Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Kerry Connelly 0:08
Good white racists are people who are intent on defending their comfort, and their inherent sense of their own goodness. And we need to deconstruct that; we need to be able to move through the discomfort and get to a place and sit with that, really sit with that, discomfort and everything that it means and those messy feelings, and come to the realization that “Yeah, I am a good person”, right? I do care about these things. And yet, at the same time, I have still been complicit in systems of racism. And my silence has made me complicit and I benefit from them, right. And until we do that hard work, until we can get to that place, where we're sitting with those messy feelings and moving in and through a place of lament, I believe is something that we need to do and, and my friends, we will ever do the work at hand, which is inviting the Kingdom of God to appear on Earth. Inviting shalom for all creatures on earth, we can’t do that work until we are willing to sit in that mess.
Seth Price 1:22
Hi my friends! Welcome, welcome, welcome. It’s episode 100 and I don’t even know. I’m recording this intro on election night. It is about 9":30 at night on the east coast. And I've watched none of it, because I can't-it's exhausting. The world is exhausting. The weather is exhausting, politics, religion, faith, Church, it's all exhausting. And it doesn't need to be, we could realize that we're all humans, and we all bear the divine, and act that way. Wouldn't that be lovely? But that's not why you're here today is that I apologize for the somber tone there but that's where I'm at, at recording this intro. That's just where I'm at. My guest today is Kerry Connelly. She wrote a book called Good White Racist. And you saw that title, I'm sure and went away what that doesn't make any sense, what! And then you're going to listen to this conversation and go, that's not I don't know how I feel about that! But I want to be clear, a lot of the work that needs to be done when we talk about racism and power structures and so many of the things especially in the church, it needs to happen amongst the circles that we run into. And for me, those are white circles, unfortunately. Like, those are my predominant circles, there is a power that my voice has, and there is a power that your voice has. And it's time that we learned how to use that in a way that deals with supremacy, and deals with exceptionalism in a way that doesn't screw around the topic in a way that values humans. Every single one of us. This is a challenging conversation. And it's a very challenging book. And it is worth every moment. Let's roll the tape of Kerry Connelly.
Seth Price 3:29
Kerry Connelly, welcome to the show. appreciate your willingness to come on the 19th time, I think we found a date. So we made it happen. We did it the night of the vice presidential election, I could be doing a lot of things. I would rather be doing this than watching the next train wreck.
Kerry Connelly 3:44
(laughter) Oh my gosh yes! Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
Seth Price 3:48
I'm excited to have you here. So I always start off with a very simple question. But sometimes they're 20 seconds into 20 minutes. So what are you like is you kind of roll back through the Rolodex of this is what makes me me, like, what are like what are those tentpoles?
Kerry Connelly 4:05
Oh, wow.
That's such a good question. And where to start? What am I? I would have to say I'm a writer, I think and I say that first and foremost, only because it's one thing in life that I have to do that I would do even if even if nobody paid attention. I would just do it right. So I think that that's definitely a part of of who I am.
I identify as a follower of Jesus. I am probably, somewhat, rebellious. I am an enneagram eight if it means anything to you, and a wife and a mom, and a daughter, and a friend, and probably more on the “woowoo” side of like mysticism. And that's where my faith is kind of taking me after seminary kind of smashed it all to bits and then you know, reconstructed it.
So, yeah. So I definitely fall more on the mystical side of it than anything - experiential.
Seth Price 5:17
How do you define woowoo? What's the inverse of woowoo?
Kerry Connelly 5:21
Um
Seth Price 5:27
(laughter from both) Um, so that’s episode title right there…the inverse of woo woo
Kerry Connelly 5:29
Yes! That's a really good one. So what I will say is that the the process of going to seminary, I really did it like any good seminary it, it kind of completely smashed my faith to bits, which I think is a healthy thing, right. And then what happened was, I looked down on the floor, and I was like, Wow, there is a whole bunch of stuff in there that I don't really want, like legalism, and patriarchy and a whole lot of stuff. And I was coming out of evangelicalism. So when that happened, and I removed those things, it left all this beautiful open space for my actual experience of the Divine to come in. And once that actually happened. It was kind of crazy, because I started having to pay attention to some of the stranger experiences that I've had my entire life. And I could no longer compartmentalize them. I had to kind of pay attention to them. And yeah, so that's where the woowoo comes in.
Seth Price 6:30
That's a seminarian word. The woowoo. It's Greek for mystic
Kerry Connelly 6:34
Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
Seth Price 6:39
That's funny. Yeah, I've had people try to explain, I've had people ask me to explain the way that I see Jesus and “woowoo” has never come into the vernacular. But when you said it, I immediately was like, I get that. I know what you mean. It's less Bible Scripture passages and more. Jesus, which I know how heretical that sounds saying out loud.
Kerry Connelly 7:02
In my opinion, any opinion that the old white guys that like decided, and I say that, you know, but, you know, the dudes that got to put together and decide what got to go in the Bible, anything that they didn't like, is called heretical, whether it's a true experience of the Divine or not. And so I'm proudly on the side of heretics because there are some good people over there.
Seth Price 7:27
Yeah, I mean, everybody's somebodies heretic.
Kerry Connelly 7:32
Exactly!
Seth Price 7:34
Yeah, if you're Catholic, Martin Luther is a heretic if you're Jerry Jr. I'm a heretic like everybody somebodies heretic, it's totally, totally fine. So I wanted to ask a couple, just so as I was reading through your book, which I don't want to get the title wrong. So let me make sure that I'm not miss remembering. Yep, I didn't Good White Racist, which is a title that when you see it on the encapsulate, wait, what? What, what happened here? What just what just happened here? So we'll go, we'll come back to that. But as I read through your book, I want to know, on a scale of one to 1-10 … 10 of sarcasm, like what is your base level of sarcasm? Just in a day to day?
