Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 2. Problems of Social Decision
Chapter 9: Christianity and the Race Problem
3. Effects of race prejudice
I make no claim to being a prophet. Yet in 1944, when Russia was still generally viewed as a faithful ally, I wrote these words:
Let us rejoice heartily that there is race equality anywhere, whether under a Christian or Communist ideology. But let us beware. When the time comes to make the peace, the suppressed longings of the colored and racially underprivileged peoples of the world, if they do not see freedom in prospect elsewhere, will turn to Russia to get it. The color question cannot fail to be a powerful leverage to enhance the authority of Russia after the war. One may doubt whether Russia is altruistic enough to use this authority to increase the welfare of the world; one cannot doubt that the union of capitalism with race discrimination puts a weapon of incalculable power in the hands of Mr. Stalin.10
Since that time Stalin has passed from the scene and his authority as well, but what he set in motion has not passed away. Since that time also, the emergence of the atomic and hydrogen bombs has vastly increased the peril to the total world that racial conflict might fan to hideously destructive power.
But what of the effects of race discrimination in the immediate, domestic setting?
The effects upon its recipients are so manifold in the form of hurts, frustrations, denials of opportunity, and the continuance of a rankling sense of injustice that I shall make no attempt to catalogue them.
In our own country millions of people especially American Negroes are subjected to discrimination and unequal treatment in educational
opportunities, in employment, wages and conditions of work, in access to professional and business opportunities, in housing, in transportation, in the administration of justice and even in the right to vote.11
In recent years some advance steps have been made, as in the opening of Pullman cars and diners to Negroes, elimination of segregation in the armed forces, and the admission of Negroes to some southern state universities. Yet the attempts made to nullify the Supreme Court decision even at the cost of eliminating the public schools and passing acts of open defiance in state legislatures, to say nothing of rioting and violence and the nonviolent but intimidating acts of white citizens’
councils, indicate how long a road there is yet to travel. Not since the
Civil War has the internal harmony of the United States been so seriously disturbed.
Not only does race discrimination hurt those who are its recipients, but those who practice it become also its victims. As Benjamin Mays,
himself an eminent Negro college president, stated eloquently before the World Council of Churches in Evanston,
Usually the question is: What does discrimination or segregation do to the person segregated, to the disadvantaged person? . . . But we seldom realize what discrimination does to the person who practices it. It scars not only the soul of the segregated but the soul of the segregator as well.
When we build fences to keep others out, erect barriers to keep others down, deny to them freedom which we ourselves enjoy and cherish most, we keep ourselves in, hold ourselves down, and the barriers we erect against others become prison bars to our own souls.
A major effect in the domestic scene is what racism does to public respect for the principles of democracy and of Christianity. In both connections there are endless reverberations, which can be touched upon only in barest mention. When one becomes accustomed to perversions of justice with reference to those of another race, these are likely before long not to seem perversions, and the democratic conscience that should be demanding "liberty and justice for all" is dulled into acquiescence.
Those on the receiving end of the injustice can scarcely avoid the
feeling that democracy is being flouted, and the temptation to flout it in return is strong. Both of these reactions together are responsible for not a little of the domestic unrest and incidence of crime in our society.
In the Church also there is a sheaf of bad effects. The most obvious one, by the continuance of segregation, is to negate the principle of the
equality of all men before God, which even the most casual secularist recognizes to be Christian, and thus to bring the Church into disfavor.
More subtle effects, however, are found in the thwarting of the growth of Christian personality by denials of opportunity and fellowship that should be open to all, and in the deepening of the sin of moral dullness through all the forms of rationalization that have been outlined.
Only God can judge fully the range and depth of these evil effects. In an issue so complex and so serious, claims of human omniscience are very inappropriate. There is need to be tolerant and understanding, to "judge not, that you be not judged." Yet there is need also to be clear-sighted
and to be firm. To be neutral or acquiescent in conditions so clearly at variance with the Christian gospel is to deny our faith.
4. Proposals for Christian action12
The Church cannot let these conditions continue without action. The security of the world calls for the mitigation of racial tensions through justice. Yet deeper than the demand for security is the obligation of the Christian gospel to increase love in human relations.
In the first place, the Church must understand and proclaim its gospel.
Vague generalities about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man have often been spoken which do not cut down through our crust of convention to where the race problem is. We need to recover the
insights of Jesus on this question. And one of the most amazing things about Jesus is how he met the racism of his day. Reared in a Jewish tradition that prided itself on being the chosen people of God, living in occupied territory where Roman superiority and Jewish superiority were always in uneasy tension, he lived on a plane that made a Roman
centurion say of him, "Truly this was a son of God!" (Matt. 27:54). Jew, Roman, Samaritan, Syrophoenician, were to him equally the children of God. In the presence of human need, his healing knew no bounds.
If we examine the democracy of Jesus — a democracy which he never talked about but always practiced — we discover in it both the
fountainhead of our democracy and certain radical challenges. We talk much about the dignity of man. This he did not deny; in fact, he
assumed it, but always in the framework of man’s dependence upon God and the obligation to obey God and love one another. His emphasis was not on the claim of personal rights, as so much of ours is, but on the doing of duties. This may well lead to the claiming of rights for others, but such a demand must first be expressed in the acts and attitudes of daily life. These four — divine dependence, mutual obligation
stemming from love, sound judgment of human nature, and the practice of brotherhood in daily experience — are the basis of any true
democracy. Not until the Church both preaches and practices such Christian democracy will it touch the fringe of the race question.
