Racial Unity Quotes

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Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.
Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
Through love, tribes have been intermixing colors to reveal a new rainbow world. And as more time passes, this racial and cultural blending will make it harder for humans to side with one race, nation or religion over another.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
To become a true global citizen, one must abandon all notions of 'otherness' and instead embrace 'togetherness'. The world is no longer white, black, yellow and brown. Through love, tribes have been intermixing colors to reveal a new rainbow world. And as more time passes, this racial and cultural blending will make it harder for humans to side with one race, nation or religion over another. Therefore, practical wisdom should be used to abandon any cultural, social, religious, tribal, and national beliefs of alterity altogether. This is the only way mankind will truly evolve. Segregation is a word of the past. Unity is the key to a peaceful future.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden,then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence?
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
You can never really, truly, understand discrimination unless you've been fuckin' ugly. Ugly people face as much, or more, discrimination than any fuckin' minority group, and they have none of the...recourse. ... You don't have any group that's going to come together and fight for your rights...'cause there's no unity among the ugly. ... And ugly isn't even a minority! We're the fuckin' majority, and we still take the fuckin' backseat! ... Any minority would rather be called the worst racial slur according to their group than pointed out as unattractive: someone calls you a nigger, a lot of people fuckin' bunch up around you and go 'what the fuck you say to him?!'; someone calls you dog-dick-fuckin'-ugly, you wear that all by yourself.
Doug Stanhope
The disease of intolerance is not communicated only in religious groups. I’ve seen it infect racial groups, economic groups and even whole nations (where it is often cleverly disguised as patriotism). Intolerance always fences people out. It creates one group we call US. And the rest we call THEM.
Steve Goodier
And all Negroes at some period of their lives there is that yearning for a sense of group unity that is the yearning of men for a flag: for a unity that cannot be compromised, that cannot be bought; that is conscious of itself, of its strength, that is militant.
Ralph Ellison
Because the more familiar term “racial reconciliation” implies a preexisting harmony and unity, we propose the use of the term “racial conciliation.
Soong-Chan Rah (Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery)
Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
Robert H. Jackson
There were moments of racial unity. Lawrence Goodwyn found in east Texas an unusual coalition of black and white public officials: it had begun during Reconstruction and continued into the Populist period. The state government was in the control of white Democrats, but in Grimes County, blacks won local offices and sent legislators to the state capital. The district clerk was a black man; there were black deputy sheriffs and a black school principal. A night-riding White Man’s Union used intimidation and murder to split the coalition, but Goodwyn points to “the long years of interracial cooperation in Grimes County” and wonders about missed opportunities.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
Black anti-semitism is a form of underdog resentment and envy, directed at another underdog who has made it in American society. The remarkable upward mobility of American Jews--rooted chiefly in a history and culture that places a premium on higher education and self-organization--easily lends itself to myths of Jewish unity and homogeneity that have gained currency among other groups, especially among relatively unorganized groups like black Americans. The high visibility of Jews in the upper reaches of the academy, journalism, the entertainment industry, and the professions--though less so percentage-wise in corporate America and national political office--is viewed less as a result of hard work and success fairly won and more as a matter of favoritism and nepotism among Jews. Ironically, calls for black solidarity and achievement are often modeled on myths of Jewish unity--as both groups respond to American xenophobia and racism. But in times such as these, some blacks view Jews as obstacles rather than allies in the struggle for racial justice.
Cornel West
Colorblind theology denies Christ’s power to heal racial divisions, disparities, and injustices by ignoring their ongoing impact. Colorblind theology undermines unity in the church by refusing to acknowledge significant ethnic differences or address significant problems.
Eric Mason (Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice)
The world is no longer white, black, yellow and brown. Through love, tribes have been intermixing colors to reveal a new rainbow world. And as more time passes, this racial and cultural blending will make it harder for humans to side with one race, nation or religion over another.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
Racism quickly came to color the English usage of the Sanskrit word arya, the word that the Vedic poets used to refer to themselves, meaning “Us” or “Good Guys,” long before anyone had a concept of race. Properly speaking, “Aryan” (as it became in English) designates a linguistic family, not a racial group (just as Indo-European is basically a linguistic rather than demographic term); there are no Aryan noses, only Aryan verbs, no Aryan people, only Aryan-speaking people. Granted, the Sanskrit term does refer to people rather than to a language. But the people who spoke *Indo-European were not a people in the sense of a nation (for they may never have formed a political unity) or a race, but only in the sense of a linguistic community.10 After all those migrations, the blood of several different races had mingled in their veins.
Wendy Doniger (The Hindus: An Alternative History)
Jesus’s final prayer was oriented around a vision for unity, and he commissioned his church to be the healing agent that brings the ministry of reconciliation into broken and fractured places in society. And yet an honest assessment raises more questions than answers. Is the church at large, and are we as individuals, currently making any contribution to healing the divisions? Or are we making things worse? Have we come to grips with our role in creating this divide, or are we stuck in a state of denial?
LaTasha Morrison (Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation)
the future of this country is all about patriotic, unity-inducing language. Post-Racial. Trans–Jim Crow. Epi-Traumatic. Alt-Reparational. Omni-Restitutional. Jingoistic Body-Positive. Sociocultural-Transcendental. Indigenous-Ripostic. Treaty of Fort Laramie–Perpendicular. Meta-Exculpatory. Pan-Political. Uber-Intermutual. MLK-Adjacent. Demi-Arcadian Bucolic.
Jason Mott (Hell of a Book)
We don’t necessarily need any more famous Christians. We need more faithful Christians
H.B. Charles Jr. (A Biblical Answer for Racial Unity)
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I would like to see an America where people of any race, color or creed may live on a plane of cultural, material well-being, cooperating unhindered by sectarian, racial, or factional prejudices that do nobody any good.
Langston Hughes (Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings)
In view of the mess we have made of crystal-clear commands--the unity of the church, love as a mark of Christians, racial and economic justice, the importance of personal purity, the dangers of wealth--I tremble to think what we would do if some of the ambiguous doctrines were less ambiguous.
Philip Yancey (Reaching for the Invisible God)
That was when I realized that the world is demanding something more of me. That was also when I realized that the world is demanding something more of the church. People like Mavis are watching us and wondering why we remain silent on the critical social issues of our day. Why aren’t we more involved? Why aren’t we pitching in to solve the problems of racial injustice, gender disparity and social inequity in our world? When unarmed young black men are shot and killed in the United States, why are so many Christians silent as we watch these events unfold? When over 200 schoolgirls are abducted in Nigeria or 148 college students are shot to death in Kenya or 43 abducted in Mexico, why is the Christian community not standing in greater solidarity with them? Mavis would have every right, still today, to look us in the eye and demand answers.
