Whiteness and Morality (2007) by Jennifer Harvey
In 1903, the black scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois accurately complained that whites had made American blacks into "a problem." Jennifer reverses this idea in her book: "white people are THE problem." Whites created the false idea of race; there is no scientific nor biblical validity to the idea of separate and distinct races. Out of the false concept of race, whites created the evil but socially real concept of racism.
In a rare moment of white honesty, the Kerner Commission Report agreed that black disorders in the 1960s were the result of white racism; "White institutions created the racial ghetto. White institutions maintain it. White society condones it." And then white society quickly and conveniently forgot about the Kerner Report and did little about it. Few whites have repented of their racism because they see themselves as superior WASPs. Whiteness is next to godliness and blackness is next to evil making blacks dangerous.
Harvey asserts: "To be white is to be in a state of acute moral crisis." But most American Christians are too self-righteous to repent, make radical changes. John the Baptist and Jesus began their ministries calling for repentance, but the highly religious Pharisees refused to repent.
Most American whites, including most Christian whites, believe that they are salt-of-the-earth people who are preserving society from the dysfunctions of Native American, Black and Latino cultures. I am surrounded by such whites here in godly Iowa. What is whiteness?---the ideology and idolatry of whiteness, white supremacy, white oppression, white privilege.
Mercifully, the Hitler holocaust lasted a few years. But the American holocaust has lasted nearly 400 years, making it more akin to the 400 year Hebrew enslavement which is described in Exodus 1 as ruthless and in Exodus 6:9 as mass PTSD.
The British perfected their brand of ethnocentrism/oppression against the Irish and then the British colonists brought it to America. The British brand was religio-cultural, not racial; the Irish were fellow whites. In the colonies, a racialized white-black component was added creating a deadly and especially perverse blend of religion, culture and race. WASP is a convenient shorthand to describe it.. None of the American revivals, including Pentecostalism, have eradicated WASPness. No church has yet developed a theology that is adequate; half of the biblical gospel has been ignored, pushed aside.
The American who has come closest is John Perkins, a poor black from Mississippi. The following ideas are the core of his Christian Community Development ministry. A white partner, H. Spees, assisted in the development of these principles. They are called the three "r's". I have made explicit some additional ideas which are implicit in John's thinking:
1. Relocation/repentance
* It is a radical change for a white person to leave the suburbs and live in a poor, black ghetto.
* These actions are signs of repentance, more than just words "I am sorry"
* A step toward reversing segregation.
2. Redistribution/repair
* a sharing of education, skills and resources
* a step toward justice
3. Reconciliation
* located in the ghetto so more authentic
* white participation in a black church and black community
* authentic only if preceded by repentance and redistribution
The three "r's" will work at the individual level but they will be much more effective if done at the church level where a suburban church would directly involve 10 percent of its membership, preferably in teams and 10 percent of its financial resources.
To end this review, I would like to focus on the profoundly negative message of chapter 3 "Becoming Uniquely White 'American'" with a few quotations from chapter 2 as well. First, from chapter 2:
"the terminology the English colonists most often used to describe themselves was 'Christian'. From the mid-1600s to 1680 it was 'English' and 'free.' After about 1680, . . . WHITE.'"
"Thus, whiteness would become the bond out of which a unified nation-state and a shared national identity would be forged. This identity . . . depended parasitically upon the existence of a non-free, deeply oppressed racial other."
"People of African descent were also active in the Revolutionary War. Thousands of them fought with the British."
"By the time of the Revolution, the South and North had already become thoroughly reliant on slavery, the slave trade, and the industries made possible by slave labor." The textile industry in New England used slave grown cotton.
"there was not a single New England merchant of the era uninvolved in the slave trade," directly or indirectly.
Next, quotations from chapter 3:
"As far as we could determine, . . . white culture depended primarily upon the exploitation of land, people, and life itself." Vine Deloria, Jr., a Native American.
"Lynchings were communal acts of torture and mutilation in which white people would hunt down, terrify, torture, and publicly murder an African American. . . . " "Almost no words can begin to get at the brutality in which white people engaged; evil and depravity are the closest descriptors one dares to utter in approaching something so atrocious."
"For most of its history, lynching was not perceived widely as social deviance. It was a piece with national, public, white supremacist mythologies about and obsession with blackness."
"One sheriff conceded that he had to give up his intentions to defend a black about to be lynched because 'the first half dozen men standing there were leading citizens---businessmen, leaders of the church and community---I just couldn't do it'"
"Lynching as a socializing force points to the constitution of whiteness as a social identity: white selves and/or a white group being created out of communal blood violence."
Dray is quoted:
"Lynching was an undeniable part of daily life, as distinctly American as baseball games and church suppers. Men brought their wives and children along to the events, posed for commemorative photographs, and purchased souvenirs of the occasion as if they had been at a company picnic."
"Moreover, for all of Jefferson's talk about 'assimilation'---it own form of violence and imperialism---he and other presidents before Jackson pursued incessant warfare against Native peoples. And they did so while crafting an ideology of Anglo-Saxon 'destiny'. U.S.-Americans were increasingly steeped, in this period in notions of being a 'providential people' who would bring liberty and democracy to the globe."
After reading chapters 2 and 3, I thought Could God possibly allow a single white American into heaven?
And I remembered that some Mississippi blacks wondered if there were any whites who were genuine Christians. My mind also flashed to John 8 and the intense dialog between Jesus and the Jews. "To the Jews who believed in him. . . . You belong to your father, the devil." Could we insert white American Christians in place of the Jews?
The legitimate human response to the horrific actions of white people should first be 'grief and rage,' asserts Harvey. I agree; but then move on to repentance and repair following the model of John Perkins.
My next blog continues this topic under the title "The Puritan Effect."
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