The raw, unedited 8-minute and 46-second video of George Floyd’s death is horrifying and heartbreaking and appalling. Ahmaud Arbery was shot while running in a predominately white neighborhood.
Whatever those particular cases reveal about racism in America, we can and should acknowledge this: racism is not dead in America. Not even close.
In the aftermath of a significant uptick of white supremacy in our country which culminated in Charlottesville in August 2017, I wrote “On Race and the Gospel: Pastoral Reflections”. Many of those scriptural and theological truths should be reiterated again during these days.
The last couple of days feels like the aftermath of Rodney King on steroids. Just as nobody is defending the horrific manner of George Floyd’s gratuitous death, it is likewise (rather) easy to agree that the looting (stolen merchandise) and the burning of businesses in city centers from Minneapolis to Atlanta to Los Angeles are acts of violence that do not honor the memory of George Floyd. In the midst of it all, there are peaceful protestors expressing genuine hurt, frustration, despair, and anger over racial injustice that is intertwined in a long, complex social history of racism in our country.
More is Needed than Virtue Signaling
Virtue signaling is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue”. Social media is a breeding ground of virtue signaling. With a few clicks and shares, you can be sure you are always on “the right side” of any particular moral issue while signaling to others your impeccable moral character. Racism in my life? “Please, haven’t you seen my moral outrage via my posts on social media?” More will be needed than virtue signaling in the days (and years) ahead if America is to heal one of its foremost collective sins. (For more on virtue signaling read here, with a counter-point here.)
Share the Pain
Rev. Dr. David Lenz is a friend and an ECO pastor-colleague working in Minneapolis. After Minneapolis pastors came together via a video call, Lenz reflects thus:
I listened as one of my friends and colleagues, a prominent African American leader, someone I have laughed with and shared meals with, someone I admire greatly, someone who has preached at Hope Church, shared his pain.
Through his tears, he wanted us to know how this experience feels to him and the black community. The horrific public death of George Floyd, a death that never should have happened, for which there cannot be any shred of justification, is not an isolated event. Rather, it is part of a shameful pattern that reaches back across American history for something like 400 years.
He wanted us to know that it is precisely because such deaths keep happening that there is such despair, such questioning of systems and structures that have not protected African Americans from lynching and brutality. (I thought of my visit with him in 2018 to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama - an extraordinary place, where 800 steel structures list the names of lynching victims from every county in the United States where they have taken place.)
Most of all, he wanted to know if white Christians will come alongside black Christians and the black community, to stand with them in their pain, to be willing to name the evils of racism (and the often implicit ways racism continues to infect and impact us), and to work together for a better future.
A question white Christians should be asking during these days is this: what does it mean for me to (better) understand the pain of the black community? To stand with them in their pain? To begin, through empathy and through action, to share the pain? Folks might point out the impossibility of complete solidarity or the impossible task of fully sharing the pain of another. Yet even if solidarity is always approximate and burden-bearing never bears the full load, the trust and good-will and intentionality present in such movement towards others who are not like you is often appreciated and respected, even if you (and me) will be corrected at times and continue to learn through the journey.
Ask the Question “What is Racism?” and Let the Question come Home to Roost
The paradox of racism in America is that almost nobody believes themselves to be a racist…yet racism is prevalent in our country. How can this be? Part of the problem why this Gordian knot is extremely difficult to unravel is our inability to even agree on a simple definition of racism.
Conservatives tend to define racism in terms of personal, concrete behaviors; progressives tend to define racism in terms of social and structural systems. Much of America talks past each other on issues of race because we are starting the conversation from such distinct vantage points.
In general, white conservatives tend to define racism in such narrow terms that the definition itself often serves only to insulate them from any implicit participation in the societal structures of racism. With a narrow definition of racism in place, only egregious and heinous and personal concrete actions are considered racist and thus most white conservatives are never forced to look in the mirror and let the question of racism come home to roost in their own lives (i.e. “I haven’t lynched anyone” or “I haven’t purposely discriminated against anyone…so I’m fine”).
I wonder whether defining away the problem is part of the problem.
I’m not advocating a militant pendulum swing (i.e. “all white people are racist” or “all white people should be plagued by white guilt”). Complex issues deserve proper nuance rather than visceral sound bites. Yet if we define away the problem of racism such that nobody ever really participates in racism, then we haven’t traveled very far down the path towards hope and healing.
Unsettling times calls for unsettling questions: let the question of racism come home to roost in your own life. Therein lies the beginning of the journey.
