The Bible teaches four very foundational things about us as humans: (1) We were made by God, (2) We were made in His image, (3) We were made unique—i.e., we’re not cookie cutters, but each of us has things about our talents, aptitudes, and appearance that make us unlike anyone else, and (4) We are made for relationship with God and each other.
I was thinking about that in the wake of what’s going on in our country surrounding the death of George Floyd and the resulting protests. While many of the protests are calling attention to the practice of police brutality against people of color, I’m convinced the issue of police brutality is merely the symptom and not the underlying disease. The disease, if you will, is an entrenched and established system of racism—a notion that rips apart the very notion of a single human race made by God and created in His image.
Racism at its core is believing in the superiority of one’s race over and above other races. It is believing race determines one’s intellectual, cultural and moral capacities. And it’s a great evil because it betrays God’s heart toward His creation—that all people are one and made in His image. To claim you possess more of God’s image than someone else—that you matter more to Him, or are entitled to certain blessings or privileges because of some ephemeral characteristic—is heresy.
One of the great callings of the Bible is to be hospitable—to reach out and include the other … to befriend, welcome, and accept them in spite of the fact they might be different or unlike you. Racism, in many ways, is the polar opposite of hospitality, for racism excludes and rejects someone because of their “otherness”—shuns or withdraws from them for no reason other than the fact they are different than you. Rather than reaching out in grace and kindness, the racist pulls back and treats the other with indifference or disdain.
Racism can play out both individually and institutionally. On the institutional front, if you’re black, you are less likely to get a quality education … less likely to live in a desirable neighborhood with a low crime rate … and less likely to get a high-paying job. I remember watching an episode of 60 Minutes some years ago where some individuals crafted resumes and sent them to employers that had advertised for open positions. The resumes were identical in quality and contained no pictures—they just laid out the individual’s education and experience, accomplishments and credentials. The only difference was the names—some had “white sounding names” and others had “black sounding names.” I don’t recall the exact numbers, but the percentage of those with “white sounding names” who got called for an interview as opposed to those with “black sounding names” was staggering. This is a glaring example of institutional racism.
But on the individual front, the presence of racism is typically much more subtle. Granted—there are the periodic stories like the one about the four black high school students were going door-to-door to sell coupon books and raise money for their football team. When they came upon a certain house, a white woman toting a gun walked out and ordered them to get on the ground and stay put. When the police arrived (turns out she’d seen them coming and called before they ever walked up) the officer encountered the four boys laying on the ground at gunpoint. He had them stand up and asked what they were doing, and they said they were selling discount cards for their school’s athletic program. When the woman was asked why she pulled the gun on the boys, she said it was because they were black, the area was predominantly white, and she was suspicious because there had been a recent string of home burglaries in the neighborhood. She assumed they were up to no good.
Occasionally racism will be this overt and obvious. But for the most part, it is much more subtle and understated. Most of us would condemn racism in the strongest terms and say we don’t have a racist bone in our body. But at the same time, many of us operate with an implicit bias against people of a certain ethnic or racial background. There’s an inner visceral reaction many of us have when we see an interracial couple … a feeling that says “this isn’t right.” It’s the assumption “these guys are up to no good” the woman had when those high school athletes were walking through her neighborhood selling their coupon books. It’s the time, a while back, when I was sitting in the parking lot at a strip shopping center waiting for my wife and a young black man walked by and I instinctively reached over and locked my car doors. It’s an embedded and entrenched mindset that causes us to prejudge and think certain things about a specific group of people on the basis of their outward appearance without ever getting to know them.
Here’s the deal: Most of us are not consciously racist; we don’t wear a sense of racial superiority or preeminence on our arm like a person sporting a tattoo. But at any given time, we can behave in racist ways because of the ideas, feelings, reactions, and choices that are hiding in the shadows of our life.
Racism can flow in all directions—not just whites toward blacks, but blacks toward whites, Hispanics toward Asians, whites toward Hispanics—there’s no end to how it can manifest itself. But the song I learned as a child is true …
Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world,
Red, brown, yellow, black and white
They’re all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world
Given the hypersensitivity and acute sense of nervousness regarding racial issues in our day, it’s good to remind ourselves not simply of the theology of race and the evil of racism, but to also recognize how the shadow of racism can enter into our lives—even those of us who’d never acknowledge or admit that we’re the least bit racist.