Message from our Director of Inclusion and Advocacy
The mass murder and carnage in Buffalo on Saturday is a tragic reminder that white supremacy and racial violence continue to kill. It has become too common. Just one day later our national attention turned to a deadly shooting at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in California.
As United Methodists, we cannot send our thoughts and prayers without moving our hands and feet. We must search within ourselves to see where implicit and explicit bias is present and deal with it. Among the hardest places to address racism is within ourselves. This most recent shooting didn’t take shape in a moment. It is rooted in something that had been taught. It is still true that you have to be carefully taught to hate.
So along with thoughts and prayers, here are 2 things I recommend:
- Signup for an Implicit Bias Course. $20 is not too costly a price to open our eyes to the biases we hold. https://gcorr.teachable.com/p/
implicitbias - Talk to your pastor, Sunday school class, small group, or other folks about what your church can do in the local community to share love and acceptance, and to also address historical racism. This one is free. It will only cost you a little courage.
Brian Tillman
Brian.tillman@ngumc.net