DO BLACK LIVES MATTER TO WHITE CHRISTIANS? A Theological Reflection in Three Movements.

Introduction

In the spring of 2009, shortly after Barack Obama assumed the Office of President of the United States, I was invited to lecture at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, on the topic of whether or not the election of the nation's first African American president signaled a new post-racial era in American politics. Back then I wrote, "The election of our nation's first African-American president is a giant step forward on the journey toward Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'beloved community,' but we cannot presume that one single step can end what has been a very long, and very painful journey. Yet, as ridiculous as it sounds, some pundits have proclaimed that President Barack Obama's election has brought about a new "post-racial" era in which race no longer matters and racism and discrimination no longer keep people of color from full participation in American society." Then, as now such naivete about America's racist history does not inspire confidence in political punditry.

From the outset, however, President Obama remained a political realist on issues of race: "At the inauguration, I think there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country. . .But that lasted about a day." (1) Thankfully, the President was under no illusions that a single political victory could erase the stain of hundreds of years of slavery, degradation, discrimination, and racism that marks our nation's history. Instead, Obama viewed his election as an opportunity to "continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America." (2) While Obama's political realism was undoubtedly tempered by a lifetime of growing up black in a white supremacist culture, it was more immediately occasioned by the first of many trials he would face on the race relations front as President: two Constitutional challenges, one to the Congress's extension of the Voting Rights Act and a second targeting a controversial affirmative action program in New Haven, Connecticut.

The first Supreme Court case, Northwest Austin Utility District v. Holder, challenged Congress's reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006 on the basis that this particular district had no history or claims of racial discrimination in any of its elections therefore ought to be exempt from [section]5 of the Voting Rights Act requiring certain (Southern) states to receive pre-clearance from the Federal government before enacting changes in their electoral law. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9--0) that the Austin district was exempt from the [section]5 requirement because of technical wording in [section]4(a) and [section] 14(c)(2) about what constitutes a "political subdivision," thus preserving the Federal government's oversight of election law changes while avoiding a ruling on the Constitutionality of [section]5 by a vote of 8-1, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting, arguing that [section]5 is no longer Constitutional. (3) The second case before the Supreme Court, Ricci v. DeStefano, was brought forward by nineteen white (and one Hispanic) firefighters who claimed discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after they had passed the test for promotion to management positions yet the city declined to promote them. The city of New Haven, Connecticut, invalidated the test results because none of the black applicants who took the same test scored high enough on the test to warrant promotion to a management position. The Supreme Court ruled 5--4 that the city's decision to ignore the test results violated Title VII and also "criticized New Haven for using "raw, racial statistics" to invalidate a promotional examination, but stopped short of ordering broad changes to race-and-hiring laws sought by the firefighters and their supporters around the country." (4) While this case did not overthrow the affirmative action provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it did set the stage for how accusations of "reverse discrimination" and white backlash would come to characterize race relations in the United States during the eight years of the Obama presidency.

In 2008, white liberal optimism viewed the Obama presidency as an opportunity for racial reconciliation, but political realism soon demonstrated its opposite, a rise in white backlash as a direct result of electing the nation's first black President: "according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the election of the first black president had triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents.. .a sobering reminder of the work that remains ahead." (5) This white backlash reached its nadir with the emergence and popularity throughout his presidency of the "birther" movement, a far-right conspiracy theory that claimed Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore Constitutionally prohibited from holding the office of President. These allegations first surfaced during the Democratic primaries in 2007, and while not directly linked to Hillary Rodham Clinton, there is evidence that these rumors were forwarded via e-mail by a Clinton campaign volunteer (subsequently fired), and more damning, that the idea of attacking candidate Obama for his "lack of American roots" was first proposed by Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn. (6) Not surprisingly, these allegations resurfaced during the 2016 Presidential campaign, when GOP candidate Donald Trump, for years one of the more high-profile proponents of the "birther" movement (in 2011 he told NBC news, "I would like to have him show his birth certificate, and can I be honest with you, I hope he can"), reversed his position while blaming Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton "of starting the birther movement during her 2008 Democratic primary campaign against Obama." (7) Sadly, instead of leading the nation in a new conversation on racial reconciliation, the Obama presidency came to be characterized as timid on race relations for the sake of advancing other political agendas like the Affordable Healthcare Act. Even though Obama, who campaigned on a platform promising change entered office in 2008 riding a wave of optimism, in 2017 he left office with a mixed record on race, as evidenced by the simple fact that Black Lives Matter, a youth-led movement responding to acts of police brutality targeting black communities, was born during his presidency.

People of faith, most especially the nation's progressive white Christians, have to deal more frankly and openly with the realities of racism in post-Obama America after the election of Donald Trump, a candidate whose path to the White House was made possible by the empowerment of fringe white nationalist groups collectively labeled the Alt-Right movement. (8) This became evident in Charlottesville, Virginia, the weekend of August 11-12, 2017, as several hundred white nationalists from all over the nation descended on the small college town nestled in the idyllic Blue Ridge Mountains for a "Unite the Right" rally. Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of "white lives matter," "Jews will not replace us," "Whose streets? Our streets!" (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, "Blood and soil," marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying "Trump/Pence" signs. Yet, instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, President Trump vacillated, claiming there were "very fine people on both sides," and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, "a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest." (9)

Throughout its history, far right white supremacy movements have tended to identify with Protestant Christianity and have co-opted Christian language and imagery--for example, the use of burning crosses as an instrument of terror by the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, as James Cone's The Cross and the lynching Tree reminds us, "between 1880 to 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these "Christians" did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions." (10) This raises the question: How many "Christians" were there among those clean-cut, well-dressed, college-age white protesters chanting hateful Nazi slogans at progressive Christians gathered in peaceful prayer at St. Paul's

Memorial Episcopal Church on Friday night, August 11? How many professed "Christians" were there among those who harassed and goaded clergy and other faith leaders on their peaceful walk to Emancipation Park on Saturday, August 12, and then gathered for worship in a "Christian" church on Sunday, August 13?

