It’s been interesting to hear the variety of responses to President Obama’s comments yesterday about race in America. I was very proud to hear our President speak about the issue and to bring to America’s living room the all-too-frequent realities faced by our African-American brothers in particular.
Since his speech, many people have responded that they, too, feel profiled or treated differently. A white male on CNN today talked about how a woman alone might respond to his entry into an elevator by clutching her purse in fear. “Would that constitute racial profiling?” he asked.
All this made me remember when I first moved to LA (that’s Los Angeles, not Lower Alabama!). I was horrified to find myself doing all of the things that President Obama was talking about… I clutched my purse, I locked my car doors, I crossed to the other side of the road and so on. I did this when I encountered people of other color… African Americans, Latinos, etc. Oh, no…. how could I? I never thought of myself as a racist… and yet, here I was, acting like one.
Over time, I took note of my reactions to people, and I discovered something: My fear response was based on my perceived commonality with others. I was less fearful of a woman of any color than any man… even a white man. I then realized that even with men, my reaction would be based on perceived commonalities/differences. A man in a business suit would prompt a different reaction than a guy in jeans and a tie-dye t-shirt.
All this to say, in the words of a song in the Broadway show, “Avenue Q,” everyone’s a little bit racist/class-ist/sexist/discriminatory. Sad, but true. And it’s not supposed to be that way.
I guess we fear others partially because we lose sight of our common humanity and the fact that we are all made in God’s image, but I think the largest reason is because as fallen, broken people, we live in captivity to fear. Christ has come so that we might be liberated from all of our fears, and freed to live and love with arms open wide. But so often, we fall back into the toxic pool of fright.
As we engage in the “soul searching” that President Obama asked us to do, let us recommit ourselves to living in the light of Christ as people with nothing to fear. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans:
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Thoughts & Images from the Heart 
Good questions, Rebecca. Thank you!
Thanks so much, Rebecca.
I am hopeful. In the hours following that speech I had the opportunity to talk with an older couple about my racism and about ‘white privilege.’ They had heard the term before but the President’s comments finally made the issue real to them. I pray that such was true across the country.