So this is one of those blog posts that could get me into a lot of trouble. I have a friend who says that every racial reconciler should possess a little Martin (as in MLK Jr.) and a little Malcolm (as in X). The idea is that we need the balance of MLK's love and peacefulness as well as the demanding, unsatisfied voice of Malcolm. This post is falling a little closer to Malcolm.  

This week, many around the world will pause to remember the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. We will stop to reflect on powerful, prophetic sermons that rocked communities. We will post images of marches, sit-ins, and freedom riders. We'll upload or favorite pictures and tweet our favorite quotes. And I will be among everyone else, loving the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement he represented. 

When we truly pause to reflect on this time in American history, it really is astounding. With the advent of television, Civil Rights leaders, including MLK, used this growing technology to draw attention to their plight. They set-up the media to put on display the realities of living in segregated America. The media couldn't resist covering the Movement, even if they wanted to ignore it. Every protest was purposefully creative. At the very least they served three purposes 1. to galvanize the community of the oppressed 2. to move the hearts of the privileged and uninvolved and 3. to provide evidence to the unbelieving that America had a problem that needed to be fixed.  

While I am grateful for the ways this legacy lives on, the tradition and history that arises every time I hear the song, "We Shall Overcome", I still want more. I want us to embody the spirit of the protests, not just repeat the steps. I have seen many glimpses of new creativity- Facebook pictures the symbolize our support, apps that make fundraising easy, tweets that spread like wildfire. But I also still see an overwhelming number of small marches and old hymns that lack the courage, creativity, danger, sacrifice, and heart that moved the nation in the 1960s. What happened to our conviction to put racism on display, to show what it looks like, sounds like, feels like? 

It seems that many protests today are missing some of these essential ingredients. People gather together but they aren't always representative of the oppressed community, and they certainly aren't always planned and implemented by the oppressed, an essential component of sustainable galvanization. It also seems like a lot of protests are so focused on what they are against, that they have completely forgotten about moving people to care. The beauty of the Civil Rights protests was its incredible growth. White college students from the North were risking their lives because they were so moved to action, so moved to care. Today's protests have the "us vs them" language down, but have they forgotten how to turn "them" into "us"? And lastly, protest planners have to keep in mind that the world is looking for evidence- evidence of a problem. Can your protest put the evidence, the symbols, the faces, the feelings on display? If all three components can exist in today's world of amazing technology, communication and connection, we just might, finally, Overcome. 

My immense gratitude for those of old who marched, sat, kneeled, voted, preached, sang, and gave their lives so that I can lead the life I have. And my eternal support to the activists of today who are trying to change the world, one (creative) protest at a time.  

Ida M Flood was born in February of 1884 in Virginia. She was the oldest of her siblings, and by the age of 16 was being raised by a single mother. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find what happened to Ida's father. There is a great deal of mystery swirling around her "mulatto" identity, as listed on every census record where her name appears. Following her father's death, her mother took over supporting the family by becoming a cook. At the age of 20, Ida married into the Harvey family. Despite the fact that Ida's father-in-law had been a slave, the family was quite well off. 

Following the civil war, Ida's father-in-law ran a thriving tobacco farm. The farm was so successful that the family hired white sharecroppers to work the land, and the family frequently took shopping trips to New York, proving that shopping is in fact in my blood.

By 1920 Ida's in-laws passed away, and she and her husband, Paul, ran the tobacco farm, along with extended family. They had 3 surviving children, Hattie Lee (my great grandmother), Grace and Paul. 

I am told that every Sunday Ida cooked a full meal for all the hired hands who worked the farm, skills she no doubt learned from her mother. The kitchen would fill with the smells of dinner and dessert- pies and cakes which my great grandmother helped cook but could not touch. There was a rule in this house- those who worked ate first and to their hearts' content. This family refused to treat the hired hands like slaves. The family would not feast in their faces, or leave them wanting food; they did not receive the left overs or the trash that the family did not want. They got the best, the first, and they could eat as much as they wanted. 

Though this was torture for my great grandmother, a child trying to resist the smell of cakes and pies, in case she received none, I am so proud to know this about my great, great grandmother. How easy it would have been to lord their power over the farm hands, to wallow in resentment of the past. Her own father in law, who she lived with for at least a decade, would carry the marks of slavery, and perhaps her own father as well. Ida refused to be like the oppressors of the past, and I love her for it. 

May we all aspire to be people who choose our way forward, not based on the wounds of the past- no matter how painful the memories. Let us instead give our best and give it generously. 

Our Multicultural Training Team, uses a lot of interactive experiences to start honest, open dialogues. The interactive experiences are typically very simple, but certainly cannot be confused for being easy. In fact, our interactive experiences intentionally make people uneasy!   