A spiritual Turing test

Watching the documentary news footage from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, I remember seeing the hatred in the faces of the (mostly) young, white males wearing the preppy "business casual" look that allows them to blend seamlessly into corporate America carrying torches and chanting Nazi slogans, and asking myself, "Are they even human?" Such anger, such hatred.. .What events unfolded in their lives that would cause them to spew such hateful and dehumanizing bile about their fellow human beings? But that is the crux of the matter: The ideology that leads to such actions is grounded in denying all who oppose them--be they black, brown, yellow, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, gay, lesbian, or transgender--human status. When you can objectify the other and reduce them to an obstacle in your way rather than acknowledge them as fully living breathing human beings, it becomes easier to trample them beneath your boots or under the wheels of your car. (11) It was at that moment that I had the following thought: What if we could develop a "spiritual" Turing test that would allow us to determine whether or not the hateful bigots fighting for white supremacy still possess some spark of humanity? Are they capable of dialogue? Is conversion from their hateful ways possible? Or are they so far gone down the path of racial hatred that we ought not waste our breath?

Alan Turing, an English philosopher and mathematician who contributed to Great Britain's code-breaking efforts that ultimately enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis during World War Two, was a pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence. In 1950, he developed the Turing test, an experiment designed to evaluate whether or not a machine is able to emulate intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from human intelligence. (12) In this landmark paper, Turing considers the question, "Can machines think?" Acknowledging that "think" is a philosophically difficult and highly contested concept, Turing suggests replacing his initial question with a similar, but less ambiguous question: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?" (13) Turing describes a simple party game in which Player A is male, Player B is female, and Player C (either male or female), who is unable to see or hear either Player A or B, attempts to determine which player is male and which female. Unknown to Player C, Player A's role is to attempt to trick Player C into making the wrong choice while Player B's task is to help Player C make the correct choice. To maintain the anonymity of both Player A and B, the players communicate with one another by means of written notes. Turing adapts this parlor came into an experiment evaluating "machine intelligence" by modifying a digital computer "to have an adequate storage, suitably increasing its speed of action, and providing it with an appropriate programme," so that the computer could replace Player A in the game, then unbeknown to Player C, both the computer and Player B are trying to deceive Player C into making the wrong choice. (14) This time, however, the challenge to Player C is to determine which player is a computer and which player is human. Turing argues that if human Player C is unable to distinguish between the computer-generated statements and the statements typed into the terminal by human Player B, then the computer wins the game and takes an important step toward creating an artificial intelligence capable of emulating human cognitive capacities. Turing's stated goal in developing the Turing test is not to determine whether the digital computers of his day and age were capable of artificial intelligence, but given future advances in technology, "whether there are imaginable computers" that could do well enough to win the game. (15)

Most philosophers and scientists agree that the Turing test does not determine whether or not a machine is intelligent; rather, it is designed to evaluate whether or not a computer can be programmed to imitate a human being well enough to fool a human interrogator. Not surprisingly, many Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers argue that trying to pass the Turing test actually distracts from more important advances in AI, and point out that very few academic or commercial researchers are actually interested in implementing the Turing test. (16) Nevertheless, Alan Turing's thought experiment has captured the popular imagination, appearing in movies and fiction in one form or another, and resurfacing in 1996 when Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM, defeated reigning world champion Garry Kasparov in game one of a six-game match. Today, chess-playing software has become increasingly complex and much faster than Deep Blue, so that in 2006 a chess program called Deep Fritz defeated world champion Vladimir Kramnik 4 games to 2, taking advantage of its computational speed of eight million positions per second to successfully emulate human reasoning well enough to defeat a world champion. (17)

So as I watched the cold, empty, hateful glares of the white racists protesting in Charlottesville, Virginia, my mind immediately thought: "Are they human? Or are they soulless automatons? Could these carbon copy, golf-shirt wearing clones be the creation of some evil genius intent on turning back the clock of human progress by returning us to the 1950s pre-Civil Rights South?" Which is when it hit me that a "spiritual" Turing test could help us determine whether these protesters are in fact twenty-first century humans, or some facsimile designed to imitate human behavior just well enough to fool us into treating them with proper respect and civility. I then began to formulate a possible experiment, like Turing's "imitation game," consisting of a battery of yes-or-no questions (Are all human beings equally image of God? Did slavery come into existence because of the Curse of Ham? Can you affirm faith in a black Christ?), designed to help us identify the genuine Christian from the racist ideologue. Yet, this kind of thinking, however tempting, is a shibboleth that very quickly leads down the slippery slope toward demonizing the other and treating them as objects to be controlled, manipulated, or eliminated. The term shibboleth has come to mean any distinguishing word or phrase used to distinguish members of a group from outsiders, and in many societies such linguistic (or cultural) differentiations are used to justify segregation as a way of maintaining group purity. Its origins date to the book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible:

