Black racism is a myth created by whites to ease their guilt feelings. As long as whites can be assured that blacks are racists, they can find reasons to justify their own oppression of’ black people.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that black racism is a false construct used by white people to alleviate their guilt and justify their own oppression.
James H. Cone's quote challenges the perception of racism by asserting that the concept of 'black racism' has been fabricated by white individuals. It posits that this myth serves to comfort white people by shifting the focus of blame onto black individuals, allowing whites to rationalize and maintain their oppressive behaviors while evading accountability for systemic racism.
In practice
In a discussion about the systemic issues of race, this quote can highlight the dynamics of guilt and oppression.
Indeed our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived by the people. If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to appropriate it, for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.
In the act of worship itself, the experience of liberation becomes a constituent of the community's being . . . It is the power of God's Spirit invading the lives of the people, "building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side".
The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us. Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto).
To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!
The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition
If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.
What do we know but that we face one another in this place?
To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.
The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint
A sannyasin is one who has no prejudices, who has not chosen any ideology to be his own, who is choicelessly aware of all that is. In this choicelessness you will be in the middle. The moment you choose, you choose some extreme. The moment you choose, you choose against something; otherwise there is no question of choice. Being in a choiceless awareness is another meaning of being in the middle.
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