Black History month has ended. How do you feel about that? Relieved? Did you get tired of hearing Black stuff? Is your response to police brutality stories, “just obey the law and you’ll be fine” while forgetting the Black people that do obey and don’t end up fine and the white people that don’t obey and do end up fine? Are you sick of hearing President Joe Biden and countless organizations acknowledging systemic racism and taking steps to combat it?
If you believe that racial justice issues — like African-Americans comprising 13.4% of the American population yet making up 38.6% of the prison population — only have to do with personal choices and responsibility, and are not in any way connected to racism, oppression, red-lining, slavery, intentional efforts to maintain minority poverty and encourage genocide, biases in sentencing criminals, biases in pursuing/arresting/charging people, old and new laws and policies that target minorities, or inequality, you have to also believe one or more of the following:
• At their core, Black people are more rude, violent, and disobedient than white people.
• At their core, Black people have a larger propensity to commit crime than white people. Poor uneducated Black people especially will commit more crime than poor uneducated white people.
• At their core, Black people are less intelligent than white people and therefore have less options or “get caught” more often.
• At their core, Black men are less interested in maintaining marriages, raising children, and maintaining healthy homes and relationships than white men.
• At their core, Black people cannot succeed spiritually as well as white people.
If you believe any or all of these things about Black people or any race or ethnicity, you are in fact a white supremacist and you are not acknowledging and respecting the heart of God and the way He made human beings.
Don’t believe me? Check the definition of white supremacy. God not being a respecter of persons isn’t just about status; it connects to distribution of inner gifts and characteristics. Remember, He causes the sun to rise on the good and the evil; the rain to fall on the wicked and the just. So, all things being equal, the percentages of rude, violent, criminal, intelligent, nice and strong people in the world are about even across races.
And the number of people arrested and in prison should roughly match racial/ethnic population percentages. But things are not equal, so the fact that many of these sorts of percentages don’t come close to matching is a huge indicator of systemic racism and residual effects of slavery and other racist institutions. Are you really going to respond by saying all races have been slaves before? Teach me the residual effects of those other races being slaves. God is not pleased with you continually denying or mitigating systemic racism, refusing to educate yourself in an unbiased and loving manner, and allowing yourself to believe that certain human beings, at their core, are less than you.
Michael Green
Centralia
