Month: February 2015

Last week’s STAR described recent mandates concerning the 1972 Federal law on gender equity known as “Title IX” to the problem of relationship violence on campuses.  Students at Houghton can celebrate that they live in an environment free of much of the outwardly destructive behavior that characterizes many schools.   What, then, does Title IX have to do with Houghton?   The goal of Title IX at Houghton is to promote the education of students, specifically as this relates to Houghton Goal #5:  “Ground students in a strong biblical worldview in the Wesleyan tradition that allows them to be deeply and thoughtfully Christian so as to transform culture through redeeming action.”    Much of the conversation I hear around campus falls short of the standard of being “deep” or “thoughtful” and much of our energy seems devoted to defending a particular stereotyped vision of gender roles rather than invested in “redeeming action”.   Houghton must do a better job of preparing its students to be leaders in the area of gender equity.

Former President Jimmy Carter’s A Call to Action:  Women, Religion, Violence, and Power states, “ . . . in my opinion, Jesus Christ was the greatest liberator of women in a society where they had been considered throughout biblical history to be inferior.”  If we are followers of Christ, we must be fearless in opening ourselves to the possibility that the privileges we enjoy hinder us from seeing the extent of the work yet to be done.   In calling us to be agents of redemption in the world, is Christ calling us to be “Human Rights’ Activists”?  If so, what does this look like?  Perhaps just as importantly, what are the distractions or petty disagreements that seem to draw us away from our calling?

My job as Title IX Coordinator is to encourage thoughtful consideration of questions such as, “In what ways are we influenced by the larger culture regarding gender in a way that is harmful to our understanding of what it means to be created in God’s image?   How do both women and men contribute to and sustain the difficulties we have in relating to one another in Christ-honoring ways?  How does language impact our views of women and men?  What implications are there for using the word ‘girls’ to describe females over 18 and using ‘men’ or ‘guys’ to describe males over 18?   Why don’t we have a universal policy of gender-friendly language for our course syllabi?”

If they are to follow Christ’s lead in gender justice, Houghton graduates must wrestle with questions, such as, Why does the self-confidence of girls decrease sharply just as they reach puberty?  Why is it okay to use disparaging comments when referring to girls and women (e.g. “You throw like a girl” – see SuperBowl 49 commercial)?  Why do women speak less in mixed groups, including during class discussions?  How much should it concern us that the phrase,” I totally raped you!”, is likely to refer to beating someone in a videogame?  Why is it that so many young women, including Christians, feel that they owe a man something if he compliments them and pays attention to them?  How can Christian women be empowered to have a voice and to assert themselves while nurturing the belief that Christians are to place service to others above self?   How does a culture of patriarchy within the church contribute to a climate of female restraint and male entitlement that hinders the full development of both men and women?    How do we respond to the complaint from a sister or brother that something we have said or done has negatively impacted her or him, regardless of any lack of intent to do harm?

Transformation needs to occur, but first we seek the truth with humility. Thankfully, Christ and scriptures such as Galatians 3:28, which states “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”  give us direction.   As Emma Brittain noted in, How Houghton Handles Racism,  “. . . if we are not sensitive to race, we can’t be intentional about combating racism.”    We must open ourselves up to conversations that are difficult, that make us uncomfortable, and on which we disagree. This is the best way to hold ourselves and one another accountable.   There is work to be done at Houghton.

Last weekend, I and a group of eleven other Houghton students attended the tenth annual Faith and International Development Conference at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve been thinking for the past month or so about what it means to be graduating with a degree in International Development. International Development is a relatively new area of study which means that there isn’t one established way to think about it or really any major areas of agreement at all. For every issue there are at least three sides, and the literature is filled with vehement arguments. Learning about development entails learning a lot of different ways of looking at the world and evaluating the arguments for each of them.

The framework used by a lot of Christian development practitioners is known as transformational development; it is the framework typically used by the speakers at FIDC Calvin. Transformational development, as defined by Bryant Myers in Walking with the Poor, looks at poverty as an economic, relational, and spiritual phenomenon, not only present in the lives of those who suffer from resource poverty but in the lives of those who are rich. And I think the transformational development framework should be used by any Christians who are interested in engaging in any way with the world, which should be all Christians.

Fundamentally, transformational development is concerned with seeing the world as it really is, not the way we want it to be. The opposite of transformational development is willful blindness to reality for your own benefit. President Mullen, in her chapel message at the beginning of the week, talked about how many of the problems in our world have been caused by the self-deception of those in power. At one point near the beginning of the talk, she said: “…Sooner or later, this pattern of not calling things what they really are stops being a matter of the mind… and starts being a matter of the heart.” Practitioners of transformational development are not simply witnesses to the process but are themselves transformed.

