Let's Talk About Sexual Entitlement

It started when I was only five years old. A neighbor boy, about a year older than me, with a couple of his friends, persuaded me to take off my clothes for them. My older sister was shocked and put a stop to it-- but it was the first lesson of many. The second lesson was on my first-grade playground, where I was caught by two third-grade boys and dragged to the notorious schoolyard kisser, where despite my struggles I endured being kissed by the boy while his friends laughed and jeered.

By second grade my female classmates and I had learned to consistently wear shorts under our skirts. Boys liked to run by and flip the skirts up, or crawl under the monkey bars and look up as we swung overhead. In fifth grade, the year I got plump before thinning down again in junior high, I became known as "fatso" and "bubble-butt."  My name seemed to have been forgotten, replaced by jokes about what I looked like.

It was the early 1970s, and all these things joined together to teach me that what mattered most about me, as a girl, was my body: how it looked, whether that was pleasing to boys or not, and how it could be turned into a source of fun and mockery. And when I started to develop breasts? Well, all I will say is that this didn't improve things.

In junior high, one day when I had to leave class before the bell rang (I don't remember why) a boy chased me through the empty halls, down the stairs of the school and across the parking lot, trying to touch my chest. But even worse, somehow, was the feeling of worthlessness because other boys wanted nothing to do with me, being too smart and not pretty or cute enough. A girl's worth was measured by whether a boy wanted to be her boyfriend, and I didn't measure up. I'm sure I'm not the only girl who invented a boyfriend who lived in another town, just to get a little respect as a girl whom a boy had claimed.

This continued throughout high school. Girls who were small and sweet, who acted childlike and not too smart so that boys could feel important and protective-- these were the valued ones. Not being one of these, I began to learn to find my value in other ways: through the speech team, through grades, and through my new-found faith.

One of the main draws of the spiritually abusive religious group I joined in college was that, whatever their faults, they required the guys and girls to treat one another as sisters and brothers. Girls were given opportunities to have a real voice in the church, too, though we couldn't aspire to anything greater than to someday be a pastor's wife. As sisters, though, we really were viewed as real people, not just as bodies that existed primarily for the enjoyment of men.

There was, in fact, actually a good reason at that time to be fearful of "the world" around me-- the university campus had developed a reputation for the ease and frequency with which rapes occurred. The campus was even referred to as "the candy store" because women were so vulnerable as they crossed the grounds and the surrounding streets. Those of us girls who lived outside the church's boarding house were requested to call the house for a brotherly escort any time we needed to walk after dusk.

The memory will always stay with me of the evening I hurried home just after sunset, having misjudged the hour, terrified of being noticed by anyone. At the sound of pounding footsteps approaching down the sidewalk behind me, I froze in panic. "It's all right! You're all right!" said the jogger as he passed me, leaving me weak with relief. Not all men were rapists. But we had no way of knowing who was and who wasn't.

I know I'm one of the lucky ones. Except for the occasional grab, I've never been physically assaulted by a man. But that doesn't mean I've escaped the pervasive sexual entitlement in our culture.

When I finished college I went to work at first for a woman boss, and that was lovely. But her company failed, and I found a job for a small technology-development company where all the bosses were male. I had to get used to comments being made about my legs, my figure, and my singleness. I was propositioned by the CEO, who was over 70 years old and apparently liked a little side action when his wife wasn't around.

But I was fortunate. None of them did anything more than talk, and the CEO didn't try to force the issue when I told him I was only interested in guys my own age. In fact, they were afraid I might report this to someone or get a lawyer. It was the mid 1980s, and "sexual harassment" was new terminology that had only recently been coined.

Not until I arrived at work with an engagement ring on my finger did the harassment stop. But this was not because they had decided to respect me. They only respected the fact that a man had now staked a claim to me.

I left that job for the paralegal position I have held ever since. The lawyers I have worked for have been men, with one brief exception-- but I have always been respected there as a person, not just as a female body that belongs to another male. As I have grown older, instances of disrespect and harassment elsewhere have also pretty much ceased. But the attitude that female bodies exist for the use and enjoyment of men has not died. Far from it.

