The Silence Breakers: What They can Teach us about Racial Reconciliation

This past week I started reading the book, ‘Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone’, by renowned social scientist and author Brené Brown. The book is essentially the culmination of her research on “true belonging”. Americans are scared, she writes, and to offset our fear we have collectively hunkered around our “ideological bunkers”, sorting ourselves into more homogeneous groups so that we live, work and play with people who look, think and act like we do. Yet instead of these “bunkers” drawing us closer together, we are moving further apart. Ironically all this sorting has us more disconnected than ever and yearning for true belonging.

In the book, Brown offers us the clarity and courage we need to find our way back to ourselves and to each other. But she does not hesitate to underscore the challenge America faces. In this country, she writes, “our three greatest fault lines, cracks that have grown and deepened due to willful neglect and a collective lack of courage are race, gender and class. The fear and uncertainty flowing from collective trauma of all kinds have exposed these gaping wounds in a way that has been both profoundly polarizing and necessary. These are conversations that need to happen. This is discomfort that must be felt.”

Race, gender, class—America’s fault lines. When I read those words this week as I was crafting this post on racial reconciliation, I had to pause. Here I am writing about racial reconciliation in a month where the fault line that has cracked open wide is the one around gender. I cannot write about racial reconciliation in this season of America, without acknowledging what is happening in this country in the wake of the allegations of sexual assault of hundreds of women at the hands of powerful men in entertainment, politics and business. It is simply staggering.

I’m encouraged by the hundreds of brave women coming out with their #metoo stories, each one subsequently fortifying the other, because this too is a state of affairs that has long since needed reckoning in this country. I’m hopeful as I see man after man being stripped of his title, status and privilege for his gross misconduct against women because justice, however imperfect, is finally being served. And with the truth out these women who have been trapped by their stories can find true freedom. The dark secret of sexual harassment and assault in America’s workplaces is out and as a country thank God, we will never be the same.

The movement is so powerful that Time magazine Editor-in-Chief, Edward Felsenthal dubbed it “the highest-velocity shift in our culture since the 1960s”. To champion how ground breaking this movement has been, Time chose these very brave women, “The Silence Breakers” as the much anticipated Time Person of the Year for 2017. But Felsenthal acknowledges that we are just in the “middle of the beginning of this upheaval. There is so much that we still don’t know about its ultimate impact. How far-reaching will it be? How deep into the country? How far down the organizational chart?” We don’t know. Time will tell.

Sexism affects all women. There are no grey areas, no blurred lines. One is either male or female, and as females we have been subjected to sexism all our lives. We learn to orient ourselves as women in a male-centric world at an early age, being mindful that how we dress, comb our hair, walk, talk or behave can lead men to see us as prey. This is such an integral aspect of being female that most of us, myself included, aren’t even aware of the many ways we have contorted ourselves so we won’t be the victims of unwanted sexual advances. Unfortunately as recent allegations demonstrate, even taking these precautions don’t necessarily grant us immunity from attack.

But here is where I’m going with this. There has been a certain confluence of events that has led to the fallout from sexism in the workplace. Was it the close but no cigar almost Presidency of Hillary Clinton, the first woman to have almost succeeded? Was it Trump becoming President even after allegations of his own sexual misconduct had been publicized last year? Was it the Women’s March in January that united and emboldened women to start sharing their stories? We may never know what led to this domino effect that has given women the courage to stand up and speak out against sexual harassment. But it is happening. And it is changing the landscape of this country as we speak.

So I wonder then what sequence of events would need to happen to see real, substantive change along racial lines in this country? Race--that infinitely much more complicated and emotionally charged demographic variable than gender---which impacts an important sub-segment of the U.S. population, some who happen to be women too. What would that take? Can we hope to really see racial reconciliation in America? Can I look to what is happening now with the galvanizing movement against sexism, witnessing those chickens come home to roost, and hold onto hope for racial reconciliation?

This country needs to reconcile itself to centuries of racial oppression against blacks. Consider the challenge. It is daunting. But we must be fearless in wanting the light of truth to shine too on the nasty, grimy, filthy crevices of racial hatred. But I believe it will be much more difficult than what has occurred this year to begin to end the cycle of female oppression.

In the Be the Bridge racial reconciliation small group I have participated in for the past eight months, I often had to lean heavily on our good intentions and the covering of our church in engaging in these hard conversations around race, knowing we were building bridges of racial unity in our church by our efforts. That didn’t make it easier, just more intentional. I felt anger, hurt and guilt repeatedly as I allowed myself to listen to other women’s experiences and views that sometimes offended me or were in conflict with my own.  I listened with a heavy heart as women shared their painful stories of racial discrimination or how they may have hurt others because of their white privilege. And I shared my own experiences, which as a black woman born and raised in the Caribbean are so very different from my African-American sisters. My blackness did not much inform my identity growing up as I lived on an island where people of color are the dominant culture. By the time I got to the United States to study at Rutgers University, I did not have that particular monkey on my back. I knew racism was alive and well here but I did not take it personally. And my experiences in college, Corporate America, in my own business and in my social circles, where I was often the solo black person amongst a sea of white people, oddly enough validated that way of thinking for me. I felt “free” to be me. I see things differently now.

