(This is a snippet from a prayer letter. Want to learn more? Sign up to receive my prayer letters here.)
As the Multiethnic Ministries department starts the next 5-year leg of our journey, and as we begin to have a real communications team for the first time, we’re working on developing our strategy: what are we doing? Why? How? With whom?
If I do my job well, the amazing resources of our department will make it to as many people as possible; our staff and students will grow in their cross-cultural competency and ethnic self-awareness; and conversations and relationships will develop around the topics of ethnicity, multiethnicity, and reconciliation.
That’s the goal.
Here’s the the “how” of that goal, as it pertains to my work:
As the communications coordinator I work (and oversee work by other staff) in writing, editing, promotion, advertising, social media, email campaigns, resource creation, and more. My job is to connect people to the work we’re doing, and connect them to each other in conversation about that work.
As we work to develop a communications strategy, we’re figuring out how we, as communicators, can further the ministry of InterVarsity’s Multiethnic Ministries department and invite more and more staff and students into the work and conversation we’re having there.
(This is a snippet from a prayer letter. Want to learn more? Sign up to receive my prayer letters here.)
My supervisor, Maureen Huang, is the Communications and Resource Development Manager for InterVarsity’s Multiethnic Ministries department, and wrote this for you:
Thank you for partnering with Matt in his ministry with InterVarsity!
As Matt’s supervisor, I want to thank you for your investment in Matt and his ministry with InterVarsity. His work is critical to what we do. Our vision is to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed and world changers developed through the gospel. In our increasingly technology-connected world, we have the unique opportunity to connect with others and proclaim the gospel in new ways – facebook, twitter, other social media platforms, the possibilities seem almost endless.
Yet for many ministers unfamiliar with these technologies, opportunities can be missed. Even more, without using these technologies, some ministers will be unable to effectively communicate to this present generation. Thus, we are so grateful for Matt and the skills that he brings to InterVarsity, particularly with regards to communication and technology. He is enabling us to expand our ministry and increase our impact for Christ with today’s youth. Most recently, Matt helped us expand our audience, virtually, for Multiethnic Staff Conference through the use of technology. In fact, some are now investigating the possibility of doing something similar at the Urbana Missions Convention. His contributions have enabled us to go beyond what we could have done without him. I can only begin to imagine what the future could hold! Thank you again for your partnership and please know that the kingdom work of which you and Matt are a part, is laying a critical foundation for effective ministry both now and the future.
(This is a snippet from a prayer letter. Want to learn more? Sign up to receive my prayer letters here.)
I’ve mentioned that my role up until this point was primarily focused on MESC12. But now that it’s over, what’s next?
Well, we’re still working on that. But here are a few things we know for sure:
I’ll be working with the Multiethnic Ministries Leadership Team to develop a strategy for social media for the department. But this isn’t just geek talk (although that’s surely a part of it); rather, it’ll involve learning to understand how we can partner in ministry with other groups that aren’t in the same physical location as us, how we can resource staff around the country, and how we can develop a community of likeminded people through social media.
I’ll be helping develop resources for campus staff and students. One of my great passions is taking the amazing resources that exist across our movement and finding ways to make them available to the rest of the movement. That’s why I started Staffhacker, and now I have the opportunity to do that with some of our racial reconciliation-related resources.
I’ll be working with staff at many different stages in their journey. I have the opportunity to work with IV staff (and people outside of IV) who are veterans of the racial reconciliation conversation, deep thinkers, pastors, leaders, philosophers, and overall incredible human beings; I also have the opportunity to work with staff and students who don’t even know what the phrase “racial reconciliation” means (who are also overall incredible human beings ). I love this! I can learn from those with more wisdom than me, but share what I’ve learned with others; also, I’m not just hiding in an enclave of people who think like me, but being given the opportunity to interact and share and develop relationships from people all across the theological and philosophical spectrum.
(This is a snippet from a prayer letter. Want to learn more? Sign up to receive my prayer letters here.)
Thank you so much for your prayers and concern about the Multiethnic Staff Conference and our Virtual attendance program. The conference was incredible–from the preaching and exposition from Acts, to the prophetic voices speaking to our movement, to a continued exhortation to understand and meet our students in their contexts.
A few statistics:
125 staff registered to attend the entire conference virtually
204 unique viewers watching a total of 138 hours of live content
20 videos, including sessions, video blogs, and virtual host recap videos
1,549 video plays of the recorded videos (so far–the numbers keep growing!)
