Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

 

I didn’t know I was racist. That was the big revelation. The piano falling on my head. Notice, I didn’t say that I didn’t know I was a racist. It’s not a noun, where I was a guy yelling slurs and making crude jokes and refusing to serve black and brown people. Plenty of people in my ancestral family have done that, I’m sure, along with people I grew up with, but I was different. I was an enlightened, liberal. I voted for Kinky Friedman and Barack Obama! No way was I a racist! I have black friends, and I want to be a minister, and I never use the n-word, and I treat all people equally. I don’t see color. No, I was a good, liberal, non-racist white person. People made too much of a deal about race, anyways. We just need to move on together! Can’t we just get past the past and work to make things better?

 

That’s how I felt. It was a safe, comforting feeling. I wasn’t responsible for racism, and the worst racism was in the past. Racism is a personal prejudice against someone because of the color of their skin, and treating them differently because of it, but I don’t see color, so I’m good. I’m in the clear.

 

And then, someone showed me how racism has evolved from the 1950s into today. Racism didn’t go away. It adapted. A better definition than a personal prejudice is Howard Winant’s: “the routinized outcome of practices that create or reproduce hierarchical social structures based on essentialized racial categories.” I read that again and again, and I had to relabel my definition of racism.  This is systemic racism, where most everyone polled would say that they are definitely not a racist and that they don’t see color, but where black, brown, and Native peoples are disproportionately represented in the prison system, the lowest economic brackets, and the access points to quality education.

 

And then I had a Black classmate tell me, “You can say that you don’t see color, because you can afford not to. I can never take off my Blackness, and this country will always see me as black, no matter how rich or successful I become.”

 

Crash. Piano. Racist.

 

My emotions spike just typing that word, because I am not a racist. That doesn’t mean that systemic racism is not a deadly real power in the world, and that I am not an unwitting participant. I benefit from being a white, straight, Christian, male in so many invisible and obvious ways.

 

I have never been afraid of being stopped by the police.

I have never been followed in a grocery store.

I’ve never had anyone label me as “articulate”

I’ve never had anyone question if my family was poor or if I had a parent in prison.

I can dress however I want and I’ve never been labeled “suspicious.”

I’ve never been told I “fit the description.”

It was never a question if I would go to college.

I didn’t stand out in any class I ever took in seminary.

I’ve never been asked for my picture to be in an institutional brochure because of how I look.

I look in the history books of my homeland and see people that look like me.

I look at the leaders of our country and see people that look like me.

I look at the wealthiest people in this nation and see people that look like me.

I look at prison populations and see people that don’t look like me.

 

I read all these things and I resisted. I didn’t want to be uncomfortable. I didn’t want to learn about racism. I wanted to just move on and make the world a better place. I wanted to feed the hungry and give to the poor. I wanted hope and joy and light and for the world to get better on its own.

 

I wanted the resurrection, but I didn’t want to go through the crucifixion. But I had to. I had to encounter and embrace my discomfort. The only way to reconstruct your world is to deconstruct the sucky parts of it first. That meant taking a look at my whiteness.

 

To be white is to be a participant in a culture of oppression, willing or unwilling.I was part of a racist system, simply by being born into it. I didn’t ask for it, didn’t want it, but it still happened. That sucks. That’s not fair.

 

And it’s not fair, but neither is oppression of any kind.

 

I had to take a hard look at myself and recognize my role in being silent to the oppression of my neighbors, just because I didn’t want to see color.

 

Our criminal justice system sees color. Our drug laws see color. Our implicit biases (that every single one of us has, regardless of skin tone) see color.

 

In refusing to see color, I was a participant in systemic racism. In refusing to engage the discomfort, I was perpetuating the very attitude that allows systemic racism the thrive. That’s the insidiousness of it. I am guilty by association, but I’m not to blame for its construction.

 

I am racist. How could I not be? I was born and raised in the culture, breathed it in with every moment, seeing it on tv and listening to it on the radio, joking with my friends and laughing at stories about “the other,” unrealizing.

 

But I realize now. I can’t unsee now that I see. I embrace the discomfort, because it’s helping me to be more human. It’s helping me to live out the faith I proclaim. It wasn’t easy. I had to struggle, wrestle, be vulnerable, and be open to uncomfortable truths. I’m so glad I did. It’s the only way I feel I can truly become an ally for anti-racist, justice-oriented work. It’s not enough for me to be “not racist” anymore. That doesn’t change things, doesn’t change me, doesn’t change the 3 feet of space around me. I’ve got to go deeper into a culture and experience that is not mine, to be an accomplice as people continue the struggle for justice against oppression. That’s why we need Black History month and Black stories and Black leaders. We have to practice being anti-racist. Intentionally, uncomfortably, exhaustingly. Anti-racist.

 

And most of the time I don’t know what to do. I just do the best I can to be open and vulnerable. To be willing to learn and to listen and to grow. But I’m doing my best to challenge it when I see it, especially when I see it in me. Because it’s still there, like a virus. It’s still inside of me, begging me to rationalize away violence against people of color, incarceration rates, disparity and inequality. It’s still inside of me, but maybe one day…..