My Journey Toward Racial Justice
My Journey Toward Racial Justice
Written By: Kenton Self
My grandmother could put a popsicle stick in the ground and in time it would grow popsicles.
Well, not quite, but she did have quite the green thumb, so as the grandson of Mamie Wagliardo, I spent a lot of time with her digging in the dirt. One of the lessons she instilled in me is that if you want to get the dandelion out of the yard, you can’t just break it off at the stem, you have to pull it from the roots.
Pulling dandelions takes a certain skill that one does not acquire on the first attempt. If the ground is too hard, it has to be softened. It’s frankly a whole lot easier to break the stem. When the yard is freshly mowed you can’t see a solitary dandelion that was cut off at the same height as the grass around it. You can pretend it’s gone. But it’s still there. Give it time, and those roots will eventually pop up another ugly dandelion.
The Journey Toward Racial Justice is an initiative of the North Texas council of the UMC. It was created in order to “create disciples of Jesus Christ who are courageously anti-racist in a broken and hurting world.” AUMC is committed to getting this initiative off the ground and to pilot the program. We are developing the program as we go through it. We are working out the kinks. No, not the kinks in the program (well, we ARE working out the kinks in the program, but that’s not the point of this) We are working out the kinks in ourselves.
I grew up in Dallas. My family has been in this city for generations. When I was going into the sixth grade, Dallas ISD started a desegregation process that bussed students from minority schools to white schools. A lot of my peers moved out of the district that summer.
We didn’t. We stayed.
It was messy. I didn’t have a mindset that welcomed people that didn’t look like me. I told jokes that were inappropriate. I harbored resentment against classmates of color who exhibited talents and intelligence I didn’t have. The roots were deep. The ground around the dandelion was hard.
Over time, I was able to see the ugliness that I carried and of the system of racism I lived in. I’ve seen how my friends of color had to (and still have to) navigate the world by different rules than I was afforded by my white privilege. I wanted to be a part of the solution. In my attempts to do better I have seen a bunch of ugly broken dandelion stems in my right hand. I have done well at keeping the grass mowed. But dandelion roots run deep.
There is a lot to say about the Journey to Racial Justice program. The reading, the conversation, the invaluable partnership with Hamilton Park UMC, the events... We are doing a lot to help soften the ground. One moment in particular, though, stands out for me.
We recently took a tour of Dallas that highlighted the “Hidden History” of race. There were 90 of us in two buses from both Arapaho and Hamilton Park, sitting together and hearing stories many of us had never heard before. The last stop, though, was a story I knew. The last stop was Forest Avenue/James Madison High School. It’s an ugly episode within Dallas' racial past, when African-Americans began moving into a predominantly white neighborhood around Fair Park. (This article tells the story of the school.)
When my mom was a girl, her family lived in that neighborhood. My uncle and aunt graduated from that high school. My aunt still has vivid memories of living there and she has shared them with me often. When our tour stopped in front of that building, I felt a connection to the story, to the neighborhood, to the history, and to the system of supremacy that still inhabits that area and our whole city.
We have a long way to go. We have a lot of work to dismantle the system. It takes time and intention to soften the ground and pull the dandelions out. It takes active listening to the stories of others. The Journey to Racial Justice offers us an opportunity to move the story forward. I’m thankful to be a part of it.
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