Recently we led an interactive experience that involved participants revealing their first reaction to racially loaded identities (terrorist, poor, nerd, millionaire, supermodel, gang member, etc). As we spoke each identity out loud, participants had to write down the first racial or ethnic group that came to mind. All participants then posted their responses on the walls. For the most part, participants jump into this (and similar exercises) quite willingly, despite the uneasiness exercises like this cause. But occasionally, we have someone who just can't handle it. The last time we did this particular exercise, someone walked out. Afterwards, a woman who witnessed the walkout, suggested that next time "we should leave out anything that would create volatility in favor of doing things we can all agree on so that we focus more on creating community". 

Our response was a kind but firm, "no." I would like to offer three reasons why our team has chosen to use simple but uneasy experiences, and why we will continue to, even at the risk of losing participants.  

1. Building True Community.  Most people probably wouldn't associate the word "chaos" with the word "community", but I have found that groups who don't enter into chaos with one another are only operating on a superficial level of association, not the deeper level of community. Superficiality does not serve as a solid foundation for honest, open dialogue on race, and the only way to move beyond superficiality is to introduce a little controlled chaos- something that rubs us the wrong way, that digs into our psyche, that make us uncomfortable, that forces us to be ourselves. We must be willing to go to that deeper place where race lives if we are serious about creating reconciliation. Sing-alongs are not the same as reconciliation. And so, we use interactive experiences that will create some tension, some uneasiness and also some community. (Read M Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled or A Different Drum for more on building true community)

2. Creating a Shared Experience. The second reason our team is committed to using interactive experiences is because they lay a good foundation for beginning dialogue. One reason (of many) why its so hard to have conversations about race is because our experiences are so varied. Our racial identities were not formed in vacuums. They were informed by our families, socioeconomics, education, geography, generation and more. How do you bring all these variations into a room and attempt to have a meaningful dialogue? Our solution is to create a shared experience. This allows everyone to talk about the same experience, but to offer an individual perspective. A shared experience gives us all the same starting point, the same context, the same people involved... what differs are our reactions, our feelings, our thoughts. The shared experience creates a framework for the dialogue that helps people hear and understand one another. 

 3. Acknowledging What's Wrong. The basic premise of all of our trainings/classes is that race still matters. I am down for celebrating diversity, sharing one anthers food, learning about ethnic holidays, etc. Those are all good and beautiful actions. But to do that without acknowledging racial disparities, racial discrimination, racial stereotypes, racial bias, racial histories, and racial inequalities is to do a disservice to the very people I am attempting to celebrate. Our inter-activities give everyone permission to acknowledge and share the hard things about dealing with race in America. We don't pretend everything is golden, and we don't expect our participants to do so. Its healthy and honest to acknowledge what is still broken; how else can we galvanize to fix it? 

So far from trying to appease our participants and make it easy to stay in the room, we would much rather challenge everyone and ourselves by building community from (a little) chaos, creating shared experiences, and giving everyone space to acknowledge what's wrong. Thats how we move forward together, truly together. 

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Well, it took me a long time to realize I had a problem. Not only was my ethnocentricity not a problem to me; I thought it was a wonderful way to define myself- as ethnocentric, proud of my heritage and comfortable in my skin. And I am. I love learning about African American history, about inventors and leaders and achievers. I love learning about my own African American history- where my family is from, the trials they endured, the successes they enjoyed, the stories they passed down from one generation to another. I'm in love with my heritage and all that my black body represents- struggle, strength, patience, hard-work, love. 

While all those things are good (and I have every intention of passing these stories on to my future children) when I was in college I had a significant revelation: I invested so much into my own culture that I had closed off any interest or opportunity to explore and understand the histories, cultures, and leaders of any other ethnic group. Though I never would have said it aloud, as I looked at my life, I realized that I was treating my culture as superior to anyone else's. I was only eating "my" soul food, listening to "my" gospel music, attending "my" black church, hanging out with "my" black friends (and the white ones who also loved "my" culture), I only dated black men, only hung posters with black folks represented and devoured books that exclusively discussed the importance of black leaders. My whole world revolved around being black. I was a Christian, and yet my world did not at all reflect the truth of God's love for every nation, tribe and tongue. If you looked at my life, you'd think God only loved black people and tolerated everyone else!

Now the whole truth is that I am still recovering. Sometimes I still get caught up in feeling the need to assert my culture when whiteness is normalized, retreating to the comfort of my culture, or racializing conversations. I don't think these are always bad things, but I have to be careful not to make blackness the center of my life. I have to be conscious about studying other cultures, other leaders, other issues in the world. I have to be purposeful about trying other foods, making new friends, investigating more and more and more. I have to follow through on promises I've made to myself, like learning to speak Spanish. I have to be disciplined until a multicultural life is completely normalized for me. I believe that is the life God has called me to; the closer I get, the more alive I feel. 

Hi, my name is Austin, and I am a recovering ethnocentrist.