George Floyd Memorial.jpg

May 25 was the one year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. That tragic act of brutality sparked a national and worldwide movement focused on the ongoing struggle for racial justice. A question on the minds of many throughout our country this week is, “Where do we go from here?” That reminds me of the title of Dr. King’s final book written in 1967, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos of Community? This powerful book is not as well known as Dr. King’s more familiar works. I believe this is because it represents the final stage of his thinking prior to his death. He struggled with the still unrealized dream of racial justice and the resistance of most white people to confront and change the structures that continued to perpetuate racist systems. The following words of Dr. King written in 1967 (substitute “Black” for “Negro”) could have been written today:

“Ever since the birth of our nation, white America has had a schizophrenic personality of the question of race…This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice…There has never been a solid, unified, and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans.”

We see this “schizophrenic personality” at work today in the controversy about Critical Race Theory. A significant number of people including local, state, and national lawmakers deny the reality of systemic racism. The video posted below provides a glimpse into this through a forum held by the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis. The short excerpt makes clear the division between the majority of white people and the people of color in attendance. One white legislator even invokes the name of Dr. King to promote a kind of color blind equality that refutes the reality of systemic racism. He obviously has a very selective knowledge of Dr. King’s work that does not include the book quoted above.

Despite all the obstacles to racial justice that Dr. King cites in his book, he remained hopeful if we are willing to face the reality of systemic racism. The following words from the same book could also have been written today:

“The value of pulling racism out of its obscurity and stripping it of its rationalizations lies in the confidence that it can be changed. To live with the pretense that racism is a doctrine of a very few is to disarm us in fighting it frontally as scientifically unsound, morally repugnant, and socially destructive. The prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease.”

One year later, the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd can serve as an “accurate diagnosis of the disease” of systemic racism. As followers of Jesus, we believe in forgiveness and redemption both personally and communally. Yet nothing can be healed that is not brought to consciousness. Where do we go from here? depends on the answer to another question, How conscious are we willing to be?