From Race to Taste
Becky Baer Porteous
January 1, 2003
When I first lived in southern Africa ten years ago, I was quite critical of the racism of white South Africans. But ten months in Zimbabwe and South Africa led me to a disturbing conclusion. Although our racial attitudes were different, the most significant part of my life in the United States—my fellowship in Christ—was suspiciously similar to the lives of most white South Africans. In Zimbabwe, I was careful to attend black churches—after all, I was in Africa, wasn't I? But back in the States, I had always belonged to churches that were almost entirely white and middle class.
I had always assumed that multi-racialism would arise in Christian circles in the United States through black people's joining the predominantly white churches and groups to which I belonged. In a nation where white people are in the majority, and in which half of all black people are in the middle or upper middle class, perhaps that assumption makes some sense. But I began to wonder. Might it not be more in line with the gospel for me to go to the outcast and alien in my society, rather than wait for them to come to me?
Thus began a journey that has taken me farther from home than I ever expected. When I moved to North Carolina a year and a half after returning from Zimbabwe, I resolved that I would, again, look for a black church. I ended up joining a storefront church in Durham, started by a group of black, middle-class men and women as an outreach to drug addicts, prostitutes, and other people on the street. I was convinced that I was where God wanted me to be. But I sometimes found myself terribly lonely.
I wanted to socialize, date, and get married—yet I often felt like the men and women around me were from a different planet. Yes, we were all ...
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