WHY CHRISTIANS MUST VIGOROUSLY OPPOSE THE 20+ TYPES OF SINFUL/DESTRUCTIVE RACISM AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICANS

COMPELLING THOUGHTS

“All of you are equal as brothers and sisters. ” Matthew 23:8 NLT

“The righteous care about justice for the poor, the wicked have no such concern.” Prov. 29:7 (NLT)

“The standard of the golden rule is the true standard of Christianity; anything short of it is a deception. A religion that leads men to place a low estimate upon human beings, whom Christ has esteemed of such value as to give Himself for them; a religion that would lead us to be careless of human needs, sufferings, or rights, is a spurious religion. In slighting the claims of the poor, the suffering, and the sinful, we are proving ourselves traitors to Christ. It is because men take upon themselves the name of Christ, while in life they deny His character, that Christianity has so little power in the world. The name of the Lord is blasphemed because of these things.” MB pg. 136+

“When the whites commit crimes, they are often allowed to go uncondemned, while for the same transgressions the blacks …. are treated worse than the brutes. The demon of passion is let loose, and all the suffering that can be decided is instituted against them. Will not God judge for these things? As surely as the whites have brought their inhumane cruelty to bear upon the negroes, so surely will God’s vengeance fall upon them.” {Lt 99-1899.9, EGW}

“Reforms must be made, for spiritual weakness and blindness were upon the people who had been blessed with great light and precious opportunities and privileges. .. While we will endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace, we will not with pen or voice cease to protest against bigotry….” –Manuscript Release, volume 11, pg. 229.2, Ellen G. White

Explaining the rationale for Adventist public policy activism in 1892, Ellen White wrote:
“Many deplore the wrongs which they know exist, but consider themselves free from all responsibility in the matter. This cannot be. Every individual exerts an influence in society. ” Gospel Workers, pp. 387, 388.

================================================================

When most white people think of racism, they think of KKK lynchings, neo-nazi skinhead gang violence, segregated schools and things like that. But there are actually ~20 kinds of insidious and very destructive kinds of racism now.

It’s a bit like how Satanism deceives people. The brilliant Christian documentary “Hells Bells 2.0” pointed out that media portrays Satanism as sacrificing and eating babies, saying Hail Satan, etc. But Satanists themselves say that the primary principle of Satanism is “Do what thou wilt”, to do what you feel like, follow your heart, make no apologies, have no regrets, follow your feelings, fulfill your fantasies. These common ideas are unfortunately far more devastating to millions of lives than the extremes of sacrificing babies, which are for sure horrible.

Similarly, the common forms of racism that are pervasive in government policies and societal institutions are a lot more destructive to far more lives, than the extreme forms of racism such as the KKK followed, which is of course also horrible.

Christians are adjured by God to oppose, speak out against and eliminate injustice of all kinds, including racism, in over 2,000 verses in the Bible. There are many reasons for this:

1) GOD MADE US ALL EQUAL
The Bible repeatedly says that we all are created by God and thus are all equal, with the same rights to justice and fair treatment (Numbers 15:15, Matt. 23:8, Gal. 3:28, etc.). Racism is a denial of these principles and so because we love God and love others as His creations and our equals, we must oppose any injustices done to others. A very good short video on what justice means in the Bible and how it is a crucial essence of Christianity is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A14THPoc4-4

2) THE GOLDEN RULE AND ETERNAL LIFE/DEATH
It’s an issue of eternal life or death. The Bible and Ellen White tell us that anything less than the full golden rule is not only unchristian, but causes people to blaspheme God (see the quote at the top). Matthew 5:17-19, 7:21, Hebrews 10:26, etc. tell us that when anyone habitually rejects God’s principles and laws, even a small one, that person will either lose eternal life or be disgraced for eternity because of supporting destructive evil to lives that God created. Injustices are not just a small principle. They are the biggest most often mentioned topic in all the Bible. Racism is one of many plagues of injustice in the world now that every Christian must oppose.

3) CHURCHES/EVANGELISM FLOURISHES WHEN WE SUPPORT JUSTICE/DIE WHEN WE DON’T When Christians reject justice, people very soon after that reject Christianity too because they don’t believe that God cares about their suffering. Churches that advocate justice bring many to trust that God loves them.

