Facing the Truth About Race

As the US teeters between denial and reckoning, race remains at the center of our moral, political, and spiritual crisis.

It is time we accept that racism is the continuing thread running through America’s entire story, and it lies at the heart of the crisis we face right now. I find it both interesting and deeply troubling that many, if not most, of American liberal and progressive commentators still resist acknowledging racism as a central factor of our country’s failures. They are willing to analyze and recognize polarization, resentment, institutional distrust, economic grievance, and a myriad of other true factors as pivotal to the downfall of our democracy, but fail to emphasize racial discrimination as an immoral foundation of the authoritarian movement. To dismiss America’s unfinished story on race is not a minor oversight but a grave mistake.

Bryan Stevenson says this so very well, “My interest is not in punishment but in liberation, and I believe truth-telling can set us free. We can no longer be silent about our history…If we find the courage to engage in truth-telling, something good will happen. Something is waiting for us that feels more like freedom or equality or justice—but to get there, we have to do the hard work.” Something good will indeed happen, but only if we finally face the truth that lies within the deep subject of race. Because if we do not take this moment as an opportunity to achieve multi-racial democracy, we will lose democracy altogether.

From the beginning of his first campaign, Trump branded himself as a racist. He referred to all Latinos as Mexicans, and all Mexicans as “criminals and rapists.” Race, and let’s be honest, racism, has been central to his message. This has remained true, with his falsehoods about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets in Ohio to his fear-mongering about “illegal aliens” invading our cities, to push for mass deportation. Trump’s mass deportation “czar,” Tom Homan (the guy who took $50,000 in a bag in an FBI sting that the Justice Department, under Pam Bondi, has seemingly been let off the hook with no answers to Senator’s questions about where the money went) has repeatedly said that racial profiling can be used as probable cause for suspicion and detention of people. The Supreme Court has also gone along with the targeting of Hispanic people. These are not isolated outbursts. They are deliberate strategies of racial scapegoating. For this administration, it is all about race.

Even on the world stage, Trump’s rhetoric continues the same theme. During his opening remarks at the United Nations, he railed against the “globalist migration agenda” and painted asylum seekers as criminals who “repay kindness with crime.” From his earliest speeches to his latest memos, race has always been the organizing principle.

At the heart of our political polarization is the question of race. White resentment has been weaponized to the point where many white Americans reject policies that would be key to their self-interest, because they would rather “preserve” their white identity, which is the last thing they believe they still have. Historically, authoritarian regimes have used racialized resentment as a way to divide and conquer their subjects. Authoritarian governments, from Europe in the 1930s to today, have used race to create enemies, justify exclusion, and weaken democracy itself. So the rise of authoritarianism is not a surprise. When racial hierarchy is “threatened”, white supremacists rise.

In my podcast this week with my friend Eddie Glaude, he called race “the lie at the heart of America’s self-understanding.” That lie continues to shape both our politics and our moral imagination. Like Bryan Stevenson, Eddie insists that truth-telling about race is not about blaming white people, but opening up the only moral and democratic path forward. In my classes at Georgetown, I often teach Eddie Glaude’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons For Our Own, which reflects on James Baldwin’s call for America to face its lies about race. We spoke about what it would mean for this nation to begin again—to face the truth of our racial story and live differently because of it.

We are witnessing a deliberate effort by the current administration to conceal our nation’s truth. “White washing” is the best term to use for the denial of real American history in favor of sanitized, “alternative” versions that hide the uncomfortable truths about who we have been and who we still are.

Both Eddie and I recently learned that our books were banned from the U.S. Naval Academy before a visit from Pete Hegseth. Neither of us even knew our books were in their library, but we were happy to be in good company with other banned authors. In many red states, school curriculums are being changed to erase discussions of slavery or any so-called “negative” American history, which means the omission of the history of race and racism itself. Even museums are being censored in an effort to “restore the truth and sanity of our American history”.

Trump’s frontal assault on DEI programs that acknowledge diversity, equity, and inclusion in government, universities, and even civil society is essential now to this White House. Pete Hegseth said in his speech to a room full of admirals and generals that a “woke” military is over and that anti-wokeness is now being enforced across the board.

My morning devotion today offered a very different message. It reminded me that God is trying to “awaken us” to what God is doing in this moment and encouraged all of us to play our part in advancing the kingdom of God for all of God’s children.

And close to home for me, Georgetown University has become a moral example in this moment. During a recent Congressional hearing, the university affirmed that its core Jesuit values—truth, justice, and the dignity of every person—will not be compromised. When the Trump administration issued a memo to end DEI programs, ordering recipients of federal funds to eliminate efforts that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Dean of Georgetown Law, where my son is a student, was the first to refuse. That act of courage gave me great hope.

When I first wrote The False White Gospel, I had no idea how urgently its questions would confront us today. The question Joe Scarborough asked me a couple of weeks ago, “What is the true gospel?” still lingers. That’s the question for us right now. It is, at its core, the question of what kind of people we choose to be. The truth of Jesus’ teachings warrants discussion. Gaining an honest understanding of them will help us finally thread the needle of the American story about race. God’s love calls us to face the truth about race, to reject the lies that divide us, and to build a community rooted in justice and compassion. We must stitch our democracy back together not by denial or fear, but by moral courage and hope. That is a future worth living and even dying for.

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