Andre Henry Helps Us Find the Freedom to Flourish – Sojourners

AUSTIN CHANNING BROWN, author of Im Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, posted once that she didnt need more friends but rather wanted partners in the struggle for justice.

As a white Midwesterner, Id thought of racial injustice as an individual problemindividuals not liking other individuals who didnt look like them. Therefore, the answer to racism was friendship. I worked at churches that celebrated calls to the common table in worship, absent confession or repentance, to sanctify my individualistic take on race. Browns words shook methis activist wants co-laborers, not friends? What even is the work if its not friendship?

While Andre Henry is Black and grew up in the South, he and I were raised on the same milk of individualistic race relations. In his debut book, All the White Friends I Couldnt Keep, Henry narrates his journey out of the colorblind evangelicalism of his childhood to being an artist, activist, and community organizer for systemic racial justice.

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Andre Henry Helps Us Find the Freedom to Flourish - Sojourners