When I started getting interest from strangers (most notably, The Washington Post) in talking about race and the post I wrote recently, I decided it was time to reach out to my friend and mentor Stan Parker about having our own conversation, like we’ve been doing for a couple years now. Stan was my youth pastor lots of years ago and has continued to be a major influence in my life both through the radio work we’ve done together, and in the conversations we’ve had behind the scenes. I had hopes this interview would be more of a dialogue, since Stan has been a big part of my educational process on understanding race in light of our shared faith, but he was the interviewer and chose not to add his perspective. I’m hopeful in the future there will be more conversations where you all get to hear the wisdom I get to hear from him on this topic.
I’ve got a radio link to the interview here and beneath it I’ll post some additional thoughts that we didn’t get to cover. Enjoy!
-Yes, Danny wants us to get chickens. Anybody with chicken wisdom, feel free to add it to the comment section here.
-If you haven’t heard my “drunken sailor” laugh (as my little sister calls it, or alternately “the witch cackle”) before, my apologies. This is my actual laugh. Love me, love my laugh.
-So I referenced going to a pancake feed where Josh was the only black person in the room. This touches on a bigger issue that is hard for me to address because I feel really conflicted about it. Should we raise a black child in a primarily white environment? Is it fair to him? I struggle with this a lot. We do live in a very white area of the country. Josh has limited access to “racial mirrors” in his daily life. This is a loss for him (as well as for our Native American son and Mexican American daughter) and for us and we try to compensate for that by helping cultivate those relationships where we can and also providing him access to education about his birth culture. As adults, our kids may choose to live in a more diverse community, and we would fully support that. These conversations are definitely ongoing.
-I am currently reading “Just Mercy” and my concerns on the topic of the inequalities in our justice system continue to grow. There are obviously systemic issues that we have got to look full in the face if we want to see change. Deciding they don’t exist because they don’t negatively impact us personally isn’t helpful. When those of us who benefit from those inequalities are just as outraged as those who are wounded by them, I’m hopeful that’s when change will start.
-I have done a lot of reading and listening on the topic of race. I am well aware that what I wrote is not revolutionary and has been said many times over by black moms of black sons. In some ways, I’m frustrated that my post got such attention, maybe in part because I am a white mom saying these things (although if you read the comments on my post, not everybody got the memo that I’m white. . . ). I didn’t talk about race for a long time because I didn’t feel qualified. At some point I realized my silence was a statement in and of itself and that wasn’t the statement I wanted to make. I’m not qualified to speak about the experience of being black in America, but I’m trying to find my voice in advocating in helpful ways.
-Okay, can we talk about the daycare issue? This may deserve its own post, but I just want to acknowledge that I said something flippant about putting the kids in daycare so I can write and how that wouldn’t be right for me to do. While that is entirely true (I love being home with my kids, love that I can work from home, and the cost of childcare would pretty well bankrupt us), I want to reiterate my support for moms who make a different choice. There are plenty of reasons why putting kids in daycare can be a positive for a family, that’s just not the stage I’m in right now, as tempting as it might seem at times.
-I’ll admit I’m optimistic about the direction these race conversations are heading. Maybe foolishly so. What I see is each generation doing a little better. I think some of the problem has been that this generation thought all the work of racial reconciliation was done. People adopted a “colorblind” attitude and felt progressive because of it. I think we’re starting to have the blinders stripped away to see the prejudice that each of us carries and to see how a history of racism continues to impact our society, even after the explicitly racist policies are gone. We’ve got work to do, but I’m encouraged that we can at least acknowledge that now.
2 Comments
Leave a reply →