A Final Appeal

Tomorrow we face perhaps the most consequential presidential election since 1864. Two great questions were at stake in that contest over 150 years ago:

Would the republic survive?

Who would be included in it?

Echoes of those questions face us today. Voting for Trump—for authoritarian White nationalism—aligns us with the most destructive political tradition in American history.

Though I’ve always been interested in politics, I’ve never before spoken out about an election as I have this year. But never has someone so completely unfit in every possible way been this close to the presidency. His comprehensive ignorance and foolishness are disqualifying by themselves. Combine that with his cruelty and his publicly declared plans to oppress people, and we have a dangerous brew. His oppressive plans are not abstractions to me. I can't assume it's all talk. I know the people he has maligned. They’re friends and neighbors.

Our community is full of good people. It is not the hellhole of Donald Trump's racist imagination.

I am shocked and grieved that so many American Christians are willing to follow the oppressor because he might be on their team and appoint supreme court justices to their liking. This dream is so consuming that Christians are willing to trample on their neighbors in their rush to see it brought to reality.  

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for new kinds of oppression, with no realistic prospect of reducing its existing forms. Tomorrow, please care for others and protect your integrity by voting for anyone but him, or abstaining.

We Have the Nation's Attention

This, out from Gallup today, is fascinating:

I wrote earlier this month that this is the best moment for "race relations" (a horrible term) in decades. The American public might not describe this moment in such cheerful terms, but it appears that many agree that it is at least consequential.

The brief spike you see in the early 1990s is the Rodney King verdict and subsequent violence in Los Angeles. Other than that brief moment, more Americans currently say "racism/race relations" is the biggest issue facing the country than at any time since the 1960s.

What do these numbers mean? Three quick things:

1) Racial injustice is invisible to Americans unless highly publicized--usually violent--spectacles bring it to light. Schools did not suddenly become more segregated in December, 2014. The justice system did not turn on a dime and start brutalizing Black people. Poverty did not take an unexpected racial turn this December. These are longstanding issues that impoverish and kill and cause misery and heartache. They are invisible under normal circumstances.

2) The movement is accomplishing something meaningful. Don't get me wrong. We need much more tangible accomplishments. But this poll represents a dramatic shift in public consciousness that we've only seen once before since the death of Martin Luther King. This is not sufficient in itself, but it may be a necessary precondition for the more tangible changes that need to occur.

3) This will surely be, like the 1992 eruption you see in the graph, just a brief spike before a return to the normal baseline, unless we continue to organize, protest, disrupt, and bring our concerns before the nation in a way that it cannot ignore. Our activity does not need to stay in the same form. Less important than any specific means of protest is our ability to craft an overall posture of protest such that we are increasingly organized, increasingly specific, increasingly assertive. We must develop a large, sustainable movement capable of escalating over time. The media will come and go, as will the nation's attention. We know this. We must be organized in such numbers that we can bring justice back onto the national agenda repeatedly and reclaim the nation's attention until substantive change is achieved.

Going to a protest this week is nice, but making plans to be on board for the tough years ahead is more important.

The Dilemma of Nonviolence

I believe in nonviolence. Don't get me wrong. I believe in it as a strategic matter, and more importantly I believe in it because my Christian faith compels me to. Keep that in mind, because the rest of this post is a contemplation of the limitations of nonviolence.

I've written about this before, but it's been made more abundantly clear in recent months. The dilemma nonviolent protestors face is that it takes probably at least 1000 times as many people to produce the same political response and national sense of urgency that a few people acting violently can achieve. How many people actually engaged in violence in the small riots in Ferguson? Dozens? Maybe hundreds if we're being generous. Yet their actions provoked a widespread response and nationwide attention.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of protestors all over the country marched peacefully, demanding change. We barely made it on the news. We outnumber those engaging in violence by 10,000 to 1, but our impact may be less.

The civil rights movement got around this problem largely because of the stupidity of its opponents in places like Birmingham and Selma. Americans who had little sympathy for Black rights still didn't want to see people being beaten on TV. The nonviolent actions were extremely effective because authorities responded with violence, making them newsworthy. The prospect of disorder on the streets was, I believe, the decisive factor causing the political system to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. My apologies to your favorite morality tales. Certainly, the 1968 Fair Housing Act cannot plausibly be explained apart from the violence that ensued after Dr. King's murder.

When the civil rights movement came up against more canny opponents in places like Albany, Georgia, or Chicago, it was much less successful.Without the dramatization of injustice as expressed through the ritual of state-sanctioned violence, it turned out Americans didn't really care about injustice. In the present day, with the notable exception of Ferguson's absurd militarized police provocation even while Brown's body lay on the street, nearly every place in the country these protests occur is more akin to Albany and Chicago than Birmingham and Selma. We're dealing with savvy governments that have an institutional memory of how the civil rights movement was defeated. They are determined not to provide the dramatization we seek.

So what's the way forward? I don't claim to know. The easy theoretical answer is that we simply need to make these protests bigger. If we could mobilize as many Americans for a worthwhile cause as routinely gather at stadiums in cities and college towns all over the country to watch football every weekend, we could shut whole cities down. Once normal commerce and transportation is disrupted in a severe way, the political system will respond quite rapidly. 

I frankly think this is a pipe dream. I just don't believe we have that many people. We have to find other ways to make the political system responsive. We have to work from the grassroots level. Partisan political mobilization will accomplish little. Nearly all the authorities involved in recent events, from Governors Nixon and Cuomo in Missouri and New York, to President Obama, are Democrats. So what? All of them are doing the barest possible minimum to support justice. They know that demands for equal treatment for all Americans and honest discourse about how to get there enrages many of their White constituents.

This White rage over the prospect of losing unjust advantages brings us back to the most fundamental limitation of nonviolence: it plays along with the basic White supremacist double-standards of American history and thought. The average White American today will look at you with a straight face and say that the American Revolution was justified but an armed insurrection by African Americans in the 1960s would not have been. Try to make any moral or historical sense of that position without relying on the logic of White racism. Yet this point is no doubt a new thought to many people. It shows how deeply embedded are our assumptions about the racial boundaries of justifiable violence.

I believe in nonviolence. I think it is strategically wise. I think it is morally necessary. But I'm not blind to its limitations.

This is the Best Moment for American Race Relations in Decades

Racial controversy has been in the news a lot in the last couple weeks. This has produced a heightened sense of racial tension, and protestors around the country have been out on the streets daily. My sense is that most White Americans view all of this as unfortunate. There is a feeling that “race relations” have deteriorated. 

I want to dispel that idea. If you stand for justice, this has been, by far, the best moment for American “race relations” in decades. It is hard to overstate how pervasive the assumption is that outward calm should be the goal of our efforts. The assumption is carried in the language we use. “Race relations” is a term that reduces everything to the question of how we appear to be getting along. It completely elides whether there is a presence or absence of justice. And folks, what American history unequivocally shows is that you don’t get racial justice without going through times when White Americans are despairing over the sad state of “race relations.” It’s time to recognize how empty that term is. Let’s stop using it.

During the civil rights movement, an astonishingly consistent pattern emerged. As protests began in a city or region, Whites in that area expressed confusion and irritation. Over and over again, they declared that “race relations” were good in their town before the protests began. They were genuinely, sincerely baffled that African Americans were protesting when there was nothing to protest over. They repeatedly lamented that the civil rights activists had caused deterioration in “race relations” and sought to get the protests over with as quickly as possible so that peace could return.

