About a week ago when we first arrived at our hostel in New Orleans, we found ourselves unpacking the car on the side of the road in a scuzzy part of town at about 10:30 at night.
Though there were sidewalks on both sides, as we unloaded our suitcases, a group of 4-5 black young men came walking down the opposite side of the street, then crossed in the middle of the lane, so that they were walking towards us on the street. I felt nervous. They walked right past us and I gave a guilty sigh of relief.
In an area where the vast majority of the population is black, I've never been so aware of race before in my life. I've been reflecting on the above situation, wondering if the colour of their skin made me more nervous than I would have been if they were white. I'm honestly not sure. Either way, a group of men crossing the street at night towards you and your car instead of using the sidewalks and intersections is disconcerting. Nevertheless, I was keenly aware of the colour of their skin versus the colour of mine.
I don't want to be racist, but I know that I am living in a racist fishbowl. I know that I need to intentionally shed some ingrained unfair biases. I'm just not sure quite how to confront the evil in me that I'm largely unaware of.
Part of the issue is that despite living in a fairly multicultural part of Canada, my interests don't usually get me in situations where I would naturally socialize with people from other cultural backgrounds (minus the occasional person here or there). Is the answer, then, to deliberately branch out and go to those places more frequented by people different than myself?
Before we left for this trip, we made a list of things we wanted to do while in the USA. Attend a black gospel church was one of our items. We did that, and one of the announcements at that church was about a 50th Anniversary of ML King's Speech Celebration / Protest Against Mass Incarceration. Since another item on our list was to attend a protest, we decided to go. It was, after all, an issue that we believed in. We also felt that the presence of as many white faces in the protest as possible would be a positive thing, even if, politically as Canadians, we couldn't do much about it.
We attended the protest, which ended up being a kind of rally in a church. I was expecting something out on a street somewhere with signs. There were signs there, but they were printed on 8 1/2 X 11 sheets of printer paper and were only used inside the church. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, children and judges took the stage - talking about the problem of mass incarceration of African Americans in America, especially in Louisiana. The statistics we heard were very alarming. Did you know that America incarcerates more people per capita than any other country, and that Louisiana incarcerates more people per than any other state? Or that more African Americans are in prison today than all the slaves in America in 1850?
The main, most concrete issue to be confronted was that the police wanted to expand the local prison so that it could house more inmates. It is not just the voilent people being sent to prison - that, nobody is disputing - it is that going to prison is the band-aid solution to far too many crimes. The reality is that far too many people are being sent to jail for possessing drugs or having a mental illness.They handed out lawmakers' phone numbers and told everyone to contact these people the next day telling them that they oppose the new prison expansion.
I don't know what the laws are like in Canada pertaining to the same issues, but that's probably because I've never really gotten involved in politics before. I think when we go back to Canada, this is something we would like to get more involved in. Canada's situation is different, but we have oppressed groups too. And we would like to be on the side of the liberators, not the perpetrators, and certainly not a part of the silent majority.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Week 1: Covington, KY
For our first stop on this journey, we've been spending time as WWOOFers at a hobby farm in Covington, Kentucky, which is about a 10 minute drive from Cincinnati, Ohio. On a map it doesn't look very far south, but culturally, things are very different.
I'm exhausted right now from the number of intense discussions I've had lately. I'm in total cultural shock over a number of things and my host family has not been shy at all about drawing my opinions out of me and discussing them with me. I'm really not used to talking about what I actually think about potentially offensive things. I'm realizing that I think for the sake of keeping the peace, Canadians ignore controversial topics when around people they are pretty sure have opposing views. Not so here.
Most of what I've talked about has been fairly well accepted. I was directly asked about my views on females in church leadership and female submission. Though we disagreed on those topics, we were still able to talk it out without tension building too uncomfortably high.
Our host family at one point in the past was semi-seriously looking into moving up to Canada because they hated how many immigrants were coming to the US and taking up all of the country's low-wages jobs. ("What kind of jobs are college students supposed to get during the summer when all of the minimum wage jobs have been taken up by foreigners?") I explicitly stated that most Canadians I know are actually very welcoming to immigrants and many of them are very frustrated with the governments' latest restrictions on them. I told them about how broken hearted our church was when a Columbian family in our congregation was forced to move back to Columbia and how hard we rallied to try to get them to stay. Again, we differed in our perspectives here but again, everything seemed to be fine.
Out of the blue one morning, our host mom said, "you guys have been such a positive Christian presence here! You give me such hope for the future!" So that was nice. However, I think the lines of communication have kind of broken down since I was pointedly asked about my opinion of homosexuality.
