February is Black History month in Canada and we’re encouraged to mark this event in our worship in some way.  Last year I had a black colleague come and speak to us…but this year I’m in a very different place. I think we need to do our own work – not ask others to spoon feed us.

This morning I’m going to open up a topic that most of us in the room will be sensitive to, maybe even uncomfortable with – white privilege. I could talk about racism but that can take on a confrontational sensibility. I don’t think we’re a racist community of faith however most of us here have benefited from the almost invisible culture of whiteness that exists in Canada.

Individuals in the Indigenous Study Group, as well as many of you after some sermons, have come to me and said, “Teresa, this stuff is depressing and so big, what can we do about it?” Well, friends, this is the beginning of an answer to that question.

For the last thirty years scholars have been wrestling with the various ways the current racial order offers white people in general, and them in particular, certain advantages and privileges as a white person. You may not be aware but the notion of race is a relatively recent occurrence. And if you trace it back, it has it’s roots in capitalism, in the need of Europeans for more manual laborers than they could readily supply. Of course, the solution was slavery – the capture and forced labor of African peoples. (Yes, there were also Indigenous slaves and indentured white servants but the majority were African. And yes, this happened in Canada too.) As slavers began to pillage Africa, Europeans began to attempt to justify this behaviour by defining the notion of race and assigning it social attributes. At the very same time, in Victorian England, notions of cultural superiority and the Eugenics movement were becoming quite mainstream. The result was an understanding of the “white” race as intellectually and socially superior to other races. This justified slavery.

In the last four hundred years, we have refined this sense of superiority and, in the process made it almost invisible. Think of a fish swimming in the water – he has no idea what water is or that there is the possibility of life without it. That’s like us, we swim in a sea of white privilege that completely immerses us.

I remember in seminary I had a class on the Old Testament. In that class I learned that Moses was married to an Ethiopian woman. I had always understood that Jesus was Middle Eastern and I accepted that the majority of characters within the bible stories were not white. But in that class, fellow African Canadian students shared that they had mostly felt like outsiders in the stories that came from the bible – it was never their story. They had been taught about a white saviour who was going to save them.

Seeing this story through their eyes woke something in me. Because in reality, Jesus was a brown man. Hearing that Moses was married to an Ethiopian made me realize that black people were just as prevalent in these stories. In fact, if anything, white people were probably in the minority. But how have we learned this story? We have been shown pictures of a white Moses, a white Mary and Joseph, and a white Jesus. I knew on some level this was problematic but I’d never stopped to consider its implications.

It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I saw how the dominate white culture had stolen a story that belonged to its people of origin and changed it into a story about themselves. That is what colonization does, that is what people in power do. In doing so, this white version of God and Jesus encouraged more reliance on and referral to the dominant white culture.

This was a painful experience and it took a surprising turn – I realized that deep down inside my own racist underpinnings, I held to a belief that white people were nicer, kinder, they wanted to help others, they would never colonize others in this manner.

And yet, whites like us, did this. Peeling back the layers of privilege and dominance, it opened my eyes to the reality that white people were not more caring or benevolent. In fact, it made me see that whites were interested in keeping this myth alive so that they could also keep the power. Ministers and people of faith have preached from pulpits for centuries about this white Jesus.

Artists have carried on this myth for so long that when I showed a group of children a painting of a black Jesus, they laughed at it. That wasn’t Jesus, Jesus was white, everyone knows that. This way of supporting white privilege keeps us in ignorance about how prevalent this power is. When we live in a culture that supports us in the lifestyle we have, we don’t realize it’s even happening.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. When I was a Franciscan I travelled once a month via highway 401. I would set my speed on cruise control at 115 kilometres when I left London and take it off when I got to Mississauga. I was purposely speeding and I knew it. I knew I might get stopped but the risk was relatively low. So guess what? I did get stopped – three times in four years. And each and every time, the officer took one look at me, a nice, white woman in a sedan and let me off the hook with a warning. Every time. I was never issued a ticket.

Now imagine if I was a young black man. What do you suppose might have happened?

I have a middle-aged black colleague who shared a story of being pulled over at night on his way home from the gym. In four years, he has been pulled over 17 times. This particular time his signal light was out. Because he was sweaty, the officer immediately assumed he was high and made him get out of the car to do a sobriety test. He passed. The officer ticketed him for the signal light but forgot to give him back his license. I told him to go to the police station and get it back. He said, “No way, I’ll go to Service Ontario and get a new one.” He was afraid to approach the police because he automatically assumed the worst would happen because of the colour of his skin.  And looking at the news – he was right to worry. And what happened to me during those speeding stops? The police immediately assumed the best, I was safe, a white person, just like them.