In Russia, it was almost entirely because the church in Russia ignored justice for the suffering poor that Stalin and the young people of his generation rejected the church, because they considered it worthless and accepted Darwinism and atheism. A new book called “Young Stalin” from Russian archives goes over this history in some detail. You can see some of it here: http://blog.truth-is-life.org/rights/thrive/causesofcommunism/

In stark contrast, S. Korea and China, the churches embraced justice and boldly protested injustice by the government leaders (against the Japanese occupiers in Korea’s case and against Mao Tse Tung in China’s case). In S. Korea, where I was for 23 years, 1/2 of the freedom fighters were Christians in the war against the Japanese. Even 50-60 years later, older S. Koreans came up to me and said they thank Christians for helping their country become free and it was a major reason why they became Christians. Korea is now among the top 5 missionary sending countries in the world. 
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/rights/thrive/koreas-rise/

4) INJUSTICE HURTS EVERYONE & RUINS SOCIETIES
When oppressors hurt other people, if we don’t protest, eventually they will lose all moral sense. Then they will hurt us and those we love too. Israel’s history tell us that when people ignore God’s laws (esp. laws on economic justice), God allows enemies to harass them (Hosea 8:1-4, 11, 12). Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Even wise pagans like Thucydides understood that when governments commit crimes against foreigners, it isn’t long until they commit crimes against their own people. He said that the tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself. Much history and science show us this is true.

This is a TED talk about how that has already happened in several ways. It shows how racism hurts minorities first. But it eventually ends up hurting everyone.

There are other reasons too, but that should be sufficient.

Note that peaceful protests are almost always the most effective long term. Dr. Chenoweth points out that it can take as little as 3.5% of the people in a nation to cause major change.

The success of nonviolent civil resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/11/05/peaceful-protest-is-much-more-effective-than-violence-in-toppling-dictators/

One recent example of this was that in South Korea, ~2% of the people protested for weeks about corruption and it caused the removal of president Park Geun-hye. Other research says that preventing war is up to 60 times cheaper than fighting it.

https://www.fcnl.org/updates/invest-in-smart-security-171

So Jesus principles of protesting (Luke 4:18-19), but doing it peacefully (Matthew 5:44) are still extremely valuable in the modern world too.

Below are some of the many types of racism that do terrible injury to innocent people that God created with God given rights, especially minorities. They exist in almost every country with some differences, because the majority population is different in every country. But it is impossible for people to follow God’s principles and be racism. At a minimum, doing this causes terrible injustices to real people, fractures societies and cripples their progress.  But in many cases it causes people to slander and blaspheme God’s church and many will be lost forever because of this sin of racism. Those who refuse to give up this cruelty of racism and support justice have a very serious chance of losing eternal life or being disgraced for all eternity as I explained in the introductory article***. God and Bible principles require that governments treat everyone equally (this was the origin of civil rights for poor whites when the white elite were oppressing poor whites..and must be extended to all peoples if one is godly).

Unfortunately, most white people are kept in total ignorance and brainwashing about the structural racism that permeates the US government and societal institutions. Even though I have been involved in justice movements for decades, I didn’t know about most of this structural racism until ~5-10 years ago (I was though overseas in Korea and China for ~25 years dealing with other kinds of injustice more). There is a brief summary of them first, and then a more detailed overview with references to real people’s stories and/or scientific research on it.


BRIEF OVERVIEW

There are at least 21 forms of racism overall in ~3-4 categories:

Individual Racism
This is racist beliefs or attitudes of individuals regarding superiority of people of one skin color over another.

Interpersonal Racism
Interpersonal racism is when we engage in interactions with others and our beliefs of superiority or inferiority of people based on skin color are expressed in words or destructive actions that cause emotional or physical harm or trauma.

Societal racism.
This category of racism is when corporations, small businesses, organizations, etc. have racist/discriminatory laws, policies or cultures that denigrate, harm, eliminate opportunities, destroy equality for people because of their skin color. When societal racism infects spiritual organization, this becomes spiritual racism.

Examples: health care racism (doctors treating minorities different in attitudes or how much pain medication they give), financial racism (African Americans getting fewer job opportunities, lower pay for the same qualifications), corporate/business racism, environmental racism (minorities more often living in polluted/poisonous areas), media racism (villains mostly being portrayed as minorities), spiritual racism (any of the 20 types of racism entering the church).

Systematic/structural/institutional Racism.

This category of racism is when racist laws/practices are ingrained in government institutions like the military, police departments, the justice department, housing department, education departments, NGOs, etc. or there are racist attitudes that are pervasive and denigrate, cause disadvantage, cause harm, eliminate opportunities, destroy equality for people,  because of their skin color/ethnicity.

