You should know there's a new slj site! Check it out

 
 
“Race Matters” at UCLA
a change in meeting topic
changes a campus

by Tracey Shyr 

It was a beautiful Saturday morning as I walked into Westwood Village, Los Angeles to get some lunch. I was looking forward to having some time by myself to relax and unwind after a long and hectic week. I happened to walk by a Daily Bruin, UCLA’s campus newspaper, and as I glanced at the cover story, I could hardly believe what I read. A hate crime had occurred on campus just a couple of days before. A black woman was kicked down a flight of stairs by a white man as he called her the “n” word. On this campus! In broad daylight! I was shocked and also confused; how could this have happened? I knew that somehow Jesus wanted to do something through it but I wasn’t sure what. How can I lead people into some kind of response? I wondered. I know that I don’t want InterVarsity to become another political group on campus. It can’t be just about superficial actions, but Jesus has to do something in our hearts as a fellowship, too. What should I do about this?

What would you have done?

It happened that the next day would be our quarterly Race Matters meeting. These are regular meetings to discuss issues of race and how to make reconciliation a reality. (These meetings were formerly known as “Rainbow Sherbet” [see the SLJ Winter 1997/Spring 1998 issue, or visit
www.ivcf.org/slj/wi97/wi97_cn_rainbow_sherbet.html].)

Earlier, we had planned to discuss racial conflict in our friendships and why we avoid talking about it with those closest to us. I was eager to hear what specific steps the students had taken since our last meeting to be more open with others about racial misunderstandings. But I knew we’d have to postpone this topic and go with a whole new plan. Race Matters is the perfect place for the community to deal with what had happened on our own campus. So, that afternoon, I made copies of the Daily Bruin article, told the rest of the staff team that we’d be changing the topic and prayed. Even though I was nervous, I knew that Race Matters would be the perfect way to deal with what had happened.

Approximately 90 people were jammed together in my apartment as we began. I told them, “You know, I’m so glad that we are having Race Matters tonight. We had another topic planned, but God has something different for us.” As I spoke, several of the Black students in the room cheered. Other people offered only blank stares.

We broke into small groups first, along the lines of our ethnicities. (Later we would gather as a whole group to discuss our topic further.) In my small group, after reading the article, Linnette, a Chinese-American sophomore, confessed that she knew the hate crime on campus was a big deal but couldn’t get herself to see it that way. She felt apathetic. The majority of the non-black students in the room felt that as well. I thought to myself, When we come back together as a large group, I have a feeling sparks are about to fly. We gathered again as a whole group, and I opened up the floor for discussion. Right away the Black brothers and sisters in the room began to share. They described how angry and hurt they were and most of them were yelling and crying as they talked. Jen admitted how angry and hurt she was, and how drastically different the campus’s reaction would have been if it had been a white woman kicked by a Black man. At the end she couldn’t even get the words out; all she could do was cry.

One woman, Jade, shared, “I feel like this incident is how the whole campus sees me—as less than human and worthless.” As we saw our sisters’ pain and tears and hurt, God melted away the apathy. I looked over at Linnette and she was weeping. My heart broke as the black women shared their pain and tears with the rest of the community.

But we listened and were moved with compassion. By the middle of our time together, most of the room was weeping. People responded and we prayed for the black students, for God’s healing and restoration. The compassion and the presence of God in the room was overwhelming. At the end, I exhorted them and I said, “God has done an amazing thing in us tonight. But it would be wrong not to do something with that. What will you do?”

In the next three days, I saw the students respond as never before. Preston, a white senior, wrote an article about the incident, highlighting the fact that the campus was not well informed. He went to Kinko’s, made tons of copies and passed them out on Bruin Walk in the center of campus. In his article, he talked about the book of Ruth and how he has seen God’s heart for compassion and racial reconciliation.

Preston, along with Payshun (Black), Abner (Latino) and Mike (Filipino), met with the Chancellor to discuss what steps the campus would take in response. Abner also wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily Bruin, and it was published the next week. A group of InterVarsity students served snacks for an African Student Union meeting as an act of love and service.

Alison, a bi-racial white/Mexican woman, among others, attended a rally on campus where the other sponsoring groups were the African Student Union, Raza Women and MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan). In the Daily Bruin article covering the event, InterVarsity’s Bruin Christian Fellowship was included among those other groups as participants. How strange it was to see our name right in the middle of the list of these various ethnic groups on campus! It was so different because even though racial tension is not new to the campus, usually the Christian students are nowhere in sight. But there we were, aligned with our campus and trying to demonstrate Jesus.

At the next Race Matters, the Black students in the fellowship expressed how grateful they were to be a part of a community that advocated for them and loved them. Preston shared that he couldn’t believe he had waited until his senior year to take an active stance on the campus. He said, “Writing the article and meeting with the Chancellor were great, but ultimately I see that it’s not politics that the campus needs, it’s Jesus. He’s the solution to all the racial problems we have seen.” Preston’s passion for racial reconciliation and his faith that God can bring it about increased a hundredfold. Now he feels a strong sense of call to live in the inner city and minister to the urban poor in his neighborhood. He’s just one of the many who have been transformed by Jesus.

Watching the fellowship act boldly, I stood amazed. I had called them to respond in some way, but they went way beyond what I expected. I think the reason is that God filled them with his love for their fellow students and their action sprang out of that love. Especially for the ethnic minority students, the hate crime was a major event that rocked the campus. For once, nobody could say, “But where are the Christians?” That built bridges of trust, and many students expressed gladness that we wanted to respond together. The students who took these risks grew tremendously in their commitment to love the Black students on campus.