The question is: what do you believe?
“Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus taught us, but we built prison after prison. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” Jesus taught us, but we did not turn our cheek. We turned instead our billy stick. We turned instead our pepper spray. We turned instead our rubber bullets and our tear gas and our riot gear. To George Floyd, and so many others, we turned instead our knee.I still wonder what would happen if we championed the Beatitudes as the public display of Christianity, rather than the Ten Commandments.
The quote in the title is from Dom Crossan's version of the "original" sayings of Jesus. I quote it for reasons which should become obvious.
White Christians who came before us captured human beings and beat them and raped them and stole their babies from them and stole their parents from them and stole their husbands and their wives from them and locked them in chains and made them work in inhuman conditions. Our spiritual ancestors went to church and listened to their pastors argue that these human beings weren’t human at all.We are having a "moment" here, as a nation. The only question is: will we set fires of justice and reform? Or will we set more fires of self-interest and self-preservation. The question of the ' 60's civil rights and anti-war movements is the same question now: "Whose side are you on?"
Our pastors don’t tell us that anymore, but we are still setting fires.
Christians set a fire every time we allow our leaders to weaponize our fears against us. We set a fire every time our faith in good police officers prevents us from seeing the bad ones. Christian voters preserve a system that permits police violence, unjust prosecutions and hellhole prisons filled with people who should have received the same addiction treatment we give our own troubled kids.
We set a fire every time we fail to scrutinize a police culture that allows an officer’s own fear and hatred to justify the most casual brutality against another human being. It would be almost unbelievable to match an adjective like “casual” with a noun like “brutality,” but we have seen the videos. Watch the faces of justice shove an old man aside and leave him bleeding on the ground. Watch them drive their vehicles into protesters protected by the United States Constitution. Watch them fire rubber bullets directly at journalists doing work that is also protected by the United States Constitution. In video after video, note their unconcern with people who are bleeding or screaming in pain.
Make yourself look. Study the air of perfect nonchalance on Derek Chauvin’s face as he kneels on the neck of George Floyd. Register the blithe indifference in his posture, the way he puts his hand in his pocket as though he were just walking along the street on a sunny summer day. Nothing in his whole body suggests concern. He is not the least bit troubled by taking another human life.
We created Derek Chauvin.
Every single aspect of our criminal justice system is permeated by racism, but too many Christians continue to vote for “law and order” candidates anyway, failing to notice that more cops and more weapons and more prisons have done exactly nothing to make us safer. Failing to notice that they have instead endangered all Americans, but black people most of all.
As Dr. King put it:
“The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing the evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”
But as Jesus of Nazareth put it: "When you start a fire, you want it to burn." We want the fire; do we want the results?
A couple of ideas from here and elsewhere, a bit of thinking out loud. I saw a comment that the push for racial justice will reach the moment of truth when whites have to give up some of their privileges. Then we will know if this is going to work. Having that in my head, and then reading the Dr. King quote got me going. Dr. King recognized that racial justice was also tied to poverty, militarism and materialism. If we try to just layer racial justice on top our our current winner take all economics, then I do think it is likely to fail. Income disparity is even more extreme than at the time of MLK. In the current hyper-economic environment, granting an advantage, or even removing an impediment, has potentially severe consequences on everyone else. It is really a zero sum game (with a steadily shrinking pie, to layer on the metaphors). Any gain by you is a definite loss for me. With the current extremes of haves and have-nots, there is a long way to fall for even a small loss. It's not access to college, it's access to the right colleges with the right names and connections. It's the getting on the first rung of the successful companies. The difference of getting on that rung or not is huge. People may be willing to give up an advantage is the consequences aren't severe. To make an example, I may be fine with my kid getting into a less prestigious school to allow more students of color an opportunity, if my kid can still get a decent job, have some stability, raise a family. If getting into that lesser school means instead of a steady job, a constant wheel of gig jobs, no stability that allows for marriage, kids, et al, than that is much harder sell. There are many similar examples up and down the economic ladder. I am always freshly shocked when I hear even generally liberal people say you shouldn't have kids if you can afford them. Procreation I guess is only for the wealthy. If that is how we truly see the world, then to fall is face our own extinction.
ReplyDeleteIf there is no poverty, if all work is considered worthy of a living wage and benefits, if there is a meaning life that doesn't necessitate extreme wealth. If there is safety no matter where you live, then there is a possibility for us to build a more fair society. There needs to be direct action on racism, but there needs to be a reimagining of our society.
I can't see substantive progress on a more racially just America, without a more equally economic justice. But I don't think solving the economic justice alone will have any substantial effect on racial justice. Racism is our original sin, it won't fix itself.