Black racism is a myth created by whites to ease their guilt feelings. As long as whites can be assured that blacks are racists, they can find reasons to justify their own oppression of’ black people.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that black racism is a false construct used by white people to alleviate their guilt and justify their own oppression.
James H. Cone's quote challenges the perception of racism by asserting that the concept of 'black racism' has been fabricated by white individuals. It posits that this myth serves to comfort white people by shifting the focus of blame onto black individuals, allowing whites to rationalize and maintain their oppressive behaviors while evading accountability for systemic racism.
In practice
In a discussion about the systemic issues of race, this quote can highlight the dynamics of guilt and oppression.
Indeed our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived by the people. If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to appropriate it, for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.
In the act of worship itself, the experience of liberation becomes a constituent of the community's being . . . It is the power of God's Spirit invading the lives of the people, "building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side".
The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us. Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto).
To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!
If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
We are living in a world of fear. The life of man today is corroded and made bitter by fear: fear of the future, fear of the hydrogen bomb, fear of ideologies. Perhaps this fear is a greater danger than the danger itself because it is fear, which drives men to act thoughtlessly, to act dangerously.
The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.
History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes.
Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else.
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