As Valentines Day, Black History Month and the typical 73-degree winter weather of Southern California come to an end, we start this March toward the end of the semester. Biola’s annual SCORR conference is coming up and soon Calvary Chapel will be filled with students oozing with the spirit of “racial reconciliation,” a phrase many students are definitely tired of hearing (100 extra credit points if anyone knows what SCORR actually means).
I mean, isn’t that phrase something that we can only talk about in Racial Reconciliation Chapels? After all, isn’t that what they’re for —- to segregate the minorities even more? Or perhaps this taboo word can be talked about during Missions Conference instead? Well, fellow students, quite the opposite. In fact, it’s us Biolans that need to understand racial reconciliation the most. Instead of building relationships with people, we have been keeping them at an arms distance, an arm with the word “stereotype” written on it.
By the way,
I am also white. Yet I still see the importance of the “R” words. It’s not just a “minority issue.” I think we have grown so accustomed to the “norm” that we fight anything unfamiliar, whether it’s hearing music from another culture, hearing someone speaking another language, or being in the midst of a totally different environment. Minorities have had to abandon part of their culture to fit in at Biola, and instead of joining them and stepping into something possibly unfamiliar to us, we demand conformity. This has been a festering wound, and instead of taking time to heal it, we put on a Band-aid with the words, “we’re all the same.”
As a white male, some already categorize me as a racist and a sexist. But the encouraging thing about this is that the solution lies in the problem: I have to be the one to start that change. It should be a part of our daily lives; it should be the way we deal with conflict; it should be partnered with humility.
What exactly does that look like from my perspective? Well, it means seeing people as humans, not simply a stereotype or “the ethnic friend.” It means getting out of our comfort zones and trying to see through the lens of a minority, something they go through everyday. It means enjoying the richness of being different but not limiting a person to her or his culture. It is a refusal to live in ignorance that racism doesn’t happen here.
God came to reconcile our relationship with him and our relationships with each other. So as this Student Conference on Racial Reconciliation approaches, let’s understand the importance of continuous racial reconciliation regardless of how many times it’s said. I, Justin -— a white male -— believe in this.