Examples: Police racism (killing minorities at far higher rates), educational racism (funding for minority schools is often 50% or less than white schools), economic/housing racism (governments gave billions of low interest loans to whites but not blacks), political racism (billionaires eliminated over 1 million black/minority/youth votes to get Trump in office), racial profiling/surveillance racism, military racism, justice system racism/prison racism (drug laws give punishments ~18 times more severe for almost identical drugs used more often by blacks compared to whites), court racism, reverse racism, cultural racism (denying that the above types of racism exist or are severe).

Many of these forms of racism can be intentional or unintentional, overt or covert, etc.  But they all still do very serious harm.

There are also new kinds of racism being invented from time to time as the abuse and injustice of old ones is being discovered. Harvard University points out that:

“In the 1980s and 1990s, various theories of ‘new racisms’ (see Section New Racisms) and implicit biases (see Section Implicit Bias) emerged, suggesting that racism itself has transformed into more covert forms…research on new racisms and implicit biases documents the changing content, character, and implications of new forms of racism.”
Matthew Clair, Jeffrey S Denis “Sociology of Racism”, 2015.
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/deib-explorer/files/sociology_of_racism.pdf 

So we need to be on our guard for new forms of injustice, inequality, racism, etc. that harm people that God loves and created to be our brothers and sisters and who will help us in completing God’s work far more effectively if we treat them as equals.

INDIVIDUAL/INTERPERSONAL RACISM

1) INDIVIDUAL RACISM

This is racist beliefs or attitudes of individuals regarding superiority of people of one skin color over another that exist in people’s minds and worldviews but which are not expressed in words/actions. This is almost impossible to separate from interpersonal racism since our thoughts eventually become words, actions and habits.

2) INTERPERSONAL RACISM

Interpersonal racism is when we engage in interactions with others and our beliefs of superiority or inferiority of people based on skin color are expressed in words or destructive actions that cause emotional or physical harm or trauma. 

This is the common racism that most people learn about in in the media, at school, at church, etc. It is individual’s racist assumptions, beliefs or behaviours that cause them to reject the golden rule and principles of equality to treat others as inferiors based on skin color. It is “a form of racial discrimination that stems from conscious and unconscious, personal prejudice” (Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 329). It is treating individuals a person meets as inferior based on their skin color.

Examples: bigotry, stereotyping, behaviors (name calling, discrimination, violence), discrimination against family members/friends dating someone because of skin color or ethnic background on up to neo-nazi/skin head violence, KKK lynchings, etc.

SOCIETAL RACISM

3) HEALTHCARE RACISM

African Americans in particular face discrimination in the world of healthcare too. A 2012 study found that a majority of doctors have “unconscious racial biases” when it comes to their black patients.

One study found that 67% of doctors have a bias against African-American patients.

Black Americans are far more likely than whites to lack access to emergency medical care. The hospitals they go to tend to be less well funded, and staffed by practitioners with less experience. But even black doctors face discrimination: they are less likely than their similarly credentialed white peers to receive government grants for research projects. And it seems that facing a lifetime of racism leaves African Americans vulnerable to developing stress-related health issues that can lead to chronic issues later in life.

https://www.benjerry.com/home/whats-new/2016/systemic-racism-is-real

4) FINANCIAL/CAREER RACISM: LOWER JOB OPPORTUNITIES

Many businesses that had the highest paying jobs were prejudiced against black people. Job applicants with white names needed to send 10 resumes to get one callback, but the black candidate needed to send 15 for one.
“These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market.” https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/mar/15/jalen-ross/black-name-resume-50-percent-less-likely-get-respo/

5) FINANCIAL/CAREER RACISM: UNEMPLOYMENT

It’s next to impossible to build wealth without steady and rewarding employment. But the black unemployment rate has been consistently twice that of whites African-Americans are 2x as likely to be unemployed…over the past 60 years, no matter what has been going on with the economy.
https://www.benjerry.com/home/whats-new/2016/systemic-racism-is-real

6) FINANCIAL/CAREER RACISM: LOWER PAY

“black–white wage gaps expanded with rising wage inequality from 1979 to 2015…a person’s wages are not a simple function of individual ability. Instead, workers’ ability to claim higher wages rests on a host of social, political, and institutional factors outside their control…after controlling for age, gender, education, and region, black workers are paid 16.2 percent less than white workers. Education is not a panacea for closing these wage gaps…racial wealth gaps have been almost entirely unmoved by a narrowing of the black–white college attainment gap.
https://www.epi.org/blog/stark-black-white-divide-in-wages-is-widening-further/

This makes it much harder for black men and women to get a job and support families and give their children decent opportunities in life.

RACISM & FINANCIAL RACISM HURTS EVERYONE ELSE TOO

All these kinds of racism devastate the family wealth of minorities severely.

