Tag Archives: racism

Systemic Racism

by

During the week in which Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and five officers in Dallas were killed, a friend of mine emailed me and wanted to discuss a phrase that I had used on social media quite a bit.  That phrase was “systemic racism.”  He wanted to know what was meant when people used it because it could be interpreted in lots of different ways.

Considering the kind of responses that we all saw on social media that week, the respect and kindness that was shown by my friend was a breath of fresh air!  So I spent an hour or so writing out how I define “systemic racism” and why I define it that way.  I’m no expert by any means, but this is an issue that I care a lot about.  So…

Here’s what I wrote (with a few minor edits and a few links included):

I think you picked the right place to start — “systemic racism.”  …  It’s not often that the term is defined carefully and even when it is, not many people listen.

Here’s the way I define it: Our system as a society in the United States is bent against people of color, especially black people.

It began before there was a United States with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and continued through Antebellum slavery.

After the Civil War when black folks were free, they had few places to go. This period, called Reconstruction, was a really trying time for most black people.

Many black people, if not most, ended up moving to northern cities looking for work or because they were forced out of the their homes in the south.  Since very few white people (both in the north and south) wanted to live with them, they were forced (sometimes by law) to move into downtown areas.  These areas were devoid of jobs that they could do.

Other groups already living in those areas (most notably immigrant groups), especially the Irish, Italians, and various Asians, have had an easier, but still quite difficult, go of it in our country.  And when black folks moved into the inner-cities, many of these other groups moved out (at least those who could afford to often did).

That left very little work for black folks and not many other people groups cared.

In the midst of this horrid situation, it’s natural enough that crime began to rise.  People needed money for food and shelter.  Eventually the criminal element began to organize, just like it did with the Irish, the Italians, and other groups before.  (Side note: for whatever reason, we call black organized crime “gangs” and that of other groups “the mob” or “the mafia.”)

Anyway, while this was going on almost no laws were made to assist, aid, or protect black people.  They were slaves and then they weren’t.  Black folks were set off on their own.  And when some of them weren’t succeeding, people (especially white people) said, “work harder.”  And many, many black foks did just that.  Or that tried to…but many couldn’t find work.  And even for those who found work, it was almost never a “good enough” job to help get them out of their predicament.

But no one really cared.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  A few people cared a lot…so much so that they worked tooth and nail to ensure that black people continued to have a hard time.

Many cities and counties passed laws limiting where black people could live, where they could be educated, whether or not they could vote, etc.  This is what we all call the Jim Crow era and these laws and policies are called Jim Crow laws.  Some people even hated black people enough to kill them for little or no reason.  Public lynchings were happening fairly often in the south and, for the most part, most of the murderers were never caught, tried, and brought to justice.  As if they needed another reason, but most black people at this time had no faith in the governments of the cities, counties, states, or even of the US.

Then, as you might expect, in the 1950s and 60s black civil rights advocates began to rise up, people like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, Rosa Parks, and others.  They were demanding that people look at the plight of their community.  They were demanding that they be treated with equality and justice.  They were demanding that the color of their children’s skin shouldn’t impact whether or not they had a shot at making it.

And what were they met with?  Death threats.  Church bombings.  Stricter laws in some places limiting their freedoms.  And more lynchings in some places.

What it took for America to begin to wake up to the overt racism of so many people was live video footage of police dogs being sent to attack black folks, including children and black folks being beaten unconscious by “peace” officers.  The public perception of the civil rights movement began to shift, but overt racism wouldn’t let go.  Civil rights leaders were assassinated, more acts of terror were leveled against the black community, and even white allies were assassinated too.

After the various Civil Rights Acts and Voting Rights Acts were passed, it became more or less a major social faux pas to exhibit any overt racism.  The KKK and other white supremacy groups eventually shrunk.  The use of the n-word decreased to some degree, at least in polite company.  Not serving black people in a business became a crime, etc.

For most white people, this is when they think that racism in America ended.

If only that were true.  If you ask individual persons of color, especially black folks, about their experience of race in the US, some will tell you horror stories of overt racism and virtually every single one will tell you stories of the results of implicit racism, what many people call “micro-aggressions.”

Implicit racism would include things like women clutching their bags when black men walk by, people touching black women’s hair, and people asking a Latino graduating from college if they are the first in their family to do so (a question almost no one would ask a white person).  Most people don’t mean anything nefarious by these micro-aggressions, but people of color notice them and many are hurt by them.

These hurts add up over time.  They make people of color feel white people view them as other, something different, and, to some, as less than fully human.

The problem is that people who represent authority are guilty of implicit racism too.  (So are people of color, of course, and so are people of color who are in positions of authority.)  What does this look like?

Well, when I worked at Best Buy as security personnel I was way more likely to watch a black teenager on the monitor, even though in all my time there we never caught a black person stealing anything.  (Side note: I caught employees and lots of white people stealing.)  But my first instinct was to watch the black teen.  And my implicit bias against black people isn’t just something that I have.  Many black people report being harassed while shopping.  It even happens to “well-dressed, respectful, and articulate” black folks.

Hiring managers, as famously reported by the Freakonomics people, are much more likely to favor applications that have “white sounding” names to those with “ethnic sounding” ones.  This implicit bias more or less goes away when the applicants are in front of the hiring manager, presumably because he or she is trying to be equitable when seeing a person of color face-to-face.

