Near the beginning of the summer, I wrote this post about imagining something new. 

I wrote it publicly, but actually I think that it was for me. 

Those words have been the oars that have moved me slowly and quietly over the waves of the past months. 

I am traveling in a small, unassuming boat in a little corner of the world that few have ever heard of, much less visited. But I am paying attention to what’s happening in the world, the giant waves of destruction and chaos that rise up and threaten to consume us all. 

But instead of focusing only on what is happening, I am making a practice of imagining what is possible. 

This practice of imagining something else is one I have learned from those who have much more experience with facing reality than I do.

I don’t think it’s a version of sticking my head in the sand. I want to remain fully awake.

It’s a practice that (for me) is prayer-soaked. I’m asking for visions of a world that only the Holy Spirit can give to me. And then I am asking for that world to come to be. (On earth as it is in heaven.)

Here are a few examples:

When I call an airline to cancel another trip I had planned, or I write to tell my friends I won’t be able to see them, I imagine us one day in the future, walking together in the sun. I see a path running through green pastures and along bubbling creeks, and we are laughing together as we walk. We are remembering the days of quarantine as a distant memory and delighting at the small joy of drinking wine from a community cup.

When I see rows of people in riot gear, armed for violence and ready for war, I imagine them stripping it all off. One by one they are tossing guns, bullets and vests into a fire. I imagine helmets being pulled off to reveal faces. When I see their eyes, I see how tired they are of fighting. I see that anger and fear are keeping their souls imprisoned. Then I imagine the police having a different experience of being with the people they serve as Resmaa Menakem describes in his book: living in the actual neighborhoods they serve, coaching football in their precincts, having kids over for meals, organizing food for families they know are in need, browsing garage sales and watching parades in their neighborhoods. 

When I read that two of the twenty highest clusters of COVID cases are in Arkansas prisons, I imagine the walls of the prison falling down. I see them actually crumbling apart like Jericho, to allow the captives to go free. Outside the fallen walls are doctors and nurses and families ready to care for each person whose body is broken in sickness, and whose heart is aching from being forgotten all these months while prisons have been closed to visitors. 

When I see my kids doing school online and their weary teachers trying so hard to make this new process work, I imagine that we discover something new about education in the midst of this strange time. I see communities spending money on turning education at home into an unexpected gift to children and parents, allocating resources that allow parents to be at home with their children during this season. I imagine children thriving outside the walls of schools that have grown to resemble prisons. I see parents, grandparents and teachers who are creating something new.

Recently I listened to an interview with Eddie S. Glaude Jr. where he said that it is we who are the midwives of something new: But every time a new America is about to be born, white supremacy is the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck, and we allow white supremacy to choke the life out of it. 

Maybe the most important part of my practice this summer has been to sit in mediation and pray for the cutting of this umbilical cord. To ask for the release of white supremacy from my very DNA. 

This week I finished working through the practices from My Grandmother’s Hands with a group of women. We’ve been doing them twice a week on lunch hour Zoom calls. The practices, written by trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem, are intended to help us heal the generational racial trauma that is stored deep within our bodies.

Some of the practices are a bit different, even strange. They are new to us or don’t come naturally. But week after week, I have asked these women to just trust the process even when we don’t understand it. 

Thomas Merton said that God can only take us to “sanctity” by paths that we do not understand. 

I think that’s because when we walk paths we don’t understand, we have to release control. We have to let go of all the familiar roads. We don’t know the way, so we can’t be in charge. 

And then mysteriously, the unknowing is the actual path. 

Our uncertainty is the gift that God uses to take us to “sanctity.”

And that’s encouraging. 

Because there is so much that I don’t know. 

I don’t know how we are going to survive losing so many loved ones to a new virus. 

I don’t know how we are going to create a future that is free from white supremacy when we have worshipped it for so long and built every existing system upon its tenets.

I don’t know how we are going to heal our world from fires and hurricanes and poverty.

I don’t know how to look ahead to next month, much less next year. 

So I keep returning to this practice of imagining what is possible. 

When I become overwhelmed by how dark the world seems, I sit back down on my little meditation cushion, and ask the Holy Spirit to help me to see it with new eyes. 

Maybe that seems naive or crazy or silly. 

Maybe that’s because it’s a path that you don’t understand. 

I invite you to come along with me down it anyway.

Only God knows what we will find. 

The post What is possible? appeared first on Alison Chino.

Several years ago if you had showed me a protest sign with the words “Defund the Police” written on it,

I would have thought that the person who wrote that sign was a little extreme. Maybe even a radical.

Just five years ago, if you had tried to tell me that we should close all the prisons in our country, I would have thought you were crazy. 

I would have said, “Where would we put all the bad guys?” 

I would have said, “Who will protect us from the rapists and murderers?”

I would have conceded that maybe we need to reform the police and the prisons. 

I would have agreed that the police need to be trained to not act on implicit racial bias.

I would have said that we need to do better at holding police accountable, but I would not have imagined a world in which we do not have police or prisons.

