America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America

by Jim Wallis

People of color in the United States, particularly young black men, are burdened with a presumption of guilt and dangerousness.

While the mainstream church has been largely silent or worse, our nation has rationalized racial injustice ever since we first ignored the claims and rights of Native people, who were subjected to genocide and forced displacement.

Involuntary servitude was banned by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, but nothing was done to confront the ideology of white supremacy.

White privilege is the assumption of racial entitlement and the normality of whiteness, something that most of those of us who are white still fail to recognize or resist.

As the Bible teaches, repentance is much more than saying we are brokenhearted and sorry; it means turning in a totally new direction.

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.

We must fight the things that we know are wrong, but

without being wrong ourselves.

The painful and combustible connection between poverty, crime, and hopelessness is another of our lingering national sins. Joblessness leads to hopelessness; if we don’t do a better job of educating all our children, they will struggle to find decent jobs, and without education and jobs it’s very hard to build the strong families that all humans so critically need.

But no matter where you go as a white person in American society, no matter where you live, no matter who your friends and allies are, and no matter what you do to help overcome racism, you can never escape white privilege in America if you are white.

“If white Christians acted more Christian than white, black parents would have less to fear for their children.”

Finally, to become better and freer human beings because of the truth. I think that’s what Jesus was getting at in the Gospel passage.

Then she said something I will never forget as long as I live. “So I tell all of my children,” she said, “if you are ever lost and can’t find your way back home, and you see a policeman, quickly duck behind a building or down a stairwell.

As Butch’s mother said that to me, my own mother’s words rang in my head. My mom told all of her five kids, “If you are ever lost and can’t find your way home, look for a policeman. The policeman is your friend. He will take care of you and bring you safely home.”

“Son, you’ve got to understand: Christianity has nothing to do with racism; that’s political, and our faith is personal.”

That was the night that I left the church I had been raised in and the faith that had raised me—left it in my head and my heart. And my church was glad to see me go.

How we treat the poorest and most vulnerable, Jesus instructs us in that Gospel passage, is how we treat him: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these . . . you did it to me” (v. 40).

The facts in specific cases are often in great dispute. But the reality that young black men and women are treated differently than are young white men and women by our law enforcement system is beyond dispute.

For many white Americans, the tragic deaths of young black men at the hands of white police officers are “unfortunate incidents” that can be explained away. But for most black families, they are indicative of systems they have lived with their entire lives.

White people need to stop talking so much—stop defending the systems that protect and serve us and stop saying, “I’m not a racist.” If white people turn a blind eye to systems that are racially biased, we can’t be absolved from the sin of racism.

Do we believe what we say about the unity of “the body of Christ” or not?

Racial healing is a commitment at the heart of the gospel.

The theft of land and the violent exploitation of labor were embedded in America’s origins.

Later immigration of other racial minorities was also driven—at least in part—by the need for more cheap labor.

our original racial diversity was a product of appalling human oppre...

We are not now, nor will we ever be, a “postracial” society. We are instead a society on a journey toward embracing our ever-greater and richer diversity, which is the American story.

But as we are becoming, for the first time, a country with no single racial majority—having been from our beginnings a white-majority nation—we stand at another door, which many white Americans are still very fearful of passing through.

It really said it all when the defense put up as a witness a white woman who had been robbed by a black man as an “explanation” for why Zimmerman picked out Martin to follow and stalk. Was she robbed by Trayvon Martin? No. So why should he be considered suspect because of another black robber? That is racial profiling—period.

not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

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.

Laws do not stand on their own, they are built on the foundation of justice. Justice in the American sense of presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Now they must add any stranger who might have a gun and could claim he or she was fearful of a black person and had to shoot.

If black youths in America can’t rely on the police, the law, or their own neighborhood for protection, where can they go?

If white Christians stay in our mostly white churches and talk mostly to one another, we will never understand how our black brothers and sisters feel after a terrible incident like this one.

As I described in the last chapter, 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.

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.”

The second report told the rest of the story;

This devastating report revealed a police force and court system in Ferguson that verified almost everything that the protesters and other local residents had been saying about their city in the wake of the shooting.

The Ferguson police went beyond even racial profiling to direct racist targeting and exploitation for a profit, with city and police leadership apparently more concerned about “fill[ing] the revenue pipeline”

Stopping people for no apparent reason was common in Ferguson, using Tasers and other force if they objected.

Seen in this context—amid a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by illegal and misguided practices—it is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg.

However, people from all sides have accepted the credibility of both reports and the more complex parable that they represent.

Thus, liberals have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened. Conservatives, on the other hand, have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that the Ferguson PD—as with many other municipal police departments in the country—truly is out of control, in that it recklessly violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ferguson and does so in a manner that has a clearly disproportionate impact on minorities.

for many African Americans the verdict on America’s criminal justice system was already in: guilty, for treating young black men differently than young white men.

“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

Conservative white Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore said

But how can we get there when white people do not face the same experiences as do black people?

A government that can choke a man to death on video for selling cigarettes is not a government living up to a biblical definition of justice or any recognizable definition of justice.

“I need to apologize to the young people, because we treated you like you should have come to the church, and we should have brought the church to you.”

Joblessness leads to hopelessness, lack of education leads to more joblessness, and the lack of education and jobs leads to family breakdown, which leads to so many other problems. Add substance abuse to hopelessness, replace real industry with a drug industry, and everything gets worse and more violent.

But if we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could. It’s just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant, and that we don’t just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns and we don’t just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped.