An inter-Mennonite newspaper, putting the Mennonite world together every week since 1923

EDITORIAL

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As a student at Goshen (Ind.) College five years ago, I took the course Liberation Theologies, delving into Christian schools of belief that God desires justice in earthly life for people who are oppressed. I listened as white classmates expressed confusion about why James Cone, the most prominent black liberation theologian, writes with such anger when we know Jesus loves everyone.

Jesus does love everyone; not all Christians love each other. Some Christians in the U.S. uphold racism, whether intentionally through speaking and acting in racist ways, or unintentionally by supporting racist systems. That makes some people angry, even as they believe God’s love is greater than such human limitations.

When Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a Democratic presidential candidate, spoke March 18 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he felt compelled to address and condemn statements made by the retiring pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., of the congregation where he is a member, Trinity United Church of Christ, on the Southeast Side of Chicago. In pieces of longer sermons, Wright expressed anger at racist systems that can feel so pervasive that our whole nation appears corrupted.

“The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning,” Obama said.

White people, especially white Christians, do need to hear such anger about racism, whether through listening to sermons by preachers such as Wright, or through one-on-one or small group conversations with friends or strangers.

I grew up in Washington, D.C., listening to black, Hispanic and Asian peers, teachers and administrators at D.C. Public Schools — as well as people in my neighborhood — speak about experiences with racism, and the sadness, self-hatred, bitterness and anger such experiences create. And I currently live on the Southwest Side of Chicago — about 10 miles from Trinity UCC — where discrimination remains a daily reality for many of my neighbors, not just in personal interactions but in education, housing, jobs and city services.

Often being the only white person in a classroom or neighborhood gathering, I have experienced anger directed at me, usually not because of anything I had done, but because I was white. As a child, I sometimes objected that I was not racist, and that my Mennonite ancestors had opposed slavery. But it would have been better for me to just listen. Whether or not I, or my ancestors, particularly deserve blame, I benefit from a racist system.

There is no such thing as “reverse racism,” the charge some have leveled against Wright. Racism is discrimination backed by a system in which people of color are denied equal rights and privileges in a society. When individual white people use such a system to discriminate against individual people of color, that is racism. When individual people of color discriminate against white people, or against other people of color, there is no system giving power to their speech and actions.

Being able to hear anger about racism — even when directed at a white person, white people generally or a nation’s racist actions — is a blessing. I value the honesty of people of color who have expressed to me the ways they have been hurt by racism.

Anger and lament are valid expressions of human experience, as we can see in examples throughout Scripture. Psalm 137:9 expels anger so raw it shocks readers millennia later. Directed at Babylon after the Exile of Israel, the psalmist writes, “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”

Listening to such honest anger can produce the kind of humility each of us needs. Christians of each culture are part of the body of one loving Christ, no better or worse than any other. Such humility is essential if our nation is to talk openly about the way racism continues to affect each of us, of all races and faiths, as well as our nation.

Wherever we live, whichever church we attend and whomever is elected as president, we can live in the hope that one day we will live in a country where all people experience true equality and justice. — Celeste Kennel-Shank