And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

“Now here is a book of love and you overlook all of it in favor of judgment and petty meanness.”

-  Juliet in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (film)

I was talking to a friend the other day about what it means to be a peacemaker. I think sometimes people confuse being a peacemaker with being a passivist. 

I shared with her an analogy I had been mulling over that day: Imagine you break a bone and it heals back incorrectly, causing discomfort or pain. To actually find relief from that injury, you have to rebreak the bone, set it correctly, and let it heal. Ultimately, that leads to more peace, comfort, and freedom, but the path to get there is painful. 

Being a peacemaker does not mean being conflict-avoidant. It means seeing the bigger picture and, with respect and consideration for those around you, making strides toward it. Those strides might be painful, confusing, and confronting. They might require that accountability, justice, humility, and patience hold hands with each other. But I believe they will always be worth it. 

As you know, this year's inauguration was held on MLK Jr. Day. The contrast between Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Donald Trump’s inauguration speech felt almost dystopian. It also felt personal. 

My mom was born in 1965 to a white mother and a black father. The Civil Rights Act was signed only a year before her birth. At the age of two, her mother married a white man who adopted her. They began rolling out my mom’s hair and changing her clothes so that she resembled less and less the black child from her baby photos and more and more a replica of her white parents. She didn’t learn that she was half-black until she was eleven years old, but the whispers at school had made her wonder long before then. 

This upbringing, centered on erasing her true identity in favor of a more socially convenient one, left her confused and insecure. She figured that being black must be a terrible thing if her family had spent so much of their time and energy hiding it from her and the world. So, she denied it too. In high school, she told people that she was Puerto Rican because being Latina was higher on the racial/ethnic totem pole. The way she styled her hair or chose her clothes all depended on rejecting her true identity in favor of her false one. But try as she might, the curls in her hair still wound just a little too tight, her eyes still were just a little too big, and her nose still reminded her just a little too much of the race she had been conditioned to believe was less than. 

Her biological father died in the late eighties after suffering from prolonged alcoholism. She never knew him.

In some ways, this generational pattern of erasure was passed on to me and my siblings. Though we weren’t raised to believe that being black was bad, we were raised to believe that our blackness was insignificant. We were mostly white, after all. He had light eyes, after all. I spent much of my teenage years longing to know what my biological grandfather had been like, what he looked like, and if he left anyone behind. I spent years typing keywords into Google, painstakingly crafting a family tree based on the limited information the internet could provide. 

When I was twenty-one years old, I finally sent a letter to one of the relatives I had found. She responded and her response led to what has now been seven years and counting of family reconciliation and healing. I knew that my biological grandfather had been from Selma, Alabama but that was all I knew. What I learned from her and others was that our family had actually been heavily involved in the civil rights movement. My great-grandfather had opened the doors of his office to the Freedom Riders. He had also illegally taught himself law to support his fellow black Americans. And my uncle walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge… the first time.

I didn’t grow up knowing these people or this history, but even so, I know that their sacrifice, their courage, and their fight for justice have rushed through the generations and now live with me. 

So, you may be able to imagine my grief when I heard our nation’s new leader say that we would now be a nation of colorblindness and when I watched him aggressively roll back efforts to bring justice and equity to a nation that has never healed from the impacts of slavery and segregation. Martin Luther King Jr. did not say in his momentous speech that all girls and boys would hold hands, he said, “… one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers” (emphasis mine). To be colorblind is to increase the exposure of our filter so that everything is cast in a white hue and truth is erased. I can tell you from personal experience that erasing these identities only leads to generations of pain. 

It's also not Biblical. 

Revelation 7:9 (NIV) says this, “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” 

He doesn’t say, there before me was a mass of people who all looked the same, or spoke the same, or came from the same place. The author of this text describes a world, designed by God, where there is unity in diversity. 

In Matthew 20, Jesus shares a parable where an owner of a vineyard hires workers throughout the day, each of them agreeing to be paid one denarius for their work. At the end of the day, he tells his foreman to pay the workers one denarius each, beginning with the last and ending with the first. Those who began in the morning cry out saying that it’s unfair that the workers who started later are being paid the same as those who began earlier. The parable continues, “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:13-16 NIV). 

