Glass half empty on race relations

What would it take for an overwhelming majority of Americans to say race relations are improving? According to a new Rasmussen telephone survey of 1,000 people, half of American adults think relations between the races are growing worse, up from 44 percent last year, and 20 percent think relations are getting better. Twenty-six percent believe race relations have stayed about the same, while 18 percent think rate race relations are good or excellent. We could use more of the “good or excellent” people.

Although blacks, according to the survey, are “much more likely than whites and other minorities to believe the United States is headed in the right direction,” they are the most skeptical about achieving equal opportunity, which liberals tend to interpret as equal outcomes. That defies common sense. Individuals don’t achieve equal outcomes, as we have varying levels of intelligence, skill, and motivation. Equality as liberals define it will never exist, so to expect groups to have similar levels of achievement and accumulate similar amounts of material goods is fantasy.

But that doesn’t stop politicians, who know that playing to people’s fear, resentment, envy, and covetousness will keep them in office. The civil rights industry’s existence depends on dissatisfaction and constant complaining. As long as that’s the case, we likely won’t read about an overwhelming majority of Americans who think race relations are getting better.

According to Rasmussen, 66 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats say race relations are getting worse. What accounts for the former group’s pessimism? I’d speculate that they’re jaded by the old “Republicans are racists” canard, and the prevalence of thought-policing, politically correct jargon, and double standards, among other things.

Christians know that racial strife—all strife—is a consequence of sin. God isn’t partial to any racial or ethnic group. He is partial to the repentant individual. As long as we exist in these fallen bodies, with desperately wicked hearts, there will be enmity. Men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor, religious vs. secular, this race vs. that race, and on and on. Beyond race, sex, or any other differences, however, there is salvation.

Sometimes we make negative judgments based on an individual’s racial/ethnic group, right or wrong. We can be grateful God doesn’t. He made His creation diverse for His purposes. We’re one in Christ. It’s a miracle. No matter what’s happening now in race relations, we become spiritual brothers and sisters once saved, children of God, co-heirs of Christ. If we’re not standing together in this life, we certainly will in the eternal one.

“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number,” the Apostle John wrote in Revelation, “of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”