This Starts With Me

Donald Trump's followers include many overt white-supremacist racists. Donald Trump, I would argue is also an obvious racist.

For a while I thought this public overt racism might be a good thing for the Black Lives Matter movement. Trump's speeches and voter questions are revealing a large segment of the population that is deeply and obviously and proudly racist.

Wouldn't that make us all realize that racism is alive and well?

I mean, you can't deny that general bigotry exists when one of his supporters claims all the problems in the US today are due to Muslims and that we need to "get rid of them."

 Wouldn't those sort of comments make the even the strongest racism-ended-with-Obama arguments fall to pieces?

In part, yes, no one can deny that a large part of the population holds racist beliefs - Trump and his followers have made that obvious.

Where this public knowledge actually hurts our progress is in how progressive white folk take and use this information about overt racism.

As I've said before, the movement to end systemic racism is NOT a black responsibility. It is a white responsibility. We must recognize individually our white privilege, dismantle it, and use our white privilege as leverage to bring about social justice. It starts within our individual selves.

But Trump and Limbaugh and Cruz and the rest of them have made it so much easier to relocate the problem outside of ourselves.
THEY are the racists.
THEY are the bigots.
THEY are the problem.

And the discussion of racism becomes an us-vs-them debate. WE progressives have it right. THEY conservatives are the racists and the bigots. THEY are wrong.

There is no possibility of ending systemic racism if we make this conversation about THOSE racists.

The conversation, white people, must be about I, racist.
I, white privileged.
I, complicit ignorer of injustice.

This starts with me.

In the Gospel of Luke we're told that Jesus shared a parable about a Pharisee and a tax-collector praying at the same time in the temple. Jesus says that the Pharisee stood praying before the Lord and thanked God that he was not like this evil-doer, this tax-collector. Jesus notes that the tax-collector also prayed, but did so with deep humility. Jesus says that "He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’"

Then Jesus praises the tax-collector for his humility instead of the praising the Pharisee for his self-exalting righteousness.

I would say we could replace those two job titles in the parable with progressive and conservative, or democrat and republican, or whatever degrading term you have for "the other side" and the story would still hold. 

I thank God I am not like those racist conservatives. 

But as Jesus teaches, that pride is wrong. 

Christ calls us to a life of self-reflection. 

A life of humility. 

God, have mercy on me, a privileged white racist. 

The Beloved Community starts with me.