1,332 tweets (short little bursts of text about the conference on Twitter)
And a few quotes:
From a special guest from another organization: “[Our] Diversity Journey has once again been impacted by the transparent example of InterVarsity. I’ve collected some great new ideas […] including some unexpected insights into the power of manuscript Bible study in a diverse community[… P]ersonally, I was stretched and affirmed and challenged and admonished…and I head back [home] tonight with a renewed commitment and vision for what we must keep at.”
Special guest from Canada: “I left encouraged […] and was enriched by the depth of the wrestling of pertinent issues. There were some significant prophetic echoes heard in this gathering. Be assured that this gathering’s impact will continued to be a catalyst in re-charting the course of the InterVarsity movement.”
Virtually attending staff: “It was great. I am thankful for that opportunity to participate in this way even when attending wasn’t a possibility for me.”
InterVarsity leader from outside the Multiethnic Ministries Department: “As I sat with many of our national staff in Long Beach, I was struck by the engagement of the group with those not physically present. The emphasis was not on the golly-gee technology of streaming video or projected tweets of prayer. The emphasis was on welcoming, hosting, loving, caring and partnering. The ME staff seem to “get” virtual ministry. There is a lot to VM, but the emphases on relationship and channels of communication are most important.”
The virtual attendance, video, & social media team:
Maureen Huang, Jenn Ikoma-Motzko, Michael Motzko, Barney Lin, and 2100‘s David Hui, Laura Li, Glenn Griffin, and Steve Falk
Thank you for your support–you helped make this happen! Your support enabled each of those statistics to become reality, each of those experiences to come to fruition.
Once again, there’s a video that’s been making the rounds and I’ve found myself making the same response to it every time. I think it’s time to get my thoughts together in one place, and here it is. Before I start, here’s the video in question; it’s a clip of Morgan Freeman talking about his thoughts on Black History Month and talking about race.
I want to break this up into a few sections.
Black History Month
For starters, I want to acknowledge that I get where Freeman’s coming from. The ideal world is one in which Black History Month is unnecessary, the history of Black Americans so well integrated into the fabric and curriculums of the US that the idea of relegating it to a month seems ridiculous. I think Freeman and I share this desire.
The question, then, is how we go about achieving our goal. Is it canceling the institution of Black History Month and just hoping everything will just get better on its own? Or is it passionately campaigning for the inclusion of Black history in all the places it’s missing until Black History Month seems absurd?
The desire to see Black History Month gone now communicates that you think the world is either A) doing just fine as it is right now or B) at least headed in a good enough direction that we can trust it’ll get there soon enough. If you don’t, then your desire must be for Black History Month to be unnecessary in the future and then work for that future.
“Stop Talking About It”
I’ll be honest; I understand it feels great to hear Morgan Freeman–a famous Black person–say “let’s just stop talking about racism.” There are quite a few reasons for this.
First, it’s such a wonderfully simple answer. Do you mean that, simply by no longer talking about racism, it’ll go away? I’m not sure whether the uploader of this video intended the title to be ironic (although 1.2 million thumbs up suggests its viewers don’t take it ironically), but “Morgan Freeman solves the race problem”, the YouTube clip title, does seem to be how this video is usually proposed.
Second, it makes us feel comfortable for the answer to be to just ignore it. I know I’m not the only White person who often feels a little uncomfortable when we’re talking about race–like I’m not quite welcome, like I don’t understand the language, like I walked into a previously running conversation and nobody’s bringing me up to speed. If someone–an insider, nonetheless–tells me that the conversation is over, that makes me a lot more comfortable than someone telling me I have to stick it out and figure it out.
However, we’re running into the same situation as the previous point: we have to agree that either A) the world is fine as is or B) the world is doing well enough that it’ll just right itself on its own, without discussion. In a previous conversation I had about this, someone suggested that it’s unnecessary for race to be talked about so much, because “it may not even be a thought for most people on a daily basis.”
Here, I’ll have to step outside of my attempt at an un-biased approach and simply state: This is not the truth. The world is not fine. The world is not doing well enough on its own. And race is only easy to ignore if you’re White.
Bam. I said it. The concept of being able to just ignore race is a luxury particular to White people. (Since there are a lot of White people in the US, please know that I’m talking the majority here; I’m very aware that there are exceptions to this description.) We’ve spent our lives comfortably unaware of many of the racial dynamics at play in the US, and enjoyed being the recipients of race-based privilege that carries along with it a blanket hiding many of the experiences of people of color around us.