Though Whites don’t see it this way, the message they convey when they focus on “relations” instead of “justice” is that racial injustice doesn’t matter as long as others are bearing the brunt of it, and doing so in silence. If our first response to recent events is to hope that things calm down soon, we’re acting as defenders of injustice even though we don’t mean to be doing so. If protests stop, no legislation is likely to be passed. If protests stop, White Christians can stop learning about these issues. If protests stop, we can go back to saying, “peace, peace!” when there is no peace. 

Want a concrete example of the “Let’s all calm down and stop talking about race” discourse? There is no better specimen than the repeated quoting of Martin Luther King that I’ve heard from many Whites in recent weeks. Here’s the funny thing about it: you already know which line they quoted. I don’t even have to tell you. And this line is quoted as a trump card. It’s a strange thing. I’ve never gotten the sense from the people quoting it that they have any qualms about not knowing any of Dr. King’s thousands of other speeches and sermons. The thing that is so discouraging about it is that they don't seem to realize there is more to know. They quote the line with utter abandon. It would be a different sort of problem if people were just cynical and saying, “As a strategic matter to try to bolster my argument and moral authority, I’m going to quote King.” But I don’t think that’s what they’re doing. I think they sincerely quote him and are unaware that he disagreed with their point of view. 

What should our conclusion be? These protests do not increase racial divisions. They expose them. Yet many White Americans are more offended by the act of exposure than by the injustice. We lack self-awareness and a sense of our place in history. Think about this: you can get all but the most committed racists to reluctantly admit that every single prior generation of White people was wrong on racial justice. Every generation. Yet people will continue to take the White perspective in this generation, with an outlandish confidence that, hey, I guess, the 20th time’s the charm. It’s theoretically possible they’re correct. But it takes a special brand of arrogance to think it is likely.

Thoughts For Sunday

 Isaiah Chapter 59

Justice is turned back,
    and righteousness stands far away;
for truth has stumbled in the public squares,
    and uprightness cannot enter.
Truth is lacking,
    and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.

The Lord saw it, and it displeased him
    that there was no justice.

He saw that there was no one,
    and wondered that there was no one to intercede;
then his own arm brought him salvation,
    and his righteousness upheld him.
He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
    and a helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on garments of vengeance for clothing,
    and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.

 According to what they have done,
    so will he repay
wrath to his enemies
    and retribution to his foes...

For he will come like a pent-up flood
    that the breath of the Lord drives along.

The Coming Movement

Indictment or no indictment tonight (we'll know soon enough), we must pray that what is happening in Ferguson is the awakening of a movement that will change the entire country. We must pray that it will change not merely a set of policing practices. That is as good a place as any to start, and we must start somewhere, but what is needed goes much deeper. Movement activists understand it even if the great mass of morally slumbering White Americans do not. What is needed is what has always been needed: a society that is for Blacks and everyone else every bit as much as it is for Whites. What is needed is comprehensive reformation of laws and hearts so that America works for all of us. If you're not a believer, what is needed is some basic human decency. If you are a believer, repentance is needed in the hope that somehow we Christians will begin to pray and live "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" instead of throwing stones at "radicals" who dare to do what Jesus told us to do.

The United States is a dramatically better place for Black Americans than it used to be. The United States is also a White state that has yet to fully reckon with what it would require to do justice for all its citizens. In spite of everything that has changed, we can still quote the words of Black intellectuals over half a century ago, and their words ring true with a vital and terrible ferocity. Richard Wright believed that the exclusion of African Americans was so central to American life that if the United States ever attempted to eradicate White supremacy “it will find itself at war with itself, convulsed by a spasm of emotional and moral confusion.” James Baldwin agreed. Baldwin wrote, “there is simply no possibility of a real change in the Negro’s situation without the most radical and far-reaching changes in the American political and social structure.” Yet such changes were so unsettling to white Americans that they were “unable even to envision them.” Wright and Baldwin offered a sense of America’s history and meaning in which the destruction of white supremacy might produce a national identity crisis rather than ushering in the inevitable culmination of American ideals. In an age of inequality and mass incarceration, in a time of protest and disillusionment, when thousands feel compelled to take to the streets and signs assert what should not need to be asserted, that “Black Lives Matter,” the promise and tragedy of American history haunts us still. And still, millions of Whites stand to the side, choosing whiteness over justice, whiteness over God, whiteness over their very souls.

Dr. King was right. If we're wrong now, then God almighty is wrong.

Ferguson Is The Civil Rights Movement

My son was up at 2:45 this morning and decided that going back to sleep was an unnecessary extravagance, so here we are.

I'm sick in my heart over Ferguson and all that it represents. There are a great many things I wish I could tell my fellow White Americans if I had them as a captive audience. For now, I'll just mention one:

Never use disorder as an excuse to avoid dealing with injustice. 

The fixation of so many people on the tiny amount of looting that occurred months ago is extremely revealing. What would it take for them to be on the side of the protestors? I bet they think the civil rights movement consisted of a bunch of middle class Black people in suits refusing to make a ruckus. I bet they don't know that there was lots of violence in and around civil rights movement demonstrations. Or they do know, but somehow they assume that back then it was all so clear and those mean southern sheriffs were obviously at fault. Don't they know that the civil rights movement seemed murky and confusing to White Americans and most of them eventually opposed it?

Ferguson is not so different. We must expose people and make them uncomfortable. If Ferguson comes up in conversation, go ahead and tell your White friends that the civil rights movement isn't over. Tell them to stop paying lip service to the gains of the past while refusing to get on the side of justice in the present. Consider the gross perversion of this world where truth and justice are constantly on the defensive. Find a perfect example of racial injustice, they tell us! One where it is so obvious that the victim is an angel and completely innocent and the perpetrator is a monster! Then we will join with you! Then we might be willing to support Black humanity!

People can't find any evidence that Black people are treated equally in this country, but we who point this out are deemed to be radical or unreasonable. Sure, there's racial discrimination and inequality in education, employment, housing, health care, and life in general, but it doesn't matter because looting. Because baggy pants. Because ebonics. Because scary Black male.

The sins of the powerful produce oppression. The sins of the powerless produce disorder. Which sins we're quickest to judge says a lot about the state of our hearts.

Move Along, Nothing To See Here...

Source.
UPDATE: It turns out that this chart is very misleading. Though it doesn't say so, the incarceration rate for "Black America" is actually for Black American men, while those of other countries are for total population. Once women are added in, the black bar on the far right would be much shorter. Yet it would still be dramatically higher than any other country. One way of looking at it is that even if the incarceration rate of Black women was zero, the total rate would still average out to above 2,000, which is 4x that of the nearest country (Cuba). So the chart is factually wrong, but the point it's making stands.

Evangelicalism Doesn't Possess A Language For Talking About Injustice

Thabiti Anyabwile says there must be a robust White evangelical response to the issues raised by Ferguson:

Otherwise, orthodox evangelicalism is dead. It’s dead to oppressed folks in our back yards who need to hear the word of God spoken into their situation with all the prophetic unction our Lord would give. It’s dead to grieving parents required to have closed casket funerals for their children because racist systems and people so disfigure the body it can’t be shown. Orthodox evangelicalism is dead to the marginalized because it’s so allergic to the margins. It wants its mainstream, its tree-lined streets of cultural acceptance, its reserve and respectability. So it’s dead.

