Has anyone ever asked you to speak for a whole people group? If you represent a racial or cultural minority, you have undoubtedly been asked to explain, defend–even apologize for–your group’s ideas, thoughts, beliefs, practices. I suspect most Christians have had that experience some time in their life. Some well-known Christian blows up his life and you are asked to explain how someone could get up on Sunday and say Christian words but in private be having an affair. You are asked to explain why, “you evangelicals talk about grace but hate homosexuals” or something similar.
So how do you feel when you have to speak for a whole people group? If you are white, have you ever had to speak for all white people? Your African American brothers and sisters have to speak for all black folk as to what is black theology or why no one takes Hip Hop artists to task for their language about women (which of course isn’t true). Your Asian brothers and sisters are asked to explain why so many of their parents own dry cleaning shops. And so on.
To those of us who are of the dominant (white) culture: do we know really what it is like to be first a representation of a whole people group and an individual second? Do we feel compelled to explain or defend less than savory characters within our people group? Do we lose sleep over how others perceive us and whether they will see beyond the exterior?
So, let’s agree to stop putting people in the place where they have to answer for a whole group. Let’s realize that within groups there is great diversity in thought, belief, and action. There is no one black theology just as there is no one white theology. There is no one missional church model just as there is no one evangelical church model. There is no one biblical counseling model just as there is no one secular therapy model.
There is a great cost to being a minority. There is stress and isolation associated with being a minority person. Let’s not add unnecessary pressures when we are of the dominant culture seeking to learn from folks that may have been invisible to us in the past. And let us white folk remember that even if we experience momentary stereotypes as evangelicals, we can shed that “skin” and be anonymous as we go about our travels while our ethnic minority brothers and sisters NEVER shed their “skin.”
But here’s a challenge for us. How do we enter in and invite mutual understanding and learning without putting people in boxes, without identifying stereotypes, without making minority individuals feel self-conscious that they are seen first as their ethnic exterior and only second as a person?
Thoughts? Experiences?
Musings on Faith and Psychology 