Are Racism and Prejudice Taught? (via Interrace Magazine)

Haven’t written anything in a few months, but found this post interesting enough to repost. Enjoy…

Jane Elliot (http://www.janeelliott.com) is an American teacher, who, during the 1960s, taught children anti-racism classes (although unbeknownst to the children for most for of the duration of the "experiment") in her third grade classes. The children were told that those with blue eyes were superior to those with brown eyes; and that the blue eyed children would be allowed more play time and receive other perks as well – since, of course, they … Read More

via Interrace Magazine

Culture, Ethnicity, and Race

These terms are often used interchangeably, but in reality they describe very different traits. When we talk about crossing barriers, there are many different factors that we must consider.

Culture describes the corporate soul of a grouping of human beings. It is manifested as a preference for various choices of lifestyle: the type of food we like, the music we listen to, the clothes we wear, the language we speak,  the types of entertainment we enjoy, leisure activities, arts and other creative pursuits.  I recently heard an expanded definition of the “soul” of man, that went beyond the three parts traditionally taught, to five parts. They are the mind, will, emotions, personality and imagination.  All five of these are formed in an individual through their environment of shared experiences, which we call culture.  Collectively, a group of people with a common soulish  makeup, form a culture or Subculture in a broader general sense.  People from a common culture, will filter all of their corporate experiences through their personal cultural bias.  When we take a set of cultural biases, and formulate them into moral principles, that is when prejudice begins.

Ethnicity involves the origins or heritage of a group of people; their family genealogy, or the lineage of the people who raised them. This idea of ethnicity is often confused with race, which has similar concepts in it’s definition, but is a different matter altogether. Ethnicity determines the family you are born into, the nations from which your ancestors originated, and can all be traced back to Babel, when languages were confused by God, and people were scattered throughout the earth.  Thus LANGUAGE is the connecting thread between CULTURE and ETHNICITY.  One of the most obvious examples of this is the Latin or Hispanic peoples.  There is one common language, Spanish. However, there are multitudes of differing cultures, and ethnicities  which all speak the Spanish language. Often, Hispanic, is considered a race, which is a blatant error.  There are Hispanic people from at least three different racial streams: European, African, and Indian. However, all of these people are considered Latino or Hispanic, because of their language and some aspects of common culture.

Race describes purely the physical genetic history of a person, or group of people.  It is visibly recognizable by the hue or color of the skin tone, texture and color of hair, and the shape and color of the eyes. Other minor physical features also differentiate racial background. There is no direct correlation between race and culture or ethnicity.  The best example of this is the diaspora of people from Africa, with a tightly identified gene pool of common physical traits, yet they were scattered into hundreds of different cultures and ethnicities. There are people of African descent who are British, Australian, American, Islanders, Dominican, Haitian, literally all of the other nations of the earth. These people are culturally and ethnically different, yet they are all racially blacks of African descent.

So what is Racism?  Racism is the belief that there are inherent differences in people’s traits and capacities that are entirely due to their race, however defined, and that, as a consequence, justify the different treatment of those people, both socially and legally. Racism is based purely on prejudice, which we previously defined as building moral principles, which are subjectively based on cultural and ethnic bias or preference.  Furthermore, racism is about power. When one group of people, whether a culture, ethnicity, or race, have an unbalanced amount of power to enforce their own cultural and ethnic biases on another group of people, that is what we normally define as racism.

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Connect, Empower, Develop

How do we bridge the divide between white and black Christianity? How do we build effective partnerships for ministry to the WHOLE community that is neither paternalistic nor exclusive? We must see ourselves as doing ministry WITH our minority brothers and sisters, not just doing ministry TO them, or FOR them.

In order to be effective cross-culturally, we as white, middle class, Christians must resist the tendency to just provide relief.  Relief is temporary and fosters dependence on those receiving it.  We must learn to first, build the necessary relationships, for a foundation of trust to be established.  We must fellowship together, share meals and common experiences, in order for there to be that trust.  This is the connect phase of ministry.  Just connecting with the people we intend to serve with on a personal, compassionate, and loving level.

The next phase is empowerment.  As we build meaningful relationships in the culture where we minister, we must identify potential leaders in the community, and empower them to minister directly to others in that community.  As outsiders, we could be viewed as “do-gooders” just making ourselves feel good that we came and did something cross culturally.  There must be members of the community, working side by side in leadership positions of the work.   This is CRITICAL in cross-cultural ministry, including “minorities” in leadership roles from the beginning phases of a ministry being established. Turning the tables, if you will, where white Christians, seek to simply serve minority leaders, and place themselves in submissive roles to those in cultural leadership will provide the fastest and most effective model for empowerment.