Kerry Connelly 8:13
Oh, yeah, it's pretty high.
Seth Price 8:17
Because I'm assuming the editor, I'm assuming the editors filtered it down a bit. So
Kerry Connelly 8:20
Oh, indeed!
Seth Price 8:22
So what was revision one? Like, what was that at?
Kerry Connelly 8:23
There were some things I had to fight for. I had to be like, No, listen, you can't you gotta let me keep this is like, please, this is just my voice, you know. And it's also, you know, I think not that I had a huge audience before the book came out. But for the people who did read my blog that I was writing and stuff, they would have expected there to be some serious sarcasm and snark, you know, so it's definitely who I am. Yeah, I should have included that in my first answer.
Seth Price 8:53
As I read through, I found myself nodding like, yeah, so for the longest time, I fought against the enneagram. Mostly because I don't like things that everybody talks about. That's why I don't like the Patriots, which I don't know if you like the Patriots or not, it's fine if you do, I don't. Yeah, but it doesn't matter what it is. Like that thing that everybody is like the shiny new toy like, I don't care. And for the longest time, enneagram was that and then at the prodding of my pastor and many other people, I began to dig into and I genuinely enjoy the process of that now. For the longest time, though, I however, thought I was an eight. And upon further reflection after many after a couple years, I realize I'm not I'm a five and if I showed you my books and my notes and the way that I was just an unhealthy five, like hoarding knowledge as a dictator, you know, and, yeah, but eight really felt good, because that's the way that I was badly acting. Oh, I know, but it felt good-powerful.
Kerry Connelly 9:51
And you know, I resonate with that too, because I don't really know a lot about the enneagram. It confuses me. I've not yet studied it. I do want to I want to actually get certified in it, but when the eight totally resonates with me, but then I was reading that it could be possible. I'm just a broken something else. And I was like, Oh, I should probably look into that one of these days. But I'm too busy.
Seth Price 10:13
So my pastor's being trained by and I don't know if you'll ever hear this Barrett, I've no idea if he's listening..he may, something about like his you see those arrows. If you go against the arrow, that's you being healthy. You go with the arrow, you're just like, not not being healthy. Um, but it was funny as when I told him I was a five. He's like, of course you are. And he started rattling off all these things. And I was like, how long have you known?
Kerry Connelly 10:39
Why didn't you tell me?
Seth Price 10:41
That's that's not the fun part. Anyway, not why you're here. So I wanted to address something that you said it's either in the intro, or maybe it's the person that wrote the foreword. I can't remember which, but I felt like it's in the intro, that you felt the need to write this book on being a good white racist, specifically to other white people. Which I find is appropriate because we're both white people. Yeah, to the best of my knowledge, and so why that clarification? What matters there? Why is that?
Because I feel like most people just skip the intro. You know what I mean, in many books, I just tried to get into the meat, or they glaze over it. And I'm bad about that as well. But why that clarification, why does that matter?
Kerry Connelly 11:26
I think it matters because partially, it matters, Because white people in general, especially white Christians, we tend to have a huge savior complex, like this white savior complex, right. And I wanted to be super clear that I was not trying to explain whiteness to black people, or racism to black people, I that this was not a, or to the BIPOC community as a whole. It needed to be very specific that this was a conversation between two white people, myself and the reader, right. And part of that also is about the fact that I'm sitting here as a companion along this journey, right, having done some of this work, and by no means am I done with this work, but as in complete, but I am doing this work along with the reader. Right. And I think that that's really important. I think it's important for white people to take up this labor. I think, black people specifically, but we've asked to the BIPOC community to do this work for far too long. And I think that it's time for us to do our part, you know. And so that's kind of really what I was trying to get get out there is that it's really important for white people to understand that this is a white a conversation that white people need to be having.
Seth Price 12:48
Why?
Kerry Connelly 12:50
Because whiteness is invisible to white people, and it's constructed to be invisible to white people. And so it's our sickness, it's our sole distortion or disfigurement. And so it's our responsibility to go about the work of our own healing, right. And until we consider this work, just that, the work of our own healing, until we can we can really start to understand that this is something that is within us that we need to root out and practice agency over-until we can we can really start doing that work and doing that discernment and that agency practicing that agency, we're never going to heal racism, right. Black people can sit there and yell and they can protest. And they can take to their knees and they can do all of the things and none of it will matter if white people are not willing to do white work. And that's why I do what I do. Right because we have to, I need to ,my goal is to invite white people into a place of ultimate discomfort, and truly to deconstruct and decolonize our own identities, right. So that we can find the true self that that I believe we are created to be so that we can all move into a place of Shalom, you know of what God actually intended for us.
Seth Price 14:29
Yeah, that's one of my favorite words shalom. It's actually how I sign almost every email unless it's just a quick I'll get the kids after school, or you know, those emails don't get a shalom. Yeah, it's one of my favorite because I the concept of that word. The theology of that word is massive, honestly, yes. Might even be the gospel, different, different topic altogether. But yes, yeah. Anyway, you're using the words and I'm one Be real clear, I'm gonna probably be tongue in cheek and devil's advocate, because most people listening most likely have not read the book. And for people listening that's on you, you should hit pause. And just, you really should read the book, right? write the book. No, read the book is what you're supposed to say. Yeah, buy the book, buy the book is what I was looking for.
So it's been a long day.
So yeah, so when you say good white racist, I think most people are going to read that and go, I don't know what that means. Like in you take, don't take chapters because, you know, don't you take literally three chapters to define this. So what are you meaning to say when you say those? And then I have another question that I don't script these that I just thought of, from what you said a moment ago but we’ll get there.
