This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/deborah-haarsma-the-presidents-notebook/one-human-family
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/deborah-haarsma-the-presidents-notebook/one-human-family
We encourage discussion on this important and difficult topic. If this is your first time commenting at BioLogos, we request that you read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting. We welcome all perspectives, as long as they are stated graciously, without inflammatory or abusive language.
"Though genetics doesnât lead us to race, the social construct of race is very real. "
I appreciate the clarification that just because race is not based on genetic realities, that does not mean it isnât real. This misconception that ârace isnât realâ is something I have seen batted around in articles recently. Just because something is a social/cultural construct doesnât make it less real. Language and gender roles are human constructs too, but that doesnât mean they arenât real and important.
I think the church needs to do a better job acknowledging the reality of race before we can appropriately address race based injustice. It isnât enough to just point out that we are all genetically very similar and belong to the same human family. True. (And that is an important point to make when addressing ways that science or religion has been used to promote harmful or discriminatory racial distinctions) But hugging someone of a different race and affirming we are all brothers and sisters in the human family doesnât address all the very real ways that our experiences and perceptions are shaped by the racial categories we identify with and the ones we identify as âother.â
True. And if it is important for BioLogos to address race, as Dr. Haarsma says, then it is important for evangelicals to do some self-evaluation on that subject. Everything that follows is quoted from the 2013 and 2015 PRRI values surveys:
âThe face of American society has changed dramatically over the course of a single generation. More than 7-in-10 (71%) seniors (age 65 and older) identify as white Christian (29% white evangelical Protestant, 23% white mainline Protestant, and 17% white Catholic). By contrast, less than 3-in-10 (28%) Millennials (age 18-29) identify as white Christian (10% white evangelical Protestant, 9% white mainline Protestant, and 6% white Catholic).â
The average age of evangelicals is 55.
âWhite Christians strongly embrace the belief that American culture has changed for the worse since the 1950s. Three-quarters (75%) of white evangelical Protestants and more than 6-in-10 white mainline Protestants (61%) and white Catholics (62%) say American culture and way of life has changed for the worse over the past half-century. ⌠By contrast, nearly two-thirds of Jewish Americans (65%) and majorities of Hispanic Catholics (57%) and black Protestants (58%) believe that American culture has changed for the better.â
Why do Jews, blacks, and Hispanics believe that our culture has changed for the better since the 1950s? Hmmmm. Could it have anything to do with desegregation? The white evangelical nostalgia for the past engendered by the Culture War will not, in fact, make America great again. It is divisive.
"Roughly four in ten Mormons (38%), white Catholics (41%), and white mainline Protestants (43%) say that immigrants present a threat to American culture. White evangelical Protestants stand out as the only religious community in which a majority (53%) believe that immigrants threaten traditional American customs and values".
It seems to me that if these types of attitudes toward race and âthe otherâ are a majority opinion among white evangelicals, then evangelicalism is in severe trouble within two generations, based simply on demographics.
Brothers and sisters, something has to change!
Maybe they should pay more attention to their leadership: http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/february/max-lucado-beth-moore-evangelicals-immigration-dreamers-ref.html#storystream
I appreciate this thorough discussion that avoids the pitfalls of extreme statements.
Race matters.
People are tribal by nature. Blood is thicker than water. Good fences make good neighbors.
Israel has a Jewish immigration policy based on DNA. They want to preserve their Jewish identity. Good on them. Only whites are taught to pretend race doesnât matter and races are interchangeable.
Many churches in the US are segregated. Itâs not a bad thing. Different races evolved different traits, natures, and temperaments. They need their own way of worship.
Who do you know that teaches this? Progressives sure arenât.
Do you have any evidence or examples of this?
What happens with interracial adoptions, in your view?
(I donât think you know what youâre talking about, to be blunt, but I say this in the kindest, most non-trolling tone you can imagine.)
âWhiteâ and âblackâ are only races in the American imagination.
Spend a few months in Africa and your perceptions will change. Youâll start thinking someone looks âlight-skinnedâ when just a few months before you would have called them all âblackâ and probably not even seen a difference between black and brown. Why? Because skin color is gradated, and culturally conditioned. In America, we have a âone dropâ definition: One drop of African blood, and youâre considered âblack.â This is a cultural definition, and it informs how we perceive the categories of race. But this is by no means immutable. In most places in Africa, you look around and everyone is dark black, and then the few people who are a lighter brown color stand out as different.
