Last week was a hard week for our nation.
I haven’t sat watching the news, fighting tears swelling in my eyes, since Hurricane Katrina. But, in that case, my tears were over a natural tragedy. These tears are over the tragedy of human brokenness. This weekend, it was heart-wrenching to watch protests turn into riots. Seeing the generational pain of so many swell over into destruction was heartbreaking.
Also heartbreaking, though, was seeing the reaction of too many on social media.
I don’t want to make it sound like subtle racism has been my entire social media experience since the killing of George Floyd. I’ve seen a couple of posts about people changing their minds recently on racial issues. I also had an incredibly positive experience with a friend with whom I often disagree, but we have developed a mutual respect. He reached out to me after an interaction he had with others on social media. In that interaction, he said a few things to which others strongly objected. He wanted to get my feedback. I guess he trusts me as someone who is committed to social justice but is reasonable and able to dialogue without castigating him. We’ve had a good discussion over the last couple of days where we have challenged each other, and he is coming, I think, to have a better understanding of a different perspective. So, this conversation in particular gives me hope.
But there are other conversations that give me less hope.
One particular exchange stood out to me. I have a friend, who I have known since elementary school, who shared a post saying, “Vocal about the looting. Silent about the murder. I see y’all.” This was not taken well by some of her friends. One person, in particular, made a comment that included the sentence, “Destroying innocent people’s businesses is just as terrible as what happened to that man.”
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. She was claiming that the loss of property was just as bad as the loss of life. She was claiming an equivalence between property and his life. I don’t need to relay a complete blow-by-blow of the conversation here. But, in our exchange, she argued that the Boston Tea Party was morally superior to protests about murder because “Rioting over murder does nothing” while the Boston Tea Party “directly addressed a tyrant who was taxing those people unfairly.”
In our conversation, I argued that the idea that violent protest over money was morally superior to violent protest over murder was, in fact, wrong and that claiming a moral equivalency between murder and property destruction was morally repugnant. I was clear throughout that I do not condone rioting. In my last comment, I brought her back to what she first said when I wrote:
But, let’s go back to what you first said… Destroying a business is as terrible as killing a black man. Property is equal to a black man. Think about that historically. I am not offended by your position as much as heartbroken that your values do not place the life of a black man over personal property.
She blocked me after that.
This is not a young woman who would view herself as racist. Honestly, I don’t think she even realized what she was saying. I seriously doubt, if push came to shove, that she would ever say that a black man’s life is worth less than property. But, as we saw with the liberally minded Amy Cooper in NYC, racism runs deep even when we think we are “woke.”
I’ve been thinking about Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling. So many white folks refused to listen to the African-American community when they peacefully protested. It isn’t the right time, it isn’t the right place. Let’s be frank. White folks simply didn’t want to hear it. What we are seeing now is the result of our refusal to listen. Don’t blame the protestors. We need to take responsibility for creating this situation, either by our outright sin or more often by the sin of complacency.
That is what a lot of this comes down to for me. White America failed to listen repeatedly, for years, decades, centuries, and then complains when people rise up. White America created this situation. We have systemic problems that have led to this repeatedly happening. But when whites riot in history, we praise it, such as with theย Boston Tea Party, or when whites have a race riot killing black people and destroying their property, such as in theย 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,ย we largely erase it from history.
A good friend of mine was recently bothered by an article about Amy Cooper that I posted. On the phone, he complained that the author, a black woman, was reducing him down to race by saying all white people are a certain way. He was disgusted by what Amy Cooper had done and did not want to be equated with it merely because of the color of his skin. I didn’t remember the author saying anything like this. When I went back and read the article again, I noticed that she twice used the phrase whiteness. She said that whiteness “puts black and brown bodies in needless danger” and there had been times when she felt policed by whiteness. What my friend failed to apprehend here is that whiteness is not referencing all “white people” but a set of Western cultural values in which being white is the default position.
This is a culture that whites have formed and which, in the USA, has a long dark history of oppression of blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, Chinese, Japanese, and anyone who isn’t white. To be fair, this same ethic has oppressed Jews, the Irish, and other white groups that were seen as “other.” With time, however, white skin assimilates, while black and brown are always “other.” This culture of oppression is whiteness.
White culture created and perpetuated this oppression. We need to admit that. Many whites may not be openly racist, but we are all influenced by the racism intrinsic in our culture. We need to acknowledge it and actively fight against it. Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If anย elephantย has its foot on theย tailย of aย mouseย and you say that you are neutral, theย mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” Whiteness is the elephant. We have a responsibility not to be neutral. If we are, we condone the oppression. Further, disapproving of the elephant does nothing to relieve the pain of the mouse. We need to actively remove the elephant’s foot from the mouse’s tail. If we don’t, we risk allowing the elephant to step on the body of the mouse, as was the case with George Floyd and so many others before him.
