No writer has had a greater impact on my understanding of cultural identity than Dr. Beverly Tatum. …When introducing cultural identity (or racial identity, a term she uses synonymously), Tatum tells...
In 2008, I felt like an American for the first time because I saw a leader who looked like me. All my life I hoped my education and accomplishments would free me from the history of my skin color as i...
May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...
Did you know that we are more or less likely to act with prejudice according to the time of day? Daniel Pink, in his excellent work, “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing” draws from recent...
Sometimes evil can feel so strong, so powerful, that its damage seems permanent and the final word on the subject. In this short excerpt from Philip Yancey, we see a reversal, perhaps a foretaste of w...
The creation of a white standard in the world during the age of exploration, and the white structural privilege prevalent for so long in America, led to what is often called “white privilege”. This is...
God of freedom, whether we like to admit it or not, we do not treat everybody with equality. We silently judge others based on appearance, social status, and even race. Please give us the courage to m...
Author Drew Hart tells the story of meeting up for sweet tea with a friendly white suburban pastor, who placed his foam cup on the table between them and decided to make a racial analogy. The white pa...
On May 20, 1990, 42-year-old Georgene Johnson arrived 15 min early for her 10K race (6.2 mi) as part of the Revco-Cleveland Marathon and found runners already heading down the course. So, she jumped i...
O God, we thank thee thou that hast made man in thine own image. Help us to see ourselves as thou seest us, all standing in need of thy mercy yet dear unto thee. We confess to the many injustices and ...
In his seminal work, the Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois describes the unique challenge to identity one faces being both Black and American. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-conscious...
O my Savior, help me. I am slow to learn, prone to forget, and weak to climb; I am in the foothills when I should be on the heights; I am pained by my graceless heart, my prayerless days, my poverty o...
In sovereign love, you, O God, created the world good And made everyone equally in your image, Male and female, of every race and people, To live as one community. But we rebel against you; we hid...
To illustrate how the racial oppression of previous generations has benefited European Americans, we can look at the fate of Native Americans. When Europeans arrived in North America, Indians owned al...
In his book Unshakeable Faith , Max Lucado shares a true story about a friend who competed in an Ironman Triathlon in Lake Placid, New York. You can compete in Ironman races around the world in p...
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become fri...
The most serious thing [concerning the credibility of our global witness] is the image around the world that evangelicals are soft on racial injustice. . . . One sign and wonder, biblically speaking, ...
Matthew 24:42-44, Proverbs 31:8-9, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 1 Peter 1:3-4, James 5:7-8, Joshua 1:9, Matthew 28:20
Lord God, we rejoice in your resurrection and in your promise to return. Help us live today as people who await the fulfillment of your kingdom. We confess we often look for comfort outside of you. Be...
Matthew 6:33, Colossians 3:23, Psalm 39:6, Luke 12:15, Acts 15:29, Matthew 5:14-16, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:62, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, James 1:12, Romans 8:16-17, Galatians 2:20
The true story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, two British sprinters who qualified for the 1924 Olympic Games, illustrates two contrasting approaches to life and identity. Abrahams was driven by ...
Martin Luther King, responding to criticism from Southern White Pastors with respect to Civil Rights Activism: Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to s...
The myth of race is, at its heart, about power relations, and in order to understand how it evolved, we must avoid vague theoretical and historical formulations and instead ask, Who benefited from the...
My kids love the movie Remember the Titans . It’s the story of the integration of the TC WIlliams High School Football Team in Alexandria, Virginia, in the 1960s Civil Rights era. The white players a...
I knew a man who was the head of a set of car dealerships in the South. The way in which things were done was you could come in and negotiate, and the salesman had a pretty big window of what they cou...
We want everyone around us to believe we have it all together—and we don’t. We fear everyone else is living the lives they post and we are the only imposters. And so, the race is on. The race to perfe...
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white citizen’s counciler or the ku klux klanner, but the white moderate...
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set b...
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives powe...
Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is black? ...Root up, if possible, the great sin of prejudic...
In January 1999 I was flying on Saudi Arabian Airlines from Mumbai, India, to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and then onward to London. I arrived at the Mumbai airport to find a long line. Perhaps seventy-five...