I yelled in my truck the day I saw the video of Alton Sterling’s lifeless body on the ground, lest I be perceived as the angry black dude by yelling in public. In him, I saw myself. My brother. My cousins. My friends.
I was on my way to church that day. At the time, I was immersed in white evangelical church life and had been the one selected to lead a group through a book on race because the church wanted to be more “diverse.” Ironically, it was the popular white evangelical pastor John Piper’s book “Bloodlines,” a book on race that was safe for the congregation. I was probably the first black person to preach there. That usually came with a badge of honor — the “first” usually means you’re breaking barriers (or so I thought).
