The anti-racism debate: an essay by Matthew McBirth
This is the third and final section of our “Pain and Perspective”series, that opens up a thoughtful conversation about the anti-racism movement and why it’s happening, both here in Joplin and in the nation at large.
You can view the entire series HERE.
This section is an essay/editorial, addressing 10 tough ‘debate points’ or questions directed toward the black lives matter movement. The responses are written by Matthew McBirth, a bible professor and director of multicultural affairs at Ozark Christian College.
10 QUESTIONS IN THE DEBATE ABOUT RACISM.
By Matthew McBirth
1: How DO YOU JUSTIFY the RIOTING?
Riots are bad; I’ve seen folks burning cities down this past year and this upsets me. Violence doesn’t justify violence. I can’t get past the destruction of property; nothing justifies that. How does the black lives matter movement justify this?
1) YES, riots are bad. Most people, regardless of race, would agree that riots are bad.
2) The news has blown the amount of riots taking place way out of proportion. There is a small minority of people who are causing these riots to take place. To say that Black Lives Matter is the cause and instigators of riots is not factual. Many of the rioters and looters are either trying to start violence or seizing a chance to steal. There are videos of people who are not with the protesters who show up, destroy things, and then they leave. So we can say, “I can’t get past the destruction of property.” But that’s literally a minority of protesters and the news is blowing it up.
3) Lastly, violence is literally part of our DNA as a country. So, stop getting mad when it’s violence for a cause that you are not cool with.
Examples:
- We got this land through violence - ask Native Americans/First Nation Peoples about their ancestors’ perspectives.
- We seceded from England through violence.
- During the Civil War, we reunited the North and the South through violence. - We created nuclear bombs and dropped them on Japan because we were responding to Pearl Harbor.
I agree that violence doesn’t justify violence - but why don’t we say that about our past as well as our current predicaments?
2: I’M NOT RESPONSIBLE
But I’M not racist; I have a black friend even! I don’t practice racism and haven’t seen it firsthand, therefore, does it even exist where I am and is there anything I am personally responsible for?
There’s a lot that can be said here, but I am going to try to be as concise as possible. I am against the rhetoric that if you are not anti-racist, then you are racist. That can be another question that we can answer later, but I want to acknowledge where people are coming from. There is a growing population of people who think that white people by default are racist. This is not only unfair but also racially prejudicial.
With that said, not practicing racism is not enough for the problems that we are facing as a nation. Having a black friend is not enough. The issue is that a majority of people (not just white people but definitely inclusive of them) are indifferent to their neighbors of color. You don’t have to be racist for racism to continue to exist. If you are indifferent to racism, then racism will just conceal itself in different clothing and then continue to hurt people of color.
Hypothetical Illustration: If you are walking on a road and you notice that a fellow community member is on the ground bleeding, asking for help - someone just attacked him - and you say, “Well, I didn’t see anything happen and I have never been attacked on this road, so he must
have deserved what happened,” and you continue to keep walking, you weren’t the person who attacked that fellow community member but you are part of the problem. Why? Not because you were personally being violent or oppressive. It’s because you were apathetic. We are not allowed to be indifferent to our neighbors. If everyone was like that, we would literally not exist as a society. So, saying that you are not racist may be true - but if you're indifferent to your neighbors of color, then you are not bettering our community. We need to recognize that being part of a community means that we need to feel some responsibility for the well-being of our community when they are in need.
3: WHAT ABOUT…
But what about… this other injustice? I know racism is bad, but what makes BLM more important than womens’ rights, economic inequality, unborn babies, etc?
Well, BLM does also fight for things like women’s rights and economic inequality. More importantly, when people say “black lives matter,” we are not saying “black lives matter more.” We are not denying that all lives matter. To say the phrase “black lives matter” is to bring attention to the prejudice and discrimination that still takes place in our country.
