Charlene is Ghanaian American. Her father told her from a young age that assimilating to her white surroundings was the way to success. “You have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to be seen,” he’d say. During kindergarten, she went to the bathroom and washed her hands under the running water for several minutes trying to “get the black off.” In first grade, she heard a friend call her brother the N-word. When she asked him why he used that word, he replied, “That’s what my dad calls you people.” She realized at a young age that even if she tried to be colorblind, the world she lived in wasn’t.
In the beginning of Genesis, God is like an exuberant artist, a potter, proudly displaying his work. Gleaming fresh from the Creator’s kiln, vibrant with color, humankind is meant to reflect God’s image in its communion with each other. But sin enters the picture in Genesis 3, where the serpent successfully tempts Eve into trusting something else to be like God. He tells her that the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil will make her like God, but this is a lie. Only communion with God will help us live out the imago Dei. This first sin of Adam and Eve—the distrust of God and idolatry of something else—drives a high-impact crack into the pottery art of what God intended. It’s the kind of fissure that leads to more cracks, as death, envy, murder, division, polygamy, and all other kinds of brokenness enter the story of humanity.
In the table of nations in Genesis 10, we read about people groups that later will be at war with or enslave the Israelites (Egypt, Canaan, Aram, Babylon, and Assyria). And the cracks set in humanity ripple even further, causing the oppression and destruction of ethnic groups at the hands of others. Every major civilization was built on the backs of the people it oppressed, be it Japan’s conquest of Asia (and its twenty-million-person holocaust), Europe’s colonization of Africa and South America, the Aztec empire’s military campaigns to acquire daily human sacrifices for its temple gods, the decimation of Native communities in North America, or slavery and segregation in the United States. Slavery, ethnic superiority, and the setting up of laws benefitting one people group at the expense of another all rest on the idea that one people can be supreme, or like God, above another. Japan carried out its belief of its ethnic supremacy in how it conquered, killed, and raped Koreans. America was founded upon the idea that European men were created equal by God yet Natives were expendable “savages” and black Americans were “three-fifths” human. Such systems of white supremacy (as compared to white supremacists, meaning skinheads and Neo-Nazis) seem hard to shake. Today, we see the effects of unequal drug-sentencing that favors white offenders, biased and dangerous police treatment of black Americans, and rampant racism found on college campuses, in sports teams, work places, and presidential campaigns. Movements such as Black Lives Matter and Black on Campus are protesting these systemic and unchallenged unjust practices.
Definition of Terms
White supremacists refers to white individuals who engage in racist speech and racial violence against nonwhites (and often against Jews and LGBTQ people). They often see the United States as a nation intended for whites.
White supremacy, on the other hand, is the idea that white people are inherently superior in intellect, beauty, character, culture, and ability. It exists in multiple systems and attitudes in schools, corporations, churches, and communities, where the “white way” of doing things is seen as normative or the standard to which all should aspire.
Privilege, in contrast, is the phenomenon where advantages or immunity are granted to or enjoyed by certain persons beyond the common advantage of all others. In the case of white privilege, racial privilege can yield things such as shorter prison sentences for a criminal offense or family financial support that makes education, entrepreneurship, and home ownership more accessible. This differs depending on the economic background of the white person (someone descended from a family with money versus someone from a family with generational poverty). Thus, a black or Latino American from an affluent background might have more economic privilege than a white person who has been living in poverty. However, the black person will have to navigate subtle and overt racism no matter how wealthy they are, whereas the white person will not.
For further explanation of these terms, go to beyondcolorblind.com.
On top of this, the United States (and the rest of the world) is full of a hitherto unimaginable kind of ethnic and global diversity. We have Hmong, Cambodian, Sudanese, Congolese, Colombian, and Croatian recent immigrants who have fled war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and their own experiences of systemic injustice and division. Still other immigrants represent the majority and the privileged in their society (consider the Han Chinese, who make up 90 percent of China even though there are more than fifty ethnic minority people groups in China). A Ugandan or Haitian American might have very little in common with a Black American in understanding cultural or racial experiences. A more recent Chinese immigrant is not going to share much with a Chinese American who has been in the United States since the days of the earliest railroads.
