Portland, Ferguson and Watts

by ProfDave, ©2021

(Aug. 26, 2021) — So race riots are back.  Some of us thought we had surmounted that fifty years ago.  The conscience of Christian America freed the slaves, but failed, for almost a century, to erase prejudice and racial barriers.  We finally got serious about Martin Luther King’s dream of Christian unity in the sixties.  Legal and institutional barriers were torn down.  We were “one nation under God.”  But as Alan Paton put it (Cry the Beloved Country), when we at last were turned to loving they were turned to hating, in the spirit of Malcolm X and black separatism.

The situation we have today has nothing to do with slavery and very little with segregation.  Discrimination is well established as illegal and politically incorrect.  True, the relative poverty and poor education of African Americans back then was a disadvantage.  But the tribalism of post-modern thinking has not helped.  The minority community is only a generation and a half ahead of the majority on the slippery slope.  “They” have not become “us.”  Disproportionate numbers have chosen not to integrate, not to “melt” into “the melting pot,” not to identify with the mainstream “middle class” world, but rather a subculture that, forgive me, is not all positive.  Not blaming the victim, but dysfunctional thinking keeps a man down.  Who will hire an angry young man?

But perhaps I have missed the point.  The antagonistic relationship between police and young men of color is an established fact, but entirely wrong.  If you do the crime, you should get arrested, no matter who you are.  But if you are doing what is right, you should wave and move on unmolested.  Try not to look or act like a criminal.  And if an officer makes a mistake, looting the 7-11 is not an appropriate answer.  But we all know that a dark skin should not be part of “the look.”  Society is already ruined when it is alienated from the law.  The police become occupiers rather than community agents.  Any solutions?

But what does a biblical world-view have to say on the issue?  Bottom line: all mankind are made of one blood, in the image of God.  Skin color is not mentioned in Scripture and apparently was not an issue in the ancient Mediterranean world.  Science concurs: there is only one race of homo sapiens. 

When the Law of Moses decrees separation, it does so on the basis of cultural-religious contagion.  But the Old Testament is littered with exceptions of individuals who apparently accepted the God of Israel.  Descent matters, but relationship to the Almighty is the main thing.  There are only two kinds of people, the people of God (“the Kingdom”) and the people of separation from Him (“the world”).  Allegiance is decisive.  But both are made by and loved by God – and, in Christ, sought by God.

Christianity, from the first century, has been distinctive in teaching equality, male and female, slave and free, urbane and primitive.  “Christians” have not had a perfect record, by any means – see the revival of slavery in modern times.  But compare the value placed upon social equality of women and minorities in the West with Islamic law, the Hindu caste system, or social Darwinism. 

For Jesus followers, racism is just plain wrong.  All brothers are brothers and all sisters are sisters.  Red and yellow, black and white, green and polka-dotted, lame and blind, deaf and dumb and Down’s too – Jesus died for all.  And if He loves them that much, I had better love them, too!    

Is there an extent to which aspects of the ghetto sub-culture contribute to perpetuating the under-class condition of so many?  Can “attitude” make you unemployable?  Un-educable?  Un-marriageable?  Is Black racism self-defeating?  Or is this blaming the victim?  Black-American friends, what do you think?

Gaza, Homs, Donetz, Ferguson, Baltimore, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis.  Scenes of urban violence and hatred.  I remember Watts, CA,1965.  There are real grievances, compounded by generations of hatred and fear.  Orgies of violence bring destruction and misery, leaving everyone worse off and with more reason to hate and fear than before. 

What is the answer?  What is to keep the hatred and violence from escalating to mutual destruction?   How can Jews and Palestinians, Sunnis and Alawites (the secular regime, really, and in Iraq, too), Russians and Ukrainians, minority youth and police be reconciled?  The appeal to conscience and common humanity or to power?  Whence comes real peace?   Let’s think about this.

I used to do carriages at Shaw’s Grocery.  We noticed things about people.  Some folks put their carts in the corrals and some folks leave them in the parking space next to their cars – along with their trash.  Hmmh.  What makes the difference?  Identification with the community of shoppers.  If you identify with the community, you don’t trash it.  Even a dog doesn’t poop in its own bed. 

So it is pretty obvious why the Minneapolis young people loot and burn.  And it is about more than the color of their skin.  Without a sense of common community, society does not work.  Yes, it would help if the police were part of the same community.  They might get a little more help – it’s tough being treated like an army of occupation – and not be so trigger happy.  But who is my community?  Reminds me of the parable, “the good Samaritan.”  Who is my neighbor?

It has been 57 years since Watts but the images on the news are indistinguishable.  Has nothing changed?  Every possible effort educationally and legally has been made to eliminate racial discrimination.  African-Americans have reached the top of almost every profession and status.  Yet the color of the underclass, the inner city, and the prisons is at least brown.  It is obvious that some have succeeded and some have not.  And the hatred boils over. 

