Racial Justice for the Long Haul

“My intention is that you too will find a hope that is weathered and wild. A hope that grows in the composted remains of suffering and produces the nourishing fruit of love.” —Jeske

We gathered at Upper House on December 4, 2025, for an evening conversation leading toward hope—an often-unexpected tone when discussing racial justice, a subject that has left many in a state of despair.

Together we explored accounts of believers relating across differences, reckoning with moments when racial justice efforts falter, and considering postures of grace and practices of perseverance.

By the end of the evening, we hope to have wrestled with the question, “Dare we even to hope?”—not a trite or naïve hope, but a hope that is sustainable, weathered, and wild.

About our speaker:

Dr. Christine Jeske is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College (PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison; MBA, Eastern University) with expertise in helping people live good and just lives in a multicultural world. She writes and speaks widely on topics of race, work, vocation, faith, and the good life. Her publications include Racial Justice for the Long Haul (IVP Academic, 2025), The Laziness Myth (Cornell, 2020), and numerous other books, chapters, and articles. Before teaching at Wheaton, Dr. Jeske spent a decade in Nicaragua, China, and South Africa working with economic empowerment initiatives. She and her husband have raised chickens, pigs, innumerable weeds, and two wonderful children.

🔗 To purchase the book = https://www.ivpress.com/racial-justice-for-the-long-haul

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Okay, well we have a good crowd here with us. So um why don't we start with a round of applause for our guest of honor, please? Dr. Christine Jesky, welcome her now. Welcome. Oh, it's fun to be here. Oh, it's great to have you here. And welcome to all of you to the book launch for Dr. Christine Jesky's fourth book, Racial Justice for the Long Haul. Another round of applause because it's a big deal to finish a book. And I was like, wow, it must feel so magical to like hold the fruition of all of your work and smell the pages and the novelty of it. Like, wow, my own book. And then you proceeded to say, like, this is my book. I've written three others. Sorry? That's right. You're um you're used to greatness. This is this wasn't like a new thing for you. But how are you feeling about it being accomplished?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

