One Heart At a Time- Reflections on My Own Racism

My wife and I have a strong belief that one of our goals as parents is to raise kids that are less prejudice than we are. I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, in a pocket of white, Dutch Christian Reformed families. Many of them had moved from an area in Chicago called Roseland to the suburbs where I grew up. In the 50’s and 60’s Roseland had been a thriving Dutch community, with several Christian Reformed churches. But when black families began to move into the neighborhood, drawn by the affordable housing and seeking the American Dream to own their own homes, the area experienced “white flight”.

Spurred by some realtors who used the influx of black families as a scare tactic to convince white families that they better sell their houses soon before the property values fell, hundreds of families left the neighborhood and moved to the suburbs. Apparently the decision to live in an integrated neighborhood was not one they were willing to make. The end result was a deeply-rooted racism among that Dutch community, a seed of racism that carried through generations. I hoped that the prejudice of my generation would be a little less, and that each following generation would learn the truth of racial and ethnic equality.

The church I’m currently attending was doing a series on overcoming our prejudice. Along with the series were some specific plans to work towards integrating the church, both racially and ethnically. While I had some questions on how they planned to accomplish the second part, beginning the process with recognition and confession was a good first step. Along with overcoming our personal prejudices are the broader justice issues, overcoming systemic racism and prejudice. It’s a noble battle, and one that needs to be fought. There has been some headway in this battle in the last decade, but we have a long, long way to go. But are there things we can do as individuals to chip away at racism and prejudice?

Several years ago I was gassing up my van at a local gas station. I had finished pumping and was hanging up the nozzle when I heard someone shouting. I looked up to see a young black man running down the sidewalk. He was hollering at the city bus that had stopped at the intersection, trying to flag down the bus driver. He was only a half-block away, and was yelling loudly, so I assumed the bus would wait for him.

The bus door was open, having let a passenger off at that stop. I saw the bus driver look up at the young black man, look right at him. Then he closed the door and drove away. The young man stood there, shoulders dropped, head down. I felt an anger rise up inside me. I knew deep inside that I needed to get out of my comfort zone and do something.

My oldest son was in the van with me that day, and I reacted to what I had seen. I drove over to where that young black man stood and told him I had seen what the bus driver had done. I told him I would give him a ride and try to catch up to the bus. He gave me a strange look but was apparently desperate enough for a ride and climbed in my van. I drove like a bat-out-of-you-know-where, doing my best to catch up to that bus. I wanted to put that bus driver in his place. The young man told me he was going to classes down at the Community College. I told him if we didn’t catch up to the bus I would take him down town to school.

We caught that bus a few miles down the road. I pulled in front of it just as it was driving away, forcing it to stop. I watched in my mirror as the bus driver let that young man on the bus. I could see his stare in my side mirror.

I never asked the young man his name and don’t know what the impact of this incident was on him or on my son. I don’t think this single act atoned for my years of prejudice. This was no world-changing event. And yet maybe this is precisely the way to overcome prejudice, one ride at a time, one attempt at a time to overcome overt acts of racism and prejudice. Maybe the solution to systemic racism isn’t changing the system; it’s changing our hearts.