So far in 2024 I have deliberately tried to be conscious of what I am reading, the effect it is having on me, and what difference this might make to the people around me.
I have read books on race in the UK by Remi Eddo-Lodge and Afua Hirsch, deliberately to start to understand the experiences that might be faced by the children we are caring for. Both books raise possible issues of white carers raising black or mixed race children and I want to be attentive to what they are saying. These books were recommended by a friend, who is black, and who works to see equality of treatment and achievement by black people in the highest levels of business, law, and government.
I have also read The Fraud by Zadie Smith, which has, as I found, a strong storyline about race and slavery. A sizeable section of the book is a first person account of the experiences of slaves in Jamaica, which I found eye-opening and harrowing. When I asked my friend whether she had read it she said that she was listening to it as an audio book, but that she had had to stop (or at least pause) that section because it affected her so much.
I have been discussing race and theology with another friend. He had felt really emotional listening to The Christian Imagination – Theology and the Origins of Race by Willie James Jennings and did not get through the whole book. This set me thinking about what factors might draw one into a text, causing emotional engagement and response.
It seems obvious to me that a black person reading such a text will have a different response from a white person. When I read these passages I can see the horrors of slavery, for example, and feel a sense of the injustice of the situations. I can ask myself how did a society operating in that way ever come about and even determine to do my part to ensure that it does not again.
However, if I think of myself, as a white person, transported to that time and place, I do not automatically imagine myself as someone who would have been enslaved and subject to the horrors of slavery. I do not read accounts of racism and automatically imagine myself being on the receiving end.
I wonder whether another factor in the engagement with the text is the question of reading or listening. When reading a physical (or electronic) book, it is possible to skip or skim passages that I might find challenging or think I already know, either consciously or sub-consciously. However, when listening, this is much harder. Although there may be other distractions, every word of the text is read and, if listening on headphones, seemingly directly beamed into my head, making skimming much harder. I am faced with the reality of the text at the speed of the recorded voice, not at my own choice.
My reading this year has also included following The Bible in One Year according to the pattern followed by Nicky and Pippa Gumbel’s Bible app. On some days I read the text for the day, and on others I listen to the extracts from the David Suchet recording provided in the app. The other day I was listening, and the Old Testament passage included Exodus 21.1-11.
I had no choice but to listen to these words:
“When you buy a Hebrew slave…”; if a slave master gives a slave a wife “the wife and her children shall be her master’s”; “When a man sells his daughter as a slave…”.
I must have read this passage before, but listening to them (in the context of my reading for the year) made much more of an impact. If that was the case for me, I wondered, how do black people respond when reading this passage?
In the app, Nicky Gumbel explains that these laws were, in the context of the laws at the time, a significant improvement and a move toward fair treatment of people. I have no reason to doubt that this is true, but it seems insufficient comment on this passage. I wonder what impact this passage has on a black reader; does the sort of explanation that Gumbel provides seem sufficient? I think I need to find out.
More broadly, it prompted me to think about the extent to which the text of the Bible is addressed to those in positions of power in society. Thinking about what I have read recently in Exodus, much of it seems to be addressed to those who own the slaves, those who organise the work force, and the men who give and take in marriage. Even as I write this, I can think of contrasting sections in the New Testament where Jesus and Paul address other groups of people. But that’s a different subject, and maybe another blog.
Meanwhile, I mean to keep reading and listening, being attentive to voices and experiences other than my own. Tomorrow, we start a Lent course drawing on black spirituality with the theme ‘Watch and Pray’ using the book Tarry Awhile.