Building Bridges

Amid ongoing cultural clashes about whether it's really necessary to learn and to talk about race (it is), one Austin woman's faith-based program brings dialogue and racial reconciliation to communities around the world.

- SAMANTHA VINCENTY

"I can say hard things really well with a smile,” says Latasha Morrison, that high-wattage smile beaming at me as it did throughout an hours-long Zoom that flies by. “A friend once told me, 'It's like you punch me in the face, but you're rubbing my back at the same time."

MORRISON'S UNCOMMON gift was put to the test in her new hometown of Austin, where she moved in 2012 from Atlanta. “I have pictures of my godkids and family up in my office. Now, I'm the only Black person that works at this place,” Morrison, who goes by Tasha, says of the church where she'd begun working. A white coworker would routinely walk into her office and, her eyes falling to the cluster of photos, exclaim, "I just love little Black boys!"

At first, Morrison thought, That is so weird, and let the comment pass. But after the third time, she turned to her coworker and said, “Imagine me coming into your office saying, 'I just love little white boys! What would you think? She said, "Oh my goodness! But she didn't get offended, so I asked her, 'Have you ever worked with Black people before?' She's like, 'Why do you ask?' And I said, 'Because I can tell you haven't.'

Nor had many of the white people Morrison met in her new community, people who often made well-meaning yet cringeworthy racial remarks or asked her unprompted, loaded questions about things like her hair and her political beliefs. “It felt as if people had saved all their ‘ask a Black person' questions for me, and they unloaded until it almost drove me insane,” Morrison writes in her book Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation.