Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

On the Catholic Beat

Home
Catholic
Religion News
Rooting Out Racism Will Be Difficult.

Rooting Out Racism Will Be Difficult.

Last updated on: June 24, 2020 at 2:06 pm by Brian Fraga

Rooting Out Racism Will Be Difficult. 2020-06-24T14:06:46-05:00 Brian Fraga

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Photo by Alessandro Paiva, FreeImages

I don’t exactly have a green thumb. If potted plants could file charges, I’d likely be serving a prison sentence right now for forced dehydration.

But I’ve learned enough recently in preparing a patch in my backyard for a new vegetable garden that you need to till and clear the land, which underneath can often be a tangled, layered mess of old hardened roots. If you live in a city, chances are you might also find “urban fill” – demolition debris, asphalt, wood ash, coal – not too far below the surface.

When doing the work to get rid of that all dug-in rot and junk, I’m reminded of what my old U.S. Army squad leader used to say, with his trademark South Carolina accent, when referring to the kind of hard physical labor you needed to move something big: “You gotta put some ASS into it, son.”

That’s kind of what the work of undoing systemic racism in the United States is like: difficult, tedious labor to dig up decades worth of ugly and hardened attitudes, biases, assumptions and habits; removing stubborn roots and unsightly concrete debris that supported the foundations and lifeblood of a society built in part on the subjugation and marginalization of people of color.

Thanks be to God, we have no shortage of people of good will – from all racial and ethnic backgrounds – who are putting in the work to clear our nation’s landscape of the ugly legacy of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, white supremacy and institutional racism. They are taking to the streets, speaking out, calling their elected officials, writing letters to the editor, and demanding action.

Sadly, they are running into networks of resistance, deeply embedded in the soil of American culture, that are not keen to be dug up and exposed to the light of day. These old lifeless but rigid and interconnected roots manifest themselves in outright denials that systemic racism exists, in whataboutisms, deflections, calumnies and detraction against those who dare call racism out for what it is.

Working through that all muck, you even find still-active embers of the once more-common and nastier overt forms of racism.

In 2020, it’s easy to see that ugliness – left undisturbed for too long – being brought to the surface on social media. People who are trying to honestly talk about our national reckoning with racism are often on the receiving end of some intellectually-dishonest responses, disingenuous talking points and straw man arguments, not to mention hostility and ad hominem attacks.

To illustrate the point, I’m posting screenshots below of some ignorant comments – all from white people as far as I could tell- that I’ve been seeing on Catholic social media pages and underneath news articles and blogs. Though what they wrote was public, my intention here is not to shame individuals, so I won’t be including their names or social media profile pictures.

If anything, the whataboutisms, deflections, disingenuous comments and blatant outright racist statements that follow below should all show us that racial bigotry is still very much alive in the United States, and that dealing with it is not going to be easy, even within the Church.

Previous Post

June 18, 2020

A Q&A with Lamar Hunt, Jr. of the Kansas City Chiefs Family.

Next Post

June 24, 2020 Gloria Purvis of EWTN Tells Our Sunday Visitor "Racism is Demonic."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What is the key message of Proverbs about how to live?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Seek power Amass riches Pursue wisdom Win battles