The Uneasy Conscience of a White Christian: Making Racial Equity a Priority

Introduction

Whenever a police officer unjustifiably kills a Black American, or when some other person acts in some clearly racially injurious way, one wants to ask, What kind of person would do that? What values do they have? What are their priorities? What character traits do they possess? The same questions can also be asked about those who actively oppose racially injurious actions. What kinds of people are they? What values do they hold dear? What are their priorities and character traits?

These questions run through this book. They presuppose the assertion that moral character affects the way we treat other people, in particular, the way we White people treat people of color.

This assertion strikes me as evident, because moral character plays an essential role in all of our interactions with others. Yet rarely is moral character discussed in treatments of race. News media typically do not carry stories about the character traits of people involved in racial incidents. It is the incidents themselves, the objective facts, that readers want to know about. Rarely is there a story about the themes behind the incidents—the hundred-year history leading up to the incidents, the sociological and psychological backdrop of them, the legal precedents that shaped them, or the character traits of the people involved in them. Though some books on race deal with the themes behind the incidents, they too seldom deal with the character traits of police officers who use excessive force or of activists who resist racial inequity.

Moral character is important. Think, for instance, of the propensity to be morally imaginative. Those who have this trait to a high degree use their imagination in a variety of moral contexts. They imagine what it would be like to experience the pain that a friend is experiencing. They picture themselves loving someone in the way that that person needs to be loved. If they are White, they imagine what it would be like to be a person of color in a racialized culture. All of these instances of imagination affect how people act.

Think also of the moral perceptions one has. These are the ways one perceives people in moral situations. They too affect how people act. Those who are sensitive to the difficulties disabled people face will exert extra care in their presence. People who value compassion highly will be more likely to perceive that people are in need and thus will tend to act in compassionate ways. White people who perceive people of color as having equal value will tend to treat them equally.

Think, last, of organizations such as businesses, local town councils, or churches that take White authority and control for granted, that is, regard the authority and control of White people in business, town, and church affairs as the way things are. The people in these organizations tend to look upon the concerns of people of color in their organizations as having less value than that of White folks, and they resist demands for shared power. The character trait here that needs to be eradicated can be dubbed taking White authority and control for granted.

These instances of moral character in racial contexts point to the general truth that having the right moral character is important in racial contexts. The character traits that strike me as being important for those of us who are White are:

•Being sensitive to the experiences of people of color

•Being empathetic toward the trauma people of color have experienced

•Being willing to resist the tendency to feel superior to people of color

•Being willing to resist the propensity to exercise authority over people of color

•Being morally imaginative in racial contexts

•Having the right moral perceptions of people of color

Without these character traits, we White Americans would not be sensitive to the experiences people of color have. Racial equity would not be a priority for us, nor would we be openly welcoming to people of color. We would not understand why people of color are so upset when another prominent racial incident takes place. We would assume, most likely unconsciously, that being White is normal and that it justifies being entitled to certain advantages and positions of dominance.

It is no doubt true that we White people extend character traits analogous to these six toward other White people. But it does not automatically follow that we extend the character traits to people of color. In fact, as I try to show later, we White people who are otherwise gracious, loving, and kind do not uniformly extend the six character traits to people of color. Our assumptions about the normality and entitlement of being White are deeply entrenched in us. One of the aims of this book, then, is to show how we White people can live out these character traits toward people of color.

These character traits are, of course, desirable for all people. But it is not one-sided to focus on them for White folks, as I do, just as it would not be one-sided for a Black author to focus on them for Black folks. The traits are as important for Black people as they are for White people, though they are exemplified in different ways, given that Whites have dominated Blacks for centuries.

The character traits, in both their racial and nonracial applications, are rooted in biblical values. There is, first, the rock-bottom theme that runs through the entire Bible that all humans are made in the image of God. As such, all humans should be treated with equal regard, without unjust preferential treatment. Particular passages exhibit this biblical theme. The Samaritan who stopped to aid a Jewish traveler who had fallen prey to robbers on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was sensitive to the experiences of someone different from him (Luke 10:30–37). He instinctively imagined how he would have felt if he himself had been beaten, stripped, and robbed. The Golden Rule, enunciated by Jesus in Matthew 7:12, enjoins us to treat other people in ways we ourselves would want to be treated. It does not limit that treatment only to those who are like us. Paul’s great declaration of inclusion in Galatians 3:28 entails that we should be welcoming to those who are radically different from us: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. In both Paul’s time and ours, these categories of people inhabit distinct social realities. Although Paul’s declaration involves the law and grace he had been talking about in previous verses, it makes it imperative that we regard people who inhabit these distinct realities with equal respect.

These biblical values, along with the character traits based on them, need to be taken more seriously in racial matters than they currently are among White Americans. This is a presupposition that runs through the chapters in this book.

