This was a great moment for me to stop and synthesize what I have been thinking and writing about for about a year now. I wrote:
"White Christians need to develop a “sociological imagination.
Sociologists are able to see the world in ways that are supremely helpful to understanding our experience. Along with anthropologists, they are the ones who describe how “race” is not a biological or cultural reality, but is social constructed. Going all the way back to W.E.B. Dubois, they are the people who talk about a system of “White privilege,” which is the other side of institutionalized racism.
White Christians mostly don’t know about these concepts, because to be brutally honest, White churches were helping to maintain Jim Crow laws and racial segregation on Sunday morning and every other day of the week for much of this time. We absolutely have to listen to what sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists are saying about "race," racial identity, privilege and oppression, because we as White Christians have not been developing a capacity to think about these topics. If we can listen with discernment, we will begin to understand why it is so critical to be aware of the society in which we live."
The rest of the post can be found on Kenneth's blog, which I recommend checking out at http://voicilesmotsjustes.blogspot.com/.
I am still hoping for some dialogue around this topic, so maybe I can give another go at engaging people.
1) What form of privilege do you think we most need to engage in the church?
2) Are the sociological concepts of "privilege" and "oppression" useful for Christians? If not, are there similar themes in the Bible that might help Christians theorize about "race" and racial inequality?
3) Other thoughts, opinions, or critiques?