And, unfortunately, police are victims of implicit racism too.  Multiple studies have shown that people, all people, tend to prefer images of lighter-skinned people, while at the same time being more threatened by images of darker-skinned people.  This same implicit bias has been seen in numerous studies of police officers too, though they tend to do better than the general public.

Thus, for many police officers, black people, and especially black males, are implicitly more threatening, will be watched more closely, etc.  This can be seen in the evidence from the NYPD about how black people (as well as Latinos) are much more likely to be stopped and frisked and why “driving while black” is a reality, since black drivers will, generally speaking, be watched quite a bit more closely.

(Please note, implicit racism is not the fault of a given individual.  It’s human nature.  It’s part of our basic tribalism that says members of “our group” are better than members of “their group.”  And black cops are also likely to exhibit implicit racism against black people as white cops are.)

But a more important part of systemic racism today has less to do with implicit racism and more to do with the residue of our explicitly racist history as a country and some explicitly racist laws and policies.

What do I mean?  Well, as I mentioned earlier, after the Civil War many black people moved into inner-cities.  Those that didn’t, those who stayed in smaller towns, were more or less forced to move into neighborhoods that were comprised almost exclusively of other black people.  And these boundaries were often set into law or official housing policies.

Even liberal Pasadena, CA (where I once lived) in liberal Southern California has some of these policies in its past.

And, unsurprisingly, many black people still live in these very same neighborhoods today (unless they’ve been pushed into even “worse” neighborhoods thanks to gentrification, property prices rising, zoning policies, and imminent domain abuses, etc.).

And, unsurprisingly, these communities didn’t have the best services, the best stores, the best schools, etc.  And between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act, these communities were heavily policed by largely white police forces because of the realities of organized crime and because of overt racism (just go back and listen to some of the recordings of Bull Connor, the infamous sheriff in Alabama [like this one]…they’ll make your skin crawl!).

So folks in these communities started way behind the starting line in comparison to where others in the US started.  And black families who “made it” had such a harder and longer road to hoe, even than white families who began at similar levels of poverty due to explicit and implicit racism.

During the 70s things seemed to be getting a tiny bit better.  It was during this time that the rise of the black middle-class happened (which is basically gone today, by the way), thanks in part to government jobs, especially those at the post office, sanitation control, and the like.

Then the 1980s came with the “war on drugs.”  Some of the policies set in place during this time period by the federal government, as well as state and city governments, really harmed black communities.

How so?  Cocaine.

The rush of cocaine into the US during the late 1970s and 80s really hurt lots of people.  In fact, it seems that people of all ethnicities were using cocaine in more or less equal percentages.

But the laws surrounding cocaine disproportionately affected black people.  Crack cocaine was punished much more harshly than powder cocaine, though both are equally bad, equally addictive, and equally dangerous.  And black communities tended to use crack over powder.  Sentences for crack cocaine were much longer than those for powder.  Drug-free zones were set up in communities affected by crack cocaine, but not those for powder, which meant that a drug conviction in a drug-free zone was more harshly punished.

So when a black person was caught using cocaine, he would be sentenced to a much, much longer sentence than a white man, sometimes dozens of times longer, since he was likely to be using crack in a drug-free zone.  And since the police were more likely to heavily police black neighborhoods (due to the number of calls, population density, and implicit racism), black people were much more likely to be caught using and possessing cocaine.

It was so bad that black users of cocaine would go to jail for much longer sentences than even the white people who sold it or whomever trafficked it into the country!

And this war on drugs, which targeted black communities (intentionally or not, doesn’t really matter), really hurt these communities.  Many children in these communities had to grow up without fathers since so many black men were incarcerated on drug charges.

Some neighborhoods were hurt by the policies so badly that only a very few men ever made it out alive or without being incarcerated.  One of my mentors, who happens to be black, grew up in the neighborhood where my wife and I once served and he tells the sad story that of the 20 boys that grew up on his street, only four or five aren’t in prison or dead today.  His story is not uncommon in neighborhoods like his, one that is labeled a drug-free zone and has a large black population.

(Quick aside: many of the crack-specific sentencing laws and policies have been altered or overturned, but, in general, crack convictions still carry longer sentence than powder cocaine today.)

And with the massive influx of people (mostly people of color) being incarcerated for drug charges, jails began to fill up.  State and federal monies were used to build more.  Then these new jails filled up.  It got so overcrowded that many states gave many of their prisons over to private, for-profit companies who run them.  These companies make millions and millions of dollars incarcerating people.  They often get paid by the number of full jail cells they have.

In other words, these companies have a vested interest in keeping their beds full, so they do what any successful business would do, they lobby to keep laws and policies in place that keep their beds full and their profits growing.  And their money is in the pockets of politicians on the left and the right, thus ensuring that the industrial prison complex remains full of people, mostly on drug charges.

And a very disproportionate number of these people are people of color, thus furthering the problems of their communities since it means that parents (especially fathers) are literally taken out of the equation.

And all the while, white people use drugs at about the same rate as blacks (some studies indicate that white folks use more drugs) and yet white people are not arrested as often and when convicted serve shorter sentences and once in prison are more likely to receive parole.

