What to Leave Out in Conversations about Race

What to Leave Out in Conversations about Race

by | Jul 22, 2020

Law, custom, and even religion are intertwined with racism. It’s so pervasive that it’s not always easy to identify, let alone dismantle. We must approach Constructive conversations about racism with emotional intelligence.

I have written about arriving at workable definitions of racism and the surprising impact of emotional intelligence on racism. 

Now, let’s talk about what to leave out in conversations about race. Knowing what to leave out is just as important as what to include.

When people are passionate about a topic—whether passionately for or passionately against—unbridled emotion can easily lead to destructive responses. Destructive responses such as belittling, defensiveness, dismissing opinions, and passive-aggressive behavior strip others’ humanity. While these kinds of reactions may feel satisfying, they don’t advance the conversation. Because they don’t dignify people, hard as it may be, it’s best to leave them out.

Using Emotional Intelligence in Constructive Conversations about Race

On the other hand, while perhaps not immediately satisfying, productive responses will get you farther in the conversation. Apologizing, determining the root of the problem, and taking ownership of your part in a situation will help. Giving people space and time, acknowledging others’ feelings, and seeking active resolution will help. Separating emotions from facts, communicating respectfully, listening, and being aware of your senses will help. These are the kinds of behavior that create space for change.

Effective responses can be harder to live than knee-jerk destructive reactions. However, responding in these ways will grant dignity to yourself and the other parties involved. At the heart of it, acknowledging others’ humanity is one of Christian life’s deep values.

Uncomfortable Conversations

Racism is not easy to identify, let alone dismantle. Approach constructive conversations about racism with emotional intelligence. Share on X

Gloria Browne-Marshall, my guest on the Uncomfortable Conversations series, writes in Race, Law, and American Society that “Justice is an ongoing quest. Freedom for people of color in America began as a fight for physical liberty. It continued as a struggle for constitutional protections and remains a battle against forces that would relegate people to a perpetual underclass based on color and tradition.”

Together, let’s weather that battle for Justice with dignity intact. We do this by fine-tuning what kind of behavior to include and what to leave out. Doing the work of transforming racism is too important not to get right.

The Surprising Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Racism

The Surprising Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Racism

by | Jul 14, 2020

Emotional intelligence is a soft skill often prized in the world of interpersonal relationships. Can it be used as a tool to dismantle something as hard and ingrained as systemic racism? My answer is a resounding yes. In fact, I don’t think that the structures, beliefs, and attitudes that form racism can be understood or addressed without it. In this article, I am going to introduce you to the surprising impact emotional intelligence has on racism.  And how your church can naturally expand both its emotional intelligence and its ability to impact racism.

First, let’s define racism. As I write elsewhere, racism is not so much about individual bias or prejudice as it is about systems and structures that reinforce racial bias. In the United States, racism grants extended rights and opportunities to whites while minimizing access to those same opportunities to people of color.  Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, Past-President of the American Public Health Association asserts that racism negatively impacts every citizen, regardless of race, because it “saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.”

So how does emotional intelligence make an impact on this persistent problem? Let’s take a look at three key tenets of emotional intelligence: empathy, motivation, and social skill. Then I’ll suggest how your church can tap into these tenets to address the sin of racism.

Emotional Intelligence: Empathy

Empathy is the willingness to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagine what it must feel like to be them.  Empathy cracks open the door of white denial of systemic racism. The long list of Black folks who have died due to police brutality, most recently George Floyd, has brought out a wave of empathy amongst people of every race.  This empathy has found expression in innumerable forms of solidarity from demonstrations to protests to intensive studies to calls for de-funding police and re-funding social safety nets.

How Your Church Can Tap into Empathy

How can churches expand and harness the impact of empathy? Remind your people that empathy is a key teaching of Jesus: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and of Paul: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”

Emotional Intelligence: Motivation

Solidarity has led to an awakening. White people in particular are grappling with new understandings of the privilege they have been born into. And the extensive, if hidden, nature of this privilege.  This burgeoning awareness (copies of How to be an Anti-Racist and White Fragility seem to be on permanent backorder) is motivating people to educate themselves. People are learning how and why systemic racism has been perpetuated, a topic Gloria Browne-Marshall and I discuss in the launch of the Uncomfortable Conversation Series. 

