An imaginary dialogue between a white evangelical and a black evangelical

Below is an imaginary dialogue I have written between a hypothetical "reasonable white conservative evangelical" and a hypothetical "reasonable black evangelical".  The dialogue is imaginary, but it is based on numerous real conversations I have had (with both sides) over the years. Just to be clear: the "white evangelical" does not represent my own views; I agree with some of the points of both of the speakers and try to present counterpoints raised by each side. Both of the speakers say things that I have heard in real conversations, so they are not straw men nor figments of my imagination, but of course, each does not speak for everyone. 

​White evangelical: “While I agree that we should be against any injustice, I still feel that the outrage against police excessive force and vigilantes is disproportionate to the danger it poses. The number of these cases that we see is a handful per year, while every year thousands of black Americans suffer or die due to other crimes, mostly from other black Americans. Why is there no outcry against that?”
 
Black evangelical: “I agree that the relative risk of me being attacked and killed by police or vigilantes is low compared to other crimes that occur in depressed urban areas. But what you miss is that all of those crimes are treated as crimes. In almost every case, someone will call the police, who will try to track down the criminal, who will then be prosecuted.  But in the case of these actions by police and vigilantes, in every single case I know of, nothing was done to prosecute anyone, even though people knew who the perpetrator was, until after there was a great outcry. So even if most police are not doing such things or approving of them, there has to be a larger system in which the police almost never hold their own people to account for these things, unless someone was there with a camera, and it goes public. 
 
“Add to that, that I and most other black people have experienced a lesser form of aggression, in which a cop or some other authority ordered us around or treated us with suspicion for no other apparent reason than that we were black, and add to that the history, as recent as the 1970s (within our parents’ lifetimes) of police departments in some places of the country deliberately assisting lynchings (read the books of John Perkins, for example), and it is just very hard to feel secure.
 
“Think about it this way: it may be that the police don’t succeed at rescuing you from every crime. But you as a white person have a reasonable expectation that if the police did show up, they would be helpful to you. But as a black person, I feel like there is no truly “safe place” to go, and no one I can know I can trust that if I call them, they will certainly help me. It might be that they will, maybe even most of the time they will, but I can’t trust that it always will be the case, because there are just too many of these incidents out there. So one feels that one is an alien without a homeland, even in a country where one’s parents and grandparents have lived for hundreds of years, and there is no other country where we belong.”
 
White evangelical: “I can see that. I agree that it would certainly help things if at least some times we heard of authorities bringing a police officer or self-appointed vigilante to justice for excessive or disproportionate use of force well before it had to become a public outcry. It seems that police (both black and white) and prosecutors “protect their own” far too much, and even seem to protect vigilantes who they know.  But is that really specially directed against blacks? There are also many cases of excessive force used against whites, and vigilantism against whites. 
 
“I’m not saying there is no real racism out there, but is it not also possible to see racism where there wasn’t any? Sometimes we can misinterpret the actions of others if we expect them to be against us.”
 
Black evangelical: “I agree that not every case of these viral videos is clearly a case of racism, and we ought to be careful about too quickly jumping onto a bandwagon that sees everything through the lens of black victimhood and unjust authorities. Some of these incidents can be explained as just incompetence or by a larger context of someone trying to do the right thing in a pressure situation but making a mistake. And it’s possible that sometimes I have personally taken an aggressive authority as being against me because I am black, when actually they were just a rude person in general.
 
“But FBI statistics show that police threaten or use force about twice as often with black people as with whites under the same conditions, and other statistics show the likelihood of death at the hands of police is about three times higher for blacks than whites. And while I know there are some injustices by the police that happen to whites (such as the recent shooting of a deaf man who didn’t respond the way the police thought he should), I think if there were incidents against whites as egregious as those we have seen over the years against blacks, we would have seen and heard about a lot more of it.”
 
White evangelical: “Okay, I’ll accept that the police are more likely to do these injustices to blacks. The fact is, that while I do know of some white friends who have had run-ins with the police bossing them around, most people I know haven’t had that experience. But isn’t that at least partially due to the fact that the crime rate of blacks is much higher? The rate of homicides by blacks is about eight times higher than the rest of the population, and the rate of violent crimes is about three times higher.  Wouldn’t that make the police more jumpy, in general? 
 
