Since my summary cannot match the force of Cone's text, I will limit my observations to the bare-bones of his argument together with a few reflections on his rhetoric. What is the sin of white supremacy? And why is silence in the face of white supremacy theology's great sin?
"Can any nation ... discover what belonged to someone else?" asked the seventeenth-century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). Few Europeans asked such questions but instead exploited lands and peoples unhindered by philosophy, religion, or ethics. In fact, these disciplines assisted them in justifying their violence as they viewed themselves as God's chosen people to subdue indigenous people and their land.
The physical deaths of millions in the Americas as a result of European encroachment is only half the picture: "Spiritual death is another, and it is just as destructive, if not more so, for it destroys the soul of both the racists and their victims." And this combination of physical and spiritual, in Cone's understanding, describes the double-effect of the sin of white supremacy for "we are all bound together, inseparably linked to a common humanity. What we do to one another, we do to ourselves."
In turn, failure to address white supremacy is theology's great sin because, apart from Reinhold Niebuhr, "few [mid-twentieth century] American theologians even bothered to address white supremacy as a moral evil." American theologians of that era were pleased to pick up South American liberation theology with its Marxist foundations but pulled back from the sort of oppression that was right in front of their faces, so to speak.
While there is more to Cone's argument than noted here, it nonetheless lacks the balance that a scholarly eye could level against it. Yet, Cone's rhetorical skills do much to disarm any counter-attacks before they can be launched. This is neither accidental nor malicious. Cone is writing a brief in favor of a people--his people--whom he deeply believes to have been deeply wronged. The collective and continuing experience of hundreds of years of oppression rather than academic precision structure his brief.
Still, Cone works to off-foot white objectors. Rather than anticipating arguments he would prefer not to face, he attributes a fragile character to his would-be critics. First, Cone brushes aside "dealing with people's personal prejudices" because is "emotionally exhausting and achieves very little in dismantling racism." In short, Cone is the mirror image of most white Evangelicals who believe that individuals "coming to Jesus" will solve America's social problems.
Second, having cleared the landscape of the personal in favor of the social (by which Cone means legal), he asks, "Why won't white religion scholars write and speak about racism?" This question seems out of date considering that the chapter was published in 2012, not 1972. Nonetheless, Cone follows with four possible answers, the cumulative effect of which identities cowardice as the prevailing vice of white scholars of religion.
For those who know their rhetoric, Cone's chapter is a superb example of polemics. And lest we think less of Cone the polemicist, I recall the late R.C. Sproul's lament that modern seminaries were not training their students in polemics. After all, the century or so beginning with the Reformation was perhaps the great era of polemics (an aside here).
In any event, I appreciated reading this chapter of the Companion if not for the effectiveness of the argument, then for its skill in presentation.
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