Friends, that is white privilege.

With all that’s going on with race issues these days,

I felt I really needed to tackle this sense of privilege that is mine simply because I am melatonin-challenged. There is an article by Peggy McIntosh, entitled White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, that lays out fifty ways in which white people are privileged. I won’t share all fifty with you but you can google the article if you want to read all of them.

Here are a few that really struck me:

1.   I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. Do you even think about this? I don’t. And yet people of colour do every day. An African-Canadian friend of mine said that the first thing she does when she walks into an event or a meeting is to see if there are any other people of colour in the room. I never think about this. EVER. That is white privilege.

2.    I can avoid spending time with people of other races quite easily. I don’t even have to purposely avoid this, it just doesn’t happen often. This is not true for people of colour in our community.

3.    If I need to move, I can be fairly sure of renting or buying housing in an area which I can afford and which I want to live. I have moved many times in my adult life. I have never had to worry about this.  That is white privilege.

4.    I can go shopping alone and be sure that I will not be harassed or followed in the store.

5.    I can turn on the TV or open the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

6.    When I was taught about our national history, I was shown that the people of my colour made it what it is.

7.    When I cash cheques or use credit cards I can count on my skin colour not to work against the appearance of financial responsibility. A friend tells a story of shopping with a black friend. They went to the grocery store. Her friend wrote a cheque (yep, small towns still do this) and the cashier brought out a listing of folks who had written bad cheques and went through it before accepting her cheque. My friend also wrote a cheque, but the cashier did not review the list.  That is white privilege.

8.    I can swear, or dress in second clothes or not answer emails or phone calls without having people attribute these choices to bad morals, poverty or the illiteracy of my race. Think about it, how many white people do you know that do things like this and we think that is just them, but do you ever blame a white person’s race for this? I saw a meme on Facebook that said “A Muslim commits a crime and we blame his whole religion. A Black man commits a crime and we blame his race. A white man commits a terrible crime and we say that he is mentally unstable and a lone wolf. We never blame a white person’s whole race for their behaviour.  That is white privilege.

9.    If I ask to speak to the person in charge, I can be pretty sure that I will be facing a person of my own race.

10.  I can feel welcomed and normal in the usual walks of public, institutional and social life.

Those are just ten of the fifty privileges listed in McIntosh’s article. In our communities, white culture is the norm. I think that’s why we are so uncomfortable when we hear about race-based protests like Black Lives Matter or Idle No More.

Our own denomination has been active in these protests. We’ve been working towards being an intercultural church for twelve years now. Yet we still have racism in our church, we still have white privilege at work here too! And as long as white privilege dictates that black and brown and red and yellow lives don’t matter as much as white lives, we will need to continue this work. And be honest about it.

Long ago, I gave up on the concept of evil. I did not believe in an embodied force or devil that was trying to work against us. Yet I confess, when my eyes were opened to the enormous system that has been created to support white privilege, I became overwhelmed with the complexity and size. I can no longer pretend that it doesn’t exist. I do know AND with each moment I GAIN, as a white person who lives within this system.

This awareness and the overall feeling that we can’t escape from this system defines evil for me now. It scares me. It seems so wildly out of control and, as a person who is called to serve, I must do something about it, and that’s frightening too.

Friends, the system is so big, so supported and so ingrained that we can’t separate ourselves from it. So what do we do?

First, we educate ourselves so that we recognize where we stand. Being honest about white privilege, recognizing it, and naming it is an important first step. We need to recognize that we’re swimming in waters polluted by this white privilege.

We need to get real with ourselves, and get honest about privilege. We need to continue to evolve so that we are a community that stands up and speaks out against rulings and policies that are unjust. We need to call out privilege even when it may cause us discomfort. We need to call out the neighbour who makes a racist joke. We need to speak up when someone refers to “those people.” Our silence keeps white privilege strong and in place.

This is a call to roll up our sleeves, talk with open hearts to one another to create strong anti-racist and anti-oppression partnerships within the wider community, and to become allies with those who are on the outside of this system of privilege. To that end, during Lent, I want to invite you to consider participating in our Lenten study on white privilege. We’re going to be following a curriculum written by our partners in the United Church of Christ in the U.S. I will be adding Indigenous content and Canadian examples to the program as we go along.

Friends, it is time to really wake up. Justice means each person is treated with respect and dignity, not just some. Justice means that we all share in the bounty of this earth, not just some. Justice means equity for all, not just some. Justice means telling our Christian story as if it really were good news for all. Amen.