In 2014, I watched from my home in Scotland as police in riot gear attacked protesters in Ferguson. It was the first time I felt that perhaps the police did not actually exist to protect and to serve. 

Then in the fall of 2015, I read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson.

In his book, I read story after story of Black brothers and sisters being imprisoned without trial, many without guilt, and at shockingly increasing rates. 

This one book set me on a journey of reading about Mass Incarceration in the United States. (It has now been made into a movie and is free to watch for the month of June on all platforms.)

After I read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, I began to imagine a world without prisons. I looked at how other developed countries rehabilitate people who have committed crimes instead of locking them up and forgetting about them.

The next year (2016), the documentary 13th was released on Netflix and confirmed for me what by then I already knew in my heart: that I want to live in a world where the police (including ICE) and prisons no longer exist. 

By the year 2016, I would have called myself an abolitionist. 

Not because I was working tirelessly for the abolition of police and prisons, but because even though I could not quite clearly see the way forward, I knew in my heart that the current system, one which was built entirely on white supremacy, must be dismantled in order for there to ever be true equality in our country. 

So I joined racial justice book clubs and marched with the Poor Peoples’ Campaign. Every time another Black man or woman had their life stolen from them by police, I lamented over their names, turned into hashtags for a movement that seemed stuck in molasses.

Eric Garner

Philando Castile

Michael Brown

Trayvon Martin

Tamir Rice

Walter Scott

Natasha McKenna

Kendrec McDade

Sandra Bland

Botham Jean

Oscar Grant

Atatiana Jefferson

Kenneth Chamberlain

Samuel DuBose

Ahmaud Arbery

Breonna Taylor

And then finally,

George Floyd

Now, in 2020, I have had the benefit of sitting for several years with the knowledge that the police force came into existence to capture runaway slaves. And after slavery was abolished, prison labor evolved to continue the institution under another name. 

In this moment, I am watching in horror as police who are armed to the teeth attack protesters all over the country, inciting violence even where there is none. I am horrified, but I am not surprised.

The violence that I see police enacting on my brothers and sisters in the streets is born of a violence that is also running through my DNA. My ancestors believed that Black bodies were not worthy of the same love, dignity and status as white bodies. 

We now know (because science) that we store trauma in our DNA and pass it down to our children. (The stress of generations of racism is causing Black women to die in childbirth at higher rates in our country, regardless of their current circumstances.) 

As white people, when we read slave narratives or stories of white mobs lynching Black men and women, we usually either look away or we think: How could they do that?  

In the same way that we think we would never have sent Jesus to the cross or Jewish people to concentration camps, we think that we would never have owned, tortured or killed Black people. 

But we don’t always stop and think about the hate, anger and shame that a person must allow to take hold in their hearts in order to enact such horrors. And as “good white people,” we are wholly unaware of how that same hate, anger and shame is running through our own bodies. These days I call that hate, anger and shame what I think it is: white supremacy.

White supremacy cannot be reformed. And though reading and studying is a help, white supremacy cannot be “read” or “studied” away. (Believe me, friends, if it was possible to eradicate white supremacy from within your heart by reading the right books, watching the right movies, and listening to the right podcasts, I would know.)

I am growing in an understanding of how I can move the trauma of my ancestral history of white supremacy out of my body, but I am still a baby in this work. As a life-long reader and thinker, the entire field of “body work” has not come easily to me, but I am learning from many teachers, including trauma therapist Resmaa Menakem. He teaches about using body work specifically for racial trauma. (He explains the research of how we store trauma in our DNA in this podcast and he is a guest on Krista Tippet’s podcast here, and then his book My Grandmother’s Hands is full of exercises that help us sit with and move the trauma out of our bodies.)

But the longer I live and wrestle with my place in the world with regards to racial inequality, the more I am convinced that the way forward is to lose everything. 

To un-build all that has been built. To let go of all that I am holding onto. 

It’s funny that somehow I am surprised that the way forward in eradicating white supremacy is also the way forward in following Jesus.

To commit to a life of downward mobility.

To lose my life in order to save it. 

Often in our spiritual lives, we have to let go of something before we get to see what comes next. 

We almost never get to just trade one thing for another. 

We have to make space by releasing.

And then waiting. 

Maybe asking who is going to “save our lives” if we let go of policing and prisons is the wrong question.

Maybe we could ask instead if we are willing to release the unjust system we have now, in order to make room for something else to unfold.

And then we wait.

Allow the space to imagine something new. 

I will not fight to protect things that have been built. I only want to protect people.

And I want to start with the lives that we have oppressed for over 400 years in the US. 

I want to start by reframing my white body to know all the way down to my DNA that Black Lives Matter.

I believe a more beautiful world is possible, but first I think we have to let go of the one we have built. 

We have a lot of tearing down to do. 

But as the honorable Dr. Rev. William Barber

and Dr. Rev. Anika Whitfield of Little Rock have taught me to say (or rather to sing),

We have nothing to lose but our chains. 

