50. Erin Jones: Building Bridges - An Intimate Conversation on Racial Healing, Resilience, and Faith.

Are you fascinated by stories of resilience that cuts across racial boundaries? Hold tight as I bring you an intimate conversation with Erin Jones, author of 'Bridges to Heal Us Stories and Strategies for Racial Healing'. Her inspiring journey as a biracial, transracial adoptee and a significant influencer in the field of education is nothing short of riveting. Erin, also shares how the game of basketball became her refuge and an unexpected encounter with the legendary Julius Irving.

 We also delve into Erin's experiences with faith, race, and politics. From her daring decision to run for public office as the first black woman in Washington State, to the racial and political rifts she encountered in her church, Erin's story is a testament to resilience.

Get ready for a hearty discussion on embracing curiosity, courage, and gratitude in our faith journey. Finally, we discuss the importance of expanding our circle of friends and stepping outside our comfort zones to make a difference. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and will leave you inspired to make a difference in your own way. Don't miss it!

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#erinjones
#erinjones2016

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# faith
#reconciliation
#race
racialreconciliation

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Podcast art by Mario Christie.

Transcript

Grantley: 0:09

Welcome to Above the Noise, a podcast at the intersection of faith, race and reconciliation, And I'm your host, Grant ley Martelly. My guest today on Above the Noise is Erin Jones, author of the book Bridges to Heal Us: Stories and Strategies for Racial Healing. Erin is a gifted speaker, an independent consultant, and an educator who has won many awards, including in 2007, the most Innovative Foreign Language Teacher. In 2008, she was the state of Washington's Milken Educator of the Year. In 2013, a White House Champion of Change and in 2015, Washington State PTA's Outstanding Educator. Erin is the first black woman to run for any state office in the State of Washington, where she ran for the State Superintendent of Education in 2016, losing by only 1%. Let's join the conversation and hear her story. I am so happy to have you here today, Erin. Thank you for being my guest, Thank you for coming on, and I'm looking forward to our discussion. I appreciate you taking the time to be with me today.

Erin Jones: 1:34

I'm excited to be here.

Grantley: 1:36

So, on, above the Noise, we usually start with trying to ground the sin on who the person is that we are talking to. You are bringing in your parents, your brothers, and what would your childhood like? you know, going through school and that kind of stuff.

Erin Jones: 1:51

Wow, that's. That's a whole. I have a whole TED talk on that, so I'll try to give you the short version. But I am a biracial, transracial adoptee, so because people will be listening to this online, I am. My mother was a white woman in 1971. I was born on June 3rd 1971. So literally my birthday from the time of this recording my birthday is in four days. I'll be 52.

Erin Jones: 2:21

But I was born at a time when black and white were not supposed to mix in the United States and my white mother we don't know the history or the exact story of my birth, but she had me with a black man and was told she could not keep me. So I was abandoned at birth in the hospital and sent to the Children's Home Society, which is where I started life. I was really fortunate and I know that God had a plan. I don't believe in excellence. God had a plan for my life because about 85 to 90% of black babies in Minnesota, where I was born, never get adopted. But I was adopted right away. At three months old, a white couple who were both teachers from Northern Minnesota came to the agency and said we want to adopt black babies And they were given me. They chose me actually. My dad tells the story of walking through the nursery and saying my crib and saying I want her, and so I tell people I was not abandoned by a mother. I was chosen by a set of parents. I don't know that their families were so excited about that decision, because, even though people in Northern Minnesota were openly racist, they also were pretty ignorant. There were no black people that lived where my parents were from, and so the only stories that my grandparents knew about black people were what they had read in the newspaper or seen on television, and they were not really positive stories. So I know that my parents parents were probably not really excited about me being adopted, but my father brought me to meet his family when I was about seven months old for Christmas, and they fell in love with me and the rest is history.

Erin Jones: 4:00

For my dad's side of the family, we have really beautiful relationship, and my cousins and I are all six feet taller taller, we are all teachers, we're all basketball players, we all sing and we've all written a book. I think all of us have written a book too. Yeah, so we're all writers too, which is just really interesting because they are all Scandinavian. So there's me and then there's them, but we all really enjoy doing the same things. We're all Jesus people too, so we all are involved in church ministry in some way too, which is interesting, because my parents were not. We went to church as kids, but faith was not a real strong part of my childhood exactly. Going to church was important, but not faith exactly. That makes a difference, and all of my cousins and I have all come to our own understanding of faith, and faith is really important to all of us cousins. So I just think it's interesting how God brought us together and made us so much alike even though I was not birthed by nature into the family We lived in Minnesota for until 1976, until I was five, and then my father took a teaching job in the Netherlands.

Erin Jones: 5:10

He taught at the American School of the Hague in the Netherlands, and so that's where I did most of my childhood from 1976 to 1989. I graduated from the American School of the Hague, and that is the school that was created to serve the United Nations world court lawyers. So all of the lawyers children went to my school, but also most of the ambassadors for non British colony countries. So the ambassadors, japan, their children went to my school in Brazil, their children went to my school. Portugal, spain, i mean all these. So I went from being an orphan kid and an orphanage to sitting next to really powerful people's children. Shell, conoco, texaco all the oil companies also sent their children to our school. Here I was, this teacher's kid, going to school for free at a school that costs today. It cost $30,000 for kindergarten. When I think about what God has done for me and allowing me to go to one of the best schools in the world, my whole childhood, is just pretty incredible.

Erin Jones: 6:15

Every American president visited our school. So every time the president would come to visit the United Nations, he would always stop at our school because we were right down the street from the United Nations world court. And how do you not stop at the American school? So we got visits from Jimmy Carter to George Bush. I hosted Barbara Bush when I was the senior in high school, but she was my second president's wife I met I met my first president's wife when I was nine years old, the president's wife of the country of Egypt.

