Racial Justice for the Long Haul | Dr. Christine Jeske

In this episode of The UpWords Podcast, host Rebecca Cooks sits down with Dr. Christine Jeske—professor, researcher, and author of Racial Justice for the Long Haul: How White Christian Advocates Persevere and Why. Christine shares compelling stories and research on what sustains hope and commitment in the pursuit of racial justice. From personal experiences to systemic challenges, we explore why this work is not a quick fix but a lifelong journey rooted in grace, resilience, and community.

What You'll Learn

1. Why racial justice requires more than short-term activism.
2. Four common pitfalls that derail perseverance—and how to navigate them.
3. The role of lament, mending, risk-taking, and joy in sustaining advocacy.
4. How Christian hope reframes our approach to justice.
5. Practical insights for white Christians seeking long-term engagement.

Resources & Links

1. Book: https://a.co/d/azCpsPj
2. Past Episodes & Resources: slbf.org/studio

Key Quotes

1. “We are seeking out a justice that moves to community rather than a justice that says, ‘All right, we’re all even now.’”
2. “Grace is not about saying, ‘Oh, it’s fine.’ You can’t forgive something unless you’ve named what was wrong.”
3. “Sometimes the best way to fix it is just to live it.”

CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

So mending is this idea of like the social fabric is what we're after. It's not about just fixing your relationship with one person. So there is that, right? Like, you know, in my own family, like having conversations with people about this is important. Comforting somebody who's just come through a racial incident that was really wrong, right? That's important too. But if you think it's just like, I need to have a friend who's different from myself, and that will solve it, that's not the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we explore the intersection of Christian faith in the academy, church, and marketplace. I'm your host, Rebecca Cooks, and our guest today is Dr. Christine Jeske, professor and author of the new book, Racial Justice for the Long Haul: How White Christian Advocates Persevere, and Why. Christine shares stories, research, and insights on what sustains hopeful commitment in this work. From pitfalls of perseverance to postures of perseverance, Christine helps us see why racial justice isn't just a quick fix, but a lifelong journey rooted in grace and resilience. Stay tuned for our conversation that pulls back the curtain on why pursuing racial justice is so hard and so worth it. Welcome to the podcast. We are talking about your new and fourth book, Racial Justice for the Long Haul, How White Christian Advocates Persevere, and Why? Congratulations on writing a fourth book. Thank you so much. Yes, it's just what I do know. It's just writing books. Do you already have a next one in the queue?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

No. Yeah. It feels a little bit like giving birth to children. Like fair. It feels like, but it's like a five-year process. So like a five-year incubation of a child. And then at this point, you're like, I don't know if I ever want to do this again. But then a couple years later, you're like, yeah, I guess I can. I'm up for it. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Yeah. So we'll see. Okay. Excellent. Yes. Well, please take time to bask in all of the rest and goodness of writing a book and completing it. Well, as a little just taste of what the book is about, I have one quote here and then feel free to add to uh maybe how you would summarize the book. But this is one of my favorite quotes. You say, 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. Which is really lovely. And that's at the beginning of your book. You like pack a punch with that. Um, what more would you say to give people a taste of what your book is about?

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah, I think in short, maybe I would say this is a book about how white Christians come to advocate for racial justice, not just as a weekend hobby or a one-time thing when it's in the news, but in the long haul. Um, and specifically about white people and specifically about Christians, and specifically about longevity. So it's about how do you develop a hope and a practice and a posture that this can keep going in your life? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yes. Okay, that's great. I would like to hit some of those points specifically. Before we get there though, can you tell me what got you into this topic? This isn't just, you know, a light topic that people casually stroll into and decide, I'm gonna write a book on this. So um, maybe actually let's start with an earlier story. Um, you give a prompt to several people in your book who you're doing the research with. Um, and the prompt goes, I would not be committed to racial justice in the way that I am, if not for. And I'm wondering how you would answer that question. What got you into this?

