The new thing for churches is intentionally trying to become racially diverse.  I can’t help them.  I don’t speak white which is strange because I am white.  I am non privileged in other ways, having a mental illness, a moderate physical disability, and being on the autistic spectrum.  I may not be able to speak for blacks but I am not put off by their perspective when they go off script and start speaking their mind.   For example after Hurricane Katrina when Kanye West stated the obvious, that Bush didn’t care about black people.

The problem with churches is they often hire diversity consultants.  These are people paid to talk to white people, even when the group includes people of color one will get a very watered down perspective.

My philosophy for pretty much everything comes from an Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”  Why it works with diversity is often “nothing left to take away” matches oppressed people’s predicament.  Many of them do not have their basic needs met.  The best thing I can think of that you could do for poor people is partner with a service such as Uber to offer reduced rate rides to poor people to stores, work, food pantries, the doctor, etc..  The technology to do this has matured but it takes people of privilege walking a mile in a disadvantaged person’s shoes to implement.

Speaking white is about having the luxury to add and be obtuse and inauthentic because privilege has allowed you to not be careening so close to the edge that every word must count.  For a person far from privilege even learning isn’t an anodyne process.  Taking in past and current oppression of the non privileged group you belong to often leaves you (justifiably) angry and immobilized.  And perhaps the worst part of it is it makes you unconsciously associate learning with pain often turning you off to future learning.

If I could get churches to read one article on diversity it would be Christina Clevelant’s Listening Well as a Person of Privilege.