Erin Jones: 6:46

She actually brought her friend John Denver with her and he sang with our choir and she shared her story and their country, Egypt, was in a civil war at the time and in fact, her husband would be assassinated just months after she came to visit us And she would share a story of wanting to be at peace. So she had this vision in her 40s that if we could just teach little kids to commit to peace, maybe we could end wars around the world. And so she had this vision of visiting schools, elementary schools all over the world, and she wanted to start with our school because she thought, you know, it's the United Nations school. We have children from all over the world here. And so I got to meet the president's wife of Egypt as a light-skinned black woman, a girl at the time.

Erin Jones: 7:33

It didn't strike me until many years later how powerful it was that I got to meet another light-skinned black woman who was an African president's wife when I was nine. But she would tell me when I was nine years old that I was a world changer. So I was already. I could already speak English and Dutch fluently by the time I was nine. I was learning to speak Arabic in Hebrew at nine because I had friends in my school who were from Israel and Palestine And I just had this innate passion for them to be at peace, and I knew that somehow, instinctively. I knew at nine years old I should probably speak their language if I'm going to help them become peaceful. I had this dream as a nine-year-old kid that I was going to broke her peace between Israel and Palestine, and so I had already learned. I was learning to speak Arabic in Hebrew when the president's wife came to visit our school and she told me at nine that I was going to change the world, and I believed her.

Grantley: 8:28

And.

Erin Jones: 8:28

I began to live that way as a nine-year-old kid, and I just think about the power of the words of adults and children.

Grantley: 8:35

Yeah, the power of speaking into existence. Yeah, there's still a peace between Israel and Palestine. Yes, that's probably close to it.

Erin Jones: 8:43

Yes, you still got time. You still got time to work.

Grantley: 8:46

Yes, You got time to get it done. It's interesting how you started out. I mean, I'm not sure. I think I'm going to go back to the story of one rejection from your birth mother, but then you immediately went into acceptance. A couple came and accepted, you, brought you into a family and you were adopted into this family. But yet there's so many similarities that you were saying The kids are tall authors, no professional people. So it seems like you went from rejection to acceptance into the right family, even though you were different. You weren't standing out that much because it seems like there were some things that were common to the traits of the children. Yeah, you were not born into that family. Naturally, that's amazing how God works things out. Even though sometimes it seems like it starts negative, He sort of brings all the pieces together for the destiny of your life. You said something in your book about sometimes, when you're faced with challenges, that's when you must step up to the plate. We cannot just step up. Seems like before you could walk, you were stepping up.

Erin Jones: 10:01

Yeah, I feel like that has been my life's work is to step up to hard things.

Grantley: 10:07

So, by the way, a happy birthday in.

Erin Jones: 10:09

Georgia. Thank you, that's what.

Grantley: 10:11

June occurred.

Erin Jones: 10:13

Yeah, that's great.

Grantley: 10:15

You were from the Hague. Did you actually graduate there before you came back? I did Yeah.

Erin Jones: 10:20

So I actually graduated second in my class, which is also pretty incredible because here's all these rich kids, very powerful people's children. All the parents went to Harvard and Yale and my parents went to small town community college. And then here's Erin graduating. I missed valedictorian by.01. Wow. So I mean I worked really, really, really hard.

Erin Jones: 10:47

So I graduated from high school and I was actually the top athlete too. So I played three varsity sports in high school. I was captain of all three soccer, basketball and softball And then I also played two instruments in the band and I ran the largest model United Nations in the world as a senior in high school And then applied to come back to the United States for college and got accepted at Princeton. But Princeton never looked at my financial aid paperwork. They just assumed that I was one of the rich kids. They looked at the name of my high school and made assumptions about me, and we didn't learn until many years later that they didn't look at my financial aid paperwork. And so they gave me a really small scholarship like $1,000, which, of course, for Princeton that doesn't buy anything. Buy some books. And my parents had to say no to me, as imagine. Imagine being a parent and your child has done everything right, everything right And you have to say no. I you know I tell people. I can remember the three times my father has cried, and that was one of the times my father cried. He was so devastated to have to say no to me. So I'd have to say no to Princeton, but I got accepted at the sister college to Princeton. So what a lot of Americans don't know is that all of the Ivy League colleges were created only for men, and so if women wanted to attend college, they created partner women's colleges. So Harvard has a women's college. That's connected to it. Stanford, all of the big Yale.

Erin Jones: 12:18

And I went to the sister school that Princeton. It's called Bryn Mawr College. It's right outside of Philadelphia And I went there sight unseen, which I would not recommend to anyone ever. I tell parents all the time do not, i don't care how much money the college gives you, don't go until you have visited, because you just don't know what you're going to end up in.

Erin Jones: 12:39

Bryn Mawr was not an easy place to be at all, and especially in the skin that I'm in.

Erin Jones: 12:45

There were only 10 black women there at the time that I attended And it was a community that really didn't want us there unless we were cleaning things or serving things, and that was such a rude awakening coming from Europe, where the Europeans, if you spoke languages and were an athlete and a musician, they loved you as a black person.

Erin Jones: 13:07

So I had grown up my whole life being really well loved in Europe and appreciated, and it was the first time in my life that I was openly hated and cheated with disrespect. And I remember my parents came to visit Thanksgiving, my freshman year, and it took four restaurants before they would seat us together in the same place And they actually seated us in a back room and closed the door of my white parents. I didn't even want us to sit together, it just was. It was a hard time And I know that it led me to the work that I do today. All of that challenge led me to teaching and then to helping people talk about race, because I had to. I was forced to have to think about those things in a way that I might not have had I been somewhere else.

