The Magic Words 'Racism' and 'Hate'

I got my fill of the annual Martin Luther King guilt trip speeches again this year.  The president’s comments (or any politician’s comments for that matter) are always predictable.  “We have made some gains in our fight against racism, but we still have a long way to go”.  Ironic that these comments have come from a black president for the past 6 years.  “Racism” and “Hate” are magic labels.  If you can slap them on a person, organization or class of people, they become instantly stripped of social and human rights.  You are free to vent your all your pent up hostility – justified or not – at the condemned.  And while most people won’t admit it, they find it refreshingly liberating to throw off, guilt-free, the restraints of civility and return to the visceral, base passions that feverishly fueled public executions in past days. “Haters” are fair game, no holds barred.

And the bar for ‘hate’ is not just low, it’s invisible.  If, like Phil from A&E’s Duck Dynasty, you dare to paraphrase the Bible, you are presumptuously filled with hate and deserve to be publicly lynched in the town square.  No trial is necessary, no analysis, no parsing of the quotes… you are a wretched barbarian that is harmful to society and should be exiled from all public life. 

Shelby Steele wrote another brilliant piece in the Wall Street Journal after the outcry over the Trayvon Martin case in which a black teen was killed by a neighborhood watchman.  Even though Zimmerman was Hispanic (not white), and the jury found him innocent due to self-defense,  race baiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t let facts get in the way of a good crusade against the oppressive white society.  Mr. Steele made the provocative observation that Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson desperately want the US to be perpetually stuck in the 60s, when oppression was real and the rallying call of equal rights was justified.  The movement had substance back then.  Black leaders could articulate an agenda:  voting rights, end to segregation, no whites-only restaurants and drinking fountains, equal access to loans and jobs regardless of skin color.  Sharpton and his ilk see themselves as that inspirational figure delivering the “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington DC.   They want to be heroes, to have kids memorize their speeches, to have the whole country celebrate their birthdays as a national holidays.   If the country isn’t infested with white trash racists, they have no oppression to champion.  So they have a vested interest in keeping that image alive, even if they have to create it one pixel at a time.

In an earlier post about MLK, I pointed out that his original vision was that of unity, when we stop caring about skin color and think of each other as people.  Dr. King actually painted a very clear picture of his dream in which blacks and whites joined together in activities and society without stopping to think or ask about skin pigmentation level.  Suppose Dr. King could have captured a snapshot of America in 2014, with a black President, black Supreme Court justices, black entertainment moguls, black lawyers, black millionaires, blacks and whites riding the same public transit, eating in the same restaurants, going to the same schools, shopping in the same stores, living in the same neighborhoods and worshiping in the same churches.  Would he be proud of the way black society has advanced in 50 years?  Would he still think racism is the biggest problem they face?  Or would he make note of the statistics of black on black violent crime, teen pregnancies, school dropouts, single parent households and the disproportionate number of blacks in jails and prisons?  Is the abuse of white power to blame for all of this? Or have we found white guilt a convenient gravy train to load up with all black suffering? 

We have become accustomed to politicians saying anything and everything that makes their voters feel championed. But the guilt trips have spread beyond political figures and have crept into our churches, probably because the pulpit is the universally recognized hydrant from which guilt is dispensed.  Ministers can make you feel bad about anything, even if it has only tenuous religious roots.   If you don’t embrace the gay agenda, you must be a hater and you should feel guilty. If you don’t support your political leaders, you must be a hater and should confess.  How many times over MLK weekend were variations of this phrase proclaimed to congregations:  “We need to repent for the sins of racism and slavery!”? 

Strangely enough, slavery is never portrayed in the bible as a sin.  And it’s not because slavery didn’t exist in the old or new testament.  In fact, slaves were discussed in many passages.  In Exodus, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, aka the Torah, several rules are issued for the buying, selling and treatment of slaves including this pearl in Exodus 21: 20-21 “When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.”  Wow. The New Testament frees Christians of Old Testament law, but it not silent on the topic of slavery.  Colossians 4:1: “Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven.”  Paul made a point of delivering a specific message to Christian slave masters, and if he wanted to tell them slavery was a sin this would have certainly been the right opportunity.  The whole book of Philemon is in reference to a slave, Onesimus, who Paul is sending back to his master.  It’s a short letter, but nowhere does Paul call Philemon a sinner for owning Onesimus.  

Seems like there should be a verse somewhere that says “Masters, free your slaves just as Christ has freed you”.  Sure sounds biblical, doesn’t it?  But it’s not there, not anywhere.  How could something as vile and wicked as slavery escape the attention of Jesus?  And how was it not mentioned as one of the deadliest deadly sins?  Could it be that Jesus didn’t think slavery was a sin?   (Did I really just make that sentence?)  One couldn’t claim with a straight face that the bible encourages slavery, or that reinstating it in 21^st century America could be done with a clear conscience.  But we need to be careful about drawing lines where God didn’t see fit to draw them; putting ourselves in his seat of justice is not only arrogant, it’s downright blasphemous.  Maybe we have demonized slavery because the only images forced upon our minds are the inhuman treatment and oppression of blacks, beatings, rapes, unsanitary conditions and the like.  Those were sins, but not because one person was ‘property’ of another.  And maybe we only recall the worst of slavery because we are socially forbidden to imagine it in any other way.   For example, a person would surely be worthy of public beating and indelible ‘racist’ branding if they were to point out that black activists, who are quick to claim their African heritage, are far better off in every way than their distant African cousins who weren’t ever brought to America.  Heresy.  How dare I?

But think about it: Can you list any country in the whole world where blacks have more opportunity for health and prosperity than in the United States?  What about the countries in Africa that have not been ‘spoiled’ by whites – which of those blossomed into the utopian society that blacks enjoy today?   Uganda?  Rwanda?  Somalia?  Anybody wish they lived there instead of the USA?   Many there still don’t have clean water to drink.  As bad as AIDS is in America, it’s far worse in Africa.  Hunger, pestilence, poverty, literacy, infant mortality, health care… does an African country top the US in any category?

It’s one of those dialogs we are forbidden to have in public discourse, like the blatantly racist policy that allows blacks to use the ‘n-word’ freely but can never be uttered if you are white.  Let’s just admit it:  OJ was acquitted of murder largely because his attorneys found that sometime in the history of his life, Mark Fuhrman uttered the ‘n-word’.   That’s all it takes to discredit and condemn a white witness. Whites can’t even discuss the evidence of the OJ trial, because that might require you to say ‘the n-word’. 

But the fact that racism is an institution that Jackson and Sharpton depend on for their living is merely a disappointment, not a surprise.  What bothers me more is that ministers in otherwise fundamental churches are so easily co-opted to cultivate guilt among white people in the name of spiritual righteousness.  Although conviction and repentance is necessary to Christianity, simply ginning up those symptoms for a spiritually counterfeit agenda is reprehensible.  But alas, an intellectually honest dialog on the topic is beyond elusive, it’s forbidden.

Here is an example of an honest but incendiary statement that cannot be made in public discourse:  I feel no guiltier about a slavery 200 years ago than I feel entitled to gratitude for bringing blacks out of Africa for a life of opportunity in the greatest nation on earth. If I’m indebted for one, shouldn’t I get credit for the other?  How about neither?

MLKs dream was that we reach a day when we stop trying to keep score and just see each other as Americans. 

I’m ready.  Are you?