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Racism

An Introduction to Race, Racism, and Whiteness

By Dr. Alex Mikulich

Over 100 years ago, in his introduction to The Souls of Black Folk, W.E. B. Du Bois wrote: “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” Despite claims that we live in a “post-racial” society after the historic election of Barack Obama, the fact remains that the color line and racial hierarchy endures in the 21st century. 

At issue for the Jesuit Social Research Institute, from the perspective of Roman Catholic social teaching and thought, is the persistence of disproportionate advantage for white Americans in relationship to pervasive and persistent disproportionate disadvantage for people of color in every sphere of life including health, wealth, income, education, housing, and the criminal justice system. 

More than one issue among others, the contradiction between Gospel values and practices of racial inequality is scandalous. The contradiction between Roman Catholic and American claims for universal human dignity and equality, and the reality of social, political, and economic advantage that white Americans consciously and unconsciously accept and assume, betrays this scandal.

 Racial prejudice, in every form, the Roman Catholic Church states:

denies equal dignity of all members of the human family and blasphemes the Creator, can only be eradicated by going to its roots, where it is formed: in the human heart.[1]  

In the U.S. context, in which too many assume that racial justice has been achieved because of passage of Civil Rights legislation in 1965, the Roman Catholic Church rightly emphasizes that

 it is not enough that laws prohibit or punish all types of racial discrimination:  these laws can be easily gotten around if the community for which they are intended does not fully accept them. To overcome discrimination, a community must interiorize the values that inspire just laws and live out, in day-to-day life, the conviction of equal dignity of all.[2]

 The Church is clear that conversion of people’s hearts must be joined with denunciation of every form of exclusion, and that the State and society should promote “equitable behavior, legislative dispositions, and social structures.”[3]

Du Bois’ prescience regarding the persistence of racial injustice is no small part due to its historical rootedness. Race has been “a fundamental in global politics and culture for half a millennium. It continues to signify and structure social life not only experientially and locally, but nationally and globally.”[4] In 2001, the Roman Catholic Church agrees:

 The situation since 1988 with regard to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance has regrettably not improved; indeed it has perhaps deteriorated, at a time when the movement of peoples has continued to increase and intermingling of cultures and multi-ethnicity have become “social facts.”[5]

 The Church and science agree that there is only one race—the human race—and that we all trace our roots to Africa.[6] “Race” has no scientific basis. Divine revelation “insists on the unity of the human family.”[7] The African proverb that “I am because we are” says it best. Drawing upon this African insight, the rock star Bono asks: “could it be that all Americans are, in that sense, African-Americans?” Theologically and practically, the Church calls all people to witness to the innumerable ways that “I am because we are.”

This article continues here. 

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