While we should be cautious in jumping to conclusions on any particular case, there is still racial hatred out there. And this racial hatred is not all unidirectional. There is plenty of racial hatred of whites by blacks, too. Many people would seek to justify this part of the equation by saying that it is payback. Since when is revenge a healthy, godly thing?

Racism hasn’t gone away like many people thought it had. Race hatred seems to be worse now than it was when I was growing up. Or maybe I just didn’t hear about it then, and it has always been this bad. Or, the powers that be have stoked the fires of race baiting. Whatever your explanation of how it has gotten to be this bad, it’s pretty bad right now. There is a list of things that black people can’t do with zero fear and white people can. There are the Native Americans who always seem to get ignored in the discussion. There is Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and many, many others. There’s a lot of outrage. And there are plenty of people who think that the outrage should not only continue, but should escalate until “things change.” Given that there are reams of books written on the subject, I do not pretend either to be an expert, or to have the answers in any kind of fulsome way. This post is not intended even to be comprehensive in what it addresses, let alone be adequate to the subject matter. It is just a few thoughts on racism.

First things first, then, there is still racism out there. It doesn’t do us any good to deny it. One does not have to engage in “guiltier than thou” hand-wringing to acknowledge this. While we should be cautious in jumping to conclusions on any particular case, there is still racial hatred out there. And this racial hatred is not all unidirectional. There is plenty of racial hatred of whites by blacks, too. Many people would seek to justify this part of the equation by saying that it is payback. Since when is revenge a healthy, godly thing? The Count of Monte Cristo ought to have taught us better than that. All racially motivated hatred is evil. Period. It doesn’t matter which race is hating which other race for being different, that is wrong. But on what basis is it wrong? Here I want to discuss where I think the beginnings of the solution lie. This is important: the basis for claiming that all racially-based hatred is evil has to be part of the solution to that same hatred. Or, to put it another way, I believe that proper theology (in the broader sense, which would include anthropology) has the beginnings of the solution.

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