Brenda Salter McNeil (Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice)
I look forward to seeing you in the “jungle” as our warriors meet and join the battle drum that calls for unity in the struggle for breaking the chains of modern slavery—like the butterflies flying the skies and the birds over the seas, all are welcomed for both ear and eye—promises of victory are high, for even if unattainable today, tomorrow still holds the torch and dream, like fire of paradise, glory of life, glory of eternity!
Martin Guevara Urbina (Twenty-first Century Dynamics of Multiculturalism: Beyond Post-racial America)
The unity of humanity can be explained in a mystical way, as Emerson did with his term “over-soul” (see below); but it can also be put into scientific terms. Science has revealed that all human beings belong to one species, with the same anatomy and brain structure. We’re all part of one family; descended, in fact, from one common ancestor. Racial and cultural differences are only secondary and surface—the unity of humanity is primary and fundamental.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Everyday Emerson: The Wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson Paraphrased)
The people’s hero does not only have to be someone in possession of the scepter of power. It can be anyone capable of giving unity, prosperity, security, peace and a sense of worthiness to his people. Such a figure gets elevated to the status of a revered hero with the human touch if he imparts a sense of oneness on a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious group; especially a diverse people who have been fighting one another for years and centuries...
Janvier Chando (The Union Moujik: Janvier Chando &)
...The people’s hero does not only have to be someone in possession of the scepter of power. It can be anyone capable of giving unity, prosperity, security, peace and a sense of worthiness to his people. Such a figure gets elevated to the status of a revered hero with the human touch if he imparts a sense of oneness on a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious group; especially a diverse people who have been fighting one another for years and centuries...
Janvier Chouteu-Chando (The Union Moujik)
which Trump released as one of the last acts of his presidency, on Martin Luther King Day. Written without input from any scholars who specialize in American history, it sought to reinforce the exceptional nature of our country, and to put forth a “patriotic” narrative that downplays racism and inequality and emphasizes a unity predicated on seeing slavery, segregation, and ongoing racial injustice as aberrations in a fundamentally just and exceptionally free nation.21
Nikole Hannah-Jones (The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story)
My one ambition is to get all Americans to realize that they are, and must continue to be, the greatest Race on the face of this old Earth, and second, to realize that whatever apparent Differences there may be among us, in wealth, knowledge, skill, ancestry or strength—though, of course, all this does not apply to people who are racially different from us—we are all brothers, bound together in the great and wonderful bond of National Unity, for which we should all be very glad.
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
The reason we haven’t solved the race problem in America after hundreds of years is that people apart from God are trying to create unity, while people under God who already have unity are not living out the unity we possess. The result of both of these conditions is disastrous for America. Our failure to find cultural unity as a nation is directly related to the church’s failure to preserve our spiritual unity. The church has already been given unity because we’ve been made part of the same family. An interesting point to note about family is that you don’t have to get family to be family. A family already is a family. But sometimes you do have to get family to act like family. In the family of God, this is done through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. A perfect example of spiritual unity came on the Day of Pentecost when God’s people spoke with other tongues (Acts 2:4). When the Holy Spirit showed up, people spoke in languages they didn’t know so that people from a variety of backgrounds could unite under the cross of Jesus Christ. The people who heard the apostles speak on the Day of Pentecost were from all over the world, representing at least sixteen different geographical areas, racial categories, or ethnic groups (Acts 2:8–11). But in spite of the great diversity, they found true oneness in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual oneness always and only comes to those who are under God’s authority because in that reality He enables them with the power of His Spirit.
John M. Perkins (One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love)
Yet another tactic was offered the Negro. He was encouraged to seek unity with the millions of disadvantaged whites of the South, whose basic need for social change paralleled his own. Theoretically, this proposal held a measure of logic, for it is undeniable that great masses of southern whites exist in conditions scarcely better than those which afflict the Negro. But the rationale of this theory wilted under the heat of fact. The need for immediate change was more urgently felt and more bitterly realized by the Negro than by the exploited white. As individuals, the whites could better their situation without the barrier that society places in front of a man whose racial identification by color is inescapable. Moreover, the underprivileged southern whites saw the color that separated them from Negroes more clearly than they saw the circumstances that bound them together in mutual interest. Negroes were therefore forced to face the fact that, in the South, they must move without allies; and yet the coiled power of state force made such a prospect appear both futile and quixotic.
Martin Luther King Jr. (Why We Can't Wait)
In an effort to demonstrate their commitment to a genuinely multiracial, working-class movement against white elites, the Populists made strides toward racial integration, a symbol of their commitment to class-based unity. African Americans throughout the South responded with great hope and enthusiasm, eager to be true partners in a struggle for social justice. According to Woodward, “It is altogether probable that during the brief Populist upheaval in the nineties Negroes and native whites achieved a greater comity of mind and harmony of political purpose than ever before or since in the South.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
I long for models of solidarity and human unity and difference rooted in friendship, work, partially shared purposes, intractable collective pain, inescapable mortality, and persistent hope. It is time to theorize an ‘unfamiliar’ unconscious, a different primal scene, where everything does not stem from the dramas of identity and reproduction. Ties through blood—including blood recast in the coin of genes and information— have been bloody enough already. I believe that there will be no racial or sexual peace, no livable nature, until we learn to produce humanity through something more and less than kinship.
Donna J. Haraway (Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience)
A Prayer for Humility Lord, we ask that the words of this book fall on the soil of our hearts. Come into our brokenness and our lives with your love that heals all. Consume our pride and replace it with humility and vulnerability. Allow us to make space for your correction and redemption. Allow us to bow down with humble hearts, hearts of repentance. Bind us together in true unity and restoration. May we hear your voice within the words of these pages. Give us collective eyes to see our role in repairing what has been broken. Allow these words to be a conduit for personal transformation that would lead to collective reproduction. —LATASHA MORRISON
LaTasha Morrison (Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation)
Out of the travails through which the world is passing, a new order is bound to emerge based on a knowledge of the universal Spirit. But this cannot be achieved by the efforts of politicians, diplomats, and administrators whose vision is warped by narrow considerations of personal, national, and racial self-interest. The transformation can be brought about only by divinely inspired saints and sages who have experienced the universal vision of Truth or God, who are perfectly selfless and whose hearts are ever filled with love for all. (...) International conflicts, religious wrangles, social injustices, economic exploitations, and political tyrannies are all found, in the ultimate analysis, to spring from selfishness born of the failure to realize the unity and universality of the Spirit.
