I wish I'd written "the dignity gap"
On reconciliation & the need for self-giving love for our enemies
Hello Dear Friends,
Before we dive into today’s post, I want to remind you that this Thursday I’m hosting a contemplative writing circle focused on the wildness of summer. It’s an hour-long intentional writing practice in which we’ll reflect on the summer in the natural world and the wisdom it’s holding for us. I won’t pretend like an intentional hour of writing time will magically make right all that is wrong in the world, but it just might make better some part of what feels anxious and overwhelmed in us. It costs $12, but if cost is prohibitive let me know. You can register at the button below. Onward to today’s reflection.
Sometimes I wish I’d written The Dignity Gap.
For those who don’t know, my first book is called The Diversity Gap1. It’s focused largely on creating and sustaining racially diverse organizations. But more recently, I’ve been wishing that I’d written a book focused not so much on racial diversity as on the spiritual, emotional, and relational vigor required to honor the humanity of fellow persons regardless of their perceived identity. I wish I’d spent more time contemplating and redressing the limits of being defined by boxes, labels, and characteristics of hair textures and skin tones.
Of course I know these things matter, in some ways. Our hair textures and skin tones carry something of our culture, our histories, and our stories. But what I’m seeing now is that they don’t matter in all the ways I thought they did and in all the ways I was taught they mattered.
I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few months about the backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many chalk it up to some oppressive, incontrovertible social sin, i.e. “supremacy this,” and “fascism that.” Yes, maybe. But I also think the backlash is something more than systemically unjust or particularly nefarious. I think people simply don’t like being put into boxes. People don’t like being told who they are, what they think, what they value or who they’ll vote for based on their skin color. People don’t like being defined as a victim of a system any more than people like being defined as inflictors of perpetual social harm, simply by nature of the body they were born into at this particular time on the clock of the world. Yes, some people do truly hate the plurality of diversity, the sacrifice of equity, and the labor of inclusion, but I think far more people simply resist being bound to lofty academic constructs while all the ways they don’t fit into those boxes are dismissed.
This could be a particular axe I have to grind as I make peace with my own past as a loud and prominent champion of what I now believe to be a reductive way of viewing myself, others, and the world. Coming home to my faith tradition has reoriented my view of humanity, where racial identity is no longer the primary lens through which I see. I’m doing my best, with God’s help, to see and to encounter persons first, instead of relating to others based on projections rooted in judgment and academic theories. Yes, I bring my training with me—training on systemic analysis and social harm—but it’s no longer my only way of defining reality. People, I’m learning, are so much more than these social categories. I suppose I lost sight of that at some point, but I’m grateful now for the returning a fuller view.
On true reconciliation
When I first began grappling with issues of race as a young adult, it was in the context of my religious and spiritual life. As a Protestant, evangelical Christian, my belief was that God was reconciling the world first to himself, and in so doing, reconciling us persons to one another. But over the years, as I progressed in studying the problem of race, at least in American life, I stopped centering the need for us to be first reconciled to God. I started centering utopic visions of social harmony where we could manufacture idealized versions of power dynamics that would make for some sort of peaceful future where everyone felt happy, connected and good all the time—without ever having to sacrifice or change anything about themselves. I don’t fully understand why and how I started to see the world this way, but I do understand that by removing the spiritual and religious foundation of my worldview, I also cut myself off from the very tradition that held the keys needed to make true social healing possible, keys such as: humility, long-suffering, self-giving love even unto one’s enemies, forgiveness and keeping no record of wrongs.
Even though I’m no longer Protestant or evangelical, this Christian vision of reconciliation, one in which we find our home in Christ and from this place of rootedness extend compassion and transformative care to the world, holds truer in my being than it ever has before. Such faith is a much needed touchstone in a world that expects our government and academic institutions to facilitate a sort of healing they are simply incapable of offering for us.
The urgent need for self-giving love
As we sit on the brink of another war amidst all sorts of political violence the world over, I return again to the urgent need for us to close the dignity gaps around us. Dignity gaps are those places where we are tempted to dehumanize, judge, disparage and disregard others based on who they are. Dignity gaps are those places where we think histories of oppression and harm give us a free pass to hate our neighbors. I share this not from a place of doing this well, but from a place of doing this poorly for many years on end. It’s as much a note-to-self as it a blog entry being shared with all of you.
Self-giving love of enemies is among the most urgent needs of our lifetime. While we have little control over the horrific choices our elected leaders make, we have tremendous control over our own willful desire to be sowers of the transformative love and reconciliation offered first to us by Christ.
In love and prayer for our neighbors around the world,
Bethaney
I love this. I really hope that we can get to a place in society where we can talk about these issues as both / and versus either / or. Yes there are systemic issues that perpetuate injustice and yes we all contain multitudes. We are all oppressor and oppressed. We are all privileged and disadvantaged. We are all in the majority and the minority at times. We can seek to address systemic problems while still honoring and respecting the dignity of all individuals benefitting and being harmed by those systems.
Really love this, Bethaney