I love my church: the pastor is Korean, the worship leader is Hispanic, the lady who does announcements is black , and there are more inter-marrieds than same-race couples. But as my eyelids close for prayer, the last thing I see is a racial slur. “Morano” is chiseled into the oak arm of the old theatre-style seat in the auditorium at Hamilton Middle School in Long Beach where my church meets.

“Morano” means “pig.” It’s the name Queen Isabella christened my people, the Jews, before she expelled us from Spain in 1492. It’s the vulgarity Hitler called my grandmother, a Jew, before he slaughtered all her relatives in the Third Reich concentration camps of the 1940s. It’s the insult radical Muslims in Paris called a 12-year-old schoolgirl, a Jew, before they carved a swastika on her face with a box cutter in 2004.

“Okay, okay,” you might say. “So Catholics, Protestants and Muslims have all dealt treacherously with your people. What’s the point? Racism happens to everyone.”

Exactly.

Though I think biblical grounds exist for me to continue to kvetch (complain) about the horrors inflicted on Jewish people, I will admit that I raised the point here solely for rhetorical purposes. You see, I’m sick and tired of hearing a one-sided racism argument.

Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I cannot identify with being a target of hatred; I’d be rich if I had a dollar for every time I was cussed out. Just because my eyes are blue doesn’t mean that I cannot recognize the clutches of injustice; I’ve been assaulted. Just because my parents are entrepreneurs with degrees doesn’t mean that I cannot understand the haunting need for provision; I’ve had days with no money in the bank or my pocket, and no food in the fridge. Just because I grew up in Kansas doesn’t mean that I cannot conceive of life in the ’hood; I lived willingly in the inner city for three and a half years.

So why do I have to sit in chapel and hear Soong-Chan Rah misinterpret the Hebrew prophet Micah using bad replacement theology, saying that “the mountain of the Lord” called Zion where every nation will worship is the church, and that beating “swords into plowshares” means surrendering your white power? Why do I have to listen to another chapel with Ray Causly – a Biola and Talbot grad – twisting the words of Revelation 5:9 to say if we don’t deliberately recruit students from every “tribe and tongue and nation” then my school is racist?

I support students of color: every color. The song “Jesus Loves the Little Children” tells us that Jesus loves red, yellow, black, and white. He died for us all. He will save people from every race. That’s a promise.

As for you and me, I cannot go to every nation to witness. You cannot learn every language to educate the downtrodden. But we can do what we can, where we are. Many times that is as simple as looking out to save our own skins – our own people’s skins.

This is what happened when another man called my people, the Jews, “pigs.” His name was Haman. God called a Jewish girl to stick her neck out to save her own people. Esther “saved the bacon ” so to speak, and my people rejoice every year at Purim that Haman was hanged and we took the plunder. This queen is a good example of helping her own kind.

And you cannot call that racist.