When I first went to college, I heard a (White) speaker declare that “all White people are racist.” I was shocked and instantly defensive–which was in part his goal. Since then I’ve struggled with how to understand and process this statement and his opinions, and I’d like to process a little bit here.

First, I don’t believe all White people are racist*. But he didn’t really mean “racist” in the way people are offended to hear it; he meant “insensitive, unaware, and potentially biased.” It’s still a negative portrayal, but vastly different from what most people imagine when they hear racist: “prejudiced, angry, judgmental, bigoted, and hateful.”

Second, I don’t believe all White people are what he meant by the word “racist.” Even being the same ethnicity as someone, it’s still stereotyping (and, arguably, racist) to assume that you know something about a person solely because of the color of their skin.

However, I do think his core point–when you dig past semantics–was right on point. Most White people in the US have quite a bit of growing to do in the area of race relationships. There are two main areas I’ve learned we suffer: Unaware-ness (yes, I made that word up) and racialization.

Unaware-ness

I do believe that the vast majority (we’re talking 97+% here) of White people in the US live our lives with little to no interactions with the significant racial undercurrents, tensions, conversations, and pressures that exist in the world around us. The point the speaker was trying to drive home is that not only do we not see it, we don’t even know it’s there. This is a topic for a much longer post/conversation (maybe next week?), so please excuse my brief but inflammatory statement here.

Essentially, as I’ve stepped into relationship with more and more people of color, and as I’ve learned more about the historic and present state of race relations in our country, I’ve begun to see the complex world of racial dynamics as something like the Matrix. There’s an entire world of interactions and pressures and battles that affects everything around us, but the majority of White Americans spend our lives blissfully unaware of it. The majority of American people of color, on the other hand, are unable to be unaware of these issues, as they affect their everyday lives.

Again, this is a touchy subject and one worth a much longer discussion, but that’s the start of it. There are many aspects of racial reconciliation that require structural change, but this is the one piece that is most powerfully affected by personal relationship. For me, it began to change when I (rather naïvely) joined an ongoing discussion about race and ethnicity in which I was one of few White people, and I had the opportunity to learn about the practical, lived out experiences of my friends of color.

Once again, more on this later.

Racialization

The other half of this puzzle is the concept of racialization. It is another made up word that I first discovered in the book Divided By Faith. Again, it’s a complex subject, but the essence of it is this: Our culture and our nation is racialized, which means it’s divided along racial lines. Income, unemployment, education, incarceration, housing quality, school quality, and many more areas of inequity in our country are striated based on racial lines. This means that no matter how post-racial our country is or isn’t, this fact is still true: ”African-Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population – and about 44 percent of America’s prison inmates.” (source) Whether or not you believe that’s because Black people are inherently more inclined to crime (which I hope you don’t), you must recognize that that shows a racialized aspect of our society–one which is separated based on race.

So, whether or not you are racist isn’t the deepest issue for White people. Many of us harbor no conscious stereotypes or negative attitudes towards people of color, and many of us even have friends of color. However, the concept of racialization shows that we live in a country that is deeply broken in regards to race and how it affects people’s lives. So the question here because less about your racism and more about your awareness and action: Do you understand that we live in a racialized society that privileges us because we’re White? If not, how does your view line up with the statistics like the one I quoted above? If so, what are you doing about it?

Again, these are all complex topics–and this is already an extremely long blog post–but I hope this can begin the conversation. Please, let me know what you think, and feel free to get in touch with me so we can discuss it further.

*However, I do think you’d be hard-pressed to find a person of any race that harbors not one unexamined stereotype, race-based presumption, or similar internal racist thought. It’s in our nature to make assumptions (stereotypes, if you will) about people based on shared characteristics, and when you add to that every external force in our culture shaping and molding us to think this way about this person and that way about the other, it’s a potent brew of presumptions. Similarly, unless someone has perfectly equal exposure to people of every culture, and the most saintly attitude of openness and non-judgment, some of their knowledge and understanding of people of other cultures will be less complete and less accurate than that of others. As a musical once suggested, suggest that “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.”

In a “town hall” last night during which the administration reportedly dismissed student concerns, the university compared this current issue to the Civil Rights movement. In their eyes, campus organizations that are officially recognized by the university should, in keeping with the university’s non-discrimination policy, not be able to “discriminate” in their leadership selection by requiring student leaders to be Christians; Vanderbilt sees themselves as Civil Rights crusaders.

