The Problem With The Current Desire For Racial Reconcilation

The most recent police shootings of Black men along with the shooting of a number of Dallas police officers as well as the shooting of a Missouri officer and a Georgia officer has inspired many a person to review their own perspective on race, gun laws, and the police. And it is good that we would review any of our perspectives let alone our perspectives on these issues. However, if we are honest about ourselves, the most recent shooting events of both Black men and police officers have given many of us a glimpse of the abyss, a place where there is an endless cycle of repression by the authorities resulting in retaliation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes to mind here.

So we are reviewing one of many Christian articles on racial reconciliation. And it seems that many of them have one trait, which in reality is a flaw. That flaw is to try to contribute to racial reconciliation by focusing solely on racial discord. Currently I am listening to such a podcast that quotes Martin Luther King on racism without quoting him on other subjects that he linked to racism.

The article being reviewed here is by Mark Galli (click here for a bio) called The Burden And Promise Of Racial Reconciliation (click here for the article). Now this article references another article to which I did not have full access to. However, by what could be read from both articles, the prospect of racial reconciliation is both restricted to just racial issues and is Christianized. And the problem with Christianizing the solution to racial reconciliation is that it provides no such solution to a secular world that rightfully clings to religious freedom along with the fact that part of Christianizing the solution means that we must wait for the Judgment Day before we can expect any significant degree of relief from the plague of racism.

With that being said, the article made one point that is never made enough times. That point is that the founding of our nation was based on racism. In our nation's case, that racism has been against both Blacks and Native Americans.

Yes, the article also talked about both exposing and righting some wrongs. But in the end, a key component to racial reconciliation  is never mentioned though it was mentioned a number of times by everyone's favorite race reconciler: Martin Luther King Jr. In the end, the initial steps that lead to racial reconciliation include following the the money. Consider the following quote my King as he spoke out against the Vietnam War (click here).

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Here, we should first note that we cannot solve our problem with racism by focusing on racism alone. Racism, materialism, and militarism are also referred to as racism, economic exploitation, and war are triplets, in another speech (click here) are linked together. We should note that materialism and economic exploitation are two sides of a multiple sided object as is war and militarism.

The second thing we should note is that, according to King, racism cannot be solved using a divide and conquer approach. We just cannot solve racism by focusing on it at the exclusion of the other evils. And this is where the current discussions, especially those coming from religiously conservative Christians, fall short and perhaps with good reason. To cure racism, according to King, we need to change our economic system to one that stresses sharing and cooperation as much as it promotes individualism. So we need a new economic system to cure racism (see the speech that used the term 'economic exploitation' in place of the term 'materialism'). We also need to reduce, if not eliminate,  our reliance on war and  militarism.

 In the Vietnam speech, King identifies the general ethic society must adapt in order to eliminate racism. That general ethic consists of society counting people as being more valuable than things like gadgets, profits, and property rights. When we put the two speeches together, we not only are told that we must restructure our society's economic system, society must change its values. But unlike the Christianized solutions to facilitate racial reconciliation, King presents us with civic ethic that infringes on nobody's religious rights unless they are worshipers of Ayn Rand.

Unfortunately, many pretenders will sanctimoniously quote King on how we can eliminate racism. And they do so never having fully read him. Because if they had read him, they would have realized that, according to him, we must address the evils of racism, materialism/poverty, and war/militarism together in order to just make a significant dent in one of them. In addition, not all of the changes needed to reduce racism in this nation will be welcomed changes. To change from Capitalism will result in disrupting the financial and ideological lives of many who passionately embrace a comfortable lifestyle. Why? Because unless one changes one's economic system, the hoarding of resources and the pursuit of the self will only ensure what the statistics continue to say: that wealth disparity reigns over the economic lives of the races and thus at least one race will always feel it is being short-changed by society and its systems (click here). The fruit most often produced by a continuing of such disparities is resentment. And without eliminating race-based resentment, there can be not significant reduction in racism.

After staring into the abyss, many of us better see the need for us to put a major dent into racism. But unless we learn King's perspective on how to battle racism, we will not only fail to battle racism, we will be sabotaging our own efforts. This article fails to view racism from King's perspective and thus it fails in adequately addressing the subject.

Dueling Banjos Play While Syrian Refugees Hope To Survive

What is at stake are hope and even life for those Syrians who would seek to find refuge here. We should note the kind of people we are talking about. The Syrians have already put most nations to shame when it comes to helping refugees. For that is what they did while our nation was creating between 3.5 million to 5 million refugees when we invaded Iraq (clich here). Most of the refugees went to either Syria or Jordan. And as of 2010, at least 1 million of them were in Syria (click here). But now that it is their turn to need help, they're finding that they may have already received their payment from the world with a pat on the back as nations decide whether to  accept them.

