Racism in a Biblical and Theological Perspective: Accommodation, Racism, and Resistance

As I've intimated in the last several essays, it is very easy for one to assume that because the institution of slavery has been dismantled, that institutional, structural, and systemic racism are also no longer in existence. It is the purpose of these essays to demonstrate that the notion of the non-existence of slavery is a self-delusional myth.  To equate racism exclusively with slavery is to miss the point by disregarding the different manifestations of continued racism, both individual and systemic.

The defeat of Reconstruction and the Populist movement saw the reemergence of two currents within Black politics:  accommodation and emigrationism. The growth of both currents was rooted in the disillusionment that set in after the failure of Radical Reconstruction and represented a retreat from the struggle for Black rights in the United States.  They both expressed the frustation and and aspirations of the small and embattled Black middle class (Ahmed Shawki, Black Liberation and Socialism, p. 83).

The most prominent spokesmen for separation in this period were Alexander Crummell and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner.  Crummell was born free in 1819. He typified the influence of Victorian civilization on the Black nationalist ideology and gave voice to a common belief that Africans were universally lacking in 'civilization,' which they would have to acquire in order to avoid the fate of the American Indian (Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 59). To this end, Crummell spent twenty years, from 1853 to 1873, in Liberia, where he found that "Darkness covers the land.....human sacrifices, and devil-worship is devouring men, women, and little children (Moses, p. 67).

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner did not share Crummell's complete rejection of political struggle. Turner had thrown himself into the struggle for emancipation during the Civil War, and was appointed an army chaplain by President Lincoln in an effort to recruit Black soldiers.  In 1868, he was elected to the Georgia state legislature, but when it convened, the first order of business was to disqualify Blacks from office. Denied his seat, Turner made an impassioned speech summing up the disillusionment he shared with thousands of Blacks in the possibility of achieving equality (Shawki, p. 84).

Alfonso Pinkney writes: " Never in the history of the world, has a man been arraigned before a body clothed with legislative, judicial, or executive function, charged with the offence of being a darker hue than his fellow men...Cases may be found where men have been deprived of their rights for crimes or misdemeanors; but it has remained for the State of Georgia, in the very heart of the nineteenth century,to call a man before the bar, and there charge him with an act for which he is no more responsible than for the head which he carries upon his shoulders. We Blacks have pioneered civilization here; we have built up your country, we have worked in your fields, and garnered your harvests, for two hundred and fifty years! We are willing to let the dead past bury its dead; but we asking you now for our Rights. The Black man cannot protect a country if the country doesn't protect him; and if tomorrow, a war should arise, I would not raise a musket to defend a country where my manhood was denied (Alfonso Pinkney, Red, Black, and Green: Black Nationalism in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978, p.23)."

Following the "Great Migration" of Blacks to Northern cities in the early decades of the twentieth century (when approximately one million or 10 percent of the total Black population of the country, moved from the rural South to the Northern cities), the presence of African Americans as a substantial section of workers in the main U.S. industries was established (Pinkney, p.37).  This social transformation of the Black population laid the basis for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, the first mass urban-based movement of Blacks, and later, for the rise of industrial unions and socialist and communist parties to which the African American struggle for equal rights was crucial (Shawki, p.98).

As we can see from what has been so far, and will be presented in subsequent essays, the phenomenon of racism continues. It has not disappeared by any stretch of the imagination, and is not likely to disappear any time soon.

The thrust of the Gospel message and of Liberation Theology serve as resources for hope in the midst of the struggle for genuine emancipation.  While some may continue to see religion (especially Christianity) as the "opiate of the masses," this writer sees in the Gospel as the most effective mechanism of confronting racism as attitude, ideology, and socio-economic-political reality.  The Gospel, rather than putting us to sleep, gives us the impetus to agitate, educate, organize, and mobilize against this demonic force.  It is the Gospel which gives us the gumption to continue proclaiming "down and the hell with racism."  Archbishop Desmund Tutu has served as a modern day example of what means for the Body of Christ to be immersed in the war against racism. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner is also an example of what it means for Christians to fight against this political and social evil.  The Struggle Continues.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Ayala-Carmona