Despite the fact that we have a black president, this racism continues today, as most nonwhites will testify. It’s just that it’s no longer obvious to most whites. One of the ways the social system of America continues to privilege whites over others is that it insulates us from the ongoing effects of America’s racist past.
And this is why many sincere white people fail to see why racial reconciliation is a big deal.
If the church in America is going to make progress in manifesting the “one new humanity” of the Kingdom, this obstacle has to be overcome.
THE HIERARCHY OF PRIVILEGE
Sixteen years ago when I helped plant the church I now pastor, I naively thought that if I simply taught that reconciliation is central to the Gospel our church would quickly become a diverse, multiethnic congregation. I was baffled when our church remained 98 percent white five years into the ministry.
I now understand why. My perspective on the world and my way of doing church were entirely white. While I had many acquaintances who were nonwhite, I had no deep friendships that enabled me to genuinely “get on the inside” of other cultures and appreciate how different they are from my own. As a result, I didn’t realize that, while we said we welcomed all people, we were actually requiring people to check their nonwhite culture at the door and join our “white” way of doing church.
Even more importantly, because I wasn’t “on the inside” of the non-white experience of American culture, I naively assumed my “white” experience was pretty much “the norm.” I was largely unaware of the systemic racism that continues to permeate American culture. I was oblivious to the fact that I, as a white person, sat at the top of a hierarchy of privilege that allowed me to hover freely above thick but largely invisible walls that restrict opportunities for nonwhites.
Over time I’ve developed honest, trusting relationships with nonwhites. Sharing experiences with these friends has opened my eyes to a hierarchy of privilege that advantages me and disadvantages them. I envision this hierarchy something like the diagram on the following page.
The walls that restrict others are invisible to most whites because we never have to run up against them. It’s why the whites who called in on the radio talk show could so easily dismiss the study that exposed racial profiling. It’s why whites can honestly believe the slogan that America is a “land of equal opportunity,” despite the fact that all the evidence indicates that it is not.
Why are whites three times more likely to own homes, four times more likely to earn a college degree, and five times less likely to end up in prison than African Americans? Why do whites tend to earn significantly more and own significantly more than non-whites? Why are most of the top positions in major corporations occupied by white males?
Faced with statistics like this, many whites simply appeal to individual choices. “People choose to commit crimes and so end up in prison rather than in college. It’s that simple.”
Well, it’s not “that simple.” Of course every individual must take responsibility for his or her actions—but individual choices alone don’t explain group behavior. To understand why the group experiences of whites and nonwhites differ so radically—and why whites happen to usually “come out on top”—we have to understand the ongoing destructive effects of America’s racist past. And the most important effect to consider is the hierarchy of privilege we’ve inherited and that we who are white continue to benefit from, usually without knowing it.
If followers of Jesus in America are going to make progress manifesting the “one new humanity” of the Kingdom, this system of privilege must be acknowledged and revolted against.
LISTENING, LEARNING, AND FOLLOWING
In this light, I believe the first step to manifesting the “one new humanity” Jesus died to create is for whites to humbly acknowledge that we don’t know what we don’t know. The only way we can possibly learn about the walls we are privileged to hover above is by listening to the life experiences of those who run into them.
So, for example, rather than normalizing our own (privileged) experience and thus denying that racial profiling exists—accusing all who claim otherwise of “playing the race card”—we who are white must humbly listen to and trust the experience of nonwhites whose experience suggest that it does.
To wake up to the systemic racism of our culture, we who are white need to cultivate relationships with nonwhites that are deep enough to allow us to “get on the inside” of a nonwhite experience of the world. Not only this, but where it is appropriate, we who are white need to submit to the leadership of nonwhites. Individuals, small groups, and predominately white churches must pursue these submitted relationships if we’re to make headway in manifesting “the one new humanity.” I’ve become convinced that, as helpful as books and seminars on racism are, they are in most cases not enough to bring about permanent changes in the way white people view the world. On this matter, whites need people of color to teach us and to lead us.
This is frankly challenging for many whites, even for those who sincerely believe they want to be agents of reconciliation. Our privileged status has conditioned us to assume our perspectives are normative and to expect to have things our way. Because America was established by and for whites, nonwhites have to deal with our culture, but we don’t usually have to deal with theirs. The decision to listen, learn, and follow people of color requires whites to place themselves in a submitted position they aren’t accustomed to. But if the systemic racism that has characterized the American church throughout its history is going to be subverted, this is the first step that must be taken.
AN EXAMPLE OF BLOWING IT
About three years after Woodland Hills Church started, we asked an African American man named Norm Blagman to be our worship leader. Norm was a relatively new Christian and had no background in leading worship, but the man is (no exaggeration) a musical genius. He has the equivalent of a photographic memory when it comes to music. He can hear a song once and then ten years later recall what every instrument and voice does in the song. He can also sing and play congas like nobody’s business. And most importantly, Norm has a passion and gift for worship leading.