Then the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the
Ephraimites. Whenever one of the fugitives of Ephraim said, 'Let me go
over,' the men of Gilead would say to him, 'Are you an Ephraimite?'
When he said, 'No,' they said to him, "Then say Shibboleth,' and he
said, 'Sibboleth,' for he could not pronounce it right. Then they
seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two
thousand of the Ephraimites fell at that time. (Jgs 12:5-6, NRSV)

The purpose of a shibboleth is exclusionary, as evidenced by the biblical tale in which persons whose way of speaking reveals their status as an outsider are viewed as threats to the community, and then are executed by the dominant group. Therefore, while it is tempting to have some quick and simple test to determine whether the hateful bigot in front of me is capable of conversion and therefore worth engaging in dialogue, or is beyond redemption and therefore incapable of conversation (let alone conversion), the act of developing and implementing a "spiritual" Turing test can easily become a form of theological totalitarianism as reprehensible as the neo-Nazis and white nationalists spouting hatred in Charlottesville.

Consequently, a Christian engagement of white racism--especially in its most virulent form, white nationalism--is better served by a dialogic approach. Admittedly, some interlocutors are not interested in conversation, but this ought not to deter one from making the effort. Furthermore, within the confines of U.S. politics, these interlocutors are not the neo-Nazi extremists themselves, but rather their mainstream allies and facilitators within the GOP and other social and political institutions who have tolerated--even encouraged--such right-wing extremism for the sake of gaining a few percentage points at the polls. In the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, I began a conversation on racism and Catholic social teaching with one of my graduate students, a white male police officer in the Ferguson police department, which has blossomed into friendship. As a liberation theologian who leans left-of-center on most issues, there is much we disagree on, yet despite our differences, we are able to discuss sensitive issues and, more importantly, disagree while managing to treat each other civilly. It is not an overstatement to say we actually enjoy each other's company. Not surprisingly, many of his colleagues on the force are baffled by our relationship and seem worried that I will "infect" him with some sort of liberal contagion. Nevertheless, we have had some deep and meaningful conversations analyzing the situation in St. Louis and have reached some areas of agreement: (1) St. Louis is a radically segregated city, part of the Jim Crow era legacy, so the high crime rates and social unrest currently plaguing the city need to be understood within the context of this racist history (18) ; (2) increased incidents of police violence against potentially armed suspects are in part the result of cuts to community policing that eliminated the practice of two-officer patrol cars (19) ; and (3) long-term strategies to diversify police departments cannot be divorced from public education reform efforts since only 59 percent of African American males graduate high school (despite a national all-time high graduation rate of 81 percent in 2012-13), given that applicants to the police academy need to have a high school diploma or its equivalent (not to mention no felony convictions or "unfavorable" police record). (20)

Over time, our conversations have broadened beyond the crisis in Ferguson to consider the impact of racism and economic injustice on a whole host of issues impacting the nation, yet my student's insights are always grounded in his experiences as a police officer in Ferguson. He admits that police are now "even further alienated from their communities," and attributes some of the increased police violence to the day-today fears patrol officers live with: "Now guns are everywhere and officers know it. They also know that there is nothing they can do about it. Frankly, if an officer isn't afraid today he's a psychopath and shouldn't be out there. Part of the problem is they feel like sitting ducks." Unfortunately, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that police departments and police unions do not have the political capital or courage to stand up to the NRA and the gun lobby, (21) which is why he prefers that I protect his anonymity. In a conversation following the mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, he confided: "Stuff I can't say in the public arena.. .referencing Las Vegas. As I mentioned, the current gun laws are a disaster for policing. The much stricter gun laws of the 1980's were never considered unconstitutional. I brought in a gun a night and did so following the rules. There was no perceived threat to the Constitution on either side of the fence. I would like to think that I had some impact. If young black males were dying of anything other than puncture wounds as the result of an incoming round, NIH would declare an epidemic. It is a frustrating feeling of helplessness. Sad." In a later conversation, he added: "The further we walk down this gun road we are on, the more paranoid (justifiably I would argue) the police become. We are human and the chance for mistakes increases with every gun on the street. As you said, we are banging our heads on the wall expecting different results." Finally, in assessing the Federal study done in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting, this officer expressed the opinion that this was a "missed opportunity" by the Department of Justice because its use of consent decrees in Ferguson and Baltimore have actually increased mistrust of law enforcement while simultaneously "destroying any trust that officers had in the process that was established to take bad officers off the street. I don't see officers coming forward about bad officers."

Ultimately, any way forward on these issues begins and ends with trust. The idea behind the very concept of neighborhood or community policing is to increase trust between police officers and the communities they patrol, because the "need to close the gap between cops and the community has become increasingly apparent in recent years." (22) In St. Louis County, the strategy implemented guarantees that "officers patrol the same beat, within the same neighborhood and are provided with a yearly computer schedule that is designed to allow the beat officer an opportunity to get to know the residents, businesses and schools where our children attend and grow." (23) Churches, vital resources in every community, ought to take the lead on these issues, speaking prophetically against abuse and brutality by law enforcement, while simultaneously supporting community and trust-building efforts by local governments and police departments. Some police departments are encouraging more transparency during investigations of police-shooting incidents by sharing information with local African American clergy and NAACP representatives, while developing outreach efforts in African American communities with the hope of moving "the police force closer to some of its most disenfranchised and suspicious stakeholders." (24) As, for example, in Tulsa, Oklahoma after a recent officer-involved shooting, when potential hostilities were stilled by the community's trust in Mayor Dewey Bartlett. According to the Reverend Warren Blakney, church pastor and president of the local branch of the NAACP, Mayor Bartlett "has worked hard to establish ties with the black community in north Tulsa, attending Sunday services at African-American churches most weekends." (25) More and more, as "racial tensions continue to simmer in the wake of the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white officers in Ferguson, Mo., New York City and elsewhere, churches have offered themselves up as trusted go-betweens for the police and angry residents, particularly in black communities." (26) While community policing is still viewed with suspicion by many African American activists, some local chapters of Black Lives Matter have taken steps toward building the kind of trust necessary to not only change the culture of police departments, but also transform how police are perceived in predominately African American communities. (27)