The difficulty of this chapter is trying to give framework that allows us to examine the cracks in our ethnic backgrounds in such a diverse context. But we need to, or else our cracks will deepen or we will unintentionally or willfully cause more damage. We can’t ask Jesus to heal us if we do not know what we need healing from in the first place. And we can’t steward ourselves in a multiethnic world if we don’t realize our own places of pain first. Broken responses to that pain are found in idolatry, racial and ethnic division, rejection of ethnicity, defining ourselves by our scars, and self-punishment.
Idolatry can look different in various cultures. For instance, in Asian cultures, children are taught to either treat their parents as secondary gods or to become gods themselves, pursuing success, financial gain, and the envy of their community. Imperfections, particularly public imperfections, are not tolerated. “Swallowing bitterness” is a common Chinese saying, where one is expected to endure suffering in silence. But that makes it difficult to bring up conflict or address relational or mental health issues, resulting in long-term bitterness, resentment, family division, depression, and broken relationships. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reported in 2011 that “Asian American teenage girls have the highest rate of depressive symptoms of any racial, ethnic or gender group.”1 According to the Asian American Psychological Association, suicide is the second leading cause of death for Asian Americans aged fifteen to thirty-four.2 Between 1996 and 2006, thirteen of the twenty-one suicides at Cornell University were Asian American students, although they made up only 14 percent of the student body.3
No one can stand the pressure of being someone’s god: it either distorts the would-be god or its worshipers. In ethnicity, the beautiful distinctives of a culture often become the very things that get distorted.
In Latino cultures, men are often seen as more important than women. Daisy, a Latina friend, explains that “machismo can become machista,” an exaggerated sense of power. The prizing of masculinity can often lean to misogyny and unhealthy behaviors including adultery, domestic violence, or alcoholism. Women in traditional Latin American households are taught to not speak up and are restricted in their individual freedoms, while their male relatives are free to express themselves and do what they want (in the United States, this disparity lessens with subsequent generations). Combined with issues of poverty (especially in recent migrants), injustice, and racism faced by Latinos, the familia breaks down.
If you were Satan, would you not delight in breaking apart the most beautiful aspects of an ethnicity’s culture? Would you not try to get Latinos to reject their ethnicity because of their pain and also get the surrounding society to view it only by its scars and brokenness? I spoke with a young Latina who said, “I don’t know who I’m mad at: non-Latinos who have said and done racist things toward me, or Latinos who keep telling me that I’m not really Latina because I speak American-accented Spanish and have friends who are non-Latino. I feel stuck between resenting being rejected for being Latino and also wanting to reject my people because they’ve rejected me.”
For white Americans, there is a high regard for individual merit, self-earned hard work, and dependence on educational background. When such things become idols, it makes it difficult for white people to understand how our justice systems don’t afford the same merit or work opportunities for nonwhites. The influence of the Enlightenment and church culture creates an allergic reaction to the slightest hint of moral failure (much in the way that family-shaming imperfection is avoided in Asian contexts). Whether in shame, disappointment, or disgust, many white Americans leave churches that feel devoid of the grace of the gospel. Those who value being educated or enlightened often are eager to seem informed in conversations about race or ethnicity but then will often be the most unforgiving toward other whites who don’t have the equivalent education or similar crosscultural experiences. A black friend who was disturbed at watching white activists unsuccessfully woo less-informed white people remarked, “One of the most unpleasant people to be around is the angry white person who is furious at his own people for not getting it.”
White people who understand the racism their friends of color experience are often those most impatient with their own people; they look down on other whites as uneducated, ignorant, or racist. And being called a “racist” is a cardinal sin among many college-educated whites. You can call a white person selfish, arrogant, rude, but call them a racist, and they react like you just spat in their face. Individual enlightenment seems to be the goal, but individual enlightenment does little to actually change a society. And if enlightenment is an idol, then you’re essentially fighting racism with an idol. You can’t win against the enemy using his tools. It is instead a self-promoting pat on the back, an accolade to individual moral achievement. It is self-worship.
Idols are dangerous because we often don’t recognize them and therefore can’t see that they cause brokenness. Idolatry separates us from God because we trust something other than God. When the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and tells him to tear down his household gods, Gideon does so in secret in the middle of the night, afraid to challenge to his family’s idolatries in broad daylight (Judges 6:25-27). When our idolatry is unacknowledged or unchecked, it damages us, the people in our communities, and other people.
