Between the Trees

Sorry for the bombarding with new posts on race in the past few days, I’ve just spent a lot of time thinking through it and I want to offer a thought I’ve been having a lot the past few days.

There’s two comments I keep coming across and I think they’re both betraying an implicit assumption that destroys the speaker’s credibility in the eyes of minorities. The first is one I mentioned earlier that goes something like this: “It’s not excusable for black voters to vote for a black candidate solely on the basis of race without considering the pressing issues of the day.” The second is, “It’s good that an African-American is president, but I hope that he’s president for reasons besides the fact that he’s African-American.”

Both betray the assumption that race is not a, “pressing issue of the day.” And when most African-Americans hear you say this, most will immediately ignore you. Why? Because the fact that you think race isn’t a pressing issue indicates that you have never spent any length of time in serious dialogue with them about these issues.

If you had, you’d know it is indeed a pressing issue and that for them race is simply the one issue that swings their vote, just as abortion is the one issue that defines the voting choices of many white Christians.

Think of it this way: You don’t think of yourself as white. If you think of the main things that define you as a person race won’t come to mind. I never once thought of race as a defining trait for me until I spent a summer in Zambia. Suddenly I was a racial minority. In fact, I went an entire month without speaking to another white male. Then I started identifying myself as white.

I think the takeaway from this is that we identify ourselves by what makes us unique. Put another way - you’re not cognizant of the traits you share with everyone around you. You’re aware of the traits that set you apart, the traits that aren’t “normal.” In the USA, white is the majority. Therefore white people don’t identify themselves in those terms. Black people as a minority, do identify as black. In fact, I’d take this a step further - often what is dominant becomes “normal,” in the vernacular of the culture.

This means that what is a non-issue to whites is a huge issue to African-Americans, even if there were no traumatic history preceding it. It’s an issue simply by virtue of the fact that it cuts at something that is fundamental to their identity. When you add in the impossible-to-overstate injustices to which they’ve been subjected for 400 years, the issue becomes that much larger.

I think there’s two applications we need to take away from this:

1) We need to be very careful in how we think and speak about these issues. We need to understand that these issues - though they exist as mere abstractions to us as whites - are profoundly personal for minorities, especially African-Americans.

2) When we’re forced to take a side on this issue, the pattern ought to be that we side with the marginalized or oppressed group. This seems to be the pattern we see in Jesus in the Gospels, he constantly sides with the marginalized peoples of his day when forced to pick one side or the other. That doesn’t mean we disregard all other criteria in our thought process or that we uncritically accept everything we are told. And it certainly doesn’t mean our primary loyalty is to that one marginalized group. Our chief loyalty is always to Jesus, but when it comes to applying his lordship to our lives on a practical day-to-day level, I’d much rather find myself living in the margins with the oppressed and forgotten than living comfortably with the wealthy, affluent, and comfortable.