TRH on Racism No. 1: Name the Tension. Call it Racism.

by Erin M. Conway

Recently I read Jon Sobrino, SJ’s book No Salvation Outside the Poor. In it, he writes about the necessity and impact of calling things by name. Theologically, the simple act of naming, he writes, “means making things real, calling them into existence.”¹ Sobrino cites Genesis here as the first example of the power of names. Names give validity. They give power. They take things previously unacknowledged and confirm their existence.

As a liberation theologian, Sobrino is deeply concerned with Catholics’ particular acknowledgment of and encounter with the poor. Writing in the aftermath of the Salvadoran Civil War, he seeks especially to call attention to the thousands of Salvadorans who were disappeared² or killed in those years. “Just by mentioning the names of the tortured, dead, and disappeared,” he writes, “we recognize their fundamental dignity as human beings who deserve to be remembered as such.” Knowing the names of the poor allows us to enter into relationship with them, and in doing so we are able to acknowledge the dignity that exists within them as children of God. After all, God herself tells us in Isaiah 43, “I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Sobrino examined his historical and cultural moment and cried out for justice. He believed that the central mission of the church is and would be lost when a society lost sight of her poor.

As I finished Sobrino’s book, I was confronted with questions. What massive poverty or injustice threatens our nation today? Who are the people whose fundamental dignity we should be remembering? Who or what, should we, as people of faith, be calling by name?

You don’t have to look too hard in our country today to discover situations fraught with injustice.

• The killing of unarmed black men and women by police with seemingly little legal recourse.
• A president who ran an election campaign inundated with references to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” “murderers,” and even “bad hombres.”
• Children separated from their parents as they seek asylum on our Southern Border.
• A twitter storm that consumed our country in response to the behavior of students from Covington Catholic High School.
• The divisive rhetoric surrounding Colin Kaepernick’s insistence on kneeling during the National Anthem and the backlash that has met those who followed suit.
• Four years worth of unclean water for families and children in Flint, Michigan.
• A so-called “Muslim ban” which prohibited foreign nationals from Muslim majority countries from entering the United States.

As much as we speak about these events, as much as we talk about them with our friends or post about them on social media, we often fail to name what they all hold in common.

What if we acknowledged that each and every one of those events is affected by, escalated by, or defined by race? What if we called the systemic inequalities that ravage our country by the name of racism? What if we, as people of faith, pushed our country to talk about race and racism in a way that honors the humanity of all people? What if we, as white Catholics, examined the ways in which our privilege has blinded us to the struggles of our brothers and sisters of color? What if as a church we spoke more intentionally and consistently about the racism that exists not only in our country but in our church? What if we spent time encountering and accompanying people of color rather the seeking constantly to explain why we aren’t actually racist? How could this naming change our nation?

To be fair, our world does not often provide us with strong examples. Mainstream media, for example, seems to bend over backward in order to avoid specifically naming any incidents or individuals as “racist.” For example, NPR recently reported on how, in response to remarks by Iowa Representative Steve King, an editor from NBC News sent an email to their staff which read, “Be careful to avoid characterizing [King’s] remarks as racist. It is okay to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist’ or something like that.”

If you listen closely, you’ll hear similar, more subtle rhetoric everywhere. We’d rather say that our immigration policies stem from “concerns over national security,” not an underlying racism for those who look different than us. We’d prefer to argue that poverty in our cities is not the result of historically racist policies such as redlining, but is instead connected to “laziness” or “poor decision making.” It is more comfortable to claim black Americans are killed by police because they “were reaching for their waistband,” not because of implicit racial bias.

We cannot create justice and move beyond the racism that divides our country if we don’t first name it.

Father Bryan Massingale, Professor of Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham, speaks adamantly that “virtually every social challenge facing the United States [...] is entangled with or aggravated by racial bias against people of color.” He calls racism “the subtext of almost every social concern in our nation”³ and insists that Catholics lead the way in conversations about racial justice.

Instead of shying away, let’s use names.

Tamir Rice.
Trayvon Martin.
LaQuan McDonald.
Sandra Bland.
Jakelin Caal Maquin.
Felipe Gomez Alonzo.

When we name the black men and women killed at the hands of the police, when we name the children who died in the custody of Customs and Border Patrol, it becomes much harder to look away. It becomes harder to imagine that their lives and deaths have nothing to do with us.

In my own life, I have been able to name the racism I see in our country because of my experiences as a teacher. Working in places like Baltimore City, the Coachella Valley, and Cleveland has caused me to look deep inside, recognize my own privilege, and realize I can no longer stay silent. Once I listened to the stories of my students I realized the privileged place I occupy in the universe and there has been no turning back. I learned names and stories and I haven’t been able to look away.

My job has enabled me, a white Catholic woman, to walk in the door each day and encounter people of color in a meaningful and intimate way. This accompaniment doesn’t mean I perfectly handle conversations surrounding race, however. They are moments my students and I struggle to understand one another, moments when I fail in my role as a compassionate educator, when I put my foot in my mouth and fail to recognize fundamental differences that lies between our experiences and realities. But in these encounters, I’ve been able to NAME the struggle. Racism is real. I see and hear it every day and I truly believe that my students have allowed me to recognize this in a way I never have before.

As a people of faith, we can do what God asks of us and lead the way in the naming of racism. We can recognize that racism and its implications are things we should absolutely care about. We can work actively to dismantle its effects. For many of us, meaningful encounter with people of color is not an everyday occurrence. So we must change our behavior. We must learn names, we must learn stories, and we must enter into meaningful relationship.

But in this effort, we shouldn’t put the burden of story sharing on our brothers and sisters of color. We have to do the work ourselves first. Read books. Listen to podcasts. Check out The Restless Hearts over the next several weeks as we dive more deeply into the ways race and racism intersects with our existence as Catholics. We can examine our own prejudices and begin to recognize our own privilege, and perhaps more importantly, our own blind spots. Let’s begin to call this thing by its name: racism.

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1 No Salvation Outside the Poor, Jon Sobrino, Orbis Books, 2008.^↩

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2 There are thousands of Salvadoran’s who went missing during the Civil War whose deaths have never been accounted for - these individuals are referred to as having been “disappeared.”^↩

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3 Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, Bryan N. Massingale, Orbis Books, 2010. ^↩

The Invisible Fingerprints of Formation

by Erin Conway

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the forces and ideas that form us. These are the values that reside deep in our hearts that seemingly lack origin, the ideas that we didn’t realize were shaping us. Combined, these ideas and values cover us in invisible fingerprints, fingerprints that can only be seen when particular circumstances cast a new light on them.

I’ve had several instances in my life where I’ve uncovered these invisible fingerprints.

When I started teaching at a Jesuit school in 2009, for instance, I remember learning about Jesuit spirituality and thinking to myself wow, my whole life has been Jesuit, we just never called it that. Sure, my parents attended a Jesuit parish and grade school, and my dad, grandfather, and brother went to a Jesuit high school, but I never “spoke Ignatian” until I arrived in Baltimore. I never had a name for the values that I saw lived out around me. Instead, the drive to be a woman for others, the desire to center the voices of the marginalized, the practice of growth through reflection, felt “right” to me because I saw them lived out in simple, non-attention-seeking ways. The actions and attitudes of my parents (perhaps also unknowingly shaped) left me covered in Jesuit fingerprints. These things had become ingrained in me without my understanding of what or why or how.

Then, in 2015, Father Ted Hesburgh passed away. As a student at Notre Dame, Father Hesburgh’s name was certainly one I knew and his office of the 13th floor of the library bearing his name was the stuff of legend, but I couldn’t have told you much about who he was or what he’d done for the university.¹ Shortly after Hesburgh’s death I read an article from America Magazine about his life and history and was surprised to find so much of who I am and what I believe woven into his language, in the way he spoke about Our Lady’s University and his desires for her students. I realized that, because of age, maturity, or the distractions of life, I hadn’t understood Notre Dame as a Catholic University when I was there. I didn’t understand the kind of people she was trying to produce. Again, I was stunned to find myself covered in invisible fingerprints, my image reflected back to me.

