Rev. Mark Crear, Ph.D., has more than 15 years of experience in Racial Reconciliation, Life Relationship and Multicultural Counseling, and Organizational coaching. Crear’s latest work as an author is a book titled, Peace Be Still 978-1-950088-90-4, which is solely based on promoting racial reconciliation in different parts of our communities. He provides readers with statistical facts, first-hand experiences, and valuable tools that can help promote racial reconciliation and racial unity among American communities and churches. Crear writes about how important of a role churches can play in fostering and spreading the ideas of racial reconciliation and unity with believers.
Racial reconciliation and racial unity have been discussed for decades now but it has not been able to become widespread. Many people still oppose these ideas to this day, where racial tensions have reached new peaks in the U.S. After centuries of slavery and oppression, the Black community deserves to heal from the generational trauma that has passed down. Racial reconciliation is a big step towards healing and recovering for the Black community. To understand racial reconciliation best, Crear’s book Peace Be Still is a great source of information. Additionally, here are some terms and definitions by Willow Creek Community Church that one needs to understand to eventually understand the concept of racial reconciliation. They are also mentioned by Crear in the book.
· Racism: The belief that people born of a certain race – often defined by skin color, ethnicity, or cultural traditions – are superior to those of another race.
· Internalized Racism: Prejudice, bias and blind spots people have in themselves. An individual level of racism.
· Interpersonal Racism: When we act on internalized racism on each other. An individual level of racism.
· Institutional Racism: Racist policies and discriminatory processes across institutions, including schools, governments, organizations, and businesses that produce unjust outcomes for people of color. A systemic level of racism.
· Structural Racism: Unjust patterns and practices that play out across institutions that make up our society. A systemic level of racism.
· Racial Reconciliation: The concept starts with the idea that racism in America is systemic and institutionalized, as well as internalized, individualized, and interpersonal. Reconciliation begins with a dialogue between people and people groups that have been historically divided. It engages relationship-building and truth-telling. On an individual and interpersonal level, racial reconciliation takes intentionality, vulnerability, and confession. On a systemic level, it takes learning and advocacy. Racial justice, often in a restorative manner, is central to racial reconciliation. It advocates responsibility from all stakeholders and generational beneficiaries of racial oppression and seeks to right historical wrongs.
· Colorblindness: The concept that people see no color in others; it has good intentions but is misguided and can do real harm by overlooking substantial parts of people’s identity. “Colorblindness does not acknowledge the image of God in diverse people groups,” says David Bailey, founder of Arrabon, a ministry that equips churches and Christian organizations to be reconciling communities. “It actually encourages us to do surface-level diversity and be passive in reconciliation.”
· Discrimination: Treating a person or a particular group of people in a different way. Favoring or being unfair to people because of certain categorizations that include religion, age, gender, or race.
· Prejudice: An opinion not based on actual experience; based on preconception.
· Bigotry: Intolerance of any beliefs, opinions, or creeds that are different from one’s own.
· Multiculturalism: The view that various cultures can co-exist in the same society and that those cultures merit equal respect, honor, interest, and exploration.
· White Supremacy: The belief that white people are superior to other racial groups and should be the dominant group in social, cultural, business, and political circles of influence and power.
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