America is a racialized country, meaning it’s affected by a history of racism. People see/think in racial terms and according to racial categorizations. Look at our census. It’s everywhere. While that is different from America being de jure racist today, the past has an effect. https://twitter.com/nikkihaley/status/1298260967256514562
2/ And there are still racists in America who operate along the grooves and ruts of racialization created by past legal and social barriers created to enforce segregated society. So, for many, the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past, as Faulkner famously said. It’s zombie racism.
3/ To say today that “America is a racist county” or to deny a 300+ year history of racism’s affects on America is to err both ways. Yes, we are a country that has actively fought racism for decades. But, we can’t get the spot out. The history runs too deep. It keeps showing up.
4/ And this is what people can’t understand. There are social/cultural structures formed by the past that go beyond individual decisions and that keep shaping us today. It’s basic common sense. But, we don’t use it when it comes to race because we believed the Progressive Myth.
5/ The Progressive Myth is the idea that humans continue to socially evolve and just get better as time passes. It’s related to evolutionary biology and enlightenment thought and has been embraced by conservatives denying that racism continues to affect us. It is unbiblical.
6/ One doesn’t have to be racist to live along the ruts and barriers created by past racialization. And when the loving, non-racist lives in those ruts while embracing the Progressive, unbiblical Myth of natural human progress without recognizing the landscape, it’s perpetuated.
7/ I don’t call people racists. It’s unproductive. And, I’m grateful I live in a country where people have sought to address our past in many ways, albeit imperfectly. But, we need to recognize that America was racialized in the past and that past still affects us today. And ...
8/ ... core issue of “protect, promote, and defend my way of life over and above others” is still with us today and drives the effects of past/present racialization into the future. We need a Philippians 2:1-11 ethic in the church as a salt/light witness to America.
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