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Benjamin Watson outlines his mixed emotions in his book, providing an African American man’s perspective on racial divisions, expressing his thoughts and feelings after police officer Darren Wilson was acquitted in the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, leading to riots throughout the city.
Watson explains, “I’m writing not because I have all the answers, but because I have a lot of questions and concerns about how we as Americans with different skin tones relate to one another…”
His feelings on getting real about race are outlined below:
I’M ANGRY
because the stories of injustice that have been passed down for generations seem to be continuing before our very eyes.
Watson says, “I’m angry because white people don’t get it. I’m angry because black people don’t get it, either.”
You’d think that after all this time since the abolition of slavery we would have reached real parity between the races, that there would be truly equal opportunity, and that we would be seeing and experiencing fairness in society between blacks and whites.
Rather than milk and honey, the Promised Land for many black Americans was filled with more blood, more tears, and more repression. And so, ninety years after abolition, Rosa Parks was still required to sit in the back of the bus.
There’s a feeling in white America that everything is equal now. But black people know in their bones that there’s still a residue of neoslavery that sticks to so much of life. “Twenty-first-century segregation exists overtly in our school systems, communities, and prisons,” writes Reniqua Allen in The Guardian. “It also permeates our society in ways we don’t even realize.”
The church has the greatest opportunity to effect change in our communities, yet it remains the most segregated institution in America. Christianity Today reported in January 2015 that “Sunday morning remains one of the most segregated hours in American life, with more than 8 in 10 congregations made up of one predominant racial group.”
Watson notes, “I believe that it must be very difficult for white cops to maintain order in a predominantly black town without legitimate police work being perceived as racially motivated. And I believe it’s likely that sometimes police work is racially motivated and biased. Both can be true. I believe that white people look at law enforcement and assume it is good, based on their experiences and interactions with the police. And I believe that black people look at law enforcement and assume—based on patterns and history and experience—that someone is out to get them. I believe both are true.”
At its core, the issue is not about race. It’s about the human heart. Nothing will change…unless God changes our hearts and minds.
I’M INTROSPECTIVE
because sometimes I want to take “our” side without looking at the facts in situations like these…
The problem of racism is not in the extremes at the edges of society. The problem of racism is not in “that guy over there.” It’s right here. The problem of racism is inside me and you.
Researchers have found that even preschool children are aware of racial differences between themselves and others. As we get older we begin to learn from those around us—our parents, our friends, our friends’ parents—and we pick up their attitudes about race.
We tend to take things and automatically blame them on race. Blacks and whites. When sometimes the facts actually say something different. We want to point our fingers outward, but the problem of race starts within.
The solution to the problem of race in America will be found only by ordinary people, “good” people, looking inside themselves, being honest about the assumptions and biases that have formed, and beginning to change what’s in their hearts.
I’M EMBARRASSED
because the looting, violent protests, and lawbreaking only confirm—and in the minds of many, validate—the stereotypes and thus the inferior treatment.
Truth is often more complex than we want it to be. And it’s easier to paint ourselves as white or black, either/or, rather than both/and.
In Ferguson, Missouri, could it be that Michael Brown both did something wrong and did not deserve to be shot six times? Could it be that Darren Wilson both was just doing his job and responded inappropriately to a perceived threat? That’s the crux of the problem with the racial divide. It’s a divide. We can’t help but slide to one side of the ring or the other and get ready to fight. And the media pundits push us toward our respective corners.
Anthropologist Ashley Montagu’s classic book Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race says, “The idea of ‘race’ represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time, and one of the most tragic.” Francis Collins—head of the Human Genome Project for a decade and a half, an outspoken Christian, and bestselling author of The Language of God—has said that all human DNA is “99.9 percent identical.”
Race is literally only skin deep. We are commonly human.
I’M FRUSTRATED
because pop culture, music, and movies glorify these types of police-citizen altercations…
Music of all kinds allows us to express a range of human emotions: sadness and anger, joy and elation. It’s a language voicing the highest and lowest points of life, an art that comes from the heart and soul. It’s a way to broadcast political, social, and relational experiences. All genres of music—pop, rock, blues, jazz, and hip-hop—are means by which we sometimes cry, laugh, or scream at the world.
Of all music genres, hip-hop is probably the form that is most extreme and most raw. It is a music of anger. It is a music of passion. It is a music of protest. And as a vehicle for protest, hip-hop is uniquely African American.
In the black community, police abuse and brutality are givens. The threat of police to innocent black people is assumed, something everyone knows is true. And the black community knows that the white community is blind to it. Why? Because they don’t experience it.
Hip-hop today contributes to the racial divide by emphasizing violence in response to the problem. Any entertainment that exalts the self inherently feeds pride, and pride is the biggest problem that leads to violence and death.
I’M FEARFUL
because in the back of my mind I know that, although I’m a law-abiding citizen, I could still be looked upon as a “threat” to those who don’t know me. So I will continue to have to go the extra mile to earn the benefit of the doubt.
I’m confused because I don’t know why it’s so hard to obey a policeman. You will not win! And I don’t know why some policemen abuse their power. Power is a responsibility, not a weapon to brandish and lord over the populace.
69 percent of whites express confidence that law enforcement officials provide equal treatment to people of both races, while just 28 percent of blacks hold that view.
Watson points out, “White people have no idea of the fear that black people feel toward the police. I cannot say that strongly enough, loudly enough, or forcefully enough. I believe it is a huge point of division between black people and white people. Black people have little expectation of being treated fairly by police in any situation. We have a high expectation of being demeaned, abused, and possibly treated violently in any encounter with law enforcement. We have a history that supports this, news headlines that shout this, and personal experiences that confirm this. We believe that cops overall have a bias against black people, that we are more likely to be singled out, and that we can be innocent and yet run into trouble at the hands of the cops.”
Therefore, a black person and a white person feel differently, act differently, and respond differently when a cop approaches.
I’M SAD
because another young life was lost from his family; the racial divide has widened; a community is in shambles; accusations, insensitivity, hurt, and hatred are boiling over; and we may never know the truth about what happened that day.
I’m sympathetic because I wasn’t there, so I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe Darren Wilson acted within his rights and duty as an officer of the law and killed Michael Brown in self-defense like any of us would in the circumstance. Now he has to fear the backlash against himself and his loved ones when he was only doing his job. What a horrible thing to endure. Or maybe he provoked Michael and ignited the series of events that led to him eventually murdering the young man to prove a point.
Part of the problem is that we are separate. We keep ourselves separate. Even those who make a show of sympathy for racial issues keep separate from the people who live in it. We don’t look for ways to personally connect with each other.
We remain incredibly segregated. So we don’t sit down together at neighborhood picnics. We don’t hang out together after work. We don’t worship together in our churches. At the beginning of his closing argument in A Time to Kill, Jake Brigance says, “I set out to prove a black man could receive a fair trial in the South—that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. That’s not the truth, because the eyes of the law are human eyes—yours and mine—and until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to be evenhanded. It will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own prejudices. So, until that day, we have a duty under God to seek the truth, not with our eyes and not with our minds, where fear and hate turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts—where we don’t know better. Until we can see each other as equals—as mothers and fathers, as sons and daughters—justice is never going to be evenhanded. Only when we share time together and make it personal will we lay aside the prejudice of our minds and experience the true understanding of our hearts. Only when we as blacks and whites watch our kids play together will we know that we all are created by God and are commonly human.”
I’M OFFENDED
because of the insulting comments I’ve seen that are not only insensitive but dismissive to the painful experiences of others.
The N-word is a hateful word, no matter who uses it. It’s the trademark of white supremacist terrorism. It is the keyword of the sorry legacy of slavery. It is the symbol of inhumanity. It’s often the flashpoint of racial conflict and violence.
The word robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar. It reduces people to just one thing, based on a stereotype. That’s the thing about racial offensiveness. It isn’t only the crass comments that matter; it’s the feeling and meaning behind the words that fail to or refuse to see people, white or black, as the complex human beings they are. Racial slurs are a way of diminishing a person to a single thing, a lesser thing, a less-than-human thing.
I’M HOPELESS
because I’ve lived long enough to expect things like this to continue to happen. I’m not surprised, and at some point my little children are going to inherit the weight of being a minority and all that it entails.
Toward the end of World War II, Watson’s grandfather worked at the Norfolk, Virginia naval base, which was the intake point for Nazi German prisoners. His grandfather loaded and unloaded planes near the place where the prisoners were kept. The only thing was, if he needed to use the bathroom, he wasn’t allowed to use the one that the prisoners and the white workers could use. He had to walk clear around the base to the “colored” bathroom. The white Nazis had more privilege than a black American.
Has anything changed? Has anything gotten better? I can see that, yes, some things have changed. Black people have more opportunity than in Watson’s grandfather’s day. Black people have access to better education overall than in his father’s school-age years. Yet black men still make less money for the same jobs as white men, education is still unequal, and we are still largely a segregated society, each race continuing to head for its respective corner.
Certainly the younger generation, millennials, are less prejudiced than their parents—you would think. But as the Washington Post reports, citing research from the General Social Survey, millennials are just as likely to harbor racial biases as their baby-boomer parents.
There are now nearly one million black people in jails in America: some 43 percent of the total prison population (though blacks constitute only 13.2 percent of the US general population).
Much of white America just wants the black problem to go away, to the degree that some celebrities and politicians, incredibly, claim “there is no racism.”
The problem of race is deep and wide and requires seismic change. But if we look to government to solve it, we might as well feel hopeless. If we look to corporate America to solve it, we’ll be waiting a long, long time.
Watson says, “As I’ve said, the problem of race is not ‘out there.’ It’s ‘in here,’ in the human heart. And though there is no task in heaven or on earth more difficult than changing the human heart, I believe in the one who can do it. It requires a supernatural solution. Yes, I believe in God. You see, I know how God can change a person’s heart.”
I’M HOPEFUL
because I know that while we still have race issues in America, we enjoy a much different normal than those of our parents and grandparents. I see it in my personal relationships with teammates, friends, and mentors. And it’s a beautiful thing.
Hope will not ultimately be found in the educational system or the government. Hope will not be found in programs. Hope will not even be found in learning about the great black people of history. I believe that hope will be found only in the God of heaven and earth and in the choices we make about him.
We have largely overcome the attitudes and practices of the separate-but-equal society. Yes, blacks and whites are still too segregated, but black people are not institutionally separated out, as in the time of Rosa Parks. There are no longer separate bathrooms for colored people.
White flight is now a much less common practice in our society. In 1958, 44 percent of whites said they’d move if a black family moved into their neighborhood; by 1998, that number was down to just one percent.
More than four-fifths of blacks claim they have white friends; likewise for white people claiming they have black friends. This gives hope.
I’M ENCOURAGED
because ultimately the problem is not a skin problem, it is a sin problem. Sin is the reason we rebel against authority. Sin is the reason we abuse our authority. Sin is why we are racist and prejudiced and why we lie to cover for our own. Sin is the reason we riot, loot, and burn. But
I’m encouraged because God has provided a solution for sin through his son, Jesus, and with it, a transformed heart and mind. One that’s capable of looking past the outward and seeing what’s truly important in every human being. The cure for the Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner tragedies is not education or exposure. It’s the gospel.
So, finally, I’m encouraged because the gospel gives mankind hope.
Watson explains, “I don’t know how we can talk about the race problem in America without talking about God. What is under our skin, and under the skin problem in America, is a spiritual problem. When we focus on another person’s skin, we miss the reality of our own sin.”
At the root of racism is a flawed view of ourselves. Racism is based on an elevation of our own talents, physical characteristics, and DNA—which we inherited by no choice or merit of our own—over someone else’s.
When black neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson was asked why he doesn’t talk about race more often, he said, “When I take someone into the operating room, I’m actually operating on the thing [the brain] that makes them who they are. The skin doesn’t make them who they are.” Under our skin, we are the same—flesh, blood, and spirit. We are commonly human. All of us are human beings, whom God created.
Grace is about how God bridges the racial divide one heart and one person at a time. Only when we personally experience God’s grace—his unmerited favor—will we be able to extend grace to others. To Darren Wilson. To Michael Brown. To each other as black and white human beings. This is the gospel. The Good News.
We won’t change the world around us unless God has changed the world within us.
What if we sought intentional relationships with people who are not of our race? The key to this idea is the word intentional. Because America is still significantly segregated, there aren’t always natural opportunities to make friends with someone of another race.
Watson ends with this final exhortation, “The problem of race in America is a spiritual problem at the heart of America. Individually we may feel as if there’s not much we can do. But maybe we underestimate what God can do through us. I believe it’s essential for us to pray for America.”
May we seek freedom from hate and divisions, as we shoot for the stars!