Peach People

I took a class towards my Master's degree this summer that has my mind spinning. It was a course called "Teaching in Diverse Classrooms" and focused on issues that surround diversity of gender, race, socioeconomic status, ability, and more that we see here in Chicago. It forced me to exercise those dormant brain muscles reserved for uncomfortable, convicting, and troubling conversations that surround these kinds of categories.

We read course texts and took notes and all that good stuff, but we spent most of the time in class reflecting and discussing these things in relation to our own experiences and the experiences of our kids in the classroom. We discussed things like gang rape. White privilege. Segregated proms that are still happening in Mississippi. The pressure on girls to be perfect and the ads, TV shows, movies, and songs that promote it. Racial slurs. The American Dream. Hate crimes. Affirmative Action. Food deserts. Unjust systems, societies, and sovereigns. Immigration. Where they money goes. And more. I know a lot of those things are buzz words for people on both sides of many of those issues, and believe me, my head has been buzzing ever since.

I often left class feeling overwhelmed. But it was good.

When I was a kid, I thought people were peach. I had a crayon labeled "peach" and it more or less matched my skin color. I looked around me and all I saw were other peach people. Every so often I would encounter someone who wasn't a peach person and I mentally noted which crayon he or she might be. I distinctly remember doing so with one of my favorite people: I loved Michael Jordan when I was growing up, and he wasn't peach. So I figured he was "brown" because that's the crayon that matched him. Later on, I learned that my coloring-book-theory of race relations was not acceptable. I was white. Michael Jordan was black. And that's without addressing all the other kinds of people on this earth besides the two categories we so harshly box up with neat little labels.

But back to the class.

Beyond being simply a student, I carried my faith into that classroom with me each day that made all of the brokenness and darkness that we dug up to be all the more harsh, confusing, and disorienting. I still have a million questions swirling around. How could our world look like this, so broken and hurtful? How am I supposed to move on? How can I, just one person, love people like Jesus loves people? How do I embrace all the differences we have and be someone who looks past the neat little labels so carefully affixed by people to other people? I'm somewhat frustrated at myself that at age 23 this is the first time so many of these questions have been on my mind. I'm frustrated at all of us for being so unloving to one another in the most nasty and subtle of ways. How do I even start? I'm just that one person, remember?

In the week since the class ended, I've been thinking about what it means to be a peach person in this black and white world. The starting place, I've decided, has a lot to do with my everyday life. It has a lot to do with the words that come out of my mouth, the thoughts I assume about people, and the time I put into listening to others. It starts with me deciding to be an ally against injustice. It starts with me waking up each day of teaching this year and asking God to help me love my kids for who He made them to be. To encourage all the hues of personalities, people, and ideas that come from our neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. To see the box of crayons for all of its beautiful colors.