Healing Racial Divides: Finding Strength in Our Diversity
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About this ebook
Can the church help America emerge from its racist shadows empowered to heal racial divides? Church pastor and former police officer Terrell Carter says yes.
While our faith inarguably calls Christians to unity, the hard fact remains: we're still tragically divided when it comes to race, even - and especially, many say -- in our churches. Racism pervades our faith, our relationships, and our institutions in deep, often imperceptible ways. In Healing Racial Divides, Terrell Carter, a pastor, professor and former police officer takes us on a revelatory journey into the abyss of the racial divide and shows us how we've arrived at this divisive place. Understanding racism's roots - and our place in it - we surface more committed and empowered to defeat racism once and for all.
Drawing from the Bible, scholarly research, and personal experience as a both a former police officer and a black pastor serving white congregations, Carter unpacks the deep roots of racism in America, how it continues to be perpetuated today, and practical strategies for racial reconciliation. Looking forward, he shapes a bold and faithful vision for healing racial division through multicultural communities focused on relationship, listening, and learning from each other.
With a pastor's heart and an academic's head, Carter invites us to look at where we've been-and where God calls us as spiritually mature Christians, seeking healing and true unity on earth.
In Healing Racial Divides, Terrell Carter helps us:
· Understand the roots of racism in the world, the church, and ourselves
· Gain a biblical perspective on the sin of racism, as well as the biblical call to Christian unity
· Examine how racism continues to be perpetuated in America today
· Explore the concept of "white normality" and its aftereffects
· Discover a way across the divide through the creation of multi-cultural relationships, churches and communities
Terrell Carter
Terrell Carter is Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and Director of Contextualized Learning at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kansas. He is the author of Walking the Blue Line: A Police Officer Turned Community Activist Provides Solutions to the Racial Divide (2015) and Machiavellian Ministry: What Faith-filled Leaders can Learn from a Faithless Politician (2015).
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Healing Racial Divides - Terrell Carter
Praise for Healing Racial Divides
"In Healing Racial Divides Dr. Carter touches on the pulse of racialized issues challenging society and our sense of community. Carter uses thorough definitions and insightful examples of lived experiences to raise undeniable incongruities in perceptions that create border walls among humanity. Whether leader or laity, readers are convicted to ponder, How did we move so far from God’s loving-kindness? Achieving solely that reflective outcome is worthwhile, yet Carter astutely moves us to hold up the mirror and ask,What about me?" —Valerie Miles-Tribble, Graduate Theological Union and American Baptist Seminary of the West
Dr. Terrell Carter is an artist, pastor, educator, and former police officer. He combines these experiences with the insights of theology, the social sciences, law, and cultural analysis to address the key issue in America—the racial divide that inhibits our interactions and poisons public discourse. Carter’s very personal engagement with the topic encourages us to find strength rather than division in our diversity. His approach is fresh, informative, and a source of healing.
—Ircel Harrison, Central Baptist Theological Seminary and Pinnacle Associates
As a pastor what I appreciate most is that Dr. Carter masterfully weaves his own painful personal experiences, scholarly research, biblical teaching, and the history of racial division into a book that is accessible and relevant to folks at any level of understanding in the conversation of racial inequality. His book is a great tool for any pastor or congregant seeking to begin or continue more deeply the important work of racial justice and healing.
—Johnny Lewis, Shawnee Community Christian Church, Shawnee, Kansas
"While reading another substantive book by Dr. Carter, I’m resisting the urge to scribble quotes and shove them into the hands of anyone I can find. Healing Racial Divides is a unique contribution to healing racial brokenness due to Dr. Carter’s rich and unique journey combined with keen academic insights. With precision, Dr. Carter strips away the illusion that racism is only historical in this country, yet his personal humility simultaneously disarms reader defensiveness. Ultimately, Dr. Carter calls the Church to live into its identity as a vessel of reconciliation in this divided world. I suspect many readers will mirror my experience, quoting this book most everywhere they can." —Mark E. Tidsworth, President, Pinnacle Leadership Associates
Equipped with a pastor’s heart, a scholar’s mind, and a boundless sense of justice, Terrell Carter has provided a work that seeks first and foremost to change the very life of a community of faith. This text dares to address oft-ignored disparities and is approachable enough to offer practical ways that congregations can seek to fully embody their calling.
