I woke up this morning to a social media feed filled with lament.
My Asian-American brothers and sisters in Christ are feeling the weight of a rising tide of racial hatred (with a horrific shooting this week). I have to confess that it took some time for me to slow down and really hear them. In the conversation about racism, we can easily make it an issue of black and white and forget how racism impacts Asians Americans.
Raymond Chang, in this article, writes, “Most people — including many Asian Americans — don’t understand how Asian Americans have been racialized and how racism actually impacts us. Most Americans don’t seem to have even a basic understanding of Asian American history, let alone present-day realities.”
Today I read some history about the dehumanization and sexualization of Asian women in the crosshairs of sexism, imperialism, and racism. There’s much to lament and repent of personally and as a culture.
Unlike many of my Asian American brothers and sisters, I didn’t wake up today afraid for my own mother and father or my little sisters, but I can do the work of entering in to someone else’s pain so I can love them better.
“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.” (Rom 12:15-16a ESV)
This is the way of Jesus and his Kingdom.
“But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (1Corinthians 12:24-27 ESV)
No racial or ethnic group is lacking in any inherent dignity and honor before God. That’s not an issue. The brokenness lies in the way our society and culture give dignity and honor based on race or gender or class.
To correct this brokenness requires us not to ignore the social impacts of race, gender, and class in the name of unity, but to acknowledge these social forces and work to care for one another, acknowledge each other’s suffering, and counteract these negative impacts.
That’s why I think it honors human dignity to say Asian Lives Matter or Black Lives Matter.
Part of the work of anti-racism is interpersonal. Part of that work addresses the ways our social systems (think education, medicine, housing, government) perpetuate injustice and oppression.
For more on Biblical justice, I wrote a post collecting Scriptures about a Biblical view of justice HERE. I also recommend this little book* and The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right by Lisa Sharon Harper.*
“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.” (Psalm 146:5-9 ESV)
Lord, your kingdom come and your will be done!
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RECOMMENDED READING
Responding to anti-Asian Violence with Creativity from the Margins by Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes.
In this she addresses the “perpetual foreigner syndrome (i.e., that Asians are assumed foreigners until proven otherwise) and model minority myth.”
The Atlanta massacre is yet another reminder we desperately need race-conscious discipleship by Raymond Chang
“What people need is an understanding of how race, racialization and racism operate, and how the church in the United States is called to be an alternative community that doesn’t mirror the patterns of a racialized world. The only way to do that is through a race-conscious discipleship.”
Let the church declare: Asian Lives Matter by Raymond Chang and Michelle Reyes
“Anti-Asian racism is consistently argued away as never being that bad until it’s really bad — and even when it’s really bad, our warped nationalistic tendencies leave us neglectful to civically engage in powerful and sustained ways.
The Church’s Role in Creating Systemic Racism, and How the Church Can Dismantle It by Ken Shigematsu
“The Doctrine of Discovery asserted that if a white, Christian European claimed to discover a land in the name of the European monarch and planted the flag of the king on its soil, the land was now the king’s—even if someone else was living there. . . . Part of our current systemic racism can be traced back directly to the legacy of the institutional church. It was the church that created the Doctrine of Discovery, the heretical teaching that non-white, non-Christian people are less than fully human. So, their land could be taken. Their children could be taken. They could be enslaved, raped, and abused because they were merely property.”
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Didn’t the sick young man not say that he committed those terrible crimes due to sex addiction and not race? And his roommates corroborated his personal problems? We take other criminals at their word as to why they did what they did? Why don’t we believe this messed up young man about his motivations.
It’s so sad that he tried to destroy external temptations and didn’t come to see that the evil is in his own heart. Let’s eschew narratives. Asian lives definitely matter. Each individual life is precious to God.
Thank you for reading, Jan. David French addressed this question in his most recent article, so I will quote him: “Does that mean there was no racial component to the killing? Well, no. For one thing, we don’t automatically take a killer’s word as the final explanation for his motives. For another thing, his actions provide their own testimony. The identity of his victims is plain to see. Moreover, there are disturbing cultural patterns that sexualize and exploit Asian women. There is much we still don’t know. At the very least we can and should mourn with our Asian American brothers and sisters and understand (and share!) their heightened concerns.” From this article:
https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/why-the-atlanta-massacre-triggered