They [African-Americans] don’t want to work. . . . You go downtown and you see some of these apartments, low-income housing. It’s trash. I mean, they don’t care and then they complain. Well, get off your duffer and do something. Make a better life for yourself. Clean up your house, pick up your trash, get some kind of job. (a white evangelical on p. 102, Divided by Faith).
This semester, I've been introduced to critical race theory ("CRT"), which proposes, as Jim-Crow-era racism is gone, that whites have replaced it with subtle justifications of our structural dominance.
Implicit in the definition of a good, civic-minded American is conforming to white culture (yet remember whiteness and all racial categories are social constructs).
Whiteness is the norm - taken for granted, invisible, maintained through whites' economic dominance. Success and the status quo are conflated with whiteness. This is why some whites ask, "Where is white history month?" in response to black history month, unaware every month celebrates white history and culture. Or, why only "non-accented" "standard" English is acceptable in politics or the workplace.
Hiddenness and dominance mean whites promote individual solutions. Are you poor? Work harder! Don't have children you can't provide for! These solutions are color-blind and seem obvious to whites, so whites perceive disadvantaged people as not conforming to "simple" solutions. Whites assume everyone has equal opportunity to succeed. This is just one aspect of CRT - it has been applied to law, education, and more.
Because I want racial reconciliation in the church, I was thrilled to discover a CRT analysis of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith: Critical Whiteness Theories and the Evangelical "Race Problem:" Extending Emerson and Smith's Divided by Faith. Eric Tranby and Douglass Hartmann argue that understanding evangelicalism's race problem allows a better understanding of America's race problem.
Divided by Faith proposed white evangelicals are not more racist; rather, they hold more tightly to individualism and anti-structuralism. White evangelicals strictly apply meritocratic principles. Although evangelicals believe in equal opportunity for all, they can't see one's plight could be determined by anything other than merit and hard work. Such merit-based, individualist views demonstrate white evangelicals and non-evangelical white Americans "ladle from the same kettle” (342).
With CRT, Tranby and Hartmann find white evangelicals' individualism more harmful, not only because it ignores structures, but also because it allows whites to justify the status quo (Id.). Evangelical and non-evangelical whites make the very cultural practices that privilege whites over others seem natural (Id.).
White evangelicals' beliefs make marginalization of people of color seem normal, and they become blind to the racism lurking underneath. These invisible cultural norms impede meaningful change. Whites have no idea white behavior marginalizes people of color.
CRT shows the U.S. church's failure to be a subversive, countercultural, privilege-destructing presence. Rather than unmasking and repenting of it, the church often reinforces white privilege. Because white evangelicals' attitudes are no different from white Americans', the church has not thoughtfully critiqued what politicians and other cultural forces tell us.
In applying CRT to Christians' racial attitudes, I wondered if I'm uncritically accepting CRT without using Scripture to develop a response to racial injustice. However, I do think Scripture addresses the racism lurking under the surface, and commands a response to it. Ephesians 6:12 calls Christians to struggle against authorities and spiritual evil forces. And Colossians 1:16-20 says:
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
We've relegated this struggle to nebulous demons or to what some feel is persecution of Christians. However, what if the invisible privilege that white Christians unwittingly accept means we're called to struggle against far more complex and hidden powers?
Brian J. Walsh and Syliva C. Keesmaat, in Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, say Greek words like throne, dominion, and power signify not only spiritual things, but "what Walter Wink calls the 'legitimations, sanctions, and permissions that undergird the everday exercise of power'" (Id.). Walsh and Keesmaat assert these verses refer to the "very shape of life in the empire" and "dynamics of daily life" (92).
White Christians take for granted our privilege and exert it as an "everday exercise of power," failing to recognize its effects on people of color. Perhaps invisible white dominance, reinforced through the status quo, is a power that Scripture commands us to confront, which has also been reconciled through Christ.
The above Divided by Faith quote illustrates the church has done little to confront harmful beliefs that African-Americans "don't want to work." Also, when common white evangelical solutions only entail "getting off your duffer and doing something," perhaps we've failed to struggle against hidden forces of white privilege.
Any thoughts? What would confronting the power of white privilege look like in practice?
Photo Credit (Whose flesh color is the ad referring to...?)
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