Notice that this is not about who the groups allow to attend their meetings, but rather who lead them. When the potential for this situation to arise has been discussed in the past, the comparison has been made to the university requiring the Campus Democrats to allow all comers–even Republicans–to become leaders within this organization. Imagine, if a group of Republicans joined a Democratic club and successfully voted one of their own a leader of the organization.

This is not to suggest that Christian groups have enemies on campus that plan to infiltrate our ranks. Rather, it’s to point out the extreme to which the university is attempting to take a well-intentioned non-discrimination policy.

For now, the best we can do is pray and stay up to date on the news surrounding the issue. If you want to learn more, take a look at InterVarsity’s Campus Access page.

When I came onboard, the idea was to offer recorded versions of the main sessions of the conference for staff to view after the fact. Thinking back to my (oh-so-long-ago) time as campus staff, I pushed for livestreaming (which they had considered) for the sake of getting non-attending staff involved right then, rather than “when I get to it.”

Well, it morphed into the entire concept of “virtual attendance”, replete with a registration form, special videos, a Twitter hash tag (#MESC12), and an entirely separate schedule and packet of handouts. We’re recruiting viewing party hosts and virtual attendees and just trying to get this whole virtual attendance concept up and running.

So, today we launched the actual informational site. It’s currently only viewable by InterVarsity staff, but I’ll link it up here if the decision is made to make it public.

Whew. That’s a big project, unloaded. Next step: Recruit viewing party hosts, recruit virtual attendance participants, cast the vision for all staff in InterVartity to participate, develop the virtual attendance schedule, and make plans for how social media and the web site will be structured and will interact during the conference itself.

After March 9 (the day the conference is over), I’ll start an entirely new set of responsibilities, and I’m equally excited about them. There will be plenty of web and social media, but there’s also the opportunities to network with thinkers and doers, edit memoirs and treatises (not really treatises, but I just like the word), and write/videotape/create. This is the good, meaty stuff.

For now, though, I’m going to rest–just for a few days–on the joy of having launched this portion of the site, and then it’s back to the grind.

One quick note: This project was not only “my project,” but was a collaborative effort of the entire Communications team. It wouldn’t have happened without the work that was done prior to my arrival, the group brainstorming sessions, or the videos and other materials produced by other members of the team.

This is a great technique to help children and new believers understand God’s personal interest in and love for them, but it also reveals a dangerous tendency we have when reading Scripture: to see God’s interests as pertaining only to us as individuals. It’s a common malady in the American Evangelical and Fundamentalist church, especially in Charismatic and Pentecostal circles. We excel in seeking intimacy and communion with God, but we tend to fall a little short in walking out our faith outside of the quiet place and worship gatherings.

It has been powerfully transformative for me to learn, slowly, how God desires each of our faiths to be both communal and public. I’ve learned that my narrow view of God’s purposes for my faith have affected my understanding of mission and salvation, limiting them to ”God came to save me, and now I should be good until Heaven (and maybe tell some other people God wants to save them too).” Instead, I’m learning, he has plans for using me (little old me) as a part of his work in the world.

The communal aspect of God’s intention for our faith is made very clear in Biblical language (for which reason I will forever advocate the incorporate of the word “Y’all” into the formal English language; how many times does God address a group of people and yet we read the word “you”, hear a singular word, and think it’s directly to us?). This is also the case in most liturgical language, which is filled with “we” and “us”–one of the reasons I love that my Charismatic upbringing was rooted in the Lutheran tradition. So even if I struggle with that at times, it’s been the easier jump.

But the big jump for me has been learning how to have a faith that is also public. By “public”, I mean a faith that is not separate from the rest of my life–perhaps the word “integrated” would be more fitting. It’s not God or school, it’s God and school. It’s not God or the workplace, it’s God and the workplace. It’s not God or my non-Christian friends, it’s God and my non-Christian friends. And, more recently, it’s not God or Twitter/Facebook/Internet, it’s God and Twitter/Facebook/Internet.

So, in each of these contexts, the question becomes: How do I combine both honor and love God so much that his presence saturates my every word and movement, and also understand and relate in contexts that aren’t inherently Godly? What’s the right place between being that guy on Facebook who never posts anything but the Bible verse he read that morning (self-righteously, often enough) and being someone whose Twitter presence has no indication whatsoever that they follow the LORD? How do I become a light and a blessing in my workplace? How do I both seek to be the “cool Christian”, meaning my friends know they can talk to me without being trampled upon, and yet avoid being the “cool Christian”, meaning I’m so afraid to stand up for anything that I might as well not be a Christian at all?

