Despite Science and Despite Humanitarianism, Racism Continues

The flames of racial unrest are burning in localized pockets across the United States right now. In three separate incidents—Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York City; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I live—white police officers have shot unarmed young black men. Wait; you haven’t heard about the Tulsa one? I guess I will have to tell you about it, since Tulsa has no violent protests such as in the St. Louis suburb and no Al Sharpton as in New York. You expect this sort of thing once in a while, but three at the same time seems a bit unlikely.

A Tulsa policeman, Shannon Kepler, and his wife (also a police officer) adopted a girl with a troubled past. After many years, the girl’s troubles were apparently too much for the couple to handle. They took her to a shelter for homeless adults and left her there. Things like this happen sometimes. But what happened next was astonishing. The young woman went the house where her boyfriend, Jeremey Lake, lived. What would you expect her to do? And if you have just kicked your adopted daughter out of the house, you at least need to let her decide where she is going to live.

But Shannon Kepler did not do this. He drove over to Lake’s house and shot and killed 19-year-old Jeremy Lake and then shot in the general direction of the young woman also. Was Lake’s killing murder or was it manslaughter? And was Kepler actually aiming for his stepdaughter? That is, was there premeditation? Police investigators found that the step-parents had, in their home, a copy of Lake’s arrest records, on which they had written his address. This would seem to be premeditation. Kepler’s defense attorney said that the shooting was understandable because Lake was a sexual predator, which as far as I can determine was not the judgment of any court. So the defense attorney asked for a bail of only $50,000. The prosecutor asked for a bail of $1 ½ million. The prosecutor’s request that Kepler be fitted with an ankle bracelet for monitoring his location was denied by the judge, who imposed a bail about halfway between the two requests. The judge must have considered that this police shooting was not much of a continuing danger to the community. This decision was issued August 22, the same day that Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri were in the news.

What the Tulsa World newspaper article of August 22 did not mention—and which I had to locate finally in the New York Daily News—was that Jeremy Lake was black. The Tulsa newspaper article did not mention this, nor as far as I could find did it print Lake’s photograph.

Whether this conclusion is justified or not, I know that if I were a young black man I would be worried right now, especially if I lived in Oklahoma, where police shooting young black men does not get much noticed by national media.

When are we going to stop thinking of white police shootings (or, in Staten Island, strangling) of black men as normal? (The authorities seem to have thought that the Staten Island victim was manifestly guilty of a dangerous, dangerous crime: selling untaxed cigarettes. That deserves getting someone killed, they seem to think.)

As most readers of this blog will know already, there is no biological basis for considering one race inferior to another. Pseudoscientific claims of black inferiority have been repeatedly discredited. And even if there was such evidence, it would not justify members of one race killing members of another and having it treated lightly by authorities.

I wonder what Jesus would have to say about this, especially since much of the racism in Oklahoma is reinforced by fundamentalist Christianity.

Religion and Les Misérables

I recently saw the Theatre Tulsa performance of the musical Les Misérables, and was deeply moved by it for a number of reasons. (I was not the only person to look for the director afterwards and say that I’d seen it on Broadway but found this performance more meaningful.) The novel and musical are about an escaped convict, Jean Valjean, who rose above hatred and tried to do good in the world.

Of course one of the main themes was that opposition to the overwhelming forces of oppression is nearly always doomed to failure. Victor Hugo’s novel, and the musical, are based on the 1832 “June Revolution” in France, a hopeless revolt against the re-establishment of the monarchy that had been overthrown during the earlier French Revolution. Those who are miserable because of the oppression by the rich will remain so. Even the American Revolution did not change this; in place of English kings we now have American corporations virtually enslaving us.

But the novel and musical also illuminate several aspects of religion which can, like any biological or cultural adaptation, be either good or evil.

First, consider the Javert kind of religion. This was the police officer who dedicated himself utterly to wreaking imprisonment and death upon anyone who had violated even the smallest law. He never stopped looking for Jean Valjean, to punish him first for stealing bread then for violating parole. This is a kind of doctrinal religion—here is the law, in violation of which you die—that leads to oppression. But even Javert had to struggle with a moral dilemma: confronted with the mercy that Jean Valjean showed to him, he could not decide what to do, and committed suicide.

Second, consider the Valjean type of religion. At first he simply did not know what to believe about the Catholic priest who showed totally undeserved mercy to him. What he ended up doing was, with a religious but not doctrinal faith, using what opportunities he had to try to make the world a better place, first by raising Cosette and then by joining with the June revolutionaries. As the musical said, if you’ve loved someone you have seen the face of God.

