Thank you. It's been nearly one month, and I know this blog is striking an important note, so I will continue. I hope it can soon become more than just my voice, or my ideas. Obviously, the first month, like a first album for a singer-songwriter, there's all of these posts and thoughts that have been fermenting for quite some time, kind of exploding. I appreciate your grace with this and look forward to more rich, robust, and meaningful dialogue as a first step towards forgiveness, repentance, and maybe even a taste of reconciliation.
Please send articles, ideas, conversations, your own blogposts to me on Twitter through @matthewjschmitt!
If you're new to this blogsite, here's the thing: this is not anti-white people. It's anti-white supremacy. Which, doesn't only look like the KKK. White-Supremacy is the mindset, the power, the principality that white is "normal," white is "smartest," white is "best," white is "kindest," white should be in charge. It's against the notion that Jesus was a white man who looks like one of the Allman Brothers. It's against the notion that white Christians are God's new chosen, in the sense that we have a life insurance policy to get into heaven's big retirement gates first. I will speak against this arrogance and in the face of this power, reflecting on the many ways God has sent prophets of color in my life these past 20-25 years. And friends. Deep, deep, mentoring, loving, challenging, and very wise friends.
Here's a table of contents of sorts:
Why "Dismantling Whiteousness?" - Explaining the reasoning in launching this. And remembering Levi, the man in prison who converted me to Christianity.
Prison Snow: My First taste of Non-White Non-Privilege - a poem about growing up a few miles away from a frozen hell.
Voices from the Movement of Teach For America - TFA is expanding, rightfully, into teaming up with modern Civil Rights movements.
Walking from Dulan's Soul Food to the Asian American Drug Abuse Program
Who Said Women Can't Preach? (It wasn't Paul....) - the amazing Dei, Toni, and Diane preached the gospel from a non-WASP perspective.
On Being Called the White Devil - honoring the hatred hurled at me, and respecting why it cannot stop me from sharing these stories
On the Black Boy Arresting the Cops in Beyonce's Formation Video - the song is not anti-cop, it's pro-humanity.
Confessing My Whiteousness - inspired by Kendrick Lamar calling himself a hypocrite, I too, must confess
Why Do I Need to Talk to White People? - kids of color always have to talk to white people, but white kids don't have to talk to people of color if they don't feel like it....
The Tragedy of Whiteousness for White People - I think my favorite post to date.
How Tori Amos Primed me for Dismantling Whiteousness, #NativeLivesMatter - she taught me to play the piano, and she taught me to ask tough questions of people in power.
America, by André Henry - an incredible classmate from Fuller Seminary is also a prophetic singer-songwriter
Wake Up! - the text of a sermon born in the Garden of Gethsemane and moving into modern racial reconciliation work
Erykah Badu and D'Angelo in 2000 - formational albums for me
#ZipCodeMatters, Sadly - on the deplorable practice of protecting and serving wealthy people first and foremost
Entitlement, Revisited - though poor people of color get blamed for our country's ills, I believe it's wealthy white folks who have more to repent, here
To the Man Who's Name is Not Lamont - how white folks, like myself, treat people of color with disrespect on a daily basis in small and large ways
Peace all, more to come - M
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