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yeah, so a story I'm thinking about is if I go back to I'm about 13 years old and I am walking into a brewers game uh here in Wisconsin, where I grew up, and I'm with my immediate family and my grandparents. And we have just had a lovely picnic. We're walking into the brewers game, and my grandfather suddenly just drops down onto the ground. And I was walking in front of him. I had actually turned around and I saw it happen. He just lands face down on the pavement, and it turns out he's had a massive heart attack. They roll him over, people are kind of like, oh my goodness, what can we do? We call for help, and a man comes over and starts doing CPR on him. And he ultimately died that day. And um, so that's my grandfather's death. Now, what does that have to do with this book? Well, so fast forward to about five, six years later, I'm in college and I start learning some backstory about my grandfather, and I know some of this, but not all of this. So, one of the things I learned was that he did not allow his own son-in-law to come into his house, and he didn't go to that marriage of his daughter and son-in-law because his son-in-law was black. So I knew I knew this. Um, they got divorced when I was very young, so I'd actually not known this uncle of mine. But I'm learning this and sort of realizing, like, wow, there's some serious racism going on in my immediate family background. And I'm just kind of like, you know, that's in the background. What do I do about that? But I didn't grow up in a family where we really talked about race a lot. But in college, also some other significant things started happening. One was that I was an RA in a dorm here in UW Madison. Which storm um Liz Waters. That's where I live. Yes, I was there for two years. Yes. Great. So one of those years, I had a number of pairs of roommates who were just freshmen randomly assigned to roommates, and they were white and black roommates together. And one of those, about midway through the year, I was away for the weekend. I came back, and my residents at my hall are like, Christine, did you hear what happened? The parents of a white student came and shouted at the roommate and said, You will not come onto our daughter's side of the room. And they actually took masking tape and put masking tape down the middle of the dorm room and said, You won't cross over here. And um, and like, you know, I sort of missed all the fallout of this. Thankfully, like there were people who supported that roommate through that process. Um, but basically it was like, wow, we are basically recreating segregation right here in our dorm. Not long after that, another pair of roommates, there was a white roommate who physically picked up the television of her black roommate and threw it across the room. And we're talking like, you know, this isn't the era where they're like big boxy televisions, right? This is not like a small light thing. It's never a small thing to throw at television, but it was a particularly large television, right? And this is a particularly large thing in my life that I started realizing like, what on earth is going on here? And I organized this event in my dorm called Let's Talk About Race, thinking I would just, you know, like bring people together and like we're gonna talk this through. And as long as we're all in the room together, we can solve this, right? Well, first of all, I think only like three people came. They were all white, and none of them had any solutions to what we can do about this. Okay. So so anyway, I'm realizing like this is a big problem. I don't know what to do with it. I actually started writing in this memoir class when I was a senior in college. And part of what I wanted to unpack is like, what is the history of race in my family? Having very little tools for this. But so where it goes back to, I start writing about my grandfather and his life. And when I got to writing about his death, I suddenly, like going back through that in my mind, realized that man who had rolled him over and done CPR on him, the last man he ever saw in his life was black. And that man obviously didn't know my grandfather, didn't know the history of that. But it was this moment where I was like, there's like an undeserved grace in this moment. Yeah. And and that I didn't have words for at the time, but that you will see it's it's a theme that's come back in my writing too. It's like, what do you do with this like undeserved gift that is given and you can't repay it? How do I live differently knowing that?

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember what your processing was like as you were starting to realize these things about your grandfather? Were you pushing against it? Were you actually pretty ready to accept, oh no, this is a truth about him? How did you view him afterwards?

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah, like what was your processing? That's a great question. You know, I feel like through the years, it's just been different at different times. Thankfully, like I have so many wonderful memories of him too. And so I think when you put race into the context of an individual, you can see some aspects of it that just kind of are true across the board. One is that like it's not just about one person being a hateful, spiteful person who's like the evil person in the world. Like, I feel like sometimes that's the portrayal in movies is there's just like the racist people and the not racist people. And if we can just sort them out, we'll have it solved. Yeah. And, you know, I have a cousin who's mixed race. And like my grandfather was wonderful to her too. So it's like, how do you reconcile that people can be complicated? But we are in a system that trains us to think and act in a certain way, and we become products of that unless we actively push against it. Um, so I think like realizing that he was produced by a system, and I can't change who he was, but I can like interact with that system today and try to make it so people are trained differently throughout their lifetime. Yeah. But I think like in college, it was just like so many questions. Like I just felt like I was walking around trying to find somebody who could help answer these questions of like, how did the world come to be the way that it is?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

How is this happening? Yeah. Yeah, that feels uh very similar to part of my family story as well. I'm mixed race. Woo!

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

And I had known growing up that there was tension in my family because my dad was black and my mom was white and they were marrying each other. Even here in Madison, Wisconsin, in what, 1993? Yep. Um, that was still a big issue. Um, but I experienced my mom's side of the family, particularly her dad, very loving, very kind, raised me uh wonderfully whenever I was with them. But then as I was in college, I was starting to learn, particularly from my grandfather, how he still had a lot of really horrible thoughts uh against the African-American community. And uh, that was very hard for me to reckon with, right? Because I'm assuming part of my my half of myself, my African-American half. And I was like, So do you not like me? You still hate this side of my family? Do you see me differently? But then why? And and why don't you value this? And so I from the sounds of it, I was not nearly as gracious as you were pronounced in the in my initial reaction. Like, oh, we need to cut all ties. I need to sever this. This is I I can't be around you. Yeah. And and the idea of needing to re-engage is very hard until a couple of years later when I became one of his, I guess, caretakers. Yeah.

unknown 11:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

So that's that's not an easy process. Like picking up on what you said of like very gracious, like one thing I've learned is that grace is not about just saying, like, oh, it's fine. Really, right? It's like you gotta name what was wrong there, right? You can't forgive something unless you've really named what is wrong with the thing that you're forgiving. And so yeah, definitely, you know, don't read me as just like, oh, that, you know, it wasn't that big of a deal. It's okay. No, right? Like we have to be able to say that was a really ugly part of my upbringing and it affects who I am today. And it was part of how I was trained. And if I'm not able to name that, and and also even like, you know, figuring out where are the ways I participated in it and like receiving forgiveness by naming what was wrong too is is a part of that.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yes. Yeah. Yes. Lament, forgiveness, yeah, the giving of grace, they all have that tie where they're it is not just a sweeping under the rug because there is a cost to forgiving, right? You are assuming that cost in a certain way. And so there there does need to be some acknowledgement and hopefully reconciliation is the end goal. But initially, gotta say what was wrong. Yeah. I'm wondering on the lines of complexity, if we're looking at the story that you were telling about being an RA and having some of these experiences with the residents, were there other elements that were competing with the race story? Meaning um, for the roommates where there was masking tape put in the middle of the room, was it clear to everyone or was it explicitly stated that it was because of race, or were there also things like, well, she took something or she's not respecting my child's space, um, or she's doing something undesirable, right? Was the throwing of the TV because it was a spat about boys as opposed to race? How did how did we land on race?

