And now, a reading from the Gospel of white guilt

Is it possible to celebrate a joyous occasion without racial antagonists seizing the opportunity to bash whitey? Unfortunately, as “Juneteenth” has shown, no, it is not.

Consider a recent article in Christianity Today, penned by reparations enthusiast Justin Giboney. The piece draws on the life of civil rights activist Fred Shuttlesworth, framing it as a “clarion call to the biblical activism we still need to advance racial justice in America.”

For those unfamiliar with Reverend Shuttlesworth, Giboney recounts how the southern minister helped dismantle the Jim Crow apparatus in Alabama, standing up to “Bull” Connor, the vile Democrat public safety commissioner who was a notorious foe against integration.

As the story goes, Shuttlesworth first believed that he could “shame” Americans into accepting demands for equality before the law. But after seeing little headway, he allegedly said, “You can’t shame segregation … Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide; ball teams don’t strike themselves out. You gotta put ’em out.”

Now, before you shout Amen to how Shuttlesworth sought to tear down the loathsome structures of the Deep South, know that Giboney wants American blacks to adopt this same “you gotta put ’em out” mentality today.

He writes, “In the last few years, particularly since the murder of George Floyd, it seems the American Evangelical church has gone backward when it comes to race relations.”

As support for this claim, Gibney asserts that “justice proponents have been expelled from pulpits and jobs” and that “political activists have made boogiemen out of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT),” which, he argues, white evangelicals have then used as a pretext “to reject calls to humility or course correction on race issues from Black siblings in Christ.”

If you click on the link regarding the dude who was “expelled” from the pulpit (it should be singular; there was only one church involved — not “pulpits”), you’ll find it was because this pastor in Columbus, Mississippi, had a history of harassing his congregation for not being “diverse” enough. Plus, he jumped on the “Black Lives Matter” bandwagon after George Floyd’s death.

And if DEI and CRT are truly overblown, why did Harvard and MIT just drop mandatory DEI statements for aspiring faculty members? Why did the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture apologize a few years ago for listing hard work, delayed gratification, property rights, and linear thinking as emblematic of “whiteness,” to name a handful of prominent examples among many, many others?

Looks like these “boogiemen” are doing a pretty good job of hiding in plain sight.

But back to the repeat offender George Floyd. As author Jeremy Carl explains, the rush to codify Juneteenth happened in the “Post-George Floyd moral panic.” To the left, the newly minted holiday was never about commemorating America’s resolve to uphold the ideals of the Declaration of Independence — a cause everyone can support. It was to “excoriate whites” and stir up guilt for past events that you and I had no part in but are nonetheless supposed to feel remorseful for and do something about.

Gibson admits as much, writing in his “Happy Juneteenth” piece that the “basic messages of racial reconciliation have proven insufficient to shame parts of the church into sincere repentance and reparation of a long and sinful history of division and injustice.” That’s why we need, in a Shuttlesworth fashion, to “apply pressure inside and outside the church to force an acknowledgment of and remedy for historical injustice.”

In other words, get ready to empty your pockets in Al Sharpton’s offering bucket, white boy, and cop to a sin you never committed.

The inimitable Thomas Sowell captured the danger of this thinking in his book Discrimination and Disparities:

“Wrongs abound in times and places around the world — inflicted on, and perpetrated by, people of virtually every race, creed and color. But what can any society today hope to gain by having newborn babies in that society enter the world as heirs to prepackaged grievances against other babies born into that same society on the same day.”

Here’s the thing about racial agitators, though: The card of victimhood is their only leverage, and thus they play it ad infinitum, regardless of how obsolete it is.

Tens of millions of immigrant families, for instance, call America home and fill its churches, with zero connection to the nation’s old racial baggage. Yet, are they also expected to pay for these shakedown schemes, as if fleeing persecution, discrimination, or economic hardship elsewhere makes them responsible here?

Moreover, are we supposed to ignore the trillions of tax dollars funneled into social welfare initiatives over the last five decades, designed in part to address “racial injustice?”

At what point does the pity party end?

It’s the Year of Our Lord 2024, and too many people are still stuck in the black-and-white paradigm of the 1960s, desperately clinging to antiquated narratives as relevant today as a rotary phone.

Instead of advocating for policies that would undoubtedly stoke more resentment and anger, such as unbiblical reparation payouts and meaningless apologies from those who did no wrong to those who suffered none, we should marvel at our country’s remarkable progress on matters of race.

So next year, when “Juneteenth” rolls around, what if we observe, in patriotic awe, how a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” paid in large quantities of blood and treasure to ensure those words became a reality?

I realize that this message isn’t as flashy as pretending to be a civil rights icon hunting imaginary rattlesnakes on national holidays, but it’s far more unifying.

Originally published at the Standing for Freedom Center.