Structural Racism, Systemic Racism and the Racism that Lives in Your Heart

I grew up in one of those mid-sized cities in Texas where there was an abundance of every kind of hypocrisy hiding just beneath a veneer of small city charm. There was a "black side" of town and a "mexican side" of town and it never dawned on me until much later that this was on purpose and even the result of policies (written and unwritten) meant to keep the city cordoned off like that. I also grew up in locker rooms, where a good friend recently reminded me, such divisions tend to get choked out. There were a few guys in those locker rooms who hated black people - all of them, even the ones in the locker room - but most of their vitriol was held in check by the fact that we were all trying to do something else - win football games. A largely meritocratic society developed (can you do your job?). My circle of friends, the guys I spent the most time with were from all sides of town. I attended elementary school in a school over in the "black side" of town in a program that pulled in kids from all over the city. A lot of those kids were in the locker room with me in high school.

In our current troubles we are being confronted with a smorgasbord of problems. Some of them are racial, some of them aren't. Its important to do a few things as we think and seek to act accordingly. First, we have to remember that none of these issues exist in isolation, they're all thrown in a giant bag and shaken about like those fried pizza dough balls covered in cinnamon sugar that Ernie's pizza used to have. But secondly, and here's the pickle, they have to be addressed separately otherwise we get a whole lot of confusion (or a really good cinnamon sugar ball that kind of melts in your mouth and makes you forget all about all the other troubles in the world for just a few seconds, but I digress...). One of the ways this confusion happens is by lumping a bunch of things into one phrase: "Systemic Racism." This is a problem for a number of reasons, but mostly because it leads people to believe and act as though the problem is a thing called The System, and the solution is to either change The System or burn The System down or reset The System. But the problems of racism and specifically racial animosity are far more troublesome than this. So let’s look at three different layers of the racism problem to start seeing how complicated this thing is, so we can start dreaming up ways to do the work we have to do. I'll use my own little hometown as an example.

Structural Racism

This is maybe the easiest to identify and the clearest thing to know how to fight. One of the things that made the Civil Rights movement so powerful was that it went to war with particular structural sins or evils. Jim Crow laws are an example of structural racism. Policies requiring black people to give up their bus seats for white riders are structural racism. Companies maintaining policies (both written and unwritten but the ones everybody knows not to violate) that forbid the hiring of black people or anyone on the basis of the color of their skin is structural racism. Any laws or policies that are designed around racial animosity or superiority represent structural racism. In my hometown any legal barriers or financial policies from banks or other institutions that prevented a black family from buying a house in my neighborhood on the west side of town represents structural racism. This doesn't mean that there will be a flood of racial diversity in that sprawling expansion of mostly identical houses - for there may be any number of reasons why a black person wouldn't want to live in that neighborhood. But anybody who wants to buy a house in that neighborhood and can afford to, should be legally free to. Its important to note that eliminating structural racism is not about outcomes but process. If there aren't any black people living in the sprawling metropolis of West Wichita Falls (no idea what the demographic make-up of that neighborhood is now), we should investigate why before we jump to structural conclusions. We want a free society, one that is marked by distinctive and diverse expressions, not one marked by monolithic results.

A society infected with the fermenting presence of the gospel should be in steady rebellion against structural racism. Laws should be overturned. Policies should be rewritten. Unwritten ones should be exposed and abandoned. This process takes time - and it should take time. Some of those policies and laws are buried underneath layers and layers of other policies and laws and just getting to them and understanding them is difficult and we're not dealing with some centralized System. Furthermore we're dealing with a lengthy history of this sort of thing. Those things leave a cultural legacy. Removing unjust structures remove impediments to freedom, they don't actually create free people and free communities. The movement of a society that is being transformed by the gospel should be towards freedom, biblical, God-centered freedom.

