Insightful @tgjelten observes a gap in religious dialogue: "Evangelical Christians focus on the need to have a personal relationship with Jesus, to confess one's sins and to seek forgiveness. It's about people as individuals. Talking about systemic racism can be difficult."
This applies to many kinds of people. When race comes up, it's easy to say that you were raised color blind, or that all people should be kind. Well, people should be kind. But race in America involves forces a lot bigger and more lasting than any individual's thoughts.
To take one random example: New Deal housing programs from the 1930's helped millions. But they steered white people toward home ownership, and a gradual growth in wealth through generations. Black people were steered more to public housing apartments, and no accumulated wealth.
The New Deal programs could not pass unless they were structured in ways that Southern segregationists would support. Almost nobody still living had anything to do with that. But we do still live with the enormous consequences, and pure hearts alone do not address that.
Our colleagues from @throughlineNPR have a story today about the origins of American policing: slave patrols. Do modern police understand how much of their job grew out of historic efforts to control black people? Pure hearts alone do not address that. npr.org/2020/06/05/870…
Character matters. But systemic racism is bigger than any individual. Some deeply unpleasant characters in American history have taken meaningful steps against systemic racism. And it's possible to be an otherwise virtuous person and not take any meaningful step.