Of course there have been Christians weighing in on the issue of accepting Syrian refugees. On the side of being more reluctant out  of sense of fear/responsibility to allowing Syrian refugees here is an blogpost written by Bill Blankschaen (click here). How reluctant Blanschaen is is not quite clear since his post lacked specifics. But by the tone of it, he seems to want the Church and our nation to err way on the side of caution when it comes to allowing Syrian refugees. 

A position that seems, details are lacking again, to be more in the middle are article written by Gospel Coalition writers Kevin DeYoung and Trevin Wax (click here and there). It seems like the purpose of their articles/posts is to at least mention the counterbalance between the two main competing issues involved in accepting Syrian Refugees: the government's responsibility to keep its own citizens safe and secure,  and a call to show compassion to those in need. And finally we have a Christianity Today article, written by Mark Galli, that represents the view that leans toward throwing the doors of our nation wide open to the refugees (click here).

What else do we know or not know. Thus far we know that of Paris assailants who have been identified, not one of them is a Syrian citizen. There was some confusion because of a fake passport that was found in the aftermath of the attack. In fact, not only were the known attackers not Syrian, they were all citizens of European nations (click here). Should we now refuse Europeans entry into our nation?

There is something that we do not know which some of us think we know. In Trevin Wax's article, Wax makes the following statement about ISIS and its terrorism:

As we denounce these acts of violence with every fiber of our being, we cannot ignore the fundamental religious nature of this clash of worldviews. Whether or not we believe the Islamic State to be the inheritor of “true Islam” or a cruel distortion that is ravaging the world, there is no question that theology lies at the heart of today’s terrorist activity.

If the driving forces for ISIS are the same as what the driving forces have been the driving forces for Al-Qaeda, Wax's assessment here needs to be severely challenged. Why? Just by the looks of it, it assumes that the key difference between what members of ISIS have experienced and what peaceful members of any other part of the world have experienced revolves around religion. This assumes that war and failed governments have nothing to do with what created ISIS.  Such is a huge assumption. This was discussed in Tuesday's blogpost (click here).

In addition, what Tuesday's blogpost quoted from Jason Burke's book, Al-Qaeda: The True Story Of Radical Islam,  states that it is the combination of serious grievances plus a failed and deaf political system along with being on the receiving side of violence that can make one a terrorist, it isn't religion that does that. After all, history shows that representatives of all of the major religions have been involved in terrorism/war. During the British Mandate, Jewish terrorists were attacking both Arab and British targets. In addition, many would easily call Israel's attacks on the Palestinians acts of terrorism too. American Christians have, in the name of patriotism, often supported unnecessary wars such as the Vietnam War and George W. Bush's Iraq War. And of course, allegedly, depending on whom one is speaking with, representing Islam are groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

There are several points to note here. The first point of course, which has already been mentioned, is the alleged ties between ISIS and Islam. That the members of ISIS are Muslims does not prove that ISIS comes from Islam any more than the religious identity of KKK members prove that the KKK is a Christian group--a point that has been made several times in Facebook posts. Again, as in Wax's statement that was examined earlier, such takes for granted the effects that the political and social contexts that were set in a war have on ISIS members and their sympathizers.

Second, we should note that, as Nicholas Wolterstorff often points out, when it comes to helping the vulnerable including the alien, we are no longer just dealing with issues of compassion, we are also dealing with issues of justice. And when dealing with issues of justice regarding refugees, we are no longer dealing with freedom of choice in terms of what we shall share or not share, we are dealing with what do we owe the Syrian refugees. For when we do not give them what we owe, we are visiting injustice on them.

Finally, we should note that there is a point of continuity between taking any other position than a generous one toward allowing Syrian refugees into America and one of the justifications of the Iraq War. We should remember that one of the ways the Bush Administration defended America's invasion of Iraq was that the invasion allowed us to fight the terrorists there, rather than here. And now, many of those who supported that war want to keep Syrian refugees out America for the same reason. It's as if we are saying to the world: 'Yes, we will do what we can to oppose terrorism regardless of the price others must pay as long as we are not attacked on our own soil.' Was it ironic or predictable that the war we fought to keep terrorism away from our doorstep is now, because of its role in creating ISIS, threatening to bring terrorism to where we live. And instead of reflecting on what we might have done to contribute to this new threat, we prefer to externalize evil by how we assoicate the new king of terrorism, ISIS, with either the religion or national identity of those who are different from us.