How I will try to change because of Ferguson
Written by Dan McDonald
The
recent events in Ferguson Missouri and the resulting conversations surrounding
those events have shown me a need to make changes in my life. Especially I have
learned that like seventy-five percent of white persons I seldom interact
socially with anyone non-white. I believe that needs to change. I write this
blog to tell how I hope to change my life so that I will interact with more
non-white persons.
Three
Changes I want to make in my life
1. I want greater diversity of friends with whom
I regularly interact.
To intentionally pursue diversity in
friendships can easily be regarded as forced and artificial. It can seem
unnatural to choose to build friendships with people of a different color, when
in one’s whole life there have seldom been friends except from one race. But perhaps
what has happened in the past needs to be regarded just as much as unnatural. I
went to college with people of different races, I have worked with people from
different races and ethnicities, and yet almost all my friends have been white.
Was that a natural occurrence or have I simply found it easier to not deal with
the difficulties of race in choosing to go along with a sort of expectation
that we develop friendships with people that look like us? Perhaps the past
choices that led to an all-white group of friends was the unnatural choice and
now I am trying to simply recover enough of my humanity to pursue friends
wherever I may find them regardless of their race or ethnic composition?
2. I want my thinking to be influenced by people
from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
I like to think. I try to read. I look for books that will
influence and provide nourishment for my thinking. There was a time when my reading
list seemed to indicate a mind reserved for “white men only.” In the past year
I intentionally began reading books and blogs by women. Consequently I will
never ever return to reading books and blogs by men only. I am certain that
adding more writers of color will feed, nourish and enrich my understanding of
life similarly to how reading women has enriched me. I need some suggestions. I
plan on reading some books by Christena Cleveland, Maya Angelou, and John
Perkins, but I know there are so many other authors and I know so few of them.
Let me know your suggestions.
3. I
want to seek greater diversity in relationships alongside less personal
double-mindedness and hypocrisy.
It can be very difficult to break out from a mold of having
friendships from only one race or ethnic group. The Bible shows us that in the
example of St. Peter. He was the one God called to take the Gospel to
Cornelius, because God had heard Cornelius’ prayers. St. Peter went. St. Peter
supported receiving Gentiles into the church without making them become Jews at
the council of Jerusalem. But later St. Peter found it so much easier to sit
with his Jewish friends than to be willing to sit with the Gentiles, so St Paul
had to address St. Peter’s fall into hypocrisy. I know I am a painfully weak
and wishy-washy human being. I will need to face my own tendencies to say
nothing to rock the boat. I will have to prepare myself for the time when some
white person makes an ethnic joke, or a racist, and especially a subtle almost
non-racist remark. I will need to take a stand and say that I have determined I
will not listen to offensive remarks against my fellow human beings any more
than I will allow myself to make them. I must seek diversity in relationships
while seeking a single-minded unity of heart in the principles of my love
toward all my neighbors.
What
are my expectations in this venture of faith?
While
I cannot pre-judge what I shall discover by implementing these changes in my
life, I do have two expectations.
I DO
NOT EXPECT to discover “ the black perspective.”
I imagine that it is a common sense
expectation that it should be as offensive for me to imagine that I will
discover some African-American “black
perspective” as it would be for some non-Americans to have a few white
American friends and thus deduce through that group of American friends “the white American perspective”. For
someone to imagine the individuals of a race or ethnic group to be able to be
reduced to a group perspective; must be one of the more easily observed
expressions of bigotry and prejudice to be witnessed within our fallen humanity.
I do
expect to discover the common bonds of a shared humanity
My second expectation as I begin
this journey is a positive expectation. I believe that the more I share life
and friendships with people of other races and ethnicities, the more I will
learn that what we share in humanity is generally greater than what distinguishes
us within our varied groups that form our self-identities. I expect to discover
that we have in common some very basic hopes, dreams, desires, and fears.
With all the hopes and expectations I have, this journey should
be one of the great adventures I will ever undertake in this life.
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