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 21st 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?
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