Racism, Not Race

Even those of us who find racism to be abhorrent and sinful may be surprised to learn that the lingering assumptions we hold about race are generally false. 

How do we come to view our neighbors as different from us – especially when that difference is skin color or ethnicity? What does “difference” really mean if “race” is a cultural creation rather than a biological reality? 

In short, “race” doesn’t exist as a biological category that separates, for example, Africans from Europeans. But racism most certainly exists, and for centuries has created a lived experience of race that we must unpack and understand in order to overcome.

This Sunday, Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday, we will welcome evolutionary biologist (and faithful Episcopalian) Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr. In addition to his scholarly work, he has written extensively about the complicity of the church in creating racism as we know it, and the sources of those false understandings of “race” that have polluted our American society for centuries. Dr. Graves will preach at the 9:00 am and 11:15 am services. During our formation hour, between the services, he will join me for a Dean’s Forum conversation.

This week, we remember the courageous and faithful work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We do so with celebration and confession, for we must acknowledge that the work of justice and equality remains profoundly unfinished. This is no small measure because of false assumptions about difference and race that we must surface and heal in order to become the Beloved Community God calls us to be. 

The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens