Episode 116 - Anti-Racism with Andre Henry

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christianity as a whole stopped being compelling for me and stopped making sense to me uns until i started speaking up about racial injustice this is andre henry a writer speaker musician and activist with a deep passion for racial justice and social change today on the podcast he's being interviewed by host william matthews they're talking about anti-racism so as always i hope you'll open your mind in your heart welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody you said in 2016 uh um or excuse me you said in 2019 about 2016 you wrote i quote i was a much better christian before 2016. i was a student of theology and impassioned preacher and music leader and an avid church-goer that was until i found out that the christianity i grew up in might actually be for white people the way you opened your eyes why what he said white people well that's what i was getting like so i think these questions are connected right why why is this story relevant it's because um in 2016 i had like this there was a breaking point for me where i i wouldn't say that i needed to decide if i was going to be a christian or not because i didn't know that morning that i was going to make that decision right all i knew is that for maybe a year or so i had begun speaking up about racial injustice more frequently more clearly more forcefully more passionately than i had ever done in my life and that i had a lot of people that were giving me a lot of pushback about it and most of them were people that i knew from southeastern wow so you're saying your white christian friends or my friends yeah my white christian friends that and many of them people that were in the ministry training programs the people who studied theology alongside me were like the people who were giving me the most pushback even some people that i considered mentors were like i mean i remember having long conversations with with one guy that i considered like a spiritual father and basically he's debating me on whether or not the social misery of black people is our own fault and whether or not white america should care someone that i call father right now one morning oh during that time i remember one classmate i spoke to because early on when people used to push back i used to like really try to reason with them and i would like arrange a time let's talk on the phone or let's video chat or something like that i've learned to not do that anymore but yeah yeah but but at first i used to really pursue the conversation and i remember having one of these conversations with this guy who reaches out to me and he's like you know it's taking me a while to write you but but you know seeing as how it doesn't look like you're going to calm down about racial justice anytime soon i'm just gonna wade into these waters and tell you that i think that you've forsaken the greatest commandment to love your neighbor and um that you have fallen away from the gospel and all this other kind of stuff and so i'm like all right you know what well first i asked him what do you want to accomplish through this exchange which is a great question that's actually a good idea no it's a great ask it's a great question to lead with like what do you want to get out of this conversation because a lot of times people don't actually know and so like that that gets them to like self-reflect for a second they're like wait i really don't know why i'm doing this and then they might just leave they might just be like yeah i need to go think about that and i've experienced that sometimes you know or i'll ask people you know why does it matter like people that i know not i'm not even talking about strangers i'm talking about people that i had relationships with from college and i would ask them why does it bother you so much that i said something that you don't agree with like why do you feel like you need to defend the entire christian faith from me right and what are you defending right and so um so this conversation i had with this guy who reaches out to me and tells me i'm i'm apostate basically i know you have i know you have but see you've been called apostate because you're like the universe which is not bad but i'm saying you get i get why i get why a conservative evangelical christian will look at you and be like are you are you using the universe and god interchangeably that's that sounds off i'm saying god wants you to love your neighbor and and that means that you can't ignore your neighbor's pain why is that controversial right yeah so he and i we get on this video chat and we're talking and i remember him looking me in the eye and saying racism is not a priority to god and to this day i mean yesterday so i'm working on a book proposal and yesterday i'm right i'm working on this story as one of the narrative samples because you know you got to write some of the book yeah to present the publishers right and i remember having to walk away and i'm driving to dinner to meet my partner aaron and i remember feeling sad about this all over again because even though he and i were not close i remember like us being in chapel together in worship and singing to god together and us being in theology one together or whatever and hearing and so remembering like looking at this person in the face that i thought we were on the same page like i thought that i could say you know whatever happens on the earth matters to god because god created the earth and cares about what happens here and that someone like that would say i've been friends with andre for years and i believe him and this wasn't the case okay so this idea racism is not a priority god he said it but i felt it a bunch of different other places right i was leading music at a bunch of different churches and no one would talk about racial justice and when you tried to bring it up pastors always had some kind of excuse everything from well they're not that many black people in eagle rock to it's an extent that's a quote you know well they're not that many they're not that many black people in the eagles to um well andre we're a large church and the way that we stay large is by avoiding conversations that would offend people and who we know um we just want to keep the main thing the main thing right all those kinds of all those kinds of statements being made so one morning i'm laying on my couch and i'm supposed to be leading worship not yeah hey i was supposed to be leading worship that morning at um at a church in glendora i lived in northwest pasadena so on a sunday morning that could take about 40 minutes to get there yeah if i was going to get there in time i needed to have left 15 minutes ago but i'm laying on the couch and i'm going you know what i think maybe maybe this guy is right maybe this guy is right because i've had so many arguments with so many different people even people that i respect so much and when i look when i look at the history of how christianity has been used weaponized against black people throughout history it gives the statement racism is not a priority god wait i thought you know maybe maybe they're right maybe christianity is not for us maybe christianity is for white people do you still believe that that christianity's for white people i think that there are some i think that there are some versions of christian faith that are for white people they're they're a tool right to serve white people's interests i