Another presupposition is that we White folks must read and listen to the descriptions that Black Americans and other people of color give of their own experiences. This listening is necessary for the same reason that we must listen to our friends, acquaintances, and family members—to know how they have been harmed, what their feelings are, the standpoint from which they speak, and the contexts they inhabit. Without this knowledge, we will simply talk past them. We are not likely to have empathy for them or a sense of equity toward them. And we may become alienated from them.

This presupposition means that we White Americans cannot have well-founded thoughts about race relations in the United States without some knowledge of the horrors of slavery; White resistance to Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement; lynching; Jim Crow oppression; the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; racially motivated legal restrictions enacted by federal, state, and local governments in the US; Japanese internment camps during World War II; current ways in which people of color are treated differently; the damaging things that are sometimes said to them; and the tacit racial ethos in which we swim, often without knowing it. In particular, White Christians cannot have well-founded thoughts about race relations without coming to learn that the harm people of color have experienced in the ways just mentioned have often been at the hands of White Christians. The point of this reading and listening is for we White Americans to discover, from the standpoint of people of color, how they have been harmed, and to realize that this harm has been carried out by people just like us.

We White people must listen to people of color for another reason—to learn their perceptions of us White folks. Listening to the perceptions that people of color have of us White Americans is necessary because other people sometimes see our character traits better than we ourselves do. A therapist may recognize her clients’ anxiety or anger better than they do, or someone may observe what is really going on with a close friend better than the friend herself.

This second reason for listening to other people is especially important in racial contexts. Drew Hart describes an occasion when he and a White suburban pastor were having tea one afternoon in a McDonald’s. The pastor said, I can’t see what is printed on your side of this tea cup, and you can’t see what is printed on my side of the cup, meaning that each would have to explain their racial experiences to the other. Hart graciously thanked the pastor for his sentiment, but responded that he, Hart, a Black college professor, actually did know a good deal about what was on the pastor’s side of the cup. Throughout his life he had been exposed to history, literature, and politics from a White perspective. He had had numerous White teachers, watched television and read newspapers controlled by White people, and lived in mostly White suburban neighborhoods.¹ Hart was telling his White pastor friend that he could tell him some things about himself that he probably did not know.

Sometimes we humans get defensive when others point out truths about ourselves that we would rather not know, especially when they involve race. As George Yancy observes, Marking whiteness in the presence of whites can be a profoundly disquieting experience for them, especially when the agent doing the marking is a person of color, which Yancy himself is.² Courage, however, requires that we not let that defensiveness be both our first and last response, but that we get beyond it to searching interrogation of ourselves. In this there is a third presupposition that runs through the chapters in this book—the need to listen to ourselves.

My Black friends decidedly and passionately concur with these three presuppositions. In a recent conversation, AJ declared that America does not like him. He has lived with this feeling for years. I can’t breathe, he stated, then repeated, with some agitation. A week earlier, Kiki described a conversation she had had with a White friend who had voted in a recent presidential election for a person whose policies would have had deleterious racial effects. Don’t you realize that your vote harms me? she asked him incredulously. She has not given up hoping that her White friends who have beliefs that hurt people like her will change, but has redirected her energy toward empowering those who don’t have the same political, economic, or social resources that White people have.

I want to be true to AJ and Kiki. To do that, I have to describe the character traits that are pertinent to valuing racial equity for them.

1 . Hart, Trouble I’ve Seen,

23–25

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2 . Yancy, Look, a White!,

154

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A Note on the Stories

The ten stories that are scattered throughout this book are edited transcriptions of interviews I conducted, most via Zoom. Joi, Devlin, and Jonathan are spouses of former students; Beth, Israel, and Lisa are former students; and Sophie and Ana are acquaintances. All are graduates of evangelical Christian colleges, and, except for Sophie, all are Black, Hispanic, or Asian Americans. I have identified them with their real names, which are used with their permission.

The stories depict in honest and raw detail some of the racialized experiences each person has had, beginning with a description of their first racial awareness. Except for Sophie, that occurred in their early childhoods. From there, the stories move in different directions. Joi explains the code-switching she had to engage in and what it felt like to break free from it. Beth tells how she gave up her childhood desire to erase her Asian identity. Jonathan describes in graphic detail several unsettling encounters with White police officers and later a number of incidents that deeply angered him. Devlin gives an account of how the educational system failed him, plus descriptions of what the church he is now a pastor of does to promote racial harmony. Israel describes the racial undertones in his early interactions with White friends, plus his reasons for feeling comfortable as an adult in different racial settings. Ana mentions several ways she must deal with being a Latina in a predominantly White country. Lisa tells how, off and on for decades, she has felt that she does not belong in White spaces. Sophie, who has inhabited White spaces from birth, describes the events during her year-long journey toward racial sensitivity while she was in college.

I was able to get these stories because each of the persons I asked knew me. Also, the occasion for asking about their racialized experiences was for a specific, public goal, namely, to appear in print in this book. It is not likely that Black, Hispanic, or Asian Americans would reveal what was said to me in these interviews in casual conversations of the kind one might have in a coffee shop or on one’s front porch. Indeed, it is often better for White people not to ask people of color about their racialized experiences in everyday conversations, else their non-White friends be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of times they would have to describe those experiences. However, as Lisa and Devlin mention, in public, church contexts, such conversations may be needed to maintain harmony and unity.