Statistics of inequality:
- African Americans are nationally and in Joplin disproportionately living below the poverty line more than any other ethnicity (27% compared to 18% Anglo-Americans/white). - Nationwide, African Americans make up more of our prison system than any other ethnicity. And the majority of them are in for nonviolent crimes like drug use, even though statistically every other ethnicity uses drugs just as much as African Americans. - When it comes to household wealth, the 2018 median household income for all people was $63,000. For African Americans, it was $41,000.
So, if we actually started caring about African American communities instead of having a mentality of indifference, economic inequality would get better. I agree that injustice is not something that only happens to black people. But we need to care for every part of our community, not just our own.
4: DO BLUE LIVES MATTER TO YOU?
Cops are (mostly) good. We keep attacking them for the actions of a few bad eggs. I support the police; don’t their lives matter?
I agree. I think most cops are good. I also agree that police officers’ lives matter. And they put their lives on the line everyday. Two things I want to try to make clear:
1) Many African Americans are not anti-police officers. I think many African Americans would agree that the average police officer isn’t crooked. So, when people say “black lives matter” or even when we get upset at a police officer for killing an unarmed black person, we are not declaring war on the police. We are trying to change a system that keeps on hurting brown people. It has happened too many times to think this is just a coincidence. I don’t think the culprit is law enforcement. It’s bigger than that.
2) People don’t realize how much conflict there is between African American communities and police officers.
A good example of this is Fergusson, MO. The local law enforcement were over-policing impoverished African Americans and giving them tickets and fines for small stuff so that the city could pay for other things. Do you hear what I’m saying? They were charging impoverished African Americans for small stuff like being in a park “past curfew” although there was no curfew in effect and it wasn’t even dark yet. Take this constant experience over a period of years and you have a very bitter relationship with police officers.
Then, fast forward to when an unarmed black man (18 years old) is killed by a police officer. The riots and protests that erupted after that were not just because Michael Brown was killed. It was because there was distrust towards that community and police officers.
And this isn’t isolated. I have my own history of hearing about bad policing that affects my family. That carries with me.
5: doesn’t some of the VIOLENCE originate FROM WITHIN?
What about blacks generating/ perpetuating violence in their own culture? Specifically rap music that glorifies drugs, gang activity, violence, belittling women…
This is a problem. But if you think that rap artists are the problem, then you don’t understand the music industry. Rap music comes out of record labels that are normally (by normally I mean almost 100%) owned by white men. Meaning, they decide what music is published. If they don’t think a song will sell well, they will scrap it. It is statistically true that the most popular rap artists of all time were only able to become popular through white people buying their music. So not only are white people publishing the music, but white people are the major consumers of rap music. So, you might ask, what are record labels going to publish because they know it will sell well to the white demographic? Things that glorify drug use, violence, and sex. Yes, the rap artist might be writing the words, but they have to because their record label and consumers are desiring that. They are just being smart capitalists.
Lastly, if you don’t listen to rap music, then don’t complain about it. Because some of the best artists of all time talked just as much, if not more, about love, justice, and black people needing to take responsibility for their actions. Arguably the two best rappers right now, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, normally only talk about justice, love, and uplifting black communities. How come you look over them and only pay attention to the “bad apples?”
6: DOESN’T THE MEDIA SKEW FACTS?
The media makes everything a race issue. Many of these stories have nothing to do with race. But the media over-dramatizes them and blows it out of proportion in the direction of black people, making every police incident about race. Isn’t this skewing the whole issue?
Going from what I said earlier, I definitely agree. Again, you might ask “why are they doing this?” It sells! It gets clicks, which means they make more money. Sometimes it does have something to do with race. And it’s not that the police officer was racist. It’s that the police officer was indifferent. But yes, the media disproportionately shows and talks about the deaths of black
people versus other ethnicities. I completely agree. This doesn’t mean that there is not really any racism any more. It just means that they overplay it.
