What would it mean for you and me to “end systemic racism” in America?
I’ve been pondering deeply the fact that the five police officers accused of the recent pointless, needless killing of a man in Memphis, Tyre Nichols, were of the same race as the victim. Some folks will seize on this fact to argue that police killings of civilians are not racially motivated. That would fit neatly with the agenda of right-wing propagandists in America who are pushing the narrative that making a big deal about racism is un-patriotic. They’re trying to un-write the history of this country, to downplay the devastating effects of racism from 1619, when slavery began in America, through the present day. Conservative “snowflakes” are afraid of making white people today feel guilty about an old problem that they didn’t create.
But anti-racism isn’t about making anybody feel bad or embarrassed. It is a movement aimed at healing a wound, inflicted long ago, that festers to this day – among us all, and within us all. Let’s be brave Americans and deal with it, as we’ve dealt with so many other huge challenges in our history!
Our country is going through a fresh and very messy reckoning with racism from the past that pervades our present moment. Racism is what St Paul called a “power and a principality” – a force that infects individuals, but is at the same time pervades whole societies and social structures. It’s airborne, like a virus. You can’t see it, but you can definitely see its devastating effects. It infects us all, including those police officers in Memphis. It is personal because it is systemic, and it is systemic because it is personal. It exists within us, and shapes our behavior, without any conscious malicious intention by us as individuals. Few of us intend to be racist. Few of us have any overt desire to think or act in a racist manner.
Years ago, I worked for a majority Black nonprofit in a majority Black community. And there I learned a lot about myself. I thought of myself as a good liberal, part of the struggle for civil rights and equality. But in that job and in that community, I was forced to face the racism that lurked within myself. And that at some level, still lurks within me. That experience awakened me to the reality that intimate exposure to people of races other than one’s own is not necessarily the cure to racism – it can just as well entrench racist attitudes. And the only way to change it is to see how it lives in us now, so that we can boldly, steadily, patiently root it out from within us and also root it out from social and economic and political structures.
There is no utility in wallowing in guilt and self-blame about it. Ron DeSantis and his ilk would have us believe this whole anti-racism movement is aimed at making all white people, including young kids at school, blame themselves for the problem. That’s just nonsense. Literally a cop-out! A wimpy way to avoid the subject. There may be a few folks out there in the anti-racism movement who do want all white people to squirm in discomfort and shame. But that’s not typical of most folks involved in this work.
It is not a blame game. It is rather the work of carefully diagnosing the problem, understanding its perniciously subtle nature, and then engaging at both personal and systematic levels to heal from it. We need to think of it as a depth-psychological, spiritual public health problem. Those words might seem strange to string together in one sentence. But I think they point us in the right direction. Public health is not about blaming any individual for the problem. It is about harm reduction for everyone. Racism is a very deeply-ingrained set of habits of mind. It is a cluster of entrained neural pathways that connect our natural systems of response to fear and disgust with certain culturally-derived perceptions. In most cases, these pathways activate without our conscious awareness. Most of us sincerely intend not only to treat all others equally and without prejudice regarding race or ethnicity, but also intend to do our part in opposing systemic, organized racism. But vestiges of racism against Black, brown, Asian, and other people remain in us all – no matter our race nor our ethnicity. It is no use to beat ourselves up about this fact. Nor to perform some kind of exorcism on ourselves or each other. What we need to do is recognize that racism continues to be present within us, coloring the way we see others, and thus ultimately how we treat them. Even if it might take very subtle and indirect forms – like looking twice at a person while out at night, feeling ever so slightly more threatened by that person than by other strangers. Again, no need to feel bad or guilty about this. That’s useless. Our task in fighting racism starts with a clear-eyed, honest awareness of its presence deep within us all – even if it manifests only in fleeting ways.