Note that the category âwhiteâ is also culturally conditioned. It is not a positive term, denoting a definable group. It is a negative term. It only means ânot black,â as I described with reference to the One Drop rule. There is no one group of traits that belongs to a âwhite race,â because âwhitenessâ is actually heterogeneous. In fact, which ethnic groups were allowed to be âwhiteâ has changed; I understand that newer waves of (now considered) white immigrants were originally not generally called âwhite.â
This is why it would be socially acceptable to celebrate âSwiss German Mennonite Heritage Dayâ but not âWhite Day.â Thatâs because Swiss German Mennonite is a positive term, but âwhiteâ is just a grab bag of people who were lucky enough to avoid the social stigma and structural oppression of slavery, and everything that came with it and flowed from it.
P.S. I find your comment offensive and potentially inflammatory but I do hope the moderators wonât delete it yet. When possible, itâs better to discuss things calmly than to shame people and force such ideas underground, where they donât go away.
Tribalism has been the way of the world, as has war, greed, selfishness⌠but when I read the words of Jesus I see a call to something different â grace, love, and a view of something bigger than my own DNA.
From Luke 8:19-21
Then Jesusâ mother and brothers came to see him, but they couldnât get to him because of the crowd. Someone told Jesus, âYour mother and your brothers are outside, and they want to see you.â
Jesus replied, âMy mother and my brothers are all those who hear Godâs word and obey it.â
Even in a society steeped in ideas of âblood and turf,â Jesus led them to something bigger and far more important. (And yes, I believe race is real, and ignoring it can be harmful (mostly for minorities) but we shouldnât use it as a means of superiority.)
While disturbing, so long as we can discuss the topic with grace and respect for others, your post provides fertile ground to plow.
Let me share the experience of our local church. I live in an area where there is a low percentage of African-Americans, with the demographics having Latino as the predominent minority (it is ridiculous how much you have think about terms to avoid giving offense!) and after Katrina among other factors, our communityâs black population increased a bunch as a whole church community came from New Orleans. That community since has fragmented a bit, and we now have half a dozen new families in our church that previously only had an occasional black attendee. It has made a huge difference in our church to have a more diverse body. We have added one of the new members to our staff, and are supporting him as he attends seminary preparing for the ministry, and overall our church as been blessed. The last year or so has been difficult for race related issues in our society and in the church, and to share those struggles with people you worship and commune with adds a great deal to understanding.
You are talking about culture, not something biological or genetic. Culture is transmitted socially not biologically.
Social scientists say âwhite cultureâ is something describable in positive terms, it is not simply the absence of âethnic-ness.â
I found the book Understanding Whiteness very helpful, because I think a lot of white people insist that they donât have a definable culture, only the âotherâ groups do. But this is just an example of a âwhite culture as normativeâ fallacy.
Weâre talking about two different things. I donât disagree with you. Iâm talking about what criteria decides whoâs in and out of the white club (so to speak). Youâre talking about the culture of the club.
Thanks for the book recommendation.
When I was in InterVarsity in college, I had the naive view youâre describing. People talked about building a multiethnic fellowship and I was like, âUm, we are multiethnic! And hey, weâre not the ones separating ourselves! Doors are always open if those clubby folks over there care to join the rest of us!â
With time, mercifully, I came to understand that we had a culture, and that I was, generally speaking, really only accepting of black folks who chose to put on a public face within my culture to interact with us. I felt more uncomfortable when in their cultural element. ⌠which is exactly what our leadership encouraged us to do: Go to the black fellowships and black churches and learn from them, because only then could we really understand the cultural dynamics at play and what would be needed to cultivate a true and humble multiethnicity.
Iâm grateful for those leaders!
