Mar

25

Living the Christian Life – Race Relations in the United States

Filed Under Living the Christian Life 

The Christian Life Commission was birthed in 1950 in the midst of a race relations crisis. Especially in the South, society was segregated along racial lines—churches, public schools, colleges, lunch counters, theatres, buses, drinking fountains. To people like T.B. Maston, A.C. Miller, and W.R. White, racial bigotry and the segregation it inspired were an affront to the Gospel, an insult to the New Testament portrayal of the Jesus who reached out across the most trenchant of social divides (i.e., Jew-Gentile) to invite people into the Kingdom of God. Under the leadership of Maston, Miller, White, and others, the CLC was called into being to speak a prophetic word to Texas Baptists about the reconciliation brought about by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

Nearly sixty years later, the election of Barack Obama serves as a contemporary litmus test regarding race relations in the United States. The very fact that an African American could win both his party’s nomination and the general election was positively exhilarating for those who have longed for and worked for racial reconciliation and justice. Many factors were at work in Mr. Obama’s election which transcended race, but the willingness of the majority of the American electorate to cast their ballots in the privacy of their voting booths for a person of color says something. It says that the cynics (including people on both sides of the political isle) who doubted that we were ready to elect a non-white candidate were wrong. On this historic occasion, the candidate’s race did not trump his qualifications and platform. At least for this moment in time, that which was more substantive triumphed over that which was less substantive.

Subsequent events have served to remind us that the Kingdom of God has not yet come with regard to race relations in the United States. Post-election racist cartoons have littered e-mail inboxes. Racist attempts at humor have infiltrated conversations about the new president. Racist remarks, some intended and some unintended, have crept into radio, television, and newspaper commentaries. While none of these manifestations have eclipsed the election itself, they serve as stubborn reminders that we who claim to be followers of Jesus have work to do.

In his book Racism without Racists Eduardo Bonilla Silva describes contemporary racist attitudes as “color blind.” After noticing that blacks and dark-skinned racial minorities lag well behind whites in virtually every area of social life—wealth, income, education, housing, treatment in the criminal justice system—Bonilla Silva asks, “How it is possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a country where most whites claim that race is no longer relevant?” His answer is that “Jim Crow racism” which explained blacks’ social standing in terms of alleged biological and moral inferiority has been replaced by “color-blind racism” which rationalizes minorities’ disadvantaged status as the product of market dynamics, naturally occurring phenomena, and imputed cultural limitations. In contrast to Jim Crow racism, color blind racism accomplishes residential segregation—almost as severe today as three decades ago—by covert rather than overt marketing practices. Similarly, while civil rights legislation and reforms have helped to remove barriers to electoral participation, practices like racial gerrymandering and multimember legislative districts are used to disenfranchise people of color. Compared to Jim Crow racism, the ideology of color blindness seems like “racism lite.” Instead of proclaiming that God placed minorities in the world in a servile position, color blind racism suggests that people of color lag behind because they do not work hard enough. “Smiling face” discrimination (“We don’t have jobs now, but please check back later”) has replaced open discrimination.

Color blind racism confirms the truth of Reinhold Niebuhr’s commentary on the law, that the law could not change our hearts but that the law was necessary until our hearts could be changed. Overt racism has been delegitimized by Congress and the courts, but covert racism remains a fixture in the landscape of unrepentant humanity. It will only be rooted out by the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, and it is through the empowerment of the Spirit that we carry on the work of our forebears who proclaimed this Gospel truth sixty years ago:

For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility . . . that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in the one body in the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. Ephesians 2:14-16

We’ve come a long way since 1950, but we’ve still got a long way to go. God grant us the faithfulness and courage to preach and practice the gospel of reconciliation in all the intersections of our lives.

Reference: Eduardo Bonilla Silva, Racism without Racists, Second Edition (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006), pp. 2-3.

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