About six months after Norm joined our otherwise exclusively white pastoral staff, a young white man in our congregation began to persistently write letters and leave voice messages for Norm and myself about a number of theological matters that bothered him. Among other things, this man thought it was unbiblical and offensive that Norm sometimes wore a cap while leading worship. In several of his contacts with Norm he made reference to “you people,” which Norm took to mean, “You black people.” (I’ve since learned that “you people” is often used by whites to stereotype blacks.)
Over several months Norm expressed his concern that this guy’s behavior was at least partly racially motivated and that he saw trouble brewing. He suggested—and then pleaded—that I and others in leadership do something to address this problem before it grew into something bigger. Instead of humbly following Norm’s lead on this, I encouraged him to just ignore the guy. In my view the man was crazy, but not a racist. After all, I was getting more letters and phone calls than Norm, and most of this man’s messages were bizarre ramblings about end-time prophecies or megalomaniac pronouncements about how he was God’s anointed prophet. The issue of Norm’s cap, in my view, was almost incidental.
So It old Norm that in large churches like ours we should expect to occasionally have to deal with crazy people. Norm was new to ministry, and I was just trying to toughen him up for the years of ministry he had ahead of him.
Well, my advice didn’t help. Norm’s concern grew to the point where he asked me and other pastors to consider getting a restraining order barring this guy from church and from contacting Norm. I agreed to meet with the man and tell him to stop hassling us, but everyone in leadership except Norm thought that taking out a restraining order on a man who hadn’t made any threats was unwarranted. “You just have to learn how to deal graciously wit
h crazy people like this,” we kept telling Norm.
Then, several weeks after this, the disturbed man confronted Norm after one of our church services. He pushed a lady to the floor and shoved a Bible in Norm’s face while screaming something about how Norm wasn’t fit to be a worship leader. Norm instinctively responded by pushing the man back and pinning him up against the wall. There was a crowd of parishioners around who intervened to break up the altercation.
When the pastoral staff processed the event the next day, it was decided that we needed to take out a restraining order on the disturbed man. It was also decided that Norm, being a pastor, needed to confess to the congregation that he had “lost his cool” and that he should not have responded to this man so forcefully.
At the time—and for a good while after this event—I felt like we handled the episode pretty much “by the book.” The problem, I now see, is that the “book” we were going by was written exclusively by, and for, white people.
Here’s the side of the story our “white book” didn’t include.
Norm was raised in a New York City ghetto, and like many other inner-city black youth, his early life experience and social conditioning led him to have a certain mistrust of white people—especially white people in positions of power. Over the years Norm had several experiences working in white establishments that reinforced this mistrust. Among other things, he found that white bosses tended to believe white employees and customers over black employees and customers. So, whenever a white employee or customer raised an issue with him, Norm found his job was on the line—regardless of how frivolous the complaint may have been.
I lacked the capacity to appreciate this at the time, but I now understand that it took tremendous courage for Norm to accept a leadership position in a church that was almost completely white and run by all white people. The question on his mind was, “Will the white leadership of this church believe me and cover my back if a white person in the congregation raises an issue about me?”
This question was put to the test when the disturbed white man began raising the issue over Norm’s cap. As a white person who never had to worry about losing my job for frivolous racial reasons, it was easy for me to dismiss the man as just another example of the kind of disturbed people pastors sometimes have to put up with. But as a black person who had lost several jobs for just such reasons, it was not so easy for Norm.
Indeed, my well-intentioned advice to Norm that he adopt a dismissive attitude toward this man actually intensified his worry that, if push came to shove (no pun intended), the white leadership of this church would not believe him or cover his back. Norm rightly discerned that his black perspective on this issue was simply not being taken seriously.
When the disturbed man aggressively accosted him after a church service, Norm felt like he had felt so often in his life: he was completely on his own in a white-run organization. No one believed him , and so he felt he had no option except to take matters into his own hands and defend himself. He later told me he felt like a wounded badger backed into a corner.
While it helped that we (finally) got a restraining order against the man, the fact that Norm had to publicly apologize to the congregation reinforced this sense of aloneness. Far from feeling like he was believed and understood, he felt like he was once again being made out to be the bad guy. It ’s true that Norm didn’t model Christ’s teaching on turning the other cheek in the way he responded to his aggressor. But had we listened to Norm, matters never would have come to this. We failed Norm.
