In this episode
On this episode we are joined by Dr. Terence Lester, PhD, author of several books, including his most recent, All God’s Children: How Confronting Buried History Can Build Racial Solidarity.
We invited Terence to speak with us because his book, All God’s Children offers practical advice for the next generations of faith communities that understand in order to move forward, they have to look back.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Thread or Insta Lisa @lisasharper or to Freedom Road @freedomroad.us. We’re also on Substack! So be sure to subscribe to freedomroad.substack.com. And, keep sharing the podcast with your friends and networks and letting us know what you think!
www.threads.net/@lisasharper
www.threads.net/@freedomroad.us
freedomroad.substack.com/
www.mahoganybooks.com/9781514005958
https://terencelester.org/
Transcript
Lisa Sharon Harper: [00:00:00] Coming to you from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. I’m Lisa Sharon Harper, president of Freedom Road, a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap.
Welcome to the Freedom Road Podcast. Each episode we speak with authors and national faith leaders and advocates and activists to have the kinds of conversations that we normally have on the front lines. It’s just that this time we’ve got microphones in our faces, and you are listening in.
This time we are joined by Dr. Terence Lester, PhD. Somebody. Hello. That’s on the recent side, and so we’re still celebrating. We’re in celebration mode. He is the author of a few books, including his most recent All God’s Children, How Confronting Buried History Can Build Racial Solidarity.
[00:01:00] If you have been listening to our episodes recently, you might see a theme. We are, we are definitely in the midst of a major series this whole last year really asking the question of how do we engage this, this critical time and space that we’re in right now that is so super divided, and how do we leverage the power of history to do it, right?
So, Terence, I’ve invited to speak with us today because his book, All God’s Children offers really practical advice for the next generations of faith communities that understand that in order to move forward, we have to look back, right? So, um, he has, he has, I mean, it’s almost like he’s really done the work in his book of saying, okay, do this and then now do this.
And then now do that. And so I wanted to make sure everybody who listens to Freedom Road has the roadmap. Okay. So this is your roadmap. So we’d love to hear your thoughts thread or Insta us at me @LisaSHarper, or [00:02:00] reach out to Freedom Road directly on Thread or insta @freedomroad.us. Or you can catch us on Substack at Freedom Road.
And so, you know, we’re everywhere. So there you go. Please keep sharing the podcast though. I mean, our audience is growing. People are talking about, I’m actually really, truly surprised whenever I go out and speak, somebody’s like, oh, I was listening to your podcast. They’re, I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s so cool.
People are listening. So keep sharing it with your friends and your networks and let us know what you think.
So Terence, let’s dive in. Okay. We, we usually start with folks’ faith story. So can you share with us like, how did you come to faith and, and like where, where was your faith location? And your development that got you to where you are now.
Dr. Terence Lester: Yeah. It’s, well, firstly, thank you for having me. Uh, Lisa, I have a huge honor and respect for your work. [00:03:00] And although I’ve never met you in person, I feel like you’re my auntie. So I tell my, I tell my wife and my kids, that’s Auntie Lisa, right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Aww.
Dr Terence Lester: And I’m just really appreciative of you. But as you talk about narrative gaps one of the things that you do really well, even in your recent book, fortune, is talk about your, uh, your historical shaping and relationship to your family.
And that takes me back to my grandmother, Jessica Lester, who was a part of the historic Wheat Street Baptist Church. I can remember as early as age eight sitting in the Baptist pews, uh, listening to the ministers deliver a liturgy that was both spiritual and justice oriented. Right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Dr Terence Lester: I remember, you know, listening to choirs and [00:04:00] their robust singing bringing this message of hope, but also, uh, talking about issues of our day that was plaguing the black community.
And I remember watching my grandmother being a community leader, sort of an activist in her own right. But a lover of people and just reflecting on, you know, that kind of imprint on my life as early as age eight, I can tell that was the start of my, uh, spiritual development in terms of understanding that there is some type of divine being right, greater than all of my social location, my context, et cetera. And then, you know, kind of fast forwarding you know, as a teenager, as early as 16 and a half years old, I remember running away from home, which…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, wow. Which I think all of us had that.
Wait, let me tell you, I [00:05:00] probably ran, I think I ran away from home about two or three times as a kid. And it wasn’t really warranted. It was like my mom wouldn’t listen to me, or maybe she was gonna ground me for something bad that I did. And I was like, I’m outta here. Right? Yeah. And I ran around the block and I stayed with a friend.
I literally went to a friend’s house. Oh my gosh. Stupid. Yeah. Anyway, how so, but you ran away from, was it for real? Like, did you really run through it?
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Ooh Lord.
Dr Terence Lester: Well, it was one of those moments where like, If you can imagine like the social context that I was kind of being brought up in was mixed with, you know, violence and abuse and all of those sorts of things.
And so, I felt safer being away. And so I found myself, you know, sleeping in parks and from friend’s house to friend’s house, uh, experiencing ho homelessness, which is in total contrast to my, you know, [00:06:00] kind of my experience in my, my faith upbringing with my grandmother. And so I really wrestled for a lot of years until I had an encounter when I was about 20 years old.
I found myself in a jail cell, uh, as a young black man. And this guy comes over to me, and he asked me a question that changed the trajectory of my life. He says, what on earth are you doing here?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Dr Terence Lester: And it wasn’t you know, the kind of talking to me trying to see what, what, what did you do to get in here?
He was right. Basically framing this in a way where it was like, why are you wasting your life? Right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Dr Terence Lester: And that caused me to reflect on my time with my grandmother what I had been exposed to at an early age. And then he shares the gospel with me, right? The good news in that…
Lisa Sharon Harper: In jail, this is, this is a [00:07:00] prisoner?
