I grew up in a white enclave in Grand Rapids, where my childhood lens was that the only group who mattered was the Dutch Christian Reformed cocoon. My parents looked with distrust at our Catholic neighbors who, they were convinced, voted for John F. Kennedy because he would appoint the Pope to be Secretary of State. I went swimming most every summer day at Garfield Park, although my parents were wary of the growing number of Black kids who played there. I also grew up knowing that our white neighborhood was under threat of being integrated, since realtors were warning that Blacks would soon cross the red line of Burton street and live in our neighborhood. Underlying all of this was the assumption that if you were not Christian Reformed and didn’t send your kids to Christian schools, you were an outsider.

GR’s City Commission was under the strong influence of white, Christian Reformed males. Legacy names include Boelens, Decker, Rienstra, Sevensma, Sonneveldt, Soodsma, Vandenberg, and Worst. Although my parents grudgingly admitted that “Westside” commissioners were likely to be Polish and Catholic, it was assumed that “if you’re not Dutch, you’re not much.”  We held the cards.

A vivid sign of my white privilege occurred during the riots that afflicted Grand Rapids in 1967. I felt scared but protected in the presence of armed neighbors. When my parents joined the white flight to the suburbs, they fled for their perceived safety and the desire to avoid the threat voiced by realtors of property values declining.

“White privilege,” a term coined in its modern form by Peggy McIntosh in 1988, describes an “invisible knapsack” of social, economic, and cultural advantages relative to non-white people in the same society. White privilege was in the oxygen I breathed. It was Assumed, unquestioned, and unearned. When it came time to look for work as a young adult, having the advantages of ethnic and religious privilege, I was afforded social and professional acceptance and entrée without merit. I did not have to prove anything. My background implied I had a strong work ethic and moral compass.

Southern Privilege

I am bicultural, Northern by birth and Southern by DNA (East Tennessee). My Southern heritage equipped me with its own privileges. I am a descendent of slave owners, and my family’s inherited generational wealth was acquired through the unpaid labor of black bodies.

As a young child, I saw Ku Klux Klan crosses burning alongside the Tennessee River.  I knew that lynchings were happening, and also knew white people were not being lynched. My friends and I had a running joke about “colored” water fountains: we wanted clear water, not colored water. As I became an adult and traveled from Michigan to Tennessee, I did not fear violence—as my Black nannies did—if I rented a motel room.

As I came of age, I was very concerned about injustice on many levels, not the least of which was racial. I became a white liberal, pretty much blind to my privilege.

Warnings of White Privilege for White Liberals

Both Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela had strong words to say about white liberals and moderates.

In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King expressed deep disappointment with white moderates’ refusal to use their privilege for the cause of justice, describing them as a greater stumbling block to racial equality than the Ku Klux Klan. He argued that their preference for “order” over “justice” and the resulting inaction hindered progress more than overt opposition. White moderates preferred a “negative peace” (absence of tension) to a “positive peace” (presence of justice).

 Nelson Mandela criticized the silence and hesitation of white liberals and moderates, which allowed white supremacy and economic inequality to flourish. He declared that anyone—regardless of color—who helped perpetuate white supremacy was an “enemy of the people.”

King and Mandela both understood that white liberals often prefer safe activism, which offers the illusion of actually making a difference while soothing liberal consciences and remaining socially acceptable.

White liberals swallow their tongues and only ask “safe questions” that don’t catalyze dissonance and discomfort for them or their social circles. For example, imagine asking questions that examine the morality of how (Christian) billionaires have earned their wealth and yet fail to provide a living wage to their employees. 

White liberals practice “safe tithing” to charities that care for the collateral damage of unjust systems while not addressing root causes of the damage. This is co-dependent tithing, and it enables injustice to persist. Imagine giving money and volunteering for groups that expose and confront ICE when it disappears persons based on their accent or skin color and demand that our leaders ban this terror.

White liberals participate in “safe groups” such as book clubs that study familiar, white authors and safe topics. Imagine the scandal of reading literature by women of color who aggressively diagnose our economic inequality, racial caste system, and toxic masculinity.

White liberals practice “safe activism” by writing our elected representatives. Imagine putting your body on the line and risking arrest in public protests on behalf of the marginalized. And heaven forbid that you risk your friendships when your actions become known by your safety-preferring social circles.

In sum, white liberals cling to their safe identity and status and thereby stay above the fray.

My Movement to Shed Comfort, Status, and Moderation

As I became aware of my numerous advantages (wealth, influence, relationships and connections), I learned that privilege is a neutral force to be used in service to those on the margins or misused to others’ harm.

As I have sought to be an ally for those on the margins, I have learned that I must earn entrée. It is natural that marginalized peoples are deeply suspicious of majority culture. I have learned I cannot presume to know what they need from me. I can only serve where directed, constantly aware that white savior-ism is a phenomenon of privilege and patriarchy.