don't know that yeah that that's what i think i think that there are some some theological frameworks that that the people who ascribe to them that subscribe to them they call those they call that theological framework christian and that that version of christianity is for white people and it's the same christianity that jonathan edwards practiced you know to write his treatise about the great awakening where he explains that the reason why he can own a slave and be the foremost thinker of this alleged revival is because god cares more about our souls than about our bodies so god doesn't care about god doesn't care as much about the fact that his and his the person that he has enslaved in his household is enslaved god really cares about her soul therefore she can even get saved and god doesn't have to do anything to liberate her or free her yes of course that slaveholder religion that masquerades its christianity is entirely made for white people it's the christianity that allows that allowed those people who built one of the first slave ships to put jesus on the name of the side of that slave ship to name that slave ship jesus yes that version of christianity is definitely made for white people the problem is not j besides the fact that it's an oppressive that's like an oppressive story to legitimate all of this anti-black violence um the the other problem to that is that white people want for other non-white people to live inside of that christianity and to subscribe to it as well and to submit to it you know which is what was happening in that conversation where this man tells me like i have fallen away from the christian faith because i believe that god cares about my lived experience in america hmm well it sounds like you have fallen away from the christian faith and a staged intervention for you we are coming to rescue you michael gunger's in the room too we're gonna bring up the creed michael bring up the uh sinner's prayer we're here's prayer we're here to uh get our brother andre back on track um one of the things i think i love most about your work is your work around uh racial justice and anti-racism which we'll get into in a moment um is is the theological underpinnings it is it's interesting yeah yeah actually i i do i mean mr universe over here i actually care about about the the theology i do uh because it seems to inform your love for justice it very much does i have i have been asking questions about the value of approaching these conversations from a theological perspective for a while and like you said okay so you came across the god of the ghetto series that i was writing on yes um medium i think i started that in 2017 yeah it had to be because the first line is for about a year now white evangelical pastors have been trying to tell me that god does not care about me that jesus doesn't care about me right yep and that's where we begin and i loved writing the god of the ghetto series because that was the thing on that morning when i said well maybe christianity is for white people that is the thing that came to me was the exodus story came back to me and it came back to me in a way that i'd never really thought of in the sense that like this pharaoh comes up with this idea to systematically oppress these hebrew people right and i know that like a lot of people aren't from i mean i don't know people talk about them not being familiar with systems although i think that's kind of bullshit like i think that people are way more familiar with systems than maybe they might know or be willing to admit but anyway we create systems to make things easier right that's the reason why we make you know and when we talk about a system it's like i have a team of people in a slack channel right now that help me um to post things or schedule things to social media right so i create my content somebody helps they pull some quotes and they put it in a graphic and there's a system so that it makes it easier that way i don't have to stay i don't have to spend five hours on saturday doing all of that work myself right okay that's how it works we create systems to make things easier well this pharaoh decides like he has an objective we want to make sure that this hebrew population does not flourish and so he they erased their history because it says there was a pharaoh that came up that did not know joseph how could you not know joseph when he literally like saved the egyptian economy you know like i mean in in the story in that narrative right um so it came back to me as like the erasure of the history the imposition of horse labor the the genocide all this stuff i was like wow like this is this is not just something wrong that happened this was a system of injustice that was created and look at how god responded to this not only that it was the plague of darkness that came to me first before i wrote the series this was that morning on the couch the plague of darkness hit me again and i was like wait a minute you're telling me that there is there are only two characters in this story that say you know what we should oppress these hebrews it's the first pharaoh and the one that succeeds that pharaoh right and yet when the plague of darkness hits every egyptian has to sit in darkness and there's only light in goshen in the ghetto and it hit me in that moment like what does it mean to be an innocent person in a society where there is a system of injustice that harms the marginalized every single day i think that god was you know in that story god is saying like no like egyptian societies complicit in the harm of these people in the ghetto yeah and so that was really validating to me that morning and i went oh wait so these people who think that god doesn't like racism is not a priority to god they're just wrong they're worshiping a god that i don't know and i don't want to know and that shifted like my my posture toward the work like forever like to not feel the pressure to like sit within the theological frameworks that i was given when i was growing up in a predominantly white church and i went to southeastern to get a theology degree and when i'm talking with this person who says you've fallen away from the faith because you believe that god actually wants to liberate your people uh yeah i do believe that and you're gonna have a hard time convincing me as many white evangelicals have tried that the only reason that god rescued these people from um from slavery is so that jesus could come from their bloodline when god says god's self in exodus 3 i've heard the cry of my people and i'm going to come do that so anyway even so though i've i've questioned so i i know that the god of the ghetto series is is at least like not heretical right i know that it's at least not nonsense right but i've still questioned whether or not doing that kind of work around theology is useful and helpful so it's surprising to me when someone says you know i really appreciate the theological work you do around that yeah it's so embedded i don't i don't see the the distinction um because it definitely is the motivating force for you is that what helped you shift into uh what you know is now known as like an anti-racist framework like um maybe take a moment to describe what is anti-racism um in particular and and your shift um probably sounds like out of a maybe a strictly christian theological framework and a bit more into uh this sort of newer paradigm that's being named in this way yeah i think that for most people coming