Black History Month & The Power of Story with Pastor James A. White

Dan: Racheal, we have a dear friend joining us, a friend who is very dear to my heart over many years. And so James White, welcome to our conversation.

James: Yes, it is good to be here. And I would say the feeling is definitely, we’ve had this incredible, I think wonderful reciprocal relationship. So it’s a whole lot more than just mutual. I think there’s been a wonderful connection that I’ve had with you and with you too, Racheal . So very, very good to be here with you.

Rachael: Yes, always good to have you back. I just want to say because we’re very privileged that you keep coming back to join us. So thank you.

Dan: Thank the living God, so always. You are one of the people that I can pin you down to positions and to jobs. And I mean, introducing you is actually one of the difficulties of doing this show in that you have a wide variety of both passions and interests from martial arts to well to engaging the human heart in the context of systems growing not only the system, but the people in it to come to love. We live in a world in which your labor to help nonprofits believing more secular organizations engage the story of how belonging, how the story of the past plays out in the present. And it’s, you’ve had some very complex and interesting days. Anything else that you would add, Racheal, or you want to talk about his pastoral presence?

Rachael: Well, I was just thinking a great pastoral presence, whether that’s playing out in non-faith oriented context or not. And I for one, have been a beneficiary of that in brief moments. And so yes, just deeply grateful for your wisdom and your generosity to bring that wisdom here with us.

Dan: Before we jump in, because we’re going to deal with everything from what I’m experiencing as something of the erasure of Black History Month, we’re going to jump into a lot of questions that I want to address, but this is really, we can cut it out if it’s going to be problematic. But recently there was, and I know you love basketball. True?

James: Yes.

Dan: Yeah. And recently, two competitors within your state were in a brawl that ended at the last millisecond, Duke and the University of North Carolina. I’m just curious whether you felt grief? Relief? Are you dispassionate? Do you have a team?

James: Well, one, my incredible daughter, Alexis, she graduated from University of North Carolina. It is amazing how this rivalry is such a spectacle. It’s a spectacle. It’s almost like the Dallas Cowboys and the Commanders. It doesn’t even matter if you win the NCAA championship, as long as you beat Duke or Carolina. That’s the rivalry and it’s intense, and it’s one of those cultural phenomenas because you literally will have family members and friends that can’t talk to each other based on the outcome of the game. It’s just fascinating. I love the cultural dynamic and it’s just an incredible game as well too. There’s something psychologically, I mean teams, both of them will beat each other even if they’ve had a losing record in the season, they just show up differently for one another. And I don’t know if it’s proximity or what, but it’s a real interesting reality of the power of the mind and how that works in athletic performance, that something happens internally when you have an opposing person. So it’s interesting when we think of story, that there’s a story that has become, I think, bigger than just the sport or the game.

Dn: You are a brilliant, stunningly articulate and compelling presence, and I love how you evaded the question.

James: Carolina. For sure. You were happy. Yeah, I was happy. I was happy with Carolina. I was happy with Carolina.

Dan: Good.

James: However, I got to say this, I appreciate Duke, especially in light of our conversation because there’s some scholars and some work that’s been done at Duke because it’s a private institution. When others have began to shy away from this conversation, I’ve appreciated how Duke has continued to lean into this conversation.

Dan: And essentially, we’re not talking about an institution, we’re talking about a rivalry that allows us to have language of enmity and cruelty and desire for vanquishing. So beyond that, we can leave that, Racheal, I wish people could see your face. Are you okay with me so far, Rachael? I mean, look, if there’s any human being on the earth that bears the effects of rivalry in the sports realm, it would be you.

Rachael: I know deeply, I am an Oklahoma State fan. We no longer have our rivalry because the University of Oklahoma abandoned the rivalry. So we will never know. My children won’t grow up knowing what it is to be losing for 20 years, have losing seasons for 20 years, but destroy your opponent’s chances at a championship, and that’s what you live for. So yes, I do understand that cultural, psychological phenomenon, and I’m also deeply grateful for those willing to take risks in our current moment when many have capitulated to the threat. So I can hold both conversations that are happening.