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. In that cell. Yes. I gave my life to the Lord. In that moment, I got out, the charges were dropped. I remember making a commitment to God. I said, if you give me another opportunity when I leave college and go back home, I’m never looking back. And I started along that journey in discovering who I was, getting involved in church, getting a lot of mentors who were like twice my age and really being you know, kind of discipled in a way where it was more of just spending time asking questions from older generation, and really starting to understand who I was, what my history was and all of those things. And so that’s kind of like how I came to faith in terms of, you know, really having [00:08:00] some spiritual development. So I credit my grandmother as well as, you know, unfortunate circumstance.
Lisa Sharon Harper: What did you learn about who you were, and what your history was in that journey?
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s hard because, you know, in the black family sometimes, I know in my experience, you know, history really isn’t shared in a way that, you know, where it’s like you get a chance to understand your family tree or why someone made this decision or, you know, how do we end up here?
Or even like some of your ancestral things, like, who is my grandmother’s mother? You know, what did they do?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. Right.
Dr Terence Lester: You know? Some of those things that are like, you have to really dig for. And you know, I remember starting to have race conversations before I [00:09:00] knew my family’s history as early as age nine and 10.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh yeah. Absolutely. I remember that.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah, I remember the first time hearing about, you know, history in a way that was like really jarring. And it came in the form of like, the talk that most young black children get when they are like eight and nine years old. And my grandfather started to talk to me about like real issues.
Like, you know, his experiences, how he grew up how his grandparents were, weren’t given the opportunity to read you know, about Emmett Till and some of these real things. And it was like drinking from a war, a fire hydrant, right?
Like I’m, I mean, encountering these things and things like, it started to, I guess, cause me to question who I was in relationship to my family, but who I am in [00:10:00] relationship to, uh, the culture that I’m emerging from.
And so that started that started a lot of the questioning. Yep.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. So, When your family first sat you down and started to share with you the history, the Emmett Till, the sense of, you know, this is what you have to be careful of as a young black boy. Did you have a sense of how all of those things had ever impacted your own family and then within your own family story, or was it just passed down to you as like, lessons, things to know as opposed to, well, when your Great Aunt Berta did this or that this is what happened, you know, was it even put in context?
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. I mean, it was put in context. Like, I remember my grandfather, who is still alive, my grandmother who is 91, she’s still alive. And my other grandmother [00:11:00] is still alive. She’s, uh, 86, but I remember my grandfather, let’s say Carlton York, right? How he would talk to me about his very real experiences.
One time he was, um, you know, brutally beaten by the KKK, right? When he was a teenager, and he told me that he had to spend, you know, almost a month in the hospital, uh, because they almost claimed his life. My 91 year old grandmother who I’m still like unpacking things from, she, she was born in 1932, uh, during the time of redlining, and she comes to our organization probably a few weeks back, nine days after her 91st birthday, and she’s taken a tour at a museum that we started, we’ll probably talk about later, but she stands in the museum and she says, when I was your age or a little younger, I couldn’t even visit a museum.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my God.
Dr Terence Lester: And she [00:12:00] says, there’s a well-known story. It was riches, but it turned into Macy’s and it was in the heart of the city. She says, I couldn’t even work in that department store. There were certain parts of town that I could not go in and like, hearing those stories in real time, I mean, your grandparents and your family members become like living historical epistles. Right? That’s exactly right. And I’m still like gleaning information from how, you know, the Jim Crow era and racism and all of those things impacted them and shaped the professions they chose, you know, what parts of town they decided to live in.
How they chose the parent, their children, uh, which are my parents and, you know, and how that is like being passed down through generation to generation. And then that shows up in, you know, always keep your hands out of your pocket when you enter into a store. You know, if you don’t have money, don’t go into a store.
If you’re driving, keep your hands [00:13:00] like ten and two. Don’t wear baggy clothes. You know, all of the talk things to kind of mitigate what they experienced in real time for young black children
Lisa Sharon Harper: And all passed down because of love. Yes. All of those talks ’cause of love. They happen because you are loved by them.
Dr Terence Lester: And they want, and they want you to be safe!
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right! Love drives them to try to help you to be safe throughout your life. So, can I ask you why, why, why did you write all God’s children right now?.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. I was really wrestling, um, with a number of things. Firstly, I was and still am, waking up to the reality that there’s so much history that has been erased, hidden.
I mean, you know what moves a Carter G. Woodson to create Negro History Week that later becomes Black History Month, right? [00:14:00] He says that, you know, a people that have been oppressed can’t even draw inspiration if they don’t have access to that history, right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Ooh.
Dr Terence Lester: And so I think a part of me writing this is reconnecting even deeper on a deeper level things that have historically shaped black people, and it’s still having an impact in the way that I show up in the world. Like, I want to connect to a Fannie Lou Hamer or Ella Baker, or, you know, some of the women who led, uh, during the Montgomery Bus boycott. I want to connect with that type of strength from black women from our black heritage that speaks to the way in which I show up in strength.
Two, I think you know, black people. I was in this setting last night talking about the book, and I asked people who were majority black and brown in the audience. I was like, how many of you have ever [00:15:00] walked into the a room, and the room was full of white people. And you had to deal with these embedded ideas of who you are and the type of work that you bring to the table. I’ve had to navigate many white spaces, and I’ve encountered all types of, uh, you know, racially motivated, abusive behaviors microaggressions, uh, the implicit bias you know, all of the things.
And, you know, as a black person or a person of color, you’re always grappling with, you know this, you know, wanting to be seen, wanting to be heard. Yeah. Wanting to, you know, really.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Understood.
