Christian privilege

I have, over the past I-don't-know-how-many years, had several people try to explain the concepts of "white privilege" and "institutional racism" to me, and I must confess that for most of that time, until quite recently really, the best I could manage was to nod my head politely and pretend to understand.

The idea, in case it hasn't been explained to you on multiple occasions, is that

(a) even though it is no longer okay in most circles for a "white" person to be openly derogatory toward people of other "races" (I put words about race in quotes here because race is a vague and socially-constructed idea at best, but because we don’t really have better words for the ideas behind them) or ethnicities (or at least it hadn't been okay before the rise of "white nationalism" and the "alt right" during Trump's run for the White House), and

(b) even though there may be quite a number of "white" people (perhaps even the majority of us) who no longer harbor any conscious biases about people of other "races" or ethnicities,

(c) racism and "white"/European-American culture have been so normative for so long in American culture that they are practically sewn into the fabric of our daily life, such that

(d) "black" and hispanic and asian and native Americans (and I'm sure plenty of others) live in a world full of invisible (to the "white" majority, at least) expectations that they will respect, comply with, even give deference to "white" people and their cultural expectations, such that

(e) whenever "non-white" people demand equal respect for themselves or their unique histories or native cultures, "white" people either balk at the unreasonable-ness of their demands or (more in my case) express utter surprise that what we have been doing all along was in any way discriminatory.

And that utter surprise has been my reaction to all of the "black lives matter" stuff that came (in my mind) out of the blue, to most of the "institutional racism" claims that I've seen or heard about over the past decade, to claims people have made that I am being inherent racist whenever I don’t go out of my way to give up the privilege that comes with being white. 

I mean, of *course* black lives matter, shouldn't that go without saying? But no, apparently not. In a world where an old white guy can load a ton of firepower into a Las Vegas hotel room with no questions asked, but a black kid with a gun (or sometimes with no weapon at all) is automatically seen as a threat and met with deadly force, apparently it *does* require saying.


Now, I know what you're thinking. What is this liberal political rant doing on a blog about Judaism and becoming Jewish?

I lead off with this by way of making a comparison. Just as having “white privilege” in officially-color-blind America is so invisible that I don’t notice it except in cases where I’m being asked to give it up, I think there is a similar Christian privilege accorded to one religious group in our officially-religiously-plural country that I suspect most of my Christian readers have never noticed or even thought about, except possibly when confronted by a person of another religion. 

And, thinking about the scores of little slights against my “minority” religion that Christians don’t seem to know they are making, I finally can begin to understand the way that “black” people feel living in a normatively “white” world. 

I was first prompted to think these thoughts when the head of the soccer league that I’m coaching in, during one interminably long training session after another, told us that if parents had complaints about how we referee their kids’ games, we should instruct them to “go to church on Sunday, forgive everybody involved, and then call you on Monday if they still have something to talk about.”

Did he really just say that?!? Am I really supposed to tell a Muslim or a Jewish or a Hindu or a Buddhist (or an un-religious) parent to go to church on Sunday before they talk to me about something?

He had just assumed 

(1) that all parents go to something called “church” (or that, if they are non-church-goers, church is where they would or should go on Sunday if an occasion arose that merited religious intervention), 

(2) that all such religious meetings happen on Sunday, the day after all of our soccer games, and

(3) that all religious people associate going to their particular religious service with forgiving people (Jews, for example, are instructed to forgive others nightly as part of our bedtime prayers, but offering forgiveness has no special part in our Shabbat prayer services) 

And the thing is that I’m sure he has used that same line for twenty years, to the point that I’ve heard his subordinates parrot it as well, and nobody called him on it. In fact, neither did I. Why not? Because I have been trained not to raise a stink when people in power subtly diss my religion. I have been trained not to be “that guy” who ruins the mood with talk of discrimination.

In other words, I have been trained to respect Christian privilege. 

I have had students ask to offer Christian prayers in my classroom at the community college before a major exam. One even went so far as to offer a prayer to Jesus, loudly, in front of and on behalf of all the other students, without bothering to wait for an answer. And I didn’t cut her off. I was a new teacher at the time, I didn’t want to rock the boat. 

We have opening and closing prayers during Commencement at my school, offered by the students of course, and nobody seems to coach them on how to offer an interfaith prayer. As a result, at least one of these prayers has been directed to “Lord Jesus” or offered “in Jesus name” every year that I have been in attendance. And I never complain, because I don’t want to be “that guy.” So I sit silently, not bowing my head, and have a prayer offered to a diety I don’t believe in - who is in fact against my religion - on my behalf. But if I got a student to stand up in front of everyone in Baytown, Texas and say a recognizably Jewish prayer, or Muslim, or other, I’d bet there would be hell to pay.  

But it’s not just about language and prayers. 

