What white people hear.
A while back we were talking
about how to reach out to BAME people in church. I said it would be nice to
organise events that celebrated blackness and included black people in the
daily services. After a minute of silence someone said ‘we can celebrate Eid
with the local Muslims to improve race relations’.
Most of the white people in the
room looked pleased with themselves, the only other person of colour and I
looked at each other rolled our eyes.
We were specifically asked about race not religion and the issue of
inclusion of BAME Anglicans.
Islam is not a race and the
religion is not confined to race or ethnicity. All people of colour are not
Muslim either.
BAME Christians live under a
constant gaze, we are asked to prove our credentials at all times. The church
often becomes a checkpoint where we have to display our documents to prove we
are who we say we are. Our allegiance is always suspect. I worship in a church
with white neo converts, they are assumed to be Christian by virtue of their
race, yet the Chinese family with names like Michael, Esther, James and
Rebecca, who have been a part of the church for twenty years are constantly
asked if they are Christian.
To most people in the church east
Asians are communist or Buddhists. South Asians are Muslim of Hindu. Afro
Caribbean’s are Christians but only just, every black person is assumed to a
homophobe and a Pentecostal Christian. I live in a big city, I travel around
the country and this is my experience in the big cities. I often travel with a
white friend who is an atheist, when we walk into church I am never offered a
prayer book, they are.
When an almost all white PCC has
the temerity to suggest Eid is a means of improving race relations it makes my
erasure and exclusion in the church more apparent. Silences, mishearing and
misinterpreting are deliberate acts of exclusion, very polite ones but
exclusion nevertheless. People
assume racism looks like a bunch of horrible looking people shouting swear
words at a person of colour, the truth is that is only one kind of racism.
Everyday racism is quiet, insidious and polite, it makes people of colour
deeply uncomfortable, we know something is wrong but cant pinpoint where of
what. Polite racism is probably
the worst because it is in plain sight yet it is harder to call out. Calling
out people on this committee only lead to the black people in the room being
told we were ungrateful and didn’t understand the significance of the effort
being made for us.
Two months after this incident
were are we now? The local Mosque was contacted, they said they might think
about it. Have things changed for BAME Anglicans, NO and they wont either. The
truth is there was never any will to change the status quo, it wasn’t lack of
ideas that prevents BAME Anglicans from participating in the church. When it
comes down to it white people hear what they want to hear.
Recommended reading
Comments
Post a Comment