Ramdas (The Essential Swami Ramdas (Library of Perennial Philosophy))
Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.” Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.” Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.” Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.” Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.” The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.” She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.” (...) “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.” She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.” He said, “And you’re funny.” She said, “And we love you.
John C. Wright (The Phoenix Exultant (Golden Age, #2))
Today we place lots of emphasis on increasing racial diversity in our churches. That’s a good thing. It’s needed. But there’s more to having a genuinely mosaic church than just racial and socioeconomic diversity. We also have to learn to work through the passionate and mutually exclusive opinions that we have in the realms of politics, theology, and ministry priorities. The world is watching to see if our modern-day Simon the Zealots and Matthew the tax collectors can learn to get along for the sake of the Lord Jesus. If not, we shouldn’t be surprised if it no longer listens to us. Jesus warned us that people would have a hard time believing that he was the Son of God and that we were his followers if we couldn’t get along. Whenever we fail to play nice in the sandbox, we give people on the outside good reason to write us off, shake their heads in disgust, and ask, “What kind of Father would have a family like that?”1 BEARING WITH ONE ANOTHER To create and maintain the kind of unity that exalts Jesus as Lord of all, we have to learn what it means to genuinely bear with one another. I fear that for lots of Christians today, bearing with one another is nothing more than a cliché, a verse to be memorized but not a command to obey.2 By definition, bearing with one another is an act of selfless obedience. It means dying to self and overlooking things I’d rather not overlook. It means working out real and deep differences and disagreements. It means offering to others the same grace, mercy, and patience when they are dead wrong as Jesus offers to me when I’m dead wrong. As I’ve said before, I’m not talking about overlooking heresy, embracing a different gospel, or ignoring high-handed sin. But I am talking about agreeing to disagree on matters of substance and things we feel passionate about. If we overlook only the little stuff, we aren’t bearing with one another. We’re just showing common courtesy.
Larry Osborne (Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith)
[W]e made the mistake of assuming that there is something inevitable about democracy - you know, that it's a - you don't really have to do anything. If you just sit still, it will come because it's the natural way that human beings are. And, you know, we forgot about, first of all, how turbulent our own democracy has been over 200 years, and we also forgot about the deep appeal of autocracy and the power of extremism. You know, there are people - there is a part of every society that's deeply bothered by rapid change - that dislikes - you know, whether it's the election of Obama or whether it's racial integration or whether it's rapid economic change - you know, that dislikes change, wants it to stop, dislikes political strife, wants it to end and prefers to be within a homogenous movement where everybody's united. It's funny - there's a kind of deep human desire for unity, and this is what autocrats see and intuitively understand and why some of them have been able to hold power.
Anne Applebaum
Virginia lawmakers made slave patrols compulsory for non-slaveholding Whites; these groups of White citizens were charged with policing slaves, enforcing discipline, and guarding routes of escape. The Virginia legislature also denied Blacks the ability to hold office. Evoking repeatedly the term “christian white servant” and defining their rights, Virginia lawmakers fully married Whiteness and Christianity, uniting rich White enslavers and the non-slaveholding White poor. To seal the unity (and racial loyalty), Virginia’s White lawmakers seized and sold all property owned by “any slave,” the “profit thereof applied to the use of the poor of the said parish.” The story would be told many times in American history: Black property legally or illegally seized; the resulting Black destitution blamed on Black inferiority; the past discrimination ignored when the blame was assigned. Virginia’s 1705 code mandated that planters provide freed White servants with fifty acres of land. The resulting White prosperity was then attributed to White superiority.
Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
India’s success in building a modern state that defied predictions of its demise derived from its thorough insistence on institutionalizing what was Mahatma Gandhi’s greatest bequest to the freedom movement: the construction of a new Indian nation, not by suppressing its many particularities but by incorporating them into a new composite identity that preserved in “marble-cake” fashion all its constituent diversities across ethnic, religious, and racial lines. These diversities, far from being obliterated, acquired salience depending on context but, being enmeshed and free-flowing, they erased the boundaries between the insular and national identities, congealing the latter even as they preserved the former. The modern Indian polity, therefore, emerged not as a nation-state since, given its myriad diversities, it could not be so—but rather as a nations-state. Under the rubric of “unity in diversity,” its different ethnic, religious, and racial groups combined to create a novel, multilayered political identity. However confusing that reality may be to the outside world, it is authentically and indisputably Indian.
Bibek Debroy (Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform)
The threat of difference has been no less blinding to people of Color. Those of us who are Black must see that the reality of our lives and our struggle does not make us immune to the errors of ignoring and misnaming difference. Within Black communities where racism is a living reality, differences among us often seem dangerous and suspect. The need for unity is often misnamed as a need for homogeneity, and a Black feminist vision mistaken for betrayal of our common interests as a people. Because of the continuous battle against racial erasure that Black women and Black men share, some Black women still refuse to recognize that we are also oppressed as women, and that sexual hostility against Black women is practiced not only by the white racist society, but implemented within our Black communities as well. It is a disease striking the heart of Black nationhood, and silence will not make it disappear. Exacerbated by racism and the pressures of powerlessness, violence against Black women and children often becomes a standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured. But these woman-hating acts are rarely discussed as crimes against Black women.
Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)
FORGIVENESS The political score from four scores ago doesn't matter to anyone anymore. So why are we still keeping a tally of all the scores? If we are not applying the lessons to be gained from yesterday's history to address the problems of today - then why does any of it matter? Does Babe Ruth's baseball score from 1917 matter to us today? No. Does it matter that Gandhi bickered with his wife, or that Lincoln got into a brawl over Sally at a bar? No. Then why do tribal matches that happened thousands of years ago still mean so much to us today? To keep us from moving forward? To remind us of our racial differences and indifference? To revive tribal bitterness? And what father or God would want his children to keep a record of every argument they have ever had with each other - if there is nothing positive - only harm - to be gained by constantly reminding them? Would a wise man steer his followers to hold onto past hurts - or to squeeze them for every drop of wisdom that could be gained from them - then release them? Isn't forgiveness a holy virtue? And if so, then why do we insist on keeping historical records of resentment? Is the Creator an advocate of love or hate? And if love, then why are we still pushing so much hatred? What is there ever to be gained from vocalizing hatred? Only MORE hatred. Who wants that? And why?