When a young man in Isla Vista recently went on a killing spree because women refused to have sex with him, it touched a nerve on the Internet, resulting in the Twitter page #YesAllWomen.  Women everywhere added their voices to say that though not all men participate in this attitude, pretty much all women, young and old, have experienced it in one way or another in their lives.  It isn't just a problem from our society's more sexist past -- it's still going on now.

Today I was dismayed to learn that only a week after Isla Vista and #YesAllWomen, a new story of male entitlement is circulating, and in this case (presumably because he hasn't killed anyone or made an over-the-top video expressing terrible misogyny) this 17-year-old is being praised for dumping his girlfriend when she cheated on him-- apparently because he was clever in the way he did it, exclusively using Internet memes.  But if you really take an objective look at what happened, it isn't funny.  It's the same, "I own you, so I can punish you when you misbehave" attitude that women should not still be encountering.  A guy is certainly justified in breaking up with a girl who cheats on him, if they had promised each other an exclusive relationship.  But threatening to "do bad things to you" and to "murder your family," aren't funny even if meant in jest.  And the follow-up picture, which is supposed to be a joke, is nothing more than a gang-rape suggestion/threat.

I'm not laughing.

As blogger Sarah Over the Moon says:

Many people in our society respect women and, if asked, would tell you that women do not deserved to be threatened with violence. They don’t deserve to be shot down in the streets of Isla Vista, and they don’t deserve to receive a text from a young man threatening to murder their whole family. “Of course they don’t! Women are our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters! We would never want such a thing to happen to them,” a benevolent man might say. 

But that same exact benevolent man is likely to change his mind quickly as soon as a woman steps outside of a “proper” role for women to fill. As soon as a woman stops acting like an innocent, romanticized mother, sister, or daughter, and starts acting like a “bitch,”or a “slut,” or a cheater, the hostile sexism begins to fly. There is research backing this up. . .

This is why CNN and Buzzfeed can mourn a tragic shooting one week, and interview a “Twitter hero” who threatens women with violence the next. .  

I’d like to think society is improving in its views toward women. I’d like to think the success of #YesAllWomen shows that men are starting to learn and listen. But then Kane Zipperman goes viral, and I put my fists back up.  

We’ve still got a lot more fighting to do.

A May 29th ThinkProgress article examines several studies that show how the media, and male readers, still frequently categorize women as adjuncts for the benefit of men, rather than as full people in with their own goals, rights and needs.  It concludes:

There are serious consequences to this pervasive cultural attitude about women as objects of men’s desires. When men believe that they are entitled to sex, they often respond violently when women deny it from them. . . 

These attitudes have been so deeply embedded in our culture, young women believe that forfeiting their consent is a normal aspect of gender relations, according to a recent study. “Objectification, sexual harassment, and abuse appear to be part of the fabric of young women’s lives,” the study’s authors noted.

Unfortunately, Christian churches, including the one I fled to for refuge from male sexual entitlement, often also participate in the objectification of women and the commodification of their bodies through Purity Culture and its insistence on women dressing modestly for fear of "causing their brothers to stumble".  But if we can leave all that aside, the idea that unless a man and a woman have both consented to become romantically involved, they should treat one another as brothers and sisters, is a pretty good thing. There's a reason why Jesus and the apostles used "brothers and sisters" as their main terminology for referring to Christians in community.  As Michael Kruse of the Kruse Kronicle puts it:

Remember that in the obsessively status oriented Greco-Roman world, the sibling relationship was the most egalitarian of all relationships. Harmony and solidarity was expected among brothers. If folks followed Jesus instruction of sibling relatedness, then status questions would evaporate. In verses 8-12, Jesus rejects all status seeking preoccupations and reiterates his upside down paradigm where the way you get to the top is by going to the very bottom. This is just one way in which the fictive family metaphor regulates the life of the community.

Kids growing up in the same family do usually imbibe the idea that their siblings are fellow human beings and not objects or adjuncts.  Sharing, respect, and asking first before you take, are all part of being good sisters and brothers.  So can't we do better at teaching these basic principles not just in our churches, but in society as a whole?