And it’s not just drugs.  As the horrible Brock Turner (the swimmer at Stanford that was basically given a slap on the wrist for sexually assaulting a woman behind a dumpster) story reminds us, white folks are often given the benefit of the doubt and/or shorter sentences.  For example, a Vanderbilt football player, Cory Batey, committed a similar crime as Brock Turner, and he was sentenced to a much, much longer sentence — 15-25 years.

Then you take a look into the public schools which serve black students and see that they are much, much worse than those that serve white communities.  In fact, according to some recent research, a case can be made that our public schools are more segregated now than they were during the Jim Crow era.  And, unsurprisingly, the schools that serve black communities generally underperform.

And the list could go on and on.  Black graduates of college are less likely to land a job than white graduates.  Etc., etc., etc.

And, unfortunately, the data shows that a given black person is much more likely to die at the hand of the police than a given white person.  All of the factors above play into this sad statistic.

Just to be clear, in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases I don’t think that black people are more likely to die during a police interaction due to explicit racism.  There are really so few people who are jerks like that anymore.

But implicit racism and its effects are real.  And the residue of the explicitly racist policies and laws of the past and some of the current policies and laws that disproportionately impact black people are real too.

If we’re going to move forward as a nation, then we need to admit some things.  Here are a few of those things:

We need to admit that we live in a country in which our Declaration of Independence calls a group of people “savages” and the 13th Amendment of the Constitution repealed a compromise that argued that black people are 3/5ths as valued as other people.

We need to admit the horrors of the Jim Crow era and the violence committed against black people during their fight for civil rights.

We need to admit the impact of the war on drugs on black communities.

And we need to admit that doing nothing about the current plight of the black community will only make the resulting problems worse.

That’s systemic racism.

Systemic racism is not a fiction. Systemic racism is not an excuse. Systemic racism is real and its effects hurt black communities like the one where my wife and I served.

But you may be wondering, why talk about systemic racism on a blog about being missional, that is, following Jesus in the real world?  Well, the answer is pretty straightforward — the real world is messed up and unjust and Jesus calls us to care about matters like this.  He says “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice” (Matthew 5.6).

I know, you memorized “righteousness” as a kid.  So did I.  But “justice” is an equally valid translation of the Greek word that is found here and the context in which this word is found leans toward folks who are oppressed and thus longing for justice.

So I guess that’s really the question then…when we, as followers of Jesus in the real world, see a problem such as systemic racism, do we hunger and thirst for justice?  Or do we try to deny the evidence, invalidate the experiences of people of color, and effectively perpetuate the injustice through our silence and inaction?

What do you think about the way I defined and discussed systemic racism?

What do you think we can do about it?

What can you, as an individual, do about it?

Let me know in the comments below.

And be civil.  I will be monitoring these comments closely.  Anything that deem disrespectful, racist, or rude will be removed.

Privilege

by

Privilege.

That’s a dirty word these days in almost every circle.

Some hate the word and all it represents because they have been belittled, oppressed, and marginalized by people they would say have experienced privilege.

There’s another group of people who get the privilege stamp placed on them by others, which is off-putting because they know that there are others better off than them or they feel like the word downplays the work they accomplished to get where they are.

And then there’s another group which tries to stay out of this fray altogether, knowing that it’s fraught with issues around every corner.

So what can be said about this topic then?  And what might it have to do with following Jesus in the real world?

What Is Privilege?

I think the picture above captures what many people think of when they think of privilege — a straight white man who is wearing a nice suit and has a nice watch.  Others may think of the same picture as above just with an older straight which man who is wearing a nice suit and has a nice watch.

But is this picture of privilege accurate?  Is it the only picture?  Is it the best picture?

Two of the three simple definitions provided by Merriam-Webster are instructive:

  • a right or benefit that is given to some people and not to others
  • a special opportunity to do something that makes you proud
  • the advantage that wealthy and powerful people have over other people in a society

The first and last ones are most pertinent to the current popular discussions of privilege in our society at large.  Specifically what stands out to me are the ideas that privilege is what some people have and others don’t…and those “some people” are the “wealthy and powerful.”

How do others define privilege?

Christena Cleveland, a social psychologist who just so happens to be a follower of Jesus, defines privilege like this: “I think privilege is the ways in which society accommodates some people while alienating others” [SOURCE].

Her definition lines up with what we saw from the dictionary entry as well — privilege is for some and not others.  Her definition is all about relative wealth and power, not absolute wealth and power.  In other words, certain things about us cause society to accommodate for us more, things like education, wealth, political power, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc.  The more things someone has in the privilege column, the more likely it is that society will bend toward their wishes.

And in the clip I linked above, Dr. Cleveland makes the point that we can be both privileged and non-privileged at the same time.  Dr. Cleveland is a great example herself — she’s a hire-able, educated, and published scholar while also being a black woman.

Dr. Cleveland’s definition is in line with the scholarly norm.  Here’s a great example of this norm from the Society of Counseling Psychology:

Privilege is comprised of unearned advantages that are conferred on individuals based on membership in a dominant group or assumed membership. Privilege has the following characteristics:

  • Privilege reflects, reifies and supports dominant power structures.
  • Privilege is supported structurally and systemically, including an investment in maintaining a lack of consciousness about the benefits and costs resulting from that privilege.
  • Privilege is enacted through societal structures, systems, and daily interactions.
  • A single individual may experience intersecting privileges and oppressions which may reflect differential receipt of benefits.

