{"id":18943,"date":"2020-06-10T09:39:39","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T13:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18943"},"modified":"2020-06-10T10:06:29","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T14:06:29","slug":"unlearning-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18943","title":{"rendered":"Unlearning Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Unlearning\nRacism<\/strong><br>\nWednesday, \u202fJune 10, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/beO4-WgwHmY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Jonathan\nWilson-Hartgrove is an author, minister, and contemplative activist. The\ninterview with CAC\u2019s Daily Meditations editor Mark Longhurst, which we have\nexcerpted here, was published in 2018, but his reflections on freedom from what\nhe calls \u201cslaveholder religion,\u201d contemplation, and action are especially\nrelevant today.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My journey\ntoward freedom from slaveholder religion has been one of unlearning a\nhyper-individualized piety. <em>[This is what I\nwould call an obsession with our individual salvation project\u2014RR]<\/em>&nbsp;. . . I\u2019ve had to learn that this is a\nspiritual version of the myth of the self-made man or woman that [the social\nsystems that privilege] whiteness created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Jonathan shares\nabout his prayer practices and how the practice of confessing sin helps him\ndwell in solidarity with the marginalized: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We need\nrelationships of accountability\u2014spaces where we listen to black and brown folks\nsay what actions are hurting them and their communities. Given the power\nimbalances in our society, confession for white folks really has to be\nsomething of a reverse confessional. It\u2019s not the job of people who\u2019ve suffered\ngenerational injustice to sit and listen to us. No, we\u2019ve got to position\nourselves to sit and listen to them. Then talk to one another about how we can\nunlearn implicit bias, leverage social privilege for the common good, and\nfollow the leadership of impacted people working for systemic justice. The\ndaily practice of confession is a radical act of listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Wilson-Hartgrove\nfinds that communal spirituality and action for justice have&nbsp;helped\nliberate him from the individualistic, self-made myth of systemic whiteness: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[The] antidote is, in many ways, in the communal contemplative practices of the black-led freedom movement in America. I\u2019m thinking about the prayer practices of song and shout in Pentecostal&nbsp;churches, of call and response in black Baptist preaching. There\u2019s a mantra-like repetition in that experience of worship that is every bit as much contemplation as you find sitting in silence. In fact, it is a silence\u2014a still point of complete simplicity\u2014that\u2019s beyond words. For me, I find that silence in the praise and testimony service at the St. John\u2019s Baptist Church, and I find it singing and marching in the streets with the Poor People\u2019s Campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>At the same\ntime, Jonathan cherishes stillness, embodying a true \u201ccentering down,\u201d in the\nwords of Howard Thurman, that can take place just about anywhere. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The silence of the early morning is why I wake early. I can\u2019t be myself without it. But as I grow in the life of faith, I feel more and more the connection between that silence and the silence at the center of [a mourning mother\u2019s] cry\u2014the silence of the down beat between the claps in a freedom song. There is a still point in the turning world, and we practice contemplation as we ground ourselves in that place, not apart from action, but in the center of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"404\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-10-at-10.05.06-AM-500x404.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18946\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-10-at-10.05.06-AM-500x404.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-10-at-10.05.06-AM-300x242.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-10-at-10.05.06-AM-768x620.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-10-at-10.05.06-AM.png 1660w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlearning Racism Wednesday, \u202fJune 10, 2020 Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, minister, and contemplative activist. The interview with CAC\u2019s Daily Meditations editor Mark Longhurst, which we have excerpted here, was published in 2018, but his reflections on freedom from what he calls \u201cslaveholder religion,\u201d contemplation, and action are especially relevant today. My journey toward freedom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18948,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18943\/revisions\/18948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}