Two short pieces on racism that you might find very helpful:

THREE LEVELS OF RACISM

My friend Matt Talley, who i met in Americaland but who is currently living and working with his family in Spain, sent me this from a class he is doing.

It’s super simple but I don’t think I had heard the three levels labeled this way before. Of course I’ve heard the labels of personal racism and institutional/structural racism. But many people deny our personal racism and feel powerless in the face of institutional racism. So identifying the sort of middle ground of “cultural racism” is really helpful. We know that racism = prejudice + power structures. But it’s super important to remember that it also includes culture & customs–something that all of us are a part of shaping (racism = prejudice + power structures + customs).

Three Levels of Racism

  1. Personal: racial prejudice and bias.

  2. Cultural: Symbolic production of images, metaphors, ideology, ideas-> stereotypes

  3. Institutional:  political, legal, military, educational, economic power discrimination (glass ceiling).

 
Possible Response

  1. Personal level

    1. Fellowship with people of other races (housing, neighborhood, congregational integration) e.g., Jesus’ association with a Samaritan woman;

    2. Mutual learning (Genuine cultural exchanges and increase of cultural competence: We need to be willing to learn from other cultures)

  2. Cultural level

    1. overcoming stereotypes—role switches (leaders and followers); practice of genuine equality (E.g.,the Parable of the Good Samaritan)

    2. “Rather than uplifting one race and ethnicity as the ultimate image of God, we must establish churches that honor the breadth of God’s image found in a range of cultural expressions” (Soong Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism, 85).

    3. Before discriminating others from our social world, we drive them out from our symbolic world (Miroslav Volf, Exclusion& Embrace, 75)

    4. With a flood of “dysphemisms,” others are dehumanized in order that they can be discriminated against, dominated, driven out, or destroyed (Dwight Bollinger, Language, 1980).

  3. Institutional level

    1. Inclusion: “Radical inclusion in community was a key theme in Jesus’ ministry …. The exclusion from community wounds the excluded deeply, both at an emotional level and a practical level. Whether it is the child excluded on the playground or the worker not invited to a meeting that ought to involve her, exclusion from participation in community is a profound injustice and one consistently addressed in Scripture” (Kingdom Ethics, 397).

    2. Space for People of Color: If we want a society without racism, then the power to undo that racism must belong to those from whom power has been taken. (Joseph Barndt, Dismantling Racism, 100)

    3. Sharing of power (fair representation, not tokenism), removing injustices (policy, by laws, norms, etc.), and more inclusive and representative policy, position, power sharing. Building coalition for justice.

      1. “It is also important to change the conditions that make robbery possible. Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice that make philanthropy necessary”(King, Strength to Love, 25).

[Christian Ethics Course at Fuller Theological Seminary, Professor Seung Woo Lee]

TWO LEVELS OF RACISM

Then i read this quote this morning on my friend Jess Basson’s Facebook and thought it was worth adding to the mix:

A beautiful explanation by the ever thoughtful and articulate Stephanie Sinnema on why white people struggle when issues like hair are labeled as racism.

“I think the reason a lot of people struggle to own their racism is because of the nuance between explicit vs. implicit racism. Explicit racism is pretty easy to spot and those outright injustices are getting addressed through the rule of law and governance (albeit in an imperfect system.) But implicit racism, the kind rooted in deeply seated, often unquestioned beliefs and attitudes that perhaps have no racist intent, but certainly have racist outcomes, are the hardest to own and weed out. We do and implicitly agree to so many things that have no racist intent but still disrupt the pursuit of equity in this society. Racist feelings don’t make one racist. Living in a racist system– one that we all implicitly co-create– makes us racist. That’s why looking at the rules and revising the system matters so very much.”