A Conversation between Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J., and Karsonya Wise Whitehead on the Intersection of Ignatian Spirituality and Antiracism
Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J.: Since Europeans arrived in the Americas and the seeds of racial injustice began to be planted, there has been a need for conversion. Our nation was built on this racial injustice and continues to exist as a land known for the division, separation, exclusion, and elimination of Black and Indigenous people
But Ignatian spirituality, which emerged from a conversion experience that St. Ignatius himself had 500 years ago, invites us to work toward changing, converting this ailing system that we’ve inherited from our past.
Perhaps we have Ignatius’ disappointment to thank for the moments of his conversion and for his spirituality. He was the son of a wealthy nobleman and a military man, until he suffered a career ending injury, his leg being shattered by a cannonball in battle in 1521. During his lonely hours of suffering and convalescence, he found a new spiritual perspective from which to view his life and his calling, a perspective which would develop into his Spiritual Exercises.
So, in this way of seeing things, we are all charged with taking responsibility to convert our troubled system, which is the product of hundreds of years of sin and the stain of slavery. Since the basis of Ignatian spirituality is about change, reconciliation, and healing, we can find tools for antiracism in the Spiritual Exercises, and we must use these tools to act now to heal our nation.
In an address at the 2018 Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice, +George V. Murry, S.J. (above), then bishop of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio and a former chairperson of the Committee Against Racism for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, underscored the importance of engaging in adult conversation to overcome the parasite of racism. Bishop Murry defined racism as “race prejudice plus power, a conscious or unconscious assumption that one race is superior to another which is then re-enforced by political, social, economic and societal power.” The dialogue between Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J. and Karsonya Wise Whitehead embodies the importance of embracing Ignatian spirituality in order to develop “our willingness to confront white supremacy, racism, and whiteness and work to dismantle them.” Photo courtesy of the Society of Jesus.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead: The way I see it, here is our reality: after 400 years, we still have to prove to both the world and to some within our community that our lives—Black lives—matter. This is both a toxic reality and a painful realization. But at the same time, we have survived. We have had four hundred years of white nationalism and white supremacy, of racism and oppression. But we have also had four hundred years of Black resilience and Black joy, of Black family and Black love.
It is a burden that is made more onerous by the years of injustice, the tears shed, and the protests mounted. In August 1619 when the first 20 Africans landed here in English North America, they did so, not knowing what the future held for them or whether they were going to survive and thrive in this new world. That the information was recorded is astonishing, that it has survived is a miracle because it provides us with a small window that opens up our history on these native shores. Among the “20 and odd Negroes” were Antoney and Isabell, a couple who would later marry and give birth to William, the first documented African baby baptized in this new world. Their story, which is pieced together by fading documents and a vibrant oral history, shows that they were captured, enslaved, and later freed, building their family and eventually amassing a small fortune. There is a story of white supremacy and Black resilience.
And now, I think we are now at a “middle passage moment,” a passage between the past and the future, where we must recognize that we have survived Black bodies being lynched and terrorized, choked and beaten, and shot and killed, over and over again, and we are choosing, once again, to go forward rather than backward.
We have survived, and so I think this recognition must be a part of our awakening today, remembering that power, like Frederick Douglas taught us, never concedes without a struggle. This survival instinct must become our rallying cry. I believe that we must continue to push for justice, equity, and reconciliation—which to me, means reparations. We must find a way to get there before more people—and I am really thinking about the next generation— suffer, struggle, and die within this system.
PS-J: I agree, and I’m hopeful that if we continue to put pressure on the system and continue to teach the truth, most of us will not need to experience physical agony like Ignatius’s shattered leg to transform our perspectives and set us on the path forward. I think, in place of this kind of wounding, we all can, instead, benefit from quiet times in which we retreat from our super-charged routines, when we clear out the noise and clutter of our daily lives, when we open up space for God to enter and for change to happen within us.
I would remind people that for the past five centuries, Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises have helped people reflect and transform, and they can serve as a guidebook for stepping back and viewing our situation in new ways.
KWW: But this moment right here, is a crucial one. As we must remember that, despite our best intentions and our work to make this country a more perfect union in the past, there are still some spaces in this country where our lives do not matter. It’s not a new moment, but we need to see it as new.
For so many of us, who cannot trace and document the beginning of our lives in this country, Antoney and Isabell are a beacon of hope, an example of what it looks like to choose to survive in this country. The history of this country was written with our blood. We are the reason America became America. We tilled the soil, raised the crops, tamed the underbrush, but we were not supposed to survive. Yet, we did not die. We are the descendants of men and women who chose survival as an act of rebellion.
On top of everything else that is happening, maybe what we need is a moment to reflect and this is where the Spiritual Exercises might help us. I just need to understand how someone who is not a Jesuit can engage with the Spiritual Exercises in a way that can make an antiracist difference today.