Kerry Connelly 15:48
So, um, so essentially, what I'm trying to get at here is the idea of paradox right. And I think that just in general, the American psyche has a really hard time holding paradox holding this idea that we love binaries, right. And so holding this idea that more than one thing can be true at the same time. And also in our American psyche, is this deeply embedded hero complex, right, this idea that Americans are always the good guys. And that is a message that is deeply embedded in our culture, and in our national identity. And, the truth is that we've done a lot of really crappy things, right? We've done a lot of as a country, as a nation, we've done we have some pretty horrific things in our history. And racism, obviously, being in slavery, obviously, being one of the biggest, right.
And so what I'm trying to help people understand is that white people, and when I'm saying good white racists, I'm not talking about the KKK, I'm not talking about neo nazis, I'm talking about good people who really care and don't want to be racist, right. The idea of racism is not something that they would aspire to, it's not something that that they want in their psyche, or in their lives, they don't want to embody it. And yet they are unwilling because they are so intent on protecting two things, their own comfort, right, and they are feeling this defensiveness and this unwillingness to acknowledge the fact that they could be not all that good, right. Like that there's some goodness in them and there's also some, messiness in them, right.
And so good white racists are people who are intent on defending their comfort, and their inherent sense of their own goodness. And we need to deconstruct that. We need to be able to move through the discomfort, and get to a place and sit with that really sit with that discomfort, and everything that it means and those messy feelings, and come to the realization that, yeah, I am a good person, right, I do care about these things. And yet, at the same time, I have still been complicit in systems of racism. And my silence has made me complicit and I benefit from them, right. And until we can do that hard work, until we can get to that place where we're sitting with those messy feelings and moving through a place of lament, I believe, is something that we need to do and despair—we can't ever do the actual work at hand, which is inviting the kingdom of God to appear here on Earth. Inviting shalom for all creatures on earth, we can't do that work until we are willing to sit in that mess.
Seth Price 18:49
So a minute ago, and I'm gonna come back to some of that, but a minute ago, you had talked about, I don't remember your words exactly because I can't write fast enough about, you know, the reason that it matters for the audience, primarily being other white people is that we need to enact some change, we need to do something. So as I read through the book, and as I talked to some of my friends that are not white, there is a power structure a struggle, and I've had this conversation with him often of you know, oftentimes, we don't want to give someone else of a different race, power and authority because we're terrified if we're honest, that they'll do what we've generationally done to them back to us. But I find the odd, and I’ll use your word “paradox” that it is going to require whites expressing power in giving away power to enact that change. So and I don't know if I'm saying that right. But I don't know how to ride that tension.
Kerry Connelly 19:49
Yeah, that is, it's so insightful. And this is the thing that I think so many of my white friends that when we struggle with this over, you know a bottle of wine or a couple drinks or whatever this is where we always get to. That there is this tension and there is going to be this messy period of time where we are going to have to center whiteness in order to de-center it. Right? Like we are going to. There's this idea. Okay, so you're gonna, you're a bunch of white people who care about this stuff, you're going to put on a conference? How do I not put on a typical white, especially a white Christian conference, right, which is usually a bunch of white dudes up on stage and nobody else right? So how do we be intentional about sharing that platform? Well, just the fact that we have to come from the position of we own the platform, and that we're going to share, that in itself is something that needs to be deconstructed.
But that doesn't mean that we throw up our hands and say, well, then I'm not going to share my platform, right? Like, like, I'm going to take all my toys and go home, right? We don't get that we have to sit in that discomfort. And this is what ultimately the problem is that we have suffered a failure of imagination. You know, Andre Henry, who is somebody that I suggest everybody follow, he's great. And he tweeted one time, he said something like, I don't understand. And he was talking specifically about white women. He goes, I don't understand why white women place themselves in a role of anti racism work, because isn't it equivalent to self annihilation? And I'm like, Yes, actually, it is. White work that when we are deconstructing our white identity, it is about dying to self, it is about self annihilation, and the faith part comes in where we go, Okay, I'm going to trust that God's going to show me what I'm going to be. But we have suffered this massive failure of imagination. And that was, I think that was the way the book got started. And the way I even started this whole process was I watched an episode of Ruby sale of on being with Ruby Sales were Krista Tippett interviews Ruby sales watch.
Seth Price 22:09
I thought that was just a podcast.
Kerry Connelly 22:11
No, it's a video. Yeah, at least of this one.
Seth Price 22:16
I was today years old when I learned this.
Kerry Connelly 22:18
Yeah, there's a website and it has video and
Seth Price 22:20
Yes, right.
Kerry Connelly 22:23
Okay. Yes. And so if you don't know who Ruby Sales is, she was a, she's a public theologian, woman is theologian and she was 17 years old. She was at a civil rights rally. She was standing on the porch of a general store and a white man came up and with a shotgun and pulled the trigger, and a young white seminarian through his body in front of Ruby and saved her life, he died immediately changing her life forever. And in this episode of On Being she says, You know, I know we have a black liberating theology, what I want to know is where is the white liberating theology? Right?
Where is the theology that liberates white people from hunger and pain and drug addiction and all of the things. And I was so struck I mean, it's such a womanist theology and thing to say, right, but I was so struck by the generosity of it. And it really got me thinking, I was like, Okay, well, what would a white liberating theology look like? And I was sitting in seminary, I'm like, well, what better place to start thinking about it, then in seminary, right? And then I realized, this book really came out of my understanding that I needed to have an education on what white identity actually is, right? And that's kind of how I got to this book. But what I realized in the process is that we actually have, really, we have this failure of imagination that we cannot imagine what we would be without this constructed identity of dominance. And until we can begin to imagine what it would be like to no longer embody a false dominance, we will never be able to create or participate in the creation of a more just world.
Seth Price 24:08
So for me, my faith really struggled a few years after marriage with having a child because emotions happen and fives don't deal well with emotions. And yay, we did it. Yeah. And that's the most I'm gonna say about that. Because I'm not doing it. I'm not crying tonight. I'm not crying ever again.
