White Work – and White Women – After Minneapolis

White folks – and white women – we have some particular work to do in this season.

As Minneapolis burns in more ways than one, we should choose to see the whole story that is at work. We have to see, witness, and grieve the weight of the violence, trauma, and Black death that Keeps. On. Happening. Before we even process or understand one traumatic event, another narrative fills the news. And these are all built on years of previous trauma, and generations of stories, that created the unjust systems that prioritize and protect “Whiteness.” These stories upon stories – think of all of them in just the last few weeks – tell us how Whiteness enables policemen to not even be afraid to be video recorded, while it kneels down and suffocates Black Life, while it hunts down and kills Black Lives jogging in the neighborhood but is not even arrested, when it sprays a room full of bullets and takes life from a Black woman in her own bed for absolutely no reason. Whiteness makes these police not afraid – in fact to act confidently – as they take these actions, because they know the systems in this world will help set them free, cover, exonerate, explain away, create a new narrative – even though the cost of their arrogant violence is death. Whiteness is why we have these and hundreds of other hashtags: #AhmaudArbery #BreonnaTaylor #GeorgeFloyd

And white women – that same story of Whiteness protects a woman in a park who, with specific intentionality, threatens a Black man who is not responding to her how she wants. She knows there is power in saying she will call the police and name “an African American man is threatening me” – she used that Whiteness and narrative of who deserves protection, who is believed, and who should be feared – to enforce her own personal desires and discomfort, to literally make a call that could have ended another Black Life. Whiteness is why we have #AmyCooper

After we see the story we are all a part of and name it truthfully for what it is – Whiteness is an interlocking system that protects white folks power (and those who serve it/are in proximity to it), through access to finances, health care, church platforms, voice, legitimacy, believability, media, court systems, education, guns, violence, policing the parks and neighborhoods and cities – everything – next we have to actively work to dismantle it. We have to commit to shifting and rewriting that story. (Bryan Stevenson’s work calls it fighting “the narrative of racial difference.”) It means we persistently learn more, do the work, and make those around us in our white families, churches, communities, and congressional halls also do the work and repair the brokenness that keeps building. It means we pray, prophetically intercede, care for communities of color in the moment, and then also make a plan for how to organize our votes, our voices, our finances to break down the ways unjust law enforcement and white vigilantes that murder Black Lives are not held accountable. It means we shift our time, preferences, comfort, media, worship styles, who we follow in leadership – we seek to put in the work wherever we need in order to de-center Whiteness. While it is not always clear how to re-write the narrative of Whiteness, and we will still get it wrong as we learn, it is necessary for white folks to keep learning, keeping fighting, and to see our central role in reshaping and owning this story; because we are already characters within this deadly plot.

Its a tricky narrative too – for example, White progressives can still center Whiteness (and Patriarchy), if we don’t examine power, humility, and truth. White advocates can even still center Whiteness, if we don’t examine how we advocate, and why. White churches and faith-based institutions can certainly still center Whiteness, even though they probably struggle to see or repent of this truth. One of the most powerful quotes I’ve ever heard is from Pastor Shaun Marshall in Chicago, when he preached on how Whiteness of all political/philosophical backgrounds often recruits leaders of color, not to truly hear their voice or follow their leadership, but “to serve on their particular theological plantation.” Sit with that for a moment. This is because Whiteness is a powerful story with tendrils everywhere, its hooks deeply embedded, that we’ve been indoctrinated into and just seems “normal” for most white folks, even if the benefits to us and costs to the Black community are unseen by us. Whiteness takes long term, sustained, intentional work to uproot it, and the strength to fight the battle with those powers that do desire to protect it as well. Whiteness is why we have to say over and over and over and over and over and over, #BlackLivesMatter. And it’s also why we say, Jesus, how long?

And by this point, we all know that this is a long game, right? We know that this narrative is busy at work not just when these tragedies hit the news cycles, but it takes a lifetime of unlearning Whiteness, seeing the profound danger within it, and knowing our connection to those systems of power in this story. Yes we all know good policemen, but white men – what is this violence and this arrogance that confidently kneels *while being captured on a video* to injure and choke an unarmed Black man to death, his own hand calmly resting in a pocket, while wearing a badge? And it keeps happening, over and over and over – arrests, sentencing, treatment in prison, etc., are vastly different for Black Americans, we all know the numbers by now. How will you interrupt that and call those white men out, make your mayors and police chiefs and judges interrupt that, esp before November? How will you interrupt that story when it takes over your Bible Study, your zoom calls, your hiring decisions, your homes?

And white women – what is going on in the demands for comfort and privilege with these angry protestors who scream to demand haircuts, women who call the police at BBQs, and who feel the inherent right to police Black bodies watching birds in a park? Even if we might not feel like we are tied to Amy Cooper, or a Karen, how do we see the connections so we can interrupt this to re-tell the story of what it means to be white and female? How to we repent of the ways we are formed to back up Whiteness, and strengthen Patriarchy, in our unknowing and our not-doing, and also in our intentionally accessing Whiteness for protection or pity? How do we get other white women to stop drinking the kool-aid and see that Whiteness and Patriarchy need to be dismantled for our elections in November? How do we courageously interrupt this story when it takes over our Bible Study, our zoom calls, our hiring decisions, our homes?

