By the Rev. Ken Howard
Structural Racism

When we started The FaithX Project a little over three years ago, we chose as our mission “helping faith communities survive and thrive in turbulent times.” Little did we know how prophetic those words would be or how turbulent the times we would be working in. In the last three months we have experienced: 

• A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that has closed down society, even houses of worship,
• An economic collapse to rival the Great Depression, and…
• Societal upheaval not seen since the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, which erupted in response to the murder of a unarmed black man by a policeman and to the systemic structural racism it represented.

Systemic Structural Racism is the idea that our social system is structured in such a way that disadvantages a particular race – in this case, African-Americans. Some people would make the case that it does not exist, that it is a made-up concept. I don’t buy that. In the work we do at FaithX helping congregations to understand and better serve their neighborhoods, we frequently notice that multiple social vulnerabilities tend to coexist in a vast number African-American neighborhoods: unemployment, poverty, low access to medical care, inadequate housing, and a number of other issues. So many that it couldn’t be a coincidence. And when we dig into the history, we often find that it follows the boundaries of earlier racial red-lining and racially-restrictive covenants. 

Let me give you some examples and let you make up your own mind. I prepared side-by-side maps* showing the relationship of predominantly African-American neighborhoods to ten different vulnerability factors. You can find all 10  maps by clicking here, but I’m going to show you just three: pandemic vulnerability, unemployment, and poverty.