Why we will never quite achieve a Post Racial America

A woman from Turlock California was fired from her job and is being investigated by Secret Service after posting a racial slur about President Barack Obama.  She had called the President the N word and then expressed her hopes that he would be assassinated this term.     Most Americans would agree that this woman’s comments were disgraceful and completely unacceptable in a civilized society and probably shows us that we will never quite live in a post racial America.   While progress has been made in this country, racism has taken on a much more insidious nature.  No matter our ethnicity we all have probably been the recipient or possibly the provider of racial bias or stereotyping. 

 In this world we must remember that there is nothing new under the sun. In the Bible in book of Esther, Haman shows contempt towards Mordecia after his refusal to bow to him.  After he finds out he is Jewish he plots not only to kill Mordecia but all the Jews in the empire.   During Jesus’s time on earth Jews hated Samirtans and Gentiles because they considered them unclean.  They would even travel extra days by going around Samaria rather than traveling through the Gentile country.  Does this sound familiar?  Has there ever been situation you have had a bad encounter with one individual and decided to generalize that to an entire ethnic group?  How often have you looked to blame others for your current condition or looked for a group to scapegoat?  Racism throughout history has been a tremendous plague on humanity and is nothing but deception that appeals to one’s pride, ego, and selfishness.

Despite all of this we must never lose sight that God still sits on the throne and is in control.  He shows no partiality or favoritism to ethnic groups.  There is only one race and that is the human race.  Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Indians, Arabs, and Jews are not different races but merely just ethnicities of a fallen human race that can only be reconciled through a Savior. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor Free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”  Gal 3:28