Tim Wise, a current pro-civil rights speaker, shares some history (in this video --starting at about 33 minutes in) that the whole concept of âwhite raceâ is pure invention from the slave-owning aristocracy in the Americas in the late 1700s [edit: actually late 1600s now that I went back and listened again]. According to him, the poor white share croppers of the south were in danger of joining with the slaves against all the wealthy land-owners â so the elites played the ârace cardâ and kept the poor white farmers from joining with the blacks by giving them a token advantage. The new psychology being ⌠âwell I may be poor, but at least Iâm âwhiteâ.â Prior to that (and even after) there were a lot of people (Irish, Native Americans and such) who were not considered part of the elite even though their skin was not dark colored. So it was more about class division and privilege than about actual skin color. And even if your skin was the ârightâ color â you were still held out of any financially elite group (as the Irish would be able to tell us.)
So does this mesh with or contradict what is being discussed here? If his (Timâs) history class is overly revisionist, I would like to know where he gets it wrong.
This!
This!
This!
Check out my little chart here, which I made from the PRRI data. Just looking at three indicators â attitudes toward immigrants, the percent of white Christians in the population, and a stateâs religious diversity â you can almost predict the outcome of the presidential election. I sorted first on the percent of white Christians, and second on the âfear of immigrants.â (By the way, âreligious diversityâ is not necessarily different religions. For instance, White Evangelical Protestant is a separate category than White Mainline Protestant. Thus, a state like Minnesota has a great deal of religious diversity, and a whole lot of white folks.) Not until you get to #25 Rhode Island do you find a state with three out of four measures falling on the âblueâ side of the equation.
Here is the point (and, yes, I do have one): The problem is called âempathy.â Notice that the states that are most homogeneous are also the most fearful of others. White Christians must cross that divide, but it takes effort. Philâs church âluckedâ into it, in a sense. We should be more purposeful in building bridges of empathy between all Christian communities, and thus be an example of what âlove thy neighborâ actually means in practice.
Thatâs my story, and Iâm stickin to it!
All States | Threaten US customs & values | Strengthen US society | % White Christian | Religious Diversity | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
National Avg. | 34 | 50 | 43 | 0.723 | |
1 | North Dakota | 39 | 43 | 71 | 0.647 |
2 | South Dakota | 43 | 40 | 68 | 0.628 |
3 | Iowa | 39 | 44 | 64 | 0.679 |
4 | West Virginia | 47 | 35 | 61 | 0.600 |
5 | Kentucky | 44 | 40 | 61 | 0.609 |
6 | Utah | 33 | 40 | 61 | 0.555 |
7 | Minnesota | 38 | 45 | 59 | 0.729 |
8 | Arkansas | 44 | 43 | 58 | 0.489 |
9 | Missouri | 36 | 45 | 58 | 0.613 |
10 | Wyoming | 48 | 38 | 57 | 0.637 |
11 | Tennessee | 43 | 42 | 57 | 0.533 |
12 | Indiana | 40 | 43 | 57 | 0.651 |
13 | Montana | 39 | 46 | 57 | 0.688 |
14 | Idaho | 41 | 46 | 56 | 0.672 |
15 | Ohio | 40 | 45 | 56 | 0.699 |
16 | Maine | 40 | 41 | 56 | 0.806 |
17 | Nebraska | 36 | 45 | 56 | 0.717 |
18 | Wisconsin | 36 | 46 | 56 | 0.752 |
19 | Pennsylvania | 38 | 47 | 55 | 0.759 |
20 | Alabama | 47 | 36 | 53 | 0.477 |
21 | New Hampshire | 40 | 42 | 53 | 0.781 |
22 | Kansas | 36 | 50 | 53 | 0.699 |
23 | South Carolina | 38 | 44 | 51 | 0.528 |
24 | Michigan | 38 | 44 | 50 | 0.731 |
25 | Rhode Island | 29 | 58 | 50 | 0.771 |
Fascinating tidbit in here: The lowest fear indicator here is in Utah. Why?
I have my suspicions: I think itâs because a substantial portion of their population goes on a two-year mission when theyâre college-age. Builds empathy, opens the mind, lowers xenophobia.
Now if we could just get evangelicals to be as globally minded as their Mormon friendsâŚ
That is my guess, too.
You canât see it on the âTop 25,â but all the Western border states plus Florida and New York have low fears of immigrants. Again, itâs simple exposure. People fear who/what they donât know.