PS-J: Well, the Spiritual Exercises were not written as spiritual stories for healing and reconciliation. Still, the experience of these exercises helps offer new perspectives and helps us determine how to make a difference in the world around us, and so in this way they can guide us in our antiracism today. For example, Ignatius’ Exercises emphasize the importance of consistency, continuity, community, and prayer with action. So, we can learn from him, for example, how our action for justice can actually be considered a way of “praying.”
And he emphasizes proaction, not reaction. In fact, Ignatius cautioned against reactive behavior, which he considered the movement of an “evil spirit,” while he saw proactive behavior—a human response that can lead to hope, love, and charity—as the fruit of a “good spirit.” As Jesuits, the glue that holds us together in our spiritual formation is the discernment between the evil spirit of reaction and the good spirit which prompts actions of hope, love, and charity.
In terms of advancing antiracism, it’s time for us to truly learn to be proactive creatures who are participating, and seeing our purpose as participating, with the work of creation alongside our Creator, who is manifested in actions of hope, love, and charity.
KWW: My sense is that it’s a time first to remember, then to be converted, and then go forward in action. In some ways, we were at this kind of pivotal moment in the colonies when slavery was legalized. We were at this moment during Reconstruction when the rise of white domestic terrorism slowed the wave of Black progress and change. We were at this moment when they murdered Emmett Till, when they shot Medgar Evers and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., when they blew up the 16th Street Baptist Church in 5 Birmingham, when they burned down Black Wall Street in Tulsa and Rosewood in rural Florida. We have been at this moment before, and because we remember, we know what we need to do. I have been thinking a lot about this moment particularly when someone tries to tell us that all of this happened 400 years ago but let us not forget that the year Harriet Tubman died, Rosa Parks was born. Our history, as James Baldwin once said, is not the past but the present.
So, in light of this, it’s important to remember what you say about action being a fundamental concept of Ignatian spirituality and that this can serve as a tool in antiracism work.
PS-J: Also, remembering Ignatius’ conversion, we might ask for the grace of conversion in our own lives, to change our attitudes of reluctance and inaction with the gift of a “good spirit” that leads us forward in progress, what you call doing the work of creation alongside the Creator.
KWW: This type of conversion will not be a sprint, but a marathon, and our individual work will not conclude until our last breaths. Frederick Douglass argued that after 230 years of being chained and lashed, hunted with bloodhounds, and surrounded with utter insecurity, we had learned how to live on and how to smile under it all. We learned how to sing through our pain and laugh through our tears.
And even when we thought we made it over, we were reminded time and time again that America—the land of the free and the home of the brave, the place that opens its arms to the poor huddled masses yearning to be free, the country that guarantees life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—had never been America to us. I think the work to make America America continues.
In an effort to “help make America America,” Karsonya Wise Whitehead (above-middle), associate professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland, hosts an award-winning radio show on the NPR-affiliated public radio station for the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan region. Photo courtesy of Morgan State University.
PS-J: You’re right. The work will take a long time, but the time for conversion is now. In a letter sent to some younger Jesuits studying in Spain, Ignatius insisted, “We should never postpone a good work, no matter how small it may be, with the thought of later doing something greater.”
Today, every member of the Ignatian family—Jesuits, teachers, students, staff—as well as every American with a conscience and a beating heart, is called to engage in an Ignatian fashion with prayer for complete conversion toward antiracist healing and reconciliation.
I believe that if Americans truly want to move forward, to put an end to the centuries-long system of racism and injustice, we must embrace this vision— “never postpone a good work”— that Ignatius furnished centuries ago. I’m also thinking of writer James Baldwin, who said, “You always told me ‘It takes time.’ It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time, my uncle’s time, my brothers’, and my sisters’ time. How much time do you want for your progress?”
The time for conversion is now. The time to pray for the grace of conversion is now.
KWW: I think it is much more complicated than simply praying for the grace of conversion. It definitely can entail embracing the gift of Ignatius’s spirituality, and it should start with self-transformation. But it must also include embracing that spirituality for the purpose of developing our willingness to confront white supremacy, racism, and whiteness and work to dismantle them. It is difficult to do anything else in terms of antiracism unless we start there.
Angela Davis reminds us that we have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world, and we must act that way every day. Radically transforming the world, in my opinion, starts with radically transforming ourselves and then radically reimagining the world that we want to live in and that we want to leave our children.
Patrick Saint-Jean, S.J., is a Jesuit regent teaching psychology and counseling at Creighton University and is the author of The Spiritual Work of Racial Justice: A Month of Meditations with Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead is associate professor of Communication and African and African American studies and the founding director of the Karson Institute for Race, Peace, and Social Justice at Loyola University of Maryland. She is the author of Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.