race Resources

"If you're black, get back.
If you're brown, get down.
If you're yellow, you're mellow.
If you're white, you're right."

Those are the words of a little jingle I learned when I was young. I shared it with a white Alabama woman, maybe ten years younger than me, and her jaw dropped. She'd never heard the ditty and she was appalled. One, that she as a product of the Deep South, had never heard the tune. And two, that there was such a tune.

When Dr. King died, I was still in diapers. Ford’s new muscle car, the Mustang, was brand new but the civil rights struggle was not.

I imagine that my parents and paternal grandmother, who played a huge role in my early development, tried to keep the turmoil of the times away from me as a toddled around the bare wood floors of that old clapboard house in Cherry, North Carolina.

But I think some things filtered in and became part of my virtual racial DNA, that part of me that needs to know about the whats, whens, and whys of the racial struggles of those times. That part that needs to make connections and reconcile (or at least, placate my conscience that we believers are striving for answers).

last night at Bible study we discussed Romans 15:1-7. in chapters 14 and 15 Paul is urging his readers to seek unity among the body of believers and to put the needs of others before their own, just as Christ did.

springing out of this passage is a very important issue that much of the Church has neglected for quite a while...racial reconciliation. unity among worshippers of all colors and races. i know that the issue has been glossed over because i mentioned the term last night and no one knew what i was talking about. but once the discussion got rolling it was clear that there were a lot of opinions on the topic.