Dr Terence Lester: Not be defined by how people have ignorantly labeled you or tried to define you.
And so I’m grappling with that. I’m grappling with my own history, [00:16:00] but I really do have a heart, uh, Lisa for peacemaking, you know, what does it look like to do as Reverend Barber is talking about, have this fusion movement, right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes. Yes.
Dr Terence Lester: Have this coming together where we stand in solidarity against anything that seeks to disrupt God’s love and God’s people and God’s shalom Earth.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So what did you see for the first time while you were writing this book? What, what did, what did the process of writing illuminate?
Dr Terence Lester: That I had been silenced.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Um, ooh, now wait. Now wait. We just gotta sit on that for a minute. Yeah. Because you didn’t say I’ve been silent. You said I’ve been silenced.
So that is, someone has taken action against your voice and shut it down. So explain that. [00:17:00]
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. You ever we’ve seen many different types of racial unrest. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor. I mean, uh, we just, all things. Yes. Yeah. Like all the things. Hashtags.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. The river of hashtags is what I call the river of hashtags.
Dr Terence Lester: What happens to a black man or a black woman or black person when they are murdered at the hand of violence? They die. Two deaths, right? They have two deaths. One: they have a physical death. And what we see that causes racial trauma, right? And then they have another death.
And the, the second death is character assassination.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Ooh, yes.
Dr Terence Lester: You know people start with every single case, every single case, right? And so, black people, we know the [00:18:00] injustice that we have been faced with and what we, we’ve had to suffer through. And when we start to voice, you know, and speak out, right?
That the beginning of repair is truth telling, right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right.
Dr Terence Lester: When we begin to speak out and voice, you know what happens? People want to edit you. And the editing is a part of the silencing. That’s right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes. Who edited you?
Dr Terence Lester: Just navigating white spaces. You know, I grew up historically, black church, uh, began to walk across lines and, uh, found myself in predominantly white space spaces, giving a lot of talks.
Whether it’s preaching or DEI talks or whatever. And the moment you start talking about how the collective trauma, the racial [00:19:00] trauma, the things that have caused harm to black people is the moment that people start to question not only you, they question your voice, and they try to silence or edit the truth that you’re telling.
And I, you know, I often say that if you know, people only want half truth, it’s still a whole lie. And you know, I’ve been in many spaces where people only want half truths to appease. And to make themselves feel comfortable with dealing with the realities of how history is still impacting us in the present moment.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I love that. And I mean it, I love it because it’s really true. And I wanna just say amen. I have been there. And I also wanna give an example of how that happens, right? Because I think that some of our listeners might be going, but how, how does that happen? Like, if you’re giving a speech, if you’re giving a talk [00:20:00] and you tell the truth in that talk how do you get silenced in the middle of telling your talk?
I mean, one way is that you start seeing people check out. I mean, I’ve literally had people get up and walk out. Like I literally… had recently I spoke at… Oh, it was, it was actually a significant event that was at Penn University. And it was it was put on by foreign Philly, which is an amazing organization here in Philadelphia.
And it involved the Boy Scouts and it involved a double blah, blah. It was a big deal. Right? And so really one of the only white people in the whole room for Juneteenth no less. Right. It was a Juneteenth thing.
Dr Terence Lester: Oh, oh, right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So one of the only white people in the whole room was a mother of a white child who was in the Boy Scouts.
And as I got up to speak on slavery and Texas, she literally grabbed her little white son and they, they [00:21:00] rushed out in the middle aisle. Now, who knows, maybe they were late for something and they thought it was gonna be over. I doubt it. But in any case, that’s the kind of thing that I’ve experienced also.
Just explicitly, like when I was, and tell me, you, you experienced this explicitly when I was, um, coming up as a quote, racial reconciliation, you know, person like leader. I was counseled by white men in particular. This is how you talk about this. You can’t say things through the front door.
You have to go through the back door. You have to give scripture first and then give the value, but never really name what you’re talking about. Just give them the thing that’s gonna lead them to do what you want them to do. Right? Be kind to people. So talk about kindness. Don’t talk about race. Talk about generosity. Don’t talk about justice, right? So, yeah. Or if you’re gonna talk about justice, talk [00:22:00] about just generosity as that’s a, isn’t that a title of a book? So how have you experienced it?
Dr Terence Lester: In similar ways. It’s the scripting, right? Yeah. You know, most times I think Dr. Bernice King says, whenever someone invites you to a table they still have the power of that table, right? Being able to dictate what conversations are had, what scriptures are chosen, you know, the talking points, et cetera. And so, I mean that within itself is a form of silencing when you invite a black or brown person to a conversation about reconciliation, and then you dictate what they get a chance to talk about as if you can forgive your way out of abuse, you can forgive your way out of injustice. And that just doesn’t happen. And I think one of the things too is [00:23:00] conflating these ideas trying to conflate this idea of racial reconciliation with racial justice, which are two distinct conversations.
And so I’ve been to tables or invited to spaces where they wanted to talk about racial justice under the umbrella of racial reconciliation and you know, racial reconciliation for, you know, majority culture churches is all about forgiveness.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. Right. That is so true. You totally named it.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. It’s all about like this individualist, like just kind of like, you know, kumbaya moment. But it…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Lemme just say real quick. It is about recognizing and repenting for individual prejudice.
Dr Terence Lester: Yes, yes, yes. [00:24:00] And that’s exactly it, which I don’t have any problems with that.