Instead of reconciliation, grievances are being compounded from one generation to another.  White America, in blood and fire, did away with slavery 150 years ago.  Martin Luther King marched for racial reconciliation and an end to segregation (on Christian principles) fifty years ago.  Largely white legislators and judges made integration and equal opportunity the law of the land.  It’s over.  So why do we still hate each other in the city?

Could it be a spiritual problem?  Both Lincoln and King preached healing, reconciliation, and unity.  Both appealed to the Christian values of the nation.  Both were assassinated and their message drowned by voices of retribution and domination.  Black Power moved away from integration and assimilation as a goal towards self-conscious separatism.  Instead of understanding, defiance.  No quarter given or expected.  Instead of joining America, effectively rejecting it and stoking old grievances.

But this is no longer a strictly racial problem.  It is a socio-economic problem.  The erosion of Christian values has created an underclass of alienated and unsuccessful human beings of all races and ethnicities.

This world is still a mess.  Sure, we all have a natural tendency to be wary of strangers: the stranger the warier.  We tend to draw a line between “us” and “them.”  Is our sense of community inclusive or exclusive?    And if we are not “in on” it, we are “down on” it.  Whatever “it” is.

But hatred between people-groups does not depend on skin pigment, but a choice.  Do we pre-judge a person by our grievances against his/her people (perhaps things that happened in another time and another place) or as a human being – bearer of God’s image for whom Christ died?

It is pretty clear which choice is the way of racial or class or religious reconciliation, isn’t it?  Grievances are real and justice is important, but 50 years of justice has not solved the ghetto problem.  Abusing you because your grandfather abused my grandfather is not justice.  Let alone robbing the Asian who owns the local store!  Justice does not bring community reconciliation.  Reconciliation brings justice.  Christianity – if applied – does have a solution.

But the other problem in the “hood” is not specifically racial, but the anger and hopelessness of feral young men of all colors and languages.  You have heard of feral dogs, of course, domestic pets who have gone wild, become dangerous, and run in packs?  Well, people do the same thing when not properly cared for and “domesticated.”  Real Christianity – if applied – has a solution for this, too.

Racial and community conflict in our cities comes partly from our fundamental pre-suppositions about other people – dehumanizing and objectifying them or seeing them as divine image-bearers.  The other factor, the one doing most of the looting and destruction, is feral young men (and some women). 

What is a feral young man?  One who has gone wild.  A boy who has not been socialized – like Topsy, not raised but “just gro’d”.  He has not been given the life skills, values, and character traits necessary to be a successful and productive member of society.  Typically, he did not have a mother and father who stuck together long enough to raise him.  Particularly, he did not have a father to instill in him the discipline and sense of responsibility to stay in school, hold a job, make a faithful marriage, and raise his own children.  Probably because his father was feral, too, and abandoned him and his mother.  And that great gaping father-wound is a grievance against life and society, a simmering rage that can break out in abuse, crime and destruction, rape and pillage.  A child needs a father and a mother.

The urban tinderbox, I contend, is not so much a racial problem as an underclass problem.  Feral young men are only half of it.  Hurt people hurt people.

The female side of the equation is the single mother, whom feral men and sexual freedom leave in their wake.  Her disadvantages are huge: interrupted education, lower-paying jobs or welfare, the impossible task of being father and mother and bread-winner without resources.  Chances are, she didn’t have a mother and father who stuck together long enough to raise her, either.  Daddy didn’t show her how a gentleman should treat her.  And nobody told her how critical it would be to her life’s success to postpone sexual activity until after education and marriage – and to select her partner very very carefully.

But there you have it: an underclass full of rage and desperation, with little commitment or identification with the wider community.  And not a whole lot of hope for the “American Dream.”  The rest cascades from there.  Unemployment, under-employment, underground economy, welfare dependency, substance abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse and exploitation, vice and gangs, crime and incarceration, high school dropping out – all concentrated in low rent/subsidized housing districts, dragging down resources for schools and services. 

Is that the consequence of being black?  They are White and Hispanic, too.  Is it racial prejudice or the cumulative effect of generations of family failure – moral failure? 

Do we see them, with all their anger and brokenness as sacred human beings, loved by God?  Do they see themselves so?  Can we convince them that they are?  Convince ourselves?  That is the path to healing.

Our cities and our society are deeply divided, between haves and have-nots, between races, between sexes, between liberal and conservative.  No amount of regulation, “community organization,” urban renewal or welfare will close the gap.  Justice is not enough.  The path to reconciliation is spiritual.  It requires those who demand equality to treat others with equality, those who demand toleration to be tolerant, those who demand freedom to grant it, those who demand respect to be respectful.  It requires Christians to be Christians – to follow Jesus, love their enemies, and respect the common image of God in different people.

Furthermore, if the poor and underprivileged (black or white or in between) are ever to emerge from the underclass, they need to return to their spiritual roots and moral discipline.  Do the right thing.  Seek supernatural aid – Uncle Sam will fail you.  To be specific: stay out of bed, stick by your woman, raise your own kids!  And the liberal elites need to encourage, rather than discourage faith.

David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College.  He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota.  He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020).  He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.