ethnicity

Review: Beyond Ethnic Loneliness

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Cover image of "Beyond Ethnic Loneliness" by Prasanta Verma

Beyond Ethnic Loneliness, Prasanta Verma. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514007419), 2024.

Summary: An Indian American immigrant describes the distinctive experience of ethnic loneliness and steps those experiencing that loneliness and those who care for them can take toward healing.

” ‘Go back to Indiana, or wherever it is you came from!’ she hissed.

Imagine you are the little girl whose only memories are growing up in Alabama, whose family immigrated from India. It was a devastating message that the author of this work has never forgotten, even with the mistaken notion that Indian Americans must be from Indiana! She spoke English like an American but looked “different” from others. She found herself asking the question “What am I?” And in living in this place on the margins, it led to a peculiar kind of loneliness–ethnic loneliness. It is the loneliness that Blacks, Indigenous people, Latinos, Africans, Middle East and North Africans and Asian American and Pacific Islanders who live in a White majority country struggle with.

In Part One of the book, Prasanta Verma takes this question of “what are you” and delineates the particular nature of ethnic loneliness. In defining ethnic loneliness, one of the striking aspects to me was its chronic, rather than episodic nature that may be experienced as cultural isolation, lack of connection, identity conflicts, loss of cultural identity, social exclusion, marginalization, language barriers, and integration and assimilation. Verma discusses the experience of disbelonging, being uprooted from a place where one belongs to and with others. She poignantly describes her own struggle where her particular beauty clashed with the dominant white culture–she with dark skin without tanning and dark curly hair. She wrestles with identity theft, being the perpetual foreigner in America and a tourist with an American passport in India.

She shares what it is like to be isolated and othered in a racialized society–the racial stereotypes (in her case, the model Asian) and the microaggressions (“where are you from?” which is asked because of one’s different appearance). There is even the struggle of names–does one choose an American name to fit in, making one a traitor to one’s own ethnicity. She chronicles how ethnic minorities are marginalized in institutions: lack of diversity and representation, cultural insensitivity, discriminatory policies, microaggressions, lack of access, language barriers, and more. She concludes this part with summarizing the experience as one of exile. Throughout, Verma draws on how scripture addresses such loneliness, and here points out how God was with exiled Israel, the despised Samaritans and others on the margins.

Part Two of the book explores what may be done. Her focus is on the ethnically lonely person and a key is moving from disbelonging to belonging.. She begins with the healing of different forms of racial trauma, which she names, as a kind of belonging to oneself. She also encourages finding people to be safe with while also setting healthy boundaries in one’s life. She emphasizes the importance of stories, including reading the stories of others, offering a great bibliography. A good rule in such situations (and especially for majority culture people) is: “Don’t deflect racism/Don’t defend racism/Don’t deny racism.” She discusses the ways individualism and fear create barriers to moving from disbelonging to belonging and offers an extremely helpful list of what churches and community organizations can do. Her concluding chapter describes living in the already/not yet of longing for “the better country” of Hebrews 11:13-16–the loneliness that opens us up to the beauty of community, the glimpses and the long haul to see the changes we dream of.

At the end of each chapter (along with questions and a writing prompt) is an answer in verse to the question “So, What are you?” which are wonderful meditations allowing the chapter’s truth to sink deeply into one’s life. Here is the one from the final chapter:

SO, WHAT ARE YOU?

You are beloved
You are not invisible
You are whole
You are wanted
You are seen
You are loved
Just the way you are
You belong to yourself
You belong to others
You belong to God
So, what are you?
You are a gift of joy
You eat at the table
Of belonging
You are a Home
Of belonging
To others
And yourself

Prasanta Verma addresses hard realities of loneliness and trauma with stories of her own life and those of others. She offers biblical re-framing and practical suggestions wrapped in beautiful rhythmic prose and verse. This is an important book not only for those who struggle with ethnic loneliness but for any who care enough to want to understand and accompany those who struggle. And I can’t help but wonder if the insights and practices in this book, if applied, might also begin to address the larger loneliness pervading our society.

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

I Need Diverse Books

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This post is inspired by the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign that developed when the first ever BookCon, which took place this past weekend, announced an all-white author lineup. The Twitter campaign that followed garnered 162 million impressions in its attempt to raise awareness of the need for more books by and about people of various ethnicities and races. This post is not about that campaign (which you can read about here), but about my own growing realization that I need diverse books.

Nope, I’m not going to try to persuade you that you need more diverse books, or your children or your school or your library need more diverse books. So take a deep breath and relax. I’m just going to share how important reading diverse books is for my own life.

For one thing, even the local world of my neighborhood doesn’t look like me. I see saris and headscarves and skin much darker than mine. I hear other languages, and even sing some of the worship songs in our church in Spanish because we have Spanish speakers who are part of our worship. Certainly the world of the university where I engage in campus ministry doesn’t look like me. We have over 3,000 students from China alone and growing numbers from India and South America. We also have students from  the “hyphenated” communities in this country: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans. And there are many from all these groups who call themselves “brother” or “sister” in my faith who I believe I will spend eternity with. Better start understanding each other!

Reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow for example portrayed to me afresh what it is like to be stopped simply for driving or walking while black, and the practices of illegal searches in this country that violate our Fourth Amendment protections.  Sheryl Wu Dunn’s Half The Sky reminds me of the systematic injustices and violence we do to women around the world, and how women have courageously fought back.  Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, helped me look at life through the lens of immigrants encountering very different value systems and trying to hold onto something of their identities. Julie Park’s When Diversity Drops helped me see  our collegiate ministry as students of different ethnicity encounter it. John Perkins books and the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. help me begin to understand the difficult experience of Blacks in America, and challenges me to match their Christ-likeness in pursuing justice and reconciliation.

This year I have been listening to a variety of voices, mostly outside my own faith community, who are writing about the future of higher education. Some of this has to do with a conference on this subject I am leading this summer. Why this is valuable for me is that if we are going to participate as responsible partners in conversations about the future of the university, we need to understand the issues and each other well. For similar reasons, I’ve read science writers like J Craig Venter on genetic research and Sir John Houghton (actually a committed Christian) on issues of climate change. Sometimes they open my eyes to issues I haven’t thought about. I don’t agree with all I read–what would be the fun in that?

I need diverse books because I believe God’s intention is to form a “beloved community” that is a mosaic of the peoples of the world. What a great design for engaging the diverse peoples and problems we confront in this world! Yet I come from a white, working class background that has shaped my outlook, for good and less than good. Beginning with the diverse narratives of the Bible, diverse books that help me understand the parts of the world that are “different” for me, and diverse friendships, I hope to be able both to offer what is unique in my own gifts and background and to welcome the abundant variety of gifted people that make up a “God sized, beloved community.”

Those are some of the reasons I need diverse books. What diverse books would you suggest I read? Who knows, you might see them in future reviews on this blog.

 

Color Blind

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As a parent, I remember when our son was first tested for color blindness. We were holding our breath, hoping he would be able to see all the colors shown him. Thankfully he did. Physical color blindness is not usually considered a good thing. The inability to distinguish colors means a person with red-green color blindness has to make certain adjustments when driving, for example. And color perception is essential in some jobs, such as mixing paint colors.

Ishihara color test. Those with red-green color blindness cannot see the number 74.

Ishihara color test. Those with red-green color blindness cannot see the number 74.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve become aware of another kind of “color blindness”. It is the effort to act as if racial and ethnic distinctions do not exist and do not have an impact on relations between different groups. I have to admit that for a time, I thought this was a good thing. It seemed consistent with Dr. King’s statement that we do not want to ” judge a person by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This is a great statement of the ideal just society. Unfortunately, this ideal has three problems at least when it comes to my relationships with a person of another race or ethnicity that as a white male I’ve become increasingly aware of. I don’t think these are particular problems of white people alone although I do think we are often the most unaware that we suffer from them.

One is that I am not color blind. I can no more not notice skin color than I cannot notice gender distinctions as they present themselves.

Two is that to try to be ‘color blind’ is to ignore the associated attitudes and experiences I have toward those whose skin color is not my own. I find I most hurt others when I lack self-awareness of these things. As a Christ follower, I believe my false and prejudicial attitudes are connected to my sinfulness–the rebellion against God that leads to estrangement not only from God but from other people. But the hope I have is that as I become aware of these prejudices, I can confess them. The truth is that I am racially prejudiced, and more than I know. Yet I find that the acceptance of Christ gives me courage to face this about myself, and the desire to become more like Christ challenges me to repent of these things and to pray that I can see “color” increasingly with the eyes of Christ.

And this leads to the third problem of being ‘color blind’. To think “mono-chromatically” about others is to miss the beautiful differences that exist among us and the unique gifts people of every race and ethnicity bring to the body of Christ–and to our multi-ethnic society. Recently I wrote about the loss to church and society of not appreciating the difference of “introversion”, and indeed our prejudices against introverts. Speaking as a white, our failure to see the gifts Blacks, Asians, Latino/as and others bring to us is likewise both a deep affront and a terrible loss.

Revelation 7:9-10 describes the future of God’s people in these terms:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” (New International Version)

I have to confess that this is the scene I look forward to more than anything in my life. It is the place where the dream of a “beloved community” will be fulfilled in all its splendor and beauty. For me to live toward that day is not to strive for some “color blind” ideal but rather to ask for the vision and courage to face the ways I see those of color wrongly and repent.  It is to ask for the vision to see those of color in all of their God-given beauty that I might affirm and celebrate the good gifts of God in his multi-ethnic family. I’m not there yet, but one thing I know, color blindness won’t get me there.