Dear Mike,

You are around 12 in this photo. The good news is that you are going to care deeply about injustices resulting from the dehumanizing of people who are not considered white. The bad news is that it is going to take another 46 years for you to care enough to take action. In the meantime, you are going to live your life surrounded by white people with seemingly no need for friends of color.

The Room

The Room in this metaphor is our country ; The United States of America.

The Elephant

The Elephant in this metaphor is the reality that white men have done some very disturbing things in the name of Manifest Destiny to create what we now enjoy as America. If it was just a matter to survival of the fittest, I would say tough – there are always losers.

The problem for you will be this – you will become a Follower of Jesus Christ some time during your junior year of high school. At that point, you don’t get to shrug this off as “dog eat dog” rules… You won’t have that luxury. Everything “should” be run through a Biblical filter as a Believer.

The other problem? You will be missing a LOT of history and the history you have learned has been whitewashed and spun like well-oiled political campaign rhetoric.

Missing History

Everything for me hinges on the phrase Imago Dei – all people have been created in the image of God. This is a crucial cross-roads because race was created to elevate one group of people while dehumanizing most of the others.