Love Your Political Enemies: A Response to Jimmy Carter’s Comments on Racism

by Valerie Elverton Dixon 09-17-2009

I love my fellow citizens who have taken to the street against President Obama and his plans for health-care reform. I love those who carry signs that compare him to Hitler and depict him as the Joker in Batman. I love those who show up to his town hall meetings wearing guns. I love Congress members who show disrespect for the first African-American president by shouting out, texting, and not giving him their attention. I love those citizens who say that President Obama is not a natural-born United States citizen. I love talk show hosts on radio and television that seek to divide the nation with pronouncements that bear little resemblance to the facts.

President Jimmy Carter has said that many of these good people are motivated by racism. Each woman and each man has to look into her or his heart and decide the truth of this. Racist or not, I love them. I love them because the teachings of Jesus command it.

Christianity is a hard religion to live. We do not tell people this when we open the doors to the church and invite them into salvation. It is easy to talk the talk of being saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost. But it is difficult to walk the walk, to turn the other cheek, to walk the extra mile, to give up coat and cloak, to pray God’s blessing upon people whose actions are hateful. It is difficult to pray that God will walk with them and demonstrate God’s love and presence in their lives. I cannot do this in my own power. I can only do this through the power of God’s own Holy Spirit.

I value my heard-headed realism that tells me to be clear-eyed about everything. I dare not forget my history, a large part of which is the history of struggle against the congenital deformity and the internal contradiction of America. From the very beginning our founders used the rhetoric of liberty and equality but did not consider their slaves or women to be equal persons under the law.

This racist thinking corrupted every aspect of American life — science, society, culture, economy, education, politics and religion. In-group identities and loyalties, common in human social organization, become dangerous when one group considers itself superior to the other. I must stay vigilant and work to exorcise this danger from the world. I have to release my resentment.

Moreover, my faith requires that I wrestle with the spiritual wickedness that is racism, but not with the individuals who are trapped by it. And racism traps everyone it touches. Love, radical love, is the first work that is ours to do. Biblical wisdom tells us that perfect love casts our fear (I John 4:18). This perfect love is not a flawless or error-free love. It is a complete, mature love — a love that loves even enemies. Thankfully and blessedly, it is a love that also shelters me and protects me from my own fears.

Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her Ph.D. in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School.

Categories: Activism, Faith and Politics, Race

Tags: African-American, America, anger, Batman, Christian, equality, Ethics, extra mile, Healthcare, healthcare reform, holy spirit, Jesus, Jimmy Carter, peace, Politics, President, Racism, racist, slaves, town hall, United States

BlueDeacon

No, that is NOT what I'm saying. In fact, I make the distinction between
Obama's critics -- those who have sincere disagreement based on
principle -- and his enemies, who want to see him fail due to pure
envy. And it's clear to me that most of the folks demonstrating him today
generally fall into the second camp, not interested even in negotiating with
him. And Obama has to know that too -- I mean, how do you talk to someone who
just won't listen to anything you say?

irish_annie

so anyone with another viewpoint is identified as "obama's enemies"?!!!

is your scope so narrow that anyone who strays from the group think is named ENEMY? firmly entrenched in a self-righteous "us vs them", the new liturgical left has no more imagination or insight than the old religious right. two sides of the same coin.

BlueDeacon

This was a case of someone hijacking my handle.

lysager

I did not vote for President Obama, but did feel some measure of pride in his ultimately being elected. President Obama has many admirable qualities which I respect. I also pray for President Obama as I did for President Bush. The scriptures instruct us to respect and pray for the authorities. Our prayers may not always be that their particular agenda suceeds, but rather for God's guidance, wisdom, and will be done. I fear that some on the far right are vengefully directing the same venom on Obama that was poured out on Bush. I could, at times, scarcely believe the kind of hatred the left cultivated against then President Bush. I felt that those who did not believe in Satan had a substitute they created called Bush. He seemed to become the source of all evil that stalks the earth, from global warming to starvation in Africa, and hurricane Katrina. If prayers were given for Bush I believe some prayed he would die a horrible painful death to suffer for his imputed crimes. Such attitudes and actions toward anyone is sinful and contradicts our Lord's teachings totally. Those of us who are conservatives must restrain any urge to get revenge or to "do to them as they did to us." Let us show respect and judge with righteous judgement. When we disagree, as Shane Claiborne is fond of saying, let us do so, well. Let every thought and word be subject to Christ, not only in church, but in politics and all of life.