Dan: Well, let me make a transition, but not one without enmity, and in one sense, a level of heartache. February 10th this year is the 50th anniversary of President Ford’s making Black History month, but it’s also the hundredth year celebration of Black history being from Carter Woodson, creating a context to be able to honor both Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. So we’ve been in a hundred years of, shall we say, returning to the place of African-American Black presence and the history of the goodness and glory that’s been brought. But what we’re experiencing, and again, I want your input at a moment, the current administration is not denying the place of Black history, but amalgamating Black history into American history. So that there is nothing distinct per se about Black history. It’s just the presence of good that has come from Americans irrespective of color of skin. And in one sense, it’s the old, shall we say, saw of colorblind society. So eventually, what I want at least to invite you to engage is are you seeing erasure? And in that this notion of what happens when a person or a culture attempts to become “colorblind” in our world. But James, as I invite you, you always go where you want to go, and I love that. So we’re given this beginning other than Duke, UNC, where would you like to go?

James: Well, then you always begin with essay and not multiple choice. So this is where it can be difficult sometimes, but I am going to start at one place. And as you think about this, this is where G.K. Chesterton comes to mind. G.K. Chesterton in one of his books, Chesterton said it this way. He says, I’ve always felt life as a story. And if there is a story, there’s a storyteller, and I think it’s his book, Orthodoxy. And so if life is a story, which I believe it is, and I’m talking to again two people who this is the world you live in, and this has been your contribution, I think, in a variety of ways to believers, to the body of Christ. But then the question becomes who’s the storyteller? And part of what we are experiencing is someone trying to become the storyteller, which is really why Carter G. Woodson even came up and designed this whole idea of first Negro History Week, which then evolved into Black History Month because the problem was is that you had a colonizing world and a colonizing country and influence that in America, you had a storyteller that wasn’t telling the complete story. And part of what Woodson was doing in his efforts is saying, no, there is so much more to the story. There is a scholarly reality that is not just narrative that was handed by a storyteller who had a whole reason and motive for telling the story a particular way in the first place. And so the challenge too is because we’re in a time where even as we had this conversation, this is where story, where history becomes important, and this is where Carter G. Woodson’s work was so important because part of what happened is even in the very beginning, and Carter G. Woodson really began to point to this, that the story was often told incompletely from a point of trauma as if the existence of a Black person, an African-American began with slavery, which is part of the challenge that Carter G. Woodson did in naming, again, even going back to African histories and even the distorted myths that we had of Africa, by the way, which everyone had these distorted myths of Africa. And this is where again, for many of your audience who are Christ followers, who are Christians, that even the whole mission movement, the whole mission movement had a distorted point of view of Africa. You had missionaries that would come back and tell stories as if somehow Africa is this blank slate. And that’s what really justified not just America, but other colonizers coming in and literally erasing the story of Africa. It’s important that Carter G. Woodson and his work began even helping us understand slavery didn’t somehow give those who came from Africa, this ability to read, to have intellect that no… part of what you see with Woodson begins to write, which is important in this month, is that we didn’t begin 1619, we simply begin to refine and innovate in the midst of 1619. And so many of the agricultural strategies and things that we had, they came directly from Africa. It wasn’t as if White slaveholders gave us all these insights as to how to farm land, how to grow cotton, how to grow rice, et cetera, et cetera. So even as you have this conversation of Black history, you have to go back and look at how there’s a storyteller that told the wrong story in the first place.

Dan: I don’t have any struggle with the word wrong. It is wrong, but it’s very intended. It is a story told with a purpose.

James: So let’s use another word, evil.

Dan: Yes, that’s another word.