Who Controls All The Wealth? According to one study, white families hold 90% of the national wealth, Latino families hold 2.3%, and black families hold 2.6%. Not only that, the Great Recession hit minority families particularly hard. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/07/12/income-inequality-in-the-u-s-is-rising-most-rapidly-among-asians/

averages are misleading. Among those most likely to need care, fewer than 40 percent could afford two years of extensive personal care at home….In sum, while overall income security has improved for older adults, as Biggs correctly reports, things are not so good if you are poor or middle-income, less educated, an unmarried woman, or African-American…

Howard Gleckman On Average, Retirees Are More Financially Secure Than Ever. Unfortunately, Most Of Us Are Not Average, Jun 20, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2019/06/20/on-average-retirees-are-more-financially-secure-than-ever-unfortunately-most-of-us-are-not-average/#483c1d8e2587

7) ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM:

Right now pollution and toxic chemicals are the 3rd largest cause of death on planet earth, killing ~13 million people PER YEAR worldwide.
World Health Organization. “An estimated 12.6 million deaths each year are attributable to unhealthy environments.” March 15, 2016. www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2016/deaths-attributable-to-unhealthy-environments/en/. See also: World Health Organization. “Preventing disease through healthy environments: a global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks.” https://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/publications/preventing-disease/en/ and World Health Organization. “7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution”. March 25, 2014, www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/.

In other words, they are about 2 Nazi holocausts per year, because of corporations putting greed over people, in diabolical and direct defiance of God’s principles in the Bible about the importance of people’s lives and caring for the environment as its stewards.

The pollution and poisoning of the environment is also a major type of racism. Many of the most polluting and toxic factories, hog factories, are in black or in Hispanic areas as this documentary shows (see ~37:00+). 

What The Health
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1QDkpUPiI8

This is from scientists at the EPA, which Trump has filled with his own yes men. And STILL they find that pollution and toxic chemicals are poisoning and killing minority races and the poor at far higher rates than others.

Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emission Sources by Race and Poverty Status  https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2017.304297

A new study by scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published today in the American Journal of Public Health found that facilities emitting dangerous particulate air pollution — like soot — disproportionately impact low-income communities and communities of color – demonstrating that the reprehensible history of economic injustice and environmental racism regarding air pollution continues in the United States….After assessing particulate matter emissions from facilities in a nationwide study — and the characteristics of the communities at the highest risk of health consequences due to exposure to it — the study found that communities living below the poverty line have a 35 percent higher burden from particulate matter emissions than the overall population. Non-whites had a 28 percent higher health burden and African Americans, specifically, had a 54 percent higher burden than the overall population. https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2019/08/new-study-shows-environmental-racism-and-economic-injustice-health-burdens

Laymen level reviews are here:
Trump’s EPA Concludes Environmental Racism Is Real A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency finds that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air—even as the agency seeks to roll back regulations on pollution.

“people of color face disproportionate risks from pollution, and that polluting industries are often located in the middle of their communities. [an EPA study] finds that people in poverty are exposed to more fine particulate matter than people living above poverty…particulate matter, a group of both natural and manmade microscopic suspensions of solids and liquids in the air that serve as air pollutants. Anthropogenic particulates include automobile fumes, smog, soot, oil smoke, ash, and construction dust, all of which have been linked to serious health problems…Particulate matter was named a known definite carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and it’s been named by the EPA as a contributor to several lung conditions, heart attacks, and possible premature deaths. The pollutant has been implicated in both asthma prevalence and severity, low birth weights, and high blood pressure…

As the study details, previous works have also linked disproportionate exposure to particulate matter and America’s racial geography. A 2016 study in Environment International found that long-term exposure to the pollutant is associated with racial segregation, with more highly segregated areas suffering higher levels of exposure. A 2012 article in Environmental Health Perspectives found that overall levels of particulate matter exposure for people of color were higher than those for white people…differences for some key particles were immense. For example, Hispanics faced rates of chlorine exposure that are more than double those of whites. Chronic chlorine inhalation is known for degrading cardiac function…

They find that black people are exposed to about 1.5 times more particulate matter than white people, and that Hispanics had about 1.2 times the exposure of non-Hispanic whites. The study found that people in poverty had about 1.3 times more exposure than people above poverty…the magnitude of emissions from individual factories appears to be higher in minority neighborhoods…

These findings join an ever-growing body of literature that has found that both polluters and pollution are often disproportionately located in communities of color. In some places, hydraulic-fracturing oil wells are more likely to be sited in those neighborhoods. Researchers have found the presence of benzene and other dangerous aromatic chemicals to be linked to race. Strong racial disparities are suspected in the prevalence of lead poisoning.  
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-trump-administration-finds-that-environmental-racism-is-real/554315/

This has been going on for decades.

In New Orleans in 1994, “Almost 1 percent of all young black men in the city were killed… ..But the obstacles for a young mother and her two children ran deeper than the onslaught in the streets. “They played inside a lot,” Billieson said, “and we thought they’d be safe that way, but then we learned even that was bad for them.” …Lead was only one of many ecological risks her family faced. The playgrounds where Ryan and Ronnie played often brimmed with pools of fetid, standing water—owing to New Orleans’s fabled and constant flooding—that were sometimes tainted with battery acid…Some other kids across the virtually all-black New Orleans housing projects had it even worse. That year, the Press Park section of the Desire projects and its nearby elementary school were declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency for a concoction of known contaminants leaching from a closed landfill. ..she went the extra mile; researching the specific risks her kids faced, including those from lead, at the public library. But what do you do when everything is contaminated? …“A lawyer and his team were in the area doing testing on the soil, and I was on my way to the doctor’s office with my kids,” Billieson said. “So I stopped and had a conversation with them about lead poisoning. A suggestion from them was to have the kids tested.”When the blood came back, Billieson found out that both of her children were poisoned and likely had been for years. In a panic, she called the lawyer who’d left his card with her. That phone call began a legal war of attrition that spanned more than two decades, three presidents, and one of the most devastating natural disasters in American history.

In 1994, 15 years after HANO was labeled a “troubled” development, HUD inspectors visited 150 units in the neighborhood and found that all 150 units failed to meet standards—with problems including peeling lead paint, asbestos exposure, and massive roach infestations—and that none of the units had been updated at all in 10 years. HUD rates housing authorities on a 100-point quality scale, with a score below 60 indicating a “troubled” development. In 1994, Billieson was raising her boys in a project that had just received a score of 26.There is no safe level of lead in the human body. Even at low levels, chronic exposure can damage the brain and the central nervous system, and can cause symptoms from hearing loss to IQ deterioration to lack of impulse control. Over time, lead gets absorbed into the bones, making them brittle and stunted, and causes teeth to crack and rot. Exposure in young children with developing minds and growing bones is most destructive, and in times of serious stress and trauma—common in places like the New Orleans projects in the 1990s—those effects are magnified. Each poisoned child in HANO dealt with at least some of those issues, many or most of them for life.  

…Hundreds of women who’d been born in the projects and poisoned with lead their whole lives passed metals in utero to their children, whose first breaths took in clouds of white leaden dust. Lead levels per deciliter of blood among the plaintiffs regularly measured in the 20- to 40-microgram range, with spikes above 50 micrograms. (The water-contamination crisis that began in Flint, Michigan, in 2014 was triggered by blood-lead levels over the current upper limit of five micrograms per deciliter.)

In 2012, Mielke and co-author Sammy Zahran examined crime—specifically aggravated assault—in six cities, including New Orleans, and its relationship to lead in gasoline emissions. Their results were startling: Increases in lead aerosols were strongly associated with increased crime, and according to their research, differences in lead levels accounted for about 90 percent of the variation in crime between the six study cities…Rick Nevin, a HUD consultant on the risk-impact analysis for lead-paint-reduction rules, developed a hypothesis that the main societal cost of lead poisoning was its effect on crime, mediated through its cognitive effects on boys and young men…Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an Amherst College researcher,… identified critical pathways of the potential effect—with juvenile delinquency, ADHD, and low IQ connecting populations of young black men to ultimate criminal outcomes and incarceration. 


…Gambel had been trying to find a way to investigate the lead-poisoning issue in New Orleans housing developments ever since an old associate of his uncovered several positive lead-poisoning tests while working a different case involving public-housing residents. …Gambel’s response when he realized he’d stumbled onto one of the worst public-health crises in America was one of awe: “I said, ‘God, we need to do something.’”

“When I filed that lawsuit, in hindsight I was just naive,” Gambel said. “As a young lawyer and a start-up firm, there were a lot of people asking me, ‘How are you going to do this?’” .. While Gary Gambel had accidentally hooked himself a whale, Joe Bruno was a lawyer who hunted them. …the lawyers decided to take another ambitious step: creating a class-action suit representing all of the affected children and families who lived in HANO. ..“We put this case together for trial over 20 times,” Gambel said. ..The group of mothers who’d led the charge against HANO as young adults themselves began to watch a generation of their grandchildren grow up in their homes and choke on the same lead dust.

