It has been a season of revealing: the murderous knee on George Floyd’s neck, the disproportionate number of people of color dying from COVID-19, and the flagrant racism depicted in Bryan Stevenson’s movie, Just Mercy. All three reveal that systemic racism did not die in the United States with the removal of Jim Crow laws in the 1950’s and 60’s. This revealing calls for response. Even so, I did not anticipate my next blog would address racism and whiteness—not because I did not think it is vitally important, but because I did not think I am the one to speak. It is a moment for this writer to take his hands off the keyboard and read others, a moment for this teacher to step away from the lectern and learn from my former students, including Marcel Woodruff (and here), Ivan Paz (and here), Noemi Vega (and here), Nathan Hunt (and here), and Dallas Nord. I have listened and read. And what has happened for decades now when I read something that grabs me? I want to share it with others. So, although in regards to racism I still think my posture should remain, predominantly, that of learner and listener, I am going to follow the internal voice that today said, “Mark, you are a teacher. Be who you are.” I read an article and am listening to a podcast series that propel the teacher in me to want to share a few insights and say “read this” and “listen to this!”
In a previous blog about whiteness I quoted Ben Franklin writing glowingly about white people and making disparaging comments about non-whites. The shocking thing was that I was in the latter category! Franklin wanted to stop the swarthy Germans from flowing into Pennsylvania and contaminating the purity of the English-Saxon culture of white people. My father’s ancestors came from Germany and settled in Franklin’s beloved Pennsylvania. Franklin’s comment made very concrete something I was learning from Willie Jennings (book, article, lecture) and some of my students mentioned above. Race is not a biological given, it is a construction. And, as Franklin’s comments display, it was as much about perspectives on superiority and inferiority as actual skin color. Of course, there have been people with different shades of skin for millennia, that is biological, but there were no racial categories of white people and black people until after Europeans started taking Africans as slaves.
What has been constructed can be deconstructed. Understanding more of how racism was constructed will aid us in deconstructing it and constructing alternatives.
Season two of the Podcast Scene on Radio is titled “Seeing White.” The second episode “How Race was Made,” repeated and reinforced things I had already learned, yet the conciseness of some statements grabbed my attention. I share two with you.
- Exploitation came first. People were not seen as inferior and therefore enslaved. The concept of blackness as an inferior race to whiteness was developed to provide a rationale for enslaving Africans. The “enlightened” Christian Europeans needed, and came up with, a justification for the oppressive practices of their day.
- Race is constructed, but real. To say it is not a given of nature but a human invention does not mean the construction does not exist today. It does, however, mean there is opportunity for deconstruction.
One thesis of the podcast series is that working at “race relations” is not enough. Changing attitudes is not enough. Those relations and those attitudes are lived out in a system that is fundamentally racist. This coheres with what I learned from Willie Jennings: whiteness is not just certain privileges and biases, but a way of understanding land/place, property, rights, relationships, and the economy. The series seeks to display systemic aspects by exposing how exploitative racialization was intentionally woven into the fabric of this nation.
One way the podcast does this, in the third and fourth episodes, is by peeling back layers and exploring early colonial rulings and legislation about race. The chattel system of enslavement of blacks was not a given in the early days of the colonies. It developed as something distinct from indentured servitude through rulings and legislation. The definition of whiteness and the rights of whites were constructed over time. The podcast argues that power and economics were at the root of all these decisions. For instance, the first legislative body in the colonies, the Virginia House of Burgesses, crafted legislation to define who was white—and therefore those with rights. They were going to use a purity definition of whites being those without one drop of African or Native American blood. But some of the most powerful and richest men in the colony were descendants of the mixed marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas. So the legislation allowed that one could still be considered white with a degree of Native American blood, but no black blood. White was not a definition of biological realities; it was a category of those who had power.
There is so much more. I encourage you, listen to this podcast series!
Despair
And I want to say, “read this!” In a New Yorker book review Atul Gawande engages the question why the death rates of working-age white men and women without college degrees have increased dramatically in recent years. We have heard the immediate causes of the increase: suicide, drug overdoses, alcohol related liver diseases, but what is behind them? Despair. So argue the authors of Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. They found that locales with higher rates of people without jobs also had higher death rates. And those who are working have seen their wages stagnate or go down while they see the college educated growing wealthier. The article states, “Religious institutions previously played a vital role in connecting people to a community. But the number of Americans who attend religious services has declined markedly over the past half-century. . . (The rate is lower among non-college graduates.)” No job, less meaning and purpose, less connection—despair.
There is much more in the article that calls for reflection. I read it and wondered, “how is the church responding?” Perhaps I will return to this article in a future blog. I am wary, however, of giving it more attention in this blog because I do not want to pull the focus away from where we started—the knee on George Floyd’s neck. I do not bring this article in as an attempt to counter “Black Lives Matter” by saying “some white people have it pretty bad too.” Rather, I include it to say, “those dying of despair are hurt by whiteness as well.” And, especially, to reinforce the point that whiteness was constructed by the powerful and is used by the powerful. I will do that by pointing to similarities between what the article describe and something the podcast described.
Many whites in the south, in colonial days and after, were poor. They were not enslaved but in other ways they too were exploited by the powerful elite. This wealthy minority, that controlled the economic structures, hindered the flourishing of the poor whites. But the elite used racial categories to create a white-black division rather than an oppressor-oppressed division. Even though in reality poor whites had more in common with slaves than the slaveowners, the powerful turned them against blacks and created unity through having a common other. The racial prejudices that poor whites developed against blacks did nothing to help the concrete situation of the poor whites. How about today? What have some of the rich and powerful said to the working-class whites dying of despair today? Have those with power worked to address the root causes of despair? No, they have shifted the poor white’s angry gaze from the white elite who continue to prosper, in part by moving industries and jobs to other countries, and have told those in despair that the cause of their problems is brown-skinned people from south of the border.
In each case racial difference was used to scapegoat one group of people and create a superficial unity, a racial unity, that ignored deep differences and injustices. Every layer of these actions is opposite to the way of Jesus seen in the gospels and counter to the movement of the Spirit observed Acts. Let us be aware of how race may be used today as a tool to enable some to continue to oppress others and to create false divisions between people.
Final Thoughts
I want to underline, I write this blog mostly to say, listen to this podcast, read this article, and join me in learning from Willie Jennings and my former students listed above. With a spirit of humility of one still learning and one enmeshed in systems of whiteness, I end with a few implications of the above observations for us as followers of Jesus.
- The God revealed by Jesus Christ stands against categorizing groups of people as inferior or superior to others, and through the liberating power of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection we have the possibility of living in ways of unity and respect radically different than our racially sick society.
- Systemic problems are revealed through George Floyd’s death, through COVID-19, and descriptions of the criminal justice system like Just Mercy. Part of the problem is individuals who are profoundly racist, but it is much more than that. (And even those individuals are products of systems.) Deep repairs are needed.
- At the core of racial categorization are some things that I address directly through the Discipleship and Ethics course and website—Mammon, Greed, Consumerism. But there are other things at the core that are so much part of the air I breathe that it is hard for me to imagine alternatives. I want to. As followers of Jesus we are called to and enabled to. Join me.