Friendship in Black and White, episode 2
www.CrossCulturalVoices.org
Monique Duson: What helped me get to the level of not seeing you as a racist? What I really think it was, was beginning to really read the scripture in context. Reading through the entire book of Amos, reading through the entire book of Micah, looking at these books that really talk about justice, and understanding who was being spoken to, what was the context, in which these verses are taken.
And that I think began to shift my mind from this black/white dynamic to a biblical Christ-centered or non-biblical non-Christ-centered worldview. And then we were able to have different conversations.
John Yoder: Hi everybody. John Yoder here, your host for Cross-Cultural Voices. Welcome back for part two of our conversation with Monique Duson and Krista Bontrager. It's called Friendship and Black and White. These two ladies share how they pushed through some intense disagreements to build a robust friendship. And today they share how their conversations became quite heated when they began discussing practical things like parenting, racism and politics.
Please remember that you can catch every episode. You can catch complete transcripts, and you can catch a link to our weekly blog summary on our website, www.CrossCulturalVoices.org.
Also remember that parallel to this Tuesday podcast series, we also are running a Thursday series called Christian Compassion Without Culture Wars. You'll hear the voices of Monique and Krista. You'll also be hearing from Mexican American, Chinese American, Indian American, African American ministry leaders about how we can build robust cross-cultural friendships without endless arguing and bickering over culture wars.
And now let's listen in to part two of Monique and Krista's Story.
Krista Bontrager: In coming to live with us, what were some of the things early on that you realized, “Oh, wow, this is a big cultural difference between us that I never really thought about, or this is different than what I thought about white people?”
Monique Duson: That's a good question.
Krista Bontrager: I know one of the things you've told me is differences in parenting styles.
Monique Duson: Something that I went into your home with, thinking was going to be one way and it actually was different? No, when I went in, I thought the parenting was going to be this way. And it was that way. Just the difference in parenting culture. In black culture, I'm not allowed to talk back to my mother. When my mother says, if she calls my name, if I were to say “What?” to her, I would be slapped.
I'm a full-grown human. At my big age, I will not say “What?” to my mother when she calls my name. I will not interrupt her conversation. If she's having a conversation with her adult friend, whether I have an answer or a thought or not, if I value my life, I will not interject into that conversation.
There were just ways in which I think I had been raised and that were values in black culture. I don't want to say all white people, because I don't want to create this monolith, but that I immediately thought and had grown up with understanding, especially from my mom, because my mom would say clearly, “Only white kids do that”. But I'm not trying to say that's all white people…
Krista Bontrager: There are certain stereotypes in the black community about white parenting. And so you came into our home with that with those stereotypes in your mind. And then you felt like they were confirmed.
Monique Duson: Yes. I remember the time when your youngest daughter interjected into our conversation. And I quickly turned to her and I said, “This is not your conversation. It has nothing to do with you.” And then you invited her into the conversation. I was so confused. I was like, “Why are we inviting this child into our conversation? It's nothing to do with her.” But then she added what she added. And now I am more personally open (not a lot of openness) about hearing the thought or opinion of a child who may not be in the conversation at all.
Krista Bontrager: She was 15.
Monique Duson: She was 15. Yes, that is a child. That's a whole nother’ thing. If you are not over 21, paying bills and contributing to the family. And even if you are in some homes, you are still a child, and you must remain in a child's place.
Krista Bontrager: And in black cultures, I've learned that there's a much stronger ethos about limitations on requests that come from children than there is the stereotypically in white families. There’s a strong ethos on, you don't pay bills so you don't get an opinion. That's a strong ethos in the black culture.
Monique Duson: Don't slam my door. You didn't pay for that door. I'll remove the door. And my mother did. I remember growing up and my brother slammed the door and my mother took it off the hinges. He had a sheet.
Krista Bontrager: Okay. And in this stereotype, I think in many white families is that we're a lot more gentle with our children. We do invite them in, and we do allow them to interrupt us. These are things that I learned just cross-culturally with you living with us that I was like, “Oh, this is different. Not everybody relates to their kids in the same way.”
And there were cultural differences. I think that's just a microcosm of other conflicts that we had in talking about race and justice issues. There were wide differences between us, even though we were both Christians, and we both grew up in Southern California. So we had some things in common, some basic things, and in my mind, we were practically twins. But in Monique's mind, she's “No, we come from different cultures. We relate to the world differently. We think differently”.
Monique Duson: So then let me ask you this. What was your fear? Or what was it about me that you were like, “Oh, I don't know about this. Or, I bet this is what it's like. I bet she does this because she's black.”
Krista Bontrager: I don't know if I had any thoughts about you being black per se.
Monique Duson: Tell the truth and shame the devil, girl. Come on. What was it?
Krista Bontrager: No, I really didn’t! I thought I took great delight in learning and asking you questions and trying to understand the world from your point of view. I think that the assumptions that I did have and the fears that I did have was more about your viewpoints than it was about your ethnicity or your culture. It was more about you being a progressive and a Democrat.
And I felt like at some point we're going to be on a trajectory here of having some harder conversations potentially about particular social issues like abortion and the LGBT conversation. And I did have some concerns of how you might inadvertently impact my children on those progressive ideas. That was a bigger concern for me than your race or your background or your culture.
Monique Duson: You did have a lot of questions. I think your concern was fair about, what kind of influence would you have over my kids? Your oldest daughter was away at college, so I didn't really see her that much, but I did have a lot of time with your younger daughter. I remember though, one of your main concerns. Why do you have so much lotion?
Krista Bontrager: Oh, yeah. I didn't understand because I get ashy. You had different skin needs.
Monique Duson: Yes. Why do you have so many hair products? Yes, it's different.
Okay. We've talked about some of our conflicts, things of a political nature, or even the way we interpreted scripture, doing things of eisegesis versus exegesis, like understanding what the text is saying based on a authorial intent. What did the writer actually mean during that time? How should I understand the author's intent? and how a reader during that time would have read this text? That's exegesis. Eisegesis is when I introduce myself into the text, and I make it mean something to me that it would have never meant during that time. And so we had disagreements about that.
Krista Bontrager: You had a lot of views in the beginning about what you thought the Bible taught. And that you thought Jesus was a social worker. You thought that every social program could fly under the parable of the Good Samaritan and feeding the 5,000, that was your scriptural basis for public welfare.
You did have some Bible verses, but I think that some of my challenging to you--I remember we were once on a hike and you said, “You're against helping the poor.” And I said, “No, I'm for helping the poor. I think you and I just differ on how to help the poor. What's the best way to help the poor”? And you're interpreting my different approach as being heartless or uncompassionate. I think we have to have a conversation, though, and what does the Bible really teach about the best way to help the poor?
Monique Duson: And I saw that largely because you were white and Republican. Or at least I thought that at that time. We were having that conversation. I actually didn't know what political party affiliation you belonged to.
Krista Bontrager: Because I didn't tell you!
Monique Duson: And I remember that conversation too.
Krista Bontrager: Really frustrated you.
Monique Duson: But my assumption was she's white and we only have really two parties in America. The black people belong to the Democrats and white people belong to the Republicans. There we are.
Krista Bontrager: You wanted to make a lot of things about politics. Where I was like, “I don't want to make it about politics. I want to make it about what does the Bible teach.” And front load the biblical teaching first and politics for me was downstream of that.
And so you kind of saw it differently. You had a stereotype about me is because I'm white and middle to upper middle class that I must believe certain things. And so it was tricky.
Monique Duson: Would you ever say that you saw some of the views that I held as me holding those views because I'm black? I think that you did, maybe not all of them.
Krista Bontrager: A few. Yeah, I think more than just you being black, I thought you were just very confused. And no one had ever really talked to you about what the Bible teaches or challenged you. You just had some broad thoughts about the Bible.
Monique Duson: Oh, they were broad. Okay, so here we are. I have these broad thoughts. I feel like you have thought a lot about a lot of things. And I thought a lot about a lot of things, too. I just think that we didn't think about the same things.
Krista Bontrager: I think that's probably true.
Monique Duson: We did not think about the same things. For you, what was it that kept you in it? Because it definitely was more than the fact that I lived in your home, because you could have put me out.
Krista Bontrager: What kept us in the friendship?
Monique Duson: In spite of all the conflicts. Yes. For you, anyway, what was it that kept you in it?
Krista Bontrager: I think I just made up my mind that you were my sister in the Lord. There were so many things about our friendship that I really loved and appreciated.
I love laughing with you. I loved our sense of humor together. I loved how you were not afraid to talk about big ideas. And I love that. I've always loved that about people is when people are willing to have an opinion and talk about big ideas and I thought that's fun and engaging.
I wanted to hang on to the best parts of our friendship. But it was hard when there was an undertone to some of our conversations when it came to race. You had a belief about me as a white person that I was racist. It was an operating assumption that you had about me. And I found that very confusing. Because in my mind, I have you as African-American living in my house. I'm sharing my kids with you, my family with you, my food with you. She taught my daughter how to cook. But she was coming to our family birthdays and holidays. So I thought, How could I possibly be a racist and when I'm doing all of this?
Monique Duson: I think that's a great question. Many people don't understand is that there's two operating definitions, and now definitely even more than two operating definitions of racism. You can have people who are these ardent racists who will call me the N-word or out of my name and things like that.
But then you can have people much like yourself and how I saw you as the nice racist, the racist who will allow me to stay in their home and who will make sure that I have a bed to sleep in and things like that if I needed it, but yet still participate in systems and structures and benefit from those things even without their knowing. Or who holds certain white ideas.
And when I say white or whiteness, what I'm referring to is more of that Western European way of thinking, meritocracy, making sure that you're on time, this idea of marriage and family diligence, hard work, like all of these things. And a lot of the Christian ideals as well.
