Tuesday, October 26, 2021

The Crucial Shift

As white Christians continue to warn their congregations about the dangers of “wokeness,” it is revealing to recall where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the issue. Even after some significant civil rights gains, he still said that getting into a real process of exposing our racism would be the only possible way to unify the country. Because it’s the only thing that can heal us. King compared what people are calling “critical race theory” to a doctor prescribing chemotherapy for cancer. Unless we deal with the disease, it will kill us.

Of course, denial is one way to deal with the disease. We can just say that the Civil Rights Movement cured American culture of the racist cancer—and offer Oprah and Obama as proof. But the inconvenient statistics are so unsettling. White families have ten times the wealth as the average Black family. The unemployment rate for Black folks is double that of white folks. Black and Brown people are disproportionately imprisoned, uninsured, unhoused and the victims of early death. White people own far more property.
These stats don’t necessarily prove that there is systemic racism. The problem could be that people of color lag because they lack drive, determination, wisdom or work ethic—a perspective that is the very definition of racism. This is the white Christian conundrum. If there’s no such thing as systemic racism, and if people of color are not inferior to white folks, then what’s causing all the horrifying inequality in our society? It’s either terrible luck or a terrible god. Two options that seem simply unbelievable.
What I do believe is that white Christians can make the crucial shift from denial to diagnosis. After all, we are supposed to be people scripted by a biblical brand of love that does not insist on our own way and rejoices in the truth. Racism is real and it is devastating. This should not make us feel guilty. It should make us take action. Until the cancer is gone.

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