James: Well, and again, let’s use evil because that’s what the Bible would use. And I’m not just saying this because I’m a pastor, I’m saying this even as I read the scripture story. Again, Joseph said in one of my favorite verses in Genesis 50:20, what you meant for evil. It’s always fascinating to me, even when we want erase and stop telling stories, this is where, man, I’m concerned when Christians want to do that, even in the erasure of difference, equity, inclusion, Christians should have been the one to say, no, we got to deal with those things that tell the truth. And the truth of the matter is the origin of let’s say our immigration and forced immigration of those who were from African descent was evil here in America. And one of the other myths is there were free Africans that were here in America before 1619. And this is where even when you think about Negro History Month, now, unfortunately I can say names of scholars, but our brains now will not even pay attention to them. But it’s true that what even caused there to be a Black History Month was because of the White story that was told. It was in the 1600’s and this is where I’m just going to give some, around, 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion, which is really important because before that, Europeans, you had the aristocracy and you had the lower class, you had the elites, and you had the lower class. And in that lower class you had Africans, you had Indigenous people, and you had White settlers who were poor. And part of what happened is, again, the colonies. And in Virginia, they were afraid because Bacon brought about unity among, again, poor Whites, slaves, and even some Indigenous people against the authority of the king. And so part of how to deal with it is they say, we got to do something about this. And so what they do, yes, they use military force, but they also use ideas. And it’s around 1600, in the 1600’s, after Bacon’s Rebellion, you now can look at the Virginia House of Burgess and other places where you can find the documentation where we come up with this class of people called White. And so you’ve literally defined now this whole class of people called White. Well before that you were European before that. And what would happen is you are now not changing things necessarily economically, but now you are giving people who are disadvantaged and poor. You’re giving them a psychological advantage. And so even though there may not have been an economic advantage, now you’ve got a psychological advantage because White is human, White is superior, and those who come from African origin, we make up myths. We make up stories, and this is going to be our chosen body since we have in Portuguese the slave trade going on before America and other places. So we’re going to take advantage of that and we’re now going to create this narrative of difference to where now this idea of White now becomes the psychological power that you have, not economic power necessarily, but psychological power. And that continued for hundreds and hundreds of years. And you know what? It still continue today. So hence when you come to this country, if you come as an immigrant, I’m not going to identify as Irish because when you’re Irish, there was also a narrative, this story that happened with the Irish when they came here, but man, if you can be White, you now can move to that other status of psychological power. Italian, absolutely Italian has a horrific immigration story, but we get a chance to move to psychological power as White. So all of that comes systemically to literally create a need for a narrative, a story, a history that hasn’t been told. And so Carter G. Woodson began making sure that that history will be told. It’s what I call an act of subtle and not so subtle resistance.

Dan: Again, it’s both brilliant. And again, back to the word evil, the idea that there would’ve been unity among certain groups because of an experience of being impoverished in the face of people with great power and great privilege and great money, but a framework that has worked since the name Diabolos, where would get the word devil, Diabolos, meaning the scatterer, the divider. So you come to creating the category White in order to divide, Diablos, you divide and conquer and you create a linkage between, in one sense the elite White, but also the poor White in a standard structure that’s able to resist the union that might come to disrupt that particular empire. Again, I don’t know how to use another word for it’s brilliant, but it’s also evil brilliant.

James: And it influences every aspect of our life. I mean, we can go back and we could do a whole time around medicine, how medicine was influenced by this false category of Whiteness. One of the current things that just comes top of mind is Serena Williams when she was having her baby, didn’t receive the prenatal care and didn’t receive some of the other things that she should receive because of the myth of being able to endure pain. Now, some suggest that maybe it was just because she was an athlete. No, there are other stories around that. So this whole… has shaped every aspect of our lives and continues to shape it today. I mean, because again, think about this, what do we see today around immigration? Once again, a false narrative is being created and it’s so similar. This is where Black history becomes important because it’s so similar to what happened after reconstruction that now to really deconstruct reconstruction after slavery, you create a narrative of the dangerous Black male. You create a narrative once again of the slave as like an animal. And it is insidious that there’s really nothing new of once again, being the architect of a story to literally dehumanize a group of people. And could it be just as in Bacon’s Rebellion, I’m not trying to, I don’t want to make too much of a stretch here, but it’s just fascinating. I’m curious, and just as in Bacon’s Rebellion, you were afraid of unity. Could it be that some of this happened because we were afraid of the browning of America? Could it be that in a time period when America now is becoming once again a place where there’s a threatening many times of numbers even, it’s always sad to me because just because there’s large numbers don’t mean there’s going to be an exchange of power, but there’s this threat of…. South Africa lets us know that… that there’s this threat of the browning of America. Could that be why once again, we’ve got to come up with something to divide and to create once again in a diabolical way, this sense of let’s just divide and really bring into one group having power out of a sense of fear. I mean, when you pay attention to their historical narrative, you now begin to look at things through a different lens.