Lisa Sharon Harper: It’s like, okay, we can go there. But that’s not the whole deal at all.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. That’s not the whole deal. Right. My problems come with when you want to talk about the actual realities of what upholds injustice, you know, the residue that we are still faced with and the truth telling of that. That’s when, you know, I’ve had a time when I was given a talk and my microphone was shut off.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. My microphone was shut off because I said something that was outside of the script that was given. You know, and then, you know, the other thing too is like this whole not only policing dialogue and rhetoric, but the policing of experience. Right.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my gosh. Yes.
Dr Terence Lester: You know, trying to dictate to someone [00:25:00] else, um, the experiencing the experience that they’re having in their body, in their mind.
You know, the trauma that we carry when we experience racialized trauma, whether from the social media image or it doesn’t even have to be a family member. We are connected through the, the, the lineage of just, you know, our families and our history and our heritage and the suffering.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. Right.
Dr Terence Lester: And so we feel that. I remember times when I was asked, I was on staff at a predominantly white church. I was asked to give a talk about racial reconciliation. When someone’s life was taken, a black body was taken, murdered. And nobody even checked on my soul. Nobody asked me, what, what are you feeling on the inside? Right?
It was just a bunch of scriptures being shoved at me about, you know, things that I needed to talk about. And, [00:26:00] you know, that is a, a form of silencing within itself.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, hell no. Is what I say to that. Yeah. I mean, really that’s…
Dr Terence Lester: You don’t get a chance to talk about how you’re feeling.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. But more than that, okay, yes.
You don’t get the chance to talk about how you’re feeling, but, but never, like never. Under any circumstances, under any circumstances, should people of European descent be assuming the role of the shaper of the conversation on race. It just is inappropriate.
Dr Terence Lester: Yes. Yeah, it’s inappropriate, and it’s harmful.
Lisa Sharon Harper: It is harmful.
Dr Terence Lester: And it’s harmful. So to your, you know, to your question, writing this book was cathartic for me. Because most black people don’t get a chance to share their experiences that they [00:27:00] have in white spaces.
Lisa Sharon Harper: These are our stories. You’re listening to the Freedom Road podcast, where we bring you stories from the front lines of the struggle for justice.
So, Terence, you were, you were saying that people don’t normally get, we don’t normally get a chance to tell our stories. You were exactly right. And you know, we love history. You love history. I love history. And part of your journey, especially for this book, has been the process of going back into your own history.
I wanna ask you, especially given the reality that we have states, like several states now that are outlawing the teaching of history, if the word race is mentioned, right? Let alone the topic, why do you believe history is important right now? [00:28:00] And actually, let me… I’m sorry…
Let me rephrase that as well, or, or add something to that framing because that framing really centers the struggle to have white people learn history. But quite honestly, we need the history as well. And you know, just like you say in your book, history is not always welcome. We don’t always wanna go back and see, and I know that even within young, like, especially within younger, um, generations right now, they just are kind of done with the whole, I don’t wanna know about no slaves anymore.
I wanna know about how we get free. Like, I wanna, so they don’t really necessarily, they’re not attracted to that story. So why is it important for all of us to dig deep into the past in order to move forward?
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. I forget the scholar who said it, but it was basically alluding to the fact that if you don’t know your history, you really don’t know yourself.[00:29:00]
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, that’s true.
Dr Terence Lester: When I think about the book banning, you know, state of Texas, Missouri, Florida, I mean, it’s happening all around the country. Mm-hmm. Um, This, this sort of like eraser upholds ignorance. Dr. Cosby from Simmons College, he says it’s two forms of ignorance. You got woeful ignorance and you have willful ignorance.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Ooh, that’s good.
Dr Terence Lester: Woeful is more of like, oh, I, I’ve never encountered that before. I’ve never seen that before. Mm-hmm. This is my first time encountering that. And I was just unknowing. But this sort of willful ignorance is knowing the truth, but still in your stubbornness, you deny it. This is what we saw.
This is what we saw, you know, during or after reconstruction. [00:30:00] You know, 1890 to 1940s, uh, you know, Dr. Lagar King, he writes this beautiful research called When Lions Write History. He’s basically looking at the removal of black history from textbooks. Through the K through 12 experience, and he’s examining these textbooks that were written during this time, looking at most of the storytellers are white historians, white educators who use history as a way to explore this social framing of how black people were viewed, right?
And so, you know being able to write history in a way that socially frames an entire population of people as criminal, as less than, as barbarians, as destitute of intelligence, as all of these things have had a tremendous impact. Then we’re not even talking about [00:31:00] de jure laws like redlining that was instituted by policy that upholds these social constructions of what it means to be black or brown, and experiencing poverty that was socially constructed in this country. Right?
And even after its abolishment, uh, what Dr. King is arguing is that it became de facto, it was removed from law, but it wasn’t removed from the heart.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s right. And it also,honestly, it also wasn’t removed from our economic systems the way things work economically.
Dr Terence Lester: Exactly. Exactly.
And so understanding history firstly gives us an awareness of for black people who we are. ‘Cause I’m grappling with all of these things, you know? You know, the strength, the legacy.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Good.
Dr Terence Lester: Not just being defined by enslavement, but we were a people, you know, that predates enslavement. Right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hello? Yes.
Dr Terence Lester: You know, trying to understand, you know, the long history [00:32:00] of our people and how we have emerged and how we’ve overcame and how we’ve struggled and how we’ve contributed to the world.
There’s no place on this earth that you can touch on foot that black people haven’t contributed to in some shape, form, or fashion.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Right. It’s amazing.
Dr Terence Lester: And so I get a chance to find strength in that by wrestling with that history, understanding that history. But I also get a chance to see how the knowing of history in our present moment helps us to make better decisions in the present moment.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So, you know, in his forward, Daniel Hill describes this book as a resource. He says quote “for the wilderness season we find ourselves in.” So it’s a resource for the wilderness. Um, and he,
Dr Terence Lester: We are in the wilderness.