Grantley: 13:58

So how did that affect you as an 18 year old coming coming back to the United States after being well gone your whole life? You, you, maybe, so you were never really lived here.

Erin Jones: 14:10

Well, to be honest, i mean, if I'm really frank, i thought about taking my life. And I should add that not only did I come to the US, having not lived here really, i also came before the internet. So there was no like calling home, there was no sending an email home which, you know, younger people just don't, can't appreciate that So we just didn't have a phone in our hands that we could just call, and so I was in the US by myself And I didn't have community here. My cousins were here, but they were in Minnesota And again we didn't have internet, so they it was as if they weren't here either.

Erin Jones: 14:48

They were all in college too, because we're all about the same age. So I had no one, and I played soccer for the university, and then I played basketball as well, and so I had community there on the court. But when the season was over, my basketball season actually averaged about 23 points a game as a freshman, which is a lot. I played every minute of every game my freshman year. We won every game for the first time in the history of the college, and my coach never checked on me after the last game.

Grantley: 15:17

Wow.

Erin Jones: 15:18

Never checked on me And he knew I had nowhere to go for spring break. He knew I had nowhere to go on the weekends. He knew I had no family here And he never checked on me. And I stopped going to class when the season was over And I stopped eating, i stopped bathing myself And I really began to think. Maybe I can't do anything in the world that's worth it. Maybe I was a mistake, maybe my adoption was a mistake, maybe my whole life has been a mistake. And then one day I ended up. I know this was God now, but I didn't understand at the time.

Erin Jones: 15:53

I woke up, it was the first weekend in April of 1990, right before the end of my freshman year of college, and I hadn't been to class in like three weeks And I'd just been literally laying in my bed all day. I know I was depressed now, but we didn't have words for that then. And I woke up and the sun was shining on my face And I know now it was God, like just hey, aaron, wake up, wake up. But I didn't know what it was. I just knew there was an urgency to get out of my dorm. So I left my dorm. I did not even know where I was going And I just started walking. I felt like I was being led somewhere And I know now that it was God leading me somewhere, but I didn't understand. I just was walking, i didn't know where I was going And I ended up on a basketball court in this tiny little black community.

Erin Jones: 16:39

And it's where the help lived. It's where all the people lived who worked in the white people's mansions in my college town. They served food and they were the chauffeurs and chefs and housekeepers and nannies of the rich white people in my college town. So it was this tiny little black neighborhood, really small houses, a community center, and right in the middle of town was this beautiful outdoor basketball court And this very tall man, older probably at the time. He seemed older, he was probably like 45 or 46 at the time, but he called out to me and he said you are obviously a basketball player. We need one more to play basketball. And I could tell you did not say no to this man.

Erin Jones: 17:20

So I played basketball with this man all day And when he left he took us to adult sons with him And I turned to these black high school boys and said who was that Jay man that we just played with all day. And they looked at me like I was an alien from another planet And they said, jay, you mean Dr Jay, who is that? And I said, yeah, who's Dr Jay? And they said where are you from? You don't know who Dr Jay is. I said I'm from the Netherlands. I don't know, i don't know who Dr Jay. And they had to explain to me Julius Irving, greatest NBA star to ever play a game.

Erin Jones: 17:56

And so here I had been playing with the superstar all day long and had, i mean, i knew he was good, it was obviously he was really good, but I had no idea who he was. And I sat on the sidelines and talked with these three boys for hours And they shared their story And I shared mine And what I realized as depressed as I was, i realized for the first time that I had been given so many gifts in my life And, even though I had lost my way as a freshman and I felt really alone, the thing that God showed me in that moment was Aaron, i made you black and white, i made you an athlete And I made you a great student. I made you American and European. I made you a bridge. I made you a bridge. I made you to be a bridge between multiple things, and I also had you be raised by teachers And you've been trying to run from teaching.

Erin Jones: 18:50

I'd always said I don't want to be like my parents.

Erin Jones: 18:52

They work way too hard for too little money.

Erin Jones: 18:55

But I knew, talking to these boys, they had all dropped out of school And I asked them what's your dream for your future if you're not going to get a high school diploma? And all three boys said we don't expect to live to be 21. And I knew in that moment these boys deserved to have really great teachers, like my parents had been for me And my teachers, all of my teachers had been really great for me. And I knew that these boys deserve that. And I remember running all the way back to my dorm And at the time you had to call an operator, to call Europe, and so I called my parents in the middle of the night, woke them up and said I know what my purpose is. I want to thank you for loving me so well And for being so courageous to leave America to raise me somewhere else. And I know I knew who I'm supposed to be in the world. I'm going to be a teacher, like you, but I need to do it here in America, so I'm not coming home.

Grantley: 19:51

Wow.

Erin Jones: 19:52

And I didn't come home. I never did. I've been here for 32 years And we cried on the phone that day. We cried for a long time. I can't imagine now as a mom. I can't imagine having my 18 year old kid tell me I'm not coming back across the ocean. I can't imagine what that must have been like, for my mother especially. But I made a decision that day I'm not going back, I need to stay here, And that has been. I don't regret one second of it. It's not been easy at all By far. it's definitely not been an easy decision, But I don't regret one second of it. I've taught now in Philadelphia, South Bend, Indiana, Columbus, Ohio, Corvallis, Oregon, Tacoma, Washington and Spokane, Washington.

Grantley: 20:36

So Yeah, yeah, you're born to be a teacher. You know, in some ways our story intersects a little bit. Obviously not in terms of maybe going to school, but I grew up in the Caribbean with this dream of going to college and getting the college education. Being the first person in my family to get four-year college degree. I went to the University of West Indies for a year and that was not successful. And then I met this white couple who came through Barbados. They got stuck in Barbados because there was a hurricane right. Their daughter was on another island doing some summer internships Who just happened to the internship, just happened to be with my brother who was a pastor, and I met them at church.

