Racism Can’t Die from Starvation: The Debt of American Christianity
On this the date that we honor the work of one of America’s most influential Christian Pastors, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr I have one question: When was racism officially over in America?
I mean what date did the United States finally close the book on this and declare that now, finally, everyone was equal? Or at least equal with regards to race?
The United States officially ended racism in…
What about 1777? That was the year that the Constitution of the Vermont Republic (what would become the state of Vermont in the USA) banned slavery by freeing men over 21 and women older than 18. So a law that was designed to sort of graduate you from slavery left children enslaved and separated from their parents?
Maybe it was 1807? The USA passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act which outlawed the international slave trade. Of course the domestic trade remained legal, and the last slave ship to dock in the USA did so in 1860. The ship itself was built in America too, it was called the Clotilda.
Well definitely 1865 right? The 13th amendment to the Constitution which officially outlawed slavery in the USA by declaring that, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Of course if it was that simple then the words Jim Crow, lynching, and KKK would have no meaning in American History.
Ok, definitely by 1965 then, with the Voting Rights Act which aimed to remove every impediment to voting which had been placed upon African Americans since they had been allowed to vote in the first place.
Or at least by 1967, when the Supreme Court forced marriage equality on the entire country. By which I mean that they forced the states to legalize interracial marriage in the landmark decision Loving V. Virginia.
Ok, it was definitely over in 2008 when the US House of Representatives, and in 2009 when the Senate, passed separate resolutions apologizing for slavery. Of course the president never signed these, and these resolutions “came with a caveat that the mea culpa could not be used as legal rationale for reparations.”
So, even in the late 2000’s the US government wasn’t exactly coordinated or agreed that slavery was a mistake so much as a kind of accident for which the USA was in no way really responsible.
Well if racism was over then, would the following names have any meaning? Rodney King or Amadou Diallo? What about Tamir Rice or Michael Brown? Maybe you have heard of Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, or perhaps Aiyana Stanley-Jones? If you look them up I am sure you will remember that you know them, but that somehow they have slipped into the dark recesses of our minds. They have slipped down into the space where we remind ourselves that racism is dead and none of these people died for anything other than a simple misunderstanding. Certainly it can’t be that race had anything to do with their death, since we all know that racism is dead because…now when did that happen again?
I mean it must have been in my lifetime because I know that I grew up understanding that you weren’t allowed to call people the N-word anymore. Never mind of course that I often heard it in those situations where that one friend looks around to make sure that we’re all white here and then they say it, and we chuckle. You had to laugh, because otherwise you would be kicked out of the club, and you wanted to be in the club.
Christians apologize
Ok so as Christians, Let’s try some new dates.
Catholicism sort of apologized
In 1985 Pope John Paul the II apologized to black Christians in Cameroon for the involvement of Christians in slavery. ”In the course of history, men belonging to Christian nations did not always do this, and we ask pardon from our African brothers who suffered so much because of the trade in blacks.” In 1999, The Vatican’s Memory and Reconciliation declaration set the stage for how the Catholic Church would move forward and apologize for its participation in historical atrocities. The Pope finally issued this coming apology in 2000, which included a broad apology for all the sins of the church over the past 2000 years. This included the Holocaust, Inquisition, and Crusades, all of which were in some ways motivated by racism.
The Southern Baptist Convention issued a rather good apology
In 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention, which had been formed because the Baptists split into Northern and Southern over the issue of slavery in 1845, issued a formal apology for its support of slavery and segregation. The convention goes so far as to apologize to all African-Americans and admit that the effects of slavery are ongoing.
The United Methodist Church apologized for how racism affected itself
In 2000, the United Methodist Church apologized for how the racism in the church had split it into distinct denominations of black and white, north and south.
The Episcopal Church issued an apology and a confession
In 2006 and then again in 2008 the Episcopal Church issued its official apology for the church’s specific involvement in “human captivity, segregation and discrimination.” They even went so far as to prepare a document listing the actual actions taken by the church and its members in preserving racism. This document served as the primary evidence that the church should apologize to all blacks in America for its participation in slavery and racist practices.
So if racism is over then can we as Christians finally own up to and apologize for it? Can we apologize for Jim Crow, segregation, lynching, and our part in driving non-whites out of our churches and our neighborhoods? Can we admit that our disdain for welfare recipients, poor neighborhoods, and all of our veiled statements about “those people” aren’t right? Maybe the American Christian Churches didn’t own slaves, but if this used to be an almost entirely Christian nation then that means all of the most horrible racist aggressions in our history were carried out by the people sitting in our pews. It’s time to be honest about that.
