Systemic Change — Racism
By Ms. Marilynn Knott, Retired Commissioned Minister
Member, Crown Heights Christian Church, OKC
Oklahoma’s most valuable resource is our people. One of the best things we can do for our state is to enable our people to become fully the people God created them to be. If you check out statistics on poverty, you will learn that people of color are disproportionately included in counts of those living in poverty. Jim Wallis labels racism as America’s Original Sin.
One of my great grandfathers was the captain of a local militia for the Confederacy during the Civil War. I was told he was very bitter about the loss of the war and carried that bitterness throughout his life passing it on to his family. Some years ago, I sat in a court house in Tennessee reading the will of this great grandfather’s father who was the product of Manifest Destiny probably taught in his church. Tears ran down my cheeks as I read the names of his house slaves and the children who inherited them listed among the horses and cattle he was also leaving them. His great granddaughter, my mother, did not pass that on to me. I never got the chance to ask her how that happened. My guess is she learned racism was wrong in Sunday school when a teacher taught her that God commanded us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and she thought God meant it.
People of Faith Don’t Always Get Things Right
People of faith don’t always get things right. As Paul says we get caught up in the world sometimes and transfer the ways of the world to our faith. The good thing is we serve a God of second chances giving us the opportunity to turn around and work to set things right. My mother took that opportunity and lived and modeled it all her 98 years from serving all colors of people as a deaconess in the Methodist church in West Virginia during the depression to intercessory prayers from her nursing home bed.
Pray for Needed Systemic Change
Systemic racism is insidious, destructive in ways that are gradual and not easily noticed. As we pray about needed systemic change, let us seek and follow guidance on becoming intentional in our efforts to overcome systemic racism.