Developing those leaders and the ministry partnership is the third phase.  As the relationships are built, and leaders are empowered, there must be a continued commitment to help them grow, be equipped,  and matured. This will require commitment to the long haul.  In order for long term development to really be effective, some team members should be so committed, as to be willing to move into the target community, and live among the people they are trying to reach.  That is the level of commitment, that of being fully present, and that we are here to stay, that will communicate real partnership.

On the institutional level, in order for white ministries to be effective in bridging the racial divide, and build effective partnerships, African Americans will need help overcoming their bitterness, from centuries of subjugation and oppression.  Whites on the other hand,  need help overcoming their fear; unfounded and sometimes irrational fears of  lost reputations, loss of control, loss of financial power and rejection by the black community.  For many, this means repentance of deep seated false beliefs, and the tearing down of strongholds in their hearts and minds.  It will not be easy.

My own journey with racism

What follows is the bulk of a paper that I wrote for the Detroit City College experience.  We were required to read “Winning the race …” by Dr. Clarence Shuler, and then write about our impressions.

Briefly, I want to share my heritage.  My paternal grandparents were school teachers in the backwoods of Dixie County, Florida.  Born in 1900, Ellis Williams was the principal of the small rural school and taught grades 7-12.

His wife Mabel taught primary grades 1-6. They raised 6 children through the 1920s to 50s in very meager conditions, supplementing their small salaries with whatever they could grow, hunt and fish. Their students were all white, due to the prevailing idea that blacks should not be educated, since they were destined to be a servant class.

There was a definite caste system that had taken root in the south during the fifty years since Reconstruction.  Even though blacks had been freed from slavery, their assumed plight was to work as farm laborers or domestic servants. By denying them an education, the ruling white caste was able to subjugate and control the working caste.  In many cases, blacks were not able to calculate their day’s wage, which enabled their white employers to cheat them out of even the substandard pay they had agreed to.  They were not able to read and understand contractual agreements, and were at the mercy of the white people to whom they owed money for such things as groceries, rent, and financed purchases, even the clothes on their backs.  “Jim Crow” laws, as they were known, required blacks to step off the sidewalk when approaching whites, drink from separate fountains, eat in separate dining areas, wait in separate rooms for medical treatment, ride in separate transportation, and receive separate educations, if they were allowed an opportunity to be educated at all.

These practices were rooted in a false Biblical doctrine that God had separated the races at Babel, and that He intended them to always be separated.  Indeed, a fear of cross breeding was also a part of that root, which kept especially the black males under constant suspicion and forced submission. Adherents to this doctrine also believed that the black man’s skin was “the mark of Cain”, which is mentioned in the book of Genesis.

In 1923, when my grandparents would have been newlyweds, there was a small village known as Rosewood, Florida, just 25 miles southwest of where they lived. The town was populated predominantly by black tradesmen who had milled cedar trees into pencils.  Because of the rumor of a black man attacking a married white woman in the neighboring town of Sumner, (it was later discovered to be her white lover), 300 whites surrounded the town, and murdered twenty something people.  They finished by burning every building in town, including black and white churches, to the ground.

“The split between the Northern and Southern Baptist organizations arose over slavery and the education of slaves. At the time of the split, the Southern Baptist group used the curse of Cain as a justification for the practice. In fact, most 19th and early 20th century Southern Baptist congregations in the southern United States taught that there were two separate heavens; one for blacks, and one for whites.” [i]  Baptists and other denominations including Pentecostals officially taught or practiced various forms of racial segregation well into the mid-to-late-20th century, though members of all races were accepted at worship services after the 1970s and 1980s when many official policies were changed. In fact, it was not until 1995 that the Southern Baptist Convention officially renounced its “racist roots.”  Nearly all Protestant groups in America had supported the notion that black slavery, oppression, and African colonization was the result of God’s curse on people with black skin or people of African descent through Cain or through the curse of Ham.” ⁱ

In no way, do I excuse or justify Ellis and Mabel Williams’ participation in this system, only to state that they were caught up in something much larger than their individual prejudice.  The socio-religious culture of the South was completely immersed in this doctrine, which caused whites to justify mistreatment of blacks in every area of daily life.  It was taught and modeled by their parents, and reinforced from the pulpits of almost every protestant and Pentecostal church.  This is to my shame, and the shame of every white Christian who has been a part of these denominations. Even though there have been demonstrations of corporate repentance by these churches, the damage done during middle of the 20^th century, to the black race, will likely take another century to heal.  In fact there are still thousands of Southern Baptist churches where a black person would be uncomfortable attending, if not openly made to feel unwelcome.

