An Initial Loathing

As a child, I hated to read. I didn’t want to read anywhere, not at home, not at school, not at the library, and not at church. And though I’d suffer someone reading to me, I refused to reciprocate—even for my mom. Try as she might, mi madre could not get me to read with her.

I didn’t desire books because I craved being outside, playing with friends, and exploring New Jersey’s beautiful woods. But that’s not the whole story. Early in my elementary schooling, my teachers switched from phonics to sight-reading. Soon I was reeling with embarrassment from my inability to recognize or sound out words. And soon people were marching me out of my homeroom class to attend reading-assistance sessions. “Why isn’t the entire class going to reading time?” I asked. I despised these special sessions. Each one further enflamed my hatred for reading.

These reading sessions intensified my fear of being special for the wrong reasons. Time and again I had to explain to people that my last name is pronounced “Car-ta-hen-a,” not “Car-ta-gen-a.” “The ‘g’ is pronounced like an ‘h,’” I’d tell teachers, classmates, and administrators. My classmates were blunt: “That’s weird. Why don’t you have a normal last name?” I never gave a good answer. What could a young, insecure Latino tell an Anglo-dominated world?

I usually settled on what felt safest, what felt like a place to hide: “Well, my mom’s maiden name is Smith. That’s pretty normal, right?”

Try to hide, little Latino. Try to hide as best as you can. The world wasn’t made for you, niño. No one has told you this truth, so you’ll have to learn it the hard way. Until then, hide as best as you can.

A Civilizing Lesson

I couldn’t hide in Mrs. Noone’s class. Mrs. Noone made sure of it. Noone was my sixth-grade honours English teacher, and she cherished the elementary school equivalent to law and order. Her classroom was spartan, the desks precisely aligned. Noone demanded that we assimilate into her ideological and material space, her kingdom. She prepared an individual place for each of us. My assigned seat: Front row, far left—right next to Noone’s podium. I knew our seating arrangement wasn’t arranged alphabetically, but I hadn’t learned the machinations of racial surveillance. That happened later. I would learn other lessons first.

Class began immediately after the school bell rang. Noone strode between podium and blackboard, covering the latter with notes. My notebook’s contents surpassed the board’s as I meticulously transcribed Noone’s every word. Although I doubted that I’d excel in an honours course, fear of failing propelled my studiousness. I was Latino. I could work hard. That’s what we do.

Then it happened.

“Nathan!” Noone shouted.

“Yes ma’am,” I responded, just as Mom taught me.

“Have you been paying attention?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“No, you have not,” Noone replied, as she locked her pointer finger on to me. “And that is precisely your problem: You do not pay attention.”

All eyes fixed on me. My heart started pounding as my ears grew hot. Sweat filled my palms. There was nowhere to hide.

“This is an honours class, Nathan, not a daycare centre,” Mrs. Noone continued.

“Yes ma’am, I know. But I was paying attention.”

Wrong move.

“Enough!” Mrs. Noone cried. “You do not belong in this class, Nathan. Do you understand? You are only here for racial diversity numbers.”

No one spoke. No one defended me. Like my Indigenous and Puerto Rican ancestors, I faced a horrifying dilemma: Resist my civilizing lesson and face horrific consequences or silently absorb it. I chose the latter. I absorbed Mrs. Noone’s instruction and internalized its racist logic. And in short order, I started telling myself a sinister story: “It’s okay to spell your middle name as ‘Lewis.’ It’s okay to ignore that it’s ‘Luis,’ like your dad’s and abuelo’s. And it’s okay to admit that, because you’re Puerto Rican, you’re less intelligent than normal people. As Noone said, you’re only here for racial diversity numbers.”

Try to hide, little Latino. Try to hide as best as you can. The world wasn’t made for you, niño. No one has told you this truth, so you’ll have to learn it the hard way. Until then, hide as best as you can.

A Challenging Transition

For years, I silently suffered from Noone’s civilizing lesson. The lesson’s racist logic catalyzed catastrophic, long-term effects. Chief among these evils were psychic devastations, including an inability to see myself rather than the white supremacist stereotypes I had internalized. It is hard to love a self you don’t see. And it’s hard to love yourself when you accept a colonizer’s dehumanized image of you and your people. A colonized mind carries corruptions.

