Who holds you accountable?

Danielle Steenwyk-Rowaan

A drive by birthday party for an Open Homes Guest. Pictured are Danielle and another team member.

Danielle at the Black Lives Matter rally in Hamilton

If I had to choose one word to describe the last few months, I would choose “apocalyptic.”

What does that word call to mind for you? Gas masks, mushroom clouds, and barren horizons, perhaps?

I don’t mean it in that sense (though gas masks aren’t a far cry from reality these days!) but in the more biblical sense. An apocalypse, from the Greek “apokalypsis,” is an uncovering, an unveiling, a revelation of truth.

The 8 minutes 46 seconds that police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck have led to the uncovering of systemic racism for many of us.

Many white people like me were blind for years to the impacts of systemic racism on sisters and brothers of colour. It has taken us so long to see that Canadian multiculturalism and commitments to diversity don’t really play out as promised for Black and Brown people in this country. But I’ve had more conversations about racism with family members, fellow church members, and friends in the past couple of months than I’ve had in years. This has been at times exhilarating, at times overwhelming, at times confusing. Perhaps you can relate!

I’ve been thinking about these verses from James 1 recently:
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.”
A mirror has been held up to our societies recently. And since all truth comes from the Living Word, the Spirit of God, I believe this is a spiritual unveiling.

I hope that for white people like me, we see ourselves a bit more clearly now. I can’t know fully what the experience of people of colour is and has been in this country. They know things about how this country really works that I can only learn by listening, by learning, by unlearning. I am part of racist systems that privilege people that look like me, because they were built to work that way, and I must continually learn how to truly honour the image of God in people of colour.

May God give us strength and tender hearts for the road ahead. He who has called us is faithful, and He will do it. (1 Thessalonians 5:24)

What does this have to do with IAFR Canada’s mission, “helping people survive and recover from forced displacement”? Everything.

Refugees are overwhelmingly people of colour. Of course, anyone can be a refugee, but the top refugee-producing countries are all majority-POC countries.  Each of the newly arrived refugees who have been guests with Open Homes Hamilton have been people of colour.

If I know that systemic racism exists

•       and I know that I’m not the best person to see it because I don’t live in a people of colour (POC) body and have learned ways of operating that subtly privilege people like me,
•       and yet I am and will always be a white person working with some people of colour and some white people to serve a population that is mainly people of colour,
•     then I believe I must be accountable to and closely connected to people of colour so that I do no harm.

At IAFR Canada we have the immense blessing of a board that is half white people, half people of colour of various ethnic backgrounds. This is huge! It matters, immensely, that we are accountable to people with lived experience in POC bodies.

I also have the immense blessing of working with several people of colour, including people with lived refugee experience, and learning from them.

And yet my ministry team (Open Homes Hamilton) is made up of four white women. We recognize that we have blind spots, no matter how much learning and unlearning and relationship building we do.

Here’s my fear: we get refugee claimants connected to safe long-term housing (yay!). They get connected to resources for their new lives here.
But we get most of our feedback on our work from white people.
White grant providers.
White church members.
White donors. They hold the purse strings, so their input has weight.

What if we’re missing something? What if something that we’re doing leaves the refugees we support feeling like less than fully human image-bearers of God?  How will we know?

Debriefing with guests
We do debrief with guests, which is absolutely critical. And yet it is not enough. When a former guest becomes a volunteer or directs their friends towards us, I celebrate—that is the most genuine feedback we can get. But I imagine that, just like in any situation of power difference, especially power difference across language barriers, true feedback is hard to come by.

Leadership learning
Accountability won’t mean anything if we as leaders haven’t done our own learning and deep heart work so that we can receive critique when it is offered. (I have so much work to do on my own pride!) Two of the four of us have participated in white anti-racism discipleship groups, and a third is planning to participate as well. This is a beginning, not an end.

All of this is not yet accountability. One of the ideas I am beginning to wonder about is assembling (and paying honoraria to) a small advisory team made up exclusively of people of colour, to ask good questions and hold us accountable.  Another idea is to bring POC participants and volunteers together and empower them to share both positive and negative feedback.

This is a post full of questions, not answers. Our team will continue to delve into these conversations prayerfully.
Please pray along with us that the Spirit who hovered over the deep at the creation
will hover over us and
give us the creativity and
courage to take the next faithful step,
and then the next,
and then the next.

Resources I’m looking at or that have been recommended to me (because I am at the beginning of my learning journey on this!):
Beyond Diversity : How to Build a Truly Anti-Racist Organization (webinar)
“We Can’t Train Our Way to Racial Equity” (article)
A Shared Table (creator of transformational cross-cultural events and anti-racism educator)

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What does this have to do with IAFR Canada’s mission, “helping people survive and recover from forced displacement”? Everything.

Refugees are overwhelmingly people of colour. Of course, anyone can be a refugee, but the top refugee-producing countries are all majority-POC countries. 
Each of the newly arrived refugees who have been guests with Open Homes Hamilton have been people of colour.

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Danielle Steenwyk-Rowaan lives on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples in Hamilton, Ontario. She leads Open Homes Hamilton, a ministry of IAFR Canada that brings churches together to support newly arrived refugee claimants by offering home-based hospitality.