Sacred Ground

by Eboo Patel

  The future of pluralism in America depends more on the Chris Stedmans, the Josh Stantons, and the Frankie Fredericks than on the Dalai Lamas. First, there just aren’t that many Dalai Lamas. Secondly, when it’s only the cosmic giants we hold up as exemplars, it creates the sense that interfaith leadership is for otherworldly creatures. When Chris or Josh or Frankie is onstage telling stories about his friendships with people of different faiths, I watch the faces of young people in the audience light up, and I know behind those eyes they are thinking, “I relate to that story. I can do this, too.” That’s a key step in growing preachers—having people in the choir relate to you.

  One thing about music, when you diagram it out, it can feel dry and expert, like the worst stereotypes of science. But once the notes start coming through your mouth, it becomes an art, and that art moves people. The same is true for the song of interfaith cooperation. There is a science to the interfaith triangle and how it maps to academic concepts like bridging social capital and building networks of engagement. But interfaith preachers who speak only of the science will find that the choir has gone elsewhere. That’s because the application of the science, like actually singing the notes of the score, sounds and feels like something else entirely.

  Forming a relationship with someone of a different tradition is an art. Reflecting on that relationship in a way that expands the way you understand your own path is an art. Telling the story of that friendship so that it changes others, that is an art as well. Creating spaces where people can form their own interfaith relationships—art. Taking passages from Scripture, stories from contemporary culture, moments from our own lives, weaving them together into a song that helps people glimpse the possibilities of pluralism—all of it, an art. Assembling a choir, teaching them the song, making sure they sing, nudging them to stay on key, allowing the best members to riff and solo, pulling them out and training them to be preachers, sending them off to start their own choirs—the whole thing, an art.

  Chris, Josh, and Frankie first heard about the idea of interfaith cooperation in college. It’s the key space in our society where a choir of idealistic young people from a range of backgrounds come together to form their vocations, participate in a diverse community, and acquire a knowledge base that will help them be leaders in the world beyond. It is the cathedral where I have been blessed to do the vast majority of my interfaith preaching. Though there are many sectors in our society where interfaith cooperation is relevant and necessary (houses of worship, neighborhoods, hospitals, and cities, to name a few), I believe college campuses play a uniquely powerful role. As Chilean sociologist Eugenio Tironi suggested, the kind of society we seek is intimately connected to the type of education we offer.8 If we believe in a nation where people from different faith backgrounds live in equal dignity and mutual loyalty, we will have to make the teaching and practice of interfaith cooperation a priority on our nation’s campuses.

  In the question-and-answer session after a public talk I gave at Northwestern University, a student got up and asked, with a hint of indignation in her voice, “It’s great that you’re giving this speech about interfaith leadership at Northwestern, but when are you going to bring this message to the small town I’m from in Kentucky, a place where they’d rather meet a Martian than a Muslim?”

  I was about to accept that challenge when the obvious occurred to me: What if every student in that room said, “Come to my hometown?” Movements aren’t built by a single person running himself ragged through a thousand places; they’re built when a diverse network of people internalize a central message and are able to communicate it effectively to their various communities.

  And what did I know about a small town in Kentucky, anyway? My favorite speaking engagements are on college campuses; my favorite teaching opportunities are at seminaries and divinity schools. That’s where my interfaith journey had begun. And perhaps through the law of like attracting like, the same was true for much of our staff at IFYC. We are familiar with the higher-ed patois, we know what it feels like both to be and to mentor student leaders. It was clear—and the McKinsey analysis confirmed it—that the sector where the Interfaith Youth Core could make the highest impact was in universities and seminaries. How we do it is the subject of the next two chapters.

  But here is what I told that student: “My job was to speak at Northwestern. Your job is to figure out how the message connects back in your hometown in Kentucky.” How else to have a nation of interfaith preachers unless they practice the song?

  PART III

  COLLEGES

  I squared my shoulders, folded my arms, did my best to look fierce, and crossed the line. My friend Chris’s eyes grew wide as he watched me. It was a “Wow, that’s something I didn’t know about Eboo” expression. It’s what I was aiming for. We were juniors and seniors, campus-leader types at the University of Illinois, going through a two-week resident-adviser training at the end of which, the theory was, we would be prepared to take responsibility for fifty to sixty younger students, mostly freshmen. We had a session on supporting students who were struggling academically, a workshop dealing with roommate conflict, and some training on identifying symptoms of depression, but a good half of our time was given over to diversity issues. Crossing the line was a typical exercise. The facilitator would read out a question that was meant to allow the people of color an opportunity to share their experience of being dark in America and to teach the white people in the room a thing or two: “Cross the line if you ever wanted blue eyes.” “Cross the line if you were embarrassed by the smell of the food your parents cooked at home.” “Cross the line if you wanted to change your name so that it sounded more American.” Most of the questions resulted in the people of color doing a lot of the moving—crossing to the other side with somewhat defiant “Yeah, I went through this” looks—and a group of white people shifting uncomfortably in place, looking helpless and forlorn.

