Racism Is Us, Not Them!

I do hope that my intentionally provocative title will compel you to read my entire essay before reacting. The essay itself is also intentionally provocative, so I hope you will keep reading past your emotional stop signs. Now that political correctness is being dismissed in popular culture and replaced by disrespect, certainly a serious consideration of race can be undertaken even if it is uncomfortable.

I doubt anyone would question that the people of the US are more aware of racial tensions now than they have been for a long time, perhaps even more than at the height of the civil rights movement. Accusations of promoting race tensions have been hurled at President Obama throughout his eight year administration. Race tensions have become increasingly volatile through this presidential campaign, much of which has been attributed to President-elect Trump. I don’t know how this could be quantified or documented, but I suggest that neither of them is to blame for creating the acute racial hostility currently surging in the country. Rather, I believe they have exposed deeply embedded racism that has been undercover to some degree for some time.

President Obama is, to me, a fascinating case study in how race is perceived. His mother was white, so he is as much white as Black. His father was from Africa and not a descendant of US slaves, so President Obama is not a natural inheritor of African-American culture. Perhaps through Michelle, he was adopted by the African-American community for whom he embodied some of their hopes for equality. I know the claim that opposition to him was about policy and not race, but the racial overtones were inescapable among both white and Black folk, and occasionally overt references slipped out in both directions.

Whatever he intended, many of President-elect Trump’s comments during the campaign were taken by many as permission to express overtly racist sentiments, not directed only at African-Americans, but at Latinos, Middle Easterners, Native Americans, Asians, and Jews. Whether President-elect Trump wanted it or not, his candidacy attracted support from some white supremacist groups. These days since the election have seen a distressing burst of blatant racism, some incidents seeming to attack President-elect Trump’s supporters, and many making direct threats and even physical attacks on African-Americans, Latinos, Jews, and Muslims (or those presumed to be Muslim such as Sikhs and even Middle Eastern Christians). The threatened and enacted violence evokes fear, some even fear for life and limb.

  While only a small portion of the US population may espouse the most virulent expressions of racism that have been in the public eye recently, I do believe that racism is present in all of us and woven deeply into the fabric of the society in which we live. No ethnic or social group has a monopoly on racism, nor is any ethnic or social group immune to or exempt from racism. I also am convinced that comparative racism, scoring some groups worse as or better than others only exacerbates that problem. This is because that usually is a device for shifting responsibility away from one’s self and one’s own group onto “the other,” onto someone else. I strongly believe that volatile issues such as racism can only be addressed effectively by taking responsibility for one’s self and allowing others to take responsibility for themselves. Thus, as a 70 year old white man, I need to deal with my own racist attitudes and those in my social circles and allow Black folk, Latino folk, and others deal with their attitudes. Critiquing ourselves creates a safe space in which others can critique themselves. Racism in another group in no way justifies or excuses racism among white folk!

Locating a problem as outside of ourselves only aggravates the problem and interferes with the possibility of progress toward harmony. Thus I am convinced that we inflame racial tensions when:

·         We believe racism is worse in another group or groups, so I (we) don’t have to do anything about my racism or the racism of my social circle.

·         When we defend those with whom we most easily identify and critique those with whom we have a hard time identifying.

·         We protest that we are not racist or prejudiced or proclaim we have friends who are: Black, white, Latino, Asian (or you fill in the blank).

·         We believe the other side must make the first move toward reconciliation. I believe the first one to recognize the problem is responsible to be the first one to begin solving the problem.

·         We use misconduct by some on the other side to discredit all we see as part of that group.

·         We hold up token members of the other side who express opinions we are comfortable with to discount those with whom we are uncomfortable.

·         We distance ourselves from racist attitudes of people of our group by saying, “But that’s not what I think,” without challenging the reality and power of such attitudes in our own social circles.

While am appalled at the overt, virulent racism being expressed so freely in recent days (perhaps being rationalized by the lifting of the presumed expectation of political correctness), I do see a positive possibility. That is, if a veneer of courtesy has kept racist reality pretty much under cover for a generation without dealing with it, perhaps by bringing it out in the open we have an opportunity to make real personal and social changes. With the integration of public schools that followed Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the civil rights movement that produced the Civil Rights Act (1964), I remember people objecting to these legal measures by saying that law can’t change people’s hearts. My sense is that they were right and that race tensions are as bad or worse in 2016 as they were 50-60 years ago, even though considerable progress has been made on the legal front. We are in danger of becoming like the Balkans who descended into ethnic violence when the oppression of totalitarian government was removed. So perhaps we have come to a crossroad at which individually and together we can change our hearts. Theologically, perhaps we can think of the surfacing of rampant racism in our time as a sort of confession, but to bring changes in hearts, and if you will the collective soul of our society, requires going from confession to repentance. I cannot repent for someone else, only for myself. Though I suppose this essay could be thought of as an invitation to repentance.