It's amazing to be here. Um, I was just talking to Susie Jensen and saying it feels like coming to a birthday party, but um it's not just like your friends at the birthday party, it's also people you haven't met before. So thank you all for being here. It's just so fun to get to share this with you all.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Uh yeah, yeah, lovely. And we do have some people in the audience who have been pivotal to making the book happen. Um, quick shout out to Princess, who uh Princess Volks, who got to help with the research. So thank you for being here and being a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yes. Um if I get a chance to thank people right now, can I go for that? Yeah, so I you beat me to it. I wanted to thank uh Princess who got to be there. Uh, read every single transcript of every single interview. You're gonna hear there was 70 of those. It's a lot of a lot of pages. Um, she did that and helped me talk through every part of it. There's also people who I can't tell who they are because everybody is anonymized, but there are people in this room who were interviewed for this or introduced me to people for this or really helped make it possible. Um, who you don't get to see their names in it, but they know who they are, and I super appreciate them. Uh, and I'm just so glad you all are here too. Um, you all are now sort of a part of the launch team of sharing this with people, which is what it's all for. All the hours and hours of effort that goes into it is because you want people to read it. So um I hope you are currently thinking of, ooh, who is the person I'm going to give this to next? Uh thank you for doing that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Um many of you know Christine. Um, and so I'll just this will be maybe familiar information to you, but I will take the opportunity to brag on you a little bit. Um, Christine and I have gotten to know each other over the last couple years, a couple projects um related to justice and forgiveness. And uh through those years, I have just gotten to learn that you do incredible work. Um, not only are you professor of anthropology at Wheaton College and getting your PhD in anthropology here at UW Madison, um, not only have you lived and worked in multiple countries around the world, specifically in um economic empowerment, um, you're a great speaker, you're a witty writer, and you are a very practical and empathetic leader. Um so it's just a delight that we get to speak with you tonight. Um, so with that in mind, this is a very special evening. It feels a little exclusive for a couple reasons. One, we get to highlight a local author. It is very cool when we get to elevate the good work of our friends and our neighbors. Um, the book is published by Intervarsity Press, and Innervarsity being a campus ministry that is based in Madison, that's also an exciting connection. Uh, but then the other reason is that the book isn't actually released yet. So this is like a sneak peek, if you will. Um, so since you are all here tonight, as Chrissy mentioned, you are officially inducted into the uh launch team for this book. And you didn't even know you were getting signed up, but congratulations, you're in it now. And what that means is that we are going to ask you to consider three things. One of those things is to buy the book. Uh, we do have about 30 copies of the book available here tonight. They're at the book table over to your left. And there will be some time after the program that you can go and purchase the book. Excuse me, a suggested donation of$20. Um, and so you will have access to that book before the rest of the public gets access to it. The second thing is to pre-order the book. So, pre-orders specifically on Amazon. Um, what that does is it helps Chrissy get the um get the word out, but then it also works with the Amazon algorithm so that Amazon continues to let people know what the good books are to read, what are the important things that need to be heard. And that just doesn't happen without pre-orders and pre-sales. So um, when you are ready to buy 53 more copies for every single member of your family, there are QR codes for those pre-sales everywhere around this building this evening. So you can scan that and um pre-order. The last thing is if you would um create a review, give or write a review, because the review has just as much impact as the pre-sale. So whether you are getting the book this evening or if you do the pre-order, just um let us know how great it is, and that will help out a lot. Is there anything that I've missed with that? That sounds great. That sounds great. Thank you with your great launch team. All right, last um bit of information before we dive into the book. There will be a QA and a book signing at the end of this. So during the conversation, please do think of questions that you would like to ask Christine, and she can respond to those during the QA. We'll have a couple microphones going around or during the book signing, where there will also be a dessert reception. So you thought we were done with food. Oh no, there's more coming. They'll refresh the table. It's gonna be very exciting. Okay. Getting started. Racial justice, super light topic. Do you just like doing hard things? That's right. Yes. Dive in. Oh my gosh. So you um you ask a lot of the participants in your research a prompt that seems like an apt way to begin. And the prompt goes like this uh finish the sentence. I would not be committed to racial justice in the way that I am if not for. How would you respond to that?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah. So this is something I asked everybody, and I would tell them they had to tell a story and often several stories. So I'll start with part of my story. I um uh I'll put us in um my sophomore year in college. I'm a student here at UW Madison, living in Lizwaters dorm. And my cousin uh who grew up about a half hour away from me, we were close growing up, um, she graduated from high school. And um, that was particularly exciting because she'd had a child um during her senior year. And so there was this sort of touch and go, how's graduation gonna work? Finish high school. I went with my family and celebrated her graduation. And um, while I was there, sat uh next to her partner, held her baby. Um, we're cheering her on, you know, celebrate everything. It was the first time I'd met her partner. And um, the next day I'm back in Lizwaters dorm, and uh I get this phone call from my mom, and she says, just want to tell you, um, your cousin's partner was shot and killed last night. Um, and and the first thought that went through my head was, this doesn't happen in real life. Like what what the heck? Like just this random murder. Um and the second thought that went through my head was, oh, this happens to black people. So my cousin, um, her father is black, was Nigerian, um, and her partner was black. And um, and as that thought sort of like comes through my head, I'm like horrified by it. Because it's both like sort of true and also why? Right. So it just it causes me to ask this question why does this happen? Um, not long before that, I'd also found out some more of the family history of that side of my family. So um, I had no memories of her father, uh, didn't know much about him, assumed it was just because uh my aunt and he got divorced when I was pretty little. Um, when I was a freshman in college or around that time, I found out that that was partly because my grandfather had told him that he would never set foot in my grandparents' house. So this black uncle of mine never came to family gatherings. My grandfather didn't go to the wedding. Um, so I am learning this as a uh sophomore in college. And um, it was kind of like holding the pieces of, you know, your beautiful jigsaw puzzle that you thought was complete and it's broken apart. And um, I feel like I was kind of walking around to to people around me, like, does anyone know how to put this back together? And also realizing that even if we could put it back together, like it's not the right picture. It didn't describe what was really in the world anyway. Um, so that's a starting point. And that yeah, I I I think maybe I'll just connect it to the book and say, this is the book that I wish somebody had handed me when I was at that point in my life. Um, I was thankfully eventually able to find mentors and people who had more answers to the questions I was asking, but I just started asking so many questions. And it took me a long time to find the people who could help me answer them.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, let's continue on that thought. So if the first process, or if your answer was about your first experience really reckoning with race in that way, what was your experience then that led you to writing a book that's asking this question? Okay, so how do I last? How do I stay in this? It's like you've hit this point of, okay, it's important. But then there has to come a time where you're that brings you to asking the question, how does how do I keep going? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Well, so years passed in between there. Um I definitely didn't think I was going to be a person who wrote a book about racial justice for many of those years. Um, got interested in sort of international justice, like you said, lived in several different countries and um life carried on, got a PhD in anthropology, wrote this book about South Africa, Ladida. I finished that book. The video with the I um around the time I was finishing up my PhD and the book that came out of that, I was back in South Africa um with people there and had a conversation with a dear friend of ours who is a white South African who had moved into a predominantly black neighborhood. And um that is not a common thing to do in the United States for white people to move into predominantly black neighborhoods, but it is like unheard of in white or in South Africa. And um and I had this conversation with her, and she ended up there actually in part because our family had lived in that neighborhood before and they were part of our church and we talked about this. Um, and I had this conversation with her about what it was like to live there, and she was just like, I realized that I don't know how to hope. Um, I I think the people around me know how to hope, but I don't know what to do in this setting. I don't know how to hope. Um, and that resonated with me. Um, and I it the project actually started with it was gonna be just this simple little, like maybe an article about white South Africans moving to black neighborhoods. Um, and then COVID happened and I couldn't get back to South Africa. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll like interview maybe a couple people in America, and then COVID kept happening. And two years later, I was like, okay, Lord, I guess I'll do my research in America. Um, so it's partly about South Africa, but it's really mostly about America.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Yeah, yeah. Um, the uh subtitle is already heavy hitting. So a subtitle, how white Christian advocates persevere and why? And so, based off of this story, you're seeing a white family move into a black neighborhood in South Africa. Uh why are we focusing on white advocates, white Christian Christians?

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yes. Great question. Um, you know, it's it's in different circles. I feel like sometimes I just say, I wrote a book called Racial Justice for the Long Haul. And I don't necessarily say the subtitle because it feels like it needs more explanation. So thanks for asking. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, well, so another thing about this book is I originally the best title I had for a long time for it was I wanted to call it the nine percent. And that number is the percentage of white Christians in 2020 who said they were very motivated to address racial injustice. And 9% is half as many as the number that the year earlier were highly motivated. So from 2019 to 2020, George Floyd died, and white Christians became half as likely to be highly motivated to address racial injustice. So, what on earth is going on there? Also, 9% is half as many as just white people in the general population. So being Christian and white less likely to be motivated. Um, it's five times, well, sorry, one-fifth as likely as black Christians. So it's not just Christian, it's not just white, it's the combination of the two. Um, and I knew that's statistic, but statistics don't necessarily tell us why. Um, and I I had known people that I was like, I'm I think they're in that 9%. And I have a disproportionate number of those people in my life just because of the kind of work that I've done and where I've ended up in life. And I was like, I know they are there. But if 91% of the white Christian population is not in that group, they don't necessarily know they exist. Um, and and I think we had this sense in our country for a lot of the last 10 years of like, are there even white Christians at all who are addressing racial injustice? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

How do they keep going? Yeah. Can you take us through how you chose then these white Christians or really anybody that you involved in your research? What was your process? Because this isn't just a book of stories, this is your entire research project. So take into that.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

So it's fun to give you guys kind of the inside scoop that is not in the book. So the whole like 9% title, nobody knows that from just reading the book. Another thing you wouldn't know from reading the book uh is that I originally, like I said, was gonna make this a book about white Christians moving into black neighborhoods um in South Africa and um was an article, not a book. Um and then um I realized that wasn't gonna work. And I I realized I wanted it to be a little bigger, just like not just moving in a black neighborhood, because people do that for a lot of different reasons. Like there's a lot of reasons to do that, and they're not necessarily for racial justice reasons. So I was like, how do you find white people who are committed to racial justice? Um, there's been books that have tried to do this, and usually what they'll do is just pick like an organization and pick everybody who works with that organization. Um, I I thought, you know, I could come up with like some kind of criteria, like, I don't know, a survey of like, do you answer the questions in the right way? And I was like, well, what would that be? How do you know? And so um I landed on this idea that the people who should be deciding are people who know them well, and specifically people of color who have seen what their life is like. So I started by interviewing 30 people of color, um, mostly faith leaders, leaders in churches, also leaders in racial justice-related organizations, ask them uh it was a whole at least an hour interview with each of them talking about what does racial justice look like, um, questions related to this book. Um, and then at the end of it, I would say, okay, so um, do you know any white Christians who have been at this for years or decades? Um, if you imagined a young white person who's looking for a mentor, who would you recommend to them? And then off of their recommendations, I I interviewed 40 white people.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Yeah. Wow. Um, can you tell us a little bit more then about the process? How did you make your decisions of you were going to focus in Madison versus other places? Um, how did you know when you were done asking questions and doing research? I got tired.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

No, that's not as the most honest tonight. So um I knew I wanted to do Madison because it's helpful to be familiar with a place and you kind of know the insider scoop about like, you know, when someone refers to a neighborhood, you're like, ah, I know what that neighborhood means. Um I knew that was gonna be one of my sites, and that's the site that is named in the book. I talk about Madison specifically. There are three other sites that I kept anonymous on purpose. Um, one of them is an East Coast city in a space that is predominantly non-white because Madison is predominantly white, so I wanted a different kind of urban space. One of them is in the uh I can't. I promised. Um and then one is in the post-Confederate South, because I wanted an experience that was in the South as well, and then one is South Africa. So those are the sites. Um, and and having each of them anonymous is actually helpful. If you read the book, you might notice that I don't really tell you a lot of details about things. Um, it's a tricky balance trying to make things relatively anonymous. If it's your story and you're having it told, you'll probably recognize yourself, but not necessarily. There's quotes that people um I think probably won't even remember saying in it, but but that's intentional because um when I started it, I asked people whether they wanted to be anonymous or not. Um, and some people said yes and some people said no, but enough people said yes that um it and because there are a lot of them are connected, right? So, you know, I I have this advantage of having the back and forth between a person of color who recommends the white person and they're often talking about their relationship. So if one of them's anonymous, I have to make them both anonymous, and I finally just decided everybody's anonymous.

