Doing the Work; Learning about Racism
by William Culleton

As a member of Old Saint Joseph’s parish, I invite you to join in reading Father Brian Massingale’s insightful study on racism and Catholicism, Racial Justice and the Catholic Church (Orbis 2010). Fr. Massingale is an African American theologian, currently teaching ethics at Fordham University; he has had an illustrious career as a teacher, speaker and advocate. His extended deconstruction of American racism will more than reward your time and energy.

Yet there is a more essential reason to fit this into your schedule. We as Catholics are very much called to do the work of understanding race and the Catholic response to it. Catholic social teaching charges us with the moral responsibility to work for the elimination of racism in all of its manifestations. Many voices in our Church, our archdiocese, and our own parish are calling us to be at the forefront of efforts for racial justice.

This year, our own neighbors in the Philadelphia area rose up by the thousands to demand our attention to ongoing racism, crying out for justice. We need to respond thoughtfully, prayerfully. How better to deal with this scourge than to address it as a parish?

If you are a white parishioner, you may feel, as I did, that you already understand the problem—you’ve done the work, read about it, thought about it. I felt that way too. I especially resisted the notion that I am somehow “privileged” because I am white. Whatever blessings I have received seem to be the just reward of a responsible life. So how are they a form of privilege?

Maybe I was reluctant to revisit my own participation in American racism. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to dwell on my sins and failures, as Saint Ignatius so frequently encouraged us to do. I don’t want to have feelings of remorse, embarrassment, failure, even ignorance. I don’t want to see myself as God might see me, warts and all.

But that’s the rub. My whole adult life I’ve lived in this city with my African American or “minority” neighbors in West Philly, North Philly, South Philly, Overbrook, Cheltenham, the Mount Airys, the lower Northeast and the suburbs. Yet I am repeatedly told that people of color don’t have a reasonably happy or comfortable life because of racism. And they keep saying that I benefit from it.

But I am not a racist, I argue, because I abhor and resist prejudice in my encounters and relationships with people of color (well, except for that joke I told once -only once, and I’m still embarrassed to think of it!). And what exactly is this “systemic racism” they keep talking about? I thought I already knew all about “institutional racism” in housing, education, income inequality, workplace safety and dignity, discrimination in employment and services, “environmental racism”. So, if I’m not a racist, then how can I be part of the problem?

Recently it occurred to me that I could begin to answer these questions by making a list of every way in which I benefit from American racism. I did it prayerfully with a request for the grace to find examples of privilege in my life. I discovered some things, especially about how systemic racism separates, classifies and pushes others down, leaving me to “succeed” by standing above them. I found out that I had not thought it through as well as I smugly believed. There is more to learn.

I was being called to learn more about American racism. Again.

Fr. Massingale’s analysis is a good place to re-start your own reflection about this fundamental ethical and intellectual challenge. He covers all the bases. His taxonomy of American racism
actually puts aside individual acts of discrimination or disrespect; it points us to a more
fundamental set of cultural feelings and attitudes that make American racism “systemic”. 

Fr. Massingale’s work is not just analytic; he also looks to the future, and to the role of the Church in bringing the love of Jesus to this culturally racist society. He reviews the Church’s social teaching as it pertains to race. He points to future Catholic engagement, reconciliation and racial solidarity.

So, please join me in reading this well researched and engaging book, right now in the waning days of summer. Then in September there will be two parish-wide meetings to react to it, share our thoughts about it, think about it. They are scheduled for September 10 and 29, both at 7:30 PM.

Let us study together then. Let us think together and thus gain a deeper understanding of our own contributions to American racism, how it impacts those of us who are not white, and what we can do about it as Catholics.