Most recently, however, I noticed the invisible fingerprints of formation connected to my teaching. This year I’ve been given the privilege of piloting a service learning program in our Sophomore Theology class. It’s the perfect combination of everything I love about Catholic, Jesuit education: an opportunity to get to know students in the classroom; a chance to volunteer side by side with students, modeling faith in action; and a way to implement continual and (hopefully) meaningful reflection. With all these benefits, it’s not hard to believe that I started the year flying high.

But two weeks ago we hit a rough patch. I had a group of students who demonstrated a disappointing lack of maturity at a service site, I watched other groups of students struggle and even seemingly refuse to engage at other sites, and when I created a space for open feedback at the end of the first quarter, close to 1/5 of my students asked some form of the question “why are we doing this?” or “what does this have to do with Theology?”

I was crushed. I had tried so hard to create a space where students could find God in their work with the world and it seemed I had missed the mark.

Disheartened, I went back to the beginning, to the mission statement I’d shared with students at the start of the year.

In the sophomore Theology course at Saint Martin students will explore their call to the creation of a more just world through the formation of loving relationships. As part of his/her Theology class, each sophomore will participate in a continual process of action and reflection that combines volunteering in the community with theological content learned in the classroom. This form of community-based learning promotes kinship and solidarity between students and the communities and sites where they spend time. This experience in the community is aimed at helping each sophomore grow as both a student and a person of faith and is meant to instill an awareness of his/her responsibility to work for justice and transform urban Cleveland.

We hope that this cycle of action and reflection becomes a way of life for our students as they become men and women for others.²

Mission statement in hand, driven to show students that I wasn’t as crazy as they thought, I went back to the drawing board, taking time to gather documents, readings, and resources that could defend our work those who didn’t yet understand why it mattered. I wanted to explain to students (and perhaps myself) why we opted to forgo daily classroom instruction and catechesis to spend time working with marginalized individuals in our community.

Although a better Theology teacher might have gone first to the Bible, starting with Jesus to explain to students why serving the “least of our brothers and sisters” was, in fact, deeply theological, I accessed these ideas (I realize now) in the way that I learned them, in Jesuit texts. I pulled four partial texts for my students: the Saint Martin de Porres High School Founding Curriculum, “What Makes A Jesuit School Jesuit?”, Pedro Arrupe’s Speech “Men and Women for Others” and an article by Dean Brackley, SJ called “The Challenge of the UCA.”

I can’t explain what inspired me to start with these particular texts other than, well, God, but what I found there were the words from my mission statement, words and ideas that had been ingrained into my person, my soul, and my being without my awareness. Once again, I found myself reflected back at me and I recognized the invisible fingerprints of formation.

What I learned, however, was how incredibly satisfying, and even powerful, to put a language to myself, to the person I am. And on top of all that, discovering these fingerprints brought me to a deep awareness of and gratitude for the institutions that have shaped me, the people who have loved me and for the God who has guided me, leaving her prints on my being.

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1 It seems important to mention here that I was not a life-long ND aficionado. I knew little of the University before I set foot on Campus in 2005. In fact, during Freshman Orientation, I found myself a definite outside when we sang the fight song for the first time - I had never heard the song before in my life.^↩

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2 A quick caveat: The fingerprints on this piece of my curriculum are not so invisible. The Mission Statement was *just slightly* adapted from the language used by my last school (Xavier College Prep) in connection to their Junior Praxis Project. Thanks Xavier for making me look good! ^↩

How a Solo Summer in Europe (Hopefully) Changed My Life

by Erin Conway

What did you do over summer vacation?

It’s a predictable question used by teachers, professors, colleagues, friends, and more at the start of every school year. Responding often seems to morph into a competition, as students (0r adults) try to one up each other, each vacation sounding more fantastic than the last.

And so it’s with this fear in the back of my mind that I now write, at the risk of sounding trite and predictable (and in full awareness of its cliché-ness), that my summer vacation was magical. When I was asked the usual question on my return to school in early August, I said that without a doubt, my summer adventures had the potential to shift the trajectory of my life -- if I allow them to.

No, I didn’t get married or meet the love of my life. I didn’t start a new job or spend deeply important and meaningful time with loved ones. In fact, I spent this summer almost entirely on my own.

As a teacher, I often use the summer months to get a second job, something like teaching summer school or working at a day camp, to rake in that extra dough, but this past summer I decided to pass. Instead, I booked a flight and planned to use five weeks of my six week summer vacation to traipse about Europe (mostly) alone.

A caveat: I’m not a stranger to European travel. I travelled abroad for the first time when I was 16, studied in Greece for a semester when I was a junior in college, and have had the privilege to visit Europe with family at least four other times. My parents jokingly refer to me as their “tour guide” on these trips. I plan the itinerary, learn how the transportation works, do the translating (poorly, but still), find the accommodations, and chose the sites we’ll visit. I say this not to flaunt my travels, but to show simply that I’m no stranger to European adventures. I say this to explain that the power of this trip wasn’t the necessarily the novelty of my experience but of what it taught me about my life and myself.

* * *

It reminded me that I love to write.

Like the true journal hound that I am, I bought a new journal, acquired new pens, and committed (again) to write every day. But, for perhaps the first time ever, I actually did it.

Committed to making writing my “me time” each day, I instead (re)discovered that journaling is actually my “God time.” Although my writing often started as a simple retelling of my day, it usually transformed into God at work in my life... a clarification of my emotions, an understanding of my desires, or a revelation of who I was and what I needed.

Once I started to write, I was amazed to discover how much my mind craved this activity. One of my favorite travel activities became finding the perfect café, bar, park bench, or grassy lawn on which to capture my thoughts. My daily “God time” became a habit that centered me and reminded me of who I was.

It reminded me that it’s okay to stop and take time for you.

One day when I was in Geneva, Switzerland, I booked a ticket for an eight-hour ferry and read a book in a lounge chair ALL DAY on the top deck while staring at a gorgeous lake. That day ranks in the top three of all my adventures, if not my favorite day. But it almost didn’t happen.

When I first stumbled upon this idea, I hesitated. I had only scheduled three days in Geneva and I had a decently extensive list of things I wanted to see and experience. Spending almost the entirety of one of those days on a boat felt almost wasteful.

But thankfully, I paused. If I had been on a “regular” summer vacation, at the beach or the lake, I would likely spend a large number of days sitting in a chair, reading a book, staring at water, and drinking a beer. And gosh darn it, this WAS my vacation. Sure, it was different, it was a chance to explore new cultures and place, but it was also one of weeks I earned, teaching high school seniors 50+ hours a week. I was going back to work when I got home, I reminded myself, so I needed to enjoy the time I had.

I took a step back from what I thought I should be doing, from what I thought was expected as me of a traveler, from my fear that I would miss out on experiences or have regrets and I took time for me. I choose to do the thing I love the most, in the setting I love the most. And wow, was it perfect.

I learned that being anonymous and doing things alone is a powerful thing (and not always as awkward as you expect).

On one of my first days in Europe, after spending an entire afternoon wandering the streets of Madrid alone, I wrote in my journal there is an anonymity to travel that I can’t get enough of, it makes you feel insignificant in the best way, you recognize what little space you actually occupy. I felt this early on, and it quickly became a refrain for my experience.

This anonymity became extremely powerful for me. One of my greatest anxieties in life is being judged by others, of making a fool of myself. And while teaching high school students has helped me release some of that fear (being extra weird is sometimes the only thing that catches their attention), this fear often stops me from acting, from doing the things I want to do.

But when you travel solo through Europe for weeks at a time though, you are forced to do things on your own. Eat at restaurants alone. Go to the movies alone. Ride a ferris wheel by yourself. Sit at a bar alone and have a glass of wine. Go to a beach filled with families and couples and find a spot alone for your towel.