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
Liberty which is paraded in the West as a holy grail to keep the masses quiet, descends on their necks as a rubber truncheon when they organise to demand their real liberties, their basic rights to work, to land, to a secure future. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world today who have decided that liberty is something to do with everyday life and work. They are not interested in a liberty of the press to promote religious and racial hatreds; not interested in a liberty for publishers to flood bookstalls with pornographic literature; not interested in the liberty of scientists to devote their best brains to inventing hydrogen bombs or other means of destroying the world; not interested even in the theoretical liberty of the ballot box to decide between two groups of political parties both bent on maintaining the privileges of one tiny group of people over the great majority of the population. If the same advance is made in the next twenty years as has been made in the past five years in bringing real liberties to the workers and peasants of the People's Democracies, and if the Western powers give up their morbid plans to destroy the People's Democracies by force of arms and the hydrogen bomb, the whole population will be enjoying liberties of a quality not yet dreamed of in the Western world. [From Chapter 16 of People's Democracies (World Unity Publications, 1951), pp. 277-287.]
Wilfred G. Burchett (Rebel Journalism: The Writings of Wilfred Burchett)
There are two reasons for white Christianity—churches, fellowships, ministries—to pursue solidarity rather than first seeking to become multiracial/ ethnic/ cultural. First, as we have already seen, racial segregation is less about separateness than about the material damages of our racially unjust society. It is possible to build a multiracial ministry that leaves structures of racism and white supremacy totally undisturbed. In fact, it is easy for multiracial churches to bend toward the comfort of white people rather than the well-being of people of color. Focusing on solidarity moves the focus away from shallow togetherness onto the priorities and flourishing of Christians of color. “White American Christians in our society,” writes Drew G. I. Hart, “must do something seemingly absurd and unnatural, yet very Christian in orientation: they must move decisively toward a counterintuitive solidarity with those on the margins. They must allow the eyes of the violated of the land to lead and guide them, seeking to have renewed minds no longer conformed to the patterns of our world.” 2 The second reason for making solidarity our goal is that every expression of white Christianity can pursue gospel reconciliation immediately. Rather than outsourcing this essential Christian vocation to multiracial churches or to congregations in urban or racially diverse regions, every white congregation can contribute to the unity of the body of Christ across lines of cultural division. In fact, given what we have observed about the particular injustices associated with racial whiteness, it’s not a stretch to say that white churches have a front-lines role in the spiritual battle for reconciliation.
David W. Swanson (Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity)
The diversity of India is tremendous; it is obvious: it lies on the surface and anybody can see it. It concerns itself with physical appearances as well as with certain mental habits and traits. There is little in common, to outward seeming, between the Pathan of the Northwest and the Tamil in the far South. Their racial stocks are not the same, though there may be common strands running through them; they differ in face and figure, food and clothing, and, of course, language … The Pathan and Tamil are two extreme examples; the others lie somewhere in between. All of them have still more the distinguishing mark of India. It is fascinating to find how the Bengalis, the Marathas, the Gujaratis, the Tamils, the Andhras, the Oriyas, the Assamese, the Canarese, the Malayalis, the Sindhis, the Punjabis, the Pathans, the Kashmiris, the Rajputs, and the great central block comprising the Hindustani-speaking people, have retained their peculiar characteristics for hundreds of years, have still more or less the same virtues and failings of which old tradition or record tells us, and yet have been throughout these ages distinctively Indian, with the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities.    There was something living and dynamic about this heritage, which showed itself in ways of living and a philosophical attitude to life and its problems. Ancient India, like ancient China, was a world in itself, a culture and a civilization which gave shape to all things. Foreign influences poured in and often influenced that culture and were absorbed. Disruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to an attempt to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of beliefs and customs was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged.    In ancient and medieval times, the idea of the modern nation was non-existent, and feudal, religious, racial, and cultural bonds had more importance. Yet I think that at almost any time in recorded history an Indian would have felt more or less at home in any part of India, and would have felt as a stranger and alien in any other country. He would certainly have felt less of a stranger in countries which had partly adopted his culture or religion. Those, such as Christians, Jews, Parsees, or Moslems, who professed a religion of non-Indian origin or, coming to India, settled down there, became distinctively Indian in the course of a few generations. Indian converts to some of these religions never ceased to be Indians on account of a change of their faith. They were looked upon in other countries as Indians and foreigners, even though there might have been a community of faith between them.6
Fali S. Nariman (Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography)
That’s the kind of moral resistance people are yearning for. They’re yearning for unity and a sense of humanity that will give us the strength necessary to survive very difficult conditions. If we’re going to change the system, if we’re going to have economic and racial justice, it’s going to take resistance driven by compassion.
Rowan Blanchard (Together We Rise: Behind the Scenes at the Protest Heard Around the World)
Perhaps the time has come to give up the racial bribes and begin an honest conversation about race in America. The topic of the conversation should be how us can come to include all of us. Accomplishing this degree of unity may mean giving up fierce defense of policies and strategies that exacerbate racial tensions and produce for racially defined groups primarily psychological or cosmetic racial benefits. Of course, if meaningful progress is to be made, whites must give up their racial bribes too, and be willing to sacrifice their racial privilege. Some might argue that in this game of chicken, whites should make the first move. Whites should demonstrate that their silence in the drug war cannot be bought by tacit assurances that their sons and daughters will not be rounded up en masse and locked away. Whites should prove their commitment to dismantling not only mass incarceration, but all of the structures of racial inequality that guarantee for whites the resilience of white privilege. After all, why should “we” give up our racial bribes if whites have been unwilling to give up theirs? In light of our nation’s racial history, that seems profoundly unfair. But if your strategy for racial justice involves waiting for whites to be fair, history suggests it will be a long wait. It’s not that white people are more unjust than others. Rather it seems that an aspect of human nature is the tendency to cling tightly to one’s advantages and privileges and to rationalize the suffering and exclusion of others. This tendency is what led Frederick Douglass to declare that “power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
Personalism therefore includes among its leading ideas, the affirmation of the unity of mankind, both in space and time, which was foreshadowed by certain schools of thought in the latter days of antiquity and confirmed in the Judeo-Christian tradition. For the Christian there are neither citizens nor barbarians, neither bond nor free, neither Jew nor gentile, neither white, black or yellow, but only men created in the image of God and called to salvation in Christ. The conception of a human race with a collective history and destiny, from which no individual destiny can be separated, is one of the sovereign ideas of the Fathers of the Church. In a secularised form, this is the animating principle of eighteenth century cosmopolitanism, and later of Marxism. It is flatly opposed to the ideas of absolute discontinuity between free spirits (as in Sartre) or between civilizations (in Malraux or Frobenius). It is against every form of racialism or of caste, against the ‘elimination of the abnormal’ , the contempt of the foreigner, against the totalitarians’ denigration of political adversaries—in short, it is altogether against the fabrication of scapegoats. Any man, however different, or even degraded, remains a man, for whom we ought to make a human way of life possible.