How to silence 200 nineteen-year-olds in St. Louis, Missouri

For years, Dr. Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" (1963) has been required reading in my introductory Theological Foundations course at Saint Louis University (SLU). Most semesters we read this text in the latter half of the semester after a solid grounding in the biblical foundations of the Christian faith and exposure to such perennial theological favorites as Augustine's On Christian Doctrine, Anselm's Why GodBecame Man, and Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. This school year, however, I made the decision to begin with Dr. King's letter given the events that took place in Charlottesville mere days before the start of the semester. In hindsight, I made the correct decision insofar as a few weeks later the city of St. Louis was once again rocked by violent protests after the acquittal of a white police officer, Jason Stockley, charged with murder for the 2011 shooting death of a black driver, Anthony Lamar Smith. (28) In a matter of hours, these protests moved from downtown to midtown, from midtown to the suburbs, and even onto the campus of Saint Louis University where, I am proud to say, I saw many of my students marching and partaking in nonviolent direct action in the tradition of Dr. King.

The Monday after the first wave of protests, I was lecturing to my class of 200 first-year undergraduate students, making a point about Christian just-war theory in an effort to explain why the Bush doctrine-a strategy of "preemptive strikes" as a defense against an immediate or perceived future threat to the security of the United States (29)--violates Christian moral reasoning. To illustrate my point, I asked a (white) male student to stand up and said to him: "Imagine we are walking toward each other on the street. Unknown to you I have had a very bad day so I am in a foul mood. As I approach you I happen to give you a mean look. Applying the Bush doctrine to this situation you interpret my look--keeping in mind that I am brown and weigh 250 pounds--as a potential threat to your life, and this being Missouri (a concealed carry state), you pull out your 9 mm GLOCK pistol and shoot me dead. I ask you, is this a legitimate case of self-defense?" The class was somewhat shocked by my example, and most just sat there in silence, but a few voices could be heard saying, "No!" At that moment, when I was certain I had their attention, I said loudly and clearly, "Unless, of course, you are a white police officer in the United States." Time stopped. The room was deathly still, and I let the silence linger for a moment longer before returning to the lecture at hand, my point made. I then related the Christian tradition of just-war reasoning to the issue of racially targeted police brutality by drawing concrete parallels to the Stockley acquittal, in which the accused white officer planted a gun on the victim yet only Stockley's DNA could be found on it. Ultimately, the judge ruled that the state failed to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt that Stockley 'did not act in self-defense,'" despite the fact that Stockley admitted to carrying unauthorized weapons with extra rounds while on duty. (30) Undoubtedly, my actions and statements made an impact on students (which I am sure will reflect both negatively and positively on my student course evaluations), as evidenced by the comments students made on their way to their next class. The young man whom I had drafted to take part in my lecture illustration actually said, "That was funny. I appreciate how you used sarcasm to make your point." One African American student, who had been among the protesters the night before, came up to me and said, "Thank you for that." Regardless, I had learned from personal experience how to silence an auditorium full of usually loud and talkative nineteen-year-olds in St. Louis, Missouri.

My decision to begin our semester by reading Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" in order to locate Black Lives Matter (BLM) within our nation's historical struggles for civil rights was motivated by the fact that this movement has had a major impact in St. Louis since Michael Brown's 2014 shooting death yet there is much misinformation in the local media about the movement, its goals, and its tactics. The Black Lives Matter movement came to national prominence in the aftermath of the murder of African American youth Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. However, it was actually founded in 2013 by three radical organizers--Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi--in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator for a gated community in Sanford, Florida, who had murdered African American teenager Trayvon Martin (a guest at a town home in the gated community) with a 9-mm semi-automatic pistol. According to the movement's mission statement,

BLM is "an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise," committed to affirming "the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements." (31) When Michael Brown was murdered in 2014, BLM worked with local organizers in Ferguson, Missouri, to coordinate a series of nonviolent protests (that led to civil unrest) designed to draw international attention to the systemic pattern of brutalization of African Americans by law enforcement. While the movement has since become an international network with over thirty local chapters, their involvement in Ferguson highlights the founders' desires to work as a decentralized network without a formal hierarchy. It is worth noting that despite the growth of the movement and subsequent incidents of police fatal violence targeting African Americans in places like Baltimore and Minneapolis-St. Paul, the BLM website still credits local organizers and activists in Missouri for their ongoing frontline work: "the folks in St. Louis and Ferguson who put their bodies on the line day in and day out, and who continue to show up for Black lives." (32) As theological ethicist Jermaine M. McDonald has noted, much of the backlash from within the African American civil rights establishment directed at Black Lives Matter stems from the fact that BLM is "primarily composed of younger activists, it conflicts with elders in the black community over tactics and strategies, and it is not committed to any particular religious worldview." (33)