And although I often entered into each of these activities with butterflies in my stomach or a racing heart, I discovered that no one cared what I did. I don’t know why it felt different in a different country, but it did. It sounds simple, but it was freeing to know that even if people judged me, I would quite literally never see them again in my life. This feeling of anonymity freed me up in ways I couldn’t imagine. I did all the activities I wanted to do when I wanted to do them. I remembered that while I’m a person who has other people that care about them, I am not the center of everyone’s world. People are busy living their lives and realizing this helped me to get busy living mine.



I was reminded of what balance feels like.

Anyone who know me well will tell you that my life is often out of whack. The phrase I’ve used often to describe my teaching life is “unsustainable.” Sure, I can power through and survive for the time being - but for two, five, or ten more years? It hardly seems possible and certainly feels unhealthy.

But this summer I felt the magic of a life in balance.

I exercised enough, slept enough, wrote (and prayed) enough, read enough, and took enough time for myself to feel an almost complete lack of anxiety. I still felt like my life had purpose and structure, I wasn’t floundering in the way I sometimes do at the start of a vacation, but it didn’t feel unsustainable.

And while I recognize that a life-long sabbatical which involves me living off my savings and adventuring rather than bringing in a salary could not feasibly last more than 3 or 4 months, I realized that this time refocused me on what I really want. I want to feel in control. I want to feel like I have time for myself. I want to feel like I have a purpose. I want to feel excited about each day. The question of where and how I find that outside of my European adventure may be a bit more challenging.

* * *

One of my prayers this summer was the repeated question, how do I bring this experience home with me? We ask this of ourselves and our students after retreats and immersions, but what about spiritual experiences that take the form of our everyday lives? How do we capture the peace of a balanced existence and bring that into the busyness that is teaching, parenting, marriage, friendship, work, and well, life? That’s perhaps what I will carry with me most into the future from this experience.

This summer’s true power will only really be tested as my life unfolds. I’ll know how much it transformed me if I can continue to chase balance, pursue writing, be brave, embrace quiet, and take time for myself.

Dear Mom: A Love Letter to Our Lady

by Erin M. Conway

Dear Mom,

First of all, I hope you don’t mind me addressing you so casually. I know other people often address you as “Our Lady” or “Holy Mother” or simply “Mary,” but when we walk around campus at the University of Notre Dame, my best friend Steph always calls out “Hey mom!” whenever we catch a glimpse of you perched on top of the Golden Dome and I’ve always liked that. So if you’ll allow it, I’m going to call you mom in this letter. I hope you recognize it for what it is, a sign of my deep love for you.

Posing with my earth mom and aunt
in front of the dome at Notre Dame.

As you know, I haven’t always appreciated you the way I should. Like Jesus, who grew in “wisdom and age” (Lk 2:52), it’s taken me some time to understand how much you matter to me and how much you’ve been present in my life. But then again, I think that is how it is with most people and their moms, right? We rarely realize how important our mothers are to us until much later in life.

The first time I really recognized how cool you could be (sorry it took me 25 years!) was during my first day of new teacher meetings at Xavier College Prep in Palm Desert, CA. Taking that job had required a huge leap of faith for me, I’d moved across the country to live and work in a town I’d never even heard of before, not a typical Erin move as you know. Just a few days after my arrival I listened to a fellow new teacher (and later good friend) speak about how she had a special love for and devotion to you. I couldn’t tell you now exactly what Natalie said about you that day, but I remember the way it made me feel. She and I shared a middle name, Marie, and until that point I had always considered my middle name to be cliche and boring. I knew it mattered to my other mom (the one who gave birth to me) because it was her own mother’s middle name, but in all honesty, I had always wished that it was more unique. When Natalie shared her story, however, I realized that my name connected me to you forever mom, and since then I’ve always felt proud of being linked to you in such a way.

Not surprisingly, once I recognized our link, my appreciation for you grew deeper during my time at Xavier. My first year in the desert, I gathered often during lunch with a group of female teachers and we prayed the rosary together. It was always quick, maybe 15 minutes or so, but it connected me to you in a new way. Sure, I’d prayed the rosary since I was young (although if I’m being honest, I usually did it as a way to fall asleep rather than as an intentional, thoughtful form of prayer… sorry Mom!), but I had never prayed it together with friends. I think more than the prayer, though, I was grateful to be welcomed and loved by these women who had such a special love for you. I admired their faith and wanted to be part of something like that. In fact, as I look back at my time at Xavier (which you know were some of the most formative years in my faith life), I realize that all of the women who were most important to me, the women who helped me to live my life for Christ, who inspired me to love more fully and deeply, who walked with me as I sought my vocation, each and every one of these women had a deep love of you. I think this matters, Mom. As I look back now, I am filled with gratitude for you because I know you put these women in my life to be physically present when you could not.

The statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe
outside Dolores Mission,
decorated for her feast day.

And of course, it was during my three years at Xavier that I encountered you in another new way that deepened my love for you, in the forms of Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lady of Guadalupe. At Dolores Mission Parish in East LA (named for Our Lady of Sorrows¹) I encountered a new way to live my faith, the people and programs of the parish showed me what it truly means to live the Gospel and to love God and their neighbor.² I can honestly say I wouldn’t be the person I am today without this place, and although it wasn’t an exclusive encounter with you, mom, I know that your love brought me there and guided the people of the parish. It was here, too, that I met what I like to tell people is my “favorite Mary,” Our Lady of Guadalupe. Obviously, every version of “Our Lady” that we encounter is you, mom, but something about encountering this embodiment of you, early on the morning of your feast day, during a mass that celebrated your presence to those on the margins, a mass that felt genuinely joyful, helped me to realize once again how much you mean to people and how much they love you. Anyone who gets up before 5 AM and signs their heart out must have a darn good reason for it!

Now Mom, I know you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, okay, Erin, all this is great, but why are you telling me this NOW? Why is all this so important to you in this specific moment in time? Hold tight, Mom, I’m getting to that right now.

For the past two weeks I’ve been on a pilgrimage through Spain and Italy, following in the steps of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Pretty cool, right? And while I’ve learned a whole lot of fascinating things about Ignatius and the early Jesuits, more than anything, I’ve been struck by your presence everywhere on this journey.

When we were in Spain, we stopped at something like seven different Marian shrines in four days. At first I was confused, why these places? I’ve never heard of most of these before, what do they have to do with Ignatius? We learned that even though visits to many of these shrines aren’t officially documented in Ignatius’ autobiography, historically it is unimaginable that a religious pilgrim like Ignatius traveling the direction he did would not have stopped at each of these places. This surprised me. I guess I never realized how important you were to my buddy Iñigo.³ I didn’t realize how central your presence was and is in Ignatian spirituality and devotion. As a product of his times in many ways, Ignatius, like many of his contemporaries, believed that the best way to access God was through you. As Jesus’ mom, you had a unique relationship and privileged access to your son. In the same way I call my own earthly mother when I’m overwhelmed or sad or joyful or just need someone to talk to, Ignatius visited your shrines to talk to you. It makes sense.

As I reflected back over my trip later, I realized that many of my deepest moments of consolation occurred at these Marian shrines. For example, at Our Lady of Olatz in Azpeitia, I felt God’s presence reverberating off the walls of the simple chapel, captured in the voices of my fellow pilgrims as they sang the Salve Regina. After seeing your image, found by a farmer among the thorns at Arantzazu,⁴ I sat outside and was awed by the beauty of the mountains and the soft breeze across my face. When we visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar, I was wowed by the sheer number of people who travelled to see you. In Montserrat, when I came face to face with the Black Madonna, I wanted so much to share this image of you with my students. I found your representation as something other than white to be powerful and important, welcoming all people into participation in Christ.

The image of Madonna and Child

in the Cathedral of Saint Paul’s Outside-the-Walls in Rome.