Emmanuel Mounier (Personalism)
If we are to make the ordinary man aware of the spiritual uity out of which asll the separate activities of our civilization have arisen, it is necessary in the first place to look at Western civilization as a whole and to treat it wit the same objective appreciation and respect which the humanists of the past devoted to the civilization of antiquity. This does not seem much to ask; yet there have always been a number of reasons which stood in the way of its fulfillment. In the first place, there has been the influence of modern nationalism, which has led every European people to insist on what distinguished it from the rest, instead of what united it with them. It is not necessary to seek for examples in the extremism of German racial nationalists and their crazy theories, proving that everything good in the world comes from men with Germanic blood. Leaving all these extravagances out of account, we still have the basic fact that modern education in general teaches men the history of their country and the literature of their own tongue, as though these were complete wholes and not part of a greater unity. In the second place, there has been the separation between religion and culture, which arose partly from the bitterness of the internal divisions of Christendom and partly from a fear lest the transcendent divine values of Christianity should be endangered by any identification or association of them with the relative human values of culture. Both these factors have been at work, long before our civilization was actually secularized. They had their origins in the Reformation period, and it was Martin Luther in particular who stated the theological dualism of faith and works in such a drastic form as to leave no room for any positive conception of a Christian culture, such as had hitherto been taken for granted. And in the third place, the vast expansion of Western civilization in modern times has led to a loss of any standard of comparison or any recognition of its limits in time and space. Western civilization has ceased to be one civilization amongst others: it became civilization in the absolute sense. It is the disappearance or decline of this naive absolutism and the reappearance of a sense of the relative and limited character of Western civilization as a particular historic culture, which are the characteristic features of the present epoch.
Christopher Henry Dawson (Understanding Europe (Works of Christopher Dawson))
Certainly, what Kant calls the transcendental reference, experience and object of experience are in a sense present in both opposed views of the nature of the subjective *a-priori*. In both cases the object must 'order itself' according to the rules of the knowing mind or its functions, irrespective of whether the specific function of cognition is based on a systematic construction, synthetization, formation of the object from 'given' sensational material or on a methodical selection-process (suppression, abstraction, disregard) imposed on a self-constituting object. For if the order of selection in which the fulness of the world, as it is in ipseity, reaches man (or a particular kind of man, e.g., a type of racial or cultural unity) is so governed that an object of essence *B* is only given when an object of essence *A* has already been given (if, that is to say, *A* has datum-priority over *B* in order of time―not necessarily in direct succession), then if an object *X* is simultaneously of essence *A* and *B*, everything which is true of *A* must necessarily be true of *X*―not vice versa. For example, if spatiality and extensity have strict perceptual priority over all essential properties of matter and corporeality, geometry must be strictly valid for all possible bodies. But the same principle, the applicability of geometry to all bodies without exception, would still hold good if Kant's doctrine were true―though it denies the very reality of extension and space, and explains the spatial form as merely a subjective aspect of the datum. Thus in both cases the transcendental validity of the so-called *a-priori*, even for the objects of experience, would persist, so that in itself it offers us *no* criterion of choice between one or other *hypothesis*―that which supposes a synthetic addition of the form on the part of the spontaneous mind, or the other, which postulates an ordered selection in conformity with foreknown essences." ―from_On the Eternal in Man_. The Nature of Philosophy, with a new introduction by Graham McAleer
Max Scheler
In 2012 they elected Fred Luter as the first African American president of the denomination...."A descendant of slaves elected to lead a denomination forged to protect the evil interest of slaveholders is a sign of the power of a gospel that crucifies injustice and reconciles brothers and sisters." "We thought it was time to stop talking about racial unity in positions of leadership within our convention" and "put a president out there
John M. Perkins
Hispanic" and "Latino" are terms whose descriptive legitimacy is premised on a startling lack of specificity. The categories encompass any and all individuals living in the United States who trace their ancestry to the Spanish-speaking regions of Latin America and the Caribbean; Latinos hail from Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, and beyond-more than twenty countries in all. Such inclusivity is part of the problem: "Hispanic" and "Latino" tell us nothing about country of origin, gender, citizenship status, economic class, or length of residence in the United States. An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala is Hispanic; so is a third-generation Mexican American lawyer. Moreover, both categories are racially indeterminate: Latinos can be white, black, indigenous, and every combination thereof. In other words, characterizing a subject as either "Hispanic" or "Latino" is an exercise in opacity-the terms are so comprehensive that their explanatory power is limited. When referring to "Latinos in the United States," it is far from immediately clear whether the subjects under discussion are farmworkers living below the poverty line or middle-class homeowners, urban hipsters or rural evangelicals, white or black, gay or straight, Catholic or Jewish, undocumented Spanish monolinguals or fourth-generation speakers of English-only.
Cristina Beltrán (The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity)
To be racially mixed is to represent unity, to synthesize, to integrate.
Ilan Stavans (The United States of Mestizo)
Pastor, when those White police officers were terrorizing me, I saw them as less than human. I saw them as maggots. If I’d had a nuclear grenade, I would have detonated it and killed them and me. They filled me with hate.” But he told me, “Then I realized I was a bigot too. But I knew as a Christian, I cannot hate these men. I must love. I want to preach a gospel strong enough to heal this madness and hatred.”[2] JP writes, For too long, many in the Church have argued that unity in the body of Christ across ethnic and class lines is a separate issue from the gospel. There has been the suggestion that we can be reconciled to God without being reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Scripture doesn’t bear that out. . . . It’s going to take intentionally multiethnic and multicultural churches to bust through the chaos and confusion of the present moment and redirect our gaze to the revolutionary gospel of reconciliation.[3]
Derwin L. Gray (How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation)
She had said this with such ease and a spirit of community and camaraderie, of unity in the multiplicity instead of difference.