Black evangelical: “It is true that black crime is high, and I grieve over that. But we have a principle of justice in this country that a person can’t be detained or accused without substantial evidence, and certainly not on the basis of just one ethnic factor, such as having the same skin color as a criminal. If we allow that, we just create a cycle of anger and violence, in which people who are unjustly treated don’t trust the police, which increases the amount of crime in their communities, because people don’t cooperate with the police. 
 
“If you say that jumpiness is legitimate, you are basically justifying racism, that says that we can prejudge people just on an ethnic identity marker. The founders of the US fought against that when it was applied to themselves: crime was much greater in the lower classes of England and among the Scottish and Irish, so the upper classes often railroaded them in criminal trials based on their prejudices against them. The rights of the accused we have in the US were designed to prevent that.
 
“On the other hand, if you are saying that jumpiness of the police is not legitimate, but it is to be expected anyway,  you are saying that this pervasive sense of no safe place that I described to you earlier is no big deal to you. 
 
“Many people might be jumpy in a community that is not their own, especially if it is known for high crime. But police who are jumpy are badly trained police. And a society that allows ‘jumpy’ police to keep on doing injustices, even if they are just a few ‘bad apples’ in a police force that is mostly good, is implicitly saying that the people in those communities with bad police like that, don’t matter much.”
 
White evangelical:  “Okay, I agree that the law and all the agents of the law need to act on the basis of the presumption of innocence, even in communities with higher crime. And I agree that we all ought to be concerned to make sure that the police and authorities (and anyone acting as tolerated non-professionals enforcing the law) have the training to make sure they understand that, and are prosecuted if they recklessly put the lives of others in danger, even if they did it out of thoughtlessness instead of willful malice. 
 
“But here’s another thing: the very principle of presumption of innocence that I agree should be applied to all people, even if they come from a high-crime community (or look like they do), also applies to the police. Even if we got to a point where prosecutors brought charges for excessive force on a regular basis without needing an outcry from the community to force them to do it, it would still be the case that some police would not be convicted, because the evidence is not always so clear. Even video evidence is not always clear, which is why we have trials in which people get to argue in their own defense. But it seems to me that in every one of these cases, if the police or vigilante in question is not convicted, people riot.”
 
Black evangelical:  “I agree that even in an ideal world, we would expect that not every criminal, and not every criminally acting police officer, will be convicted, and we have to allow for that, because the opposite, of having swift punishments based on less-than-adequate evidence, is worse. 
 
“But until recently, the batting average of police and white vigilantes accused of these things was nearly 100% getting off free. The law of averages would seem to imply that even if the evidence isn’t always clear, a lot of times it should be clear enough. Perhaps with a few more convictions, people will start to have more confidence in the system.” 
 
White evangelical: “Granted. It seems that juries often give great deference to police, and even to private vigilantes, out of a too-great sense of hero worship of first responders and those who aim to protect others. We should respect and honor police, but we would be naïve if we thought that police are immune to sin, and even if we neglected to recognize that some people may actually be attracted to become police because they find it attractive to use severe force. Just about every position of authority has some people attracted to it because they actually love ordering people around and being dominant, including pastors and school teachers.
 
“But while we’re on the topic of riots, I know that black evangelicals are not the ones out looting and burning, but don’t you think that you are contributing to that tacitly by creating an environment of anger that gets people in a rage, so that they feel any type of lawlessness is justified? And in the end, the communities are hurt much more by the riots than by the original injustice, especially when you account for the many business people who could create jobs moving out of the communities, after the riots.”
 
Black evangelical: “Black evangelicals do speak out against criminal acts during riots all the time, and go to great lengths to make sure to have peaceful protests. But if you mean to tell us not to express any anger, you are denying us a part of our humanness. Anger at injustice, just like joy in good things, and all human emotions, was created by God as part of who we are.
 
“You are right, though, that historically riots have always been a negative, a disaster for communities. Martin Luther King had it right—nonviolence, but not silence. There are clearly some people who see riots as a good chance to get some loot while the police are occupied elsewhere, and some people who want to use them to advance their own political agenda, without caring what impact it has on the community.” 
 
White evangelical:  “What will move us forward? It seems like it is a hopeless cycle. Blacks mistrust the police and don’t cooperate with them, raising crime, police get their backs up and act unjustly, leading to less trust, and so on.”
 
