Episode 119: Xavier Ramey - Diversity, Social Justice, and the Gospel
In this episode of The Bible for Normal People Podcast, Pete and Jared talk with the CEO of Justice Informed, Xavier Ramey, about how the Bible informs his role as a social impact consultant as they explore the following questions:
- What does Xavier Ramey do as a business consultant?
- How does Xavier see his work at Justice Informed fitting into the Gospel?
- How does the Gospel intersect with systems of power?
- How do societies change?
- What is meant by an “inescapable network of mutuality”?
- What is the responsibility of the individual?
- Does persuasion play a part in Xavier’s work as a consultant?
- Why is it important for white folks to live in proximity to people who don’t look like them?
- Is capitalism the problem or are people the problem?
- What are some practical things you can do to prioritize fighting for justice?
- What three steps must people in power who have money take to stop injustice?
- What is “issue switching”?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, less-than-280-character statements from Xavier Ramey you can share.
- “It is impossible in my mind, and through my experience, to assume that individual absolution will ever lead to societal change.” @XavierRamey
- “I’m not looking to persuade Caesar, my job here is not to challenge Pilate, my job here is not to persuade the people. I am seeking to model what I believe to be the righteous way of building a company, of leading a team, of speaking life and light and contending with my own demons before I insist other people cage theirs.” @XavierRamey
- “Jesus did not contend with Caesar, Caesar was simply a symptom of the system that we insisted on.”@XavierRamey
- [Police officers] are a symptom of what we require when we don’t know how to keep peace we insist on delegating the responsibility of safety to officers rather than taking on that responsibility ourselves in a shared and equitable and abundant community that we can construct.”@XavierRamey
- “Everyone is signing up for their own version of the cross, the safest thing that they can do to accumulate as much as they can so that they can give a little bit back and hope that they’re not Cain but instead that they are Abel and… that their sacrifice will be blessed.” @XavierRamey
- “How you make your dollar creates the poverty.” @XavierRamey
- “Stop saying we’re overwhelmed, stop saying it’s too hard… The reality is we’re simply unpracticed. We practice racism, we practice sexism, we practice ignoring the calls of the poor, we practice justifying harm, we practice these things and so we’re good at it.” @XavierRamey
Mentioned in This Episode
- Book: The Fire Next Time
- Website: Justice Informed
- Website: Xavier Ramey
- Patreon: The Bible for Normal People
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[Introduction]
0:00
Pete: You’re listening to The Bible for Normal People. The onlyGod-ordained podcast on the internet. Serious talk about the sacred book. I’mPete Enns.
Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.
[Jaunty Intro Music]
Jared: Welcome everyone to this episode of the Biblefor Normal People. Today we have a hard-hitting topic. But, before we do that, justa reminder that we have a course, a one hour, online course coming up March 26that 8:30pm Eastern time- 9:30pm. And it’s going to be called, “How to Read theBible Like Adults.” And we don’t mean to denigrate how people read the Bible inany way we just want to talk about what are some ways that we found that are moremature ways of approaching this text. So it you haven’t already, it’spay-what-you-want, so nobody’s going to be turned down. It you want to registerfor that you can go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/howtoreadthebibleand it will take you to an Eventbrite page where you can register and get ticketsfor that. Its again, online, it’s through Zoom, you’ll get instructions onceyou register. Pay what you want so we hope you can join us March 26that 8:30pm EST. Now back to our topic for today. I say it’s hard-hitting becauseit’s about diversity, social justice, and the gospel. How do those all playtogether? And we’ve talked about this some but we can keep peeling back thelayers of that onion and I’m excited about the person we have who’s qualified, uniquelyqualified, to talk about these layers and how we can pull them back. His nameis Xavier Ramey. He leads an organization called Justice Informed, which is a socialimpact consulting firm. So its grounded in his faith but it’s a lot about socialimpact, inclusion, community engagement with organizations. So we’ll see, inparticular one thing that’s reallyhelpful is, you know a lot of this is when we talk about the Bible, we talkabout right and wrong and it’s about individuals, and how our actions areimpacting others but there’s something that I think is important we talk about,and that’s systems. And how do systems form in communities and how do thosesystems privilege or give opportunity or benefit some and maybe put others at adisadvantage. And how do we talk about that it ways that don’t alienate andisolate but also really dig into the reality of a lot of people face with thesesystems in place. So let’s get to this conversation with Xavier Ramey on diversity,social justice, and the gospel.
[Music Begins]
Xavier: The hypocrisy of it all.Right, the demand to go to countries that are all brown people and then notunderstand your responsibilities toward justice and equity at home as where nowalong racial lines you have an entire swath of people saying “make Americagreat,” and they all look the same! They all want the same America,it’s like, 92% of African Americans did not vote for the man whothinks that we should be a country that none of the people who look like mewant to live in again.
[Music ends]
Jared: Well welcome, Xavier, to this episode ofthe podcast.
Xavier: Thank you so much for having me.
Pete: Yeah, it’s great to have you.
Jared: So, we have a lot to talk about, we wantto jump in. But, before we do, maybe give people a little spiritual biography,just a little bit of your background and how you got into the things thatyou’re into now.
Xavier: [Laughter]
The things that I’m into now.
Pete: In a tweet, tweet length, yeah.
Xavier: Okay.
