An open letter from another angry, black woman.
To my church folk--former, current, and future: you owe black people an apology. If you only knew how many times I sat in church, hoping you would speak out against the oppression of black people. How much it hurt when week after week, there was nothing but silence from the pulpit. Or worse, silence from my friends. Many of you felt (and maybe continue to feel) threatened by the Black Lives Matters movement and had no trouble voicing your negative sentiments to me, a hurting member of the black community. Some of you hosted problematic, white guest speakers to come and speak to the church about “racial reconciliation”--exhorting black folks to “lay down our offenses for the sake of the gospel” without giving any mention of repentance of the centuries of church-sanctioned violence against black Americans. Many of you weaponized your white fragility by storming out of meetings where racial injustice in the church was being discussed to shift the attention from people of color onto your