We have holy days that Christians don’t have. And we don’t celebrate Christmas, even if all other Americans do. My college still has a “Christmas Party”. They tried changing it to a “holiday party” last year, which I really appreciated, and the name change met with backlash. Seriously. My son in public school choir has to sing Christmas music. Fine, it’s part of the canon of Western music, yadda yadda. But when he asked if they could do one Hanukkah song he got the reply “we couldn’t find any Hanukkah songs, because nobody but Jews celebrate that holiday.” A minute of google searching proved that the director was either lying about trying to find Hanukkah songs for choir or had spectacularly bad search skills. 

Some of us wear clothing items that Christians don’t. Reference my high schooler, who was once harangued by a teacher for wearing a “hat” in class, when district policy allows for such religious clothing as a kippah/yarmulke or a hijab. He simply replied that it wasn’t a hat, it was a religious item, and went back to his business. 

And while there never seem to be Jewish groups on campuses around here, every school in my kids’ district seems to have a Christian club of some sort that meets and even advertises on campus. 

Christian privilege. 

Last week, I had what started out as a heated (on her side, not mine) text-message discussion with a soccer mom who was irate that I was holding practices on Sunday afternoons, when her kid is supposed the be involved in all manner of activities at a local Baptist Church. 

She had the idea in mind that the whole world is and ought to be organized around letting her have her religious day. The thing is, in many ways it is. The soccer games, the non-negotiable part of the soccer season, are all scheduled on my religious day, Saturday, so that I cannot attend Torah service. If my wife’s school district wants to offer an extra, mandatory training day on a weekend you can bet that it won’t be on a Sunday. Never mind that her religion mandates no work on Saturday, my wife has to go anyway. And like generations of Jews before her, she goes along with it and doesn’t make a scene. 

Christian privilege. 

Or there was the person who, when my wife applied to take the High Holy Days off from work one year, responded curtly that as a Christian she didn’t get her holy days off from work. Seriously? You get two weeks off for Christmas, Easter is on a Sunday to begin with, and every school district in Texas seems to use Good Friday as one of its “make-up days” in case of the snow we never get. But this person had no concept of how the whole school year is structured around her religion, just that it seemed unfair for my wife to ask for extra days off that she didn’t get. (And can we talk about the fact that my wife even has to ask for her holy days off in the first place? Which implies that her school district could, at any time, say no and leave her to choose between her religion and her job?)

Christian privilege. 

Back to my soccer mom: I tried explaining to her that it is going to start getting dark early soon, our practice fields aren’t lit, and with my work schedule I could never hold practices any earlier than 5:45-6:45. So Sunday afternoon was the logical alternative. Besides, my two kids with other coaches have their practices scheduled on Sunday afternoon as well - it’s not just me. No amount of explaining helped. Sunday practice was just that offensive to her. 

I finally decided to take a different tack. “I know how you feel,” I said, “I’m Jewish and there isn’t a soccer league out there that doesn’t have Saturday games.”  That quieted her down for a little bit, and when she finally responded she was much more conciliatory and willing to compromise. We were now both religious people trying to make the best of a difficult situation, of which I was arguably getting the shorter end of the stick, and she seemed suddenly more willing to work with me on that. 

I’m not writing this just to rant about particular incidents that have bothered me – though I do feel better having written them all down! – but instead I write it out of two hopes. 

Hope #1: if you are Christian and you read this, I hope that you will start paying attention to the subtle ways in which your language, your prayers offered in public places, your expectations about holy days and holidays and how people structure their time in general, your choice to apply words like “church” or “Old Testament” to things that have different names to different people, your assumptions about so many things, are colored by the expectation that most of the people you meet are and ought to be Christian. A person without a religious home, for example, is often said by Christians to be “unchurched” – as if the only logical alternative to not being religious is going to a Christian church. Start paying attention, please, and see what you can do to even the playing field for those of us who typically get the short end of America’s religious expression stick. Especially, if you are going to schedule an event that Jews might want to attend, avoid Saturday morning and check a Jewish holiday calendar (they are easy to find online) to make sure you aren’t planning a big school event on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah or night one or two of Passover. 

Hope #2: if you are Jewish and you read this, I hope that you will stop being afraid to come out publicly as a Jew and that you might start speaking up (politely at first, of course, but sometimes being firm in your convictions doesn’t look pretty) when specifically Christian language is used in public places, when only Christian holy days and holidays are respected, when Christianity is advertised in the public schools, when Christians are afforded certain privileges that the rest of us do not get. We may not be dying in the streets like the people who inspired “black lives matter,” but our faith is endangered today, as it has been in every generation in America, where assimilation is often so easy and standing up for your right to be different is often so hard. Be brave. It has never been more important to be Jewish, and to be public about it, than it is today.

And I don’t mean this message just for Jews. I have my first hijab-wearing student in my anatomy class this year, and I am thrilled. We cannot stand up for our right to be Jewish without also standing up for the right of others to be Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever else they need to be. 

So, in the words of a Six13 parody song from last fall, let the “fight for Hanukkah rights” begin!