Alone

I’ve been the only native English speaker in the room on many occasions. I’ve been the only white face in the room. I’ve sat in the governor’s office surrounded by Latin American political and religious leaders after 9/11 who were concerned about the US using the attack to launch a new war of reprisal. I’ve been the only North American face walking through impoverished neighborhoods, slums, and favelas. I’ve been the only foreigner on the bus with people hanging out the back door. I’ve been the non-citizen in the police office giving a crime report. I know what it is like to be the minority voice, the only person of my race, the only one of my nationality, the only one of my social class, education level, hair color, and so many other things. What I don’t know is what it is like to be the minority voice as one who is considered less for that minority status.
Growing up in Brazil, I lived a life of privilege. Oh, we were not wealthy or even really comfortable by standards in the US. Our mission cars were not allowed to have air conditioning. Mission houses could not have carpet or HVAC, for those were luxuries. I did not, however, live in the favelas that so many around me experienced as the only way of life possible to them. When I ventured into those neighborhoods and alleys deemed undesirable, I always had a way out. I had a safe place to which I could return. I had a different life from which I was simply taking an excursion of some kind.
When I was introduced to the governor of Rio Grande do Sul at that 9/11 meeting, he addressed me in English. No such deference was given to the Spanish speakers in the room. When I replied in Portuguese, the room was filled with surprise, with laughter, with relief, with wonder. I was known only to my young Brazilian pastor (also one of my seminary students), and yet I was accorded a deference no other person in the room was given, deference by the governor who had no previous knowledge of me. Had I been an official with the US Consulate, I would not have been afforded more respect, though I was the outsider with no special standing among those gathered other than things over which I had little control. To them, I was the white representative of the United States of America.
You didn’t vote to put me in any office. My parents were not politicians. I have never served the US government in any capacity. My citizenship, my education, and my skin gave me standing in that room, just as they have given me standing in so many other places and gatherings in which I have participated. They have offered me protection on the streets of Trinidad, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia. They have offered me protection and respect I did nothing to deserve here in the US, as well.
When I open my mouth to speak in Portuguese among Brazilians, that respect is doubled. When I speak in Spanish among Latinos, it is the same. That has little to do with my fluency and language skills. It has everything to do with the fact that I, as a white citizen of the US would step past some of that privilege to embrace people without it as worthy of my time, energy, and effort. That I would treat them as equals is powerful. It is powerful because of the privilege and status I enjoy because of things over which I have no control.
That privilege grants me power that is unearned and undeserved. When I am alone, when I am in the minority, I bear with me the strength of the majority of which I am deemed a part. That is not the experience of those who are minorities. When they find themselves alone, they are alone.


— ©Copyright 2020, Christopher B. Harbin

http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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