Welcome. ‘Racial Justice’ is a widely used phrase, but also a slippery one as I found when I attempted to write about it. This is my take. I would love to hear yours, especially taking forward the complexity and range of the topic.
What is ‘Racial Justice’?
Clearly the opposite of racial justice is racial injustice, and no-one is in favour of that. Examples of racial injustice have not been difficult to find. Overt acts of racial injustice have been manifest as Britain has become a multi-racial society. Racial discrimination in the ‘Windrush era’ (1948-1965?) was widespread. The shameful record of Anglican churches in this respect has been called out, notably in a recent General Synod debate. Any clergy who ministered in a multi-racial parish before, say, 2000 will have heard people tell of stories of racism, rejection and rudeness. The church here simply reflected the wider picture of discrimination and exclusion in employment opportunities, housing and social life, plus the added factor of actual physical violence. (The flow of Linbert Spencer’s thoughtful and information-rich book on ‘Building a Multi-Ethnic Church’ (SPCK 2007) is suddenly disrupted by his account of being wrestled to the ground in a racist attack on a suburban commuter train).
Legislation against discrimination, substantial growth in personal interactions, and discovery of the wide variety of resources that ethnic minorities bring to our society have all served to considerably reduce the instances of explicitly racist behaviour and language, but the history has left us with a legacy of minority communities, notably African Caribbean, that have been damaged by the foundation experiences of racism and a continuing story of suspicion, distrust and bitterness, which continues to inhibit progress to equality.
But damaging and distressing as persisting examples of overt racism maybe, to see them as forming the main target that calls for racial justice inveigh against clearly fails to match the weight of concern that racial injustice arouses. Rather the weight of racial justice concern is over continuing inequality – lower incomes and job prospects for members of minority ethnic groups, less representation at the top of various professions, such as the judiciary; poor performance in schools, especially in terms of exclusions; poor relationships with the police and higher levels of incarceration. To these can be added, as regards the church, fewer ordained clergy and under-representation at senior levels. All this adds up to offer clear evidence that being non-white or from an ethnic minority is disadvantageous in our society.
So how can racial justice be promoted, and what are the pitfalls?
1. Listen to the Marginalised.
One of the values of ‘Critical Theories’ has been its emphasis on the power of knowledge and who determines it and shares it. It is undeniable that those who have exercised power, including in the church, have had ears attuned to voices that speak with similar inflections to their own. The history of the church has often found unfamiliar voices crying out for hearing, not least in the recent rise of Pentecostalism. Churches, especially historic and established ones, ought to relish the prospect of hearing new voices speaking in unfamiliar accents. This is important in a local congregation, when people of different ethnicities are both encouraged by hearing others’ testimonies of faith, but also host the sharing of grievances and pain without defensiveness then unity and maturity develop. Simply speaking, being heard and being respected is for many a significant experience and needsto be at the heart of church life.
But sharing stories can also become repetitive and self-indulgent if perceptions are not challenged, and if the fear of being defensive carries over into unquestioning acceptance. One pitfall for discriminated against groups is to assign all set-backs to discrimination and to lose the vigour that comes from self-interrogation and awareness. At a group level this can lead to an uncontested and inward-looking grievance narrative which becomes immune to criticism, to receiving from others, and reform. In ‘Cynical Theories’ Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay attend to how ‘grievance studies’ (such as womens, gay, black etc) come to form their own worlds that are impervious to negative analysis. Affixing the label of ‘Black’ to any area of study should not lead to it being uncontested
2. Identifying and Nurturing Ability.
The daughter of our local imam told her school-teacher that she wanted to be a doctor. She was aiming too high the teacher said and should think of a less demanding occupation. She is now a doctor. Stories of low expectations being impressed on minority ethnic young people have been distressingly common, even if they have become less frequent recently. Low estimates of the capacities of non-Europeans have a long history in justifying European dominance and power. It lies behind the reality of unconscious bias. It can easily overlook the potential of people in the workplace, school or church; the more so if they possess gifts which have been less valued. It is the responsibility of all leaders, not least in the churches, to have sharp eyes to discern and nurture the potential of people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Often it requires a second look A few years back the press drew attention of the appointments in the same week of Sharon White as CEO of John Lewis and Sonita Alleyne as Master of Jesus College Cambridge, both of who had been nurtured by their sixth-form teacher in Leyton. This was not a form of ‘white saviourism’, but simply a teacher delighting to see human capacities flourishing in his classroom. How much potential have we lost in our society because it has not been looked for?
