Needed: Justice, Not (Just) Friendship or Even Money

Just as in 1968, racial tension in the U.S. has been rampant these last few months in 2020, and, again, just like back then, one presidential candidate is calling for LAW AND ORDER. But what is the most pressing need for People of Color, and how can the current unrest best be addressed?  

Are Reparations the Answer?

There have been strong calls by some for the U.S. government to provide reparations to the descendants of Black people who were formerly enslaved. In his long, oft-cited June 2014 piece in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a strong appeal for reparations.

If it could have been arranged, this month would have been a fitting time for reparations to be paid, for it was 170 years ago on September 18, 1850, that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, making the enslavement of Blacks in the South even more secure—and more odious.

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849, but then her daring work freeing other slaves by means of the Underground Railroad was made even more dangerous and challenging after the Fugitive Slave Act took effect the next year.

But there are many problems with reparations: how could it be satisfactorily determined who is eligible for reparations after all these years, and how could adequate funding be provided? With the massive expenditures on covid-19 relief this year, there is no possibility of funding being provided now, even if there were the will to do so.

Reparations are most likely not the answer to the problem of racial unrest in this country for the foreseeable future—or ever.

Is Friendship the Answer?

There has been much talk over the last sixty years about the need for racial reconciliation and for eliminating the segregation of Blacks and whites.

Near the beginning of “A Segregated Church or a Beloved Community,” the sixth chapter in his 2016 book America’s Original Sin, Jim Wallis recounts how in the 1950s Martin Luther King, Jr., sadly said, “I am [ashamed] and appalled that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

Then Wallis went on to lament that still now “the racial segregation of US churches is nothing short of scandalous and sinful” (Kindle ed., pp. 97, 98).

While I strongly believe that churches should never be segregated because of unwillingness to accept people of different races/ethnicities and have long regretted not being a part of a church here in the U.S. with a significant number of People of Color, I now think that integration is not the primary goal we whites should seek.

Last month, Jennifer Harvey, a religion professor at Drake University in Iowa, wrote a powerful opinion piece for CNN. While her piece was largely in support of reparations, I was struck by her disparagement of all the work that has been done for “racial reconciliation” and the emphasis in recent years on “diversity and inclusion.”

Harvey insists that “we need to be clear that friendships are never a substitute for justice.”

Thus, while definitely important, friendship/reconciliation is not the primary answer to the problem of racial unrest abroad in the land.

The Need for Justice/Equity

In her highly acclaimed book Caste (2020), Isabel Wilkerson writes, “We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today” (p. 387).

Accordingly, rather than focusing on reparations for the past, what is needed most now is the creation of a more just, equitable society.

If we whites want to help People of Color (PoC) have better lives in this still-racist society, we need to focus most on legislation and law enforcement that, among other things, combats police brutality against PoC; corrects the inequities in the prison justice system; and eliminates discrimination in housing and discriminatory finance charges for both houses and cars.

To do this we can support various nationwide organizations, such as the ACLU, for example, which urges us to Demand Justice Now.