How to Motivate Churches to Impact Racism

How can you motivate your church to address racism? First, draw upon resources in the Bible that highlight the importance of doing good “in season and out of season.” This wealth of resources includes the story of Ruth, the story of Esther, the teachings of Leviticus, and the entire life and death of Jesus. Immersed in these teachings, dare to begin your own uncomfortable conversation. Also, join me for the next one on August 5, in which we talk about racism and health disparities.

Emotional intelligence is a skill often prized in interpersonal relationships. Can it be used to dismantle systemic racism? Share on X

Emotional Intelligence: Social Skill

No other component of emotional intelligence has more potential for a positive impact than social skills. Social skill is the ability to motivate others to go in the direction you want them to go.  Another term for this skill is leadership.  As you expand your social skill you can draw others into a positive shared vision of the future, one that undoes racism.

Church, Social Skill, and Dream Like Jesus®

How can church leaders tap into their own social skills?  Learn how to dream like Jesus. Jesus exemplified the very best in social skills. He called disciples, trained apostles, and empowered all kinds of ordinary people to heal the sick, cast out demons, and proclaim the Kingdom.

Churches must wade into troubled waters to accomplish this.  If you want harmony at the expense of uncomfortable conversations, you’re not alone. The fear of losing people or of “being too political” can give churches a good case of laryngitis. But it’s time to grow in courage.

Ethical Not Political

One last tip. Instead of thinking of dismantling racism as “too political,” consider the ethical nature of this quest.  Dismantling racism manifests the Kingdom of God. It brings honor to people. It gives glory to God.  It’s worth the effort.

Still not sure how to expand your emotional intelligence? Reach out to me. You are not alone.

The Vital Step Your Church Can Take in Addressing Racism

The Vital Step Your Church Can Take in Addressing Racism

by | Jul 6, 2020

As conversations about race, racism, and racial justice heat up, you may be wondering what you can do to engage your congregation and your community in addressing racism. Where should you begin? March for Black Lives Matter? Write letters to the editor? Support people of color in your midst?  While all of these are important actions, I suggest a more basic, yet vital, step to take. Begin by defining terms.

When asked the question, “Are you racist?” most people I know would answer “No.” That answer makes sense if you understand racism to be conscious of hatefulness toward a person of a different race. Instead, that’s a more apt definition of prejudice, not racism.  Yet so many conversations on race and racism get stopped right there: “But I’m not a racist!”

Just as you wouldn’t conduct a Bible study without distinguishing between the Gospels and the Letters of Paul, or between the Old and New Testaments, so having a conversation on race and racism without using agreed-upon terms would be equally frustrating and fruitless.

Racism is not so much about the particular actions of a prejudiced individual or group—even though that is one of Merriam-Webster’s current dictionary definitions—as it is about how prejudice is built into a society’s very systems and structures. Especially when those systems and structures deliver vastly different results for White people and Black people or other people of color. In that case, every White person I know, including me, is racist.  Not because you or I consciously chose to be, but because of the systems we are born into.

What can you do to engage your congregation and your community in addressing racism? I suggest beginning by defining terms. Share on X

The Important of Addressing Racism

While I can’t speak to systems in other countries, US society is built on a series of interlocking systems of wealth, education, housing, criminal justice, and media that inherently extend the privilege to White people while at the same time disadvantaging non-White people. Check out this video for a quick introduction to these five interlocking systems.

Racism isn’t the only term that needs a deeper explanation. The idea of race itself requires exploration. Ancestry.com and 23andMe aside, genetically speaking there are very few differences between the so-called races of humanity. When it comes to differentiating between peoples, even the Bible does not speak of race; rather it speaks of tribes and nations.  In a word, the race isn’t real.  That doesn’t mean White people can or should be color-blind. Because while racial distinctions aren’t real, racism is.  Even if you can’t see it or haven’t experienced it.