You may not agree with me, but I consider this a pretty compelling argument for equity. The laborers hired later in the day were no less capable, they simply hadn’t had the opportunity to utilize their skill sets. The vineyard owner recognized this and instead of focusing on fairness, he was generous with the laborers who joined later in the day, elevating them to the same status as everyone else. The last line is also a poignant warning for anyone seeking status at a cost to others. 

In Matthew 22, Jesus famously declares the two greatest commandments saying, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). 

These commandments are then questioned in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. In this parable, an expert in the Old Testament law asks Jesus to clarify who his neighbor is. Jesus replies, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have’” (Luke 10:30-35 NIV). Jesus then confirms that it was the Samaritan, not the others, who had loved his neighbor well and that we should do the same in our own lives.

Samaritans and Jews hated each other. This parable has been re-told for thousands of years because of this controversy. It's shocking to imagine that a Samaritan would not only care for a Jew, but sacrifice for one. We feel removed from this idea in our current context and yet we face similar challenges. Sure, we can live next to each other and preach some level of tolerance that is largely rooted in the same erasure I’ve described. But we could also sacrifice our own convenience and understanding to reach across differences by serving and uplifting someone else. 

Christians have historically been the leaders of the justice movement. We’ve developed hospitals, initiated global efforts to heal sickness and disease, advocated for policies to protect the poor and vulnerable, founded democratic nations, and created history by being on the frontlines of the civil rights movement. MLK Jr. was not a perfect man and he was not a perfect representation of Christ either. But the fruits of his actions were good. The ripples of his choices reflected Jesus in this world. He created peace not through avoiding and not through erasing, but through graciously confronting the ones in power and holding them accountable for their decisions. 

Christians have historically been the leaders of the justice movement. Let us not fail now. 

Since inauguration day last week, I have heard rumblings of people dismissing the rhetoric of Donald Trump as if it’s just another crazy thing he’s saying. But words matter. Words convince. Just like they did on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Just like they do on social media in 2025. These words can be used for good or they can be used for evil. Trends start in the blink of an eye and opinions change even faster than that. Whether or not you support our current president in other ways, if you do not agree with his choice to dehumanize people by making them other or by leaving them off the invite list, then I implore you to not dismiss his words but to speak truth over them. When you hear people talking down about their neighbor, whether they are black, brown, an immigrant, or hold any other identity different than their own, I hope you will remember my words. I hope you will be kind, but I hope you will not be quiet. 

I spoke once with someone who said they were a numbers person and that stories didn’t matter. But stories are the only thing that can explain numbers. I am a story, and my friends and family too, but our race or any other demographic characteristic is only a statistic. You can dismiss us on paper, but you will not dismiss us in real life. However, if you are a numbers person and still choose to reject this story, let me offer that there is plenty of factual evidence to suggest that the more we collaborate and the more we invite people in, the more there will be for all of us. 

This is not to say that the color of our skin or the shape of our eyes or the country we come from is the most important thing about us. In fact, I think that rhetoric has also been incredibly damaging. But it is to say that it matters. It mattered when my family stood with other black families and fought for what was right. It mattered when my mom was conditioned to believe that who she was wasn’t good enough. And it matters now when our children and our friends and our communities are told the same thing. I wonder what a world where we could celebrate commonalities while honoring differences would look like. I bet it would be a beautiful thing.

These discussions should be easy. They should feel as obvious as telling someone that fruits and vegetables are good for them. But for some reason, it’s not so obvious anymore. Or, better yet, maybe it was never as obvious as it should’ve been. 

There is work to be done and I want to do it. I want to be a peacemaker, a real one. I know that it might be painful, but I believe it will always be worth it. The question is, do you want the same?

Titular Reference: “I Have a Dream” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As an aside, there is so much more that I could share on various equity topics, this one included. Right now, I’m particularly concerned about health equity-related decision-making and would love to dispel some myths or perhaps share some of the impact of these decisions from my lens as a public health professional. I am conscious of not being too heavy-handed, but please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like me to discuss any of these topics in this space or interpersonally.