No
Longer Black or White?
Galatians 3:27-28
Saint Paul says
something in his letter to the Galatians that many of us love for the way it
destroys all of the sexist nonsense that keeps women out of ordained Christian
ministry in so many churches. At Galatians 3:27-28 Paul says:
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed
yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in
Christ Jesus.
So much for women can’t be
ordained because Jesus was a man—or for any other reason for that matter. In
Christ the distinction between women and men disappears, not because we humans
are no longer men and women (thanks be to God!) but because in a mystical,
metaphorical sense we are clothed in Christ. We are all one in Christ. Biological
roles in human reproduction aside, even in a worldly context it rarely if ever
makes sense to say men can to something but women can’t or to say women can do
something but men can’t. In the church that distinction makes even less sense.
In Christ there is no longer male and female, for all are one in Christ. Thanks
be to God!
Now, Paul offers
a couple of other human distinctions that were important in his world that mostly
aren’t in ours. The distinction between Jews and Greeks means essentially
nothing to us. It certainly doesn’t mean today what it meant to people of Paul’s
time and place. Although tragically slavery does still exist in some parts of
the world it doesn’t exist in my world. It probably doesn’t exist in yours. We
needn’t concern ourselves too much with those distinctions for our purposes
here.
There is however
another distinction that is immensely important in the United States of America
today. It occurred to me recently as I reread these verses from Galatians. It
is the distinction between what we Americans call white and what we Americans
call Black.[1]
Racism of whites against Blacks is the defining characteristic of both American
history and America today. Our history and culture are rotten to the core with
it. Most of us white Americans refuse to recognize that truth. Some even expressly
deny it, as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley did at the 2020
Republican National Convention. That ignorant blindness and denial in no way
diminish the obvious truth. The United States of America is defined as much by
its racism as it is by anything else. In the years, months, and days before I
wrote this piece the unprovoked murder or attempted murder of unarmed Black
people by white police officers has generated massive outcries of outrage and
anger from Americans of all racial identities. For many of us white Americans
our nation’s endemic racism and our complicity in it, even if only as
beneficiaries, has been prominent in our minds as never before.
So Paul’s
elimination of the human distinctions he mentioned from his world got me to ask
whether it is also true that in our American context there is no longer Black
and white. As I thought about that the question the answer to it seemed to be
yes and no. As is true of American racism generally, the answer to the question
of whether there is no longer Black and white turns out to be more complex than
at first appears.
The yes part of
the answer comes when we consider the question from a spiritual or specifically
Christian point of view. As Paul said of women and men, in Christ there is no
longer Black and white because all are one in Christ. Actually, from a
spiritual or specifically Christian point of view all always have been one in
Christ. From Christ’s perspective, which is God’s perspective, the racial
distinctions we humans make just don’t exist. As much as we white Americans may
think of white at the human norm with other skin shades being deviations from
the norm and therefore less than the norm, there is no human racial norm. There
are more Asian people in the world than there are white people of European
ancestry, but that truth doesn’t make any kind of Asian the human norm any more
than white is. The deepest truth about what appear to us to be racial
distinctions between people is that all people without exception are created in
the image and likeness of God. So from the divine perspective the answer to our
question as to whether there is no longer Black and white is yes. There is no
distinction between Black and white, and there never has been.
So does that mean
that we Americans today may or even must go through our lives ignoring the racial
differences we see between Black people and white people? Must we pretend that
they don’t exist? No, absolutely not, it doesn’t mean that at all. Of course it
doesn’t mean that we pay attention to racial differences so we can perpetuate racism.
Not at all. Yet American racism is real. It has deep roots in American culture
and American consciousness. It manifests its ugly self in numerous ways to
today, in the police shootings I mentioned to be sure, but in far less obvious
ways too. We can’t overcome what we don’t acknowledge, so no, we must not
simply pretend that differences between Black and white don’t exist.
Racism is a
complex issue. Much of American racism isn’t about individual white people
hating and discriminating against individual Black people. It is far more insidious
than that. It has its own demonic spiritual power that pervades all of our
institutions. We see it in the statistics. Unemployment is higher among Blacks
than among whites. Poverty is more widespread among Blacks than among whites.
So are lack of education and medical care. The pandemic we are living through
as I write these words has hit Black people harder than it has hit white people.
We find it remarkable when a Black person becomes a CEO of a Fortune 500
company or President of the United States. Why? Because we’ve been conditioned
by our racist culture to think deep in our psyches, perhaps below the level of
consciousness, that Black people aren’t good enough to rise that high.
We see American
institutional racism most clearly and perhaps most appallingly in our criminal
law system. The disparity in prosecutorial outcomes between Blacks and whites
is so great that I refuse to call it the criminal justice system as so many
people. do. It produces very little justice. Black criminal defendants are
convicted at a higher rate than are white defendants. When convicted Black
defendants consistently receive harsher sentences than do white defendants for
the same crime. So many young Black men spend time in prison that in some Black
communities a young man spending time in prison is just a normal and expected
part of life. Black imprisonment is so common that it has been called the new
Jim Crow. Systemic racism infects our criminal law system profoundly and
insidiously. It is one of the primary expressions of systemic racism among us. We
will never overcome that tragic truth by pretending that it doesn’t exist or by
pretending that we don’t see race. We must address racism precisely as having
to do with race. We must all learn the statistics that show disparate outcomes between
Blacks and whites in every aspect of our society. We whites must learn what it
is to live Black in America as a victim of systemic racism.
Here’s an example
of how that systemic racism works. In a seminary class that had both Black and
white students the professor asked the students to describe how they would
react if a police officer knocked on their door. The white students said they
would wonder what was going on and about how they could help the police. The
Black students said they’d be horribly frightened, would pray that the police would
not be violent, and wonder who was going to be arrested for something they didn’t
do. Those different reactions to the presence of the police are the products of
institutional racism. They result from the difference between privileged white
life in America and oppressed Black life in America. Both responses were
authentic. Both responses were honest. They show us how far we still have to go
to overcome racism in our country.
How would someone
who denied the reality of American racism explain those different Black and
white experiences of the police? It’s hard for me to say because I see them as
results of racism. Perhaps in order to maintain their stance of denying the
reality of racism those white folks who do not understand the responses as
results of racism would dismiss the Black students’ responses as unauthentic,
as made up, as being only what the Black students thought the white students
wanted to hear or what the Black students wanted them to hear. Whatever the
grounds are that white racism deniers use to dismiss the reality of racism
among us, that denial is a huge obstacle in the way of overcoming racism. You can’t
overcome what you won’t admit is real. We will never overcome American racism
until we white Americans stop denying the reality of American racism.
So is there no
longer Black and white among us? Yes and no. Race matters not at all to God. In
God’s eyes all people are equal. But if we mere humans are ever to overcome
racism we must recognize the profound and destructive effects racism has had
and does have on American life. We don’t do that by ignoring race. We must look
racism squarely in they eye, recognize it for the evil that it is, and find
every new ways of resisting and overcoming it. May it be so.
[1] I
use “white” and “Black” that way intentionally to honor the way Black Americans
often identify themselves. We needn’t lift up white by capitalizing it.
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