Like the earlier definitions, this one uses the “some people and not others” type of language.  This definition also has some other interesting points.

First, privilege can be based on assumed membership to a group.  In my experience as a white man and as a friend of many other privileged people, this can be a major sticking point.  The argument goes something like this: “Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I was handed anything for free!”  In this line of reasoning this person is reacting to the assumption that he or she is part of the elite group of “fat cat” white people who run things, while in fact he or she hasn’t experienced life in that way at all.

Second, privilege holds up societal norms.  This was an assumption or logical conclusion of the earlier definitions, but it is spelled out here.  The logic is simple: if some groups tend to receive more accommodations than others, then it stands to reason that they will be over-represented among those with wealth and power.

Third, and most importantly, for the privileged there’s an advantage to be gained by not thinking about and/or outright denying privilege.  Why?  Because in so doing privilege is ensured to carry on unabated.  I know that when I first encountered the ideas of privilege in my early-to-mid 20s I reacted quite negatively.  And I’ve seen this same response among many other people I know.  In fact, this response is so common that it’s been given a name: white fragility (though we could add “male fragility,” “straight fragility,” etc. to the list).

Is Privilege Real?

Others have done a much better job than I have on this topic, so I will move quickly through this and trust that you’ll click the links and do some research of your own.

Here’s the question: Is privilege real?  Are there certain groups of people for whom our society seems to afford more accommodations than others?

The simple answer is “yes” and the evidence bears this out.

People of privilege are over-represented in corporate leadership, political leadership, acting roles, higher education, etc.

And people with relatively less privilege are over-represented in homeless communities, prisons, low-paying jobs, under-performing public schools, etc.

In other words, the verdict is in: privilege is real whether we would like for it to be or not.

So What Do We Do?

All of this begs an important question: what are we to do, especially as followers of Jesus?

Here are a few ideas:

  1. Get to know the God of the Bible.  From the early pages of the Bible to the very end we get a really clear idea that God cares deeply for those who have been oppressed, marginalized, overlooked, and forgotten.  A quick search of the Bible for words like “poor,” “poverty,” and “oppressed” will reveal this (in fact, for those of us who haven’t been exposed to the idea that God cares for the downcast, this exercise can be shocking).  A reading of the life of Jesus will show this to be the case as well.  Jesus regularly interacted with un-privileged people, such as women, children, Gentiles, the sick, the unclean, etc.  Thus, it appears that God has a clear concern for the un-privileged.
  2. Go out of the way to care for the un-privileged.  As I’ve written about before, in John 4 Jesus made a special trip through Samaria in order to talk to a very marginalized woman.  Furthermore, this woman is then clearly portrayed by John as a role model to be emulated by his readers!  This same scenario can be seen through all four of the Gospels.  Jesus quite clearly cared about the well-being of those who had been written off.  And, friends, the same is expected of us today too.  Those of us with privilege, any privilege at all, have an obligation to use it like Jesus did, for the benefit of others.  I mean, come on, who has ever been more privileged than Jesus?  The Second Person of the Trinity decided for our sakes to lay all of his advantages aside and became a slave for us (Philippians 2)?!?  That’s amazing!  And we are called to follow in his footsteps, however challenging that may be.
  3. But don’t ignore the privileged in the meantime.  While it’s certainly true that God clearly has a heart for those without much privilege and that Jesus constantly went out of his way to serve those who were marginalized, we are not therefore freed from loving, caring for, and ministering to those with privilege.  I think Jesus is the best example here: right after his interaction with the Samaritan Woman in John 4 (which I described briefly in point #2), Jesus then heals the child of an official from a neighboring city.  An official.  This was a man of privilege and Jesus didn’t ignore him.  And this man isn’t the only one — there’s Nicodemus, the centurion and his servant that Jesus healed, and the so-called “rich young ruler.”  Jesus didn’t ignore the privileged, but he didn’t base his ministry on serving them.  Maybe as churches in America we could do a better job of following Jesus instead of following our bottom lines.

So, privilege is real.  And while we may be tempted to go with the societal flow and serve and minister to the privileged first, that’s not the call of God from the pages of the Bible.  No!  His call, instead, is to care for the poor, the under-resourced, the oppressed, the forgotten, and those without privilege.  That doesn’t mean that those with privilege are to be ignored, they (including me!) just shouldn’t be the focus of all that we do as followers of Jesus!

 

What do you think?  How should the fact that privilege is real impact the way we follow Jesus?  Let me know in the comments below and please be kind and civil.  I actively monitor all comments.

Thanks!

It’s Time to Listen

by

I posted this video on Facebook a short while after the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, SC and it has been viewed more than 3500 times.  That’s pretty amazing!

White brothers and sisters: We must listen to our friends of color. The time is NOW.

http://wp.me/p45U6t-fQ

Posted by J. Matthew Barnes on Friday, June 19, 2015

Here’s the point in a nutshell: Racism is real; therefore, we (meaning white people) must listen to our brothers and sisters of color.  The time for arguing and saying that folks are too sensitive is over.

We must listen.

 

And then we must act.  We must own up to our part of the systemic issues that folks face in our world, ask for forgiveness, and make amends by standing in solidarity with our friends of color.  (And, no, we can’t just jump to that last part.  We must humble ourselves through confession and the seeking of forgiveness first.)

