Addressing the Structural Causes of America’s Race Problem
By Patrick Anderson, editor
Conservative New York Times columnist, David Brooks, recently stated on the PBS Newshour that the political divide regarding race in America today is over whether race is an individual issue or a structural issue. He said that if race is to be viewed primarily as an individual issue (he called that the Republican Party’s position), racial inequities can be overcome through individual effort and choices. But if it is to be viewed structurally (he referred to that as the Democratic Party’s position), that would imply a need for significant changes in the construct of American society demonstrating the need for a correction in the fabric of America.
The individual versus structural construction of the race issue is a way white people tend to put the subject. As we express our individualism, who among us cannot celebrate the heroic accomplishments of Frederick Douglass, or Jackie Robinson, or Thurgood Marshall, or any of a long line of African-Americans who have overcome racial obstacles to achieve success? Their accomplishments provide a balm to the white person’s guilt and inspiration to black persons’ aspirations. “See? They did it. So can you.”
But the focus on the exceptional achievements of exceptional persons ignores the untold numbers of persons of color with exemplary talents and gifts who have been systemically denied access to opportunities to cultivate and express their gifts due to the ugly history and legacy of white supremacy and racism. By focusing on individuals we impose the dual judgement of praising the success and blaming the absence of success on individual deficiencies. The fundamental problem with this approach is that we ignore the structural effects of 400 years of enslavement and other forms of bondage inflicted on people based on nothing more than the color of their skin.
Thus, the individualistic approach is fatally flawed. And for the Christian, dividing persons created in the divine image according to race or ability or any other characteristic is unbiblical. Are we not all members of one body in Christ? Are we not admonished to share each other’s burdens, to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep?
It is no wonder that the individual understanding of race is favored by white people; it is easier than the alternative understanding—the structural defects in our society. The historical facts white folks choose to ignore when talking about racial inequities are legion. We have never quantified or acknowledged the costs of slavery and its aftermath in our national story. The United States of Amnesia (as some have called it) has never fully studied the impact of the human trafficking of Africans, the generations of family disruption by slave owners, centuries of disenfranchisement and wage theft, Dred Scott, Jim Crow, decades of lynching, segregation, housing discrimination and financial impoverishment.
We white people have never fully owned up to the hostility in our minds toward people of color. We have been miseducated about the unearned benefits shared by white people and the undeserved disadvantages shared by black people. Never in my public school was I informed about “red lining” practices of mortgage loan providers by which dark-skinned persons were banned from purchasing homes in “better” neighborhoods with access to the schools and other benefits derived therefrom. I was never told about the enormous wealth gained by white slave owners from the free and enforced labors of dark-skinned persons which found its way into the coffers of white universities, banks, churches and insurance companies.
I attended Furman University oblivious to the fact that the establishment of my university was funded largely by wealthy white people who obtained that wealth through the exploited, stolen labor of black persons. It was not until my junior year at Furman that the very first African- American student was admitted. At the same time HBCUs (historical black colleges and universities) struggled to provide educational opportunities to black persons who were systematically denied access to even publicly funded education. Without endowments, donated property, high tuition and all the other advantages of white Southern society, HBCUs forged ahead to create educational opportunities which should have been automatically available to all Americans.
This is the subject for this special edition of Christian Ethics Today. The content herein is a summons to all Christians seeking to follow Jesus to recognize and acknowledge the structural conditions which have brought our country to this time in history. We cannot understand, much less resolve, the racial divide in America without coming to terms with those structural conditions.
I am encouraged that a relatively large number of Christians, black and white, are working together on these issues. Since 1989, Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a lawyer and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has repeatedly introduced HR. 40, named in part to reference the “40 acres and a mule” unfulfilled promise made to freed slaves in 1865 by the Union, the first effort toward reparations. He re-introduced an updated version of the legislation in January 2017, now titled the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act”. It particularly addresses recent expanded legal and societal discourse about the Transatlantic Slave Trade and reparations. His efforts have been largely ignored by legislative leaders of both political parties.
Various protestant denominations have joined the effort to encourage truth and reconciliation efforts between black and white churches. Former President Jimmy Carter began such an effort among Baptists through the New Baptist Covenant, which brings local churches and church leaders, black and white, to work together for mutual reconciliation.
The Angela Project, originating in Louisville, Kentucky is a part of the overall effort to address the structural issues related to race relations in America. This project is named for one of the first African slaves to arrive in America at Point Comfort on the James River in Virginia, during the latter part of the summer of 1619. Simmons College, one of the historic black colleges and universities, is largely responsible for the effort resulting in the essays presented here.
This issue of Christian Ethics Today represents a step in exploring how to understand racism as a system of oppression and how to act in a way to change some aspect of it. Educational inequality, which is the subject of the essays included here, represents one part of the larger systematic issues of race. The Angela Project is not confined only to educational inequality, but over the next three years will focus on economic inequality and reparations.
Dr. Lewis Brogdon, provost of Simmons College, is the guest editor of this issue of Christian Ethics Today. He has secured the essays included, for which we are greatly indebted.
The Angela Project…is a part of the overall effort to address the structural issues related to race relations in America. This project is named for one of the first African slaves to arrive in America at Point Comfort on the James River in Virginia, during the latter part of the summer of 1619.
Randy, put this quote just before the paragraph beginning: The Angela Project