At the conference this past weekend, the theme was “Healthy Humility: Learning to Learn,” particularly from the people whose perspective we typically ignore. One of the best sessions was a devotional by Dr. Ravi Jayakaran, a member of the Lausanne Movement and pioneer of participatory development. His message was taken from the story of Simon the Pharisee and the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet. Jayakaran stressed the importance of being in a posture of orienting ourselves to the marginalized. The passage he referenced in Luke 7 reads that “Jesus looked at the woman and spoke to Simon”.

This is what we are all called to do as Christians. We are called to be a prophetic voice in society, aligning ourselves with the needs of the marginalized rather than the desires of the powerful. Liberation theology, born out of the experience of the Catholic Church in Latin America, has sometimes been controversial but it emphasizes something that Western Christianity is in danger of missing. One of the key elements in liberation theology is God’s preferential option for the poor—our God is a God who looks at the poor when speaking to the powerful.

I don’t mean to suggest in any way that the international development industry has always or even often aligned itself with the cause of the oppressed. That is unfortunately and sadly untrue—counterexamples are too numerous to number. USAID has a long history of granting aid for reasons of foreign policy that has been used by the elite members of developing societies for their own benefit.

I do think though that at its best a Christian theology of international development has the right view of the world. Listening to the speakers at the conference—Kurt Ver Beek from the Association for a More Just Society in Honduras; Pauline Muchina from the Future African Leaders Project; Scott Sabin from Plant With Purpose; Michael Woolcock from the World Bank—I was inspired by their clear passion for righting injustice whether through environmental interventions, the empowerment of women, or the promotion of a legal system that works for rather than against everyone.

As a graduating senior looking toward the rest of my life, I want to be one of the people that looks to the powerless rather than to the powerful. I want to give preference to the marginalized rather than deference to the celebrated. I want to see the world the way it really is.

“And when the saints go marching in / I want to be one of them”.

The Subtle Side of Racism

We live in a world today that doesn’t pay attention to anything mediocre. Miley Cyrus has to either come in like a wrecking ball wearing, well, nothing, or Beyoncé has to drop a self-titled album out of literally nowhere. And thanks to technology that rivals that of the Jetsons’, we have become subconsciously conditioned to ignore things that don’t immediately grab our attention.

Love it or hate it, it is the shock factor of Miley Cyrus that keeps her famous. By taking time out of our day, we, the consumers, allow for extremes that keep Miley Cyrus twerking, while celebrities like Hilary Duff (who also started as a child star) look on in the post-Lizzie McGuire life, largely unnoticed. And unfortunately for us, this culture manifests itself in other aspects of life outside of Hollywood and the gossip-starved media; it manifests itself in conversations that really matter to human co-existence, like racism.

I like to think that at Houghton, racism is a common enemy; something we can all rally against, kind of like seeing “ice pellets” on the weather forecast and still not getting classes cancelled (unless you aren’t bothered by that, in which case… who even are you?). And for the most part, I think most of the Houghton population could adamantly deny being racist—at least, not intentionally.

This is where the problem lies.

The media does not talk about a celebrity’s everyday life if it does not draw out extremes and intense emotions. Likewise, our community does not talk about the more subtle side of racism, the more nuanced side of it, if you will, because of the lack of internet and emotional outcry against it. But there is actually a word for this kind of racism: it is called micro-aggression.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term micro-aggression, it is defined as any form of unintended discrimination against minority groups—in this case, ethnic minority groups such as Asians. Whether that’s asking if I “speak Asian” or “am really, really good at math,” these sometimes humorous and even well-intended questions can act as a form of micro-aggression. Maybe this was some of you yesterday, and maybe some of you have never even thought about it. And that’s understandable, though perhaps not excusable, because we as a community have failed to talk about the everyday subtleties that micro-aggression manifests itself in. While we are quick to address more evident issues of racism, for which I commend Houghton, I think it would serve us well to think about the everyday realities of attending a majority-white school as an Asian. What does it feel like to be the only non-white student in your class? What about people assuming you know a certain Chinese student because, well, she’s Asian? Or what about even hearing compliments from people who tell you your “English is very, very good”?

This is not to say that everyone at Houghton has been either a perpetrator or a victim of micro-aggression. And this is most certainly not to say that race should be a taboo subject because of the potential awkward moments it could create. Rather, what I am trying to convey is that in order for us to fully understand the presence of micro-aggression that exists even on this campus, there must first and foremost be a sense of awareness and humility. There needs to be a realization that good intentions are simply not enough—it’s time to ask ourselves what kinds of effects our words may have on others, a continual process of self-reflection. And from there, engage in open dialogue with those who may be otherwise prey to acts of nuanced racism, to micro-aggression.

Just to be clear, I am not the only Asian voice on campus, nor am I even a representation of the majority Asian perspective and experience at Houghton. But if this article has done nothing else, let it at least be a tool from which you can start helpful and tactful dialogues with other Asian students.