Back in 2008 the national office of my denomination, the United Church of Christ, asked us local church pastors to preach on racism. I did. Below is the sermon I gave, typos and all. Given the tragic events in Charleston, SC, this week, I think it is more important than ever for us white Americans to hear what I said, so I'm posting that sermon here. May God open our hearts and minds to confront and transform our history of murderous racism.
On Racism
Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 18, 2008
May 18, 2008
Scripture:
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
This is the first time I’ve preached on a topic that someone else selected for me, so this sermon may be a bit different from most. The Collegium of Officers of the United Church of Christ has asked us parish pastors to preach on racism today. As near as I can tell, the Collegium of Officers is the UCC’s version of the old Soviet Politburo. It is the collective body of the denominations four top leaders led by Chairman—I mean President and General Minister—John Thomas. They want us to preach on racism, and who am I to argue with the Politburo—I mean the Collegium. So, for what it’s worth, racism it is. And because my denomination has asked me to speak on it, I’m going to tell what I know to be the truth of American racism with no holds barred, or at least that is my intention. Some of what I have to say may be difficult for us white people to hear, but perhaps it should be. And before I start there’s something I need to say to Manny, Shawna, and anyone else here this morning who isn’t white: I apologize in advance that this sermon is directed mainly to us white people in the congregation. It’s what most of us are, and my white experience is the only experience from which I can speak. I pray only that I may speak as a white ally of the victims of racism everywhere. Amen.
My reflections on racism in American history and contemporary culture, and on my own life experience, have led me to the conclusion that the key dynamics of American racism among white people during my lifetime and today are historical ignorance and contemporary denial. But rather than speak in the abstract about these matters, let me tell you about my personal experience as I grew up in the thoroughly racist white American culture.
My parents came from overwhelmingly white North Dakota. They didn’t know any Black people, and I don’t think even the Lakota Indians of the Dakotas were ever on their view screens despite the fact that they both graduated from the University of North Dakota whose teams were, and are, called the Fighting Sioux. I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, in those days an almost exclusively white town. There were some people of color around, mostly Asian or Asian-American faculty members at the University or foreign students from around the world, including some from Africa. I had one Chinese-American friend in grade school, but I knew not one single Black person.
As I grew up my parents, my schools, and my culture lied to me about American racism, if only primarily by ignoring it and failing to teach me about it. We kids used to sing “eenie, meenie, miney, moe, catch a nigger by the toe” And no one told me that was racist, but of course if was. No one told me how hateful that “n” word is, but of course it is. My mother, may she rest in peace, on occasion would say about someone who had done something decent “that was white of him.” And no one told me that was racist, but of course it was.
In school in the 1950s and into the early 60s we were taught some about American slavery, but its true horrors were glossed over. We weren’t told of the millions who died in the holds of slave ships. We weren’t told of families ripped apart when members were sold away to other slave owners. Most of all, there was no moral outrage expressed over it, no repentance, no instilling of a passion to make sure its vestiges were rooted out from American culture. I attended South Eugene High School, and every year at the football game with North Eugene High School, someone dressed in a Confederate uniform rode a horse around the field carrying a Confederate flag. A few people complained, and we thought they were silly. No one told us we were being racist, but we were.
We were not taught that slavery and the genocide of the American Indian nations are the twin moral abominations upon which this country was built, but they are. Nothing at all was said about the racist reality of the Jim Crow South, the de facto segregation in the North, the power of the Ku Klux Klan in earlier decades even in supposedly morally pure Oregon, the reality of lynching of Black people, the power of “Yellow peril” politics in Oregon, or about the many, many other ways in which racism permeated American history. We loved Black entertainers like Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nat King Cole, but no one ever told us that these men were not permitted to stay in the Las Vegas hotels that made fortunes off of their appearances simply because they were Black. Both the racism and the denial or ignorance of racism were pervasive in the culture in which I grew up, and I could hardly be unaffected by them. I can only hope that I have grown morally and spiritually and that, although my past will of course always be with me, I can to some extent transcend it and embrace a new understanding of the equality and the equal worth and dignity of all of God’s people.
