An Awakening

I grew up in a town on the coast of Maine. The majority of the people in my community were Quebecois, immigrants or children of immigrants from the Canadian province of Quebec. This fact made it so that our city was very white and not just because of the mounds of snow that would fall each winter. In my high school there were a handful of Asian kids and one African American kid, the other 95% of us were white as the aforementioned snow.

Living in a community as homogeneous as mine lends itself to certain attitudes. There was no overt racism, in the sense of purposeful bigotry, but there were plenty of opinions about African Americans that were based more in assumption than in reality. No matter how much one tries to be open minded in a community like that some of the attitudes are going to rub off on you.¹ Since there is no reason to question these assumptions there is very little critical thought as to whether or not they are correct.

It was not until I became the father of an African American child that I even began to question the assumptions that I had grown up having. Prior to my son Jamil coming into our lives it was easy to say that Travon Martin should not have been in that housing development or Michael Brown should have obeyed the police officer. After Jamil the black boy being killed was no longer an abstraction, some guy from over there. There was flesh and blood that I loved who could be the next victim of American law enforcement's proclivity toward shooting black males. Jamil was the catalyst for me to engage in critical reflection about my attitudes about African Americans.

Critical reflection on one's biases, both conscious and unconscious, is never easy nor is it ever enjoyable. I felt horrible about myself for a long time for buying into stereotypes that had no basis in reality. The pervasiveness of my biases was appalling to me. At a certain point you have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and start doing something, so I dove in and questioned everything I believed about African Americans. I prayed a lot of prayers of forgiveness during that time. From time to time things still come up at which point I once again have to critically examine the thing and move to an opinion that is based in reality. I know that I am just at the beginning of this journey, there was so much hammered into me growing up where I did, it will take a while to get through it all. At least I have techniques to use now.

An interesting thing that happened as I started to question my beliefs about African Americans is that I started to be critical of other beliefs that I held. Does political party X really care for all people or only a segment. What does 'pro-life' even mean? Does my lifestyle lend itself toward acts of love and hospitality? It seems that the more you actively engage in critical thinking the more you naturally do it.²

Perhaps when the Apostle Paul encouraged us to "take every though captive" he was pointing us toward having a more critical mind that is actively engaging with the thoughts provided to us.

I am still one of the lazier thinkers that I know. I would rather just accept what is given than question it. My experiences have taught me that I need to critically examine my thoughts and the thoughts of others. The work continues, but it is less daunting now than it was at the beginning.