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Before I address the racism I experienced at Columbia Theological Seminary, I would like to introduce myself to those reading this. My name is DeNoire Henderson, I am a 26-year-old African American woman born and raised outside of Atlanta in two small towns, Stone Mountain and Snellville, GA. I received my B.A. in Communications and Culture from Howard University with a minor in Political Science. Before attending Columbia Theological Seminary, I spent three years teaching at a predominately Black and Hispanic school. My formal education from Howard University, personal experience teaching in the classroom, and my grade school education in a predominately white school district taught me the importance and impact of seeing yourself in the learning materials. There are hundreds of studies on the critical nature of increasing cultural diversity in classroom materials so that students “see themselves.” It is important that students’ cultures are represented, but it is equally, if not more important, how they are represented. During my time at Howard, I wrote a thesis on the indoctrination of inferiority and superiority complexes by television news media. Through my research, I discovered just how much representation impacts personal, social, and cultural identity. The scope of my work was limited to the impact of television news media, specifically, FOX News. However, my experience in education taught me that indoctrination in the classroom is just as powerful, maybe more so. In 2020, the world went through an incredibly difficult year. We were living through a global pandemic and suffering from all of the side effects: fear, trauma, sickness, grief, doubt, lack, depression, etc. Amid this, the world watched a defenseless black embodied man be murdered in broad daylight. We watched cities destroyed in the aftermath and continued to have the event replayed in our hearts, minds, and screens. As a black woman, this trauma ate away at me as I tried to find joy, peace, and community amongst my friends, family, and classmates while in isolation. Due to the nature of the pandemic, I saw my professors and classmates through zoom screens more than I saw my own family and schoolwork became one of the only constants in my life. Amid this, I received a letter from Columbia Theological Seminary in June of 2020 acknowledging their historical contribution to the oppression of those that look like me, stating they would be working to “repair the breach.” While I was proud of my institution for taking the stance of standing with me and those who look like me, I was not foolish enough to believe that the racism embedded in this institution would disappear overnight. However, I did feel safe enough to share my pain and hopeful about the potential healing that could happen in this place. Then, just eight months later, something happened that both shocked and rocked me to my core. In February 2021, during a theology lecture, my professor, Dr. Martha Moore-Keish, uploaded a lecture for the class to watch on the four stories of humanity. “First of all, I wanted to frame this week in terms of how it stands in relationship to the whole course and think about the concept of sin, and why it’s still something that is worth considering. The purpose of thinking about this concept of sin is simply to name as clearly as possible the alienation between ourselves and God. To name the brokenness of the world that has to do with the suffering of our relationship between ourselves and God and has to do with our harm that we do to ourselves, to one another, and to the world.” She then went on to share her screen to display images to help us see the four stories of humanity. This is the image she displayed to illustrate “what it means to be created beings, human beings as creatures created good and in the image of God. Creatures who are made in the image of God, who are also fully embodied. (12th-13th century Mosaic of Adam and Eve, Cathedral of the Assumption, Monreale, Sicily: https://www.christianiconography.info/sicily/originalSinMonreale.html)             This is the image that was used to illustrate “humanity as sinful having turned away from relationship with God therefore alienated from God’s intentions from the world and from our own well-being.” (PowerPoint Slide of Dr. Martha Moore-Keish, public domain source unknown)         This is the image used to illustrate “humanity as redeemed by God and Jesus Christ, drawn back into covenant relationship and made new.” (“The Return of the Prodigal Son” by Rembrandt (ca. 1667-1669): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_(Rembrandt))             This is the image used to illustrate “human beings as oriented toward a future hope of perfect communion with God and with one another.” (“The Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks (1834): https://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hicks/peaceable-kingdom-1834)             She then ended this portion of the lecture by saying, “So this just visually I hope reminds you of what we’re looking at over the course of the entire semester and to locate this week in the context of those four stories, now. This concept of sin has, I think we need to acknowledge, been harmful at some points to some people in human history, and so we need to acknowledge this.” In light of all that had transpired for me and was still transpiring for me, I saw my theology professor perpetuating the ideologies that made it possible for George Floyd to be murdered in the street. Black bodies represent “humanity as sinful having turned away from relationship with God therefore alienated from God’s intentions from the world and from our own well-being.” In isolation, the use of the black body to represent sin is not really the problem. This image juxtaposed with the other images of white bodies representing good, redeemed, and perfect humanity is the problem. I immediately closed my computer, too upset to finish the assignment. I screen recorded the lecture later that evening and sent it to other colleagues (some at Columbia and others studying and teaching elsewhere). I asked them to tell me what they saw, before telling them what I felt watching it. They all immediately saw the same thing. Some were as upset as I was, some were more upset, and still some more were apathetic, stating that they didn’t expect anything different from white people. “White people are incapable of seeing or being anything but racist.” I, however, refused to accept this as the norm. I was a student at a school committed to “repairing the breach.” I was being educated by professors who used culturally diverse theologians in their lectures, who attended marches, and wrote about decolonizing Christianity and dismantling Christendom. I would be lying if I said that the event did not make me angry. I was furious because my “well-meaning progressive white professor” was so insensitive to my soul embodied in black skin. However, this anger was not without purpose. It fueled a righteous indignation that forced me to speak up and email my professors. They were very receptive, and apologetic; however, Dr. Moore-Keish’s response (and current reflection) revealed that we have so much more work to do. She told me that she was blind to it and had been using the same images for several years. My anger then turned to sorrow for her, for the church, and for humanity. How deeply did racism have to be imbedded in such an educated being for them to miss this? She, the professor, the driver of the vehicle of our theological education, who had driven hundreds of students before us, was blindly leading. As I mentioned earlier, because of my formal education I am keenly aware of the value of my black body. I am keenly aware of the lies present in every level of our education system and society at large that tells me black is bad while white is good. My view of myself was not swayed by this distorted portrayal. However, I hurt for those who, like my professor, have not had their lens corrected and are leading others with blind spots that could be deadly. This situation is so much bigger than me, Dr. Moore-Keish, or Columbia. This zoom session represents a microcosm of a human issue. Dr. Moore-Keish rightly discussed the truth that our sin causes pain. I have reflected upon this for months and realize that while our sin does hurt others, it hurts us more than it ever could hurt others. While I walked away from this situation with more intentionality in how to pray that blind eyes be opened and hearts be changed, Dr. Moore-Keish walked away with shame. As she mentioned, many times, shame paralyzes us. In the following class, Dr. Moore-Keish didn’t even feel that she could pray to lead the class, her guilt and shame were that heavy. However, the sin of racism does not have the final say and neither does the shame that sin brings with it. I prayed to open class, not because I felt lofty and holier than though, but because I could see clearly. In this painful situation, I saw the grace of God and the blood of Jesus. I saw the cross. The heavy cross that looked like defeat to the natural eye but was truly victory. I saw an opportunity for generations coming behind me and everyone connected to those in this grief-stricken virtual classroom to learn the truth because of the cross that we came to in February 2021. Thank God for Jesus and the freedom of the cross that has the power to turn shame into surrender and surrender into sanctification. It is nothing but the redemptive power of Jesus that created the opportunity for us to write together about this event for the sake of helping and freeing others. The Bible says, “Confess your sins one to another and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” We are forgiven in Jesus but healed in community. A few verses before this text says, “And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven” (James 5:15). So, we must confess, speak about the event, and pray for one another. Yet, there is another scripture that speaks about the activity of faith. “Faith without works is dead.” We can pray for racial reconciliation and the dismantling of racism until we are blue in the face, but we also must work to discern and avoid perpetuating systems that we are blincaud to. The work cannot stop with this reflection. Reflection must be continual and communal. It must be transparent to be transformative. It must be vulnerable to be valuable. It must be consistent to be effective. All of this would be in vain if this reflection is the only result. Education must continue, but not unchanged, unchecked, or unchallenged. Checkpoints must be implemented. Curriculum must be reviewed and revised, and not just in the imagery, but in the texts assigned, the examples used, etc. Is that more work for professors? Absolutely. But it is also more work for the disadvantaged. I type this paper after a long day of work, during my summer break, not because I want to add to the shame of my professor or pump my pride. It would’ve been easier for me to decline to speak about the event again. However, I have sight and feel obligated to walk alongside blind people who are trying to see because there are nations and generations following behind us that shouldn’t have to fall into the same pits we have. This moment was not about pictures any more than the crucifixion was about trees. The tree made the wood out of which the cross was constructed upon which my Lord was crucified. The cross was a mirror that showed the world its sickness and shame which the Lord died to redeem. Many saw a naked savior and felt defeat: Jesus felt the pain he bore but knew of the coming victory. He did not focus on the cross but made his focus the coming redemption. He did not become angry with the ignorant who nailed him to it but rather prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” So, I won’t make this about the racist pictures we encountered upon the hill of theological education, because Jesus did not make his crucifixion about the cross. Instead, I will focus on the coming redemption and pray, “Father, forgive Martha, for she knew not what she did.” I will then accept and magnify the redemptive power of Jesus that was offered up when Christ arose from the dead as we rise from this. Sin was not eradicated when Christ rose, but the paralyzing power of the shame it brings was. *Read the accompanied blog by Dr. Martha Moore-Keish HERE

One photograph: a luminous dark body curved in upon itself, hands pressed to head. One photograph, chosen in haste and shown as part of a recorded lecture in theology class this spring. That’s all it took to bring me face to face with my own racism, and to trigger a torrent of shame. I offer the following reflections not to focus attention on myself, but to explore one particular experience of shame as a clue to what white privileged people might need to learn, in our bodies, about what it means to be human. I offer this as a testimony to what I am learning, dimly, in fragments, in my own body, about the pain we have inflicted on the bodies of others. I offer this as a snapshot of how shame might be an opening to the healing of racism. For the past 17 years, I have co-taught the two-semester introductory course in theology at Columbia Theological Seminary. Every time I teach on theological anthropology, I draw on a conceptual framework that I picked up long ago from Serene Jones to talk about the complexity of the human condition. There are four basic stories of humanity, I say to students, and all four are simultaneously true: we are created good in the image of God we are distorted (individually and collectively) by sin we are forgiven and redeemed we are drawn toward the future in hope for a day when all creation will be made new When we ponder the mystery of what it means to be human, it is vital to attend to all these dimensions to avoid major pitfalls in dealing with other humans. If we do not affirm that all are made good, in God’s image, we can invent division and hierarchy among different groups of humans, some imagined as more valuable than others. If we affirm that we are all made in the image of God but fail to grapple with the reality of sin, we do not tell the truth about the way that we wound each other, ourselves, and the world that God so loves. If we confront the reality of sin but do not also proclaim God’s forgiveness and transforming grace, then we have no hope. If we affirm that we are forgiven now but do not also announce the eschatological promise that God is not done yet, then we can lapse into complacency. We are complicated, fragile, wondrous, beloved, and unfinished creatures. Our theological anthropology needs to say at least this much. This is what I sought to remind students back in February, as we approached the week on the doctrine of sin. In my introductory recorded video, I repeated these four dimensions of humanity, each with an associated image to provoke reflection: an early mosaic of Adam and Eve in the garden (creation) a photograph of a (male) human being curved in upon himself (sin) a painting of the prodigal son welcomed home (forgiveness) a painting of the peaceable kingdom (eschatological hope) As you read this, you may already suspect the problem that emerged. But I did not. Not yet. Friday night, I recorded and posted the video, so that all the materials for the coming week would be available for students working ahead over the weekend. Tuesday morning, as soon as I turned on my computer, I discovered an email from a student naming the obvious racism in the images I had chosen as they were associated with the four stories of humanity: the images of Adam and Eve, the prodigal son and his father, and the little child in the peaceable kingdom all were portrayed as white. The only human being of color in the set of images was in the portrayal of sin. I had presented to my students the lie that white people represent goodness and forgiveness, while a Black person represents sin. Sick to my stomach, I could only shake my head in horror at my own blindness—my own sin. The student raised other concerns about the class as well, but it was the juxtaposition of images that was the trigger for their rightful pain and anger. That day and the days immediately following were a blur of conversations, confessions, and attempts to begin the long work of repair for the damage done. Nights did not bring much sleep. Over and over I replayed what I had done.             Why did I choose these images?             Why did I not see the implications?             I have used these same pictures before, and no one said anything . . .             Imposter. After careful consultation with colleagues, I posted a public apology and promised to try to do better. I listened as students described their pain. I tried, and failed, to focus attention on the harm I had done, rather than fixating on what I was feeling. Yet could it be that what I was feeling was itself an important clue to the harm I had done? The next day was Ash Wednesday. Lent came right on time. Almost immediately, I named for myself what I was experiencing with one word, in capital letters: SHAME. How could I have done this? How could I not have seen what my student saw? My grandfather spent a night in jail in 1930 to protect a Black woman from being lynched after she killed my five-year old aunt in a hit-and-run accident. My father worked in Selma in 1965 to register Black citizens to vote in the days following “Bloody Sunday.” My parents enrolled me in the first racially integrated preschool in the city of Tallahassee. I had been raised to protest all forms of racial discrimination. I knew better. I knew better. My knowing did not go deep enough. As I wrestled with shame, I sought wisdom from Brené Brown, who has spent years doing research on this emotion. Brown says that shame has two big tapes: “You are never good enough” and “Who do you think you are?” These are common tapes in my mental rotation, as I think they are for many women, including those in Black, AAPI, Latinx, and white communities.