When Color-Blindness Blinds Justice

In 1957, Elizabeth Eckford was fifteen when she attempted to attend an all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas.

 

She was blocked from entering by the National Guard.  

As she later said, “I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in. He didn't move. When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet, and then the other guards moved in and they raised their bayonets. . . . I turned around and the crowd came toward me. They moved closer and closer. Somebody started yelling, ‘Drag her over this tree! Let's take care of that n----r!’”

After nearly three weeks, she and eight other Black students were finally allowed to enter via a side door under federal protection. A little over sixty years later, she recalled that “We were knocked down stairs, kicked, scalded in gym showers, body-slammed into wall lockers. We were generally knocked-about every day. It never ceased.”

Now, nearly 70 years later, we get this haunting photo of a young Black woman sitting alone in a Washington, D.C. Metro train. All around her in the crowded car are masked members of a white supremacist organization called Patriot Front. Hundreds of them would be marching in Washington on America’s 250th birthday celebration.

These jack-booted, masked thugs are the face—and excuse the irony—of the ugly side of the American experience. Racism is baked into our country’s founding: our original economic engine was built on “free labor”, a race-based chattel slavery system.

It is fascinating that a majority of our Supreme Court Justices believe we now live in a post-racial, colorblind society, and that the government has no need of protecting rights based on race. With the stroke of a pen, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had eliminated racism in everyone’s heart. Just like that.

Apparently, they’ve never read any comments on X or Facebook.

So now, Louisiana is attempting to gerrymander its six congressional districts to eliminate at least one—and hopefully two—of its Black majority districts to favor white voters, even though Louisiana’s population is one-third Black. And, they say, it’s not about race, it’s about party.

The apostle Paul wrote that “In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ.”  GALATIANS 3:28 THE MESSAGE

But if we’re honest, we must admit that though this may be true “in the Spirit”, it was not true in praxis. And Paul was aware of that, since he had to confront Peter about his discriminatory behavior. It seems as though he was reflecting the “not yet” aspect of the Kingdom and not the “now” harsh reality.

Likewise with the problem of food distribution for the widows in the church. The Greek-speaking Jewish Christians were being discriminated against by the Aramaic-speaking Hebrew Christians. To remedy the disparity, the leaders approved seven Greek-speaking leaders to oversee the distribution, all with Greek names.

Do you see the connection?

Imagine if the widows being discriminated against were a Black minority. The church then decides that all the leaders of the distribution program should be Black. It was a forced way of ensuring that some sense of fairness would follow. Today that would be struck down as “reverse racism” and “not being color-blind.”

I’ll leave it at that. Except for this…

In the case of the first-century Church, it seems less of a coincidence that Luke the historian/physician follows up that account with these words:

They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly….  ACTS 6:6, 7b

There is fruit in the Church—and in a country—when justice rolls down like water.

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

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