I grew up with my own blinders to racism living in Southern Alberta and failing to see how First Nations sisters and brothers were being mistreated and abused after more than a century of injustice. I had Japanese Canadian friends in high school and was blind to the painful past that brought their families to the interior of the country into my neighborhood and high school. I confess my own ignorance and participation. The Covid 19 Pandemic is showing an ugly racism just under the surface, even in Canada. We are not immune.
I can recall a slow awakening in college when some of my professors returned from an Apartheid South Africa having met Black Consciousness leader Steven Biko who was shortly thereafter murdered by his white jailers. The movie Cry Freedom tells part of his story. That awakening was part of our decision to teach in South Africa in 2002 and experience what it is to be a minority.
Biko was once asked by a white judge in a political show trial, "Why do you people call yourselves black? You look more brown than black." He shot back, "Why do you call yourselves white? You look more pink than white."
In truth, when you grow up pink, you don’t know what it like to experience life in North America as a person of color. I have grown up in white, male, middle class privilege and it grieves me. Sack cloth and ashes are called for.
We all need to embrace this new daily prayer written by Good Shepherd NYC as a response to the murder of George Floyd.
All are welcome at the table of God
Every man, woman and child
For Christ brings peace to all,
Tearing down every hostile wall,
So that the many may become one
One heart
One family
One new humanity.
For God who is love
And Christ, who is all and in all,
Show no partiality and make no distinction,
So neither race nor class,
Gender nor sexuality,
Politics nor religion,
Personality nor nationality count for us or against us.
The light of Christ enlightens all.
Christ the prisoner and the naked,
Christ the hungry and the sick,
Christ the thirsty and the stranger,
Christ the other.
May God’s spirit hover over our chaos,
Our hatred and indifference,
Descend in our hearts with love and pleasure,
Blow us out into the world to listen and serve
And set us ablaze to forgive and reconcile.
For we are all welcome at the table of God
Every man, woman and child.
Amen
Written by Good Shepherd NYC from the week of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis MN. May 2020