The Moving Walkway of Racism - Part 1
Christians believe that not all that is present and even dominant in our world and culture was created or intended by the Creator. The Bible records that God created humanity as his image to proliferate his likeness and to do so in fellowship with him. Science has underscored that the genetic variation between one race and another is the same as the variation existent within any given race. Thus, "race has no scientific merit outside of sociological classification."1 In other words, there is biologically only one race, the human race, the image of Almighty God.
The irony is that racism is the demonstration of something quite unlike God, misrepresenting him severely and in the context of alienation from him. Consequently, to participate in a racist system 2 is to participate in something that is dehumanizing-ultimately for both the oppressor and the oppressed. The double irony is that it is in the "separate but equal" church of Jesus Christ, that Jim Crow 3 seems to recline unchallenged.
Racism Defined
Some have defined racism as "Prejudice plus power." David Wellman (Portraits of White Racism) considers racism from a more systemic paradigm as a "system of advantage based on race", which Tatum expands to involve "cultural messages and institutional policies and practices as well as the beliefs and actions of individuals." 4 She continues by comparing this system with a moving walkway like one might find at an American airport:
I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of White supremacy and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. Some of the bystanders may feel the motion of the conveyor belt, see the active racists ahead of them, and choose to turn around, unwilling to go to the same destination as the White supremacists. But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than they conveyor belt-unless they are actively antiracist-they will find themselves carried along with the others. 5
1 A short article working through James King's work in The Biology of Race can be found at http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Sciences/Lifescience/HumanRaces/BiologyRace/BiologyRace.htm
2 As we will develop in this article, racism is more than behavior. On an inpidual basis, racism is a condition of the heart that encompasses how one thinks, feels and acts. The systemic nature of racism displays the prejudices of the majority of inpiduals in ways that result in privilege and advantage for that majority.
3 From Wikipedia: The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure segregation in all public facilities, with a "separate but equal" status for black Americans and members of other non-white racial groups. Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms and restaurants for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated. These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800-66 Black Codes, which had also restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964[1] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
4 Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (New York: Basic Books 2003), 7.
5 Ibid., 11-12.
