Sorry, I couldn't resist. (Google the title if you don't know what I'm referring to.)
I've been thinking a lot about practice ever since I read somewhere that "anti-racism is a practice." When I first saw the phrase, I stopped and read it again. It sounded weird to me. I thought to myself, "But aren't you either one or the other, racist or not racist?" But as I read up on the topic, it made sense. Even if you're not actively racist, even if you truly believe that all people's lives are precious and you long for the day when people are treated truly equally regardless of their skin color or ethnicity or background, we all have prejudices, biases and thoughts that are based on race. We have all been racist. One part of anti-racism is undoing that type of thinking, and it's an ongoing practice. It's not a light switch you either flip on or off.
This made me think about other areas that require practice. For example, calm is a practice. Gratitude is a practice. Humility is a practice. But how often do we just attribute those traits as innate qualities that someone is born with? "Oh, she's so calm," or "He's always thankful and doesn't take things in life for granted." We'd like to believe those people are born with those traits. You know why? Because it lets us off the hook. I wasn't born [calm/grateful/humble/etc.], so it's not my fault. It's just not "who I am." In the Bible, we have the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. No one is born with all these qualities perfectly developed; in fact, it's quite the opposite. Galatians talks about how we're born with qualities that go against the Spirit, like enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, etc. In other words, it takes practice to both build up these good qualities and to fight our destructive qualities.
The prevailing narrative in this country, however, is that it is one or the other--you're racist or you're not. And so people will often defend themselves to the ends of earth saying "I'm not racist!" Then what happens is the denial continues, and the difficult internal work people need to do doesn't get done. I think this is where education is so crucial, and I am hopeful that we are starting to see some tides shifting. We need to see the normalization of the truth that we are all flawed in our thinking and that we all see things based on race sometimes. We need to accept that this stuff is messy, nuanced and hard. We need to see people talking about these things openly, without judgment, without shame. We need to see change at both the structural level and the individual level. So individually, how do we do it? I am committing my family to this practice in a few ways: 1. I buy/borrow a lot of books for myself and for the kids. I think it's important to not only read books about civil rights, racism, discrimination, etc., but also books that celebrate people of color's lives just because they're amazing. It normalizes the success of people of every race. 2. We talk about it at home. I am proud that Lana and Jonah know so much more than I did when I was their age. 3. I seek out resources that help my education on the topic. 4. I donate to causes that are fighting racism. 5. I also do the above things for anti-sexism and anti-ableism, because they are different flavors of the same problem.