Acknowledging this reality was difficult for me. And part of my personal journey during this process, was owning that as an American with black skin, I too am an object of hate and revulsion among racists in this country. I am not exempt, different, set apart or in any way spared just because I had a different socializing. My Caribbean heritage could no longer be a mask I could hide behind. With this understanding arose a righteous anger within me that scared me for a while. And if I’m being honest, at that low point, I just wanted out. I didn’t want to know, see or feel the things that were being stirred up within me, seeing myself, the way many white Americans see me with my blackness speaking for me before anything else about me. It pained and offended me. But this is the reality of racial toxicity. This is the struggle and I have no illusions about which side of the battlefield I’m on.

With this awareness I’ve really been struggling with what racial reconciliation looks like at the national level. Getting to racial reconciliation as a nation seems virtually impossible to me. How can centuries old hurts, wounds and the systemic oppression of a race of people be healed? Since there is no precedent for racial harmony in America, what are we even reconciling to? These valid concerns can stop the attempt and intent to reconcile dead in its tracks. There are no easy answers. I would offer that meaningful racial reconciliation in this country is not likely in my lifetime, given its history.

2017 will go down as the year white supremacists rallied in broad daylight in Charlottesville resulting in clashes killing one. Racial tensions in this country are worsening. For a moment, I wonder too with Edward Rosenthal of Time what it would have been like in the 60s if Rosa Parks had a Twitter account, like the countless women who used the social media platform to share their stories of sexual assault and discrimination. Would the civil rights movement have progressed more? But after a moment, I shake my head to myself. No. I don’t think we’d be much further along. Because racism is way more complicated than sexism and harkens back to the root of how this country was founded.

Michelle Higgins, worship leader and a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement wrote a no holds barred article this summer titled: The Idea of Racial Reconciliation is Bankrupt. She asserts that before the nation can even think of reconciliation that it needs to be repenting of its past atrocities, “I grieve the arrogance and presumption of “racial reconciliation” work among the diverse peoples of the United States. I believe that the terminology of racial reconciliation is bankrupt. When, in the history of this country, have racial relationships been conciliatory? We need racial righteousness, racial repentance. In this country and many others, we have worked harder to hide the truth about our history than we have to amplify the stories of people who’ve been wounded by historical lies.”

Since slavery first reared its monstrous head in America in the 1600’s there has never been a period of racial reconciliation between blacks and whites in this country. Ever. And the wounds inflicted on black men and women from the ravages of slavery are at the center of this country’s heartbeat. They are generational, endemic and propagating. They have never healed. And like any unhealed bodily wound that has been left untreated, the wounds wreaked from racial inequality and oppression have festered and infected the body collective of this country. Whites, blacks, browns…all are infected and affected. This racial hostility in America will be all of our demise, if we don’t work through the reconciliation process in a meaningful way together.

In ‘Braving The Wilderness’, Brown offers hope. She has faith that we can build connection across our differences if we are willing to listen and “lean into vulnerability.  She adds, and “mercifully, it will only take a critical mass of people who believe in finding love and connection across differences to change everything.”

I believe this critical mass of people gathering together and having these difficult, painful conversations around race has to start in our church communities. Starting in groups like the Be The Bridge groups. And I believe, like the Silence Breakers, who sacrificed comfort for courage to speak their painful truths around sexism, it will take courageous people of all skin tones to bridge the gap of racism in America. And most importantly, I believe engaging in conversations and building relationships with others of diverse ethnicities in ways that are healthy and that promote peace requires a supernatural covering which can only come from the creator of the Universe.

If Jews and Gentiles could come together to share the gospel, and build the early church under the Lordship of Christ, I hold onto hope that one day the walls of the racial divide in America will come crashing down as we unite together in love and truth. This is not pie in the sky. This is biblically sound truth. And this is true for people of all skin tones, nationalities and ethnicities, not just in America but globally.

Note: This article was excerpted and edited from a longer article titled: The Imperative & Paradox of Racial Reconciliation by Natalie Jobity. The full article can be read here.

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Natalie Jobity is an inspirational author, insight coach, and marketing & branding consultant. She is the author of the Amazon Best-selling style guide Frumpy to Fabulous: Flaunting It. Your Ultimate Guide to Effortless Style. Read more of her inspirational posts on her website. Email her at Elanimage07@gmail.com.