There are yet other kinds of religion from which to choose. One is the conviction that, if you assent to the correct doctrines, you are on God’s side and you can do whatever you want to other people, with God’s blessing. That is, you are saved even if you do horrible things to other people. Another is the flip-side of this belief, that people who do not assent to your doctrines are damned, even if they have done nothing wrong. Both of these kinds of religion are beyond the scope of Hugo’s novel. But France was no stranger to them. They were the foundation of all of the persecutions against Protestants and Jews in the middle ages, most notably the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572.

We cannot be ignorant of the fact that the ground is fertile for these two kinds of religion to continue growing. They are only too well known in the Muslim world—to many Muslim extremists, your religion makes you right and even the slightest deviation from it makes you worthy of death. This is also uncomfortably close to the view of many American conservative Christians—as I have written before, this has been an important part of my experience, and I share this experience with many hundreds of thousands of other Americans. These conservatives have guns and I do not see how, under the right circumstances, they could keep themselves from using them, since they believe that God has commanded them to have their guns ready.

I would not expect the American conservative Christians I have known to have Javert’s kind of moral dilemma before turning on me, under the right circumstances.

I renew my devotion to oppose all hateful versions of religion, with the even slight hope that a (probably doctrine-less) religion of love can replace them.

The Biblical Solution to the Palestinian Crisis

As of today, about 1800 Palestinians, mostly civilians including children, have been killed by Israel, while Palestinians have killed only about 70 Israelis, mostly soldiers. It is clear that both sides are committing horrible acts, but the about 25-to-1 disparity shows that the main result of this conflict is the death of Palestinian civilians. The Israeli prime minister has made it clear that he has no interest in what the rest of the world may think about his response to this crisis.

The reason that this matters to many Americans is that American conservatives consider Israel to be (second only to the USA) God’s nation on the face of the Earth. Israel, in their view, can do whatever they want to do, because God has approved of them in advance. And conservative American Christians base their views on the Old Testament. This raises the question about what the Biblical response to the Palestinian crisis might be—a response that American conservative Christians should clearly champion.

The Old Testament makes it clear that God led the tribes of Israel into the region that some of their descendants now possess, told them the land was theirs, and not only authorized but commanded them to slaughter every Canaanite man, woman, and child. In fact, in some instances, when they left a few Canaanites alive, God took retribution against Israel for disobedience. Genocide was, according to the Bible, God’s clear command. And if, as Christians believe, God is unchanging forever, then genocide must still be God’s command. In order to be consistent with their Biblical literalism, American conservative Christians should demand that Israel carry out a campaign of genocide against the Palestinians (who are Arabs, not Canaanites, but are still residents of the land the Bible says God gave to Israel). And the Republican Party, based solidly on whatever the Christian Right wants them to do, should demand that the United States support this genocide. As it is, Israel is just playing around; just 1800 Palestinian deaths? This can only mean that, despite his protestations, the Israeli prime minister does in fact have some fear of world opinion.

Of course I do not believe genocide would be the right solution. The very idea makes me personally sick, especially since one of the best students I ever had was a Palestinian American woman and whom I very much respect. But I also do not believe the Bible is a set of commands for what we must do. I believe the Old Testament is a record of the primitive and often evil actions of people who used God’s name to justify whatever they wanted to do. I believe the incomplete genocide carried out by ancient Israel is exactly the wrong, not exactly the right, thing to do. What I do not understand is why American conservative Christians do not wave their Bibles in the air and demand a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.

American conservative Christians today seem to consider physical force to be the preferable option in nearly every case. They were happy to have the Bush II Administration use torture against detainees (which they now blame on Obama). I vividly remember Pat Robertson calling for air strikes on Iran years ago. This is very different from the fundamentalist experience I had back when I was in high school. The Church of Christ sect of which I was a member was pacifist. Back when the draft was still in effect, nearly every young man in our sect published a prepared statement, “My position on carnal warfare,” in our nationwide newsletter, Old Paths Advocate, stating that the Bible clearly forbade us to kill our enemies. I think we were right, but virtually NO conservative Christian leaders today reflect this idea. Today, the Christian church seems to be primarily an arm of the military-industrial complex. Just think of all of the weapons we could sell to Israel if they took their Old Testament duty seriously and began a campaign of genocide that they have so far resisted.