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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jim Wallis
Read between
February 24 - March 18, 2018
The Confederate flag had been raised above the South Carolina statehouse in 1962—in direct defiance of racial integration and the civil rights movement3—and has been used as an emblem of white hate and violence against black people ever since. It is therefore an anti-Christian flag that helped inspire the murder of black Christians on June 17, 2015.
“If white Christians acted more Christian than white, black parents would have less to fear for their children.”
God is always personal, but never private. Trying to understand the public meaning of faith has been my vocation ever since. How that personal and public gospel can overcome the remaining agendas of racism in America is the subject of this book.
if white Christians in America were ready to act more Christian than white when it comes to race, black parents would be less fearful for their children.
our original racial diversity was a product of appalling human oppression based on greed.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech, whose fiftieth anniversary has now passed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”1 King’s dream failed that night in Florida when Zimmerman decided to follow Martin because of the color of his skin.
Yes.
Racial profiling is a sin in the eyes of God, as we will later explore theologically. It should also be a crime in the eyes of our society and reflected in the laws we enact to protect one another and our common good.
the heart of the difference is that many white Americans tend to see unfortunate incidents based on individual circumstances, while most black Americans see systems in which their black lives matter less than white lives.
It’s indefensible that no accurate national data currently exist describing how many people are killed by the police each year.
FBI director James Comey has acknowledged the problem of the lack of good data: “It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people were shot by the police in this country.”
Conservatives and liberals need to take facts—and the lives impacted by those facts—seriously, by committing themselves to correcting and changing the racialized behaviors of our policing and criminal justice systems—and doing that together.
These were transforming words for those of us who listened. As I heard these young leaders, I realized America would be converted by these young people’s honest and earnest conversation—they would clearly win a national debate about our criminal justice system’s response to young people of color—if the nation could really see and hear them. That is why they have been deliberately marginalized and painted with the brush of false narratives that polarize our responses to them, a polarization so painfully and starkly along racial lines.
No different for white Parkland students, at least to a degree.
Conservative white Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore said this in the wake of Ferguson: In the public arena, we ought to recognize that it is empirically true that African-American men are more likely, by virtually every measure, to be arrested, sentenced, executed, or murdered than their white peers. We cannot shrug that off with apathy. Working toward justice in this arena will mean consciences that are sensitive to the problem. But how can we get there when white people do not face the same experiences as do black people?34 After the Eric Garner decision, Moore made another powerful
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“The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the near genocide of another race and then the enslavement of yet another.”
The technical term for [failing to reflect God’s image in the world] is “sin,” whose primary meaning is not “breaking the rules” but “missing the mark,” failing to hit the target of complete, genuine, glorious humanness. Once again, the gospel itself, the very message which announces that Jesus is Lord and calls us to obedience, contains the remedy: forgiveness, unearned and freely given, because of his cross. All we can say is, “Thank you.”10
reconciliation from liberation.”19 The powerful thing Cone is saying here is that participation in the struggle to overcome racism is less about skin color and more about repentance. In order for white people to join the struggle, they need to “die to whiteness” and be “reborn.”
Let nobody give you the impression that the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression that only time will solve the problem. That is a myth, and it is a myth because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I’m absolutely convinced that the people of ill will in our nation—the extreme rightists—the forces committed to negative ends—have used time much more effectively than the people of good will.
We begin with the long history of the British struggle to conquer Ireland and subjugate its people. This structural relation of dominance along with British frustration in the face of stubborn resistance, gave rise to a cultural belief that the Irish were an inferior and savage people, not merely in the organization of their societies, but in their very nature as human beings. The British came to view the Irish as something like a separate species altogether, possessing inferior traits that were biologically passed from one generation to the next. In this, the British were inventing a concept
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If people of color went around showing the pain they feel in every moment that they feel it, they could be killed. It is dangerous. They cannot always share their outrage about the injustice of racism. White people can’t tolerate it. And we punish it severely—from job loss, to violence, to murder. For them to take that risk and show us, that is a moment of trust.