out of a white evangelical uh context your your concept of racial justice is racial reconciliation yeah which is why i was chasing down racists to try to get them to sit down for a cup of coffee or a video chat or something like that to talk to me about some racist shit that they said yeah wait a minute somebody punches you in the stomach right you have to call them later hey i want to talk about what happened can we talk about why you have low impulse control can i help you with that why why you why does that burden fall on you yeah but but when but in that and i'm not saying that that's how like dr brenda salter mcneil or john williams who runs the racial reconciliation uh center in monrovia would describe racial reconciliation of course but i do think no i don't think i know like when i talk about these things i still have white evangelical men they're usually male that say theo bro jim yes who will say things like well reconciliation is a priority to jesus and so i think that you should try to talk to that person again you know i had people after the relevant conversation which i'm sure we'll get into but who have said i would love to hear you and cameron strang have a you know cordial discussion about what happened and i'm like yeah but see that do punch me in the stomach so why would i why would i set up that meeting yeah like the burden is on them to realize i hurt someone and for them to approach me right and and to seek reconciliation because they're the one that caused the harm anyway all that to say that we in those contexts that's kind of the way that we're that we had been talking about racial racial justice is that racial justice is about us coming together coming to the table um maybe even dismissing or overlooking racial differences and trying to like somehow have like this kind of colorblind conversation about race and racial and a commonality probably based on like falsehoods or false assumptions yes i mean the idea that grounds this in some way is kind of this both sides-ism that says like that i have just as much to repent of as you do as the guy who said you know racism is not a priority to god to me like well how are both of us wrong in this situation yeah you know yeah so i mean that i think that's the framework now my conclusion that the god of the ghetto series was not i it's not where i i expect it to go because god turned out to be way more radical than i expected no seriously i was like holy crap you mean plagues and judgments and i never thought about this before right like god in this story destroys crops like he says god says rather sorry god decides that first off this is worth actually like waging war over and is willing to engage in sabotage and property destruction things that you would get locked up forever as a human being if you tried to liberate people in that way right and then decides the only way that these people are free is if they're separate like there is there is no version of this system that they live in that that can correct the situation and so salvation like the picture of salvation in the old testament and that the new testament new testament writers they pull from is this image of salvation that says salvation for these people is to move their bodies from this geographic location to another geographic location right uh yeah i was radicalized by doing by going through that by going through that uh process and looking at that and also i think also the other thing was that i realized that my attempts to be conciliatory were actually causing me a lot of harm and not actually producing a lot of fruit because when i sit like telling someone that god doesn't care about the thing that you are experiencing every day like for some reason when we talk about racism like i feel like people put it in this other bucket in their mind but it's no different than if someone looked me in the face and said god doesn't care if your mom has cancer it's an inhumane thing to do it's a hurtful thing to do you know so what is what is anti-racism then so and is anti-racism the remedy to the problem of the racial reconciliation movement um is it a an upgrade of consciousness and thought around how do we deal with um these real injustices and like you said the real punch in the stomach that's happening right exactly so that's exactly where i was going is like comparing this like idea of like the way to do this is for us to come to the table um it doesn't account for the harm that occurs at the table if white people are not addressing their white supremacy right anti-racism is not colorblind anti-racism takes as its foundation that racism is a real problem people are experiencing every day people are participating in racism whether they know it or not whether they intend to or not and the solution is not to overlook it and say let's just hug it out the the goal is let's identify it and let's deal with it let's let's remedy it but the first step is like i am actually i actually have my eyes peeled to identify racism or instances of racism when they happen and i think those are the fundamentally different postures we'll be right back it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better health that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists i think the majority of people do seem to struggle across racial lines of identifying like what is what is racism what is a racist lie um well even the framing you know the anti-racist framing that you know puts racism primarily in the context of an idea versus just a bad heart intention right like they're just racist things that we believe in in our heads um i i think the majority of the population the cross racial lines probably definitely struggle with identifying because racism is so kicked and baked structurally in the system what it actually is so how would you how would you talk like tell someone like how do you start identifying what is uh a racism and a racist lie i'm i'm like connecting all these through lines from our conversations so we talked about the plague of darkness right and talking about how every egyptian has to sit in darkness because they're all complicit in that system of of harming hebrews right um in an anti-racist framework we don't really deal in the category of non-racist like the idea of neutrality is just not a part of that framework this is one place where it actually is binary is that there are things that there are race there are things that are racist there are things that are anti-racist you know um one thing that i appreciate about that binary is that it does clarify some things you know and so i think that i and i bring up the the plague of darkness again because i think that a lot of times we encounter racist outcomes or racial harm from people who are not intending to produce it right and so the conversation is usually like i am not a racist but we're actually not talking about who you are let's talk about your identity okay we're talking about whether or not what you did or said or expressed or thought or whatever whether or not that belongs on the racist part of the scale or on the anti-racist part of the scale right and it's not about who you are as a person it's about actions right yeah so how do you identify something that is racist well i think i mean that's a large question you know but yeah i think that you i think that you have to ask about outcomes you know understanding that we live in a society that was literally built for the flourishing of white people primarily