I voted for a black man in the 2008 US presidential election. And if indeed Alan Keyes (together with his running mate Brian Rohrbough, president of Colorado Right to Life) had won, then it indeed would have been a magnificent occasion to celebrate, amongst other things, progress against the evil spirit of racism in America.
But that didn’t happen. Barack Obama won the presidency instead. A question that arises then is this: despite whatever policy disagreements someone like myself might have with the Obama administration, it this nevertheless an occasion to celebrate progress away from a history of ugly prejudice in America? With all due respect to my black and white countrymen who see it that way, I must say that no, I don’t think so. Allow me to explain.
Imagine with me a hypothetical scenario for a moment. Let us say that over the last two hundred years there was an additional ethnic group in America called the Taiers. Through the 19th and first half of the 20th century the Taiers enjoyed favored social status. Indeed they were given special treatment and highly regarded by all other segments of society. Moreover, say in our hypothetical situation that about the time of the civil rights movement, about the time society started to recognize that African Americans deserved the same rights and equality as white Americans, a strange thing happened — Taiers gradually started to become an oppressed group! Whites, blacks, hispanics, and Asian Americans together gradually began to see too many Taiers as a burden on them and on society, rather than as a blessed group that everyone loved to love. Hate terms like “Nigger” were becoming socially unacceptable, but simultaneously whites and blacks together began to find new ways to describe Taiers as if they were now something less than human. Whereas in the past black people would be lynched by white people and the courts would bring no measure of justice against the whites, Taiers had now been dehumanized to the point that courts started giving approval to kill Taiers for the crime of being inconvenient to non-Taiers. It was if the focus of discriminative anger, injustice, and oppression had simply shifted off of blacks and onto Taiers. American society was not an inch closer to recognizing the value of human life, it had simply redrawn the boundaries of which groups would be considered valuable — blacks were now in and Taiers were out.
Of course, the only imaginative part of the above scenario is that Taiers were/are not an ethnic subgroup of Americans, but rather a developmental subgroup of Americans — those still in the womb (”tai er” is Chinese for “fetus”). You see, we should be careful and realize how the very vocabulary of our language shapes our thinking about the things it describes. In English we have the word “racism” that carries (rightly so) a very negative connotation. But what if I say I hate all Buddhists: “Black, white, brown, red, and yellow Buddhists, I hate them all equally and wish they were dead.” Does that make me a “racist”? No, not by the dictionary definition. Perhaps I could be called a “religious bigot”, but not technically a racist since Buddhists come from different races. Now say that I hate all old people, I think that their hefty health care expenses are a needless, useless burden on the economy, and thus nature should be allowed to “take its course” in wiping out anyone after retirement age. What word or phrase would you use to describe me? Now it gets harder to find a accurate and precise word that is in common use. You could say I’m a “selfish jerk”, and that would be true enough, but that phrase certainly doesn’t differentiate me from the wide variety of other manifestations of selfish jerkiness out there.
The point is this: whether my animosity and devaluing of human life is directed towards a group defined by skin pigmentation, by religious affliation, or by age, the spirit and attitude and sinfulness behind it all is identical even though common vocabulary might describe my attitude with different terminology depending on the nature of the categorical boundaries defining the target group. More succinctly, “alreadybornism” is just “racism” repacked in a slightly different flavor.
To put it yet another way, if Barack Obama, with his current core set of values and ethics intact, was born a white man in the Southern US in the 1940’s, would he approve of the lynching of “trouble-making niggers”? I think there is good reason to believe that absolutely yes he would. When Obama says he wouldn’t want his daughters “punished with a baby“, when he opposed legislation to protect babies born alive due to botched abortions (see pages 86-87), when he made it a priority as President to resume taxpayer funded support of aboritons worldwide, etc., etc., he repeatedly proves that he sees nothing inherently valuable in human life itself.
Sure, under the current real life circumstances he supports equality for black, white, and brown Americans; why wouldn’t he? But he has clearly stated that sees no transcendant, “universal value” which would affirm that babies of all races shouldn’t be killed while in the womb, while partially in the womb and partially out, or (in some circumstances) even after fully exiting the womb. Relegating Scriptural authority to the realm of “personal belief”, his criteria for determining what constitues a genuinely valuable human life apparently has no where to rest except on that which is “self-evident”. Interestingly though, many of the signers and supporters of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence apparently did not consider it to be “self-evident” that Negroes were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. Such notion only became “self-evident” to the majority of (white) Americans nearly 200 years later (if at all). For a white man in the South in the 1950’s it was “self-evident” that trouble-making Niggers deserved to die. So again, Obama’s refusal to ascribe universal truth value to God’s word in the Bible (or any other so-called sacred text, for that matter) tells me that if he was born into a different context, he would have had no grounds for opposing, for example, the gruesome murder of Emmett Louis Till. Insofar as the entire white population of Money, Mississippi is part of the “universe”, it would seem that no “universal” principle “accessible to all people” would condemn Till’s murder.
So, one more time to be clear. The reason I can’t say that I’m excited about the Obama presidency in one sense (progress towards racial reconciliation demonstrated in an African-American president) and yet sad about the Obama presidency in another sense (increasing approval for the slaughter of innocent babies) is because I don’t see these as TWO DISTINCT SENSES. The great irony is that the very spirit and fuel behind America’s ugly history of racism (dehumanization of a weaker group of people that are considered a bother to the stronger group) is the exact same spirit that is embodied in so much of what Obama stands for. Do we see superficially shifting sands of allegiances, variation regarding who’s on whose side, changes in which is the “stronger group” that is in position to stomp on which “weaker group”? Yes! But progress towards acceptance of universal and transcendant principles which can form a foundation of genuine racial harmony and love, no, sadly I don’t see any evidence for that in the outcome of this election.
The only true grounds for harmony, reconciliation, love, and unity between Jew and Gentile, male and female, black and white, Western and Eastern, born and preborn, young and old, etc., is through coming into the oneness that has eternally existed in the Triune God (John 17, Gal 3:28).
But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. AND HE CAME AND PREACHED PEACE TO YOU WHO WERE FAR AWAY, AND PEACE TO THOSE WHO WERE NEAR; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Eph 2:13-22
Human society has not, and never will, make “progress” towards racial harmony. The church of Jesus Christ is the one place that you can and should expect to see love for all manner of human life. May it be so.
To end on a practical note tying all of the above together: I am told by a friend with experience in the American adoption bueracracy that, while there is generally a waiting period of years to adopt a white American baby, “you can adopt an African-American baby tomorrow.” Sounds like an opportunity for American Christians of all colors to take seriously!