When I was serving a church in Trenton, I became really intrigued with how the church could not only give folk a spiritual lift on Sundays that lasts through the week, but also be transformative and healing to the psyche and soul. I believed that if people’s souls were healed, they would go into the world and heal it as well. I still really believe that. God wants to meet us where we are and make us whole so we can heal the world. That core belief sent me to graduate school to learn about the psychology of religion. After five years of study of how religious belief is a strong component in identity development, my faith in God was stronger and my belief that God is in the transforming business was even more acute. I also left more acutely aware of how the convergence of race, class, and gender matter in America. It is not that I was naïve before. I remember well when Lisa came to our Air Force community in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We were five years old, it was 1964, and our happy, well-adjusted little group of children was “multicultural,” which then meant one Black girl (that would be me); one Japanese girl (that would be Carla, and her dad was Black); and twelve or so white children.

“Rice Rocket” is a working rickshaw customized with lowrider-style spoked rims and white-walled tires. Speakers are attached below the seat and play the tunes of War and the Stylistics. This work emphasizes his cross-cultural experience within a social network, informed by his experience growing up as a Japanese American in a predominantly Latino neighborhood of LA. © 2007 Clement Hanami. Photograph and artwork by Clement Hanami. Used with permission of the artist. Click here for more information about the artist and his work.

We played together, learned together, and took turns going to birthday parties. In that context, class was a non-issue. Children of officers and enlisted learned and played together. Gender did not matter in that we were boys and girls at rest and play. Race did not matter either, until Lisa came and informed us that I was a n—— and that my mom gave me chocolate milk straight from the pump!

Psychologists Janet Helms and William Cross would call that experience an encounter, as they theorize about racial identity development. Until then, we were just children. After that, my mom had to explain to me that, believe it or not, “. . . some people would not like me just because I was a Negro.” My innocence was shattered. Now I cannot remember whether images of dogs chasing people on civil rights marches, or hoses being turned to spray adults and children, or the story of those girls being bombed in the church came before or after that encounter with Lisa. All I know is that suddenly race mattered.

And it still does. What a rash of hateful comments have come from public figures. Rush Limbaugh, Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, and Don Imus have crossed a line, articulating the loathsome, horrible, unspeakable racist comments that leave me wondering, if public figures will say that, what kinds of thoughts go unsaid? I am so grateful for the public outcry about this most recent event, yet I am convinced that there is so much more that we need to do.

There is only one race, the human race, but all over the world, physical characteristics like nose shape, eye shape, lips, hair, bottoms, and sexual organs have been racialized. Color, of course, has been racialized as well.

Positive characteristics are attributed to white and light, and negative characteristics to dark and black. Toni Morrison aptly captured that phenomenon in her book, Playing in the Dark. This phenomenon, colorism born of racism, is true in China, where some women have died from using black market products to lighten their skin. It is true in Great Britain, where a legacy of imperialism and colonialism leaves Blacks from former British colonies feeling somehow superior to African Americans. And it is true in America, where our legacy of slavery has created a black-white fault line on which all of our “racial” dynamics are built. This country was built on the backs of enslaved Africans and despite more than 130 years of emancipation, gifted young women can be called “nappy headed hos,” for a few laughs.

“Race” matters. African-American psychologist Robert Carter says that race is the salient, divisive identity characteristic in America. In The Multicultural Imagination, white psychologist Michael Vannoy Adams says that white racism is “not just a scheme to deny certain people social, political, and economic rights. It is a mental (and moral) illness that we need to psychoanalyze.” I say while “race” is a false construct (unless we mean the human race), oppression based on that false premise is racism.

Theologically, it is a sin that needs to be confessed. Psychologically, it is condition that has been ignored far too long by therapists of all orientations. From one narrative psychological perspective, “race” is narrated to us. Stories of capture, power, capacity, sexuality, shame, and fear are among those that shape our personal and collective stories. Without examination and critique, we keep living those stories over and over again.

Re-storying race means preaching, teaching, education, conversation, confrontation. It also means that many of us need to put ourselves in therapeutic relationships and have our stories re-framed. It means acknowledging the narratives that have formed us (slavery in America, like Lisa in the kindergarten circle, like the lynching of Emmet Till for “eyeballing” a white lady, like a radio personality calling strong Black female athletes out of their names, like whatever stories of “race” that make Imus able to say such a thing!!)

I believe we can re-story “race.” It will take time; it will take pushing and shoving on the bulwark of systemic racism. It will take a redistribution of power. It will take prayer and tears. It will take education of church leaders. I believe the Church is called to this project. To make 11:00 AM an unsegregated hour. To build more and more multicultural, multiracial congregations that rehearse the realm of God here on earth. Our conference April 29–May 1, The Power of Stories: Building Multiracial/Multicultural Congregations, is part of Middle’s ongoing effort to be not only a multicultural re-presentation of the realm of God, but to be an antiracist congregation.

Thank you, Middle family, for giving me the opportunity to practice what I preach. I love you—

Jacqui

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