As a teacher and especially as a theologian I try to help
students connect how a community's understanding of who God is connects to the
way they see themselves and their world. But inevitably, when we encounter the
historical atrocities of the American slave system, Jim Crow, or other global
acts of tragic dehumanization and violence, students are overwhelmed. But they
also express a curious distance from those historical perpetrators. They say
something like this, "Well, surely something like that couldn't happen
now, we are not those sort of people."
But what "sort of people" either justify or ignore
the persistent cries of those being dispossessed and persecuted? And herein
lies the fundamental problem. The implicit language of what is natural
underlines how we view ourselves and others. While a relatively small percentage
of individuals owned slaves in the United States, the assumption of what black
bodies were, by nature, and what white bodies were, by nature, served to
perpetuate the system as part of God's natural order.
As we watch the events unfold in Ferguson we see a narrative
that seeks to justify the police department's militaristic response to public
outcry over Michael Brown's death. An insipid underlying assumption of black
bodies as criminal, as dangerous, serves to obscure more fundamental questions
of why black bodies are targeted by police.
And it is these assumptions that underlay the justification of
militarized force against a community, effectively transforming a suburban town
into a battlefield and its citizens into "enemy combatants."
Why is there not more outrage at the use of force? At the
violation of constitutional rights? At the excessive force used against Michael
Brown in the first place, or countless other African Americans targeted by the
American criminal justice system? If we are honest, perhaps we have to begin to
see that the African American must continually justify why they should not be treated in such a way.
The atrocities of the world do not require explicit hatred
of another. Marginalization and violence thrive upon the naturalization of
another's guilt and of our innocence. But as Christians are we not called to a
perpetual awareness of our falling short and Christ's filling in the gaps? If
so, are we not called to be reminded in moments such as Ferguson that yes, we are those sorts of people, people who
could so easily justify another's oppression and stay silent in the face of
their dispossession. But by God's grace and in Christ's name we are called to
live into what we are not. Perhaps walking with Christ begins not with the
refusal of the one who reminds us of our falleness. Perhaps it begins with
hearing the uncomfortable anger of those who are crying out in our midst.
Dr. Brian Bantum is Associate Professor of Theology at Seattle Pacific University
1 comment:
As a white woman who doesn't feel like I have much that I can do, I felt paralyzed when the Ferguson situation first came up. But by reading and listening, I have become more sensitive and have spoken up more and observed more in my little world. Thank you Dr. Bantum for being one of the persons who is teaching me.
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