Systems and laws, more than prejudice and discrimination

Racism is much more a matter of systems, laws and government policy than it is personal prejudice and personal discrimination.  Personal prejudice is only a small part of the total picture.

An example: In regards to slavery, individual slave owners would die, but the system of slavery continued on from one generation to the next generation.

Two books highlight the systems of oppression or racism in law and government.  In 2012, Michelle Alexander wrote "The New Jim Crow", a book about the crucial role of the criminal justice system combined with racial profiling and the war on drugs; the result was the mass incarceration of young black and Hispanic males.

The second book I recommend, a 2017 book, is entitled "The Color of Law".  Here is how a book review in the November 8, 2017, "Christian Century" describes this book.

"The law has never been blind.  In fact, when it comes to race and segregation, the law has often done more harm to African American residential communities than racial customs and traditions have.  It has done so intentionally.  Richard Rothstein, an expert on race, education, and social policy at the Economic Policy Institute, details what the African American community has always known about residential segregation, shoddy housing and schools, and lack of meaningful job opportunities.  He reveals how the consequences of residential segregation from the 1920s to today have been legal, intentional, and long lasting."

This book review by Shana L. Haines also says, "The suburbs laid down the welcome mat for white families - who built walls, burned crosses, and threw bricks through the windows of those African Americans foolish enough to think that the American dream was meant for them."

So many of the racial problems making the headlines today have a long history.  Once racism becomes a system of oppression, a matter of law and government, individuals cannot then plead ignorance and assume no personal responsibility for the racism that continues on unabated.

The real question is not whether you are personally prejudiced; the real question is what are you doing to end systems of oppression, to release the oppressed, to rebuild oppressed poor communities.

The real issue is oppression damage caused dysfunction in which the rich oppress the poor or whites oppress blacks.  This is the demonic at work as it crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves, and kills peoples created in the image of God.  But in many white person's mind, the problem has moved from oppression damage dysfunction to blame the victim dysfunction where Indians are called savages and blacks are regarded as inferior.  Or another way to put it, supposed biological flaws or cultural inferiority are falsely blamed.

When you look at statistics on infant mortality, unemployment or poverty, over the last fifty years, you still find the statistics for blacks doubled for infant mortality, unemployment and poverty.  So- called racial progress in employment disappears when incarceration numbers are included.  See "The New Jim Crow" for documentation.  When whites can blame blacks for dysfunction, whites then are not guilty.  They can claim they are righteous; if whites are righteous and blacks are to blame, whites need not repent and do not repent.  For whites, there is not repentance, restitution or an obligation to repair oppressed communities.