Jen and I just got home from watching the star-studded movie The Butler: The thing I’m struck most about the Civil Rights Movement is how recent it was, yet how my generation and the generations younger than mine have such limited consciousness of the things that went on, and how these things have shaped American […]
Being Black & Highly Educated is Not Enough to Avoid Racial Profiling
I’d like to give props to the Lansing State Journal for posting a sectional cover story in yesterday’s Sunday paper entitled, “Living While Black.” The article is written by Jeffrey Wray, an East Lansing resident and an MSU professor who specializes in film studies, who is also African-American. Professor Wray writes about his various experiences […]
Can shampoo be racist? What about Band-Aids?
A great challenge for white people is to try to put ourselves in the shoes of a minority in America. I think this act of walking a mile in one’s shoes, which is a very Christ-like, loving, and incarnational thing to do, comes very unnaturally to us. It’s an act I’ve been trying hard to […]
Rising above the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman arguments
I’ve been blogging a lot about racial reconciliation over the past couple of weeks. Due to timing of this, I thought I would give some of my thoughts on the recent Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman case. Mostly via Facebook, I have read white friends who are defending that Zimmerman didn’t break any laws and […]
Powerful video of 3rd graders’ racist views
The following eye-opening video shows the power of in-group and out-group dynamics, and how the in-group of being white has been such a powerfully oppressive force in American history. This video was shot in 1970 with a classroom of 3rd grade students from Iowa. These children would all be around the age of 52 today. […]
How America’s Racist Past Breeds Racial Profiling Today
I recently wrote about the racial discrimination housing laws of the 1940’s-1970’s (and I did a post on “How To Talk About Racism”). My point in showing those bits of somewhat hidden history is to help set the table for why some things are the way they are today when it comes to race. It’s […]