These stories connect intimately with the themes of the book in a number of ways:

1.Without a knowledge of the racialized experiences of Black, Hispanic, or Asian Americans, White Americans are less likely to be aware of their dominance.

2.By having an acquaintance of these racialized experiences, one is more likely to be persuaded of the importance of racial issues.

3.Knowing the racialized experiences of people of color can prompt White Americans to recognize their racial socialization, as described in chapter 2.

4.It is easier to exercise the imagination required by the Golden Rule when one is acquainted with the racialized experiences of non-White folks (see chapter 4).

5.Listening to the stories of people of color can prompt White police officers and other Americans to have the right moral perceptions of them (see chapter 5).

6.The stories supplement the statistics regarding racial disparities in the United States (see chapter 7).

7.The stories help one understand why the 1961 Freedom Riders did what they did (see chapter 11) and how slavery affects Black Americans now (see chapter 12).

8.Knowing the stories can prompt churches to engage in interracial dialogue that may be needed to maintain church integration (see chapter 13).

9.Knowing the racialized experiences of people of color can prompt White Americans to pursue character traits that are pertinent to racial interaction (see chapter 14).

In general, the specific, detailed stories highlight the importance of listening to people of color, and they make the themes of the book come alive. They are fuel from which the flames of racial sensitivity can burst forth.

1

The Uneasy Conscience of a White Christian

I, a White college professor, had taught philosophy at Christian colleges for forty-five years before arriving at Wheaton College in 2013. Two years later, Wheaton, an evangelical Christian college in Illinois, changed its core requirements so that a single course could count for more than one category of required classes. Ah! I said to myself. I will teach a course called Race and Justice for which students get credit for both the philosophy and the diversity in the United States categories.

Nothing, however, in what I had previously taught dealt directly with racial issues. Nor had I read anything about race, except for several slave narratives. I had, though, visited Black churches from time to time. And for some time I had regarded racial issues as important. So I was ripe for learning a good deal more about race.

I got the philosophy department’s approval and the faculty curriculum committee’s approval, then spent more than a year reading numerous books and articles on the subject. I read about the nature of race, the ethical underpinnings of racial equity, and Whiteness. I also watched a six-part television series on the history of African Americans, read more autobiographies, and read Frederick Douglass’s famous Fourth of July speech, given in 1852.³

I never thought that the extensive reading I did for the course, plus actually teaching it a number of times, would change me. But it did, in numerous ways—ways that changed my conception of what it is like to be a person of color in the United States and ways involving my own self-conception.

Changed

(1) I became much more aware of the overt ways in which many American people of color have been discriminated against, including having fewer opportunities to buy houses in White neighborhoods, receiving disproportionately longer prison sentences, and being stopped by police officers more often. I had known a little about some of these, but had thought that most of them had occurred in the past. I discovered, though, that many kinds of differential treatment continue to exist, as shown by numerous statistics and individual reports. These include statistics showing that Black Americans die disproportionately as a result of encounters with police, that Black women die in childbirth at a much higher rate than do non-Black women for reasons that do not have a biological cause, and that residential segregation affects the quality of health care that Black Americans have access to. Other persons of color—Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans—I discovered, also receive differential treatment, some in the same way that Black Americans do and some in different ways. The sheer extent of these differences was a jarring revelation. Each new bit of information I acquired jolted me a little more out of my White slumber.

Knowing these facts meant that I would have to regard many of the persons of color I encountered as having been hurt in some way and to some degree by Whites. I could no longer believe that we had had the same experiences.

(2) I learned that the history of people of color in the United States has been ignored or distorted in history textbooks. This awareness began with a chance event on a Saturday afternoon four decades earlier. My wife had been on errands that Saturday afternoon and had randomly stopped at a garage sale, where she bought a book of slave narratives for a quarter. As I read the autobiographies of former slaves, I was stunned to learn that slaves were whipped and raped, that slave families were sometimes broken up when they were sold, and that they were prevented from learning to read and write—all by respectable and otherwise upright church people. My awareness of these facts was intensified by watching the six-part television series on the history of African Americans.

Nothing of what I learned from these sources had been taught in the White schools I grew up in. I felt betrayed by that fact. It felt to me that the true US history had been covered up. It did not matter whether that was intentional or unintentional. The effect was the same—ignorance of what really happened.

I was ignorant too, I discovered, of how Native Americans had been given reservations and their children forced into boarding schools designed to eradicate their culture, how Asian Americans had been constricted during World War II, and how Mexican Americans have experienced second-class citizenship in the United States. Although these people groups had not been enslaved, they had, I learned, been subordinated to White America.

Hitherto, my conception of US history was full of White heroes who founded a great nation with the noble pursuit of freedom—a cause of historical pride in me. I would have to set that aside and somehow integrate Black history into it—a history that is replete with White masters who