Note: Excerpt from Invitation to Christian Ethics (Kregel Academic 2020). Reprinted with permission. Citations have been omitted.
From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth.
Acts 17:26
You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator. In Christ there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.
Colossians 3:10-11
On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected the forty-fourth president of the United States, marking a defining moment in American history. Many had hopes that the election of the first black president would bring about a time of healing in a nation torn by racial division throughout its history, while “sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics,” as the New York Times put it. In his acceptance speech, referring to a range of issues including race relations, Obama struck a hopeful tone, announcing that “change has come to America.” He asserted, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
Indeed, a majority of voters (52 percent) expected that the election of President Obama would lead to better race relations. Among black voters, the optimism was much higher, with 75 percent believing there would be better race relations. In the months following the election, the percentage of adults who said that race relations are “generally good” was at an all-time high. Sadly, however, by the end of Obama’s presidency, the hope of many black voters for progress in race relations was gone: In 2016, 61 percent of African Americans polled said that race relations “are generally bad” (compared with 45 percent of white people polled). What caused the optimism and hope held by a majority of black people in 2009 to vanish in fear and anger?
Black Lives Matter
Though there are multiple factors, the shift from hope to fear and anger is symbolized by the movement that came to be known as Black Lives Matter. The movement began in 2013 after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the 2012 killing an unarmed seventeen-year-old black man named Trayvon Martin. In response, Alicia Garza posted on social media what so many other black people were thinking: “Black people are not safe in America.” Garza’s friend Patrisse Cullors reposted with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, and a movement was born, protesting police brutality against black people, as well as what many in the movement believe to be indifference to the killing of black people.
The story of Trayvon Martin is not an isolated incident. The names and events are etched in the psyche of so many people of color: Jordan Davis (2012), Renisha McBride (2013), Eric Garner (2014), John Crawford (2014), Michael Brown (2014), Tamir Rice (2014), Walter Scott (2015), Freddie Gray (2015), Alton Sterling (2016), Jordan Edwards (2017) Stephon Clark (2018), Ahmaud Arbery (2020), Breonna Taylor (2020) and George Floyd (2020). All of these were black people killed, in most (but not all) cases, by police officers or while in police custody. They include a range of circumstances, and in some cases the death resulted in a conviction and prison sentence for persons responsible, while in others charges were dropped or the person charged for the death was acquitted. The reasons that these and other cases received national attention and galvanized a movement are numerous, but at the core was the sense that the deaths were either criminal or unnecessary, and it seemed to many black people that many simply didn’t care about those who were killed because they were black.
These cases highlight the racial tensions in America. Many in the Black Lives Matter movement cite such cases to underscore their view that black people in America are not safe and many live in fear. They argue that the civil rights movement made significant gains, but there is a long way to go. Critics have said that Black Lives Matter is different from the civil rights movement in the 1960s, in part because it is difficult to tell the activists from opportunists that burn and loot and visit demonstrations with hate speech and profanity. One civil rights activist complained that “even if the BLM activists aren’t the ones participating in the boorish language and dress, neither are they condemning it.” Other critics have responded to the movement with slogans of their own, like “All Lives Matter,” or “Blue Lives Matter” (a reference to police who are killed in the line of duty, or simply who put themselves in harm’s way).
There may be reasonable debate about whether a particular killing was justified, and there may be problems with aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement, but the underlying point should not be missed. Many black people who have done no wrong live in fear in twenty-first-century America, or simply have grown used to being looked on with suspicion. That should not be the case. The feelings of many black people are summed up in remarks by President Obama after the not-guilty verdict was issued by the jury in the Trayvon Martin case:
When you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away. . . . There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. . . . There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. . . . There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. . . . Those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.
African Americans, and other people of color, can tell of countless similar experiences. The reality of daily life for many African Americans has led some to refer to a phenomenon of being pulled over for “driving while black.” To respond to the Black Lives Matter movement by asserting that “all lives matter” is to remain tone-deaf to what our black neighbors and friends, our Christian brothers and sisters, are pleading for white people to understand. Perhaps, instead of responding in such a way, or seeking to defend and explain a particular case, we may start simply by grieving that our friends and neighbors, our brothers and sisters, have had to experience and endure such things.
Make America Great Again?
For many, it is as if we live in “two nations.” Consider the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Donald Trump ran with the slogan “Make America Great Again.” It resonated especially with working-class white voters and many white evangelicals, especially those concerned with issues like the advance of the sexual revolution, threats to free speech and freedom of religious expression, reigning in a judiciary that legislates from the bench, illegal immigration and sluggish economic progress. For many, a vote for Trump was based on a hope that he would slow or reverse the trend on some of the issues that they were most concerned about, and it was a vote against Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, whom they feared would accelerate those trends.
Whatever their reasons, many white evangelicals seemed to be unaware of, or insensitive to, the concerns of black voters (as well as Hispanic voters anxious about Trump’s rhetoric on immigration). For many, the intention and appeal of the campaign slogan seemed to be to highlight a decline in various things that have made America great, like freedom and opportunity and democracy, which have (ironically) drawn countless immigrants to the United States. However, America has not been great for everyone, and the cry to “make America great again” did not resonate with many whose history has been marked by enslavement, exclusion and fear. To understand this in some measure, we need to remind ourselves of the history and legacy of racism in America, which remains the backdrop to the experience of many black people today.
Ken Magnuson, executive director, Evangelical Theological Society