Racism and racialization are not gone.
Of course, the Trayvon Martin case is in the news right now. But that’s something that’s currently an issue of contention (although it’s very interesting to note the racial makeup of the different “sides” to the debate… take a look at that some time), and I’d rather work with something that has no contention.
Here are a few statistics to frame the conversation:
The average net worth of White Americans ($113,000) is 20 times the average net worth of Black Americans ($5,600) and 18 times the average net worth of Hispanics ($6,325). (source)
College-educated Black mothers have higher infant mortality rates than White mothers who dropped out of high school. (source)
Black Americans represent 13% of drug users (paralleling the national racial demographic), but they account for 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of those sent to prison on drug possession charges. (source)
More African Americans are under correctional control today (prison, jail, probation, or parole) than were enslaved in 1850. (source)
Statistics come from, and are given more context in, this post and this post.
There are so many more elements to this conversation–education, hiring, health care, beauty standards, and much more–but this is a place to start. There is a problem, and it is very large, and simply not talking about it is not going to make it go away.
Also: this conversation extends to other people of color, too, but Black people are the most hard hit by the effects of racialization in the US.
Our Response To This Video
I know this has been long. I want to write pages more, but let’s just end it here: As White people (and as people in general), we need to step outside of our place of comfort and be loving, compassionate advocates for people who are treated unjustly. As Christians we find it very easy to have compassion and fight for justice for oppressed people outside of the US, but somehow struggle to fight for justice within the US. Again, there are a lot of reasons behind that, but let’s just start with this: rather than being the ones trying to shush the race conversations, Christians–White American Christians in particular–should be the ones who push outside of our comfort zones and stand alongside our sisters and brothers of color. We should be the ones who are willing to examine ways we might have personally benefitted from systems of injustice, and we should be the ones who learn to listen to people of color rather than always demanding to be heard.
My vision is that, when people of color in the US (Christian and non-Christian alike) think with pain about the past and present oppression of their people, and the many rifts between people along racial lines, they would see White Christians as humble, loving allies who stand up for them when no one else will, who build bridges to places of power and influence, and who, like many White folks during the Civil Rights Era, march with them to the world where we don’t, indeed, need a Black History Month.
I’ve been posting a lot of a articles to my Facebook about race & ethnicity recently. A few (disclaimer: I don’t agree with 100% of everything in every link or quote I post. I post things because I want people to read/watch them.)
These have brought up some amazing conversations, and one conversation I’ve participated in today is about love. A friend pointed out that the first article, “Joseph Kony is famous. Trayvon Martin is not.” had a negative tone in some areas. We worked back and forth on it, discussing how the quotation marks the author put around the phrase “giving voices” wasn’t derogatory to the filmmakers, but instead an important nod to the discussion surrounding the “white savior” issue of foreign missions and race conversations.
But in the end, his point stood: many conversations about race become negative. Many race pundits, out of pain, frustration, or whatever else, develop an aggressively negative stance toward everything. Not this author, necessarily, but in general.
My friend pointed to Martin Luther King, Jr. as an example of how to deal with race, ethnicity, oppression, and justice in love. We have to approach each conversation, criticism, complaint, concern, and confrontation (all the letter C!) with love. And this reminded me of an article I posted a few days ago that wasn’t about race, but in hindsight fits perfectly into this conversation: Leading with Love, a mini-biography about Billy Graham’s consistent focus on love.
This conversation, and the inspiration of Graham and King, has led me to strongly desire to show as much of a consistent attitude and application of love as Graham and King did. Do you have any tips for me? Would you hold me accountable?
Regular readers, this is a post written for InterVarsity staff.
InterVarsity staff, you might’ve seen (or worse, been completely unaware of) the torrent of Facebook posts, videos, and InterVarsity Update mentions about Multiethnic Staff Conference ’12 Virtual Attendance. But there’s a good chance you don’t know why it really matters. We, the communications team of the Multiethnic Ministries Department, wanted to communicate a few reasons why this is so significant:
The Multiethnic Staff Conference and the matters discussed there is important for everyone on InterVarsity staff. Multiethnicity and racial reconciliation are not just important for staff of color; they’re values of our national movement and conversations we all need to enter. We strongly desire for every InterVarsity staffmember to be a vital part of this important conversation.
