As a white advocate in an ethnic minority context, I spend a disproportionate amount of my time trying to wrap my mind around why it’s so hard to mobilize majority culture leaders and folks as a whole to engage ethnic minority leaders on their terms and in ways that offer redemptive and culture changing experiences and moments. It’s hard. Especially because we’re not talking about bad people in general. We’re talking about good and sometimes very mature people.
So why do so many avoid ethnicity and race?
Why do so many still not seem to “get it” and start engaging others differently?
In organizations, why do we so often just keep doing business as usual when “business as usual” isn’t serving large sections of the community or society?
While many would feel quite insulted by the notion that they “don’t get” anything, nonetheless it’s true for many. And it’s true for me often. Nobody gets it perfectly for all contexts, but there’s a basic understanding of ethnicity, culture, and difference that moves people to behave and relate differently. “Getting it” for me as it relates to cross-cultural capacity is really connected to identifying the “what” to learn, “how” to learn, and the “who” they need to learn from. People can feel like they “get it” as much as they want, but what validates or exposes our cross-cultural trustworthiness is the paradigm we develop for learning from “others” and the underlying humility and intentionality that may or may not reflect.
It strikes me that one of the biggest challenges to someone “getting it” is that it is fundamentally a difficult task to start caring about something that doesn’t involve you. There have been times in my life where I felt numb to the stories and calls for change and justice – I simply didn’t feel like it had much to do with me. And there are many folks who either avoid, minimize, or judge because they simply don’t feel like things like ethnic identity, power dynamics, or ethnic voice has much to do with them. It makes a lot of sense – it’s hard to really engage things that aren’t about you and that are outside of your world.
But before this starts sounding like an apologetic for those who don’t care and aren’t engaged in empowering people who have had to navigate the margins of the majority culture, I do not think this is an excuse. I just understand why this area is such a challenge for society as a whole as well as the church. It’s hard and counter-cultural to care about realities that you don’t perceive as directly impacting you. We must not settle for that though – we must develop a more interconnected narrative of how we do indeed impact one another in great ways even though we may not be conscious of it day to day. Our posture towards ethnicity, culture, and difference matters – even if we don’t know it yet.
So for all those who are staying on the margins of anything to do with the marginalized because you may not think all of the issues and conversations involved don’t involve you, this is what I would say. There’s a phenomenon that us majority culture folk need to recognize and it’s this. “By taking a posture that it doesn’t involve us, we end up making it about us.”
Here’s why.
Most people will say that they think the “ideal” is a multi-ethnic community or reality. I will write off complete racists from any culture as not relevant to this immediate discussion. But what they fail to recognize is that a multi-ethnic community that is healthy and reproducing leaders requires everybody to be engaged in constructive, intentional, and humble ways. So in organizational, ministry, church, or non-profit efforts to mobilize towards multi-ethnic community and unity, the people who are staying “disengaged” because they don’t think they are involved end up making themselves very involved in the community’s failure because they impede progress merely by their lack of engagement.
Moving towards a vision of multiethnic unity and diversity is just that – a vision, a vision of a new reality. But it’s a reality that everyone needs to be invested in – or at least a significant and critical mass. Because it’s systemic vision – a vision that can only be realized in the context of the whole of a community or context, those that function detached or self-absorbed because they don’t see why anything different should be required of them put themselves in a position as a tangible roadblock to a community vision being realized. Not only are they not doing their part. They are in the way and resisting. In a pursuit that requires EVERYONE to see newness realized, detachment or disengagement is a darker reality than what many of us want to believe.
There is a cost to cross-cultural or multi-ethnic detachment. Not everyone will play an MLK Jr. type role in terms of level of influence. But by refusing to examine what role we can play and what posture that requires of us in communities of difference, we will be accepting another role by default – that of status quo champion and roadblock towards transformational dialogue. By doing our business as usual we stand in the way of courageous and pioneering men and women who would seek to make a difference for the present and the next generation. Or we can join them and be a part of bringing about a new reality that serves all!
So what do you need to learn? Who do you need to learn from? How do you need to go about that learning (posture)? Even experienced cross-cultural learners are regularly asking these questions – it’s what makes them cross-cultural learners. So wherever you are in your cross-cultural journey, these questions may help you take the next step both in heart change and in action.
But if you can’t answer those questions or you don’t know what those questions mean – I’d encourage you to take some steps to talk to someone who is seasoned in this area and talk through what your next step might be.