Rachael: Yeah, I’m just feeling, I’m actually just deep grief, just even thinking about my Italian ancestors and the grasping of power that had to come at the expense of a lot of loss of culture and also at the expense of positioning themselves as above other people, as being people who knew what that was like coming from the context they were coming from. And I was thinking about you because I know you’ve spent a lot of time in the Twin Cities, and we can do it, this what we will, but I’m just thinking about what we’re also seeing with people pushing against that kind of diabolical division that is so fear-based, so hate based to say, no, we are going to protect our neighbors. We’re going to lean into mutual care. We’re going, and I know Minneapolis, St. Paul, the Twin Cities have held a fair amount of trauma where with George Floyd and many Black folks who have been shot by the police in Minneapolis, Philando Castile and different people. So it’s a city that’s had a long history of learning how to take care of each other and come together. But for me, when I, because I’ve been seeing this meme like enslavement is not Black history, it’s White history, like how Black people innovated and chose to survive and thrive in the midst of that is Black history. But to me, when I have had the opportunity to be invited into deconstruction of a lot of the myths, I actually, you or someone in a training we were doing, I was in my feelings and said something like, I just need to know the resurrection is true. And you graciously, but also unapologetically just kind of said to me, I know the resurrection is true because I am here. And you were speaking to the fact that it is a miracle in many ways that you are here. And so when I can in seasons right now that bring a lot of despair and when I’m having to reckon with in my body something I’ve intellectually known, but a deeper threat of what happens when you give up proximity to Whiteness, when I can look at Black history, I actually gain great hope and strength and courage. And I think, like you said, this is not a new story. And many people have been saying that for a long time, that doesn’t have to be this way. And so that’s just a lot of rambling, not sure it’s helpful any way, it’s just where my body and brain are as I’m hearing you talk, and even learning new things too about Black history and how it came to be and why storytelling and who gets to tell the story is so important and powerful. It has huge implications. So there’s also a lot at stake.

James: Very much so, and I think right now what we’re seeing in Minneapolis is we’re seeing that there was a need to develop systems and structures when Philando Castile was murdered, when there was a number of other murders that have taken place. And yet Minnesota is plagued with this Minnesota nice. And part of what you see happening now is a deconstruction of Minnesota nice, which is true of many Midwestern states. This is where it exposes the American narrative that all the problems were in the South, which the real true story is everybody was complicit to the problems in the South because the North’s industries and everything benefited from the South. Cotton was provided for all of America. Minnesota used to be the place where slaveholders would come and vacation with their slaves. And Dred Scott in the Dred Scott Supreme Court case, Dred Scott even would go to Minnesota with his master. And that was in the Supreme Court case because that was one of the ways he was trying to prove that he was free. So all of this sort of exposes that none of us are  , and when we say none of us are innocent, this is what we’ve got to also be very careful because it is, again, one would want you to believe that it is just all White people who are evil, and you’ve got all these other racial groups who they’re the innocent victims. I’m no one’s victim because trust me, that there’s a whole group of people whose melanin was not light that also benefited from the power structures that have existed, that now we see the oppression that has come about. And so when you look at it only individually, you miss that there’s some systems that we probably should have paid attention to that are not guarded simply because Democrats or liberals are in office.

Rachael: That’s right.