Historically churches have been fertile grounds for developing capacities. The Evangelical Revival and especially the growth of Methodism led both to the growth of independent, locally-led churches and also spawned transferable skills which nurtured social activism, trade unions and the Labour movement. Similarly black churches in Britain have nurtured people with confidence to take on senior roles in civil society. Clergy therefore ought to be both sharpening their own eyes and consulting with others, especially from ethnic minorities to identify and develop the talents of their members. The joy of seeing people flourish in unexpected ways is one of the delights of ministry.
Alongside such energy needs to go thoughtfulness in assessing abilities. The phrase of ‘the soft racism of low expectations’ serves as a salutary warning, both against too readily accepting low standards and being insufficiently rigorous in expecting quality. As will be pointed out below ‘equality of outcome’ may well not happen. Overly authoritarian or unstable upbringing in a person’s early years may well have limited their ‘social capital’, including the capacities to persevere, take criticism, co-operate or accept authority which results in the early levelling out of someone’s potential. A passion to see racial justice implemented in terms of equality of opportunity and the development of leaders can run up against deep-set limitations.
3. Track Institutional Racism.
The most grievous examples of racial injustice in Britain have been carried out by institutions – the ‘Windrush scandal’ of the denial of rights, culminating in deportations of long-standing members of our society because they had no documentation of their entry into this country several decades ago; and the Grenfell Tower disaster which took the lives of mainly minority ethnic people because of failure to apply regulations and government pressure to build social housing as cheaply as possible. They are examples of how, without explicit intent, minorities in our society are treated as second class and their dignity and rights denied. Partly as a result of not hearing people’s voices, as identified above, ethnic minorities are amongst those who receive disproportionately unjust treatment in our society.
In several blogs I have tried to track how in the Church of England the needs of minority ethnic people are overlooked, for example in being ‘invisible’ when the church forms its pastoral policies (Blog at 14/01/2021) or in not attending to preparing clergy to minister in a multi-ethnic nation (Blog #46).
However, the word ‘tracking’ with reference to institutional racism is used intentionally – the specific processes need to be delineated, as in the Church examples I give above. Part of the controversy that there has been in the church over the phrase is that often the processes are not identified. ‘From Lament to Action’ made important proposals about selection processes so that minority people were structured into decision making procedures, but when church leaders lament that ‘we are institutionally racist’ without specifically identifying how people are discriminated against then the laments are empty – no change is possible until procedures that create racist outcomes are identified and reforms suggested.
In this respect the simple quoting of statistics of ethnic disparities, which constantly occurs in attempts to identify racial injustice, are inadequate. Listing disparities of outcome (in education, wages, employment prospects, housing and so on) does not in itself prove racism. Disparities can arise from all sorts of reasons – lifestyle choices, pre-migration histories, behavioural patterns – which are not caused by racialised processes. In this respect it is important to stress that inequality of outcome is a good servant but a bad master. If black children in a school are performing badly, if the senior managers in a company are all white, if a church’s lesson readers never includes black people then the inequalities are a ‘good servant’ in pointing the need to investigate and explain such disparities. But they are a ‘bad master’ if it is assumed without question that racist assumptions or policies are at work. As mentioned above there can be a host of other reasons that make better sense in explaining the disparities.
‘Races’ are not set immovable, unchangeable entities. They develop, sub-divide, alter their focus. They are also very amorphous. In that sense any hard definition of ‘racial justice’ is impossible. Strict justice requires the comparing of like with like and can be clearly defined – either you were or were not driving over 30mph. ‘Races’ are not alike, often it is not even clear, or how intensely, a person belongs to or identifies with a group. There are then, no clear rules, and certainly no qualified court or judiciary, to determine in every case what constitutes racial injustice.
But the phrase has traction in adding moral force to the identification of clear injustices and imbalances in the way people are treated, simply on the basis of the ‘racial’ group they are seen to belong to. Perhaps rather than referring to ‘racial justice warriors’ we should be referring to ‘racial justice strategists’. The battle is not with flesh and blood hard racists, but with the subtleties of perceptions and policies with which open warfare is a clumsy and inadequate response.
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Add Ons
My booklets on ‘Building Multi-Racial Churches’ (Latimer Trust) and ‘Worship in a Multi-Ethnic Society’ are available for £4 & £3.50 respectively, or £7 for the two (all post free). Just send a cheque to John Root at 42 Newlyn Rd, N17 6RX.
Two lectures worth hearing:
* If you valued Chris Watkin’s Cambridge Paper on ‘Critical Race Theory’ (referred to in Blog #86) then it is worth hearing his lecture on ‘Developing a Biblical Critical Theory’ on the Thinking Through the Bible You Tube Channel. He also has a book on Biblical Critical Theory just published.
* Mark Nam’s lecture on "East-Asian theology as a corrective to a Western view of creation care" (available on the OCMS Oxford web-site) is an eye-opening (for me) exploration of East Asian philosophy and popular culture’s connection with the biblical understanding of the environment.