While idolatry can be subtle, the signs of ethnic division are more visible in how they affect us today. An Armenian friend once remarked that it’s impossible to ask an Armenian about their ethnic background without hearing about the Turkish genocide. Being Armenian becomes “the one Turkey has sinned against.” The same goes for black Americans and Native Americans in the United States, who today feel the effects of the legacy of slavery, genocide, and racism. As a Korean general’s granddaughter, it’s impossible for me to ignore the repeated attempts at conquest and oppression by Japan in the country of my ancestors.
We may expect all Latinos to get along, but in reality, differences in language, culture, and history exist. Do not get a Mexican American mixed up with a Puerto Rican, or vice versa. Pakistan and India are not friends, and those prejudices carry over to this side of the globe. Italian, Irish, and Eastern European Americans were labeled as “colored” in the earlier half of the twentieth century and were thought of as less intelligent, lesser in moral character, and thus less human than their Western European counterparts. It’s a great mistake to assume that black Americans will get along with Haitian Americans or second-generation children of African immigrants. Nigerian Americans often share about how they grew up with other black children deriding them for their Nigerian heritage and culture. This caused strong resentment either of black Americans or of their own ethnic backgrounds.
Ajit, a research scientist with a doctorate degree, works for a pharmaceutical company. He is an Indian American whose parents immigrated to the United States in hopes of having greater opportunities than in India, where they were part of the lower castes. However, one of the managers at the pharmaceutical company was also Indian American, only she was a descendant of the highest castes and resented Ajit due to his family’s caste. Verbal berating, prejudice, and insults were a regular part of how she interacted with Ajit behind closed doors. How do you fight this type of enmity and bigotry that has existed for hundreds of years?
Such experiences of historical conflict, systemic racism, or personal ethnic prejudice and racism can leave deep scars in us. And our broken response is often to define ourselves by our scars and to define others by their scars.
Once we get past the barrier of colorblindness, we are confronted with other potential barriers. We can be tempted to define our ethnicity by the ways we or our people have rejected others or been rejected by others. Instead of the image of God informing our understanding of ethnicity, human divisions and values serve as broken standards. Miroslav Volf writes that evil “keeps re-creating a world without innocence. Evil generates new evil as evildoers fashion victims in their own ugly image.”4
Hatred of the other. Given the historic nature of ethnic tension, conflict, war, and racism, it becomes accepted in cultures to define their ethnicity by their hatred of an ethnic group. Black men are told, “Don’t you dare bring home a white girl.” When Melissa, a Mexican American, dared to marry a Puerto Rican man, her father refused to speak to her for twenty-five years, relenting only when her mother was suffering from cancer.
Viewing a people as inferior. It’s an unfortunate reality that people are labeled by their negative stereotypes or projections in media. “All Mexicans are lazy” is the stereotype when in reality many Mexican Americans are hard-working and diligent. Even if one would never admit to viewing a people as less than, our implicit hidden biases say much. Julian, a black pastor, was serving on a team with another black pastor who recognized that Julian was holding back from confronting sin patterns in white male students. He asked, “Why is that, Julian?” After some conversation and reflection, Julian realized with surprise that though he was Ivy-league educated and prized for his intellect, he had unconsciously bought into the belief that he had less authority over white men because he was black.
Viewing a people as superior. When ethnic superiority is a view held by those in power, unjust systems and restricted access to power for others can result. Often times, African and Caribbean Americans view nonblacks as more ideal marriage partners or friends than their own people. Or, in the case of Asian Americans who ask to be treated “as white people,” they don’t realize that instead of challenging an unequal society, they are aspiring to be included as part of the privileged racial group. They add to the problem instead of challenging the premise of superiority. For example, when a jury indicted Peter Liang, a rookie New York city police officer, for the fatal shooting of a black father named Akai Gurley, the Chinese American community protested across the country, divided even among itself. They demanded that Liang either be given the same privileges given to white police or that Liang should receive a proportional sentence and not be made into a scapegoat for the pressures put on the law enforcement community.5
Hatred of the self. Sometimes, the impact of either cultural idolatry or experience of racism (or both) can cause someone to despise their ethnicity. Many Asian Americans, Latinos, black Americans, and others try to associate with something other than their ethnicity because of those experiences. For white Americans, the historic and current scars caused by white Americans can cause them to despise their ethnic identity and whiteness. Self-hatred can cause people to lament that they are trapped in the cultural idols and expectations of their ethnicity—and feel like there is no way out other than to bow down to the gods within.