To be clear, evangelicalism’s quietude is not a case of not knowing what to say, how to say it, or being too distant from the problem. It’s not merely a case of leaders and people staring into an isolated incident and needing to collect data before they act. It’s not a case of not having media outlets and channels of its own. No. In incident after incident—proving a pattern, a systemic problem that requires eyes-and-mouth-wide-open denouncement—the church has turned her head, closed her eyes, and pressed tight her lips. The problem dominates local and national news. But evangelicalism changes the channel and carries on with regularly scheduled programming. Even if the revolution is televised, evangelicalism ain’t even willing to watch much less join.

And this call isn’t an attempt to guilt people who have nothing to do with some far off situation. No. This post is a recognition that evangelicalism is useless in its own back yard, with its own neighbors, while it changes its twitter avatars to identify with persecuted Christians half a world away. Evangelicalism should show outward solidarity with persecuted Christians. But it should also be the good Samaritan religion, a religion of justified people who demonstrate their justification in practical acts of compassion for its beaten, robbed and left-for-dead ethnic-other neighbors. Do we see that from national evangelical ministries and leaders? No, we don’t. Ours appears to be the religion of the Pharisee who asks, “Who then is my neighbor?”

Who is evangelicalism’s neighbor? Is Michael Brown? How about Kimani Gray, Kendrec McDade, Amadou Diallo, Ousmane Zongo, Timothy Stansbury, Jr., Sean Bell, Orlando Barlow, Aaron Campbell, Ronald Madison and James Brissette, or Oscar Grant? Or let’s just take the unarmed persons shot and killed in the month of August: Eric Garner, John Crawford, Ezell Ford and Dante Parker. Has evangelicalism recognized these men as neighbors? Does it recognize that their being made in the image of God requires the protection of their lives and the expression of our neighborly love? An evangelicalism that does not know its neighbor is a dead evangelicalism, an unjustified evangelicalism.

We must join people in their suffering or else say goodbye to evangelicalism. The righteous and carefully channeled anger Anyabwile displays here must pierce our hearts. In a more eloquent and fulsome way than I could say it, he is repeating my point that we, the White evangelical church, do not fully recognize Jesus when he comes to us in unexpected forms. One of the most discouraging and painful things about this is that many White evangelicals have strong opinions on issues of race, poverty, and justice, despite living in church cultures that have never taught them what Christianity has to say about these matters.

We haven't heard sermons about systemic sin. We have not had a Bible study about racism. Our pastor has not told us that Christianity values both individualism and collectivism but we're living in a culture that has made individualism an idol. Our leaders have never told us that the inability to think systemically as well as individually distorts our view of self and others and makes us blind to much of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. We've not been challenged to give thought to our class and racial privileges and forsake them in the way the Apostle Paul did so relentlessly. We have not been confronted about our preoccupation with American nationalism. If we've been lucky enough to be in a church that teaches us to care for the marginalized, our church leaders still probably shrink back from telling us what it might actually mean and cost in our own country and community.

Our sin is so engrained -- woven into the very fabric of our religious tradition well before we were born -- that we take strong and opinionated positions about race without any sense of shame or self-awareness, without even realizing that we're not using Christianity to support our views. Our certainty is reinforced rather than tempered by our ignorance. It is not caused by a bunch of bad people in the church being mean. It is precisely the sort of systemic sin we have trouble seeing. Laboring under the weight of generations past, constrained by secular cultural norms and patterns of thought that were long ago baptized as "Christian," we treat race and justice more as an issue to be argued over in the vein of politics than as an inextricable part of the Gospel. Anyabwile goes on:

Around the country evangelical leaders participate in “racial reconciliation” conversations and repeatedly ask, “How can we diversify our church?” or “How can we attract more African-American members?” Why would diverse groups want to belong to an evangelicalism that does not acknowledge their diversity where it hurts when it matters? You want diversity in your membership roles? How about forgetting your membership statistics and further diversifying the picket lines and protests thronged by the disenfranchised in their just fights? We don’t want to be your statistics—whether wrongful death statistics or church membership statistics. We want a living, breathing, risk-taking brotherhood in the gospel lived out where it matters. Until evangelicalism can muster that kind of courage and abandon its privileged, “objective,” distant calls for calm and “gospel”-this or “gospel”-that, it proves itself entirely inadequate for a people who need to see Jesus through the tear gas smoke of injustice.

It can no longer be the case that to be “evangelical” means to care about either the gospel or justice. Evangelicalism must come to understand that justice and mercy flow inextricably from the gospel—both at the cross of Christ as well as in the daily carrying of our crosses. Micah 6:8 is still God’s requirement of us. And it will not do to position one injustice against another, as if to say we need only focus on one thing, or as if to say until this one “greater” injustice is dealt with then all “lesser” crimes need not be attended. Don’t place abortion in opposition to persecuted Christians in Syria or persecuted Christians in Syria in opposition to the Mike Browns. Can not the evangelical heart and mind expand to care about and act against all these things? Should not we risk a bursting heart in order to live a vibrant Christian life? If we can’t, then we should confess and repent of our hypocrisy and partiality, else be done with calling ourselves Christians. True religion cares for widows, orphans and the like.

Anyabwile calls for the formation of a new conservative evangelical organization to promote sound theology for justice as well as a program of activism aligned with that theology. As I ponder this, I think a big part of the challenge for us is that there is no widely accepted language for talking about justice that is indigenous to evangelicalism. This has some lamentable consequences. Those who have begun to see evangelicalism's failures try to speak to their fellow evangelicals about it, but often do so by borrowing words and phrases that, to most evangelicals at least, are associated with the academy or secularism, and have developed political connotations. How can we avoid this when there is no established evangelical language for discussing these issues? It becomes very tempting to borrow words such as racism, white privilege, social justice, and more. The Bible addresses all of these ideas extensively, but the use of these phrases can throw up walls among White evangelical listeners right away.

The severity of the difficulty is revealed when we consider what happens when we try to discard these buzzwords and speak in specifically Christian terms using scriptural evidence. When we take this approach we encounter two dangers. The first concern is that in using specifically Christian language and lots of scripture, we make the message too opaque and generalized for White evangelicals to even understand that race and privilege and justice are the topics at hand. The second problem arises when White evangelicals understand the point we're driving at, but are utterly baffled by our use of scripture. Because we have been immersed in a cultural milieu that does not address systems and justice and racism -- because we have imbibed the false belief that these issues are not just superficially political but fundamentally political -- when we read scriptures that explicitly give us teaching on precisely these things, we often fail to see it. Having never seen a scripture used in this way before, it is extremely easy to reject its plain meaning.

Perhaps the kind of organization Mr. Anywabwile calls for can address this problem in a substantial way. In the meantime, it is important for us to begin to understand that our leaders have let us down. They have sold us a distorted and incomplete Gospel that harms others while leaving us without credibility before a watching world.

The Slaying of Michael Brown

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.
     --Martin Luther King

The slaying of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri calls forth disparate but by now well-worn responses. There are two that I want to highlight that might come from White people like myself.

