Advancing Gospel Reconciliation - Stop Missing the Point on Racial Justice, Part 3
Written by Dr. Kenny Gibbs
As a Black man in America, I often face the reality of racial injustice, ranging from the evening news to my own life. During the summer of 2018 – when I saw children locked in cages at the US Southern Border, and various ways “Living While Black” was being policed, I began to express my dismay to those around me. It was not uncommon for my White brothers and sisters – whether religious or secular, conservative or liberal – to respond to my dismay with a simple question: “Do you think that was because of skin color?” For those seeking to advance God’s justice in the world, it’s a question that misses the point.
The point of justice, defined by the Reverend Dr. Mika Edmonson at a recent church retreat as “protecting and restoring the rights of God’s image bearers, especially the most vulnerable,” is justice – across all lines. This includes racial justice. Our goal as followers of Jesus is not to divine the motives of the party carrying out the injustice, but to name the injustice and then participate in the work of repair.
A core challenge we have as Americans and as the church in America in talking about race or racism is that we approach the topic from different lived realities, and use the same terminology in wildly different manors. Is racism about personal hatred or a system rooted in history that privileges one group above others? One of the more helpful definitions I’ve found comes from the Reverend Duke Kwon, who stated:
Racism is the sinful devaluation (or overvaluation), subordination (or supraordination), and exclusion (or preferential inclusion) of God’s image-bearers on the basis of ethnicity, culture or race. It is an idolatrous ecosystem of beliefs, behaviors and social structures that assigns value or advantage based on ethnicity, culture or race. Racism is individual and systemic, behavioral and attitudinal, conscious and subconscious, explicit and implicit, active and passive.