Different is good.
When I was a missionary in Taiwan twenty plus years ago, I had an a-ha moment of sorts one day. As I was stopped at an intersection while riding my bike, I heard someone shout the Chinese word for “foreigner”.
That’s what Taiwanese people often do when they notice a non-Asian.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone shout out “foreigner” in reference to me. But it was the first time that I glanced around me, wondering who the heck they were talking about.
You see, I’d been living in Taiwan for 15 months at that point. I’d been living exclusively with native Taiwanese people for half of that time. I spoke the language fluently. My dreams were in Chinese. I’d even begun to acquire a taste for tofu.
For all intents and purposes, I thought I was Taiwanese.
It took me a moment to realize that the “foreigner” was, in fact, me. But the lesson I learned from that experience has stayed with me. I learned that we can become one with people who are different when we are immersed in their culture and truly work to understand and love them.
Racial tensions in the U.S. in recent weeks have upset me more than I can express. It saddens (and sickens) me to see how many lives have been adversely affected because of the color of one’s skin.
As people have shared their experiences with racism, I’ve been shocked. Not because I disbelieve their accounts of those experiences. Still, because I have never witnessed such things, I therefore find it unthinkable that they actually happen.
I think racism has sort of always existed in a bubble to me. When you don’t deal with something on a daily basis, it’s easy to develop a naïveté concerning it. I currently live in a racially homogenous place in comparison to many of the places in which I lived in my earlier years. And in ALL of those places, I was fortunate to associate with mostly compassionate people so it would be difficult to imagine them as perpetrators of racism.
The trouble with living in a bubble is that the assumptions you adopt regarding the inherent goodness of people can inhibit a motivation to fight for those who are marginalized.
Aside from living life as a person of color, the best way to develop a desire to advocate for them is through empathy. And empathy is much easier to achieve when one knows someone personally who has been a target of racism. And despite knowing many people of color throughout the course of my life, I am ashamed to say that I haven’t taken the time to really contemplate what life must be like for them.
Maybe it’s because they never felt safe expressing such sentiments to me. Maybe it just never came up. Maybe, because I cared for them and never really viewed the color of their skin as an impediment, I failed to acknowledge that others might.
I don’t beat myself up too much about it. Because my fundamental belief that we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father has guided the way I treat others.
Still, the events in our world have stirred in me a desire to do better. To ask more questions. To not take for granted the opportunities life has afforded me simply due to the color of my skin. To open my eyes to the plight so many individuals face and try harder to mourn with them. And to ease their burden in any way I can.
I’m not quite sure how to do this yet.
But I know who does know what I can do. He (Jesus Christ) is also the one who will right all wrongs in the end. And although I trust in His ability to do so, it is still my charge to emulate Him and to do my best in this life to advocate for those who cannot do so for themselves.