Mr. Afros, Mr. Blanchard, and Mr. Neal began the process of healing my psychic wounds. Jewish, English, and African American, respectively, these committed tenth-grade teachers saw me better than I saw myself. What’s more, they loved me. And because they loved me, they pursued me and told me a different story than Noone’s and the one I told myself. They said I was a scholar.

For Afros, Blanchard, and Neal, the term “scholar” was sacred. A scholar was dedicated to critical thinking, not rote memorization, or academic regurgitation. A scholar accepted the arduous task of perpetual self-examination. And a scholar was virtuous, someone committed to cultivating excellent character. Given this meaning, these three men used the term selectively.

They challenged students to become scholars, but rarely praised someone for achieving it.

During an after-school study session for an upcoming exam, Blanchard decided to challenge me to grow as a Christian scholar. Approaching me, he asked if we could discuss something unrelated to his class. I said yes.

“Nathan,” Blanchard said, “you are a scholar. And because of that, I offer you this challenge: Take your Christian commitments more seriously. Don’t settle for a shallow understanding of the Bible or a cursory understanding of Christian theology. If you’re to be a Christian and a scholar, you must apply the same intellectual rigour that you demonstrate in class to learning the Bible and to learning theology. Anything else is dishonest.” Blanchard’s unexpected challenge resonated with me. I decided to accept it.

Years of Sunday school, youth group, and church services made me confident that I could read the entire Bible by myself if I used a study Bible. But I was not confident that I could read and understand academic theology. To lessen my chances of failing, I chose to read Ravi Zacharias’s The Real Face of Atheism, because I had a budding interest in Christian apologetics. Atheism’s opening pages rocked me. They made me feel ignorant and embarrassed; they made me feel special. I didn’t know what “gainsay” or “germane” meant. Same went for “existential” and “intellectualism.” But my embarrassment gave way to a fierce determination, and I committed to a simple plan: When I didn’t know a word, I looked up the definition and wrote it in Atheism’s margins.

Progress was slow. Really slow. But I moved. Line by line, sentence by sentence, I moved. Atheism moved too, for I carried Zacharias’s book and my pocket dictionary wherever I went. Riffing on my elementary school practice of hiding spelling lists under my desk during exams, I became adept at subtly searching for and reading definitions from a dictionary tucked under my desk. I carried on this way for weeks. And after three months, I had meticulously read a book for the first time.

Rebellion and Suppression

Reading Atheism motivated me to expand my reading skills. My vocabulary and reading comprehension grew as I plodded through academic theology books throughout my junior year. And as my senior year started, I craved the opportunity to further my growth in Ms. Jackson’s AP English class.

Ms. Jackson was my first and only female African American English teacher. She also was the first and only English teacher I had who employed Socratic dialogue. It did not matter where you sat, whether in the front or back, Jackson elicited contributions from everyone. She was an attentive, engaging instructor.

Jackson was also an attentive reader. In our course’s opening weeks, she routinely excavated textual gems from passages I thought the class had exhausted. Inspired, I committed to offering the class’s most insightful readings of our second book, Toni Morrison’s Beloved. But this proved impossible.

My white classmates staged a coordinated rebellion against Jackson and Morrison. For three straight days they filibustered. For three straight days they saturated our sessions with diatribes about reverse racism, anti-whiteness, and black privilege. “Ms. Jackson, why should we have to read about slavery? Ms. Jackson, why do you assign authors that hate white people? Ms. Jackson, don’t you think Morrison only won the Noble Prize because she’s black?” From start to finish, that’s how class went. Furious and exhausted, Ms. Jackson canned our time with Morrison.

I hated those class periods. I hated hearing my white classmates’ racist screeds. And I hated that I never spoke. I didn’t speak up for Morrison, I didn’t speak up for Jackson, and I didn’t speak up for myself. I remained silent, stewing in anger and longing to ask a question: How much research did Morrison put into Beloved? On the surface, this question reflected my sense that Beloved folded mountains of learning into textual details. Because I didn’t know much about the antebellum South or Reconstruction, I wasn’t sure if my suspicion was right, and wanted to check with Jackson. But my question also housed a deeper meaning. For I’d begun to wonder: If Toni Morrison needed to do extensive historical research to write Beloved, might not I need to do extensive historical research to understand how racism affected me?

