It is Black History month—and black history seems a point of contention today. I could state what seems obvious about that contention, but perhaps it is best to stick to what I can more confidently say from my limited experience.
My own understanding of black history was shabbily constructed in American public schools in the 1980s. It was a woefully incomplete story, one that pretty much went as Melvin J. Gravely, II describes in his book, Dear White Friend:
“Slavery happened. It was a dark period in our nation’s history. Good White people were against it and even those who owned enslaved people often treated them benevolently. Whites fought in the Civil War to end slavery, and President Abraham Lincoln set Blacks free.
Then . . . [skip] forward to the civil rights era in the 1960s. Martin Luther King, Jr. was deemed a good person because he worked with Whites. Malcolm X is rarely mentioned at all. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill in 1964, and our education on the history of race in America was complete,” (10).
The insufficiency of this public-school history was never more obvious to me when years ago, I read Isabel Wilkerson’s, The Warmth of Other Suns. How could I have never studied one of the world’s greatest migratory movements, the story of 6 million blacks leaving the American South between 1915-1970? It was reconfirmed just this month, when I listened to Clint Smith narrate his important book, How the Word is Passed.
Embarrassingly, I knew very little about Angola, one of the sites Smith visits. Angola is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and it is located on a former slave plantation. Smith details the visit he made to the Angola Museum, telling of the gift shop and the prison “rodeo” that gathers spectators to watch inmates compete (according to the Rodeo website) “in various rodeo events, earn money in the competition, and sell hobbycraft, inmate-made furniture, art, and jewelry. Inmate participation is entirely voluntary.” Smith never did have satisfying answers to his probing questions about the “progress” the prison had made in more recent decades.
Here’s what I know now. My public-school education American history has not given me the ability to account for what seem to be undeniable realities today: that black Americans lack generational wealth; that black Americans suffer worse health outcomes; that black Americans are disproportionately incarcerated; that black Americans suffer higher rates of unemployment. These are just a handful of the many obvious disparities that exist in our society, and we have important questions to ask.
What story explains these inequities? What history can make sense of them?
I can appreciate the arc of Greg Thompson’s story, which he described in his recent interview with Tish Harrison Warren for her Sunday New York Times column. Thompson was the pastor of a predominantly white church in Charlottesville, Virginia; he was also a PhD student of religion at the University of Virginia.
Thompson’s dissertation focused on the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and he told Warren about one late-night he spent reading narratives of rape and abuse suffered by African Americans. He realized, “I am a pastor in the longest standing white supremacist social order in history.”
Thompson left the pastorate in 2016 and resigned his ordination in 2021. He explained, “I [could] either spend the next 20 years of my life trying to convince wealthy white people that they are not victims and white supremacy really exists or I [could] go do what I think needs to be done.” Thompson has since founded Voices Underground that works toward the reparation of truth he talked about with Warren, and he’s also co-authored, with Duke Kwon, a book called Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair.
This Wednesday—Ash Wednesday—our Christian school community is bringing Melvin J. Gravely, II, to speak on the subject of his book, Dear White Friend: The Realities of Race, the Power of Relationships, and Our Path to Equity. I find this an important and courageous decision on the part of school leadership to host this conversation, not least because so many persist in saying, “Why talk about race? It causes division. It makes people feel uncomfortable.”
I will be glad to participate, both as an attendee of the lecture but also a participant in one of the smaller book clubs. I believe race is a subject to talk about and keeping talking about, no matter our discomfort. It’s a conversation that requires many partners and a compassionate, courageous commitment to repairing truth and justice. As Gravely writes, “Your potential discomfort, [dear white friend], can no longer be the reason we don’t talk about race.”
In fact, Gravely goes further to say that our willingness to remain ignorant “is not innocence. It is complicity.”
“I hope you agree,” he writes, “that if you see negative impacts and saying nothing—if you benefit from the system of racism and do nothing—you are indeed a benefitting bystander.” He reminds his readers how they exercise their activist voice on all kinds of issues that concern their own communities. “From neighborhood zoning to tax levies to proposed new gas pipelines to the new mascot at your high school alma mater, I see how you have the capacity to get into the details and probe past the simple, topline answers to complex topics.”
“I need you to be more active in this conversation about race. I need you to be more curious about why things are the way they are. I need you to question your own beliefs. I need you to be willing to learn more about this topic. I need you to be okay with being a little less comfortable.”
If you are okay with getting a little less comfortable and want suggestions for books to discuss race in America within your own neighborhood, school, and church communities, here are some I’ve benefitted from or heard others recommend highly.
From Mother to Son by Jasmine Holmes
Carved in Ebony by Jasmine Holmes
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
The Beautiful Community by Irwyn Ince
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith
Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley
Healing Racial Trauma by Sheila Wise Rowe
Rediscipling the White Church by David W. Swanson
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby
Here is another very fulsome list of books on race by Hearts and Minds Bookstore.
InterVarsity Press is also running a sale on their many wonderful titles by black authors.
Jasmine Holmes is definitely someone to follow on Instagram, and she is running a 2023 Reading Everyone Black Challenge. Perhaps you might participate?
My hope is that Christians will become the kind of people who are most curious to learn our nation’s history, most committed to telling a complete story, most compassionate for the sufferings of all oppressed people, most courageous to take up responsible action in the world today.
Post Script | February 20, 2023
God bless you for your courage and conviction. I’m reading The Warmth of Other Suns right now.
Thank you for REALLY caring.