unknown 19:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah. When you are using the phrase racial justice, is there a common understanding we are supposed to have of what that word means or phrase means, what it looks like, what we're aiming towards? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

This is where we get into like what it's like to be an anthropologist. So if I were a philosopher or a theologian, I might give you my definition of it. But the thing anthropologists usually do is say, I'm not gonna define anything myself. I'm going to listen to how other people define it. And so as you're reading the book, it starts with like, hold on, I'm not gonna tell you what I mean by this yet, because that's kind of the point of the book, is we have to walk through this together to learn what does racial justice mean? Um we can get into this later, but a big part of the the book is about hope. And part of that is what do people hope for? Um, and so that ultimately is asking, like, what is the racial justice that we imagine we want? Um, I think we often talk about like anti-racism. We're good at talking about the thing that is not good, but what is the opposite of it? Um, so I'm avoiding the question kind of intentionally, but um, you know, the the answer is is part of what the book is about, is like, how did people collectively describe what that looks like and and how were they making it happen? We can come back to it later, but I feel like it's skipping to the end of the book. Yeah. Okay, we circle back.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

We can't, we can't get too far too soon. Um I I can imagine sitting in the audience um and processing, okay, what have my own experiences with race been? Do I uh do I relate? Do I not? Um, as a framework for how to think about this conversation, are we thinking about racial justice on an individual level, on a systemic level? What's the scale that we're trying to address? Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, all of it. All of it. That's overwhelming. Solve the world. That's what we're doing here. Okay, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Um maybe I can dive into a couple things in the book to answer that question. Okay, so that question that she started with for me of like, how would you fill in the blank? I would not be committed to racial justice if not for a blank. A big part of the book is analyzing sort of what people said in answer to that. How did they come to be these people who are recommended as long-term advocates for racial justice? And I um, with my dear research assistant who read every single transcript with me, um, you you analyze those, you code them, you organize it. Uh, we have this ginormous spreadsheet that just sort of like organizes every answer that anyone said to anything. And um, and look for patterns, um, which like physically involves like often laying on my bed just being like, what is going on? Like trying to organize information from 70 huge interviews. Um, and if you start to realize, like, oh, that came up and over and over again. So three things came. Came up over and over again, but are kind of the bedrock of the start of the book. Um, one of them is what I call collision moments. And um I describe that as a moment when reality um clashes with your imagination of reality so forcefully that you can't ignore it. And that's like that moment where my mom calls and says your cousin's partner was shot and killed, where you're just like, what happened? Um you collide into injustice, you collide into your own guilt, you collide into these sorts of things. And sometimes it's even news stories, right? Like George Floyd, I think in some way, was this collision for our country. Um and what I think those moments do is they individualize the systemic, the social big things, become individual. Um, I think it's really important that we notice moments like that where we're like, oh, this is personal. This is a human being. It's not just a news story. This is my friend, this is my neighbor, whatever. Um, but then there's this other side of it, which I call asking why, asking a lot of why. This wonderful interview with a woman who um she told the story of working in a low-income, under-resourced neighborhood and working with kids. And the little kids were eating Cheetos every day. And she's just like, I started asking why? Why are they eating just so many Cheetos? And she's like, that made me ask, well, why are their parents not at home? And then why are the parents working nights? And then why do they not have healthy food they can they can find and stuff? And she she was like, I was in this phase of asking a lot of why. Um, and that for me was college. And and it doesn't end, right? It just keeps going. You know, my whole lifetime. You don't necessarily do it in college. Um, but um, I think that's where you person you socialize or you systematize the personal. Um, so I really think we need that pairing of the two of them to not think like, oh, you know, this happened to my cousin, but it's a one-off thing, too bad. Um, it's it's a pattern.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Were you noticing in the pattern, was one happening before the other? Were they changed collision and asking why? Was there an order? It's a great question. No.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

And I think sometimes they they land together. Like, you know, sometimes people will be just taking an everyday class, and this woman who is taking a class in linguistics, not thinking this is a class about race. And then um she uh finds out about um the ways that African-American vernacular English are um uh uh sort of prejudiced against and uh uh has this moment where she realized she was doing that and um and has this collision in the middle of her class where she's learning to ask why questions, right? So I think they fit together and and then you have multiple of them usually over your lifetime, I think. You know, it's kind of like a stair step way that you keep on that journey.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Because this is a conscientious crowd, are collision moments things that we should be striving to experience? Like, should we be putting ourselves in the way of a collision moment? Uh, are seeking them out?

