BARRC Sociological Theory

David K. Clark, Professor of Theology Bethel Seminary

The Purpose of Theoretical Foundations

We seek shalom. This includes acting against racism. Action presupposes and lives out a theoretical foundation. Any attempt to prevail over racial conflict demands solid theoretical analysis. While building theories is necessary, it's never sufficient as a response to racism.

Racism evokes sadness, anger, and disgust. Sometimes we merely think about racism; sometimes we only develop right opinions about racism. That makes us feel as though we're doing something about racism. Thinking for understanding is good, but thinking about racism instead of acting on it is not. Racism should ignite emotions and stir up action. If any person is subjected to a racial slur or insult, a racial injustice or systemic oppression, our common humanity should cause us to feel as though someone just made a lewd remark about a beloved family member. And we should respond with action.

But just as too much abstract thinking can shortcut active response, so the wrong kind of emotional response can get in the way of solutions. For example, language related to racial identity can be used to shame others. Shaming is a power play. Power plays predictably bring about negative reactions that prevent cooperation and reconciliation. Sometimes, the "N" word is a shaming word. This is why it's offensive. Similarly, the "R" word is sometimes a shaming word. It's used, not for its descriptive or explanatory value, but for its emotional impact. Evaluating certain behaviors as "racist" can be accurate. But calling a person a "racist" can also be a shaming maneuver. Shaming language is out of bounds. We're committed to an accurate theoretical foundation that doesn't shame anyone.

We agree that racism is sinful. We need an accurate analysis to guide concrete action plans. Theoretical analyses use definitions and conceptual frameworks that have great power. Emotions provide power as well, but the power must be channeled constructively. The wrong use of emotion, without good understanding, can undercut the vision for constructive change. So the purpose of good theory is to develop understanding that's demonstrably true and properly qualified. This will create a common foundation to help us, the people of Bethel, to channel our passionate desire for peace and to become a community of shalom.

Racial Prejudice

Racial prejudice begins with judging an individual or a group based on negative racial stereotypes or animosity. Racial prejudice includes hating members of other groups and assuming the worst about them. In addition, it includes refusing to adjust that negative judgment regarding an individual or group based on firsthand experience with that person or group. Racial prejudice involves negative beliefs and values regarding members of other groups.

Racial discrimination is more than race prejudice. It occurs when people act out their racist beliefs and values. When people express racial discrimination, they try to gain advantage over members of other groups. They may set up barriers to the advancement of members of other groups or seek to limit their opportunities. People in every group can hold racially prejudiced beliefs and act in racially discriminatory ways.

Individual Racism

Individual racism goes beyond race prejudice. It involves hatred or fear of persons based on their racial or ethnic identity. But in addition, the idea of racism also includes the belief that persons of particular racial or ethnic identities are inferior, will retard social progress, and must be restrained. In contemporary understanding, the idea of racism goes beyond race prejudice to include possessing the power to magnify the effects of racial discrimination.

People in dominant social groups have the power to magnify the effects of their racial discrimination. Social position and institutional status give the power to intensify the harm that the racial prejudices of one group cause to other groups. This power can be invisible to those who have it. So individuals in an advantaged group can perpetuate their advantage over other groups over time. It happens outside of—and sometimes against—the explicit policies of institutions. The power to reinforce racial discrimination works itself out as part of ordinary human interaction by which humans tend to reinforce the patterns of their cultural upbringing. The power that imposes the negative results of race prejudice on people of color is sometimes called Power1.

Example: Bill needs to hire new workers in his hardware store. He chats with his current employees during coffee breaks about their relatives. He hopes to get good leads with minimum effort. All his employees are white, however, so due to normal social patterns, all the leads Bill gets are white people. So all his new hires are white, even though Bill never intentionally excludes non-white people from his hiring pool. Bill could seek out Asian youths from the local community college, but it never occurs to him to do so. And if it did occur to him, he might choose not to act on the thought due to nagging fears that this action might possibly upset other employees. So playing it safe and taking the path of least resistance, he gives subtle but real advantages to white applicants. As a storeowner, Bill has the power to hire anyone he chooses. If he's racially prejudiced, his power results in hiring practices that disadvantage the Asian youths. Because of his status, Bill's actions have a greater impact than another person's prejudices might.