[1] These refrains reinforce my deeply held fear that in spite of the fact that I am trying my best, someone is going to find out that I am really inadequate to the task. I know these messages are harmful to me and they contradict my own theological teaching — that I am also good, made in God’s image, and am forgiven, justified, and free. The day I was confronted with my own racism, the Shame Tapes were all I could hear. I curved in upon myself, like the image I had chosen to represent sin. Never good enough. Who do you think you are? These loops stand in stark contrast to what scholars like Kerry Connelly describe as the story that many white Americans tell ourselves: that we are basically “good” people.[2] “Good people” do not intend to harm others. They mean well. More insidiously, as Connelly describes it, good people are “nice and never disruptive, and they value peace and comfort and the status quo.”[3] This tape, too, is well played in my head; though I rarely if ever describe myself as a “good person,” I often say it about others, to highlight their positive intentions even if a particular behavior was harmful. “They’re good people,” I might say, “They did not mean any harm.” This monolithic insistence on the goodness of the race one identifies with is obviously problematic, for many reasons. It reduces “goodness” to “niceness,” which has gotten twisted into “whiteness.” It confuses fundamental human value with nondisruptive human behavior that conforms to the status quo. In addition, it fundamentally masks the complexity of who we are as human beings—yes, created good in God’s image, but also deeply warped into patterns of behavior that harm ourselves, one another, and the earth. Despite Connelly’s focus on the tendency to see myself as “good,” on that day in February, and on the days following, it was hard for me to see any kind of “goodness” in myself. Instead, it was the shame refrain: “I am bad.” This is where Brené Brown focuses attention in her own research on shame. She points out that shame says, “I am bad,” while guilt says, “I did something bad.” Shame becomes a totalizing narrative enclosing a person in an identity as “bad,” while guilt focuses on a particular action as bad. Brown urges people to move from shame, which immobilizes, to guilt, which can motivate a person to change and do better. Brown has much wisdom here, rooted in years of research with people whose narratives of shame have prevented them from thriving as healthy human beings. Shame can be debilitating, even deadly. Too often, shame is connected with sexuality, particularly women’s sexuality. Young women are particularly vulnerable to being “shamed” for the way they dress or for engaging in sexual behavior. Shame in this sphere of life is surely problematic, reinforcing unhealthy views of gender and sexuality that need to be healed. Shame is also destructive in the world of addiction. My friend Jenn Carlier effectively documents the power of shame in her work on addiction and atonement theory. “The paradox of having some sense of agency and yet feeling compelled to keep drinking creates a space for the tremendous shame and self-loathing that perpetuate [drug] use. [One writer] says of her behavior, ‘I’m sick. I’m responsible.’ It is this combination of being sick and yet feeling the shame of moral failure that makes it so difficult for those struggling with addiction to get help.”[4] In the case of people suffering from addiction disorders, the experience of shame often becomes the driver for continuing to abuse substances, and the continuing abuse then feeds the cycle of shame. The constant reminder of being “never good enough” keeps people mired in patterns of self-destruction, preventing them from seeking help. Shame can clearly be destructive, especially when it is imposed by an external community that repeats the messages, “You are not good enough. You are a failure. Who do you think you are?” When these are the only messages that we hear, we hide from others. We curve in on ourselves, refusing to admit our need for help. It is especially problematic among marginalized communities, who often internalize messages of shame for “failing” to live up to societal expectations of financial success, behavior, physical appearance, or ability. This kind of shaming is not what I want to endorse. Yet I am convinced that the shame I experienced taught me something vital about myself, and about race and racism. While Brené Brown advocates moving from shame to guilt, I think that at least in some cases, and especially for those of us who carry privilege, shame is what we must face. Shame as a deep-seated, embodied encounter with my own failing is still the best word I can summon to describe what I experienced, and it revealed something I need to know. To call this simply “guilt” would be to reduce the problem to a single incident, an example of an action that I needed to confess, make amends for, and move on from. “Shame,” on the other hand, signals the depth and endurance of a problem in which I am implicated, for which I am partially responsible, and from which I cannot completely extricate myself. In this case, shame welled up as I confronted my own racist entanglement. It is precisely shame that reveals an important truth about who I am—and who we are. Wrestling with painful shame offered me a dim awareness of the horrific pain endured by members of the Black community—including the real pain of my own student, which I had exacerbated by my thoughtlessness thoughtlessness.[5] Further, shame does not have to immobilize us. A recent Rabbis for Human Rights essay offers this insight into the positive side of shame: “A remarkable teaching in the Babylonian Talmud (Nedarim 20a) reads: a person who has no shame, such a person’s ancestors did not stand at Sinai. I don’t read this as genealogical research, but as ethical teaching. To be heirs of those who stood at Sinai, to stand ourselves at the foot of the mountain, means not only to affirm identity. It means to take responsibility.”[6] Shame then, rather than immobilizing us, can ignite responsibility. I am starting to think that “shame” is another way of naming what some Christians have called a deep awareness of original sin: the truth that human beings are infected by inexplicable tendencies to harm ourselves, others, and the world around us, to turn away from the holy and loving Mystery we call “God.” In my case, shame shocked me into recognition of my own complicity in the sin of racism, as well as offering a tiny hint of the destructive kind of shame experienced by Black people and other marginalized persons. Shame, in at least this case, can be an engine for empathy and change. Of course, this is not the end of the story, but just a beginning. Much as I hate to admit it, I fully expect to run up against shame again, to be faced with my failings again and again, to feel that sickness in the pit of my stomach. I hope, however, that having named it this spring, I will be better equipped to acknowledge it for the revelation it is, and to hear the Shame Tape not as a single voice in my head, but as one truthful voice among others that I need to hear. The real danger is not the experience of shame itself, but the experience of shame by itself, as the only story of who we are. Just as it is problematic to tell a single story of “goodness” without the truth of sin, so too it can be deadly to experience shame without also being told “you are forgiven. You are still beloved.” The courageous student who wrote to me back in February to call out my racism in the classroom has shown remarkable patience and grace in our ongoing interactions. In spite of exhaustion and pain in the wake of that week’s presentation, the student continued to show up to class discussions, alert and engaged, ready to discuss the readings and offer insights. They also offered forgiveness (accompanied by an appropriate call to accountability). In so doing, this student enabled me to see myself not as locked into the narrative of shame, but as someone who might be transformed by grace. Mine is not a simple story of sin moving to redemption. Instead, my experience this spring has deepened my understanding of the complexity of what it means to be human. I am not just one story. Rather than telling a single story about ourselves, or simply moving from one story to another (with the corresponding risk of premature closure), I think it is more appropriate to recognize that we are complex creatures, living multiple stories. We are AT ONCE beloved and corrupted, forgiven and unfinished. Several years ago, one of my daughters shared with me the work of Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie, who gave a now-famous TED Talk in 2009 on “the danger of the single story.”