But Mom, in true Erin fashion, I didn’t connect the dots at first as I visited these shrines. I didn’t realize that you were the thread that wove through all these experiences (crazy, I know!) until I sat face to face with you in the Cathedral of Saint Paul’s Outside-the-Walls in Rome. In a side chapel, there is an image of Madonna and Child, the very image in from of which Ignatius and his first companions took their first vows as Jesuits. This connection to Ignatius was enough to console me, but as I sat there staring at this beautiful image of you, I was floored by the realization that you’d been working in the background of my trip. Every key moment of consolation on my trip, was connected to you. You’d been with me the whole time and I didn’t realize it until then.

Even my purchase of the only souvenir I’d picked up thus far, a 10 bead rosary bracelet from the childhood home of my boy Francis Xavier, was connected to you. Because of the connections I’ve found between Xavier’s life and my own,⁵ this visit was the one I was most looking forward to. But the momento I picked up, although it had Frank’s face on it (like you and I, Francis Xavier and I are on familiar terms… I also hope he doesn’t mind), it was a tool to pray with you. Because you’ve always been there for me even when I didn’t acknowledge you.

And in these same moments, as I scribbled furiously in my journal (my favorite form of prayer, as you know), I flashed back to Xavier once again (the school, not the saint), and I started (with your guidance, I’m sure) to connect even more dots. Everything that happened to me at Xavier and on this immersion began to click into place. It struck me just how Jesuit this devotion to you is and how much it had been present in my life without my acknowledging it. It was like when I started learning about the Ignatian spirituality and the Jesuits when I started teaching almost ten years ago. Day after day I was struck by just how Jesuit my life had been up until that point, but I didn’t realize it because I didn’t “speak the language.” My realization of your presence in my life and on this trip was similar. It was really Jesuit and it had always been there, I just didn’t see it.

So basically, mom, consider this letter as a long way of saying THANK YOU. Thanks for being my mother, for loving me even when I forget you’re around, for giving up your only son so that I could live, for placing women in my life who have shaped and guided me into the person I am today, and for working behind the scenes to help me build a relationship with your Son and God the Father. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without you!

Your loving daughter,
Erin MARIE Conway

P.S. Oh, and thanks for giving me the mom who birthed me as well, she shares a lot of these same qualities and I don’t always thank her enough for them!

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1 Dolores means sorrows in Spanish.^↩

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2 Dolores Mission Parish is the launching place of Homeboy Industries and the former parish of my hero, Father Greg Boyle, SJ. During my time at Xavier, I helped coordinate and lead immersion trips to Dolores Mission for our students. The parish to me is a beacon of social justice and Catholicism done right.^↩

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3 We used the names Iñigo and Ignatius interchangeably on the pilgrimage. The man we now know as Ignatius of Loyola was born with name Iñigo but then changed his name to Ignatius sometime while he studied in Paris.^↩

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4 The word Arantzazu literally means, “You, among the thorns?!” which is what the farmer who found the statue is believed to have said upon discovering it (he was looking for his cow).^↩

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5 To understand more why I feel so connected to Francis Xavier, check out my first post!^↩

The Cost of Faith

by Erin M. Conway

If I say I believe in God what does that mean for my life?
If I say I am a follower of Christ, how must I act?

All year, these essential questions have been written on the whiteboard in my classroom. They’ve framed our conversations on social justice and vocation. We’ve wrestled with them together, in some moments finding their answers more palatable than in others. Oftentimes the answers to these questions result in discomfort - emotional, mental, or, perhaps most frighteningly, physical.

Since the election of our 45th president in November of 2016, I’ve found myself thinking in very real ways about my personal answers to these questions. At what point, I’ve often thought, will I have to put aside my own comfort and put myself on the line for what my faith expects of me? At what point, will I be asked to be criticized in defense of my students and others who live on the margins? At what point will I be asked to place myself in the pathway of potential physical harm?

This past week, I’ve once again found myself face to face with these questions. Surrounded by images of migrant children separated from their parents, photographs of individuals in detention facilities, and stories of workers who live and work near me arrested while at work, leaving children and families questioning why they never came home, I can’t help but ask how my faith calls me to respond.

In times like these I try to remind myself to return to the examen, ¹ looking for the places where God has been at work in my life and using these moments to figure out how to respond now.

Dolores Mission Parish in East LA, decorated for Christmas

There are three physical locations in our world where I can say that I felt an overwhelming physical presence of the Holy Spirit. Difficult to describe and hard to comprehend, I can best explain these moments as being characterized by an almost oppressive collection of emotion hanging in the air. In each of these moments I felt that I walked into a space in which the air was thicker, a place where my soul felt different than it has felt anywhere else. I believe that what I felt in each of these places was love, a lingering presence of God’s love for the people who occupied these spaces and the love of God which they embodied.

The first of these encounters happened the first time I stepped into Dolores Mission Church in East Los Angeles.² I had read enough stories about Father Greg Boyle at this point to be overwhelmed by the importance of that small space even before my arrival. I imagined the countless homilies, funerals, quinceaneras, and conversations that took place in this space. The hearts that had been transformed, the love of God shared, all of it was staggering. But it is one thing to stand in awe of a place. What I felt at Dolores Mission was different. I believe and trust that what I felt there was nothing other than the presence of the Holy Spirit that marked this sacred ground.

The altar at the Chapel of the Divine Providence
where Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated.

My second encounter occurred during my first visit to El Salvador. I stood on the altar in the Chapel of the Divine Providence, in the very spot where Blessed, and soon to be saint, Archbishop Oscar Romero was martyred, and I once again found myself swimming under this massive weight of God. Like at Dolores Mission, I entered this space with a deep appreciation for Romero’s work in his country as well as a reverence for the love he garnered for his people. I knew that he likely saw the assassin drive up and fire his shot but chose to continue with the consecration anyway. But despite all this, what I felt in this space was more than a deep reverence. It was truly God’s presence in my life.

The third encounter also took place in El Salvador, on the same trip and in the same day. We visited the University of Central America, the UCA, where six Jesuit priests were dragged from their rooms and martyred during the Salvadoran Civil War for speaking out against the government and seeking to empower the people. The place where I most encountered God was not in the rose garden where the Jesuits were murdered, however, but in the small room down the corridor where Elva and Salina Ramos were killed. The Jesuit’s housekeeper and her daughter stayed at the UCA that night because they believed they would be safer there than in their own village. They were killed simply because the army did not want to leave witnesses behind. As I stood in that tiny room, I couldn’t shake the image of mother and daughter clinging to one another, knowing these were their last moments together, yet praying that they might have more. The weight of prayer in the room was oppressive.

The rose garden at the University of Central America (UCA)
in San Salvador.

I think what’s important about all three of these locations, the reason that God showed up so uniquely in these moments, is that each space reminds me of what the cost of Christianity can be. Each can be connected to the questions we began with: If I say I believe in God, what does that mean for my life? If I say I am a follower of Christ, how must I act?

A Christian life, a moral life, requires sacrifice of us. It requires that we remove ourselves from what is comfortable, that we step beyond our safe spaces of power and align ourselves with the outcast and the downtrodden. This is what Jesus did and as his followers, we are called to do the same. For those like Father Greg Boyle, this means devoting our lives to educate, employ, and empower those our society chooses to leave out. For some of us, like Blessed Oscar Romero or the Jesuit martyrs of the UCA, this means quite literally laying down our lives to protect and empower a people who are not being treated justly.

So what does this mean for me and you? I think this is a question that deserves our constant discernment. Are we called to simply love Jesus as we encounter him in our neighbors? Are we called to challenge our government when we encounter an unjust laws? Are we called to peaceful protest or civil disobedience? Are we called to physically align ourselves with those our society wishes to harm? Are we called to lay down our lives in the name of our faith? I believe each of us is called to our own unique response to God’s presence. And although I’m not convinced that God calls all of us to be martyrs, there is a reason, I like to remind my students, that the symbol of our faith is Christ crucified. Our faith requires much of us. It may not end in our literal crucifixion but it will likely lead us to make physical, mental, or emotional sacrifices in an effort to create the world God has in mind. God calls each of us to a unique response, but if we aren’t asking what that response might be, are we truly living a Christian life?

