Here's What You Do With Racism

Last night some church friends sat on our back porch and briefly explained, as their three young girls squealed and did cannonballs in our pool, why they had changed schools.

Bigotry. Prejudice. Racism.

Daily the girls were forced to acknowledge the obvious fact that their pretty skins were slightly darker than most kids in the school. At their tax payer sponsored school a daily dose of bigotry came with classwork, quizzes, lunch and recess. They also got to hear classmates call them names coined by long dead buyers and sellers of human flesh - names meant to degrade, subjugate, humiliate and psychologically rape earlier generations with dark, pretty skin.

There were rounds of meetings as mom and dad sought the school's help. After all, it was enlightened Bakersfield, California in the twenty-first century, not backward Birmingham, Alabama in the nineteenth. Lots of promises came attached to little action. School staff seemed unsure of how to do the obvious right thing.

The difficult sessions ended and the matter was happily resolved when the parents requested and received a transfer and the girls began attending a more diverse school with a wiser, better equipped staff. The problem magically went away, saving school officials awkward confrontations with bigot moms and dads who had done a stellar job passing on their callousness, unkindness and bigotry.

A seamless and happy partnership of bigot parents and seemingly feckless educators made certain the soul corrupting bacteria of ignorance had found a next generation host and would thrive a few more decades. A sanitized version of it all now sits quietly in an already forgotten file folder.

How long is this stuff going to go on?

Almost sixty years ago, as I began to read, I asked my mom why different color people had to drink at different water fountains. Almost that long ago, a family friend died from a stroke because police found him incoherent in  his car and jailed him for being "just another drunk n***r." I've seen it in schools, stores, restaurants, the workplace, in tasteless jokes told by people who assumed I was an insider and fellow traveler. I've seen it repeatedly in a sport I love and in the church world I know too well. The mouths and offices of squeaky clean church leaders and the board rooms of prominent churches alike have been too often filled with the vilest vomit of bigotry and willful hatred. It's not hearsay. I've heard it myself. We've drawn a line in the church I'm part of that's cost us as people put out for repeated ugly racist jokes and name calling have continued to cause grief.

How long is this stuff going to go on? When will it end?

Jesus gave a good answer in Luke 10 with an original and intentionally racialized story. The humanity of two men was tested when one of them was savagely beaten and left dying in the street. They were from very different ethnic backgrounds and the Bible claims that in their everyday world, the animosities ran so high that they "had no dealings with each other". At great expense, inconvenience and with social stigma attached, one man crossed a great divide and saved the other man's life.

Jesus said, "Go and do the same." To all of us.

Thinking about what three beautiful little girls lived through in my city has kept me up all night, feeling sick inside. I've seen some variation on this theme my entire life. When will it end?

It ends the day we set aside our own agendas, stop waiting on somebody else to do something and start initiating mercy like Jesus said. Put yourself out there. Let it start with you. Stop talking so much and do something for somebody.

Initiate mercy.