Guns, church, and President Obama OR Bullets, Bearing Witness, and Bans.

"Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?"
- Jimi Hendrix

I grew up in world full of guns. Living in rural Michigan in the 1980's every farmer I knew had a gun cabinet on the back porch full of rifles, shot guns and ammo. Guns were tools those men and women used in controlling the population of pests on the farm. Those same men and women taught me the value of life - not just human life, but all life. I was told from a young age that you didn't just kill something because it was fun or because you were angry. Some animals, like deer and rabbits, were killed for food others met their violent demise because they ate crops and destroyed property.

I also, grew up in a world filled with church. My father was a pastor in a rural church. We were always at church, often the first to arrive and the last to leave. That church, nearly 100% white, sponsored immigrants from Cambodia fleeing the brutal regime of Pol Pot. I remember going to Cambodian picnics and eating wonderful Asian food as well as church potlucks filled with Dutch and midwest fare. I watched my father invite people of all types to sit down in Bible studies, and at tables, to fellowship in the name of Christ.

This week those two images from my youth came flooding back as I heard the news of the shooting on Charleston, SC. As word of the shooting made its way through the media, I thought about that little country church established (c.1855) around 40 years after Emanuel A.M.E. in Charleston (1816). Both churches are seen as mothers, the little country church my father served, Graafschap Christian Reformed Church (CRC), was one of the first CRC churches and mothered that denomination, while Emanuel A.M.E. is lovingly referred to as "Mother Emanuel." My mind raced to thoughts of guns, and of Bible studies where those different than the majority of the members were welcomed.

My mind continued racing while listening to the words of President Obama as he spoke following the massacre. President Obama stated:

“At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “It is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of the avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it." (1)

Obama addressed gun control in the wake of yet another violent incident - in this case racial terrorism. I applaud our President for stating this in his response and calling on this nations leaders to do something about it. It is simply a fact that we need to ban some types of guns in the United States. I remember watching a comedian on TV once say that we should all be issued a gun at birth, but the gun issued should be a musket, because who can rob a 7-11 with a shingle shot gun that takes 5 minutes to load? While I disagree with universal gun ownership, I agree with the point. The shooter in Charleston sat in the Bible Study for NEARLY AND HOUR before opening fire. AN HOUR!!! (2) How was he able to do this? First, he was invited in and shown Christian hospitality (more on this below), and second, he had a hand gun. He had a gun you can conceal. I am willing to bet that the shooter would not have been allowed to sit for an hour in the Bible study if he was carrying a long rifle or shot gun. While a shooting may have still happened, he would have been stopped at the door and the hour long infiltration, resulting in a higher loss of life, avoided.  I believe there is a place for gun ownership. 

I believe that the farmers and hunters I grew up with have a right to own and use guns. I believe that travelers in the backcountry in my home state of Alaska should be able to carry a gun. What I think we need to ban are guns that are easily concealed and firearms made for military purposes (assault rifles, etc.). It is time for the United States to ban a large amount of the weapons we have allowed for too long.

While I felt myself strongly responding to the American gun culture in the wake of Dylann Storm Roof opening fire, it was the fact that he killed Christians at a Bible study that has struck a cord deep inside of me. It did not strike the hollow tone of the ranting found on Fox News who feverishly tried to paint this shooting as anti-Christian. (3) (4) I want to be perfectly clear, the members of Emanual A.M.E. were not killed because they were Christians, but because they were black, however they were living out their Christian faith.

The A.M.E. church has a saying, "the doors of the church are open." When young Mr. Roof came to Emanuel A.M.E. asking for the pastor and wanting to join the Bible study he was welcomed in through those open doors. He was shown hospitality. He was given the seat next to the Pastor. The members of that church did what we are all called to do as followers of Jesus. They invited someone in - someone other/different than them - and welcomed that person into their fellowship. It is something I was taught in my youth by observing those Cambodian Bible studies. It is something I have done in my ministry many, many times. This welcoming, inviting, entertaining hospitality is at the core of what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus is always inviting those he did not know, those different than himself to join in. The members of Emanuel A.M.E. are not only victims they are martyrs. They died bearing witness to a Jesus who welcomed everyone. Let us not forget that Jesus was betrayed by someone at his table - someone sitting next to him.

