"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... One ever feels his twoness,-- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -W.E.B. DuBois, "The Souls of Black Folk"
"Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." -Galatians 6:2
"What's it feel like to be the oppressor?"
I'll never forget hearing those words. I was a sophomore in college, completely unaware of so many of the deep-seated realities of racism in our world. Yet there I was, the only white guy in a class called Black Liberation and Womanist Theology as a religion major. I loved the class. It stretched me. I read things that made me more uncomfortable than anything I'd ever read, books with words like oppression and White Devil.
But that particular day kicked off with a bang. Justin, a Black defensive lineman on the football team who looked like he could finish me in one swing if he'd wanted to, asked me those eight words as class started. I was startled. Not even that, I was defensive. I was stunned. I wanted to hide in a shell for the next 90 minutes and sprint to the door.
But I didn't. And he wasn't trying to intimidate me. It was a legitimate question. And after 90 minutes of conversation, I started to get it. He wasn't accusing me of oppressing him. He wasn't accusing me of bigotry and racism. In fact, by the end of the class, we'd done more honest sharing and grown more comfortable with each other than any other 90-minute session would've allowed.
He was getting at a deep reality that I was uniquely positioned to speak to. In very few moments in my life do I have to worry about how others are perceiving me because of my identity. I don't need to identify myself by my whiteness because we've largely imagined it as the default (imagine why there is a Black Congressional Caucus but not a White one). I don't have to prove myself twice over because of my gender like so many women still have to do. No one needs any explanation or asks any questions when I describe my sexuality or faith. I get to just be me.
Not everyone in our world gets to live with that same freedom. For so many, they're forced to live within the constraints of what W.E.B. DuBois coined "the double-consciousness," the reality that for most Black folks in America, they must live true to themselves AND project an image acceptable to the world around them. I know this is true, because I've never wondered if I'd be safe when pulled over. I've never wondered if the police would be called because the car I was driving looked "too nice." I've never wondered if I'd get beaten for talking to a white girl. I've never wondered if I'd be allowed to buy a house in a particular neighborhood.
I didn't even know to think about those questions. It took what Donald Miller calls an "inciting incident." It took being uncomfortable and being forced to wrestle with questions that tinged me with guilt and sadness and defensiveness and frustration and exhaustion. It took Justin. We all need an inciting incident. We all need a nudge. I still need lots of nudges.
But I also know that we need compassion. Compassion is a simple word with so much depth. Literally, it means to "suffer together." To carry one another's burdens. We all have burdens. We all carry pain. We all carry suffering. Instead of it motivating us towards comparison, forever arguing over whose suffering demands greater redress, our shared pain ought to attune our ears to hear the pain of others. We're all intersections of unique stories and pain, and that intersectionality ought to highlight our own pain so that we can see and sympathize with the pain of others. It doesn't require us to prioritize some over the other, nor does it necessitate that we delegitimize honest and painful reflections as not "woke" enough or not "activated"enough.
As I watch our country's cities burn, I can't help but hear pain. It's been crying out for far longer than just the past few days. It's been crying out for centuries. We've been inflicting pain on our Black brothers and sisters for far too long. It doesn't have to look like lynchings and cross-burnings. It doesn't have to wear white hoods. It looks like restrictive housing policies, localizing poverty in African-American communities while opportunity immigrated to the suburbs. It looks like policing policies and attitudes that result in dead unarmed Black men. It looks like the side glances and off-handed jokes we make about the Black students who don't really belong at our school except that they play sports or met some diversity quota. It looks like assuming the man in front of you is a janitor, not the physician, simply by virtue of their skin color.
But I hear pain. Where hope has been silenced, opportunity suppressed, and equality denied, pain sometimes requires a louder voice. Systems don't often respond to whispers. They don't often respond to single voices. Sometimes the voices of hopeless pain must scream from the tops of their lungs in protests. Regardless of our response to the mediums that voice takes, we have to hear pain. We have to hear trauma. We are called to compassion, to hear the suffering of our neighbors and try to help carry it.
This is the work of God's people. God's people were never called to a life of passivity. We're called to stand in God's presence and proclaim the kingdom of God. if you're curious what that kingdom looks like, it often involves embracing the least of these, the forgotten, the voiceless and hopeless. Throughout scripture, God has stood alongside those suffering. God has seen our suffering and heard our cries of pain and declared, "I am with you." If we want to stand in the presence of God, there are worse first steps than to stand with those God stands with and amongst. There are worse places to stand than with those crying out. Listen, and we may just hear the voice of God speaking.
I have so much to learn about loving God and loving God's people. I have so much to learn about my own prejudice and my own pain. I have so much to learn about the pain of Black Americans. I need so much more courage and less defensiveness. I've got to let go of so much of the fear that drives me! But that's the work of faithful disciples of Jesus. May we take that on, striving faithfully every day to take another step towards becoming the people God made us to be and working for a world of shalom like the one God created this world to be. It won't be without pain. It won't be without discomfort. But Jesus never invited us to those things. God began with a garden, getting God's hands dirty with the work of creating a new world. May we get our hands dirty and do God's work.
forever unfinished...