Farzana Nayani (Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World)
There may be other cultures or races or social groups you have been conditional to fear or even hate. But as a legendary woman, you must choose to see beyond the labels. The Word says that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). We are all one in Christ Jesus, so the legendary woman will not let social or cultural barriers stand in her way. She will choose love...Legendary women must actively find ways to cross racial barriers embedded in our world systems.
Michelle McClain-Walters (Legendary Woman: Partnering With God to Become the Heroine of Your Own Story)
The baptism with the Spirit is the act of the Holy Spirit joining together into a spiritual unity people of diverse racial extractions and diverse social backgrounds so that they form the body of Christ — the ekklēsia.
George Eldon Ladd (A Theology of the New Testament)
You may have desegregated your leadership team, but that does not mean you have an integrated team. Integration means incorporating diverse perspectives, people, and practices into an organization so that the culture expands to include diversity while maintaining unity.
Jemar Tisby (How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice)
The Church, in the name of Christ, tells us to love others and enjoy our cultural and racial and personal differences as gifts. Unity in society is possible when differences are recognized as gifts to be shared.
Francis E. George
According to Paul, the wisdom of God is most clearly demonstrated, not in eloquent, anointed preaching or exuberant, intense worship — but through racial and ethnic unity in the church. In
J.D. Greear (Gaining By Losing: Why the Future Belongs to Churches that Send (Exponential Series))
The cause underlying all others is racial. It is explained in their names. The theology of one had its roots in Greek Philosophy; that of the other in Roman Law. One tended to a brilliant diversity, the other to centralization and unity. One was a group of Ecclesiastical States, a Hierarchy and a Polyarchy, governed by Patriarchs, each supreme in his own diocese; the other was a Monarchy, arbitrarily and diplomatically governed from one center. It was the difference between an archipelago and a continent, and not unlike the difference between ancient Greece and Rome. One had the tremendous principle of growth, stability, and permanence; the other had not. Such were the race tendencies which led to entirely different ecclesiastical systems.
Mary Platt Parmele (A Short History of Russia)
The postulate of national unity that informs the North American Constitution has determined the invariable rule that no territory shall be admitted as a state until the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic elements have obtained definitive ascendancy. The racial, religious, and cultural elements are primordial in considering the possibility of admission of a community to statehood or as a province.
Pedro Campos (Free Puerto Rico)
In the eyes of many Malayans, it was a zero-sum game. Help for one race was viewed as a loss for another. Loyalty to the country would be difficult to nurture among the immigrant races if they felt they were second-class citizens politically. Acceptance of the immigrants by the Malays would be hard since they felt they should be favored over the immigrants. Unity and equity – could they be reconciled? It has been said that “high tides raise all boats,” and perhaps rapid economic growth could help solve the racial problems.
Anonymous
The claimed “hard work” or “nose-to-the-grindstone” method of white wealth creation is Euro-mythology in its purest form—another psychological trick designed to suggest that Black poverty is merely a sign of Black laziness and Black inferiority. There is a very logical reason why whites did the “hard work” of constructing thousands of ships to sail thousands of miles to kidnap millions of Africans to work as slave laborers for hundreds of years—and it is not because those people are lazy. Indeed, they are the most productive, creative, and industrious people who ever lived. The racist, exploitative behaviors committed by whites are not the random acts of rogue Caucasians, but the highly efficient tactical operation of a dedicated people acting in unity on the perfected European principle of racial domination. Whites feign ignorance of these extraordinary injustices when they prescribe “HARD WORK” for the children of their former slaves. Dr.
Reclamation Project (How White Folks Got So Rich: The Untold Story of American White Supremacy (The Architecture of White Supremacy Book 1))
Politically, Pakistan is a state which was deliberately created, not on an economic, linguistic, or racial basis, but on that of religious unity. This does not mean, however, that religions other than Islam are not tolerated or their adherents persecuted. On the contrary, I saw the churches and temples of many religions, including a Jewish synagogue, a Hindu temple, and the Towers of Silence on the top of which Parsees expose their dead to be devoured by vultures.
Carveth Wells (Road to Shalimar)
The cause underlying all others is racial. It is explained in their names. The theology of one had its roots in Greek Philosophy; that of the other in Roman Law. One tended to a brilliant diversity, the other to centralization and unity. One was a group of Ecclesiastical States, a Hierarchy and a Polyarchy, governed by Patriarchs, each supreme in his own diocese; the other was a Monarchy, arbitrarily and diplomatically governed from one center. It was the difference between an archipelago and a continent, and not unlike the difference between ancient Greece and Rome.
Mary Platt Parmele (A Short History of Russia)
The view which would base the unity of a local church on a political, racial or cultural principle is considered by the Orthodox Church as a heresy, specially known by the name of philetism.
Vladimir Lossky (The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church)
As we continued to watch, the scenes accelerated forward, and we could see individuals remembering their spiritual missions at increasingly younger ages. Here we could see the precise understanding that would soon embody the new spiritual world-view. Individuals would come of age and remember themselves as souls born from one dimension of existence into another. Although memory loss during the transition would be expected, recapturing pre-life memory would become an important early goal of education. As youths, our teachers would first guide us through the early experience of synchronicity; urge us to identify our intuitions to study certain subjects, to visit particular places, always looking for higher answers as to why we were pursuing these particular paths. As the full memory of the Insights emerged, we would find ourselves involved with certain groups, working on particular projects, bringing in our full vision of what we had wanted to do. And finally we would recover the underlying intention behind our lives. We would know that we came here to raise the vibratory level of this planet, to discover and protect the beauty and energy of its natural sites, and to ensure that all humans had access to these special locations, so that we could continue to increase our energy, ultimately instituting the Afterlife culture here in the physical. Such a worldview would especially shift the way we looked at other people. No longer would we see human beings merely in the racial dress or national origin of one particular lifetime. Instead, we would see others as brother or sister souls, engaged, like us, in a process of coming awake and of spiritualizing the planet. It would become known that the settling of certain souls into various geographical locations on the planet had occurred with great meaning. Each nation was, in fact, an enclave of specific spiritual information, shared and modeled by its citizens, information waiting to be learned and integrated. As I watched the future unfold, I could see that a world political unity, envisioned by so many, was finally being achieved— not by forcing all nations into subservience to one political body, but rather through a grassroots acknowledgment of our spiritual similarities while treasuring our local autonomy and cultural differences. As with individuals interacting in a group, each member of the family of nations was being recognized for this culture truth represented to the world at large. Before us, we saw Earth’s political struggles, so often violent, shifting into a war of words. As the tide of remembrance continued to sweep the planet, all humans began to understand that our destiny was to discuss and compare the perspectives of our relative religions and, while honoring the best of their individual doctrines at the personal level, ultimately to see that each religion supplemented the others and to integrate them into a synthesized global spirituality.