People of God - those striving to follow Jesus - it is easy for us to become comfortable with our faith. It is easy to forget that the way of Jesus - the welcoming of the other - made him a target. Let us not forget, in our comfortable Christianity, that when we follow Jesus we are promised that it will not always be easy, that it will not always be safe, that it will not always turn out well, but let us keep going. Let us NEVER stop inviting in the stranger. Let us never stop offering hospitality. Let us continue to bear witness to the Jesus that calls us to join him at the table even though we do not belong.

Joel K

Let us not become weary in doing good, 

for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
- Galatians 6:9

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/us/politics/obama-charleston-shooting.html?_r=0

(2) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting.html

(3) An excellent discussion of this can be found on Comedy Central's The Nightly Show from June 18. I know its a comedy show, but it was excellent coverage of a sad incident, with little comedy involved: http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/5awodx/the-nightly-show-june-18--2015---church-shooting-in-south-carolina-season-1-ep-01074

(4) In my mind Fox News pushed this theme in an effort to divert its largely white audience away from the fact that the shooter stated he wanted to kill black people. These type of avoidances of the issue of racism just reenforces the status quo.

How Dare You!: Thoughts on Rachel Dolezal

"The skin your in makes choices for ya"
- The Nightwatchman


"No matter where you go, you are what you are player
And you can try to change but that's just the top layer
Man, you was who you was 'fore you got here"
- Jay-Z

I've been watching the coverage of Rachel Dolezal - a white women In Spokane, WA who identifies as black who was, until recent days, the area director of the NAACP - with a bit of interest. Some of what I have seen has been interesting, some infuriating, and some just ridiculous. All of it has been thought provoking. Facebook has been particularly entertaining. Two of my favorite quotes friends have posted are:

"Prior to colonialism people freely identified with national and ethnic identities as they desired. Stories in the Old Testament evidence this. They knew there was no gene or chromosome for race. Applied today Rachel Dolezal would not have to lie or even explain her ethnic identity choice. Interesting!" (from a college professor friend in Seattle)

and

"So Bruce Jenner can be a woman but this white lady isn't allowed to be black? I guess I don't get false constructs anymore. Also, this sort of reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where his dentist becomes Jewish and starts telling all the Jewish jokes." (with sarcasm from a radio reporter friend in Texas) (1)

Back to Rachel Dolezal. What is the big deal here? It certainly can't be that Ms. Dolezal is a white woman working for the advancement of colored people. I hope we can agree that we should all be doing that, because we should want all people to be treated as the image of God scripture tells us that each of us are. Furthermore, I can't honestly believe the uproar is because a white woman is teaching an African American Studies course as an adjunct professor at a college. Clearly one does not have to experience something to teach it. We have professors of History who never fought at Gettysburg and give lectures on the topic as well as pastors who never saw the empty tomb but preach about it each Easter.

So, with that said, we are left with the fact that Ms. Dolezal is a white woman presenting herself as black, and has deceived people in her efforts to carry on her identification. If we can put aside the deception for a moment - not condoning it or condemning it, but either way not debating it - we are left with a white women identifying as black. Frankly, that is what I think is causing the uproar. Some might be in a tizzy about the deception, but it is the identification that is at the core of the uproar.

So some of you are now saying "Duh," and clicking off this blog. If your still here allow me to explain why I think this might be the issue. In two words: White Privilege. (2) White privilege means that in the Western-World people with white skin enjoy benefits that non-whites are often not afforded. Put another way: "White privilege is a set of advantages and/or immunities that white people benefit from on a daily basis beyond those common to all others. White privilege can exist without white people's conscious knowledge of its presence and it helps to maintain the racial hierarchy in this country." (also: 2)

Charlie LeDuff in his excellent book "Detroit: An American Autopsy" writes a chapter about his grand father. (3) In it he notes a few changes in the perception and portrayal of his grand fathers race. He begins the chapter by stating, "Roy LeDuff, my grandfather, was not black. Not anymore." He elaborates, "I was told there may have been some mixing of the races in a distant wing of my family, and every LeDuff I had ever met was the color of carmel. But the fact that Grandpa himself was born black and died a white man blew me away." LeDuff goes on to show how his great-grandfather was listed in census data as "mulatto," on his draft card as "negro," and when he left the south for Detroit he was riding in the colored car of the train. By 1920, while Henry (great-grandpa) made his way north, LeDuff's grandfather, Roy was listed in the census as "mulatto." Henry in Detroit told the census clerk his mother was born in Paris and only spoke French when she was a mulatto in Louisiana who spoke Creole. The clerk recorded Henry as white. By 1930 the entire LeDuff clan was in Detroit and listed in the census as white. By the 1950's Roy had married and LeDuff notes, "My grandfather - black and white - and my grandmother - Chippewa Indian and White - reinvented themselves, creating new myths to cover their pasts and their olive skin...They both knew their true heritage. My grandfather left Jim Crow Baton Rouge as a teenager, after all. My grandmother's mother was a red as the sunset. Nevertheless, they became paragons of clean white middle-class living." Nowhere in the chapter does Charlie LeDuff mention the uproar in the press about his grandparents identifying as white. Also, I remember no outcry when the book was released about Charlie LeDuff's racial identification.