Kerry Connelly 24:28
You sure you’re not an eight? That sounds pretty eight to me!
Seth Price 24:32
(laughter)
I don't know. So you're a little of every number. Yeah. And I should find it or get my pastor to say it. There's one part where he's like, because it would take one like when Jesus did this, and it would take a two when Jesus did this, and it would take three like when Jesus did this, and he rolls through all of these different parables and stories, and he's like, what I'm trying to tell you is when you're healthy, that's what you're supposed to be like you're supposed to be able to access different ways to be with different people. Because anyway, again, yeah, but he does a rant. It's one of those rants that I'm sure in seminary people memorize, you're like, oh, he's doing the story. Again, he's doing that, like you can tell, because every time it tweaks it slightly, and it gets better or worse, depending on the week or you know, allergy medicine or what's in there. So, you're going through all this in seminary then like, that's when everything kind of shattered around this? Like, how does that go over in seminary when you're trying to talk about it? Or you just kind of no I’m going to sit in the corner? I'm gonna shut my mouth cuz they're gonna kick me out?
Kerry Connelly 25:36
Okay. That's, that's, uh, yeah, so let me that timeline is important. So I wrote a blog called Jersey Girl Jesus, I don't really write there anymore. I write more. That was on patios, but I write more on my own blog now. But on my own website, but um, so I was writing a lot about race and LGBTQ rights and women's rights and through the evangelical Christian lens, right, it were or how should I say this not through that lens, maybe opposing that lens. And, you know, for a blog, that had Jesus in the name, the most feedback I would get would be around racial issues and LGBTQ, obviously, those two issues. Which, of course, being the eight, I was like, oh, poke poke, right. So let's talk about that more.
And, you know, I was just really shocked by the visceral reactions that I got from white people. And I started seeing patterns and noticing, like the ways that the comebacks and the comments, they all started to sound the same, right? Like the same arguments. And I was like, wow, this is like, this is a thing. And it kind of got me really interested in that. So I was already kind of there. And then my very first class in seminary, it's a diverse seminary. And it's one of the I think it's the only one that actually has a PhD program in African American preaching and homiletics. And so it's a pretty diverse student body. The very first class, we took I had a four hour afternoon session in this very diverse, and when I say diverse, I mean, there were black people and then there were white people at every end of the spectrum of racial awakening. And we had a conversation about race that was pivotal.
I mean, it was exhausting. And it was emotional. And it was beautiful. And I think we all came out of that experience really well bonded as a as a, as a class as a cohort, right? And then throughout the rest of my journey I was able to take classes in liberation, theology, and womanism, and interest and process theology and to study all of these different theologies that like, Who knew who to ever think that there were all these other ways to think about God? They're amazing people. I know. It's like, Whoa, wow. That's incredible. Well, you know, all those heretics, right? And when I was exposed to, you know, a black liberation theology that starts to help me understand that, you know, if God decided to come down and put a body on, then maybe God cares about bodies, and we should, too, right. And then how that changes my eschatology and how that changes what I'm thinking about the afterlife and what my reward is going to be. What heaven is actually, you know, all of those things. So it was pretty well received, right?
Although it was also a wonderful place for me to say a whole bunch of really stupid things. And luckily, I was able to make some really long lasting, I hope, deep friendships and relationships with black people who were willing to invest the time in me and sit with me and have those really hard conversations whenever I said something stupid, which was often
Seth Price 29:24
Two of my best friends on the planet are there they're both black. And oftentimes, when I'll say something stupid, one of them's will be like Seth, that's bullshit. Like, like, no, I love you. And I know But listen, no, no. Yes, no. And I'm like, Oh, well, tell me Like what? I want to be better tell me because I didn't know. And then in hindsight, I usually think I didn't know I just didn't understand, which I think is a different version than know
I want to jump around a bit. So you have a chapter on gaslighting. ghosting, at least, yeah, that I think that's what it's called. But in there you talk about micro aggressions? I don't…so can you kind of explain what those are and how those relate to good white racism?
Kerry Connelly 30:14
Yeah. So one of the things that I think is really important to understand is that racism, and I am going to, I'm going to say this, and then I'm going to answer your question, because this is not going to sound like an answer to your question. But I think it's important to make sure that people understand this is that racism occurs on at least two levels. That's probably oversimplifying it, but there's the individual right. And that's where people get the most defensive, right? Where we go “I'm not a racist, right? I you know, why are you calling me a racist, because I said this thing, slavery is over, you know, whatever, Oprah's rich”. So like, you know, that there's, but there are, there's that individual aspect that of the individual soul that we need to be addressing and practicing agency over and that that occurs with the thoughts that go through our minds and the ways our interpersonal relationships and how we embody those and behave in those right.
And then there's systemic racism, which is the collective sin. And that's the collective nature and the and the institutionalized racism that is causing actual oppression among an entire people group or people groups, right. And it's important to understand that there are two different places that it operates, right, and they are intertwined with each other and they are cohesive, and you can't really separate them, but you need to understand that they're both there, right?
So microaggressions, work, both individually and systemically. So for example, and I'll explain this because I'm not a I'm not a black person, I will I can, I can understand it as a woman, because as a woman, I experienced microaggressions all the time. And I can give you a perfect example of one.
So I was on my way to an event where I was going to be speaking, I think, I think it was speaking that night, called Brew Theology. And I got into an Uber. And my Uber driver asked me where I was going. And to be honest, I was kind of tired, I didn't feel like talking I was really exhausted. And I was getting into an Uber with a male driver by myself. And I was preparing to go to this talk. And so I had to be on. I had to keep having my energy up. And I get into the Uber, and he asks me where I'm going, and he's just started talking, you know, incessantly. And then he asked me where I was going, I said, “Oh, I'm going to thing called Brew Theology”. And he got so excited, because he had also been in seminary, and then he began to explain to me after I told him, I was in seminary, or he had not gone to seminary, but he started to explain biblical concepts to me, and I can't remember, but he picked, like, the most basic. It was like, first day of seminary 101, like something, I can't remember what it was. And it was exhausting. And then he proceeded to tell me that at his church, he doesn't believe women should preach or pastor.