Grantley: 21:24

They came to our church that Sunday and he just started talking to me and he said young man, what do you want to do with your life? I told him what I want to do in my life That time I wanted to be a doctor. He says how are you going to do that? I said I don't know. I want to go to the United States to go to school. And he said if you will do everything in your power to make it possible, i will do everything in my power to help you, but the same thing you know, the Lord brought me culture into a white culture to learn the ways of white people. How did I think I made this decision? I was going to learn everything I can about how white people think, because I knew I had to be better in order to succeed. Because we were in Nampa, idaho.

Erin Jones: 22:13

Wow.

Grantley: 22:14

You can imagine, Yeah, Some of the things that were sad and some of the things like that, right, It's anyhow. But this is not about me, This is about you. But as you were thinking about this, I was like, wow, here it is. That you know, you think that your, your life is changing drastically and and you don't always put all the pieces together while it's happening. But now, as I on it, I see how much you know, I call that gentleman, my father, and then it was Irvin Laird.

Grantley: 22:43

He passed away about seven years ago. God knows what he's doing.

Erin Jones: 22:48

Yes, that he does, that he does. He's orchestrating it from way out here He's orchestrating.

Grantley: 22:54

So at those points God puts people in your life to give you the right words. You're right For you. If for you it was Dr J That there right Who caught you out from down the street, knowing, not knowing, everything going through your mind, and he revived in you a, a flame that might have been going out. Yeah, here you are. Yeah, so you went to college, you got your degrees. So where, where did you go from there?

Erin Jones: 23:22

My husband and I met this summer after my sophomore year, his junior year at Boston University. We both got accepted into a special summer program for black students from across the country. We took the top black students from across the country and we got chosen as one of the 25 students and we ended up living in a brownstone together and going to school for six weeks And I knew the first day of the program, this one, And we ended up becoming really great friends. And then he went back to Oregon state, for he played football there on scholarship And I went back to Bryn Mawr And then I convinced my dean to let me do an exchange program at Oregon state for the rest of my junior year, Because most women at Bryn Mawr go overseas. But I convinced her. I lived overseas my whole life. I have never been to the West Coast, so let me go. So I was the first student they let go to the West Coast. What was amazing about that is because I was so advanced in French. I was allowed to teach French at the University of El Boso, I got to be a teacher's assistant teaching French and I got to also teach in the writing center. So even as a young I mean, I was only a junior in college. I got experience teaching and I got experience speaking French, But I also got to play with the Oregon state basketball team. I didn't get to play in games, but I got to play in their practice season, which was also amazing. To go from a small women's college to a division one and to get to practice with them every day, And that was like another dream that I had was to play at the next level And so being able to practice there. We ended up getting engaged there at Oregon state And then he got a scholarship to Boston not to Boston to Notre Dame University where he did his graduate work in political science.

Erin Jones: 25:18

And when I graduated from college the next year, we got married in South Bend And he went to graduate school. He was an associate minister in a small Black Baptist church And I began teaching there. Actually, for people in the United States listening, Pete Buttigieg was at the school that I taught in, So he, the gentleman who ran for president, who's now our secretary of transportation he was in the eighth grade when I taught sixth grade in South Bend, Indiana, which is just kind of funny He was this little Pete. We moved to Columbus, Ohio, so my husband could go to Bible college And I taught English as a second language for the Honda Corporation And then he got called home to Tacoma to be the youth pastor at the church he'd grown up in. And so we came to Washington state 26 years ago now So he could be a youth pastor And so he did that full time for 10 years. I helped him in that. But I also opened a school in my garage and then I began teaching in the public school system.

Erin Jones: 26:23

We adopted a little girl out of a gang here in the area And her mom was actually my husband's little sister And she ended up overdosing and dying his sister And we had to leave the area because the gang came for her daughter. And so we felt like God said move to Spokane, which didn't make any sense to our Black family to move to Spokane. So this thing you don't know, Spokane it's about 98% white, It's not a community that Black families move to. But we felt like God was calling us there.

Erin Jones: 26:58

I had been doing some work with Whitworth University to support students of color on campus and they had a job opening for me, And so we quit our jobs and sold our house And three weeks before we were supposed to move, Whitworth had a budget cut and they cut my position. So we're moving for a job that I'm supposed to have that doesn't exist anymore. And I remember my husband and I looking at each other and saying, OK, what do we do now? And we both said God told us to move, We're just going to move. So we don't have jobs. Neither one of us had jobs at that point, But we'd already rented a house. We had three little kids I think the kids were nine, 10, and 11. So we moved to Spokane without jobs. He got hired by a Christian youth organization 24 hours after we moved. They were so excited to have a former youth pastor that got snapped up right away And that youth program is going to serve a high school in the area.

Erin Jones: 27:55

I ended up getting hired at the high school in the area, And Spokane has lots of high schools. But that particular high school where my husband is going to be working was the school that hired me And I ended up winning Teacher of the Year there for our state And that propelled us back across the mountains back to the state capital where I would work for two state superintendents as an executive, And then I became the first black woman in our state to run for any state office. I ran for the public schools in 2016. I lost that race by one point, But that was also God, because schools would shut down with the pandemic right after that. And I think all the time about if I had won I would have been running schools during the pandemic And I feel like God knew that was coming And he said not, Erin, I wanted you to get close, But yeah, you need to be doing something else. So I have been doing consulting work for the last six years.