On the flip side, with the rise of hip-hop, white youth began to identify with the black urban experience. Those youth often drew (and sometimes still draw) criticism for their choice and were labeled with derogatory nicknames. Bakari Kitwana's 2006 book, "Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America," chronicles this movement (and in the title) some of the names tied to it.

Why is it that Charlie LeDuff's grandparents seeking to become "white" in order to get better jobs (the auto plants were largely segregated with black workers receiving lower jobs and less pay) - as many others did - doesn't cause the reaction that white kids identifying with hip hop does. Or why does Rachel Dolezal gather large media outcry when she chooses to be black, but no one gives a second thought to a non-western immigrant that dumps their racial/cultural/ethnic identity in favor of Judeo-Christian European values to become an "American?" And what do you do with Eminem or Elvis?

Willie James Jennings in his book " The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Religion" (4) argues that race is a product of European exploration and imperialism. Once Europeans left the continent and were no longer able to be identified by the land they lived on a new standard for identity needed to be created. That new system was based on color with white being the best color with the most privilege and black the worst and least. Each of the races were attached to a point along the spectrum based on how light skinned and "European" they appeared to be. This system of identification institutionalized racism and white privilege.

So here is my thought, I might be wrong, but what I think makes people so upset about Rachel Dolezal, or the youth that love hip hop, but not the immigrant quick to adapt the Western way or Charlie LeDuff's grandparents seeking a better life is that they are using white privilege wrong. Make no mistake about it Rachel Dolezal is able to "choose" to be black because she is white. But my hunch is that when she makes that choice, when those white hip hop kids in the suburbs choose rap, or those white kids in the 1950's spun an Elvis 45, what makes us so mad is that they are using their privilege to choose something that is perceived to be lower, less than, and bad. When Charlie LeDuff's grandparents choose being white, or the new immigrant chooses to be western, they are choosing something higher, better than, and right. I wonder if Rachel Dolezal isn't getting a bunch of coverage because she is using her privilege wrong. Could it be?

If it is true, what does that say about us?

I'm not sure I got this all dialed in. What I am sure of is that in a world that is becoming increasingly global and increasingly more integrated; where mixed race will become more and more common and racial/ethnic/cultural lines will become more blurred (remember we do have a President who is half black and half white and identifies as black); in a climate where people will be able to choose who they identify with, this discussion is not likely to go away anytime soon.


Joel K


"Where's my place in a music that's been taken by my race
Cultural appropriated by the white face
And we don't want to admit that this is existing
So scared to acknowledge the benefits of our white privilege
Cause it's human nature to want to be part of something different
Especially when your ancestors are European Christians
And most whites don't want to acknowledge this is occurring
Cause we got the best deal, the music without the burden"
- Macklemore

(1)
I must state that I believe there are two Seinfeld episodes at play here: The dentist/Jewish episode ("The Yada, Yada" - Season 8, Episode 19) mentioned above, and the episode where Jerry is dating a white women who is identifying as Chinese ("The Chinese Woman" - Season 6, Episode 4). The later seems like more of a parallel to the situation at hand.

(2)
"White privilege is a set of advantages and/or immunities that white people benefit from on a daily basis beyond those common to all others. White privilege can exist without white people's conscious knowledge of its presence and it helps to maintain the racial hierarchy in this country.

The biggest problem with white privilege is the invisibility it maintains to those who benefit from it most. The inability to recognize that many of the advantages whites hold are a direct result of the disadvantages of other people, contributes to the unwillingness of white people, even those who are not overtly racist, to recognize their part in maintaining and benefiting from white supremacy.

White privilege is about not having to worry about being followed in a department store while shopping. It's about thinking that your clothes, manner of speech, and behavior in general, are racially neutral, when, in fact, they are white. It's seeing your image on television daily and knowing that you're being represented. It's people assuming that you lead a constructive life free from crime and off welfare. It's about not having to assume your daily interactions with people have racial overtones.

