Between the World and Me: A Radical Evangelical Perspective

I just finished reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ letter to his son, Between the World and Me. After everything I’ve witnessed in the past year, I felt it imperative to step outside my worldview and try to grasp, albeit crudely, the experience of someone so far outside my own as to feel utterly alien. In retrospect, Ta-Nehisi Coates and I may as well have come from different universes, and yet we are both Americans. I have long struggled to show genuine empathy toward those labeled non-white and classified as minorities, and I hoped this book might help me understand their experiences and views of myself and the world they inhabit. But I find the gulf is greater than I imagined.

In another America, I imagined I could make a difference. Once upon a time, I taught English at a school for disadvantaged and troubled youths. I learned then that my help was neither wanted nor needed, that the disparity was so great between my world and theirs that no one person could overcome it by willpower alone. Some people can cross that line, but I could not. Maybe it’s the way I looked. Maybe it’s the way I talked. Maybe it was just my personality. I remained, throughout my days there, unwelcomed and unwanted. Regardless of good intentions and genuine concern for the outcomes of my students, I remained irrelevant. After seeing I could make no improvements for these children, I walked away from teaching for good. Too many games. Too little time. Too little energy for the politics of pleasing everyone and truly serving no one.

And then I tried again, in 2019, to be an emissary for Christ in a community where I was a minority. I imagined myself a bridge-builder, but it turned out what I constructed was instead a pier, off the end of which I could toss myself for all that it mattered to those I encountered with regularity. The tensions in our new community were high, and my wife and I had often felt unwelcome in stores as we shopped where others greeted us with looks that seemed to say, “What do you think you’re doing here, in this place? Why aren’t you on your side of the line?”

And then 2020 happened. I watched America stagger from the harms brought upon her by her own machinations and from the influence of outside forces, both material and immaterial. And as I did so, I also watched the suffering of minorities compounded by Covid combined with systematic oppression. And then I watched with horror as the people I considered my own, the evangelical Christians, did everything they could to keep Trump and the Republican Party in power. I call my response radical because, in the present atmosphere, to be an evangelical and not appear primarily self-serving seems a non sequitur, to be evangelical and moved with compassion for the outsider seems unnatural and uncommon. We are a long way from 1st century Christianity.

But it seems the gulf between Coates and myself is even greater, and I cannot fathom the depths of that gulf because, while I desire to be an ally, what I hear, again and again, runs something like, “Go away. You’re not welcome here.” Where then am I welcome? I’m not white enough for some. I’m not handsome enough for some. I’m not smart enough for some. I’m not slim enough for some. I’m not worldly enough for some. I’m not evangelical enough for some. I’m not blasé enough for some. I’m not sophisticated enough for some. I’m not plain enough for some. I’m not left enough for some. I’m not right enough for some. I’m not fluid enough for some. I’m not primal enough for some. So, while Coates seems to think I’m part of a group of beings who live like masters of the galaxy, I find I’m just as much of an outsider to that world as he is.

Someone will ask, “How so? You’re white. You automatically benefit by that fact.”

To which I reply, “The best I can hope to achieve is to fly under the radar because being white doesn’t make you immune to the predators or herd mentality.” I have benefited by being white, but I am no more a master of the galaxy than Donald Duck (and considerably less-adored, for valid reasons). Being white doesn’t immunize you from police brutality or the blind millstones of justice. I have seen that firsthand. If the system sets its sights upon you, you had better pray to God for deliverance, regardless of your ethnic, racial, or other identity.

Coates seems to want a universe in which black is everywhere and acknowledged as beautiful, but everyone ranks in opposite fashion to the present reality. He doesn’t frame the situation as being between black and white, but as being between black and those who must believe they are white. In that universe, I remain an unwelcome outsider, just as much as I am in the present reality. And I don’t believe that, were Coates to receive his desires, it would fix his brokenness any more than it would fix the brokenness of any human being.

Coates calls the oppressive political power wielded by the authorities majoritarian, meaning they wield the power they do because democratic desire insists that they do. There is some truth to this, as the one who hinders progress or gets in the way, thereby impeding the Dream, is apt to learn and quick. But to fool oneself into thinking this is only a problem for black people is unhelpful. The real problem for black people is that the power wielded against them most often goes unchecked. It’s more likely to end in death or prison, regardless of circumstance or actual criminality. This is a great tragedy for America.

And then I force myself to ask the question that I ask more and more of late. Is it wrong for the majority to wield power if it does so justly and equitably? I don’t think so. Is it right to over-represent minorities in every aspect of society? Whether we’re speaking of prison or politics, I don’t think so. We know that non-binary human beings only make up 1 in 20 people of the general American population, and yet Americans perceive that the number is closer to 1 in 4. Why? Over-representation in media. We know that black people are far more likely to suffer at the hands of the criminal justice system. Why? Over-representation in policing.

What do I mean? I mean if you are going to concentrate police officers in an all black neighborhood or all white neighborhood, what will the reason for sending the police into those neighborhoods be, how will it differ between the two, and what will the attitudes in each instance more likely run toward? The perception is reality because if you go looking for crime, you are more apt to find it, even if it is minor. If you’re more likely to stop blacks than whites, what will the outcome more likely be? It won’t be positive for blacks because even an innocent stop may result (and is more likely to do so) in police brutality or the unjust death of a citizen.

I saw the news today, oh boy. A boy killed by police in Chicago, allegedly because he was carrying a gun and running from the police. The authorities say they will find the man who placed the gun in the boy’s hand, and after reading Coates letter to his son, I cannot help but wonder if the police officer was the man who did so, because that stuff happens. When I was a younger man, I listened to a police officer as he joked about putting a gun on the body of a dead suspect to make it easier for the Dreamers, as Coates would call them, to forget. When I was a teenager, I listened as a different police officer talked about the teenage girl he was dating. He wasn’t lying. I met her. I didn’t report him because that’s not the world I came from. The world I came from was one in which I was likely to suffer for doing so, as was the girl, while the officer went his merry way.

Coates essentially said that to cry black on black crime is to shoot a man and punish him for bleeding (I’m paraphrasing). I believe him. I’ve seen the injustice. My own ancestors include both African and Native Americans. Coates is right about many things, and yet, in the end, I still walked away from his book feeling an unwelcome outsider. He’s not wrong about several things, but people like him—that is people who suffer under oppression, should remember that not everyone on the other side is your enemy.

Not everyone’s experience is the same. I may be white, but that doesn’t make me a master of the galaxy, though it does mean I’ve been able to pass and fly under the radar when justice didn’t look directly at me. Dreamers won’t understand what I’m saying, but if you’ve ever had blind justice turn its face in your direction, you’ll know that justice isn’t really blind, it just wants what it wants, even if it has to be heartless in its pursuit to get it.

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