like that's the priority in the hierarchy right when someone gives me a compelling reason to believe that we have somehow restructured that entirely i am totally open to hearing that but to the present moment we have not done any major restructure to that hierarchy outside of desegregation which even that is yeah yeah i mean sure like but dr king said like what what point what good is it for me to sit at a lunch counter with white people if i can't afford a hamburger you know he's talking about like these structural these structural uh components to racism that are not addressed simply by us integrating you know yeah so it's like sure like the problem with segregation and this is what i think a lot of white americans don't understand is like the problem with segregation was not that white people and black people were living separately it was the fact like malcolm x said that like in a segregated community which it was like white people still had control over everything that happened in the black community yeah the white white people owned the businesses and they ran the political institutions and they made decisions about voting yeah and the laws yeah they dominated the school board all that kind of stuff like that's why malcolm x was arguing for separation he's like we're already separate just let us run our community and that almost goes back to your earlier point about you know the hebrews or god calling the hebrews out to be separated yeah right exactly so um i forgot how we got down i forgot how we got down there race anti-racism we were talking about racist ideas and oh yes so thinking about outcomes understanding that um when you understand the actual position that we're in you ask yourself you know is this actually supporting the status quo you know like when i'm in a conversation like i'm talking okay let's let's take a very just simple human interaction because we could talk about mass incarceration all that kind of stuff and how people are supporting that or not let's just take a simple human interaction some folks during the enlightenment came up with an idea that uh people who grew up in warmer climates are dumb and people who and therefore people with darker skin and the darker the skin the dumber they are right ideas don't die easily yeah okay so that is something that was put into the air and it is an idea that was if you ask ibram candy then it probably that that idea was produced to legitimate the construction of a racial hierarchy right so there that's that's a form of white superiority or white supremacy white people know more than black people yeah let's fast forward all the way from the 1500s to this morning i write on twitter that three years ago this guy looks me in the face and says racism is not a priority to god and i can't really articulate why i'm never going to talk to that person again a white man responds to that response to that tweet saying i think that you should reach out to that man why not not why does he think i should reach out to him why does he assume that he can give me advice because he's white why does he why does he enter the conversation automatically assuming that well i have an opinion that matters and it's important i don't know your situation i don't know that conversation i don't know that person but i'm gonna tell you what to do in this instance right okay so maybe that one doesn't sound as clear that way he thinks that his idea is better than mine well let's go back to let's go back to the example we were talking about racism is not a priority to god who is this man that gets to tell me what god's priorities are and how does he know does god come to his bedroom in the morning with his checklist and say okay we're gonna have to push abolishing racism to thursday because i got some parking spaces that i gotta that i got yeah that i gotta reserve for some folks that are praying for them at the grocery store right now yeah yeah you know who was he just who is he to make that decision sounds like you're i mean this is really deep because what you're talking about ultimately is um the way in which folks ground themselves in the world like their sense of humanity their sense of being their sense of of importance their sense of um and then when we talk collectively about groups of people and the way in which groups of people like ground themselves in the world what you're ultimately saying is collectively and then their individual applications of this white people ground them tend to ground themselves in the world based on their history um in a form of supremacy and so it comes across it comes off as i am my opinion matters you enter the conversation saying i know better than you yeah this man who tells me that i need to go and reconcile with that person does he know what it's like talking to white people about racism as a black person yeah does he know what it's going to feel like to chase that person down and have them push back on whether whether or not god truly loves me or not and yet he just assumes that he has the authority to do so the guy who said that to me in the first place somehow it feels as though like his ideas about theology are more important than mine and more valid than mine when i asked him i said i said mason what is it that i'm saying that is so heretical to you and so dangerous he says well it goes against the teaching of the church for thousands of years okay now that was poorly worded on his on his part because it doesn't go against what has been you know like but it sure was absent in our theological upbringing we went to the same school and no one ever talked about how like god cares about liberating oppressed people so that might be where he got got that idea from so my response was well don't you think that calvin and luther and all these other dead white theologians that they also were doing theology from their own social location in their context and the things that they cared about influenced the way that they interpreted the bible and translated scripture and stuff like that and you know what he says he says well i think that that is a very modern way of looking at things they love that post-modern word don't right why because they assume that they're objective and why do they assume that they're objective why do white people assume that and you see this in theology programs right in theology programs you have uh theology you can take theology you want you can take theology too systematic theology and but if you want to study james cohn that's contextual theology wow okay so wait we're the only ones that have a context so when we're doing theology we have to do it from our location and through our lens and all that stuff and that makes it inferior to all these other white men that we're doing theology because they apparently don't because they're the default human right they're the default we're the aberration we're the variation you know what i'm saying where does that idea come from the enlightenment back where we started so that's what i'm talking when people are trying to identify you know is is this racist they have to understand that that racism is not we're not talking about your individual act and your individual experience but that thing happens in a context right always so if you're if you're saying things and it sounds like your ancestors and you're white you know then you have to consider like am i adding to the pile there am i participating in this tradition whether i intended to or not whether i