Though not explicitly theological--and definitely not linked to any single confessional tradition--Black Lives Matter has often invoked Martin Luther King, Jr. to differentiate, situate, and defend itself from external criticism. Specifically, the movement's founders have responded to criticisms that their involvement in the rioting in Ferguson betrayed the nonviolent legacy of Dr. King, arguing instead that they are "recovering the radicalism of King's methods and message for the twenty-first century" (34) by retrieving and reclaiming King's "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail" (1963) and his infamous address at Riverside Church in New York City, "A Time to Break Silence" (1967), in order to drive home the urgency of the current situation in which black lives continue to be brutalized and murdered by agents of the state. Therefore, BLM stands on the same principled call to "direct action" that brought Dr. King to Birmingham in 1963, because there "comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men [sic] are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the blackness of corroding despair." (35) With Dr. King, they have learned from "painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed" (36) ; like Dr. King, they do not shy away from controversy by affirming their unapologetic "blackness" in a white supremacist culture in much the same way Dr. King refused to back down when he was criticized for using his fame to address issues beyond civil rights in order to condemn the U.S. war in Vietnam: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." (37)

A movement like Black Lives Matter eschews traditional religion and focuses primarily on advocating for those who have been marginalized within established black liberation movements while presenting itself as an emancipatory spirituality for all black lives. Recognizing that their revolutionary goals necessitate tactics that might not meet with the approval of the older, more ecclesiocentric Civil Rights Movement, the founders of BLM have struggled to differentiate their movement and its goals while nonetheless locating themselves within the rich history of African American struggles for liberation. In an interview for Teen Vogue magazine, Patrisse Cullors, one of the three founders of Black Lives Matter, expressed the resistance she and her two comrades experienced: "The first challenge was making sure that people knew who actually were the creators of Black Lives Matter--pushing back against our own erasure. I have never felt the grips of patriarchy and its need to erase black women and our labor.. .so strongly until the creation of Black Lives Matter." (38) However, the greatest resistance has come from the white mainstream, which has labeled Black Lives Matter a terrorist group. (39) Thus, even supposed white allies come under the critical lens of BLM and its consistent message that racism is alive and well in post-Obama America: "We forced folks to look at the Democratic party as a party that has historically said it's on the side of black people but instead it hasn't been, and the policies have shown that." (40) George Wayne Smith, the tenth Anglican Bishop of Missouri, focuses the vague spiritual urge underlying the activism of groups like BLM within an explicitly theological framework with the suggestion that the site of Michael Brown's murder on Canfield Avenue in Ferguson has become a shrine:

People go to that place and weep, or they rage, or they sing, or they
stand in slack-jawed silence. The place allows people to express deep
emotion, and it lets them hope. Some even pray. The pavement is still
visibly marked by Michael Brown's blood. Protestors sometimes
paraphrase Genesis 4 in saying that his blood cries out for justice.
But the place is also saturated by the anger, the hopes, and the
prayers of thousands. It is an important place. Dare I call it holy?
(41)

This spiritual urging that gives voice to an entire people's history of suffering and dehumanization occupies the liminal space where the love of God coexists with innocent human suffering but in place of theodicy--a rational explanation for the existence of evil--the Spirit offers mystery, turning the tragedy of Michael Brown into a sacramental encounter with God in the midst of our broken human history.

Concluding unscientific postscript

In the words of the apostle Paul, the Christian church is called to be a community in which "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:27-28, NRSV). It was foolish to expect the election and presidency of Barack Obama to erase the problem of racism in the United States; yet, many are surprised by just how strong the white male resentment has become now that Obama has left office. The truth is, this resentment was seething just below the surface all along. Cory Booker, then mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and now the junior Senator from New Jersey (a much-talked-about potential presidential candidate for 2020), described the promise and challenge of racial reconciliation following the election of the first African American President:

We are a nation that celebrates racial diversity. We're not Norway;
we're not South Korea; we are the United States of America. The story
of America is one of bringing such differences together to manifest a
united set of ideals--not a united culture, not a united language, not
a united religion, but a united set of ideals. That was what made
America dramatic when it was founded, the first country of its kind in
humanity. So I reject [the idea of a post-racial America]. I want to
celebrate all of America: its richness, its diversity, its
deliciousness... God forbid if we ever get to a point where we
"transcend our race." (42)

This tension identified by Cory Booker is a topic I addressed in my first book, Racism and God-Talk (2008) (43)--the desire to affirm racial and ethnic particularity while embodying the apostle Paul's inclusive vision of the church as a community where we are no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female but one in Christ Jesus. The "Silent Majority" that elected Donald Trump in 2016 has become an emboldened white supremacist reactionary political movement with deep pockets and nationwide organizational support led by former Trump staffer Steve Bannon (who was fired by Trump less than a week after the Unite the Right rally in Virginia). (44) This shift in U.S. politics, which elevates and celebrates "whiteness" as if white people were a repressed minority suffering under generations of oppression finally being delivered from captivity, ought to prompt bold and thoughtful theological responses from the church as it resists white identity politics without erasing the racial and ethnic diversity that constitutes our nation in order to build a "more perfect union."

