This podcast features special guest Matt Chandler, lead pastor of teaching at The Village Church in Dallas / Fort Worth, Texas.
“Almost all my understanding of what made America great is because of efforts and the work ethic of people like me,” Chandler says in a video addressed to his congregation. Chandler, who is the pastor of The Village Church The Village Church located in a suburb of the Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas area, says he identifies with the cliche of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” However, Chandler began to realize that he had grown up with an “invisible tool kit” of privilege that “a lot of brothers and sisters” don’t possess.
Chandler explains that white privilege is not overt racism. Rather, it is the experience of belonging to the predominant culture. In America, Chandler explains, we often gloss over the contributions of other ethnicities to the forming and building of our nation. We might study Black History in the month of February, for instance, but that is insufficient at best. He also gives the example of looking for a book for a child that features a main character that is his or her same ethnicity; it’s hard to find unless you’re white.
The problem with this type of subtle privilege, Chandler warns, is that if we don’t allow the gospel to purify our hearts, we’ll begin to judge harshly those who cannot get where we are. This is a terrible place to sit, Chandler warns.
However, he’s not saying being white is a bad thing. “We don’t need to feel bad about our experience in the predominant culture, we just need to be aware of it so it doesn’t shape how we interact with the world around us,” Chandler says.
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