Pete: [Chuckles]
Xavier: Well, my name’s Xavier Ramey, I’m anative of the city of Chicago in the great state of Illinois. I am the CEO of asocial impact consulting firm called Justice Informs that seeks to catalyzeinstitutional spaces, communities, and geographies around relationalspecificity and creating an invitation to deeper understanding of how we all,not only relate to each other personally, but the effects of our personalrelationships on the systemic realities of our world. My spiritual biographystarts within the African Methodist Episcopal Church where I grew up. Mygrandmother was a minister in the AME church called Saint Stephens in Chicago. AndI grew up, typical kind of pastors kid, meaning that I was in church everySunday for all three services, I was laying under the pews when I was a littlekid falling asleep, and then I was expected to join the choir when I was ayoung adult. Then I was expected to take on other leadership roles as I gotolder and eventually I just left all that stuff and I left the church forseveral years and was re-confronted with God when I took on a role as the headof fundraising for a nonprofit back in my old neighborhood, North Lawndale, inChicago after I had gotten my economics degree at DePaul University and, it’s along story. I’m not going to give you the whole thing of it, but, an encounterwith a man who came to the door and then subsequently listening to really goodcounsel and really awesome people who chose to see what I couldn’t see inmyself, it reconnected me with relationship with God. That actually created ademand for my life on a greater insistence on asking, what I think are betterquestions that eventually led me to where I am today in realizing that much ofthe challenges of our world are related to a fundamental breakdown in how wesee each other, and in that space how we see the face of God and how we expectto receive and engage one another in this space of harm that has been, andopportunities that can come should we chose to truly understand and see eachother, and ourselves. So, I channel that work into Justice Informed, which is aconsulting firm. Which, that might sound weird, I’ll get into that later ifya’ll have some questions about how does, how does the Gospel story fit into aconsulting firm’s model.
5:26
Pete: That’s a really good question.
Xavier: [Laughter]
I, look, I spent quite a bit of time trying tofigure it out myself, and so I’d be happy to share that. But I gleefully andjoyfully lead Justice Informed now in a way that I think is important, giventhat we’re in this great transition moment, this great social transition,political transitional moment in American history. And as an African American,I’m particularly interested in shifting how we look at this country and who it’sfor and what it’s about and using my firm as a catalyst for that. Seems likeone of the best blessing I could have right now in my life.
Jared: So, before we jump into how what you dointeracts with the Gospel, maybe, can you break down some of the words youused? You used a lot of big words when you kind of talked about what JusticeInformed is about. So just break it down so that people, every day people canunderstand exactly kind of what it is you do.
Pete: Now he means just me.
Jared: Yeah. I just wanted to protect Pete’s ego.
Pete: I know. That’s, he just means me. Juststop, stop it Jared. Okay.
Jared: [Laughter]
Pete: Okay Xavier, talk to me. Explain to me whatyou’re doing.
Xavier: [Laughter]
So, I’m a consultant, which means I give advice.I give advice that comes in the form of strategies. The strategies are basedupon my understanding and expertise in certain domains as it relates toinstitutional culture, management operations, community engagement and impact,and public policy. Pool all that together, what does it mean that I do day today? My work with companies, I work with nonprofits, I work with foundations, Iwork with universities, primarily around the cultural challenges that theyhave. So, in layman’s terms, people might call that like, diversity, equity,inclusion, and accessibility. Some people might call it corporate socialresponsibility, some folks might call it public policy, so how laws affectscommunities or businesses or people. Some may call it philanthropy. The companyengages across those areas: social responsibility, DEI, community engagementand philanthropy, to shift how institutions affect the people that are eitherworking there or the people that are stakeholders in that institution’s successor failure; meaning, the folks who live around that company.
Pete: So, how institutions affect people, thatsounds like a very important idea because I think I’ve been affected byinstitutions and that seems like that’s part of our social network that wouldhappen all the time anyway, right?
Xavier: Absolutely. I mean, looking at evenmyself, right? I’m an African American who’s worked at a lot of really big,fancy places. I’ve got a degree in economics. I was the only one in my class tograduate out of the honors. As an African American, in America, in Chicago, I havecertain lens on life. That lens is colored by the institutions, thecommunities, the government that I exist in and I exist around. As an AfricanAmerican, my experience has been colored by my, the color of my skin and thereare many people like me. I am also a cisgender heterosexual male. For thosefolks who don’t know what that means, that means that I am what, I am thegender I was assigned at birth. I am attracted primarily to women, and I amalso a man. And that creates an experience in this world, because that puts mein a dominant category. All of that, we’ve had the, I’ll say the privilege ofaccessible ignorance and a tolerable level of ignorance, given that ignorance Ifeel, ignorance, perpetuated ignorance is a form of violence. And I knoweveryone may not agree with that or understand that, but I challenge you to letthat sentiment and that term wash over you a bit. Now that we’re at the pointthat people who look like me, who sound like me, who come from where I camefrom, the Nazareth of Chicago; we have the right to speak and we are creatingnew definitions and we are creating new paradigms and new strategies, but we’realso doing it with a level of insistence that comes with the backing of thingslike the Civil Rights Act of ’64, the Community Rights Act, the CommunityInvestment Act of ’77, the Equal Pay Act for Women. These types of statutoryopportunities have now, that we’re a generation removed, my generation as anolder millennial, we are rising up and insisting that the social order changeswith the political order. The challenge that we’re in right now, why I saidAmerica’s in this transition moment, is because this is the first generation ofwhite people in American history that have to listen to black people, and they’renot taking it too well. This is the first generation of men, cisgenderheterosexual men in American history, that have to listen to LGBTQIA persons ortheir company budget suffered, their revenue suffered, their talent poolsremained homogenous. They have to listen to people that no other generation ofAmericans has ever, literally, had to listen to. And so, they’re being pressedon the notion of proximity. They’re being pressed on the reality ofrelationships, and they’re being pressed on what they would consider it“normal” to be. I see it as my job to bridge that divide and to accelerate thepace of change in America to make it one, this country one, and ourcorporations, our nonprofits, and our philanthropic organizations ones, thatpeople like me actually feel comfortable working in, living around, growing,starting, or stopping.
10:42
Pete: Mmm. You said before, just before Xavier, Ithink you said that perpetuating ignorance is a form of violence? And you saidlet that sit there for a while. Well, I’ve let it sit for a minute and I wantyou to explain it to me. It sounds, I mean, I think I get it, but flesh thatout for us. What do you mean by that?
Xavier: So, the very notion of equity versuslike, diversity, right? Diversity is the ability to just be seen, to becounted. You know, Pete, but the challenge is people are often seen but notcounted, and even if they’re counted, they may not have the agency or power tospeak. And so, they’re these lines of power that exist in our world, in ourinstitutions, in our churches, everywhere. And there’s different accessibilityto each point. When I say perpetuated ignorance, what I mean is that people havebeen able to act as if that doesn’t exist. They’ve been able to act as if it isthe responsibility of people who have been oppressed to appreciate whatevernext little thing that they get that mitigates a bit of their oppression. So,for example, you can imagine that in 1866, the year after the end of slavery.Slavery was abolished in ’65. The next year there was probably a cacophony of whiteAmericans who were like, “isn’t this better? You should appreciate this.” To anAfrican American like Frederick Douglas who would say, “I want to be president”.They would immediately say, “you should appreciate what you have. Isn’t this somuch more?” When the reality is, all they’re saying is we have the right tocontinue being violent in ways that you can’t yet fight against.
Pete: Mm hmm.
Xavier: I see that as a form of demanding that anignorance exists at levels of power, where James Baldwin said, “ignoranceallied with power is the greatest threat that justice can ever have.”
Pete: Mmm. It’s sort of like, what people say,“after all we’ve done for you.”
Xavier: Yeah, I mean even that statement, “afterall we’ve done for you,” immediately reasserts the hierarchy.
Pete: Right.
Xavier: We did something for you, meaning that onthe other side of it, we were doing something to you, which gets back to thechallenge of acknowledgement in restoration and rehabilitation of relationshipswhere one would say “you should appreciate what you, what I gave you,” whichmeans that I insist on still being above you and parroting down resources. Idon’t seek to level the playing field, I seek for you to recognize the validityof me being incrementally nicer to you; which doesn’t mean you’re relating tothat person as a human, you’re actually relating to them through a hierarchythat you may still be organizing power to uphold.
Jared: So, this is, I want to bring the Bible,maybe the Gospel a little bit into this, because when I hear that, so I justgive a little context for my question, is, you know, I would have grown up in atradition where it was very much about the individual. That, basically, most ofour problems could be solved if individuals just asked Jesus into their heartand were nicer to each other. And you’ve used words like systems of power, andI feel like for a lot of people in my community growing up, that would havebeen really abstract and really hard to understand. They can understand askingJesus into my heart and that changing my life, and if we all did that it wouldchange everything; but when you start talking about this, these institutionsand systems, it starts getting abstract. So, can you maybe talk about how theGospel intersects with this idea of system.
14:05
Xavier: Yeah. First, I’m going to pull out a, oneof my favorite scriptures that speaks about, it essentially says, do notforsake the blessing of your assembly. And deep down, what that’s saying isthat there are certain things that can only happen in community. There arecertain epiphanies that can only happen in community. The requirement oftestimony, right? Testimony meaning that I am now verbally expressing a thingthat I could not create in life that God created for me that I will now say tothe masses so that they know he is there for them as well. And so, if they aresitting in shame about what is going through in their lives, they can now knowthat they are not alone and that there’s a way further by, again, reinvestingand reinforcing the validity and the importance of relying upon your faith inGod. The reality of assembly, as juxtaposed with the demand for individualaction that you may be speaking about, right? If you would just believe inJesus, it would all get better. The reality is, you know, I see that being cutwith Jesus saying, well what you did for the least of these you’ve done for me.And then, secondarily, looking and saying the poor will always be with you.Going back to Adam and saying, you know, the curses that you will toil, meaningthat we’re talking about things that happen in time. Not only that, but if sintruly cloaks the world, then the poor are always being with us, they’re onlywith us because of us and how we are, which goes back to, well then, if there’spoverty and there’s a difference in the hierarchy of power, that power moves througheconomies and economics. Again, that economics and those economies move throughcommunity. And so, at the end of the day, it is impossible in my mind, andthrough my experience, to assume that individual absolution will ever lead tosocietal change. Individual absolution or individual power and agency onlymeans that you will have a better understanding of your cross to bear. But justbecause you bear your cross, if God actually gave you that cross, because a lotof people just hang themselves up there and expect us to respect the crossthey’ve made –
Pete: [Chuckles] Yeah.
Xavier: I hate my job! That’s my cross.
Pete: Yeah, yeah.
Xavier: That’s not a cross! You’ve got a suckyjob?
Pete: Yeah.
Xavier: Like, relegated responsibility years ago?Like, that’s on you bro!
Pete: Yeah. [Laughter]
Xavier: But the reality is that, Dr. King saidthis beautiful thing. He said, “we cannot negate that we are caught in aninescapable network of mutuality.” An inescapable network of mutuality.Inescapable. The reality is we are all connected. That’s why when I go back toJustice Informed, and I always think, I founded the company and when I wasthinking about how do I found this in a way that it is light and life? Wellthen, it has to be an invitation because Christ moved his actions, his everyaction was simply an invitation through modeling what life was like if youtruly believed; how hard it would be, and how beautiful it would be. Butsecondarily, he focused on being relationally specific. And so, to say that ifeverybody would just be Peter, Paul, Simon, etc. then the world would be better.The reality is even together, those people didn’t always believe, because themoment Jesus was gone, they all went back to what they were doing.
Jared: Mmm.
Xavier: And so, we have to commit together. Evenif just for Peter to be together with Paul enough to say, “Hey, Peter, don’t goback fishing. Just because that’s what you were doing before you met Christ.Remember what you said you believed in.” And in community, we can now beaccountable to one another.
You flip that over to racial challenges; thereality is that we live in a country where people don’t want to be accountableto other people that they have never historically had to consider. And so, thechallenge there is also for the church, that when you focus on thisindividualist gospel, when the reality of even the, the great chapter rightafter the Gospels, right, Acts, was all about the church coming together.