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah, you know, I I don't know enough details. I do remember that there was a difference in sort of physical size between the roommates. Um, one was much taller, stronger, and one was very small. And so, like, one was very quiet, one was very extroverted, right? And so I think often when race is at play, that is often the tendency for sure, is to say, like, oh, it wasn't about race. I'm not being racist, it's not about race, right? Because we're trained that way in this era, like we know it's politically incorrect to say it's about race. And so what happens and what has happened kind of like in a shift since say like the 70s and 80s has been this sort of colorblind approach of like, well, it's not about race. It's really just that, like, oh, it's a difference of social class, it's about poverty and wealth, or it's about like extrovert, introvert, or just an unfamiliar culture. Those things can all be at play, also, but there is still a way in which we have been trained historically to see categories of race. And those categories were made in a way that trains us to put one group hierarchically above others, and systems have been made that way. So, yes, you need to address all kinds of other things in society too. This is not to say like other social problems are not important. And honestly, I hope that people read a book like racial justice for the long haul and they can see like racial justice is one aspect of justice. But if you're working toward like climate justice or you're working for like ableism or against ableism, right? Um, like whatever sort of aspect of justice you're working for, so much of this applies too, because it is about like how do you have the resilience to fight against a social issue as an individual. Like we're not made as individuals to solve society, but we are made as individuals to contribute to solving society. I don't know, making it better, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Well, I mean, your book, it has all of the answers for us. We will have addressed every race.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Once you get to the end, you are a good person. Awesome. I loved that where we're going.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

This is what you made out.

unknown 15:06

Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Not at all. Well, let's get into the book a little bit more. Um, and I do want to come back to some of the things that you were highlighting, and I was specifically seeing them in your subtitle. Um, so how white Christian advocates persevere and why. Let's start with just the first part of that. Why are we focusing on white Christian advocates as opposed to any other population?

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Well, track records not great. Uh okay, I mean, it started because I'm a white Christian, like, and I teach white Christians. I teach at Wheaton College, predominantly White Institute and Christian. So I was like, if nothing else, I just want to know how to do my job better and how to be a better white Christian is what I am, right? And then when I got further into this research, I started looking statistically at, you know, different demographic groups and how they engage with racism. And one study in particular came out, it was the the survey was done with thousands of people across 2019 and 2020 and found that in 2020, the percentage of white Christians, and this is like Christians of all denominations, not just evangelical, who said they were very motivated to address racial injustice was only 9%. And that's half as many as white people more broadly, and it's one-fifth as many as black Christians. So it's not just being white, it's not just being Christians. That combination is a group that has become in our society less likely to address racial injustice. And yet there's that 9%. And maybe it's larger, you know, that's like very motivated, right? There's some who are maybe somewhat motivated. It's not a perfect number to describe what's going on, but I knew they were out there. And because so many books have been written that describe the history of how white Christians have participated in causing racism. That leaves open this space for like, well, what's what's the rest of the story? Can we do anything? Is there anything that can be done better? Um, and I I'd met people who were in that category, I was pretty sure. And I was like, I want to, I want to know what I can learn from them.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

How do they keep going? Yes, yes. That's one of the many things that I appreciated about your book was that it wasn't just berating or pointing out these are all the ways that you, whoever you is, you have done it wrong. But in fact, it's a, but here is a path forward, or here's at least some encouragement and some bolstering. It is looking at um, though this may not be our ideal number, we are going to see what we can learn from this number nonetheless. We are going to pull the good. And I appreciated that. It felt very approachable then to read.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah. Can I actually just read you a quote from one of the people I interviewed? Please do. This was a white woman who was not actually a Christian at the time, became a Christian later, but she described working in a place where she had just had a racist incident come up that she was at fault for and was um really dealing with like her own sense of responsibility and culpability in this situation. And she went to this event where a black Christian man was speaking about racism. And this is how she described it. She said, She said, I get a little weepy just thinking about it still. I remember how I felt. I was like, wow, I don't know what's happening here, but I feel like I belong here. I feel like there's something hopeful here because I felt so horrible. And I just thought, here is this black man appealing to white people, believing in like, believing in white people, that like if you just educate them and give them some space to do their best, that could really happen. And I wanted to be a part of that. And I'll never forget the grace that he had with me in that moment. So she went up and talked to him afterward about her situation, um, which again, like he would not have had to make time for her to even listen to this. But she said, you know, I didn't know what grace was at the time. But, you know, as time has gone on, when I look back at it still, it's ever more profound, like understanding how effed up we actually are. And yet he's still, and her voice just like cracked and broke off right there. And that description of those moments in people's life, like that's not the only moment in a person's journey. But I think I wanted, as this research went on, I wanted to be able to kind of describe why those moments matter, these moments when people actually realize like there is some hope for change. And it's a hope that is not in denial. It's like, it's really horrible. We know it's horrible. We know it's effed up. And that was like she bleep her herself out, right? Okay. Um, but I feel like that's such a great definition for what Christian grace looks like, is like we understand how effed up it is, and yet still, yet still something. And so yeah, that's kind of a thread that runs through this whole book is like how do you how do you find that kind of a hope? And I think it's intimately tied to grace.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Yes, yes. And I think you do a good job as well outlining grace as not just being the oneness on minority populations to be the only ones extending grace. This is an invitation for white Christian advocates as well to participate in the cycle of grace uh of receiving it, giving it themselves and and really risking to try and make this a better situation. Yeah. Um, so that could be something that we maybe get to on on grace and what that looks like. Um but also read the book. Yes. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so maybe the second part of your subtitle, you ask the question, how white Christian advocates persevere. So there are two questions, how and why. So if we're looking at the how, it's implying that perseverance is hard, as we all know. Um, but even more so, it's not happening that much. There's a quote here that actually I found really amusing. You were talking to a woman who was acknowledging that she had really gotten into racial justice at one point and then, you know, life changed and different things just happened. And so she started to pull away just kind of naturally or just not investing as much. And she was reflecting on people who hadn't pulled away but were still going in this racial justice fight. And she says, I was working with people who had been in it for the long haul, and I'd asked them, How do you keep it up? Like, how have you been doing this so long? Like you burned your draft card in like 1969, and you're still going, and you still somehow believe that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice? Like how? And I think that was a great quote to kind of encapsulate the crux of how is this happening? So if we're gonna try and answer how, which I think your book takes a really great stab at, let's look at what what's making perseverance hard first. Why is it not working? How are we getting tripped up? You suggest what you call pitfalls. Let's talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah. Yeah. I'll let you respond to that. Do you have in front of you the list of pitfalls that I have? I sure want to read them for me because it's been a little while since I read that.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

