The Continuing Challenge of Racial Justice

Today's debates over affirmative action and other policies that aim to remedy racial injustice have to do with more than racism and charges of racism. The debates revolve around questions of the proper role of government in society and about which of the inequities suffered by racial minorities are caused by racism. Unfortunately, among those who want to promote justice for all races there is relatively little consensus today about what government's responsibility should be and which policies will best advance that justice.

When the majority of Americans finally accepted the outcomes of the Civil Rights movement, they did so for various reasons and with some reservations. Many Americans had, of course, become persuaded of the injustice of past laws and committed themselves to racial non-discrimination: the law should be colorblind. Some felt they should obey the new laws even if they did not feel entirely comfortable with the full integration of African-Americans into society. Most citizens believed that the post-Civil-Rights order would give African-Americans the opportunity to make their way in American society on the same terms as everyone else.

Many if not most Americans had reservations, however, about the federal government's authority to mandate racial change in every institution and arena of society. Their reservations were not necessarily due to racist attitudes, but reflected a belief in individual freedom and limited government. Many of the leaders and strongest proponents of civil-rights reform, on the other hand, had fewer reservations about government action to reform society in face of the entrenched patterns of racism going back to slavery. Government should act in every way possible to overcome racism, they believed.

Holding Two Truths Together

Two truths come to light in the contrast just drawn, truths that have not yet been strongly joined in a single cause of racial justice. One truth is that a constitutionally limited political and legal system should protect and support the diverse, independent responsibilities people bear in the various institutions of our complex society. The health and stability of non-government organizations and relationships have to be worked out within them, on their own terms, in relative independence. Government ought not to act as if it has omnicompetent authority to shape and reshape all of life. The second truth is that discrimination against people because of race, treating them as less than the image of God, is wrong everywhere and in every institution and relationship. People of all races should be able to flourish freely in all areas of life.

The challenge in heeding these two truths is to avoid disregarding one of them while seeking to advance the other. Racism is always wrong, but not all racism can be overcome by public-legal means. Racism is a grievous sin but it is not the only cause of injustice. Not every policy proposal that aims to advance racial equality is fair and just simply because it has a good purpose. Not every objection to every civil-rights proposal arises from a racist attitude.

Consider, for a moment, the policy of busing students to different schools in order to achieve greater racial equality. Busing appears to be an entirely reasonable policy if attention is focused only on the imbalance of differently colored children in the public school buildings where local governments have assigned them. Yet what if there is more to consider in respect to the education of children? What if justice also needs to be done, at the same time, to families, neighborhoods, social bonds, and religious communities, none of which is a department of state? What if busing, despite its good intention, causes or intensifies other kinds of injustices?

The fact is that many integrationist busing attempts failed to achieve their aim and not simply because of racist resistance. Many parents, both black and white, objected to their children being bused far from home and from the local neighborhood, not because they did not want equal education but because they did not want the breaking of close connections between parents and local teachers, between families and neighborhoods, and among children and their friends.

The challenge taken up by most civil-rights reformers was, of course, to advance the integration of African-Americans into white society. Equal opportunity seemed hopeless if African Americans were kept from the majority institutions and relationships of society. There can be no doubt that the weight of slavery and of legalized racism after the Civil War until the 1960s remained heavy for African-Americans after passage of the major civil-rights laws of the '60s. That history and continuing discriminatory attitudes among many Americans had to be confronted. Nevertheless, once legalized racism was overturned, subsequent legislation designed to ameliorate economic, educational, and social inequalities among racial groups would have to do justice to respective economic, educational, and social institutions if it were to succeed. Not every inequality or injustice in every sphere of life could be judged racist in origin or addressed by means of simple anti-discriminatory policies.

By analogy, think of the anticolonial movements following World War II. In various colonies, almost everyone worked together to fight against the single evil of colonialism that affected them all. After independence, however, it was much more difficult within each former colony to find agreement on all the decisions that needed to be made about economic development, education, and the treatment of racial and religious communities. Cooperation could no longer be reduced to the fight against colonialism.

After the Civil Rights movement succeeded in changing the law so that African-Americans were no longer excluded from equal protection of the law, the positive construction and reconstruction of society required widely diverse judgments and strategies about economic, educational, and political advance. Whereas all African-Americans suffered in all areas of life under legalized racism, just as all former colonials suffered under colonial rule, the achievement of civil-rights reforms, like the overthrow of colonialism, presented the liberated ones with the possibility of living as complex, diversified persons in many different human relationships and institutions. The basis of organized community could no longer be the single cause of anti-racism or anti-colonialism, but now had to become constructively diversified.

Developing a More Comprehensive Perspective

Unfortunately, cooperation among Christians and people of other faiths and philosophies in the Civil Rights movement contributed relatively little to the development of a public philosophy adequate for life in a religiously diverse, institutionally differentiated, and racially nondiscriminatory society. The Civil Rights movement and its impact strongly reaffirmed the Constitution's Bill of Rights for individual citizens, insisting that African-Americans be treated as full citizens. However, the nature of political community in contrast to other kinds of community and organization was not further clarified. Consequently, when the goal of a fully integrated "American community" was not attained quickly, the movement that had successfully united opponents of legalized racism was not strong enough to maintain a constructive movement for justice in a complex society.