[7] I’ve been thinking about this, too, in light of what happened this spring. Adichie reflects on her own experience of growing up reading British and American children’s books, which led her to assume that there was only one story of what books are, and what childhood is like. When she discovered African literature, she realized that there were other stories that could be told—stories that included people who looked like her and lived like her. Later, when she came to college in America, her roommate was shocked by Adichie’s elegant English because the roommate had a single story of Africa that shaped her perception of what all African people must be like. On her first visit to Mexico, Adichie confronted the danger of the single story in herself. “I was overwhelmed with shame,” she says, when she realized that she had assumed that all Mexicans were one thing: “the abject immigrant.” “I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.” If we tell a single story about other people, it narrows our understandings of others into stereotypical assumptions, usually based on stories told by those in power. Adichie illumines this point powerfully. And she has helped me to see the further point that we need multiple stories not only of other people, but also of ourselves. I have taught this before, but shame has shown me the truth of it in a new way. If I do not affirm that all people are made good, in God’s image, I invent division and hierarchy among different groups of humans, some imagined as more valuable than others. That is what my image choices conveyed. If I affirm that we are all made in the image of God but fail to grapple with the reality of sin, I do not tell the truth about the way that we wound each other, ourselves, and the world that God so loves. That is the truth that shame is teaching me. If I confront the reality of sin but do not also proclaim God’s forgiveness and transforming grace, then I have no hope. That is the possibility of transformation that my student and my colleagues are offering me. If I affirm that we are forgiven now but do not also announce the eschatological promise that God is not done yet, then I can lapse into complacency. This is where my work lies. We are, all of us, complicated, fragile, wondrous, beloved, and unfinished creatures. Thanks to the student who called me out, I am learning more deeply the truth of what it means to be human.   *Read the accompanied blog by DeNoire Henderson HERE   [1] Recent psychological and sociological research is exploring how shame functions in distinctive ways in different cultural communities, but with similar messages of not being worthy or good enough. [2] See Kerry Connelly, Good White Racist? Confronting Your Role in Racial Injustice (Westminster John Knox, 2020). [3] Ibid., 11. [4] Jennifer Carlier, Finding God in the Basement: Addiction and Metaphors for Salvation, PhD dissertation (Emory University, 2021), 37. [5] Psychotherapist Joseph Burgo helpfully distinguishes between productive shame and toxic shame in a way that resembles my own hunch: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/4/18/18308346/shame-toxic-productive. In addition, many of the essays in On Productive Shame, Reconciliation, and Agency edited by Suzana Milevska (2016) are also working along these lines: https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/suzana-milevska. [6] Michael Marmur, Rabbis for Human Rights email newsletter, 5/13/2021. [7] https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en#t-10322.

Steed V. Davidson Associate Professor of Old Testament Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Church Divinity School of the Pacific Each night I watch Jeopardy. Occasionally I am thrilled when Tobago or Trinidad features in a clue. This thrill comes from knowing that the island where I grew up (area of 116 square miles) has found its way into the knowledge required of Jeopardy contestants. I take this small thrill, and I am painfully aware of how small it is, because for most of my life I have been told that the intellectual knowledge that matters consists of material outside of..

Like many of you, perhaps, I’ve been involved in a lot of race-related conversations at my institution lately. These conversations are usually among folks who I might, if pressed, call “allies,” “accomplices,” or even “co-conspirators”—well-intentioned, social justice advocates who are wanting to make real change at our institution, particularly in the ways we support the learning, sense of belonging, mental health, retention, and success of our underserved student populations. Yet I’ve noticed a trend in these various conversations, which, frankly, I find troubling. The trend is this: the problem (and thus, implicitly, any solution) always seems to be located elsewhere, outside the meeting space, in the ones who are not “woke”—that is, students, colleagues, and administrators ‘over there.’ This move, and it is a one I recognize and have made myself many times before, only serves to distance ourselves from the need for critical self-reflection, for taking responsibility, for offering apologies, for tough internal change. Exploring, even confronting, ourselves is a crucial step in doing any kind of social justice work, including what we might want to be doing with students in our classes. How can we effectively lead conversations about, for instance, antisemitism or Islamophobia when we ourselves haven’t done the necessary inner work of racial justice? Professor of Law Rhonda Magee offers an “ecological model of social change,” which, yes, aspires toward interconnectedness and collective transformation, but which, first, depends on the work we do within and on ourselves. For Magee, the focus is on mindfulness, awareness, self-compassion, and resilience. What are our physical sensations? What are our emotional responses? What are our fears? What are our immediate judgments? For me, such increased awareness leads me to ask some tough questions: How am I complicit? How is my department? How is our discipline? A few years ago, I read Irving’s Waking Up White and, I’m embarrassed to admit, realized for the first time in my life that I was, in fact, white. This set me on a course to better understand “white privilege”—how being white has affected me, what paths it has smoothed over for me, what barriers it has removed for me—invisibly, seamlessly, without me even noticing or trying. I’ve read Oluo’s So You Want to Talk about Race, DiAngelo’s White Fragility, and Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist, and I’ve been unsettled, even disturbed, at some of the things I’ve discovered about myself. I won’t record them here, as I imagine they would be upsetting for some readers, but I assure you that this aspect of my social identity invariably affects how I show up as a friend, as a neighbor, as a colleague, as a team leader, as a teacher. When we talk about implicit bias, it’s not just “them,” it’s me. When we talk about microaggressions, it’s not just “them,” it’s me. When we talk about the problems, it’s not just “them,” it’s me. Ongoing self-exploration, “fierce moral audits” as a friend of mine likes to say, is necessary as we work with and alongside our students. There are wonderful tools and resources available online, such as this Anti-Racist Educator Questionnaire and Rubric. Folks of color (like those at yourblackfriendsarebusy) have been generous in curating, writing, talking, protesting, singing, illustrating, imagining. For me, these efforts are not to (continue to) center whiteness or to get kudos and congratulations for doing what is essentially the bare minimum; it is to better ourselves before attempting to better anyone else. In a recent blog post, Sarah Farmer wrote beautifully of her experiences with students: Justice-seeking conversations challenge students at the core. Students aren’t just grappling with social justice concepts theoretically; they wrestle with their very identities. I invite that wrestling in the class. I want the class to be a space where they can explore, discover, challenge, reconstruct, and dream of a better world and their participation in that world together. But each of these actions require courage. I imagine my classroom as a stage, one where students are invited to “try on” these new courageous ways of doing and being socially just. Her words work just as well if you replace “students” with “us” or “we.” This work is challenging for us. We are wrestling with our very identities. We are (or should be) exploring, discovering, challenging, reconstructing, and dreaming. Social justice requires courage—not just of them, but of us too.

Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, is the first non-English-language, subtitled film to win Best Picture in the Oscars’ 92-year history. President Trump censured the award of the foreign film in a February 2020 campaign rally, wanting to get back to the 1939 classic movie “Gone with the Wind” often criticized for its racist stereotypes. The distributor of Parasite immediately responded to the President with a tweet: “Understandable. He can’t read.” In an earlier speech accepting the Golden Globes Foreign Film Award, Bong observed, “Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” In contrast to #OscarsSoWhite, the US President’s view of Oscars-not-quite-so-white reminds me of the connections between cultural texts and imperialism Edward Said explores in his work. I want to bring this discussion to my teaching context. When social justice is addressed in the classroom, one may assume that the teacher should discuss particular social issues or subjects that exist outside the classroom. Yet, if social justice is primarily about power, privilege, and oppression, a curriculum is inevitably a site in which social justice issues emerge. Curriculum selects, structures, and reproduces knowledge while authorizing certain constructions of knowledge and hence, producing the truth. How have knowledge and the truth been constructed? The western academy and education are rooted in a modern liberalism that presupposes “human” as the white European male. This ideology is racist and colonialist. In a Wabash podcast, “After Whiteness,” Willie Jennings points out that western education has been shaped by the dominant image of formation, “becoming”—becoming a “white self-sufficient man” and suggests an alternative view that highlights “belonging.” It was enlightening to understand where my frustration, along with a sense of inferiority, arose throughout my fourteen years of theological education in South Korea and the U.S. What you are going to “become” is not only unidentified but also, instinctively, unattainable. In my seminary, I was introduced to Luther, Barth, Bultmann, and Moltmann, just to name a few, by all male professors who had earned their doctorates in the U.S. and Europe. In my first year of Master’s studies in the U.S., I couldn’t believe that I was being taught by the prominent male professors whose names I had only seen in books. One of the professors, whom I respected greatly, said to me, “Korean students’ exegesis skills are good, but there is something they lack.” The second part of his words haunted me and I desired to have what I did not have without knowing what it was. Obviously, the professor did not mean that it is whiteness that I lack. Yet the ghost of whiteness surfaces in classrooms in various forms. The student-led campaign in the U.K., “Why is My Curriculum White?”, argued that the course content at universities served to reproduce the ideology of whiteness. This argument can apply to any discipline which was founded on the work of Anglo-European white males, including theological and biblical studies. What’s wrong with using their profound work that has influenced not only Western civilization and Christianity, but also the minds of people in other parts of the world? Why am I anxious about not using one of the canonized textbooks, which white male scholars authored, for my New Testament introduction course? Because we are speaking about power structures that normalize whiteness and white privilege. Institutional whiteness is incorporated in and reproduced through curriculum. As Jennings reminds us, that is how minoritized students and faculty in religious and theological education suffer the “racially formed sense of inadequacy.” Including one or two recommended readings written by non-white scholars in the syllabus is not enough, though one may start from there. Multiculturalism often promotes diversity by including a few minority individuals or groups, while still concealing power structures that perpetuate white supremacy and racism. In order to overcome white curriculum, the teacher needs to disclose the effects of racism embedded in the discipline and institutions, dismantle the ideology of whiteness inscribed in the textbook, and develop students’ ability to critically evaluate knowledge. There are “so many great [white] movies,” as the President said. Breaking “the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” is more than watching a foreign film. Students know, or need to know, how to read subtitles. Can I read? Asking the question of whether my curriculum reads as white is a matter of social justice—the matter of death-dealing or life-affirming in the classroom.

I’ve been interested in the connection between culture and education for most of my adult life. My wife and I spent 8 years in pastoral work in Central Europe, and since 2005 my work with online education has brought me into intercultural spaces that include the intersection of multiple kinds of experiences, such as international, intercultural, and interracial. We in theological higher education must be aware of the ways multiple perspectives both enrich the learning experience as well as complicate the online learning culture. In the last decade I started inquiring about how different cultures experience online education and learning systems. My article, “Global Contexts for Learning” (2014), was an earlier attempt to describe how cultural backgrounds bring different contextual expectations, a matter course designers and online teachers ought to consider for the sake of leveling the opportunities for intercultural learning spaces. More recently my dissertation journey explored race and faith-based higher education and brought me into meaningful conversations with African American adult learners in non-traditional programs in predominantly white institutions (see Westbrook 2017, published by Routledge). These conversations exposed my own white blindness and helped me see with more focus the ways experiences of racialization affect one’s perspective, including in online education courses. I write this blog from a white perspective, and to be totally honest, this post probably is best suited for white readers. In other words, people who live with race consciousness day after day might not find this essay particularly unusual or insightful. However, those, like myself, who have lived most of life from the white position in predominantly white settings need to be informed of the extra layer of challenges racialization adds to online learning. “The Wall” of Anonymity Two broad themes surface when we consider online learning spaces and race. First, the nature of one’s working through a screen and often written-based exercises presents an “impression of anonymity” (Al-Harthi, 2005, p. 7). One of my interviewees described the online learning environment as “the wall” (Westbrook, 2017, p. 118) that protects students from racially motivated prejudices. Ibarra (2000, p. 7) cited an interviewee in which the person said, “No one can hear my accent on the keyboard.” When a person is interacting in an online course from her or his own context, the student is approaching the learning activities from a comfortable and personally selected environment. Stereotype threat may be minimalized from one computer screen to another. For many, macro-aggressions are recent experiences and the effects of segregation laws from the Jim Crow South have lingered. Some students may welcome an added layer of protection from racial discrimination. “The Wall” of Separation The second major theme is that in spite of the “wall” effect of online learning, each person brings to the classroom previous experiences of racialization, including micro-aggressions in previous schooling, the work place, and in society at large. In addition, each student also has one’s own learning style, preferred communication style, and cultural filter through which one interprets the course. What might be “normal” for some could be intimidating for others, and if the course is based in writing, then social cues and non-verbal regulators are missing, which leaves room for the imagination to infer both positive and negative presumptions about others in the course. For example, one of my interviewees said the following about her online course activities, “But I could also tell when there was a Caucasian writing . . . . Because sometimes they can get too lengthy” (Westbrook, 2017, p. 118). According to this student, she felt like her classmates’ writing styles were obviously white and different from how she would have communicated. Another example was how one interviewee presumed white privilege of her classmates because of their personal introductions in the course (Westbrook, 2017, p. 119). Now, imagine this race awareness by the students who have a background of being followed in department stores, who have had car doors locked while they were passing by, and purses held tighter when they enter elevators, all white responses to the color of the students’ skin. Such examples were given my interviewees. Then, enter back into the online discussion. What impact do these previous experiences of not being trusted have on students who feel underrepresented in a predominantly white online course? In addition, not all of my interviewees’ experiences in the predominantly white institutions were online. Some described their experiences on the physical campuses. They were quite aware of the majority white demographics in student population, faculty, and staff; and one person reported feeling insecure when she started her program due to matters of race. The point here is that this student was thinking about racial differences as well as the macro- and micro-aggressions from before. It was unlikely her white classmates thought about race at all when they were answering personal introductions or doing their course work. Some of their white classmates might even deny such a difference would exist, adding further pain to the problems. Move Toward eQuality in Online Education Online education learning spaces are not neutral spaces. Each student brings personal memories, expectations, hurts, fears, and stereotypes to the online classroom. Although the computer screen may appear to filter “in the moment” forms of discrimination and provide a safe space for “colorblind” interaction, the online experience is still a form of human interaction. Whatever social challenges people have when face to face also extend into the online domain. Rather than presuming a colorblind or neutral space, online education brings together through digital technology communities that are diverse. As theological educators, whether online or onground, we have a moral imperative to design and offer our students learning spaces that resemble the teachings of Jesus and have a spirit of peace and reconciliation. The image of the mosaic of believers before the throne of God in Revelation 7:9, 10 provides a wonderful depiction of the kingdom of God. Our theological institutions that are designed to prepare people to serve in the kingdom of God ought to hold high this image in Revelation as the standard for the reality and beauty of diversity within God’s people. As we envision the near and distant future of our distance learning, I offer the following thoughts to ponder: Design courses in such a way that maximizes access for working adults and parents. Consider accessibility matters in every possible way that digital technology may open new doors; watch out for the incidental new barriers. Predominantly white schools must continue to make diversification of faculty, staff, and students a priority. Design online courses in such a way that recognizes diversity and encourages multiple perspectives to be shared freely and safely. Adult learning programs must provide academic support and ongoing encouragement for online students, recognizing that systemic barriers have created unequal starting points for many adult learners who are returning to school. Faculty and staff must be trained for race consciousness and cultural diversity. Tim Westbrook Harding University Works Cited Al-Harthi, A. S. (2005). Distance higher education experiences of Arab Gulf students in the United States: A cultural perspective. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 6(3). Ibarra, R. A. (2000). Studying Latinos in a “virtual” university: Reframing diversity and academic culture change (Occasional Paper No. 68). Westbrook, Timothy Paul (2014). Global Contexts for Learning: Exploring the Relationship Between Low-Context Online Learning and High-Context Learners, Christian Higher Education, 13(4), 281-294. Westbrook, Timothy Paul (2017). Spirituality, community and race consciousness in adult higher education. New York: Routledge.

