Am I a Racist?

Recently I reacted to an online comment that somewhat shocked me. I don’t know the person wo made the comment, but it seemed like the commenter was a Christian and politically conservative. I’m not going to quote the comment verbatim, but give you the gist, then do some thinking about why it is concerning.

The comment went something like this:

How can you support the Jews? Don’t you know that most of the people producing the porn industry are Jews? Shouldn’t that inform your support of them?

Remember, I am just paraphrasing the whole comment. (I could have gotten it wrong, but I’ve seen similar comments about other groups elsewhere. It’s a fairly common line of argumentation.)

I am very concerned about the rise of antisemitism among Conservatives, especially among Conservative Christians. Historically Christian antagonism towards Jews rose after Jewish persecution of Christians in the Apostolic age. Subsequently, Jewish membership in the church steadily decreased as Judaism put pressure on individuals to remain as they were (or to come back to Judaism, see the long argument against that in the book of Hebrews). After the Bar Kokhba rebellion in ad 135, the Jewish element in the church, even in Palestine, diminished radically. As Jewish opposition to Christianity persisted and intensified, so did Christian opposition towards Jews and Judaism. From there we pass to the often horrific record of professing Christians through the Middle Ages and Reformation period where professing Christians went beyond rhetoric to overt persecution of Judaism.

In more recent times, evangelical/fundamentalist attitudes towards Jews radically altered. Partly due to the rise of Dispensationalism, seeing a major role for believing Israel in the future millennium, Jews were viewed more positively and support for toleration (and evangelization) became the priority attitudes. These Christians still disagreed vehemently with Jewish rejection of the Messiah, but rather than attack them, they wanted to win them to Christ.

When you see comments like the one paraphrased above, something else seems to be driving the conversation. Does a comment like this advocate antagonism towards Jews as a class? Does it further evangelism, or does it antagonize prospective converts? I suppose you can see what I think, just by raising the questions.

An even more troubling question: are comments like the one paraphrased above an example of racism? It is especially troubling because I think I’ve used similar argumentation in the past, not about Jews, but about others. Does that make me a racist? To answer that, we need to understand what racism is.

Defining Race and Racism

Here is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines racism:

“Prejudice, antagonism, or discrimination by an individual, institution, or society, against a person or people on the basis of their nationality or (now usually) their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. Also: beliefs that members of a particular racial or ethnic group possess innate characteristics or qualities, or that some racial or ethnic groups are superior to others; an ideology based on such beliefs.”¹

The OED “is widely regarded as the last word on the meaning of words in English.”² What its editors are after is description of words, rather than prescription. As noted in an Atlantic article, the OED aims to be “tracking the meaning of every word in the language across time and laying out how people were actually using each one.”³ When you read an OED definition, it is describing the usage of the word in the English language taking into account it’s nuances over time.

Let’s consider the parts of this definition:

• “Prejudice, antagonism, or discrimination” — an attitude that can be expressed in action
• “against a person or people” — the attitude is antagonistic and directed at an individual or a group
• “on the basis of their nationality” — the criteria that sparks the attitude
• “or (now usually) their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group” — this is now the more usual criteria, not strictly nationality, but ethnicity or “race”

These are the essential components of racism: an antagonistic attitude towards persons based on characteristics due to perceived racial/ethnic/national distinctions.

I found an interesting comment about “race” in an article by Charlotte Reading out of the University of Northern British Columbia:

“Race is a relatively recent concept within western societies. In Europe, until the latter part of the 1600s, identity was primarily defined by one’s religion and language (Hannaford, 1996). The concept of race as a category of identity did not emerge until Europeans began to colonize other continents. …”⁴

The whole article betrays a more left-wing view of racism, but this is a remarkable observation. What we think of as “races” is a relatively new idea.

In my life, I’ve met people who were suspicious (at least) of those who are culturally different from them in some notable way. It could be the differences caused by a foreign (to the observer) culture, physical characteristics, distinctive mannerisms, or what have you. The differences somehow mark the other person out as somehow inferior to the observer, someone we ought to look out for or look down on. So-called racial differences, skin colour, body shapes, the shape of eyes, and so on, become markers of someone who is “of a different race” than the observer. They are not like me, therefore they are not as good as me, in some way or other.