know of it or not whether i fostered these ideas on my own or not like someone is in front of you telling you that you sound like your ancestors well there's something really particular when you do it because when i do it yeah when andre henry does it andre henry does it you know piss people off i know you do and that they're very sad because i don't like making people upset i don't think people know that and this is why i wanted to have this conversation with you because i you know we all have like uh you know digital mediums and and you know into some level like perceived personas or internet personas of like who we are how people or maybe the bulk of like what you do on twitter is anti-racist work so then therefore everyone thinks that you're always angry about this because you express vulnerability and anger but you know folks don't get the full context of who you are so what i want to say is andre henry you're problematic you're problematic for a white patriarchal structure you're problematic for twitter you're problematic for actual institutions in which your physical body resides in yeah for sure and so talk to me about your experience working at in pretty much a primarily white institution uh known as relevant media group and and i want to talk about the situation because i think your experience in this environment speaks to a broader context that people of color often face when working in the workplace and i'll give a little background you were the managing editor of relevant media groups for a time and i say you're problematic because your experience of the world somehow i've just noticed you in the years that i've known you somehow finds a way of unearthing things like you show up in a space and things come forward things get on earth you your awareness but also just your presence alone on earth's people's uncomfortabilities people you know these structures and systems maybe because you're inside of you you're so um there's almost like a vibration and energy with you and it almost like rises something out of people and i've seen it in a way that you're just being yourself and people interpret it as aggressive or they interpret it as pointed and targeted or whatever yeah so yeah so talk to me about your experience working uh in this environment in particular how uh yeah it relates to anti-racism i wrote a medium article about this a couple months ago and what i describe experiencing at relevant is people trying to be nice people but in not directly confronting racism and anti-blackness they end up actually participating in anti-blackness right yeah so i i was hired to be the managing editor and uh the short version of that story is as the managing editor i was told that i was to make decisions about what we published on the website um i was writing scripts for video and being in the video and i was on the podcast like uh on air talent for the podcast from time to time there were four areas it was web oh the magazine right so or the the magazine uh as a managing editor you would typically you know help help decide on what stories are gonna get published and who's gonna write them and all that kind of thing i got there i was told i was gonna you know have a hand in deciding what relevant produces right and this is a christian uh largest christian media platform serving young millennials christians right yeah okay so i get there uh around this time in 2017 i think maybe 2018 i don't remember and i the content schedule for the web is dropped in my lap relevant at the time produced 80 articles per month 80 new articles per month i should say um because we also produced several pieces of content per day so in a day we produce 15 pieces of content pretty on average a lot that's a lot to produce and the content schedule was dropped in my lap and said okay your job is to fill this content schedule every week by friday we have a content meeting and you're going to present what we're going to publish the next day we're going to work on headlines together we're going to talk about the pieces but that's that's the job i did that job for a few months and obviously if you have 80 articles that you need to produce you're going to try to systematize it yeah right our favorite word this episode um everyone's listening like he is such a professor i know yes we try to i try to systematize it and the way that i try to systematize it is saying well i know that in november people are getting ready for thanksgiving so what i'm gonna do is i need some fun articles for thanksgiving right i need some i need some articles from some indigenous christians um it's also native american heritage month so i'm gonna get as many indigenous christians as i can find to write some articles about indigeneity and christianity um i'm gonna get some folks some some folks with a background in psychology to write some articles about having difficult conversations with family right naturally because this is what people care about in november in december i want the most ridiculous take on why any christmas special i don't care who it is just find a writer who has a strong opinion about a christmas special for no apparent reason and i want from them to write 800 words about why this is the best christmas special ever created and if you disagree with me you're wrong i want it yeah right i want the definitive ranking of christmas uh christmas sides for dinner i want 15 ethical companies that you can order christmas presents from i want the the christian origins of uh saint nicholas and i want you know you know what i'm saying like i'm going around what's happening around that time of year and generating ideas right and that was fine no complaints until january because black history month was coming up and the same thing that i did for november that i differed for december and that i did for january i was doing for february and i was going to try to do something like what the 1619 project was for the new york times i mean this was before the 1619 project yeah but i'm just i'm comparing you know saying like i wanted for us to produce just one piece of content of the 15 pieces of content that we would that we would normally produce um each day in february for black history having something to do with racial justice well uh the ceo cameron strain comes to the content meeting he doesn't always come to the content meeting but um he did fairly regularly and when he saw that there was something on most days in february for black history month he goes what we're doing something every day for black history month i said yeah and he goes well no one talk to me about that like i've been here for i've been here for months i never talked to him about what what i'm gonna publish every you know from month to month i said i wasn't under the impression that we needed to do that i figured i would do the same thing i did for the other months and that we do black history month that we do women's history month he goes oh so you just making decisions now wow like literally so the ceo of the company in comes to the conference me in the face and looks you in the face and says to the managing editor the person he hired to make decisions yes oh so you're just making decisions now you just making decisions now did that feel like one of those moments where it was like boy know your place yes it did now the other thing he goes is well what about people who aren't interested in that let's just get through the conversation now we'll we'll pick it apart because