Rejection of the ethnic self. Hatred of self can lead to a desire to disavow one’s ethnicity. Many times, for nonwhite Americans, this can lead to a disavowing of their background of color because they “basically feel like a white person.” Or, some white Americans can try desperately to try to absorb another ethnicity’s culture and experiences in the hopes of not being “without a culture anymore.” Multiracial people have the complex and difficult task of trying to figure out who they are; they often represent two ethnic groups or races that have historically been at war with each other. Someone who grows up biracial black and white can feel like they have to choose—which side do they embrace? Multiracial people sometimes choose to view a certain part of their ethnic background as negligible or unredeemable. Often, they are told that they are broken pieces of a whole that can never be. They are rejected by both sides because they represent the other. Ultimately this can lead to the rejection of one’s own people.
And if we do not reject our people or those considered “not our people,” our temptation becomes to define ourselves by our scars. Racism has had real effects on many people of color, and in particular the black American and Native American experience.
Black Americans suffered brutality, the breakdown of the nuclear family, the degradation of their bodies as vehicles of sexual procreation only, and division even against each other to curry favor with the “master.” The end of slavery did not bring an end to this cycle; the lynching period post–Civil War to the mid-nineteenth century continued the brutalizing of black bodies, the false and base stereotyping of black men as sexual beasts, the destruction of black families, and the reign of white supremacy. In today’s outcry against the death of unarmed black men, women, and children at the hands of law enforcement, we hear an eerie pattern of white police officers testifying that they were afraid for their lives because of the aggression they perceived in the black men they shot. Inequity exists, even today. One in three black American men are incarcerated, often given harder sentences for drug-related crimes that occur at the same frequency as their white counterparts (but with lighter and shorter sentencing).6 Black drivers are more likely to be pulled over than white drivers.7 Those stats are true whether the driver is African American, Jamaican, Nigerian, Haitian, or multiracial black.
Today, black people are called epithets and racial slurs, implied to be less than others at work or school, and suffer the indignity of painful interactions with the police, with neither a doctorate degree nor a clerical collar making a difference in how they’re treated. Experiencing this regularly can cause several reactions in black men and women: exhaustion, numbness, anger, shutting down, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, fear, and suicide.8 How does one not define oneself by the reality of these scars?
James grew up being told, “Be black and be proud!” This affirmation of blackness contradicted the message that black men were inferior, undesirable, or less than when compared to nonblacks. James grew up watching and experiencing racism personally and in his black community. He wondered what it meant to be black. Was it to try to fit in? That didn’t seem to work. Was it to be angry all the time? That didn’t really seem to be a long-term option either, as he watched many friends become depressed and consumed by their anger. Jeremy, who is descended from both Nigerian and black American families, often withdrew as a response when confronted with racism and the N-word. He didn’t want to be the “angry black man,” but he also didn’t want to be subjected to further abuse. Caught between two bad options, he learned to shut down to protect himself.
I’ve watched a number of Asian Americans, Christian and not, reject or resignedly accept the relational dysfunction with parents and family without even questioning whether it could be another way. Curiously, Asian churches, much like Latino or black churches, might affirm their ethnic heritage but do little to challenge the negative parts of their culture. We sometimes passively accept things as they are because we have a broken understanding of our ethnicities. “He’s just being Irish,” or “she’s just being Puerto Rican,” becomes our dismissive response when defining our ethnicities by brokenness.
Native Americans paid great costs at the hands of white superiority. Courtland, a Lakota friend, shared this analogy from Navajo theologian Mark Charles: the Native people are like a grandmother who invited guests into her home. They wanted her bedroom, so she ended up sleeping in the guestroom. But they wanted that too, and she ended up sleeping on the couch. But they wanted that too. So with nowhere to go, she went up to the attic, invisible to the quarreling guests below who refuse to visit or honor her.9
Native Americans are a people who suffered being torn from the land with which they had a deep connection and commitment to steward. Their families and villages were decimated by disease and war, and they experienced the indignity of being seen as subhuman hundreds of times over in broken treaties and unjust policies. Today, we falsely are taught that Native Americans are a thing of the past. At a conference I attended, a Navajo man named Rashawn softly pleaded with the group: “Please don’t forget us. We are still here.” His soft-spoken and sincere words pierced us. It’s not enough that Native Americans remember who they are. He is asking non-Native people to remember, to counter the scar of being forgotten.
