White people can no longer afford to deny the violent racism that infects our lives. Rather, we must take responsibility for it. The first thing we need to do is to name it. Yes, name it in people like the terrorist who killed the nine people at Emmanuel last Wednesday. Name it in our political, economic, and entertainment systems that propagate and benefit from racist structures. For example, did you know that currently, “the U.S. has a greater wealth gap between whites and blacks than South Africa did during apartheid?” Name it for the sinful, demonic structure that it is.
But just as important, name the racism that infects you. It’s not helpful to just name racism in others if we don’t also take responsibility for the racism within each of us. Name it in yourself so that you can repent from it. And once you repent from it, name it again and again. Racism is so embedded in our culture that its evil will surely return to our lives.
Please don’t fail to recognize this vital moment in American history: when our fellow citizens screamed for equality, marched for recognition, and pleaded for justice. Because someday the next generation will ask us: What did you do?
And so today we must ask ourselves: What are we doing? What are we seeing? What does this all mean?
Because the last few years within our country — a continuation of the past hundreds of years — have been socially jarring for a society that considers itself a modernized, technologically advanced, and morally superior nation
The school’s atmosphere, cultivated over the past nine months, has a magical effect on the 80 attending students. In a surprisingly short time, the commitment to creating a nonviolent learning environment has enabled at least thirty students to become literate.
As the governor of the first state to secede from the Union, Haley treaded softly on Monday, explaining: Some “South Carolinians view the flag as a symbol of respect, integrity, and duty. They also see it as a memorial. A way to honor ancestors who came to the service of their state during time of conflict.” But, “for many others in South Carolina,” she continued, “the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past.”
Haley explained that it is fine for individuals to fly the Confederate flag on their own private property.
“But, the state house is different,” she declared.
Why is it different and what is the connection to the deaths of Walter Scott and The Emanuel Nine?
Vatican officials on June 23 released a document on family values — a precursor to a major meeting in October — that underscores the ongoing tension between Pope Francis’ desire for a more “welcoming” church and the need to hew to long-standing tradition and doctrine.
“The Christian message should be conveyed using language that generates hope,” reads the 78-page working document , which compiles the responses of Catholics around the world on issues facing modern families.
A lifelong anti-abortion activist, Schenck has impeccable evangelical credentials. Consequently, after the 2013 D.C. Navy Yard shooting left 13 people dead in his own neighborhood, Schenck risked losing those credentials — and possibly his career — as he publicly began to question the unholy alliance between God and guns that exists among many conservative evangelicals.
Though Schenck has already made a few public statements about his support for stricter gun control as part of his pro-life stance, he expects that The Armor of Light, released earlier this year, will cause him to lose "significant" financial support.
Not that he minds.
Nancy Ross was sitting next to Kate Kelly at an Ordain Women board meeting in Salt Lake City on June 23, 2014, when Kelly learned that she had been excommunicated from the LDS Church.
Kelly began to tear up at the email from her Mormon bishop, and soon most of the nine or so board members around the table were weeping as well.
“It was a truly awful day — with a lot of really big emotions,” Ross recalls.
“A year later, it’s still an awful thing.”
The Confederate battle flag will not fly much longer on the grounds of the South Carolina state Capitol, where it has flown since it was dislodged from the Capitol itself 15 years ago.
The state’s political establishment wants it gone, and doubtless it soon will be. What is to be hoped is that its removal signals the end of the mythical republic for which it stands.
In the years after the Civil War, the battle flag became the emblem of the Religion of the Lost Cause, which white Southerners embraced not only to legitimate and ennoble their disastrous struggle to maintain their right to own other people, but also to create the myth of an antebellum golden age of genteel manners, Christian piety, and happy slaves.
There is a scripture that says we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against powers and rulers of the darkness. Within the nonviolent faith tradition it has always been clear that hate cannot drive out hate and evil cannot drive out evil, and so the Christians that were able to forgive the murder 48 hours after losing their loved ones is consistent with their faith Jesus said as he was being murdered by the state, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." But this forgiveness should not be misinterpreted as a dismissing of the greater evil. Their forgiveness is also an act of resistance to the attempts to lay the blame for this horror at the feet of one man. If America is serious about this moment we cannot just cry ceremonial tears while at the same time refusing to support the martyred Reverend and his parishioners’ stalwart fight against the racism that gave birth to the crime.
Sometimes they release studies about white people that just make you groan.
When “Americans” speak up and protest unfair treatment by the government, two-thirds (67%) of white Americans agree that it always makes our country better. But when “black Americans” speak up and protest unfair treatment by the government, white Americans’ approval drops to less than half (48%), all according to a study released by the Public Religion Research Institue (PRRI) on June 23 .
Seriously, white folks? Come on.