There’s been a weight sitting on my chest since Wednesday night. It started when I had to turn my laptop off and go to bed when I read an article by the BBC claiming that there was no evidence that a shooting at a predominantly, historically black church was a hate crime. It continued through the day yesterday as more details emerged about the shooting in Charleston. And, it remains this morning as I process the outpouring of grief on my social media. This is not religious persecution. This is not just another example of gun violence. This is racism and bigotry in their ugliest and most violent forms. This is terrorism, a term that needs to be reclaimed from the North American news outlets that reserve it for Arab or black Muslims. Because if the primary weapon of terrorism is fear and terror, then the Charleston shooter is quite simply a terrorist.
So first, do some research. Start with Twitter. It is, surprisingly, the least political and most human place to be in a time like this. Read @austinchanning’s tweets, and follow the threads of the conversation that was happening yesterday and today. Read her blog response http://austinchanning.com/blog/logical-conclusion. Read about the lives of the 9 people who were killed, and offer a prayer on their behalf (http://mic.com/articles/120967/the-9-people-you-should-be-talking-about-instead-of-dylann-roof). Hear the righteous anger of a college professor (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/06/black-lives-churches-matter-charleston-150618060102973.html) and a political satirist (http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/19/jon-stewart-charleston-daily-show?hootPostID=42ac6908c1e4432eb8487bac728567f4).
Here’s my two cents, a confession of sins of omission and some strongly worded advice. I have a complicated history with race. I grew up, a white child, in Mozambique and Kenya. Over the years as a missionary kid, I have appropriated race and culture to fill the gaps and holes of my own long lost cultural identity. As I have grown up and learned, I have started to realize the problems with my acts of cultural appropriation. As I returned to North America and saw bigotry and racism in blatant action, I have realized the privileges and the oppression that is written in the colour of my skin. But, what frustrates me the most is that bigotry and racism are not an inevitable part of the human condition. I went to high school with teenagers from a variety of races and cultures and religions, and we just disliked each other for normal high school reasons, not because of the colour of their skin or the country on their passport or their religion. There is no universal law that says that we have to treat people who are different than us with disdain or distrust, based on sweeping generalizations. And yet, here we are, people. Here we are.
So, here’s where my confession gets personal. I was having dinner last week with some white, Christian friends. Over the course of dinner, the conversation moved towards Islam, with my friends making some largely benign, if rather ignorant remarks about the treatment of Christianity by Muslims. I made a choice in that moment to stay silent, to do the Canadian thing of keeping the peace. See, the truth is my Muslim friends always understood my faith better than my agnostic or atheist friends. There was a respect and curiosity from those who shared a common commitment to religion, an unpopular institution in our modern age. My parents have worked in two Arab, Muslim countries, and have found their local students and colleagues open and respectful about their faith. Beyond just my faith, I have Muslim friends who blow me away with their commitment to fasting for an entire month (Best wishes for Ramadan, by the way!) and Arab friends who amaze me with their commitment to generosity. Western culture and the western church could learn much from Islamic traditions and Arab culture. And so, every time I don’t speak up in defence of these much loved friends of mine, I don’t keep the peace. Instead, I allow ignorance to reign.
The problem with bigotry and racism in all its forms is we rarely let the party in question speak for themselves. We make generalizations because we refuse to make human connections. So, here’s my advice. Before you make a comment about Islam or black people or Hispanic people or First Nations people or the LGBT community, take a few days or weeks or months, as long as it takes, to see the world through their eyes. Sure, we aren’t all the anomalies, the ones who pick up the guns or the bombs and kill. But when we use that defence, we risk forgetting that not too long ago, it was our white ancestors who held public lynchings and denied black people the right to vote and placed Japanese immigrants in concentration camps and kicked First Nations people off their land. So, even the ‘harmless’, throwaway comments that have been spoken in our families for generations are part of the problem.
And, the most important word of advice I can give you? If you can’t take the time to learn human empathy and slowly work on your own ignorance, then just stop. Stop talking. Stop rolling your eyes. Stop making comments under your breath. Stop posting ignorant comments on your social media or your friends’ social media. Because people can see and hear you. Often those people are the young ones, the true innocents, who have yet to see the world through the lens of privilege that you do. You are responsible for the way that you influence the innocents. Jesus was pretty clear on that front with his millstones and such.
Bigotry and racism are founded on bullshit. There is no way that you can condense the complexity of the human experience into a sweeping indictment of a people group. So, stop allowing bullshit to destroy the soul of your country, your culture and your communities. Just stop.
So, listen well and speak truth. Peace and healing are empty words until we are ready to “beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks” and engage in the hard, ongoing work of confession and reconciliation.
And for those of you who follow Jesus, treat your brothers and sisters, your friends and your enemies with the dignity that he demands. Love is the primary commandment, not your moral or political or social opinions.