But I I love it. This is great. This is great. Yes. Um, four pitfalls of perseverance. You label them as, right? Isn't that so good? Did you know you wrote this? I did.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

I did write it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

I just want to make sure I I actually nail what you're asking. No, that's not fair to say, okay, tell me word for word these steps in your book. That's no, no, no. Here we go. Okay. Uh the first one is gap between knowledge and embodiment, and we can come back. The second one is uncertainty around complexity. The third is loneliness, plain and simple. And then the fourth is fear of guilt and shame. So let's just start with number one, um, the gap between knowledge and embodiment. What do we mean?

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yes. Yeah. So you can read a book about how the history of racism played out. You can read another book about all the right things you're supposed to do. You can read lots of books, right? You can watch lots of movies, but if you don't actually try it, you are not learning sort of the embodied challenges and postures that it takes to engage in this work. And what I heard over and over again from people is that often when they get started thinking like, okay, I'm gonna like show up at this protest or I'm going to enter into a space where I, as a white person, am not the majority. There's this feeling of like, oh my goodness, I'm making so many mistakes. And you're suddenly aware of your ability to make mistakes in a different way. And that's normal, right? Because like you don't notice your mistakes if you're just hiding out with other white people and never thinking about racial injustice. So, but getting through that is a challenge. And I think a lot of people, it goes back to even sort of the sense of hope, right? Like, I think sometimes the the sort of privileged way to think about hope that many of us have been trained in is that the world will mostly turn out fine. Um, you know, if you look at the history of white Americans, it's like, well, most of the time things turned out okay. And but that's not the history that black Americans, Native American history will tell you. And so it's running into this like, wow, maybe this is harder than I really thought it was. And how do I embody my myself when I'm like participating in that? There's a word we use in social science called habitus sometimes, which is a word for sort of like embodied culture, like how all of your cultural influences around you train you to actually act as a person. Looks a lot like habit. The word like habit. Yeah. Yeah. Shorthand for that. Yeah. But French philosopher Borgio had to use, you know, a word that was in the unfamiliar commodity. No, no, no. I study French is great. Yeah. But I describe it kind of like learning to dance, right? Like if you if you watch people dance, it's a lot of fun. But when you get out there, you have to actually like get your feet to move and like and we learn it from people around us. So if you're learning an unfamiliar style of dance, it's gonna feel more awkward, also. I want to read for you a quote, and it's gonna take me just a second to find it.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking about it. I was thinking about uh when have I seen embodiment done well, where someone has, you know, transitioned from just knowing to embodying and perhaps taking that risk. I was thinking about a good friend of mine who, as as she was learning more about race, she was so quick to call out a situation and apologize or at least say, Hey, I approached the conversation in this way and I said this thing. I don't know if that was a good thing to say, if that was a bad thing to say. I don't know if that hurt you. Yeah. And I need to know that. Um, so uh should I can I apologize? Um, and so she was very good to keep practicing and coming back, or even just checking in. It was her own initiative. Like, this might have been fine, but it may not have been. Help me with this. Yeah. Um, and since we were friends, we already had the the trust where yes, I I want to invest in you, I want to help you and love you well. And it's uh my joy to explain this to you because I want to keep this friendship going. So that that's a picture I'm having of embodiment.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Yeah. You know, there's so much in that too, like that idea of trust, right? Like the the work of racial justice depends upon trust. And trust just takes time to to build up. I think of it kind of like a reservoir that like you're just putting deposits into this reservoir so that when you need it, you have something that you can take out of it, right? Like when something goes wrong, if you've built up that trust, you have something in the reservoir. But there are moments where it can just like gush out tons of it where like something goes wrong. And it just takes time to like slowly rebuild it between people. Um, one thing we didn't mention, I think, is that this the way that I did this research was not just interviewing white people. And the way that I chose white people for the study was by starting with people of color from a lot of different churches and a lot of different organizations, but asking them, what does racial justice look like to you? And then having them recommend white people that they knew. And so it gives a different flavor to the book, too, because there's this interplay between them. Sometimes they were telling the same stories of something that happened, but you'd hear both sides of that story and how they both interpreted it.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Um, so I wanted to share this quote about making mistakes from a black woman who I was talking with. And she said, Guess what? You're gonna make a mistake. This work is messy, okay? It is messy. This work is hard, but any relationship is. So if you're really serious about relationship building and being in a relationship specifically with communities of color, yeah, you're gonna mess up. That is part of the growing journey. And then here's a quote from a white man who was talking about a really similar thing. And he said, he described what it feels like for him to be in multi-racial, multicultural spaces. He said, cross-cultural courage is like, I am terrified. I'm afraid. I don't really know what I'm doing, and I'm trying, but I know that I could really cause some damage. I know that I'm scared. I know that I'm scared that someday somebody's gonna ask me to do something to prove that I am anti-racist enough and I'm gonna feel like I don't want to do that, but I'm still gonna show up. I'm still gonna be here. I'm still going to trust God, even if I don't understand all the time, or if I'm still working through it. Um, and you know, if you get one thing out of the book, I hope one of the things you get out of it is just it's a journey. Like nobody arrives at the end and has made it. It's really about like being on that journey and continuing to have like a long obedience in the same direction and just let yourself be changed through that journey.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Yes. Yeah, yes, that's lovely. If you're enjoying this conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the Upwards Podcast on your favorite platform. And if Christine's insights resonate with you, check out her new book, Racial Justice for the Long Haul from Intervarsity Press. It's a powerful resource about moving past optimism to a weathered, sustainable hope for anyone intimidated, suspicious, or just run ragged in the world of racial justice. You'll also find past episodes and resources at slbf.org slash studio. Now, let's return to our discussion with Christine as we explore the postures that sustain long-term advocacy. So if gap between knowledge and embodiment is one of the areas that's tripping us up, I think one that's very similar to the quote you were just reading is actually your fourth one about a fear of guilt and shame. And can you talk to us about that and how that relates?