Black evangelical: “The process of reconciliation involves repentance and forgiveness. On the part of white people, repentance means working to ensure that just systems of oversight are put into place regarding the police, and also not lecturing black people on how all their problems are their own fault. Black Christians need to think about what it means to have an attitude of forgiveness toward whites, even if whites are not fully repentant. Who ever does ‘fully’ repent? That’s very tough, to forgive an enemy, and for many years, blacks have felt that US society at large was their enemy, and not without reason—as I said, we all know the story of someone in our family who was lynched, or some other injustice. 
 
“On the other hand, black Americans need to accept that some of their problems are their own communal fault, and repent too. Too many young black people today are ‘nihilistic’—having no hope in anything and living every day for the moment, which can mean taking advantage of each other and pulling down those who try to do better. One can argue that the history of this country and our present society has made them nihilistic, but that would be no better than arguing that crime in the black community justifies the police being ‘jumpy.’ Two wrongs don’t make a right. And white people have to forgive black people for the sins they perceive. I think that we focus so much on white guilt that we fail to also recognize that everyone has to forgive, too.” 
 
White evangelical: “I think your focus on mutual forgiveness is great. A lot of white evangelicals feel that black evangelicals just want them to grovel forever in ‘white guilt,’ which is antithetical to the Gospel. There doesn’t seem to be a recognition that many good things have happened in the white evangelical church. For example, all major evangelical colleges and denominations have repented of past racism and have issued statements to that effect, over the past decades. Many traditionally white churches are actively planting multi-racial churches in cities around the US. 
 
“Strangely, some white Christians seem to revel in stoking up their own ‘white guilt’ almost as a sort of Catholic penance. And some seem to like to use it as a way to look down on other Christians, by proving their own higher degree of enlightenment. But it doesn’t follow that there is no such thing as corporate guilt. The Bible makes it very clear that we do own the sins of our fathers. But we can acknowledge that and then move on, because corporate sin is forgiven in the blood of Christ like all sin. 
 
“Perhaps there is one final issue to be discussed. Many white conservatives worry that black evangelicals, as well as other evangelicals who consider themselves ‘progressive’ to some degree, are supportive of socialism, that is, of a vast increase of the power of government to not only control the economy but also the education and speech of people. We’ve seen in recent years how those who stand for traditional sexual morality have been targeted, and we worry that if the people targeting them are in charge of the whole government, shutting down churches will be next. Can you accept that conservative white support of capitalism and limited government, and of rights such as freedom of speech and freedom to bear arms, are positions that a Christian can hold in good conscience, believing that they lead to greater human flourishing, and are not just masks for white racism and control?”
 
Black evangelical: “I can accept that those are valid positions for a Christian to argue for, although I have a different perspective. Historically, the federal government has been a friend to blacks, while pockets of local government have supported entrenched racism and tyranny. But very few blacks want full-scale socialism. We value our freedoms and rights too. We probably differ from you just in the degree of federal involvement—we distrust local governments having too much power because we have seen firsthand how oppressive they can be.”
 
White evangelical:  “Can you accept that some white evangelicals are so concerned about the threats to our freedoms, that they would vote for someone for president who is personally reprehensible, but who stands in opposition to powers they feel are pressing hard against our freedoms, who would make things a lot worse?”
 
Black evangelical: “That’s harder to swallow, but I can generally accept the premise that one can vote for the lesser of perceived evils. The fact is, sometimes blacks have voted for local politicians of our own who are less than stellar at a personal level, to say the least, out of the perception that they will fight for us. I actually don’t think Trump is driven by racism—he has done many things to benefit the black community, after consulting with conservative black leaders, such as decriminalization of some “tough on crime” laws, sending many black men home from prison, tax-free zones in depressed communities, vouchers let black kids into good schools, and direct funding for historically black colleges. But I also don’t fear the other side as much as you, because generally, as I have said, the expansion of the power of the federal government has been a lesser of two evils for the black community.
 
“Can you accept that, without saying that I am a ‘liberal,’ meaning that I have a lower view of the Bible than you?”
 
White evangelical: “So you are saying we could vote oppositely of each other, and think that the other person has made a terrible choice, but still affirm each other as brothers in Christ?”
 
Black evangelical: “If I cast out of the kingdom everyone who I thought had done a dumb and boneheaded thing, there wouldn’t be many left. Are you willing to show up in a black church or at an event we organize, from time to time, to get to know us, and our concerns?” 
 
White evangelical: “It’s a start!”