Rebecca Parker on anti racist transformation

It is often said that becoming an anti racist involves transformation.  In this series of excerpts from her Soul Work essay "A Struggle To Inhabit By Country" Rebecca Parker applies the theological concept of conversion through engaged action to point to the nature of anti racist transformation.

"A person of faith, seeking out of love and desire for life to inhabit his or her country, needs to be engaged in incarnational social action.  Activism returns one to the actual world as participatory citizen and agent of history. Through activism, compliant absence is transformed into engaged presence.

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"This is my country.  Love calls me beyond denial and disassociation.  It is not enough to think of racism as a problem of "human relations" to be cured by me and others like me treating everyone fairly, with respect and without prejudice.  Racism is more.  It is a problem of segregated knowledge, mystification of facts, anesthetization of feeling, exploitation of people and violence against the communion/community of our humanity.

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"The habit of living somewhere else rather than here in a constructed "reality" that minimizes my country's history of both violence and beauty and ignores the present facts, keeps me from effectively engaging in the actual world.  I have the sensation of being a disembodied spectator as structures of racism are recreated before my eyes. But involvement in the steps of conversion -- theological reflection, remedial education, soul work, and engaged action -- moves me from enclosure to openness."