yeah cause uh what about people who aren't interested in that i was i was just stunned i didn't even know what to say to that i just kind of just surprised that he would ask me that question um then he goes well well now we're gonna have to produce you know seven or eight pieces of content per day because you know like just to offset this thing because it's supposed to be balanced and this isn't this is going to upset our balance we cover god faith and culture and i interrupted him and said i am not confused about what we cover here yeah i follow relevant for years now i was trained when i got here i i know what we cover you don't have to you don't go over that with me here's what i do know relevant covers three main areas god life culture right and we produce four new articles per day three content areas four new articles right which means that fourth article could be about anything and you can still cover every single one of your content yeah content focuses right so this excuse is nonsense okay so then he like turns his attention to something else that's on the calendar and it's like what is this you know this no one's going to be interested in this i said well i'm going to push back on you on that one because that article's not been written yet and it's going to be written in the house so it could be really be anything you want if you want for it to be a funny article we can try to do it from a funny angle um you know whatever he just goes well maybe this con maybe this maybe this isn't ready for publisher feedback and just storms out of the meeting i sat there for a second and i'd heard about these tantrums and this is a history like and you you had heard about this this had been going on with people that have previously had your job like this was an actual pattern when it came to issues with related to black folks women uh marginalized people yeah there's just something about like basically just disrespecting people's work in general there you know like you don't you don't have to like the idea but i've seen or i had seen i'd seen a willingness to collaborate to make things better on other things that was not present in that meeting and the way that this was framed later was that well you know you know everyone's not gonna like every idea that we come up with you know sometimes we just have to you know accept that like you know you know we're not gonna you're not gonna every idea is not gonna be accepted this is the problem when we're talking about black history month though right first off you are telling me that a publication that serves mostly white evangelicals is not gonna cover black history month during the trump era wow what kind of sense does that make you know what i'm saying yeah when you say what about the people who aren't interested in that you have again stated your priorities the people who aren't interested in black history month are more important than the people who are who are the people that are interested in black history month who are the people who are not interested in black history month so then who's the priority here and that's what we talk about we say well how do you identify a racist thing does it matter if cameron strang says that he loves black people or not no neither here nor there you can say that you love black people all that you want but you had an opportunity to serve black people and you didn't you you actually said out of your mouth black people are not my priority yep my priority are the people who would be mad at me if i serve black people in this way so that's one example of a gazillion examples and so what you did which once again you being beautifully problematic you wrote this amazing honestly one of the most well-written articles i've ever read um i mean it's just a testament to your skill level like you are seriously a incredible writer like everyone should be hiring you to be a ghost um you wrote a medium article about your experience primarily because uh you know relevance seemed to frame a facebook post or some social media post in which they appeared to be saying that they were going to talk about diversity in the church or inclusion or something like that and and you then wrote a beautifully worded article that basically argued that relevant was unfit and chemistry in particular was unfit to talk around this subject because of your experience um as well as the experience of many other people that work there um and i guess unbeknownst to you what ended up happening was when you wrote that article and you hit publish um so many other former employees begin to speak out about their experiences yeah well i knew that there were a lot of other employees that had stories yeah and that there were a bunch of people that had left relevant hurt and had left with a sense an unresolved sense of injustice and that they wanted to come forward uh but no one had and there's a whole story about like why there are so many why why there were and there still are some people who are like kind of just sitting on on their pain but a lot of people just didn't feel like anyone would care and like it would make a difference if they said anything so people went to therapy and people you know put it behind them as best they could and all that and i i mean i didn't write about this as soon as i left you know i i felt dishonored at relevant i felt like they tried to i mean after that meeting they took all of my decision making power away from me as managing editor simply for for wanting to post about black history month well they say that it wasn't about that they said well it looks like that you know but you know it's coincidental and i'm like well i mean you can say that but this is what it looks like you know you you guys got afraid of the decisions that i was making it looks like and you you you made me on camera talent after that wow so um yeah there i knew that there were people who had stories and i just i thought the same thing i thought it's not gonna make a difference if i say anything about it people aren't gonna understand and the thing is when it happened someone reached out to cameron i have a screenshot someone reached out to cameron on on the instant messenger in the office and it's like you need to apologize to andre and cameron's response was well jesse spoke to him already and jesse is the brand manager and apparently you know jesse had another conversation with one of my colleagues and was like you know andre just needs to get over this you know like i just need to get over the fact that it happened so you know when you're in that kind of situation and everyone's telling you like it's not that big a deal right it's not that big a deal yeah what happened and you know you you think that that's how people are going to respond like they're not going to understand so i wrote that article because a mutual friend of ours brandy miller told me just you just need to get this out like just write it and just let it be like you're an active closure for you and so i did i wrote it and i thought okay dust this off it'll live on medium you know maybe a couple of people will read it and that'll be that but little did i know that that not only i knew people were out there but i didn't know that it would signal to people oh no we can do that and i think part of this too because i named the person like i didn't i didn't not say relevant i put relevant in the title of the article and i named cameron straight and i think that people that some people were like oh like