Lisa Sharon Harper: We are. Can you kind of go like, unpack that, what is our wilderness? And also, you know, unpack how this is a resource.[00:33:00]
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. I think I was, I was talking to um, I was talking to this group yesterday and a question came up similar because I was talking about the ignorance. I told the story of my daughter. My daughter was in the eighth grade, uh, when I, uh, she sent me this random text. She had worn an African headscarf to school.
And she was proud because at this time she was 13 and she’s really trying to understand her racial identity as a black. A young lady, a black woman. And you know, we kind of celebrate that, right? Yeah. And so she says, dad, and normally when she texts me, dad, I know that she’s gonna ask me a question to get something or she wants to make a statement.
But in this case, she was making a statement. She says, I was stopped by a white principal and she told me to take off my hat. And she says, [00:34:00] I don’t have on a hat. And then she says, she started to badger me and say like only Muslims were those types of things. I stopped my meeting, Lisa.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my God.
Dr Terence Lester: I got in my car. I went up to the school. I de, I demanded to speak to the principal. Oh my God. Get into the, we get into the conference room and um, I asked her, I say, do you know where heads scarfs and hit wraps come from? She says, no. I said those were one of the only pieces of garments that made it through the middle passage.
And when Africans actually arrived to the Americas, those who were enslaving Africans actually used headscarves to identify women as property. And here in recent years black women have reclaimed, uh, their naturalness saying, I’m not going to be defined by, you know a space that [00:35:00] dictates how I wear my crown. Right?
And we’re teaching our daughter this, and she calls my daughter into the office. She says, I was totally oblivious to this. I was unaware, and I wanna apologize. That affirmed my daughter in that moment. And so when I talk about a resource, I’m talking about things, uh, that one helps people to grapple with these questions.
Like, what talk were you given? I display my talk. Either you were verbally taught these things. I’m talking to, uh, people who may be European descent. Or you caught those things. There’s a nonverbal talking that happened, right? You saw how, you know, a grandmother or a grandfather, or an uncle or a cousin treated someone who is black or brown.
But two, I’m exposing these different things, uh, to help people grapple with some of their embedded ideology that have been passed down through generation to generation. And then towards the end of [00:36:00] each chapter, I’m giving like, like very basic and practical things that people could do, like in real time, uh, to start to build solidarity with their neighbor.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So tell us how to confront history. We don’t want to know how do we do it? Like what’s the how?
Dr Terence Lester: That we don’t want to know?
Lisa Sharon Harper: That we don’t want to know.
Dr Terence Lester: I think we need to just firstly deal with that. Uh, and ask, why don’t we want to know this? You know, that’s good that there has, there has to be some inner work that needs to be done. And I mean, you really have to question and ask yourself what is keeping you from wanting to know history, right?
There’s a bird called the Sankofa bird. It’s from Ghana. You know it. The picture of this bird is the body is facing forward, but the head is turned backwards. And it’s this it depicts this [00:37:00] idea that although we’re forever moving forward, we can’t move forward unless we look back.
That informs our present moment, that informs how we move forward. And if you are wanting to grow relationally in just like your solidarity work being in solidarity with others if you’re wanting to grow in, you know, just as a person and how you embody empathy and compassion and fill in those narrative gaps that Lisa talks about, then you’ve gotta really do that work and ask yourself, why don’t I want to know this?
Why do I need to hide this? Why am I keeping myself from going through, uh, this type of understanding of knowing, uh, that history?
Lisa Sharon Harper: So tell us how to unpack our hidden biases.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah.
Lisa Sharon Harper: These are chapters in the book, [00:38:00] by the way, everybody.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. When I think about bias there’s so many aspects of bias, whether it’s implicit, affinity bias, confirmation bias, right?
Where you want to only look at information that is of your liking, uh, you know, cherry picking information to you know, grapple with things that you’re kind of aligned with your core values and your beliefs. I think one of the ways in which we really grapple with the embedded biases is to ask ourselves questions.
Why do I believe this? Where did I get this information from? You know, what has kind of upheld this type of belief system in my view, in my framework, in my heart? And I think we also need to hold, you know, those answers to those questions and [00:39:00] seek out the truth to see if what we are actually believing is the truth or not.
And I don’t think people have allowed themselves that type of space to kind of have that introspection. I think another thing…
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow, wait, wait, wait. Before you move on, let me just say, lemme sit there for a second because I think what you’re saying is actually pretty profound. ‘Cause what you’re saying is that, In order for us to unpack our hidden biases, we actually have to enter into a transition space.
Dr Terence Lester: Yes.
Lisa Sharon Harper: A space that is between understandings. Yes. So we have to become comfortable not knowing. You know, it’s the, yes. I mean, I’ve, I mean, I’d say I’ve been challenged by that, uh, by, uh, to do that in the midst of my own PhD study. Right. So, PhD is all about research and you can’t call yourself doing research if you already know the answer.
You actually have to have an actual question.
So unpacking [00:40:00] hidden biases, maybe, maybe. Does it look like searching for the actual question you have? Hello?
Dr Terence Lester: That, that, all that, that preaching? Yeah, I, I remember. When I was working on my doctoral work, I had to take a class, it was a foundational class called Engaging Differences.
Engaging differences. And I thought, Hmm, that’s interesting. So like, I go through the class, had to write a lot of papers, and every single paper had to be on something that wasn’t, uh, you know, familiar to myself. I had to choose a people group: indigenous folks. I had to learn history.
