What does "telling the truth in love" mean as a White American?

CW: racial trauma, enslavement

Growing up, I often heard Ephesians 4:14-15 preached:

“We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way… into Christ.”

Speaking the truth in love is essential to the process of becoming antiracist in the US. My own White family mythology–the generous grandfather, the brave pioneers–is often a case of “trickery” designed to deflect from crimes against humanity.

And becoming anti-racist means speaking the whole truth–telling the facts as they really happened. This is essential for us to grow up in every way into Christ, individually and collectively as a whole body, joined and knit together.

*Dr. Marlon Johnson (left), Rev. Javon Bracy (right)*

Last week at Seminary of the Southwest, I sat with an inaugural cohort of pastors and mental health providers in Howell Dining Hall for the launch of the Racial Healing Initiative. The room was bright with twinkle lights overhead, blue ,and orange pumpkin centerpieces. Dr. Marlon Johnson and Rev. Javon Bracy explained the goal of the Racial Healing Initiative is to equip clergy and mental health professionals with resources and strategies to address racial trauma in our respective communities.

As an ice-breaker, we were invited to share our name and profession, and respond to this question:

“How did your ancestors come to inhabit the land on which they lived?”

It wasn’t until we started going around the circle that I realized this was the first time I’ve been asked this question so directly. What I’ve known is that my ancestors are White bodied farmers and ranchers, educators and enslavers, who occupied the southern US before the Revolutionary War, and helped the US military seize indigenous land in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Virginia.

Over the years I have made attempts to unearth details surrounding my family story and I’ve often run into roadblocks and gotten stuck.

“This is a crime against humanity.”

That phrase may describe the process of many White-bodied Americans around racial identity development–we often feel “stuck.” When we do discover documents and records, the picture they paint is often incongruent with White family lore.

The other day I watched a Netflix documentary, Descendant, about the founders of Africatown, just north of Mobile, Alabama.

The historic community was formed in 1860 by West Africans who were captured and illegally trafficked across the Atlantic and down the Mobile River on a ship called Clotilda. Those who survived the torturous trip went on to form the community known as Africatown. Cudjo Kazoola Lewis, thought to be the one of the last Clotilda captives, lived in Africatown until he passed in 1935.

Present-day community members of Africatown sought to unearth the history of their ancestors, and surface the remains of the wrecked Clotilda as evidence of the town’s origins. The investigation shed light on the facts surrounding the Meaher’s, the White family who trafficked and profited off the Clotilda hostages and later covered up their involvement.

“Whiteness gets people stuck by design.”

Kamau Sadiki, a diver from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Slave Wreck’s Project, says to the Africatown residents, “This is a crime against humanity and we’ve got sufficient evidence to know that a crime has been committed here. This community has suffered tremendously. So as we talk about healing and reconciliation, there has to be a sense of justice.” Then he ends with this question, “What does justice mean to you?”

A recent exchange with Rev. Dr. Stephen Ray, Seminary of the Southwest’s Crump Visiting Professor and Black Religious Scholars Group Scholar-in-Residence, has me now reflecting on how whiteness as a category of racial formation in the US seeks to “get people stuck” by design. No matter how diverse a community becomes, so long as our cultural, economic, and imaginative systems inscribe whiteness as normative, people will feel “stuck” because of the overwhelming complexity of White Americans’ complicity in crimes against humanity, and the fact that whiteness functions as a controlling variable which constrains our strategies for addressing it.

So last weekend, I put on some tea and renewed my quest for the facts of my heritage. I reached out to my mother for names and dates, and I entered the Ancestry.com labyrinth with fresh determination. My commitment is rooted deeper than before, and I understand even better now the importance of uncovering the facts of one’s lineage for racial identity development.

I’m also better equipped now to tolerate the emotions and bodily sensations that I feel when I think about my family being involved in hate crimes, lynchings, and human trafficking.

“As a White American, I can hold the illusion of myself as a rescuer - that is harmful.”

Surfacing ancestral stories takes time and patience. It also deepens our understanding of who we are within the web of survivors and perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Telling the truth in love about the facts of those crimes and my family’s involvement in them changes my sense of my role in relationship to the Body of Christ.

*“Triangle of Punishment” (adapted from Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle)*

As a White-bodied American I like holding the illusion of myself as a savior, a rescuer of the “victim”, but that idea is harmful. But the rescuer is also trapped within the Triangle of Punishment, because the rescuer also takes a turn in the role of persecutor. And when asked to look at our role as persecutor, the rescuer often feels like a victim.

The roles keep swapping around the Triangle of Punishment–there is movement–but nothing ever changes. The Triangle gives the illusion of progress, but really it’s a trap.

I’ve come to think the way out of the Triangle of Punishment is nonviolence (toward persons and toward ourselves) and forgiveness, which is so foreign to our human systems of operating. We must tell the truth about ourselves and really receive forgiveness first in our relationship with God before our brains can rewire enough to forgive ourselves and others who have harmed us.

That process is also slow, emotional work that requires deeply listening to the facts of reality, our bodily emotions and sensations, and God’s response toward us given the horror of our crimes in the light of day.

“We must tell the truth about ourselves and receive forgiveness inside our relationship with God.”

After a few days of research, I excavated census data from 1830–1850 confirming the households of my family included enslaved persons. I unearthed a bill of sale in the handwriting of my fourth great-grandfather paying for the enslavement of a five-year old boy named James Walker.

I am now researching James Walker, born around 1929, living in Kentucky, possibly Wayne County, circa 1934, when my fourth great-grandfather trafficked him. I am seeking James Walker’s story and want to learn who his ancestors were and where his descendants might be now. I am asking myself–along with God, my therapist, and friends with stories similar to James’s–what justice looks like.

How might James Walker and his descendants respond if my family were to ask, “What does justice mean to you?”

I am sitting now with the reality of my family’s true story. The privileges I inherited–college educated parents, a legacy of homeownership, generations of persons living on the same land, free of any threat of displacement–these are luxuries my children will know. The true cost of these privileges was paid by James Walker; they came at the expense of his safety and freedom and wellbeing.

“What does justice mean to you?”

The horror of that reality is almost too much for my body to bear, but my body is bearing it. I’m thinking of James Walker’s five-year-old body and what it might have suffered and endured. I’m thinking of his mother. I’m wondering if he ever had children. I’m letting the true story of James Walker and how my family harmed him rewrite my understanding of who I am in the world.

It is in the middle of those horrific scenes that I encounter God’s forgiveness. It is when I think about the incarnation–the notion that Jesus was God in a body–that I find God entirely trustworthy. I sense God’s grief over my family’s crimes, and also God’s love and tenderness in trying to open our eyes. Jesus was wholly forgiving toward persecutors–healing them and correcting their perspective so that they could recognize God as nonpunishing.

There is no rescuer coming for James Walker.

There is no punishment coming for me and my family.

There is no persecutor chasing me around the Triangle of Punishment with threats of violence.

There is only my body, forgiven and changed, as I practice speaking the truth in love.

And there is only the Body of Christ which joins me with the descendants of James Walker and similar others with holy ligaments and tissue.

And there is only my voice with which to speak the truth in love, and receive God’s forgiveness, and ask forgiveness of others, along with the question, “What does justice mean to you?”

And there is only the quality of my presence as I practice listening to the answer.

Listening with you,