  I loved crossing the line. I loved diversity training. I loved the phrase “person of color.” I loved the helpless looks on the faces of white people when we did multicultural activities. Growing up in the white western suburbs of Chicago, I was ashamed of my skin, my name, my mother’s name, my mother’s accent, my mother country. At the University of Illinois, I felt like I had entered a magic kingdom where the most powerful spell was role reversal. Those of us who had grown up on the margins were now at the center. Those who had known only the center were now on the sidelines, required to watch as the others were given the stage to tell our stories. I was no longer the dorky brown kid who got picked last for kickball games. I was now in the spotlight holding a microphone, with permission to roar.

  My campus in the mid-1990s, like just about every other campus in the country, was in the swing of multiculturalism. You couldn’t walk ten feet in any direction without running into somebody reading Cornel West’s Race Matters or hearing a heated debate about black women’s role in the feminist movement. Just a few years earlier, multiculturalism was an abstract theory being discussed in the seminar rooms of the humanities building. Now, it was a full-fledged movement that impacted every corner of the campus.

  No incident was more responsible for that shift than the beating of black motorist Rodney King by four white Los Angeles Police Department officers in 1991. Actually, it was more like a series of nightmarish events than a single incident. The officers used a Taser on King, hit him fifty-six times with a baton, focusing especially on his joints, then kicked him six times for good measure. The incident was caught on camera by a private citizen—something almost unheard of back then—and the footage was broadcast around the clock and around the world. The following year, a jury with not a single black member acquitted the four officers. That judgment sparked off riots in Los Angeles that lasted several days and claimed over fifty lives. On the third day, Rodney King appeared on television and appealed for peace: “Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it
out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to work it out.” It was the icing on the cake: the black victim of the brutal beating by four white police officers was calling for reconciliation, not revenge. Even President George H. W. Bush, who had been accused of cynically playing the race card himself in a campaign commercial featuring a black criminal named Willie Horton, said he was “stunned” by the verdict.

  For advocates of multiculturalism on college campuses, the events around the Rodney King incident were a case study in American racism. At the center of the problem were profound differences in power and profoundly warped perceptions. Simply put, white people’s privilege put them in positions like that of police officer and juror, and their prejudice caused them to use that power oppressively. The issue in the Rodney King case wasn’t just the fact of the beating and the acquittal of the officers; it was the whispers that maybe Rodney King deserved it. The thinking went something like this: He might have been unarmed, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Weren’t those white police officers justified in feeling threatened? Didn’t they have a right to defend themselves? Especially after they pulled over a speeding car and discovered the driver was . . . black. Where I was from, there were pockets where those whispers weren’t so soft. At a backyard barbeque, I heard a friend’s parent say with pride that if he had been one of the cops, he would have done exactly the same thing. Hell, he would have called in reinforcements just in case. After all, the guy was . . . He didn’t have to say it. Everybody knew what he meant.

  What did those white cops see in Rodney King’s black skin? What do most white Americans see when they see black skin? For those of us who grew up where I did when I did, most of the black people we saw were either dancing in music videos, dunking on the basketball court, or glaring at us in mug shots on the evening news. And if those musicians and those athletes weren’t blessed with their unique gifts, chances are, they would have wound up in one of those mug shots on the evening news, too. In other words, when we saw black skin, we thought “threat.” I cringe every time I remember what I did in that backyard-barbecue discussion about Rodney King, nodded along with everyone else, hoping that my actions would override my skin color, put me at the center instead of keeping me on the margins.

  Thirty years after the civil rights movement, the challenges related to race in America—the power differences, the warped perceptions—persisted. Higher education, to its everlasting credit, recognized this and took on the challenge. College campuses effectively transformed themselves at every level to take race seriously. Affirmative action programs were expanded, increasing the number of students of color on campuses. Establishing a welcoming environment became an overriding priority in student affairs, meaning that freshman-orientation programs and resident-adviser training started to emphasize diversity. The importance of engaging the color line was signaled from every corner of the campus. I remember the football coach at the University of Illinois speaking about how, to build interracial camaraderie on his squad, he had black and white players room together. (At a sports-crazed school like Illinois, messages from the football coach mattered a great deal.) The change was felt on the academic side as well. Minority professors were hired, new courses were added, and Non-Western Civilization and Minority Cultures in America were no longer elective categories; they were now requirements for graduation. Thinking back, every single class that I took in the social sciences or humanities (my areas of concentration) had diversity as a central theme. It was clear that priority around diversity was felt at the very top of the university ladder. When the president of the University of Illinois system met with student leaders at the Urbana campus in 1996, he talked about the importance of science and technology, areas that Illinois emphasized and excelled in. But he also spoke passionately about diversity. He said that to be educated in late-twentieth-century America meant knowing something about minority cultures, having positive and substantive experiences with racial diversity, and having the skills to lead a diverse team. He wanted these to be hallmarks of an Illinois education. In fact, when he shook the hand of a graduate of the University of Illinois, he wanted to feel confident that during her time at Illinois, she had acquired multicultural literacy, experienced multicultural community, and engaged in opportunities in multicultural leadership.