I know homophobia exists in the Canadian church but trust me when I say that even the most ridiculous homophobic thing I've heard in Ontario is tame compared to what I've heard here. Basically, they truly believe that if America accepts homosexuals, their empire will "fall" just like Rome, Greece and Africa(?) did because "its been well documented by secular sources that that's what happens". Seriously.
I tried defending homosexuals as best I could. I've never had to do it before, at least, not in the context of talking with someone who is so proudly homophobic. Its too controversial of an issue for a lot of Canadian Christians, I guess. As an evangelical who worked in a very liberal United Church, its an issue I've had to really think through and research thoroughly.
I truly believe that God doesn't fault homosexuals their romantic love for others in their same sex. Why would He? What logic is there to that at all? If you find that an unbiblical idea, I encourage you to watch the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" or read the book, A Lily Among the Thorns: Imagining a New Christian Sexuality by Miguel de la Torre. These are both excellent resources that take Scripture seriously. I especially recommend the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" for any evangelical who opposes homosexuals. The title sounds a little patronizing, I know, but the actual content of the movie is actually quite sensitive to both sides of the issue.
Anyway, I think the anger I feel right now about the overt homophobia I've experienced here in the Bible Belt has inspired me to break my silence on this topic. There have been too many times that I've let less intense forms of homophobia slide in my presence. Homophobia is disgusting and I hope that in 50 years from now, I can proudly say that I was on the side of the liberators in this movement, just like a few white folks can say that about their participation in the Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s. Anyway, I need to get going. In case you haven't noticed, this is Gloria, not Chris. Hopefully he'll be doing some of these updates as well.
I'm exhausted right now from the number of intense discussions I've had lately. I'm in total cultural shock over a number of things and my host family has not been shy at all about drawing my opinions out of me and discussing them with me. I'm really not used to talking about what I actually think about potentially offensive things. I'm realizing that I think for the sake of keeping the peace, Canadians ignore controversial topics when around people they are pretty sure have opposing views. Not so here.
Most of what I've talked about has been fairly well accepted. I was directly asked about my views on females in church leadership and female submission. Though we disagreed on those topics, we were still able to talk it out without tension building too uncomfortably high.
Our host family at one point in the past was semi-seriously looking into moving up to Canada because they hated how many immigrants were coming to the US and taking up all of the country's low-wages jobs. ("What kind of jobs are college students supposed to get during the summer when all of the minimum wage jobs have been taken up by foreigners?") I explicitly stated that most Canadians I know are actually very welcoming to immigrants and many of them are very frustrated with the governments' latest restrictions on them. I told them about how broken hearted our church was when a Columbian family in our congregation was forced to move back to Columbia and how hard we rallied to try to get them to stay. Again, we differed in our perspectives here but again, everything seemed to be fine.
Out of the blue one morning, our host mom said, "you guys have been such a positive Christian presence here! You give me such hope for the future!" So that was nice. However, I think the lines of communication have kind of broken down since I was pointedly asked about my opinion of homosexuality.
I know homophobia exists in the Canadian church but trust me when I say that even the most ridiculous homophobic thing I've heard in Ontario is tame compared to what I've heard here. Basically, they truly believe that if America accepts homosexuals, their empire will "fall" just like Rome, Greece and Africa(?) did because "its been well documented by secular sources that that's what happens". Seriously.
I tried defending homosexuals as best I could. I've never had to do it before, at least, not in the context of talking with someone who is so proudly homophobic. Its too controversial of an issue for a lot of Canadian Christians, I guess. As an evangelical who worked in a very liberal United Church, its an issue I've had to really think through and research thoroughly.
I truly believe that God doesn't fault homosexuals their romantic love for others in their same sex. Why would He? What logic is there to that at all? If you find that an unbiblical idea, I encourage you to watch the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" or read the book, A Lily Among the Thorns: Imagining a New Christian Sexuality by Miguel de la Torre. These are both excellent resources that take Scripture seriously. I especially recommend the documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" for any evangelical who opposes homosexuals. The title sounds a little patronizing, I know, but the actual content of the movie is actually quite sensitive to both sides of the issue.
Anyway, I think the anger I feel right now about the overt homophobia I've experienced here in the Bible Belt has inspired me to break my silence on this topic. There have been too many times that I've let less intense forms of homophobia slide in my presence. Homophobia is disgusting and I hope that in 50 years from now, I can proudly say that I was on the side of the liberators in this movement, just like a few white folks can say that about their participation in the Civil Rights Movement in the 50s and 60s. Anyway, I need to get going. In case you haven't noticed, this is Gloria, not Chris. Hopefully he'll be doing some of these updates as well.
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