wfn.org | Confronting Racism Is Focus of APCE Workshop

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

10-February-1997 
97072 
 
           Confronting Racism Is Focus of APCE Workshop 
 
                         by Julian Shipp 
 
SAN DIEGO, Calif.--With issues of race pervading American society, a 
workshop at the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators (APCE) 
conference sought to confront the problem through frank discussion and 
spiritual reflection. 
 
     Convened by Sara P. Lisherness, associate for governing body support 
with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the workshop was titled 
"Breaking Down the Walls: Responding to the Racism that Confronts Us." 
Participants explored how they can respond to racism individually and as 
members of faith communities. 
 
     According to Lisherness, the need to understand and deal with racism 
has become vitally important in these days of widely attested, resurgent 
racism. Not only has there been an increasing number of incidents of 
violence directed against racial-ethnic people, but racism has become more 
institutionalized and subtle, she insisted. 
 
     "We live in a racist culture and we are influenced by a racist 
culture," Lisherness said. "There is no easy way for us to dismantle racism 
unless we are able to undertake a significant amount of pain." 
 
     Lisherness outlined two elements of racism: prejudice and individual 
racism. She defined "prejudice" as an opinion or judgment, usually 
unfavorable, formed beforehand with no basis except personal feelings. 
 
     " Individual racism,'" she continued, "is prejudice plus power. It 
requires two factors: 1) an individual's thoughts, feelings, language, and 
behavior which are based on the assumption of the dominant racial group 
that another racial or ethnic group is inferior to one's own, and 2) the 
power the individual, as a member of the dominant group, has to 
discriminate against or in some other way harm people of a racial-ethnic 
group not in power." 
 
     In order to confront racism and create the possibility of building 
God's "beloved community," Lisherness said, European-American Christians 
must acknowledge the advantages that being European-American brings in 
contemporary American society. To that end, they must 
 
          make the dominant culture aware of racism in the United States 
          educate themselves on the history of racism in the U.S. 
          advocate for societal change 
          become activists in the face of the dominant culture and its 
norms. 
 
     In building a faith community, some key questions to ask:  Who is 
determining the norms and the standards for this community?  Who has the 
access to resources?  Is there a person or a group who is perceived as a 
problem?  Who has the power to enforce and regulate these resources? 
 
     "We must continually ask ourselves how things would appear in the 
beloved community that Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of," Lisherness said. 
 
 
 
 
 
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