How does Christianity fit into the struggle against racism? Part of our work is to recognize how Christianity has contributed to the problem. One way it makes racism worse is the historic dogma of the faith that suggests that everybody is a hopeless sinner, condemned to eternal punishment unless they assent to a particular religious doctrine. It is an outdated and spiritually useless and downright harmful belief. Yes, we sin – we do things and think thoughts that we should not do or think. And yes, by following Jesus we wake up to our sins and work to rectify them. But we’re not hopeless sinners. Instead of feeling guilty and fearing punishment, we can open our eyes to our sins and take forthright action to make things right. That’s what Jesus gets us to do! Ron DeSantis describes the movement against racism as one that paints white people as hopeless sinners who deserve punishment. Ironically, he’s fitting it in to the frame of fundamentalist Christian thinking. But to fight racism, we use progressive Christian thinking, which follows Jesus in recognizing our wrongs and making them right.
That includes inner spiritual work as well as civic activism. We need to enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, to end gerrymandering and voter suppression that has been aimed at disenfranchising Black people in particular. We need to change fundamentally the way we train and deploy police. We need to take seriously the need for economic reparations for our country’s history of slavery and racism. And this can be done in a way that benefits everyone significantly, but will benefit racial minorities, particularly Black folks, disproportionately to their circumstances. Taking the next steps beyond Obamacare to create a truly universal, guaranteed high-quality health care system will be good for all Americans, but will disproportionately benefit minorities. Same with universal guaranteed child care and sick leave and reducing mass incarceration. Same with the proposal for a guaranteed income – an idea first proposed by a notable leader of the American revolution – Tom Paine. It doesn’t get more red, white, and blue than that! These are practical ways to help make right the wrong that started in 1619 – ways that are fair and beneficial to everyone.
Another way that Christianity has contributed to racism is its historic pattern of “othering” groups of people – starting with separating Christians from non-Christians. Either you’re in or you’re out. If you’re in, you are saved, if you are out, you are damned. It’s hard to exaggerate how toxic this belief system has become. It distorts and poisons the relationships between evangelical Christians and everyone else. And then there is the anti-Semitism baked right into the New Testament, in which the Jews are blamed for Jesus’ death… which is false on the face of it, because he was executed by the Romans. In this country, millions upon millions of people have been trained by fundamentalist preachers to see people as either “in” or “out”, and that way of seeing the world is racism’s kissing cousin. But today, following the trajectory that Jesus set for his church, he gets us to see everybody as “in” – everybody is worthy of the unconditional love that is God. If we are all one, as Jesus prayed we’d be, then there is no category of “other” in which to separate and isolate people by religion, race, or anything else. This inclusive kind of Christianity is a force for healing the wound of racism in our hearts and in our society.
A mindful, progressive Christianity helps us see what is, with clear eyes – even if it is hard. And then our faith gives us inner strength to change those hard things – within ourselves, over time with spiritual practice, and in society, through voting and active civic participation – including participating in the life of our church, which is a vital building-block of democracy. What makes America great is patriotic Americans putting 2023’s rights to 1619’s wrongs. To love our country is to address actively its present reality of racism. And Christianity has much to contribute to this cause. Our work is to see, pray, and act!
A few years ago I was riding the LA Metro and a woman got onto the train and went from seat to seat, begging for money. She was big, she smelled terrible, her clothes were rags – and she was Black. She went up the aisle and into the next train car. Near me on another seat I saw a Black woman who was shaking her head, visibly saddened, grieving aloud to herself after seeing the beggar: “My people. My people.” Her words hit me hard; I felt tears well up in my eyes. It seemed to me that she was upset that the people on the train would think that this begging woman was a typical Black person, representing her people. And I think she was absolutely right to worry that the sight of that begging woman would harden the deep-seated racism of the people in that train car. Myself included. She was grieving the whole weight, the whole burden, of racism’s consequences since 1619. Let us not allow this woman to grieve alone. Let us be in solidarity with her. And with the woman who was begging, as well. Who knows what events in her life resulted in her condition? We need to grieve for “Our people. Our people.” Grieving for all of us, Black, Asian American, Native American, white, Latino/Latina – because all of us bear this weight and burden of racism even today. With faith in the unconditional, boundary-free love who is God, let us lift that burden together and put it behind us forever. Amen!