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Did do they just happen? Yeah, that's such a great question. Um, no. And um, I wrote this article for Sojourner's magazine that was like how to be in it for the long journey. And I called it two and a half things you can do. Um, because I have these three things in the book, but one of them I say is a half because you can't really orchestrate it. You can't really cause a collision to happen. You shouldn't, right? Like because usually they're bad. Um, but I do think you can reflect on it. I think um the the thing that you can actively do is ask yourself, like, when have I had that moment where something didn't compute for me in what I saw? And um, and collisions are just not enough to keep us on the journey because we can walk away from them so easily. Um, not necessarily, I shouldn't say it's easy. Sometimes it's very hard to walk away from them, but um, but they're often momentary, right? And we find ways to just sort of reincorporate it into the way we think the world works and forget about it. Um, so so I think what the active step is more reflecting on it. Um, I I mentioned in the book too, I think that's actually kind of a beautiful thing that um I think we sometimes think that the trying to do justice is always like, I have to go make it happen. And if I'm not trying and I'm not doing it, I'm doing something wrong. Um, and I think that there's something really powerful in like releasing agency a little bit and being like, actually, I'm I'm not in charge of this. And especially as white people, because we think we should be able to solve it. Um, and and there's a healing process where we say, like, oh, I might not be the full solution to this problem. I just need to reflect on it. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah, yes. Which I think one of the things your book does really well is gives people the permission to breathe. Because race is so complicated. Naturally, the solution then also has to be complicated and multi-layered. And one person cannot hit every component of the complexity. So it almost lets people step back and say, okay, okay, I can do what is coming to me or what I see the next thing is. It doesn't all have to happen at the same time. Yeah. Which is nice. Um, asking why. Yeah. I could ask questions all day long. Is there like a um you're seeing a pattern of where people were asking why, to whom, how they were finding their answers.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah, that's a a good point. Um, there's I tried to kind of like start compiling some of the why questions that people were asking in my interviews in this, and it I realized quickly that it could become a very, very long section of the book. Um, and I guess the summary I would say is like, it doesn't end. It's um a big theme I use is like it's a posture you put on. Um, this book is not a to-do list, it's not a like solve the problem by doing these five simple steps. It's how do you adopt that posture for a lifetime? So people are asking questions like, how does this relate to theology? How does this um relate to my neighborhood? What about that racial group? What about that racial group? Um, how do you know how what's the history? What's the the system I'm a part of?

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so going on that further, if if this is happening constantly, that means that we are doing this for a long time in the long haul, as it's in the title. You see how I did it? Wow. Um so that gets us to the topic of perseverance. If we know that this is going to be a struggle for a while, yeah, um, how and why are we going to persevere? Um I want to move to that. I'm looking for a quote. Oh, and how it relates to hope. So you ask several questions that are contingent on the idea of hope. And I think that will come back to perseverance. Um, but you ask questions like, is perseverance possible? Can people change when forces push um against the status quo or push us to keep the status quo? Excuse me. Can humans repair seemingly irreparable damage between each other? So we're acknowledging that we need to persevere, but perseverance is really hard. Take us from there. How what is make what is making perseverance so tricky for us? Yeah, I would start with that.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Um if you could tell a story about a hope. Um so in 2008, I am in a room in South Africa in a probably hundred-year-old building, and everyone is packed shoulder to shoulder in the room, and everyone is shouting, and they are shouting because they are praying, and they are praying because we are part of a seminary that has just run out of money. And I was a um faculty member at this seminary, and students had called this meeting to pray uh together with everybody at the at the seminary, and um and the way that you pray in a lot of South African contexts is everybody prays loudly at once. And um my husband and I had been working hard for the last months to try to raise money for the seminary because um the reason it ran out of money is the seminary had appointed its first black president, and a lot of the donors didn't think that was a good idea, and so spread the idea that you should stop donating to the seminary. Also, it was the 2008 financial crisis. So donors in America had run out of money, also. And so we're praying, and I'm just listening and I'm like trying to do my part. I'm like, oh Lord, you are powerful, you are mighty, save this college, like saying the things I'm supposed to say. And I hit this point, I'm just like out of words, and I just go silent, and I realized I don't have hope left. Like, I don't know how to hope for this because it's bigger than just money for the seminary. It's like all around me are people who have been saving for decades sometimes, even to come to this place. They just found out they lost their scholarship, they just found out they're not gonna graduate from their seminary degree. And and it's not just us, it's the whole history of apartheid, it's the whole history of the world, right? It's like there on our shoulders. And I go silent. And I just sat there listening to the people around me. And there's this woman on my left who escaped the genocide in Rwanda, and she's finishing her PhD on reconciliation. And there's a man on my right who survived a heart attack in Zambia, and there's a woman across from me from DR Congo who escaped a war. And I'm like, they're still praying. They have a hope that I don't even begin to know how to find. Um, and that I think is also part of what drove me in this is like people who have suffered know something about hope that people who haven't suffered don't know how to handle. Um, and I mean you're that one more time. That was nice. Can you say one more time? People who have suffered for work know how to hope in a way that people who have not suffered don't know how to handle. Um, and and that came up over and over again in my earliest interviews. I wasn't asking people about hope, but I talked to these white people and be like, what how what's changed from the years when you started this to where you are now? And they'd be like, I hope differently. I'd be like, How do you hope differently? And often they'd be like, no one's ever asked me that before. But they just knew they did. And often they'd be like, Well, I learned it from the people I'm with, um, from people of color. Um, and it turns out there's a whole literature of people who have written, mostly like black authors, being like, we know how to hope. The rest of the world doesn't necessarily know how to do this, but we know how to do it. And so um, like realizing that was sort of a cultural inheritance that um that is part of that journey for people is like learning how to tap into how to hope. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Can you distinguish from the hope that people were feeling when they started in the journey? And then either what was missing or what they were gaining into a better hope. Yeah, is a better hope.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah. So this was an interesting part of my journey too, is I was like, I know this is about hope, but I don't know how to describe hope. Um, because usually when we talk about hope, we're just like, you need more of it. Like, just get some hope. Um, and it's like kind of this like one-dimensional thing, like you have less or you have more. And I started realizing it's not just more, it's a different kind. It's like there's different species of it. There's like as many kinds of hope as there are of like different bacteria. And I needed to be like the scientist who could sort of differentiate them and name them and see how they're different. Um, so I started like looking at these different dimensions of hope that kind of have questions to them of like, why do you hope? What's the basis of it? What do you hope for? Uh, what do you think you should do along the way with that hope? And the answers to those can be really different. Like, you can hope because everything's gone well for you in life. You can hope because uh it's going well currently, you had a good day. Um, those are not sustainable reasons to hope. Um, but they are often what we draw on. I was at this panel one time that was actually talking about racism, and the moderator asked all the panelists what gives you hope right now. And every single one answered the question with something recent that had happened that was kind of positive. And I was like, they answered the question of what's going well right now, but they didn't ask, they didn't answer a question of what's what's a reason to hope. Um so I like often I think we fall back on these really flimsy reasons to hope. Um, and then what do we hope for? Um, when I asked that question to people, a lot of people really had to pause. And I think we have this flaw in how we talk about racial justice that often we really do just we know how to talk about what's wrong. We don't know how to imagine what's possible, how to find it, what are we hoping for? Um, so so articulating that was one of the most challenging things in the book. Um, yeah, that's back to that question like what is racial justice? What is racial justice?

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah, what is hope? So was there something that tied these different kinds of hope together that made you say, okay, there can be a sustaining hope, even if they're different, there is a type of hope that will help you keep pushing through.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Yeah, you want me to sneak to the end of the book?