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, anybody who does this work long enough is just going to have to deal with that. And there's just so many angles to it, right? Like everybody, I think, will experience some hurt and disappointment um with other people and also some hurt and disappointment with themselves. And because of the nature of the hierarchy of racism, the history is that the hurts have been more often caused by white people to people of color. Um, but that doesn't mean that like everybody's not dealing with some guilt and shame in it and dealing with those in community. And that's why like this idea of grace just kept coming up. And so I set out to try to look for common elements that came up in these life stories of people who had this long-term commitment to racial justice. And the things that I expected were like, oh, they learn a lot and they've had transformative incidents in their life, what I call collision moments, where suddenly this social issue hits home, kind of like you know, with my grandfather and asking why, you know, taking classes about that. Those I kind of expected. And I feel like that's where most of the training around uh racial justice focuses. But when I talk to my students, it always comes up. They're like, but what do we do with the guilt? What do we do with the harm? Can you like put a price tag on slavery? Can you pay it back? Can you get to a place where it's even? And you can't. So then what do we do with situations like that where you can't just like tie a neat bow around it, put a price tag on it, pay it off, and be done? And I realized like that's actually not what we're called to in dealing with suffering in the world. Like, if you if you think about how Paul dealt with suffering, um, he never was like, well, I've suffered this amount, and so I deserve this from the rest of the world that it's going to like, you know, solve that. And he wasn't like, you know, other people have suffered a certain amount that I'm gonna pay it back. But rather he was like, I live out of a a response to grace, that everything I have was a gift from God. And so, like, how do I approach justice? I approach it out of this overflow of receiving forgiveness from God and having more than I need that I can just keep giving to people around me. And that's that's sort of like what the walk of being a Christian is.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Yeah. Yeah. That's really lovely. And I it's I'm just struck with the fact that students can ask you such a question. Like that's a vulnerable question to say, what do I do with the guilt that right? I feel that.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Yeah, that's very moving. Another quote that brings in questions that your students ask ties to one of the other pitfalls being uh uncertainty around complexity. And I love this quote because I hear these questions frequently as well. And they're they're sitting in our minds frequently. It's about getting stuck in how messy race can be. And uh so the quotes go um, if I don't volunteer, excuse me, if you don't volunteer, you're selfish. If you do volunteer, you're privileged. But what then? And then you go on to just give all of these dichotomies. How can you give generously but not think of yourself as a white savior? How can you see all the wrongs white people cause but not be deprived, excuse me, but not be driven by white guilt? How can you create safe spaces for people of color, but not treat people of color as fragile or pitiable? How are you supposed to follow and learn from people of color but not expect that they take on the burden of educating you and spending their valuable time on you? These are great questions, Christine. Great questions. It's all complicated. What are we meant to do when we are faced with that much complexity? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