However, in the past, only a small percentage of staff could attend. This year we’re trying to change that by opening conference attendance up to everyone through virtual attendance. This isn’t just us saying “Hey, here are a few nice videos to watch if you’re bored, because, you know, staff have so much free time.” Instead, we’re working hard to get every InterVarsity staffmember to join us and participate as much as possible, whether or not they can attend physically.
This is a new step into the world of virtual ministry. We as a movement must be proficient in the language and techniques of social media, online communication, and virtual ministry. This is an opportunity for our entire movement to learn and grow in our effectiveness in using current technology in ministry, and your participation (and subsequent feedback!) will benefit us and hopefully you as well.
I hope this makes it a little more clear exactly why we’ve been pushing so hard to promote virtual attendance. So, now that you understand why we’ve been pushing it, would you consider registering today? You don’t even have to attend the entire conference if your schedule won’t allow it–but register today to see a schedule and to receive access to all of the videos and downloads. One note: make sure to run this by your supervisor to clear any time you’ll be taking off from your normal staff duties.
The word “racist” has a lot of weight attached to it. It’s the most powerful and descriptive word to address race-based discrimination, oppression, and general bad attitudes and behavior. However, it’s also painful and offensive to people who aren’t racist (or don’t consider themselves racist.) So how can we work around such a weighted term?
When I first went to college, I heard a (White) speaker declare that “all White people are racist.” I was shocked and instantly defensive–which was in part his goal. Since then I’ve struggled with how to understand and process this statement and his opinions, and I’d like to process a little bit here.
First, I don’t believe all White people are racist*. But he didn’t really mean “racist” in the way people are offended to hear it; he meant “insensitive, unaware, and potentially biased.” It’s still a negative portrayal, but vastly different from what most people imagine when they hear racist: “prejudiced, angry, judgmental, bigoted, and hateful.”
Second, I don’t believe all White people are what he meant by the word “racist.” Even being the same ethnicity as someone, it’s still stereotyping (and, arguably, racist) to assume that you know something about a person solely because of the color of their skin.
However, I do think his core point–when you dig past semantics–was right on point. Most White people in the US have quite a bit of growing to do in the area of race relationships. There are two main areas I’ve learned we suffer: Unaware-ness (yes, I made that word up) and racialization.
Unaware-ness
I do believe that the vast majority (we’re talking 97+% here) of White people in the US live our lives with little to no interactions with the significant racial undercurrents, tensions, conversations, and pressures that exist in the world around us. The point the speaker was trying to drive home is that not only do we not see it, we don’t even know it’s there. This is a topic for a much longer post/conversation (maybe next week?), so please excuse my brief but inflammatory statement here.
Essentially, as I’ve stepped into relationship with more and more people of color, and as I’ve learned more about the historic and present state of race relations in our country, I’ve begun to see the complex world of racial dynamics as something like the Matrix. There’s an entire world of interactions and pressures and battles that affects everything around us, but the majority of White Americans spend our lives blissfully unaware of it. The majority of American people of color, on the other hand, are unable to be unaware of these issues, as they affect their everyday lives.
Again, this is a touchy subject and one worth a much longer discussion, but that’s the start of it. There are many aspects of racial reconciliation that require structural change, but this is the one piece that is most powerfully affected by personal relationship. For me, it began to change when I (rather naïvely) joined an ongoing discussion about race and ethnicity in which I was one of few White people, and I had the opportunity to learn about the practical, lived out experiences of my friends of color.
Once again, more on this later.
Racialization
The other half of this puzzle is the concept of racialization. It is another made up word that I first discovered in the book Divided By Faith. Again, it’s a complex subject, but the essence of it is this: Our culture and our nation is racialized, which means it’s divided along racial lines. Income, unemployment, education, incarceration, housing quality, school quality, and many more areas of inequity in our country are striated based on racial lines. This means that no matter how post-racial our country is or isn’t, this fact is still true: ”African-Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population – and about 44 percent of America’s prison inmates.” (source) Whether or not you believe that’s because Black people are inherently more inclined to crime (which I hope you don’t), you must recognize that that shows a racialized aspect of our society–one which is separated based on race.
