It’s time to be an anti-racist

Black lives matter.

Is there anything to add?

Black lives matter.

Is there anything more to be said?

It’s not my story, not my experience. I’m on the privileged side of so many spectrums of power, so I should probably just stay quiet and listen. I want to amplify Black voices and the voices of people of color, not drown them out. (Sorry for my black square…)

But at the same time, I have a certain audience: I have a facebook circle of white Christians who might not listen to another voice, or maybe who need to hear a voice they know as they step into the arena of anti-racism. I’ve been listening in on the conversation for six years now, so maybe I have something to add for someone who is just starting to try to understand the terms: systemic racism, mass incarceration, implicit bias, micro-aggressions, POC/BIPOC, white privilege, anti-racism.

So for what it’s worth, Black lives matter. There are real systemic problems that are not imagined and just because you don’t see or experience them doesn’t mean that you can ignore them. If you aren’t going to be part of the solution, you’re part of propping up a system that is problematic, aka, part of the problem. Racism and injustice in the US are the most important issues facing the church in America, and if we do not address them — NOW — and repent of our complicity with racism through the whole history of this nation, then the (white evangelical) church will lose any moral authority it has remaining. These are things I believe with all my heart.

Two months ago, I started reading “How to be an Anti-Racist” by Ibram X. Kendi, because a podcast that I listen to, Pass the Mic with Tyler Burns and Jemar Tisby, had mentioned a couple times this concept that there’s no such thing as being ‘not racist’: there’s only racist and anti-racist. So I thought I’d read up on how to be an anti-racist. (Disclaimer: I haven’t finished the book yet; I’m back on the waiting list.)

At that point, when I was listening to Jemar say that in April of this year, I was thinking, “I’m definitely not an anti-racist yet. I don’t know if that’s something I could be. I don’t want to be racist or part of upholding a bad system, but I don’t know if I could dedicate that much energy to being actively anti-racist, especially when it’s not that important to most of the people around me. Especially when I’m living overseas and I can’t really do anything to change it.”

I’m sorry, George, Breonna, Ahmaud. I’m sorry you guys died because of a system I didn’t think was important enough to put effort into changing.

I’m ready to start being an anti-racist now. I’m ready to donate, to email my senator, to do whatever else we are called to step into.

The “fierce urgency of now” has caught up to us again.

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