I think my constant desire for integrity plays a huge role here, because the question I’m asking here is really, “How do I find a way to act, believe, think, relate outside of church the same I do in church (or in my prayer time or with all Christian friends or whatever)?”

How do I insure that I’ll never act in a way that I’d be embarrassed about when viewed from another context? How do I maintain integrity?

Lots of questions. LORD, help me be a man of character and integrity.

The University as a strategic context

Many campus ministers see power and potential in the following quote by Charles Malik, the former president of the United Nations General Assembly:

The University is a clear-cut fulcrum with which to move the world. The problem here is for the church to realize that no greater service can it render both itself and the cause of the gospel than to try to recapture the universities for Christ, on whom they were all originally founded. More potently than by any other means, change the university and you change the world.

Not only is it exciting, it’s also an effective tool to communicate to donors and potential donors the significance of ministry in this specific context.

The University as a partner

But my excitement about relating to the University comes even more from the experience of working on campus for my first three years at the University of Florida. No matter how well we did, no matter how many people we talked to, I always had the feeling of being on the outside. I longed to be more integrated with the community of the University and impact the University itself, instead of meeting just off campus or in a tucked-away room in the far reaches of the union.

Three things really cemented the possibility of this for me, and these three examples give me much hope:

1. At Urbana 2006, when I was first considering coming on staff, I attended a seminar led by Greg Jao for potential staff. I don’t remember a lot of what he said, but one thing stuck out: We want our students to be the best students. We want our students to be on time to class, respectful of their professors and fellow students, to engage with the University and not just escape from it. In fact, it made such an impact that I made it into an InterVarsity video talking about.
2. At Urbana 2009, I heard a story of a staff who facilitated discussion on campus–I think it was about race and ethnicity–so well that the University asked them to teach a class. The class was so successful that they were asked to teach more. What better way to have an impact on the community, than to be engaged with it and honored by it?
3. InterVarsity’s Staff Conference 2011 was titled “Renewing the campus”, which makes sense, considering our vision is “[t]o see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed.” Most of the conference focused on our relation with the University, and how we can positively interact with the University and its structures, faculty and staff. We were all given or reminded of a vision to be good university citizens, and to long for the transformation not just of our group of students, or even all students, but the University itself.

So that’s what gets me excited, even today. How can I be a part of God’s work of transformation among the colleges and universities of the world? What gifts, talents, interests, and passions has he given me to use toward that goal? And finally, how do I share his vision of the redemption of (instead of just the escape from) the broken systems and structures of this world?

For those of us working with social media and ministry, we’re often trying to work through what I often call “the big question” with new technologies: How does this help me accomplish my goals? What do I gain from this?

No one’s asking that question about Facebook these days, and less and less people are asking it about other social networks. Everyone’s there, and that’s where you have to be if you want to be where everyone is, clearly.

So, the big question is: If social networks are supposed to represent little online communities, and the final factor forcing people to join one is so that they won’t miss out on what their community is doing, how do we take advantage of that community-building function in our ministry?

With social media and InterVarsity’s Multiethnic Ministries department, this will mean working through the building of a nationwide community of students, staff, faculty, and alumni who care about matters of ethnic and multiethnicity. Thankfully, InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Network has gone ahead of us in a very similar venture, and done a fantastic job.

Please, pray that we can create this sort of God-breathed community of folks looking to see God reconcile all people to each other and to himself.

I’ve mentioned Regent College before, and how much I’d love to study there; but as we’re in Chicago for the present, I’m looking for other places to continue my study. A few resources have been invaluable during this journey:

• Comment Magazine
• Books and Culture Magazine
• Christianity Today
• Mako Fujimura and the International Arts Movement
• The entire catalog of John Stott (including the Langham Partnership Daily Thought, an incredible daily email of Stott quotes)
• My new (thanks Berry!) ESV Study Bible
• InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Network

Are you interested in the intersection of faith and intellect? I’d love to talk with you about it–please get in touch!

For the next 3 months I’ll be promoting InterVarsity‘s Multiethnic Staff Conference (in March 2012), a conference our department hosts to discuss issues of ethnicity and multiethnicity in our work and our students’ lives. My primary role is to engage staffworkers who aren’t there physically with the content of the conference before, during, and after the conference itself.

The most exciting part about my role there is that in the past, the conference has been limited to only the few hundred people who can attend in person. This year, however, I’ll be leading an initiative to allow “virtual attendance,” allowing the benefits of the conference to be extended to a much wider audience. It’s exciting also because the role involves technology, communications, teaching, and interpersonal interactions–a little bit of everything I’ve wanted to do.