PS. Here’s a helpful resource guide on prison and police abolition if you want to do a little reading of your own. 

The post Imagining Something New appeared first on Alison Chino.

10 Easy Things You Could Do On MLK Day To Honor the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1. Listen to a whole MLK speech.

When we only see the popular quotes pulled from his speeches, we are in danger of consuming a sanitized version of Dr. King that makes us comfortable. Listening to Dr. KIng’s words in full protect us from distilling his speeches down to platitudes.

2. Read Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

This letter is uncanny in its timelessness. Dr. King’s eloquent words, written from a jail cell, echo through the decades to call us out of our commitment to a kind of “negative peace” that ignores injustice.

3. Read articles from The Guardian’s series on Anti-Racism.

I particularly appreciated Ibram X Kendi’s piece on building an Anti-Racist America and Robin DiAngelo’s on our tendency as white people to equate niceness with being “not racist.” I would say that my commitment to “niceness” and to being perceived as a “nice person” has been the single greatest hurdle in my journey towards eradicating racial bias from my own dark heart. Whenever I am more worried about whether someone thinks I am nice or about if we can all just be nice to one another, I am clouding my vision from being able to see the insidious white supremacy in the room, especially if it’s coming from me.

4. Read this article from an agent of mercy being arrested at our southern border.

A quote:

The truth is that the “soul of the nation” has been deeply disturbed for 500 years. Despite rhetoric in our founding documents that “all men are created equal,” the legacy of our history is one of deep denial. We all live on stolen land and reside in a society built from stolen labor. Our country was founded on the legacy of dispossession and settler colonialism, rooted in a belief that some are deserving of rights, but only some.

5. Watch 13th or Selma.

6. Donate money to an organization that is devoted to justice and that is run by a person of color.

Two organizations I love right now that are doing amazing work are Bryan Stevenson’s Equality Justice Initiative and Susan Burton’s A New Way of Life. If you want to be compelled by the work of these two individuals, they both have amazing books out that detail the work they are doing: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and Becoming Ms. Burton by Susan Burton.

7. Order The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby.

This important book, which I’ve already talked about on the blog, releases tomorrow.

8. Support a business in your town today that is owned by a person or family of color.

This is an easy one! If you eat out or shop today, be intentional about spending those dollars in a way that makes a tiny dent in the enormous racial wealth gap in our country. (If you live in North Little Rock, you could eat lunch at Lindsey’s BBQ. I get the catfish platter every time!)

9. Follow Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice King, on Twitter.

I am amazed at how she is both consistently a voice for justice and manages to give wisdom that is unfettered by bitterness. She honors both of her parents’ legacies with grace.

10. Join The Poor People’s Campaign.

This campaign is literally the continuation of Dr. King’s unfinished work. It’s based on a campaign by the same name that he started shortly before his life was taken. Being a part of this campaign has been an incredible learning experience for me. I would say one of the most important things I have learned is how much more complicated and lengthy the process is towards lasting change. I think it’s easy to simplify Dr. King’s life (and the Civil Rights Movement), but walking through the process of being involved in the PPC has helped me greater appreciate the long slog it is to push against racism and injustice.

Thank you Dr. King for working to see God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is heaven, even unto death. 

The post 10 Easy Things You Could Do On MLK Day To Honor the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.  appeared first on Alison Chino.

The Color of Compromise: The Truth About The American Church’s Complicity in Racism

A new book by Jemar Tisby

I have been following Jemar Tisby’s work for a couple of years now and have been eagerly anticipating the release of his new book The Color of Compromise, so when calls went out for advance readers, I raised my hand high.

I’ve been digesting the book slowly for a few weeks and here is what most amazes me: I have been reading and studying America’s deeply racist history for a while now, but this specific history of how the American church had a leading role in both establishing and maintaining racism was, for the most part, previously unknown to me.

I think that there is a part of my heart that felt that all true followers of Jesus during the colonial era were abolitionists. (Not true.)

And I certainly thought that all abolitionists believed in racial equality. (Also not true.)

I thought that white churches during the Civil Rights Movement were either supportive or silent, but I was surprised to discover that segregation was actually preached from the pulpit.  Tisby argues that the Religious Right was initially galvanized by an effort to put forth laws and practices that would reverse the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. (It was not abortion that initially bound Fundamentalists together, but rather the move to establish tax-exempt status for private schools which provided a means of fleeing integrated schools.)

These are just a couple of examples of the many revelations that were part of reading the history of the way the American church helped build our nation on white supremacy.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that understanding the ways that racism has evolved since slavery has repeatedly brought me to my knees in lament.

Reading that the American church and many Christian leaders have lent their overwhelming support to that evolution is a whole other level of devastating.

The History of the American Church Matters.

I read A LOT of history because I think that it’s important. The parts of our history that we don’t know or the stories we sweep under the carpet are the bits that come back to bite us. Also reading history keeps me from naively believing the many false narratives that pervade our thinking about “The Land of the Free” (where people are imprisoned at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world).