7: WE’VE GOTTEN RID OF RACISM…?
We got racism out of our system (in our area). Sure, there are still extremists here and there. But we’ve made things right; slavery is gone, segregation is gone, black folks have as much a chance as anybody. Why are we still acting like this is such a big deal?
The statistics I shared earlier are evidence that racism is not out of our system. Racism has just adapted itself to fit what is politically correct. It's been doing this for decades.
- Slavery was abolished, then sharecropping and Jim Crow happened.
- Sharecropping and Jim Crow were abolished, then mass incarceration of black and brown people skyrocketed, and redlining started up. [redlining definition: refers to a discriminatory pattern of disinvestment and obstructive lending practices that act as an impediment to home ownership among African Americans and other people of color. Banks used the concept to deny loans to homeowners and would-be homeowners who lived in these neighborhoods].
- Segregation was abolished, but the residual effects are still felt.
- Why do Webb City and Carl Junction offer better education and are significantly less diverse than Joplin and Carthage?
- If I wanted to get in trouble, I could start asking questions about why private schools are pretty much all white.
8: AFRICAN AMERICANS HAVE AS MUCH CHANCE AS ANYONE IN THIS COUNTRY, DON’T THEY?
Everybody has a chance to build their lives from the ground up in America. (I OR ____ grew up ____ and we overcame our adversity). What about the black people that are using this movement to rationalize laziness, handouts, and whining?
1) Just because you did it, doesn’t mean that everyone can. Your experience isn’t necessarily the norm.
2) That mindset is not neighborly. As a society that is about freedom and equality, we should not be so uncaring about the specific problems of people in our community. Maybe they are facing different adversities that you never had to deal with. You can’t say for sure that you would have overcome their adversity, because you never had to deal with it.
9: ISN’T THIS A ‘LIBERAL’ MOVEMENT?
This is a liberal movement, and I’m conservative. How do I know this isn’t all constructed by liberal media to make something out of nothing?
Justice doesn’t have a political bent. It doesn’t side with liberals or with conservatives. It sides with justice. We really need to stop allowing our political affiliations to blind us from the problems of our neighbors. I am not a liberal or a democrat. But I also am not ultra conservative. If a political ideology fits all of the complexity of our humanity into it, then we are more democrat or republican than we are human.
10. WHY ARE WE TAKING DOWN HISTORIC MONUMENTS?
The removal of southern heritage monuments is offensive to me; why should we remove history to make certain people happy? Where does it end?
Check out Equal Justice Initiative at www.eji.org. It’s founder is Bryon Stevenson. You may have heard his name before as he was played by Michael B. Jordan in the recent movie Just Mercy. Stevenson’s approach to talking about history and monuments is something worthy to be heard and considered. In summary, he argues that taking down or leaving up monuments is not the big issue. The issue is that the monuments in our country are overwhelmingly telling only part of our history. We need more monuments to talk about the full history of the South (and other parts of the country included). This is why EJI created the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. A monument near downtown Montgomery, Alabama that records all the documented names of people lynched in the United States of America. One of those names is Thomas Gilyard, a black man lynched in Joplin, MO in 1903. How come Joplin doesn’t have a monument talking about that important history? How come some people have never heard about what took place that day in April when a man was lynched by a mob of white citizens in Joplin; and then that same mob went and ran the African American residents of East Town out of their homes?
Want to explore more on this topic? These same questions are addressed in a 2+ hour conversation with Matthew and Jaron Scott in the Joplin Toad podcast 2 part episode. Listen on Spotify, on Apple podcasts, or HERE.
or…
Watch our 4 part video series, featuring stories from local residents of color on their own experiences, on our YouTube channel.
MATTHEW MCBIRTH
Matthew McBirth serves as a professor of Bible and Ministry and the Director of the Multicultural Affairs Department at Ozark Christian College. After moving to Joplin for college, Matthew has been living in the Joplin area for almost 10 years.