Race and Confession

The verdict in the Trayvon Martin case on the heels of the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act has brought our shared national legacy of racial division back to the foreground of our political debates.  Now, while the iron is hot, is the time for theological conversation to strike on this enduring and complicated issue.

Beyond the political rhetoric of the day, what can the church say theologically about the legacy of racial division in American culture?

Besides simply saying “racism is sin” (which we should keep saying), what can the church say on the topic of race to move our conversation and our shared life forward?

As I began trying to formulate an answer to that question, I found myself walking around and around answers and ideas but never getting far beneath the surface.  The first draft of this post was little more than a string of platitudes and bumper-sticker slogans on ending racism.  Rev. Jim Forbes, former pastor at Riverside Church in NYC, once referred to that sort of theology as “hoop skirt theology,”- it covers everything but touches nothing.

Why, I began to wonder, am I not able to really go deep into a theology of anti-racism?  Why do I have so much trouble thinking and writing beyond the platitudes?  I ruminated on those questions for a couple of weeks until it dawned on me.  There is a very simple reason why I have such difficulty talking deeply and formatively on the subject of race.

I am a racist.

That is my confession.  I am a racist.

I fully realize how loaded that sentence is, but words are important and sometimes we have to call things like they are and not hedge our bets or soften our words.  I define racism here not in terms of superiority of one group over another but as the persistent habit of seeing difference in other people before anything else.  

I am not a KKK banner waving racist like David Duke or a hate spewing racist like the pastor in Florida who keeps burning the Koran or even a passive aggressive racist like half of the United States Congress.  My racism is less cartoonish and frankly more troubling.  Now, I want to be clear at this point and say that I do not set out to be a racist.  In fact, I like to think of myself as being pretty sensitive to the subject.  I cannot conceive of actively discriminating against another person for just about any reason.  Mine is not overt hate-racism.  Mine is that insidious form of silent American racism that goes unnoticed and, like a lurking malignancy, undiagnosed for years until it eats you away from the inside.  It is the kind of racism that is unintentional but no less harmful.  That is my sin. (Well one of them anyway)

We like to behave as though racism is just hate.  To be sure, in its most insidious and often violent form it is.  But racism is not reserved to the hatemongers and those who promote a politics of fear of the other.  Sometimes it is silent.  And silent racism in America is too easily and too often ignored.  

This kind of American racism is not rooted in hate but in a focus on the otherness of a person of a different race.  For example, I do not dislike or disrespect the President because he is an African-American.  (In fact, I still have the bottle of wine my mother and I used to toast his election in 2008 and I am proud that our nation elected its first African-American President.)  But when I see him on television or in the newspaper, I see a black man before I see a President.  I see what is different about him before I see anything else.  (I have to confess feeling a little indicted by the President when he pointed to just that sort of racism in his impromptu speech in late July.)

The lingering liberal in me wants to say, “Well, difference is good.  Difference is diversity.” And I suppose that is true on some level.  It is our differences that give definition and depth to our diversity and that is a good thing.  However, before diversity can really be appreciated, we have to learn to define it in terms of our commonality.  We are diverse to be sure, however we are diverse within a shared humanity. 

Yet our shared humanity is rarely the first thing we see.  We see race, gender identity, age, physical capability and all manner of physical differences before we see what it is we share- our humanity.  Silent American racism (and its partners sexism, homophobia, ageism and others) is the habitual and uncritical willingness to see the difference in another person before seeing our shared humanity if we see it at all.

In her wonderful book From Disgust to Humanity, philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls American culture out on our habitual pattern of creating boogeymen out of whole groups of people.  Although Nussbaum focuses on GLBTQ discrimination, her argument applies to the problem of silent racism as well.  Even silent racism creates categories of people based on assumed differences that categorize those people as “not like me.” We create an image that gives us permission to treat that group and any member of it as other; as less than.   (It was fascinating how many times stories about Trayvon Martin that characterized him as a young black male wearing a hoodie with pot in his system were followed immediately with a picture of the President.) Nussbaum advocates for a “politics of humanity” that resists this silent form of discrimination in favor of a political culture rooted in our common humanity. 

What Nussbaum advocates for in the political sphere, the church must advocate in the theological.  Don’t we claim that we are ALL children of God?  What greater witness can we make to the unity we have in Christ than creating a culture that focuses first on our shared humanity?  Our shared created-ness in the image of God?   Before anything else, we are all children of the Living God.  Transcending any possible division or category we might impose, we are all one in God’s family. 

There is holiness in that message.  There is holiness in proclaiming the love, hope and unity of Jesus Christ. There is holiness in declaring that before anything in the world that might seek to divide us, we are united in the eyes of God; each of us wonderfully made and precious in God’s sight.  What a daring and faithful message that would be in the world!  What a bold church we would be if we only had the courage to proclaim it!

Dr. King called Sunday morning worship the most segregated hour in the week.  It was true when he said it nearly half a century ago and it is true today.  Even the church is not immune to silent racism.  We have a long way to go to become the people God desires us to be and a long way to go to become a community of common humanity bearing witness to the world. 

In the meantime, there is grace.  Amazing grace for those of us who still have a way to go; who still have some work to do in the journey from difference to humanity.   

Racism has been called “America’s original sin” and it is going to take time for us to overcome it, however just because it is difficult does not mean that we do not try. 

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem.

No more silence; that is the first step. 

Anyone ready to take it with me?