Several days after my classmates’ rebellion, I asked Jackson about Beloved’s research requirements. Jackson’s answer crushed me. “Toni didn’t do a lot of research for Beloved. She mainly used her imagination.” Presuming this answer was true, I resolved to limit my analyses of racism to the intuitive, to what I deemed obvious. I thus suppressed wounded, colonized parts of me that recognized Beloved’s research and hoped that similar learning could heal and decolonize them. If my white classmates hadn’t heard Morrison, I did—just before muting her and myself.

A Prolonged Reckoning

Open your eyes, mijo. I know your pains are great. Many have failed you, but I will not. I have come to bind up the broken-hearted and set captives free. Yes, I am toppling empires, but a bruised reed I will not break. My kingdom belongs to you, mijo, and it is here. Ven: Be healed.

I kept my commitment to ahistorical analyses of racism until my senior year of college. That’s when Alasdair MacIntyre schooled me. I was reading After Virtue for class at Grove City College when I found this arresting line: “Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means, and Bakke [a US Supreme Court Case] was an engagement whose antecedent were at Gettysburg and Shiloh.” In a single sentence, MacIntyre joined what I’d experienced separately. Bakke was about racial and ethnic quotas in academic enrolment—it was about racial diversity numbers. MacIntyre’s sentence entailed that I couldn’t understand this landmark case and how it shaped my educational experiences without understanding the Civil War’s unresolved conflicts over racism and chattel slavery that Beloved detailed. I was on to something. But I didn’t know how to proceed.

Two years later, Dr. Tommy Curry nudged me in the right direction. I met Curry at a Texas A&M philosophy-department potluck. While talking, I mentioned being Puerto Rican. Curry smiled then said, “You should read some critical race theory. I think you’ll find it helpful.” Curry directed me to canonical CRT texts and warned against straying far from them because white scholars were gentrifying the field. I thanked Curry—and a year later heeded his counsel.

My first venture into CRT was disastrous. I started by picking up Curry’s essay “Will the Real CRT Please Stand Up?” Three pages in I realized I did not know enough about race scholarship to appreciate his arguments. Terms like “postcolonial” were as foreign to me as “germane” had been. When I pivoted to a book Curry quoted, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, I quickly realized that the book presumed more historical and legal awareness than I had. I was stuck. A pocket dictionary would not do. I needed an educational overhaul.

I began that overhaul at Baylor University. As I began coursework, I launched several self-study programs in fields including race scholarship. Footnotes were my guides. They offered concise maps of disciplinary literatures and illuminated paths to must-read texts. I continued learning these maps and paths while writing a dissertation on Thomas Aquinas. And upon graduating, I was a competent Thomist and race scholar.

Shortly before graduating, I accepted a position to teach courses on race and justice at Wheaton College. The opportunity thrilled and terrified me. I was eager to offer courses that unmasked white supremacy, but I knew that executing this task in a historically and predominantly white Christian college would be immensely challenging. One of these challenges would be confronting the reoccurring thought that, from the institution’s perspective, I principally served to provide cover against charges of racism; I was there for racial diversity numbers. The more I considered this challenge, the more a line by Tommy Curry haunted me: “Despite the recent rise in articles by American philosophers willing to deal with race, the sophistication of American philosophy’s conceptualizations of American racism continues to lag behind other liberal arts fields committed to similar endeavors.” Curry later notes that “many scholars interested in exploring the themes of racism (marginalization, silencing, power, etc.) are taken to be authoritative, regardless of their formal education in the histories of oppressed peoples in the United States, or a functional knowledge of the development of white supremacy within America’s geography.” The possibility that Curry’s words described me was horrifying. I lacked the formal education he championed, deemed my understanding of white supremacy’s history mediocre, and, most painful, knew I avoided studying how white supremacy had ravaged me and my family. A reckoning hour was here. I needed to make some significant choices.