Because I used to uphold the idea of a woman's right to choose, bringing something like that into it. I remember our conversation of, Why do you think you get to own my body? Or that someone else should be able to tell me what I do with my body. This idea of body autonomy. In the Christian dynamic and in the scientific realm, we would say that's not your body and that we don't murder and things like that. But much of that is seen as a white way of thinking.
Krista Bontrager: And that was confusing for me. And I think that, if we get to what was the breakthrough? How did you start to change your mind about me as a white person automatically being racist? Walk people through some of those life events that happened. Because you and I were talking and living and I was fighting and I was trying to challenge some of your beliefs about what you thought were true about race and racism.
But outside of that, God was walking you through a process of undermining some of those beliefs.
Monique Duson: And I think God was walking us both through a process. What I don't want people to hear is that Monique changed her mind and Krista didn't. Krista helped bring the black girl all the way over to the white side. That's not anywhere near true.
What happened for me is that the Lord began working with me on a biblical worldview. What does it mean to have a biblical worldview? I just thought there was a black worldview and a white worldview. But in reality, there's a biblical worldview and a non-biblical worldview.
Krista Bontrager: I remember how hard it was for you to make just even that adjustment. That's so good.
Monique Duson: See, I'm trying!
Krista Bontrager: Yeah, because in the beginning you did see everything as either a black or white issue and I was trying to get you to see as a biblical or non-biblical issue. And that was really tough.
Monique Duson: But what happened was, I would say one of the most pivotal things that happened is that I had an intern who was going to a Christian university right down the street from our job. And this is before CFP was founded. I was working in social service. I had an intern and she came to work crying one morning.
And when I asked her what was going on at her Christian university, she said, “All of the black and brown students have basically hijacked the school, taken over, and told the white kids and white faculty that they can't speak in class That the white staff need to resign. The president actually did resign at the request of the students. This is now after George Floyd. And so she is telling me all that's happening.
And that was, I think, my first indication that there was something wrong. At this Christian school, where we as Christians believe that we're all created equal, there are a group of students who are now participating in a way that I would say is ungodly. But I couldn't really pinpoint why I felt it was ungodly. Like yeah, they're created equal, but there was something deeper.
And I remember coming home and telling you about it, and also talking to your younger daughter about it. If somebody tells you can't speak. You're a human. You don't take your orders from somebody else simply because they're a different skin color. And that was really the first thing that got me really thinking about how do we treat people and is there something more to the idea of worldviews than simply being black or white? And so there was that.
Then I went to a graduation. It was an all-black graduation at a prominent university down here. And the way the black kids spoke about (and this was secular), the way the black kids spoke about white people. And the harm that should be allowed to happen to white people, I, again, I came home and I was very bothered by this. And it made me think again, maybe there's something else happening behind the scenes.
Because my mom, as pro-black as she was, when I was growing up, would have never told me I should go out and initiate harm on someone else. I was always allowed to defend myself regardless of skin color. But it would be wrong of me to go out and initiate bodily harm on someone simply because of the color of their skin.
But your question was, what helped me get to the level of not seeing you as a racist? Those two things were fundamental. But then what I really think it was, was understand beginning to really read the scripture in context. Reading through the entire book of Amos, reading through the entire book of Micah, looking at these books that really talk about justice, and understanding who was being spoken to, what was the context, in which these verses are taken.
And that I think began to shift my mind from this black/white dynamic to a biblical Christ-centered or non-biblical non-Christ-centered worldview. And then we were able to have different conversations. So I think that's what initially started us off.
If I could speak for you, I would say that yours was more around understanding history, understanding the plight of the poor or the plight of, Blacks in America, since slavery. For me everything went back to slavery or to Jim Crow.
Krista Bontrager: I didn't know a lot about that. Yeah, and I remember saying to you one time in a moment of pure frustration, it's like, Why does every conversation with you always end up in a conversation about slavery? Like we're talking about hair and her challenges with her hair, yada, yada, yada, slavery.
And one time I made a comment that she was washing her hands very vigorously. I said, “I've never seen anybody wash their hands as vigorously as you do”. And then next thing we're talking about slavery. And it would just seem like every conversation led us to that issue.
Monique Duson: I'm also a germaphobe, so there's that.
Krista Bontrager: But you had a view of the world that was a big part of your identity, and that was something I had to learn to understand and wrestle through. For you, especially in the beginning, the past is the present, and the present is the past. It's all part of your story.
Monique Duson: The impact of the past is definitely felt in the present in many of the ways that we tell our stories, the ways that we look at systems or structures in America today. And so because of that, we want to make sure that we don't allow those stories to die because those stories then help us to understand even the reality of the present that we live in.
That does not necessarily mean that I believe that today.
Krista Bontrager: But in the beginning, that was a big part of your identity.
Monique Duson: Yeah.
John Yoder: Friends, when you listen to their story, doesn't it fill you with hope? Doesn't it give you the idea that people can work through their differences when they respect each other, value each other, listen to each other, and persevere.
Next time we will finish Monique and Krista's story. Remember that you can always catch our podcasts, our transcripts, and our blog on our website, www.CrossCulturalVoices.org. I'll see you next time.
