Historically, the public focus on justice seems to cycle. Why should crises raise our awareness of injustice? It should be an ongoing concern, but it isn’t. Nevertheless, 2020 was a time of many crises that are still very much with us today. I think everyone has a sense of their worldview, whether articulated or not. It is that framework within which one interprets the past, acts in the present, and prepares for the future. Worldview is the place that determines where one will lie on the spectrum of “being part of the problem or part of the solution.” That framework, for the future, is the empty canvass of vision that one is about to paint upon. Will it be idyllic, awful or something in between?
My goal, herein, is to be encouraging, not judgmental, as we look at some of our problems as well as directions towards solutions. I’m trying to capture a sense of how one group of people, including myself, find themselves biased against another group. After all, no one is born with this bias – it has to first be seen or heard and then accepted, without enough thought to dismiss it as irrational and/or illogical. One needs to think about what’s happening around oneself in order to have a chance at remediating chaos. After a few examples, we can look at means to viable solutions.
An Example
A few very bad police officers have focused us, once again, on an issue 300 years in the making. The refocus is a good thing – the circumstances, horrific. Some thought is required to understand the roots of the problem. In every grouping of people skills or product attributes, there will exist a quality control (QC) curve (typically somewhat bell shaped, i.e. like the normal distribution). That QC curve predicts that the majority of the population will be okay and that a few will be either excellent or awful. The bad cops are from one tail of the LEO’s QC curve. This doesn’t excuse the behavior – it just puts its existence into a very real, statistical context.
Most know the history – Africans were kidnapped, shipped away from their homes, and sold into slavery – ad nauseam. Today, we have both the resultant chaos and yet another opportunity to try to do something to “break the cycle” of injustice. Yet if “we the people” don’t think, we’ll never generate the understanding necessary to move toward solutions.
The initiation of the BLM movement in America was right on target. Unfortunately, the acronym represents, perhaps in hindsight, a very poor choice of words. For one, the acronym was exclusive as opposed to inclusive. Moreover, the movement did not speak to the 60 million (and counting) victims of the American Holocaust, ca. 50% of whom are black in an overall 13% black population. A single murder is terrible – what word(s) does one use to describe 30 million murders? Furthermore, BLM was, early on, hijacked by some anarchists who seem to hate everything about this country. Still, between these extremes are opportunities to break the cycle of socioeconomic injustice. Thankfully, some are beginning to get some traction, as “cooler heads” are evolving. They have been using their various platforms to both raise awareness and press for action.
In sports, for example, we are now seeing both professional and collegiate athletes use their entertainment value to draw attention to both the injustice of racism and the need to find paths to its end. One of the most clever and thoughtful expressions of this was made by a highly ranked, college basketball team’s black warm-up shirts with the single word in white text, “Eracism.” Other teams have used a variety of expressions directed at raising our awareness of the need to finally address and solve this problem.
Racism: A Personal Experience
I’ve continued to be amazed, as I look back at my own life. I grew up in a “blue collar” family, in a “blue collar” town in southern California. Like everyone else, I got to choose neither my parents nor where they lived. In my high school years, the feared high school “gang” was of a given ethnicity – Hispanic. It was easy to see how that fear morphed into racism. Like it or not, these gang members were caught in a cycle of “socioeconomic injustice.”
Many of those “caught in the cycle” were likely from broken (nontraditional; see below) families – the gang had become their family. This is not just Hollywood stuff – my dad (a white immigrant) was a local police officer who had a heart for the plight of those (many also immigrants) struggling to make an honest living. He used his status in the law enforcement community to help many Hispanic men in our community, who were taken advantage of by their bosses, keep their jobs and stay out of our local, criminal (illegal drugs) culture.
The fickle nature of racism became more obvious when my high school basketball team played in the state championship basketball tournament. We travelled 50 miles to play the Compton “Tar Babies,” a nickname I can’t fathom, to this day. We (mostly white, some brown) were destroyed by far superior (black) athletes. Years later, when the Watts riots occurred (much like the 2020’s, supposedly BLM riots), I still didn’t make the connection with racism and socioeconomic injustice. Then, I moved halfway across the country to continue my education. Suddenly, black, not brown, were the bad folks – the scary, criminal element. Racism and the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid had a new color. I had moved away from Mexican immigrants to the border of a new inhospitality.