James: And that are not guarded simply because you now have Republicans coming in through political answers. Now we’re getting a chance to see communities and economic realities exposed. And so there’s some people who benefited from some of the economic realities that existed that really are at the root of some of this. And now we are awakened because we’re not safe, period, which no one has ever been safe. When you don’t deal with injustice, when you don’t deal with humans being able to be human, you weaken the ecosystem for everyone. Sometimes we think we can build a system to just protect ourselves, but when you think systemically, any kind of poverty in your city, any kind of not paying attention to the lives of everyone, you’re going to construct a system sooner or later that will crumble. And if you look at your, so Minneapolis is going through this incredible fear right now and trying to build a system and trying to build a system to protect the citizens, but we just begin to see that man, we have built cities around myths and ideas that really don’t have the strength to protect us at all.

Dan: So let me take us back to that question of erasure, but also amalgamation. We want, at least in the current administration, a kind of colorblind society that does not see difference, therefore doesn’t see how the story evolves in a form of not just inequity but cruelty because all because all division ultimately requires dehumanization, you cannot divide yourself from another without some degree, not just of superiority, which I couldn’t agree is always there. But in the superiority, it’s the judgment of those who are not like me. And that judgment is always built on contempt, always built on degradation, and ultimately a way of dehumanizing. So when you begin to ponder this as to being both a Black man, Black intellectual, someone who has worked well within wide range of systems, how is this demand for amalgamation meant to be disrupted?

James: Well, first of all, you have to, and this is what hit me, and this is the beauty. I have loved my work experience. I’ve spent 21, I spent 19 years in one organization that was a faith-based organization. That was, again, in my early years, my ideal that this is going to be the way of changing the world. That was one of the draw that the gospel will change the world. Then I spent another 21 years at an organization that had faith roots, but was able to shift into the economic realities of America and build a business while utilizing the faith story, but not necessarily applying the narrative of the faith story to all of its work. So I have been close to two systems that much of my existence has been this thinking that if you could work within and within this system that’s supposed to have truth, things would be changed. Or if you work within a system that was doing good, there will be change. And these were both systems that were not designed, were not designed for Black men, and were not designed as well for DEI. Now the reason why I say that is because when DEI or any other kind of reality that you’re trying to bring about of difference and inclusion and diversity, when you do it sort of based on metrics and based on measurement, which I’m not a against, there’s a need for that. But metrics and measurements don’t change the root story of which those metrics and measurements come from. And so part of what both organizations, I think will not wrestle with is our whole origin story was not really designed for difference for inclusion. And part of it is when you say, how do you measure a story? Well, you go, do we have a better chapter this year than we had last year? And this is the beauty, I love my experience. Now I’ve gone through some challenge because I’m in a season now where I am not working with either of those systems and I’m in a place of curiosity. But when I look at now, I have the wisdom of seeing there has to be both quantitative and qualitative data together. You need the story and the metrics to see if you are moving things. So our success, those organizations who even wanted to do racial reconciliation, I see this in churches who talk about racial reconciliation and multi-ethnic churches. Part of it is go, do we have a different chapter this year? What is the different story that not just numbers of people coming on Sunday morning, not even numbers of people you have now in your workforce, but are the chapters different because now you have leaders, now you’re measuring what position people are in. So I think then part of what happens with colorblindness, it’s not that you’re trying to be colorblind, but you’re trying to hide. And it’s not that I’m colorblind, but I want to hide the real narratives. I want to hide the bad story. Yeah, I’m not going to be, you’re not really colorblind. You’re just hiding those stories that are really not going to get to the truth of who we really are. So you got institutions say, well, we’re colorblind. Well, you just trying to hide that you haven’t had not one leader of color who is in a position of leadership and influence, you’re colorblind, but your board still remains people who all have the same worldview. So you’re hiding things in many ways. You’re hiding the fact that there’s not a narrative or not a system in place to be able to take a person again, who may come from a different cultural background and mentor and engage and help that person come into a place of leadership. You are hiding that. And then here’s what’s so interesting. You even begin to hide it with tools that even came from the diversity, equity, inclusion movement. So now you even begin to use that and say, well see, we got our one African-American person, we’ve got our, and this is where because it was really hiding and because it really wasn’t a change in the real narrative of the company. This is why in a moment, chief diversity officers are gone. This is why in a moment you could do that and change the name so quickly, but when you have a different story and a different narrative, you wouldn’t have been able to change so quickly because it would’ve been embedded in leadership and development so that you can have a different story, not just a chapter that you could tear out of the book. You also can see this too, because when you really begin to go and look at the measurements, and I think we can see this, that the persons who really benefited from DEI were White women. And so it’s so interesting to me that many White women are still in those places of leadership just under a different name. And again, this is what we always did. We played what I call diversity economics and said, how many African-Americans do we have? How many women do we have? Okay, what about Hispanic? What about Asian? What about LGBTQ plus? And literally, there is, once again, even in the whole diversity world, you had a pseudo psychological Bacon’s Rebellion because you would have even different groups pitted against each other. I would work with groups who say, okay, we’re not going to talk just about Black people. And I’m going, what would be the problem? Because once you learn from Blackness can be transformative for any group. As a matter of fact, for those of you who are listening to this, I would advise you to really study Black history because Black history shows you genius in the midst of oppression. Black history gives you strategy of developing resilience in the midst of some very dark times. 

