Brutal Racism

The last week of February 1999 brought into high profile two cases of brutal murder, one in Jasper, Texas, and the other in London, UK. The killings had taken place in 1998 and 1993 respectively but it happened that in the same week the Texan murderer was convicted and an official Report on the London murder was published.

In both cases the murders were racially motivated. Black teenager Stephen Lawrence was waiting at a bus stop in a London suburb when he was attacked and stabbed by a group of white youths. James Byrd, a black salesman aged forty-nine, was walking home on a lonely stretch of highway near Jasper. He was offered a lift by the driver of a passing truck. Instead of helping him towards home he was taken to a lonely spot where the truck driver and his two mates chained Byrd to the truck by his ankles. They then dragged him for five kilometres along a rural road, finally leaving his mutilated corpse outside a church attended by a black congregation in Jasper.

The truck driver, John William King, aged twenty-four, was an extreme racist, notorious for his denunciation of black people, Jews and Hispanics; 65% of his skin was covered with racist tattoos. While serving time in a Texan prison for burglary he had developed intense hatreds, and on release was planning to organize a white supremacist gang. At King's trial the jury took only 21/2 hours to return the toughest possible verdict, capital murder. Significantly if this sentence is carried out, King will be the first Texan executed for killing a black person since slavery ended.

Mankind indicted

Are we sometimes tempted to feel that the array of indictments against mankind in Romans chapter 3 seems rather extreme? For example in verse 13,14:

Their throat is an open sepulchre;

With their tongues they have used deceit:

The poison of asps is under their lips:

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness...

The stench from an open sepulchre and the venom of poisonous snakes are metaphors which express the repulsive, the mortally damaging. When related to such people as J.W. King, however, they are by no means an exaggeration, but rather an accurate divine analysis. Such is the ugly potential of human depravity through sin.

Similarly in verses 15-18:

Their feet are swift to shed blood;

Destruction and misery are in their ways;

And the way of peace they have not known;

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

How fundamental is this lack of respect for God, with no apparent sense of accountability to Him or fear of retribution for evil. From this stems destruction, misery and readiness to shed blood: all so tragically reflected in the murders of Stephen Lawrence and James Byrd.

No one has been convicted for the death of Stephen Lawrence, a matter which his family have persistently kept before the public. The eventual outcome was the appointment of Sir William McPherson, a retired High Court judge, to report on the circumstances of Stephen Lawrence's death and the subsequent police investigations. The Report found that these had been marred by incompetence, negligence and cover-up. Even more radically it accused the police force of 'institutionalized racism'. Not that there was 'ingrained discrimination on the part of its managers', or that members of the force were individually racist. But there had developed 'an underlying prior judgement' against black people, based on high crime rates in certain areas. These findings of the Report were of course disputed by some and publicly debated; but important recommendations are expected to be adopted by the British government, leading to changes in the law which will help to promote the course of justice; fitting epitaph to Stephen Lawrence!

The following perceptive viewpoint from an American journal merits consideration:

Britain is not an overtly racist country (racists have no political presence compared with France and Germany) but a sense of ethnic superiority runs deep, and through all classes.

Whether or not we altogether endorse this view, it does invite searchings of heart from a Christian standpoint. 'My brethren', wrote the apostle James in another connection, 'these things ought not so to be' (3:10). Nor should 'a sense of ethnic superiority' tinge the testimony of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ. For regarding their relationship in Christ 'There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free ...for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus' (Gal. 3:28). Racial and social differences are not relevant. This mind finds its practical outworking in Christian 'lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself' (Phil. 2:3), and in viewing each fellow-disciple as the brother or sister 'for whom Christ died' (Rom. 14:15).

As to the wider world scene, hasten the day when Messiah's universal reign will eliminate racial brutality:

All nations shall serve him.

For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth,...

He shall redeem their soul from oppression and violence;

And precious shall their blood be in his sight... (Ps. 72:11-14).

unknown | Jun 1999
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