I recently posted a blog entry describing the Southern Baptist Convention’s decision to issue a wholesale condemnation of Critical Race Theory without ever consulting a single African-American Southern Baptist (yes, they do exist).
How could that happen? It is astonishing.
I have a number of thoughts on this question which I will explore in a future post in this series on Critical Race Theory (for previous posts on this subject, see here, here, here, and here), along with my continuing observations
about the problems of systemic racism in America (for a recent example see here).
I am a huge fan of all the members of the group of junior congressional women the media have dubbed “The Squad.” This includes Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and now Jamaal Bowman, and Cori Bush.
Each of them continue to demand that those involved in the Capital attack on January 6th must be held accountable. Anyone who understands the nature of justice must agree with them. There ought to be broad bipartisan support for their calls of accountability.
Instead, many members of the Republican party are telling these representatives, and especially the women, to “move on,” that they are making a mountain out of a molehill.
More than that, several Republicans have publicly denounced these women
as liars, making easily refutable statements about them never being endangered at all.
I realize that a major factor in this argument is political partisanship, which teaches you to never give your opponent a break. Add a dash of simply bullying and we have a good explanation of the human behavior now on display.
However, I am convinced that there is another powerful factor involved — white, male privilege.
White, male privilege thrives in situations allowing women’s feelings and experiences to be minimized or dismissed. Admittedly, the deeply damaged and incompetent congresswoman from Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is not a man. But there are always exceptions to every rule. I won’t pretend to know how to explain her.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has recently told her story about being a rape survivor.
She, together with Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rahida Tlaib, and you
can bet your bottom dollar that Cori Bush is now experiencing this as well, have received numerous death threats since arriving in Congress.
These women have good reason to feel traumatized after the events of January 6th. They are the physical embodiment of everything that violent mob of Trump supporters would love to eliminate from this country: emigrants, Muslims, people of color, and outspoken women who voice their disagreements loudly in public.
The heartless people now calling these female, public servants liars; accusing them of overreacting; or insisting that they just need “to get over it,” are behaving like abusers themselves. As AOC has said repeatedly, these are the things that abusers say to their victims.
It is no accident, then, that the majority of these voices come from white men. Men who have always enjoyed all the implicit and explicit advantages of being white men in American society.
Such men rarely have any reason to fear that they may be on the receiving end of a beating, or rape, or verbal assault from one of the other authoritarian men in their lives.
Such men are usually far too comfortable exercising power over others, especially when those “others” are powerless themselves.
Below is a video of the two, recent congressional speeches offered by AOC and Rahida Tlaib as they continue their calls for Congressional accountability.
If you can listen to these speeches impassively, without sympathy, without empathy, without concern, then I ask you to check your chest cavity, for you have no heart. I ask you to check your mind for your conscience has withered.
One of the primary qualities of a truly Christian life is the exercise of empathy.
It is the ability to see life from the other person’s perspective and to try to understand why they feel the way they do.
Jesus of Nazareth was extraordinary in the deep, deep levels of empathy that he possessed for the people he met. In fact, empathy is what led him to sacrifice himself on the cross at Calvary.
Let’s all pray for such divine-human empathy as we listen to these women describe their very legitimate fears on January 6th.