One just a little story along those lines that I thought really named this well was from a man who had, in I think it was in between years in college, had gone and worked in an urban context, under resource neighborhood, and like spent the summer volunteering, kind of feeling like, wow, I'm really learning how this works. I'm really doing something that's helpful. I'm kind of like becoming a good person. And then had this conversation with someone who's like, you could spend the entire summer not getting paid. What kind of ridiculous privilege is that? Like you have nothing in common with us. And like the very active volunteering, it was like, oh no. Like, so am I actually lived into this stereotype? Yes, lived into just like having things that other people don't share. And like, what do you do with that? Um, so yes, all those questions definitely come up. And I think the key thing is like those questions do not mean that the whole thing is flawed. I think sometimes people are like, well, because my training on diversity didn't answer this question, then the whole thing is a sham. Right. But rather, like, you know, like if I am in a relationship with my husband, and there are times where like he needs to just tell me about something that went wrong in his life. And there's a time where uh he wants me to help him solve that problem and like let's talk through how we can fix it. And and then there's another time where he might be just like, no, please do not try to fix it right now. I need you to just listen. Does that mean that I should like give up on the relationship because he has different needs at different times? Like, no, it just means I need to get to know him better so that I know how to read that situation and and have enough trust and honesty with him to be able to even just ask him, right? Like, is this one of those moments where you want me to um help solve that problem right now? Or do you need me to just like sit with you and lament what just happened? And so, like complexity is a part of life. Yeah. And it doesn't mean stop, it means actually like go deeper, ask more why questions, ask questions to understand how to do it better. I I was finding another quote to going back to kind of what we were saying earlier. Just so many good quotes. I know. Oh my goodness. Like the process of writing this, I just wanted to have every person be able to listen to the whole of every interview. Yes, yes. And there's just like, I get excited when I go back through this book and I just read these quotes from people who say the most brilliant things. Yes. This is from a white man who is in a very intentionally multiracial church. And he said, We are seeking out a justice that moves to community rather than a justice that says, all right, we're all even now. We don't want to get to the point where we're even. We want to get to where we're working together. And that quote came up when I asked this question of what do you hope for? And often when I would ask that question, people would be like, wow, thank you for asking. I have not been asked that often enough. And I think we know what we're working against often when you know, you get a little bit of training in racial justice and you're like, I know some things that are really bad. Like, don't be like my grandfather not allowing a black grandson or a black son-in-law into the house, right? Like, just don't do the bad things. But what are we aiming for? What is the end to all this? Is a question that actually I think Christianity gives really helpful answers to. Like a healed society of shalom. I use the metaphor of like a mended fabric of society, which is not just like one individual. Like, if we're each kind of like the threads in a fabric, it's not just about one individual doing the awesome thing of like, I mended the gap, right? It's about interweaving with people and creating this sort of beautiful web of a new way of doing society. Um, and you you catch glimpses of that. Again, like um getting to interview 70 people for this book, I was like, there are stories of that out there all the time. They're not always the stories that show up in the news, but they are happening and it's not impossible. It's hard, but it's not impossible.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

It's hard, but it's not impossible.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Yeah. Can you then take us to the last pitfall that you outlined before we hop to just what you've done, then what is working, what is helping us move forward and persevere. The last one is very simply it's loneliness. Um, it's it's a hard road to walk, as you were pointing out. It's nine percent. Yeah. That's that's a smaller number. That's a lonely number. Tell us about what you were hearing about loneliness.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

Yeah. For white people in particular, especially if you grow up in a majority white setting, being a minority is an unfamiliar experience for a lot of people the first time it happens. And some people who were in the study, a good number of them actually had like spent time internationally and had felt what it feels like to be a foreigner. And that sense of like their own experience built empathy. It's a common experience, I think, that people realize what it feels like to be on the outside in some way themselves. I had a person who talked about being bullied in school. I had a person who talked about being a female who was excluded from something. And like that can, for some people, it can be like, well, so everybody else should get over it because I suffered more. That's not helpful. Not what we're doing. Yeah, that's not what we're doing, right? So if you find yourself in that mindset, just stop it. Right. But instead, it can build empathy. Where was I going with that? So loneliness, um, this experience of like, you know, visiting a black church or even considering joining a black church as a white person. I think sometimes people's first experience is like, why are people not all being super welcoming to me? Like, I feel really special and out of place here. And they're just ignoring me, or yeah. Like and so, like trying to learn what it's like to not be the center of attention and have people distrust you. One person, a Latino woman, shared this analogy of if you were sexually assaulted, and your mother was also, and her mother was also, and back generations as long as you can go, you would be pretty sensitive around men. And you would just need men to like go out of their way to make sure you feel safe and you feel understood, and there's trust built around that. And that kind of like sensitivity applies in racial situations in some cases. That like as a white person, don't expect people to just immat immediately trust you or think you're the hero. Like there's distrust there because of the history behind it. And so that might mean that relationships just take longer to build. It also plays out that like then, you know, people become interested in racial justice as a white person, they go back to their white family. I was gonna ask, and they don't understand either. And they're like, oh, you're like super woke, or you know, like these sort of like, I don't understand what you're doing kind of things in their white community. So it can be lonely. Yeah. It doesn't always stay that way forever. But some people like just name that that might be a cost of this journey is that relationships change. But then the ones that they have, I think often are like really deep and tight because they value them. They realize like this is not something I take for granted. Yes. Cross-cultural relationships are special and they take work, but they're like maybe in some ways an extra evidence of how God works.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Absolutely. Yes. I was going to ask exactly that. Like, okay, so once they've made enough steps in one direction, let's say towards racial justice, then when going back to former communities or communities that they're still in, is there loneliness there? So it sounds like, yes, it you might be in this no man's land, an illuminal space for a while.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

But it's a very good admonishment that it doesn't end there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

It doesn't and that's part of like the work of this process of building a different society, like mending the social fabric also is being a person who comes into white communities and shares maybe what you've learned and is educating and teaching other people and leading in those spaces too. Um, the ways that people live this out were all over the place. Like some people are will ask me about this book. They're like, what do they do? They want to skip to the end of the book and they're like, Can I just do those things so that I will be that person also? Right. Um, but career-wise, all over the map, like people in healthcare, education, ministry, and most of their job titles were not titled something that was like working for a racial justice organization. Rather, it was like, you know, some are in predominantly white spaces, some are in neighborhoods that are like they're the minority. It's not about sort of like a magic formula that you have to do one thing or another. Some of them are mostly working with white people, some are mostly working with people of color. Um, so it's it's kind of discerning like where is your vocational call and how you play this out.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Absolutely. And to your point of people are looking for a checklist or the next thing, what are the things that I do? Um, if we turn the conversation to, okay, those are pitfalls, those are things that are tripping us up. You do suggest things though that help in the perseverance, um, but you don't present them as a checklist. You call them postures. Why was that word so important for you?