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1 For a more detailed explanation of the examen, see the start of this piece.^↩

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2 For those who are unfamiliar with Dolores Mission, it was the parish where Father Greg Boyle, SJ began his ministry working with gang members, a work that eventually morphed into Homeboy Industries.^↩

The Grace of Awe

by Erin M. Conway

“And awe came upon everyone.”

This line, from the Acts of the Apostles, is used by kinship guru Greg Boyle to remind us of what true compassion looks like. Compassion, he writes, stands in awe of what others are asked to carry rather than in judgement of how they carry it.

Moments of awe are my favorite teaching moments: when I think I know what to expect from my students, who they are, and what they are carrying.

I had one of these moments just last week.

If you’ve been reading my work the last few months, you know race is something I’ve thought about a lot this year. I’ve had a lot of conversations with my students. I’ve listened to their stories. For the most part I thought I knew how they felt. I started to believe I knew what their daily experiences and inner thoughts were. I became frustrated (as teachers are apt to do at the end of the year) by their inability to handle the transition from high school senior to graduate with grace.

Despite efforts to do otherwise, I began to judge, moving myself further and further from compassion.

And then, in the midst of my frustration, my students shared their poems and I found myself once again overcome with awe. Strength, kindness, compassion, resilience. I was reminded once again of how radically different the reality in which I live is.

I hope you listen to their voices.

“And awe came upon everyone.”

＊＊＊

I am tired
I am tired of being sick and tired
I am tired of having this conversation
I fear in the middle of the night that I will have to have this
Conversation with my children
That you will be judged and looked at as less than
Because you are not a part of the majority
I choose love not hate

Because I know that one day the minority
Will have the authority to prove that
They are a priority

Racial discrimination is not blacks against whites
To die or to fight
It's not Christians against atheists
Because we are all patriots
In our nation of obligation
It is ignorance against awareness
That continues to breed unfairness
I choose love not hate

As a community we need to become more open
Open to diversity in our workplace and education
To make room for a new generation
We love people like Richard and Mildred loving
Shoving the thoughts of people's opinion about their marriage

-NG

＊＊＊

We were always treated different
When it came to race
Others said that’s not the case
Even when it came to our gender
We had to surrender

A n*gga can’t walk down the street
Without making a cracker feel uncomfortable
They clench their purse and children
For no f**king reason
Yet we still had to surrender

Driving doing the speed limit
Cops can’t handle it
They kill and beat our black men black and blue
Just because they had nothing to do
Surrender

Can’t even sit at a blooming Starbucks
without making someone uneasy
Call the cops just because they didn’t order anything
You think that we were just gonna sit and not do nothing
No surrender

Yeah right
We are going to show what happens in the dark will come to light
We are going to stand up and then show that the abuse inflicted on our culture will not go unheard
Stand up and FIGHT!

We are going to show that we are human and we have feelings too
We hurt
We fear
We grieve
We stand up
We push back

Till next time…

-AB

＊＊＊

You shifted in your seat when I walked into the room
Did I make you feel uncomfortable?
Does my accent have too many colors for you?
Does my face express ugly truths that you’ve been trying to hide for so long.
Is the way I speak is loud and anxious?Does my outfit disappoints you on what a ‘ classy’ lady should look and dress like?
Dress appropriately not ghetto, ratchet, and trashy
Did you label me yet?
I can see your eyes rolling back saying ‘ Not this again here she goes’
Did you a category that ‘ defines me’
Angry
Black
Woman
Do you fear having a conservation with me?
And I’ll become ‘ angry’
You see us black women have been silenced for so many years
Our mouths being stuffed with obedience
Our dignity being cut up to pieces
We are told to never show that you are hurt
That we don’t feel a thing
I refused to be treated like some object I be damned if you try to shut me out
So yes today I’m an unapologetic black women
I’m unapologetic
Because I’m proud to be a black queen
My voice is my power and I’m not afraid to utilize it when it’s needed
I’m unapologetic
Because as a woman I’m art that was created by god
With a perfect expression of pain, struggle, strength, and beauty
I am black without apology

-RD

#sittingwhileblack: A White Woman Wrestles With Race, Part 3

by Erin M. Conway

This started as a post about Starbucks. About the sadness and outrage I felt at the arrest of Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson in a Philadelphia Starbucks on April 12th. About the helplessness I felt knowing that although I would never have to worry about being arrested for simply waiting for my friend to arrive at a coffee house, many others would. About how I was wrestling with whether a boycott of Starbucks was the appropriate response, whether it would actually make an impact.

But then just days ago, I opened my Twitter feed and discovered another video that had surfaced. I watched, sickened, as Chikesia Clemons was wrestled to the floor and handcuffed by three officers at a Waffle House in Saraland, Alabama. During the process, her breasts were humiliatingly exposed. But no nationwide outcry went up for boycott or justice. And what I wanted to say became a bit more complicated.

I had a conversation with family friends (all white suburbanites) about the Starbucks arrest a few days after it happened. While I was incensed, I was shocked with how little outrage they appeared to feel about the event. I voiced my disbelief and anger at the treatment of these two men. They only had questions.

“Did they order anything?”
“Didn’t they know that restrooms are only for paying customers?”
“Did the police ask the men to leave?”
“Did the men refuse to leave even when they were asked?”

I imagine (although I can’t know for sure) that their responses to the incident at Waffle House would have been similar: questions rather than a defense. It was as if they couldn’t quite wrap their mind around the idea that a police officer or store manager would act in an unjust way. Believing this would in some way shatter what they knew about the world and so they seemed to be grappling for an explanation that would explain the discomfort away.

Their questions pulled me back to another question I’d heard earlier that week, a question posed by a young lady in my senior Theology class:

“Ms. Conway, why do you think it is that no matter how well we present ourselves, how nice we dress or polite we act, white people always seem kind of afraid when a black person talks to them?”

She asked this question with a mixture of resignation, frustration, and exhaustion in her voice. What could I possibly say in response? I found myself trying to speak for (or perhaps defend) all white people - a position that’s neither comfortable nor realistic. All I could come up with is that we live in a segregated world and that human beings often fear the unknown. I felt like I was making excuses.

Because the reality of the situation is that I don’t really understand why white people react this way.¹ I only know that we often do. The reality of the situation is that this type of behavior doesn’t deserve to be excused. The reality of the situation is that skin color is not a good reason to be afraid of someone who presents themselves well, acts politely, and dresses nicely. And the reality of the situation is that things like this do not happen to white people. Asking to use the restroom without ordering a drink will not get us arrested. Arguing over the price of plastic silverware will not get us wrestled to the floor and handcuffed.² Waving around a BB gun like 12-year-old Tamir Rice did will not get us killed seconds after police arrive on the scene.³

I don’t believe the reaction of my white family friends was a result of them being cruel or blatantly racist individuals, and I don’t present their stories to criticize them or suggest some moral flaw in their character. While I was frustrated by their response, I also believe it came from a reality of not knowing what it’s like to be black in America. If you are a white person who has interacted mainly with other white people, it’s hard to see the larger picture. This is likely why in a Huffington Post poll almost half of white Americans (48%) responded that the arrest of Nelson and Robinson was an isolated incident but more than half of black Americans (57%) viewed the actions of the police officers as rooted in a larger societal problem.

The difference between these responses seems endemic of the two worlds writer Mikki Kendall described in a recent piece for The Washington Post. Black Americans and white Americans inhabit different realities. Rashon Nelson, Donte Robinson, Chikesia Clemons and other black men and women live in a world where often “every public space is fraught with the possibility of mistreatment.”

In the other world, the one inhabited by white men and women, you can visit Starbucks stores across the country, sit for hours at a time, and never once be challenged about your presence. How do I know this? Because this is exactly what “Starbucks observer” and author Byrant Simon did while writing his book Everything But the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks. Simon, who is white, told NPR that after visiting over 300 stores, he observed two groups of people who were confronted about whether or not they had bought anything: black men and people who appeared to be homeless.

