Racists 'R' Us

As racist attacks on Asians rise alarmingly in the land of the free, we are appropriately outraged. But if any of us believe we have not ourselves been tainted by the sin of racism, we are part of the problem.

A New Yorker cartoon put it this way: a white man is sitting on an examination table in his doctor’s office as a physician shows him an X-ray: “This is the racist bone you said you didn’t have in your body.”

That’s the point: we all have racist bones in our bodies. 

Which is worse? Brandishing our racist bones as bludgeons against persons we consider “others”? Or continuing to hide our racism while we pray the divisions in our society will go away?

The Psalmst writes: 

O LORD, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart; who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors; in whose eyes the wicked are despised, but who honor those who fear the LORD; who stand by their oath even to their hurt; who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent. Those who do these things shall never be moved. Psalm 15.

Back in the day, most hate mongers tended to obscure their identity. What goes around comes around, folks said, and wicked words could backfire. Best to spraypaint swastikas and racial slurs in secret, lest the good guys come after you.

Not so today. Venomous words that used to be hissed in moral sewers are now tweeted from the cyber mountaintops. Many recent tweets have referred to the “China Virus” or “Kung Flu,” and the slurs have been accompanied by vicious attacks on all Asians. Most of these 140-letter messages are signed.

Of course we can dismiss these miscreant tweeters as idiots, but the ease with which they flaunt their odium is frightening.

The ironic thing is that all these racist twitterers who think their country is going to hell are entitled to express their views by virtue of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Stupidity is constitutionally protected – a reality we can celebrate every time we sway to the rhythms of “God Bless America.” And while it can be unnerving that racists express themselves publicly with such impunity, the First Amendment also protects right-wing pundits such as Tucker Carlson who define their hate speak as mere conservatism. 

But let’s be careful here. As noxious as the hate speakers may be, they clearly fall in the category of those Jesus told us to love.

And recent events also remind us there are at least two types of racists: those who flaunt their hatred and those who deny it.

The fact is, racism persists in our culture like an infection and many who have the most virulent strain don’t even know they are sick. 

Today in a million offices and schools, white folks will make stupidly racist remarks based on stupidly racist assumptions about Asians and persons of color. They will react to persons of color differently and treat persons of color differently – and, when challenged about it, they will be stunned and hurt because – as they will tell you – “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”

Racism flourishes in the land and each day the majority finds a new way to make the minority feel marginalized. My daughter, who is racially mixed (as are my five other children), reacted this way a few years ago when President Obama tried to make peace between a cop and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an African American professor, The cop arrested Gates on the professor's own porch because the cop assumed he was an intruder. Obama invited the cop and the professor to the White House for a beer. My daughter wrote in her Facebook update: “Elita wishes she could have a beer with the president every time she gets racially profiled.”

It goes without saying – or should – that racism is not the sole bailiwick of whites. It’s endemic in the human condition. My wife, who was born in Havana, looked sufficiently different from the locals when she worked in Americus, Ga., in the early 1980s that she was pointedly asked, “What are you?” 

Martha has often commented on the surprise expressed by us American Baptist white folks when members of the Hispanic American Baptist Caucus complained about the domination of the Black American Baptist Caucus in denominational life – as did the Asian Caucus and Native American Caucus. “How can people who live under discrimination and injustice despise one another?” white folks would ask, genuinely shocked.

Occasionally Martha suggests that Cubans – residents of an island that projects a carefully calculated image of edenic racial harmony – are as racist as anyone. “Black members of my family make a distinction between themselves and ‘negros americanos,’ who obviously don’t benefit from the same redemptive mestizaje of the islands,” she says.

But I doubt Cubans have cornered the market on racism. The people I grew up with in Central New York State were too good at it to cede the honor to anyone else. There were only a handful of African Americans in Madison County, some of whom may have been descended from slaves who settled in Peterboro, an outpost of the Underground Railroad operated by the abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Looking back, I am appalled by memories of how the white majority – including me – treated them. Black children were taunted with the ‘N’ word on the playground, or slapped by white teachers and – in one memorable incident – subjected to an incredibly obtuse but well meaning teacher who used the ‘N’ word in a rhyme to select the next person to read from a text book: “eeney, meeney, miney mo ...” 

I can’t begin to imagine how uncomfortable we made children of color back then. And most of us oppressors would have insisted that we didn’t have a racist bone in our bodies.

I haven’t seen Tony Campolo for years, but judging from his press pictures, he’s the least changed of my Eastern Baptist College professors from the sixties.

Tony was known for making startling claims with ex cathedra authority, which was challenging in the day when you couldn’t vet his claims through Google, and he tried out some of his more famous lines on us: “Last night when you were sleeping, 30,000 kids died of malnutrition and you don't give a shit about it. Worse, you're more upset that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids starved to death.”

Once Tony said something, it was hard to forget it. Among the Tonyisms I remember:

“If you grew up in the United States, you are a racist.”

I first heard Tony say that in Soc 200 in 1969, and the notion surprised me. But as the years pass, I find fewer reasons to doubt it. I’m a racist, you’re a racist, all God’s children who grew up in the race-obsessed cauldron of American culture are racist.

Now, that’s not necessarily a peculiar aberration. Racism is a sin, and we all know we are sinners who fall short of the glory of God. To deny our racism is to deny we are sinners.

The next time you hear someone say, “I'm color-blind,” or, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” smirk ironically and walk away. 

Certainly people in the U.S. (and elsewhere) who openly tweet their hatred are to be feared – loved as Jesus willed it – but feared nonetheless. 

Particularly scary are those white folks who complain they have lost their freedom and status because a black man was twice elected president, and because he declared a commitment to universal healthcare, economic justice, immigration reform, and gun control. 

Those nervous white folks have difficulty seeing that they haven’t lost any freedoms because freedom is being offered to more people. In fact, the more races, ages, ethnic groups, and sexual orientations that are empowered in the U.S. system, the more freedom everyone has.

Be that as it may, the most dangerous people in America are not those who tweet their hatred openly. 

Even more problematical are those who don’t believe they are racists. 

That problem group may include you, me, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Al Sharpton, or anyone who is supposed to have a dispensation from the sin of racism. 

But racism is like any other sin: all have done it, and all have fallen short of the glory of God.

Racism is also a deadly virus in the body politic. Jesus sought to make it clear wherever he went that the realm of God requires opening our hearts and minds and loving God as much as every human we encounter on the shadowy pathways of life.

Loving our neighbors and loving our enemies is the only cure available for the virus of racism.

Repeating the gospel of Campolo: “You can’t grow up in the United States without being a racist.

And the first step toward the cure is to admit is that racists are us.