When your people have been oppressed for centuries, it becomes normative in that culture to hate the oppressor, just as the Jews hated the Romans and the Samaritans, their ethnic enemies, far worse. Lack of forgiveness becomes like a tumor that festers and grows inside, making it difficult for anything else to have room. And without the gospel, not forgiving and even vengeance makes sense. What rational person could forgive slavery, lynching, genocide, or racism? Nowadays, the secular world’s response to historical racial injustice and violence is to use rhetorical violence in how we speak to those with power. Are there any options other than retribution? “Love your enemies” is the most unfathomable command in all of Jesus’ teachings because it rubs against our desire to have an “eye for an eye.” Without the cross and resurrection of Jesus, there is no rationale for forgiving the other. And the next logical step is to ask ourselves: Is there an ethnic group that we are choosing to not forgive?
The reality of the fall is that each of our cultures has experienced sin and evil. As a result, we can define our view of our ethnicity by its scars: I’m the sin, or I’m the sin done to me. And our view of other ethnicities can also be to define it by its scars. If we lean on our own human ability to heal, we can be tempted to either reject our ethnicities because they are broken or to conform to our people’s assumed cultural norms.
A fifth broken response can be to try to make up for the mistakes of one’s people. Self-punishing penance is different from penitence (genuine sorrow for wrong doing) and just reparations (payment for wrong doing determined by a court or judge). It’s different from Catholic practices of reflection that help lead to deeper repentance and forgiveness. Self-punishing penance tries to atone by inflicting harm on oneself. This is particularly evident in white Americans who wrestle with “white guilt” or “white shame” after learning about the history of American racism and systemic injustice. The reality of what happened in the policies of justice, business, housing, law-making, military action, and more is staggering. For the white American navigating such conversations, it can be extremely disorienting as they begin to question all of what they’ve known to be true.
I’ve seen many white Christian ministry leaders, activists, and laypeople stay deeply committed to justice and reconciliation work between ethnic communities—and yet there is a lingering phenomenon of fear and anxiety about making mistakes and a sense of shame about the history of whiteness in America. Guilt is different from shame, as guilt is the awareness of wrongdoing that leads to conviction and repentance. Shame, on the other hand, is the sense that one is irreparably, irrevocably broken.
Many friends and ministry colleagues of color have commented to me, “I’m sick of white people feeling bad for being white.” I’ve watched white men and women in their twenties, thirties, and forties remain committed to racial justice though they lose their sense of commitment to Jesus. They are trying to do penance on behalf of the sins of their people. Self-punishing penance is works-based righteousness that doesn’t lead to life. It kills the soul.
If that resonates with you, the bad news is that nothing can atone for the legacy of slavery and racism. Jesus calls us to care for the poor, stand up for the oppressed, and invite the lost to the kingdom, but such an invitation is based on an obedience of hopeful faith, not crippling shame. The good news is that there’s hope offered in Jesus, who reconciles all to himself and to each other. But we need to come to him with full awareness and knowledge of our cracks first.
No ethnic group has been exempt from the effects of sin. No ethnic group is unaffected by patterns of idolatry and interracial and intra-racial brokenness. We live in the reality of the scars and idolatries that make us bow to the idols that are worshiped in our ethnic cultures. We turn blind eyes to the people who end up suffering because of racism and prejudice, or we tolerate racial hatred, prejudice, rhetorical violence, and vengeance toward the other. We are unable to even recognize the areas where we need to ask Jesus to come, transform, and restore. As a result, we are unable to “love God, and love neighbor” fully because we have not examined our blindness. We need to pause and look at the cracks.
Confession. Our response must be the opposite of what Adam and Eve chose in the garden. Instead of hiding in the bushes or refusing to name the sin, we must confess the places of cultural idolatry, prejudice, self-hatred, superiority, hatred of the other, and racism that have affected how we understand our own ethnic identities (and the ethnic identities of others). Confession in community is powerful because the public naming of sin unmasks the sin, and it begins to loosen the secret hold it has in one’s heart. Many times, confession about ethnicity will involve confessing the sins of our people, whether it’s racism committed by our people or the idolatries that we follow unchecked. Confessing those sins means that you are praying as someone interceding for one’s people, just as Moses, Isaiah, and many other prophets did. Instead of giving up on your own people, you’re stepping in and asking the Lord to be among you.