Yes, every individual person is a church, but thereality is the church is also an assembly of people, and there are systemicrealities that happened because people are b.s.-ing and people are violent, andpeople are insisting that people who have never had power, who have beenmarginalized for generations, live under the veil of some terrible relationshipcalled “appreciate what little things I give to you,” versus step into thefullness of an accountable, valid, resourceful, abundant relationship that isrooted in acknowledgement of harm. That is rooted in the sharing of resources,that is rooted in changing time by changing ourselves in our time. And peopleare stepping away from that, and I think that we could put strategies and ideasand words to create narratives, where people don’t look at this as loss. Theydon’t think I need to do this one thing at work, do this other thing at church;they realize that what I do at work influences what I have at church, and whatI have at church influences how I think about work. But I do all of that inthis network of, this inescapable network of mutuality of people who are nearme and people who are not; people who look like me and people who don’t.
Pete: So, the gospel, to maybe to state theobvious, the gospel must work on the level of that inescapable network ofmutuality. It’s not just individual thing, and of course, that means critiquingthe systems, and people in power typically aren’t good at doing that. So, youhave to address, you have to address power somehow too, which I think is a verydifficult thing to do. So, how, maybe, walk us through that dynamic of, thereare people in power who like things the way they are, in church or wherever,and might not want to listen. How do you persuade them? I mean, you mentionedbefore that there are precedents in our American legal system to take action,and sometimes I imagine you have to fight, and other times be very diplomatic;and you consult one way here and one way elsewhere. But, flesh that out alittle bit for us.
20:02
Xavier: Well, this is where it does matter - theunderstanding of the power of the individual does come in, because I didn’t sayall that I said just now to negate the power of the individual. I was saying itto create the understanding of the juxtaposition between the power of theindividual versus the power of the assembly, though both are respectivelyimportant. I’m not, you know, through my work, through my life, again, lookingat Christ’s example, I’m not looking to persuade Caesar. My job here is not tochallenge Pilate. My job here is not to persuade the people. I am seeking tomodel what I believe to be the righteous way of building a company, of leadinga team, of speaking life and light and contending with my own demons before Iinsist other people cage theirs. And that is the responsibility of theindividual, however, if I see myself to be called into leadership as I have,then I need to remember what it said in the book of James – not many of youshould be teachers, for you should be held to a stricter standard - which meansthat I will have different challenges because leaders go before the people. Notin terms of their position in life and hierarchy, but in terms of what you haveto endure, because taking on the matters of the cross, as my pastor says it,right? It is taking responsibility for the multitude. Jesus did not contendwith Caesar; Caesar was simply a symptom of the system that we insisted on.
Pete: Mmm.
Jared: Mm hmm.
Xavier: The police officers who walked Jesus tothe cross and then stabbed him when he was down, they are a symptom of what werequire. When we don’t know how to keep peace, we insist in delegating theresponsibility of safety to officers rather than taking on that responsibilityourselves in a shared and equitable and abundant community that we canconstruct. And so, I’m not trying to persuade any corporate CEO, though I knowI have the ear of a lot of corporate CEO’s. I’m not trying to persuadenonprofit teams or Executive Directors or philanthropic CEO’s, I’m not tryingto persuade them. I’m trying to build a company, build an institution thatlooks like something better than the racism they’ve committed to. That lookslike something better than the agnostic relationships they’ve committed to.That looks like something better than being wary of anti-harassment policies orlitigation from women who feel like they’ve been or have actually been harassed.Build a company that is a petri dish and a playground for ideas in the midst ofall the chaos that we’ve insisted on, and I believe that’s the point of acompany. I don’t, you know, when people ask me what is profit, I got into thisargument with these folks who were insistent on trying to figure out how do wereclaim capitalism and how do we make it more conscious, and I’m like, bro,you’re starting with the wrong question.
Pete: Hmm.
Xavier: Reality is that if you think that profitis simply the returns, you know, your revenue minus your cost, then you’re off.The reality is that the very definitions of business don’t require social costto be put into the formula for businesses financial solvency. You can start areal estate firm and buy and sell all types of companies, or sorry, properties,but the reality is, is that building a company in America that buys and sellsstolen land, which is what it is. All of this land is stolen land, wherethere’s not been acknowledgement and restitution to indigenous populations orpeople. You can do all of that and never have to deal with the cost to ourgovernment for affordable housing. You can do all of that, and denigrate thevalidity of the lives of people who are poor because you call it an “up andcoming neighborhood,” which essentially means there are less poor people there,or there are less people that look a certain way. You can still do all of thatand have a profit. The question is, what good is that to the rest of us?
And for me, I center an anchor, unlike manycompanies I’ve found, I anchor my decision making on how it affects the poor,the marginalized, the people who are not white. People who are black and brown,indigenous populations, immigrant, I mean, all of my companies’ money is with abank right now that when talking to the bank owner, he told me flat out, 80% ofour mortgages and our portfolio go to undocumented persons. I said, praise God,hallelujah. My company grows, your bank grows. That’s what I want to be with. Iwant to be with people who bring in the refugees. I want to be with people whoare giving out loans to little, tiny, you know, mom and pop shops and that littleeloteras on the corner who is selling those little bowls of corn withmayonnaise and hot chilis. You know, I may need five hundred bucks just tostart that little shop. They don’t need $50,000 like a company like mine wouldneed, but no bank like JP Morgan Chase is going to give a $500 loan, but thislittle bank will, and that’s community. But that’s a level of conscientiousnessthat’s actually creating challenges for me, with like, my accountant. Because he’slike, why are you spending, they can’t even, it doesn’t connect to Quick Books,the bank doesn’t have the sophistication. Like, c’mon Xavier, how far are yougoing to go with this crap?
Pete: [Laughter]
Xavier: And that’s the work for our time. That’sthe work for our time. At some point, we’ve got to take on that work.
25:02
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Jared: Can you say more about this idea, you’vementioned a few times, of proximity, because I think that’s important and Ithink of the work of, like, even Peter Block and community building and thework he’s done with Walter Brueggemann in tying it to some biblical notions,but maybe say that, because that’s a word I think a lot of people wouldn’tconnect to what we’re talking about here.