When I’m doing a workshop, I’ll often ask the people of color in the room, somewhat facetiously, “How often have you given white people feedback about our inevitable and often unconscious racist patterns and had that gone well for you?” And they laugh. Because it just doesn’t go well. And so one time I asked, “What would your daily life be like if you could just simply give us feedback, have us receive it graciously, reflect on it and work to change the behavior? What would your life be like?” And this one man of color looked at me and said, “It would be revolutionary.”39
When raced-as-White people cry out defensively, “They’re playing a race card!” they forget why there are just so many race cards out there. Raced-as-Whites have manufactured and distributed them by the millions. . . . We raced-as-White folk just about perfected the racializing system that produces race cards, but we really don’t like it when one gets handed back to us. It feels a lot better to give them than to receive them.
Again, King spoke as a pastor and not a politician by lamenting how such moral disobedience on the part of the white churches would turn people, and especially young people, away from an irrelevant church. The young people were with King, and are always with those who show courage, King said: But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I
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Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom.
But those white men shut down when their black or brown or Asian or Native American “friends” began to call on their friends to advocate against laws, policies, and structures in the church and society that oppressed or impoverished their people. This dynamic was pervasive and caused deep disillusionment within the African American community. As a result, many evangelical African Americans now push back against the use of the words “racial reconciliation.” They explain that it presupposes a time when we were in right relationship with one another. They argue that there has never been a time
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Soon, Hampton joined the church and invited some friends and family to come with her. Then they invited some friends as well and on it went. Now, Rural Hill is one of the most diverse churches in the Nashville area. Its 600-member congregation is 40% African-American, 40% white and 20% Hispanic. It is one of a small but growing number of churches in the country where Sunday service is no longer the most segregated hour of the week.
A segregated church or a beloved community—you can’t have both, and we must make a choice.
According to a 2013 Justice Department report, as reported by The Washington Post, “Black drivers are 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than whites; they are more than twice as likely to be subject to police searches as white drivers; and they are nearly twice as likely to not be given any reason for the traffic stop, period.”
For example, in Dearborn, Michigan, blacks make up only 4 percent of the population, yet they made up more than half the arrests in 2011 and 2012 (the caveat here being that many of those arrested don’t live in Dearborn but are arrested while driving through—yet it still points to a staggering disparity).28
For black men in their thirties, 1 in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day.”
The President’s Task Force report ends its section on community policing on a powerful and enlightening note: It must also be stressed that the absence of crime is not the final goal of law enforcement. Rather, it is the promotion and protection of public safety while respecting the dignity and rights of all. And public safety and well-being cannot be attained without the community’s belief that their well-being is at the heart of all law enforcement activities. It is critical to help community members see police as allies rather than as an occupying force and to work in concert with other
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Some of the blame for this phenomenon can be placed on so-called “zero-tolerance” policies that many schools have adopted. According to the American Civil Liberties Union: Lacking resources, facing incentives to push out low-performing students, and responding to a handful of highly-publicized school shootings, schools have embraced zero-tolerance policies that automatically impose severe punishment regardless of circumstances. Under these policies, students have been expelled for bringing nail clippers or scissors to school.
There is nothing quite like an honest admission of having made a mistake or doing wrong to build trust in those who have experienced those mistakes or wrongdoings.
It’s also been a major problem at demonstrations, as testimony to the task force made clear: “When officers line up in a military formation while wearing full protective gear, their visual appearance may have a dramatic influence on how the crowd perceives them and how the event ends.”
God knows we’ve slept too long. Many of us—myself included—slept through a revolution. Actually, it was a counterrevolution that has blown back much of the progress that so many racial justice advocates risked their lives for. This counterrevolution occurred with barely a whimper of protest, even as a war was declared, one that purported to be aimed at “drugs.” . . . A penal system unprecedented in world history emerged in a few short decades; by the year 2000, 2 million people found themselves behind bars, and 60 million were saddled with criminal records that would condemn them for
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As we pointed out in chapter 3, 75 percent of white Americans have entirely white social networks.14 That means that, except for perhaps the workplace, they have no meaningful interactions with people of color.