Lament. Mourning and grief is scary for many of us, and yet that is the proper response to hearing about sin and the pain that sin causes ourselves and others. Cultural idolatry, ethnic division, and racial brokenness have caused the generational pain that we see today. Lament is the invitation to come before God and say, “This should not be!” We were made for life, not death, and all signs of sin and death should make us say, “No, this is not the image of God!” It should not be that our culture causes harm to women and children because of its idolatries. It should not be that cultural idolatries cause us to choose our own success and gain at the expense of others. It should not be that racism, ethnic division, genocide, and slavery entered the world. It should not be that we are gripped by shame, fear, hatred, depression, despair, and division.
In this season of racial turmoil and pain affecting the black American community, I’ve been struck by how few black Christians have had the chance to lament and mourn with Jesus about their community’s pain. Lament wasn’t an alternative they considered or were offered. It’s one thing to feel despair, anger, or depression on your own about the state of the world. It’s another to say, “Jesus, weep at this tomb with me.” This lament can be quiet or loud, tearful or reflective, angry or wordless. God can handle our real responses of grief. Having led lament prayer with young adults and ministry professionals around the country, I’ve heard this consistent response from black women and men: “I didn’t know I hadn’t lamented until we started praying, and then everything I was carrying, trying to be strong, came down as I just wept. Before, my heart was just numb. I needed to mourn and invite Jesus into my grief, or else it was just going to crush me.”
Repentance. When John the Baptist calls people to repent and be baptized, he is inviting people to turn from their old assumed norms and to choose a different trajectory. Confession and lament over specific sin and its specific effects is to be followed by asking Jesus to show us a different way of living out our ethnic identities. We are repenting of previous choices of color-blindness, rejection of self, hatred of others, and bowing down to our cultural idols. Repentance is saying, “Jesus, this doesn’t work. Can you show me a different way?”
Particularly in the case of forgiving an ethnic enemy, it can be difficult to forgive. One can start with saying, “Jesus, I surrender to you my lack of forgiveness. I don’t forgive, and I don’t want to forgive. But I want to want to forgive.”10 The honest naming of the cracks and confession of our inability to heal ourselves invites the Holy Spirit into these broken spaces.
Last year, I was in a room full of ministers who were engaging in lament prayer over ways that racial brokenness affected our respective ministries. As I prayed next to some black colleagues, I heard the Lord say, Pray with Tony using the words oori ahgah (“our precious little one” in Korean).
But Lord, I objected, Tony doesn’t understand Korean. Jesus responded, That’s okay; just do as I say.
I knelt down next to Tony and told him that I was going to pray for him in Korean. Tony, who was quietly praying by himself, nodded. And as I began to weep and say those words in Korean, something broke in Tony, and he began to weep, crying out to the Lord about the pain he was experiencing in his body, the pain of the race conversation, and the pain of being an orphan from the housing projects of Chicago. I was not expecting the kind of emotional lament that came out of Tony. But when he and I debriefed later, he was filled with wonder as he told me what the Holy Spirit was saying to him in that space of lament: I am your Father. You are my beloved child. It was exactly what the Lord had been saying to me, though I was repeating the same four syllables in a language Tony did not understand. The Holy Spirit used Korean to speak to Tony and minister to his scars.
Jesus wanted to weep with Tony; he wanted to say, I see you, your pain, your wounds, your scars. And I want to be next to you, to touch your scars bringing healing, comfort, and hope. He wants to do the same with you. Will you let him?
1.What are some broken responses that you have had to your ethnic identity?
2.Where have you seen idolatry in your own ethnic people? Were there any mentioned in this chapter that resonated with you? How has that affected you, your family, and/or other people in your ethnic group?
3.What are experiences of ethnic tension or racism that have affected you, your family, or those close to you?
4.Find some others who are willing to engage in confession, lament, and repentance with you. Read Psalm 14 or 51 together as you pray.
America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee
The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege by Ken Wytsma
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity by Soong-Chan Rah
Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times by Soong-Chan Rah
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has a Beyond Colorblind video series about ethnic identity. For a video about the brokenness in our ethnic identities, go here: http://2100.intervarsity.org/resources/beyond-colorblind-brokenness.