Juneteenth & The “One Race”

TW: mention of slavery and Christianity, and also some potentially offensive posters.

Today is Juneteenth, a commemoration of the official end of slavery in the United States that I didn’t know existed until four years ago.

Here’s a quick history of Juneteenth:

On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas, to inform a reluctant community that President Abraham Lincoln two years earlier had freed the slaves and to press locals to comply with his directive.
Why did it take so long for the news to get to Texas?
There is no one reason why there was a 2½-year delay in letting Texas know about the abolition of slavery in the United States, according to Juneteenth.com. The historical site said some accounts place the delay on a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news, while others say the news was deliberately withheld.
Despite the delay, slavery did not end in Texas overnight, according to an article by Henry Louis Gates Jr. originally posted on The Root. Gates said after New Orleans fell, many slavers traveled to Texas with their slaves to escape regulations enforced by the Union Army in other states.
The slave owners were placed with the responsibility of letting their slaves know about the news, and some delayed relaying the information until after the harvest, Gates said.
From What is Juneteenth? originally published by The USA Today on June 19, 2018

Considering the delay of news-spreading that was the origin of this holiday, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Juneteenth isn’t the revered and celebrated day among mostly homogeneous groups of white people that it could or should be.

Nor should it surprise me that, upon dropping off my two children (one biological 8yo who is white, and one adopted 6yo who is Chinese) at VBS at a local church, I discovered that the year’s theme was not what I had been anticipating.

It’s called The Incredible Race, with a logo and description that seem to imply a lighthearted parody of the TV show The Amazing Race.

“Get ready for a race filled with fun clues to find, challenges to attempt, and a global scavenger hunt like you’ve never seen! At the same time, kids will learn about another race that started in the Garden of Eden. What race is that? The human race. As we move around the world during our 2019 vacation bible school, we’ll make pit stops before, during, and after the Tower of Babel, showing kids how this event from the Bible matters today!”

It’s totally my fault for skimming instead of reading the full description. At a glance, I caught “a race filled with fun clues”, “global scavenger hunt”, “Garden of Eden”, “Tower of Babel”, and “the Bible Matters today”.

Scavenger hunt? Cool. Done.

But then…

THEN.

I saw this poster on the wall in the church:

And that wasn’t the only questionable poster, but I didn’t take pictures of the others. Here’s a screencap of the poster pack from the provider of the curriculum:

Middle & far right: “One Race”

As a white person raised in near-total whiteness, part of me can appreciate the sentiment that the authors were going for here—the idea that, because race is a social construct, then we shouldn’t allow race to divide us. “Color-blindness” is often used to describe this mentality.

These posters advocate for race-blindness under the guise of cross-cultural appreciation and celebration, but it doesn’t at all address the reality—that our world is broken and fears, hates what is different from ourselves. The world is experienced fundamentally differently by people who exist in a space that is dominated by people of another race, gender, status, cultural heritage, education level, and on and on.

The desire and hope that black people are treated the same as white people in our culture leads to white people intentionally ignoring facts that prove the opposite.

Middle left: “The Dog Kind”

WHAT THE WHAT EVEN IS THIS? This isn’t the kind of poster that should be hung up without clear explanation. And even then… I’m concerned about the implications.

Because it feels like they’re drawing a comparison between breeds of dogs and people of different races and ethnicities.

And I just…

Moving on.

UPDATE 6/20: I asked one my daughter’s VBS teachers about the “Dog Kind” poster, and, as I suspected, it’s drawing a comparison between dog breeds and “kinds” of people. Le sigh.

For a number of reasons, this comparison is disgusting. First of all, the history of describing different races of people as “breeds” is suuuuuuper racist. Additionally, purebred dog breeds are a human-made genetic nightmare of inbreeding and disturbing inherited health problems caused by a lack of genetic diversity—hardly something to compare the beauty of human diversity to.

Do better.

Far left: Black? White?

This one stuck with me for days, and I couldn’t put my finger on why it gave me such a visceral reaction. I felt physically ill when I saw it.

I lay awake two nights ago, and it suddenly hit me. It’s the question mark. The question mark is what puts this one from ick over the edge into horrifying for me.

This poster is questioning the legitimacy of blackness.

If you’re white, you might not immediately understand just how truly heinous that is, mostly because “whiteness” isn’t really something we white people tend to identify with (except part of the resurgence of white supremacists, which is a whole other level of evil.)

White people are more likely to identify as their gender, nationality, occupation, family status, religious affiliation, age, or an ideology before their race.

For instance, I think of myself as an American, female, writer & graphic designer, wife & mom, Christian, 30-something, feminist, and so on.

I’d probably even say German-English, or blonde-haired/blue-eyed before I’d even think to mention that I’m white. I simply don’t think about my whiteness, because I have the luxury in this country of seeing myself as the default—the “normal”.

It can be different for black people and other people of color. Blackness is often core to a black person’s identity and their sense of self. They often do not have the luxury of identifying as any of the thousands of ethnic groups in Africa or any of the dozens and dozens of possible nationalities, because they simply don’t have any way to know their heritage.

Yes, I’m talking about the 400+ years of chattel slavery in the United States by the white racial majority. We white people systematically and purposefully stole and erased their ethnic and cultural heritage, intentionally replacing it with white supremacy and a racist twist of Christianity, some (much?) of which still lingers today.

Okay, now back to that poster.

That ‘innocent’ question mark next to “black” under that sweet little boy’s face is telling the VBS kids (who are mostly white) to question the very existence of blackness.

We’re erasing their culture again.

White friends, I hope you feel that twisted dagger in your gut the way I did. Why are we are STILL doing this to our black brothers and sisters? On the literal anniversary of the end of one oppression, here we are, perpetuating another.

So, did I let my kids continue attending this VBS? Believe it or not, I did.

I talked with the director of children’s ministries a few times about my concerns, and she was very open to the discussion. I asked the church to take the poster down, and they removed it before I was back to pick the kids up.

But nothing changed, really. What was she going to do? Cancel VBS? Scrap the curriculum that the church likely spent hundreds of dollar and hundreds of hours preparing for? No, of course not.

There’s been a lot of damage control this week with my kids—discussions of how our race affects the way our culture sees us and how it affects our worldview, some talk about how melanin works, and a short talk about how it’s natural to be wary of or fascinated by people whose identities are different from our own.

I’ll also be rereading God’s Very Good Idea* by Tricia Newbell with them tomorrow.

“This book celebrates diversity and will help children see how people from all ethnic and social backgrounds are valuable to God and how Jesus came to rescue all kinds of people. It will also excite them about being part of church – God’s delightfully different family.”

I LOVE THAT — “delightfully different”.

* The only very minor problem I have with this book is the somewhat limited East Asian representation.

What to do about this VBS?

Should we march on the corporate headquarters of the publisher? Call for a boycott? Petition for people to be fired? Tweetstorm? Viral video? Honestly, I don’t know. I really don’t want to add to the increasing vilification of fellow Christians in the media. And yet I know it’s my job as a Christian to stand up against this kind of thing. What’s the right course of action?

What I DO know is that we need diversity in publishing, diversity in our church leadership, diversity in the organizations that design curriculum for our kids. These kinds of harmful mistakes can be avoided by intentionally including a significant percentage of people of color in the creation and decision-making process.

I’ll be praying for that and writing to the publisher with that advice.

And also I will be reading things more carefully before signing my kids up for stuff.