And so it follows that for a Christian, reading and knowing the history of the American church’s complicity in maintaining a racist society is the only way to begin to break the cycle of that complicity.

It’s been a long, sad slog of complicity, but Jemar Tisby graciously tells it under 300 pages, stating himself that it is “a historical survey” rather than “a comprehensive treatment.” Also, he reminds us from the very beginning that it is his love of the church that compels him to tell this truth. He is not writing from the perspective of someone who written off the church, but as someone who wants to see a better day in the American church. He maintains hope that we can still seek unity across racial and ethnic lines, that we can still see God’s kingdom come.

But first, like the people of Israel who mourned when Ezra read them the word they had forgotten and forsaken, we have some reckoning to do. We cannot gloss over the sins of the past or we will continue to allow them (and their more subtle forms) in the present.

“The Fierce Urgency of Now”

Jemar closes the book with a chapter full of practical ways to address current racial injustice in America, because when we know how hard those who have gone before us have worked to erect racial barriers, surely we will want to know how to do the work of taking them down.

Here’s a paragraph from the book that will continue to inspire and admonish me in the days ahead:

Although our eternal peace is secure, a diverse but unified body of Christ will only come through struggle in this life. A survey of the history of racism and the church shows that the story is worse than most imagine. Christianity in America has been tied to the fallacy of white supremacy for hundreds of years. European colonists brought with them the ideas of white superiority and paternalism toward darker-skinned people. On this sandy foundation, they erected a society and religion that could only survive through the subjugation of people of color. Minor repairs by the weekend-warrior racial reconcilers won’t fix a flawed foundation. The church needs the Carpenter from Nazareth to deconstruct the house that racism built and remake it into a house for all nations. 

Amen to this!

I hope you’ll make a point of getting your hands on Jemar Tisby’s powerful book, The Color of Compromise. It releases on January 22, 2019, but you can pre-order it today. I also recommend following him on Twitter @JemarTisby.

PS. I’m for sure adding this book to my ongoing list of resources for growing awareness of systematic racism.

The post The Color of Compromise: The Truth About The American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby appeared first on Alison Chino.

MLK50: Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop

“There’s a wreath at the Lorraine Motel.”

“We are not children of God apart from loving one another.” 

“This is a great conference but it’s still just a conference. Let’s not give finish line praise for getting to the starting line.”

 “The reason that you are so comfortably able to honor the prophets is that they cannot speak to you any longer.” 

The post MLK50 appeared first on Alison Chino.

After the election, I was reading the news, lamenting on Twitter, and trying to listen to the voices that I felt were most marginalized by the comments our newly elected president had made on his campaign trail.

Listen and lament.

Listen and lament.

But after about a week, I was drowning in a sea of despair. I was starting to think I was going to have to shut the internet down, but I also felt like it would be an unacceptable exercising of privilege to close my ears and eyes to the emboldened racism and rampant hate-related instances unfolding all around the country.

So at some point, I was moved (probably by the Holy Sprit) to type into my Google search bar something to the effect of: Black Christian Perspective On Election Results.

Somehow my search led me to an article you wrote about feeling betrayed by white evangelicals in the wake of the election. You explained that for your white brothers and sisters to ignore the racist rhetoric was to dangerously underestimate the power of words and the impact they have on the groups which the rhetoric is intended to marginalize.

And then you ended with these words.

Because of Christ, I am willing to be part of a body that constantly underestimates the ongoing impact of racism. Because of Jesus, I am willing to associate with believers who outright deny systemic and institutional forms of inequality based on race. Because of our unity in the Spirit, I am willing to fellowship with believers who rebuke me for my honesty, and accuse me of sowing division because I speak of difficult subjects. I am still here. Bear with me if I sometimes long to worship with people who share not only my theology, but my pain as well.

As a member of a church that is trying to bridge racial divides, I do not take lightly the willingness of anyone from the minority culture to worship with me.

I have grown to understand how much people of color have given up in order to participate in racial reconciliation, in order to walk back into to churches from which their parents and grandparents were actively excluded.

So I was humbled by your willingness to remain part of a body that “constantly underestimates the ongoing impact of racism.” And it reminded me again that the black people in my church have to face the same struggle, worshipping alongside a group of believers who have (in some numbers) voted for and continue to support a president who is stripping away any small steps of progress towards equality.

As a result of landing on that one article and reading several others, I began to faithfully listen to the podcast Pass the Mic, where I began to hear you and Tyler Burns discuss issues and culture from a distinctly black Christian perspective.

Which is a perspective this white girl needs to hear.

The longer I listen, the more voices I hear. And the more I learn.

Through your podcast, I also grew to know and love the Truth’s Table podcast.

You also introduced me to the writings at the blog (Black Perspectives) of the African American Intellectual History Society, where I have read countless stories and been introduced to new books that have grown my world exponentially.

I could go on and on, but mainly I just wanted to write and say thank you.

Thank you for your willingness to keep engaging with a community that consistently   underestimates the ongoing impact of racism.

