A very wise friend recently told me that there exists in the Black and Hispanic communities seething and unchecked racism toward whites. This really got my attention because it came soon after two conversations I had that fell very much in line with this.
The first comes from my son who mentioned how one of his friends, who happens to have a black father and white mother, was taught by his philosophy teacher at Colorado State University that its not possible for blacks to be racist. His friend found the claim to be both offensive and profoundly absurd. This isn’t a new phenomenon. In an article in the Social Worker in 1987, Lee Sustar wrote that “Blacks cannot be ‘racists’.” Spike Lee repeated this inane mantra in a 1981 interview with Playboy when he said “Black people can’t be racist.”
The second revolved around a discussion I had with a white pastor from a fairly conservative church who has an adopted black son. He made passionate pleas toward others that there is systematic racism against blacks and that white privilege is a real problem. After considering a few videos he posted, I pondered what impact it would have to teach white privilege, and I came across the article “What Does Teaching ‘White Privilege’ Actually Accomplish? Not What You Might Think”. A key takeaway from this study was this:
What the researchers found is that among social liberals—i.e., participants who had indicated that they hold liberal beliefs about social issues—reading a text about white privilege did nothing to significantly increase their sympathy toward the plight of poor blacks. But … “it did significantly bump down their sympathy for a [hypothetical] poor white person.”
It truly is tragic that liberals continue to permeate such a destructive view especially within the black communities. Ironically where whites today do enjoy “white privilege” is being taught that racism is wrong. The evil of racism needs to be taught to all people. The graph below illustrates how unchecked ideas have consequences.
The Bible & Racism
Where does the Bible stand on racism? Dr Voddie Baucham nailed it on the head that race is not a biblical idea or concept (see his insightful 7 minute video). The Bible makes it crystal clear that there is only ONE race:
And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth (Acts 17:26)
What does the Bible say about interracial dating and marriage? The only type of marriage forbidden or discouraged in the Bible was due to religious reasons and not racial or ethnic reasons. Moses after all married an Ethiopian woman, but also forbade marrying women of the neighboring pagan-worshiping countries. God’s desire is for believers to marry believers, regardless of skin color, with the reason being given in Malachi 2:15:
But did He not make them one, Having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring.
What about slavery in the Bible? Most don’t know that the type of slavery in the U.S. was not only biblically forbidden, it was a capital crime to own a person in such a way (see The Bible & Slavery).
Finally, the Apostle Paul taught the completely color-blind equality of people in his letter to the churches of Galatia:
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-28)