Then, maybe just maybe, the Christian churches in America can start talking about the next step, Reparations.
Of course if you insist that racism is dead then I have one simple question,
WHEN?
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About The Author
James
James Taylor earned a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Texas A&M University, and is currently finishing his doctoral dissertation on the link between race and technology. He currently teaches philosophy and specializes in critical philosophy of race, technology, and religion. In his free time he enjoys researching family genealogies and going graving, the hobby of documenting cemeteries.
If you’ll lead the charge on paying reparations, I will follow.
Of course racism isn’t dead, and it never will be in this world. It’s by no means an American only problem.
Personally, I find reparations racist in that it demands money from all white people, regardless of their own involvement or the involvement of their family in slavery (mine were poor rural farmers who immigrated from Scotland and who remain mostly poor up to this day). You might argue taxes should pay for reparations, that also comes from the pockets of millions of innocent people. It doesn’t make sense and would do nothing to help outside of some fanciful notion of justice
Thanks for your comment, I always appreciate it when we get a good dialogue going and I can see that you have thought about this before.
To your first issue, you are right of course that racism is a problem the world over. Wherever you find a nation that was previously, or currently still is, colonized by European political powers you tend to find white supremacy played a part, and still does, in the domination and subjugation of those nations. This is a problem not just for the USA but also for South Africa, India, Australia, Brazil, and yes even Canada has its struggles with racism as the inheritance of white European colonization.
To your second issue, I admit that reparations seems like an unfair solution to a problem that was supposed to have been resolved 150 years ago. So allow me to make my case.
First, if you admit that taxation is fair and just then reparations follow as an obvious logical consequence of that. Certainly most of the money you pay in taxes goes to support organizations, institutions, corporations, funds, and public works for which neither you nor your family bear any responsibility. In fact most of our taxes go to pay for things which we don’t even get to take advantage of, and for which we never see any direct benefit to ourselves. However, we pay taxes since that is part of the price of citizenship. We accept the authority of our government and we accept that our elected officials, who levy the taxes, have been elected by a democratic process in which we participate. Of course you may disagree with some taxes or some elected officials and that is why there are legal avenues to seek redress of grievances or to protest unfair taxation. But if you are going to protest taxes then you need to have a good reason for why you should receive the benefits of citizenship when you do not wish to pay for the necessary expenses of running the country. Thus if the government passes a law to pay reparations based on a national tax then that would be fair whether or not you owned slaves, your ancestors ever owned slaves, or even whether or not you have ever benefitted from slavery.
Second, America has a very positive history with paying reparations. The USA has at different times made reparations to certain Native American peoples, and also to those Americans of Japanese ancestry who were wrongfully detained in racist internment camps during World War 2. The response to these actions has been an improvement of relations between Native Americans, Japanese Americans and White Americans, so there is good reason to think that reparations would actually improve racial relations in America.
Third, as Christians we should feel compelled by a sense of love for our neighbors and a sense of justice that God has instilled in us to repent of the sins of racism and to redress the wrongs of racism in our society. This may not mean that the mostly white megachurch hands out a suitcase full of cash to the Black church down the street (though they can certainly afford to do just that). If anything it means that the Church in America should be deeply bothered by ongoing racism. The churches I mentioned in the article have made some of the first steps necessary to begin fixing this problem, they have admitted their guilt. The next step would be for the American church to actively combat and work against racist institutions in society, starting with itself. It is not enough to be non-racist, American Christians need to be proactive in being anti-racist.
Ta Nehisi Coates wrote an interesting piece criticizing Bernie Sanders stance on reparations. Coates summarized the needs for reparations thusly: ” To briefly restate it, from 1619 until at least the late 1960s, American institutions, businesses, associations, and governments—federal, state and local—repeatedly plundered black communities. Their methods included everything from land-theft, to red-lining, to disenfranchisement, to convict-lease labor, to lynching, to enslavement, to the vending of children. So large was this plunder that America, as we know it today, is simply unimaginable without it. Its great universities were founded on it. Its early economy was built by it. Its suburbs were financed by it. Its deadliest war was the result of it….Reparations is not one possible tool against white supremacy. It is the indispensable tool against white supremacy. One cannot propose to plunder a people, incur a moral and monetary debt, propose to never pay it back, and then claim to be seriously engaging in the fight against white supremacy.”
More here: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/