 

Thoughts?  Keep things above the board.  I have an itchy delete button finger.

Broken Systems

by

America is full of broken systems.  And many of these broken systems hurt the people who are most vulnerable and most in need.  Perhaps the most obvious examples of our broken systems seem to have something to do with race (or at least correlate with race).  The examples that are pointed to most often in the past year or so have to do with how law enforcement officers interact with people of color, such as in the situations involving Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio.

I’ve written about some of these issues before (here, here, and here,)  So why write about them again?

Reader Responses

The primary reason that I wanted to write about this issue again has to do with how people have responded to my previous posts, especially my friends who are in law enforcement or who have loved ones who are.  By and large these folks have said that my thoughts on these issues are too one-sided.

And this criticism is fair.  I have spent most of my energies discussing things from the perspective of people who live in under-resourced neighborhoods and who are typically black and Latino.

So should the other side be explored too?  Of course.  So I want to do that here.  But I want to put this conversation in its proper context.

So here’s the truth.  Law enforcement officers have incredibly difficult jobs.  Every interaction that they have with the public has the potential to be a life-threatening situation.  It makes sense then that law enforcement officers may be on edge.  It makes sense that they are often thinking about self-defense and self-preservation.

Add to these the realities the fact that under-resourced areas are policed more heavily, due primarily to more calls being put in to police dispatchers.  To make things more complicated, these neighborhoods tend to be populated primarily with blacks and Latinos.

When we plug all these variables into the equation, the result is not surprising — Latinos and blacks are disproportionately more likely to be killed by police.

Therefore, it is wrong for people to assume that all police officers are racist.  Obviously there are some that are.  But it is unfair to lump all law enforcement officers into that category.

But the problem remains, people in America with black and brown skin are much more likely to be killed by police than others.

Here’s my contention: This reality is the result of broken systems in America and law enforcement officers are the ones who get the see the results of these broken systems most clearly.

Broken Systems Should Be the Focus

When someone dies at the hands of the police, we all should take note.  We should ask questions.  We should seek justice.  We should mourn with the families involved, no matter the culpability of the deceased.  And we should lament that this horrible thing happened in the first place.

But our national focus on individual cases is detrimental because it prevents us from paying attention to the larger issues, namely the broken systems.  I want to tease this out a bit more.

When my friends who are white get uber-focused on the details of a particular case, they miss opportunities to feel with people who are hurting because of the case.  And the focus on details also prevents white people from seeing the broken systems that helped create the scenarios that led to the police-involved deaths.  (Note: I’m not saying the details are unimportant.  But should the national dialogue be about them?  There are people who should be focused on those details.  More on that to come…)

And when my friends who are black and Latino get uber-focused on the details of a particular case, they miss opportunities to address the larger issues.  This is because allowing a particular case to stand in for the larger issues of the broken systems can lead to unhelpful and distracting conversations.  And what if the particular case doesn’t have clear or available evidence?  Or, worse, what if the particular case involves a justified use of force?  Then the chance to talk about the issues that led to the problems in the first place is much less likely.

So here’s my point: Let’s focus more on the issues that lead to certain communities being under-resourced.  Let’s focus on why it is that blacks and Latinos tend to live in these communities more often than whites.  Let’s focus more on the horrid schools in under-resourced areas.  Let’s focus on how these realities help cause many of us to view black and Latino people, especially males, with suspicion.

Let’s focus on the wider and endemic issues that lead up to the negative interactions with police.

Let’s focus on the broken systems.

Law Enforcement Has Some Brokeness Too

However, we also need to focus on the way that these larger broken systems impact law enforcement officers and agencies.

Because of the realities that we face as a nation, police departments and other law enforcement agencies need extensive training about how to police under-resourced areas in the wisest ways.  There are lots of agencies who are doing a great job in this capacity or who are beginning to, such as Seattle and many others.  Law enforcement officers are the ones who get to see the realities of all these broken systems.  Therefore, they need to be trained in how to deal with these realities in the best ways possible.

Another thing that has been talked about a lot lately is that law enforcement agencies need to alter their recruiting practices so that the policing force looks more like the community they are policing.  This not the solution but it certainly could help, especially if police officers can be recruited from the community where they will be policing.

Perhaps the most important area for growth would have to be in the way that excessive force by police is investigated.  Currently, it appears that most of these cases are investigated internally by the law enforcement agencies themselves or by local prosecutors.  Both of these scenarios are very problematic since they both are wrought with conflict of interest issues.  Police investigating police is obviously problematic, especially within the same agency, and since prosecutors rely on police for help with their cases, they may not be the best folks to judge the potential misconduct of police officers either.  And since data is hard to come by and the data we have seems to indicate that police officers are not likely to be indicted or even charged with a crime when a suspect is killed, it is clear that what we are currently doing isn’t working.  What is needed is an independent office to investigate cases of excessive force.  This may help us hold our police officers more accountable for their actions when necessary.

 

 

It’s time for some change.  Our broken systems need to be fixed and it’s our job as a society to do the fixing.  Let’s call for common sense solutions (like independent investigations of excessive force).

Another common sense change is to stop is labeling all police, or all white police, as racist.  That’s simply not true and it’s certainly not helpful in these discussions.

And, lastly, we need to focus more and more on the larger broken systems that lead to the scenarios like those involving Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice.

 

Thoughts?  What are some other common sense solutions that you can think of?  Share them below and keep it civil!

Michael Brown, Ferguson, and the Police

by

Michael Brown and Ferguson: Perception and the Police

When I was a child I was taught to respect the police. I often went on field trips in school to visit law enforcement stations. I always had positive interactions with the police in those settings, in my communities at large, and in general. My perception of the police as a young white man was that they were there to do their stated mission: to protect and to serve.

However, I’m becoming aware that this is not the prevailing perception of the police with everyone, especially among people of color. For various reasons that are difficult to encapsulate in any quick way, people of color, especially black Americans, often view the police as a threat and with suspicion. Some view the police as out to get them by actively profiling them. And both anecdotal stories from my black friends as well as research about the rates of arrest validate some of these concerns.

It’s in this context, the context of the perception of the police, that the story in Ferguson, Missouri of the fatal shooting of an unarmed young man named Michael Brown takes place. In other words, this story is not happening in a vacuum. This story is not happening outside the context of race and ethnicity. This story is not happening outside the realities of American history. And this story is not happening outside the decades and decades of racial tension in American cities like Ferguson.

The Church’s Response

The question that I want to wrestle with a little bit is this: what is the church’s response to situations like the one in Ferguson? What should we do?

First, we should not be silent. Churches all over America will probably not mention this story this weekend at all. Many of these silent churches will be primarily white (though it should be noted that historically black churches are sometimes silent on social issues also).

There is another piece of evidence, albeit anecdotal: my social media feeds. Despite the fact that I have numerous Christian friends online, almost none of them who are white have mentioned the story in Ferguson at all. This may be due to fear, or confusion, or whatever else. On the flip side many of my black friends, my Asian friends, and my Latino friends have been mentioning this story often. I’m sure it’s not just my social media feed that looks this way.

And, in my humble opinion, this is a disgrace. White Christians should also be involved in issues of race and ethnicity. We should stand on the side of justice. This should not be something that we ignore because it’s difficult or complicated. We should not shy away from these sorts of topics because we are scared that our white brothers and sisters may not understand where we’re coming from. And we can’t let our fears of being called “liberal” or something of that sort prevent is from standing up for what’s right.

And if the media reports are correct that Michael Brown was unarmed and that he had his hands raised whenever he was gunned down, then what happened was not right. This is true regardless of his past, his affiliations, or any other things about him. He was unarmed and his hands were raised according to reports. If those things are true then the way he died is unjust. And we Christians, all of us Christians, need to stand on the side of what’s right and just.

And second, we need to be reminded that the Jesus of the Gospels stood on the side of those who were marginalized. Specifically Jesus often went out of his way to include people who were different than him, especially the Samaritans. And we see this continuing in the book of Acts as the good news expanded outside of the bonds of Jewish ethnicity and extended into Gentile world. We read this in Paul’s letters, in the other epistles, and all throughout the Old Testament. This notion of including all people is a common theme in all of the Bible. And yet at some point we have limited the Bible to be only about me and people like me. Now that “me and people like me” in my previous sentence could be people literally like me, middle-class white people, or maybe people like you, whatever your social location.

The truth is that the gospel is not just for people like me or people like you. It is for all people. And as such those of us who claim to follow Jesus should begin to live like Jesus lived. And one of the chief ways that Jesus lived was for the other, especially the marginalized other.

Friends, in America there are marginalized people. One of the ways that people are marginalized most often is through race and ethnicity. And it is high time that we in the church took a hard stand for those who are marginalized. For whatever reason. Especially if we are white.

I would love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve written here in the comments below. But the comments need to remain civil and respectful. Any comments that I deem otherwise will be removed. Thank you for your understanding.

A Definition of Racism

by

I was listening to some Exponential Podcasts while I was driving in Texas the other day and I heard Efrem Smith share a very helpful definition of racism.  He also wrote about this same definition on page 76 of The Post-Black Post-White Church, which is an excellent book.  Here it is:

Racism is prejudice plus power.

I love this way of looking at things because it helps me – a white guy – understand why some prejudices I express are considered “racist” while those that someone with less perceived cultural power expresses aren’t.

racism

By: Emma Craig
Prejudice plus power equals a sword; prejudice minus power equals a pool noodle.

For instance, when a person like me uses a racial slur, especially one deeply connected with the history of racism in America (like the n-word, the ch-word, wet****, etc.), it is racist.  It stings the person it is aimed at deeply because it takes them back to their childhood when that word was used against them.  It causes them to recall the pain that they heard their grandparents talk about over dinner.  In other words, there’s power behind those prejudiced words.

But when someone who isn’t white like me calls me a cracker or white trash, there’s virtually no sting.  I don’t have memories from when I was a kid that involve those words being used as weapons.  My grandparents have a total of zero stories involving them.  There’s no power behind those words.

In other words, prejudice expressed by someone with perceived power is like cutting someone with a sword, while prejudice from someone without power is like slapping someone with a pool noodle.  The damage caused would certainly be different!

Maybe a definition like Efrem’s can help us think about recent examples of racist words differently too.

What do you think?  Does this definition help you think about racism in fresh ways?