What’s fascinating with characters in Black History, it’s not so much that I needed to talk about George Washington Carver so that I can be proud that a Black man created over a hundred uses of peanuts and sweet potatoes. That’s not the genius of George Washington Carver. The genius of George Washington Carver was a couple of things. One, he was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation, so George Washington Carver could never really locate his birthday. Why? Because both his father and mother were slaves. George Washington Carver is an example of genius in the midst of struggle and his genius in the midst of struggles and creating strategies that really in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were essential in order for there to be survival, not just for black people, but strategies that were redemptive for all people. The fact that he scientifically created all these different uses for the peanut and for sweet potatoes, that really what he did is he rescued agriculture in light of the dynamic of cotton in the South, and he came up with systems and structures that literally benefited everyone in the midst of a great depression. So because it came up with all of these different uses for the peanut, he’s now changing the farming industry for White farmers, for Black farmers, for everyone. The truth of the matter is the economy probably wouldn’t have survived in the South if it wasn’t for Black scientists like George Washington Carver. You wouldn’t have gotten home if it wasn’t for Garrett Morris and the stoplight. I mean, and the list goes on.

Rachael: I would not be warm in this terrible freeze we’ve had in Philadelphia without Alice Parker.

James: There you go. Absolutely.

Rachael: for the creation of the natural gas furnace heater. I have been thanking Alice Parker a lot the past few weeks.

James: Right? So again, and this is where I got to say this to Christians, your Biblical narrative gives you examples of this, because I know some are going to listen to this and you immediately probably call me a socialist or a Marxist or you’re saying, I’m talking too much about systems and not talking about individual. Well, lemme give you a Bible. In the scripture, the majority of the book of Genesis is about a man who was sold into slavery by his brothers, a man who endured incredible evil, and yet this man in the midst of a system that he didn’t change in the midst of a system, that he didn’t start a revolution to overthrow, he was able to find life in the midst of that system. And guess what happens? He ends up becoming prime minister of Egypt after years and years of suffering, and he now gives solution for his brothers and for the empire that had enslaved him. And so the very evil that had enslaved him, he became part of the solution of saving that very empire. That is very similar to the narrative that you see in Black history. You see character after character after character who develop innovative inventions, ideas, thoughts that literally have brought solutions to an empire whose origin story was slaving of their ancestors, enslavement of their ancestors. So believers ought to know that God, as Joseph said, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And as his brothers were afraid of retribution, in Genesis 50:20 Joseph said, look, first of all, you didn’t do this. And he says, I’m not God in verse 19. I’m not the one to do justice. But Joseph called it what it was. You meant it for evil. And that’s part of our problem. We don’t want to call it evil. We have church fathers and historians and just say crazy things like they were a product of their times. No, it was evil. The Bible calls it evil so that it can be redeemed. 

