From “The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy” by Jim Wallis
So where are we now? Is the incremental progress we have made enough? Many whites I know wish it were, while Black people I talk to don’t think so. Slavery is in the past, white people say, and many people want to believe that the civil rights movement fixed everything. So can we finally put the issue of race behind us? And just stop talking about it?
No, we can’t.
Now more than ever it is time to seek the truth, and understand what’s happening in America today. And crossing the color line is what creates the proximity that turns distant groups into people with whom our lives are connected by relationships.
America’s original sin of racism with a human hierarchy based on skin color still lingers, and has continued to “evolve” in the words of criminal justice leader Bryan Stevenson. Jim Crow is now wearing a suit, instead of sheets, and is once again making a comeback to prevent a united democratic future.
Here is the new strategy of white supremacy in modern terms – in a single sentence: to prevent our changing demography from changing our democracy. It is a commitment to white minority rule by any and all means necessary: covert and overt voter suppression, racial gerry-mandering in reshaping representational political districts, restricted immigration, election denial with electoral corruption and manipulation, judicial bias all the way to the Supreme Court, and when, all else fails, the promotion of political violence, as January 6 revealed to us – with the threat of more of all of the above to come.