Institutional Racism
An important form of racism is institutional racism in which the power structures, patterns of reward and punishment, and institutional policies have the effect of serving members of one group and obstructing members of another. Institutional and systemic forms of racism are exponentially more damaging than individual racism.

Institutional racism can be both explicit and intentional.

Example: In Apartheid (the system of lawful discrimination formerly practiced in South Africa), the legal system enforced racial inequity. The laws of the nation not only permitted, but actually required, differential treatment of persons based on their racial identity. This racism was purposefully and explicitly woven into the fabric of the nation's institutions. The full force of government authority supported racism.

Institutional racism can also be implicit, informal, unintentional, and relatively unnoticed by the people perpetuating it.

Example: A business club requires that only current members can nominate a potential applicant for new membership. The contacts that a person makes in the club can powerfully assist that person in her movement toward business success. The current members of the club are all white, and their social networks are white. So, the policy that requires nomination doesn't purposefully exclude non-white people overtly, but its unnoticed effect is that all new members are white.

Social institutions, like governmental social services agencies, are created to serve all people. But they can often become the arenas in which racial prejudice is embedded both in informal behavior patterns and also in formal institutional policies. This means that these institutions do not serve certain people well. In many cases and in many ways, these institutionalized systems oppress the very people they were created to help.

White Privilege

The sociological fact is that larger numbers of members of certain groups have advantages that members of other groups don't have. These include right of way into the resource centers in a culture. Those who have smoother access to these resources find it easier to succeed in a variety of adult endeavors. These resources include things like personal connections, property ownership, economic resources, and educational opportunities.

In the United States, whites generally enjoy privileges that others do not. Additionally, males, the wealthy, and the educated generally have advantages that others don't. There is, of course, a "continuum of advantage." Not every white person enjoys every privilege, and not every person of color experiences the same level of disadvantage. Still, in spite of exceptions to the generalizations, whites generally enjoy direct pathways to more social privileges—connections, property, money, and education. All other things being equal, white people in the United States typically have smoother access to the resources that make for success in adult life. More specifically, white people generally have smoother access to the resources that make for success in education. The advantage enjoyed by white people tends to compound the negative consequences of Power1. This advantage is sometimes called Power2 (power squared).

Racialized Society

In U.S. society, every person is socialized in a racialized society in which divisions between the racial groups are a given—they're part of the social landscape. A "privileged/non-privileged dynamic" exists whether or not we want to recognize it. This means that cultural practice assigns value and assumed competence to people who have certain characteristics or features. (Group membership has its privileges.) Cultural practice doesn't confer these privileges to members of certain other groups. Without being taught this explicitly, people learn the attitudes that give advantage to members of certain groups.

The "privileged/non-privileged dynamic" is unavoidable. We don't ask whether we want to live in such a society. All of us, regardless of racial group identity, just do. All of us in U.S. society, both non-white and white, are thrown into a racialized society—a society marked by a "privileged/non-privileged dynamic"—without our consent.

Every person, whether in the privileged group or the non-privileged group, suffers the effects of living in such a society. The truth about racialization—the fact that social interaction is infused with a "privileged/non-privileged dynamic" defined by racial identity—is very complex. Racialization hurts both privileged and non-privileged. But racialization hurts the non-privileged far more persistently and deeply. Members of the non-privileged groups face these disadvantages each and every day.

Example: A black mother is worried about her son. She tells the child that she's going to get to the bottom of his illness. "I'm taking you to a white doctor," she says. The sub-message the child picks up is that the person of color in some profession is less competent. Without realizing it, the child internalizes this negative attitude toward people of color—including himself.

Racialization can in some sense aid members of both groups. That is, members of both groups use racialization for their own personal advantage. In a racialized society, white people can wrongly exclude people of color, often silently and subtly, from access to the resources of the society. In a community of shalom, it's the responsibility of white people to stand against this behavior. Advocates who are white should take the lead in opposing other whites who try to use racialization for their own advantage or who negligently reinforce racism.

Example: A white employer "considers" hiring non-white people for her company. But she has no real intention to hire a non-white person. Her interviews are window dressing. She's trying to make it appear that she's in favor of diversity, but in fact she's not. White colleagues are in the best position to challenge her and to stand against her racist behavior.