Along the way, I have sought to understand who controlled regional philanthropy, I have “followed the money” and realized that charitable giving can be a tool used by the majority culture to control and domesticate assertive minority leadership, ensuring that what they are doing is “safe” and not too challenging to the status quo. It is a documented phenomenon in West Michigan that nonprofits founded and led by people of color do not receive the same levels of funding as nonprofits founded and led by whites. This has affected my charitable giving criteria and my commitment to invest in minority-led organizations who are causing what the late Congressman John Lewis called “good trouble.”

I’ve come to realize that no one is better equipped to report on events in Indian Country than Native Americans. The indelible imprint of news coverage provided by white-led organizations provides a not-so-subtle lens on what “news” consumers receive. As an antidote to the unconscious biases of white privilege, I subscribe to news sources that are owned by people of color, such as Native News Online. It offers an indigenous lens on news from Indian Country, or Turtle Island, as Indigenous peoples call North America. I also read such cutting-edge authors as Ibram X. Kendi and Resmaa Menakem to understand how racism traumatizes Blacks and whites alike.

I am far from perfect and don’t have everything figured out. But these are actions I take to try and not see the world through a privileged lens of white liberalism.

Implications

As I grow older, I am less interested in appearances and more concerned with whether I’m actually telling the truth and acting impactfully.

It is easy to confuse awareness with transformation, easy to speak the language of justice while avoiding risk and protecting the comforts privilege gives me. I’ve done it for years in subtle ways. I still catch myself doing it.

The truth is that moderation has often been my hiding place. Respectability. Professionalism. Being perceived as balanced, thoughtful, reasonable.

I have softened convictions so people would stay comfortable around me. I have edited myself in real time to avoid tension. I have swallowed words that might disturb relationships, churches, institutions, and social circles I benefited from belonging to. And over time, I’ve realized something unsettling: when I choose comfort over truth, something in me slowly goes numb. My soul starts to acclimate to injustice.

That numbness is what frightens me most about white privilege and white liberalism. It’s not overt cruelty, but an endless ability to delay urgency. To intellectualize suffering instead of confronting it. To host discussions and book clubs about justice while remaining safely insulated from the consequences borne by others.

Meanwhile, people on the margins do not get to retreat from reality when it becomes exhausting like. I do. That’s part of my privilege.

Immigrants do not get to take a break from fear. Black parents do not get to pause their anxiety when their children leave the house, fearing what could go wrong if arrested for Driving While Black. Poor families do not get to opt out of systems designed to keep them struggling. Communities targeted by ICE do not experience injustice as an abstract theological discussion. They must hide, living every single day inside the consequences while many of us merely observe them.

And too often, white liberal spaces become places where moral concern is expressed just enough to soothe the conscience without threatening the structure itself. We prefer charity over disruption. Statements over sacrifice. Diversity panels over redistribution. Safe activism over costly solidarity.

We admire prophets long after they are dead while distrusting anyone who sounds remotely prophetic while they’re alive. Prophets are inconvenient people. They disrupt dinner parties. They embarrass institutions. They refuse to worship civility when civility is being used to protect injustice.

Dr. King understood this when he warned about the white moderate who preferred “order” over justice. That warning still lands with uncomfortable force because we’ve been conditioned to believe the highest moral good is maintaining social harmony rather than confronting systems that crush human beings.

We quote Jesus saying “blessed are the peacemakers,” while ignoring the fact that peace without upending the merchants’ tables is simply managed oppression. We praise the humility of Jesus while fiercely defending our own status, wealth, reputations, and proximity to power.

Jesus did not cling to privilege. Paul counted status as loss. The prophets continually moved toward the suffering, not away from it. As the old saying has it, the gospel both comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

And yet so much of white Christianity in America has been organized around insulation: protecting property,
protecting institutions, protecting donor comfort, protecting access, protecting “good order.” The result is a lukewarm faith that mistakes politeness for discipleship. We do well to remember the words of Revelation 3:16: “Because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

Neutrality is not innocent. Comfort has consequences. Moderation is not always wisdom. Sometimes it is fear dressed in respectable clothing. And I say that not as someone standing outside this system pointing fingers, but as someone who was formed by it, rewarded by it, protected by it, and who still feels its seduction every day. This is personal.

I know how tempting it is to preserve acceptability rather than risk becoming difficult. I know how seductive it is to remain admired in white spaces rather than be fully honest in them. I’ve decided to pursue courage over comfort, truth over status, and solidarity over acceptance. This is the way of Jesus, the way of the cross.

Following the way of the cross will eventually put us at odds with systems organized around domination, control, exclusion, inequity, and accumulation. It always has.

I don’t want to reach the end of my life having been admired for being measured, careful, and safe. I want to have lived truthfully enough that those on the margins knew they were not abandoned. Even if my honesty costs me invitations, strains relationships, and makes respectable people uncomfortable. Maybe especially then.

The prophets were never called to keep everybody comfortable.

They were called to wake people up. And only when we subject our privilege to the cry for justice, can we do the same.

May God help us.