I went.
On the elevated stage were six oversized chairs. Plastic bottled waters and mugs rested atop small adjacent end tables. The room was typical of a college meeting hall in many respects: massive fluorescent lighting, rows of padded chairs linked safely together, and it was largely populated by cool-looking people living in the newness of adulthood and the freedom that comes with being a student at a large university. But, unlike the lecture halls I remember as a student, no one attended this gathering because they were compelled by a professor. No one was falling asleep in the midst of the presentation. This stuff mattered to the audience. It mattered to the panelists. UCI, along with a number of other colleges, has been hosting what they refer to as “Conversations on Identities and Culture.”
On the panel were: a hip-hop artist, an activist, a politician, two scholars, and a music producer. All but one of them, the politician (a Latina woman) were African-American. They spoke about a world in which they lived that I had not ever known. In a lot ways, I felt like a kid sitting a table of grown-ups, listening to a conversation for which I could understand only by an empathic imagination. The activist, Ashley, asked the room: “How many of you have been pulled over more than twenty times in your life?” Hands shot up all around me — young hands — hands of people who hadn’t been driving all that long. Those hands belonged to people who looked different from me. A reality set in.
My world, my experiences, my past, are different than those, not only of the panelists on the stage, but also of the overwhelming majority of the people who joined with me in that room. In each of the speakers, there was an unmistakably passionate longing to see this world made different. There was despair for things hoped for, but not realized. Only, despair was clearly not going to win the day. Instead, what was ultimately expressed came across like a kind of determined or activated hope for a new and better world.
The hip-hop artist who moderated much of the discussion, Jaziri X, closed out his portion of the conversation with these famous words: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for…” I can live in the empowerment of what is intended in that phrase. At the same time, I’m learning that in order for me to have any part in shaping our world (however Jesus may lead us to do so), I’m going to have to understand more of the personal narratives of the people who live in it, particularly, the people whose own stories are vastly different from my own.
I’m grateful to be a part of a learning community like this one at Mariners MV.
See you Sunday,
Jeff