Many of my white friends do not feel they have anything for which they need to repent racially. They were not slave owners. They were not segregationists. They seek to treat minorities as equals. Yet, the elephant is real. Whiteness, a cultural system that works against the best interests of minority groups, is real. Too often, we have looked at the elephant and looked the other way. For that, we need to repent. Neutrality is condoning, and condoning is racism.
This essay is from our Anastasis Series, where we resurrect articles from the past that are still relevant today. This piece was first published on June 1, 2020, and has been lightly edited and updated.
About Post Author
Black people need to quit with making excuses.they are prejudice.they are forever crieing like babies.they are thieves wreck good neighborhoods they are lazy.this is white America has been always will be.those essays are garbage.the worse churches to go to are black ones.their ministers sound like idiots choir singing give it up.sound like garbage.
A wasn’t going to allow this racist tripe. But I decided to allow it because some think this sort of bigotry doesn’t exist. It does and this comment is exhibit A.
Many would agree that the first sentence is pretty accurate. Blacks need to stop making excuses for bad black behavior. No matter what their trauma, they do not have the right to hurt innocent people as scapegoats for others’ actions. It seems many Blacks are very racist, and keep claiming Whites are more racist than they are. Many would argue that is not true. The rest is too much generalizing, but it isn’t fair/accurate to say staying silence is condoning; some just don’t know what a lone person can do.
Even a solitary person has a voice. A lone person can choose not to stay silent.
Lord God willing, this is not a real person leaving this type of comment! If you are real, I bet you would not say that stuff in public. I really hope you get help, at least with your grammar and punctuation; that way you may be able to string a coherent thought together.
Whiteness, these subtle accusations against society are totally unfounded. Who gets to judge what woke enough or whiteness? I am all for justice, justice for all and equality of opportunity. Justice with some sort of precursor is not justice; at best it is a mistake, at worst it is take justice and making it do something self-serving.
Also, if you look at the facts in the George Floyd case, he died of a fentanyl overdose. Like some many in recent history with drug problems, he was poisoned by the supplier of his own vice. George was no hero; he was a career criminal with a drug problem. He would have died later that day whether detained by the police or not; the cop was using a retraining method taught and preferred by his local police department.
There was no JUSTICE in that case. A cop that did not break the rules went to jail and a career criminal died in custody from a self-inflicted overdose and was subsequently unable to be charged with the crimes committed that day. Those crimes he committed put many people in harm’s way, endangering his entire community.
It seems if this is your real opinion on this made-up issue, I wonder how many other unbiblical views that you have.
Greg,
There were three autopsies done on George Floyd. All three concluded that the cause of death was the actions of the police not fentanyl. He would not have died later that day if not for the actions of those officers. I am not arguing that Floyd was a hero. He was a troubled individual who was murdered by police officers. His last conviction was thirteen years prior to his death and there is evidence he was trying to turn his life around. However, because of the actions of those officers we will never know if he would have been successful. You are correct that only one officer was physically involved in the actions that killed Floyd. The others were not convicted of murder. They were convicted of violating Floyd’s civil right by failing to intervene. They did break rules by their failure to protect him.
As for your position on Whiteness, I am unclear about what precursor you are suggesting is at play. Equality of opportunity, which you identify as favoring, requires that we understand what barriers to opportunity exist and seek to lessen those barriers.
Your last paragraph is also unclear. There is plenteous research on ingrained barriers within our culture, so I’m not sure why you insist the issue is “made-up.” Further, I am unclear about what you are calling unbiblical and how you are determining that it is unbiblical.
First, the autopsies that you can find now most likely all say the same thing. I am one that believes there may have been some suppression of the truth to convict an officer, especially during that period. Second, George Floyd had several other issues that also may have contributed to his death that cannot be ignored, including his toxicology report that included fentanyl. Third, murder is a really strong word that suggests intent. I believe the intent was to restrain a very large man high on drugs that was resisting arrest. Lastly, on George Floyd, he may not have died that day if he had not been restrained in such a way, and like you said, we will never know the answer to that either. However, if he had not been in the process of breaking the law, he would have never been in that situation to start with, whether it was passing counterfeit bills (a felony I believe) or being intoxicated in public.
As far as the “Whiteness” comment, I was referring to “Social Justice”. If you go back and reread that, I think you will see that I stated it clearly; social justice is not justice. Just like there is only absolute truth, not my truth, your truth, or relative truth. However, whiteness how can you even define that? It seems to be a moving target. I am not ashamed of my heritage, or any advantages that I may have had because my parents stayed together and worked really hard; although, if I had any they were very few. The best schools I attended were a local apprentice program (that I only got into because I was an athlete) and MCRD, Paris Island, SC.