And I mean, that's a pretty blatant microaggression. But it's a microaggression because it's happening one on one, it's an interpersonal thing that's happening. And in that moment, I needed to make a choice. I could either end up confronting him and having a really uncomfortable Uber ride, right? Utilizing my energy, and my emotional labor to educate him or to fight with him, or to just even try to resist his oppressive, patriarchal, mindset, and to establish my humanity and to fight for my own humanity in its fullness, right? Or I could just be quiet and let it go and move on to the next thing, right.
And as a woman, I, especially in the workplace, I might experience a number of microaggressions like that throughout the day. Whether that's somebody touching my body in a way that I did not give them permission to, or making comments about my body, or making assumptions about my abilities, because I'm a woman. All of these different things, right? Like he did telling, you know, telling me that I cannot for whatever because of his theology live into the fullness of my capacity, my God given capacity and calling right. So, all of those things, they are exhausting when they happen over and over and over again. So now you think about let's move that to the the racial aspect of the conversation and let's talk about police brutality, because you know, it's not like it's a topical moment.
Seth Price 34:56
Yeah,
Kerry Connelly 34:59
So first of all, you have to understand the system of policing and how we over police communities of color. Right, like so that's, that's one whole thing, right? And then within that community of color, there might be a young kid or a young, let's say, a young black man, right? Who every day is faced with small microaggressions, based on his blackness, right? Whether it is from maybe a store owner, or whether it's from the police making small things. Like constantly pulling him over for something that a white person would never get pulled over for, or like all of these things, right? And slowly, and they kind of peel away at his patience. And one day, he has a bad day. And he's not feeling it anymore. And he loses his cool. For him that's a deadly situation. Right! That becomes a deadly situation. So that's one way that microaggressions operate in the, at the systemic level, because now he his life is in danger, because he lost his patience with an agent of the state.
So microaggressions can also occur when my best friend Aisha has told me about how many times people, white women, will come up to her and say, “You're so pretty for a black woman”, Or, “oh, you talk good for a black person”, right?
Like, what does that even mean? You know, but those are small, little microaggressions that you're kind of like, and you're almost like most people, especially women who are socialized to be nice all the time, smile, and nod, make sure that men are comfortable in the room, and that their feelings are always intact, and their egos are not harmed. Right. Like this is what the work that we do as women all the time, black women carry an even bigger burden, because they have to make sure that they're not just maintaining the the male ego, but also the white ego and the comfort of all of them, right? And so for a black woman, for example, to go through the world where white people might reach out and touch her hair because they think they can. Because they think that's totally fine right and not weird at all right?
Making assumptions about her marital status, or like if she has kids, assuming she's a single mom, or you know, or that registering surprise at her high education, that she's achieved the level of high education she's achieved small little things like that, that that black people will have to put up with over and over and over again. And then when they finally respond, with any sort of assertiveness, they are considered stereotyped as the “angry black woman” or you know, the “dangerous black man”. So does that answer your questions?
Seth Price 38:01
Yeah. A couple questions. So how long is this Uber ride like where we're like, like, because he just driving slow intentionally to get all of his really bad New Testament theology straight? Yes, Phoebe didn't exist or, or just we're just talking about it anyway. Like, how long is this Uber ride?
Kerry Connelly 38:20
It was like a 30 minute Uber ride; it was horrible.
Seth Price 38:23
Oh man! That's a long ride for him to diatribe like that.
Kerry Connelly 38:27
It was exhausting, exactly. Exactly. And he was yelling like he was really loud.
Seth Price 38:32
Did you rate him? Because I've never taken an Uber because where I live is so rural, but you can rate people and say, your bad theology hits potholes.
Kerry Connelly 38:43
You want to hear something even funnier, almost not funny. But it's funny how it is not funny is that like, six months later, the pastor at his church reached out to me to ask the church where I would not be allowed to teach a man or to preach reached out to me, because he knew about my book, and he wanted me to help him understand how he could I don't know, not be racist in his church anymore?
Seth Price 39:10
I feel like that's a good thing, though. Right?
Kerry Connelly 39:14
It's a good thing. It's a great thing. But what I told him, I said, and they're not affirming to so I said, you know, well, the thing is, is that you can't only affirm like, one third of a person like you can't affirm just their black skin, but not their gayness or their womanness. People come as whole packages.
Seth Price 39:27
Like, yeah, that means come. Yeah, well, yes. As humans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah. So yes. I'm not often Yeah. Not often speechless, but we did it. So can I quote your book to you? Because you have a chapter on language and outside of not saying words that I'm not going to say right now. I've never really thought about language and the way that you do it. Is that all right, if I quote your book to you? so you say
language is indelibly entwined with our identities, that Empire uses it quite effectively in torture, or rather Empire uses torture to remove language from victims, reducing them to a pre lingual state in order to appropriate their voices.
And you go on to talk about where that comes from. But I had never heard about language discussed in this way. The only really entertainment of torture I'd ever done was whatever I see on TV or like waterboarding or something like that, just because honestly, I don't want to know, I just I don't why would I want it? Yeah. So talk about that a bit. Like I don't it's just it was all foreign to me when I read it.
Kerry Connelly 40:36
Yeah, I remember the day that I, I found the article and the connection started being made right in my head. When I found the article about ultimately what torture is about, especially, specifically, the article was talking about torture in South American dictatorships the way that those countries tend to use torture. But I'm sure that our American government uses it equally the same.