Xavier: Yeah, I was actually thinking about thisbecause of a challenge I’ve got right now with one of our clients. You know,they’re trying to understand, how do they, they’re a consulting firm as well,and if you know anything about most consulting firms, especially the big ones,it’s mostly a bunch of white guys. And the challenge with that is, again,consulting is this, the selling of ideas, meaning that when a consultant givesan idea, that becomes the narrative that people live in. And so, if we onlyhave one type of person who is able to create an idea, that means we’re livingin the narratives that only white men create for the world. That fundamentallyis a challenge, because if you look at sociological terms, most white peopledon’t integrate. And the moment that their neighborhoods become raciallyintegrated; they usually leave within ten years. And I’m not saying that aslike, a racial statement, I’m saying that as a sociological truth. You can lookat the data, you can look it up, it’s called sprawl. It’s very easy tounderstand when you look at the numbers. So, proximity is when you reversethat, and you bring people back in. A lot of people don’t understand what youget with proximity.
Here’s what’s awesome about proximity. You getthe little things. Think about the difference between babysitting versus havingthe children yourself. Right? I mean, you’re babysitting, you show up, a couplehours a day, maybe twice, two, three times a week, right? You understand thechild through the lens of the transactional process you’ve instigated andinstituted. When you’re the parent, you’re there for all the little things.You’re there to know a being intimately. You’re there for the beautiful things,the horrible things, and what happens when you’re that approximate? You learnthe most about yourself. Because it’s one of the, proximity actually allows forus to understand God even better because we’re forced to contend with thelimits of our humanity. We’re forced to deal with our selfishness as it bubblesup in the fact of another person’s need. But it wouldn’t be there if we justshowed up, you know, every Saturday for two hours for the soup kitchen in theblack neighborhood. That’s not real proximity. Proximity would mean, how wouldwe move into a neighborhood and not become a gentrifier. How would we step intoan ecosystem of relationships and histories and language and culture and not bean extractive presence? That’s the only way to be proximate and just. Becauseone can be proximate and unjust, look what the pilgrims did.
Pete: Hmm.
Xavier: Look at what people continueto do. That’s why gentrification exists. It is the reality ofour modern-day proximity that lacks justice.
Pete: Mmm.
Xavier: People who have labor marketopportunities that other people who don’t look like them don’t have, then seethe land that those poor people live in, and live on as a market opportunitybecause those other folks are priced out of the opportunities where the otherprivileged people come from.
Jared: This, you know, this remindsme a little bit of the work of Emmanuel Levinas, the philosopher who sort ofhas this ethics of the face. You know, face to face, the face of the other sortof, is the face of God. And that sort of, commands us to this ethicalresponsibility that, and it is a very physical proximate thing, that itwas, it was very grounded in physical relationship with one another andlooking into the face of the other.
29:56
Xavier: Yeah, you know, I think thechallenge with proximity is that you’ve got to think it’s your job,you know? I, a couple years ago, I had this big push, it was just on my mindand heart for years and it still is, the challenge around how people insist ontransactional relationships and I’ll say, social impact absolution by justbeing charitable or philanthropic, right? People who literally give back inneighborhoods they vote against. Like, the hypocrisy of it all. Right, thedemand to go to countries that are all brown people, right, to go down toVenezuela, to go down to Sri Lanka, all black people, go over to Ethiopia andto Kenya and then not understand your responsibilities toward justice andequity at home as you sit in a country where now along racial lines you have anentire swath of people saying “make America great,” and they all look the same!They all want the same America, it’s like, 92% of African Americansdid not vote for the man who thinks that we should be a country that none ofthe people who look like me want to live in again.
Jared: So, let me, let metranslate this. Because again, you used some big words there, so I’m going tobreak it down into my, how I would translate what you just said, which is ourchurches are set up in such a way, like I’m thinking of mission trips orcharitable giving or all these things are set up in such a way that we canassuage our self of our guilt or our obligation to be like Jesus bybabysitting rather than learning to have children of our own, to use youranalogy before. So that if I can go on the mission trip, that absolves me of myresponsibilities and so I don’t have to confront all the ways that I’m actuallycomplicit in a system for my own comfort here. And so, we findthese ways to be, you know, I think of the philosopher Žižek whotalks about the rise of how we build our charity into our consumerism. Sothat now, the way I give is to round up my dollar at Starbucks to the localcharity. And so, is that the kind of thing, like, it’s almost like these smallmicro giving is a way that we can sort of absolve ourselves to the greaterresponsibility at home.
Xavier: Yeah, I mean, there’s a bigdifference between charity and philanthropy. Charity fundamentally, I’m sayingthis in the biblical sense. Philanthropy was created by us. Philanthropy is thesystemic response to economic injustice that we crated to absolve people who Iwould rather call pirates to make them into people that we can look up to andput on the front of some building as a name. Charity is understanding that,again, the poor will always be with you and they don’t deserve that. Thatthey’re poor for a reason. It’s looking at the widow who gave the mite, and notsimply stopping at the face that she had faithbut realizing that the mite was demanded of her. She only had a mitebecause of the rest of us. And understanding your responsibility to shift thatneedle just a little bit, and it doesn’t simply mean giving back andreorganizing how you think about the beyond the ten percent tithe you maygive to your church, but it means understanding that how you make your dollarcreates the poverty.
When I was starting Justice Informed,I spent some time thinking about how do I actually run acompany justly. I came across a couple scriptures. One of them was pay yourworkers at the end of the day for their bread depends upon it. Meaning thatI have to betimely in my transactions with people. With people who trust me, because I’mgoing in front of them to bring in business for the company. Not only that, italso said pay your laborers a fair wage because they may turn to sin. Whichmeans that when I say, well, the minimum wage at Justice Informed is theliving wage for the city wherever our contractors are at, and then we work upfrom there based off experience and ability. But if that’s the living wage,then that makes no sense in a market economy, because the market economy saysyou should only try to reduce costs, but I’m simply incorporating social costswhich goes back to what I said earlier, businesses, because they don't have toincorporate them, most businesses are not financially solvent. They’reextractive. Which goes back to then, what is justice and what is love andcommunity?