The barriers that exist to making it financially in America are limited. If you graduate high school, get some kind of legal, gainful employment, and do not have children until after you are married, your chances of being financially destitute in America are about 5%. However, because our country is so great, you can screw up all three of those requirements and still come out in a very wealthy position.
Sure, there is research. I can do research that would suggest the total opposite. Actually, from my own life I have been attacked on more than one occasion because of the color of my skin. But here is some reading material by a black Harvard economics professor.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/black-harvard-economist-finds-no-racial-bias-officer-involved-shootings/
As far as lessening barriers goes, maybe if people took some responsibility for their actions and understood that they can change their actions and thereby change their outcomes, maybe, just maybe barriers would go down.
Last, the unbiblical part that I see in your article is that Paul said this – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28 The way I see your whiteness dilemma is you choose to see problems that you where there really none, or at worst very isolated instances. All people are made in the image of God and if we concentrate on getting more in line with Christianity, by taking every thought captive, most problems will work themselves out. But, with your theology of whiteness, you continue to take part in the practice of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
There is a lot here. I’ll try to respond point by point.
1) There were three autopsies on Floyd. Two were government initiated and one was independent. They all had the same conclusion. It was the actions of Officer Chauvin that caused Floyd’s death. There were other factors, as you mention, but they were not the cause of his death and would not have independently killed him. Your belief in a cover-up seems to be rooted in your desire for the autopsies to not be correct, rather than any evidence based suspicion.
2) Chauvin was found guilty by a jury of his peers for second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Therefore, murder as a descriptor seems appropriate.
3) Whether or not Floyd was committing a crime or even whether or not he was a good person is irrelevant to the appropriateness of the actions taken against him. Again, a jury believed that his actions were criminal.
4) The rough definition of Whiteness proffered in the essay is “a set of Western cultural values in which being white is the default position.” Defining the boundaries and implications of those values is well beyond a discussion such as this. The point though is that whiteness is not an indictment of anyone’s skin tone but an acknowledgement that there are systemic structures in our culture that elevate white skin and culture.
5) The “success sequence” you reference has become very popular and is generally good advice. But in and of itself is insufficient. We know the correlation between the success sequence and economic stability. Causation and an understanding of the contributing factors that lead to individuals following the success sequence are more difficult to establish. For example, there are well documented achievement gaps and gaps in hiring between different ethnicities which can have an affect on the success sequence.
6) Roland Gerhard Fryer, Jr.’s article got a lot of attention and it is an important study. It is also important to understand what his research establishes and what it doesn’t. it did establish that in the data he studied there was no evidence of racial bias in shootings. That is fantastic! But the study did establish that Blacks and Hispanics ARE 50% more likely to experience “force” at the hands of police. This is still significant. Further, it is helpful to look at a broader selection of his research which indicates that while the significance of discrimination as a significant factor in racial inequalities has dropped since the 20th century. It is not gone. There are still well documented racial gaps in achievement, poverty, incarceration, earnings, unemployment, health, etc. His research looks into issues such as the racial disparity in hiring and wages offered finding that discrimination is causative of part of that difference. Further, even on the issue of police shooting Fryer writes in a follow-up article to the one referenced by your link “The time has come for a national reckoning on race and policing in America.” His caution is that his data indicates that while unarmed blacks are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than unarmed whites it is unclear that this difference is motivated by racial bias. However, he does clearly state that his own data is “far from a representative sample of police departments.” All this is to say that these issues are complicated and we may not want to dismiss the idea of racial bias based on an article that quotes an article that references a study, especially when the researchers own research is more complicated.
7) Whiteness is not a theology but a sociological reality. It does not negate personal responsibility and certainly does not negate the Imago Dei. I am not contradicting Paul. Paul’s point is that Christ’s salvific work is open to all regardless of our earthly differences. I doubt you are arguing that because of Paul there is no such thing as gender or sexuality! My point is rather that the reality of Whiteness operates at odds with a Biblical ethic. Whiteness does not address humanity as if ethnicity were not a thing but forces all ethnicities to operate within the culture of one. It is akin not to saying “there is neither Jew nor Greek” but to saying “there is no Jew, only Greek.”
Ron, you make some good points, as much I would like to refute them I do not have the time. I have spent too much time responding already. But here goes anyway. You are correct, Chauvin was convicted, however our justice system is not fool proof. Floyd was a thug, and he put himself in that position. If whiteness is the default position, does it mean the norms of western society. If that is the case, there are things I put up with that I do not like also. Yes, there is a lot in Mr. Fryer’s work that seems to require more research, but the more you know, the only thing you know is that there is more to know. I agree with your last point “there is no Jew, only Greek”, but when in Rome do as the Romans do, if you want to be part of that society. But assimilation is an entire other subject.