In Minneapolis, rioters protesting the killing of George Floyd damaged more than 570 buildings and burned 67 businesses to the ground, many of them minority-owned. In my city of Denver, rioters targeted a pedestrian mall near the state capitol, as well as museums and the public library, smashing windows, defacing statues, and spray-painting graffiti.
I’m old enough to remember similar scenes from my former city, Chicago. A band of young radicals known as the Weathermen joined with Black Panthers and anti-war groups in 1969 to sponsor “Days of Rage” in downtown Chicago. They blew up a statue, smashed cars and windows in a posh Gold Coast neighborhood, and made it to the Drake Hotel, where a massive police force pushed them back.
After the Black Panthers disassociated themselves from such anarchism, the movement divided and the Weathermen went underground. Over the next few years they set off bombs in such places as the U.S. Capitol building, the Pentagon, and the Department of State. Several leaders died in clashes with police and in a bomb-making accident, and some survivors are still serving out life sentences in prison.
The saga of the Weathermen offers a cautionary tale. George Floyd’s death was an outrageous injustice, one that rightly calls for anger and protest. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I have learned to use my anger for good…It is an energy that compels us to define what is just and unjust.”
The Weathermen, too, staged their Days of Rage as a protest, against the injustices of racism, inequality, and the Vietnam war. But protests that begin with a noble cause may even produce the opposite of their intended effect, because of the chaos that ensues. And as history records, no government from the right or from the left will long tolerate anarchy.
Is there any hope for our divided nation? Now that iniquity has been exposed, must we return to adversarial politics and slogans screamed at each other across barricades? If not, how can we make progress in tackling injustice?
In a recent article in , author and activist Van Jones, a CNN contributor, presents a formula for working with “the other side.” A self-described leftist, he was dismayed by Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. Nevertheless, he decided that simply opposing Trump would not solve the underlying social problems that helped fuel his election. “Should I stop trying to alleviate suffering in both red counties and blue cities to focus instead on discrediting [Trump]?” he asked.
Jones chose one issue, criminal justice, and worked with such unlikely allies as Newt Gingrich and the Koch brothers to craft a landmark bill on prison and sentencing reform. The President himself rallied Republican support for the bill. In the process, Jones learned several key principles, which I’ve adapted:
1) Pay less attention to the politics at the top and more attention to the pain at the bottom. Jones deliberately chose a hard problem, one that nobody has been able to solve. Addiction, racism, mental health, homelessness—these are intractable problems with no easy solution. Only the best people on either side will touch them, he found, so you’ll start out with great partners to work with.
2) Separate battleground issues from common-ground issues. Dag Hammarskjöld, who served as secretary-general of the United Nations during the tensest days of the Cold War, explained that in dealing with adversaries he would begin by searching for the smallest point of common ground. Van Jones discovered he could work with libertarians and conservatives on criminal justice issues, which everyone agreed was a problem, while avoiding a fight with them on battleground issues such as climate change or tax policy.
(After listening to an interview with Jones, I did a quick scan of the Gospels. I wish I had been present at some of the private conversations among Jesus’ disciples. For example, Simon the Zealot had advocated violent rebellion against Roman occupiers, while Matthew had collaborated with those very occupiers by collecting taxes on their behalf. Somehow Jesus kept twelve disparate followers focused on issues they shared in common.)
3) Strive for long-term results, not complete agreement. “Don’t convert,” says Jones; “Cooperate!” Politics can be messy, and rarely satisfies all parties. Although committed to emancipation, Abraham Lincoln tackled the issue of slavery in gradual stages, first proposing compromises that were more acceptable to his adversaries. Working with Congress, Lyndon Johnson won key votes for Civil Rights legislation by flattery, intimidation, cajoling, and the promise of government contracts.
In the early years after Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement fixated on overturning the ruling and getting a complete ban on abortions. When that proved impossible, they found other methods, such as counseling centers and restrictions on late-term abortions. The annual number of abortions has since been halved.
4) Treat adversaries with respect. Try to appeal to their best instincts, urging them to honor their own principles rather than scolding them for failing to meet yours.
I cringe every time I hear President Trump use words like thugs, deranged, human scum, and enemies of the people to describe his opponents. Not only does he demean the office of the president, he also greatly decreases the likelihood of working with those opponents in the future.
We are living in troubled times, with an economy ravaged by a virus, and protests reminding us daily of a racial divide. Our nation desperately needs to come together. In a statement issued in response to the George Floyd protests, former , “The heroes of America—from Frederick Douglass, to Harriet Tubman, to Abraham Lincoln, to Martin Luther King, Jr.—are heroes of unity. Their calling has never been for the fainthearted. They often revealed the nation’s disturbing bigotry and exploitation—stains on our character sometimes difficult for the American majority to examine. We can only see the reality of America’s need by seeing it through the eyes of the threatened, oppressed, and disenfranchised.”