Do black lives matter to white Christians? The empirical evidence is lacking, and centuries of enslavement, abuse, rape, and murder of black lives by the dominant white culture of the United States suggest not. Instead of demonstrating how black lives matter, far too many white Christians offer up a supposedly Gospel-tinged countemarrative that says, "all lives matter." Still, James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011) documents the extent to which black lives have not mattered in this country--even to a progressive white Christian icon like Reinhold Niebuhr, whose "lack of a strong empathy with black suffering prevented him from speaking out passionately for justice on behalf of black people." (45) Niebuhr, while opposed to racism, "showed little or no interest in engaging in dialogue with blacks about racial justice, even though he lived in Detroit during the great migration of blacks from the South and in New York near Harlem, the largest concentration of blacks in America." (46) For Cone, this tone-deafness on matters of racial justice is best illustrated by Niebuhr's reserved reaction to the lynching of two black teenaged boys, in which he described a lynching as "a general fete to which men, women, and children are invited," yet refused to name the town in Mississippi where he witnessed this "public gallows." (47) The current historical moment, in which white Christians have allowed white bigots to hijack the language and symbols of the Christian religion for their hateful ideology, then employed the language of love, forgiveness, and tolerance to undermine the radical urgency of Black Lives Matter by proclaiming "all lives matter," exposes the cultural and political impotence of liberal mainstream Christianity.

As a Latino/a theologian, I have written about and critiqued the black/white dichotomy that dominates the nation's racial conversation, and I do not want to minimize the very real threat to brown lives in the era of Trump's exclusionary policies targeting immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East. (48) However, at this moment in U.S. history, the outcry and organized response to white supremacy originates within the African American community, and Black Lives Matter deserves the support of brown, yellow, red, white, straight, gay, trans, poor, rich, working class, and all other lives. To quibble about who suffers most under the culture of white supremacy undermines what is perhaps the most effective effort at dismantling our nation's racist infrastructure since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and allows the political manipulators to divide and conquer: "As long as communities of color fail to build the necessaiy coalitions to combat the prevailing reality that all nonwhite and nonstraight lives live in peril, the social structures protecting white privilege will remain intact." (49) Miguel De La Torre correctly concludes, neither "black lives nor brown lives will succeed in the crucial work of dismantling the racist and ethnic discriminative institutionalized structures undergirding law enforcement until brown folk stand in solidarity at Ferguson, and black folk stand in solidarity on the border." (50) In the meantime, working toward mutual solidarity need not prevent brown lives from standing united with Black Lives Matter here and now. Nor, for that matter, white lives.

Undergirding a black theology of liberation is this central question: Is Christianity the religion of the slave owners, or the religion of the slaves? In Black Theology and Black Power (1969), James H. Cone argued that, "If the Gospel of Christ.. .frees a man [sic] to be for those who labor and are heavily laden, the humiliated and abused, then it would seem that for twentieth-century America the message of Black Power is the message of

Christ himself." (51) Cone, influenced by both Dr. King's nonviolent direct action and Malcolm X's philosophy of Black Power, elevated political self-determination, racial pride ("Black is beautiful"), and resisting white supremacist violence as the concrete goals of a black theology of liberation. In A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), Cone concludes that the message of the Gospel is liberation, so in order for theology to be genuinely "Christian" it must side and identify with the oppressed in a struggle to change their condition. Accordingly, so long as black lives continue to be exploited, brutalized, and destroyed with impunity, God is most clearly revealed in the suffering of black men and women. If as Christians we believe in the Incarnation--that in becoming human God has made the suffering of the oppressed God's own--then we must be able to affirm that Christ is black. Consequently, for white Christians who want to live in solidarity with black lives, Cone's Christological assertion that Christ is black is one obvious point of departure. Granted, James Cone is not making a historical assertion about the Jesus who walked this earth in the first century of the Common Era. Rather, he is making a theological assertion about the Risen Christ's blackness today: "I begin by asserting once more that Jesus was a Jew. It is on the basis of the soteriological meaning of the particularity of his Jewishness that theology must affirm the christological significance of Jesus' present blackness. He is black because he was a Jew." (52) Therefore, all Christians--not just black Christians--ought to resist white supremacy in an America where black lives still don't seem to matter, because the Savior who revealed God's self to the world as a Jew in Roman-occupied Palestine now chooses to become incarnate in the suffering of black lives. In this context, the cross becomes the lynching tree, inverting "the world's value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last." (53)

Earlier, with tongue in cheek, I suggested our society needs a "spiritual" Turing test for distinguishing white nationalists from the rest of society. Upon further reflection, I have come to realize that what is needed--at least within the Christian churches--is a "spiritual" Turing test for identifying those Christians who pay lip service to tolerance and inclusion but in the end blandly proclaim, "all lives matter," and genuine Christians who stand with Black Lives Matter because Christ is black. Proclaiming a black Christ is possible for all people, regardless of skin color,

so long as they opt to follow Christ in his suffering, because the God revealed in the Gospels is one who chooses to identify with the oppressed of the world in order to overturn their oppression: "Hate and white supremacy lead to violence and alienation, while love and the cross lead to nonviolence and reconciliation." (54) Granted, "Loving whites who hated and killed them was not easy for African Americans. Only God could empower black Christians to love hateful whites, and even God could not guarantee that they would return love for hate, nonviolence for violence." (55) Perhaps there is no way to convince the majority of white Christians that black lives matter, but a black theology of liberation continues to struggle in hope, convinced that in offering resistance, blacks "not only liberate themselves from oppression, they also liberate the oppressors from an enslavement to their illusions." (56) Ironically, black lives are the ones most concerned about the well-being of all lives, despite the rhetoric of many well-meaning white Christians. Come, Lord Jesus!