We're all still in many ways imbibing the message that women's bodies exist for the use and possession of men.  We're still imparting it to our young people, in the church and out of it.  We're still unquestioning of it on TV and movies and magazine covers.  We're still proof-texting it from our Bibles-- but this is not what the Bible as a whole teaches.

We've got to break this cycle, for everyone's sake.  I would love someday to have my grandchildren struggle to grasp the concept of sexual entitlement in a unit of their high school history classes.  I would love to have respect and consent simply be an integral part of their world.

It's not impossible.  Let's see if, by the grace of God, we can make it true.

The Creation-Evolution Debate and the Genres of Genesis 1 & 2-3

A lot of people have been talking this week about the Bill Nye/Ken Ham Debate on Creationism vs. Evolution.  So I decided to weigh in with where I stand on this issue.

When I converted to Christianity at the age of 15, I was taught that one of the things I had to embrace if I was going to follow Jesus was young-earth creationism.  The Bible "clearly" taught that God had made the earth in six 24-hour days and that the earth is 6000 to 10,000 years old. So I read several books that supported creationism, and as far as I could tell with my not-particularly-scientific mind, it made sense.  I left what my parents and my teachers had taught me and became a creationist.

Something happened when I was nearly through my college years, though, that shook me up a little.

A public debate was scheduled on my college campus between a local biology professor and Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research, who had flown in specially for the event.  Since most of my fellow church members were attending, I went along.  As I listened, I couldn't help but think Dr. Gish was winning the debate.  After all, he was a gifted debater and public speaker, while the biology professor was-- well, a scientist who taught classes now and then.  And the audience was clearly on Gish's side.  Whenever Gish spoke, he was applauded.  When the local professor spoke, he was booed and hissed at.  And most of my friends were gleefully joining in.  This clearly bothered and rattled the poor guy-- and that was where my cognitive dissonance started.  My sympathies have always lain with the underdog, and I simply couldn't understand why good Christian people who were supposed to be following Jesus' teachings on loving your neighbor, would treat this poor man with this abysmal rudeness.

I left the debate wondering how, if we were in fact so very right, we could be so totally wrong about it.  I knew that what really mattered, what Christ really cared about, wasn't whether we believed single-celled organisms could slowly become human beings.  It was how we treated actual human beings.

I walked away from that debate feeling ashamed. I couldn't bring myself to join in with my fellow church members as they rejoiced in how thoroughly the biology professor had been humiliated.  As far as I could see, the main thing he was going to take away from that debate was not the reasonableness of creationism.  It was how little Christians actually practiced what they preached.

Years later, when I began the process I've mentioned before of laying all my beliefs on the table and finding what held true for me, creationism was one of the things that I took another look at.  I bought a book called A New Look at an Old Earth by Don Stoner.  He discussed how early Christians had considered God to have "written" another "book" in addition to the Bible-- the "book of nature," and how the created universe itself was meant to testify alongside the Bible, just as Psalm 19:1 and Romans 10:18 said.

He also talked about how very un-Christian it was to mock and ridicule evolutionists in public debates.

I thought he made a lot of sense.

So for a while I became an old-earth creationist and stopped believing that the "days" in Genesis 1 referred to actual 24-hour periods.  But I had learned in the process of re-examining my faith to hold my view lightly.  What I believed about human origins wasn't essential to my faith in Christ, and I knew I wasn't a science expert.

I kept on reading, and I kept on examining.  And some of the books and articles I read actually made even more sense than Don Stoner's book.  One of them was The Language of God by Francis Collins. Dr. Collins is the founder of the Biologos Foundation, and his view is called "evolutionary creation" or "theistic evolution."  Collins believes in the same foundational Christian doctrines that I do: in the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Christ as the Son of God, in the authority of Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit.  And the genetic evidence for theistic evolution presented in his book is hard to deny.

So the one obvious thing I have come to see is that it's quite possible for sincere Christians to believe any one of these positions.  So who is right?

I think the most compelling scientific view definitely lies with theistic evolution.  But I am an English graduate from the University of Oregon, and the best way for me to approach the topic is to look at it in terms of one thing I do really feel I have learned well-- how to read and understand a text.

