Everyday Black Matters
In one word: great! In a lot more words…
When Dave & I arrived they were just finishing up their Mandarin language service & I’m telling you my heart plummeted to my belly. Typically when I speak, I feel a healty amount of adrenalin kicking in for a steady 8-10 hours beforehand. But last night, I slept well, and didn’t feel a thing, I was actually quite worried. No adrenaline for me as a speaker means I do a poor job. Well, in this case it shot through my body at 100mph in 3 seconds. I actually -and I’m not lying here- started to gag. My prayer for the day -ya know besides like “Holy Spirit guide me, etc.”- was “oh Lord, please don’t let me start to gag or throw up while I’m on stage. Not like I did yesterday at the neighbors sons birthday party… in their kitchen sink. Oh please Lord.”
There’s not a lot of places I go in America when I’m immediately identified as the obvious minority. And honestly, sometimes it’s sort of cool being racially ambiguous. In black settings, folk just know I’m biracial. But in all white settings, a lot don’t know & don’t ask. In all Latino settings -which I’m rarely in- they know one thing: I’m not Latina, but I sort of look like everyone else. And in all of those settings, even mostly Arabic settings when I’m out & about in Dearborn with my best friend, Jamileh (who is Lebanese) I’m really very comfortable.
In fact the only two times I can remember being really very uncomfortable (In America, that is) as the minority was a) when Dave & I ended up at the largest gay resort in America at 2am…during our honeymoon. It wasn’t that I was the only black person, it was that we were the only straight people, the only people dressed in GAP clothes, the only girl with pink on & the only girl with zillions in her hair. I projected (wrongly) that they all hated me.
The other time was when my sister, Yvonne dragged me on a fundraising trip her and class were doing at one of those Monster Trucks shows at Pine Knob to sell beer. I was SO uncomfortable. Again, the only black person I’m certain for miles, and there were all of these drunk white men & kids cheering at big, LOUD, giant trucks smashing other cars. It was actually quite frightening. Other than that, I can go in and out of white, black, Arabic or Latino sub-cultures in America and feel just fine. Perfectly content as the minority.
But, Asian culture is another whole story. First of all, growing up Detroit, no one teaches you the difference of how to distinguish Koreans from Chinese or Japanese by name, or any other physical distinction. And then, there was no setting that I interacted with any large group of any culture of Asians. In fact, the only Asians I interacted with were the ones who owned the beauty supply stores and did my hair or my nails. And even then, I always felt so stupid saying, “so where are you from?” They always answered with one word answers “Japan,” never as interested in getting to know me as I was intensly interested in getting to know them.
Ashamedly, the first time I started interacting with big groups of Asians is when I joined InterVarsity Staff, which actually employs hundreds of Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans & Japanese-Americans. It has been SO FLIPPING AWESOME to get to know my brothers and sisters, their differences, their uniquness, their struggle. I just love love love them & am so thankful to InterVarsity for opening up my world.
About a 1.5 yr. ago, the Chinese Christian Fellowship at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor invited me to come to their chapter. What they said would be a “small group of Chinese kids,” ended up being over 100 American born Chinese University students. The room itself, commanding. They asked me to speak on the Holy Spirit of all things and I felt very intimidated but it ended being a great evening, they treated me so wonderfully & I had a blast!
All of that to say, when I got to the church this morning my mind began replaying all of this in my head and before I even started I was thinking about how much I loved being there & I loved that they invited me. Once I got “on stage” my mind and heart fall into a comfortability that allow me to speak from my heart. Only I couldn’t read their faces and I was so very concerned about saying something offensive. At one point I forgot to have the AV guy advance the next slide and I got all off my points and in my notes. I could feel myself starting to sweat and talk a little bit faster. What should have been about a 25 -30 minute sermon ended up taking 15 minutes. Big oops. Oh well, I did the best I could. Dave said that he couldn’t tell I was feeling nervous or fidgety and that a few minor errors didn’t detract from the overall message. Thanks to God and to all my praying friends.
Afterwards, I went to pick up Ransom from the Sunday School. They had put him in the class with 1st-3rd graders and when I walked in, it felt like organzied chaos in Chinese. I saw him standing there quitely observing wondering if everyone had been speaking Chinese for the whole 45 minutes he was in there. All of sudden I hear each kid coming forward saying a bunch of Chinese & then “in the beginning was the Word,” and then receiving a fruit roll up for their English Scripture memorization. I noticed Ransom was in line and wondered if I should step in or just let the situation play out. I watched and when it was his turn to recite “in the beginning was the Word,” he simply walked up held out his hands for his fruit roll-up and said, “peeeeeeez.” They smiled & handed him one. 🙂
We had a wonderful Chinese lunch, sat with the Pastor and some other great folks and then headed out to the playground before going home. On the playground Ran was playing with a wheelbarrow. When he walked away another kid started playing with it. Ran came back and gave him a sad face like hey aren’t you going to give that back. The kid started speaking chinese to him, gesturing that he could have the wheelbarrow back. Ran looked puzzled. The kid repeated himself. Puzzled. The kid repeated himself. I took a chance & said in English -of course- “he doesn’t know Chinese.” (Realizing as I was saying it the kid may not know English). So the kid looks at Ransom and says in perfect English, “would you like the wheelbarrow back?” Amazing! I thought it was so awesome that this kid has the wonderful Chinese enclave of security where he can speak his 1st language freely without worrying whether or not he’ll be understood. For some reason, the thought brought tears to my eyes. I think since getting to know so many of my Asian InterVarsity Staff friends, and knowing how I grew up in Detroit it’s really important to be able to feel like your culture is valuable and there are several safe places to express it.
And of course I LOVED that Ransom got a valuable cultural lesson today that I was able to talk through with him. Teaching him that everyone is not like him is really really important to me. Teaching him to love, and care about, and know about, and be concerned about many other cultures is really really important to me. So, I love that he was and we were a little uncomfortable today, a little out of place today ~ those are the situations that provide the best learning and the best understanding of humanity. And if I cant do that, what I am even bothering to preach the good news of Jesus?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In