What's So Anti-Racist about a Stack of Paper?

It was a very quiet March.

I sent the dissertation out to the committee in the last days of February, thinking I'd have feedback by the end of Spring Break. I was hoping for constructive criticism, and the go-ahead to defend.

Well, I did get the go-ahead; the oral defense is scheduled a week from today. By this time next week, I'm likely to be done.

But there has been no feedback, aside from that offered by my advisor before I sent the whole thing out to committee. That's a little unnerving.

I deliberately took a break from the manuscript while waiting for comments, and it's been good to come back to it with a fresher eye. I've spent the last week reading through the pages -- all 400 some-odd -- and seeing how things hold together.

It is too long ... and by the time I got to the end of writing most chapters, I was too out of breath to write much of a conclusion. So, there's work left to do, and I've been trying to do it, wishing I had red pen marks to focus my efforts.

But there is also work that has been done. As I read through the pages, I feel a quiet sense of satisfaction, and the realization that -- imperfect as it is -- it does what it set out to do, what I could do. I felt real trepidation at the beginning of the project, that I would not be able to get out what was inside me, get it onto the page in a way that represented what I had learned from the grace and hard effort of so many people. It is not all it could be, and there will be advisors and committee members and maybe editors to point that out, but I did the part no one else was going to do: this dissertation represents the learnings of my community in a way that makes those lessons available to others.

I hope that's worth something; I hope it matters to someone someday. Specifically, I hope it matters to white folks trying to learn to live more justly, to live into the kind of loving we are called to. And if not, well, I guess dissertating is like preaching: how it is received is not your primary concern. Getting the word out is your task.

Right now I am flooded with what has been the most common emotion through all of this: what is so anti-racist about a stack of paper? What good is having done this? Wouldn't I have done better to be involved in trying to reach white people personally, and getting involved in local initiatives led by Latinos/as and other people of color?

Could be. I'll never know. This is the path that presented itself to me when all other doors were closing. It has been my practice and my church and my memory-book and my therapy and my credo. I know what I know more surely, and I can argue for what I know a little more effectively.

Which I will have to do next week. Perhaps the most important question of all is the one I am expected to answer right up front, in an opening statement. What question did I seek to answer in the dissertation? What answer did I arrive at? What difference does this make -- that is, how does this project advance the inquiry in the field?

When I was trying to frame the core of the project, I found some words from ecofeminist theologian Sallie McFague helpful. She sees theology as "the attempt to bring the resources and insights of the religious past into fruitful conversation with the challenges of the present. ... There must be people whose priority it is to look critically at the interplay between theological ideas and everyday practices; to listen carefully to the voices and experiences of suffering and ask how religion has contributed to that suffering as well as how it might offer words of hope and healing." (McFague, "Theology as Action," in Constructive Theology, Jones and Lakeland, p. 152)

In my case, the question that found language in McFague's framework was this: "How can the resources and insights of Christian theology be used to challenge and undo racist oppression, when theological ideas have contributed to the construction and maintenance of that oppression?"

I had to write the dissertation to find out whether I could answer that question. The good news is that I did find answers. Here are some.

First, Christian theology has to acknowledge that it has contributed to the construction and maintenance of racist oppression. Theologians of color have been pointing this out for years; some white theologians also have begun to acknowledge this truth. In my dissertation, I listen to (i.e., quote) scholars exploring this deadly history. One scholar, for instance, traces the rise from Christian supremacy in Spain (with its concern for limpieza de sangre, or pure blood) of white-skin supremacy in the "new world." Others note the religious language and imagery wrapped up in newspaperman John O'Sullivan's 1840s reference to "manifest destiny," language that captured and justified the greedy exploitation, expulsion, and execution of American Indians.

Second, Christian theology needs to attend to its underlying epistemology. Traditional epistemological concerns address such questions as "what do we know? how do we know we know? what is true?" Feminist scholars have shifted the field of concern to include questions such as "what difference does the knower make? what is worth knowing? what is the purpose of knowing?" Women of color scholars ask "what difference does the knowing make? does it liberate?" (One hears the echo of "will it preach?") Ignacio Ellacuría, murdered Salvadoran priest, philosopher and theologian, argued that the only adequate form of knowledge was that which led to critical awareness of reality, and then to taking responsibility for that reality (particularly what was unjust in it), and committing to and working to change that reality. In this case, having become critically aware that theology has contributed to the construction and maintenance of racist oppression, we theologians and Christians need to take responsibility for that reality, and change it.

I've tried to do just that, to do my small part to change how theology is done, by modeling how a white person can write an anti-racist theology, in an anti-racist way. I drafted a set of prerequisites (prayer, relationships, openness, praxis) and principles (dare to dream and hope; consider the impact of worldviews; be power-aware; embrace partiality) that I wanted to follow in writing the theology, and then I did my best to follow them. I determined key theological methods (being responsible, appreciating-not-appropriating, being accountable, integrating focus on material and spiritual realities, and thinking/working in matrixed ways) and then practiced them. I defined key tasks (re-examine everything, work locally with a global awareness, follow the lead of and seek to benefit people experiencing oppression, and develop practical tools for transformation) and tried to accomplish them.

Yeah. I think I advanced the field, because of who I listened to, and because I tried to respond. Whether this project advances the inquiry in the field is ... up to the field.

I have done what I could do. And whatever happens in the defense next Monday, I will never forget the words of my peers, the anti-racist fellow journeyers who read early drafts and gave me not only the critical feedback I badly needed, but who also offered affirmations I would not have imagined. Their words ... their words have made this stack of paper worth something.

May these pages help build bridges toward more justly abundant futures.