Rev. Dr. Rosetta Ross reflects on Ronald Bonner’s Making It Plain, exploring racism, resilience, shared values, and the role of faith communities in sustaining truthful dialogue.

Thank you, Dr. Haney and Urban Missiology, for this opportunity to respond to the Reverend Dr. Ronald Bonner’s reflections on his book, Making It Plain: Deconstructing a Fictitious and Vicious Story about Racism. My response is structured as reflections on some themes and concepts highlighted in the presentation and the book. Seeking to align with Urban Missiology’s work, after each reflection, I offer questions for faith communities about the work of making it plain.

Thank you, Reverend Dr. Bonner, for your faithfulness in calling communities of faith to the important work of critical thinking and sustained conversation.

Shared Values and Interests

The first concept I want to engage is “shared values and interests,” an idea discussed near the end of the presentation. I appreciate this book beginning from a place of community. Sometimes it feels as if the rancor and acrimony, the outright lies, the plain violence against peoples of color, the assault on LGBTTTQQIAA identities and rights, and repeated attacks against everyone who does not support the current presidential administration, it sometimes feels all this is having a chilling effect on faithful persons and communities.

I admit that sometimes I fail to maintain emotional equilibrium instead of remembering that the only truth worth bearing witness to is love. Despite the current polarizing climate, I continue to believe that, ultimately, we are one national and one global community. Making It Plain encourages conversations to remind us of this.

What would happen if faith communities prioritized sustaining conversations about our shared values and interests as an element of their mission?

Racist Common Sense

The Reverend Dr. Bonner defines “racist common sense” as “racial categories [that] have been developed and used to describe who we are as people.” This act of defining the term “common sense” with the modifier “racist” is a reminder that “common sense” is constructed in contexts. The idea of “common sense” identifies how ideas, in this case racial ideas, are naturalized.

This suggests that sustained conversation addressing racism and other social issues requires that conversation partners take time to discern each other’s distinct worldview. Taking time to do this, hopefully, will help overcome the all-too-often tendency to talk past each other because we do not truly take account of another’s point of view.

How can faith communities play a role in teaching us the importance of recognizing and taking account of diverse worldviews?

Conflicted Interests

Reflecting on the revolution in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the Rev. Dr. Bonner writes, “As long as they adhere to the program, they are protected and fed. This becomes a curriculum for survival and cultural acceptance.” This observation identifies the reality that being persons includes finding and committing ourselves to lifestyles and patterns with which we develop some level of comfort.

In the process, we become entangled within the, often inescapable, net of contributing to the harm that we would resist.

How can faith communities heighten our self-awareness by making the webs of our conflicted interests plain?

Resistance and Resilience

The Rev. Dr. Bonner describes white supremacy as a “fictional yet real identity.” It is real because it functions in the world. But white supremacy is fictional because it is untrue. Over the centuries of combatting colonialism and its legacies, communities of resistance have engaged in rigorous intellectual work and persistent activism.

Conscious opposition to white wealth-supremacy requires physical and emotional resilience.

How can faith communities develop pedagogies that affirm the large and small acts of resistance while helping persons integrate the physical and emotional work that inspires resilience?

Heretical Friendships

Finally, a central term in the text is striving for “heretical friendships.” In the period that led up to the Civil Rights Movement, conversation spaces called “Human Relations Councils” emerged across the South. These organizations focused primarily on race relations. There is a contemporary legacy of these councils as well as an innovation called “Difficult Dialogs.”

One challenge of the mid-twentieth-century Human Relations Councils was the inability to develop practices of engagement that move beyond cordiality and congeniality to true relational engagement. The idea of “heretical friendships” suggests not only sustained relationship but also moving through challenge in order to bear fruit. Friendships that develop over time, work through and overcome the inevitable offenses resulting from our shared failures and frailty, can foster spaces of mutual acceptance.

Can faith communities foster “heretical friendships” by creating written protocols and providing safe spaces for ongoing conversations?

Thank you for your work, Dr. Bonner. I look forward to our conversation.