Seth Price 41:07
I'm sure we're good at it. We have the biggest military on the planet ever. Yeah, so I'm sure we're really good at it.
Kerry Connelly 41:11
I'm pretty sure we are as well, yes. And so essentially, the goal of torture is to remove the person, the victim, so far from any sense of community, and, and their own personhoo. And one of the best ways to do that, is to remove their capacity for language. And so when you when you create such intense pain that they cannot speak, and instead are moaning in pain or screaming in pain, they are essentially reduced to a pre lingual state, right. They've lost the ability to be part of their community because they can no longer communicate using the shared tool of language, right. And then what happens is that's the ultimate state of power, because then the torturer can now take their own words, the words of the Empire and place them into the mouths of the victims. Which is what we have seen. I remember growing up there were you'd always see images of soldiers who were hostages, like they were being held hostage, or people being held hostage. And they were saying words that you knew were not their words, right. But they were being used as a tool, as a propaganda tool, on television, right. And so the words of Empire had been placed in their mouths, because they had been brought to a point of they had lost their language through the use of torture. So when I started thinking about America's history and our history as a people who have participated in the kidnapping and the torture and the rape and the enslavement of whole groups of people, specifically black and indigenous people, but two different stories. So we'll stick with black for right now. But I want to acknowledge the horror done to indigenous people, but so when when I thought about that, and the ways that in which we have dehumanized them from the beginning, right, and never fully, how do I want to say this?
Because their humanity is not ours to give back. But we've never fully come to ignite acknowledge their full humanity. Let's say it that way, right? We still hold all of these constructs. So we took away their tribal identities, we took away their family identities, we took away their names, we call them all one word, right? All this Spanish word for black, which became another word, which I'm not going to say. But we flattened and modernized them all into this one identity. And then we shipped them over across the ocean and brought them here where we gave them our names, and we gave them our religion, and we gave them our identity, but only to a point, right. And then we decided in order to help the “poor savages”, we then decided we would be kind enough to educate them, but only to a point.
And so we've never fully allowed them to use their voices. Because now whenever we do, we tell them they need to be nicer about it, right? We tell them “I get that you're angry. But you need to be nicer because you're going to catch more bees with honey than you will with vinegar” or something. Like you're gonna you have to be sweeter about it. "Oh, but when you protest sweetly and you take a knee, that's not good enough. We're going to talk about you know, the flag that obviously has feelings, right. So we need to protect that flag because…
Seth Price 44:59
While you're wearing a bandana that's a flag, which is my favorite!
Kerry Connelly 45:02
My favorite is like the bedazzled bikini tops. Those are awesome, it's just amazing…while straddling a Harley, but anyway.
(Laugher)
So what we've done is we've stolen their language. We’ve refused to allow them to have their voice. And one of the things that people studying torture have learned is that so often the assumption is that revenge-being able to perpetrate some sort of violence against the person who carried out the torture-would be the ultimate satisfaction for these victims. But in actuality, that didn't bring closure. What brought closure was to have their stories told and be heard. To be able to tell their story, and to get their voices back and to share their story and to be heard and understood. In other words to be reinstated back into community. Right.
And so that's what's never happened in our American narrative around racial issues, and certainly not with the church.
Seth Price 46:14
I feel like you talked about him at the beginning of your book, but I don't know how to get to the bibliography in an electronic version. So have you read Mark Charles, his most recent book? Truth? No, it's…what's it called?
Kerry Connelly 46:31
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I have not read his book yet.
Seth Price 46:35
It’s a monster. Yeah, amazing.
Kerry Connelly 46:41
His work is amazing.
Seth Price 46:43
Yeah, I had Mark back on like, episode like, 10, or whatever. And at the end of it, I was just so mad, like, I was just angry. But there's something that he said, and it's in his current presidential run, like, you can't talk about reconciliation, because we never even had conciliation. And like the, what's he call it like, the cultural mindset or the cultural psyche? Or the culture…I'm not saying it right. Like, I don't know. For those listening, hit, just hit pause. And then just yeah, Google Mark Charles, and make it happen.
Kerry Connelly 47:10
Yeah, his website is wirelessHogan. Yeah, GA and he's brilliant.
Seth Price 47:14
Yeah, he's great. Yeah, I'm gonna try to talk to him again, when he's not running for president, because that's a literal thing that's happening.
Kerry Connelly 47:20
I know. And it might make him a little busy.
Seth Price 47:24
I guess, maybe not. Um, so we haven't talked about the church much. And honestly, I'm not certain if we'll have time to. But that's okay. Because you talked about it a bit in the book. And you have your own podcast as well that you flirt around with it as well. So that's easy to do. I have a couple more questions related towards what you talked about in the back of the book. So I want to tackle some of those ones that you're going to see on Facebook, and Twitter, and everything else. The “my ancestors didn't do this. So I'm not racist.” “Black people own slaves to”. You talked about Oprah Winfrey being a bazillionaire. A minute ago. Can you tackle some of those just In brief, because they are especially the Irish and slavery ones like? Yeah, right. Yeah.
Because I find when I try to explain things to people, I think I'm only making them dig their heels in further. Like, they're not listening, which is so frustrating. But if I don't say something, I feel like I'm, you used the metaphor, the beginning of your book of like, if you don't build a fence around this pool, that people are drowning in like, you're a problem. The pool is a problem. So is the water. But you also are an A-hole, because why would you watch someone drown? I’m so frustrated. I don't know how to speak to some of those, which are the most common things that you're going to see from a lazy Google search that just gets posted into Facebook somewhere?
Kerry Connelly 48:48
Yeah, yeah, totally. And it does take work, because I think that the way that a person will, one of the things that I've learned in having these conversations online and in person is that in order for people to maybe not dig their heels in so much is they need to be heard, right? Every person needs to feel heard, right. That's what everyone wants to feel.
