Apr 99

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

When Anti-Racism and Vengeance Collide

The Rev. Edward W. Rodman is Canon Missioner of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

When the jury pronounced their verdict of guilty on John William King in Jasper, Texas, in the first of three trials of white men accused of lynching James Byrd, Jr., great anticipation awaited their subsequent decision on whether to impose the death penalty. Many have written about the appropriateness of that penalty for this particularly hideous crime: it would represent justice and help to overcome the racist tendency the death penalty's application has historically manifested. An inordinate number of people of color have been executed for crimes against white people, and there has been a vastly disproportionate application of the same penalty for crimes against people of color. Indeed, it was noted that the last execution of a white person in Texas for killing a person of color was prior to the Civil War, for the murder of a slave (believed to have been a commodity of considerable value to the slave's master).

When the news broke that the jury had decided that the death penalty was in order, and the judge duly imposed the sentence, many people were jubilant. They saw this as a sign of our progress in toughening our stance on hate crimes, as well as an opportunity to express the "fairness" that is the mark of contemporary American society's myopic view of what anti-racism means in our era. Indeed, one could easily make the case not only that the death penalty was deserved in this case, but that it provided a concrete opportunity to say no to hate crimes and to demonstrate that, in fact, justice is blind and that the death penalty is an equal opportunity killer.

Needless to say, I was not one of the jubilant persons of color when I heard the sentence. My initial reaction was to bow to the inevitable and say, only in Texas, the state that leads the nation in executions. Wouldn't providing an alternative sentence in this particular crime, in fact, have sent a stronger message regarding both its hideousness and the irrelevancy of the death penalty in deterring it? It was truly naive of me to believe that a jury, even one composed of some people of color, could arrive at the notion of providing an alternative to this final act of vengeance.

To unpack these concerns, and try to clarify what I feel to be the tragic collision of work against racism and work against the death penalty, I would like to make some specific observations. First, it is important to understand that anti-racism and overcoming 350 years of the unequal power relationships between European Americans and African Americans and other people of color is not a matter of fairness; it is a matter of justice. Too often we are confronted with notions of color blindness, the establishment of a "level playing field," and the preposterous suggestion that what has happened in the past has no bearing on our actions in the present. Indeed, this latter argument in particular has been used to roll back affirmative action programs, and to call into question special programs for the disadvantaged of all races who find themselves in need of extra attention if they are to be equipped properly to compete in the current job market. The claim of fairness is both bogus and deceptive, because it suggests that racism has been overcome and that we have reached a state of race relations in this country where, in a case like Jasper, one can point with pride to the imminent execution of a white person for the killing of a black person as evidence that a new balance of power exists between the races.

Second, anti-racism work and the struggle to help people of European descent understand the real state of race relations are clouded by the fact that it is presumed that the act of lynching in this case is now an anomaly and should not be linked to the historical reality of lynching as a means of social control, imposed first in slavery and subsequently in the Jim Crow south, to maintain a segregated system to the advantage of privileged whites and to the disadvantage of persons of color. Contrary to this comfortable anomaly doctrine, there are in fact several documented cases of recent killings of blacks in this racist manner in North Carolina, Virginia, and other parts of the country, revealing the denial that mystifies the issue of race relations, and makes it more difficult to help the majority in this country understand the deep-seated nature of this disease and its attendant maladies of anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny.

Third, work against the death penalty has always been an uphill battle, one in which a variety of arguments have been used to demonstrate capital punishment's unfairness, and its futility as a means of deterring crime. Rather than deterring violent behavior, singling out poor and minority persons for execution has led to escalating violence in death penalty states. By its very nature, the death penalty represents the final vindication of the belief that the use of force and violence as the ultimate resolution of problems is morally acceptable. Instead of looking for alternatives that treat the perpetrators appropriately through life in prison without parole-a truly hideous sentence-and dealing with the understandable grief and desire for vengeance of the family and friends of victims in a creative and healing way, the death penalty makes those feelings the permanent legacy of the tragedy.

Fourth, anti-death penalty work in our current situation is not deterred by the verdict in Jasper because it happens to be the exception that proves the rule of the racist application of the death penalty throughout the country. In fact, it makes a mockery of the discussion of the death penalty as an appropriate tool of social control and justice precisely because its application is both final and futile. Persons of color who find some reason to rejoice in the possible execution of three white men for the lynching of a black man need to pause and think about what values they are responding to in their own experience and whether those values, i.e. the desire for revenge, are consistent with a Christian-or even humanitarian-view of the value of life and the importance of finding alternatives to violence as a means of resolving matters-both in our national life, and on the international scene.

Indeed, as primary victims of the violent history of this country-along with native peoples and immigrants of all types-black Americans should be not only in the forefront of opposing the death penalty, we should be speaking up loudly and clearly in this particular instance against the perception that revenge is an appropriate response to a guilty verdict in a death penalty case in any group. People of color, I suggest, would be ill-served if this notion of revenge was given credence. Where does one stop in the quest for revenge when the scale and the scope of the monstrous injustices that people of color in this country have suffered are factored in? How could any retribution or reparations make up for the past injustice and the present imbalance of power and access to the resources of our very rich and powerful nation? Such ideas of revenge could create a major backlash that would further nurture the growing racist minority in this country that are trumpeting a millennium-oriented call for a race war in order to restore America to what they perceive to be its original pristine state-a nation for white people only.

Finally, any discussion of the death penalty and its application has to be put in the context of not only its utility, but also its morality. Too often, discussions of social policy in our country have been reduced to efforts to objectify their cost effectiveness, or their potential effect on the behavior and attitudes of the populace, rather than their effect on the quality of life of our people, and the state of our spiritual health. I would humbly suggest that the coherence of our society at present is fragile at best, and possibly becoming more precarious. Our failure to honestly address the issues that divide us creates a false sense of security regarding the state of race relations; it permits the billiard ball effect of events like the Jasper lynching to have the chaos theory outcome of unintended consequences.

It would be my hope that this verdict, and the subsequent trials and possible convictions and verdicts against the other two persons charged with this heinous crime, would provide us an opportunity both to rethink the nature and effectiveness of the death penalty, and to discuss the state of race relations in this country. Can we, in such a dialogue, move beyond the naive and denial-based concepts of fairness and color blindness, to the more realistic and powerful understanding of distributive justice? Can we talk about restoring the wholeness of our society through profound changes in the access to and distribution of the resources that our great wealth has produced-wealth based first on the unpaid, and now on the underpaid labor of people of color? Do we dare to let nonviolence, and the alternative use of social power to the benefit of humankind, move us away from desires for revenge? Anything short of this is to miss the opportunity for healing before the collision of our fears with the reality of our situation makes the death penalty and its application irrelevant.