A Glimpse Into My Story

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I am half Brazilian, half Amish (white), and grew up in an inner city, predominantly Black community in East Oakland, California.  Yes, you read that right.  Amish, Brazilian, Black community...  All flowing through the blood in these veins.  This birthed in me a passion for justice, especially the myth that we call race.  My faith-based work in racial Justice and healing has taken me around the world, most notably to Soweto, South Africa, for nearly ten years.  

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After 30 years a Brown woman on the front lines of racial justice and healing in the United States - often the only person of color in my graduate classes - I stepped off that plane in South Africa a white person for the first time in my life.  That's right, in Soweto, a 100% Black African community of five million, I am perceived as entirely white and, therefore, considered among the oppressors.  In the cities I was viewed as coloured, but in the townships... I was white.  How can I be three different races in three different places?!  I was no longer "one of us," I was "one of them."  It was an identity crisis unlike any I had ever encountered.  

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It took me two years to realize that if I had any hope of gaining relational currency, trust, or credibility in my beloved community, I had to embrace the perceived identity as "white" in this context. Trying to explain that I was not - and had never been - white, only served to sabotage relationships and trust in my community.

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Wrestling day in and day out with how I could be an agent of healing, justice, and repair as a white person in the most racially polarized country in the world thrust me into a crucible of discovery.  Those ten years in Soweto radically challenged and changed my ideas of racial "reconciliation" (a term I no longer use) and I began to see the Gospel itself in an entirely new light.  

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Those ten years in the Motherland regarded as "white," changed the way I facilitate, teach, coach, consult, create, and disciple on race, healing, justice, and equity.  And Brown Jesus of Nazareth sits squarely at the very core.

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The greatest honor of my life has been fostering and adopting the most beautiful, tender-hearted, courageous, wise little souls, whom I named Jericho Elijah and Judah Manqoba. They are now 11 and 12 years old.