The irrationality of racism as a response to the plight of the poor began to take shape as my formal education continued and moved into full time employment, marriage, and raising a family. But, regardless of where I lived, the majority of the white, brown, or black people in my spheres of interaction were all regular folks, like me, just living their lives. Yet, the injustice was clear – some of the poorest found crime as perhaps their only option to that injustice. The real crime was and is still being committed by those non-thinking people who link the ethnicity (or other identifying trait) of a criminal gang or undesirable group, to all people of that trait – racism (or prejudice) is born and propagated.
Racism: More Widely
Racism is/was traditionally associated with a skin color when, in actuality, that color is/was of the ethnicity of a tribe or particular group victimized by a society that left part of that group locked in a cycle of brokenness and hopelessness. In a few generations, or less, the underlying causes of the victimization were attached, by thoughtless people, to skin color. One might think “thoughtless” is too kind of word and perhaps, out of context, it is. To me, how any thinking person can associate “badness” with skin color (biology) is mind numbing, when the underlying causes are blatant. Racism is an irrationality.
The world is full examples of group against group victimization, which has nothing to do with biology. The Hatfields vs McCoys, the Tutsi vs Hutus, the Sunni vs Shia, the Serbs vs Croats, and cats vs dogs, are just a few of the conflicts likely based on the lust for power and/or control. We seem to be seeing more of these examples as time progresses. It’s crept into both our politics and our communication. As one commentator put it some time ago, “there is nothing new under the sun.” If we continue to devolve, as a species, we only reinforce the absurdity in Darwin’s well known work, the full title of which is ”On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life,” that we are animals. If true, perhaps we shouldn’t be expected to think, but to only act like dogs eating dogs.
Unfortunately, racism is beginning to be used, today, as a conversation stopper, much like the word “science.” Calling someone with an opinion (ethnic context or not) differing from yours, a “racist” stops the conversation, probably because it carries so much baggage that no one wants to go there. In the final analysis, we’re talking about orthodoxy. Though most often used in a religious context, the norms of any group are, by definition, orthodox. Everyone else, outside that groups norms, is nonorthodox, i.e., by definition, a cult. Thus, if one is labeled a racist, that person is neither like nor liked by the labeler. Analogously, “science says…” is misused as some ethereal, last word – unchallengeable by mere mortals.
Breaking the Cycle
Where then are some starting points for breaking the socioeconomic cycle of injustice? If, as I surmise, a lack of thought is the root of the problem, then education must be (a very important part of) the solution. Education can not only remediate racism, whether a cause or effect of socioeconomic injustice, but also other forms of bias. Think of some of the more polarizing elements of just 2020 – racism; liberal vs conservative (and all of its subsets); dictatorship or republic; faith or not; etc.
If thinking is the solution and education drives thinking, then what forms might this “teaching people to think” take? In the “F’s” in education – Family, Formal, and Faith we can find a passing grade, not failure. These can be seen as three legs of the “seat of education”, and thus, they need to exist. History tells us that the traditional family, i.e., children being raised by their biological mother and father, are going to have a good chance of growing up in a caring environment. That caring family environment will likely extend, in the child, to caring for his classmates, and so on. When this is supplemented, not replaced, by quality K-12 schools, then thinking, creative children become more probable. College can focus that formal education. But this is just one pathway to thinking young adults. There are many variants to this route – it just happens to be close to the one I was on (the dad that raised me was my stepdad). Today, there seem to be more variants (than the one I took) to a path to becoming a thinker. Without thought, though, there’s little hope for objectivity, justice, and peace.
If children are not nurtured to think and create, then their opportunities to be part of the group of “all men (that) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Declaration of Independence, USA),” are diminished. Moreover, all of society is diminished by their exclusion and the potential bias, for being non-normative, that could be associated with them. They, themselves, have done nothing wrong, but their loss from the thinking community puts them on a slippery slope towards being the target(s) of bias and the concomitant, potential loss of the freedom(s) written into our (USA) laws.
