What Whites Can Learn from Ferguson
00:00:00.000 | The recent situation in Ferguson, Missouri has been all over the news and it has again
00:00:09.440 | sparked a lot of conversation about race in America, Pastor John.
00:00:13.960 | From this vantage point in time right now, we hear a number of conflicting reports about
00:00:17.760 | what actually happened in Ferguson.
00:00:19.840 | But from your perspective as someone who has invested a lot of time in thinking about the
00:00:24.120 | trajectory of race relations in America, what are some key lessons we can take away from
00:00:28.600 | this at this point?
00:00:30.440 | This has been a really tough season for a lot of people after the killing of Michael
00:00:37.640 | Brown, unarmed, 18 years old, in a hail of bullets from a policeman.
00:00:46.000 | We don't know all the facts, yes, there are people who like to say that and people get
00:00:50.520 | really angry when you say that first.
00:00:53.160 | I'm just trying to learn what is going on in the dialogue, not just in the wider community
00:01:01.520 | but in the Christian church.
00:01:04.120 | And here are three things.
00:01:05.800 | I want to mainly address, I think, my white fellow evangelicals and plead with them to
00:01:13.320 | think hard about three things that might feed in to why the black community would respond
00:01:24.440 | at least emotionally, if not theoretically, differently from the majority culture.
00:01:33.120 | Number one, I learned this from, I think his name is Bixby, Pastor Bixby, who wrote a blog
00:01:40.720 | about this and it's an incredibly important principle.
00:01:44.880 | If you are a minority, it doesn't have to be black, if you're a minority living in a
00:01:50.100 | majority culture, so blacks in this country are what, 13, 14 percent, something like that,
00:01:55.080 | so around them is a majority culture.
00:01:58.860 | The minority ethos tends to be an us, a we, a community, an identity along the lines of
00:02:09.760 | what defines them as the minority.
00:02:13.960 | The majority culture never has to do this.
00:02:17.200 | They're never even aware that they are a group.
00:02:22.040 | When a white guy shoots a white guy, we don't say, "Oh, white on white crime."
00:02:27.680 | We don't think about it.
00:02:29.680 | It's the luxury, it's the privilege of being majority.
00:02:34.440 | So to be aware that any time anything happens of a critical nature in the black community,
00:02:43.640 | there is a sense of us that is intrinsic, it's reflexive, it's natural, it's understandable,
00:02:51.440 | precisely because of the nature of the community as a minority community.
00:02:57.840 | That's one of the most important lessons I've had reaffirmed as I have listened.
00:03:05.520 | Number two, feeding into this event is a history.
00:03:09.400 | I mean, there's slavery, and then within my lifetime, a long history of Jim Crow laws,
00:03:17.160 | they were called, roughly coming to an end at the Civil Rights Movement, but being ugly,
00:03:22.480 | horrible, demeaning, to a degree that one can hardly imagine the indignities of it.
00:03:30.360 | So the long history of slavery, the long history of Jim Crow injustices and abuses are part
00:03:37.740 | of the matrix of that minority self-consciousness.
00:03:42.240 | We have been hated, we have been abused, we have been mistreated for a long time.
00:03:47.760 | And I know that there are other voices who say, "Come on, if we don't get beyond that,
00:03:53.040 | we won't make any progress."
00:03:54.440 | That's true, that's true, but it's not canceling out the reality of the consciousness.
00:04:00.720 | We just need to handle that consciousness in a way, and whites need to be aware that
00:04:06.840 | we've never had to deal with that, and they still do.
00:04:11.200 | That's number two lesson.
00:04:13.740 | Number three is this.
00:04:16.640 | I went to church last Sunday, and I was wondering, is Kenny going to address the issue?
00:04:21.320 | Bless his pee-picking heart.
00:04:23.520 | He began with the issue, and then he put it in a wider context, and I was so thankful.
00:04:28.280 | He's just so racially, ethnically, culturally sensitive that he began his sermon.
00:04:33.560 | And what he drew attention to, along with other things, I knew this, but he had the
00:04:39.480 | names already, and I don't have them already now, but he listed, I think, five other unarmed
00:04:46.760 | black men who had died in the last month at the hands of police.
00:04:54.240 | Now you don't have all the facts with those.
00:04:56.520 | Every one of them may be warranted in some way, but when you put a centuries-long history
00:05:01.920 | together with a minority consciousness of us, them, together with a long history of
00:05:09.760 | innocent black men being lynched, and in the moment, some unarmed black men being killed
00:05:19.160 | by people with authority, you just got to believe and understand that when another one
00:05:26.360 | happens, it's going to feel different.
00:05:29.480 | It's going to feel—now, having said all that, I'm pleading for white evangelical
00:05:34.760 | patience and understanding and listening.
00:05:39.280 | And I know that those observations don't warrant untrue or ill-advised or inflammatory
00:05:50.040 | talk from the black community towards the white community.
00:05:55.240 | And I've talked with the brothers about that.
00:05:58.520 | So that's it, Tony.
00:06:00.960 | That's where I am in my effort to listen and understand and admonish and be admonished.
00:06:06.580 | So I hope that's of some help to the majority white, especially evangelical, culture as
00:06:14.860 | we deal with these things.
00:06:15.860 | Yeah, thank you, Pastor John.
00:06:17.960 | Within our circles—YRR, neo-Calvinism, whatever you want to call it—were you surprised by
00:06:23.600 | the amount of what some would say was misunderstanding between blacks and whites on Ferguson?
00:06:28.340 | Did this come as a surprise to you?
00:06:30.360 | No.
00:06:31.360 | I think that's going to continue to be there.
00:06:34.120 | And I don't know if misunderstanding is the way I would have described it.
00:06:40.160 | Lack of empathy is what I think I would put my finger on.
00:06:43.600 | I said to one brother, "I'm hearing what they're saying, and I'm hearing true
00:06:47.720 | things."
00:06:48.720 | "They" meaning black community.
00:06:49.720 | "I'm hearing what you're saying and the facts I'm agreeing with."
00:06:53.660 | But here's the problem.
00:06:55.560 | Agreeing with that, in this context with a dead man on the street, against that backdrop,
00:07:04.200 | without some kind of effort to say that you have empathy, that you have compassion, that
00:07:12.200 | you have understanding, that's what's missing.
00:07:15.600 | And no, that doesn't understand me.
00:07:16.960 | We haven't gotten there yet.
00:07:18.800 | In fact, I think there's probably some pushback on that.
00:07:22.100 | Do we have to pander to this every time something comes along?
00:07:24.680 | Do we have to deal with those kinds of emotional things?
00:07:27.560 | And I'd say, "Well, I think there's probably a way to do it that isn't pandering,
00:07:32.400 | and that isn't belittling, that isn't dishonoring by owning a sense of understanding
00:07:39.280 | and empathy."
00:07:40.920 | Very good.
00:07:41.920 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:07:42.920 | And you can find that article by Bob Bixby online.
00:07:45.000 | It's titled "The Gospel in Black and White, A Missiological Perspective on Ferguson."
00:07:49.600 | And of course, you can download and read Pastor John's book, Bloodlines, for free.
00:07:54.360 | Go to DesiringGod.org and click on Books and look for the title, Bloodlines.
00:07:59.400 | And speaking of topics in the news, Israel and Palestine are at war again.
00:08:03.400 | There have been ceasefires and truces, but the tensions seem unresolved.
00:08:07.680 | So should we take our stand with Israel or with Palestine?
00:08:10.840 | That's tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:08:12.720 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:13.720 | Thanks for listening.
00:08:13.720 | Thank you.
00:08:14.720 | Thanks for listening.
00:08:14.740 | Thank you.
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