Now, I’ll admit that it took me several years of being friends with Norm and working through a number of difficult race-related issues before I could fully empathize with Norm’s perspective of this episode. I now realize that, as sincere as my intentions were, I, and the rest of the white leadership of the church, responded to this event poorly. Sitting at the top of the hierarchy of privilege, I was simply unaware of the radically different world in which Norm lived. I responded to this event from a strictly white perspective rather than allowing my perspective to be stretched by Norm and humbly following his lead on this issue.
I now try to humbly listen, learn, and follow when I need to. This doesn’t mean I consider a nonwhite perspective to always be right while mine is automatically wrong if we see things differently. But it does mean I try to remain open to the possibility that our disagreement may be due to the fact that our lives have been conditioned by where we’re positioned in the hierarchy of privilege.
Reconciliation is profoundly difficult even with a full awareness of the hierarchy of privilege and the historical and social influences that have constructed it. But without this awareness and without a willingness to listen, learn, and follow, it’s not even remotely possible. Without this awareness, many sincere, well-intentioned white believers won’t even see that there’s a problem that needs to be overcome.
RECONCILIATION FOR ALL PEOPLE
So far my comments have been directed entirely toward white readers. The reason for this is that I believe the main obstacle to reconciliation in the body of Christ in America is that most whites don’t really see a need for it, as I said above. Not only this, but as a white person I can only address this (and every other) issue from a white perspective.
Still, the call to be a reconciled and reconciling community applies to all Kingdom people, so we need to address what reconciliation looks like for non-European, nonwhite Americans. Here I have had to rely entirely on insights from my nonwhite sisters and brothers. There are three things that need to be said.
First, I encourage people of color to embrace Paul’s teaching that the Kingdom struggle is never against “flesh and blood” but against the Powers. We conquer them by refusing to hate, choosing instead to follow Jesus’ example of extending outrageous, self-sacrificial love to all people—even those who are intentionally or unintentionally oppressing us.
Second, it’s important for people of color to extend forgiveness, both for things done to their ethnic group in the past and for things that continue to be done in the present. Jesus reflected the attitude Kingdom people are to have when he prayed for our forgiveness before we ever dreamed of asking for it. Only this kind of love can tear down the hostile walls that have been built up over centuries and empower us to manifest the “one new humanity” Christ died to create.
Third, Kingdom reconciliation is impossible without Kingdom relationships. I therefore encourage people of color as well as white people to revolt against our tribal instincts to remain in the security of our own ethnic group and actively pursue relationships with people whose ethnicity is different than our own. Cross-ethnic relationships are, by their very nature, revolting against Powers that have installed and aggravated mistrust between different ethnic groups for centuries. Racial reconciliation is spiritual warfare, so we must not naively think forging such relationships is going to be easy. But they are always worth it.
THE UNIQUENESS OF KINGDOM RECONCILIATION
The world’s way of achieving racial reconciliation focuses on equalizing power and privilege. It tends to have an adversarial quality to it as those with less power and privilege confront those who have more. A central goal is to achieve a fairer society. This is a good and necessary endeavor in the broader society, and all fair-minded people should obviously pursue it.
Reconciliation in the Kingdom looks very different from this, however. Our focus is not on equalizing power and privilege; it’s on following the example of Jesus by abandoning the quest for power and privilege. Our goal is not to achieve more fairness; it’s to manifest Christlike submission to one another. And our adversaries are not other people who have more power and privilege than ourselves. Our adversaries are the Powers who keep humanity in bondage by fueling our hunger for power and privilege while enforcing social structures that give more to some by robbing it from others.
Our Kingdom call is to revolt against the Powers by dismantling the hierarchy of privilege, rejecting all racial stereotypes and ju
dgments, forging meaningful relationships across ethnic lines, and submitting ourselves to one another as we listen, learn, and follow one another.
As we do this, we participate in the Kingdom that Jesus unleashed into the world. It’s a revolution that manifests the beauty of God’s dream for a united humanity while revolting against all forms of racism and the ugly Powers that fuel it.
Viva la revolution!
CHAPTER 11
THE REVOLT
AGAINST POVERTY AND GREED
Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
MOTHER TERESA
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort
to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
ERICH FROMM
MEET “THE RICH”
Some time ago I got into an animated conversation with a man who I knew had sacrificed a good deal to live in solidarity with the poor. At one point he claimed, “There’s no way a Christian living in a two-million-dollar home can say they’re following Jesus’ example of self-sacrificial living.”
“Really?” I said. “How about a million-dollar house, or a quarter-of-a-million-dollar house? Or how about a little run-down fifty-thousand-dollar house?” I asked. “After all, such a house would be considered a mansion by a large percent of people around the globe.”
The man smiled because he was aware that I knew this was about what his house cost—and he was feeling a bit self-righteous about it.
The Myth of a Christian Religion Page 12