My multi-ethnic world
Posted Thursday, April 14th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
Most of the students I serve are Black. My wife is Mexican (and if she finishes her citizenship application, well….). My neice and two nephews are biracial - korean & gringo. I grew up in La Crescenta - a mostly white suburb despite the Spanish name, and now live and minister in Boyle Heights, once a strong Jewish community, now mostly Mexican, despite the non-Spanish name. In her book - “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”- Beverly Tatum asks “Who am I? The answer depends in large part on who the world around me says I am.” While I don’t agree fully with her statement, I do realize how my identity has been transformed by God through the complex multi-ethnic world around me.
And tonight I’m flying out to Madison, WI as part of the InterVarsity La Fe Servant Leadership Team. La Fe is IV’s Latino ministry. By God’s divine grace & humor, this gringo has the honor of serving on this coordinating team for the national movement of InterVarsity. And so I’m flying out to represent La Fe in a predominantly white organization - InterVarsity. Like the rest of my life, I still figuring things out. How does God want me - a big gringo - to lead and influence a mostly gringo organization like IV, in reaching and better serving Latino and Black students and staff. The one grace I hold onto - that I’ve learned as a basic element of my own ethnic identity development and cross-cultural development as a gringo - is that the world is much bigger than my personal experience says that it is. The grace is that my God created that big world - thus he is my grace in it.