Monday: The American Way of Dealing with Race
WEEK 11
MONDAY
THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEALING WITH RACE
Matthew 5:21-24
A fourth way to deal with the people of another race must be mentioned—the way we are taking in America.
It is the way of giving equal rights but grudgingly and piecemeal. Slowly but surely the African American is coming into equal rights, privileges, and opportunity in our civilization. But it isn’t being done graciously and grandly—we are doing it grumpily. We did it graciously and grandly on a legal level in the Supreme Court decision to desegregate the school system. But we dull the grandeur of that act by talk of evasion, postponement, downright rejection. We are not doing a big thing in a big way. We haggle and offer to compromise, and in the end give way. By that time the taste is gone. There are ashes in our mouths instead of a taste of sweetness. The African American is going to have equal rights and opportunities; it is destiny. Our democracy and Christianity both decree it. It will come, but it should come graciously instead of grudgingly.
The African Americans aren’t a problem; they are a possibility, one of the biggest possibilities for development we have. If they go up, we go with them. And if they stay down, we stay down with them. Booker T. Washington once said, “One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.”* America’s prestige in the world will be decided by the African American’s prestige in America. They will be equal.
The church must lead the way. Now it is leading verbally but not vitally. For the greatest hour of segregation in American life is eleven o’clock Sunday morning. Churches are the greatest illustration of segregation in American life. We come together in conferences and conventions, but in the basic life of individual churches segregation is in operation—with few exceptions. For years I have been pleading that every white church should have at least one African American member and every African American church at least one white member. That wouldn’t solve the problem, but it would be a symbol that we believe in and live in a kingdom that is class-blind and color-blind, seeing only persons—persons for whom Christ died.
O Christ, we thank you that our eyes are being opened, opened to see the possibility in every person, apart from everything extraneous. Help us to see and to heed. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The American way isn’t working in regard to race; it shall as far as I am concerned.
*Booker T. Washington, in an address on Abraham Lincoln before the Republican Club of New York City, February 12, 1909. (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington, accessed March 8, 2017).