Thank you for creating spaces where I can learn. I know that those spaces are not for me, but I am grateful to be invited along to listen and open my heart.

I hope you will keep writing, speaking, reading, tweeting and holding truth for us all to see.

With gratitude and grace,

Alison

A note to my readers:

If you want to check out the podcast, Pass The Mic, here are a couple of my favorite episodes:

This interview with Andy Crouch is a particularly great listen for white folks. Note: the podcast’s target audience is black listeners, so if you’re white, you might be asking yourself why you would join a conversation that is not for you? One good answer is that when I am in a place where my own experience excludes me from understanding what the speakers’ have encountered, I am being let in on something special. I get to listen and learn.

Bryan Stevenson (interviewed here) is a national treasure. Seriously, I think in 100 years we’ll be talking about this guy like we do Ghandi.

And if you are involved in any kind of racial reconciliation in churches, the 4-part series that Truth’s Table did on this topic is required listening. This one with Laura Pritchard is my favorite.

The post An Open Letter to Jemar Tisby appeared first on Alison Chino.

A Letter to My Ten Year Old Son Upon The Election of Donald Trump To The Office of President

I wrote this letter back in November and held onto it because I felt like it sounded a bit alarmist. I opened it again just a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised to discover that I’m not sure it’s alarmist enough. I’m sharing it now because I want all my children to understand my heart about the rhetoric of our current president. I want them to join me in grieving the state of our nation. We are having a lot of conversations at our house about racism and hateful words as people around us ask what on earth is happening in America, so this letter reflects this dialogue that has been happening in our house for a while now. 

November 2016

Dear Simon,

This week you said to me:

Donald Trump won? What does that mean?

Does it mean we can’t go back to America?

And as I was pondering how to answer, I was also wondering what was going on inside your ten-year old brain.

And before I could form my reply, you said something about a wall.

People keep talking about walls being built.

Oh, yes. There has been a lot of talk about walls.

About divides. There are a lot of divides in our country.

There is a big deep chasm right down the middle that seems impossible to cross.

So I said to you.

Do you think a wall will go up that will keep us out of America? That will not happen. We are citizens and holders of American passports, so yes, we can go back to America whenever we want.

But I guess the question is,

When there are walls going up, when so many people are divided by hostility, do we want to go back?

Of course you said,

Oh yes, I want to go back.

I knew your answer before you said it. There is no president that can come between you and your love for America.

I understand how you feel. I, too, love America. In fact, being an expat makes me love our country more. In big ways like I miss a hecka lotta people who are crazy important to me and in small ways like how I think American central heat and air is the eighth wonder of the world.

But this election means I have to ask.

Do I want to use my privilege to return to a country that is projecting the message that we, as Americans, do not value all of God’s people?

Simon, do you remember a few weeks ago when we made you watch that movie about how white people in America have treated (and continue to treat) black people? It was called 13th, because it was about the 13th amendment.

Remember how you covered your eyes and cried and begged us to turn it off because seeing that much hate for our black brothers and sisters was just too much.

It was too painful.

But the most painful thing is that the hate that we saw in that documentary, that horrible hate still lives in the hearts of many white people in the United States.

In fact, because our country was founded by white men who believed that they were fundamentally better than black people, they have handed all of us a legacy of hate. Even if we think we are not haters, we cannot help but have inherited some of the ideas that have spread this hateful idea that white people somehow deserve to have more than black and brown people.

You know what I mean by black and brown people, right? I’m talking about the folks that were in that documentary we watched. I’m talking about people who are from Mexico or from other Latin American countries. I’m talking about Muslim people like the ones in your international class who came here to escape wars in their own countries.

Well, I don’t know if you know this, but Donald Trump said a lot of horrible things about black and brown people while he was running for president.

There are a lot of people who don’t want black and brown people to feel welcome in America who supported Donald Trump for president. Elections are complicated and there are people who voted for Donald Trump for other reasons, but still, the reality is that too many Americans agree with the meanest of his statements.

So imagine that this morning when you woke up and found out that Donald Trump was president, if you were a black person or a brown person, how would it make you feel to discover that your country elected a president who encourages that kind of hate towards someone who looks like you?

Terrified.

Really scared.

Super sad.

Mad.

You would be wondering which people hate you.

If you were an immigrant from another country you might be afraid that you will have to leave the United States.

And even if you don’t have to leave, you might not feel welcome. You might feel like people don’t want you around.

I know you know how that feels. Because we are expats, we have been living in other countries where we don’t belong. We are outsiders. We do not feel at home.

Do you remember when we lived in Scotland what it took for us to finally feel at home? It was not until we made friends who were Scottish, people who welcomed us into their homes and let us know that they were glad we lived in their country.

Can you imagine how we would have felt if people never did welcome us? If we had lived in Scotland for three years without making any Scottish friends?

What if when we went to the store in Scotland, people said things to us like, “Go home!” or “Get out of our country!” or “We don’t want people like you here!”

Do you think we would have felt at home in Scotland if that had happened?