jonnymil

President Carter did NOT say that those who disagree with President Obama are racist. He said that shouting out "You Lie" on the House of Representatives during a presidential address has an inherent vistage of racism. You may disagree with President Obama all you like. God knows I do: he does not support a single-payer system of health care that would wipe out the health insurance industry--which is what I want--and the "Lie" that the Congressman cited is about whether or not all equally-created people would have access to publicly funded health care or if we would deny it to someone based on what side of an imaginary line they happened to experience birth. The truth is worse than the lie. But presidents deserve respect, and all white presidents have had it without the asking or the commentary or the explanations. And President Carter was right.

kindnature

I am very disturbed by the racist comments made about our president who is doing a superior job and doing his absolute best to clean up the mess he was left by the past administration. Where is the outrage from those people about the greed that permeated throughout the entire (closed) Bush Administration that brought this country to its knees? It was all about making a quick buck with that crowd, under the guise that they were God fearing but their opposition were made up ofl non-believers and unpatriotic.. It was sickening! But there were those who couldn't see the forest for the trees and bought it, lock stock and barrel......it's very sad!

So of course it's racism, pure and simple, that's being displayed by those who voted for the other guy and his terrible choice for vice president (a disastrous team that would have only further deteriorated this great country)

Guest

BlueDeacon, you've just violated at least the third guideline in the Comment Code of Conduct.

kansasmennonite

It's only a very small fraction of the people who don't have health insurance. They're a loud minority group that is very "fringy". Extremely anti govt so some of the repubs didn't even want to speak and show up since they are part of the govt.

BlueDeacon

You see, MLK Jr. was once accused of being a communist. Any time a white man accuses a black man of being a communist, you can bet it's racist. In fact, any time a white man challenges a black man it's because he's racist.

justontime

A commentator I read said it best:

In case you don’t get the joke, this entire “debate” over whether opposition to Obama’s health-care reform is racist is totally, completely, and in every way conceivable an invention of the Left.

Oh, sure, there are some racists who oppose Obama. Shocking news, that.

And, yes, a tiny, tiny fraction of the signs at the Tea Party protests last weekend were racially insensitive. But if that’s how we’re going to score, then opposition to the Iraq War is anti-Semitic. After all, I saw a bunch of signs at antiwar protests that said bigoted things about Jews.

[Conseratives] said they oppose [Obama's] agenda for precisely the same reasons they oppose Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s and Barney Frank’s agendas. They stand athwart Obama yelling “Stop!” just as they did with Clinton and Democratic presidents before him.

Magically, the alchemic powers of Obama’s black skin transmogrify the same arguments and the same rhetoric into racism. Saying “you’re wrong” to a white politician is a disagreement; saying it to a black politician is like shouting through Bull Connor’s megaphone...

Left-wing writers spent the week droning on about how it’s now racist to say “I want my country back.” These amnesiacs are blissfully unaware that “taking back” America was the rallying cry of the Democratic party for eight years under George W. Bush. Anti-white racists all?

Jimmy Carter sighs, “It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”

Well, ditto. Except I think the abominable circumstance is the Vesuvian eruption of nonsense belched forth from distempered liberals frustrated by their inability to win a public-policy debate.

An “overwhelming proportion” of the vocal opposition to Obama stems from the “inherent feeling” that “an African-American should not be president,” testifies the de facto voice of Southern self-loathing and pharisaical pomposity.