Grantley: 28:54

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Grantley: 30:10

So you mentioned living in Spore Can, washington. We're coming back to Tacoma, moving to Spore Can, which was mostly white, and then coming back to the Puget Sound. I mean, what was it like at that time? This program is about the intersection of faith and risk and reconciliation. So how was it moving back here with your husband and your young family and then also running for public office as the first black woman? Did you have any unique experiences that were life changing experiences, you and your family?

Erin Jones: 30:44

I'm actually about to write a book about this, so this is my. I literally met with my author coach this morning. The title is More Than a Race and I will be writing, and it will be about the intersection of faith and politics and skin color. So it's interesting that you would ask that question right now, because that book, hopefully, will be written by the end of the summer. Lots of unique experiences, which I really believe that God is in the business with me of unique experiences, something you said earlier you don't always see the pieces at the time, but when you look back later you can see all the places. So I believe one of the reasons that God moved us to Spokane is because Spokane needed our family there to understand, to begin to start thinking about race and talking about race and and thinking about what is their responsibility, to have conversations about race. So Spokane, even though it's 98% white, also has a large Ethiopian orphan population. So I don't know why, but a church years ago probably 20, 30 years ago began adopting. People from that church started adopting Ethiopian babies And now there's just lots of people adopt. So their black population is growing And even though it's not black like me, it's still black And so they have to deal with like, what are the stories that you've been told about all black people? We got to, they got to practice having some of those conversations with us And because I am who I am and my husband is a pastor by trade, we show up in spaces to talk about race and really loving ways. I tell people I don't come with boxing gloves to talk about the conversation, i come with an invitation to community And I think that's what Spokane needed at the time was just an invitation to community. So we had one of the things that I will never forget, i think, because I'm a teacher My youngest son, israel so Israel and Malachi are boys And my youngest son, izzy, was in the fourth grade, the smartest kid in his whole school.

Erin Jones: 32:56

Just, i mean Izzy. Izzy is the smartest human that I know. My son I don't know how he became the smartest, but he is like he got one wrong on the SAT And he knew which one. He got wrong the day that he took the test And he was so angry with himself for having changed the answer. Like that's how smart Izzy is. But he's also a really kind person And he's also larger than average And so today he's six, five, but in fourth grade he was bigger than every other kid, but he would finish all his work early and then he would sit and read at his desk And I can remember the teacher. At the end of the school year I went to pick him up and the teacher pulled me back in the classroom and he started crying And he said Aaron, i had all these ideas about black people until I had your son, and your son has shattered every stereotype that I had about black people.

Erin Jones: 33:46

There was one of the books that they read as a class a short story maybe, that included some conversation about slavery. And he said your son was just so kind in how he responded with the whole class about this book that we were reading, or the story that we were reading. And he said I learned more about black people this year than I've learned in my whole career. And this man was probably in his late 40s, early 50s at the time I mean not a young teacher And he said I just want to thank you for letting me be his teacher. And it was so beautiful and he was in tears And I just thought this is why we were here, like part of the reason for being in Spokane was to be the one black family in my kid's school, to be the one black family in our neighborhood and to really challenge people's ideas about what are all black people?

Erin Jones: 34:36

Guess what? All black people are not one thing, just like all white people are not one thing. And so here we were, two very well-educated black people, also athletes. So we kind of blew up that stereotype too. We're not just athletes, we're athletes and we're really smart and we're really kind and we're also Jesus people, and so it really shattered just a lot of the stories that people had, and I think that was a really great thing for that Spokane area. What's really amazing, i'm headed there tomorrow. Actually, i'm headed to Spokane tomorrow.

Erin Jones: 35:08

What's crazy about?

Erin Jones: 35:09

we only lived there two years, but Spokane is like a second home to us.

Erin Jones: 35:13

Now I actually have a room in my friend's house that she calls the Erin Room, and anytime I go I stay there And she's this toe-headed blonde, pale, white woman who loves me like a sister, and in those two years God allowed our hearts to be knit with that community in a way that is only God could do.

Erin Jones: 35:33

I played basketball and leagues there, And so I know all the basketball players there that are adults, because I played in leagues there and I used to play in the outdoor basketball tournament there And so my team always either won or came in second. So my heart is knit with educators and also with the basketball community, but also with the church community, so I've done a lot of speaking there. When George Floyd was murdered and a lot of Spokane churches were trying to figure out how do we talk about this stuff, i was invited into Zoom calls to talk about racial reconciliation and talk how do we, as Jesus people, have healthy, healing conversations about race, and so, all because of that move 15 years ago, we are still now actually have more business in Spokane than any other city in the United States.

Grantley: 36:23

So you talked about in your book. By the way, the book is called Bridges to Heal Stories and Strategies for Racial Healing. You talk about being invited into churches to speak into after the George Floyd incident and after the racial uprising, and you said, like me, " watch you navigate spaces that were being more and more divided among political and social lines. You and I struggle as we see. Those who have been seen gentle and meek now take strong stances and ways that feel contentious and dehumanizing. We suggest that the mere mention of race was in itself racist.

Grantley: 36:59

Now let's talk a little bit about that, about how navigating these issues in the church and in the context, in a place where we talk, where people come on Sundays and think everything is good because everybody shake hands in the lobby and says how you're doing, i'm doing great And I always tell people in a place where they're spending people, everybody can't be doing great. Somebody's got to be not telling the truth. However, i think the whole racial and political thing has shown up that we were not all doing great. So talk a little bit about how you've navigated those spaces as your family and how you've helped churches navigate. Those are people of faith. Let's talk a little bit broader than churches, because I'm sure you're speaking to more than people who are identified as Christians. But all faith.

Erin Jones: 37:45

When I ran for public office, I ran as a Democrat And here's why. And for those who are listening from the United States, I think you'll appreciate this more than people who are not from the US. But in the 2016 presidential race, President Trump was pretty explicitly anti-Black and anti-immigrant. He had already gotten into the race and started those dynamics at the national level before I declared that I was running. And even though I'm a Jesus person and there are things about the Republican Party that I aligned with politically, I knew at the time that how I thought about public education I was running to public schools aligned more with the Democratic Party And I'm not a big D Democrat, I think because I'm biracial. I've always been in the gray area, right, I'm a bridge, so I'm not either one or the other And I don't think most humans do nuance very well, but I live in the nuance, I live in the gray and have always been that way. But I decided to run as a Democrat. I was gonna run as an independent And then I learned really quickly that you can't win a statewide election as an independent. It's just there's not precedent for that. The support. You have to pick one side or the other, and so I picked Democrat. However, someone told me you should go meet with the chair of the Republican Party because she is a former Young Life leader and my husband had been the director of Young Life and Spokane. And so I went and met with her right at the beginning of the campaign season And I'll never forget we're sitting in this room in Seattle and I'm telling her my story And she said Erin, I understand why you're not running as a Republican. Because I said to her your statewide party may not be anti-Black and it may not be anti-immigrant, but the rhetoric at the national level is so anti-Black and anti-immigrant. As a Black woman who serves immigrant families, I can't run as a Republican. I can't do it. And she said I get it, but what I love about you is number one, you love Jesus, and number two, you love teaching. That's what matters for this particular position. So I support you, even if the Republican Party can't support you, I do, which is really amazing, like I didn't expect that. And then I ran as a Democrat and I learned really quickly in my church So we had been the youth pastors in the same church that when we came back to the West Side for me to work for the state superintendent, we decided to go back to the church that we had pastored in, even though it was an hour away.

Erin Jones: 40:26

It's what we knew. It's a community that we'd invested in. When we started there, it was 98% White. Because of us, it became probably 40% people of color. So we'd worked really hard to invest in helping the church become more ethnically diverse, and so we couldn't find a church like that here in Olympia. So we drove up to Tacoma and went back to our original church.

Erin Jones: 40:51

Oh my gosh, people would stop me in the middle of worship service and tell me that I was a baby killer, and I had not realized until that time that, as a good evangelical, i was supposed to be a Republican. I had not, because I didn't grow up in America. I didn't grow up. My parents are a Presbyterian Lutheran. They're not evangelical, so there's not an expectation of a particular party from my parents. That's not how we were raised, and so I started getting comments like that from people and I was like what? I don't even understand that.

Erin Jones: 41:24

But I learned during my campaign season from the people in my own church that there was a divide happening in our church, because what I also knew, as I was talking to the students that we had pastored as youth pastors, who now were adults in the church. I mean, we'd pastored them before we moved to Spokane and now they were young adults in the church. I was hearing from them oh my gosh, when we go to Bible study, everybody's talking about how much they love Trump, and, of course, black Christians don't always vote Republican and often don't vote Republican. And so these black young adults are really struggling with what's coming out of the mouths of the white people that they're going to church with and Bible study with. And so when I lost my election, I remember very clearly the Sunday after I lost, my pastor preached a sermon about some of you have been away from ministry for a while and it's time to come back. And I knew, okay, that's my message, it's time for me. I'm gonna volunteer in youth ministry again, even though my husband was now a head football coach and a teacher. He didn't have time to be up and down the freeway, but I knew, okay, I love young people, i can give this time now that I've lost this election.

Erin Jones: 42:41

But I also knew from watching our own church that our church needed to have some honest conversations about race because I was watching the divide happen during the election. I was watching how people were posting on social media from our church, and so I went to our pastor that next week and said, hey, i do racial equity training. I think it would really help if we could. we are now a diverse, ethnically diverse church, but we're not talking about race. And I think we need to, because I think there's some conflicts happening maybe not in the sanctuary, but it's happening out there And I would, because I do this for a living. I would love to offer what I do for a living here for free, to the people that I love desperately, without thinking.

Erin Jones: 43:25

He said we don't need that. We don't need that. And what I heard is we don't need you. And unfortunately, that's really what he meant to. He didn't know it at the time And he came back and apologized several months later and he said I have to apologize to you. I was so afraid to broach this issue that I said we don't need it, but we really do need it. And so he let me do a training with the Board, the elder board and leadership for the church, so all the youth staff and the children's workers.

Erin Jones: 44:03

I did a training, which is great. You know, when a thing is not personal to you and it's not a priority, it's easy to check a box and say we did a thing. And I was not about to fight him over, like I was not gonna bang on the door either. I didn't want him to feel like we have to have this conversation or else, and so I just said you know what I told my husband? I said when he's ready, it'll happen. He knows where I am.

Erin Jones: 44:31

And then the pandemic hit And I watched black people in our church and white people respond really differently to the pandemic And it was so hard to watch. It was really really hard to watch. And then, of course, there was another presidential election And, i would argue, more contentious than the one before it, and I began to watch on social media as people posted really gross things. And then George Floyd was murdered in the ways that some of the white members of our church talked about all black people. It was just horrifying. But I had this revelation Oh my gosh, we've been sitting next to you for 25 years but you don't actually know us.

Grantley: 45:17

You don't know each other, correct? Yes?

Erin Jones: 45:20

Just sitting next to someone in a pew does not mean you actually have a relationship, and that was the thing that was just so clearly revealed to me when George Floyd was murdered is, oh my gosh, none of y'all know me at all And I've been raising your kids. I've been serving in youth ministry for 15 years. I've known some of you for 26 years. I babysat your kids And you know me as the public speaker, you know me as the great teacher, but you don't know Aaron at all And, of course, i'm from Minneapolis, minnesota, originally. So that George Floyd situation hit me really personally hard. Not one person reached out to ask how I was doing And I continued to serve in youth ministry. So I hosted online our youth ministry for the next six months online. I did that and not one person reached out to ask how I was doing.