Training students to identify and traverse the identity politics in the United States begins on the first day of my courses. On day one, I introduce myself, then launch into the syllabus review. In describing the required readings, I hold the book or article in my hand, tell students the kind of text it is (fiction, non-fiction, etc.), then I discuss the author. I identify the race and gender of the author, and give a description of the author’s work in and beyond scholarship. And then I tell the students my rationale for selecting this author and particular text for our conservation. Last year, during this part of the syllabus rehearsal, a white woman student, who I will call Sara, raised her hand while I was waxing on about the authors. Sara (age 50ish, married, middle to upper class, suburban mom of three teen-aged children, devoted church member and avid Jets fan, self-identified as politically liberal) asked that I stop identifying the race of the authors. I have paraphrased this interaction in the following vignette:   Sara said, in a chastising tone, “The race of the authors does not matter. We should read the books regardless of the person’s race.”  I responded, “In our classroom conversation, my race matters, your race matters, and the races of the authors matter. Our voices and our perspectives, our values, our behaviors, and our beliefs are directly connected to our racial identity. No author writes for all people or from a universal perspective. We have to be aware of their perspective to better understand their work.” Sara looked puzzled. I continued, “Sara, when you look at my face do you see the face of an African American woman?” Immediately, Sara looked suspicious.  She strained for what to say. She did not know if she should say she saw my race or if she should say she did not see my race.  Sara said, “I don’t think of you as a black person. I think we should just be people.” Sara gestured as if she had said something obvious. In my mind, I heard her say, “I think we all should just be white people…. normal people . . .  just plain people.” I said, “My race informs me and to ignore my race is to ignore my voice, as well as the voices of my people. Please know that I like being an African American woman. I embrace our ways, wit, and wisdom.”  Sara’s face became quizzical, like she was considering something new and for the first time. I continued, “I think of you as a white woman.” This soft statement hit her with a jolt. Sara’s shock gave way to dismay – she frowned. Seeing her alarm, I suggested that she hold her concern for later in the semester. I went back to my syllabus rehearsal.  When I entered the classroom for the second session, Sara was seated. As I unpacked my briefcase she came up to talk with me. She reported that while she enjoyed reading the African American woman author, bell hooks (our first assigned reading), she did not think hooks was talking to her. Sara said, “I just think bell hooks has such a different perspective . . . I am not sure why this book is assigned for this class.” I told Sara to “hang-in” with the conversation – it was just the beginning.  On the last day of class, as Sara walked out of the door she thanked me for the “nice” course. Her hollow pleasantry reminded me of the way a tourist, while leaving the tram-ride, thanks the guide at the end of the amusement park safari.  I thought of James Baldwin. James Baldwin, acclaimed novelist, legendary essayist, and important human rights champion said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” I made a mental note to include writings by Baldwin the next time I taught this course. I love Baldwin’s use of the word face(d). It means to confront, challenge, provoke, even threaten or defy. He is also not so subtly suggesting that people need, if societal change is to be given a chance, to turn and face one another. Baldwin suggests that relationships of respect, decency, decorum, and dignity will change the world for the better, if we have the fortitude, tenacity, and care to make the attempt.The politics of the face is serious territory. The police do not take a mug shot of your feet or elbows. We are known by our faces. We face the world with our faces. Most racial profiling happens in the nanosecond it takes to gaze upon the face. The Sweat on their Face: Portraying American Workers, an exhibit of the Nation Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, says, “the face is the primary canvas of the story of our lives.” I agree. Once Sara signaled on the first day that conversations on social hatred were new to her and that she lacked the experience of challenging the social lies she had internalized, I watched for moments of particular distress and discomfort through the arch of our semester-long conversation. From my recollection, here are the three teachings that also shook Sara: #1) Just as victims of rape are not experts in the crime of rape or experts on rapists, so African American people, with our experience of violation, dehumanization, and oppression are not experts in the sin of racism or the contributing systems of oppression. We are typically, and rightfully so, reactionary. Reactionary is not the same as critically reflective. Please do not expect African American people to inform you about the intricacies of racism. Surviving racism does not equip one to teach about racism. Consult well-informed and mindful white persons who are aware, repentant, and doing the work of equity. There are many people. #2) Even with the sophistication and technological advancements of the 21st century, many white people still do not think they have a race. They still think race is for “other-ed” people – people of brown-hued skin or simply black people. Even so, white people typically do not hesitate, on a census form, to tick the box for Caucasian or white. Given the choices of Asian, Hispanic, African American or mixed they can declare they are white. Other than selecting that box, the everyday behavior is usually one of tension, anxiety, nervousness or just plain confusion about issues of race and racial identity.  They still believe that their racelessness is just being “normal.” The politics of this identity-delusion is debilitating to non-white people. #3) The USA has exported its systemic prejudices and social hatreds around the world.  As an American traveling overseas, being African American has mattered sometimes in dangerous and unpleasant ways. Being an African American has made me a novelty in Japan, an oddity in Korea, a target in Jamaica, an object of suspicion in Ireland and Israel, beloved in Ghana and ogled-at in France. The emotional outpouring, from rage to reverence, was at times overwhelming. The world is quite aware of the racist and stereotypical narratives of blackness in the USA and, for the sake of power and prestige, has chosen to embrace them. As an African American traveling abroad, I was a spectacle, an embodiment of the racist narrative. I was a spectacle as in celebrity or spectacle as in despised – all expressions of objectification, commodification, and all quite scary. Racism in the USA makes it difficult for African Americans to travel the world. It was challenging for Sara to understand that our goal is never to overcome all differences (being post-Obama is not the same as being post-racial), since God clearly created our spectrum of differences. God loves our faces in all their many colors, textures, shapes and sizes. It is when differences are deemed to be deficiencies that the problem of other-ing occurs. When whiteness and maleness are considered “normal” then any person not white and not male are, by base logic, abnormal and inferior. This white supremacist mentality undergirds and maintains social systems which control, sort, are suspicious of, exploit, criminalize or eradicate (quickly or slowly) those who are deemed as other. Facing this reality is our liberation – mine as well as Sara’s.  The Saras of our time are uncomfortable when the lies of the melting pot and assimilation are exposed, countered and rejected.  There is great resistance in allowing the voice of someone who has been othered (bell hooks and me) to speak our perspective. There is surprise, dismay and disorientation to learn that those who have been othered have a perspective of merit, even a perspective that is potentially revelatory. Allowing an Other’s perspective to decentralize previously un-contested norms, values and beliefs takes time, prayer, and patience. As we wait, we must acknowledge that until it is faced we will not be able to find our way forward.  I have an urgency about this. 

