Racism is so deeply embedded in this country not because of the racist right-wing radicals who practice it openly. It exists because of the silence and hurt feelings of liberal America.

By John Metta / Huffington Post
July 15, 2016


What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all white audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and this wonderful quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Credit for this speech goes to Chaédria LaBouvier, who’s “Why We Left“ inspired me to speak out about racism; to Robin DiAngelo, who’s “White Fragility“ gave me an understanding of the topic; and to Reni Eddo-Lodge who said “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race“ long before I had the courage to start doing it again.

A couple weeks ago, I was debating what I was going to talk about in this sermon. I told Pastor Kelly Ryan I had great reservations talking about the one topic that I think about every single day.

Then, a terrorist massacred nine innocent people in a church that I went to, in a city that I still think of as home. At that point, I knew that despite any misgivings, I needed to talk about race.

You see, I don’t talk about race with white people. To illustrate why, I’ll tell a story:

It was probably about 15 years ago when a conversation took place between my aunt, who is white and lives in New York State, and my sister, who is black and lives in North Carolina. This conversation can be distilled to a single sentence, said by my black sister:

“The only difference between people in the North and people in the South is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist.”

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-i-dont-talk-about-race-white-people