From Racism to Reconciliation: Lessons from Pope Francis and Martin Luther King Jr. Lcdo. Robert K. Vischer decano de la Escuela de Derecho University of St. Thomas, Minnesota We all have a story, and we all have a story of race, of emerging selfawareness of our own race and how that shapes our interaction with the world. There’s a bigger story of race too, particularly in America, a story of how race has shaped our national identity. I grew up in a white suburb of Chicago, attended white public schools, worked at a mostly white law firm representing mostly white clients, and now work at a mostly white university. In these settings, it has been too easy for me to write a story about race in my own bubble, a story that is comfortable and easy, but one that fails to take seriously the experience of others. I’ll give you one example. When I got to know my college roommate, who came from a small town in Louisiana that was roughly half black and half white, I utilized all the self-righteousness I had accumulated over 18 years and lectured him about the racial injustice in his state. He finally asked how many black students were in my graduating class at my large public high school, and I was able to count them on one hand. There were black suburbs and white suburbs, and I lived in a white suburb. So? In downtown Chicago, I could tell whether the subway train was headed to the southside or northside based on the race of the passengers. That’s just the way it is. Now let’s get back to talking about the racists in the South. It took a while, but eventually my roommate helped me see that I had written my story of race from within a carefully constructed bubble.
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