The first response is the evenhanded call for calm and justice in this particular incident. What happened to that boy is a damn shame, this person says, but it was a distinct event unconnected to anything else. A full and impartial investigation of this incident is needed, but now a media circus is going to make that more difficult. Furthermore, she might say, the rioting that has followed the shooting is more troubling than the conduct of the police force. She can't understand why a lonely shooting in a nation of 318 million souls provokes such an outcry, especially when people who look like Michael Brown are killing each other every day.

This person says everyone deserves justice. He says everyone is innocent until proven guilty. He says the color of a person's skin ought not matter, either in the application of justice or in the awakening of our sympathies. Indeed, this person is usually right, but it is the superficial and airy rightness born of complacency temporarily disturbed. "What's that? A racial disturbance in the national news, you say? Hold on, let me find my racial disturbance opinion flowchart."

This person accepts, but has not seen fit to understand, that peace is hard work. This person has learned about something called out-group prejudice but has happily found himself to be the exception proving humanity's rule. He makes his logical and insufferably correct pronouncements with no embarrassment, because he cannot imagine that others bring full and weighty lives, with full and weighty words to match, refined as they have been by fire. He cannot see what is so obvious to the grieving: his flowchart is showing.

The second response stands in opposition to the first. This person contemplates the experience of people who look like Michael Brown. She gets to know people who look like Michael Brown. She understands how governmental authorities operate in Michael Brown's neighborhood, because she has seen it with her own eyes. She sees the last few days not as a sudden and unwelcome disruption or media event, but as a cresting wave in a continuous roiling current. Most of this evil current is beneath the surface, invisible to the flighty holders of flowcharts.

This person has seen the men who look like Michael Brown on the side of the bustling boulevard pathetically selling bottles of almost-cold water to passing motorists on a too-hot day because no one will hire them. He understands that their strength of character and work ethic is stronger than his as he commutes to his rewarding middle class job. He has seen the boys who look like Michael Brown meekly submit as police assault them for what they might have done rather than what they did. He has seen the elderly woman who could be Michael Brown's grandmother faithfully sweep the sidewalk in front of her house every morning as her block falls apart.

This person has seen all this, and she is not surprised by the death of Michael Brown. Her surprise comes from elsewhere: how do millions of people who look like Michael Brown press on with patience in their step and bitterness absent from their heart? She contemplates this mystery. As she does she is tired and she is heavy with grief, because she cannot see the isolated incident that the flighty holders of flowcharts see. She sees another page in a very long story with an uncertain ending.

This second response is the Christian one. Racism as such is not addressed in scripture, since it's a category that didn't exist. But race, inextricably mingled with class, is our modern means of performing that ancient human rite that certainly did exist in biblical times: othering. Many of us, good Christians in our self-image, our loath to contemplate our practice of this insidious vice. But if the Gospel is working on us, we cannot avoid it. In its natural condition the human heart declares that its virtues are intrinsic and its faults extrinsic. In other words, if I am good, it is because I am good. If I am bad, it is because someone bothered me. The Gospel enters in and demands a complete reversal. There is nothing good in us; everything is a gift; I am bad because that's the sort of creature I am. We begin to find the playing field leveled. We look out on humanity and we can't find anyone worse than us. In a sense, with empathy infused by the Gospel, we can't even find anyone different from us.

Now, Michael Brown has been slain. There are "sides" to take. There are arguments to be won! Many of us are so afraid to confront the deepest sins of the human heart (pride toward God; indifference toward fellow human beings) that we fail to make the most basic application of Christian principles to American society. We know the God of our scriptures is on the side of the oppressed. Well, we'd better consider what that means right here in the United States. We'd better do so with no regard for the heretical worship of nation that dares to tell God our system of markets and liberties has rendered moot his categories of oppressed and oppressor. This heresy is rampant in our churches. In short, we must consider the basic fact that Black Americans are an oppressed class of human beings in our country. This calls for a response that transcends the evenhanded reasonableness I discussed above.

Some of us -- judgmental souls like myself -- are likely to ride our logical and evenhanded pronouncements all the way to hell. God, through scripture and in the the human form of Jesus, reveals himself to us without ambiguity as a God on the side of the weak, the poor, and the oppressed. Jesus died for us all, but beyond that there is very little even-handedness with God. He decided to give more faith to those at the bottom of society (the book of James). He decided to eternally judge us based on how we treat them (the book of Matthew). It is a fearful thing, then, to find that in controversy after controversy -- and much more than that, in the structures of our daily lives -- we take the side of our group against another. Christians need only consider where we would be if Christ's loyalties were constrained in the narrow manner of our own. Amid the perfect justice, peace, and fellowship of the Trinity, he might have asked, "Why let the humans in? Are any of them deserving? Why sacrifice for them?" It's laughable to consider, because of course Jesus apparently doesn't think like that. But it's more than laughable because it is precisely how we, his followers, do think.

Michael Brown is dead. It is not an isolated incident. It speaks of a centuries-old story. It speaks of the pain of millions. It speaks of oppressions yet to come. If that has not yet settled into your heart, please look to Jesus. Try to add your tears to his. Only then can you come back to consider how you might fight for the presence of justice rather than the absence of tension.

Reparations. An Old Idea, But Still A Good One

Ta-Nehisi Coates is about to open up a giant can of worms, and it looks like the full weight of the Atlantic's power to shape elite discussion is behind him.

I am extremely excited about this story. The moral case for reparations has always been obvious and overwhelming. The practical implementation of a reparations program would undoubtedly be difficult, but that is a secondary concern at this time. The great virtue of resurrecting this discussion is that it forces Whites to confront the lies that we live by. If we are to have reparations, we must have them for the evil that is being done here and now, in our lifetimes. All the old canards about how long ago the civil war was and how we had nothing to do with slavery are not just false; they are irrelevant. We're not talking about the deep past. We're talking about the lives of our fellow Americans here and now who are systematically disadvantaged because of their skin color.

The call for reparations will be received in many quarters as a radical exercise, in others it will be mocked as little more than a pipe dream. But we need radicals. We need people pushing for what is politically impossible. Even if reparations are out of reach, perhaps we can move the poles of the conversation toward justice. The inevitable divisiveness of the ensuing discussion will also expose those of us who value tranquility more than peace.

Why You and I Are More Dangerous Than Cliven Bundy

(If you're not familiar with Cliven Bundy, a Google search will quickly give you the back-story.)

As political theater, the spectacular implosion of erstwhile conservative darling and welfare rancher Cliven Bundy was exquisite. But it is important to understand the limitations--indeed, the dangers--of using instances of outrageous racism as cheap entertainment. It is notable that Bundy's words immediately rendered him a toxic laughingstock. He surely remembers a time when this was not the case. Words that used to be deployed to gain power over others now only weaken their author. This is a real achievement, and it ought not be overlooked. But the strength of this taboo--don't say racist stuff--is enforced by giving it an outsized importance. Simply put, the taboo against acting racist is much stronger than the taboo against being racist. And it is the latter that has the greatest effects on the lives of real people.

Let's think about what Bundy represents to liberals and conservatives, and then explore why the media spectacle is so problematic.

The appeal of the Bundy implosion for liberals is obvious enough. He seems to represent the very id of a certain sort of right-wing conservative, and delivers the standard critique of the welfare state in its most concentrated and unvarnished form. The fact is, most conservatives do believe the Great Society and its descendents have wrecked the black family, even if this belief doesn't lead them to embrace Bundy's absurdities about slavery. The chance to tie mainstream conservatives to a blatant racist is too good for liberals to pass up. And, after all, conservatives embraced Bundy aggressively and of their own volition. As political games go, it hasn't been unfair for liberals to have a little fun about it as conservatives disavow their former hero.

