No one wants to acknowledge the social challenges that plague America. White people want to avoid the implication of responsibility for many reasons. Mostly they think the problems of the black community, the inner cities, don’t affect them. They may express a superficial level of sorrow for the plight of colored communities, but are distant in thoughts, insulated by middle-upper classness, wealth and suburban boundaries, so they are not involved.
But hopefully the long summer of 2020 will serve as a wake-up call to see what’s happening all around the comfortable neighborhoods the privileged secure themselves with.
One-quarter of black Americans remain in poverty, many seemingly trapped in the social pathologies of the urban underclass. At the same time, while the growing number and profile of other racial minorities dramatically changes the country’s demographic landscape, America’s increasingly colorful racial picture has become enormously complicated. People of color in America continue to disproportionately experience poverty.
But racism is more than poverty. Today middle-class African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are all too able to tell personal stories of racial prejudice and discrimination.
Still, most white people seem tired of talking about racism, are opposed to affirmative action, and want to believe that their country has become a level playing field for all races. Almost no people of color believe that.
Most significant, the United States is still a very segregated society, from residential patterns to cultural associations to church attendance. The number of stable, racially integrated neighborhoods across the country is still pitifully small. People of different races spend precious little non-work time together.
We have made undeniable progress since the end of legal segregation, but we have not come as far in the last few decades as most would have expected. The hopes and dreams that followed the 1960s civil rights and voting rights legislation have yet to be fulfilled.
America is still a racially divided society, where diversity is widely perceived as a greater cause for conflict than for celebration. Again, the question is why?
Clearly, we underestimated the problem. Since the 1960s, we have learned that racism goes far deeper than civil rights. Racism goes beyond mere prejudice and personal attitudes, it is rooted in institutional patterns and structural injustices.
At the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that poverty was the next front in the battle to over come racism. Especially underestimated, has been the impact and enduring legacy of the unique and particular institution of slavery in America.
Perhaps even more important, we have failed to perceive the fundamental spiritual and theological roots of racism in America. These surely include—but go even deeper than—the historical, institutional, cultural, and psychic dimensions of racism.
IN BIBLICAL TERMS, racism is a demon and an idol, a fallen principality and power that enslaves people and nations in its deadly grip. To be even more specific, it is the idolatry of whiteness, the assumption of white privilege and supremacy, that has yet to be spiritually confronted in America and, especially, in the churches.
White racism is America’s original sin; continuing failure to repent meaningfully of that sin still confounds our efforts to overcome it. It’s true that any initiative on race will fail unless it deals with the fundamental issues of economic inequality.
But is there more to do than educating, organizing, advocating, and changing policies?
A more spiritual approach would suggest other kinds of action as well. In addition to the hard work of personal relationships, community building, and political and economic change, other responses may be required such as confession, prayer, conversion, forgiveness, preaching, and even revival.
Because spiritual and political work should never be set against one another, the question becomes how to go deeply enough with the spiritual struggle to make the political battle more successful. Here is where the churches might make their best contribution to current initiatives on race.
The surprising new zeal among some white evangelical groups to confront racism with spiritual power is a very welcome and encouraging sign. So is the growing awareness among many people, religious or not, that personal and social problems have spiritual roots.
Confronting the barriers of race, class, culture, and gender was perhaps the major social drama of the New Testament church. Overcoming those divisions was seen as a primary test of spiritual authenticity. If the churches would reclaim the call to spiritual warfare, this time against the principality and power of racism, how might the battle against racism be transformed?
Most Christians today would see a deep contradiction in being both a devout Christian and a bystander to slavery. Yet many don’t see the same contradiction in their complicity in contemporary racial violence and oppression. Instead, many uphold oppression through silence on racial injustice. What does the church say about today’s forms of racism and racialized violence?
Unfortunately, most churches answer the question of how to respond to racism and hate with a non-committal response… “Let’s just focus on the gospel. Everything else will fall into place.” This response is eerily similar to that of European settlers and slave owners in colonial America. Ignoring injustice to singularly “focus on God as Lord” runs counter to Jesus’ teachings. His behavior taught that loving everyone equally and wholeheartedly was how someone who claimed to be a follower, would act towards all peoples.
Now is the time to search our minds and hearts for answers, for things every person can do to defeat the evils of racism. You are white, you call yourself a Christian and yet you are not engaged in the struggle with your fellow humans… people of color.
When you hear the word “racism,” what images come to mind? Do you think of racism as a systemic problem that exists in the institutions of your own community? What would it mean for you to think of racism as idolatry—remembering that idolatry is not just an individual choice, but also a group activity to which people are tempted because the culture around them has accepted such attitudes and worship of a ‘superior white culture’?
The struggle against racism must include both “institutional reconstruction” and “discernment, prayer, and worship-based action.”
On which side of this “two-edged” solution do you line up? How can you adjust your thinking and acting to incorporate both aspects needed for racial justice? Has your church engaged in corporate prayer and worship against racism? If you have not thought much about God, but know he exists, then maybe now is the time to seek him and find a mixed fellowship of white and black. You will learn to love at a depth you have not known and the typical self-absorbed spirit of white America will begin to leave your heart.
Finally, what would it mean, and what would it take, for our society to move towards investing less in the idea of “whiteness” and more thought of ‘others of color’ first in considerations of wants and needs? In what ways could this be a genuine step towards racial justice, rather than just multicultural window dressing.
Fighting racism in American society requires that we go beyond addressing policies and practices that deal explicitly with matters of race and ethnicity.
It requires that we in the white community accept shared responsibility and work in solidarity with people of color to secure for all people the basic economic and social rights that flow from and merge with human dignity.
Don’t be fooled into believing the excuses. There is a tendency on the part of some people to say, “I am not prejudiced. I am not a racist. I did not cause or contribute to the racial injustices of the past. Therefore, I am not responsible for racism today. There is nothing I can do.” This view is unfortunate and morally inadequate, because it fails to take into consideration the social nature of the sin of racism. It fails to see that racism is not merely a personal sin, but also a structural sin. It is a social reality for which all members of society are responsible.
The absence of personal guilt for an evil does not absolve one of all responsibility. We must seek to resist and undo injustices we have not caused, because we can, and God expects nothing less of all people who think they have some extra-ordinary blessing. Failure to take shared responsibility makes the white communities among all nations bystanders who tacitly endorse evil and so share in guilt for it.
We need to stand side by side with people of color in working for better access to health care for the poor, better affordable housing policies, more just wages and working conditions, and more political power for those who are now disenfranchised.
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