Second, the Church must put its own house in order. This means the welcome presence of colored Christians in the membership, the worship services, church schools, discussion groups, and social gatherings of the Church. It means the presence of colored persons in the conferences and
policy-making bodies of the Church. It means the refusal to permit segregation in the living arrangements connected with church meetings.
It means the sharing of the recreational, educational, and hospital facilities of the Church with all who need them. It means the
interchange of pulpits between colored and white ministers, and much further advance in what has already been here and there undertaken, an interracial ministry. As qualified persons can be found or trained, there must be interracial teaching, medical, and administrative staffs in the institutions of the Church. In such arrangements there must be equal and nonsegregated living and working conditions, equal pay, equal
opportunities of promotion, regardless of color. Differentiation on grounds of contribution and fitness does not justify differentiation on grounds of race. If such a program arouses opposition, as it is likely to, this calls for the tactful but courageous insistence that the house of God is a place of prayer and service for all peoples and the Church of God cannot sanction discrimination at any point.
I am aware that the relatively mild proposals of the preceding sentences, if acted upon, would be revolutionary. Already I hear someone say,
"You couldn’t do that in my church!" Have you tried? The ideal of race equality will not arrive all at once. But it will not arrive at all until we stop conforming to prevailing attitudes and practices and give the Church an opportunity to lead in the shaping of community standards.
Even conflict, if dealt with in love, can prove a creative experience.
In bringing about such changes, there is particular need to avoid incrimination and self-righteousness and to act upon the basis of true facts and principles, not upon emotional impulse. Race prejudice, we have seen, is basically a matter of emotion, and there can be no effective challenge of it without right counter-emotions. Such depth of concern does not justify unloving attitudes toward or name calling of one’s opponents. "Speaking the truth in love" is a supreme need.
It is easy for one to say this who has not personally felt the sting of race discrimination. Yet the need becomes far more eloquent when it comes from the lips of one who bears the brunt of it, yet without hatred. It was put in words that ought to become classic by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a few hours after his arrest as a leader of passive resistance against segregation in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus lines:
If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to
hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight; we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.13
The race problem must, for the most part, be met by person to person contacts which create understanding. This calls for more intervisitation and social fellowship, both locally and nationally, and as occasion permits, in the world community. It is hard to remain hostile toward a people whose individuals one has come to know and love. Such fellowship has been one of the major contributions of the ecumenical movement.
In cases of racial discrimination by public agencies within the
community, the Church must be willing to stand up and be counted on the side of equality. It must act in co-operation with other community forces if possible, but in any case it must act. Not alone prophetic indictment, but patient mediation, is the function of Christian leaders.
From time to time, political aspects of the question call for action.
Among these are the steps to be taken toward desegregation in the schools and universities, the poll-tax issue, the passage of guarantees of fair employment practices, the removal of restrictions in housing and the use of public facilities. Segregation cannot be justified on the ground of
"separate but equal" facilities, for what is separate is discriminatory and hence not equal. Though the right next steps to take are not always clear, the principle is, and Christian citizens who take their gospel seriously should lead the way.
Since the race question is a world issue, and not simply a local or national one, education and action as to its world implications are necessary. Support by citizens of such action as will lift the living standards and the human dignity of the millions of underprivileged, nonwhite peoples of the earth is imperative. Congressmen must be made to feel that their constituencies insist upon it.
Finally, the total problem must be lifted into the realm of prayer and worship. We must pray for those of other races; we must be responsive to the awareness that they are praying for us. When one enters truly into the mood of intercession, bitterness departs and fellowship takes its place. It has been the contention of this chapter that the removal of race
prejudice is a duty laid upon us by God, and if it is God’s business we are engaged in, we must give God an opening in our souls.
Since it is God’s business, let us not despair. The solution will not come tomorrow, but it will come. In the midst of the walls of opposition erected by men stands Christ, who breaks down the "dividing wall of hostility" that separates us. It is the business of Christians to give him a chance to act.
NOTES:
1. Quoted by John C. Bennett in Christian Ethics and Social Policy (New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1946), p. 10 n.
2. The Christian Century, June 23, 1954, p. 759.
3. Waldo Beach in "Storm Warnings from the South," Christianity and Crisis, March 19, 1956, p. 30.
4. As in Amos 9:7 and the "servant songs" of Isaiah. Cf. Isa. 49:6; 51:4;
52:10; 56:3, 6-8.
5. For very telling evidence of this fact, read A Man Called White (New York: Viking Press, 1948), the life story of a very light-skinned Negro, Walter White, who was long the general secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and one of the outstanding leaders of his race.
6. From an address by Dr. Benjamin Mays at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, III., August 21, 1954.
7. H. A. Wallace, et al., Christian Bases of World Order (New York and Nashville:
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1943), pp. 104, 107.
8. Ch. 3, sec. 7.
9. Used by permission of the author’s estate.
10. Ibid., pp. 196-97.
11. From the report of the Delaware Conference of the Federal Council of Churches, March, 1942. This statement, though old, puts the issues as succinctly as they can be put.
12. The remainder of this chapter is reprinted with some changes and additions from my article on "The Racial Issue and the Christian Church" in The Church and the New World Mind. Used by permission of the Bethany Press.
13. The New York Times, February 24, 1956.
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Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 2. Problems of Social Decision
Georgia Harkness was educated at Cornell University, Boston University School of Theology, studied at Harvard & Yale theological seminaries and at Union
Theological Seminary of New York. She has taught at Elmira College, Mount Holyoke, and for twelve years was professor of applied theology at Garrett Biblical Institute. In 1950 she became professor of applied theology at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California. Published in 1957 by Abingdon Press. This book was prepared for Religion Online by Harry W. and Grace C. Adams.