And so what I try really hard to do is I try to attack narratives and not people, right. But in order to attack, or too interrogate a narrative, I and that's really what’s happening, right? They're getting a soundbite. They're getting this narrative that they're being fed, that is at best inaccurate, if not wholly false, right? And so we have to understand the narratives, and this is where there there's going to be an investment for white people who actually care about this is that we actually do need to know the facts and we need to understand the full system that's at play here, right? So we'll go with the Irish slaves, right? So first of all, that is a myth that came from one book that's been mostly debunked entirely right? And people need to understand that there is a huge difference between indentured servanthood and generations of chattel slavery, right? Where whole generations of people were born into and died out of slavery and lived their entire lives in in slavery.
The other thing that you have to understand what for that particular construct is the way whiteness works, right? Is it true that my ancestors, who were Irish came here, none of them came that I know of came as indentured servants, however, what I do know is that they did come over under trauma-with great trauma. They came during the famine. They came here, some died, they became addicted. They were abandoned in orphanages, there were horrible things that happened to them that were deeply traumatic, right? That's still not the same as slavery.
And what's more is that, yes, it's true that they could walk into a restaurant or walk up to a restaurant and see a sign that said, “No Irish no dogs”, right. And that's racism, because they were not yet considered white. But they could also go down the street into a different bar where they were fully welcomed and turn around and say, no blacks can come in here, right. So they were able to operate with much more fluidity on the hierarchy of whiteness. And the further they got away from their their own lineage that when they lost their brogues, when they stopped eating the foods that they ate, when they stopped listening or playing the music. And they became the American, the Irish American, as opposed to the Irish, right. They were more fully assimilated into whiteness. So that, you know, they could even lose their religion, they can pretend to not be Catholic anymore, and then they could pretty much pass as a good old fashioned WASP if they wanted to. And WASPS are the ultimate white people, right? Like, that's ultimate…
Seth Price 52:19
Can you give that acronym meaning?
Kerry Connelly 52:20
White Anglo Saxon Protestant.
So, you know, think your Blue Bloods, your Mayflower people, right, like, that's who we're talking about. And so certain people as they moved over, as people groups came over from different parts of Europe and other places, they would be assigned certain places on the hierarchy of whiteness. And then as they assimilated, they could move higher up in and become more white or, you know, and other people were less white, right?
Black people can never become completely white. They just simply can't. And then you have to understand the impact of generational slavery, and then the Jim Crow laws and how those impacted black people economically. And then redlining and you have to understand all of those things in order to be able to interrogate the narrative of, you know, the Irish were slaves too.
No, they were not! First of all, that's just a flat out lie. They were not slaves. And also the impact of generational slavery is, is so complicated, and it's like this big knotted ball of twine, right like that you have to try and, and pull apart to see clearly all of the ways that it has impacted families, to keep them impoverished generationally, to keep them under resourced, under educated and created so many more obstacles on their way to success.
Seth Price 53:54
Yeah. So I want to ask two and a half more things. (laughter from Kerry) Because there's so much that I want to ask that we genuinely don't have time. Um, yeah, because we haven't talked about education. We haven't talked about police reform, really want to talk about Colin Kaepernick and we skirted around the issue, but again, people read and buy the freakin book. Let’s assumed pie in the sky. We do this and somehow you and I don't know how old your kids are. My oldest is 11. We raise a generation of quote, woke people that are going to come alongside and maybe we'll actually figure out how to be better human beings. What does that look like? Because I think a lot of people and I'm going to use the word good faith, but it's used in poor taste on both sides. Like what can how should that look like 10, 15, 20 years down the road?
Kerry Connelly 54:52
That's the question and you know I cannot be I should not be the only person to answer that. The first way we're going to get to that place is it has to be an act of the collective right. Adrian Marie Brown is one of the most important voices. She's the author of a book called Emergent Strategy and another one called Pleasure Activism. And, you know, she talks about biomimicry, right as a way of human adaptation, things like that, like that, that could actually lead to the kinds of the kind of imagining that we need to do as as human beings, right? Because it really is going to call for a new way of being. It's going to call for something completely different from what we've already known. And I do think that our youth can can do it. I have hope. I mean, they took down an entire political rally through tiktok, I mean, come on. That's pretty freaking amazing right. So like, if they can do that, I think that they have it in them to make the kinds of structural changes that need to be made, right. But that doesn't get us off the hook. We still have to be doing the work to subvert the system, to be chipping away at it so that we're creating those weak spots so that they can come in behind us and just take it all down and rebuild something new.
And that sounds scary to a lot of people. Especially, I think the older you are, the scarier it sounds because you're like, well, what's gonna come next? Right? Something will come next. America came next. Right. And listen, I think that there's so much good in America, there is! We have ideals that are aspirational. We've never lived up to them, right. But America in and of itself is a paradox because we had the right idea. We just didn't live up to them. And so I think that when we can think back to what it must have been like, at the time when these ideas were starting to be floated around and try to capture something like that similar to that now that that might be able to give us an idea. And then combine that with the shalom of God, the kindom of God, what would the realm of God actually look like? And I specifically did not say kingdom. I said, kindom, right, like so it's not about Empire. It's about family. It's about a shared space. It's about holistic well being for all.
Seth Price 57:33
Yeah. So that's actually the second question and the half is just a gimme because I've asked it to everybody this year, so I knew I was gonna ask it before you we found the time to do this. Okay, that's so what happens to the institution of the church that you and I are accustomed to in Western Protestant…I'm going to say America, but honestly, it doesn't matter because it would be the same problem in Canada or the UK, or any English speaking country for the most part, like what happens? If that happens-if we chip away at something and our children stand on the foundations that we've helped rapture and or rupture, not rapture, different thing altogether-rupture? What happens to the church? Like, what happens?
