The Mere Hint of Support for Interracial Dating Got Me Sent to the Senior Pastor’s Office

I like to think of it as making good trouble

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.” — John Lewis

My first full-time job was as a youth pastor right after finishing my Master’s Degree from Seminary. In retrospect, the all-white church in the suburbs of a large midwestern city was not a good fit for me. But only once did I get called into the senior pastor’s office and subtly reprimanded.

I haven’t thought of this story for years. That’s the advantage of being a white person. We can push issues of race aside and ignore them most of the time, only paying attention when forced to by a particularly persistent news cycle or personal connection.

Most of the white people I know wouldn’t consider themselves even a bit racist. Scratch the surface and the racism starts leaking out. Suggest their white kid might date a black kid and the vitriol could become a geyser.

I was reminded of this reading G Correia’s excellent story Not With My White Daughter, You’re Not. Correia relates his experiences as a Black teenager in a mostly white community being welcomed and seemingly even embraced by white parents until they thought he was…