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah. I was just thinking about how, like, if you do yoga or you do any sport really, like it trains you in a certain way of being, like how you hold your body. And there's something like that in our spiritual walk too. Like you get trained into a certain way of responding to the world around you. And it's not, it's not a checklist, it's just who you become. There was one woman who was describing why she recommended this white person for the research. It was a Latino woman talking about her friend. And she said, it's just who she is. Like, I was like, Why do you recommend her? And she's like, It's just who she is. I really like that idea. People often talked about just like making it an everyday thing, everyday love, everyday life. And from both sides, like there was a black woman that I asked about what is the goal? What do you hope for? Yes. And her answer was basically just like, just live, just live it. We just want to live. Like, you know, it's not like, yeah, it's not like um, I want this certain, you know, opportunity at work. It's like I want it to be just woven into my life. One of my favorite quotes along these lines was from a man who was a white man in a multiracial family and church. And he was very quiet. He was in a group interview, he hardly said anything. And and someone asked him, like, what do you think about this? And and he said, I'm not one of those MPR types. Um, he came from like a working class background and like he was not like highly trained and like You know, this as a profession, but he said, I've lived through the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Every decade seems to have a different issue. And sometimes it feels like it's moving so fast and I'm just trying to keep up. But in doing that, sometimes I just step back and just live it, not trying to fix it, just learn what's happening. And sometimes the best way to fix it is just to live it. And the people around him who were in this group conversation was like, Yeah, that's it. Like you just nailed something that's really important. You don't get there by just one day waking up and being like, I'm gonna live it. Right. Like it's a process to make that part of your existence. But yes, but ultimately that's what we're we're headed for is it becomes so natural. It just becomes how we are. Habitus.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Habitus. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. There are a couple of things that you list out that are helpful in making that are helpful postures as you are trying to live this out, ways in which you are metaphorically holding your body and training it to keep this shape and strengthen in these ways. Um and just to list them briefly, lamenting is one of them, mending, risking, and then finally leaning into joy, which seemed fun because you start with lament and end in leaning into joy. So lament, uh biblical practice. I mean, it's a practice outside of biblical outlines as well, but it's very strong biblical outline. Yeah. Tell me if I'm getting this right of acknowledging what is wrong specifically with God and kind of saying, I don't have the power to do something about this. I am asking you, God, to intervene. And I am relying on your character, who you say you are, to be a good God, and a powerful God, and a just God to help bring about a writing of what has been wronged. Is that what we're thinking about with Lament?

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Yes. Yeah, I think you just nailed it totally. I'm not sure how much I have to add to that, other than I can probably share another quote along those lines. Um, this was from a white woman, uh, again, in a multiracial context. And she said, something that Christianity offers is the sense that it's not actually about us. She said, Growing up, I used to think that we can make things happen for God. And now I see that it's like, nope, that's not actually how it works. It's a pivot to see that actually we respond to God's goodness and movement in the world. Everything we do is a response to something that already is happening, that's bigger than us. People have been living in my neighborhood a long time before I ever got there and will continue a long time after. And I am a part of something larger that's not actually about me. I mean, I am responsible for my actions and for reflecting the goodness of God in the world. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it's not about me. I think that's a helpful recalibration because some of the discourse about racial justice is apocalyptic. Like if we don't do this, it will all end. And that's a lot of pressure. Look, the track record isn't good. If I have to trust in humanity to do good things, I'm not voting on humanity. But Christianity is saying you can respond out of God's goodness and work in the world. You're part of the bucket brigade, so get in line, and it is important, but we're not that important. And I think part of the practice of lament is like, one, it's like, it's comfort to like the Bible says, like, mourn with those who mourn. So there's like the immediate practice of just like being in that space of comfort. But it also reframes, I think, how we see ourselves in the world of saying, like, ultimately, I have to pause and say, I can't do this right now. I don't have to do this. That's not always my job. It's God's job to break into this situation.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

Yes, it's a very relieving shift of perspective. Yeah. And it doesn't take the responsibility away from us. Um, but the the ultimate end all be all is not us.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Yeah. I think it it doesn't take the responsibility away, but it takes the fear out of it, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

Yeah, that's a great way to say that.

SPEAKER_01 47:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

Yes. Okay. So then mending and risking. Those are uh two words that can easily be associated with other things. How are you using them?

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Yeah. I mean, I think I I've talked about both of those a little bit already, right? So mending is this idea of like the social fabric is what we're after. It's not about just fixing your relationship with one person. So there is that, right? Like, you know, in my own family, like having conversations with people about this is important. Comforting somebody who's just come through a racial incident that was really wrong, right? That's important too. But if you think it's just like, I need to have a friend who's different from myself and that will solve it, that's not the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

It's not the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

Um, it's also mending the systems themselves, the institutions. And so that can look like um, you know, for me, I'm a professor, right? So it's um thinking about the system I'm a part of is a college institution. How do I think about how do we get training across our entire college so that people know how to create classroom experiences where underrepresented populations are going to feel they belong and have assets that they can bring to the world? How do we do that systematically? There's always questions where you can sort of zoom out and say, there's something larger I can be a part of mending also.

SPEAKER_02 49:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

As far as risk taking, also, you know, similar to that like pitfall to pure perseverance of not having it embodied, know it's gonna be awkward for a while, feeling lonely, feeling like there's guilt and you're gonna get it wrong. It's just like naming this is gonna involve some risk. And and Christianity sort of gives us this safety net that doesn't let us off the hook from trying, but rather says, like, go out and try because God's got you. He's always got you. Um, and there might be people who uh will not want to forgive you in that moment. And that's also normal because people are people, but like but ultimately like don't give up trying.

