with Pat Howes, Rhondda MacKay, Karol Partridge, Leslie Worden
The Rev. Rhondda MacKay painted the rose-coloured glasses that may blind many to the realities of others.
Iam not a racist.
At least, that’s what I thought, until I read the book, Waking Up White by Debby Irving. The author writes as a white woman growing up in an elite environment, showing how her childhood experiences formed her attitudes of privilege and entitlement. She reveals some of the ways America the Beautiful has an ugly underbelly.
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Our small prayer group decided we would study this book together over six months, doing a couple of chapters each week. We are using Irving’s self-critique model to examine systemic/ institutionalized racism. We all happen to be creativity-friendly, so we write lots of poetry, do lots of drawings, and enjoy exploring our spiritual awakenings through the arts.
One of the many topics in Waking Up White looks at complicity—how we manage, often unconsciously, to allow racism and prejudice to thrive, even when we believe we are not racist.
We decided to make masks depicting the idea of complicity. Rhondda MacKay, an artist and ordained priest, created a fine, friendly face, wearing the rose-coloured glasses with which many of us walk the earth. Look at those self-satisfied lips, with the unspoken mantra, “Everything is lovely.” What a mask!
And then she turned it over.
The back of the mask is a collage that reminds us of “all people that on earth do dwell,” and the symbolism is not lost on us. They are on the BACK of the mask, hidden from view by our tendency not to notice, not to see, not to understand.
When do white people wake up in the morning wishing that our skin was a different colour? When, with whom, and how often do we talk about what it means to be a white person? When, if ever, were we taught about residential schools? When were we shown photographs of black three-year-olds in a cotton field, with burlap sacks slung over their shoulders, expected to fill the sack by sundown? Who ever told us about the seizing of property and the internment of Asian people on our continent during the two World Wars?
Most of us have grown up on unceded territory – land that was stolen from our Indigenous brothers and sisters just a few generations ago. Most of us have grown up in ignorance of what it means to be privileged.
We, in our small prayer group, are discovering, in the words of Carter Hayward, that “The best I can ever hope to be is a recovering racist.”We are trying our best to untie some of our old knots, so that the backs of our masks are no longer hidden behind rose-coloured glasses. We want with all our hearts to be proud members of a multi-cultural society, in which all persons are valued and loved for who they are, not who white people think they should be.
In answer to the question, “What is one small thing we can do now?” we each contributed to the online Race Card Project – responding to the word RACE with six words. Here is what we wrote.
Who are we?
with Pat Howes, Rhondda MacKay, Karol Partridge, Leslie Worden
I am not a racist.
At least, that’s what I thought, until I read the book, Waking Up White by Debby Irving. The author writes as a white woman growing up in an elite environment, showing how her childhood experiences formed her attitudes of privilege and entitlement. She reveals some of the ways America the Beautiful has an ugly underbelly.
Our small prayer group decided we would study this book together over six months, doing a couple of chapters each week. We are using Irving’s self-critique model to examine systemic/ institutionalized racism. We all happen to be creativity-friendly, so we write lots of poetry, do lots of drawings, and enjoy exploring our spiritual awakenings through the arts.
One of the many topics in Waking Up White looks at complicity—how we manage, often unconsciously, to allow racism and prejudice to thrive, even when we believe we are not racist.
We decided to make masks depicting the idea of complicity. Rhondda MacKay, an artist and ordained priest, created a fine, friendly face, wearing the rose-coloured glasses with which many of us walk the earth. Look at those self-satisfied lips, with the unspoken mantra, “Everything is lovely.” What a mask!
And then she turned it over.
The back of the mask is a collage that reminds us of “all people that on earth do dwell,” and the symbolism is not lost on us. They are on the BACK of the mask, hidden from view by our tendency not to notice, not to see, not to understand.
When do white people wake up in the morning wishing that our skin was a different colour? When, with whom, and how often do we talk about what it means to be a white person? When, if ever, were we taught about residential schools? When were we shown photographs of black three-year-olds in a cotton field, with burlap sacks slung over their shoulders, expected to fill the sack by sundown? Who ever told us about the seizing of property and the internment of Asian people on our continent during the two World Wars?
Most of us have grown up on unceded territory – land that was stolen from our Indigenous brothers and sisters just a few generations ago. Most of us have grown up in ignorance of what it means to be privileged.
We, in our small prayer group, are discovering, in the words of Carter Hayward, that “The best I can ever hope to be is a recovering racist.” We are trying our best to untie some of our old knots, so that the backs of our masks are no longer hidden behind rose-coloured glasses. We want with all our hearts to be proud members of a multi-cultural society, in which all persons are valued and loved for who they are, not who white people think they should be.
In answer to the question, “What is one small thing we can do now?” we each contributed to the online Race Card Project – responding to the word RACE with six words. Here is what we wrote.
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