I refrained, and just got 2 though. One of them is this:
Letters Across the Divide
By: David Anderson & Brent Zuercher.
David got his degree from Moody and is a pastor of a multicultural church in Maryland. Brent went to Southwest Baptist University and is a CPA. They met in Chicago and became good friends. Good enough friends to publish a book of their letters to each other discussing racism, racial reconciliation, injustice, and a lot more. It's mostly opinion and only 2 men representing 2 entire races, but it's incredible. A lot of it is very true! The privacy of the fact these were letters between Christian friends allowed for a vulnerability other discussions of similar topics lack.
The fact I even bought this book proves how powerful God is. There is no way I'd have considered reading this a year ago. Now, I love it. Just a few tidbits from it worth sharing.
(White man asked why aren't black people over it by now.) "My question to the battering husband is this: 'What are you willing to do to build bridges of trust with that abused wife?' If he answers, 'Well that was a long time ago. She should just get over it so we can live in peace today,' I would respond by saying, 'You don't really want reconciliation. You want accommodation. You want someone to accommodate your sinful behavior so you don't have to feel the repercussions of wrong choices.' If the husband truly wanted to reconcile with his wife, he would want to know what he could do to build bridges of trust again."
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The white man asked: "Cannot blacks see all the tremendous advances toward eliminating racial discrimination that have been made in the last thirty years? Why the hatred of whites? Slavery was a long time ago and as best as I can tell, life for blacks as a whole today is better in America than in any of the African countries their ancestors were kidnapped from." (What a white thing to say. I'm pretty sure I've said this in more or less words at some point in my life.)
The response: "Blacks have had to fight for every inch of freedom, respect, and privilege that has been gained. The feeling and mentality are that no one has given us anything. So when you say we're moving forward and advancing, it's not as if blacks are somehow feeling thankful to whites for it."
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"We both know that racism is not a skin problem, but a sin problem."
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"Once the definition [of racism] becomes subjective, it becomes a moving target. Anyone, white or black, then becomes able to defend his actions or choices as being only tainted in favoritism, partiality, or insensitivity - lesser evils in the sight of man. As long as we can justify away our racism as being favoritism, then we don't need to seek reconciliation, and racial unity will continue to elude the church."
One time during a mission trip I did last year, that was very culturally diverse, we did this exercise as a group. We split up into different rooms: Asian Americans, blacks, whites, Hispanic, biracial, and international. I had been in California for 5 months at this point and had gotten used to such multicultural venues. I go to the white room and the director, Scott Hall, started speaking. He asked, "How many of you feel uncomfortable right now?" Every hand went up but mine. Californians are very used to being the minority or at least not the majority and never the only ones.
He said, "How do you think the other rooms would feel if I shouted 'I LOVE WHITE PEOPLE' loud enough for them to hear? What if Krystina yelled from her room 'I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE' and we heard?"
Scott asked us how we felt about being there and the exercise we were doing. One guy said, "I just can't help but think all the other rooms are having more fun than we are." Has white become neutral? Culture-less? The standard against which to measure? Mexican food is spicy and white American food is bland. Black people are loud and white people are lifeless. (Not if a white person from Missouri moves to LA, lemme tell ya, I've never been more aware and proud to say I DO have a distinct culture even on the white American spectrum.)
I'm not really making a point. Then again, I am definitely trying to. Partly because I'm still processing a lot of this and partly because I could, but it would be a very long post.
Angela
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