Racism

Everyone is a racist. Those who say they are not racist are liars, besides.

Some of us are more racist than others, of course. Some of us genuinely despise racism, but recognize that its roots run deep, not only through the headlines of history, but to the dark corners of our own experiences. It is difficult to free yourself from racist thoughts when you have been at the receiving end of hatred or exploitation or neglect for no other reason than you happen to be of the wrong race in a given context. I suspect most of us could point to instances in which racism has been expressed against us. Some of us have this experience on a regular basis.

We may know and love individuals from particular races who give us pause and remind us that it is not that particular race that is the problem. And yet we may still feel the resentfulness, the anger, the fear, and the suspicion directed our way because of race. When you are despised for no other reason than the race in which you were born, it is difficult to not despise back, difficult not to be racist in return.

Racism is a manifestation of the wickedness of the human heart. We don’t need racism as an excuse to hate other; we have lots of other excuses. If we do not hate because of race, we will hate because of nation, or because of religion, or because of political party, or because of sex, (or because of lack of sex), or because of driving style, or because of height, or because of favorite sports team, or because of house paint color, or for disagreement over whether pews should be cushioned. We proclaim ourselves individualists but our fundamental bias is conformity, which is to say, we would have all others conform to us. If the computer searched the globe and matched us with the person in the world who would be our greatest complement, it would miss something that would turn out to be a critical error, such as one feeling strongly about not using plastic straws, while the other would buy them in bulk at Costco. We are not satisfied with splitting hairs, we move on to microscopic, robotics enhanced, filament dissection. 

Why are people racist? Is it not because, deep down, we think that if we could only rid the earth of those different than ourselves, all would be well?

I sometimes puzzle over the story of Noah. There’s plenty of debate over whether the story of Noah is literal or a moral fable. My puzzlement has more to do with the intent of the event. Was the purpose of the destruction so God could place a rainbow promising he would never resort to such a destructive extreme again? It seems He could have skipped the action and no one would be wondering about it, anyway. One thing is clear: the “purification” did not work; sin was carried forward by Noah and his family.

So I wonder if the point of the story is to demonstrate that purification on the earth is not possible via murder or even justified executions. If the Big House Cleaning didn’t work, smaller house cleanings won’t either. There is no point to ethnic cleansing. No ethnicities are clean. Clean the earth of one ethnicity and you will be left with fewer ethnicities, but all that remain will be equally troublesome and selfish. Racial cleansing is a fool’s errand. Racial hatred is a fool’s errand. We cannot make the earth a better place by ridding it of the ones we despise.

Racial hatred, racial “cleansing” and acts of genocide are common in the annals of human history. Here a few examples: Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis. During the partition of India, 6 million Muslims fled to Pakistan and Bangladesh, while 5 million Hindus and Sikhs fled to India. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, 700,000 Palestinians fled Israel and were prevented from returning. In the 1960s the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia cleansed the country of racial minorities. Eighty-five percent of the Chinese were killed or expelled, the small population of Thais were killed or escaped, while 80% of Muslims were killed. After the Gulf War in 1991, Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinians. In the 16th century, Iraq was 50% Christian. In 1987 the census counted 1.4 million Christians. Following the 2003 invasion, the number had dropped to 1/2 million. In Operation Olive Branch, Jan-Mar, 2017, Turkish military and Syrian Arab and Turkman militias displaced 250,000 Kurds from the Afrin region of northern Syria. These are not unusual events, nor, obviously, are they events from the distant past, before people had become literate and “civilized”. Where there are differences, there are individuals stirring up hatred.

It’s hard to know what to do with all this hatred. The United States Constitution has made it clear that racial background and personal ideology are, with some limits, rights to be enjoyed by all its citizens. Pluralism has drawbacks, but the right of all citizens to be treated fairly is a wondrous benefit for a nation. The very idea is solid ground on which a nation can be built…and has been built. Have there been errors in treating all citizens equally and fairly? Of course, yes; but governing a nation is a bit like bowling (though of much greater consequence). We always shoot for 300; we rarely manage that perfect score. But a history of failing to reach the perfect goal is a bad reason for abandoning the effort.