I have been enriched and privileged to live and serve in multi-ethnic, urban communities most of my life. Growing up in Oakland, CA, a trip to the grocery store meant hearing 3-5 languages most of the time, always Chinese and Spanish. Especially in junior high and high school, the mix of Anglo, Asian, Latino, and African-American students and teachers meant no one was a “majority.” As a college freshman, I had an after school job tutoring algebra for about 20 students at McClymonds High School, with an almost totally Black student body. I rode the bus to and from this job, coming home in the dark as the only white person on the bus. As a pastor, the gracious hospitality of many African-American and Latino colleagues has given me opportunities to serve, fellowship and worship with their congregations, building cherished friendships.

As wonderful as all of that has been for me, it does not exempt me from my own racism. As a junior high and high school student, in my college prep track classes I felt a kinship with the African-American and Latino students as we lagged behind in competing with the Asian and Jewish students whose families vigorously promoted academic performance. In my general classes, I felt intimidated by a few African-American students who seemed belligerent to me, and I am still on guard for these attitudes when I meet an African-American person for the first time. I must admit to an involuntary tightening of my shoulders when I am walking alone and approached by an African-American person. These are just surface symptoms of my own racism that I know has tentacles that reach into the dark recesses of my heart.

I have already indicated that as evil as this current upsurge of expressed racism is, if it prompts honest conversation about race in the US, it could end up having a beneficial effect. I have also already written that this does not come by telling those we perceive as “the other” that they have the problem or must take the initiative. It comes from an honest confrontation with my own racism. We who aspire to trust and follow Jesus may be in a unique position to lead in this effort, as our theology and spiritual experience is predicated on confession and repentance, grace and love. Watered down, generic Judeo-Christian civil religion that is reduced to believing God exists and being good citizens will not cut it. It takes the kind of radical discipleship that transformed Mary Magdalene and Saul of Tarsus.

I don’t expect such discipleship in the halls of government or other corridors of power. These voices seem to come from the edge much of the time. One of my spiritual heroes is John Woolman (1720-1772). If you want to learn about that kind of discipleship, I highly recommend reading his Journal. I’ve cited him a number of times in my writing. I learned about him and read his Journal several years before I even imagined living in his home town, Mt. Holly, NJ. In the 17 years I lived and served there I walked by the Friends Meeting House where he worshipped at least once a week. With an apparent gentle fortitude he vigorously opposed slavery and racial injustice. He supported the rights and dignity of the Native People. He advocated economic justice for the poor. He sought to nourish marriage and family life and limit the damage of alcohol abuse. He opposed all violence and war. He is treated as something of an historical celebrity in Mt. Holly today, but during his life he was an annoying thorn in the flesh to people of power, prestige, position and wealth.

However, John Woolman’s Journal is not a self-congratulatory inventory of his accomplishments or exposition of his advocacy of personal and social righteousness. Rather, he wrote of his deep introspection and conversation with God through Scripture and Jesus Christ. Not expecting publication, he bared his soul and gives those who take the trouble to read real insight into his own journey of confession and repentance, grace and love. He explored how God kept revealing to him his inadequacies and gave him grace as he acknowledged them. His journal does not read like the manifesto of a social justice firebrand, but as a humble disciple of Jesus stumbling along his journey depending on God.

I suggest to you that just as John Woolman was a model for addressing the racism of his day, his example would serve us well in our day. When we honestly acknowledge our own culpability, we become available for God to use as an instrument of reconciliation, healing, and harmony. However, if we persist in putting the burden of racial reconciliation on “the others” instead of ourselves, we only fuel the perverse desires for race war such as Dylann Roof and Micah Johnson espoused. To draw on one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare (Julius Caesar), “The fault, dear Brutus, in not in our stars but in ourselves.” Racism is us, not them!

https://vimeo.com/147760743