…When the surging floodwaters broke through the Industrial Seaway and Lake Pontchartrain, they didn’t single out races or neighborhoods to target. The city and its layers of segregation and poverty did the job of assigning victims themselves. Housing discrimination in the city had forced generations of black residents into segregated wards and neighborhoods, often located in the areas with the highest risk for both lead poisoning and flooding.

The resulting destruction was more thorough and more devastating than any single incident of racial violence or hatred. One statistic about Katrina helps put things into context: A Brown University report showed that the most damaged areas in the city were 75 percent black, while undamaged areas were only 46 percent black.

Black people generally were much more likely than white counterparts to be “Katrinaed,” and only around 44 percent of them returned within a year….By the time the city began to rebuild in earnest after the flood, HANO residents had been displaced to 36 states, and many were simply unreachable. …There’s a room in Gary Gambel’s office in downtown New Orleans, kept under lock and key and surveilled constantly by a receptionist watching from a citadel-like bureau. The lawyers around the building call it the “lead room.” The entire space is filled with boxes, Polaroids, and files documenting the whole 22-year-long history of Billieson v. New Orleans. ..

“It took me 20 years, and I didn’t think I’d live to see the end of it,” he confessed. Indeed, two lawyers on the defense side and one on the plaintiffs’ side died during the proceedings…Finally, in 2011 the small armies of lawyers reached terms on an armistice: a $100 million settlement split between $67 million in cash awards and $33 million in housing vouchers to the plaintiffs. …

Half of the $67 million would go to the affected individuals and the rest would be used for legal fees…When the feeding frenzy among lawyers subsided, what remained for the plaintiffs almost seemed an afterthought. Dominique’s three children received settlement checks of around $14,000. ..

“We did receive compensation, and no, I don’t think it was adequate,” Billieson  told me. “I think they could have had more of these kids tested …

They should send us the research [too], because none of us knew anything about lead poisoning, and we didn’t know what the side effects could’ve been.” …

Dominique’s anger was more palpable. “I don’t know that you can correct the problem, but we can help [the children] now,” she said to me over the phone. “Buy them homes. Get them educated. These are things they took from these kids. You can never make up the gap, but you can try to do something. And there are funds. The city is still operating.”“The award that we received was nowhere near what it needed to be to compensate these kids for their trouble,” she continued. “It just wasn’t enough.” …

For people living in precarious financial, environmental, and social conditions, black skin often carries with it a life of additional traumas….Strata of segregation and exclusion manifest in the most fundamental factors of life—from the air people breathe to the water they drink—and even when they don’t kill outright, they often exacerbate existing issues. For those in the poisoned generation and beyond, blackness is a tightrope, and lead poisoning is just one of the ways to fall.

Vann R. Newkirk II The Poisoned GenerationThe story of a decades-long lead-poisoning lawsuit in New Orleans illustrates how the toxin destroys black families and communities alike.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-poisoned-generation?utm_source=pocket-newtab


See also:
https://www.usw.org/blog/2018/the-many-types-of-racism-in-the-united-states-today

Again, 13 million people PER YEAR are dying because of poisoning and destroying the environment. Most of this comes from billionaires, ~70 corporations, the US military, eating meat, plastic, the polluting energy systems we still use, smoking, fast fashion, etc. These are NOT how God designed societies to function and for good reason. Supporting wicked Trump and the cruel billionaires that put him in power just means a lot more minorities will die AND a lot more poor people will die, and a lot more of both will be in debt slavery.

8) CORPORATE RACISM
Corporations have often exploited workers of all races as this very extensive documentary shows.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/plutocracy/

But it has been particularly harsh on people of color in America, Africans, Hispanics and Asians.
Banana Land: Blood, Bullets & Poison Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoRmtQht8-E 

Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXmnBbUjsPs

Invisible Ink: Navigating racism in corporate America: Stephen M. Graham https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Ink-Navigating-corporate-America/dp/1541171179 https://newrepublic.com/article/153596/fix-fashion-industrys-racism

The Corporation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpQYsk-8dWg

Excluding minorities from sports teams or golfing clubs was common in the past and still exists in some places even today is another example.


9) MEDIA RACISM

Many Hollywood movies portray Arab people and black people, Hispanic, etc. as the villains the majority of the time. There are exceptions, but this is common. This also plays a significant role in causing people and police to treat minorities differently from whites. People in high stress situations, especially with guns, make decisions in seconds, that can permanently disable or kill someone largely because of the indoctrination of media and how they were taught with propaganda to fear people from other backgrounds. See this documentary for a very good overview of this topic in regard to Arabs.

