'Woke' T-shirt Fulfills Its Aim to Start Conversations

Opinion

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Perspectives

A United Methodist Insight Commentary

I own an indecent number of social-justice T-shirts. Name a cause and I bet I have a T-shirt to match.

At last count, I had at least two dozen shirts with some kind of theme or motto. There's my Indigenous shirt with a photo of armed Apache warriors captioned "Homeland Security – Protecting the Country Since 1492." There's my ocean-blue climate crisis T-shirt saying "We Resist. We Build. We Rise." There's one that I bought from the young people who survived the Parkland High School massacre labeled "I Call BS" over dozens of people icons representing those killed by guns.

Of course, there are UMC-related and faith-based shirts as well: "#Be UMC," "Order of Saint Luke 75th Anniversary," "This Is What a Faith Leader Looks Like" in bright orange from Faith in Texas. There's even a pink shirt with a proverbial "Southern woman" saying, "Bless Your Heart." Sadly, I've passed along a shirt that said "I Love Jesus ... But I Cuss a Little." I could really use that in these days of chaos and confusion when "cussification"* comes so freely.

My favorite among my tees – aside from our "Love Is Love" St. Stephen UMC shirt that I designed – is the charcoal gray shirt imprinted with part of our United Methodist baptismal vows: "Resisting evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves."

In fact, I've collected so many witty, wacky shirts that we've imposed a family rule: I can't buy another T-shirt unless I choose one to give away. However, I recently fell to T-shirt temptation when I saw a new design. It's a black shirt with the word WOKE in big rainbow-colored letters. Underneath the big WOKE my shirt says, "It's not the insult you think it is."

I bought the shirt because I know a little about how the concept of "woke" developed, thanks to my friends and colleagues who graciously have schooled this recovering racist white woman about the reality of being Black in America. (How I miss my departed sister, Denise Johnson Stovall, who taught me about white privilege years before it became widely known!)

I bought the WOKE shirt at first to be in-your-face provocative in the wake of the slash-and-burn campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). But then I realized – or perhaps God's Holy Spirit nudged me – that the shirt gives me a golden opportunity to witness about Jesus if I approach the conversation with an attitude of humble inquiry.

I tried out my strategy by wearing the shirt to my chiropractor's clinic. While they don't force their beliefs on anyone, the clinic's founder and a lot of the staff are what we might call evangelical or even Pentecostal Christians. I get along with them because I speak fluent evangelical; it's the church language I grew up with and doesn't make me uncomfortable. The difference now is that because I've learned to think critically about my faith, I can unpack the platitudes without having to be confrontational.

Anyway, my new WOKE shirt immediately drew an inquiry from my chiropractor, who seemed a little alarmed that I was wearing something he clearly viewed as a partisan political statement. I explained that I was wearing the shirt intentionally to evoke conversations about people's understanding of "woke." My basis for being "woke," I said, came from my friendship with my Black and Hispanic neighbors, and from Jesus, who opened his ministry by proclaiming liberation for the oppressed (Luke 4:18-21).

My chiropractor acknowledged being politically conservative and launched into his view that some leaders – all Democrats – were hoodwinking people with their alarmist views such as sea level rise, when they're still buying oceanfront property. He caught himself quickly, saying he didn't want to get into a heated conversation.

I told him I agreed; I didn't want a heated debate, but I did hope for genuine conversation and appreciated hearing his perspective. I truly was thankful to hear how he views our society right now. He doesn't think "the sky is falling" whereas, as I told him, I worry about the harm done to people by moves such as the sudden freeze on foreign aid that has closed vital research in malaria and tuberculosis at UMC-related Africa University in Zimbabwe. He didn't reply to that specific example.

Naturally in the space of a 15-minute chiropractic treatment there was no time for more conversation. I do wonder if my cordial chiropractor thinks less of me for my WOKE T-shirt. Nonetheless, with my permission as always, he prayed that Jesus would heal my ills as he worked to realign my 71-year-old spine and relieve my pain, which the treatment always does.

In the big picture, my reputation seems a small price to pay for giving witness to God's unconditional love as Jesus taught, a message of love that is the antithesis of current U.S. policy. I believe this is the moment when we Jesus followers must gather our courage and speak out against the cruelty being spread falsely in Christ's name through White Christian Nationalism. Politicians' insistence that the "true church" blesses American empire is one reason I so dislike and avoid saying the Nicene Creed, because I view it as a document drafted under duress so that a dictator could invoke divine sanction. (Don't take my word for it; look up your Christian history).

I digress.

So, my WOKE T-shirt had its maiden voyage with a few big swells, but no overwhelming tsunami. I expect it won't always be so; I live in Texas, after all, a state so red it's practically burgundy. If nothing else, my new T-shirt will give me the opportunity to practice humility and patience, as in Jesus' teaching from Matthew 5:11-12: "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

It's a small thing, wearing a sassy T-shirt. Yet seeds are small when they're planted, and they'll grow.

*Hat tip to my Facebook friend Tripp Hudgins for coining the word "cussification."

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, an online journal she founded in 2011 as a media channel to amplify news and views about, for and by marginalized and under-served United Methodists.