So here's the thing.  Both young-earth and old-earth creationism approach the first two chapters of Genesis as if they are historical/scientific prose about the origins of the universe and of humanity. Young-earth creationism says that each detail should be read according to its most obvious, plain-sense reading, including the "days" as literal 24-hour periods.  Old-earth creationism says that the "days" actually represent periods of time lasting thousands and thousands of years. It says that the passage that says that God made the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day should be understood as God revealing the functions of the sun, moon and stars as they would exist for humankind.  It says the current Cenozoic period is the extended "seventh day" of the creation.  But it still approaches the text as a scientific, historical narrative.

And that is exactly what I can't, as an English graduate, view as the actual genre of these first chapters of Genesis.

I find, in fact, that I agree with Old Testament Theologian Bruce K. Waltke in his article The Literary Genre of Genesis Chapter 1, when in response to the identification of Genesis 1 as a "straightforward historical narrative"  he says, "The text, however, is begging us not to read it that way."

When I look at other portions of Genesis, this is the type of thing I read:

After Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram's wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. (Genesis 16:3)

That's it.  Straightforward prose, recounting events more or less in chronological order.

When I read Chapter 1 of Genesis, however, here's what I see:

Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with seed in them, on the earth; and it was so.  And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with seed in them, after their kind, and God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

The italicized parts mark phrases that repeat themselves over and over throughout the text. The two phrases picked out in green mark text that repeats itself within the same section.  The entire chapter works this way.  Each section has a "Then God said," a statement what He is making, then a phrase "and it was so" noting what God has made, followed by a repetitive detail of what was made. Then, each time, God sees that what He has made is good, and we get a repetition of "there was evening and there was morning," denoting a day.

This is not quite poetry, but it is, as Dr. Waltke says, highly stylized, didactic prose, intended not to give a straightforward recounting of events so much as to show the power of God and the order and beauty of His work:

[W]e argue that [this text] cannot give a satisfying scientific account of origins, for it is not scientific literature. . . The Bible is concerned with Ultimate origins ("Where did it all come from?") not scientific questions of proximate origins ("How did A arise out of B, if it did?").  [Also] its language is non-scientific. The account reports the origins of the cosmos phenomenologically, not mathematically or theoretically. . . We come back to [this] genre identification: it is a literary-artistic representation of the creation. To this we add the purpose, namely, to ground the covenant people's worship and life in the Creator, who transformed chaos into cosmos, and their ethics in His created order. [Emphasis added.]  

I also note that as far as the specific things being made, there are three pairings, occurring in two groups.  On the first and fourth days God creates light and the orbs that convey the light. On the second and fifth days God sets apart the "expanses" of the sea and the air, and then makes creatures (birds and fish) that will live in them.  On the third and sixth days God makes the dry land and its vegetation, and then the animals (and finally humans) that will live there.  The whole pattern up to the seventh day goes as follows:

Creation of an element (light)
Creation of an element (air, separated from water)
Creation of an element (land) 

Creation of things for the light (sun, moon, stars)
Creation of things for the air and water
Creation of things for the land

I find this reminds me of the kind of stylized, didactic order shown in parts of the Proverbs, such as in Chapter 2, where the pattern is:

My son, receive my wisdom
Here are the results of my wisdom 

For the Lord gives wisdom
Here are the results of the Lord's wisdom 

They will keep you from the ways of evil
Here are the results of the ways of evil 

So you will walk in the way of the good
Here are the results of doing good
And here are the result of doing evil.

In short, I think the first chapter of Genesis is a kind of didactic prose, similar to but not identical to the opening chapters of Proverbs.  I think it was written for the purpose of revealing the nature of God as Creator, not for the purpose of detailing scientific facts about the processes of our origins.  Dr. Waltke says that "Genre identification depends on a text's contents and function."  By the context and function of Genesis 1, it simply is not in the genre of historical/scientific prose.

