Race in America: We Should All Go to Church

James Poulos on The Daily Beast has a very old fashioned way of dealing with racism: Church. Its not so clear in the article but he brings up a good point. In the light of a very racially charged 2014 it is clear that in some ways we are no further along the pathway to an egalitarian society in 2015 than in 1965. But his main point is that communing together as a society around something common, like faith, is a way to heal the wounds of our skin-color based past. There are moments in this country where the memories of slavery, now 150 years past, can seem all too fresh. Even nearer is the terrorism of the Jim Crow South, complete with arbitrary executions, exclusive environments and separate bathrooms and drinking fountains. Even though that is 50 years gone and the terrible laws that those policies bred are gone, you wouldn’t guess that people have bled and died for racial equality in this country if you have read a website or newspaper in the past 6 months.

Things seem to be as bad as 1968 in some quarters and yet James Poulos seems to think that a common faith will solve the problem that re-education of both sides has seemed never to solve. Whites argue that Blacks need to behave, dress “normal” (read white normative) and to not resort to violence and stop killing each other. Blacks argue that Whites have to quit being racist. However, reality tells us that to be a person of color (black, hispanic, asian and so on) makes it harder to get ahead and (in some cases) even survive in this country. When Blacks complain about racism what they are asking is that they be treated as regular human beings and be included as full members of society rather than remaining in their Constitutionally decreed (before the 14th amendment) 3/5 status in American society. His argument for community is sound but the approach is wrong. He is right, in so much as, all people need to come together under a common cause and that being in community together will teach a kind of lesson that policy and economics will never solve. Community can do a great deal. It can put a human face on the words we use to describe the “other.” However, that will not change the reality of certain situations.

No amount of faith is going to fix the fact that every day people of color have to look at their white counterparts getting jobs and educational opportunities that are far harder to attain for themselves. The fact remains that a black household earning over six figures a year probably does not live in a neighborhood with comparable incomes. As Chris Rock put it, “The white man gets to walk to what the black man has to fly to” in terms of economic achievement. Will that pressing problem be solved by community? No. There is no amount of community, education, clothing, or living in good neighborhoods that will solve the quiet racism in this country that exists in education, in the job market, and within the greater system as a whole that is devoted, almost entirely to the advancement of white people at the detriment of all others. Let’s get to work on that problem.