To run a company in community meansyou have to lovethe laborer. It means you have to understand thatyou are a steward, not an owner. You have to understandthat what is just requires something of you beyond what you have after you’redone paying yourself. Which means that you have to alsoreorganize what money means to you. Money, you know, profit, to me, money isnot the reward for acting smartly. You can be smart and be the greatest piratein the world, themajority of our major institutions thatwere built before the year 2000, for the most part, were built on the legacyand the insistence on white supremacy. And many people may not understandwhat that means, but that’s simply means that the norms, the world views, thecultures, the practices, and the presence of white people formed the foundationfor how the company was built. That’s all that means. That doesn’tmean Nazis and swastikas, it doesn’t mean anti-Semitism, itdoesn’t mean bring out the lynch mobs and the nooses. That isn’t what it means.It simply means that we centered a people who were already in the center, andthat is how we created that thing. Supremacy of one type, one kind.
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And given that, justice then, andrighteousness, as right as justice is a form of righteousness, means thatwe have to uncoupleout institutions, including our churches, from white supremacy. Wealso have to uncoupleit from male supremacy and bring in the reality of the power that women have tolead the work force. It means that we have to decoupleour understanding of how we only center ourselves when we think about gender,how we think about accessibility. For those people who are like the manwho sat at the front of the church, right, laying on a mat for years, or the leperwho Jesus would minister to, they would bring through the roof of the churchwho could not walk. How many people would say, yeah, I’m gonna tearoff the top of the church so I can bring my friend in, ‘cause heneeds to hear this?
Pete: Not too many.
Xavier: The reality is, naw,nah. I mean, in the face of what you’re asked, what will you do? In theface of what you feel God is asking, what would you do and the reality of whereI get this insistence, and quite honestly, impatience, is thateverybody acts like God’s not saying something different to more of us. There’sno way God’s calling everybody to be a volunteer and nobody isMartin Luther King again. There’s no way! Everybody is signing up fortheir own version of the cross, the safest thing that they can do to accumulateas much as they can so that they can give a little bit back and hope thatthey’re not Cain but instead that they’re Abel and their blessing andtheir sacrifice will be blessed.
Pete: Mm hmm.
Xavier: But the reality is, the waywe’re making our money creates the realities Scripture foretoldthat the poor will always be with us, the widow will always have a mite,and it is no act of justice for us to uphold the widow and insist on herpoverty.
Pete: Hmm. That leads me to a question,is capitalism a problem, or are people the problem, or are, it doesn’t matterwhat system we have in place, what economic system we have in place,something’s gonna go wrong.
Xavier: Yeah, I mean, something’salways gonna gowrong man.
[Laughter]
Pete: Yeah, right. It’s gonewrong.
Xavier: I mean,it’s always gonna gowrong. We can build the next jubilant, beautiful system, but it’s still gonna gowrong eventually. The question is much like David, right, King David, he’s aman after God’s own heart because he kept trying. In the face of hisshortcomings, he kept, he repented, he came right back tocenter and said I was messed up. Not only that, I will acceptaccountability. I’m not simply gonna say, “wellLord, I said sorry, so let’s call it at that.” He's also not gonna say, “well, ya know, Bathsheba, I killedyour husband there, sorry on that one.” That’s what a lot of men in powerare trying to do. They’re demanding appreciation for the lowest form ofrelationship, or not even giving the lowest form of relationship, which isacknowledgement of harm done, and insisting that restitution comethrough the definition of those who inflicted the harm. But in the spaceof our capital economies and capitalism, capitalism is simply an expression ofthe vanity and the ambitions of our hearts in a systemic way. Capitalism, Ithink, is fundamentally problematic simply because coupledwith our legal system and our judiciary, it tends to try to be identityagnostic. It acts as if, like, “well there’s no such thing as, ya know,racism in the markets, right? The market’s gonna dowhatever is best for the markets. And if there is a little racism, the market,the invisible hand, which is probably white, well, we’ll simply get rid ofit.”
Pete: [Chuckles]
Xavier: Like, naw,that doesn’t work. Even if it did work, it shouldn’t take two hundred years, orin the case of African Americans, four hundred. Even if it does work, itshouldn’t mean that women have to fightjust for the right to vote, right? And the ability to vote has an effect on oureconomies, because in that case, women were not participating in our economy,meaning that white guys were getting a pass to start companies, and nowthey get to be names on the banks and on all the big buildings, andthey had a cheat code. And we act as if they did some great and wonderfulthing, but they did that great and wonderful thing upon a foundation thatexcluded competition in a market that said it was based on exactly that.
Jared: Mmm. So,what are, because I think with the news of everything, social ills, and socialinjustices, it can be easy to get kind of overwhelmed with what to do. What aresome practical things, that, you know, people who are listening may say,I’m tracking. I’mtracking with everything you're saying. Are there some things to prioritize inmy life that would help this move forward?
Pete: You don’t say work in the soupkitchen, right?
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Xavier: [Laughter] Naw.
Pete: Okay, good.
Xavier: No, still work in the soupkitchens! Like, you gotta still,like, people still need food. We can’t neglect that.
Pete: True, true.
Xavier: But just know that the soupkitchen is a symptom of the expression of our vanity and demand foraccumulation personally. But in terms of what we do about it, the first thingis to stop saying we’re overwhelmed. Stop saying it’s too hard, right? Thereality is we’re simply unpracticed. We practice racism. We practicesexism. We practice ignoring the calls of the poor. We practice justifyingharm. We practice these things, and so we’re good at it, and thereality is, is if in, why do we have to fight for justice, but we don’t have tofight for injustice?
Pete: Yeah.
Xavier: That’s part of the challenge,right? Like, we are practicing something. Bible says you rush to sin and thenin another sense, one of the saints says, “I must make my body my slave,”meaning that his, he is not in control of his body and it isa daily bread, a daily sacrifice, a daily dying unto one’s self to dothat. And so, when we think about what it actually takes, whatit takes comes through one, proximate relationships, because I’m notgoing to prescribe what any one person should do for a community. I’mnot gonna saythere’s some best practices for engaging indigenous population orsome best practices for engaging across the aislepolitically, or some best practices for engaging people of color. AllI’m gonna sayis the first thing you’ve got to start doing is decentering yourself. Samething when you’re trying to grow a relationship with Christ, you’ve got to stopgrowing a relationship with your crappy self.