It is less understood that Bundy would, were it not for the now embarrassed embrace of many mainstream conservatives, serve as a perfect embodiment of what conservatives believe racism in the United States looks like. He's old. He's eccentric. He even said "Negro" just like Harry Reid. And if Harry Reid said it...

By attempting to tie Republican politicians to the outlandish racism of an elderly rancher, liberals win a tactical victory but unwittingly play into the larger conservative narrative about what racism is in the modern United States. Rather than a set of deeply embedded and largely impersonal social and economic forces, racism becomes the product a few isolated and backward individuals. After all, we rarely seem to see racism, do we? If racism is as rampant as people like me say it is, then why do the irrelevant ramblings of an old man become a cause celebre? That's the best we've got? If Cliven Bundy is in any sense important, then racism really is essentially gone.

But of course it's not gone. The racism that permeates our lives and devastates so many Americans is too amorphous to fit in a sexy news story. When another minority student embarks on an inferior primary school education, it's not news; it's just the way things are. When a black couple with excellent credit gets turned down for a housing loan, they can't even know for sure they've been discriminated against. It only emerges years later when you glance over an obscure headline at the bottom of the business page saying that Bank ABC paid out 100 million dollars in a discrimination settlement. When the HR professional glances past that resume with the foreign-sounding name, she makes a split-second decision without becoming aware of her unconscious bias. When black children grow up in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty at 20-30x the rate of white children, it is a fact too astonishing and diffused to be reported on the evening news. These and other issues are clearly revealed in rarely-read academic books and journals and depressing newspaper pieces that no one wants to wade through. It's a lot easier to talk about Cliven Bundy.

The fact is, I am dramatically more invested in securing the best for my own children than I am for the children of others. This is only natural. But when the incumbent power brokers and holders of wealth are overwhelmingly white, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what this only natural behavior accomplishes on a collective scale. It is easy to talk about trying to expand opportunity, but it is more than a semantic quibble to point out that expanding opportunity necessarily involves redistributing opportunity. There are a finite number of selective enrollment high schools, elite college openings, graduate fellowships, CEO's, and senators. In a society in which the wealthy and white possess pervasive unearned privileges, expanding opportunity for others implies trade-offs that we're reluctant to admit.

We must move away from obsessing over the racist things people say, and call ourselves to account for the actions we take. Cliven Bundy is suddenly beyond the pale by virtue of his words, but I can purposely take advantage of my white skin by securing for myself and my family a good neighborhood and good schools, and yet I remain fully respectable. We must move past the day when we who have done little or nothing to try to tear down our privileges are granted the presumption of innocence. The majority of white Americans are invested in racism. And if we're going to give it up, we want a pay-out, thank you very much.

You see this in our politics if you look closely enough. The apparently large divide between the two major parties on the national level is in some respects superficial. On the local level, there is a deep and abiding bipartisan consensus in favor of a politics that favors the wealthy and white over the poor and brown. It goes without saying that conservatism opposes efforts to achieve racial equality. But show me the wealthy liberal community that voluntarily rezoned to allow low-income housing into the neighborhood. Show me the wealthy liberal community that voluntarily redrew school district lines so it could share its resources with a poorer neighboring community. Liberalism in the United States is not just hypocritical; it is itself a defender of racial inequality.

If Americans in any broad and tangible way valued racial justice these ideas would be common-sense. Back here in the real world, they sound hopelessly utopian.

It's easy enough to see why these things don't happen. It's because of people like you and me. We just want the best for our kids. We've worked hard for what we have. These feelings are as natural as they are anti-Christian. And for me, as a Christian, the real scandal is not that we find it hard to live up to our faith. It is that we often embrace a false faith that baptizes our selfishness and encourages us to indulge in our privilege.

Almost No One Wants to Know the Real Martin Luther King

"The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws--racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are deeply rooted in the whole structure of our society...and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."

Who said this? Malcom X? Robert F. Williams? No. It was, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.

Call him naïve if you wish--recklessly utopian perhaps--but do not pretend we've had the reckoning he demanded. The relentless drive to mythologize King is propelled by the yawning gap between the vision he proclaimed and the values of the society that claims him. He was too central a figure to forget, so he must be appropriated. He must be absorbed, becoming a totem to bolster the very societal ills he resisted.

Dr. King spoke of the interrelated problems of racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism--problems that were so embedded in the fabric of American life that they compromised the very structure of society. We modern Americans, appropriately colorblind and tolerant, believe that we've fulfilled the promise of the Black freedom struggle by...wait for it...being nice to each other. But militarism has a funny way of withstanding a pleasant hello. Materialism seems impervious to good social graces. To the extent we think of poverty, it is only to imagine growing the ranks of soulless middle-class materialists caught in the spiritual dead end that is the American Dream. Meanwhile, racism withers on the vine, we're told, because personal prejudice openly expressed is the unforgivable sin in modern America. Segregated schools, concentrated poverty, mass incarceration--these do not pertain to racism because they do not depend upon an individual acting malevolently toward another.

It is not wrong to celebrate positive changes in our society. It is essential and good to do so. But every year when this day comes around we do much more than that. As Kimberly Williams Crenshaw has written, "Sober assessments of how far we have come" are replaced "by congratulatory declarations that we have arrived." This reflects, broadly, the conceit of our present-minded culture that takes facile notions of human "progress" as obvious facts. More than that, it reveals, particularly, the persistent marginalization of what racism is and what it has meant and continues to mean to the American experience.

To talk about America honestly is to talk about racism. To talk about the present-day flaws in our society is to talk about racism. To talk about the working out of the gospel in the life of the Christian is to talk about racism. When we ignore race, that most potent and devastating of modernity's inventions, we do not rob it of its power. We merely accede to its quiet demands. Why do I live where I do? Why do I work where I do? Why do I worship where I do? Why am I successful? With hands over our ears and eyes firmly shut, we'd rather not know. The flipside of our colorblind tolerance is our insistent denigration of the importance of race to the lives of real people. We think in doing so we're dealing a death blow to modernity's evil offspring. In reality we're just unilaterally disarming, having lost our ability to distinguish between the racism that must be eradicated and the race consciousness that is necessary to achieve that eradication.

I spent years believing I could convince people of this. I have found that it is not something to be convinced of. It is something to experience, to learn, to be convicted of. It is a journey.

It's Martin Luther King Day. Sounds like as good a time as any to get started.

In Commemoration Speech, Did Obama Serve the Cause of Justice, or Myth?

I wasn't sure what to make of President Obama's speech yesterday at the commemoration of the March on Washington. Parts of it were forthright about the need for further action to combat injustice (and the President actually used that word). And he talked about the need to defeat the (conveniently unnamed) defenders of such injustice. I don't know enough about presidential rhetoric, and perhaps I'm just conditioned by the Bush years, but I was starting to think sitting Presidents don't talk like this.

But then Obama pivoted back to this:

And then, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that during the course of 50 years, there were times when some of us claiming to push for change lost our way. The anguish of assassinations set off self-defeating riots. Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways, as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support -- as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child, and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself.