Similarly, when I read the second and third chapters of Genesis, here is what I see:

A garden at the source of four great rivers
Two highly symbolic trees: the "tree of life" and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"
A serpent that talks
God walking in the garden
A prophetic speech of God (the curse) spoken in the prose style of the Books of the Prophets

I don't actually know of any Christian group that takes all of this literally-- particularly not the talking snake. Based on other biblical texts such as Revelation 20:2, Christians identify the serpent with Satan-- that Satan appeared in the form of a serpent, not that Satan actually is a literal serpent. Similarly, when the text says God "walked" in the garden, most Christians don't take this to mean that God literally has legs like a man.  Christians believe, on the basis of texts like John 4:24, that God is a Spirit, not a big manlike being like the Greek god Zeus.  The walking of God in the cool of the day may mean that God appeared in the form of a man, or it simply may be a metaphor for the Presence and Voice of God moving through the garden.

Since no one knows what kind of fruit a "life" fruit is, or a "knowledge of good and evil" fruit is (it's only tradition that calls it an apple), these trees are meant to be symbols.  Were they also literal trees, somehow bearing these abstract concepts as actual fruit?  I'm not at all sure that we're meant to understand the text that way.

In fact, Genesis 2 and 3 are no more straightforward historical prose than Genesis 1 is.  This second part of the creation text is not stylized didactic prose, but bears more in common with the symbolism of the Book of Revelation, or with the metaphorical language of some of Jesus' teachings ("the tree is known by its fruit" in Matt. 12:33 is not a reference to actual trees) than it does with the straight prose of the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob narratives.

Does this mean there was no actual, real Adam and Eve?  I don't know.  Since both Paul and Jesus speak of Adam and Eve, they may actually have been real people.  They may have been the first humanoid creatures that God chose to bear His image.  Or this may be a true story of the universal human condition, told metaphorically/symbolically (that from the beginning, when free to choose to believe God or believe the serpent, humanity, as one, has ended up choosing the serpent).  In this case Paul and Jesus, understanding that their audiences also understood it symbolically, may have felt free to speak of Adam and Eve according to the truths their story conveyed without needing to mention a shared understanding of the story as non-literal-- in the same way we might speak of Dorothy and the lure of "over the rainbow" today.

You may have a strong conviction one way or the other.  But this is not a primary, foundational doctrine of the faith, so I'm simply going to allow it to remain a mystery in my mind.  Either way, there is certainly a heavy metaphorical/symbolic emphasis in the Adam-and-Eve story. And the intent of the story is manifestly not to give a scientific account of how humanity came to exist on the earth.

I don't think the original audiences, either of the oral or written traditions, thought according to our post-Enlightenment emphasis on fact and procedure.  I think God accommodated His revelation to their mindset, not to ours.  In fact, to insist on reading these stories as scientific explanations of origins is, in a way, enslaving our minds to Enlightenment ways of thought.  Rather than examining the biblical texts according to what they themselves seem to be saying they are, we impose upon them what we believe they ought to be-- and what we think they ought to be is directly determined by the Enlightenment's emphasis on fact and historicity.

According to Dr. Waltke in the article above, "Natural theology and exegetical theology are both hindered by a continued adherence to the epistemic principle that valid scientific theories must be consistent with a woodenly literal reading of Genesis."  In other words, whether our theology focuses on understanding God through the "book of nature" or the "book of scripture," when we make it a rule that the only way we can know either book is according to a strict literal reading of these texts, we keep our thinking inside a very small box and try to drag the limitless God to fit in there with us. And it doesn't really work.

What it all comes down to is that I have come to embrace evolutionary creation, also known as theistic evolution, on the basis of the biblical texts themselves. I think young-earth creationism and old-earth creationism both show too much dependence on Enlightenment mentality to be true to the pre-Enlightenment revelation of God to the pre-Enlightenment original audiences.  The point of these texts is that God created, not how God created-- and this is also the main point of theistic evolution.

Since I also find the evidence for evolution more compelling than the evidence for either young-earth or old-earth creationism, the cognitive dissonance of my college years is resolved.  But my position is based more on how I understand the Bible than on how I understand science.

So to Ken Ham and Bill Nye, I would say this.  This science-faith schism is unfortunate and completely unnecessary.  I hope that in the future we can find the openness-- and the humility-- to move past it.

