My Story of Racism
It was a Monday. It was May 25th, 2020.
A name I had never heard of before was now on every news channel and website around the world.
George Floyd Jr.
He was murdered by a police officer while in handcuffs in Minneapolis in front of dozens of onlookers. The video footage went viral and riots erupted worldwide over the next several weeks.
Just ten days prior to this I had arrived in Chicago to begin my new role as the executive pastor at Willow Creek Community Church. I was energized to be serving for the first time in my life at a church that was multi-cultural. At that time, more than 33% of our attendees were not caucasian, and it has since grown to 43%. (Note: By definition, a church is multi-cultural when it surpasses 25% who don’t look like the majority.) I loved that. I was proud of that. I couldn't wait to jump in and feel the strength of our diversity. I hadn’t, though, given much thought to the stories of our people of color who had walked a very difficult road and paid a huge price to be connected to a faith community that was historically predominantly white. I knew nothing of their pain.
A few days after George Floyd died, I was in one of more than 30 meetings getting to know our staff. This particular group included 20 to 25 staff from our worship arts department, many whom were Black or Hispanic or Asian. Even though this was meant as a meet-and-greet for me and the Senior Pastor to be introduced to our teams, it quickly became a meeting filled with raw emotion.
During introductions, the conversation naturally moved toward the pain that had surfaced due to the murder in Minneapolis, and we heard story after story from our team who were reliving their own stories of systemic racism that manifest as discrimination and even threats. And, these weren’t just stories about their childhood or school or home experience — they included examples of being put down, left out, disenfranchised, and discriminated against by the church…by our church.
They wanted justice. They wanted assurances. They wanted to believe that we weren’t going to continue the injustice — but they were skeptical having seen the first two senior positions being filled by white guys. I could feel the exhaustion in their justice journey, the weight they were carrying from having to explain it to us — it wasn’t hypothetical, it was lived out every day.
I heard stories that day from several of our black and brown staff. As I did, I realized I had never personally asked a person of color to tell me their story. Oh, maybe in a job interview I would hear their work history or a bit about their family or their journey in multi-cultural churches — but I could not see through the lens of their life because I had never asked.
When I was a kid, I never experienced outward racism. I don’t remember any adult in my life ever saying one thing negative about a black person. But that may be because there weren’t any black people around. The little suburb I grew up in outside of Des Moines was 97% white. The high school I attended was completely white except for one kid in my class, Jeff Johnson, and his sister Sarah who was a year younger. I never bothered to ask Jeff about his story. I don’t know where he lived, I never went to his house, I never invited him to my house. We didn’t hang out.
In high school I got involved with the bus ministry. We went to the “bad” side of town and loaded up 50-60 kids in a bus and took them to church. I loved pouring into those kids. We had an afternoon kids church experience built specifically around the bus kids. It didn’t strike me at the time as odd, but thinking back I realize that Sunday morning was for the white middle-class kids, and Sunday afternoon was for the poor black and brown kids.
The first time I recall witnessing outward racism was when I was 18-years old. By then I had left home and was traveling across the country with a Christian singing group. We did one-night media productions and then stayed with families from the host church. Dwight was the only person on our team that wasn’t white, and at one stop in Alabama the church said they couldn’t find a family willing to house “the black boy.” I was shocked. We stood up for Dwight and all left the church to stay in a hotel. I wondered how that impacted Dwight, but I regret never taking time to hear his story. Now I wonder if that day which I still remember vividly 35 years later was just a "normal" day for Dwight.
Back to the summer of 2020 — the intensity around racial injustice increased as the summer continued. Just as I had never been on offense around topics of race, I had never been on defense either. Every person we hired who was not a person of color was met with disappointment and questions. Why do we keep hiring white people? Why is our candidate pool all white people? Why aren’t capable leaders of color applying for our roles?
In early August that summer we had a “town hall” of sorts with our staff on this very topic. We took questions and tried to provide answers. It didn’t go well. At one point, a very passionate black leader on our staff took the floor and said that our senior pastor and myself were espousing white supremacy through our decisions and that we couldn't bring solutions because we were the problem. It was a really hard meeting.
I left that meeting knowing I needed to grow. There was so much I didn’t know. I wanted to understand life through the eyes of our brothers and sisters of color, but it seemed like every time I spoke I made it worse. I needed to stop speaking and start hearing. We all needed to do that. We needed to de-escalate the energy and go on a learning journey together.
After vetting a few organizations, I ended up inviting Dr. Soong-Chan Rah and Rev Sandra Maria Van Opstal to walk our team through a year-long journey of learning about racism and injustice. Through that journey I began to listen to and really hear the lived out pain of the men and women of our staff who grew up much different than me.
I learned so much. I learned that I may think I’m not racist but I grew up with immense privilege. I learned that when I say “I don’t see color” to prove I’m not a racist, I’m actually discounting entire cultures who are begging me to see them. I learned that my intelligence and emotional IQ might be quite high but my cultural IQ was quite low. I learned that I have to lead staff of color differently than I lead my white staff. I learned that just because I haven't experienced systemic racism does not mean it doesn't exist. I learned that diversity is all fine and good but it isn’t the same thing as representation.
A couple years ago I watched a movie called The Hate U Give that marked me in a way I’ve rarely felt. My emotions welled up as that movie gave me a sense of what it is for many of our black and brown brothers and sisters to grow up in our cities. At one point in the movie, the dad in the black family is telling his young son and daughter how to stay alive if they ever get stopped by the police. I've never once been scared of a police officer. I’ve watched this movie over and over again because I don’t ever want to forget.
This month is Black History Month. If you look like me, I don’t know what step you need to take on your racism journey, but I’m just going to say you have a step and this is a good month to start. Read a book. Watch "The Hate U Give" on Prime or Apple TV+). Sit with a brother or sister who doesn’t look like you and find out what it was like for them growing up. Are you a pastor? Read some theology books written by black theologians.
You might be reading this and thinking you don’t need to take a step. You might roll your eyes when you hear about Black History Month thinking it's just one more example of special interest groups taking over the public narrative. Let me just suggest—you need to take a step more than most. You are blind to your privilege. You are lost in your own echo chamber. The more I’ve been tuned into my own subconscious and involuntary racism, the more I know I don’t know. The more I need to learn. And I’m still learning.
It's time. Take a step.
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