Moving from an Island of Privilege
Sister Beverly Jeanne Howe
 I am a white woman who lived in a white, insulated world. I attended a white elementary school, a white, all-girls high school, and entered an all-white Dominican religious community. My ministry evolved in all-white classrooms and all white-parishes. There was nothing sinister in my very limited experience. I learned, and then taught, the love of God for all people. Yet, who were the “all people” when my heart was daily challenged to love only those who looked like me?
I empathized, at a distance, with the racial struggles of the 1960s. I ached at the rioting and burning of Watts in Los Angeles in 1965, and prayed for racial peace as I watched the news reports of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. But I was so disconnected from the situation, so unaware of my white-privilege, so comfortable in my white-security. Then, I would have emphatically denied being a racist. Yet, how could I love, really, from my island of disconnected and privileged reality?
Life changed for me in 1997. My white-isolation was breached during my studies in Canada when I became friends with a South African Dominican brother. Our shared academic endeavors provided opportunities to discuss his life as a black man in a white world. My understanding expanded, as well as my heart.
When an anti-racism program was offered for our Springfield Dominican community, I further recognized how white-privilege had blinded me and how racial stereotypes and systemic discrimination dominated my world. My friendship with my Dominican brother and my membership on my community’s anti-racism team have transformed me. My eyes see with greater clarity and my heart with greater compassion. I have begun to recognize the daily reality of racism that people of color have endured for generations.
Sister Beverly Jeanne is a canon lawyer and serves on the Springfield Dominican Anti-Racism Team. She resides in Rockford, Ill.
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