—Tyler Tankersley, First Baptist Church, Cape Girardeau, Missouri
"Healing Racial Divides is a needed book. For some privileged communities, the racial divide is the third rail. Seek a closer look, get too close, and the community of polarized privilege will create more heat than light. Terrell Carter walks the racial divide with some ease as he seeks the light of understanding. This is a strong voice where the lines are drawn. Carter’s closing chapter, ‘Finding Common Ground,’ shines brightly in the dark with its sense of wisdom and hope." —Keith Herron, St. Lucas United Church of Christ, St. Louis, author of Living a Narrative Life: Essays on the Power of Stories
Dr. Carter uses a good blend of honest self-disclosure, personal and theological reflection, and historical recounting in this helpful book about racism and the road to recovery. He pulls us into our own culpability and points us unerringly in the direction of how to begin the journey to make things right. After reading Carter’s words, I feel compelled to help both of us—along with all of our brothers and sisters—become the best versions of ourselves.
—Robin R. Sandbothe, Englewood Baptist Church, and Director of Seminary Relations, Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri
Dr. Terrell Carter provides a must read for religious leaders who take seriously the call to bring awareness to the active, unequal racial systems of today. Combining both historical and biblical lenses, Carter encourages churches to lead the charge in which all are viewed as an equal child of God. This is a timely written book that should not only stand on a pastor’s desk, but more importantly seep into a pastor’s heart.
—David McDaniel, Holmeswood Baptist Church, Kansas City, Missouri
Copyright
Copyright ©2018 by Terrell Carter
All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, www.copyright.com.
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover art: Terrell Carter, copyright ©2018 by Terrell Carter. All rights reserved.
Cover design: Vicky Vaughn Shea of Ponderosa Pine Design. Copyright ©2018. All rights reserved.
ChalicePress.com
Print 9780827215122
EPUB 9780827215139
EPDF 9780827215146
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the many people who supported me throughout the process of completing it.
To Brad Lyons and the staff at Chalice Press: Thank you for your patience as I completed the manuscript while juggling all the other things that life threw my way. I greatly appreciated your compassion and support.
To the congregations that have welcomed me and my family and allowed me to learn what it means to be a pastor, hopefully after God’s own heart: Harmony Baptist Church, Broadway Baptist Church, Third Baptist Church, and Webster Groves Baptist Church. I have learned more from you than you have learned from me.
To the Carter clan for continual love and patience.
To Genevieve and Jerry for life more abundantly.
Contents
Praise for Healing Racial Divides
Copyright
Dedication
About the Cover
Introduction
1. Roots of Our Racial Division
2. The Normality of Whiteness
3. Aftereffects
4. Finding Common Ground
Conclusion
Selected Resources
About the Author
About the Cover
Author Terrell Carter discusses the artwork used on the cover:
The cover image, Untitled,
comes from a series of abstract images that I have been producing for several years that has culminated in a body of work titled Good Negroes.
The images, which are nondescript and faceless, can represent any person at any time. The only distinguishing features are the various colors used to form their bodies. The images represent the commonality that we all hold as human beings and, at the same time, the diversity that we all uniquely hold. They also represent my belief that we all originate from a common creator, and although we sometimes use our different physical aspects as ways to separate ourselves, in the end we all come from the One who sees us as the same.
My artistic style is influenced by artists from the Harlem Renaissance. Although many of those artists were classically trained in painting and drawing, they produced work that looked primitive and reflected their African heritage through angular colorful images. My hope, as was theirs, is to break long-held negative beliefs about African American culture and show that, although it may differ in many ways from white culture, it still holds multiple similarities.
Introduction
Racism is particularly alive and well in America. It is America’s original sin and it is institutionalized at all levels of society.
¹
Do we need another book about race? Another book about how divided our nation is? Can we not talk about something else, like how to get along?
Some would say that racism no longer exists because our nation finally elected its first African American president. Yet, in one of the more shocking developments during Obama’s tenure as president, polls showed that 55 percent of adults believe that race relations within our nation, especially those between blacks and whites, worsened during his eight years in office.
