By Jimi Calhoun.
This entry is the twelfth post in a series of bridge-building, theological-cultural reflections by Jimi Calhoun, Pastor of “Bridging Austin,” in Austin, Texas.
The music genre many affectionally call “the blues” did not start out as the arena-filling phenomenon that the Texas guitar sensation Stevie Ray Vaughn popularized. In fact, it was not primarily a musical style at its inception. It was a mode of personal expression and lament spawned out of the shared experiences of enslaved African Americans, often performed by musicians only one generation removed from the brutality of American slavery. One artist who bridged the gap between the early blues offerings of the rural South and those of the more recent urban North was guitarist Albert Collins and his band The Icebreakers.
That Collins and his Icebreakers kicked down some of the racial doors set in place by the legal racial segregation of the 1950s through the 1970s, provides the impetus for this article. Here’s why. Something else became apparent during that time period: Just because the legal barriers were removed, it did not follow that the social ones fell with them—hence the main point of this piece: distances created by social and societal alienation need bridging.
Societal alienation refers to the out-flowing currents of behavior that allow people to share the same society while remaining socially separate. Shunning perceived outsiders rather than welcoming them allows people to bypass what should be shared spaces and avoid socializing with anyone unlike themselves. Many Christians rarely trace this separation back to systemic causes or habits that have been culturally absorbed over generations; it just feels like the way things are.
I draw a distinction between societal and social. I use societal for the frameworks or structures that support a society and social for the interpersonal relationships within it. That matters right now, especially in a time when a lot of public conversation has turned toward issues like illegal immigration where the focus is on borders and entry, rather than on the deeper question about why people already inside the same society remain socially distant from one another.
Social “ICE” Breakers
Most of us know that ICE, a.k.a. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has become a controversial agency today for several reasons. Every day, strong opinions from both sides are making the news. Some people see ICE as an essential safeguard for national security and the rule of law, while others feel its methods unfairly cause hardship for families and indigent ethnic communities.
Regardless of the opinion about the politics involved, the conversation reveals that most Christians give at least some thought to where they believe people different from them belong. Ungracious attitudes are an impediment to the peace-filled life God desires for everyone concerned. I need to stress that I am speaking of attitudes here and not about any specific action.
When people gather socially, conversation starters called icebreakers play a key role. They help everyone relax, feel comfortable, and open up before getting down to business. The goal of an icebreaker is always to help participants feel genuinely connected. My men’s group’s favorite is having each person tell three things about themselves, only two of which are true. Following that, everyone takes turns identifying which statement is true or false and why. The comments made afterward reveal much about how perceptions of other people work.
Thankfully, this activity happens in a loving and open atmosphere. But not every environment where our perceptions of others are formed or put on display is as safe or nurturing. That is why some people present different versions of themselves to different people for different reasons. Nowhere does this happen more frequently than in race relations. The reason for this is that some Christians are fearful of exposing their actual views to in-group scrutiny, and so they default to something similar to the two-thirds truth-telling practice from my men’s group. Put politely, there are just some people who are not always forthcoming about their deeply held views on race.
I believe that honest and open dialogue is the number one icebreaker available to us, and we need more of it and not less. That will bring our genuine feelings about race into the open, replacing the inconsistency and ambiguity that have persisted far too long in our churches. What follows is one way we can help make that happen.
From ICE Breakers to Ice Melters
The moment ice melts, its structural framework changes enough that water molecules are no longer solid, but liquid. That may sound abstract or complex, but basic chemistry easily explains it. According to one curriculum for middle-schoolers, “water molecules in ice vibrate but don’t move past each other. As the temperature increases they begin to vibrate more. Eventually their movement overcomes their attractions and they can no longer stay in their orderly crystal structure. As the ice melts, the orderly arrangement collapses and the water molecules move past each other and actually get closer together as liquid water.”[1]
When people discover that the waters where social alienation exists are shallow, any type of bridge over them becomes less a risk and more of a hope. Then the ordered racial arrangements of the past will dissolve naturally too. How? If differences within the human species are no longer viewed as differences between, the structure of social alienation will collapse, similar to the way ice melted in the previous illustration.
Surfing the chemistry quote one last time, if ice can overcome the internal attraction that causes water to crystalize and harden, we can follow suit by intentionally overcoming the in-group attraction that causes many of our hearts to harden towards people that we label as different. One important step in that direction is giving yourself permission to own your deeply-held opinions about race guilt-free and then confronting them. It is there, in that honest and open place, that we stop being ice and start being water and finally find our way toward each other.
You may contact Jimi Calhoun at Jimi@Bridgingaustin.org.