How to battle racism?

Sparagmos said:

But how often do racists admit or even consciously recognize they don’t see others as equal? Or they will say those people were created equal and squandered it and are generally lazy, thugs, “rapists,” etc. Then give you statistics about crime rates etc. Or never utter a racist word but never vote for, hire, or date a person of color.

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Mountainmanbob said:

I think possibly people bring it up way too often? I see next to none of it here in the little redneck town I live in.

Why stir the pot if it don't need stirring?

I have dated all colors -- no big deal.

And yet many have called me that dirty name.

Shame on them.

M-Bob

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yeshuaslavejeff said:

Best as written by God in His Word ....

1 Corinthians 7:23-24 The Message (MSG)

23-24 All of you, slave and free both, were once held hostage in a sinful society.
Then a huge sum was paid out for your ransom. So please don’t, out of old habit, slip back into being or doing what everyone else tells you. Friends, stay where you were called to be. God is there. Hold the high ground with him at your side.


The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson


1 Corinthians 7:29-31

1 Corinthians 61 Corinthians 8




1 Corinthians 7:29-31 The Message (MSG)

29-31 I do want to point out, friends, that time is of the essence. There is no time to waste, so don’t complicate your lives unnecessarily. Keep it simple—in marriage, grief, joy, whatever. Even in ordinary things—your daily routines of shopping, and so on. Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrusts on you. This world as you see it is on its way out.

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SkyWriting said:

I feel switching the subject puts me in the best frame of mind.
"Battling" what others think, the poorest.

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Hazelelponi said:

If your Christian then the color of someone's skin doesn't matter.

While being the object of racism (no matter what the color of your skin is) hurts, it's a hurt only Christ can heal, both in you, and in them.

Sometimes we just need the reminder that only Christ can heal fallen man.

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Sparagmos said:

No, I believe racism is systematic oppression. Whites can be the victims of prejudice, but we have the political and economic power so the system currently benefits us. We have white privileged.

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dzheremi said:

People need to meet each other. A lot of one-on-one interactions away from the nonsense of social media (yeah, I know...we're all on the internet right now...), so that we don't have to worry what our 500 or whatever Facebook "friends" (how many does the average FB user actually know in real life, I wonder) would think or say, and can just take each other as people, not as categories. (To the best of our abilities, of course.)

The first time I ever went to a Coptic liturgy an Ethiopian friend of my contact from the church came to pick us up. I'd never met either of these people before, but I noticed that the Ethiopian was wearing a t-shirt with an image of the Ethiopian writing system on it, in a big table (this). Since I was in grad school for linguistics, I recognized it immediately and without thinking called it by its native name: "Oh, cool! It's the fidel!" (fee-del) The Ethiopian guy started laughing really hard and kept asking me to repeat it on our way to the church. "Fidel...what, am I saying it wrong?" "No. It's just really funny hearing a non-Ethiopian use our language. That's really cool." Er...okay, then. Glad to be of service, I guess? And then later in the liturgy, during the time of praises for St. Mary, we sang the hymn "Efrahi ya Mariam" (Rejoice, O Mary) and when the Ethiopian guy noticed I could actually read the Arabic, he came and stood next to me and I kind of walked him through the hymn (I knew the tune already, just not all of the words, so I just read it very deliberately off the page, making sure to enunciate as best as I could so that he could follow along slowly even though he couldn't read the page). After the hymn ended, one of the Egyptians leaned over and said to him "Wow! I didn't know you knew Arabic! You did really well!" He smiled and said thank you, but after the liturgy told the Egyptian guy that he doesn't really know Arabic, so mostly he was hearing me and mistaking me for the Ethiopian. (I'm white, by the way. There's no mistaking me for an Ethiopian.)

I'm telling these stories because none of these interactions were focused on race in any way, and yet through them me and the Ethiopian guy (I want to say his name was Mekdem, but now that I think about it he might've introduced himself as "Mark"; can't remember...this was 8 years ago already!) got to appreciate each other just as people -- him being nice and friendly and giving us a ride, and I suppose me entertaining him by showing the tiniest bit of knowledge about his culture, and trying to help him with Arabic. Not every interaction between a white person and a non-white person has to be full of dredged up historical events or current grievances or whatever, though those certainly should be addressed when it is appropriate to do so (the liturgy is not an appropriate time at all).

That said, I don't think we'll get anywhere by not talking about race at all. (NB: I don't mean this to be a response or a rebuke to Ana the Ist's post at all; it is a common enough idea that it would be worth addressing even if it weren't already in the thread.) In a certain way, if I was afraid to go outside of my own culture to learn about the cultured of others' who have different skin colors and histories than I do, then I wouldn't have known anything about the Ethiopian languages, and wouldn't have had that as an inadvertent ice breaker (and I wouldn't have been going to a Coptic liturgy in the first place, and I wouldn't have converted, etc.!). I'm just guessing here based on the non-white people I know and how they talk about it, but I don't think a kind of fake color blindness helps anyone. It's not like if we don't talk about people being white or black or whatever they are then they stop being that. An open conversation is much better than no conversation for fear of breaking a few egg shells or appearing not ultra-PC enough for five freaking seconds. Just be a person, not some weirdo. And I guess if you really are too afraid to talk about race, then you shouldn't, but the rest of society generally doesn't have a problem at least talking about it. It's a tiny fraction that is driving the current climate, which is why it seems so disconnected from reality. You'd think we were living in actual Nazi Germany or Leopold's Congo from the way some people talk about things. Maybe those particular people need to chill out so that us normals can actually build a society that everyone can feel some sense of ownership of and pride in, Listening to a lot of the loudest voices on topics like this makes me feel like a man without a country, and not because "the non-whites are taking over!" or whatever racist garbage (I don't even really understand that; yes, and then what? The president might be black again? My grandchildren might be multiracial like their grandmother was? We might speak more than one language in some parts of the country, which is already the case and has been since New Mexico drafted their state constitution to include both English and Spanish? Oh nooooo! Who cares?). Because I don't respond well to being yelled at by a 23 year old college student who has never lived a day in their life and just got turned on to how unfair the world is last week after reading some assigned reading by Foucault or whatever and is now out to "take down the system" by making it impossible for me to go to the bank or go get groceries (both of which really happened when the "Occupy Wall Street" protests came to my city in 2011; I went down one end of my street -- riot cops with guns out! Turned around, went down the other -- riot cops with guns out! Oh, come on! I'm not trying to smash the state; I'm trying to buy a bagel!)

Basically, don't be a jerk or a weirdo. That'd be a good start, anyway.

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Sparagmos said:

Well, there is huge economic disparity between whites and minorities. And a rich white person has more privilege than a poor white person but a poor Latino has less privilege than a poor white person. For instance, I have the privilege of never having been pulled over by the cops, or followed in a store, because of my skin color. I will never be kicked out of a hotel I am staying in because of my skin color. My great great great great grandfather went to college, paid for by the slave trade. And that opportunity privilege continued down to me.

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Sparagmos said:

Yup, but not because of race. So imagine if you were black AND had whatever appearance made the people in the store suspicious. I have black friends who are always well dressed and drive nice cars and have been pulled over for no apparent reason over 30 times. For real. Take whatever you have experienced, add a darker skin tone, and you would experience even more of it. Housing discrimination is a big one too.

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