The Death of White Innocence

I speak to you in the name of Jesus, who protested injustice, was executed by the state, and continues to rise up.  Amen.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

These last words of George Floyd, like those of Eric Garner before him, serve as an indictment of white America’s refusal to perceive reality.  As that great American prophet, James Baldwin, pointed out some sixty years ago,

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. (Baldwin, The Fire Next Time)

We are living through the death of white innocence.  For more than 400 years, white Americans have looted black bodies – stealing their labor, their health, their safety, and their lives – and have pretended to be innocent.  We have collectively denied the reality of a racist society and its victims, and now we are surprised at the destruction of our social fabric unleashed by that “innocence.”  400 years of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, “separate but equal,” the “War on Drugs,” mass incarceration and criminalization, discrimination, and brutality and, still, we pretend that we are innocent.

“I am not racist!”

“How could this happen?”

“We just need to get rid of the bad apples in the police department.”

“My family didn’t own slaves!  I haven’t benefitted from slavery!”

“All lives matter.”

These are among the protestations of innocence that we hear.  They seek to obscure the truth of racism and protect the fragile feelings of white people.  Let’s take “All lives matter” as an example.  It is patently false that “all lives matter” in the United States of America.  Historically, we have very precisely calculated the value of human lives:  people of African descent counted as three-fifths of a person; not quite fully human.  The coronavirus pandemic belies the claim that “all lives matter,” revealing the ongoing and cumulative racial disparities in access to basic health and safety.  Clearly, some lives matter more than others; some, not at all.

We cannot watch Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling placidly with his knee on George Floyd’s neck, with Officers Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng pressing on his chest and legs, pushing the breath out of his body, while Officer Tou Thao diligently ensures that no bystanders interfere with this public lynching, and pretend that “all lives matter.”  The history of state sanctioned terrorism against black lives exposes this lie over and over again.  “White innocence” seeks to divert our attention from the truth. 

Even as police chiefs and police officers unions issue statements condemning these officers’ behavior, they do not actually call for their arrest and prosecution.  Statements such as these allow police officers to distance themselves from the “bad apples,” while preserving the racist structures that produce and abet them, and resisting genuine accountability.  When you have a system that protects the “bad apples,” then the whole system is rotten – to its core.  This is the truth that “all lives matter” elides.

“I’m not racist,” Amy Cooper has assured us.  Yet, watch her encounter with Christian Cooper (no relation) in Central Park carefully.  Observe how readily she resorts to the basest calumny when a black man politely asks her to leash her dog in conformity with park rules.  Offended at the temerity of a black man making an equal claim on the safety of a public space, she immediately threatens to call the police and tell them that an African-American man is threatening her life. 

Ms. Cooper plays on the racist trope of black men as sexual predators; an old canard that white women have used to reinforce their privilege against countless black men, whose bodies were hung from trees by lynch mobs.  She knows that in the absence of a lynch mob, the police will do nicely; if not to lynch Christian Cooper, at least to keep him in his place.  Ms. Cooper has internalized fully how racist social structures work.  And she is fully prepared to deploy the full force of their power.  “I am not a racist.”  She just plays one on social media.

Racism is not who we are, it is what we do – and allow to be done in our name.  All white people face the same temptation to wield our privilege to our advantage.  We’ve all done it.  It takes considerable discipline and self-awareness to resist this temptation.  Privilege happens, its conditions set in place before we were born.  It is our patrimony, accumulated from the looting of black lives and passed down to us.  This is the reality in which we are living.  The façade of white innocence is wearing thin. 

We are now beginning, belatedly, to realize that James Baldwin’s acute analysis was correct.  Baldwin writes that

. . . this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death, for this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man. (But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime. (Baldwin, The Fire Next Time)

We should welcome the death of white innocence. Only by acknowledging the truth of the crime of racism, and the white privilege that obtains from it, do we become free to affirm that black lives matter and empowered for the work of antiracism.  Those of us formed by Christian traditions know this.  We just celebrated the feast of Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth which Jesus told us would set us free.[1]   Jesus told his disciples that when they received the Spirit they would be empowered to be his witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.[2]  What is it that the disciples witnessed?

They witnessed a lynch mob sanctioning the state sponsored murder of an innocent man.  They witnessed to the injustice of empire and the innocence of its victims.  Jesus was a brown man from a marginalized social group living under occupation.  He resisted the evil of the system which fostered the oppression of his people, and died in solidarity with all victims of evil.  His disciples also witnessed to his resurrection:  his continuing life with them in the movement for justice that he empowers through his Spirit. 

They began in Jerusalem, the very place in which Jesus was lynched outside the gate of the city.  They gathered a community of repentant sinners and innocent victims who together became witnesses to the truth.  They witnessed to the power of reconciliation grounded in truth-telling to overcome ancient injustices between Jew and Samaritan, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, rich and poor, women and men.  The power of that witness has now spread to every part of the earth.

The gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Jesus, is the power to perceive the truth and call out the reality of injustice.  It is also the power to create an alternative community – a beloved community – in which former enemies come together as witnesses to the truth.  We see this power at work across our nation today, as millions of people, especially young people of all backgrounds, rise up together to fearlessly resist racist oppression and make no peace with creeping martial law.  By this truth, we become free to live in an entirely new way, unafraid of the coercive power of death that unjust regimes use to perpetuate injustice. 

We, who are white, are not innocent.   The Church is not innocent.  St. John’s Episcopal Church, “the church of presidents” in Washington, D.C. and the backdrop for Donald Trump’s most recent blasphemy, was founded by wealthy plantation owners, built on slave labor.  We are not innocent. But we can be free.  We can acknowledge the reality of racism and witness to the power of love to create God-breathed community.  We can engage antiracist work, affirming the worth of black lives; the intelligence of black minds; the beauty of black bodies; the creativity of black cultures; and the resilience of black communities.

There is much work to do to dismantle the racism that we have internalized.  Antiracism begins as a contemplative practice of observing and renouncing our own racist thoughts and reactions.  It opens us to building real relationships with people of color; the kind of solidarity that makes us willing to put our life on the line for them.  It requires us to organize for justice, building institutions and implementing policies that promote equality and dignity.  Antiracism is repentance, reparations and reconciliation.   Too often, white people want to jump over the first two to embrace the third.  That is cheap grace.  There can be no racial reconciliation in America without the death of white innocence and collective amendment of life.

The confessing church, the church that witnesses to the truth, knows how to move from the death of innocence through resistance to evil, and on to new life. Echoing James Baldwin, the confessing church poses this question to white America today:  Will we die to our innocence and choose life?  Or will we protest our innocence and become a monster?

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.

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[1] John 8:31-32; 16:13.

[2] Acts 1:8.

The Jesus Gate

Today is often known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” because of the many images of shepherds in our readings.   Shepherds were common in the ancient world, and the shepherd became a common trope in biblical literature.   Shepherds – the folks who actually cared for the flocks rather than the folks who owned the flocks – were often caricatured as low-class, seedy, uneducated folks; not unlike caricatures of rural people as rednecks or hicks today.  Shepherds lived in flyover country.

Yet in the Bible, the shepherd became an image for the ideal leader; turning the stereotype of shepherds on its head.  David, the once and future king of Israel, started out as a shepherd.  The model shepherd cares for the sheep, protects them from danger, and actually lives among them.  Sheepfolds were frequently enclosed areas right next to the shepherd’s home.  Bringing sheep through the gate meant bringing them safely home after grazing in open pastures. 

Sheep were familiar animals.  They provided wool, milk, and, of course, meat.  But sheep had a significance in the ancient world that went far beyond animal husbandry.   Sheep were the animal of choice for ritual sacrifice.  They were sacrificial victims used both as sin offerings and thanksgiving offerings to God.  They suffered to benefit others, reifying an understanding of human culture built on the sacrifice of some so that others may live.  In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is engaged in a series of controversies with the religious leaders at the Temple in Jerusalem, the very center of Israel’s sacrificial cult. 

But there are other ways of imagining human culture.  In the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel, God is imagined as a good shepherd of the people, who brings justice, unlike corrupt human leaders; a shepherd who feeds the flock rather than simply fleecing them or fattening them up for slaughter.[1]  God desires that we care for one another, rather than ignore and exploit each other.   Another stream of prophetic thought imagines the Messiah, God’s anointed leader, as one who identifies with the suffering of God’s people, even choosing to endure suffering for their liberation.[2]  God desires mercy, rather than sacrifice.[3]

Jesus brings both of these streams together.  For Jesus, the sheep are human victims of injustice, exploited by the very leaders who are supposed to guide and protect them.  Jesus speaks of himself as both the “shepherd” who goes before them and the “gate” through which the sheep pass.[4]   What does he mean?

As shepherd, Jesus knows the victims of injustice intimately and they recognize his voice.  He is one of them.   In fact, he tells us later that he will even give his life for them.  Unlike the thieves and bandits who kill victims for unjust gain, and the cowardly hired hands who run away at the first threat of violence, Jesus willingly risks his life in solidarity with victims in their struggle for justice.

In Jerusalem, there was an actual Sheep Gate through which the herds were brought to holding pens where they were kept for ritual slaughter.  That gate led in only one direction – toward death.  In claiming the gate image for himself, Jesus emphasizes the reverse:  through him, victims are led out into freedom and new life.  When we walk through the Jesus Gate, we enter into a spacious and generous reality in which forgiveness replaces retribution, justice restores relationships, and God’s love brings life out of death.   In willingly entering the Sheep Gate, we begin to identify with victims and act in solidarity with them.  Compassion moves us even to take some risks on their behalf.  The point is to turn the Sheep Gates of our world into the Jesus Gate.

One thing that the coronavirus pandemic reveals is the often hidden equivalents of human slaughterhouses in our culture, where the victims of structural racism and inequality are taken to be sacrificed.   Journalist Dylan Matthews notes that COVID-19 cases and deaths have been concentrated in particular places:  nursing homes, prisons, and factory farms. 