Racism, Phil Robertson, and the Church

by
Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty

via IAmSecond.com

What are we supposed to do with the words Phil Robertson spoke during a GQ interview regarding race in Louisiana when he was growing up?  What’s a missional response?

Well, if you don’t want to read this whole post, here’s the quick version: In my opinion, Phil’s words about homosexuality were judgmental and hurt the missional cause of all Christians seeking to make the kingdom tangible among the LGBT community and his words about blacks during the days of Jim Crow seem to me to be uniformed and (perhaps unintentionally) racist.

If you want to read some more, cool beans!

Let’s Get It Started!

Last time I didn’t lead with Phil’s own words.  This time I’m going to:

Phil On Growing Up in Pre-Civil-Rights-Era Louisiana
“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.” (SOURCE: GQ.com)

First of all, I need to admit that what Phil is explicitly talking about here is his own experience.  He claims that in his neck of the woods while growing up he didn’t see the mistreatment of black people and he didn’t hear them complain.  If he’s being honest, which I have no reason to deny, then I have to trust him since he is the expert in his own experience.

But even the briefest, most cursory look into the history of white-black drama in the United States would reveal to anyone that Phil’s experience is probably not all that widespread.  In fact, a few decades before Phil was born, in his own region of Louisiana, a black man was lynched.  Lynching in Louisiana was pretty common, with one source citing around 200 lynchings in the state and another source citing 339, most of which happened prior to Phil’s birth.  However, there have been at least two lynchings in Louisiana since Phil’s been around, one when he was a baby and one when he was 19 or so.

Here’s the point: Phil must have had his eyes closed or he and his family lived so far back in the woods so as not to be aware of the wider world.  Why?  Because racial violence that leads to lynching doesn’t just pop up one day.  It’s a long, slow build.  That kind of hatred is built on years of smaller abuses that, given the right fuel, will explode into the murder of an innocent person.  There’s also the possibility that Phil and his family just see the world through extremely-vivid, rose-colored glasses.

Whatever the case, the rest of the things that Phil said about blacks when he was growing up deserve some attention too.

Let’s Get to Parsing!

Now what I’m about to do is unfair and I know that.  I’m going to pick the words of Phil Robertson apart.  If he were here, he’d most likely be able to explain himself better (or at least I would hope so!).  But, given that intro, there are still some things to glean from the actual words he chose to use.

  • “Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers”

This seems innocuous enough, right?  Sure.  Phil is just reporting how things were when he was growing up.  He couldn’t do anything about the situation that black families found themselves in.  But Phil’s words point to a larger reality of the mistreatment of black people during the Jim Crow era.

Phil says that everyone was a farmer where he grew up and that blacks worked for them.  Alright, first this points to a great difference in land and business ownership between whites and blacks during that time, which continues on today by the way.  But Phil couldn’t do anything about that.  He was just one kid in one family in one community.

However, notice the language that Phil uses “Where we lived was all farmers.”  Then blacks worked for that category of “all,” meaning that blacks aren’t in that category.  Is this just semantics?  Probably.  I’m splitting hairs, but language like this – language that sets one ethnic group off to the side from the norm, the “all” – is difficult to swallow for people who don’t fit into the “all” category.

  •  I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash.

As a white guy I understand this line really well.  If it were me who said it, then I would be saying this in an effort to diffuse some white guilt and to make it seem like I have some relational connection to black people.  I’m not saying that is what Phil is doing, but that is kind of what this sounds like.

Beyond that we’ve got a more obvious issue: Phil associates being “trash” with being black.  Again, this could just be a sign of what growing up was like where he lived.  Maybe the only white people who associated with blacks were poor, what Phil calls “white trash.”  Even still, however, I can only imagine that a black person reading these words wouldn’t be so happy to be equated with “trash.”  I’m just sayin’.

  • They’re singing and happy.

There’s an excellent book by Charles Hersch called Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans.  In the book Hersch points out that the racial climate in the South, and in Louisiana in particular, helped give rise to what became known as jazz.  Hersch draws on oral histories, old newspapers, etc. in order to get a glimpse into how jazz was born.  And part of his conclusion is that the genesis of jazz is completely wrapped up in the suffering of blacks before and during the Jim Crow era.  He makes the convincing argument that music, for them, was a way to be subversive, a way to stand in solidarity with one another against the racial injustices they were facing.

So Phil’s experience of hearing black people sing while working in the fields is nothing new and it may well have been part of a subversive movement like the one Hersch writes about.

  • I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!

This one is a no-brainer.  Of course the black workers didn’t complain!  If they complained their white bosses would fire them!  Then what?  Move?  How would their kids eat?

In a classic book on oppression called Pedagogy of Oppression, Paulo Friere, identifies what others have called a “culture of silence” that occurs in situations of oppression, like the ones in the South during the Jim Crow era.  We human beings don’t tend to use our voices when we feel that doing so will be ignored, ineffective, or harmful to our own lives or of those whom we love.

  • Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

In these loaded statements there’s much more to mine.  First, there’s an implication that blacks today aren’t godly or happy because they live post-entitlement and post-welfare.  Second, there’s a further implication that entitlements and welfare are somehow inherently wrong, even though white folks receive entitlements and welfare in droves too.  And, third, there’s just this funny statement about the blues.