On my mother’s side of the family, there is another facet of this story.  My maternal grandfather, Joseph Hingson, was fourteen years old when his father died, leaving him the man of the house.  Shortly thereafter, his mother married another man and took Joe’s younger brothers and sisters to live with them in another part of the county. Joe was left with 80 acres of fertile farmland from which to make his way in life.  Farming is hard work, and in the 1930s was primarily done with animal and human labor. Joe would need a lot of help, if he was to survive during the depression years.  Cotton and tobacco were the main cash crops, and both were very labor intensive.  He required the help of black “share croppers” who would work alongside him, planting, hoeing weeds, and harvesting the crops.

During the interim period, until the crops were harvested, Joe provided these workers a humble house to live in, a piece of ground for a garden to grow their own food and livestock, and some basic survival staples. Once the crops were harvested and sold, the share-croppers were paid a portion of the proceeds.  I cannot say whether Joe Hingson was financially fair and equitable with the black people who worked for him, or not. He probably followed the common practice of the time, by paying them the low prevailing wage that farm workers could expect.  I am sure that he profited greatly from their labor, and became one of the most successful farmers in Suwannee County, Florida.

Eventually, as mechanization became more affordable, he prospered and expanded his land holdings, and, the need for farm laborers declined.  Also, Joe and his wife Ruby, brought 4 children into the world, which in those days were naturally expected to work on the farm.  However, during my childhood, in the mid-1960s, there were still two black families, who lived on my grandfather’s farm and helped work in the fields.  Their wives worked in my grandmother’s kitchen helping tend the garden, cooking the meals which fed everyone working on the farm, did laundry and cleaning.  I played with their children in the back yard. Yet, at meal times, all of the white farm workers ate at my grandfather’s table, but Moses, Lonnie, Hattie, and Mary ate their lunch under the pecan trees outside. I never fully understood why, until now, and it makes my heart heavy to realize that I was just one generation away from being a part of that unjust system.

During the middle of the 20^th Century, southern black laborers began what is called “The Great Migration”.  Black people, by the millions, left the cotton and tobacco fields, the citrus groves, and the servile “Jim Crow” caste system which still held them in bondage to the white race.  They fled to the large northern cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, and New York where they found jobs in war-time factories, steel mills, railroads, and other manufacturing jobs.  This caused wealthy southern whites, who depended on this cheap source of labor to turn to violent and hateful practices, of fear and intimidation, in an attempt to keep blacks in the south, so that their agricultural based economy would remain profitable.  Their methods often included charging blacks with unpaid debt, back rent, and other infractions for which the black workers must remain in service to the white land owner, until their debts were satisfied. Compounding interest, at usurious rates, was used to keep the black worker from ever being able to pay off the principal balances.  If a black tried to leave the county without paying his debt, he would be arrested and brought back.

“From the early years of the twentieth century to well past its middle age, nearly every black family in the American South, which meant nearly every black family in America, had a decision to make. There were sharecroppers losing at settlement. Typists wanting to work in an office. Yard boys scared that a single gesture near the planter’s wife could leave them hanging from an oak tree. They were all stuck in a caste system as hard and unyielding as the red Georgia clay, and they each had a decision before them. In this, they were not unlike anyone who ever longed to cross the Atlantic or the Rio Grande.” … “Over the course of six decades, some six million black southerners left the land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly every other corner of America. The Great Migration would become a turning point in history. It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched. It would force the South to search its soul and finally to lay aside a feudal caste system. It grew out of the unmet promises made after the Civil War and, through the sheer weight of it, helped push the country toward the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s.” ⁱⁱ

To conclude, reading Dr. Clarence Shuler’s book, “Winning the race to Unity …” as well as “The Warmth of Other Suns…” by Isabel Wilkerson, has caused me to confront my own soul in the matter.

Before these readings, I would have declared my innocence of the oppression of blacks.  I would have identified myself as being “colorblind” and far from being a racist. I have had many close relationships with African Americans throughout my youth and adulthood.  I have served in ministry with a black pastor of a predominantly white church.  My personal conscience is clear of the charge of racism.

However, the history of my family and southern culture weighs heavily on my heart and mind. Because Clarence Shuler challenged me to delve deeper into this issue, and learn more about the facts, I have been able to recollect and develop a much deeper understanding of the injustice suffered by African Americans at the hands of white America.  It is with much sorrow and remorse that I share in my ancestors’ sins against African Americans.

My desire is to continue to seek new relationships with African Americans in my community, and to find ways to serve with them in effective ministry partnerships. By helping empower them to lead in the community, rather than patronizing them, we can right the wrongs of the 20th century.

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i Dictionary of African-American Slavery, p. 77

ⁱⁱ Wilkerson, Isabel (2010). The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (p. 9). Random House.

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