Dan: So the freedom here…

James: Let me calm down Dan, I’m sorry this is a podcast, but you’re talking about something that is… I’m passionate about.

Dan: It’s a conversation. And the last thing I would ever wish is for you to be calmed down. So to be able to step into Black history is meant to open the door to looking at the nature that lust, individually and corporately, is always a form of exploitation. And shouldn’t be surprised that if you struggle, and again, scripture is such that it says very clearly if you say you do not sin, you’re a liar. But if you do say you are someone who struggles with sin, Jesus talks about that as lust, adultery, anger, murder. And another way of putting that is exploitation is a form of lust. Degradation is a form of murder. And so Black History Month invites us to engage the issue of our own sin. Not just sin in terms of a hundred, 200, 300 years ago, but the reality of where that’s playing out in the day that we live in. And then to be able to say, this is true for families. This is true where if we’re going to erase Black history, then it’s also the same culture that will erase the reality of what’s true about a family of origin and the effects of what trauma individually and corporately have come into your world. But it’s also compelling to invite us to look at how systems are utilized by the kingdom of the evil to accomplish its purposes, not the purposes of God. And when we link a certain view of systems without being aware that every system made up of aggregates, of individuals operates as well, usually with the interplay of exploitation and degradation. So when we begin to disrupt through looking through the month of February, the lens of the Black experience, then we also see this incredible reality of Imago Dei. We look at the reality of in the midst of resilience and brilliance, the creation of goodness. So we really are through Black history month invited to look at what’s broken and what’s stunningly beautiful. And in that we get to participate. And I think you put it well, Racheal a while back with grief and with anger, but also with the profound hope that the resurrection brings, which is we are never meant to live where we are as if it is the finality of what will one day be. So my dear friend, it is again an honor to have you be riled up.

James: Well, and Dan as you said that, you’ve put that so well. I think there are a couple, I think practical things when you mention what you said for your listeners, that one, when you go to your company, when you go to your event, when you go to your church and you look around, you go, what’s the system that’s created that has caused this to look this way? It’s not, let me go find a wonderful dynamic person who represents a particular group. First, there’s some work to do. What’s the way of thinking my mental models that has even shaped the environment that I’m in? The second thing I think is we begin this conversation about with Chesterton and storytellers. I think the thing that I’m learning, even at this point, because I’ve been doing this, I am now at a place where I’m in my wisdom years. Part of what I think my work is now is wisdom in many ways at my age and at this part of the journey because I think that’s desperately what we need. But the thing that I would say that you all have helped with story, but here’s the thing that I would say is critical and important. I think those who are leaders who think they can write or change the story are dangerous. I think we see that in history. Any leader who thinks they can change the story is dangerous. I think the most faithful people are those who simply know their participance.

Dan: Yes.

James: think for me, this is where Black history becomes important. I realize there’s no such thing as a hero. There’s a human. That for me, because there’s only really one who is, and he’s not even a hero. He’s the most incredible human who is more than a hero. He’s a savior, he’s a ruler, and reigning redeemer, he’s a king. But at best, my job there is to participate. This is where history becomes important, is to participate with those who have made it possible for me to do what I do today. I’m here on this podcast because there’s some leaders who have paid a price for me to be able to be on this podcast. I live in the neighborhood of people who one time couldn’t live in this neighborhood, but I didn’t get here because I’m so smart or a false made up narrative about my life of I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. I’m here because when I was in the sixties in a Jim Crow reality, I had a community of people that said to me, you can go beyond me. And there were people who hadn’t graduated from high school. There were people who had little education, but we are all here continuing the journey. That’s why Black history becomes important. So for me, I feel like I’m a part of the continuation, but a continuation of a legacy that really has shaped not just America, but it shaped the world. That didn’t start with slavery, but started with the important origin stories that you find in Africa.

Dan: And I can say as we end, I’m so grateful for you and I can say thank God for Black History Month.