I needed to look up land that we were on, you know, which was stolen and taken. I had to like ask myself, you know, questions about why did I believe some of the things [00:41:00] and that caused me to challenge some of the embedded ideas that I had believed I had to, uh, seek out people who were actually indigenous and ask them questions without editing, without trying to give a response, without trying to answer something that is true to their existential experience, right? And so, like engaging differences within itself is being able to be with someone in their world without you inserting your own.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Ooh, that’s so good. Without editing!
Dr Terence Lester: Without editing! Which is transformational, right? Because you walk away and you are challenged to think deeply about how you arrived at some of your answers.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. And honestly, aren’t we changed through that process? We are literally are changed because we have allowed ourselves to be inside of the transition space. [00:42:00] And transition space is inherently not the space we started in, right? It’s not the, the knowing space. And I think honestly like from that process I have, and I am, I mean it’s ongoing, right?
It is a process of growing humility. The humility is really at the, at the core of that, um, the humility of, of, for me in the Christian tradition, Philippians too, right? Where it says Jesus didn’t come seeking the position of God even though he was God. Instead he lowered himself to that of a human being.
And what does it look like for us to be human? It means not being God. It means we don’t know everything, right? It means we don’t have all the answers. So when you start to approach the other, or differences with the acknowledgement that we don’t, [00:43:00] you don’t, I don’t have the answers. All of a sudden it’s like, there’s an opening, isn’t there?
There’s kind of an opening in our souls.
Dr Terence Lester: And I, I think too, there’s been a negative connotation as it relates to the transitional space. Because
Yeah. Talk more about that
Dr Terence Lester: Transitional spaces are often related to discomfort instead of adventure. I see the transitional space as, you know, newfound adventure, ways to explore, to discover things that I had not previously known.
Which in turn creates the humility and sets me up to grow. And why do I want to grow? Because I want to be a better servant. To God, I wanna be a better servant to my family. I want to be a better servant to those who are my [00:44:00] neighbor. And neighbor is just not a geographical statement. It’s a moral statement.
Neighbor is who you come in contact with. It’s whoever you, you know, cross paths with. And so I wanna be the best version that I’m able to be a better servant. And as long as I’m viewing that as an exploratory journey, then I remain humbled to learn, to grow and to put my heart in a posture of like, you know, what else, what else can I learn?
What else can I unpack? What else can I unload? You know? And I think it’s you know, it’s just a journey that you, you grow to love. You know, it’s not something that, you know, initially you just kind of have a lot of passion about it. You grow to love it because you understand that as you are encountering new knowledge and new[00:45:00] responsibilities that it’s creating more space for you to serve humanity,
Lisa Sharon Harper: Walking freedom road from coast to coast and around the globe. This is the Freedom Road podcast.
So, speaking of encountering your neighbor, can you tell us about the homeless man named Leonard? Who you met and changed your life.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. I was starting to do work early on in the beginning stages of our organization. Uh, we didn’t have a building or budget or any of that stuff.
It was just all about proximity and presence and wanting to be in [00:46:00] relationships with people who are also a part of the Bluff community. And I’ll never forget, I was at a gas station and I ran into Leonard. He was literally looking for his meal in a garbage can. And people were pumping gas and going about their day.
Nobody took time to even acknowledge his existence. And I think one of the greatest threats to belonging is distance. Right? So I approached Lennon and I asked him a question that I’m pretty sure he wasn’t expecting. I said, you know, hey, I introduced myself. We started to talk.
He told me that he lost his wife; he became depressed. And he couldn’t no longer function on his job. And he started to lose things. And I asked him, literally, if you had one wish, what would that wish be? He said, [00:47:00] I would want to be made over. And
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. I mean, the first time I heard that I was kinda like, what?
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah, he said I wanted to be made over, and it was like, it wasn’t the type of makeover. Like, I wish I could go back to the beginning and start everything over again. Yeah, yeah. He was talking about trash hanging from his beard and his clothes. He had been wearing the same thing for three weeks, the same clothes.
And it was, he was basically saying like, I just want the decency of being able to be made clean, to have access to sanitation and water and things.
Lisa Sharon Harper: My God.
Dr Terence Lester: And I remember telling his story, and we had this church. I didn’t know anybody from this church and they reached out to us and wanted to donate this bus.
And in the spirit of Leonard, we turned it into like one of the first mobile makeover units in the city of Atlanta. It was a mobile barber shop, mobile [00:48:00] shower, and clothing closet. And we were able to make Leonard over, but greater than that, connect him to housing. And I think his story is an example of many different stories because it took time to be in his presence to understand how he arrived at that plight, not to make generalizations.
But to really be present with him in that moment. And humble myself to learn from a man who had the courage to dig in a dumpster.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Wow. Well, when you put it that way, yeah. How do you recommend we engage our communities? Like where do we begin? Because you obviously have some skill at this, right? Like you’re at the gas station and you see Leonard, and I [00:49:00] actually think most people don’t ignore Leonard because of any evil intent.
I think most people ignore Leonard because they don’t know how to engage him in a way that’s one safe for them. And number two, that that doesn’t shame him, um, or cause him to feel ashamed. So how do we, and it’s not just how do we engage the homeless, but how do we engage our communities? Like where do we begin?
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah, that’s a great question. So earlier today I was at the King Center and a lady asked a similar question, but she also had another question. She says, you know, what do I do with the emotions that I have towards people who are unhoused? When I get up out of my bed, and I go to work every day.
And I started to respond in a way [00:50:00] that really broke down the constructions of poverty. Right. Uh, Theresa Gowan says is sin talk, sick talk, or system talk. These are the types of narratives that we plan our mind as it relates to why we think people are unhoused. It’s basically I was responding to her, uh, just kind of helping her to reduce the fear of those who are unhoused.