Perceptions of Racism: Why We Need a Double Standard

This image has recently been displayed on Facebook, and I want to talk about it this week:

You can view a portion of the incident on CNN here. The Huffington Post also published an article detailing what had happened and some of the reactions to it:

As some people at the Missouri State Fair see it, the rodeo incident last weekend in which a ringleader taunted a clown wearing a mask of President Obama and played with his lips as a bull charged after him was neither racist nor disrespectful. It was a joke, they said, overblown by a news media that’s hypersensitive to any possible slight against the nation’s first black president. 

The rodeo incident and the clown at the center of it have become the latest illustration of racial divisions that continue to surface nearly five years into Obama’s presidency. . . Democratic and Republican elected officials in Missouri quickly condemned the incident, saying it was offensive and inappropriate. . . .

But there has also been a backlash on the right, with conservative radio talk show hosts and writers dismissing the act as a joke no different from jabs aimed at other presidents. Moreover, they said, the president’s supporters ought to learn how to take a joke rather than seeing everything as racially motivated.

There is a long history of mocking politicians at rodeos, and clowns have donned masks of other presidents as part of their acts. But James Staab, a political science professor at the University of Central Missouri, said last week’s incident “goes beyond the pale — they’re talking about physical injury and racial stereotypes.” 

To be fair, there is naturally going to be a difference in the way a rodeo clown dressed as a Democratic President is treated by the conservative, rodeo-going crowd of Missouri, compared to the way they would treat a rodeo clown dressed as a Republican and fellow Southerner like George H. W. Bush.  It's not surprising that the crowd demonstrated more verbal animosity towards the Democrat, and race may or may not have been a factor in that.  But that's not really what the problem is with the Facebook meme.

I also don't think it's all that helpful to focus on whether the Obama clown depiction was "racially motivated," as the Huffington Post puts it.  It's difficult and often unproductive to try to determine what people's motives are in a situation like this.  But there is an issue.  And the issue, as far as I can see, is not so much about what motivated the incident, but about what actually happened.

You see, I'm not talking about racial motivations, but about racism.  I think these are actually two things that overlap, but are really not the same.

I do think the Obama mask is racist, even though there was a similar mask of Bush that obviously wasn't.  One reason I think so is the simple fact that the Obama mask overemphasizes certain stereotypical characteristics associated with black people, such as large white teeth, in a way that simply doesn't apply to the Bush mask.  Another reason is that depicting African-Americans as clownlike and stupid is a historical practice of the dominant white culture in the U.S., and as such, it isn't funny when we do it today.  Based on our history as a nation, there are ways you can lampoon a white man that you can't lampoon a black one-- because the scars are still there, and this sort of thing isn't going to help heal any of them.

But there's more to it even than that.  

I want to talk about institutional, systemic racism-- the kind that isn't about "motivation." The kind that people participate in without intention, and often without even consciousness of doing so.  The fact is, that it's quite possible-- even easy-- to participate in systemic, institutional racism without in the least intending to be racist.  All you have to do is go along with the status quo.

That's not to say that there is never any actual, deliberate, racially motivated animosity towards our current President.  I'm sure sometimes there is.  But when it comes to racism, it's quite possible to participate in it without deliberate racial motivation at all.

Back in 2009, blogger Rod at Political Jesus identified a particular characteristic of conservative evangelicalism, which he spoke of in terms of sexism, but which easily apply to racism as well.  He said that conservative evangelicalism has

a highly individualistic view of sin–an idea that individuals alone are judged according to their sins and actions. . . 

[Thus they] discredit any theological notion of corporate sin, and therefore discredit the claims of [persons experiencing systemic injustice] since institutional sin does not exist. If institutional sins such as institutional sexism does not exist, then [such] claims cannot be explained except for anything but a “conspiracy theory.”

But this is not about a secret plot that a few people claim exists.  This is about real events that happen, real ways that people get treated, which are not part of any conspiracy, but just a factor of our ongoing social structures. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as institutional, corporate sin, and systemic racism is one of them.  If sins were only individual, why would Jesus speak as He did in Matthew 11:20-24?

Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. . . And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day."

