Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Our readersJuly 17, 2020
A demonstrator holds a placard as she attends a protest against racial inequality in Rome June 7, 2020, in the aftermath of the May 25 death of George Floyd while being detained by Minneapolis police. (CNS photo/Remo Casilli, Reuters)

I am an African-American Dominican friar down in New Orleans. I read every word of your essay, “A Letter to My Fellow White Americans” (July 2020). Your story conveyed a lot of empathy and hopefully will connect with people who feel that racial issues simply spring from weak arguments and complainers.

I was born in a Black Catholic ghetto in New Orleans in the middle of the last century. My entire life has been vulnerable to being treated solely on my color.

As a child, I was touched by the life of St. Martin de Porres, O.P. My identification with his dark skin combined with grace brought me to the Dominican Order. I was blessed to have a good novice master in that he never objectified me but simply treated me like a human being. That changed as a professed brother. Formators psychologized me out of the order. I didn’t fit their notion of a Black person. My undergraduate degree in Spanish was seen as weird, and I was deemed not intelligent enough to be in the order. Further, something had to be wrong with me in my willingness to live with white people.

When seeking housing for a doctorate at Columbia University in New York, an Eastern Province prior noticed my color on a newsletter photo and phoned my provincial declaring that he “did not want a Black guy in their priory.” During my four years of study, it pained me that I would not be welcomed in a New York Dominican priory.

When in San Francisco, I was praying in a Dominican church. The priest peeped out of the sacristy and 10 minutes later two African-American police officers arrived. They pretended they were not interested in my presence and left for their patrol car parked outside the church. Minutes later, I went out and told them I intuited that they came because of a call by the priest. The police admitted it and jovially chuckled that white people can’t conceive of a Black male praying.

These examples are not meant to point a finger at my brother Dominicans. However, it’s important to note that religious orders rarely look at their own participation in a racist culture.

Herman Johnson, O.P.
New Orleans, La.

Diversity at America

In this time of our nation’s increased awareness of dismantling white supremacy, I am curious if America magazine has considered any efforts to diversify its staff and editorial contributors. A 2014 Pew study reported that the U.S. Roman Catholic Church is 59 percent white, 34 percent Hispanic/Latino, 3 percent Black, 3 percent Asian and 2 percent other. America appears to have a writing and editing staff that is overwhelmingly white. Diversity at America seems limited to gender but far less so race, with some exceptions. While this gap between the church, and the magazine’s, racial composition is not limited to America and is shared by other leading Roman Catholic weeklies and monthlies, I encourage you to take a leadership role in the prioritization of more representative racial composition of your staff. It would be welcomed to hear one of the Roman Catholic Church media leaders like yourself address this most embarrassing 21st-century gap.

Joseph F. Duggan
Santa Barbara, Calif.

We don’t have comments turned on everywhere anymore. We have recently relaunched the commenting experience at America and are aiming for a more focused commenting experience with better moderation by opening comments on a select number of articles each day.

But we still want your feedback. You can join the conversation about this article with us in social media on Twitter or Facebook, or in one of our Facebook discussion groups for various topics.

Or send us feedback on this article with one of the options below:

We welcome and read all letters to the editor but, due to the volume received, cannot guarantee a response.

In order to be considered for publication, letters should be brief (around 200 words or less) and include the author’s name and geographic location. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

We open comments only on select articles so that we can provide a focused and well-moderated discussion on interesting topics. If you think this article provides the opportunity for such a discussion, please let us know what you'd like to talk about, or what interesting question you think readers might want to respond to.

If we decide to open comments on this article, we will email you to let you know.

If you have a message for the author, we will do our best to pass it along. Note that if the article is from a wire service such as Catholic News Service, Religion News Service, or the Associated Press, we will not have direct contact information for the author. We cannot guarantee a response from any author.

We welcome any information that will help us improve the factual accuracy of this piece. Thank you.

Please consult our Contact Us page for other options to reach us.

City and state/province, or if outside Canada or the U.S., city and country. 
When you click submit, this article page will reload. You should see a message at the top of the reloaded page confirming that your feedback has been received.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024