Very Personal Thoughts on Race - Part Two - Childhood

PLEASE READ THESE POSTS IN ORDER, STARTING FROM THE BOTTOM.

I grew up in the Midwest. It was a very small town, with basically very few people of color. There were two black sisters who went to my school. They had been adopted by white Mennonite parents. I didn't really know them, because they weren't my year in school.

In this small town, I had parents who were not much like everyone else's. The values, practices, and political beliefs and actions of my family were pretty different than most of the people in our area. Part of that picture was that, when I was growing up, the Civil Rights Movement was pretty much the paragon of faith in action in my family.

My exposure to people of color when I was growing up was almost entirely through church, at events beyond my local congregation. So the scourge of racism was pretty much introduced to me as a spiritual problem from a very early age. But it was also very theoretical. I did not know black people (or people of other colors either, for that matter). I did not interact with them, and I rarely had opportunities to talk through the messiness of race in Amerika. But for whatever reason, I knew I would want to when given the chance.

As I think about it, it might have been the music. The "Eyes on the Prize" series was required watching in my family, and the music of the Civil Rights era got into my bones. My soul recognized it as true and powerful. It made me want to be part of whatever it was that inspired people to do dangerous and bold things for the sake of justice. Little did I know at the time that I would spend almost a decade of my adult life in the Heart of Dixie.