we're naming things now yeah and so rebecca marie joe she wrote her article and then others started coming forward and it was like a an avalanche from there and and then what ended up happening was was cameron has temporarily as so it seems to step down from leadership of the the publication and the media group he's at least stepped away for a time we'll see what happens stay tuned for the final segment of william and andre's conversation after this short break i think that what people often miss when black people call out racial injustice is that we're actually inviting them to create a better world and to take a new path it doesn't feel good to be called out for that kind of stuff but when you do you have an opportunity you can listen you can reflect you don't have to do what any black person tells you that's bad advice right everyone doesn't know what the what they're talking about just because they have a lot of melanin in this yeah you know true true but like if you look at like the civil rights movement and all these other protest movements and stuff like that like what they're really saying is like this society could be better it might be fine for you but it's not fine for everyone and this is how it could be fine and i saw i see that in the in the in the call out of ceo and in the way that the organization is built is that there's an opportunity for it to shift to pivot and to be better what i often find though is that throughout our history white people don't respond to those invitations well not just to the call out but to like even seeing the vision that's being put in front of them right so i got like i got shoot out by former rel some former white and relevant employees saying that we're trying to like burn the company to the ground and we're trying to ruin cameron strang's life and all this other kind of stuff and it's like y'all seriously like if we were talking about like cancellation right then people would be talking about a class-action lawsuit for a harmful workplace yeah no one is talking about that i'm not talking about that we're talking about building accountability structures so that workers don't experience harm in your company anymore which is actually good for you too because it keeps you from being in this situation again we're talking about putting in structure so that people can address harm that they experience in the workplace also great for everyone you know what i'm saying these things actually are provisions to give that company a future but some people only know how to hear it in terms of power hmm you are trying to tell this man how to run his company right which is what was said to me like you guys are trying to you guys are trying to assert power over this person and i'm like this is why we this is why uh some this is this is an obstacle to the progress that we're talking about is that the thing that we're back at the reconciliation the or the distortion of reconciliation where the solution that peop most people think of is what we need to do is just is just love each other and just hug each other and just you know you know understand that we're all human beings and all that kind of stuff but but what the anti-racist people are saying is no what we need to do is take an audit of the harm that has been caused and actually implement real uh real remedies for it and that will actually be the better for it like the remedies are not recommended to humiliate the harm doer they're actually meant to create some bridge by which reconciliation can happen you know if there's to be reconciliation yeah but ultimately it takes you know what the bible calls repentance yes it takes um it takes people like you said you know i'll just say this personally like um when you told me about this article i think i told you exactly what you just said a moment ago when you said people are only going to see it through the power dynamics i think i told you that very specifically i said well it's going to be perceived as you're trying to take this man's platform you're trying to take this man down right and i knew that's not what you were trying to do as much as you were trying to address harm and and and actually like you said seek that type of reconciliation um which unfortunately it just often seems like um white people are often just unk unable or incapable of of just doing that um and so we actually have a question here i think this kind of centers this and i would love for you to maybe talk about your podcast as it relates to this but uh it says andre what are some of the biggest issues that come up when trying to educate white people about anti-racism uh if you could give an introductory advice for approaching conversations on racism to white people what would it be i would say listen to andre's podcast oh i think that one of the limits though like so my work is not really introductory you've got to come with a bit of a foundation and i think that for me personally that is a challenge for people who are just learning is that they you're coming to algebra 2 when you're coming to open heart pills or even to the things that i'm posting on twitter i'm not starting at 101 and the reason why i'm not is because of what i talked about earlier is that you know usually at the 101 level the way that people learn is they have to wrestle with the content and usually that means that you need to wrestle with the teacher and i can't do that it's traumatizing for me yeah i can't i can't talk to you about the things that black people experience and then you're telling me that well maybe maybe maybe i'm just imagining it you know maybe i'm just being sensitive like it's gaslighting so i can't do that um and because i've been doing that kind of work for so long i actually don't know what to tell people about talking to people as an introductory especially white people as an introductory thing i don't know because nothing that i tried with white people really worked and there it is you know i'm saying like when i when i tried to chase down people who were and i knew this person's not bad they're mistaken and i'm gonna try to help them see where they're mistaken they would listen to me and so i stopped because all i would experience was harm from that so i don't really know what i do know is that white people tend to listen to white people more easily than they do to black people about this stuff so if you're white and you're talking to white people uh you probably have more emotional energy to do this and you probably have some emotional distance from the problems of racism at least compared to a black person and i think that that is your question you know to answer i honestly don't really know what works i know what works for people who care already and want to do something and don't know what to do you know i know what works for people who are willing to listen or or i've seen some things work i shouldn't say i know it works but i've seen some things work but for me to break through those kinds of barriers that are there has come at great cost like i i drug a hundred pound boulder through los angeles for months you know and it and you wait you explain that why did you do that to show people like this is what it feels like to live in my body that these things that we're talking about with racism are burdensome they're they're a weight on me and it took that for some people to get it and that's fine but i can't carry 100 100 pound granite boulder for the rest of my life everywhere i go for you