White privilege is having the freedom and luxury to fight racism one day and ignore it the next. White privilege exists on an individual, cultural, and institutional level."

Taken From: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm

(3) 

Charlie LeDuff, "Detroit: An American Autopsy." New York, NY: The Penquin Press, 2013. Pages 220-240.

(4)
Willie James Jennings, "The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race." New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

Requiem for a good man.

"If I had a hammer..."
                 - Pete Seeger & Lee Hays

                                                                                           

May 24, 2015 - Pentecost Sunday

My father-in-law, Bert Steensma, was always building something.

Don't get confused, Bert wasn't a professional carpenter.  However, by the time I married his daughter, Stacey, 20 years ago he had already built a number of successful businesses.  Bert and his brother Gary have sold tractors and auto parts, owned a mall, an office building and a service station.  Together they were always building their business.

When he retired his stated goal was to help rebuild peoples lives by helping to rebuild the homes of those who had been struck by natural disasters - and he did volunteering with the Christian Reformed Church's Disaster Response Services for years.  He also spent time helping our church here in Alaska renovate their new space.  He even returned a decade later to repaint the walls he had painted when we opened.  In the final year of his life he was busy helping to remodel a small home for a women exiting homelessness.  In the midst of cancer treatments and failing health, he worked to build a new home, and a new life, for someone in who was in need of some rebuilding.

Bert's heart for building extended beyond the borders of Michigan or even the USA.  I recall a sun soaked day two years ago basking in the warmth with Dad in Talkeetna, AK and listening to him explain to me the work he had helped start in Honduras.  He outlined the reasons why they choose to pave peoples floors (health and infant mortality) and why they built water boxes (sanitation).  He and I talked about the relational aspects of ministry.  I was so blessed to hear his heart about helping those in need, his desire to know them and be known, and to connect with him on a level we didn't often share as we shared a beer.

Bert also built a family.  He married Lynda Smedley 48 years ago.  Together they have three daughters (something I can relate directly to) and a son, as well as 14 grandchildren.  I have had the privilege to be a part of this family for the past two decades and have been blessed by the skilled craftsmanship Bert had as a family man.

An outgoing and gregarious man Bert was always building friendships.  Quick to laugh, or make a joke, he was easy company. As a churchman he built the kingdom serving as a leader in the congregations he attended and supporting mission efforts across the world.

Today my father-in-law died, a victim of the lung cancer he so valiantly fought.  He breathed his last early Pentecost morning, giving up his Spirit the day we will celebrate the Spirit's arrival.

Today I reflect, not just on a good man, but on building.  
Bert's life - a life lived well - is asking me the question "what are you building?"  
It is a question that lingers for all of us left in the wake of this wonderful builder.  
What exactly am I building in/with my life?

Rest in Peace Dad.

"Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain."
                           - Psalm 127:1


Berts Obituary Can Be Viewed at:
http://www.zaagman.com/obituaries/obituary-listings?obId=503169#/obituaryInfo

Everywhere...seriously everywhere.

"The skin your in makes choices for ya"
                             - The Nightwatchman

In recent weeks we have as a nation once again watched rioting in the streets.  This time in Baltimore.  The May 11, 2015 cover of Time magazine noted that these particular riots brought to mind the riots of 1968 in Baltimore.  Flipping through the pages one quote stood out: "We never recovered from the riots of 1968.  Our infrastructure was destroyed" (Jack Young, City Council President).  But Baltimore wasn't the only city that had riots in 1968 - Washington DC, Louisville, Kansas City, Chicago, Wilmington, and Detroit all suffered riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Detroit had seen much larger riots just a year before, riots that are often seen as the beginning of the end in Detroit. (1)  The 1968 riots happened in the year my parents finished High School.

As I was finishing High School in the spring of 1991 the events that would trigger the 1992 Los Angeles riots were beginning to unfold.  And now as my daughters are in High School we have seen riots in Ferguson and Baltimore.