On the other hand, in a racialized society, people of color can inappropriately use racialization to their own advantage. This is called "playing the race card." In a community of shalom, people of color are in the best position to challenge this behavior. Leaders of color should stand against the behavior of people of color who use the racialized situation to gain unreasonable advantages over others.

Example: A student at a community college gets a low grade because he doesn't fulfill the requirements of the syllabus. The professor tries to give the student honest feedback about what he did poorly and where he could improve. But the student rejects the feedback and tries to intimidate the professor, angling for a better grade by obliquely implying that the professor's assessment is racially driven.

Recognizing all this, racialization does help the privileged group more consistently and routinely. Benefits go to the privileged group by default, even when they overlook the dynamics of privilege. One of the biggest advantages is the privilege of remaining ignorant of these dynamics while benefiting from them.

Example: A Latino employee and a white employee get laid off due to budget cuts. The white employee never has to wonder, "Was it because I'm Latino?" But the nagging question irresistibly rises in the back of the Latino employee's mind. The question creates a persistent self-doubt that continually weighs down the Latino person, creating an extra obstacle that he must jump over on his way to success in life. The white person, however, rarely faces this obstacle, nor does he notice that his former colleague does.

Since all members of a society are socialized into dynamics that multiply the effects of Power1 and Power2, the dynamic of racialization is called Power3 (power cubed).

The Guilt of Racism

The idea that having privilege entails moral guilt is debated. This debate can keep us from constructive and active response to racism. So we need an honest but properly qualified assessment. The range of positions on this point can be expressed through the "continuum of responsibility" that involves five levels.

Level 1: Individually, white people do benefit from white privilege. But some white people recognize that their experience of advantage implies responsibility to "give back." They follow the principle: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded" (Luke 12:48). They live out the principle of Jubilee. They partner with disadvantaged individuals, serve in non-paternalistic ways to help disadvantaged groups, or work to change social structures to bring opportunities to all. These white people are proactive in the face of racism and seek to overcome it within their spheres of influence. Many people do this out of commitment to a biblical ethic. They apply in a different context the words of the Sermon on the Mount: "When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matt. 6:6). These people work assertively for shalom. People at Level 1 aren't guilty of racism (except in the general collective sense of Level 2).

Level 2: Collectively, in the United States, white people in the past formulated policies and enacted laws that oppressed peoples of color. In the sense that society identifies all white persons with the white racial group that formulated and enforced these policies, all whites share in guilt at Level 2. In a sense, all white people are identified with and share in a collective responsibility for this history.

Example: Here is a parallel case of collective guilt. Suppose I'm a Christian pastor. I meet a woman who was abused by her pastor. Am I guilty? No, not individually. Should I apologize? In the sense that I symbolize Christian pastors—I stand in for and represent Christian pastors—I can accept guilt for and apologize for that event. I identify with the attacker (in the sense that we're both Christian pastors). At the same time, I also completely repudiate what he did, absolutely reject any justification he had for his actions, empathize with the woman's pain (never perfectly, but as deeply as possibly), and appropriately seek to help her overcome the effects of this trauma. This is an analogy to illustrate the kind of guilt in which all white people participate.

Level 3: Other white people benefit from white privilege, but don't acknowledge it. They remain closed to the insights of sociology that show how social patterns give them an advantage over non-whites. They aren't required to enforce racist policies or practices at home, work, or church. They succeed in avoiding the issue in their daily lives. They aren't overtly racist. They defend themselves because they aren't overtly racist. They may even feel good for having certain positive attitudes and beliefs. Yet they are passive in the face of racism. They really don't proactively oppose racism. They don't do what they can do to promote shalom. Level 3 involves the moral guilt of culpable ignorance and negligence.

Example: The department supervisors in a company hire many employees over time. HR brings prospective employees to the supervisors. For each search process, HR brings non-white people for consideration. In each case, the supervisors find a reason why the white prospective employees would "fit in better." The supervisors pat themselves on the back because in each search process they honestly consider non-white applicants. But in the end, the negligence and cautious choices of all the supervisors collectively produces this result: many non-whites are considered, but all the people who actually get hired are white. Individual white supervisors don't notice the pattern that's repeated across the company, but HR does.