White Church leaders in particular – we should lament, and name this system of Whiteness as against God and the Gospel, bc it keeps violently taking Black Life (and other life) made in the image of God. We see the biblical connection the prophets and Jesus always maintained between justice and worship, between our personal faith and our common connected Body. So we repent, and we live differently so as to reject the story of Whiteness, as a matter of discipleship and faith. We tangibly care for our family of color, members of the Body who are grieving and traumatized. We submit to learn from them, especially our Black Sisters in leadership, who every day hold the work of navigating a world not made for Blackness nor for womanhood. My question for the church in 2020 is this: why do we not demand and elect and make room for Black Women to be in leadership at all levels of our churches – running the pulpit, the board room, the non-profit, the seminary, and the denomination? Why do we not pay for and hire and encourage and empower and honor the work and expertise Black Women hold – in the faith community and throughout public life? We could if we wanted to – we could write that story.

If you are not sure where to begin, google the lists of resources for how to do anti-racist work for white people. Look up and read Daniel Hill, David Swanson, Robin DiAngelo, Jennifer Harvey, Lisa Sharon Harper, Christina Edmonson, Osheta Moore, Brenda Salter McNeil, Dominique Gilliard, Efrem Smith, Jemar Tisby, Ibram Kendi, and hundreds of others. Check twitter for lists and lists of books and websites and parenting ideas. Pray and ask God to show you the ugly truth of Whiteness and white women’s complicity in racism since the birth of this nation. Check out local efforts run by leaders of color and Black experts in this story, and see who is holding law enforcement accountable in your city – or who should be? Look for hope in the legacies of white men and women who chose another way, who saw and spoke up and joined Black leaders to truly fight for the power to be changed. Find a group – better yet create a group – of white folks to work on becoming long-term, strategic allies to fight for Black life, and against all other racial injustices, in your context, using your gifts. Everyone has their own work to do, in each community; I have learned (from many leaders of color) that a central part of our work as white people is to educate, process, rebuke, and encourage other white people in this work – to shift the narrative from within its walls, and to also save people of color from being asked to do that additional emotional labor.  

White men – use your leadership and assumed agency to center others, to shut down male violence, to make space and center and support other voices. Get honest, gather with a few other white men, and interrogate what insecurities lead to Patriarchy, to speaking over and for women, or using women to do your labor, sustain your power, or convey a sense of pride/ownership. Press into what fragility leads to protecting Whiteness and holding up those systems, why are you afraid of leaders of color or maybe of being replaced, what insecurity or theology are you clinging to that needs to center your expertise or presence; what do you gain from the stories of Whiteness and Patriarchy, and what do you lose from it?

White women – own your leadership and strength and complicity, all of it, to do this work. Develop a learning and leadership group for white women, coach each other, read and pray and build up your muscles in this area, and recruit other younger white women to join. Do the work first, honestly, and then pay speakers or teachers to guide you where you need to – but take the lead in your own re-formation. You are already authorized to see yourself fully, and to retell this story of womanhood and Whiteness in a new way. Learn and repent of the long history of white women lying and taking Black men’s lives, of white women leaving women of color during political campaigns and movements, of white women abdicating to the roles and limitations white men design for us. What do we gain from Whiteness, and the stories of white womanhood; what do we lose? 

We all have much work to do to interrupt this story of Whiteness in all its forms. Whiteness keeps working by inflicting racialized injustice pain in all directions, in order to uphold this centuries old narrative – it also tries to keep Native and indigenous communities invisible, encourages “Chinese Virus” rhetoric and Anti-Asian racism, harms immigrants and those working toward being documented, and shapes our policies, actions, homes, and lives in so many powerful and everyday ways.

To be clear, of course we must lament, and respond to the recent sharp injustices in front of us – but with a larger goal in mind. The real goal is to rewrite this whole story of Whiteness, to revolutionize the whole canon of what is acceptable, legitimate, what gets retold and re-enshrined. If enough white voices join the leaders of color already shouting this truth, if we finally shift away from voting in leaders who do not see and act against Whiteness in every way (in politics, throughout public life, and in our churches), and spend our time and funds to organize for November and for schools and police forces and the music industry and everywhere – maybe, just maybe, we can actually shift this story and our future. At bear minimum, we could make lynchings (whether on video and covered by a badge or not) so horrifying that no one would dare snatch Black life; picture a story where streets and cities and pools and parks and homes and schools and churches and public and private spaces would finally be safe for Black Life, because we all know that to take life means being in prison for life. We could rewrite the complicity and the agency of white women so that they would never threaten to lie and weaponize their fear of Blackness; picture women growing up into a different story of what womanhood, purity, protection, authority, community, sisterhood, and truth really are.

We can choose our future story – we could center Black Lives, Black Women’s leadership, and Black History and Black Futures so that we stop repeating this death. Its been centuries. Black folk are beyond tired. I feel the ground groaning from the tiredness, the ongoing depth of injustice. Our cities burn, our prayers repeat, the pain magnifies, the story gets retold and protected in each election, each traffic stop, each false report, each choice to preserve white male power or white female protection.   

As Minneapolis burns in more ways than one, as countless Black mothers mourn too many murdered children, as too many white folks feel disconnected from their responsibility for it all – will you commit, or recommit, to rewriting this story of Whiteness? For the long haul, this long obedience in the same direction kind of discipleship, that means seeing the lies and naming truth and fighting for life for all? To all those who are already fighting and organizing and surviving and thriving and committed – leaders of color who always bear the heavy burden, and white folks who choose the cost of joining them – I see you and am so grateful. I learn from you and you bring me hope that we can, together, shift this story. Someday.

We have a lot of work to do, and it’s been a long, long time. I am grieving, and beyond angry today, and also, I am resolved. It should not be this way. It does not to be. We can choose to do our work to rewrite the story of Whiteness. We must. #WhiteWork #WhiteWomensWork #FightforHope #Lament #MinneapolisBurning #FightWhiteness #FightWhiteSupremacy #ReWritetheStory