I'm never sure what to make of this coming from Obama. Is it part of his habitual "on the one hand, on the other hand" framing of every issue? Is it what he feels he has to say as the President of all Americans? Or is it, deep down, what he believes? I'm not here to say that there is no truth at all to this paragraph (though Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a must read scathing review, says as much) but I do argue that this rhetoric is received in a certain social and cultural context that renders it, in its essence, untrue.

After suffering a series of severe blows, White regrouped and defeated the civil rights movement. Yet the discourse of Whites ever since has not acknowledged their partial victory. There is, rather, a pervasive set of mental and rhetorical frameworks built around blaming Blacks for their failure to live up to "the Dream," as if Whites have not been standing in their way the whole time. President Obama is aiding and abetting those frameworks.

Perhaps he should have called for specific policies, invoking King's name, urging congress to pass immigration reform in pursuit of King's Dream. Pass a jobs bill in pursuit of King's dream. Pass criminal justice reform in pursuit of King's Dream. Denounce the racist tea party, in honor of King. I don't know. Maybe all hell would break loose if he did that. But I think it would be a good thing if King became more controversial again. King would be appalled by the modern Republican Party. He would denounce it in moral, biblical terms. I think we should get that out in the open and let people draw their own conclusions.

Two Steps Forward

This year has at times felt like one body blow after another in the ongoing battle to protect civil rights and expand racial equality. The Supreme Court cut a huge hole out of the Voting Rights Act, and the decades-long process of rolling back gains in affirmative action and school desegregation continues apace. And then there was all the issues swirling around the George Zimmerman verdict. It has become clear that there is a sustained, coordinated assault against the gains the civil rights movement made half a century ago. This is all the more troubling when we come to grips with the extent to which the movement fell short of its goals in the first place. We like to think the civil rights movement swept everything before it. It's true that it achieved significant parts of its agenda. But it was also defeated.

And the conservative forces that defeated it have not gone away. They retrenched and are now resurgent in many states, in the U.S. House, and in the Supreme Court. They are all the more powerful for having appropriated the movement's legacy and successfully delegitimized discussion of the plain truth: the United States is shot through with racism in its public policy and in its political culture, a fact that is obvious to all those able to imagine a society without racial privilege. But the progress we have made is incorporated into the remaining racist redoubts of law and tradition and thereby becomes a means of resisting more progress.

The racism is particularly pronounced in conservatism, whose most popular spokespersons defend White supremacy unfailingly. It manifests itself in newly created fictions about voter fraud and the resulting wave of vote suppression laws. But as a cursory look at any Democratically controlled big city will reveal, racial oppression is a bipartisan White American tradition.

I didn't mean to rant because this is all a prelude to two pieces of spectacular news this morning. First, Attorney General Eric Holder is set to announce a move to get around Federal minimum sentencing laws for drug crimes. You can see the details here, but the point is that the Obama administration is trying to reduce the Federal prison population by sidestepping the minimum sentencing laws for nonviolent drug offenders. Part of the reason for doing this is the racist impact of these laws. Why not go through congress and actually change the law? First, because the House doesn't pass anything. Second, because the House especially doesn't pass anything that advances racial justice.

The second and perhaps even more important development is that a federal judge this morning gave a giant slap down to the city of New York and Mayor Bloomberg's racist stop-and-frisk policies. It was about as unequivocal a ruling as we could have hoped for. The judge said the city deliberately violated the civil rights of tens of thousands of New Yorkers over the years and ran roughshod over the fourth and fourteenth amendments.

This is a good reminder of how racism in the American political system is very much a bipartisan affair. Liberals and Democrats give themselves way too much credit. Americans have a tendency to deplore symbolic racism while not worrying about racist acts that actually ruin people's lives. Rush Limbaugh, for example, is a disrespectable figure who is widely maligned and ridiculed. It is right that he should be so, but think about this: Mayor Bloomberg has done much more to actually inflict acts of racism on real people in their daily lives than Rush Limbaugh ever has. Yet because he is rich and powerful and does not say outrageous things, Bloomberg is considered respectable.

If you think Bloomberg ought to be a respectable figure, try to imagine an America in which its premier city was led by a Black mayor who systematically and deliberately (and often violently) stopped hundreds of thousands of its White residents each year without any suspicion beyond their color. Would that mayor be respectable? For skeptics thinking this scenario leaves out the important variable of crime rates, it is crucial to know that the judge found that New York City disproportionally targeted racial minorities even after controlling for all other variables.

Has There Ever Been A Time When White Americans Weren't In Denial?

In the wake of recent events there has been a flood of commentary that is ignorant, wrongheaded, or racist. But I've tried hard to avoid getting too caught up in that. I think it's better to focus on broader data so we can see that this is much worse than a case of a few prominent pundits saying offensive things.

The Washington Post has some new polling data on how American view the justice system. Here's the question: "Do you think blacks and other minorities receive equal treatment as whites in the criminal justice system or not?" A majority of Whites, 54%, answer yes, while only 41% answer the question correctly.

As Tim Wise has noted, this is a pattern among White Americans, and it's been going on now for generations. For over 50 years Gallup has periodically asked Whites if they think Blacks have as good a chance for education and housing as they do. In 1962, when White supremacist schooling was still explicit in much of the country, 94% of Whites said Blacks had equal education opportunities. As of 2008, when White kids continue to receive higher funding on average, 80% of Whites continued to claim equal opportunity. On housing, it is the same story, with 85% of Whites saying Blacks do not face more discrimination than they do. Even on the question of police practices, only 36% of Whites said Blacks are treated unfairly.

The point of all this data is to show that the pundits and media figures who have said so many false and racist things in recent weeks are not the problem. They represent the problem. The great majority of Whites are in denial. A society in denial is not equipped to recognize, much less fight, racism. If this data is accurate, though few Whites admit to being racist, 80% or more are not anti-racist. Put another way, when 80% of us look at racist practices and profess not to see them, we're demonstrating pretty conclusively that we're not actually against racism.

And we shouldn't stop there. Those of us who at one time another have been in that 80% must ask ourselves why we believed such blatantly false things. Sometimes, of course, people are simply mistaken. But we usually don't believe truly absurd things unless there is something in it for us. We're usually trying to protect something. If nothing else, it certainly is a lot more comfortable for Whites to believe that we don't have more opportunity than others.

As I've said before recently, for people caught in that denial I will not offer statistics to try to break it. That's not my job any more than it's my job to argue with people who think we didn't land on the moon. Because these basic facts about racial inequality infringe on our view of ourselves, our history, and our country, there is a strong incentive for us to embrace lies. Becoming free is a matter of experiences and learning and repentance over a period of years. It's not a matter of being clobbered over the head with statistics.

Racism is More Innocuous and Pervasive Than You Think

One of the saddest things about this case is the way it becomes a predictable stage for the pervasive callousness and ignorance of White Americans to be expressed. Texas Governor Rick Perry said today, "I think our justice system is color-blind." How you feel about that simple statement says a lot about you and it probably predicts how you view this case.

To those who don't understand where we're coming from, try to grasp this. I'm not picking on Governor Perry. Rather, I'm using his words precisely because they're so representative. In this bland, simple statement--"I think our justice system is color-blind"--American racism is epitomized. These simple words are offered without any proof whatsoever, and the power of our wishful thinking is such that they have the ring of common sense.