The article by Charlotte Reading adds this additional comment:

“Scientists have confirmed that there is no biological basis for what we refer to as human ‘races.’ In fact, genetic researchers have discovered that among modern humans, 85% of our genetic variation occurs between individuals, with only 5% between so-called ‘racial groups’ on the same continent and 10% between people on different continents (Smedley, 1999). As Graves (2001) points out, some animals have more genetic variation than humans: ‘there is more genetic variation within one tribe of wild chimpanzees than has been observed within all existing humans!’(p. 31).”⁵

What does the Bible say about race?

^NAU Acts 17:26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,

^KJV Acts 17:26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

Paul seems to indicate here that there are no “races,” just the human race.

Skin colour is a big indicator for some, but you should note that the Bible says nothing about skin colour except in reference to animal skins dyed various colours when constructing the Tabernacle, the analysis of stages of leprosy, and a reference in Lamentations to someone who is burned or wasted because of the deprivations of war.⁶

And one other exception is very instructive:

^{Jer 13.23} “Can the Ethiopian change his skin Or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good Who are accustomed to doing evil.

Here God uses an immutable characteristic to make a point about the endemic and inherent wickedness that dwells in the hearts of all men. Men cannot change their evil nature any more than an Ethiopian can change his skin or a leopard his spots.

From the Bible, I preach to my congregation that there is only one race, the human race. We are blessed to have people in our church, as I like to say, from every continent except Australia and Antarctica. We are committed to loving one another as brethren in a local church should.

But Is It Racism? Am I or have I ever been a Racist?

To paraphrase the definition above to something more workable, let’s say racism is a negative attitude towards a person or group based on racial, national, or ethnic characteristics. The object of racism is looked down on or acted against due to an individual or group having some unchangeable characteristic.

When it comes to the statement that got me going on this line of thinking, what is the goal of that kind of statement? “We have to bear this negative fact in mind when we think about this group as a whole.” In other words, “don’t be so neutral towards the Jews because you know, a ton of porn executives are Jews.”

Am I being fair in that rephrasing? Obviously I think so.

What about my own past attitudes. I will confess to having been raised in Western Canada and thus been in a milieu that looked down on French-Canadians, the “native” population (called “First Nations” now), and just by definition as a Canadian, the Americans.⁷ I think most people in the flesh have some sort of attitude of superiority towards other people based on immutable characteristics. Something about some other person or group makes them less than me.

In some cases, when the “thing” that makes them different is “race” or ethnicity, we are right to call the attitude at least “racist.” Maybe the one holding the attitude could be fairly called a racist, too. That person might be highly offended if you labeled them that way, but what else is a persistent attitude of superiority or antagonism against someone or some group based on “racial” characteristics?

The bottom line of racism is pride. I think I am better than you. Not all pride is racism, but all pride is sin.

^{Pr 8.13} “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverted mouth, I hate.

^{Pr 11.2} When pride comes, then comes dishonor, But with the humble is wisdom.

^{Pr 16.18} Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling.

^{Pr 21.24} “Proud,” “Haughty,” “Scoffer,” are his names, Who acts with insolent pride.

^{Pr 29.23} A man’s pride will bring him low, But a humble spirit will obtain honor.

May God help us walk humbly in our world, considering others as sinners in need of a Saviour, and may we stop defining groups in terms that reduce them to “less than me” based on some unchangeable characteristic about them — God made them that way, who are you, and who am I,  to despise them?

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Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

1. Oxford English Dictionary, “racism (n.),” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/2887949371. [↩]
2. Charlotte Brewer, Examining the Oxford English Dictionary – The Bridge, January 20, 2021, https://sites.hertford.ox.ac.uk/bridge/examining-the-oxford-english-dictionary/. [↩]
3. Stephanie Hayes, “Who Made the Oxford English Dictionary?,” Books, The Atlantic, October 30, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/10/oxford-english-dictionary-sarah-ogilvie-book-review/675826/. [↩]
4. Charlotte Reading, Understanding Racism, n.d., 1–2, https://www.nccih.ca/docs/determinants/FS-Racism1-Understanding-Racism-EN.pdf. [↩]
5. Reading, Understanding Racism, 3. [↩]
6. According to Bibleworks, there are 76 references in the NASB95 to some form of word including skin: “skin*” was my search term. [↩]
7. For the record, on this last one, I married an American and fathered five American citizens, so I think I mostly got over this. [↩]