I like to think that I have done that, if not completely than at least to a significant degree. I fear, however, that I cannot say the same about our country as a whole. We have made some progress to be sure. It is significant that the apparent Democratic nominee for President is of mixed race, but he self-identifies as African American. Nonetheless, racism remains a central characteristic of American life today. If you doubt that, just look at the statistics. I’ll just quote one set of them. As of June, 2006, in the US the incarceration rate for whites was 406 per 100,000. The incarceration rate for Blacks was 2, 468 per 100,000. Among Black males the rate was 4,789 per 100,000, and for Black males ages 25 to 29 the rate was 11,695 per 100,000, or nearly 11.7% of Black men in their late 20s.1 This outrageous disparity in the rates at which we incarcerate Black people compared to white people can be explained by only one thing—white racism.
Yet there are loud voices among us today that say that we have transcended our racist past and now live in a post-racial America. Friends, it just isn’t true. Centuries of racism do not disappear in a few decades just because some significant laws were passed, as important as they are, as any reputable historian will tell you. The claim that we have now leveled the racial playing field is so obviously false that I have become convinced that the denial of the reality of racism in today’s America has today become the dominant, socially acceptable form of American racism. That denial functions to perpetuate racial inequality behind a fraudulent mask of racial neutrality. Racism is our past. Racism is our present. And I fear that unless we white Americans get a lot more honest about that reality than we have been, racism will be our future for a long time to come.
Racism is American reality, but the God we claim to love and to worship rejects racism categorically. I’ll cite just one place where we see that rejection from this morning’s lectionary readings. In the magnificent, poetic creation myth of Genesis 1 we read that God created humankind on the sixth day. The text says: “In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” Genesis 1:27 NRSV God created men and women, not White, Black, Red, Brown, and Yellow men and women. God created all men and women. We force onto people the false sociological construct of race, but God does not. God sees all people in all their marvelous variety of colors and shapes as humans created in God’s image. And consider this, all of us white people here this morning. God did not come to us as one of us in the person of a blond, blue-eyed European, all of those Eurocentric portraits of Jesus to the contrary notwithstanding. God came to us as one of us as a dark skinned Semite, someone our wonderful Traffic Safety Administration would today racially profile as a potential terrorist.
God does not see race. Does that mean that we should all suddenly become color blind? Actually, no. People who engage in the denial of American racism today often claim that they simply do not see race. That claim is almost certainly false, but there is a deeper problem with it. God did not make race a significant fact of human existence, but our history of racism has. White racism has so shaped the lives of non-white people in our country that when we whites say we do not see the race of non-white people, we deny a significant part of the human reality of those people. I’m afraid our task is more complicated that simply not seeing race. Our task is to see and acknowledge the racial diversity of God’s people, to recognize it as a significant part of a person’s humanity, especially the humanity of people of color. Then we need to celebrate it, rejoice in it, embrace it as part of God’s good creation. There used to be a sign in the Pike Place Market in Seattle that read: “We don’t tolerate diversity around here. We celebrate it.” That is our call as Americans today.
And when we have come to the place where we can truly celebrate the diversity of God’s people, what else can we do? We can confront our own internalized racism. We can recognize it, name it, and set it aside. We can refuse to remain silent, as we so often do, when we see racism in midst. On a few occasions out here in Sky Valley I have seen trucks and buildings with that Confederate battle flag on them that my high school used, that ultimate American symbol of hatred and oppression, the American equivalent of the Nazi swastika flag. And I have said nothing. I, and you, can remain silent no longer. We can call the deniers of contemporary racism, like the leaders of the successful movement here in Washington a few years ago to ban affirmative action, on their denial, which surely is grounded in and reflects the very racism they deny. We can refuse to follow their siren song that says we have no more to do. We can refuse to let veiled appeals to racial fears determine whom we will support for President this year. That’s not an endorsement of Senator Obama. It is merely an appeal that whatever decision you make on his candidacy not be based on his race.
There are many more things we can do. Do your relatives still use racist language the way mine used to? Talk to them about it. Do people at your work place tell racist jokes? Call them on it. Demand an end to racial profiling by law enforcement. Demand that prosecutors stop seeking the death penalty disproportionately against Black defendants, or much better yet, demand that they stop seeking it at all.
Racism is a fraud. It is a lie. It is one of the great American lies, a lie that resides at the very heart of our culture. May God grant us the wisdom and the courage to root it out in all of its aspects. We are all made in the image of God—Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, White, and all of the myriad gradations in between. That’s the truth that can dispel the lie of racism. Let us hear God’s truth and listen to the lie of racism no more. Amen.
1 www.prisonsucks.com