My course began with an iconic book by bell hooks and ended, after several other readings, with a beloved text by Parker Palmer. On the last day of class, a white woman student came up to me to tell me how much she enjoyed the course (she had earned an A in the course), and to give me feedback, saying, “Next time, start with the white guy and not bell hooks; it will be easier for us white people to stay in the conversation.” So much teaching is complicit with dominant race ideologies and patriarchy, yet we yearn for different ways to teach. White normative approaches to disciplinary-subject matter, reading lists which strain to add even one non-white author, grading standards which insist upon majority culture assessment categories are only a few of the ways that the ideals which normalize whiteness permeate our daily living and teaching. Disrupting these patterns of evil and shifting these detrimental values takes mixing things up, muddling stuff, creating newness and difference. Increasing our knowledge of new resources and redefining our criteria of what might constitute acceptable academic resource for our classrooms, might be a way forward. Look for narratives which resist and repudiate the story of whiteness. Stories that champion and reinforce whiteness and patriarchy, stories that allow for a token few minoritized people to triumph, but refuse to portray a change in the oppression for all or stories which never question the absence of powerless people in significant roles permeate our airwaves and imaginations. We are persons immersed in the narrative which supports and promotes white supremacy, white nationalism, and patriarchy. We have to find ways to resist. A critical challenge for all teachers who want to teach as a disruption to whiteness and patriarchy is that, regardless of personal social location, each of us must expand our knowledge of freedom narratives. We, all of us, given the ethos of the United States in the 21st century, must with great intent, seek out and immerse ourselves in the counter-narratives to the lie of whiteness. We must internalize a narrative of freedom, love, creativity, and forgiveness. We must believe in the sacredness and worth of all human beings and teach this story in unflinching and believable ways. As a spiritual discipline, take time to fill your consciousness and imagination with freedom narratives as a way to fortify yourself for teaching against the status quo. We must re-teach ourselves in order to teach toward freedom.   Read stories that depict and portray people of color as intelligent, generative, and caring human beings – as normal. This is why the movie Black Panther was so popular and so refreshing. It did not start and end with chattel slavery. It made use of fresh portrayals of people of the African diaspora which told a story of community, kinship and the complexity of freedom.  Avoid the motifs of the individual superhero like the ways Martin Luther King’s or Harriet Tubman’s legacies have been distorted. Look past the stories of inferiority and degradation often told in the daily news cycle. Find stories where the women are not one-dimensional wooden beings and the people of color are not gratuitously violent, oversexualized, or stupid. Teach yourself to identify the narratives of freedom and bring them into your classroom. In immersing yourself in freedom narratives, look for a multiplicity of mediums: film clips, music, screenplays, artwork, photography (all means of storytelling), and then consider making use of the best ones in your classes. Narratives that are sophisticated about race/gender politics are seeping into the U.S. culture. Look for new stories like “Dear White People” on Netflix. Binge watching both seasons of “Dear White People” took focus and stamina. I managed to do it in 48 hours – taking occasional breaks to walk my dog, get a snack and sleep. The well-written Netflix series is based upon an acclaimed film of the same name. The plot is set in a 21st-century fictitious college called Winchester University. The story depicts the lives of African American college students at this Ivy League, predominantly white university. The Black students are bright, articulate, culturally and politically conscious, and conscientious. In other words, the black folks are woke. The title “Dear White People” is a clue that the white folks of the community are not woke. The lead character and protagonist has a campus radio show. She often, to inform white peers, professors, and university administrators formats her radio soliloquies in the form of a letter which begins, “Dear White People.” Then in great poetic rant, she informs and reprimands the offending, or simply ignorant, white people about their white supremacy, privilege, and the ways their behaviors and the racist, sexist systems which privilege them, to which they seem to be oblivious, continually affect her and her friends. The poignant stories disclose and interrogate cultural bias, social injustice, misguided activism, and the zeal that comes with college-aged persons. The stories are also about the relationships of young people and the ways they struggle to negotiate their social, cultural, and intellectual growth. Creator and executive producer Justin Simien is a storyteller who understands the ever-present irony, bitter humor and too often anger for persons attempting to live life while being a target of white supremacy and patriarchy. “Dear White People” is an expanding of freedom narratives. This is the kind of material you want to explore for possible classroom use. Material which unapologetically tells the story from the perspective of the oppressed and the ways we navigate the dehumanizing terrain.  Consider radical ideas as you find new resources. What if you taught your introductory course with no white or male authors? Develop a course which is soundly disciplinary, but has no majority culture readings. This might mean using all articles and no textbooks, per se, but why not? Teaching to transform might not mean including a few voices of the marginalized --- it might mean excluding the voices of the oppressor so we can learn the perspectives, voices, and stories of the oppressed. And/or consider introducing each text to be read by providing, or having your students research, the social locations of each author. If an author is white and male, identify the person in this way. Resist only identifying the gender and race of authors who are female and people of color because it signals they are “exceptions” to the routinely read normal readings authored by white men.  Creating educational spaces for which the voices of the oppressed and marginalized is taken seriously, respected, even prioritized is a paradigm-shifting act – an act of freedom in which you can participate by the stories you bring into your classroom.

Every semester I stand in front of my classes at my predominantly white state university and argue, “whiteness came into being through more than five hundred years of dominant cultural narratives undergirded by [white] Christianity, laws, and sciences which have proclaimed the innate inferiority of those outside dominant white culture.” Historically my students have had three different responses to the argument: revelation, no surprise, and disdain. For the first group of students, the idea that white Christianity has anything to do with race and racism in the United States is new and revelatory. It helps them better understand how systemic violence came in to being and continues to function. For the second group of students, the idea that white Christianity is in part responsible for the state of race relations comes as no surprise and connects to their understanding of reality. Many of these students have a long view of history and many face the direct consequences of the systemic violence created by white supremacy, hetero-normativity, patriarchy, and ableism all of which have been justified by white Christianity. The third group of students respond with disbelief, anger, and disdain. This third group of students is more visible now than in previous years. As I look around the room there are clearly more eye rolls and head shakes, whispers, and general displays of dis-ease. The arguments about the politics of white Christianity are a direct affront to this group’s worldview and in some cases, the ideas are exactly what their families, community leaders, and political pundits warned them about. What has become more evident in the last year is an increased level of anxiety in classroom spaces when talking about systemic violence and oppression. Part of the anxiety is about trauma and trust, while another part of the anxiety is about anger. The trauma was created by the presence of a presidential candidate on campus. It was an event that left students and faculty feeling wounded and vulnerable. Students stood on the opposite sides of the street with a police line between them. The experience has left people questioning who they can trust. It also exposed a lot of anger, much of which is fueled by hate. We are living in a time when overt verbal and physical attacks against black and brown bodies, against women’s bodies, against queer and trans bodies, and against non-Christian bodies are more overtly public, calculated, and politically normalized. The pushback against anything that has been labeled progressive is palpable and real. I now find myself thinking about how I will deal with disrupters who take over class conversations. I find a ready group of colleagues who want to discuss and strategize about classroom engagements and the campus climate. It is easy to get distracted by fear of what could happen and in all likelihood will happen. For some colleagues and students classrooms no longer feel safe. The classroom has become a very heavy space. And yet, I go back to the words of bell hooks, “[E]ngaged pedagogy recognize[s] each classroom as different, that strategies must constantly be changed, invented, reconceptualized to address each new teaching experience.” What does an engaged pedagogy look like in the face of our current social-political climate? How does an engaged pedagogy help foster radical democracy, social responsibility, resistance, and critical citizenship? I have started to reconceptualize how I teach about the politics of white Christianity, or any other contentious topic, in an anxious classroom. First, I work very hard at creating the classroom as a community. While this is not new to my teaching, I am very careful to build relationships among the students and myself with a series of exercises at the beginning of the semester before launching into divisive issues. Next, I have reconceptualized how I create a context for students to understand their place in history by using Elise Boulding’s “200-year present.” According to Boulding, “[The 200-year present] is a continuously moving moment, always reaching out 100 years in either direction from the day we are in.” This idea allows students to engage the ebbs and flows of history and place themselves in it. The 200-year present also allows students to see how systemic violence and oppression have developed over time. Finally, I continue to call out and name domination systems. However, I spend more time considering how conversations serve to nurture radical democracy and critical citizenship rather than further entrench students in dogmatic positions. It is an anxious time and the fears of the worst are made real almost daily. There is much at stake. There is much to gain. Teaching is a constant process of reimagining how we reach students and bring in to being engaged citizens. [1] Dean J. Johnson, “Weaving Narratives: The Construction of Whiteness” in We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America, eds. Elizabeth “Betita” Martínez, Mandy Carter & Matt Meyer (PM Press 2012), 131. [1] bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Educationas the Practice of Freedom (Routledge, 1994), 10-11. [1] Elise Boulding, Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World (Syracuse University Press 1990), 4.

It was by now a pretty well-known social experiment. A man dressed like a homeless person collapses on the street and is ignored by pedestrians; when the same person puts on a business suit and collapses on the same street, however, a number of strangers quickly come to his aid. Unfortunately, appearance does matter, and it matters also in the classroom. Let me turn now to share my own experiences with two students in my very first course that I taught as a full-time professor. Student One It was literally my first day of class in the seminary. I was both anxious and excited. After giving out and going through the syllabus, I followed my lesson plan on which I had worked tirelessly all summer long. When time was up, I was secretly congratulating myself for making what I thought to be a wonderful first impression, especially when a couple of students came up to me and said that they were really “psyched” for the course. Then a white woman student who looked to me to be in her fifties introduced herself to me with not only her name but also her credentials. She said that she had a doctorate in adult education and that she could tell that I had little knowledge or experience with adult education (of course, I had told everyone at the beginning of the class that this was my very first year teaching at the seminary). She followed up and commented that my syllabus was too long and too intimidating and that I talked too fast, gave too much material, and failed to provide students any handouts. I was floored and a little embarrassed, but I managed to keep myself calm and said something to the effect that I would try to provide some handouts and that I would always be available for conversations if she had any questions about the course. Unfortunately, my “invitation” resulted in one after-class encounter that has remained vivid in my memory even almost twenty years later. I had just returned a written assignment to the class, and this woman came up after class again and asked me why she got a particular grade. (It was not a bad grade, as I remember that it was in the B range.) Since I always provide ample comments on student papers, I pointed those out and explained that her paper could be better and more tightly organized. To my surprise, she responded by saying that my “problem” had to do with the fact that English was not my first language and that I did not understand that there was a kind of writing “in the West” known as stream-of-consciousness. Would she feel the same liberty to approach a white male professor and say something like this if she got a B-range grade from him? I think not. Student Two It was time to look at my very first set of course evaluations as a full-time professor. This time, I was more anxious than excited. One particular student comment stood out among the—thankfully—many affirmative and encouraging evaluations that I had received. This student basically said he or she had gotten to the classroom feeling very tired from a long day of work as well as feeling rather frustrated as this was his or her first day in seminary. Sitting at the back of the classroom, this student said he or she felt even worse when I walked into the classroom and stood behind the lectern as the instructor for the course. I could not repeat it verbatim but it went something like this: “I could tell it was going to be a disaster as soon as I saw him, but then Professor Liew started to speak and I was immediately energized and engaged.” I am grateful and glad that, based upon a very positive evaluation, this particular student was able to learn from me and with me, but what this student assumed upon just seeing me is most telling. Why would he or she make the foregone conclusion that the course was going to be bad as soon as I showed up? Yes, there is another “appearance” that one cannot change as easily as putting on or taking off a piece of garment. These two students taught me early on in my teaching career that students carry all kinds of assumptions, racialized or otherwise, with them into the classroom, and so I have to be prepared for them. Of course, we as teachers are not immune to this: we have assumptions that lead us to think, act, speak, and make evaluations in particular ways with particular persons. If teaching is truly one of the best ways to learn, I want and need to learn from these early experiences in my teaching career how students may also need to prepare for class in ways that go way beyond what are listed on their syllabi.  Allow me to share the following video by some students at the Rhode Island School of Design as we all work to plan and prepare for the beginning of a new academic year (note that the video contains strong language that some may find offensive). The video raises a host of issues and questions to consider. What questions arose for you as you think about your own teaching? What might it mean for students and teachers to “veil” themselves in classroom contexts?  Social DNA comes with the bodies that enter our classrooms, but it can also be addressed and even changed by what we do in our classes.