Continuing a quick series on what people I trust are writing about racism, here’s an article by Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine, a Conservative Christian news magazine, dean of the World Journalism Institute, and the author of 26 books including Fighting for Liberty and Virtue and The Tragedy of American Compassion. I commend to you the whole article in which he’s responding to his conservative readership who apparently disagreed with something nice Marvin had said about Floyd George. Here are a few snippets:

I’d challenge your characterization of him as a “thug”: Floyd came out of prison in 2013 and by some accounts was a changed man over the next seven years.

Does it matter that Floyd grew up in Houston’s Third Ward in the Cuney Homes housing project…? Does it matter that he was more than 6 feet tall in middle school and didn’t get much of an education except in football and basketball, so when he wasn’t good enough to go pro he wasn’t trained in anything? … Floyd after prison volunteered with Resurrection Houston church, which held many services on the Cuney Homes basketball court. