America’s unjust efforts to preserve white privilege (COMMENTARY)

TUBA CITY, Ariz. (RNS) As I pass through the Navajo Nation on my 4,000-mile drive across America, I catch a disturbing glimpse of a white-power insurgency happening in all regions.

White settlement of the Southwest meant dislodging the native population at gunpoint. U.S. Army troops slaughtered the Navajo at will. Whites broke one treaty after another, then forced the Navajo in 1864 onto a “Long Walk” of 300 miles away from their tribal lands. When a pregnant Navajo woman came to childbirth, an impatient Army soldier simply shot her.

The Navajo were allowed to return four years later to a much-diminished territory set aside for them. Today the Navajo Nation is the largest tribal reservation in the U.S. It has significant autonomy, including its own judicial, law enforcement and social service systems. But the Navajo remain under Washington’s thumb. Poverty is everywhere.

I read the history and feel shame and compassion. The “cowboys and Indians” games we played as children in Indiana, informed by TV shows like “The Lone Ranger,” now seem utterly ignorant. The real story was gruesome and unjust.

I had a similar reaction when I moved to the South and discovered how whites there had savaged Native Americans, enslaved millions of Africans, then terrorized former slaves and their descendants for over a century.

Hearing those stories and seeing daily evidence that, as Faulkner said of the South, “the past isn’t even past,” forced me to see my life up North differently. I grew up benefiting from segregation in Indiana. I never questioned why my city had an all-black high school, or why the clubs and honors at my integrated high school were reserved for whites.

Not long ago I drove through Topeka, Kan., which gave us Brown v. Board of Education, and heard on public radio a supposedly learned conversation about the possible overturning of Brown v. Board and a resumption of legal segregation.

No wonder the politics of Kansas are so ugly and the Christian fundamentalism so virulent. So are the politics and religion of the South, of Arizona and across the country. In some places, whites seem to be on a mission to preserve the benefits of white privilege, even if that means gun violence, police brutality, unfair sentencing, and the languishing of urban schools.

They treat immigrants of color as if they were indolent invaders intent on destroying the “American way of life,” rather than the latest to believe the promise of liberty and opportunity.

Like a white government breaking promises to Native Americans, politicians serving angry whites chip away at the job gains of blacks and Hispanics, shred a social safety net that benefits people of color, cripple immigration and systematically deny voting rights to nonwhites.

They call it “shrinking” a bloated government and combating “welfare fraud” and “voter fraud,” but the targets are nonwhites, not cheaters.

There is no comparable zeal for taking white-led corporations off the federal dole or curbing their cheating. Cutting taxes on the rich and raising them on the poor are all about race. So is Christian right-wing alarm over Islam in the U.S.

Right-wing politicians and clerics dismiss concern about this white-power insurgency as soft-minded “liberal guilt” and anti-American. In fact, it’s basic justice; it’s the soul of America at stake here.

A nation that allows war on people of color risks descending into the same evil that shot a pregnant Navajo woman when a white government wanted her tribe’s land.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the president of Morning Walk Media and publisher of Fresh Day online magazine. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.)

Wow, these are great stories. I am so glad we met here.

Is there a relation between skinwalkers and the dead?

What deters them? Faith in Jesus Christ or is it native remedies only?

What do they look like? How are they created? Do they have weaknesses? Needs? What are there motivations?

Why were his parents mad at him for digging into it, the wagon (horse and wagon?) What do you mean by “digging into it?”

What is a Chindi?

I first heard about the skinwalkers listening to a late night radio show. It really scared me. In fact, I will say a rosary to keep the Holy Spirit around me.

Thank-you so much Ray. Have a Blessed Lenten season.

I think this guy not only idolizes Jackson and Sharpton, but obviously ‘feels’ guilty for being born white. The following is a sampling of his writing from different articles:

“Sixteen years before, in a town once governed by the Klan, a leader told me not to preach about race. Too many people remembered signs saying, “Negroes must be out of town by sundown.””

” We must stand on the battlefield itself — the streets of Ferguson, Mo., the hiring line when a job opens, a health clinic when battered and raped women show up for help, a voting station when the brown and black are turned away by clever stratagems — and there on the battlefield to see the wounded.”

Here’s his take on the last election:

“Big money bought an election. Fear prevailed over confidence and loathing over reason. The majority chose not to vote, allowing a passionate minority — older, whiter — to change the balance of power. Attack ads drowned out issues. A broken political system tolerated cheating and bullying.... For that voice to grow, we need to let politics into our pews. Not church politics, which are safe, but national and local politics, which tend to be unsafe. We need, for example, to be asking why racism is suddenly out in the open.... We need to be forming alliances with minorities, the bruised and marginalized, and with people who want to make a difference, especially young adults. We need to stand for generosity and civility and against the politics of meanness that would suppress votes, deny benefits, punish women and minorities and wink at overzealous police power.”

He sums up his white guilt in this recent post:

“In our pursuit of religious victory, we Christians have indeed been a scourge on civilization at times. We have slaughtered many. We have served as apologists for slavery, apartheid, racial segregation, white terrorism of blacks in the South, suppression of labor, repression of minorities sand the poor, and ethnic conflict throughout the nation.... Rather than pounce on the President for knowing his history, we should be grateful for a call to honesty.”

No wonder the Episcopal church is dying.

If the posted article was “just wow!”, then this one by him takes it off the chart:

From May 2, 2012

“[Religion News Service] I have been a Christian my entire life, never more fervently than in recent years, and yet I cringe when I hear politicians and public figures announce their Christian faith.

Hold on to your wallet. Even more, hold on to your freedoms and rights as a citizen. Because the so-called “Christian moral agenda” threatens to marginalize, deprive and denigrate many Americans for failing to be “right,” as the Christian right defines “right.”

Homosexuals — off the bus. Women wanting to control their bodies — off the bus. Liberals offering different solutions to a nation’s pressing problems — off the bus. Dark-skinned immigrants, preachers speaking truth to power, anyone questioning big banking, big oil or big business, compassionate feeders of the hungry, hospitals serving all who are sick, educators aiming to raise up all children, environmentalists, scientists — all of you, off the bus.

No respect for you, no dignity, no freedom to act independently. Showy followers of a Savior who said, “Don’t be afraid,” make fear their weapon. They reverse everything Jesus stood for — radical inclusion, justice for all, food for the hungry, respect for outcasts, challenge to the wealthy.

Instead of the actual Gospel, they substitute a fear-driven secular agenda grounded in right opinion, harsh judgment and intolerance, and they call it “Christian.”

Never mind that Jesus said nothing about any item on their political agenda. Like recent presidential candidates, they just make it up. Maybe they find a few obscure biblical citations to justify their views. Mostly they just baptize their prejudices.

No wonder people have come to see “Christians” as “harsh, judgmental, intolerant, argumentative, and angry,” as a recent nationwide survey found. Who would want to affiliate with so much negative energy? As Jesus himself showed, God is about loving humanity, not denouncing people for failing some religious litmus test.

Think about it: if Jesus had applied to his followers the same tests right-wing Christians favor, he would have been accompanied by a small cadre of wealthy white men, and not Thomas, not the fishermen, not Bartimaeus, not Mary Magdalene, not any of the women.

Indeed, Jesus himself wouldn’t have stayed around — not with his penchant for self-examination, questioning, accepting, loving, serving, and staying on the move. No cathedrals and repurposed basketball arenas for him. No prosperity Gospels. No shouting down the divergent.

What right-wing Christians have done to the Gospel in America is both shameful and dangerous. It feels like the late Middle Ages all over again, when Christian hierarchs nearly destroyed Europe with their wars and support of repressive governments.

I think it is time for serious Christians to separate themselves from this right-wing agenda. Those who send missionaries to impoverished lands, those who send emergency-response teams to disaster zones, those who care about children and families, decency and respect, those who seek the Word that Jesus actually lived — they need to turn away from freedom deniers and repression seekers.

I had the privilege this year of evaluating magazines for an Evangelical Press Association contest. I found it profoundly moving. The story of the Salvation Army’s role in 9/11 won my top prize. While politicians and prelates were preening and shouting, the Salvation Army was feeding 40,000 a day, sitting with families, ministering to emergency responders, and all without a shred of bombast, blaming or delicious rage.
Their quiet servanthood spoke of America at its best.

– Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus”and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @tomehrich.

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2012/05/02/countering-the-christians/

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