An article in Watchman Magazine Online by Marc Smith explains a little bit about what might have been the corporate sin of Capernaum:

Capernaum was located in a very advantageous place (Matthew 11:23, "And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven..." This reference the Lord makes might have had to do with the attitude of its inhabitants more than any other factor.) in that it was on a crossroads of primary importance, being along the Beth-shan, Damascus highway. The presence of Roman soldiers at Capernaum (Mark 8:5-13) illustrates the importance of Capernaum's location. (Emphasis in original)

If Capernaum as a city could have been considered guilty of corporate pride by Christ, how can we say there is no such thing as corporate sin?  As long as we look at sin as only an individual thing, we will probably fail to see that we may be participating in systemic societal sin, simply by remaining blind to it and thus just going along with the way things are.

So what does systemic racism look like?  How does it relate to the way the Obama mask is perceived, versus the way the Bush mask is perceived?

This article on white privilege details several differences between being a white person and a person of color in America.  I think one aspect in particular applies here:  that in ways a white person will never experience, a person of color is viewed less as an individual and more as a representative of his or her entire race.   Here are some examples from the article, detailing conditions which people of color cannot count on, but which white people often take for granted:

I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

White people in our culture (and particularly white men) are usually looked at as individuals.  White is normative; white is the default.  You don't get noticed for being white in our society.  You aren't considered primarily as a member of a group known as "whites."

What this means for the rodeo clown mask incident (as my husband so pithily pointed out the other evening), people in general aren't going to look at the Bush mask and say, "Oh, look at the funny white man."

But  that's not the case with the Obama mask.  When people look at the Obama mask, the tendency, learned from our culture and passed down generationally, is to see a mask of a black man first, and of a man named Barack Obama second.

What this means is that we can't put a rodeo clown in an Obama mask without its being seen as a mockery, not just of our President, but of the entire black race.  Even if we don't intend it to be seen that way.  Even if that's the last thing on our minds.

Is this fair?  No.  But it's the way things are.  So to get offended when people say, "That's racist!" is to continue to walk in the privilege of not having to notice that it's not the same to be black in our country as it is to be white. 

I think it's important as a white person not to take this too personally.  To have someone point out that something we're participating in is racist, isn't necessarily an indictment on our character.  Instead, we can see it humbly, as a time to learn to let go of privilege.  It's time to learn to see through the eyes of those our race has traditionally and repeatedly othered.  We need to understand why the Bush rodeo mask and the Obama rodeo mask really aren't the same thing-- and why it's not hypocrisy to say so.

As white people, we tend to want to ask, "Then is the only way to not be perceived as racist, to treat people of color with more consideration than we treat ourselves?

Well-- yes.

Because we can't clean up a mess by pretending it's not there.  We can't just say, "As long as I'm not making a new mess, it's ok."  We can't just say, "I wasn't the one who made that old mess, and it's not my fault or my responsibility."  That doesn't matter.  We inherited this mess of systemic racism that's been here all these years, and we have to roll up our sleeves and bend down to work on cleaning it up. To pretend it isn't there ends up just being a way to leave it in place.

And that means that, until black and brown people are really free from institutional and generational racism, there has to be a double standard.

It's the least we can do.  Isn't it?

Weeping with the Parents of Trayvon Martin

With so many people blogging and so many news articles about Trayvon Martin and the George Zimmerman trial, I've wondered what I could possibly add that hasn't already been said.  But I'm a mother of teenagers myself, and I know Trayvon Martin's parents are weeping.  I must weep with them.

And in solidarity with them, and with parents like them everywhere, I must stand up and respond to the voices who are saying "This wasn't about race."

Actually, it was.  It is.  I'm not going to weigh in on whether George Zimmerman should have been convicted or not; I have been a member of a jury before, I think the jury did the best they could to arrive at the best verdict they could come up with given the instructions they were given in the criminal trial process.  But to say this incident, as it arose, as it progressed and as it horrifically concluded, was not about race, is to speak from the luxury of not having to live as Trayvon Martin and his family have always lived: in a world where, like it or not, race is what it's about-- on a daily basis.

Blogger Caryn Riswold puts it like this in her article "I Am Not Trayvon Martin":

In the months leading up to the trial of George Zimmerman, #IAmTrayvonMartin became a popular hashtag, a way for people to show support, empathy, solidarity. I think it’s important for me and all white people who work for racial justice to say: I Am Not Trayvon Martin. Like [other middle-class white people] . . . I generally perceive law enforcement to exist in order to protect me. I will not be hunted down on the street because of the color of my skin. I will not be suspected of stealing the nice car I might be driving or trying to get into. I have never been followed in a store by a clerk who is afraid I might steal something.

