How am Using my Lenses?

When I was six years old, I was attending the local elementary school in my neighborhood (back when neighborhood schools were a thing) with my cousin. We walked back and forth to school each day (back when walking 5 or 6 blocks to school was safe and the norm), and there is one of those days seared into my brain that still, 42 years later, has left an indelible mark on my soul. Dare I say, it was a defining, benchmark moment in the shaping of me as a person.

I was born in 1972, as the Vietnam War was beginning its ugly winding down. In fact, I was three years old, give or take, when it was finally declared Ended (capitalization intended). If you remember your history, many Vietnamese fled Vietnam to make a new life in the US, and in my first grade classroom in small town Michigan, a little boy named Bang was part of one such family. I don't remember if he started with us or not, but I do know that they moved midway through the year. 

On this particular day, my cousin and I had just crossed Maple Street to begin our walk home and encountered two big kids (likely 4th or 5th graders) beating Bang over the head with their lunch boxes. Please keep in mind, in 1977, lunch boxes were metal. Poor Bang was screaming and crying, but the big boys were relentless, shouting ugly names and beating him with those dag-blasted lunch boxes. My cousin and I ran them off. I remember telling them to pick on someone their own size. Then, with our arms around Bang, we walked him right to his doorstep. His mother, not knowing much English, wasn't really sure why her son came home crying with two little white girls accompanying him, but we did our best to explain what had happened. 

I went home absolutely incensed about the whole situation and immediately reported it to my mom. I remember she told me how proud she was that I had stood up for Bang (with probably an admonishment about safety), but then I asked her why they called him such terrible names. She explained to me that these boys likely heard these things from their parents, who were using ugly slurs because they were being ignorant ... that we would not be using those words because Jesus called us to love like He does -- He looks at the soul of man not at his outside appearance.

Pretty progressive thoughts from a white mother in middle class America at the time, but she was shaped not only by her faith, but also by her father, who was, I am told, the epitome of grace and mercy. My Grandpa Wakeley, who died when I was just three years old, was known to bring home other folks wouldn't dream of bringing home. He fed them at the same table as he fed his family, became their friends, treated them like human beings, something not everyone in their little farming community did. It didn't matter what color they were or what religion they adhered to or what they had done in their lives, he was, apparently, a good judge of character and knew inherently, that each of these men just needed to be treated with dignity and love. He liked people regardless of race or class or societal "importance."

My mother recently told me a story about him pulling her aside and telling her that the little Jewish boy in her school was to be treated with kindness and compassion. She could and would play with him despite the fact that no one else in the community would. They just weren't going to treat people that way. Those same words were spoken to me many, many times during my childhood.

This was my very first exposure to racism.

As a newly minted teacher, I became friends with a girl who taught next door to me. She is a fun-loving woman who loves to laugh. In fact, her laughter is infectious, which is one of the many things I love about her! We became fast friends and spent countless late nights working at school, sharing ideas, chatting about our students, doing what teachers do. One such late night work session, we decided to drive to the Jackson Meijer to do some grocery shopping. I don't remember a lot about that night other than we shared a shopping cart, and knowing us, laughed constantly throughout the store. 

When we got to the check out lane, I suggested we change positions in the line because she had less items in the cart than me, and hers were all up at the front. The lady in front on us had her purse in the child's seat of her cart, and was, generally, not paying a lick of attention to it. Honestly, if I'd wanted to, I probably could have reached into that purse and grabbed her wallet without her ever knowing. 

We switched positions, still talking about school, and I happened to notice the lady's sideways glance at my friend before she grabbed her purse and clutched it tight to her person. I was dumbfounded. The action certainly didn't go unnoticed by my friend, who, rightfully so, vocalized her frustration over having such things happen to her all the time. My friend is black. I think I probably apologized to her for that happening, but I never said anything to the woman who perpetuated that stereotype against my friend. 

About that same time, one of my dearest high school friends came to visit me. We had a agreed that he would get lunch the next day and bring it to school to have lunch with me before he headed out to go back to Atlanta. He came at the agreed upon time, and when I came back from taking my kids to lunch, he informed me that the office secretary almost wouldn't let him come down to have lunch.  When my friend showed up with lunch, she told him to leave the lunch, and she would call me to let me know it had been delivered. It took him a bit to explain to her that he wasn't DELIVERING the lunch, he was sharing it with me before she'd let him come down to my room. I was mortified and told him, because I'd specifically told her he would be coming. 

"Eh! No big deal! I'm Asian. Everyone always mistakes me for the food delivery guy. It happens all the time."

My final incident that has shaped my view on race came from my first year of teaching. I was in the classroom of a colleague, who happened to be a woman of color, and she was telling me about a family wedding she had been to the weekend prior in Southfield, Michigan. My Michigan peeps might know where I am going with this. Following the description of the wedding, I sat through a ten-minute monologue about how Southfield had gone to hell and a hand basket since folks from the Middle East had "infiltrated" the area, and she tacked on some of the most inflammatory, degrading descriptors for Middle Easterners I think I've ever heard. I was so shocked that, sadly, I did nothing to defend them during that conversation. It is one of life's big regrets. 

So, why am I writing all of these instances down in print? 

Well, it's not to give you a shining example of me as some neutral entity in this whole race conversation, because please know, I am not perfect in this whole thing.  I have sad things that have been inflammatory, I am relatively sure. I am certain I have fallen into to stereotypical behavior. I don't think there is a one of us out there that hasn't. I would bet my life on that one.

It's also most certainly not one of those "I'm color blind ... I don't see color ...  I have friends of different races" arguments. These were blatant and ugly and I'm not all together sure I did much to stop these incidents or change the perpetrators' minds. 

Here is what I can tell you: Each of these life moments have caused me to stop and check myself ... to check my biases ... to check my heart, y'all. And shouldn't that be something we ALL do no matter who we are or where we come from? 

My high school history teacher once said, "Not a one of us is unbiased. We all approach life with a bunch of baggage lugged behind us packed by our various life experiences. It is how we unpack those experiences and what lens we use to measure future experiences with that is most important." 

And ain't that the truth?  Each one of the experiences I wrote about, I use to measure my heart temperature and my thought process when I am navigating this world. Some days, I am better at it than others, but I think that could be said of all of us. 

But those lenses are like the fine tuning lenses. Those, I use after my biggest lens, the one that brings EVERYTHING into perspective. My biggest lens, the one which every thing else is filtered through, is my faith in the One, true God. I don't know where you are in your faith journey, and you might disagree with me on the use of this lens. That's okay. We can agree to disagree. But for me, the filter that should always guide my reactions to people and situations should start at God.

1 Samuel 16:7 ESV
"But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart'."

The question I need to be asking myself daily, hourly, is am I viewing others through my God lens? If not, why? How am I using my lenses?