James Redfield (The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (Celestine Prophecy #2))
The common humanity and anti-racism of the civil rights movement had strong ties to Christianity. And Christianity promoted the value of interracial harmony: unity in Christ. But the appeal of Christianity has since waned—especially among liberal white Americans and young black Americans, and the resulting vacuum has given neoracism—a far more racially divisive ideology—a place to settle.
Coleman Hughes (The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America)
Can you imagine how different the church would be? God’s people are to be salt and light, a means of grace to a world deeply divided. Our unity in Christ, fueled by holy living, becomes a lighthouse in an ocean of chaos.
Derwin L. Gray (How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation)
Reformists and Capacianists definitely believe in their own ideologies. I mean, we even made names for those movements. However, both of us— and yes, I admit that us Reformists do it, too—have not directed our potentials to acknowledge one another’s capabilities. I swear, I will try to change the name Reformation, and hopefully, Capacianists won’t replicate the same intolerance we showed them in the past. You know what? I wouldn’t be surprised if the person who suggested the enforcement of African education bans and the Triangular Slave Trade to the Museum of Recreation did this because of intolerance. I mean, in 2999, rights for people of color were so intense that gaining rights for people of color meant diminishing the rights of Caucasians! Everyone had this preconceived notion that Caucasians were racists, and they even arrested Caucasians simply by alleging that they were being racist without even giving them a fair trial, which is like the equivalent of wrongfully accusing Black people of being criminals. I am saying this as a person of color! If only Reformists will tolerate Capacianists, Capacianists will tolerate Reformists, and people of all races and colors will tolerate one another!
Lucy Carter (The Reformation)
Today’s veterans often come home to find that, although they’re willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live for it. It’s hard to know how to live for a country that regularly tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary. The income gap between rich and poor continues to widen, many people live in racially segregated communities, the elderly are mostly sequestered from public life, and rampage shootings happen so regularly that they only remain in the news cycle for a day or two. To make matters worse, politicians occasionally accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their own country—a charge so destructive to group unity that most past societies would probably have just punished it as a form of treason. It’s complete madness, and the veterans know this. In combat, soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion, and politics within their platoon. It’s no wonder many of them get so depressed when they come home.
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
A policy on immigration helps to determine the unity as well as the size of the population. Should Australia so select its immigrants that the society is relatively unified? Or should it select immigrants who promote diversity? Should Australia continue to be dominated by Anglo-Celtic peoples and the English language and institutions? Or should it become the new Eurasia? In choosing immigrants and the pace at which they arrive, how far should we risk social and racial tensions?
Geoffrey Blainey (All for Australia)
the revelation of the heavenly congregation provides a blueprint and a motivation to seek unity right now. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Christians have been mandated to pray that the racial and ethnic unity of the church would be manifest, even if imperfectly, in the present. Christ himself brought down “the dividing wall of hostility” that separated humanity from one another and from God (Eph. 2:14). Indeed, reconciliation across racial and ethnic lines is not something Christians must achieve but a reality we must receive. On the cross when Christ said, “It is finished,” he meant it (John 19:30). If peace has been achieved between God and human beings, surely we can have greater peace between people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Jemar Tisby (The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism)
Even though participants of color repeatedly state that whites’ refusal to acknowledge racial difference and power dynamics actually maintains racial inequity, white participants continue to insist that not talking about difference is necessary for unity.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
Sheldon George’s chapter, “Jouissance and Discontent: A Meeting of Psychoanalysis, Race and American Slavery,” provides a captivating account of Freud’s contribution to these problems. Freud contended that civilization served to usurp the individual, and interrupt the impulse gratification that is more natural and instinctive for human beings. George points out that this places the blame for human misery on civilization and culture, which renounce the pursuit of pleasure. For Freud, then, ethnicity and racial identity are regressive. Civilization moves toward unity, but ethnicity and racial identification pull us back toward the aggressive and antisocial instincts. George provides a fascinating account of the consequences of Freud’s thesis, both for psychoanalysis and the broader cultural problem of racism. Utilizing Lacan, he offers a fresh analysis of the phenomenon of American slavery and demonstrates the way race mediates the way people access jouissance. The problem at hand runs deep, and George’s chapter provides a unique perspective on the development of the modern idea of “race” and its many consequences. Donna
David M. Goodman (Race, Rage, and Resistance: Philosophy, Psychology, and the Perils of Individualism (Psychology and the Other))
To seal the unity (and racial loyalty), Virginia’s White lawmakers seized and sold all property owned by “any slave,” the “profit thereof applied to the use of the poor of the said parish.” The story would be told many times in American history: Black property legally or illegally seized; the resulting Black destitution blamed on Black inferiority; the past discrimination ignored when the blame was assigned. Virginia’s 1705 code mandated that planters provide freed White servants with fifty acres of land. The resulting White prosperity was then attributed to White superiority
Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
It’s hard to know how to live for a country that regularly tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary. The income gap between rich and poor continues to widen, many people live in racially segregated communities, the elderly are mostly sequestered from public life, and rampage shootings happen so regularly that they only remain in the news cycle for a day or two. To make matters worse, politicians occasionally accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their own country—a charge so destructive to group unity that most past societies would probably have just punished it as a form of treason.
Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
I shall argue in Chapters 7 and 8, solutions to the broader problems of economic marginality in this country, including those that stem from changes in the global economy, can go a long way toward addressing the problems of inner-city joblessness, especially if the application of resources includes wise targeting to the groups most in need of help. Discussions that emphasize common solutions to commonly shared problems promote a sense of unity, regardless of the different degrees of severity to which these problems afflict certain groups. Such messages bring races together, not apart, and are especially important during periods of racial tension.
