Willie Dwayne Francois III

From “Silencing White Noise: Six Practices to Overcome Our Inaction on Race” by Willie Dwayne Francois III Colorblindness uses an idea of our biological human sameness to overlook cultural and experiential differences and negate economic and political opportunities that differ due to race. To be colorblind is to deny the structure of society. White noise […]

From “Silencing White Noise: Six Practices to Overcome Our Inaction on Race” by Willie Dwayne Francois III – Brazos Press Replacing white noise with the rhythms of reparative intercession is part of dismantling White supremacy. Each succeeding chapter of this book identifies a feature of white noise and highlights one of the rhythms of reparative

From “Silencing White Noise: Six Practices to Overcome Our Inaction on Race” by Willie Dwayne Francois III  Due to white noise, many of us undertake reconciliation without first interrogating the meaning, assumptions, histories, and privileges of Whiteness. Reconciliation does not cost the powerful and privileged anything that alters the ways they show up in the

From “Silencing White Noise: Six Practices to Overcome Our Inaction on Race” by Willie Dwayne Francois III – Brazos Press We must refuse the diversity facade in favor of power-sharing and repair first. “The Whiteness problem” necessitates more than appeals for unity and hopes for “not seeing color.” Racial repair is a process that accounts

Reparative intercession is not a call to racial reconciliation. James Cone, the progenitor of Black liberation theology, pierced the bubble of optimism by asking, “Reconciled to what?” We must repair before we can reconcile. Without repairing the harm – psychological and physical – racial reconciliation rings hollow. The desire for universal brotherhood and sisterhood that

In fall of 2015 I was part of a panel forum exploring the history and future of progressive faith communities at the intersections of gender, mass incarceration, and sexuality. During the question-and-answer time, a White attendee approached the microphone: “Rev. Francois, thank you for your talk. You rightly identified the insanity of racism in our

Reparative intercession reverberates as a counternarrative to the white noise that identifies the present world with ideas of societal fairness, racial progress, meritocracy, and colorblindness. Anti-racist educator Derald Wing Sue writes, “The counter-narratives of race talk are extremely threatening to Whites and to our society because they may unmask the secrets of power and privilege,

The one who practices racial truth-telling affects others by sharing “as directly as possible what he actually believes.” Racial truth-telling assumes the speaking person owns their words and intends for those words to re-create the worlds we inhabit. Without a readiness to own the consequences of our words, truth-telling bounces across space and time absent

The shelf life of racism depends on whether we can be honest about it. Many Americans of faith, specifically white Christians, reject their complicity in racism and claim to be nonracists. However, nonracist is not a real ethical orientation. We are either racist or anti-racist; there is no neutral, passive third way. Ibram X. Kendi

Silence serves White privilege and threatens non-White survival. I will later argue that White privilege benefits White people. But the idea of going through the day with little to no consideration of one’s skin color remains foreign to non-White people. Regarding one’s self outside racial identifiers is a privilege the majority of White people enjoy.