Some might say that one of the biggest legacies left behind by the Obama administration is widespread racial division. When asked how serious a problem people thought racial discrimination against blacks was in the U.S., three out of four blacks said it was a problem, while two out of three whites said it was not a problem.² When asked if people thought that the country’s criminal justice system treats whites and blacks equally, most white respondents said it did, but most black respondents said it did not. When asked about their feelings toward the Black Lives Matter movement and whether it was a good thing, 78 percent of African Americans thought the movement was a good thing that held a legitimate purpose, while 62 percent of whites said that it was not a good thing and did not have a legitimate purpose.
This division was quantified even more clearly by the general presidential election of 2016. For example, 88 percent of African Americans voted for Clinton, while only 8 percent voted for Trump. One thing became very evident—issues of race played a key role in how people viewed the presidential candidates and what they hoped for from the next President. One thing the election results show is that, in general, blacks and whites see what is important for our communities, and the future of our country, very differently. We trust and distrust very different people.
This discussion relates to more than just black and white. But the historic relationship between blacks and whites serves as the primary example and the foundation for the discussion we must engage in. We must try to understand why we live in divided communities, cities, states, and nations. We must try to understand why police shootings of black men, whether armed or unarmed, continue to represent what black people believe is most wrong with the United States. We must try to understand why images of black people in criminal activity continue to be the ones primarily highlighted and pushed through various media platforms. This practice will be addressed in a subsequent chapter.
We must first discuss the different forms racism can take. Although it may not look like it did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when people regularly and openly walked or rode around communities in white hoods while carrying torches, it still exists. We were reminded of this by the multiple white supremacists who proudly walked unhooded through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 wearing white supremacist regalia and carrying torches in protest of the removal of Confederate monuments.
We must discuss what we really think about black and brown people and the value they hold within our communities and organizations. And we must look at the way our nation perceives them as opposed to white people in similar circumstances.
It would seem there’s a clear disparity in how most people feel about whites as opposed to minorities. For example:
• While at a local zoo, a first-grader from Wichita, Kansas, was mauled by a leopard after the boy scaled the four-foot railing that surrounded the leopard exhibit, crossed an eight-foot gap and approached the animal’s cage. The child received lacerations to his head and neck after the leopard stuck its paw through the cage and grabbed the boy by the side of the head.³
• While at a Pittsburgh zoo, a two-year-old boy was mauled to death after he lunged from his mother’s grasp and fell over a 10-foot wooden railing into the enclosed wild African dog exhibit. The child’s family subsequently settled out of court with the zoo for an undisclosed sum.⁴
• While at Arkansas’s Little Rock Zoo with his father and grandfather, a three-year-old boy slipped through the railings surrounding a jaguar exhibition and sustained multiple injuries after he fell 15 feet into the cat pit. The family’s request to keep the child’s name private was granted by the hospital, zoo, and multiple media outlets.⁵
• A two-year-old boy, while at a Cleveland zoo, suffered injuries to his legs after he experienced a 10-foot fall into a cheetah exhibit after his mother dangled him over the exhibit’s railing.⁶
Outside of the fact that these incidents were heartbreakingly tragic, and they all occurred at zoos, the common factor was that neither the race of the child nor the race or criminal history of their parents ever became a point of emphasis by media outlets or the press after the circumstances were reported in the news. The children and families of the above stories were white.
In contrast, an African American child fell into a gorilla exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016. The three-year-old boy, like some of the children in the prior stories, managed to get away from his mother and enter what was supposed to be a secure enclosure that would keep humans and animals separated. Unfortunately, this child made it past the initial security measures, which included a three-foot-tall fence and four feet of bushes, eventually falling 15 feet into a shallow moat in the gorilla enclosure. Harambe, a 17-year old gorilla, grabbed the boy and began to drag him. Zoo personnel, fearing for the boy’s safety, shot and killed Harambe.⁷
Within hours of Harambe’s death, most of the protests related to the incident were about the animal’s death and not how the restricted area failed to keep the child out. The boy’s mother was