SHARON PRENTIS
‘My black skin is a gift from God to the world’

As a second-generation migrant growing up in the urban sprawl of an industrial northern city, my neighbours were from an array of ethnic backgrounds: they were African, Asian, Caribbean, eastern European, English, Irish and Jewish. Living in such a diverse community of cultures meant that life was never boring! We shared our food, learnt about each other’s festivals and faiths, told family stories and had fun, oblivious to the negative connotations of being different. Our collective experiences of daily life meant that even before I knew of phrases such as ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘racial reconciliation’ I could tell you about what it entailed in my neighbourhood.

Being a young Christian, I came to understand that somehow this diverse way of living together reflected God’s kingdom. Who I was, my faith, culture and ethnicity, the totality of everything was a part of the one new humanity in Christ.

From an early age, I had learnt that ‘I was fearfully and wonderfully made,’ a biblical truth that enabled me to develop a solid sense of identity and the resilience needed to encounter negative messages around race. The kaleidoscopic reality of my early life served to increase my awe and imagination about God through the histories, experiences, languages and cultures of my friends and neighbours from different backgrounds. However, this diverse reality and the nature of racism was never mentioned in the churches I attended. This had been compounded by the images of Christ I had come across since a child: white, blond and blue-eyed…

Sharon Prentis is Intercultural Mission Enabler and Dean of Black and Minority Ethnic Affairs for the Church of England in Birmingham

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CARLA GROSCH-MILLER
‘To be white is to not have to think about race’

This is a very interesting question for a white person to ponder. My knee jerk, unconsidered response would be: None at all, I’m human. There is only one race: the human race. Which reveals that I am as conditioned to my white privilege as any white person. To be white in the US (my first homeland) and the UK is to not have to think about my ‘race’. To be white is to think my experiences are normal – the norm for all people (this is also known as white body supremacy.) To be white is to assume that a holy book generated by people with darker skin than mine is actually about and for white people, and that those people’s experiences were not shaped in any way by race – because I assume that mine are not.

But that’s rubbish. I know that my white skin has opened doors so that I could get the basic things I needed to live. It has made it easy to rent an apartment even when I was a low-income single mother. It made me a desirable employee, a shopper who is not watched and followed around a store, a church visitor who is warmly welcomed. I know that history and literature, as taught to me, was about people who looked like me. And I know that my white skin has made it easier for me to dream big and transcend my small-town, midwestern American background…

Carla Grosch-Miller is a practical theologian, educator and poet. Her books include Psalms Redux: Poems and prayers (Canterbury Press, 2014; urcshop.co.uk) and Lifelines: Wrestling the Word, gathering up grace (Canterbury Press, 2020)