Category: justice
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Authority or Power?
Ta-Nehisi Coates helpfully differentiates between power and authority. African Americans, for most of our history, have lived under the power of the criminal-justice system, not its authority. The dominant feature in the relationship between African Americans and their country is plunder, and plunder has made police authority an impossibility, and police power a necessity. The…
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Martese Johnson and the Unimpressive Work of Justice
Martese Johnson was bloodied by the police on Wednesday. The UVA student is a graduate of Kenwood Academy, our neighborhood high school and the school my boys may very well attend a few years down the road. You’ll not be surprised to know that Johnson is Black. Hopefully you’ll also not be surprised to know that…
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A Sermon on MLK Weekend: The Injustices of Earth and the Resources of Heaven
Most of you know my oldest son and you know that, like his younger son, he is adopted. You may not know that my son can trace his ethnicity through Filipino people, Puerto Rican people, and, especially, African American people. My son is five years old. This means that in seven years he will be…
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Dear White People: Repent!
On Facebook & Twitter I recently made the following statement: “To my white brothers & sisters: our participation in the #BlackLivesMatter movement begins with our repentance & confession.” A friend read this and asked if I could suggest any resources for repentance. I’ll suggest one such resources at the end of this post, but I want…
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Couldn’t join the #BlackLivesMatter protest? Support those who did!
Warning: shameless financial request ahead… I’ve been so encouraged by the online support to my blog posts and social media updates about our church’s engagement with the justice issues raised by the recent non-indictments in Ferguson and New York. Of course there have been a handful of dissenters – “stick to talking about god instead of race…
David W. Swanson 