David Foster Wallace, in his remarkable commencement address to the Kenyon College class of 2005, said this:
"You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship. Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."
As a white person in America, I was born with racism in my bones. I was born into a world that was built on the backs of enslaved people. Just because we don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't true. Just because we didn't "do it," doesn't mean we're not complicit. White people in America, we are the beneficiaries of a system built on injustice, privilege, and the sinful presumption of manifest destiny. To acknowledge that we are racist does not necessitate that we are radical, alt-right white supremacists. The extremities of any position only highlight the vast area in the middle. (For more on this, please listen to Rev. Jasper Peters’ talk on White Supremacy).
As white people in America, we can decide to divest from our racism. This is hard because it requires us, first, to acknowledge that we are racist. Racism is as native to us as our patriotism. But, we decide what we worship.
White people in America, we have decided to worship our fear.
Innocent Black people have been threatened, abused, and murdered before our very eyes in the unholy name of “fear.” We have decided to worship our fear so that we can justify our choice to shoot first and ask questions later. We have made an idol of our fear, and will stop at nothing to defend it.
We worship our fear that the most shameful thing about us might be true. We worship this fear because it prevents us from addressing it.
White people in America,
when we worship our fear that we are racist,
we lay innocent Black lives on the altar of that fear
to prove our boundless devotion to it.
Everybody worships. If we choose to worship love instead of fear, we can choose to take a long, hard look at our lives and identify the subtle, terrible, horrifying things that are true because of our racism. You can identify the generational benefits of growing up white in America and realize that people of color are working exponentially harder to have what we have. We can stare the ugly truth in the face and survive it.
White people in America, we can choose to divest from our racism, to unlearn what has been subconsciously (and, often, consciously) embedded in our psyche. This is not easy. We will do it badly. We will stumble, fall, and ask for help.
Worse, we will ask for help from the people whom we have harmed,
and we have no right to ask the children of the people our families bought and sold
for anything except forgiveness.
Everybody worships. We can choose to worship love. We can survive the most shameful truth if we stop worshipping our fear. Then, and only then, can we begin the hard work to eradicate racism in America. Then, and only then, will every child, regardless of race, have a chance to be born free because their bones will no longer be hollowed out by the infection of racism.
White people in America: we can destroy the idol we have built to our fear.
We are racist.
We can work to become anti-racist.