Reel Bad Arabs.
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/reel-bad-arabs/

10) SPIRITUAL RACISM

Spiritual racism happens in several ways, but especially when the sinful, wicked and evil principles of racism in society worm their way into churches and members or leaders or institutions follow these destructive principles. There are several forms of this. A few are:
–When churches follow corruption in society and support discrimination, unjust laws or violence against people from other ethnic backgrounds  as happened in the America for centuries with chattel slavery. Another case was the horrible tragedy in Rwanda with the Hutus killing many Tutsis and certain influential pastors and leaders taking part in the crimes. This is tragic spiritual racism that should be confronted quickly.

–Unfortunately, when some Christians hear about racist actions or crimes due to racism, they will ignore or deny that these are happening, or that they are serious or that they are numerous. They will sometimes turn the topic of conversation to other topics, and ask “what about” questions. These deny the humanity and equality of the victim of the crime and add to the pain. This is tragic spiritual racism that should be confronted quickly.

–When leaders with major power in a church are always from one race, that’s spiritual racism. 

–Some missionaries sometimes go to another culture and act like they have all the truth and there’s nothing significant to learn from another culture. That’s spiritual racism. Ellen White says that we need to learn from people of every country to finish God’s work best.***

–Some missionaries constantly complain about how the new country is different in various ways from their country and always point out the best things about their country and the worst things about the new country (ignoring the best things of the new country and the worst things of their own country). That’s spiritual racism.

–If a Christian or missionary condemns everything in other religions and does not recognize that there are a few valuable principles (which can be good connections to use, as Paul did in Acts 17), that can be spiritual racism. We should point out that best principles of God and how they enable better lives and eternal life in various ways. But there’s no need to discredit everything in other religions. And much research shows that God has revealed His truths to people from 100s of cultures outside the Bible. It is usually not as comprehensive as the Bible. But Paul says that God has given evidence to all people. So we can use that to bring people to Christianity.

–When people from one race are given more funding and assistance when they are in poverty than those of another race, that’s spiritual racism. The early church met and eliminated this problem quickly and decisively when they realized they had it.

–When a person is told to just believe or follow orders without question because they don’t have a decent enough capacity for rational thinking due to their race, that’s spiritual racism.

–When a leader or teacher treats someone in ways that are unequal in any way, that’s spiritual racism.

— Another kind of spiritualism is white flight from churches. This is when more black people join a church and white people leave to find another whiter church. ***Spectrum article***

All these forms are sin, wickedness and immoral and must be eradicated from godly churches.

SYSTEMATIC/STRUCTURAL RACISM (in government policies/laws)

Systemic Racism includes the policies and practices entrenched in established institutions, which result in the exclusion or promotion of designated groups. It differs from overt discrimination in that no individual intent is necessary. (Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations. Race Relations: Myths and Facts)

It manifests itself in two ways:

A) institutional racism:  racial discrimination that derives from individuals carrying out the dictates of others who are prejudiced or of a prejudiced society

B) structural racism: inequalities rooted in the system-wide operation of a society that excludes substantial numbers of members of particular groups from significant participation in major social institutions. (Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 352)

11) POLICE RACISM

~1000 black people die every year due to police violence. And 100s from other backgrounds die from police violence too.

“Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police…The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women…For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death…Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over the life course than are white men. Black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than are white women…American Indian men are between 1.2 and 1.7 times more likely to be killed by police than are white men, and American Indian women are between 1.1 and 2.1 times more likely to be killed by police than are white women. Latino men are between 1.3 and 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police than are white men, but Latina women are between 12% and 23% less likely to be killed by police than are white women. Both Asian/Pacific Islander men and women are more than 50% less likely to be killed by police than are white men and women, respectively.” 
Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. 
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793

There are many reasons why police kill African Americans and Native Americans at higher rates than others. Some are below.

12) EDUCATIONAL RACISM (The Public School to Prison Pipeline)

**war on minds**

Property taxes fund schools. So if you live in a nicer neighborhood (such as white neighborhoods), your school will usually have more resources and be of a higher quality which gives the next generation a lifelong advantages.

“Black students are three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students, more likely to be held back a grade and drop out of school entirely.”
http://www.justicepolicy.org/news/8775

gospel effect.

13) ECONOMIC RACISM (housing)

The government gave out billions of dollars of low interest home loans for decades. Most were to whites and many banks refused to lend to blacks who wanted to live in wealthier or white areas. These racist laws and practices

A) intentionally created ghettos,

B) maintained segregation,

C) deterred investments in minority areas,

D) made it hard for blacks to inherit wealth and get tax advantages like whites did.

