First off, I don't want to whitewash (pardon the pun) the situation and give the impression I think Christians -- of any color, mind you -- are immune to racism. Of course not: no more than Christians are immune to lust, envy, pride, drug abuse, etc. And, though I think racism is probably less of a problem today than ever in our nations' history, it is certainly not absent.

"Rara" has brought to my attention an article ("Exit Interviews") in Christianity Today, of which she says (and I hope she doesn't mind my using her reaction to frame this opening):

Anyway, it turns out white Christians can be just as racist, just that they aren't as brazen about it, at least in the north. (There was an article in Christianity Today.) ... When will we learn that all God's children are one?

I was really surprised and saddened by what I read. I know that some churches in the south were overtly racist, but still.

And here's what seems to be the most troubling incident in the article:

It was my third year with the ministry. I got a call from a prominent white Christian leader, asking me to go to lunch with him.... he said, "I've had a hard time sleeping throughout the night." And I was thinking to myself, Why is he telling me this? I'm not a therapist.

"I just came back from an annual conference on the other side of the country," the man told me. "A bunch of us got together to discuss reconciliation and cross-cultural ministry. Usually, when black leaders come into the meeting, we make them feel right at home and let them be part of the decision-making process. But to be honest with you, Darrell, the decisions are made before your leaders ever get there. I'm used to hearing the jokes and the use of the N-word. But this time, when the jokes were going on and people were saying things, it didn't sound right to me."

The author invites this man over; the leader never accepts.

It saddens me to hear that some people -- some in a prominent ministry somewhere, apparently -- still use the N-word in private and behave like this. Speaking for a moment a white Christian (something I almost never think of) who nobody would, I believe, need to hide such things from, I can honestly say I've never seen this done -- not once in any church I've ever attended -- and I've attended churches in widely varying ranges of skin-tone diversity. But I also would indeed expect it still happens among some groups.

I think we all know such things are deeply wrong, and can agree on that.

But, as usual, I'm going to dwell on the controversial: the things nobody seems to be saying. So...

Another thing I find troubling, in a different way, is the way the author equates what sounds like rejection or lack of enthusiasm for various "diversity" and "reconciliation" initiatives with a subtle kind of racism. The descriptions of these programs are vague, but you can discern a rough outline.

As the first black manager at a major parachurch organization based in the western United States, Clarence Shuler didn't feel like a "golden boy" the way he had in other ministries where he had been the "first black." This time, he repeatedly ran into brick walls as he sought to usher in a culture of real diversity. He left afer three years....

[Another story:] For a while, things at the new position were fine. "I was the flavor of the month," he says. But over time, Davis began to sense tension between himself and his colleagues as he tried to implement new ideas...

In the middle of his tenure as director, Davis was in search of a speaker for a major fundraising event, and he got the idea to invite civil-rights matriarch Rosa Parks. She agreed to speak, and at first, everyone seemed thrilled. Then, without warning, Davis received a call from his organization's top leadership. They were pulling the plug.

"They were concerned that Mrs. Parks might be viewed as too liberal for some of their supporters," he recalls. "They were worried that she didn't seem to come from an evangelical background."

[Later:] I know many of my white friends and colleagues, both past and present, have grown irritated by the black community's incessant blabbering about race and racism and racial reconciliation.

... These patterns lead us to believe we've accomplished something simply by, for example, hiring a person of color or speaking to a person of another race at church or hugging someone we don't know at a conference 300 miles away from home. These types of gestures are good and necessary.

Every sad story he describes seems to come from an environment in which such policies are operating.

Tokenism

I loathe affirmative action, and I loathe tokenism -- by which I mean, hiring someone based primarily on their skin color, and then relegating them to a second-class status. And though I completely believe that -- though unrepentant racism played a role in the story above -- well-meaning but misguided policies also played a role.

One of the big problems with "diversity" programs (by which I mean artificially trying to balance out the numbers, making race a criteria for hiring) -- which the author thinks are "good and necessary" and which I think are evil and racist -- is that they increase rather than decrease racism. I'm not just saying this based on my gut feelings: Thomas Sowell has done a huge amount of research into this area and come to the same conclusions.