It appears to me that we in the US have a roughly 20 year cycle of racially charged riots.  That in itself is rather concerning.  However, what I find more concerning is the way in which we often think of these riots.  Because I don't live in Baltimore or Ferguson or Detroit (though I wear a Tigers cap nearly everyday) it is easy for me to believe that of this unrest and racial tension is happening "over there."  It is easy to think that it could never happen in my state, by city, or my neighborhood.  As a northerner growing up I always saw the issue of racial tension as a southern thing - not owning up to the legacy of racism that scars the history of my home state of Michigan.  Charlie LeDuff notes in Detroit: An American Autopsy, "Michigan may geographically be one of America's most northern states, but spiritually, it is one of its most southern...by the end of the decade (1920's), there were estimates that eighty thousand Klan members were living in Michigan, half of them in Detroit, with other klaverns throughout the state in places like Grand Rapids and Flint."  Growing up I heard the racial jokes.  When I travel back to Michigan now its easy to see the legacy of its racist past in the way people talk about areas of town where people different than them live or the terms used to describe the stores that have the most diverse clientele.  Just a few months ago while driving through Grand Rapids my wife and I noted how the neighborhoods still remain largely segregated.  But that is still over there, thousands of miles away from where I live.  I can still choose to dismiss that racial tension because its not in my hometown.

Anchorage, Alaska - my home for the past twenty years - boasts the most diverse census tract in the United States (2), the most diverse High School in the country (in fact three of the top ten) (3), and the school system boasts a majority-minority population that speaks 93 different languages. (4)  The city is very diverse and the neighborhoods are much more mixed than many cities its size.  One of the reasons I love urban Alaska is it's diversity.  Yet, here too the tensions along racial lines are real.  

When we moved in to our current neighborhood, Dimond Estates Trailer Park, we noted that the boundary lines for the schools seemed very strange.  While the park is very close to a Jr. High and a High School - both only a couple miles away - the students in our neighborhood get on buses everyday that takes them 20 minutes away to a different Jr. High and High School.  Those kids get off their school supplied transportation having moved from the extreme diversity of the trailer park to nearly all white schools.  Daily they transition from a low-income, high-density neighborhood to the most wealthy and desirable part of town.  When we inquired one administrator told my wife that this practice was in place because the district didn't want two all white schools.  What I have come to learn in the last week is that the reason is far more sinister.

Last week, as I sat in a meeting with leaders from across the city engaged in serving youth at-risk, I over heard a conversation about my neighborhood.  The person talking was someone for whom I have a great deal of respect.  He has served youth in the city for a very long time and was a respected leader in the school district for decades.  After the meeting concluded I asked this acquaintance about the history of my neighborhood that he was speaking about.  He shared that a decade ago when the new High School and Jr. High were built - the ones that my daughters and the kids of Dimond Estates are bussed to daily - the lines for the district were redrawn and public comment sought.  He continued to explaining that until that time the Dimond Estates youth were being sent to a third set of schools, and were not zoned for the High School and Jr. High that are closest to the trailer park.  In the public meetings with the parents of those most proximate schools refused to have the trailer park drawn into their schools zone because they did not want the Alaska Native youth (5) in my neighborhood in their schools.  Clearly troubled, he explained that the administrators from the school district present in those meetings said they had never seen such racist and hateful behavior in their lives.  In the end the school district re-drew the lines to the configuration used today.  So even in Anchorage the rift of racism is not too far below the surface.  The story shared with me by my fellow meeting goer was not about a riot on the other side of the continent, or a city on the other side of the state where I grew up, or my old hometown, or even some place across town, but about the neighborhood I live in.  

We so often fool ourselves into thinking that the issue of race is over.  We trick ourselves into thinking that it is something that happens "over there."  We isolate ourselves from the reality of the history that this country carries around largely unacknowledged.  But as I reflect on it...it is everywhere...seriously everywhere.

Joel K

(1) = "Detroit has the ignominious distinction of being the only American city to have been occupied by the United States army three times" - Charlie LeDuff Detroit: An American Autopsy pg. 43.  It was occupied for riots in 1863, 1943, and 1967.  All three riots were race related.

(2) =http://www.adn.com/2013/04/06/2855271/hometown-u-data-show-mountain.html)

 http://greenandgold.uaa.alaska.edu/blog/10142/studying_urban_inequality_in_alaska_and_the_us/
(3) = http://www.ktuu.com/news/news/study-calls-east-bartlett-west-americas-most-diverse-high-schools/24725354

(4)  = About the Anchorage School District, Anchorage School District, http://asdk12.org/aboutasd/, (accessed 18 June 2014).

(5) = Dimond Estates is a very diverse neighborhood.  The singling out of the Alaska Native youth is particularly disturbing.