The Troubling Persistence of the Hatred of Black People.

“I don’t get it ,” “Why can’t we get rid of racism? Who would have thought we’d handle it better ”

The sound and the fury about the presence and the persistence of racism have been loud and boisterous from much of the public, both here in this country and around the world, but the fact of the matter is that this world cannot get rid of its disease called white supremacy.

It baffles those who believe in the notion of a “good God.” That god, they posit, is the creator of all people, and that means that God created black people. If people in fact do believe that there is one God, that that God is sovereign and “good,” how is it they can hate anything or anyone whom God created?

In dealing with the issues raised by racial hatred, people of faith turn to God and to other spiritual sources for answers and encouragement. There is a real struggle in trying to reconcile the notion of a good God with white supremacy. It is troubling that many “good, Christian folks” are rabidly racist, and are given permission to feel that way from their pastors.

Too many so-called “evangelicals” have remained silent about racism; they have historically done so. Recently, a white evangelical pastor called out white supremacy in an emotional sermon. Greg Laurie, the pastor of the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Southern California, said that America needs a “spiritual awakening” following the debacle in Charlottesville.

And A.R. Bernard, the founding pastor of Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York, left an advisory council of faith leaders established by the president, citing a “deepening conflict in values.

But too many religious leaders are silent or in agreement with the tenets of racism. Some are silent because they are afraid they will lose their congregations if they speak up and speak out; congregations too often run the theological direction of any given church.

And because there is too much silence from those who are supposed to be the moral beacons in our society and in our world, white supremacy and its child, racism, lingers in our world like a canker sore.

It is said that Mohandas Gandhi criticized white supremacy and racism when he spent time in the United States. He said that if Christians followed the teachings of Jesus the Christ, the world would be revolutionized.

But even Gandhi internalized the world’s disdain for black people. In Ghana, there has been a move to remove a statue from the University of Ghana because he was “racist toward black people.” Gandhi apparently said many disparaging things about black South Africans, even as he fought for the rights of Indians. He followed the thought pattern of white supremacists, saying that Indians were more intelligent than black people – and worse.

In October of 2016, Gandhi’s statue was removed from the university.

For black people, the struggle for basic human rights and dignity is an ongoing one, but the fact that the problem remains in spite of a sovereign God begs examination of our theological structure. Scholar Wes Howard Brook contends that the religion of empire, created largely during the days of the Roman Empire created a religion which was “opposite the religion of Jesus.”

The problem isn’t God; the problem is our distortion and manipulation of God for the sake of maintaining power for the state …and for the state’s desired people. Black people do not fit the description, in spite of God. In actuality, we live not in a monotheistic society but in a polytheistic society where there are at least two gods.

That being the case, with no isolated Sovereign God to direct our paths, we, God’s people, continue to live in a perpetuate hatred based on race. It seems that the issue is resistant to theology – because there is no unified theology to put it in its place.

In the context of racism in the United States, racism against African Americans dates back to the colonial era, and it continues to be a persistent issue in American society in the 21st century.

From the arrival of the first Africans in early colonial times until after the American Civil War, most African Americans were enslaved. Even free African Americans have faced restrictions on their political, social, and economic freedoms, being subjected to lynchings, segregation, Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of discrimination, both before and after the Civil War.

Thanks to the civil rights movement, formal racial discrimination was gradually outlawed by the federal government, and gradually came to be perceived as socially and morally unacceptable by large elements of American society. Despite this, racism against Black Americans remains widespread in the U.S., and it continues to be reflected in socioeconomic inequality.

In recent years research has uncovered extensive evidence of racial discrimination in various sectors of modern U.S. society, including the criminal justice system, businesses, the economy, housing, health care, the media, and politics. In the view of the United Nations and the US Human Rights Network, "discrimination in the United States permeates all aspects of life and extends to all communities of color."

Slavery, as a form of forced labor, has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations. Slavery is not inherently racial per se. In the United States, however, slavery, having been established in the colonial era, became racialized by the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), when slavery was widely institutionalized as a racial caste system which was based on African ancestry and skin color.

Most Americans say that people of color in the United States face at least some discrimination, according to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

A new survey shows that 80% of Americans believe there is “some” or “a lot” of discrimination against Black people. Seventy-six percent say the same about Hispanic people, while 70% hold the same view about Asian people.

Pew said it conducted the survey between March 1 and March 7, before the killings of six Asian women in the Atlanta area this week.

Participants were asked to mark how much discrimination different ethnic groups – Black people, Hispanic people, White people and Asian people – faced, either “a lot,” “some,” “only a little” or “none at all.”

Nearly half of respondents, 46%, said Black people face “a lot” of discrimination – a number that has gone up from 2017, when only 39% of respondents said the same.

About 30% of respondents said Hispanic people face “a lot” of discrimination, and 27% said the same about Asian people. For Hispanic people, that number has gone down from 2017, when 34% said they face “a lot” of discrimination. Pew did not provide previous data regarding discrimination against Asian people.

Parameters for what constituted “a lot” of discrimination versus “some” discrimination were not specified by Pew.

On the surface, objections to race-targeted policies by white people are not only about race or racism — they’re also about fair play. But the impact is racial: They disempower critics who are seeking racial justice. They justify leaving the current system unchanged. They reinforce that the status quo works for people who play by existing rules.

Changing demographics make many white people nervous about their future status. “Are we going to have to learn their language? Are we going to have to move, so that they can live in our neighborhoods? Will our country lose influence and look weak if they are in charge? If our taxes dollars go to funding their schools, what about funding for our schools? ”

Underlying these tensions and conflicts is a timeless truth: Many people prefer the known to the unknown, and so they resist change.

“If you try to get any one of us to change something that we’ve been doing for a long time, and if we really believe in it — you’ll see resentment when the change agent really pushes you,” “It doesn’t mean you dislike or hate the change agent. It means, ‘You’re asking us to do something that we don’t know anything about, and we’re afraid.’ Rather than admit fear, they defend the status quo, and blame others for trying to mess things up.

“The status quo … calms us. It gives us some certainty about the world.”