Affirmative-action policies, Sowell explains, have existed for centuries all over the world. They arise from resentment and envy, from beliefs of superiority and fears of inferiority. They sometimes have been meant to protect majorities from successful minorities; at other times to protect stagnant minorities from industrious majorities. But regardless of the reason or rationale, their social effect is to politicize social relationships. [1]

Although Sowell primarily addresses cases where there's a governmental directive mandating such policies, to a lesser extent the same problem applies when a church or other group consciously embraces "diversity" policies in response to social pressures -- rather than just hiring the most qualified applicants, regardless of skin color.

Instead, the belief that a "diversity" policy is operating leads to polarization, not unity, according to Sowell:

Those who must answer to the affirmative-action police for hiring practices have incentives to choose employees, not on the basis of qualification, but on whether they belong to the "correct" group and in the appropriate numbers. This leads to resentment and anger on the part of those who might have been the ones getting the job or receiving the promotion — if it hadn't been for "them" and their special political pull. And it creates psychological doubts among the recipients about whether they are holding their positions merely because they met a needed ethnic quota on the job.

And indeed, we see both sides of this in the article:

I used to take a certain amount of pride in being the first African American on staff at Christianity Today. But I was routinely humbled when I realized that being first isn't all it's cracked up to be. When you're the only one, there's always a sense that you're in an extremely unstable position, as if one healthy gust of wind could topple you—and with you, the hopes of other people with your skin color.

Stop me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like he fears he's there because of his skin color, not his skills.

"People sometimes ignore you," says Bruce Fields, a professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. "Or, if there is attention directed toward you, it is subtly communicated that you are not to be taken as seriously as a white person of similar status, experience, and credentials."

Right: because not only does it send the message to blacks (or whatever other minority is being so treated) that they are tokens, but it also sends the message to the non-minority employees/members that the person is there primarily because of their race. Whether or not that's actually true.

Fields was the first full-time African American professor on Trinity's staff... "I think about being a minority here all the time," he confesses. "There is rarely a time when I am not thinking about it... I find myself being distant, untrusting, and often angry that I have internalized a certain sense that I am not good enough."

Precisely as Sowell predicted: "It creates psychological doubts among the recipients about whether they are holding their positions merely because they met a needed ethnic quota on the job." There's a reason Sowell, and others who have taken a hard look at the data, have become opponents of such programs. They do damage, not good.

Perhaps I'm being unintentionally "racist" here (by the new definition), or perhaps this is just common sense talking, but while I enjoy discussions of race and ethicity -- indeed, talking about traditions and differences, and celebrating them, can be a lot of fun and very educational -- I'm still an old school "liberal" in the sense that I believe we have to get past judging people by skin -- including in these well-meaning but, I believe, harmful programs and initiatives -- and judging people instead by their fitness for a job, or a set of skills, or, as someone once put it, by the content of their character.

I hate to see Christian churches falling for a softer version of the same policies which tear whole countries apart. And I believe, strangely, that the more we focus on race, the more we'll focus on race. As the blue-eyes/brown-eyes experiments prove, "racial" tensions and behavior can be induced simply by highlighting any characteristic, focusing on it, and treating people differently because of it.

A Way Out?

So what I am saying here? That I don't believe in racial integration? Or "diversity"? Not at all. I'm just saying that we've swallowed this liberal idea of putting the cart before the horse, and glorying in something which is not of God.

The last two churches I attended for any length of time (over fifteen years total) were extremely racially diverse. And, strangely, they had almost no commitment to such programs. It just happened. As one pastor put it: "It's a God thing." If you do what's right, and emulate what you see your Father in heaven doing, the right level of diversity will naturally follow.

And that "right level" can include anything, in my opinion. I don't think all-black or all-white, all-Hispanic, or all-Korean churches are necessarily sinful: it depends on the surrounding demographics, language, and other factors. It's the attitude which matters, in my opinion, and openness, not the results.

But I suspect in many cases you'll get a healthy mix which looks close to the surrounding area. As Rara said, we are all God's children, and the level of some skin-tone inducing pigment, like melanin, has very little to do with how God sees and weighs us, which is from the inside, not the outside. We must learn to weigh and see as God does.

The other thing we can make it do is to make it clear that we will not hire or make close, trusted friends with anyone based on any other criteria than their quality. In my own hiring influence, I make it clear that nothing but skill will get you in the door: period. There are no tokens where I work. And yes, we happen to be a racially diverse group. (Though I would feel no worse about that if we weren't -- except that I couldn't make this point as nicely. ;-)) Those who get in know exactly why they're there.

As always, comments are welcomed.