William Julius Wilson (When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor)
Redeemed particularity is part of God’s perfecting plan for his creation. Redeemed uniqueness is a gift of the Spirit allowing ransomed humans to be ‘gifted’ to the world for its common good. As Gunton puts it, ‘The Spirit enables people and things to be themselves through Jesus Christ.’ There is unity but never uniformity… …The redemption of the post-Pentecost world contrasts with the well-intentioned credo of the band U2. In ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’ belief in ‘Kingdom come’ coincides with the hope that ‘all the colors’ will eventually ‘bleed into one.’ While this is indeed a worthy hope, it is not quite the biblical one. In Scripture, it is not all who bleed into one but one (Jesus of Nazareth) who ‘bleeds’ into all so that our particularity - our ‘colors’ are not ‘washed out’ but brightened, like a renovated painting. Pentecost does not return us to a pre-Babel monochrome. Instated, it redeems diversity so that tribe, tongue, and racial contrasts remain, but without the ‘dividing wall’ between us (Eph.2:14). The kingdom itself is a coat of many colors because the Spirit does not wash out but redeems particularity. This also explains why Christ’s Spirit-driven moral influence moves us away from racist, classist, sexist, and nationalist errors. These are gospel issues.
Joshua M. McNall
Redeemed particularity is part of God’s perfecting plan for his creation. Redeemed uniqueness is a gift of the Spirit allowing ransomed humans to be ‘gifted’ to the world for its common good. As Gunton puts it, ‘The Spirit enables people and things to be themselves through Jesus Christ.’ There is unity but never uniformity… …The redemption of the post-Pentecost world contrasts with the well-intentioned credo of the band U2. In ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’ belief in ‘Kingdom come’ coincides with the hope that ‘all the colors’ will eventually ‘bleed into one.’ While this is indeed a worthy hope, it is not quite the biblical one. In Scripture, it is not all who bleed into one but one (Jesus of Nazareth) who ‘bleeds’ into all so that our particularity - our ‘colors’ - are not ‘washed out’ but brightened, like a renovated painting. Pentecost does not return us to a pre-Babel monochrome. Instated, it redeems diversity so that tribe, tongue, and racial contrasts remain, but without the ‘dividing wall’ between us (Eph.2:14). The kingdom itself is a coat of many colors because the Spirit does not wash out but redeems particularity. This also explains why Christ’s Spirit-driven moral influence moves us away from racist, classist, sexist, and nationalist errors. These are gospel issues.
Joshua M. McNall
Virginia lawmakers made slave patrols compulsory for non-slaveholding Whites; these groups of White citizens were charged with policing slaves, enforcing discipline, and guarding routes of escape. The Virginia legislature also denied Blacks the ability to hold office. Evoking repeatedly the term “christian white servant” and defining their rights, Virginia lawmakers fully married Whiteness and Christianity, uniting rich White enslavers and the non-slaveholding White poor. To seal the unity (and racial loyalty), Virginia’s White lawmakers seized and sold all property owned by “any slave,” the “profit thereof applied to the use of the poor of the said parish.” The story would be told many times in American history:
Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
Many whites see the naming of white racial power as divisive. For them, the problem is not the power inequity itself; the problem is naming the power inequity. This naming breaks the pretense of unity and exposes the reality of racial division.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
A PRAYER FOR MY BELOVED COUNTRY Father God remember my beautiful land of South Africa, remember my nation and remember my beautiful people. Protect the country of South Africa and her people from these demonic forces and give wisdom to the leaders of the nation. Dismantle every single weapon and every demonic plan that is meant to destroy South Africa and her people. You are unchanging and forgiving God. You are the same God who liberated us from the decades and decades of evil racial segregation and I know and believe that you can do it again. You are our only hope, help us to stand firm for the truth, peace and unity. Thank you Lord for your unconditional love and your faithfulness in Jesus name amen. SOUTH AFRICA BELONGS TO GOD.
Euginia Herlihy
Here again we see something vital about wokeness. Though it announces itself to us in positive terms, telling us we should be for “racial equity” and “justice” and “unity,” it conceals thunder. It is not a movement of unity at all, nor does it preach tolerance. In actuality, it saves its strongest firepower not for extraordinary offenders, but for ordinary men and women who live quiet, normal American lives. These people, it turns out, are the true villains. If this language sounds strong, consider what Kendi—a much-praised professor at Boston University—has said: Such people, mostly “white,” constitute the “most threatening racist movement” today, worse than actual white supremacists who create real terror and division. The “regular American” is worse than the cross-burning Klan member; as DiAngelo suggested, America today is worse than in the days of Jim Crow, and “white fragility” and all it disguises are to blame.
Owen Strachan (Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel - and the Way to Stop It)
A world made one, by the political union of its parts, would not only require of its citizen a shift of allegiance, but it would deprive him of the enormous personal satisfaction of distrusting what he doesn't know and despising what he has never seen. This would be a severe deprivation, perhaps an intolerable one. The awful truth is, a world government would lack an enemy, and that is a deficiency not to be lightly dismissed. It will take a yet undiscovered vitamin to supply the blood of man with a substitute for national ambition and racial antipathy; but we are discovering new vitamins all the time, and I am aware of that too.
E.B. White (The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters)
The Catholic theology of race thus enabled-required, even-American Catholics to hold a radically different perspective from white southern Protestants on the legitimacy of interracial marriage. If the Vatican proclaimed racial unity and common origins in Adam and Eve, then there was no doctrinal, biblical, or cultural basis for racial inequality, segregation, or legal prohibitions of interracial marriage. Although a terrible chasm loomed between theory and praxis -between what the church taught and how American Catholics behaved- Catholics never condemned marriage across the color line or cited biblical rationales for segregation G4 Indeed, by 1940, the racial theories emanating from Europe's fascist regimes and the verification of the Nazi death camps compelled the church to address decisively the issue of racial separatism and to take an explicit stance against such views. By this time, the Roman Church had begun to articulate a theology of race explicitly emphasizing the biblical bases for racial unity, and it had condemned civil prohibitions of interracial marriage.
Fay Botham (Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, and American Law)
While a white woman spoke about the racial unity that made the movement so beautiful, an older black man from L.A. spoke about how we needed to get strapped in order to shoot back at the police. When a black woman affirmed the need for black people to police their own communities, another woman of color spoke in favor of self-protection but against policing. And when a few participants – both black and white – started chanting “How do we fix the system? Buy black! Buy black!,” a young black man exclaimed that racism is maintained through capitalism itself, and a woman of color pointed out that “people don’t buy from Walmart because they want to, but because they have five dollars in their pockets.” The complicities and differences that crossed this space, as in many other spaces created in Atlanta over the past two weeks, flew in the face of lines drawn along race and identity.
Anonymous