Notes

(1.) Quoted in Justin Ewers, "Obama and Race Relations: Civil Rights Leaders Aren't Satisfied," in U.S. News b World Report, posted April 30, 2009 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://www.usnews.com/news/obama/articles/2009/04/30/obama-and-race-relations-civil-rightsleaders-arent-satisfied

(2.) Obama, Barack, "A More Perfect Union," published as "Barack Obama's Speech on Race," in The New York Times, posted March 18, 2008 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html

(3.) Liptak, Adam, "Justices Retain Oversight by U.S. on Voting Rights," in The New York Times (June 22, 2009), A1.

(4.) Mahony, Edmund H., "New Haven Firefighters To Get $2 Million In Discrimination Lawsuit: City Also Agrees To Pay Enhanced Pension Benefits," in Hartford Courant, posted July 28, 2011 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://articles.courant.com/2011-07-28/news/hc-newhaven-firefighters-0729-20110728_l_white-firefighters-new-haven-frank-ricci

(5.) Early, Gerald, Susan M. Glisson, Curtiss Paul De Young, Melvin Bray, and Chris Rice, 2008, "What's changed? Obama and race in America," in The Christian Century 125 (26), December 30, p. 21.

(6.) Green, Joshua, "Penn Strategy Memo, March 19, 2007," in The Atlantic, posted August 11, 2008 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/08/penn-strategy-memo-march-19-2008/37952/

(7.) Figueroa, Laura, "Donald Trump on Wither issue: Barack Obama born in U.S.," in Newsday, posted September 16, 2016 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/donald-trump-admits-barack-obama-was-born-in-the-united-states-1.12326105

(8.) The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) website defines the Alternative Right, known in the media as the Alt-Right, as "a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that "white identity" is under attack by multicultural forces using "political correctness" and "social justice" to undermine white people and "their" civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew "establishment" conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value." For example, after the National Review, a traditional bastion of U.S. conservatism, vehemently opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump, members of the Alt-Right used social media to attack the publication and promote Trump's presidential bid (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right

(9.) Thrush, Glenn and Maggie Haberman, "Giving White Nationalists An Unequivocal Boost," in The New York Times (August 16, 2017), A1.

(10.) Cone, James H., The Cross and the Lynching Tree, paperback edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), p. 31.

(11.) See Caron, Christina, "Friends Recall "a Strong Woman" Who Stood Up Against Discrimination," in The New York Times (August 14, 2017), A14.

(12.) Turing, Alan, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," in Mind, Vol. LIX:236 (October 1950), pp. 433-60.

(13.) Ibid., p. 442.

(14.) Ibid., p. 434.

(15.) Ibid., p. 436.

(16.) See Shieber, Stuart M., 1994, "Lessons from a Restricted Turing Test," Communications of the ACM, 37(6), pp. 70-8; and Russell, Stuart J. and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3rd edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010).

(17.) "Chess champion looses to computer," in BBC News, posted December 5, 2006 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/europe/6212076.stm

(18.) See Papers of the NAACP Part 5. The Campaign against Residential Segregation, 1914-1955 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1986); St. Louis passed a residential segregation ordinance stated that if 75 percent of the residents of a neighborhood were of a certain race, no one from a different race was allowed to move into the neighborhood. The NAACP challenged the ordinance in court, and in 1948, Shelley v. Kraemer ruled these "racial covenants in St. Louis were unconstitutional, but not before the city had become racially segregated in what is now known as the "Delmar Divide," in which the neighborhoods north of Delmar are overwhelmingly black and economically deprived. This legacy contributed to the incidents and unrest in Ferguson and is reinforced by the recent study that named St. Louis the tenth most segregated city in the United States. See Michael B. Sauter, Evan Comen, and Samuel Stebbins, "16 Most Segregated Cities in America, "posted in 24/7 Wall St., July 21, 2017 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/07/21/16-most-segregated-cities-in-america/2/

(19.) See del Carmen, Alejandro, and Lori Guevara, 2003, "Police Officers on Two-officer Units: A Study of Attitudinal Responses Towards a Patrol Experiment," Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 26(1), pp. 144-61; Griffith, David, "Two-Officer Cars: The Buddy System," in Police: The Law Enforcement Magazine, October 16, 2015 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://www.policemag.eom/channel/patrol/articles/2015/10/the-buddy-system.aspx

(20.) See Bidwell, Allie, "Racial Gaps in High School Graduation Rates Are Closing," in U.S. News & World Report, posted March 16, 2015 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/03/16/federal-data-show-racial-gap-in-high-school-graduation-rates-is-closing; Brown, Emma, "Report on Black Males' Graduation Rates Shows that Data are Muddy," in The Washington Post, posted February 11, 2015 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/report-on-black-males-graduation-rates-shows-that-data-are-muddy/2015/02/10/368bac0c-bl6b-lle4-886b-c22184f27c35_story.html?utm_term=.2026f0738e5c

(21.) See Lott, John R. Jr., "Gun Control Is Not the Answer to Shootings that Kill Police Officers," in National Review, posted July 26, 2016 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://www.nationalreview.com/article/438327/gun-control-police-officers-overwhelmingly-support-second-amendment-rights; for a contrasting view, see Robertson, Campbell and Timothy Williams, "States Widening Gun Rights Lose Longtime Ally: Police," in The New York Times (May 4, 2016), A10; Kaste, Martin, "Gun Debate Divides Nation's Police Officers, Too," in National Public Radio, posted October 9, 2015 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/446866939/gun-debate-divides-nations-police-officers-too

(22.) (accessed on November 26, 2017) https://wwwl.nyc.gov/site/nypd/bureaus/patrol/neighborhood-coordination-officers.page.

