The Ironic Justice of the Word “Racist”

Based on my Facebook feed, racist has become a slur to white people. My white friends chafe under the collar of that label. Racist is a burr under their saddle. I’ve definitely seen it light their dynamite. None have seemed self-aware enough to realize the irony of that.

I can’t tell you how many of my social connections this past year have said, “Call me a racist, but.” Some of the statements that have followed that but were indeed inappropriate, but all of these folks seemed to think racist has just become what you call someone who disagrees with you. That allows them to dismiss the label instead of wrestling with it, doing some research, and asking some tough questions.

Last summer, two of my pastors interviewed an accomplished, Black doctor on my church’s stage. They asked him about proper or preferred labels: Black vs African American. The professional expert in conflict resolution explained that either of those labels worked for him personally because both were names that black- and brown-skinned Americans gave themselves. White people used other words for them, but those with more melanin chose both Black and African American—and take pride in both.

My white friends want to be called open-minded or accepting or kind. Or just right. They don’t want to be called racist. They don’t want another group choosing a category for them, making assumptions for them, assigning names to them. These very same white people figuratively or literally roll their eyes when Guatemalans don’t want to be called Mexicans, when Mexicans don’t want to be called wetbacks, when Native Americans don’t want to be called Indians when mentally handicapped people don’t want to be called retards, when gay men don’t want to be called an F word.

I’ve heard self-identifying Christians bemoan “all this politically correct crap” without ever sitting with the word correct. Why would something be politically correct? Because individuals and people groups alike want autonomy as much as representation. We want the choice to determine what we’re called. We want people to validate our perspective, our history, and our value. There is dignity in using the name someone asks us to use.

There’s also irony in the complaint of political correctness. White Americans—including a majority of white Christians—fight to leverage politics to define what is correct for every other citizen in our nation. They demand assimilation of minorities and foreigners to white standards of beauty, language, clothing, music, worship, and even holiday celebration. They follow those demands with, “If you don’t like it here, then go back where you came from.”

Scientists of all stripes will tell you that the most resilient and robust ecosystems of plants and animals are those with diversity. Agricultural monocultures have proven susceptible to disease and drought and even extinction, whereas biodiversity can help save symbiotic or even just adjacent species. The whiter we try to make America and its standards, the more vulnerable we make our country to myopia and the grave errors that such ignorance can make when paired with the world’s deadliest military. If we want to “keep America great”—or better yet, grow our nation greater—we need to celebrate our complementary differences.

To do that, we need to embrace discomfort. We need to smile instead of frown when a fellow shopper speaks in a language we don’t know. That’s our country growing stronger. We need to ask questions instead of hurling accusations. That’s our cultural fabric weaving tighter. We need to call people by the names they ask us to call them. That’s our nation, building unity. We need to befriend people who disagree with us and look different than us. That’s our field blossoming more resilient. We need to look at our white values and peel off the roots of arrogance and misunderstanding that have grown up around it. That’s part of mental, relational, and spiritual health.

For white people of faith, people who claim to represent Jesus, we need to remove any reason for others to discount our gospel. God is not a human color, and Jesus wasn’t white. When we impose our whiteness, its values, and its assumptions on people of color, we obscure the gospel. We push both the life preserver and the ladder further away from those not in the boat. We make Jesus look like a racist.

For those who chafe under the label racist, (1) imagine the weight of generations of your family being called that. (2) Imagine someone who always called you that trying to convince you to adopt their faith, their religion, their god.

Because generations before us didn’t do that imagining, didn’t conduct that introspection, and didn’t change their hearts, it’s now our responsibility to go beyond just calling our friends by the names of their choosing. As the majority culture and the ethnicity in power in our country, it’s our job as white people to go the extra mile for racial reconciliation. We didn’t subjugate past generations of black and brown people; but we can subjugate our voices, our will, and our preferences right now as an olive branch to the children and grandchildren of those who were.

Jesus wore a towel over his arm to wash the feet of those different than him, those against him. He made friends with people the majority didn’t like. He got called pejorative names from the religious and political establishment for doing the work of spiritual reconciliation. So, we might endure some labels we don’t like while doing the work of cultural reconciliation. The good news for white people who don’t like being called racist? Pursuing justice, mercy, empathy, and kindness is a good way to be called something else.

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