The other angle on it is that this is a fundamentally mysterious issue that we all have to decide for ourselves however we wish. "I think our justice system is color-blind." Or "I think our justice system is color-blind." As if there is no evidence to be had. As if our belief has no consequences. To believe that it is color-blind when it is not is to do added violence to its victims. People who in other respects insist on the truth--inviolate and absolute and knowable--suddenly become champions of agnosticism when their world of White privilege is threatened.

"Of course our justice system is color-blind." In America in 2013, you're allowed to say that in polite company. You're allowed to offer it up without backing it up at all, and among most White crowds you'll get nods of agreement. It's common sense.

That's what racism can do. It can take utter fictions and turn them into common sense. It can render otherwise normal people impervious to evidence. It takes the burden of proof away from those defending the justice system and back on those of us who simply ask that the facts be acknowledged. The burden of proof rests with those who say that now, for the first generation in American history, we have achieved a color-blind justice system. Tell me how that happened. Show me the evidence.

I am not here at this time to offer statistics to prove the justice system is racist. If you think our justice system is color-blind, statistics are not what you need. Because they will not convince you. Repentance comes through personal experience and the weight of the Spirit of God himself bearing down on you. I will not try to disprove your racist faith. I will bide my time and trust in the God of history who will bend all things to his will.

Reactions

Updated with more reactions. Sunday, 4:24

The President:

The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy.  Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America.  I know this case has elicited strong passions.  And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher.  But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.  I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.  And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities.  We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis.  We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this.  As citizens, that’s a job for all of us.  That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.

Roxanne Gay:

Black men and women, black boys and girls, will continue to live in a world where they are guilty until proven innocent, and where their lives matter less in a justice system that is anything but blind to race. None of us, in fact, are blind to race. When people say, “I don’t see race,” they are actually saying, “I don’t want to see race and thereby face the world as it really is.” It is the most sincere expression of privilege there is.

We need to consider the bigger picture. What happened to Trayvon Martin is not a problem with Florida. We can joke about the Sunshine State and its supposed backwardness. We can pretend Zimmerman’s acquittal wouldn’t have happened elsewhere. That simply isn’t true. Though Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law contributed significantly to Zimmerman’s acquittal, the root of the problem reaches far deeper and stretches all across these United States. We must forget the convenient narrative that racism only thrives in the South. Racism is an American problem. We all need to stop trying to absolve ourselves of responsibility.

Mike Lupica:

Zimmerman walks now, leaves court a free man, does that in a state with its stand-your-ground laws where you thought the prosecution was fighting a losing game from the start. It no longer matters that Trayvon Martin, unarmed teenager, was supposed to have the same stand-your-ground rights that Zimmerman did. Only it never mattered once they were on the ground and Zimmerman got his gun out and shot him. If you think justice was really served in that courtroom on this night, you were watching the wrong movie...

The defense did a good enough job of convincing the six women on the jury that it was Zimmerman who was the real victim on that night, that it was Trayvon Martin’s job to walk away or run away, that he had no rights once Zimmerman had him in his sights.

Paul Campos

Suppose Trayvon Martin had been a 230-pound 30-year-old black man, with a loaded gun in his jacket. Suppose Zimmerman had been a 150-pound 17-year-old white kid, who was doing nothing more threatening than walking back from a convenience store to his father’s condo.
Suppose Martin had stalked Zimmerman in his car, until Zimmerman became afraid and tried to elude him. Suppose Martin had gotten out of his car and pursued Zimmerman. Suppose this led to some sort of altercation in which the big scary black man ended up with a bloody nose and some scratches on the back of his head, and the scared skinny (and unarmed) white kid had ended up with a bullet in his heart.

How do you suppose the big scary black man’s claim of “self-defense” would have gone over with a jury made up almost entirely of white women?  But of course this is America, which means that the scary figure in this story is the skinny unarmed teenager, because in America pretty much any black male over the age of 12 in this sort of situation is going to be presumed  to be the ”aggressor,” the “thug” – in short,” the real criminal,” until he’s proved innocent, which he won’t be, even if he’s now a dead, still unarmed teenager. And his killer is a grown man who provokes a fight with an otherwise harmless kid, starts losing it, and then shoots the kid dead.

Because this is America, pointing out that a black boy can be shot with impunity by a more or less white man because many white Americans are terrified by black boys and men is called “playing the race card.”  The race card is what the people who benefit politically from the fact that many white Americans are terrified by black boys and men call any reference to the fact that race continues to play an overwhelmingly important, and overwhelmingly invidious, role in American culture in general. And in the criminal justice system in particular.

Trayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black.

If you deny these things, you are either a liar or an idiot, or possibly both.

Nothing above requires the conclusion that the jury’s verdict was wrong as a matter of law. Florida’s laws, in their majestic equality, extend to people of all races the right to engage in vigilante killing that eliminates the sole witness to that killing.  To point this out is neither a defense of those laws, nor a claim that they will in fact be applied equally.  In other words, to blame this jury in this situation is to miss the point. 

Andrew Cohen:

What the verdict says, to the astonishment of tens of millions of us, is that you can go looking for trouble in Florida, with a gun and a great deal of racial bias, and you can find that trouble, and you can act upon that trouble in a way that leaves a young man dead, and none of it guarantees that you will be convicted of a crime. But this curious result says as much about Florida's judicial and legislative sensibilities as it does about Zimmerman's conduct that night. This verdict would not have occurred in every state. It might not even have occurred in any other state. But it occurred here, a tragic confluence that leaves a young man's untimely death unrequited under state law. Don't like it? Lobby to change Florida's laws.

Jelani Cobb:

During his post-verdict press conference, O’Mara said that were his client black, he would never have been charged. At the defense’s table, and in the precincts far beyond it where donors stepped forward to contribute the funds that underwrote their efforts, there is a sense that George Zimmerman was the victim.

O’Mara’s statement echoed a criticism that began circulating long before Martin and Zimmerman encountered each other. Thousands of black boys die at the hands of other African Americans each year, but the black community, it holds, is concerned only when those deaths are caused by whites. It’s an appealing argument, and widespread, but simplistic and obtuse. It’s a belief most easily held when you’ve not witnessed peace rallies and makeshift memorials, when you’ve turned a blind eye to grassroots organizations like the Interrupters in Chicago working valiantly to stem the tide of violence in the city. It is the thinking of people who’ve never wondered why African Americans disproportionately support strict gun control legislation. The added quotient of outrage in cases like this one stems not from the belief that a white murderer is somehow worse than a black one, but from the knowledge that race determines whether fear, history, and public sentiment offer that killer a usable alibi.

TNC:

Last year--after Zimmerman was arrested--I wrote something hoping that he would be convicted. A commenter wrote in to object, saying that arguing for his arrest was justifiable. Arguing for his conviction was not. I acknowledged the point at the time. The wisdom of it seems even more appropriate today...

The idea that Zimmerman got out the car to check the street signs, was ambushed by 17-year old kid with no violent history who told him he "you're going to die tonight" strikes me as very implausible.  It strikes me as much more plausible that Martin was being followed by a strange person, that the following resulted in a confrontation, that Martin was getting the best of Zimmerman in the confrontation, and Zimmerman then shot him.  But I didn't see the confrontation. No one else really saw the confrontation. Except George Zimmerman. I'm not even clear that situation I outlined would result in conviction...

I think the message of this episode is unfortunate. By Florida law, in any violent confrontation ending in a disputed act of lethal self-defense, without eye-witnesses, the advantage goes to the living.

