Community Reflections

We invite the community to share their written, oral or visual reflections. The reflections can focus on the topics presented at different events or speak to other facets of systemic racism important to the individual. We encourage thoughtful creativity and are open to multiple forms of submission. If you are interested in sharing a reflection to this page, please visit this form to learn more about the process and to submit a reflection.

Dr. Jenny Veninga is an Associate Professor of Religious and Theological Studies.

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10: 10b). In many ways, this promise of life offered by Jesus in the Gospel of John was at the center of Catholic Bishop Shelton J. Fabre’s powerful presentation for the Spring 2021 McCarthy Lecture. In “‘Equal to Us:’ The Church’s Response to Racism,” Bishop Fabre offered a rich theological reflection on the many ways that racism deprives people of abundant life by making us believe that some human beings are more equal and more dignified than others. As a “matter of the heart,” overcoming racism involves truly recognizing that all people have equal human dignity—and then acting upon this recognition to transform our individual consciences, our institutions, and the structures of our society. The lead author of the 2018 U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops’ document, “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love—A Pastoral Letter Against Racism,” Bishop Fabre describes racism as a sin which calls for genuine conversion.

As a theologian and scholar of religion, I appreciated Bishop Fabre’s framework for thinking about racism. Racism, in fact, has been described by public theologian Jim Wallis as America’s “original sin”; our nation was built through the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans. These practices, which relied upon the presupposition that Bishop Fabre discussed—that some lives are worth more than others—were often justified by racist readings of Christian Scripture. This original violence and the beliefs that supported it have shaped all of our major institutions, including (but not only): education, employment, housing, criminal justice, healthcare, and religion. We are all born into this state of original sin, and if we are white, we benefit from it whether we recognize it or not. In this way, perhaps whiteness implies a kind of “original benefit” that is rooted in white supremacy and manifests as white privilege. As trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem reminds us in his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, historical systemic racism has caused generational collective trauma that reverberates every time harm and violence is committed against a person of color. As I glance at coverage of the recent trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, and witness news of yet more police killings of black and brown men, I’m reminded that we are still mired in the terror of our original sin.

As a white person, I have benefited from white privilege from the moment I was born. This reality has meant, among other things, that I’ve never had to worry about being denied an apartment because of my race. It’s meant that I grew up never imagining that the police might be a threat to me, nor that I would ever be presumed guilty for a crime because of my skin color. As a professor, it’s meant that I don’t have to worry about lower course evaluations because of racist assumptions about my abilities. As a parent, I will not have to give my blond-haired, blue-eyed son “the talk” about police violence when he becomes a teenager. And even now, in his toddler years, our privilege is both subtle and remarkable: when we go to the store to pick out books, most of them have images of people that look like him. These are just some of the ways that systemic racism manifests. For me, it means white privilege.

Coming to terms with these undeniable realities has been, and continues to be, a process for me. I have come to realize, particularly in the wake of the BLM protests after the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, that the first and foundational way I am called to respond to systemic racism is through unlearning my privilege, but this happens only through a process of becoming aware of it. An important aspect of this work, as I’ve learned from educator and author Dr. Beth Godbee, is developing emotional literacies that can help me to have enough emotional stamina to counter my own white fragility—the defensiveness that often arises when white people become aware of their own privilege. It also means working to let go of my tendencies toward perfectionism and “either/or” binary thinking that are rooted in white supremacy. It means reading works by black authors, and especially black feminists, who bring attention to the intersection of race and gender. I am learning so much from the work of writer adrienne maree brown, for example, about the connections between embodiment and activism.

Moving outward to my family, resisting and dismantling systemic racism means engaging in anti-racist parenting, not to instill guilt but rather to foster awareness and responsibility for collective justice and repair. And then taking (at least) one more step outward toward my local, national, and global community, dismantling racism means taking risks to use anti-racism pedagogy in my classrooms and to explore relationships among racism, memory, and religion in my classes. For years now, I have assigned theologian James Cone’s profound work, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, to my Honors classes. Together we explore how to have difficult conversations about race and religion, and consider the power of Cone’s argument that “until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.” I hope is that these deep conversations have a ripple effect that chips away—even if slowly—at the foundations of our racist systems.

All of my work in these areas, as well as my protests in the streets, is imperfect. I have failed and caused harm, and I have also tried to do better the next time. Resisting and dismantling systemic racism is a practice, to be done again and again. In response to a question about whether we will ever see an end to racism, Bishop Fabre beautifully responded that we will always have sin, and racism is a sin. Our goal should be, rather, that “we are better than we were yesterday and not as good as we will be tomorrow.” I’m reminded of the powerful statement by Basile Moreau, the founder of our own Congregation of Holy Cross, that our education seeks to “contribute to preparing the world for better times than ours.”  May we have the courage to believe that better times are possible and the insight that it is up to us—all of us—to make it so.