Grantley: 46:11

And I was not well.

Erin Jones: 46:12

I was not well. Some of my mom's side of the family did not respond well to the either the pandemic or George Floyd, and so we got messages from her side of the family that were just horribly racist. And so I'm trying to walk through this. During a pandemic, my church not one person And I was very transparent on social media about how I was feeling. I was very transparent And all these secular people that I knew, like friends from work and stuff, were reaching out and people were dropping coffee off for me.

Erin Jones: 46:47

I began to teach on March 16th after school shut down. I began to offer free classes online every single day. I taught for four hours every day online. Kids could come, teachers could come, little kids. I did read aloud every morning for 81 days in a row And not one person from my church reached out, and it was so painful to know that I had invested so much in my time in a community that it felt like did not love me at all and didn't know me at all.

Erin Jones: 47:19

But one of the things that God told me back when I was 19 years old and had just come to know him is Aaron, i'm going to allow you to go through some painful things, but I always want you to take that pain and use it to teach people, use it to help other people heal, and so I knew probably by December of 2020, i knew that I needed to write.

Erin Jones: 47:43

So I will just say that the pain of watching our church fall apart over the racial tension, and I was so happy to be able to talk about how I moved through the world as a black woman.

Erin Jones: 48:09

It's different than how other people move through the world as white people, and if we truly love each other, we need to be willing to understand how all of our identities like, for example, you came from another country than the United States. If I didn't ask you questions about your childhood and how you came up and what is different than I, don't truly care, but I can't possibly know you fully If I don't understand the you that came before the US. If I only know a piece of you, then I only know a piece of you. I don't know the full you. And so one of the things I believe that God showed me is we have to get more curious about one another and we have to be willing to talk about especially the things that are hard, because guess what If Jesus people can't do it, how do we expect anybody else to be able to do it?

Grantley: 48:57

That's correct.

Erin Jones: 48:59

We have to lead the way, and God has given us a blueprint for this stuff. I mean, i think about the whole New Testament is about a bunch of people wrestling together who come from different cultures and different religious traditions, trying to wrestle together and learn each other and learn how do we better serve one another. That is the New Testament, and so how do we live that out? And that's really what I believe God said to me. And the pain of it all is, aaron, i want you to use this painful experience not to get angry, but to get hold yourself and then to help other people heal and find wholeness.

Grantley: 49:38

Wow, that is. That is powerful, and I know we're coming up on our time. I could talk to you for another hour. I'm looking at my list of questions and I'm going to go. However, i always believe that when God brings people on this podcast, we talk about the things that he wants us to talk about, not necessarily the things that I have on my list. You know, i have to hear, just like you have to prepare, but that doesn't always mean that that's where he's going to take the conversation Right. We got to be willing to flex.

Erin Jones: 50:11

Yeah.

Grantley: 50:11

So I would promote the book because there's lots of stuff in there that I want people to read. In fact, I've been sending it to people. I sent to somebody yeah, who is this person? You got to read this book. So, but I want to. I want to round us out in this session What are three or four things I mean we just talked about some really heavy stuff for people of faith, right, how we relate to each other, how we talk to each other. We can sit next to each other and not know each other and sometimes we can disclose ourselves off even to wanting to learn about. So what are three or four things that you may have that people who are struggling with this, people who want to have this conversation, people who realize, like us, that we got it, we've got people of faith have got to be leaders in this space that you would suggest for people who are trying to say what can I do to be a difference, to make a difference in this area of faith, race and reconciliation?

Erin Jones: 51:07

So I think number one and you've got to see me model this and training with your, your employer but be grateful like choose gratitude every day. So when it feels like the world is on fire which I feel, like the US feels like it's on fire right now People ask all the time how do you keep your head above water? I am grateful every day, I choose gratitude every single day, and I there's science to gratitude, but I believe God created the science. So the science of gratitude is that we get a wash with dopamine, so our body gets a hit of this positive wash of chemicals that allow us to feel good. But it also, if we choose to be grateful, over time It changes how we think about the world and we see the world through a positive lens. I think God already planned for that. He asked us to be grateful, and so I think the science just confirms what the way that God already made us. So choose gratitude every day. That's number one.

Erin Jones: 52:02

Number two choose to be courageous, and part of being courageous is being willing to embrace that you don't know it all, like God knows it all. You don't know it all, and so stop walking around the world like you know it all and be willing to push into the discomfort of not knowing it all. You're going to make mistakes, but I think the most important thing about being courageous is be willing to be vulnerable. Ask some questions, get curious about people around you who are not like you. You know, one of the most most important things about being brave, i think, for Jesus people is we have to stop creating such small circles of people who are just like us. One of the most important things you can do to be brave is to look at your friend circle. Who are you following on social media? Who are you having over for dinner? Who's whose house are you going to for dinner? If everyone looks like you all the time and they believe like you and they vote like you, you probably haven't expanded your circle enough. So who's around you, who's whose stories are you getting curious about? I want to encourage you part of being brave is getting curious about people who are really different from you, and don't assume the things that you've heard on TV about that group of people, and I would offer even to the Jesus folks out there.

Erin Jones: 53:21

One of my great friends is Muslim. She's a brown woman. She's from Bangladesh. She's had her hijab pulled off her head here in Olympia. That woman is fiercely. She's a fierce prayer warrior. She loves God the way that she loves God. And obviously I'm not a Muslim and I don't align with some of the things in Islam, and yet she has taught me things about God. There's ways that she is. She trusts God when I probably would have run from God.

