Oppression Damage; Damage Dysfunction

After rereading Randall Robinson's book, The Debt, I rethought American history.

First some biblical insights on what oppression is/does.  The 555 OT references to oppression and its synonyms have the following meanings:  crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill.  If persons are treated like animals, we shouldn't be surprised if some of them act like animals.  If persons are treated violently, we shouldn't be surprised if some of them act out violently.  If people are crushed, broken in spirit, we shouldn't be surprised by individual, family, community and cultural PTSD.

In America, slavery was quickly replaced by neoslavery which had these components:

1.  Legal/social segregation.
2.  Economic sharecropping.
3.  Criminal justice system enforced prison gangs.
4.  Lawless terrorism or lynchings.
5.  Christian neglect of justice and the love of God.

These forms/systems of oppression caused the following dysfunctions:

1.  Doubled infant mortality rate.
2.  Doubled abortion rates.
3.  Doubled unemployment rates.
4.  Higher separation/divorce rates.
5.  Higher rates of oppression/exploitation of women.

Quotation from Randall Robinson:

"Monstrous systems [of oppression] do turn people into monsters."  The monsters are more visible than the monstrous systems so the individual monsters get blamed more than the systems.  Result: it is easy to blame the victims.

Resulting myths:

1.  Black inferiority.
2.  Criminalblackman.
3.  Black dysfunction.
4.  Lazy blacks.
5.  Black stupidity.
6.  Result: scholars study black dysfunction more than white oppression.

Why are Christian blacks more willing to forgive white oppressors than white Christians are to repent and restitute regarding their centuries of oppression?  Are white Christians inherently self-righteous; self-righteous people think they don't need to repent?

Lisa Sharon Harper:

"Forgiveness cut the ties that bound the oppressed to oppressors. . . .  But if forgiveness was for the sake of South Africans of color, then what was the message for white South Africans---repentance."

"What would repentance look like in your country?"  He said, "Restitution."  "Restitution is simply the act of restoring. . . . Then the relationship could be repaired."

John the Baptist began with repentance, not forgiveness.

Final historical observation by Caitlin Fitz, "The Accidental Patriot."

"On the eve of the [American] Revolution, about 11 percent of the male taxpayers in Boston owned slaves. . . . In Virginia, many masters were fighting for the liberty to enslave. . . .  A [British] parliament that could tax colonies might also free slaves.  The Revolution was racially charged."

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

The election of Trump was racially charged---as much an anti-Obama vote as a pro-Trump vote.  A bigoted billionaire led the racial backlash.