Systematic Racism

Academic level research.

https://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law

14) PRISON RACISM/ PUBLIC SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE

Blacks make up 13% of the general population, yet 40% of the prison population. This is not an accident. It is the result of racism at all levels of society, such as the many kinds mentioned previously, but also others.

Harvard’s conservative Dr. Stuntz has pointed out that America’s prison for profit system is incarcerating more minorities than were imprisoned under Stalin. More blacks are in prison than were slaves in the 1840s. Many experts have agreed that much of this is because of unjust laws.
https://www.thenation.com/article/crime-and-punishment-william-stuntz/
digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=student_papers

Why? Often it’s unjust laws or policies such as those above and especially those below.

15) COURT RACISM

Whites and blacks use drugs at about the same rates studies show. But penalties for crack (a drug that poor minorities use more) were 100 times higher than the penalties for cocaine (a drug that is more often used by wealthy whites). They were reduced to ~18 times higher, but are still not equal.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/drug-law-reform/fair-sentencing-act

16) JUSTICE SYSTEM RACISM

After the civil rights movement, prisons became businesses for profit (raising taxes) increasing the likelihood of corruption in judge sentencing. Minorities are often poorer and so can’t afford to pay a good lawyer to beat false charges as well…and are less likely to protest and stain a judge’s good reputation. So they are easy targets for a criminal justice system that even according to white judges and police has many racist policies. (see the documentaries “Fixing the System” or “The 13th” for examples of this.)***

17) RACIAL PROFIILING

Police target and patrol minorities and areas they live and work far more than they do for whites, interrogate them more harshly, and because of these and unjust laws arrest and imprison them more often compared to whites.

18) POLITICAL ELECTORAL RACISM

Investigative reporter Greg Palast found that elections were rigged in 2016. Billionaires used various tactics to stop over 1 million people from voting, especially African Americans and young people. They helped both parties to stop candidates they didn’t want to win.

Hidden purging of millions of voters
https://youtu.be/BUSTTkhiZUI

19) NATIONALIST/MILITARY RACISM
This is when people are convinced to support their country and its military no matter what crimes it commits.  The concept of American exceptionalism, that America is the greatest of all countries, the freest of all countries, etc. is one aspect of this. America has done some good things, to be sure. In some areas it is best. But its military and corporations have also committed some very terrible crimes. These crimes are often done to people in poor countries with many people of color. It is very seldom that wars fought with other major superpowers.

20) REVERSE RACISM

There are times when so much racism has been done to minorities and society is filled with racist ideas, that there are sometimes unfortunate reactions to act in the same way and treat those from the majority race with inequality and injustice. At times this can even be incorporated into laws as the racist laws towards minorities were. This is much rarer, but does happen unfortunately at times.

21) CULTURAL RACISM

Cultural racism claims that all problems people have and injustices they suffer are because of their cultural or personal habits and lifestyle. It ignores/denies all the kinds of racism above and says there is nothing that needs serious changing, especially in societal or structural areas. It is one of the most horrific kinds of racism because it places all the blame for suffering on the victim who has already been abused. It doubles the crime and abuse.

This is precisely what many white people, especially conservatives but also many liberals, are guilty of.

CONCLUSION

Like Paul before his conversion, any silence of Christians when there is injustice, such as in the abuse and killing of minorities, makes us complicit whenever we do not acknowledged it is real or worse mock and laugh at it. That is wickedness according to Bible principles since:

“The righteous care about justice for the poor, the wicked have no such concern.” Prov. 29:7 (NLT)

But like Paul who converted and realized his sin, we can learn and repent and join the side of God and equality and justice and do what is GOOD on this earth for each person and all people (1 Thess. 5:15).

The first reason to do this is because we are supposed to be like Jesus and Jesus loves every person equally, created us equally is pained whenever any of His children are hurt and we are supposed to live like Jesus according to numerous Bible verses (Eph. 5:1, 1 John 2:4-6, etc.).

But there’s a second reason as well. God says that for every good act we do, God will give us a reward, often in both earth and heaven, a reward separate from salvation (Matt 10:40-42, Rev. 22:12). And John tells us not to lose our full reward (2 John 8).

The most important of these rewards will be seeing people from all backgrounds and ethnicities in heaven because we followed God’s principles and stood for the right against cultures of sin. Because of this, you will be an agent to save lives of more people and will be able to have experiences beyond anything we can imagine on earth throughout eternity (1 Cor. 2:9).