How Do We Overcome Racism?

No matter how we look at it, racism hurts us all. In this country, racism stems from slavery and its aftermath. While slavery has been abolished here for many years, the pain, the shame, and the blame of it haven’t. The feelings linger, and we don’t know what to do with them except inflict them on each other and ourselves—at times.

 Photo credit: B.S. Wise via photopin cc

People of both races—black and white—have tried talking about these feelings among themselves and with people of another race, but these discussions too often still lead to even more unresolved feelings and increased frustration and hostility.

The fact of the matter is there are no intellectual words that can express the pain of slavery, and there is no apology that can take that pain away. As awful as it was, nothing can change the fact that slavery is a part of our history. The question now is what do we do today?

While we all need to know about this part of our history, we ultimately have only two choices about how we react to it—to forgive the past and live in love today or not to forgive the past and live in hate today. There is nothing really in between.

Forgiveness is the key to peace and ultimately to love—forgiveness of each other, ourselves and the world we live in.

If we continue to debate racism in intellectual terms, we will never resolve it. It’s like debating religion or politics—it’s too subjective, and everyone has an opinion about it that they believe is right.

But if we look at racism in a spiritual sense, through the eyes of Christ, there is no debate. There is no excuse or reason for hating and mistreating each other, no matter how justified the hate and mistreatment seems—ever.

Each of us, in our hearts, knows what is right in how we treat each other. Consequently, each of us has the power to overcome racism by doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.