to get it yeah you know for some people it took watching you know eric garner get choked to death and it's fine that that's what woke you up but like we can't keep on like putting black bodies up for slaughter so that white people can get it you know and i know that that's not all that it takes but that what i am saying is that usually for us it the price is the the price that we pay to try to communicate and to break through has been so high you know so i know what people say you know tell compelling stories with sympathetic characters and lead with that ask people questions to get them to interrogate their own assumptions and the own obstacles that they have to listening but i wish i knew what worked as a formula you know because i'd do it i think i know it works and it's and it's i've got the answer to this question i know i'm the interviewer but i have the answer right and this is going back to our earlier conversation this is why i actually think theology matters because i think that theology has a way of metaphor and story you're right you pointed out a little bit but particularly religion has a unique power i believe to transform the human heart or to give a space for that transformation to happen and so in a lot of ways i actually think white people need to start doing the theological work um of discipling other white people um around what it means to love neighbor love stranger love foreigner love refugee love immigrant love black people i would say that i i would say that i'm i'm open to the idea that maybe white people doing that work would be helpful i know that as a black theologian doing that work all i got was white was white theobro just trying to argue with me you know like they're just like yeah you know did you see uh birth of a nation the the recent one uh with the nat turner story and it's like there's that scene where like they're literally arguing with scripture they're just like it's like a lightsaber battle with like black theology slaveholder theology well ultimately like obviously you know one has been dominant but i i don't know you've there's something about the subversive nature at one point christianity was subversive to to the dominant scripts and then became the dominant script so maybe i have a little little hope around that that theological conversation maybe generationally maybe not overnight yeah um might become the dominant script of how we which again i'm not saying no i'm just saying that's been my experience so i'm i'm open to you know possibly you know white people doing that work um they asked what some of the biggest challenges are and i think that one huge challenge is that you know white people are incredibly defensive about talking about race and racism and then the ones that aren't defensive in the sense that like i don't want to talk about it enter the conversation in a paternalistic way and say well i know just as much as you do possibly more you know and it's like a liberal white supremacy oh man um but talk to us real quick uh about your your podcast hope and heart pills well you've been doing this thing on twitter it's a newsletter um you send out two folks who you know i have a number of white friends that actually listen to your newsletter and and actually one yesterday i was i ran into an atwater village and ended up sitting down and talking to and he mentioned you and he was like he's like yeah that stuff's hard to hear sometimes but i'm so thankful somebody at uh at science mike's uh 200th podcast uh recording was like afterward he was like uh man like on twitter like you you kick my ass every day but i appreciate it and i like you said like i love people and i do think through like i don't want for people to like get into like this self-flagellation kind of yeah thing where it's like you know andre hurts me in a good way like that ugh um and also you don't exist to make white people feel bad about themselves or i don't want people to feel bad but the thing that i'm trying to do is not make people feel bad but to like take away the ambiguity around this that's why i'm trying to speak straightforwardly to it because what i cause what i used to do was i understand how you could feel that way white person uh you know you and like try to like and i would try to say these things in a way that like would make sure that like i i don't i don't upset them and it made it very easy for them to be like okay nice black man i have no work to do and they just skip off into the sunset yeah right and then um and then the other thing was that it made it obscured the message and so this is why i like twitter a lot actually i know that twitter's not great for like nuanced conversations and nuanced discussions i'm not trying to foster a nuanced discussion on twitter so so what i say so the fact that you have 280 characters and i say something like racism is not the result of ignorance ignorance is the result of racism it's it's terse now you may not understand that idea and to me it's like okay well that's your responsibility reflect on that think about that go look it up you know try now try to understand why why it was said but that's what i'm trying to do and i know that i know that for some people they're just like oh you know it's not meant as a dart it's just meant as like a clear statement it's stop yield go one way right like because otherwise i just feel like so much of the ambiguity is partly why we're having such difficult conversations about racism because we can't be clear about what we're talking about hmm well sir i perceive you to be a prophet uh i kept i thought your hope and heart peel message you know feels a little bit like you know john you know when he eats the scroll in the book of revelation you know uh you know maybe it's it sounds sweet to the taste but it's bitter to the stomach yeah um and i i see you really doing that type of prophetic work that is bringing the hope but also the the hard pill that is necessary and needed and i'm i'm personally better for the work that you do i'm thankful for the work that you do i'm thankful for your problematic ass yes but but it's the authentic self of you it's not like you don't you know you're not sitting up here trying to like mess up folk you know like just trying to piss off white people it's like right you actually are too br i am invested in the project of andre henry coming forward the full authentic black self that is andre henry without encumbrance without um resistance without you being perceived as the problematic thing because you're not um and i think so many of us i know i have felt that way um and so as you come forward as you like your voice is heard and your platform at even your platform has like dramatically increased and it's been really beautiful to watch because i think you're necessary to our social conversation um and so anyway i love you and i'm thankful for you and i'm glad you're here i appreciate it man love you too well we hope you've enjoyed this episode of the liturgist podcast your hosts have been william matthews the guest andre henry this episode was produced by me michael gunger and edited by contagiously hiding thank you for all the patrons who make this show possible much love to all of you see you next week i just wanted to sing a song okay what do you want to sing the waynes brothers theme song we're brothers we're happy and we're singing and we're colored in there give me a high five cut and print beautiful guys we're black and we're on the liturgists