Episode Details

[Intro with Danielle and Maggie]

Wendell starts by naming  how the coronavirus given racism and white supremacy back more daylight. The attack on Asian culture is brought to the forefront with mimes and racist jokes circulating on social media and even physical violence and attacks on Asian people. 

Dan says it's a lot like "judging books by it's color," assuming someone is sick because of their race.  Any race can get diseases, as shown throughout history. In fact, dominate culture has spread disease as was the case when Europeans came to this continent and decimated the Natives. Disease, when it originates in another culture, can be demonized... But that same narrative has not been told when the dominate culture brings the disease. 

The Northwest and the West Coast  appear to be tolerant and accepting of different cultures and races, "a melting pot." Wendell came to discover that it takes an event [like this] to expose the racism that is present. The coronavirus is exposing the underbelly of racism that is still residing in people. At what point do we stop and say, "Wait a minute, this isn't about the coronavirus."

This isn't just adults, racism is still being passed down to our kids as seen by kids telling racist jokes at school about Asians. 

Dan says our relationships with people who are different than us need to be transformational relationships not transactional relationships. We can not use others for products, resources and entertainment. He challenges us, "what are you doing for them now that they are hurting, how can you be transformative in their lives?" Even more, what are we doing as a body of believes to step up and bring healing between races?

Dan wonders if the coronavirus has some underlying theme; "Is God not waking us up from something?" Slow down. Stop chasing the almighty dollar. Reach out to those in need. Exposes racism. 

Wendell believes folks want to hold on to their own narrative. It's hard to deal with racism without acknowledging the narrative you hold.  The dominate culture often tries and even decides the narrative for people of color. With Dan's invitation to education is to actually have to learn the narrative. You have to do some of your own work. And Danielle adds that it's not just inside yourself but a commitment to work in your family,  your spouse, your children. You have to be humble enough to admit places you'd got it wrong and then talk about how you're going to do it differently.  It's starts to home with your own heart. 

In situations like this (pandemic) ethnicities are being pitted against one another. 

Dan is Korean and Black but people mostly see his Black features. And when he thinks about the trauma that people who look Asian are going through, he thinks they don't even want to go out out in public for fear of what people will say. The coronavirus has amplified this causing people to stereotype others. 

Racist jokes prove that there is a belief in a racial hierarchy; that some races are better than others.  

What we are seeing is that "the bandaid is off and the wound [of racism] is still festering."

Wendell says that times like these show that racial trauma is continuing to be lived out as an collective experience. This coronavirus is not just showing an individual wound but a collective wound that is manifesting itself in different cultures and different ways. If we need to pay attention and tend to this wound, it will repeat again and again.

Wendell believe that God is trying to expose the church's silence. The church often fails to address this issue around the racial jokes and racial rhetoric. God is clearly after us for how to love justice:

Micah 6:8 
He has shown you, O man, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love me