Perhaps the greatest challenge that remains in the fight for racial justice is that of developing a public philosophy that African-Americans and other Americans can share. Such a philosophy would show how justice could be done to all persons regardless of race and to the diverse range of their responsibilities both as citizens and as parents, laborers, educators, consumers, church members, and more. But it must be grounded in a point of view. It cannot be neutral among competing assumptions about human nature, the task of government, the nature of a just economy, and so forth.

Thus, in proceeding to speak of a public philosophy grounded in biblical Christianity, I must recognize that there are and will be differences of political viewpoint or philosophy among Americans, many of whom will not agree with my point of view. In most cases this is due not to racism, but to different basic worldviews. The task, then, is to try to show how, from a Christian point of view, public justice can be done to people of all races, to people of all faiths and philosophies, and to all of the diverse responsibilities people bear in society.

Christianity is, first of all, a way of life that is incompatible with any version of civil-religious nationalism of any color. On the one hand, this means relinquishing utopian dreams of an undifferentiated national community or American "family," as if a republic like ours could unite people in all respects. The United States is not a faith community or an all-encompassing moral community. It is a structurally differentiated political community that can be just and do justice only as a community of citizens under government under law. Such a community of citizens is always limited in scope and responsibility, though it is more than simply an enforcer of contracts and protector of property. People are always more than citizens. A just polity, then, is one that upholds equal and fair treatment for families, churches, schools, businesses, and other organizations that have become differentiated with their own meaning and responsibility.

This point of view entails a conception of political unity defined as a common civic order that sustains social and cultural pluralism. For the political order to be united, not everyone needs to share the same faith, the same cultural interests, or the same ethnic bonds. People of every color in America generally agree, for example, on the non-establishment of religion. We may hold different philosophical and theological convictions about why this is good, but our political agreement is that religious practices should not be forced by government and that all faiths should share the same right of religious freedom. Our constitutional agreement is to support religious pluralism; we do not insist that citizens share the same religious or philosophical view in support of the political agreement.

The Christian basis for a political order that supports religious freedom is the biblical teaching that God is patient and merciful, sending rain and sunshine to the just and unjust alike. As a Christian I feel called as a citizen to work for equal treatment of all citizens regardless of their faith even while I feel compelled to bear witness to the biblical truth that lies behind this political philosophy. I want neither to impose my faith on others by force of law nor to be kept from full freedom to articulate my view of public life in public. This should be the same for every citizen. This means more than having freedom to belong to the church I choose. It means being free to live out my convictions in all the institutions and organizations of society of which I am a part.

Educational Justice Today

What might we learn from this view of religious nondiscrimination for advancing racial nondiscrimination? The public governance of education since the 1840s has put a premium on publicly run common schools instead of equitable public pluralism. Prior to the Civil War this meant no funding or legal support for the education of slaves, but also no public funding for Catholic schools, which were perceived to be insufficiently American to deserve public support. After the Civil Rights movement, the aim has been to overcome racial discrimination in public schools but not to make possible equal choice of schools to people of all races, classes, and faiths. Today, African-American parents are sup-posed to receive equal treatment under the law, including the same free education for their children. But they often do not have an opportunity to choose good schools for their children. This brings us back to the fact that the root of the injustice, in this case, is not racism but educational injustice, which affects people of any color, particularly poor parents.

Busing failed to achieve educational justice for African-Americans not because its aim was racist but because the tool of busing within the existing framework of unjust school governance could not overcome other injustices to parents. African-American parents, for example, who prefer a religious school or a better public school than the ones to which their children are bused suffer not because they are African-American but because their religious convictions or educational obligations to their children are thwarted by public authorities. A better system would be one that gives the same public financial support to all parents so they can chose the schools they want for their children, whether those are religious or secular schools. This would be a great advantage to African-American parents not because the change is targeted racially but because many of them live in poorer districts and currently lack educational choice.

This example illustrates that without proper attention by government to the diverse, non-government institutions such as families, schools, and churches, justice cannot be done to citizens, regardless of their color. And likewise, an attempt to remedy racial discrimination without doing justice to the parental, educational, religious, and other responsibilities of black and white parents will not bring about either integration or equality. Institutionally speaking, government can do justice to the educational needs of all citizens only by recognizing that families and schools are differentiated institutions with their own identities and needs, different from the political order of citizens under law. Likewise, government must do justice to the faiths and philosophies of citizens by not discriminating against any of them. This means allowing African-Americans as well as other citizens freedom of choice in the schooling they want for their children.

A poor African-American family that wants to educate its children in a thoroughly Muslim or a thoroughly Christian way should not suffer discrimination because the family is black or because it is poor or because it is Muslim or Christian. And each of these qualifications requires a different level of consideration. Government does not do justice to this family if it excludes it from public benefit or legal protection because it is black. Justice is not served if the family is ignored or left without educational choice because it is poor. Justice fails if the family suffers educational discrimination because it is Muslim or Christian. Any attempt to secure racial equality in a way that violates the family's values, or educational choices, or religious freedom is not just.

What we need today is a civic movement for justice that seeks equal treatment of all races and faiths. This is what Christians should be seeking to develop—a vision of justice for a pluralistic society with equal civil rights for all, equitable treatment of all non-government organizations, and non-discriminatory treatment of all faiths.

[This article is based on an essay that will appear in a book produced by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.]