For white Americans, myself included, this split reality might only be noticed if you intentionally slow down and look for it. My ability to see these two worlds, as I mentioned in a previous piece, has evolved as I’ve listened to the voices and stories of my (mostly black) students. I have not always seen it, but now that I know that this split exists, I want to help others see it too.

So I challenge all of my white readers to consider this - any time you see a black man or woman portrayed or arrested on the news, check your bias. Imagine you are the one in this situation -- if you behave the exact same way, does it yield the same results? Examine your immediate assumptions about the situation - what do you assume about the outcome and individuals involved and why do you think this is where you mind goes? Consider other possible explanations. Listen to black men AND women when they share their stories. And finally, speak out when you see injustice happening.

We need to be like Melissa DePino and speak up for the victims of institutional racism. After witnessing the arrest of Nelson and Robinson, DePino spoke out both on social media and in television interviews, defending the men and reiterating the fact that they did nothing wrong or inappropriate. And although I’d rather live in a world where the testimony of a white witness wasn’t the trump card in any given situation, the reality is that what white people say matters. The reality is that we have the power to protect our black brothers and sisters if we are willing to do so. Let’s use it.

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1 I recognize that not every white person would react this way, but for the sake of simplicity, I have to speak in general terms here.^↩

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2 I’ve read more about the arrest of Chikesia Clemons since I began writing. Witness and police testimony suggest that the story is more complicated that it first appeared- that she was potentially intoxicated and belligerent. Be that as it may, I still feel comfortable in asserting that had she been a white woman, the outcome would have been much different.^↩

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3 I use Tamir Rice’s story here because he was shot and killed in Cleveland, where I teach, in a park not far from where some of my students live. He represents, in this case, any black man or woman who has been a victim of police brutality. ^↩

Why I Walked

by Erin M. Conway

Author’s Note: I wrote the bulk of this reflection after the Women’s March in 2017, following the election of Donald Trump, but never had a chance to share it. In the spirit of my recent series A White Woman Wrestles with Race as well as the increased activism of young people surrounding the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, I decided to revisit my thoughts and share them with you today.

This past weekend, the day after the inauguration of our new president, thousands of women, men, and children across the country gathered and marched in support of women and other marginalized groups. Over 350 marches took place. My mom and I joined the march in Cleveland.

People chose to march for a variety of reasons -- anger, love, frustration, a desire for change, and many more. Everyone had their own story. This is mine.

Before I began teaching at Saint Martin de Porres, Cleveland’s Cristo Rey High School, I worked both in the city of Baltimore and in the Coachella Valley of Southern California. In all three places I have been exposed to people and places that I’d previously known nothing about. In addition to time spent getting to know the stories of the young men and women in my classroom, I accompanied students on trips to El Salvador; Washington, DC; East Los Angeles; and Nogales, Mexico. Above all else, these experiences taught me the value of listening to other people’s stories. Father Greg Boyle, my personal hero and the founder of LA’s largest gang intervention program, Homeboy Industries, writes that “it is impossible to demonize someone you know.” A quick reflection on the way hearing other’s stories has changed my life reinforces my desire to share my own with you.

I have the immense privilege each day to teach Social Justice and Morality to juniors and seniors at Saint Martin. In class this week we’ve tried to wade through the flurry of our world since Donald Trump’s inauguration – executive orders, protests, press conferences, Google searches (what is an executive order anyway?), tweets, and so much more. We’ve found ourselves exhausted and overwhelmed. How do we make sense of a world where most news comes at us in 140 character bursts (now, sometimes 280) and we’re constantly being told stories are fake or journalists are unreliable? How can we find the truth in a world that constantly demonizes anyone who doesn’t agree with me?

In our conversations these past days, I’ve challenged myself and my students to look deeper, to put in the not so fun work of reading full articles, of watching the news, and perhaps the most challenging of all these, listening with open ears to what the other side is trying to say. Of course, the thing I’ve done the most during these past few weeks is listen.

I’ve listened because hearing people’s stories matters. I’ve listened because teaching has shown me that I know a lot less about the world than I think I do. I’ve listened because our world often doesn’t often listen to students that look like mine. I listened because high schoolers have no patience for hypocrisy. If I am asking them to listen to the stories of others, I better be doing the same thing. I listened, most simply, however, because I love them.

Perhaps the most remarkable challenge that has come out of listening to my students has been coming to grips with my own privilege. I speak of this often, but the young men and women who have accompanied me on my own journey have challenged me to see my life for what it is. They have shown me the ways in which our world has helped me, even when wasn’t conscious of it. The other delightful challenge of working with high schoolers is that they constantly challenge you to put your money where your mouth is. They watch every move you make, and I’ve never been more afraid of my own hypocrisy then when I step into a room 0f 15-25 teenagers. I’ve learned that if I tell them I care about their fears and their lives, I better go out and put these words into action.

So when I walked the streets of Cleveland on Saturday morning alongside my mom and 15,000 others, I did not walk because I was immediately concerned for my personal well-being or that of my family. I walked because I love my students and needed to put this love into action. I walked because my Facebook and Twitter feeds are flooded with messages of uncertainty and frustration from former students who don’t like the way the world talks to and about them. I walked because each day I have the immense privilege to share a classroom with 124 juniors and seniors who trust me with their stories and their fears. I walked because these students, many of whom are asked to carry much more than they should have to, much more than I could bear, still find it in their hearts to write things like this:

"I am constantly doubted because I am a African American female. It would not surprise many if I was expecting a child and didn't have plans to attend college. But little do many know I AM going to college. Because I have these clichés against me I crave to be different." 

“I am a black strong-minded beautiful young lady who wants to make an impact on the world. But I am scared to live in this dangerous would, where hate crimes against blacks are so popular. I could easily be Sandra Bland, who was pulled over and killed in police custody, or Myra Thompson, who was caught in a mass shooting while attending church.”

“I will use my success to show young black girls that you can achieve things, just as they see on television, and be a part of the way our world runs. This is important to me because I want to inspire young women and change the negative light that is shown on black women in the media.”

“This reminded me that if I continue to work hard, I too can show all of the people who made me feel less than that I am something.”

“I want to show kids in the community that your situation doesn’t define you or what you think you have to do because it’s your life. What’s really authentic and special is being about business, focusing on getting education, taking care of your family, helping others or sparking others to further their knowledge.”

I walked because my students share their stories every day. I want them to know that I am listening.

This reflection is dedicated to the Saint Martin de Porres Class of 2017 who helped my to find my own voice while I thought I was simply listening to theirs.

A White Woman Wrestles with Race, Part 2

by Erin Conway

Note: This post continues a discussion from Erin's last post, which can be read here.

Despite the outpouring of support I received after my first attempt to wrestle with the topic of race (THANK YOU, by the way, to all of you who read, shared, and responded to my thoughts), a part of me still questioned if I was qualified to insert myself into this crucial conversation. Do I really know what I’m talking about? Is my voice helpful or unintentionally harmful? Do I have a right to talk about being black in America? Is it my whiteness that has convinced me that my voice matters here?

These questions were on my heart before my last piece and have continued to plague me since writing. I don’t want to put words in people’s mouths and I’m uncomfortable speaking about things I don’t fully understand. But then about two weeks ago I watched political strategist Angela Rye on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. At the end of her segment Rye explained to Noah why she believes that what our world needs is not for people to “stay woke” but instead to “work woke.” Staying woke,¹ Rye told Noah, is not enough anymore. If you are woke but don’t work for justice, can you really claim to be woke at all? “What do you do after you read?” she challenged. “What do you do after you know all? How are you putting what you know into action?”

And then Rye did something that warmed my Theology teacher heart, she spoke about faith, explaining that to her, “faith without works is dead faith.” All of a sudden I recognized God’s fingerprints. When I talk to students about what it means to be a follower of Christ, I always tell them that “being Catholic” is an action and not a state of being. If I say I am Catholic but am not doing anything about it, I challenge them, can I really call myself Catholic? If I am not working to create the world God dreams of, haven’t I, in some way, fallen short of my call? This moment returned me to the question from the examen, how am I being called to respond now? The answer: work woke. Anchored in this truth, I’m pushing forward this week to share my experiences once again.

