Derek Chauvin’s eyes flashed, cutting through the judge’s bland intonation of guilty…guilty…guilty. That moment in a Minneapolis courtroom on April 20 signaled what I believe to be a historic shift: Twelve ordinary Americans—six people of color, six white—reached unanimous agreement about what they saw in the killing of George Floyd.
They called it murder.
These everyday folks, with a decidedly mixed bag of preconceptions about race, were able to process two weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses, reason together face to face, and arrive at the same conclusion. This happened in a nation with a history of aggressively denying the impact of slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism, including the disparity in police use of force against Black people.
That is monumental.
That is unprecedented.
That is spiritual.
We have reached a prophetic threshold: Ordinary people of all colors are opening their eyes to the realities of our racially inequitable society. They might not know what to do about it yet, but the work has begun in their hearts and heads.
They see what African-Americans have been saying all along, that disparities in law enforcement, justice, education, economics, housing, health care, and religion are real and malevolent and ruinous. They devour the dreams of young women of color, break the spirits of middle-aged men, and bow the backs of grandmas and grandpas who should be crowned with dignity.
These destructive forces converged on the body of a less-than-perfect man named George Floyd, and they left him dead in the street.
But I don’t want to leave out this important detail: There were ordinary young people of all colors pleading for his life on that same Minneapolis street. They saw it, and they refused to stay silent.
If Your Eyes Are Good
If only the body of Christ saw so clearly. The eye is the lamp of the body; if your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
This saying of Jesus, part of the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, perplexed me for many years. Then one day I had an insight. It’s about how you see, not what you see.
If your eyes are Jesus’ eyes, you will see others through a lens of compassion, justice, and dignity, based on our shared creation in the image of God. You will see them as immeasurably valuable, more so than any earthly treasure.
When you have the eyes of Christ, you also refract light—the Light of the World himself. Your body overflows with light that touches others.
If your eyes are bad, however—darkened by silent grudges, hidden hatreds, and unacknowledged sin—your entire body is bad. You become incapable of seeing straight.
Today in the evangelical churches, the whole body has become tainted by our refusal to perceive the reality of racism—not just interpersonally, but in its institutional, historical, intellectual, and theological manifestations.
Many white Christians prefer to set their gaze on political idols, imagined enemies, and the counterfeit Jesus whom we have robed in whiteness. Convinced of our own goodness, ensconced in comfort, we brush aside our brother’s suffering.
“It couldn’t be that bad.”
“Why do you always have to bring up race?”
“Don’t you think we’ve made progress?”
I know all about these kinds of responses, which the younger generation calls “gaslighting.” As a white person attending a Black church, I became somewhat notorious for saying “Are you sure?” when individuals in my church reported racist encounters with the same people I’d just interacted with cordially at restaurants, hotels, and other public places. I observed nothing prejudicial myself, so I was surprised when my friends had a different experience.
My “Are you sure?” refrain rubbed people the wrong way, and my pastor’s wife later told me that she stepped in on one occasion and explained that I didn’t mean ill. It was one of many times that grace was extended to me as a relatively clueless white person in a Black church.
In retrospect, I see that evidence of systemic racism was hidden in plain sight all around me and in my experiences as a newspaper reporter specializing in coverage of crime. It was there in the young Black and Hispanic men who couldn’t afford competent legal counsel and were forced to plea bargain to lengthy prison sentences for drug-related crimes, whereas young white men with good lawyers could obtain an entirely different outcome for their use of the more “respectable” powder cocaine.
It was there when my Black friend was followed by security at Target, whereas I have never been stalked by security anywhere in my life.
It was there when my Black church attempted to get a loan for new building construction in a low-income area and found itself excluded by de facto redlining. (We did eventually obtain financing after organizing a round-the-clock prayer campaign. The Black Church has had to rely on the Righteous Judge from its inception.)
I encountered more evidence through close friendships with African-Americans, who opened a window into their lives as Black people in America. I heard about how the Black Pentecostal church helped the older generation live with dignity in the midst of the dehumanization of Jim Crow, accessing the power of the Holy Ghost to overcome. I also heard how two relatives of church members “disappeared” after encounters with white people, lives that will never be reflected in the official statistics of Jim Crow-era lynchings.
I also observed that my husband, who is white, got an entirely different response from my former pastor, who is Black, when they separately called a manufacturer to inquire about the delay in delivering our church’s new front door. By “crossing lines” in friendship and church affiliation, I began to acquire what Dr. Kenneth C. Ulmer, an African-American racial reconciliation pioneer, calls the “view from the margins,” and it indelibly marked my life and ministry.
Every white person I know has at least some grasp of interpersonal racism: They’re educated enough not to disparage someone directly because of the color of their skin. But many balk at examining their prejudices and preconceptions (internalized racism), and it has become fashionable in certain circles to deny that systemic racism exists at all. Systemic racism looks beyond personal interactions based on prejudice to how white superiority is reflected at a systems level. It takes in the big picture of society, examining the everyday words and actions—in hiring, banking, legal justice, the classroom, the church, you name it—that consistently produce negative outcomes for people of color.
It is the point at which many white Christians cover their eyes and plug up their ears, or run away screaming “Critical Race Theory!”
I think I know why there is so much resistance to the concept of systemic racism among white Christians: If we see it, we have to do something about it.
That could mean shedding ugly tears at the altar of repentance.
That could mean dispensing with our pet opinions.
That could mean dethroning our political idols.
Or that could mean taking a stand that costs us something in our families, churches, and workplaces.
Because if your eyes are good, you can’t unsee what you see.
What the Chauvin verdict signaled is that ordinary people have now surpassed the Church in their ability to think and perceive clearly about racism.
If Your Eyes Are Bad
I want to go back to Derek Chauvin’s flashing eyes. Though he never testified—probably a tactical error, because saying anything even slightly remorseful might have helped establish him as a warm-blooded human being—his eyes conveyed something.
Was it shock? Anger? Caged-animal terror?
Though we don’t know what exactly, something was going on inside. His decision to remain silent failed to hide it.
I would extend this analogy to my white Christian friends who’ve chosen silence as their course of action concerning racism in America.
Your silence speaks loud and clear.
Your eyes are bad.
Your impaired vision runs the risk of plunging the entire body of Christ into darkness.