The Constitution is a wonderful document; may it ever be revered and cared for. If it needs changing, may it be changed according to wisdom and according to Constitutionally designed process. But, for me, if you want to know the truth of a matter, there is only one authoritative source: the Bible. The Bible has a great deal to say on the subject of racism, but I will limit this discussion to the implications of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

One day an “expert in the law”, or we might say, an Old Testament scholar, asked Jesus what he needed to do to be saved. Jesus responded, “What do you read in the Law?” “That we should love the Lord our God, and we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves.” Jesus agreed, “Do this and you will live.”

The expert didn’t seem concerned about whether he loved God sufficiently but he was very concerned about the definition of “neighbor”. After all, there are a lot of neighbors out there who are members of the KKK, who put pink flamingos on their lawn, who don’t drink, who do drink, who leave their trash cans on the curb for days, and who are just foul-mouthed mean. Surely, by “my neighbor”, you mean those in my family and those whose worldview is essentially the same as mine.

At this point Jesus launched into the parable. The story begins with a man journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho. He is ambushed by robbers who steal his possessions and beat him up, leaving him seriously injured and in great need. Soon a priest came along. He saw the injured man but, instead of offering help, he steered himself to the far side of the road as he passed him by. Perhaps he worried it was a trap. Perhaps he was in his finery and worried about getting blood on his clothes. Perhaps he was on his way to an important appointment for which he dared not be late. Whatever his thinking, he moved swiftly on, leaving the wretched man to die.

Not long after, a Levite, which is to say, a member of the tribe of Levi, which had been designated to care for the Temple and to administer sacrifices and offerings to the Lord, also came along. When Levites came of age, they were anointed with the same oil as the tabernacle furniture, implying that they shared the holiness of the tabernacle. Perhaps, then, the Levite had come to understand that holiness meant separation from all who were spiritually or even physically unclean. In any case, he did exactly the same as the priest.

Finally, a Samaritan came along and, rather than passing the poor man by, he stopped and focused all his resources on helping the man. First he bound the wounds and provided what medical care he could. Then he picked up the man and put him on his mule, probably steadying him in the saddle as the two slowly worked their way down the highway. When they reached an inn, the Samaritan rented a room, gave the innkeeper advance money—two days wages, so, roughly $400.  Then he instructed the innkeeper to provide care, as needed. The Samaritan promised to stop by on his return trip and make good on any additional expenses.

Based on the fact that the Samaritan was traveling alone, it is unlikely he was a rich man—probably just an ordinary middle class business man. I wonder what his wife had to say about him delaying his business, handing out $400 and then leaving an innkeeper with a blank check. The Samaritan was both generous and self-sacrificing. He wasn’t getting his name on a new hospital wing; he was simply extending himself in order to address someone else’s need.

But the story given by Jesus was not merely about selfishness vs. self-sacrifice. The story is set in Israel where we would expect human compassion to be the normal behavior of a priest or a Levite. Instead, the hero of the story is a Samaritan. The Samaritans were despised by the Israelites. So keep in mind that Jesus, a Jew, is telling this story to another Jew. Samaritans were of Jewish descent but had intermarried freely with other peoples of the land. Additionally, they had developed a variation of Judaism which the Israelites would have considered something like a cult. Most devisively, instead of seeing Mount Zion as the place on earth where God dwelt, the Samaritans looked to Mount Gerizim as the place especially blessed by God, and the special place for him to be worshipped.

Jesus flips the normal Jewish narrative by presenting a story in which the best men of Israel are selfish and callous, while the people who were always the bad guys of the stories (think: Nazis) were represented here by a wonderful hero.

“Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” Jesus then asked the expert. 

 Jesus’ question itself makes it clear that the definition of “neighbor” has nothing to do with racial or ideological similarities. He defines neighbor partly as physical proximity but primarily as common humanity. Jesus bluntly states that if we wish to live, we must be “neighborly” to those who share the world with us. We may not like some of them; we may even have very good reason to not like some of them, but if we want to live, we must love them.

We may not lynch those we despise; we must see to it that they are treated justly. We may not deport others in order to maintain racial advantage; we must embrace those who are in need. We may not red line our neighborhoods; we must labor together to make neighborhoods places of peace. We may not enter a synagogue…or a grade school, or a country music festival, or nightclub, or a World Trade Center and vent our hatred by shredding the bodies and spilling the blood of those we hate.

If we hate others we will be hated by God. If we hate others we will surely die. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. – Matthew 5.9