The Jesus I colored in Sunday school had blue eyes and blond hair, like a lifeguard at the pool. We glued cotton balls to his robe for texture. We drew smiles on his face, outlined in Crayola gold. No one said he was white. They didn’t have to. Every illustrated Bible, every flannelgraph, every stained-glass window gave him the face of suburban calm. That face looked like the dads who ran the school board. That face looked like familiarity. I didn’t question it until I realized what danger had to look like for that to be true.

I was born into a version of Christianity where obedience was next to godliness, and godliness looked a lot like a country club. We called it church, but it was also school, also neighborhood, also media. It was everywhere and nowhere. A seamless culture of polite superiority dressed up as moral clarity. Jesus wanted you to be good, and being good meant being clean, quiet, modest, appropriate. But mostly it meant being the right kind of white.

No one said it out loud. That would have broken the spell.

In first grade, I was one of the kids chosen to read aloud at chapel because I had a clear voice and didn’t stumble over words. I wasn’t particularly brave or spiritual. But I knew how to perform composure. I stood up straight, kept my face neutral, and spoke in a tone the teachers found pleasing. They called it maturity. They said I was “a natural leader.” I got gold stars and compliments and invitations to special student luncheons. I was six years old, and I had already learned how to make white adults comfortable.

The children who didn’t get invited were often louder. They asked more questions, fidgeted more, didn’t say please fast enough. One girl cried in class and got sent to the hallway. I watched her sob in silence, shoulders shaking while she sat crisscross on the green industrial tile. The teacher looked at me, gave me a small smile, and said, “This is why it’s important to stay calm.” The girl’s dad had just died.

Internalized superiority didn’t come from thinking I was better. It came from being treated like I was better.

Not because I was kinder or smarter or chosen by God. But because I was tidy. Polished. Pretty. White. The system rewarded me for resembling the picture of goodness it had already drawn. I mistook that reward for evidence.

We moved often, not because we were chasing comfort, but because my dad was in the Air Force. Still, I came back to the same neighborhood again and again. It was where I went to school as a small child, where I had friends, where the streets felt familiar. But each time I returned, something had shifted. The school I’d known in kindergarten through second grade didn’t look or feel the same by the time I was twelve. The families I grew up with were moving west. My friends’ parents started saying things like, “It’s not the same anymore.” 

They didn’t call it redlining. And maybe in North County, St. Louis, it wasn’t. At least not in the formal, federal way the history books describe. What we had were zoning boards, school district maps, real estate whispers, and municipal borders that multiplied instead of unified. St. Louis was a jigsaw of invisible fences. People said they were moving for the schools. For safety. For a little more space. But the pattern was always the same: further west, further out, further away.

The schools left behind slowly filled with students whose names the teachers in our new schools “struggled” to pronounce. The neighborhoods some of my friends now lived in had “higher test scores” and lower tolerance for noise. They had block parties and crime watches and newsletters reminding them to keep the lawns neat and the fences compliant. If the old neighborhoods felt tired, the new ones felt over-curated.

My churches weren’t megachurches, but they had growth plans. They talked about expanding outreach but never expanding inward. Our pastors said things like, “Jesus is for everyone,” but all the missionaries they supported were overseas. If Jesus was for everyone, why was the choir all white? Why did the stained glass never change?

The windows told the same story year after year: a pale, gentle Jesus surrounded by figures who looked like they could be cast in a church musical or a Hallmark Christmas special. These weren’t just pretty windows. They were theology rendered in light. And every time I looked up at them, I saw what holiness was supposed to look like, what righteousness, salvation, and leadership were shaped to resemble. The faces never aged. Never darkened. Never made room for anyone else.

And neither did we.

I wish I could say there was a single moment when it all cracked open. A lightning strike of clarity. But it wasn’t like that. It was slower. Like fog lifting. Like film being peeled off glass. A friend asking if I’d ever noticed how white my bookshelf was. Another telling me she was Asian, not Oriental. A co-worker saying they didn’t feel safe in an all white neighborhood I used to live in. 

I started seeing it everywhere. The rules I thought were universal were actually designed for people like me. Dress codes, tone policies, reading levels, safety protocols, hiring criteria, spiritual leadership. Every path I’d walked with ease, others had walked with caution. Every room that felt welcoming to me had been curated with me in mind.

And the hardest truth?

I liked it that way.

Superiority doesn’t require belief. It just needs architecture. And the architecture was beautiful. Clean. Calming. Padded pews and scented candles. College-prep and Worship teams with acoustic guitars and perfect harmonies.

It never said, “You’re better.”

It said, “You belong.”

Which means someone else didn’t.

I used to think unlearning whiteness was about shame and guilt. But guilt centers me again. What I’m trying to do now is pay attention to the architecture, the curriculum, the zoning, the roles we were praised for playing. I’m trying to tell the truth about what I was handed, and what it cost others when I accepted it without question.

I don’t need to repent for believing I was better. I need to spend the rest of my life working to dismantle the system that convinced me I was.