From those who see racists lurking around every corner to those who think we are over it, racism seems to be constantly on our minds and in the news. We have states dismantling voting districts so they are majority white when they used to be 50-50 or majority black. We have higher education institutions struggling over affirmative action while beneficiaries of those laws (like Clarence Thomas) deny those rules were a factor in being accepted to some colleges. People behaving in racist ways even though they know they are being recorded! Racism being flung around as an accusation when it isn’t. You would think by now that we would know how to navigate this multi-cultural world we live in; many of us don’t.
The truth is that most of us oppose racism. We might still have our biases, hidden beneath our logical, fair-minded lives, but we try really hard to keep them at bay. There is a fairly large minority of actual racists, but they are not the majority. Most of us are anti-racist; but are we working to dismantle racism from the culture? Are we addressing laws and attitudes and behaviors from people in power that perpetuate ugly stereotypes and unfair systems? Are we paying attention to actual facts and data that show us that we aren’t where we need to be yet? We have come a long way in the last 60 years in addressing America’s original sin, but we still have some distance to go.
I don’t know what we need to say or do to convince people that racism is still a problem. We can print “End Racism” in every NFL stadium endzone as much as we want, but that won’t convince the racists in the stands that their belief system is wrong. The fact that I marveled at the number of African American tennis players who advanced to the semis and beyond in the US Open (tennis) is a sign to me that we are still surprised when this happens. Happy, but surprised. We can thank Arthur Ashe and the Williams sisters for the tremendous impact they made to let children who look like them know that this sport is for them too; but even that, to me, is problematic. I hear it all the time – that kids need to see people like them in jobs so they feel they can achieve those goals; but the fact that I never needed that is proof that racism is still a huge problem. Nobody ever said, “Look Steve – a white man is a pastor – you can do that too!” Seems silly just to type those words.
If we think racism is wrong, we can’t just be opposed to it; we have to dismantle it. We can’t just put quotas out there; we have to point it out when it rears its ugly head. Racism is especially virulent in predominately white churches; we need to speak truth to those congregations and tell them that it seems unlikely that people who hate other people will get to spend eternal life with Jesus. Jesus had African names in his lineage, so I doubt He would take kindly to someone hating his great-grandma. This isn’t just a cultural problem – it is a theological problem. People who say they love God but hate their fellow human beings is a liar; that’s 1 John 4, by the way. As long as racism is infecting our lives, we need to work to dismantle it. It is a cancer that will destroy us all if we don’t destroy it first.
Prayer – Help us to love each other, God of every race, nation, and people; we beg You to help us stop the madness. Amen.
Today’s art is from a portfolio (2021) by Ronald Jackson.