SPEAKER_00 49:48

Because hopefully God has got you and his body, yeah, or his church totally will in some capacity also happen.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Yeah. And that's what we need to learn how to do together.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:58

That's how the body of Christ displays God, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Is in that. It's a very big apologetic for Christ, yes, to see those kinds of relationships be mended when truly there is um no worldly incentive to do so. Yeah. Yeah. The last one is kind of fun then, leaning into joy. What are ways that you've seen that done well? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

I tell uh in that chapter, I kind of frame it around this group of friends. And one of them was recommended for the study by somebody outside of this group. And and I approached her and I said, like, where would you like to do an interview or what do you think we should do? And she's like, I think you should come with me to a pub. And she brought her friends, and it was just this uh group of people who had been through stuff together. They were all part of the same church, uh, different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and hearing them just laugh at this pub and joke about things. And um there's one thing that that one of them said that involved just like being goofy together, right? Like um, and and creating like church potlucks and times to just be themselves and have fun. And that's so important because the work is hard, you need that joy. And the joy is actually, I think, sometimes brighter when you've been through hard things together. Yes. Um, there's a woman who described it as like a both and relationship. Right. Like if you're not naming the hardness, then the joy is shallow. We don't want to just come to church and like sit and be happy in the pews and fake it, right? We actually need the joy that acknowledges the hardship.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

Yes. Yes. And it also strikes me that the joy doesn't need to be this calculated uber multicultural experience on its own either, right? It's it's the normal things that we find fun that bring us close with people, whatever the group is feeling at the time. Yeah. Um, I'm thinking about a Kingdom Justice Summit, a project that you and I work on. And the planning team, after giving a lot of concentrated effort to, okay, how do we be pastoral? How do we not offend, but yet challenge, and then conference logistics, we break all of that at the end of the conference with, okay, we need takeout Thai food, and we're gonna sit in somebody's living room and just exist with each other. And that's where the laughter especially comes in and it's almost healing to the all of the hard work that was done before. But nothing extravagant or calculated.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

Okay, two more questions for you. Um, unless you know you spark so many more. This is great. But um, the final part of your subtitle is the question, why? Why do white Christian advocates hope? And so I think that's a wonderful piece to land on. Why go through all this effort? Would you say there is reason to hope?

SPEAKER_01 52:50

Yeah. And we need to know why. Yeah. Again, I I stumbled into this topic of hope because it was important in my own life and I've been thinking about it, but I was not planning on asking questions about it until early on in the interviews, people kept telling me, I would ask questions like, How are you different from how you were 10 years ago? And they would say, I just hope differently. And so I tried to sort of unpack that. And it meant sort of like almost coming up with like what I think of as like a taxonomy of hopes, like, what are different ways that people hope? And that gets into like, why do you hope? What do you hope for? Like I said earlier, like people don't necessarily have opportunity to answer that question. What are you hoping for? But also why do you hope? And so I'd ask people, why do you hope? And sometimes people would have their sort of go-to answers that were like Jesus, because Jesus, right? Thank you. Yeah. Jesus church answer. Yeah. But then, like when you unpack that, that you realize there's a specific storyline to that. And this is what I saw kind of in common across many, many interviews was it's a storyline that has to do with God interrupting the bad with the good. And again, it's this ability to know both and to say things can be really, really bad and they're not getting better, or at least not right now. And also there is hope. And where does that come from? Well, it comes from the storyline of God. That's what God does. Let me read you from a Latina woman who actually, when I asked her why she hopes, she did start with, Jesus is the center of my hope. And I was like, great, that's not much. Awesome. But then she took a breath and she launched into what I describe as like this rolling rhythm of a preacher. And she says, My hope is in knowing the promises that come afterwards, that we live by faith and not by 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. And this will happen. My hope can't be on the leadership in my church. My hope can't be on the people at 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 people often tie this back to like, I can read the story of history. I know God created out of chaos. He created good life out of chaos. God brought people out of Exodus. God was dead in the tomb and then was dead some more. And it lasted for days until people would have given up their hope. And then he rose from the dead. So there's always this storyline that is it's the story, right? The story is not like perpetual progress. If we just get technology better, we will solve our problems. It's not AI is gonna fix it. It's not people are good enough, our children are the hope of the future. It's Jesus is the hope because that's what God is.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

Nice. I said I had two more questions, but that was a lovely way to end. We're gonna stop it there. That was really cool. I appreciate that. Yeah. Justine, thank you so much for writing the book, for doing all of that research and for sharing that with friends, family. Obviously, we want the book to go as far as possible. So thank you for sharing it with all of us. But it's been lovely to get to take in your work and then talk with you about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:05

And I hope people pick up this book, Racial Justice for the Long Haul, read it with some friends, please, because it's really good for conversation. We'll never know what your last question is, but maybe you want to come ask me that someday. I would love to meet with your group and talk about it further. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Thank you for joining us for this rich conversation with Dr. Christine Jesky about risking the pitfalls, practicing lament, embracing joy, and contextualizing hope as we work toward a mended social fabric. If today's episode encouraged you, share it with a friend and leave us a review. It helps others find these meaningful conversations. A link to Christine's book, Racial Justice for the Long Haul, is in the show notes. And remember, you can find our full library of past episodes at slbf.org slash studio. Until next time, may we continue to seek wisdom and live out our faith in every sphere of life.