I think a large part of, one of the reasons why we don’t practice proximity and presence is because it’s connected to a narrative, you know? What we believe about a community, what we believe about people who are poor, what we believe about those who are unhoused.
Lisa Sharon Harper: So true. Wow.
Dr Terence Lester: And, uh, you know, this criminal view of homelessness or, uh, persons who are impoverished really started to develop around, you know, social and political rhetoric.
And so we really have to [00:51:00] do work to understand, you know, are these persons that I really should fear. Um, there’s a study that came out of John Hopkins Hospital that said the majority of the people who commit the most crimes aren’t people who are unhoused. There are actually people with housing. You know?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. Wow.
Dr Terence Lester: I think we have to do that. That narrative justice work that you so eloquently talk about is, you know, George Lakoff argues that reframing is a part of social change. Reframing the way that we see our neighbors, and I’m not telling people just to, to jump out there, you could have wise courage, right?
Wise courage. You don’t have to just always talk to somebody, you know, while you’re out on the streets. You can actually create the type of margin in your life where you partner with organizations who are already doing this work. You could look at, you could look at your [00:52:00] plate because most people talk about wanting to create rhythms in their life where they’re actually serving, but they’re just not available.
So it’s not a willingness issue, it’s an availability issue. Then I would argue, can you create that type of margin where you connect with organizations on the ground, where you start to take steps to do this type of work, to be proximate, to find ways to serve and stand in solidarity with those who may be unhoused or vulnerable.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s good.
Dr Terence Lester: Lastly, Lisa, I would. I would say even if you can’t find ways to be a geographically proximate, you can be cognitively proximate. You can start to research and understand ways in which systems are impacting, impacting people, uh, namely those who are unhoused or marginalized or impoverished.
And, you know, you may not [00:53:00] think that cognitive, uh, proximity is important, but it is because it orients your heart in a way to be, as Lisa just said. Uh, humble.
Lisa Sharon Harper: I love how you’re quoting me back to me. That’s, thank you for the honor, brother. I appreciate it. But it is really true, isn’t it though?
Proximity matters and engaging our communities really is about shrinking the proximity gap, right? Yes. Um, my friend Michelle Warren wrote a book about that. You know, and I think that there’s… I think right now, in a lot of ways, our future depends on our ability to do exactly what you’re talking about, which is one of the reasons I wanted to lift up this book so much.
We are in an ever widening proximity gap. Between all of us. I mean, we’re, I mean, I think the [00:54:00] pandemic really kind of put this all on steroids, but literally the distance between us has widened and widened and widened and, and now it’s not even just physically, it’s actually ideologically, it’s how we think.
It’s the news. Like we’re not even watching the same news, literally not the same stories at all. And even when we, when we are, they’re coming from very different perspectives. And I think that there’s our future, the future of our nation, the future of the church will absolutely depend on our ability to connect, to reconnect to each other.
And so I really love, I love the ways that you’re really calling us to shrink that proximity gap to… if not physically, then, um, then mentally then do the reading, do the research, do the, do the documentary watching. Right. And then, yes, I love what you just said. [00:55:00] Also show up, like show up. Go to the organization that is actually working on that issue, or with these people in your area.
I talk about that in the Very Good Gospel in the chapter on race. You know, it is just one of those things you gotta do. You can’t, you can’t say you’re doing anything if you haven’t done that. So, it’s really, really good.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah. It’s, it’s so, um, wow. The proximity gap, I mean.. And what does the proximity gap do?
It creates apathy. You know, where people are indifferent towards the sufferings of others. It creates, you know, walls, right? Jesus wasn’t about walls, he was about longer tables. Right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s exactly right. Wow.
Dr Terence Lester: It creates fear, it creates distance. It threatens this idea of belonging, right?
[00:56:00] You know, and I think as you stated so eloquently, we are being called to lamentation, being able to,
Lisa Sharon Harper: I didn’t say that that was you. And it’s good. It’s good.
Dr Terence Lester: Well, I, I mean that’s what I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m sensing like we should be weeping, not in isolation, but with each other.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes.
Dr Terence Lester: You know?
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s how we need to be reconnecting.
Dr Terence Lester: Yeah, it is. It is. It’s through the cries and the, you know, you know, lamentation is about wrestling with doubt and fear and suffering and crying out and injustice and all of the things that plagued society in other relationships and the peace it disrupts the peacemaking that we are wanting to see.
We need to cry out because through lamentation [00:57:00] comes connection and community. You know, I think about, you know, the type of lament that happened where people would gather to lament together in the scriptures. And then we need this robust listening and learning.
You know, oftentimes I say that you can’t listen or learn to somebody you’ve never been proximate to.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Hello.
Dr Terence Lester: And not just listening or trying to make someone teach you, but really having authentic relationships in a way where you are creating healthy spaces where you can learn from other people and listen to other people without censorship.
I think that leads to this immersiveness, right? We talked about scripture. Jesus immersed himself, uh, Howard Thurman says that he was the one that was immersed in the [00:58:00] contact, but he also had his back against the wall. Right?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes.
Dr Terence Lester: He was standing in solidarity with those who were suffering.
And I’ll close with this, but like, there’s this quote, I forget the author’s name, but it says, if you think you are an ally or someone who is standing in solidarity with other people, But you haven’t been hit by the stones that were thrown at them, then you’re not standing close enough.
And I think that’s a powerful analogy of like, we need to be close, as Henri Nouwen says, with compassion to weep with those who are weeping, to suffer with those who are suffering, to mourn with those who are mourned. And that starts to build the repair that we desire. And from there emerges the compassion and the resistance and the ways in which we organize to stand against some of [00:59:00] the ills that are plaguing people
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s deep.