Pete: Mm hmm.
[Laughter]
Xavier: Which means you have toaccept that you’re kindof crappy right now! And unpracticed. And people are like, I gotta prayevery day?!?
Pete: You’re not crappy because, LordI repent of my eating habits. More, I repent because of how complicit I havebeen in the injustice and the unrighteousness in perpetuating a system of nothaving to think about race or gender if you’re a white male. You know, it’s,what I’m hearing is that, yeah, I’m thinking of myself, about not beingpracticed. That might not be the first thing that comes into people’s minds.The big picture, the suffering of others, it might just be what you’re dealingwith right now in your life, like, I have to stopbeing mean to my neighbor. Yeah, you probably should, but that’s like101.
Xavier: But you also have to thinkabout why, your neighbor is not your neighbor for no reason.
Pete: [Laughter]
Yeah, Exactly right.
Xavier: Like, white people tend totrust and congregate around white people. Black people do the same thing, butthose things happen for different reasons.
Pete: Yeah.
Xavier: And I’mtalking specifically in large metropolis. I know that rural America isvery different and small towns are very different, but I’m saying for themetropolises of our country, they are racially diverse and racially segregated.And so, in the space of that, what does that mean, right? To this notion ofpractice, I think it’s, so think about Zacchaeus. If you know the story ofZacchaeus -
Pete: Yeah, oh yeah.
Xavier: The man who’s up in the tree,and he’s like, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Come on, I need you Jesus!” Right?
Pete: [Chuckles]
Xavier: Jesus is like, man, thatdude is reallythirsty. Like, oh! Blessed are thosewho hunger and thirst after me, look at this guy, hungering and thirsting! Comeon down Zacchaeus, right? So, he gets his price is right moment, hecomes on down -
Pete: [Laughter]
Xavier: And he gets to have Jesusover for dinner. I can only, you know, the Bible only say he spoke with him fora while. The outcome of Jesus talking with him was that Zacchaeus said, youknow what? Now I understand what I’ve been doing. All Jesus was probablytalking to him, saying was like, “hey dude. You’re kind of ignorant,and you’re violent and because you have power and money, you’re actually thegreatest threat that justice can ever have.”
Pete: Uh huh.
Xavier: And so, at the end of the conversation, Zacchaeus decideson some practical steps. The first thing he agrees to isacknowledgement, the second thing is restitution. He says, look, I’ll giveaway four-fold what I’ve taken, not only that, I will change my practices. Andso, many people want to stop at one of those three. They want to either stop atacknowledgement, they want to stop at restitution, or they want to not move totheir practices. So, if a company is understanding that it is actuallycreating injustice, as it seeks to have a diverse inclusion strategy,it would have to look at the way in which it manufactures its goods. The way itlooks at its supplier diversity. The way at which it looks at itsproximity to other countries, the way it looks at its language through branding.It would have to look at those things to see how are we, and this is where it’sdifferent, how are we centering the marginalized, not just our profits, notjust our shareholders, not just the people who have readilyavailable access to us through their power in economies, but thepeople who are the stakeholders and invisible to us.
Pete: Mm hmm.
Xavier: Which would require a level of proximity of their team.Their team would have to know how to go into those spaces, be more proximate,and not just through volunteering, through neighborliness becausethere are a lot of people who own companies that have employees who insist onnot being neighbors. Again, I go back to racially diverse cities that aresegregated.
Pete: Mm hmm, yeah.
Xavier: The workplace cannot be the most diverse place forus. This is all, again, community, proximity, right -
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Pete: Yeah.
Xavier: Like, centering. It’s all the same thing, but the firstthing you gotta start with issaying - I’m willing to simply consider, right? When I talking to myteam around the greatest thing that you can ever do, whatwe can do as consultants is get someone to consider. That’s what Jesus wasgoing after, right?
Pete: Mm hmm.
Xavier: Can I get you to consider something different?
Pete: Right.
Xavier: Which means I haveto have a linguistic and a tactical approach to get you toconfront your heart, not your mind, your heart. And if I can do that, now yourmind is going to understand the strategies that are necessary to validate whatyour heart has now agreed to, i.e. Zacchaeus comes up on his ownvolition with what he must do, and Jesus blesses that because itcame out of a heart that was reformed.
Pete: Yeah, he blesses him by saying “salvation has come tothis house,” which is, you know, broadening the concept of that word forwhat most people probably carry with them as very individualistic, but thesalvation has come to his house. It’s not, oh good, now when you die you won’tgo to hell. It’s - you’re saved.
Xavier: Right.
Pete: You’re part of the kingdom in away, because you’re now, you’re committing yourself to change your practicesand to not be a burden to others, but be a help to others. And that’ssalvation, you know? And I think that idea of righteousness and justice, whichare twin concepts in both testaments, you know, those things arereally...
Gee, the prophets keep talking about this stuff, ya know? And,no, no, no. We selectively read our Bible, I guess. I know I do, but Ifeel bad about it. I want to change my practices.
Xavier: In terms of a practice, read your Bible and say,what does this have to do with how I understand people who are not likeme?
Pete: Yeah.
Xavier: If I’m wealthy, how does, how does anything I read actuallyreorganize the harm that was there in the Bible’s time and is here inour time, right? How, if I read my Bible, and I’m...
I mean, I was in a conversation with an Air B&B host whowas trying to explain to me why his friends in the Aryan Nation andin the Klan were such great guys. I wasn’t expecting that to be my AirB&B experience.
Pete: [Laughter]
Xavier: But, it was! I didn’t look it up.It was in a big red state, I saw gun shops and tackle shopseverywhere, and then my Air B&B host is upset because I was writing anarticle on Colin Kaepernick for this Christian magazine on why shouldChristian’s consider the reality and important of protest. And at the endof it, right, it was again, sitting down with a person who was curious but alsoignorantly violent, or I will say violently ignorant. The ability to sit withsomeone, who, for him, he was justifying people who have historically andpresently in many ways believe in the invalidity of my entire race ofpeople.
