Renaming Social Evils With Nice Names

Oppressors are clever propagandists; they rename social evils with nice sounding names.  Some examples:  white ethnocentrism becomes American exceptionalism; white oppression becomes Manifest Destiny; American ethnocentrism and oppression become proudly memorialized in the St. Louis Arch.  Most white Christians because they have no biblical theology of oppression and justice fall for this garbage.

The Puritans literally, but falsely, believed they had a divine right, even a divine assignment, to take "New England" from Native Americans, who were called Canaanites, and establish a Christian Nation.  Following the OT example, Canaanites could legitimately be destroyed.

A divine destiny!  Though often secularized today and therefore stripped of its religious language, this belief in American exceptionalism, of Manifest Destiny is still widespread in 2017.  It is legitimate and good to make white America great again---for rich, white males.

It was the divine will for America to spread from coast to coast, even if this unfortunately involved extermination and enslavement.  It would be slightly uncouth to actually call it ethnocentrism and oppression so we use the nice phrase "Westward expansion" of white civilization.

Jesus faced the exact same issues when he was incarnated as a Jew; the first social evils, national sins he challenged and exposed were religion-ethnocentrism (Luke 4:25-30) and oppression (Luke 4:18).  The Jews actually were a chosen people called to be a servant people who were to bring the Messiah into the world; he would bless all peoples, Jew and Gentile.  The Jews corrupted their high calling; they began to see themselves as a superior people and Gentiles and Samaritans as inferior people.

White Americans were never chosen by God, but they act like they were; actually they have behaved more demonic than God-like.  So white Americans think they are destined, right.  They are self-righteous; there is nothing to repent of; white ethnocentrism and oppression magically become good or at least tragically necessary.  Divinely destined people don't need to repent, restitute and repair.

There is no national movement of repentance, restitution and repair.  Therefore white privilege/whiteness remain intact.  There is even a scholarly field of history called "whiteness" devoted to this phenomenon.

In Luke, in addition to Jesus living among the poor, ministering to the poor, Luke devotes many passages to exposing the rich, often the religious rich, as the oppressors.  The poor had many problems, but Luke/Jesus focused on the rich as THE problem.  In America, white oppressors focus on blacks as THE problem.

All Christian colleges need to teach a course on white ethnocentrism and oppression and the need for white Christians to repent, restitute and repair---do justice.  This course should be team taught by both a sociology prof and a Bible prof.  I never taught such a course in my 34 years of college teaching.  I should have.

Relocation, reconciliation and redistribution (justice); these are John Perkins' famous '3'rs', a strategy for rebuilding poor black communities which he called Christian Community Development.

Repentance, restitution and repair (justice); these are my recent creation that focus on what oppressors need to do.  They have not yet been implemented as such anywhere to my knowledge.  CCD is for the oppressed;  R and R and R is for the oppressor.

Recently I witnessed a TV program on PBS (The Third Rail) structured to promote racial dialogue with the goal of racial understanding.  I myself have participated in similar sessions during my 35 years of living in black communities.  I noticed a common pattern---whites not facing their own deep guilt in creating and maintaining systems of oppression.  Instead they quote stats on black crime, black family dysfunction implying black inferiority.  Instead of white repentance, white restitution and white repair, there was white rationalization after white rationalization, black blame after black blame.

It seems that white self-righteousness runs so deep that it is next to impossible for most whites to take responsibility for centuries of ethnocentrism and oppression.  Fully faced, this would be a terrible guilt to bear.