So, whether or not you are racist isn’t the deepest issue for White people. Many of us harbor no conscious stereotypes or negative attitudes towards people of color, and many of us even have friends of color. However, the concept of racialization shows that we live in a country that is deeply broken in regards to race and how it affects people’s lives. So the question here because less about your racism and more about your awareness and action: Do you understand that we live in a racialized society that privileges us because we’re White? If not, how does your view line up with the statistics like the one I quoted above? If so, what are you doing about it?
Again, these are all complex topics–and this is already an extremely long blog post–but I hope this can begin the conversation. Please, let me know what you think, and feel free to get in touch with me so we can discuss it further.
*However, I do think you’d be hard-pressed to find a person of any race that harbors not one unexamined stereotype, race-based presumption, or similar internal racist thought. It’s in our nature to make assumptions (stereotypes, if you will) about people based on shared characteristics, and when you add to that every external force in our culture shaping and molding us to think this way about this person and that way about the other, it’s a potent brew of presumptions. Similarly, unless someone has perfectly equal exposure to people of every culture, and the most saintly attitude of openness and non-judgment, some of their knowledge and understanding of people of other cultures will be less complete and less accurate than that of others. As a musical once suggested, I’d suggest “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.”
There’s a debate happening at Vanderbilt University between the administration and a large portion of the student populace. Vanderbilt has suspended several Christian organizations, including InterVarsity’s Graduate Christian Fellowship, for requiring their student leaders to be Christians. Learn more from InterVarsity here.
In a “town hall” last night during which the administration reportedly dismissed student concerns, the university compared this current issue to the Civil Rights movement. In their eyes, campus organizations that are officially recognized by the university should, in keeping with the university’s non-discrimination policy, not be able to “discriminate” in their leadership selection by requiring student leaders to be Christians; Vanderbilt sees themselves as Civil Rights crusaders.
Notice that this is not about who the groups allow to attend their meetings, but rather who lead them. When the potential for this situation to arise has been discussed in the past, the comparison has been made to the university requiring the Campus Democrats to allow all comers–even Republicans–to become leaders within this organization. Imagine, if a group of Republicans joined a Democratic club and successfully voted one of their own a leader of the organization.
This is not to suggest that Christian groups have enemies on campus that plan to infiltrate our ranks. Rather, it’s to point out the extreme to which the university is attempting to take a well-intentioned non-discrimination policy.
For now, the best we can do is pray and stay up to date on the news surrounding the issue. If you want to learn more, take a look at InterVarsity’s Campus Access page.
This is not theological, but rather news-about-my-job related: I just pressed the launch button (if only there were a real launch button) on the first piece of my first large project: Virtual Attendance for InterVarsity’s Multiethnic Staff Conference.
When I came onboard, the idea was to offer recorded versions of the main sessions of the conference for staff to view after the fact. Thinking back to my (oh-so-long-ago) time as campus staff, I pushed for livestreaming (which they had considered) for the sake of getting non-attending staff involved right then, rather than “when I get to it.”
Well, it morphed into the entire concept of “virtual attendance”, replete with a registration form, special videos, a Twitter hash tag (#MESC12), and an entirely separate schedule and packet of handouts. We’re recruiting viewing party hosts and virtual attendees and just trying to get this whole virtual attendance concept up and running.
So, today we launched the actual informational site. It’s currently only viewable by InterVarsity staff, but I’ll link it up here if the decision is made to make it public.
Whew. That’s a big project, unloaded. Next step: Recruit viewing party hosts, recruit virtual attendance participants, cast the vision for all staff in InterVartity to participate, develop the virtual attendance schedule, and make plans for how social media and the web site will be structured and will interact during the conference itself.
After March 9 (the day the conference is over), I’ll start an entirely new set of responsibilities, and I’m equally excited about them. There will be plenty of web and social media, but there’s also the opportunities to network with thinkers and doers, edit memoirs and treatises (not really treatises, but I just like the word), and write/videotape/create. This is the good, meaty stuff.
For now, though, I’m going to rest–just for a few days–on the joy of having launched this portion of the site, and then it’s back to the grind.
One quick note: This project was not only “my project,” but was a collaborative effort of the entire Communications team. It wouldn’t have happened without the work that was done prior to my arrival, the group brainstorming sessions, or the videos and other materials produced by other members of the team.
). I love this! I can learn from those with more wisdom than me, but share what I’ve learned with others; also, I’m not just hiding in an enclave of people who think like me, but being given the opportunity to interact and share and develop relationships from people all across the theological and philosophical spectrum.