Really, President Carter? Based on what? Polls you’ve studied? Which ones? Or did you descend from the temple of the Carter Center, flee your enabling entourage of sycophants, and canvass some neighborhoods yourself? How many people told you they don’t think a black man should be president? One? Two? Zero? Or are you simply reading minds again?

BlueDeacon

We're talking about a hypothetical, but forces were already out to cause the divisiveness we see today. Truth be told, I don't think King would have been as successful with the "March on Poverty"; Southern reactionaries were advancing in the Republican Party by this point because the Democrats were supporting civil rights on a national level.

arachne646

When Dr. King was assassinated, he was becoming more dangerous to established powers in society, not because he was about to abandon non-violence, but because he had already started to work against the war in Vietnam, and was about to start his national campaign against poverty. Dr. Martin Luther King's work was not "done" any more than slaves were really freed by the Civil War. It took a lot of very brave women and men to get civil rights laws passed, but Dr. King saw that Americans of all races were still enslaved by poverty--rich boys went to college, not Vietnam, and that poverty is inherited just like a stock portfolio. I'm a Christian, and I try to love the ones I disagree with the most, but I was raised white, and I see racist thoughts and feelings in me, sometimes, because of the segregated society we live in. If we're not willing to look, we won't see.

jonabark

I watched on utube and felt the tone was. Well we know this guy is evil but is he the antiChrist?... ha ha ha.
He is not respectful. He bullies anyone he can, and the picture he presents of the government is insane fear mongering lies. According to a Harvard and US government survey taken over 15 years 45,000 citizens are now dying annually because they have no health insurance. The statistics in California of those who do have health insurance show that 1 out of 5 claims are denied. The dark picture Beck summons of government health care is almost exactly the same as that predicted by Ronald Reagan for Medicare. 100 % wrong. They are spokesmen for the paranoid greedy lies of the rich and powerful.
Universal government health care is the only reasonable model and in the many countries that have it none has taken to murdering citizens.

jeffp

We love the purple shirt SEIU thugs who beat who did a 6v1 beat down on a man passing out "don't tread on me" flags in St. Louis. And the pro-Obama thug who bit off a townhallers finger. We love ACORN and the SEIU who in the midst of death threats to AIG execs. sent bus loads of paid protesters to their homes. We love SOJO who writes an article about phony astroturf conservative townhallers while ignoring that many of the pro-Obama townhallers are paid to attend and bused in by ACORN or the SEUI.

lumens

"he fringe may not be the majority; however, no one denies that it does indeed drive the discourse"

I deny it.

BlueDeacon

In fact, by 1966 MLK Jr. was already considered irrelevant because white liberals were focusing more on the war in Vietnam and blacks outside the South, who were becoming resentful of whites in general, had fallen into the "black power" movement, which King correctly saw as a threat to racial reconciliation. Moreover, King (prodded by Coretta) began speaking out against the war, which basically ended the relationship he had with President Johnson.

Anyway, the context under which King operated has been almost lost except for those people who actually lived through it. Some years ago I heard a number of black students say that, had he survived that bullet in Memphis, he would have advised the black community to take up arms. (Which, of course, would have played right into the hands of the Klan and other racist entities.)

Lord_Voldemort

"The true civil-rights movement that you speak of in fact virtually died in the 1970s because most of that work was done. "

If true that's an astonishing statement.

xfree9

I saw the second question on TV, and if you saw it, you wouldn't believe it was disrespectful. He was asking the question in a laughingly mocking way at the notion of calling Obama the anti-Christ. If you read the quote, yes, it sounds disrespectful, but in context it was very much, "Shut up you anti-Christ mongers!"

jonabark

So Glenn Beck says respectful things like"The President has exposed himself as a guy … over and over and over again … who has a deep-seated hatred for white people … or the white culture…. I don't know what it is"

Or this respectful question"Could Barak Obama be the anti-Christ?"

letjusticerolldown

Agree.

letjusticerolldown

Did you read the post? What do your comments have to do with the post?