I know what you are thinking. You would tell me that if we were not welcome, we could just go back home. We could go back to Arkansas, where we are always welcome.

And yes. That is true. We will always be welcome in Arkansas.

(That’s called privilege by the way.)

But what if there was a war in Arkansas? What if our home had been bombed and we could not go back without risking our lives?

Or what if there was a famine back home and there was nothing to eat? What if going home meant we were in danger of starving?

Or what if a group of people back home decided that they wanted to kill us because of the church we belong to, or because we are mixed race family or because we love Jesus?

What if we could not just “go home?”

What if, like many of the people in your class at school, we were wandering the earth, broken-hearted because we could not go home, but also trying to make a life for our family in a new country…only to wake up and discover that the new country does not want us?

That the new country actually hates us?

What would that feel like?

We would cry and moan and ask God WHY?

We would wonder why the world feels this way towards us?

Why is the divide so great between us and others?

Simon, your father has been telling you something about politics since before you were old enough to understand words – he has been saying that it does not matter who is president. It doesn’t matter because both parties are controlled by big business.

Again, if you remember watching 13th, you will recall that they explained how this is true. Every president helped to pass laws that were written by a company that was being paid by corporations who would benefit financially from those laws.

All the presidents for all of time have bowed down to the idols of capitalism.

So, yes, in one sense your father is right. It doesn’t matter who is president.

But in another sense he is wrong, because the face of the president of the United States is representative of our county – not just to the world – though that is important too – but also to the people who live in America.

This is the reason I broke with our family habit of voting third party candidates to cast my ballot for Barack Obama (twice). It was not because I thought Obama could “save America.” Lord, help me the day I am fooled into thinking that the representative of a large machine (Democrat or Republican) will turn on that machine and suddenly become the champion of the poor, the oppressed and the prisoner. No, I voted for Obama because I wanted the black kids at your school to turn on the television and see that the highest office in our country could be held by someone who looked like them. I wanted Americans (you included!) to look into the face of our president and be encouraged and proud of the fact that we elected an African-American president. I wanted us all to see the black man on the news who was president. I still believe that the greatest gift Barack and Michelle have given our country is their gracious presence as a black family in the White House. There is no policy that can outweigh the uplifting effect of Obama’s being the face of our country over the last eight years for all of us, but especially for minority children.

If you were older, maybe you would ask me if I believe that Hillary’s face would have been a great encouragement in that same way for young women? To that I would have to say, no. The hope of her presence in the White House did not compel me to break from voting a third party candidate this year.

But even so, I would not have chosen over Hillary the face of someone who is willing to say out loud that he does not value all people. 

But that someone is now the president-elect. Donald Trump will be the face that we see on the news for the next four years representing our country.

And so, Simon, what are we supposed to do when so many people that we know and love are having to wonder if they are welcome in America?

When someone who looks like you and me is telling our brothers and sisters that they are not welcome, we cannot stay quiet.

We have to figure out ways to say again and again that we need our African American friends in the United States. We need people from all over the world. We need immigrants and refugees.

Simon, I want you to grow up in a country where everyone is welcome.

I want you to grow up in a country where policemen protect people of color.

I want you to be a part of a country where the refugees find refuge. Where the prisoner is set free.

I want you to grow up in a country where the walls are coming down, not going up.

In this world of great divides, I want you to be a builder of bridges.

Right now you are living a life as an outsider. We talk funny and we don’t understand the systems and we puzzle our way through most days. It is exhausting and discouraging and sometimes it feels pointless.

But Simon, I’m asking you to pay very close attention.

You are learning how to stand in the shoes of the alien.

One day you may find yourself on the inside in America again, but if you have been watching, you will have learned how walls get taken down between the insiders and the outsiders.

And, oh my son, you are going to need those skills.

America will need you use them.

Because there will be many walls to tear down.

Here’s a verse to remember when you need encouragement in this good work of tearing down walls:

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility     

– Ephesians 2:14

Love you so much,

Mama

The post A Letter to My 10 Year Old Son Upon The Election of Donald Trump To The Office of President appeared first on Alison Chino.

Dear White People (including myself),

As Black History Month wraps up, I want to make a plea that we all choose not be done with Black History for the year.

Current events are daily revealing how necessary it is that all Americans learn Black History all year long.

For how long?

For as long as it takes for us to unwrite the rules we wrote when our brothers and sisters were enslaved and we did not count them as people.

For as long as it takes to unmake a system that has its roots planted deeply in white supremacy.

For as long as it takes for us to consider Black History as an integral part of American History, embedded in our lives and national stories, just like The Mayflower, The Pilgrims and Independence Day.

Extensive reading is my preferred (and maybe too easy) method of becoming awake to how the decks are stacked against our black and brown brothers and sisters in this country. But I am committing this year not to just reading about racism, but also to talking about it, to writing about it regularly and to calling it out in myself.

Let me say that again.

I am committed to calling out racism in myself.

Lamenting it.

Confessing it.

Repenting of it.

I like to say that I am about 67% woke. (That’s probably generous.)

