McIntosh Reaction

After reading this article I immediately thought of an experience I had this summer. It was the first real first hand experience I had with racial issues. I was an intern for Week of Compassion, a ministry program affiliated with the disciples of christ church. We lived in Texas and built a church for a small community that lost its church to the series of hurricanes in the past five years. Another intern was hired along with me. He was black and from Atlanta. The program was going to place him in a different state, doing a different type of servie work, but a black women on the board suggested that he be sent somewhere else, there is a stereotype about black boys from Atlanta, and they had no time to deal with him. Therefore, he came to live with us in Texas. He was the only person of his race on staff. Occasionally we had volunteers that were African American, he was mainly surrounded by white people and our boss was a stereotypical white alpha male with a bad temper. This was not a good mix because the other intern (Gabe) also fit a stereotype of black men growing up in the "hood". He wore huge clothes, shuffled around, was aggressive, cussed all the time, made lots of threats, and was essentially very lazy. He and my boss but heads all the time. Building a church from a concrete slab was a labor intensiving very time consuming job that required a work ethic Gabe did not seem to portray. My boss wanted to fire him in the middle of the summer, but there was a huge controversy over whether or not to fire him, because of his race. According to my boss, it would shed negative light on program to fire him. I never realized race had such an impact still today, especially in a church organization. I suppose I went off on a little bit of a tangent but McIntosh's article made me think of this instance right away. This summer I realized the privileges I have always taken for granted because of my race.