When I Learned that I Was Overly Sensitive.
When I was a high school student, I walked into a local pastor’s home and was immediately assaulted by the sight of a large confederate flag hanging on the wall. I gasped and asked them why they had a confederate flag.
With disarming matter-of-factness, they told me that they liked the colors, the aesthetic and the “rebel” image that it projected.
I tried to explain (as best I could as a frazzled teen) that the flag invokes painful images of black oppression, but they remained committed to their blissful ignorance. Ultimately, they shooed me away, telling me that I was making a big deal out of nothing and that I focused too much on negative events that were resolved long ago.
The flag remained mounted on the wall for years.
The church taught me that my perspective is invalid and that the pain of my people is unimportant.
When I Learned that Racism is Hilarious.
During college, I volunteered for the youth ministry at a church. Every year, at the volunteer Christmas party, the two white guys who worked for the ministry dressed up as “black guys from the hood” and performed an entirely unoriginal and unfunny skit that exploited negative black male stereotypes for laughs.
I remember looking around the room full of volunteers, seeing the delight in their eyes as they laughed loudly at the racist jokes. I also remember feeling discouraged that a predominantly white group of Christians (who were supposedly my friends) were laughing at white guys impersonating black guys in extremely unflattering ways.
When I asked the pastor (the staff guys’ boss) about the skit, he agreed that it was offensive. But he failed to confront the issue; the skit was performed every year for the multiple years that I served as a volunteer.
The church taught me that racism is acceptable as long as it’s carried out in pursuit of laughs.
