The Racial Divide and White Christians (Introduction-Part 1)
If an outsider dropped by to visit the programs and life-on-life discipleship relationships of UTM, they would soon realize that the overwhelming majority of students to whom we minister are black. They would also recognize that a slight majority of the volunteers and staff within UTM are also black. On account of this fact, the deep relationships with our African-American neighbors, students, volunteers, and staff that we share through UTM long ago opened Sherilyn and my eyes to the ugly truth that racism is still alive and active in today’s culture. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a sheriff’s deputy racially profile UTM’s ManUP coordinator, Davien Fizer. I’ve seen a racial bias by teachers, counselors, and social workers within our city’s public and charter schools in their unfair treatment of young black boys. I’ve seen racial profiling from local, well-known hypermarket stores that sent employees to follow black students that were shopping with me. I’ve seen social workers from government, non-profit, and educational sectors use their power and influence to send a disproportionate number of pregnant low-income African-American teenage girls and young women to Planned Parenthood. In turn, PP referred them to the local abortion clinic because their answer to fatherlessness was to eliminate the baby. I’ve seen multiple churches wrongly address racial problems, struggles, or issues because they were culturally incompetent. I’ve seen racially biased social workers from CPS mishandle cases, through making rash decisions to remove a child from the premises based on wrong, racial assumptions. Or showing too much leniency due to the “soft-bigotry of low-expectations,” which kept the child in harm’s way. These examples only scratch the surface. While racism has not disappeared, it often takes on more subtle forms within the institutions of our nation than it did a couple generations ago.
What’s more, on an even larger scale, the last decade brought about new challenges to the already-strained race-relations within our nation and throughout the church-at-large. No one could have predicted the enormous social impact of social media, which exposed several incidents of racial tensions and injustices. As videos went viral, such as Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, the Ferguson Riots, Eric Garner (I can’t breathe), Starbuck arrests in Philadelphia, Philandro Castile, Sandra Bland, and Laquon Mcdonald, it led to outrage and protests and counter-protests throughout the nation. Sadly, partisan media talking heads and politicians seized this opportunity to frame racial conflict and injustices using the culture-war progressive vs. conservative, left vs. right language. And amidst the chaos, sociological terms such as White Privilege, Microaggression, Implicit Bias, Critical Race Theory, White Guilt, Microinvalidation, Virtual Signaling, Intersectionality, Cultural Marxism, Woke, and White Fragility entered social media and mainstream media debates and conversations. This sheer amount of race-information through Facebook posts and memes, twitter rants, blog post diatribes, and slanted mainstream media programming has many white people back-peddling. And they feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and defensive as they process how to think and respond critically.
In this context, I shall give my two-cents worth and provide a roadmap that White Christians can follow to help repair the racial divide that exists with their black brothers and sisters in Christ. Because I am a follower of Jesus, my frame of reference is rooted in a Christian Worldview, centered on the gospel of Jesus. Although my identity is entirely in Christ, I chose to write this article to my white brothers and sisters who claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior (although I’m sure some of my black brothers and sisters in Christ will be curious about what I have to say). It was our Lord Jesus, who declared that the world would know that we were Christians based on our love for one another. Frankly, many of us white Christians have failed to love our black brothers and sisters in Christ, reverting back to regarding people from a worldly point of view (II Cor. 5:16a) through a socio-political lens rather than a Biblical one. Hopefully, my two-cents worth will bring deep self-reflection, clarity, and unity rather than add to the racially-divisive cluttered chaos that litters the social-media blogosphere.
I can see what you are talking about, but I do not understand what I can do to help remedy the situation. How can I get involved?
Jim,
Over the next couple of months, I’ll share part 2 through 5 of this series which will provide some tangible ways to help bridge the racial divide. I just friend-requested you on Facebook, so we can maybe get together and connect in the meantime. Blessings and thanks for your heart for racial reconciliation.