Woke refers to a state of being aware of racial injustice in the world.

So if I am 67% woke, that still leaves like 33% of me that is asleep, that is ruled by racism.

I was raised in a country that was founded on white supremacy, so I am going to have a natural bent towards participating in racism that is both underlying and overt.

I am repenting of being complicit in a system that has sold itself out in a grab for power. I am so sad that I am a part of tradition that was meant to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world and instead seems to be the second coming of the Pharisees. I cannot make it right by saying I am not a part of the group, or I am not one of those kind of Christians. Somehow I stood by while we were seduced by the empire and so I participated.

For years and years, I was content to sit in a church on Sunday morning filled with people who looked like me, to fill the seats at my table with people who looked like me. I was content to read only books about people who looked like me, and I studied history that was missing the pieces that explain why life is so different for people who did not look like me.

I am lamenting that I did not notice how wrong this was. I am lamenting that my unwillingness to cross racial lines has contributed to walls that exist today, and to the rhetoric that is adding more bricks every day to those very walls, causing them to be thicker and harder to break down.

I confess that I have contributed to an atmosphere where we need to say out loud that Black Lives Matter, because the blood on the streets shows that these words are not a given. We must say that Black Lives Matter so that maybe one day we will live in a country where that is true to everyone. In fact, I believe that if we had made it true that Black Lives Matter then we would also have solved the problem of welcoming refugees, because if we raise up and value the lives of those who are different from us, then we will continue to do it with refugees, with Muslims, and with anyone we have designated as “other.”

And so I repent that I personally have not always shown with my actions in the world that Black Lives Matter.

I repent that I have acted as though I am owed the privilege that I was born with. I pass through borders and drive by police cars without fear. I walk into stores and restaurants and never doubt that I will be treated with respect. I expect to have the very best possible schools for my children, without regard for the effect my school choices have on the districts and towns in which we have lived.

If I live to be 100 I cannot undo what I have done to uphold the standard of white supremacy in the US, and this fact overwhelms me. It overwhelms me so much that I considered not writing this letter. But even if I cannot undo all the things or do all that must be done, I can try.

I can do the little that I know how to do today. And tomorrow I can try to learn about another thing. I can work towards another half percent of being woke.

And I would be so honored if you would join me.

That’s why I am making this page into a Resource List, a page that I can add to whenever I come across something that contributes to my awareness of racial injustice. You can come back to it and read again and again because this journey towards racial reconciliation is long.

But I think the long journeys are the ones worth taking.

And I think that God is with us on the long journeys.

And when I think about Martin Luther King Jr, and I listen to his speeches, I remember how bravely he stood in the face of a long uphill climb that he knew would probably end in death.

And so how dare I grow tired?

If I ever say I am tired of hearing about racism, I will call myself out and repent.

Because, friends, think of how weary our black and brown brothers and sisters are of this battle.

So very weary. I hear it in their words. Laments for hard won changes that are given only to be revoked again or never enforced.

Let us not grow weary in doing good. Let us each find the part we have to do and do it. Let us lament. Let us confess. Let us repent.

Then maybe we can rise together.

In solidarity,

Alison

Reading Resource List

This is just a start on this list. I will continue to add to it. If you know of something I should add, feel free to send me an email (alison AT alisonchino DOT com) or tell me on Twitter.

Children’s Books 

Black History Children’s Books

Sit In by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Let Freedom Sing by Vanessa Newton

The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles

The Great Migration with paintings by Jacob Lawrence

God Bless The Child by Billie Holiday, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

March by John Lewis 

Children’s Books for Talking About Race

All the Colors We Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Color by Katie Kissinger

The Skin I’m In by Pat Thomas

Shades of People by Sheila M. Kelly

Children’s Books with Black or Brown Protagonists

Chocolate Me by Taye Diggs

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold

The Snowy Day  by Ezra Jack Keats

The Barber’s Cutting Edge by Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert

Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

Concrete Rose (forthcoming) by Angie Thomas

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi

Another great resource for children’s books is the website We Need Diverse Books.

Books (nonfiction)

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Patillo Beales

The Long Shadow of Little Rock by Daisy Bates

Walking With The Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis

The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by  Ibram X. Kendi

How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Just Mercy Brian Stevenson

The New Jim Crow by Michelle WIlliams

Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackman

America’s Original Sin Jim Wallis

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

White Awake by Daniel Hill

Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation by David P. Leong

Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores by Dominique DuBois Gilliard

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

How to be Less Stupid About Race by Dr. Crystal M. Fleming

The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris

They Were Her Property: White Women As Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E Jones-Rogers

So You Wanna Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Never Caught: The Washingtons Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in A World Made For Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity by David E Swanson

May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem by Imani Perry

Books (Fiction)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (anything by Toni Morrison)

Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin (anything by James Baldwin)

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride

A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Glory Over Everything by Kathleen Grissom

The Water Dancer Ta-Nehisi Coates

Memoirs by Black Authors

Thick by Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom

Heavy by Dr. Kiese Laymon

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Becoming Ms Burton by Susan Burton

Rabbit by Patricia Williams

When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Color of Water by James McBride

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell L. Moore

Movies

Malcolm X

Selma

13th

Twelve Years A Slave

Ruby Bridges

Mississippi Burning

The Color Purple

The Hate U Give

Marshall

If Beale Street Could Talk

Just Mercy

When They See Us (series)

Articles 

Anything on the website Black Perspectives

The Racism of Good Intentions by Carlos Lozada

This is the best explanation I’ve ever seen of White Privilege by Lori Lakin Hutcherson

White Debt by Eula Bliss (first line: “The Word for debt in German also means guilt.”)

