by Nancy Corcoran, CSJ
This Sunday Jesus preaches two simple imperatives: to be salt of the earth and let our lights shine.
When I moved to Waipahu, Oahu, Hawaii, to volunteer after college, I quickly became aware that I had grown up in a cultural bubble. The Asian people opened my mind to the delicious variety of human beings and my ignorance of their cultures. Then I moved back to the mainland (or the Big Island of Round Eyes as Hawaiians refer to it) and applied for a teaching position in an African American community.
To prepare, I took a six-week program in African American cultures at Martin Center (now Martin University) in Indianapolis. For the first time in my life, all my professors and a majority of my classmates were Black. I heard stories of life in the United States from a nonwhite perspective. I had to face the reality of racism and how I, as a white person, profited from what anti-racism activist Peggy McIntosh calls “the invisible knapsack of privilege.”
The first weekend I went swimming with my classmates and developed a severe earache in each ear. I was in such pain that I could not attend class but stayed in the dorm reading the books that were assigned for the session. Looking back, I think my ears ached from hearing the pain that our culture inflicts on the people whom I was beginning to know.
The six weeks at Martin Center blessed me. I realized I had grown up in and live in a culture that is racist. I did not chose to become racist, and it is not possible for me to lose the privileges that I have as a white person. But I can become and choose to be a more conscious person.
Today another sister and I live in Ferguson, Missouri, the town where a police officer shot 18-year-old Michael Brown and put the concerns of the Black community in the headlines. Ferguson is 69% Black, 20% below the poverty line. Houses are easy to rent. We are choosing to make folks in Ferguson part of our lives, and we part of theirs.
- What choices do you make to resist racism you witness or experience? To resist privilege?