Pete: Mm hmm. But they’re nice guys! To have a beer with...
[Laughter]
Xavier: [Laughter]
Well, well, proximity, right?
Pete: Right.
Xavier: I was able to sit down for eight, it was probably six,seven hours.
Pete: Wow.
Xavier: We ended at around four o’clock in the morning afterflushing down almost an entire bottle of Bulleit Bourbon.
[Laughter]
Pete: [Laughter]
Xavier: At his counter in his little cottage with his wife sittingthere, and the only thing that got through to him, the only thing that gotthrough to him at the end of it was when I said, look, I don’t know that youunderstand whether black lives matter or not, and I know you don’t understandwhat I’m talking about around white privilege, because your grandparentscame here as immigrants, they worked the land, they gave them nothing,yada, yada. I’ve heard that before. But the reality is youfundamentally do not have the ability to listen and to understand and considerthe other. And it starts with, as I told him, your wife has beensilent for two hours, and you did not even notice the silence that you demandfrom your own choices. And so, I know you can’t see me because I’m asking youto choose me, and you only love the things you chose, and you treat the thingsyou chose by demanding silence.
Pete: Hmm.
Xavier: So how can I expect that you would understand how blacklives can matter, when you don’t even know how to make those things matter thatyou chose for your life. I’m out dude, have a great night. Thanks for thebourbon, see ya in themorning.
[Laughter]
Pete: Yeah, wow.
Jared: Mmm.
Xavier: But, BUT, that morning he was standing outside mycottage.
Pete: Yeah, and?
Xavier: He was like I didn’t sleep all night.
Pete: Okay, good.
Xavier: He was like, I didn’t sleep all night. My wifedidn’t sleep all night. We were talking about what you said. And I had simplyused a tactic that I use called issue switching, where, youknow, knowing that people insist on deifying their choices. And so inorder to get them to change and to consider other choices, you have tomeet them in what they’ve chosen, right? It’s why when Jesus was with the womanat the well, he not only asked for water, which is the thing to come, but healso met her in her choices with the man back in the house.
Jared: Mm hmm.
Xavier: He didn’t talk about some loftyother stuff; this is his consulting model.
Pete: Yeah.
Xavier: And so, for me, I haveto meet this man in his choice, and not invalidate it. I simply have to make it seen. I hadto put light on it in order for there to be life onit.
Pete: Yeah.
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Xavier: But that is only after he’s invited me in,like Zacchaeus. And so now I will invest in you, because the world wouldsay, why would you ever talk to that man? But I’ve seen something in yourheart, and I see something in my skills, and so now this is anopportunity. By the time I left that man, I gave him a book, JamesBaldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Which if you haven’t read it, ifyou’re listening, please pick up The Fire Next Time by JamesBaldwin. Please, please, please put that on your reading list. It is a verysimple book, very easy to understand. It’s a letter from a black man whohas now passed on, but it was a letter to his nephew that he published.And now that guy, he sent me an email a little bit later. He started a bookclub and all this stuff around black authors in his area, and like, I don’tknow, but the point is, you plant some seeds. You don’t know what’s gonna grow,but the reality is getting people to consider, getting people to be proximate.Understanding that we have a responsibility to engage by confronting people intheir choices as much as we have to confront the choices we’ve madeabout people that are unseen in our lives.
Jared: Hmm.
Pete: Salvation came to that house too.
Xavier: [Laughter]
I don’t take any responsibility for that, that’s for that man andGod.
Pete: Yeah.
Xavier: ‘Cause he’s, that man Italked to, he’s gotta do the same thingZacchaeus said after his glorious day with Christ. He’s gotta die every day andfocus on his daily bread, which is hard. He’s got to go to his friends andsay - I’m doing this different thing.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: Unfortunately, we’ve come to the end of our timehere. And so, you’ve plugged James Baldwin, but what might else youpromote here of your own work, and where can people find more about thisconversation from you and the work you're doing?
Xavier: Sure. People can find me, if you go onto Google and youjust type in Xavier Ramey Chicago, you’ll find quite a bit of stuff. You canalso go to https://www.xavierramey.com/, my company is https://www.justiceinformed.com/. You can also find me, I’m noton Twitter much, but I’m on Facebook quite a bit and I tend to friendpeople, so just https://www.facebook.com/xramey. I also run my mouth about corporatematters on Linked In, so if you’d like to check me out on LinkedIn. So if you’d like to check me out onLinkedIn, you can google Xavier, or LinkedIn search Xavier RameyChicago. I do a lot of rambling on Instagram, mostly through stories. My handleis @Professorecks. It’s the phonetic spellingof it all. But I just also want to say thank you all so much for having thisshow, and for having me on it. It’s been great. I feel like I’ve been talking alot, but I think that’s the point of a podcast.
Pete:Oh yeah.
Jared:Yes.
Xavier:[Laughter]
Pete:That’s why you’re here.
Xavier: I’mworking a bit ‘cause I’m looking to launch minenext year, and I’m working on a book, right now actually, as I’m in Michigan onthis retreat. I’m trying to start my first book of frameworks onhow to engage in these difficult, but I’ll say temporarily difficult only tothose who are unpracticed conversations.
Jared:Excellent, excellent. Well thanks so much again for taking out some time and chattingwith us here Xavier.
Xavier:Thank you
Pete:Yeah, see ya, thanks so much!
Xavier:See ya!
[Musicbegins]
Jared:Thanks everyone for another episode of The Bible for Normal People. We hope youjoin us next week. But also, just a reminder if you could, join us on March 26that 8:30pm EST for just an hour, pay what you want, just head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/howtoreadthebibleit will take you to an Eventbrite page that will give you more details. Also ifyou want to further the conversation, you can go to peteenns.com, you can lookus up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, we’re in all the places for thoseconversations, so we hope to see you there.
[Musicends]
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