(23.) (accessed on November 26, 2017) https://www.stlouisco.com/LawandPublicSafety/PoliceDepartment/Services/NeighborhoodPolicing

(24.) Calhoun, Jack, "How Law Enforcement and the Faith Community Can Work Together for Cities," in CitiesSpeak: National League of Cities, posted April 27, 2017 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://citiesspeak.org/2017/04/27/how-law-enforcement-and-the-faith-community-can-work-together-for-cities/

(25.) Ibid.

(26.) Banks, Adelle M., "Police Chief To Black Churches: 'We Can't Do This Without You Guys'," in Huffington Post, posted January 11, 2015 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/ll/police-black-churches_n_6443664.html

(27.) Chappell, Bill, "Police And Black Lives Matter Hold A Cookout, And Praise Rolls In," in National Public Radio, posted on July 19, 2016 (accessed on November 26, 2017). https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/19/486581466/police-and-black-lives-matter-hold-a-cookout-and-praise-rolls-in

(28.) Berman, Mark, Wesley Lowery, and Andrew deGrandpre, "Police and protesters clash in St. Louis after former officer who shot black driver acquitted on murder charges," The Washington Post, posted September 16, 2017 (accessed on December 1, 2017). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/09/15/st-louis-tenses-for-verdict-in-murder-trial-of-fonner-police-officer/?utm_term=.14872d492acb

(29.) See Dolan, Chris J., In War We Trust: The Bush Doctrine and the Pursuit of Just War (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), pp. 47-64.

(30.) Berman, Lowery, and deGrandpre, "Police and protesters clash in St. Louis," (September 16, 2017).

(31.) See https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/, and https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/herstory/, for an introduction to and defense of the movement (accessed on October 13, 2017).

(32.) Ibid.

(33.) McDonald, Jermaine M., 2016, "Ferguson and Baltimore according to Dr. King: How Competing Interpretations of King's Legacy Frame the Public Discourse on Black Lives Matter," Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 36(2), Fall/Winter, p. 149.

(34.) Ibid., pp. 150-1.

(35.) King, Jr., Martin Luther, "Letter from a Birmingham City Jail," in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), p. 293.

(36.) Ibid., p. 292.

(37.) King, Jr. Martin Luther, "A Time to Break Silence," in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), p. 241.

(38.) Anthony Blades, Lincoln, "Patrisse Cullors of Black Lives Matters Discusses the Movement," in Teen Vogue (August 24, 2017), https://www.teenvogue.com/story/patrisse-cullors-of-black-lives-matter-discusses-the-movement (accessed on October 13, 2017).

(39.) Currently, there is a popular movement petitioning the White House to declare BLM a terrorist group on par with ISIS and A1-Qaeda; the White House responded saying, "The White House plays no role in designating domestic terror organizations," nor does the U.S. government "generate a list of domestic terror organizations." See https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ formally-recognize-black-lives-matter-terrorist-organization; and Erroll Bar-nett, "White House responds to petition to label Black Lives Matter a "terror" group," CBS News (July 17, 2016), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-responds-to-petition-to-labe1-black-lives-matter-a-terror-group/ (accessed on October 16, 2017).

(40.) Ibid.

(41.) Smith, George Wayne, 2015, "Blood Cries Out from the Ground: Reflections on Ferguson," Anglican Theological Review 97 (2) Spring, p. 261.

(42.) See https://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6040 (accessed on December 13, 2017).

(43.) Rodriguez, Ruben Rosario, Racism and God-Talk: A Latinoja Perspective (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

(44.) See Blake, Aaron, "Why Steve Bannon's threat to primary almost every GOP senator should frighten Republicans," in The Washington Post, posted October 10, 2017 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/10/why-steve-bannons-targeting-of-incumbent-senators-is-a-serious-threat-to-the-gop/?utm_term=.1262a36b 9135; also see, Desiderio, Andrew, "Bannon's Revenge: Bannon Defeats Trump as Roy Moore Cruises to Victory in Alabama," posted on The Daily Beast, September 26, 2017 (accessed on November 25, 2017). https://www.thedailybeast.com/bannon-defeats-trump-as-roy-moore-cruises-to-victory-in-alabama

(45.) Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 43.

(46.) Ibid., p. 42.

(47.) Ibid., p. 46.

(48.) See Miguel A. De La Torre, "Being Brown While Black Lives Matter," in Our Lucha, posted August 29, 2015 (last accessed December 13, 2017). https://ourlucha.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/being-brown-while-black-lives-matter/

(49.) Ibid.

(50.) Ibid.

(51.) Cone, James H., Black Theology and Black Power, 1989 edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), p. 37.

(52.) James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977), p. 123.

(53.) Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 2.

(54.) Ibid., p. 71.

(55.) Ibid., p. 79.

(56.) Cone, James H., A Black Theology of Liberation, 40th anniversary edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010), pp. 185-6.

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Author:	Rodriguez, Ruben Rosario
Publication:	Cross Currents
Date:	Mar 1, 2018
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