Level 4: Other white people knowingly participate in racism in their roles in various institutions. They do not speak out against, but go along with, policies and procedures that are "out of my hands." They enforce damaging policies as part of their work or life because "it's my job." Not only are they passive in the face of racism, but they perpetuate racism by their actions when they have the power to restrain it. Level 4 involves moral guilt.

Example: A store clerk gets a memo from headquarters to trail black teenagers in the store. Rather than protest the policy, he complies. He justifies to himself that he's actually being a very good employee. He's doing his job, supporting his company, and simply trying to reduce crime.

Level 5: Other white people are overt racists who hate people of other cultures, proclaim white supremacy, and seek a return to legally sanctioned oppression of non-white peoples. They are active in support of racism. Level 5 involves gross moral guilt.

At Bethel, the goal is to be a community of shalom. This includes actively opposing racism. The goal is to get beyond "I'm not a racist" and to arrive at "We're working against racism." No one has a problem with people at Level 1. We cannot eliminate Level 2 racism. It's history. We can acknowledge it honestly. We can express empathy for fellow human beings and fellow Christians of color who experience discrimination. But we can eliminate racism at Levels 3, 4, and 5. We can each individually seek to promote shalom in our individual spheres of influence. We can all work collectively to establish policies and procedures that are fair and inclusive. In addition, we can pursue strategies that will make Bethel a place where we're known for "giving back," for going the extra mile, and for intentionally creating a sense of belonging.

Anti-racism

An institution can reflect something parallel to the "continuum of responsibility" as well. To become an anti-racist community is to make cultural inclusion part of the identity of the institution. A nonnegotiable value becomes full participation of those who represent diverse communities in the living out of the vision of the institution. This doesn't mean that every person is consulted on every decision. Leaders still must lead, but the goal is to create a community in which systemic racism is overcome. There is an ethos of trust and mutual caring in community as well as a commitment to respond proactively to racism and to work individually and collectively for shalom.

The solutions to racism and the pathway to reconciliation must be as complex and multi-faceted as the problems. Neither the personal responsibilities of all individuals nor the structures of the institutional patterns can be overlooked in this process. The solutions to racism are profoundly biblical, and they call out the best efforts of all members of our community.

We need to repent of racially prejudiced beliefs, attitudes, and discriminatory behaviors. We all need to commit to living as ministers of reconciliation and shalom. This is true for all, both those in the privileged group and those in all non-privileged groups. Commitment to work proactively against racism is a bigger leap for those in the privileged groups, but it's the responsibility of all members of Bethel's community.

We all need to work to combat negative effects of racism in our own spheres of influence. This includes learning about the tragedies of history as well as learning how to "give back" in graceful, non-paternalist ways. On the "continuum of responsibility," great responsibility goes to those who enjoy greater privileges. These will tend to be white people.

As members of a Christian community, we need to make our institutional systems as fair as possible by ensuring that formal policies and informal practices are equitable both in their intended and in their unintended consequences. We need to make access to resources and benefits of all sorts equitable. On the "continuum of responsibility," this places special responsibility on leaders.

Racial Reconciliation and Shalom

The process of institutional improvement should reflect our goal. Our goal is shalom, so our process should be an example of shalom. It should be genuinely dialogical. The members of non-privileged groups should have a full hearing and full participation in the process. Similarly, members of the privileged groups should have full participation.
No one's viewpoint is ruled out prior to genuine discussion and dialogue on the ground that "He's in denial" or "She doesn't get it." This rhetoric is not dialogical. Its purpose is to shame others, to shut down discussion, and thus to gain power over another. Organizations have appropriate authority and accountability channels, but the attempt to gain power over others through political rhetoric is never an appropriate strategy.

Shalom includes a community culture—a collective ethos—where peace, trust, and goodwill are the norm. Shalom is in part a feeling that "I belong." People of every "tribe and tongue," people of every color who love the Triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, belong in this Galatians 3:28 community. Again, for the good of all, leaders must still lead. But in the kind of community we envision, all persons will sense that they're welcome, they're safe, and they're appreciated. And all will know that they'll be challenged to be their best, to grow to maturity in Christ, and to contribute, as they're able, to the Common Good. All members of the community, no matter their social status or ethnic identity, will be "judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Together, all will become a community of shalom.