What factory farms, prisons, and nursing homes have in common is that they’re warehousing efforts. They all involve placing people or animals into confined facilities where most of society doesn’t have to think too hard about them anymore. They are institutions optimized for neglect . . .

Warehousing leaves its victims vulnerable to Covid-19 through at least two mechanisms. First, it forces affected individuals into close proximity with one other — including those maintaining the warehouse, like factory farm staff or prison guards or nursing home attendants. It’s difficult to socially distance under those conditions. But the second mechanism is subtler and arguably just as important.  Warehousing fosters social inequality, and we know that social inequality kills . . .

Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that out of Covid-19 patients for whom race is known, 30% are African American, more than double African Americans’ share of the overall population . . .

Nursing home patients are victims not just of density but of a broader societal disregard toward older people and those with disabilities. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick famously suggested that Americans 70-plus should be willing to die to get the economy back running again.

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 outbreaks at factory farms aren’t among their animals but among their staffers and the staffers at meatpacking facilities, who are disproportionately black, Latino, and/or immigrants. Warehousing hurts the people enlisted to do the warehousing, too.[5]

Dylan Matthews neglects to mention one other major vector of the pandemic:  congregate warehousing of people in homeless encampments, shelters, and crowded SROs.  Here in San Francisco, recent outbreaks at the MSC South Shelter (106 cases), Casa Quezada SRO (24 cases), Hartland Hotel SRO (5 cases), and confirmed cases at the Division Circle Navigation Center and Hamilton Family Shelter underscore the cruelty of social inequality.  Mass testing has not yet begun among the unhoused population, but incomplete data from the Department of Public Health indicates that at least 25% of COVID-positive cases in San Francisco are people experiencing homelessness or in SROs.   And every one of them has a name.

Jesus knows their names and they recognize his voice.  Do we know their names?  One of them is named Ian Carrier, an unhoused 38-year-old San Franciscan, who died in his wheelchair on Hyde and Eddy streets after being released from the hospital on Monday. He had been battling what appeared to be COVID-19. He suffered from numerous health issues, and spent the last four months in and out of the hospital on dialysis and a ventilator. Ian fit the City’s hotel room criteria, as he was critically at risk of COVID-19 due to being so medically fragile, but service providers were told there were no hotel rooms available.   

On Friday, Faith in Action Bay Area, along with other community groups, called on the Mayor and Board of Supervisors to enter into mediation to develop a real plan to move unhoused folks into the City’s thousands of vacant hotel rooms so they can shelter in place safely just like everyone else.  It is too late for Ian, but not for thousands of other vulnerable neighbors.

I want to close by sharing a message from Katherine, who took the time to write to us at Faith in Action this week.

On behalf of the people I serve, thank you for championing the cause of unhoused San Franciscans.  I’m currently helping clients at a hotel that’s being used to shelter unhoused people.  Clients come to the hotel from shelters and Navigation Centers so that those sites are less crowded. Normally, I run the Adult Education Center at Episcopal Community Services, and I’m working from home in that capacity two days a week and helping out at the hotel three days a week.

One new guest made a deep impression on me.  He is an African American man, probably in his late sixties, a bit stooped. While some guests brought quite a few bags of belongings, this man had only a small plastic carrier bag of the kind that have been strictly regulated in San Francisco and New York City.  I opened the door to the room and stepped aside.  (We do not, of course, enter the guests´rooms.)

“Aw, nah,” I heard the man say as he entered. I looked past his stooped back at the twelve-foot ceiling, tall window, and door to the en suite. “What is it, sir,” I asked.  “This isn’t all for me, is it?” “Yes, it is.”  He had to ask again, “I’m in here just me?”  “Yes, sir.” “That’s just fine,” he said, nodding.  I swallowed my tears.

On another occasion, a woman asked me how long she might expect to be at the hotel.  I apologized for not being able to give her a precise answer. “Oh, baby,” she said. “That’s okay.  I’m doing great.  Got a good night’s sleep for the first time in years, got my own t.v. and a bathroom all to myself.  I’m all right.”

Lastly, I noticed a bouquet of paper flowers, made from the white paper bags that meals are delivered in, hanging from a doorknob outside one person’s rooms.  On closer examination, I saw that the words “Thank you all” had been written on the bouquet.  It’s an honor to serve these guests.  Thank you, again, for all of the crucial work that you do.[6]

Jesus knows Ian’s name, and Katherine’s.  He invites us to have the courage to learn their names, to enter the sheep gate, the hidden slaughterhouses of our culture and shine the light upon them.   Let us hear their stories and learn their names, and let them hear our voices calling for justice as we open wide the Jesus Gate. 

In the Name of the Son of Man who had no place to lay his head, the Good Shepherd who calls us by name, the Gate to abundant life.  Amen. 

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[1] For example, Ezekiel 34; Psalms 23 & 80.

[2] See the “Suffering Servant” poems in Isaiah. 

[3] Hosea 6:6.

[4] John 10:1-21.

[5] Dylan Matthews, “America’s Covid-19 hot spots shed a light on our moral failures,” VOX (May 1, 2020) at https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/5/1/21239396/covid-19-meatpacking-prison-jail-moral

[6] Personal communication.