Standards
How does faith impact the path to thoughtfulness? In my experience, it’s been huge. Racism is obliterated in Genesis – we (humans) are all created in the image of God. Skin color is biological, not experiential. Moreover, we are called to love both Him and our neighbors. An overarching teaching of Scripture is to love the sinner yet loathe the sin – this is the model repeatedly taught by Jesus. There is (some)thing new under the Son. Unfortunately, all humans are born with the capacity to do evil (sin) which is the crux of the matter. However, without standards for right vs wrong, we’re still stuck in our bias. Fortunately, the God of the Bible “reached down” into His Creation and gave His image bearers the elements of justice. Today, those elements form the basis of most constitutional legal systems.
A Biblical worldview (read more in Existence) helps in other arenas as well. As my Biblical worldview has expanded, I have seen ample evidence of the importance of having a complete worldview, i.e., one that helps us understand the past, (thoughtfully) act in the present, and prepare for the future. If one’s framework for thought is fragmented, one’s actions will be as well. A complete worldview is essential for both logical thinking and action – elements which will be necessary if we are to find our way out of group against group prejudice.
Ways Forward
I’ve briefly mentioned (above) what I have come to believe is a path out of socioeconomic and other forms of injustice, such as group on group. That it is difficult should be obvious, as we’re not yet even close. How do we love the person(s) of another group (sinners) while not caring for their lifestyle (sin)? I have not seen any signs, either now or in history, that the “world”, by its own thinking or actions, is going to find a way forward. If we have, as I believe, a supernatural source of standards of behavior, i.e., those given in the Bible, how can we mortals be expected to live by those stated goals of behavior? We have a lot of encouragement from that same resource. One of my favorites is, “I can do all things by Him who gives me strength (Philippians 4:13).”
Why should He care about each one of us? Well, not only did He create us in His image, but he also wants everyone to enjoy both Him (John 1:12-13) and His creation (Genesis 1:28-29). He gives us a great example of reconciliation as He addresses the discord among two opposed, socio-economic-religious groups – the Jews and everyone else (Gentiles) of a couple of millennia ago. We read that “His purpose (is) to create one new (group) out of the two (opposed groups), thus making peace and in (His) one body to reconcile both (groups) to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.” This beautiful picture of fellow citizens continues for six more verses, but these two suffice to make my point. If it’s not sane to retry the same old approaches to the problems of injustice and expect different results, then let’s go another way.
We get another clue to a solution from Scripture – love your neighbor, sinner or not, in your group, or not. If you think logically about your neighborhood, it has no boundary. Let’s start with getting to better know our nearest neighbors. Walk thru your neighborhood – take a friend or family member, introduce yourselves, and talk about what’s happening in your lives. If they’re sort of like you, you’ve found some new friends. Your neighborhood grows into a bigger group to love on itself, with a greater capacity to then love on the neighboring neighborhood, etc.
If, however, that newly known neighbor is a bit different, or more, then you’ve found a member of another group with a (somewhat) different worldview. Continue the conversation, even if it’s less comfortable, but do not be thinking, “what can I do to fix them?” Instead, listen to try to identify (this could take multiple encounters) their heartfelt needs until you can ask something like, “how can I help?” or “what should I do?”
A simple change in the way we think about others (our nearby neighbors and beyond) who are less like ourselves is a very good way forward. Your worldview really does matter – will it allow you to move in this direction? If not, further reflection and study could help you become part of much-needed solutions. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” (UNCF motto).
It is easy to fear or hate what we don’t understand. Through integration and/or immersion in the cultures around us, we can gain the understanding that should reduce both fear and bias. Travel to different parts of your city or country (and maybe beyond) and interact with people who are different from yourself. Your worldview will be strengthened for the investment. To paraphrase coach Jimmy V, “Don’t give up (thinking)…don’t ever give up (thinking).”