Understanding this is a base level of awareness of white privilege, necessary in order to dismantle the system that declares open season on young black men.

As a white person, I need to step away from the luxury of not being required to think about this.  If I'm going to follow Jesus, I need to follow "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That means trying to see through their eyes.  It means trying to understand what my life would be like if I were them.

White privilege is "an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious . . . like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks."  Certain realities that I take for granted in my life-- realities that make my world easier for me and my children to live in-- simply do not exist for the person of color who might be walking down the street next to me.

White privilege means my son, if he goes out to get a snack in the evening-- even if he's wearing a hoodie-- will not automatically look over his shoulder.  No one has ever told him-- or had to tell him--that his very presence might be perceived as a threat.  If a policeman or someone in a neighborhood watch stops him, he might be startled or even nervous-- but he has no ingrained expectation that the confrontor is already most likely set against him, or that harm to him might result.

So I'm trying to think what it might be like to be Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon's mom.  Could I even let my son have the freedom a teenage boy needs as part of growing up, to leave the house and hang out with his friends, if I knew what Sybrina knew?  If I knew that the assumptions people were most likely to make about my son were not that he is probably peaceful and law-abiding, but just the opposite?

If I knew that my son also knew this-- knew that the deck was stacked against him before he even walked out the door?

That he might become wary and defensive as a result?

That his very wariness and defensiveness were most likely to be interpreted as dangers?

Blogger Libby Anne has written a piece on George Zimmerman and Race in America, in which she pulls together the results of a group of studies that make it clear that Trayvon Martin was no isolated case.   That there is a "subconscious but measurable preference to give white men the benefit of the doubt in these ambiguous situations."  (Sociological Images: Who Would You Shoot?)

That "[w]e are already biased in favor of the white defendant and against the black victim." (Sociological Images: Stand Your Ground Increases Racial Bias)

That "[a] finding of “justifiable homicide” is much more common in the case of a white-on-black killing than any other kind including a white and a black person." (Ibid.)

And this is exacerbated by the recent Stand Your Ground Laws which were in effect in the Martin-Zimmeran interaction, in which "a misinterpretation of physical clues could result in the use of deadly force, exacerbating culture, class, and race differences" resulting in "a disproportionately negative effect on minorities, persons from lower socioeconomic status, and young adults/juveniles."

What would it be like for my family, to have this be our reality?  And how can we so confidently say, having never experienced this reality, that Travyon Martin's death was not about race? 

As MSNBC's Analysis states: 

Many legal analysts, convinced that the prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove its case, had predicted the acquittal even before the trial began. Reasonable doubt, they said repeatedly. The state must persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

But reasonable doubt is an elastic standard, and it seems to work in favor of whites much more often than it does blacks. It is hard to imagine that a black “neighborhood watch volunteer” who pursued and killed a white kid under the same circumstances would have walked away a free man.

So I weep with Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton.  And I hope that somehow I can come alongside them to work for a different reality.  Because, like it or not, their reality is my reality. "No man is an island," John Donne famously said.  White privilege might give me many a free pass through situations that undermine my brothers and sisters of color, but those situations are part of the world I must live in, whether I blind myself to it or not.

An article in The Atlantic called "Trayvon Martin and the Irony of American Justice" put it in a nutshell for me:

The injustice inherent in the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was not authored by a jury given a weak case. The jury's performance may be the least disturbing aspect of this entire affair. The injustice was authored by a country which has taken as its policy, for the lionshare of its history, to erect a pariah class. The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman is not an error in programming. It is the correct result of forces we set in motion years ago and have done very little to arrest. . . You should not be troubled that George Zimmerman "got away" with the killing of Trayvon Martin, you should be troubled that you live in a country that ensures that Trayvon Martin will happen.

This is the nature of American justice.  And it is deeply, fundamentally unjust. And because of it my son is safe, while Tracy and Sybrina's son is dead.

How can I keep from weeping?