Erin Jones: 53:54

There are ways that she has taught me about faith and devotion and fasting, and so I think sometimes Christians are really afraid of having a relationship with people who are not Christian. And guess what, if your faith is not strong enough to tolerate friendship with someone else, you probably are not don't really have a strong Christian faith. Her faith in Allah and her Muslim traditions actually pushed me to think more deeply about my own tradition and make them more More deep. I find that my faith is deepened in Jesus because of how I experience her faith, and she really challenges me to live my faith more deeply. Part of being brave is also trusting that God brought you into this, but see who God's put around you. Don't be afraid of the people that he's put in your, the house next to you or the apartment complex next to you, like, trust that God put those people on your job and in your neighborhood for a reason. Get to know them and get to know their story, so just get curious about them. The other thing that I would say is that often, especially white Christians will tell me well, aaron, the Bible doesn't talk about race at all, so why do you got to talk about race? Well, yeah, america created this, not America, but really in the 1600s, the whole idea of skin color was a created thing, but there are plenty of examples of ethnic groups, plenty of examples of ethnic groups that were in conflict for the very same reasons that we are in conflict right now around. Skin color, and race is just the new ethnic.

Erin Jones: 55:24

So if you look at the Samaritan, the story of the good Samaritan is a great example of this. Why was that story so powerful? because Samaritans were not supposed to engage. People are not supposed to engage with Samaritans. They were seen as the we don't want to have anything to do with them, right? and yet Jesus used this person that was in the margins to be the one that most loved, the person lying on the side of the road. There are plenty of examples in the Bible where Jesus gives us examples of ways that we need to cross barriers around identity, and our barrier in this country happens to be this thing we call race.

Erin Jones: 56:03

But there are lots of other ways that Jesus shows that we need to get over our differences, we need to talk about them, and so this is what made us in different skin. So it's not like he made it. God made us in different skin. It's not like he made a mistake. If he meant for us to all be one skin color, he would have made us all one skin color. There's a reason he made us tall and short, with fuzzy hair and straight hair, and so we can embrace that this is something that God designed for us. And so let's get curious and figure out. Okay, how did we celebrate all the things, all the ways?

Erin Jones: 56:41

And I would say, get on your own journey of learning. There's a really beautiful podcast called be the bridge. There's a book series to. Natasha does a really great job of talking through a faith lens around this conversation, around race and reconciliation. If you were looking for more learning, there are a number of different people having conversations about this stuff. Guess what you're going to mess up? You're going to fall down. Guess what you get back up. You mess up, you fall down. That's what sin and and forgiveness is right. We mess up, we fall down. We ask for forgiveness, we get back up. This is just another opportunity to get right with God and with each other.

Grantley: 57:19

Yeah, that is powerful. Yes, I have a class that I've taught on cultural intelligence And now I'm doing this other class on culture: seeing culture in the Bible.

Erin Jones: 57:33

Oh yes, that's good. Culture Yeah. Can I read the last page of my book?

Grantley: 57:39

Yes, yes, you have the floor.

Erin Jones: 57:41

It's my favorite. It's my favorite page, and so this is what I especially for my Jesus folks. We are brothers and sisters. This is, i believe, a prayer from God. Is this from God's mouth to my ear, to my pen, into this book? Stay grateful for every encounter. Stay curious about those around you. Stay learning. Don't be paralyzed by not having the exact right answer. Keep moving and speaking and disrupting and investing. Keep being and building the bridges we need to heal us. Do you see me on the track? I'm running in front of you, behind you, alongside you, reminding you, when your lungs burn, to keep going, reminding you to keep your eyes on the prize that could also be God to for those of you out there, not just me. I'm going to run through the check with you. Last line, run through the finish line. My friends, you've got this, we've got this. With God, all things are possible.

Grantley: 58:43

Thank you very much for joining me today, for joining us today. This is very inspirational. Like I said, i could talk to you for another hour or two. I will promote bridges to heal us, because there's some great stories in there and some great points about how to have these conversations. The purpose of this podcast is to help people of faith learn to have courageous conversations about faith and race and be able to lead others through that process to reconciliation. As I read your book and I heard you and met you, it was like she is right on, She steps ahead of me, where ahead of me. But all the voices are necessary to help people come together and understand that we can lead a different story And, like you said, it's not just in the United States, it's in the other countries too do have their version of this, and people of faith in this in these countries also learn from your book: Bridges to Heal US , and and us is a play on words-

Grantley: 59:49

us and also United States, There are strategies for healing race. I really thank you and I really appreciate it. Is there any other closing words you want to share before you go?

Erin Jones: 59:58

I don't think so. I think I love what you just said. None of us are in this by ourselves and some people are in front and behind and wherever you are in the journey, just get on the get on the track. I'm going to use a running analogy again, because I'm a runner get on the track And whether you're slower, fast, whether you've run a mile or never run more than 100 meters, walk, run, just get on the track, get in the game and trust that God will. God will assist you And I'm going to leave you alone, and there are going to be times when you do fall down in your week and keep running.

Grantley: 1:00:34

We can sit next to someone for years and never really know them, unless we become intentional about taking the time to spend time together, to listen to each other's stories and get to know each other. Aaron encourages us to be willing to suspend our comfort zone and expand our circle of friends. Be courageous, Remember to subscribe and leave us a rating. Ratings are very important to helping our podcast succeed in the podcast universe and helping it become known to other people. Email us your comments at abovethenoise24 at gmailcom. Abovethenoise24 at gmailcom. And follow us on Instagram and Facebook at abovethenoise24. Thank you for listening and please share this episode with a friend.