SPEAKER_00 35:46

You guys want to know? We still have about like 15 minutes, and I still have a couple more questions. So I yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Um, well, maybe I I will say um that the third component, you want to know what the third component is? I'm really wrecking all the surprises in the book. It's not a surprise, you can find it in the first chapter. Um, is grace. Um, this idea of grace. I did not want to write a book about grace. I was like, grace has been misused in racial justice conversations too much. I think that there are people who think like, oh, the solution to racism is just like forgiveness. Everybody just needs to forgive it. We'll be done. Um, and that is dangerous to do. Um, and that's linked to, I think, this like really easy light hope of like, oh, we can move on. It's gonna be fine. It's not that bad. And I think that's actually part of the narrative that has sustained racism for generations is people saying, like, it's not that bad, just wait it out. It's gonna be fine. It's been fine for me. Why has it not been fine for you? Right. Um and uh but grace, I think a rigorous grace is about saying things can be really bad. And we're gonna name that, and yet somebody is going to give an undeserved gift that moves us past that. Um, so part of that hope is this response to grace. And I can talk more about that because it's actually, I think it's one of it's the hardest part of the book to write, really, was like trying to write about grace, but people kept talking about it and I had to, I had to delve into it. Um, but the hope I um as far as why people hope, I'll put it this way. Um it's people hoped because they believed in a God who interrupts the bad with the good. Um people would sometimes answer when I said, Why do you hope? They'd be like, Well, Jesus, like, what do you mean by that? And I realize it's a storyline. It's not just because Jesus is gonna like solve everything, it's because Jesus died and then was dead, was dead some more, and then rose dead some more for three days in a while. Um let me just read you. I I haven't had a chance to read some of the amazing quotes in here. Um, the process of writing this, I was thinking today, um stewarding people's stories is just such a tender and amazing thing to get to do. Um, if you're a person here who shared one of these stories with me, I don't hold that lightly at all. Um, but every time I would get to interview somebody, my husband knows this, I'd come home and I'd be like, I just want to share all of it. And I just I only get to choose like these little quotes from people. Um, but let me share just one of them that's my favorite. Um, there's so many favorites. Um shoot, actually, it's gonna be two. Two about hope. Are are we okay? Oh no, you're gonna choose quotes. Yes. Okay. Um I think it's fine. So this is one from a Latina woman who was talking about, she's the one who answered with Jesus first. And I was like, what do you mean by Jesus? And she says this. Um, and she starts rolling into this like preacher voice. It was awesome. Jesus is the center of my hope. Then she took a breath and launched into the rolling rhythm of a preacher at the culmination of a vibrant sermon. My hope is in knowing the promises that come afterward, that we live by faith and not by fight, if sight. And we claim things that even though we don't see them yet, we are trusting. We are trusting that he's gonna call people from every tribe and tongue and nation that this will happen. My hope can't be on the leadership of my church, my hope can't be on the people in my church, my hope can't be on politicians, my hope can't be on myself because we are also fallen. My hope has to remain consistently on Jesus, who is the author, the finisher of all this. He will perfect us. We are in progress. And let me just read one more. Um, and this one really gets to the heart of like, it's a hope that is not optimistic. I describe optimism as sort of psychologically distancing yourself from the bad. Um, but this is a hope that is like so aware of the bad. Um, but despite that, um, and this is uh an Asian American woman, and um, she said this, I would probably describe myself as either a really hopeful pessimist or a crabby optimist. I find no hope in not naming what is really happening. We have to be really honest about what is really happening. Oh, sorry, there's a swear in here. Um, and the excuse me, shit show that we are in, and that has been going on for a long time. Um, she said, look, here's the reality: things will get worse, people are gonna die. And we can't, if we can't be honest about those really hard places, it's very hard for me to find hope. I think we need to do a lot more lamenting. I think that's part of the problem. We don't acknowledge enough. I think my hope is the spirit intercedes. So I don't need to be the only one who watches what's going wrong. The truth may be that I witnessed a lot of destruction in my lifetime, but ultimately, if nothing can separate us from the love of God, then I will hold on to that. I can sit in the mystery of holding on to that hope. I can say, even that, everything I'm seeing going wrong will not be so powerful to separate us from the love of God. I'm fundamentally a person of hope, not because of me personally, but because I live in these faith traditions. My hope is not shiny or happy at all. It's totally bruised and bloodied, and it's scraping by my fingernails. On days you might not be able to see it, but there's something, maybe a scrap of it hanging on and pressing on.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

Wow. Yeah. I was about to say, let's applaud for that. We don't need to, but that was that was very powerful. Wow. Yeah. And it there's a mention of lament in one of those quotes, um, which makes me think that there are some practices or practical things that are helping bolster this hope or helping to there, it's helping the hope to continue.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Um, are there more of those practices? Maybe this is getting more practical than you want people to start thinking, but yeah. Um are there some of those next steps, or this is what I'm observing people doing that's keeping the hope alive. Yeah. Um, relationship for sure.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Um uh princess and I had many conversations about what to do with relationships. Relationships came up a lot. Um, and we're trying to decide like, how do we talk about that? Because I don't think relationship, like find your favorite black friend, is the solution to racism. Like that will sometimes be a problem for that poor black friend who has to put up with you through your relearning process if you're a white person. Um but at the same time, it like, and I I'll skip to like what are we hoping for? Um, we realize that relating in a good way. That's what we're hoping for. Um, relating in a good way to each other, relating in a good way to God. Um, and this came straight from the words of um a Native American woman who was saying, this is what I'm learning from my indigenous brothers and sisters right now, is that we need to learn how to relate in a good way. Um and uh I so so the book goes into more of like what that means, but um, I I will say that a lot of it really just came down to like everyday postures, um, being a risk taker, building trust, like taking the slow time to build trust. Uh, somebody said uh you can't microwave trust. I love that. Um, it takes time. I I I had the analogy of like a reservoir that like you just have to keep plugging into the reservoir of building trust with people who are different from you in all different ways, because it's so easy for that reservoir to just get shattered and gosh out all of the stuff you stored up. Um, so it's the everyday practices of like being a trustworthy person.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Yeah. Yeah. And you said taking risks. And I think there was a part of your book where you were saying it's almost counterintuitive. But when you start asking the why questions, you you aren't actually removing yourself from risk because, oh, I'm getting better at this. But in fact, you are putting yourself in positions to mess up more, yes, feel more risky, which is just a good reminder to have is okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Yeah. In fact, to I've had students tell me, like, I feel like I'm tiptoeing around race. And I'm like, that that shouldn't be how it feels. Um, like we need to get into the mess sometimes. Um, and and that will be uncomfortable. You will make mistakes. Um, you'll remember that you're worthy of forgiveness from God, um, and that there will be people who will who will bring you through that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