Last week, I interviewed Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, author of Race, Law, and American Society for the launch of the Uncomfortable Conversations series. A civil rights attorney and professor of constitutional law, she was very knowledgeable and articulate.  We spoke about these very terms.  My takeaways from our hour together included the value of listening to each other, learning from each other, and using a shared vocabulary. These values make possible a new and positive shared future where everyone has a fair shot at a good life.

Understanding and transforming a society built on systemic racism won’t be easy.  Or comfortable.  But it will bring us that much closer to Jesus’ big dream: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

How the Pandemic Prepared Churches to Address Racism

How the Pandemic Prepared Churches to Address Racism

by | Jun 9, 2020

Over the last three months, the church pivoted quickly to be able to serve people in a new way.  You have made changes that needed to be made for years.  You have moved from being building-bound to offering online worship, from attendance-based giving to online giving, and from resisting change to embracing it. In many ways, churches have weathered the pandemic well.

Now, a new crisis is before us.  Pain and outrage over the recent videotaped murder of George Floyd, and so many others, has brought American society to a tipping point. Most folks agree—systemic racism, and implicit bias, is a pervasive problem. It must end.

Can the church effectively pivot from one crisis to the next?  My answer is yes.  In fact, I think the pandemic has actually prepared churches for just such a time as this.  

The deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and so many others, point to a series of changes that have been needing to be made for many long years. The issue of structural or systemic racism has been with us since the founding of our country.  While much progress has been made, clearly, we are not there yet.

The church, once hemmed by tradition and limited by fear of change, has proven it can slip the knots that prevented it from making meaningful change. The result is a brand new way of being a spiritual community. The church can reimagine worship, fellowship, giving, Holy Communion, baptism, funerals, and hospitality—the very things that defined it before. It can do the same with the insistent tentacles of systemic racism. In part, because there are a surprising number of similarities between the two crises.

Systemic racism is a pervasive problem. The pandemic has actually prepared churches for just such a time as this. Read more here: Share on X

Racism vs. A Pandemic

Surprising Number Of Similarities

First, like the pandemic, systemic racism has far-reaching life and death implications.  Addressing it well means we have to change the way we think about things and do things. The church now has experience with this.

Second, churches now know that what seemed impossible before is actually quite possible.  Although many congregations resisted the idea for years, they can now make quick adjustments based on changing circumstances, adopt new forms of communication, and embrace innovative ways of being a community. Similarly, recognizing and addressing systemic racism once seemed impossible to many. But if mainline congregations can grow and thrive during a pandemic, then perhaps churches do have the agility to tackle something as pervasive as systemic racism.

Third, churches learned a new language to deal with an invisible virus whose vocabulary includes social distancing, droplets, and N95 masks. It also mastered new technologies like Facebook Live, Zoom, breakout rooms, and online giving platforms. Likewise, dealing with the almost invisible scourge of systemic racism will require a new language and a new willingness to try emerging technologies.

Fourth, during the pandemic, tired church practices yielded to more foundational life-giving spirituality. Taking the claims of systemic racism seriously will require a shift from dogmatic denials of racism and the unconscious exercise of the privilege to painful yet life-giving awareness of the people and the world around us.

Fifth, and finally, the faith-based community enjoyed a resurgence during the pandemic.  People looked to spiritual leaders to provide meaning, solace, and inspiration. In the same way, spiritual leaders can guide us in this uncomfortable new world of identifying unconscious bias, unacknowledged privilege, and unseen barriers that have kept us away from each other.

Beloved Community

None of this will be easy.  And none of this is guaranteed.  It will take equal parts guts, prayer, self-reflection, education, determination, inspiration, and action to make the changes needed to envision and ensure a world that works for everyone. But now is the time to begin.  It just might be the Beloved Community that arises.