The Racism that Lives in Your Heart (or Might Live In There)

The world's rebellion against God is total. The bible describes the nature of this rebellion as the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). We are all a nexus of disordered desires that rule us and shape our actions, our ambitions and our attitudes. We are prideful - so prideful that we'll root that pride in the dumbest and most insane things imaginable. We do so oftentimes as a bulwark to protect our pursuit of that mixed up and destructive nexus of desires. One of the rather historically pervasive out-workings of this mix of personal evil is the racism that may live in your heart. People hate other people for having a certain skin color. This isn't merely or primarily a sentiment, it is an attitude connected to a set of actions that leads people to step on those people of a different color on their way to fulfilling those disordered desires. It’s as though the Samaritan in Jesus' story was less good and rather than stopping to help, saw that the man was from Judea and kept on going. One can harbor racist animosities and oppose structural racism. It should be noted one can harbor racist animosities and adamantly defend affirmative action, the welfare state and reparations (and they often do). And, it should go without saying, someone can attain to positions of power and hold vigorously to racial animosity.

In my high school locker room there was a starting, white, and rather gifted player who held fairly evident racial animosities. But those animosities were kept in check by two things: 1) Structural freedom. The powers that be didn't care what color your skin was so long as you did your job. The locker room wasn't divided up into racial groups. No one was restricted from trying out for the team or starting and earning playing time on the basis of their skin color. Combine these factors with the reality that he wanted to play football and there were boundaries on what impact his bigotries could have, and 2) Culture. When that racial animosity came out - there was space for a man to be a bigot, but very little space for that bigotry to come out in the functioning of the team or in practice (locker room punishments could be severe and swift from diverse sources). But notice, none of these things changed the actual individual. He even had black friends on the team, but in conversations and arguments with the guy neither the diversity of the locker room nor the shame of the locker room produced any noticeable transformation in the guy's heart towards black skin generally.

We can restrict the impact of this man's bigotry, but I can't change that man's "pride of life." No policy can. No amount of shaming and cancel culture can. No external law can do the work that only the Spirit of God can do. And not just God working through some sort of gnostic magic. But God working through the real life process of a conversion and repentance and faith and discipleship to believe God and to see and live in the world under the Scriptures. And particularly through pastors and other Christians who know him and love him well enough to name his sin and call him to repent of his sin.

A lot of what is currently happening in our cultural moment is the belief that if we just shame bigotry enough or proactively find ways to make bigotry illegal then we can solve the problem tomorrow. The law has always been impotent to free us (and society) from sin (Romans 7) - in fact all it does is arouse it (both in ourselves and in our society). Godless, un-sanctified bigotries grab hold of the law and find new and exciting ways to be bigotrous (wanted to make up a new word). (And its important to note that white people can practice racial animosity and black people can practice racial animosity and its about the most condescendingly racist thing I can imagine to deny that.) I think that's happening in at least two ways right now: 1) Anti-racism is becoming the new racism. And 2) I justify my own culturally endorsed bigotries by condemning the sins of other generations rather than my own sins or I blame it all on The System.

Systemic Racism and The System

"The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular."

This line in Dostoevsky describes at least one impulse to blame The System in our current troubles. Its how violent and destructive riots can be defended and justified (when you frame a burning business in terms of The System you no longer have to consider the person(s) whose life is attached to that business). Its how we avoid the kind of long-suffering work necessary to actually see a person transformed. And as structural sins become increasingly less common, the work that must be done to become the kind of society that reflects the justice and freedom of God is the kind of work that takes generations of worship, discipleship, church discipline and faithful christian education.

I was asked recently if I believe in systemic racism. I am finding it to be an increasingly unhelpful term because I think its too vague and presents us with an unidentifiable problem while moving people away from the real essential work necessary. But I do think it exists in primarily two forms: 1) There are racists in our society's institutions whose animosities impact the institutions they are a part of, and 2) There are cultural ramifications downstream from both past institutionalized racism and relatively pervasive racial animosity. The reality though, is that these things are really hard to identify, quantify or correct. There is no The System to tear down. There is surely still work to be done in our laws. And there is an enormous amount of work to be done in the lives of actual people. But the recession of systemic racism will not come because we burned down The System, but because we went to work building churches, discipling people, practicing hospitality and building friendships, starting businesses that are generous and well managed, creative and unencumbered by wicked bigotries. It will, in the end be overcome by generations of faithfulness in neighborhoods, businesses, government, and churches. In other words, it means a deep work of Jesus over centuries in generations of people.