White People: I Don’t Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves. by Ijeoma Oluo

This is what an antiracist America would look like. How do we get there?
Ibram X Kendi

Southern Baptist Seminary Documents History of Racial Injustice

The Cost of the Confederacy by Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler

1619 Series in the NY Times

Punishment by Pandemic

Racism is Terrible. Blackness is not. by Imani Perry

Literary Quilt: A Covering for George Floyd: 15 Black authors give voice to the current unrest and movement for Black lives

Podcasts

On Being consistently has great content regarding race. Here are a few of my favorite episodes:

Love in Action with John Lewis

Let’s Talk about Whiteness with Eula Bliss

The Heart is the Last Frontier with Isabel Wilkerson

Where Does It Hurt? with Ruby Sales

Who We Want To Become: Beyond The New Jim Crow with Michelle Alexander

W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul with Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander and Arnold Rampersad

Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence with Resmaa Menakem

Pass The Mic is another podcast I appreciate for discussions concerning a diverse church. It is the podcast of the website The Witness (a Black Christian Collective), a great resource for Christians who want to explore more diverse perspectives. They also have a great episode on the use of term “woke.” One of my favorite episodes is their interview with Bryan Stevenson.

Truth’s Table. 

How Not To Accidentally Raise A Racist (The Longest Shortest Time)

Shots Fired Part 1 and Part 2 (Radiolab)

Object Anyway (More Perfect)

Poverty Myth Busters (On The Media)

Seeing White (series by Scene on Radio)

Monumental Lies (Reveal)

The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done (On The Media)

1619 Podcast

White Lies

Ear Hustle

Brene Brown with Austin Channing Brown

Brene Brown with Ibram X Kendi

 Videos

This video of Adam Thomason explaining racial preference.

A short documentary about this reign of terror by lynching in the US put out by the Equal Justice Initiative.

MTV’s Documentary White People

Ruby Sales on “How we can start to heal the pain of racial division”

Clint Hill Smith on Raising a Black Son in America

The post A Letter to White People (including Myself) + Reading and Resource List appeared first on Alison Chino.

My church hosts this class once or twice a year called Talk It Out.  And I want to invite you to be a part of it.

It’s a class for anyone who wants to learn more about race issues inside and outside of the church.

The provided reading and listening material alone is worth the effort to participate in the class, but nothing can take the place of the unrehearsed, impromptu but guided discussions you will have face to face with someone who is different from you.

To say that hearing a brother or sister alongside whom I now worship tell a story from his or her own experience is eye-opening is to grossly understate the experience.  It is heart opening.  It is nothing short of life changing.  It is the fuel we need in our souls to stay hard on the path of seeing the church become a reconciled body of Christ.

Each Talk It Out class is as different as the people who attend it.  The memories you take from a simple gathering together with others for a meager four sessions are greatly varied but consistently meaningful.

For me, the moment I remember most vividly was learning that it is common practice today in some neighborhoods that if you are an African American trying to sell your home, you would be asked by a realtor to you hide all evidence that black people live in your house.

Really?

Put away your family photos.  Take down art that might seem ethnic.

Really?

For some reason, it was this experience that stayed with me even longer than stories of growing up in segregated schools.  I think the reason for this is that it happened just recently.  In my lifetime, in the day I (we) live in, right now, people don’t want to buy a house because the race of the owner is different from their own.  Because this story happened right across from me and I could not alleviate its pain or take it away, I was ultimately most moved by it.  Even now as I remember her telling it, I feel the sting of how much I hated its truth.  I cringe.  It was something I wanted to look away from.

I did not know it at the time, but the part of Talk It Out that I needed was a tangible understanding that I don’t have to live with these kinds of common insults because I am white.  I will not ever have to explain to my children that I’m taking their pictures down because someone won’t want to buy our house if they see them.

There is a name for this collection of concerns that I don’t carry with me every day of my life.  This not having to think about race.  It is called white privilege.  I didn’t earn it and I can’t give it back, but it is as real as the chair I am sitting in.

Because I have it, I can look away.  I can turn my head. I can choose to not listen to the stories.  I can try to pretend that there is no such thing as racism in America.

But this mission, this most worthy journey of all people being reconciled in Christ Jesus, calls me to keep looking.  To keep listening.  To stop pretending.

To keep having conversations across race.

The post Talk It Out: Conversations Across Race appeared first on Alison Chino.