Currently in my senior Theology class, my students are split into social justice “book clubs.” They meet once a week to discuss their reactions to the text (among other things). The other day during one of these meetings, I sat with the students who are reading Ta’Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. While I explained to them my current obsession (to put in mildly) with this book, one of the young women in the group pointed out that although she was enjoying it and found it valuable, it seemed to her like a book “white people needed to read.” When I asked her to elaborate, she explained that she, a young black woman, already knew many of the ideas I had learned or the realities I found so fascinating in the text. What seemed important, she believed, was for white Americans to hear these stories about what it was like to be black in America. This humbled me. I wondered if all the books I had chosen were books that “white people needed to read.” This moment of humility, however, prompted me to recognize God’s fingerprints once again. Perhaps, in an unexpected way, I had just been provided with an opportunity to “work woke.”

In his newest book, Barking to the Choir, Father Greg Boyle, SJ describes the impact that the homies he’s worked with over the past 30 years have had on his life. He says the homies “have pointed the way” for him and proclaims that “to sit at their feet has been nothing short of salvific.” On a daily basis, I have the chance to sit at the feet of my students and simply listen. The example above is one of these moments. Although I talked in my last post about several non-classroom encounters that allowed me to catch a glimpse of what it might be like to be black in America, most of my deeper understanding has come from my students themselves. These personal encounters have been nothing short of salvific. I’ve learned how to be a kinder and more compassionate human being than I could have become on my own. I’ve had the chance to build kinship with young black men and women every single day. I’ve been blessed to work toward the world God has in mind.

And I have come to realize more and more that this experience is a privilege in the very best sense of the word.² Every day I get a glimpse into the lives of my students that is real and personal and direct. And while I can certainly never fully understand what it is like to be black in America, I can begin to take steps toward kinship. Not every white person has this particular privilege. But even if you are a white American who lives, works, or learns far from integrated communities of kinship, there are small constructive ways you can start to enter the conversation.

To help you do this (and in an attempt to embrace the challenge of working woke), I’ve put together a list of the most formative books, articles, movies, TV shows, and podcasts that helped me first explore the experience of being black in America. These stories helped me to begin to understand race before I was blessed to sit at the feet of my students and hear their own stories. Nothing can replace true relationship, but these books, etc. have given me a base understanding from which to engage my students further.

My list is certainly not exhaustive. Each resource I have listed below is one that I myself have read, watched, or listened to. While there are several (okay probably A LOT) more sitting on my bookshelf, bookmarked on my computer, or saved in my Netflix queue that I just haven’t yet had the chance to get to (reading student writing seems to take up most of my life), if I haven’t read or watched them myself, I’ve left them off the list for now. I intentionally only included resources that have shaped my experience and helped me personally to “get woke.”

My list will take you more than a few afternoons to get through. I hope you don’t let that intimidate you. Or better yet, I hope you feel a little intimidated but choose to engage anyway. Here’s story that I hope explains why:

In an attempt to be helpful in a recent conversation about Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, I shared with my students how I believed it was okay if they sometimes felt overwhelmed by the conversations surrounding racial justice in the United States and needed or wanted to take a break. I told them that I, too, often found myself exhausted and that I sometimes just needed to step away before diving back in. An earnest student challenged me in this moment. “But Ms. Conway,” she said, “when you look like me, you don’t have that choice. It follows you everywhere.”

So yes, white people, it’s uncomfortable to get woke. And yes, it takes a lot of time and effort. Being woke and working woke is, quite fittingly, exhausting. But the choice to disengage from this conversation is ultimately a sign of white privilege. So I hope you choose dig in and work to create, in the words of Father Greg Boyle, a world “such that God might recognize it.”

Books (and Articles, Movies, & Podcasts) All White People Should Read (or watch, or listen to)

Between the World and Me, Ta’Nehisi Coates
The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Jeff Hobbs
You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain, Phoebe Robinson
Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich
Tattoos on the Heart, Father Greg Boyle, SJ ³

Are You a Social Sinner? by Rev. Bryan Massingale
Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City, by Nikole Hannah Jones

13th
I Am Not Your Negro
Selma
Dear White People

On Being, Michelle Alexander: Who We Want to Become - Beyond the New Jim Crow
On Being, Ruby Sales: Where does it hurt?
On Being, John Lewis: Love in Action
On Being, W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul

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1 For those who are unfamiliar, to “stay woke” means (according to Urban Dictionary) “to keep informed of the shitstorm going on around you in terms of turmoil and conflict, specifically on occasions when the media is being heavily filtered.” ^↩

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2 Here I use privilege as a synonym for honor or blessing. I intentionally chose this term to contrast with the often used idea of “white privilege” which refers to the preference for whiteness that saturates our society and the advantages white people receive without earning them.^↩

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3 I include this book not because it taught me anything about what it means to be black in America, but because it defines my own Theology, and has taught me why kinship is important and how I can work toward it.^↩

Where do I go from here? A White Woman Wrestles with Race, Part 1

by Erin M. Conway

Disclaimer: ¹ This piece is not intended to be an exhaustive conversation on race or an authoritative guide on how to solve the racial tensions that exist in our society; in fact I don’t believe either of those things is possible. Race is a challenging topic on which I certainly do not consider myself to be an expert. What I offer here is an attempt to work through some of the thoughts and emotions that have recently been on my heart. As a white woman, I can offer you only the perspective of a white woman with a particular set of experiences.² I hope, like Saint Ignatius, you enter into this reading presuming my good intention even if my words or understanding fall short.

Where is God at work in my life?
How have I responded to God’s presence in my life?
How am I being called to respond now?

These three questions frame the Ignatian examen, a reflective prayer created by Saint Ignatius that challenges us to discern God’s presence in our lives and in doing so, ask how next to embrace and live out our call. When I taught at Xavier College Prep in Palm Desert, CA,³ the entire student body paused for three minutes each day after lunch to silently reflect on these questions. And while this intentional conscious practice of the examen has not carried over into my life beyond Xavier, the questions are always floating in the back of my mind, permanently coloring the way I think about my life and the world.

It is this subconscious absorption of the examen that motivates my post today. I hope to walk through my recent series of muddled thoughts on race, privilege, and kinship through the lens of the examen’s first and last questions.

Where is God at work in my life?

In Ignatian Spirituality, emotions are important indicators of God’s presence. The encounters I will share below are ones that have left an emotional footprint on my heart. They continue to push to the front of my consciousness, unwilling to be forgotten, and as such, my faith compels me to believe they should not be ignored.

Recently, I’ve felt inundated by a series of images, writings, and conversations that have challenged me to imagine what it might be like to be black in America. Being a white teacher in a classroom of primarily black students means that bumping up against the reality of a life that is not mine is a daily occurrence. And of course, the proximity of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Black History Month to one another on the calendar makes conversations about race more prevalent this time of year, but it’s certainly possible to walk through these moments without allowing yourself to truly be affected by them.

I cannot (and will not) discuss every single one of these moments below in detail, but I do want to highlight a handful of encounters that haven’t been so easy to push aside. Something about these moments invites me to sit with them, to further discern what God is saying to me.

Encounter #1: The Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, my best friend texted me a link to an article about graphic designer Daniel Rarela who created a series of “memes” in honor of the holiday. In an effort to prevent what he called the “whitewashing” of MLK, Rarela superimposed quotes from MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail over a variety of images -- some dating back to the Civil Rights Era, some from more recent #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations. His intention, he explained, was to “shatter the false image of a Martin Luther King who everyone loved, who never got arrested, was universally popular and made zero privileged people uncomfortable enough to want to kill him.”

