I am a sinner. That is the first confession I make as a Christian pursuing a holier life. This is so critical to starting my journey because my natural tendency is to justify my mistakes. I have to overcome my default presumption that nothing about me needs changing. Until then, I will never receive the correction from God that can reshape me spiritually.
I am a sinner utterly dependent on God’s grace to become a decent person.
So far, my confession should be in line with conservative Christian sensibilities. But what if I change the wording slightly? What if, instead of saying I’m a sinner, I say that I am a racist? What if I agree that all people are born into sin, and in keeping with that truth I add that all white people in the United States are born into a specific form of racism?
All of us are born racist, and we are helpless in the bondage of that racism. It’s sin and we are damaged by it.
Now I’ve said something offensive. Defenses go up. People who are comfortable confessing that they are sinners become hostile to the idea of confessing that they are sinners in this particular way. This raises the question of whether their confession to being a sinner in general is a rhetorical gesture of theological correctness.
If we are serious about confessing sin, why object to confessing a specific sin?
Sin does not merely describe mistakes that disappear into the past. Sin is the complicated web of brokenness entrapping all of humanity. Every act of injustice and idolatry has made a contribution. It is not that we are guilty of our ancestors’ sins, but whatever evil they did continues to shape the structure of our society. And what we do will shape society in the future.
Resentment, intimidation, shame, paranoia and other wounds resulting from yesterday’s sins cause today’s sins, which will in turn become part of our collective baggage shaping tomorrow’s sins. While white people alive today are not to blame for the racism of past eras, the racism of the past infected the shape of our reality. We are responsible for recognizing that we are infected, personally, by racism.
We have to ask God to liberate us from it.
If you are white and living in the United States, you cannot proceed in Christian spiritual formation without grappling with your personal racism. I suspect the reason white people are so resistant to the charge of racism is because it has been used to categorically dismiss people. But to be a racist in this country just means you have instinctual ways of reacting to black people that are unjust and can cause harm. You need to consciously fight back against your instincts. It also could mean that you have made an idol of white culture without being aware of it. You might be conflating whiteness with being civilized or even with being Christian. Racism manifests itself in an idolatry of white cultural patterns that we presume to be the way all civilized or even Christian people should act.
My racism is manifested in my bad habit of checking to see if my car door is locked when I see young black men with certain hairstyles or clothing walking past. Clicking the lock button doesn’t hurt anybody, but when I engage in this practice without any self-examination, I make the world unsafe for young men like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. (I have to ask: Why do I act on my paranoia of certain black men based on their clothing or hairstyle?)
Paranoid fear might not feel like sin, but it can result in horrific harm.
This past month, John Crawford went to a Walmart store in Beavercreek, Ohio, to purchase a toy BB gun and supplies for a family cookout. An older white couple, Ronald and April Ritchie, saw Crawford carrying the BB gun in the store. They followed him and called 911 to report a dangerous man with a gun. When the police arrived, they told Crawford to drop the weapon. And because he didn’t move quickly enough, they shot and killed him. The Ritchies will not be charged with a crime, but their paranoid fear of John Crawford contributed to his death.
