The Cost of Justice
Here are two anecdotes to illustrate what's been on my mind this week. First, earlier this week I was on a video call with a church from the east cost discussing some of the themes from Rediscipling the White Church. Toward the end one of the participants asked something like, "What brings you joy in this work?" In almost each of the book discussions I've been a part of, and in justice conversations more broadly, some version of this question is raised. What keeps you going? Where do you find hope? How do you respond to the backlash? The questions, as I understand them, aren't really about me; they reflect the questioner's intuition about the cost of racial justice.
Second, over the twelve years since we started our church, there have been innumerable guests who've visited once or twice before moving on. The reasons they didn't stick around are countless and plenty of them are good. But we've been around long enough now that I've had the opportunity to hear some of the reasons that some of the guests decided not to stay. As a representative example, one man told the person who invited him something along the lines of, "Your church is really doing it," before adding something like, "I'm just not sure it's for me." This man, who was theoretically looking for a diverse congregation engaged in the ministry of racial justice, realized the cost might be higher than he wanted to pay.
I'm totally uninterested in judging the people wondering about the cost of pursuing justice. At different points I've shared their questions and fears. I've walked away plenty of times. No, instead I want to suggest that those questions and reactions reveal something important about the nature of racial justice that many us of can overlook.
Earlier this summer I read a fantastic book by Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism. Drawing on the work of Cedric Robinson and Eric Williams, Tran writes that racism "helps set the conditions of domination necessary for capitalist exploitation, just as exploitation in turn elicits the justification that, under conditions of domination, racism provides." In other words, we can't understand racism apart from systems of capitalist exploitation. Racism, in Tran's account, provides the explanatory logic for systems of plunder and domination. "This process does not begin with ontological distinctions; it produces them along a path made by innumerable prudential judgements as bodies are passed down the line of cultural signification. More than anything race is about convenience."
I hope you understand the significance of what Tran is claiming here. Rather than standing as its own social construct for its own purposes, race is the justification for the violent accumulation of land and wealth. It is capitalism's excuse. It's what allowed certain people to inhabit their roles as colonizers and conquerors, thugs and thieves while maintaining their church memberships. Which is to say, we can't rightly understand racial injustice apart from the way it rationalized the wealth extracted from certain communities and bestowed on others.
There are so many implications to be drawn from Tran's work in Asian Americans and I hope you'll pick it up. For now though, I want to circle back to the concerns about the costs of racial justice. While those thinking in these terms aren't likely considering racism's inextricable connection to exploitation, it remains true that this connection ensures that there is a cost associated with racial justice. And while that cost may at times manifest emotionally or relationally (this is likely what people asking the question are imagining, as are those who talk themselves out of belonging to a justice oriented congregation), the nature of racial capitalism means the cost will often be material.
I've had too many conversations with pastors who've told me about the cost they have accrued (or would) for preaching on matters related to race. Members withhold their offerings. People leave. The threat of termination is leveled. While these reactions may seem extreme, especially since these pastors' engagement is generally thoughtful, careful, and empathetic, the racial capitalism lens helps to reveal their logic. Pulling back the veil of race threatens the established order and hierarchy; it threatens the bottom line.
But now I'm thinking back to the question about joy from earlier this week. This is the strange paradox of the gospel. While racial capitalism exacts a cost on those who transgress its deceptive rationale, it cannot steal joy. In fact, there is more joy to be found on the other side of these world-ordering lies which, for followers of Jesus, shouldn't surprise us at all. We are, after all, those strange people who believe that it's possible to gain the world while losing your soul. It stands to reason that we might renounce a world of exploitation and find a universe of joy.
(Photo credit: Karolina Grabowska)