You had a comment in your book about uh complicated questions that your students ask you that I'm sure many of us have asked when looking at race. So I'm trying to remember one of them, but it's like, um, how as a white student can I participate and help with my minority brothers and sisters, but not seem like white savior? Um, how do how do I reconcile the fact that if I volunteer, I look like I am like a white savior trying to solve everybody. Yeah, if don't volunteer, then I don't care. Uh right. And there are a whole bunch of these uh landmines that you can step on. Um and you you can feel really caught caught, especially as a white Christian. How do you help your students navigate that?

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Yeah. Um this is in a a chapter called Pitfalls to Perseverance. And uh the chapter does not end with a solution to it. Um it's uh I think the short answer maybe is it's gonna require contextualization. Um, that there's not a be-all end-all. Like you should do this, follow these five simple rules, and you'll have it figured out. Um, there's a section I wanted to read that is related to that. Shall I do another? Please read another. Oh, Ink we're upset about hearing okay. Yeah, um, this is um a segment at the this started the book. This is in the first chapter. And um this is one of the first things I actually wrote for this book. Um I did a lot of just like free journaling, and this just sort of like gushed out of me one time. It's been edited, but like this is early on, I realized this is what I want to do. Um, here's what I do not have for you in this book. I do not have another how-to manual of 10 neat steps to make yourself and your organization into a bastion of anti-racism. I don't have a case for how Christian theology does or doesn't line up with anti-racism or how to preach that to a congregation. I also don't have an analysis of how white Christians became entangled with racism, both blatantly and in subtle forms such as colorblindness. I am able to write this book because many others have written those books already. I'm not here to invite the white Christians who are not in this book to defend themselves, nor to raise anybody's hackles about them. Let them be for a minute. Let's turn our attention elsewhere. Neither am I offering you my own personal story of discovering some beautiful path you can follow straight to success. I cannot promise political victories, church transformation, or structural change. I know that's not great great news, but I think you don't expect great news anymore, and you can handle it. Here's what I do have for you: evidence that if you care even just a little bit about both of these crazy bedfellows of Christianity and racial justice, you are not alone. Your people are out there. They have been for a very long time. And from what I can tell, they are not going away. You exist and others like you exist. And the questions and experiences you have cradled matter. And when I say they exist, I mean not just people who signed up for a book club last fall because they saw something in the news that made them feel sad or guilty, or people who watched one YouTube video after another until they could feel emotionally alive again, or people who jumped on a bus to go to a protest last summer because their friends were going, and it was all very fun. I'm talking about people who weave racial justice into the very fabric of their communities, their work, their families. It is the normal of their lives. They're the ones who know how to get stuff done. You probably know many people who have tried out fair weather fandom of racial justice, and I want to make sure that you know the folks who are lifers. I know that for a lot of us, hope itself is hard to even hope for. If you feel yourself hanging on by only a thread of hope, hope for either racial justice or for the church or for this thin sliver of overlap between the two, I wrote this book with you in mind. Maybe this is the very first book that you've read with race in the title, or with Christians in the title, and you've got a lot of questions. Maybe you're a person who can't say the word anti-racism without rolling your eyes a little, or maybe instead you're the person who rolls your eyes at those people. Maybe just holding this book feels like a risk. I am glad you are here. Welcome. Maybe you're a person of color, and despite having to go through every day figuring out white people's ways, you're still curious or fed up enough to read some more research on white people. Maybe you've tried to be a bridge in diverse spaces, a bridge that sometimes stretches so wide it creaks and groans. Maybe you've seen white people come like tourists into your spaces, wafting the stench of colonialism. And you've done your work to figure out how white people can think and you want to know why white people can't get on with it and do the same. Maybe you've spent time around Christians and you thought that responding to racial justice should be a pretty low bar to ask of Christians, or it's supposed to be all about love and reconciliation and faith against the odds and tapping into the power of the creator of the universe. You ask yourself, if the church can't get this right, is it time to admit that this is not just accidental, but some intrinsic flaw in the very fiber and structure of the religion itself? To all readers, I hope that when you encounter something unsettling or troubling, you will listen a little longer, hold your judgments a little looser, stretch a little further, breathe a little deeper. I wouldn't ask this of you lightly. If you are anything like me, this journey comes with a lot of tears, some cursing, and throwing a book or two across the room. It can be lonely and tedious. It very well may break your heart. But let me say again what I want you to know. You are not alone. You are going to meet a certain kind of unusual people in this book. Together we are going to scoop out the litter that has clogged up our wellspring of hope, scrub it out, and see whether we find something shimmering. That was a great way to end that second. Thank you.