There is a change in tone and attitude among most white Christians from the murder of George Floyd to the end of the summer, especially with the shooting in Kenosha. We’ve reverted.
One of the reasons I’ve identified in all of this is, as whites, we want a project. We want racism to be a project we can have a start date and an end date. Three weeks? No problem.
“I’m on it.”
But when there is not a project with a time frame, we get disinterested.
Racism isn’t a project. It is sin. It is war. It is a force. There are struggles. There are surges. There are victories and defeats and casualties.
That’s a smaller reason we’re so “done” to all this in just three months. (The other smaller reason is the election. We’re back to our small minded issue of getting someone elected.)
The bigger reason: we walk away because we can.
“In the same way that patriarchy has the ability to shrug off the concerns of women, white supremacy permits white people to dismiss the concerns of black people and other ethnic minorities. White people — especially evangelicals — have the luxury of turning a deaf ear to anyone they perceive as angry.” (Dennis Edwards, Might from the Margins)