Kerry Connelly 58:18
So I think that's up to us. I think that's up to the church. I think it could either disintegrate, or it could become something even more beautiful then we could ever even imagine. You know, I was talking to a pastor, because I coach pastors through leading their churches to become anti racist. And I was talking with one the other day, and well, I think, first of all first, okay, two things I want to say my brain goes too fast.
The first thing I want to say is that….(I think you relate right?) The first thing is, I want to say is there there was a guy, a rabbi who came in and talked to a class and he told us that in Genesis where scripture that's typically translated as I am, that I am, it's actually a horrible translation. It's a phrase in Hebrew that cannot be translated at all, really, but the closest thing that could come anywhere near it would be something more along the lines of “I will become all that I have yet to become”, or I will be all that I have yet to become, which is this beautiful, like it speaks to this beautiful state of perpetual becoming that God is right.
Which, you know, this is why I have no patience for people who pointed other people and call them heretics. Because who are you to tell me that I'm not a part of God's newest becoming right, or new way of becoming? And so I think that the church would do well to release our hold, and our grip, on what our constructs have been. And embrace what new thing God is doing. You know, I know that there's scripture that says, “See I am doing a new thing.” And that is one of the most hopeful, beautiful, Scriptures to me, “see, I am doing a new thing”. And I think that COVID has, and this is the second thing I want to say that COVID has demonstrated the possibility. And I am not trying to make light of COVID. So let me just be…I'm not trying to say, hey, this was God's Will God wants, like, That's crap.
Seth Price 1:00:28
No, you're right, though. Yeah it has amplified timelines.
Kerry Connelly 1:00:34
Yes, totally. And one of the things that I think it's done for churches is it has expanded our walls to be so much more inclusive, at least the churches that I see doing a really good job of it, you know, they are now having people who are coming to worship with them from, you know, all the way across the country, right. And if we can find belonging in that way, if the church…if the Holy Spirit, if the if the Sophia of God can reach through Zoom and touch the hearts of you know, people in new in different ways, then I think that we can trust the Sophia of God to figure out a new way for the church to be if we're willing to hear her right. And hear what she has to tell us.
Seth Price 1:01:27
Final question. A question I've asked everyone this year when you try to wrap words around what God is like someone asks you tomorrow in an Uber, “hey, you talk about God. What do you mean”? Like, what are the words that you were trying to wrap around that?
Kerry Connelly 1:01:43
Yeah, that's…
like how to solve the political crisis in America?
Seth Price 1:01:51
Just pull the lever?
Kerry Connelly 1:01:52
Yeah, just press the button.
Seth Price 1:01:55
It's that meme. And it's the big red button with the guy with that. Yeah, it's done. Right. It's done.
Kerry Connelly 1:02:02
I just fixed it! (laughter)
So I think the divine is, is everything that is in our consciousness and beyond right, all of the things that we have yet to imagine. And I think it is, the divine is pure potential. And Genesis and creativity and lifeforce, right. So I don't believe in a vengeful, destructive God. I think that goes against any kind of logic that anybody could try to apply to the concept of God. Right. I just, I don't…it doesn't it doesn't make sense. I think men, not men as in I mean, let me say, humanity, ADAM can be vengeful, and we like to model our gods after ADAM. Right. But I don't think it goes the other way. I think I think God is pure lifeforce and pure creativity in Genesis.
Seth Price 1:03:06
Yeah, perfect. Where do people go? Where do they go to learn? How, where do you want people to go, wherever that is place
Kerry Connelly 1:03:12
to find all the things is my website, which is kerryconnelly.com.
Seth Price 1:03:17
Perfect, perfect.
Kerry Connelly 1:03:18
Check me out on Instagram @Kerry.Connelly,
Seth Price 1:03:21
kerryconnelly.com. I'm so bad at Instagram. I get on there. I like people's things. And I don't know what to do with it. Like I get messages of being tagged in stories. And I don't even know what that means. I click on it and nothing happens.
Kerry Connelly 1:03:35
And as soon as I learn it, they change it.
Seth Price 1:03:37
I don't even know where the stories are. I've literally gone to those people's profiles. I'm like, What is it? Where is…I don't know where it is. I don't
Kerry Connelly 1:03:43
It disappears after 24 hours?
Seth Price 1:03:45
Oh, well, I'd have to open the app once more than once a week. Okay, well, that makes sense, then I didn't know that they disappeared. That’s embarrassing. I didn't know they disappeared. I've turned off the notifications for all of my social media. So I'm only in there when I feel like being in there. Yeah. And I get the heck out as fast as I can. Thank you for your time this evening. And as well to your family. I'm sure they are either asleep or sacrificing time with you. So I appreciate it.
Kerry Connelly 1:04:14
Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. I really appreciate it.
Seth Price 1:04:31
I really hope that you and I can reimagine a way to rip apart hierarchies and structures that oppress other people. Not just black people, but all the people of color and that we figure out a way to challenge those with compassion and with grace because it is painful when structures are challenged. It hurts to change foundations.
I'm thankful for the work with people like Kerry and so many others. And I'm also very thankful for their time that they come on to this show to discuss those topics because I know they're not easy to talk about. They're exhausting to talk about. I would also like to thank Matthew Johnson, and people like him, that have become members and supporters of the show on Patreon. As the year has ended, I have noticed many people, I think the credit cards just expired, there's a report for that. So if you've been a supporter in the past and you realize I did get a new card recently, and that's still something you want to do, just log in, verify that that's still something that is on the list, I would appreciate it very much.
If you cannot support the show financially, there are a couple different ways that you can engage and or support the show. The first way is to share the show on social media that is one of the best ways that the show reaches new ears. Because your voice has influence in the circles that you're in another easy ways. Just write and review it because algorithms run our life.
You are amazing, every single one of you. I will talk to you next week.
Know how blessed you are.