 

I hung Rarela’s images around my classroom the next day and invited my students to finish the sentence “Right now I feel…” after they had time to silently engage with the photos. As they so often do, my high school seniors turned the tables on me, asking me how I felt after viewing the images. I explained that I felt challenged in particular by MLK’s condemnation of the white moderate, who (as can be seen in the image) “prefers a negative peace (the absence of tension) to a positive peace (the presence of justice).” I shared with my students my very real fear that although I like to think of myself as one of the “good white people,” deep down I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if I’m doing enough. I don’t know if I’m going about it in the right way. I don’t know if my desire to be liked by others leads me to seek the absence of tension rather than the presence of justice.

Encounter #2: After weeks of keeping it in my Netflix queue, I finally decided to watch Dear White People… And while I could write page after page on my reactions to the show, there was one particular moment that affected me on an visceral level. The show, for those who are unfamiliar, follows members of the black student unions at fictional Ivy League school Winchester University as they try to decide how to respond to a blackface party on campus. In the closing minutes of “Chapter V”, Reggie, a recognized leader in the campus’s black community, finds himself in a disagreement with his white friend who said the word “n****” while singing along to a song at a party. The disagreement escalates and spreads beyond the two students until the cops are called. Upon arrival, they immediately zero in on Reggie, asking him if he is a student at the university, and even after both he and several other students (at least one of them white) confirm his enrollment, the officer asks him to show him his student ID. When Reggie refuses, the officer pulls his gun.

This moment, the visible fear that encompasses every fiber of his being, the look on Reggie’s face as he stares into the barrel of the officer’s gun, knowing his life could end in an instant, is something I cannot shake. And I can’t erase the image of a weeping Reggie with his back to his dorm room door, broken and scared, his life forever changed. I have never known this fear. I will never know this fear, but I know that many others do and will.

Encounter #3: The Friday following Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I accompanied our entire senior class to a talk given by Nikole Hannah-Jones, MacArthur fellow and investigative reporter for The New York Times Magazine. Hannah-Jones has written extensively on the racial segregation that exists in our public school system today and how this segregation damages all students, but black and brown students in particular. The longer black (and brown) students remain in segregated schools, the further they fall behind their white peers academically. Intentional racial integration of schools, Hannah-Jones argues, is the only thing that has been proven to decrease the disturbing racial achievement gap that exists in our country. As evidence for this, she cites the fact that when mandated school integration was at its peak in 1988, the racial achievement gap in the United States was at its lowest point ever. As schools have rapidly resegregated, the achievement gap has followed suit - white students continue to pull ahead, black and brown students to fall behind. ⁴ The reason for this is simple, Hannah-Jones says. Being around white kids gets you what white kids get: more experienced teachers, higher teacher retention rates, more funding, a wider array of class choices, more field trips and extra-curricular activities, the list goes on and on.

As Hannah-Jones described the the struggles and deficits that primarily black and brown schools face, I couldn’t help but notice that the school she was describing sounded an awful lot like Saint Martin (where I currently teach). I was struck by the uneasy feeling that although we believe as a staff that we are offering our black students (and others) a better educational option than their local public schools, our classroom demographics aren’t much different. We are not offering our students an integrated learning environment. I struggled once again with MLK’s notion of the white moderate - are we doing enough? Are we seeking justice in the most effective ways?

Encounter #4: I experienced this final moment just a few days ago when I watched the most recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy. This is not a normal part of my weekly routine (I’m not sure I’ve watched a full episode of Grey’s since Season 1), but again, I believe this was God at work in my life. For those who didn’t see the episode, the staff at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital are charged with treating a young black boy named Eric who was shot by police trying to enter his own home. Having lost his house keys, police spot 12 year-old Eric climbing through a window of his own home and when he reaches for his cell phone, they shoot him. And while this story line in and of itself is horrifying and speaks volumes about the fear America carries of young black men, the scene that brought me to tears was one that followed. Faced with the reality of Eric’s fate, Dr. Miranda Bailey and her husband Ben decide they must have “the talk” with their 13 year-old son Tuck. This talk is not the one most of us received as teenagers.

In the scene that follows (you can watch it here), a frightened Tuck repeats the following words back to his parents while his hands sit on the back of his head: “I am William George Bailey Johnson. I am 13 years old and I have nothing to harm you.” The scene continues as Bailey and Ben say to their son, “If your white friends are saying things and mouthing off, know that you cannot.” In this moment, my reaction was once again visceral. The stark difference of what it means to grow up white and not black in America was on full display. Never have my parents sat me down and told me what to do if I am pulled over or detained by police. Never have I considered the possibility that any run in with police (of which I’ve had none) wouldn’t end with me using the fact that I’m a young, pretty white woman to my advantage. Never once have I thought that I could end up dead. This is a reality that is not mine. But this is the world that many of the young men and women than I love live in each and every day.

All of these intensely emotional encounters have lead me to the next question of the examen:

How am I called to respond now?

But before I wrestle this final question of the examen, let me give some context.

I am a 30 year-old white woman who grew up in Hudson, Ohio, a town I jokingly call “the whitest suburb in the state of Ohio” but which does, in all actuality, fall into the category of “super zipcode.”⁵ When I left Hudson at age 18, I attended the University of Notre Dame, a school that, although it provided me with a myriad of life changing experiences for which I will always be grateful, cannot boast to have placed me into classrooms with students whose lives before they arrived in South Bend were much different from my own.

My life has undoubtedly been one of privilege and quite honestly, one of unconscious segregation. Before I began teaching at age 22, I would be hard pressed to describe many meaningful encounters with black men or women. I am deeply aware that I can’t ever pretend that I know what it is like to be black in America.

What I can (and want) to say, however, is that I carry a deep love for the black young men and women I’ve taught over the years both in Baltimore and now in Cleveland. What I do know is that teaching these young men and women has forced me to examine my perception of the world and confront my own privilege. What I do know is that teaching black young men and women has irrevocably changed me for the better: it has expanded my compassion and has forced me to think critically about how “real” my reality is.

So where do I go from here? How am I being called to respond?

I can no longer stay silent. I feel called to use what I’ve learned about my own privilege to help others see theirs. I feel called to use this same privilege to project the voices of my students into places their voices don’t normally reach. Their witness has transformed me and I pray it will do the same for others.

In Between the World and Me (a must read for any and every one), author Ta-Naheisi Coates writes that “the fact of history is that black people have not -- probably no people have ever -- liberated themselves strictly through their own efforts.”

I don’t share this quote to perpetuate the myth of the white savior.⁶ Although we (white Americans) may be responsible for creating the need for liberation, I do not to any degree believe that white Americans alone can “fix” our culture’s brokenness when it comes to race. I share Coates’s quote here because I believe it speaks to the notion of kinship that lies at the heart of the Catholic faith. He challenges all of us - white, black, brown, etc. - to see each and every human being as our brother or sister, to acknowledge our unavoidable kinship and to work together to create the world God had in mind when she created us.⁷

To me this quote affirms my belief that white Americans cannot pretend that conversations about race are not about us. White Americans cannot pretend that the so-called “problem of race” is out of our hands. We have to have this conversation. We have to enter in to the messiness of this world. Our nation can’t move forward without it.

I plan, in the next few weeks, to start this conversation. I hope you’ll join me.

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1 It should be acknowledged right off the bat, that I’ve borrowed this title from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?^↩

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2 I am indebted to my fellow Restless Heart, Dave Gregory, for writing about his particular experiences first. You can check out his thoughts here.^↩

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3 For more on that, check out my first Restless Hearts post.^↩

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4 For further reading on this topic, check out the Hannah-Jones article “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City.”^↩

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5 This metric, created by the American Enterprise Institute, ranks zip codes based on their per capita income and college graduation rates. Those termed “Super Zips” fall in the 95th to 99th percentile. Basically this means that I grew up in one of the most elite suburbs in the country (translation: white).^↩

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6 The best, and most challenging, description I’ve read about the white savior complex can be found here. ^↩

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7 For more on kinship and why it matters, check out the greatest book of all time (in this writer’s opinion): Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, SJ.^↩