“In New York we have a different window into what the unrest looks like, both the pain and the beauty.”

Ashley Anderson, Chelsea

Ashley Anderson is new to New York, but she’s not new to racial tension.

“I have an ambiguous racial identity, for sure. My mom is super white, and my dad comes from a long line of light-skinned black people. I was raised pretty apart from the black community and black culture. Most people think I’m Latin American or Middle Eastern. I definitely live in the light-skinned tension, not knowing which community I belong to.

I don’t think I realized there were other people who lived in this ambiguous tension. It felt very isolating and alone. Because I pass for white, I also pass for a lot more privilege than my grandma did, or her mom or her brother. So it’s nuanced and it’s complicated, but I’m learning and unlearning a lot. The parts of me that I’ve always appreciated to pass for white are the things that I have to look really hard at right now, and it’s been the catalyst for a lot of internal hard and heavy work.

I moved to New York in September of 2019, and shortly thereafter it became the epicenter of a global pandemic, and now the center of a revolution of sorts. I think being in New York may be harder, but we have a different window into what the unrest looks like, both the pain and the beauty. At any given point in the day, you can walk out your door and get swept up in a different march, and you see the full story, longer than the 30-second clip.

I got invited to attend this Black Lives Matter demonstration that ended in a huge rally led by these amazing women organizers who were so clear and convicting. I was getting ready to leave, but something in my spirit said, Wait, for one more speaker. All of a sudden, that speaker gets up and says, “Do we have any American Sign Language interpreters in the crowd?” My heart sinks into my stomach because I was an ASL interpreter in a previous career, but it’s been a long time. Before my head knows what’s happening, my body is making its way to the stage, and then the crowd clears like the Red Sea, and I’m being pulled up on the stage. I immediately see these Deaf people who had been in the crowd the whole time, with zero access to what was being said through the microphone, but they were there to support their community. I got to meet this team of other interpreters who found each other in the crowd. It was just such a thing of beauty to see the community show up and rally.

I don’t think I realized how many people under the surface were thinking about race and reconciliation. When all this first emerged, my first thought was: How quickly will this fade out of the news cycle and the consciousness of the community? But the people who I’ve come to know in New York actually seem thoughtful and committed to this work in a way that we just weren’t talking about before.

I’m part of this community group at my church. One night, we have people of color — in particular, black people in the Bronx — on this same video call with a white guy in Staten Island who’s applying to become a police officer. And they have this really thoughtful conversation about race relations and police brutality, and the way forward. This was such an interesting spectrum of people and heritage and thought, and even where they live in New York. We have so many boroughs represented and they all came together and had this sweet moment of we actually are working toward the same vision. That brought me a lot of hope and encouragement.

This is Jesus’s heart to unite all people and all things. When Jesus spent time on earth, he was constantly bringing people to the table who had no business being together and who would never have chosen to be together, who believed different things, who lived very different lives. He brought political leaders and political prisoners all together in the same room.

I’m hopeful that the voices of disenfranchised or marginalized people that have been in the church the whole time are finally getting elevated in a different way, and we get to see the other side of Christianity. I think that culture will paint one narrative of white, evangelical Christianity, and how they vote, and how they operate in this world, and where they are on issues like this, but there’s so much more than that to the church. It has for so long held these spaces of pain and grief and sorrow with the marginalized. Now is the moment that their stories are being centered and that gives me a lot of hope.”

Signs of Life is an editorial and photographic series by church.nyc. If themes within this story have resonated with you and you’d like to speak with someone about it, you can email hello@churchofthecity.com.