In conversation con mi esposa, I committed to become an academically respected CRT scholar devoted to healing my colonial wounds. This was two years before George Floyd’s murder and the anti-CRT movements that ensued. It was two years before Christopher Rufo, Tucker Carlson, President Donald Trump, and the Southern Baptist Convention’s six seminary presidents launched campaigns against CRT. And it was two years before I started receiving hate mail.

Building a Liberating Library

Continue to look, mijo. I know your pains are great. But yours is the kingdom, and a bruised reed I will not break. Ven, mijo. Be healed. Be transformed.

Despite the avalanche of white violence my family and I suffered, we persevered in our commitment to my becoming an academically respected CRT scholar. My personal library makes this plain. CRT texts line my desk. Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Tommy Curry, Richard Delgado, Ian Haney López, Mari Matsuda, Imani Perry, and Robert A. Williams Jr.—these and other CRT authors have helped me see myself and the centuries of white-supremacist imperialism shaping me, my family, and my people. This changed sight and understanding required and empowered me to make extended stays in literatures with which I had only made a passing acquaintance in graduate school. Now heavily annotated texts in Asian American history, black studies, critical whiteness studies, decolonial studies, indigenous studies, and liberation theologies populate my bookshelves.

But if the above portrait of my family’s perseverance and my evolving library is true, it is also incomplete. I recognized this truth last January. As I sat in my chair to switch from snow boots to dress shoes, I placed my winter hat on a stack of books pincered between several other stacks of books. Because I hate being cluttered, I winced. Then I glanced at my desk. Flanking my CRT books were stacks of books and articles. I knew the source of this mess: I was clinging to colonial totems and tools. My internal chant riffed on Augustine: “O Lord, give me liberation—just not yet.” I knew that I couldn’t confront my double-mindedness or the stacks it spawned until the semester’s end. Liberation is a process, and I wasn’t ready for the next stage.

The semester ended. Two weeks passed. The stacks remained. Then a month passed. The stacks remained in their assigned seats. Frustration and embarrassment overwhelmed me. But as I reeled from pain, I remembered a dear friend: James Baldwin.

Jimmy’s writings had healed me many times. They’d injected clarity where confusion festered and restored human flesh to dehumanized bones. This health required accepting two important truths: “The past is all that makes the present cohort, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.” Jimmy wrote that in 1955, in his “Autobiographical Notes.” He sang a similar tune in 1963, midway through The Fire Next Time. “The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. To accept one’s past—one’s history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.”

Jimmy’s general and racially specific point had sung to me. As I faced my library, his words sang again. My chaotic library mirrored my internal chaos, my frantic effort to avoid drowning in a vortex of interrelated educational pains. Grove City College had condemned a “CRT” I didn’t recognize and functionally exiled me. There was no returning to my undergraduate alma mater. And as people continued to hurl vicious messages and comments at me and my family, Baylor and Wheaton proved relatively silent about my delivering prominent talks on CRT and my being the first Latine to win a prestigious Wheaton teaching award. These slights brought painful memories to the fore: I saw myself walking to special reading time; I heard Noone’s civilizing lesson; and I watched my classmates’ white rebellion. Past and present blended together. I was drowning in a sea of pain that my white normative, empire-sustaining education had inflicted on me. If I were to regain my library, I needed to heal. If I were to heal, I needed liberation. I needed to put my past to work.

Because honestly confronting the past takes time, I set aside a day to engage myself and my library. I began early in the morning. And from then until I finished that evening, I prayed for God’s healing and liberating kingdom to come in me and my library’s portion of the earth as it is in heaven. Tears flowed as I repeatedly acknowledged two bitter truths: I kept many articles and books because, in my mind, they proved that I hadn’t abandoned the historically white communities that shaped me; and I kept those texts from a desire to please those same communities, to show that I had texts that they deemed good. A white imperial gaze still guided my reading habits. I wasn’t free.

One day wasn’t enough to liberate myself or my library. We’re both works in progress. But new questions inform what books and articles I acquire or keep, and this one has been key: Given your past, what texts do you need to heal and more fully experience the liberating kingdom of God? Perhaps you’ll find this question helpful too.