I mean, is that a little bit of what you mean by the call to sit at another’s table: at someone else’s table?
Dr Terence Lester: Yes. Yes. We talked about that earlier. I’ve been invited to many tables. But there was power at that table that dictated the dialog. To sit at someone else’s table means that if you’re a person of European descent, you, you decenter yourself in a way.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes.
Dr Terence Lester: Where you’re able to humble yourself to learn in, in someone else’s context.
Lisa Sharon Harper: That’s good. And then get hit by whatever’s coming their way too.
Dr Terence Lester: Right. And you get hit by what, whatever’s coming their way.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow. That’s good. All right. So I have…
Dr Terence Lester: Can I ask you one question before?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Dr Terence Lester: What, what do you think keeps people from sitting at the [01:00:00] table of another?
Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, that’s a great question. What do I think keeps people from sitting at the table of another? Fear. I do think it’s fear. I think it’s fear of the unknown. It’s fear of loss of control, and especially, people of European descent and Western cultures control is probably one of the highest values of all: the ability to control the self and control one’s environment and control the other.
And you see, you know, self-discipline is a high, high value to control the environment. I mean, we’re doing everything. We’re even cloning, like, you know what I mean? We’re actually literally creating or trying to be God, trying to create, and I mean this in the western culture in particular, trying to create life that there’s no greater attempt to control the environment than [01:01:00] to do that, right?
And then also, I was just watching a news report literally just before we got on about climate change and how the reality is that there we’ve been people, science has been sounding the alarm on climate change since the 1950s. And in 1978 President Carter came out. I remember this, I was a little kid when he came out and said, look, if we don’t change our carbon emission emissions, this is what’s gonna happen.
And what he said was gonna happen is, what is happening right now! And yet, for now, 50 something years, going on 60 years, we in the West have refused to give up control of our present and our future by refusing to, to let go of what we know, coal oil, natural gas [01:02:00] in favor of what we don’t know as well.
And we don’t know how the economy will work under wind or algae or, you know, any of the other renewable sources that we have. Sun. Right? We didn’t know. And also there’s a need to shift whole economies in that way. So you literally would be entering an entire, well, multiple economies and the world economy.
We have to do this now, otherwise we will be extinct in like 30 years. But you have to shift the world economy into something we’ve never seen before. And so rather than do that, rather than give up control, what did we do in the West? We held onto control. And now mother nature’s like, well, you chose to have control, then that means I have control now.
You know? And now somebody gets a third degree burn when they sit down on the [01:03:00] pavement, right? Now you, we literally are in danger of not having crops in the next year because California has burned so much that our main source of crops in the United States of America will not have crops.
They won’t have crops. And that’s because of choices that we made to maintain control, right? So I think it’s fear of the unknown. Fear of losing control. But what, you know, the ironic thing about that is that it’s the counterintuitive, it’s the counterintuitive wisdom that says growth, blessing, requires letting go of control.
Let it go, let it flow, let go, let God, [01:04:00] all of those, those like maxims that we, that we have, that actually are, they are on point. There are things we haven’t done. And, and our, and what’s happening now is right, like after 2020 and the uprising there and the sense of, whoa, we don’t, we, we need to change in order to have a viable America racially and then white people a lot, like in droves let go of control and then found themselves out floating on a sea and said, this can’t be right.
And so what they do now, they’re clamping down and grabbing control again. And not just, not just socially. Now we’re talking about legal control. We’re talking about political control. In order to take us back to that moment when they felt in control, because now they’re afraid of this world that they’ve never known: a world where they are a minority.[01:05:00]
So, boy, you know, you asked me that question. I did not have an answer, but in the speaking of it, I think that’s my answer.
Dr Terence Lester: Wow.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Can I, can I ask you a question? Yeah. What does, for you, what does the coming of the kin-dom of God look like?
Dr Terence Lester: The coming of the kingdom of God: it’s a space when, uh, people who are unhoused aren’t turned away from public restrooms. It’s a space where kids aren’t the fastest growing population of people experiencing homelessness. It’s a place where, you know families don’t have to stay in cars because they can no longer afford to stay in the neighborhood that’s being [01:06:00] gentrified.
It’s a place where we care about climate change. It’s a place where we call and hold people accountable who are still advocating for gun violence or the ownership of assault rifles. It’s a place where, you know, our neighbors no matter how they identify, or you know, what ethnic background they emerge from, is it included?
It’s a place where peace is exalted above war. Where love is exalted above division. It’s a place where poverty is an issue that we addressed where fusion and togetherness and solidarity and all of the things that makes us [01:07:00] whole and united is at the center. It’s a space where black people aren’t edited, where the narrative gap: there is no narrative gap.
Where it’s not about narrative justice anymore. It’s a space where there’s, you know, flourishing and peace. So I think that’s what we are all hoping in some way.
Lisa Sharon Harper: Amen. Amen and amen.
The conversations leaders have on the road to justice. This is The Freedom Road podcast. Thank you for joining us today. The Freedom Road Podcast is recorded in Philadelphia and wherever our guests are laying their heads that night. This episode was engineered and edited and produced by Corey Nathan of [01:08:00] Scan Media and Freedom Road Podcast is executive produced by Freedom Road, LLC.
We consult, coach, train and design experiences that bring common understanding, common commitment, and lead to common action. And you can find out more about our work at our website, freedomroad.us. Stay in a no by signing up for updates, which are on Substack. You can find us on Substack at Freedom Road. At Freedom Road actually on Substack.
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Doctor Terence Lester, thank you very much.