An intelligent, self-interested observer of this case, who happens to live in Florida, would not be wrong to do as George Zimmerman did--buy a gun, master the finer points of Florida self-defense law and then wait. 

Circling back to the first point, it's worth remembering that caused a national outcry was not the possibility of George Zimmerman being found innocent, but that there would be no trial at all.  This case was really unique because of what happened with the Sanford police. If you doubt this, ask yourself if you know the name "Jordan Davis." Then ask yourself how many protests and national media reports you've seen about him. 

Racist Justice System Becoming a Topic for Mainstream Discussion

It's encouraging to see Newsweek's investment in a long and deeply reported piece on how our society treats black men. It's worth your time. It is appropriately passionate and hopeful in its tone. This is a good example of why affirmative action is right. Read about the pervasiveness of these injustices against black men set in their historical context, and then try to tell me that affirmative action is some kind of great wrong against whites. It is absurd, and that's why campaigning against it is so offensive. It's not that you have to agree with it. It's just that if you're going to try to make something better, why not try to work on something that is actually causing human suffering?

So I should make clear, after my strongly worded post below, that I don't mind at all when people take a long look at it and say, "No, I don't support affirmative action. Here's what I think we should do..." That really doesn't bother me. The problem is that affirmative action is viscerally upsetting to many whites. That is nearly always proof positive of their racism. You don't get upset about something like affirmative action unless you devalue black life. You just don't. These are people who can't be bothered about our mass incarceration policies, but giving a black kid a leg up is offensive to them.

The author quotes Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has a way of getting to the root of things:

“If there’s one thing that’s missing in our country, it’s an acknowledgment of the broad humanity of black folks. Racism—and anti-black racism in particular—is the belief that there’s something wrong with black people … and I mean something in our bones.” He continued, “In our own community, we’ve internalized this. We wonder if we lack moral courage.”

“I want the country to understand that there’s nothing wrong with us,” Coates says, with urgency in his voice. “Things have happened in this country, but there’s nothing wrong with us. My job is to help close the gap between what they see in us and who we actually are.”

Why Affirmative Action is Morally Right

[While writing this post the Supreme Court released its ruling on the case. It looks as though they did a narrow ruling that dodged most of the issues involved. A much better outcome than what I feared.]

For some background on the Supreme Court's likely ruling on affirmative action this week, I encourage you to read Propublica's insightful reporting. The plaintiff at the center of the case, Abigail Fisher, has alleged that she was denied admission to the University of Texas because she is white:

"There were people in my class with lower grades who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skin," she says. "I was taught from the time I was a little girl that any kind of discrimination was wrong. And for an institution of higher learning to act this way makes no sense to me. What kind of example does it set for others?"
It's a deeply emotional argument delivered by an earnest young woman, one that's been quoted over and over again.
Except there's a problem. The claim that race cost Fisher her spot at the University of Texas isn't really true.
In the hundreds of pages of legal filings, Fisher's lawyers spend almost no time arguing that Fisher would have gotten into the university but for her race.
If you're confused, it is no doubt in part because of how Blum, Fisher and others have shaped the dialogue as the case worked its way to the country's top court.
Journalists and bloggers have written dozens of articles on the case, including profiles of Fisher and Blum. News networks have aired panel after panel about the future of affirmative action. Yet for all the front-page attention, angry debate and exchanges before the justices, some of the more fundamental elements of the case have been little reported.
Race probably had nothing to do with the University of Texas's decision to deny admission to Abigail Fisher. 

But let's go deeper. What if it it had? Would that be a problem? Doesn't the entire premise of affirmative action imply that, even if Abigail Fisher in this specific incident is incorrect in her allegation, there will inevitably be many Abigail Fisher's? Are we okay with that? Many Americans, especially whites, are not. Perhaps you oppose affirmative action too.

I would like to convince you that you're wrong.

Your view of affirmative action is heavily influenced by your understanding of what American society is like. As soon as you acknowledge the exhaustively documented extent of inequality and discrimination that favors whites and disadvantages minorities, affirmative action looks fairly reasonable even if you disagree with it. If you're in denial about the way our society systemically privileges white skins, there's little left to argue about. You need something like a spiritual conversion.

Twenty years ago Cheryl Harris wrote a classic article in the Harvard Law Review called "Whiteness as Property." She argued that whiteness itself has taken on the characteristics of property and many whites and social and governmental systems unconsciously expect privileges to accrue to them because of their whiteness.

In questions of affirmative action, the baseline is thereby distorted beyond any reasonable standard of justice. When considering whether affirmative action cost them a specific job, whites claim to ask, "Would I have got the job if race was not a factor?" In asking this question, they elide the fact that the society of which they are a part is discriminatory and unequal in ways that favor them. Had they been born with a different skin color they would have been statistically less likely to have the opportunity to apply for the job in the first place. Having arrived at the specific circumstance of the job or college application on the strength of an uneven playing field, they now insist that the playing field be equal. In this way they enshrine their white privilege as normative.

It is a bit mind-numbing if you've never thought about it this way before, and probably more so due to the inadequacies of my explanation. But this gets at the deeper changes the lawyers working on Fisher's behalf are trying to bring about:

So while the Fisher case has been billed as a referendum on affirmative action, its backers have significantly grander ambitions: They seek to make the case a referendum on the 14th Amendment itself. At issue is whether the Constitution's equal protection clause, drafted by Congress during Reconstruction to ensure the rights of black Americans, also prohibits the use of race to help them overcome the nation's legacy of racism.

The Supreme Court has never ruled that the Constitution bars any and all laws and government programs that consider race. But Blum and his supporters, seeing an opening with the current Court, seek to overturn more than a century of precedent.

The true crux of the suit is not Fisher's failed application, but that government officials violate the constitutional rights of white Americans when they consider race in a way that might help African-Americans and Latinos.

"An argument can be made that it is simply impossible to tease out down to the last student who would have been admitted, and who would have not been admitted, had they been a different skin color," Blum said. "What we know is skin color is weighed and ethnicity is weighed by the University of Texas in their admissions process, and that alone is enough to strike down the plan."

Blum and his supporters say the reasoning is simple. The Constitution is colorblind and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits the government from treating people differently because of race. 

It is difficult to immerse myself in the strategies and rhetoric of segregationists defending Jim Crow, and then when I come up for a breather I find their spiritual descendants are respectable figures arguing cases before the Supreme Court. I have a rather unlimited degree of contempt for Mr. Blum and his ilk. They're using the same old playbook. As soon as the Supreme Court essentially told whites they weren't allowed to officially write white supremacy in law, whites turned around and said, "oh okay, well you know, the constitution is colorblind. We can't acknowledge race in government policy." The motivation is clear. In a society that is systemically discriminatory against blacks, a strictly neutral government validates such racial inequality as a baseline status quo. The culture acts affirmatively against blacks, while conservatives seek to prevent the government and other socially responsible institutions from stepping in to act affirmatively in blacks' favor.

Take a step back and realize that there are respectable people in the United States today who are fighting for the rights and privileges of white people, as such, even if they do not admit it in precisely those words. As a Christian who believes in the words of Jesus and the reality of a final judgment, that is a truly scary place for a person to be in. At the end of our lives when we tell Jesus what we were all about, I don't think fighting on behalf of the most privileged group in our society will have done us any favors.