  The rationale for colleges to take race seriously was not simply about the campus; it was also an attempt by the higher-education sector to have a positive impact on the broader society. In a culture with continuing tensions between racial and ethnic communities, campuses are a unique place where people from different racial backgrounds can come together, commit themselves to a multicultural agenda, develop an appreciation for cultural narratives that are poorly represented in high school textbooks and in the media, and nurture relationships between people from different backgrounds. Colleges develop a society’s leaders and set a country’s intellectual and cultural agenda, meaning that the attitudes and relationships nurtured on American campuses impact diversity issues in the broader society. Essentially, the center of the multicultural movement was about renewing the idea that America is about people from different backgrounds coming together to build a nation. To do that, people need open attitudes, appreciative knowledge, and meaningful multicultural relationships. College provides the perfect environment to cultivate all three.

  Like any movement, multiculturalism had its fringe. It was a place I knew well. Let’s put it this way: I crossed the line a lot. “Cross the line if you asked members of your family not to speak their native language in public.” “Cross the line if you have ever wished you were white.” I was always moving—proudly, passionately, frequently. The next question: “Cross the line if, when you are just hanging out with your friends, people mistake you for being in a gang.” That’s the one that provoked the extra-hard look from me, and the extra-wide eyes from Chris. I came back and stood next to him, arms still folded, eyes still locked in a fierce glare. Chris leaned in to whisper something to me. I thought he was going to tell me how enriched he felt by this exercise, how appreciative he was to learn this new layer in my life. Instead, he said, “Dude, you’re an Indian kid, from Glen Ellyn. I could understand you being frustrated if people stereotyped you as an engineering student or they asked you to fix their computer or something. But being in a gang? Give me a fucking break.”

  The center of the multicultural movement may have been about advancing the American project, but the fringe was characterized by all kinds of excess. There was the ludicrous belief that the only people with interesting stories to tell were people of color, and that the most interesting parts of those stories were the parts about being oppressed. It meant that people woke up in the morning looking for ways that they were marginalized, and if they couldn’t find any, inventing them. I spent a lot of time seeking and inventing. I remember being fifteen minutes late for a noon lunch appointment with a white friend, and when he looked impatiently at his watch as I sat down with my tray, I snapped that I refused to be colonized by his white notions of time. “Eboo,” he said, trying to keep his voice even, “we both have one o’clock classes. Your being late isn’t about you being oppressed; it’s about us having less time for lunch together.”

  As much as I liked lecturing my white friends on campus about identity politics, I focused most of my energy on a certain unsuspecting middle-aged Indian who had immigrated to America two decades earlier. Once or twice during a semester, I would pack my dirty laundry in the back of my parents’ Oldsmobile and drive north on I-57 for a home-cooked meal and another opportunity to educate my dad, practicing my lecture out loud on the way. Why had he told me to read John Steinbeck and Ken Kesey growing up? Why not Richard Wright or Ralph Ellison—were they too radical for his suburban tastes because they were black? (Clearly, I didn’t pay attention to Steinbeck and Kesey if I didn’t think they were radical, he told me.) My father lay languidly on the sofa, watching football (exploitation of minority athletes, I told him), regarding
the fruit of his tuition dollars with mild curiosity, raising his eyebrows when I said something that he thought crossed the line, occasionally intervening when he thought I was edging close to the cliff.

  “You’re lecturing me as if I know nothing about being a minority,” he told me during halftime of one Bears game. “I was one of the only brown students at Notre Dame in the mid-1970s, I was one of an even smaller number of brown guys to be an executive in corporate advertising, and I was one of the first brown people to start a business in the village of Lisle, so stop acting as if you own all things brown.”

  “Plus,” he said, “for all your talk about identity, you have never once mentioned the dimension of identity driving world affairs.”

  I was about to say something self-righteous when he interrupted with a phrase that felt out of left field: “Religious identity, Eboo. Religious identity. That’s what people are killing each other over these days. If you don’t believe me, just look at the newspaper. Listen, the next time you want to act like the world’s expert on diversity, please first tell me how you plan to solve religious conflict.” The second half had just started; he turned back to the game. I left in a huff, my folded laundry and Tupperware containers of home-cooked food in the back seat of the Olds. Clearly, my dad had been so thoroughly assimilated that his only response to my attempts to raise his consciousness was to try to divert me.

  A few weeks later, a friend of mine called, choking back sobs, and said, “Did you hear the news? Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.”