For White People Only: A Hypothetical on Race and the Church

What if:

  • America had been founded by black people from Africa;
  • Those black people captured white people from Europe and brought them to America to serve as slaves to black masters;
  • Black people continued to enslave white people for two hundred years;
  • Many black Christians justified their enslavement of white people by quoting the Bible;
  • After white slavery ended, black people passed laws ensuring white people could not use public restrooms, water fountains, and had to ride at the back of the bus;
  • After those laws were repealed, black people continued to discriminate against white people by refusing to hire them and excluding them from their neighborhoods, country clubs, and social clubs;
  • After laws were passed prohibiting discrimination against white people in employment, housing, and public accommodations, when white people brought lawsuits to enforce those laws they had to try their cases to all black juries because the law allowed attorneys to systematically exclude white people from the juries;
  • The most popular movies and television shows were about black people, and the leading actors and actresses in Hollywood were black;
  • Most companies were run by black CEOs, COOs, CFOs and overseen by boards of directors consisting almost exclusively of black people;
  • While whites participated in professional team athletics, all those teams were owned by black people;
  • 75% of America was black and 13% was white;
  • Yet white people continued to be arrested and imprisoned at a much higher rate than black people;
  • Black people lived in the nicest, wealthiest ,neighborhoods, while white people lived in the poorest ones;
  • White people were routinely stopped by police while driving through black neighborhoods and were routinely stopped, frisked, and harassed by the police; 
  • You had been stopped more than once by the police for doing nothing wrong except being white at night or in a black part of town; and
  • There had been a string of incidents in recent years where police had used excessive force against white people and killed them while they were in custody.

And then…

One day a black police officer with a smug look on his face was caught on video kneeling on a white person’s neck, while the white person continued to plead, “I can’t breath,” yet the officer continued until he had killed the white person.

Might you think the officer’s actions were motivated by race? Might you think it was time to have a larger discussion about race in America? Might you feel like protesting with your white friends against the black establishment?

And what if…

You looked to your black friends at church for support, and they were silent.

Leave a Reply