“Daddy changed the world!” said George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter in a video that went viral. Whether that proves true remains to be seen. Floyd’s death did, however, open the world’s eyes to how far we fall short of the American ideal that all people are created equal with rights endowed by God.
Former President Bush concluded his statement by saying, “We love our neighbors as ourselves when we treat them as equals, in both protection and compassion. There is a better way—the way of empathy, and shared commitment, and bold action, and a peace rooted in justice. I am confident that together, Americans will choose the better way.”
Truthfully, I don’t have that same confidence…yet. But I’m praying for it, and committed to working toward it.
Greetings Mr. Yancey;
I have been blessed by your books and your talks over the years and I was looking forward to hear what you had to say about the RIGHTEOUS PROTESTS that are going on around the country and all over the world to bring an end to POLICE BRUTALITY AND SYSTEMIC RACISM. After reading your post I realized that what captured your imagination was the damage caused to property and the “similarity” between the BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS and a disbanded 60’s militant Marxist organization. One of the popular chants at the various protests we have been witnessing is , ” What’s his/her name”? There is a reason for that. White America , especially white Evangelical/Protestant America,doesn’t want to hear the names of the countless men and women that have been gunned down by the police.White Evangelical Christians bend over back wards to white wash the DIABOLICAL SIN OF RACISM. This is very unfortunate. White America is content to live comfortably, continuing to enjoy the benefits of white privilege and systemic racism while Black America suffers from both the lived out legacy of slavery and systemic racism. What adds insult to injury is the stubborn and arrogant refusal of WHITE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS to come to grips with this reality and repent and join hands with their black brothers and sisters to get rid of this scourge. White America is yet to realize that WHITE SILENCE IS VIOLENCE. I will give you three examples to illustrate my case. During the past month , three leading white evangelicals made outrageous statements about the current situation. Two are mega church pastors and one is the president of a well known christian university. Let me start with the “enlightened” university president. Due to his opposition to a mask mandate in the state he lives in, he thought it appropriate to post a racist picture just to score political points. Result, black faculty and students are leaving. A white evangelical pastor of a mega church from your birth state suggested that ” white privilege” triggers white people. So his solution, “instead of using the phrase white privilege, let us call it “white blessings” because white people are living in the blessing of slavery that built the frame work they live in today. Last but not least, another white evangelical pastor and televangelist from the mid west called slavery ” a birth defect” . Not a sin, not an abomination , a ” birth defect”. I wish I was making this up, but I am not. So in closing Mr. Yancey, I have heard you say in many interviews that the books you write are a result of your attempt to understand a subject matter you don’t understand fully. As a result , you have blessed millions ( my self included ) with your writings. It’s my hope that you will research and study this painful subject matter and use your pen and platform to bring about true repentance and healing to a nation that desperately needs it.May God bless you and your family and may He heal our nation.
I appreciate your spirit, your passion, and your practical suggestions. I began the post with the riots because those white evangelicals are exactly the people I would like to reach–I am one, after all. Many wrongly dismiss the legitimacy of protests because of the violence and chaos that took place. I started with the common ground that we all should agree on, and then hoped to work toward ways to move forward. Don’t give up, please. We need your voice.
My blog (www.gmanuell.com from Australia) dated 14 June 2020 considered the terms ‘race’ and ‘racism’ with respect to differences in human beings. I repeat what I said then and will expand on it.
The God of the Bible doesn’t recognise races, except one human race. He doesn’t think in terms of ‘black lives matter’—He thinks that every single life (that He created!) matters. This God only recognises individuals. God wants to love and care for everyone personally: as someone for whom His Son, the Lord Jesus, shed His blood so that all of us could avoid shedding one another’s blood.
As shown below, ‘race’ is a fiction of the human mind but ‘racism’ is the real thing: the judging people of different so-called ‘races’ as superior or inferior to one another. Much (but not all) of racism is based on the colour of a person’s skin—something over which they had no control when they were born.
I am puzzled that most Christians do not seem to recognise this fundamental truth and that they do not react strongly in rejecting the concept of various human ‘races.’ This rejection of ‘race’ provides a wonderful opportunity for Christians to tell the world a new story which changes all our presuppositions concerning the interaction of different people, no matter what their differences: physical, mental or emotional.
‘Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.’ (Psalm 51:10)
We need to understand the modern origin of the concept of different ‘races’ amongst humanity to see how evil is this notion. There have always been differences between groups of people based on location, language, culture and religion and, regrettably, that has caused the death of millions. I don’t expect that to change. But the addition of ‘race’ to this list only broadens the opportunity for demeaning people.
Would this solve the problem? Not at all! This word could easily be replaced by ‘tribe/tribalism’ or some other term. The underlying issue is the disposition of our heart and mind. Some catchy slogans reflect this:
• The problem of the heart is the heart of the problem.
• It is a sin problem, not a skin problem.
• It’s grace, not race, that matters.
The classification of people into different ‘races’ is of relatively recent origin when that term is considered in the broad sweep of human history.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) was a Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician, who is regarded the father of taxonomy because he invented the modern system of naming organisms (animals, plants and minerals). He was a brilliant man whose great contribution to science is acknowledged the world over. He was also a man of strong Christian conviction. However, he took one step too far when he decided to include humanity in his taxonomical investigations. Linnaeus noted the similar taxonomy of monkeys and human beings and decided that there was no difference between them, except for human speech.#
He initially classified humans and monkeys as part of the same taxonomical group known as ‘Anthropomorpha,’ meaning ‘man-like.’ He invented the ‘scientific’ notion that humanity could be divided into four races: initially, he started with whitish European, reddish American, tawny Asian and blackish African.* He changed and increased these descriptions over time; nevertheless, Linnaeus always believed that humans and apes both belonged to the animal kingdom and should be classified accordingly. He gave humans the name, ‘homo sapiens.’
Of course, this raised difficult issues for theologians and natural historians. The Bible’s teaching is clear. Humans were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) and designed to rule His creation on earth (Genesis 1:26, 28). Male and female humans were something that God had not created before. How could the distinct ruler of everything on earth, at the same time, be part of the ruled?
In response to criticism from a German botanist, Johann Georg Gmelin, Linnaeus replied in a letter dated 25 February 1747 (my emphases):
‘It does not please [you] that I’ve placed Man among the Anthropomorpha, perhaps because of the term ‘with human form,’ but man learns to know himself. Let’s not quibble over words. It will be the same to me whatever name we apply. But I seek from you and from the whole world a generic difference between man and simian [apes] that [follows] from the principles of Natural History. I absolutely know of none.’@
In historical terms, Linnaeus won. Since then, a human being was considered to be part of the animal kingdom and, similarly, could be classified into different groups. My earlier blog noted the dreadful impact of theories generated by the influential Blumenbach in the 1770s, derived from Linnaeus’ conclusions. To criticise the ideas of these people is not to condemn them morally. But it is legitimate to reject their conclusions.
Many Christians, in particular, appear to have learnt little from the disastrous slave trade of the UK, USA and European countries; systemic cultural and legal discrimination in the USA; apartheid in South Africa; and the horrors of Nazi Germany. These outcomes are all based on the ideas of failed human thinking.
Everyone who discusses ‘race’ according to classifications of the one race of human beings is demeaning those (every one of them, including themselves!!) who were and are created in the image of God by subdividing them into different groups.
By accepting the ‘science’(?!) of people like Linnaeus and Blumenbach, people everywhere are confirming the apostle Paul’s criticism of humanity:
‘For even though they knew God, they did not honour Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.’ (Romans 1:21-22)
Christians need to stand up for the truth by rejecting the notion of ‘race’ amongst human beings once and for all. That will begin a decline in racism. That would be a small step forward for Christians.
* See Braziel, Jana Evans, ‘Genre, race, erasure: a genealogical critique of “American” autobiography,’ in J A Young & J E Braziel (eds), ‘Erasing Public Memory: Race, Aesthetics, and Cultural Amnesia in the Americas’ (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2007), 35-70.
# For these references, see Frängsmyr, Tore, Sten Lindroth, Gunnar Erikson & Gunnar Broberg, ‘Linnaeus, the Man and his Work’ (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 159, 166, 175.
@ Gribbin, Mary & John Gribbin, ‘Flower Hunters’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 56.
Two excellent men who speak from experience & biblical knowledge on racism.
Voddie Baucham, Jr.
Robert Woodson (Robert Woodson Institute)
Thank you Philip, this is such a helpful and inspiring reflection.
I was wondering. How many hours a week would you usually spend reading news, where do you go to get your news from, and how do you try to find a balance of perspectives? Do you watch news on TV too, or mainly read it?
I don’t want to spend endless hours reading different perspectives, and so many news outlets seem to be ideologically driven/partisan/ contradictory
Recently, I have taken to giving up news for most of the week (as it was just filling my head with so much gloom and muddle) and then just reading the Economist on Fridays to catch up, but they also have their ideological drivers…