The blues, as a musical genre, was birthed by blacks in the South during the Jim Crow period and beyond.  The power and authenticity and rawness of the blues come from the pain of oppression suffered by black people.  It was in 1912 that blues as a major musical genre exploded with the song “Memphis Blues” by W.C. Handy, right smack in the middle of the Jim Crow era.

If the black people with whom Phil worked were singing, my guess is that they were singing the blues, literally or figuratively!

Let’s Wrap This Up!

So, were the words of Phil Robertson racist?  Yes.  That word – racist – is hard for people to hear.  I know.  It’s hard for me too.  And when I’ve said things that were insensitive and my words were called racist, I cringed and got defensive.  But racism doesn’t have to do only with my intent, necessarily.  I can say the most well-meaning thing and it can be completely racist.  Stella Ting-Toomey says it best in Communicating Across Cultures: “Thus, we confirm and disconfirm others by the words we choose” (173).  So I’m not saying necessarily that Phil was trying to be racist; but his words, nonetheless, could very, very easily be seen as racist.

 

A Lesson to Learn from Phil Robertson

So what’s the point?  Well, I think there’s a lesson to learn from all this.  We must learn to use our words carefully if we want to be missional where we live, work, and play.  If we want people from every tribe, tongue, and nation (Revelation 7.9) to come to know Jesus, then we need to speak more hospitably to all people and about all people.

But how can we do this?  What if we make mistakes?  “What if”?  More like WHEN we make mistakes!  And we will!  Here’s the best advice I have: apologize sincerely, make amends quickly, and move forward in solidarity with the offended ones.

 

What do you think?  Let me know below (but keep it civil)!

Half Full or Half Empty: Some Thoughts on Racism

by

Nemo / Pixabay

Is this glass in the picture half full?  Or is it half empty?  (Or, if you are a nerd, do you focus on the half that’s full of a clear liquid or the half that’s full of air?)

Well, for me, it depends.  If it’s my glass, then it’s half full.  I get to enjoy several more drinks of refreshing water before having to get up and get some more!  But if you’re a guest at my house, it’s half empty and I need to get ready to bring you a refill!

In my life I find a similar sort of relativism when it comes to whether I’m an optimist or not.  When it’s my stuff, my life, the things I have leadership over, I’m usually optimistic, especially when I’m talking to others.  But if I’m looking at the situations that others find themselves in, I tend to be more pessimistic.

I find myself much more easily doubting the intentions of others rather than being honest about my own.  I’m really likely to ask for people to give me leeway for my mistakes and to point out my own progress on various issues but I’m pretty unlikely to do either for other people.

So, I don’t find it surprising that some people who have been hurt in the sticky racial climate in our country don’t want to hear from me how far I’ve come with regard to being more sensitive about ethnically-related ethics, practices, and behaviors.

But I have come a long way.  I fully imbibed the latent but polite racism that was part of the culture of my youth.  However, I always tried to fight against it.  I tried not to laugh at the racist jokes.  I tried not to use racial slurs.  I tried not to buy into the stereotypes of people of different ethnicities.  I tried to have a diverse set of friends.  I tried to lead groups in the churches where I have served to be more multi-cultural.  I have tried to stand in solidarity with those different than me.  I’ve tried to be an advocate, a support, and a freedom fighter.

I have tried.

But the folks who live in my neighborhood who are currently suffering thanks to unfair systems and structures don’t really care about how I have tried.  And my friends who when they look at themselves in the mirror wish that they could change, not their weight or hair, but their ethnicity thanks to all the pain they have suffered just by being a person of color, don’t really want to hear how I’ve tried either.  And folks who feel marginalized and unheard within Evangelical churches like my own simply because they were born within a different ethnic culture than me also don’t really care how much I’ve tried.

Is it good that I’ve tried?  Sure!  100%!

But why do I have this tendency to tell people how hard I’ve tried?  Is it white guilt, the feeling of shame and frustration that some white people feel when they see or hear about racism leveled against others by whites, whether in the present or past?  Or is it my sad effort to distance myself from those racists while ignoring some lingering racist tendencies in me?

My friend, Liz Lin, recently posted an awesome blog at The Salt Collective called “My Name is Liz Lin, and I’m Racist.”  In her piece Liz argues that we’re all racist by default.  It’s just part of what it means to be human to group people together and to make pre-judgments about them.  But Liz doesn’t leave it there.  She pushes forward, challenging us to move beyond simply accepting our own racism and that of others.  She says, “We need to actively correct ourselves — and each other.”

And Liz is right!  But as we do this active correction of ourselves and others, let’s not parade it around for everyone to see!  Instead of using some of my energy to tell others, especially those who don’t look like me, how much I’ve tried and how far I’ve come, I’d rather use that same energy to continue to treat people of other ethnicities with dignity and grace, just like I would like to be treated!

So let’s get a little less “the glass is half full” with this issue.  Instead, let’s admit that the glass is broken and the refreshing water that was supposed to be delivered to us all has spilled all over the table and is dripping onto the floor.  Now let’s work together, across all of our divisions (ethnicity, socio-economics, gender, education, etc.) to build a new vessel to hold water…and then let’s tip it over and shower those in the most need with the life-giving water of the good news of the kingdom of God!

Here’s a book by Efrem Smith that is full of helpful resources and thoughts about being missional and multiethnic: The Post-Black, Post-White Church: Becoming the Beloved Community in a Multi-Ethnic World.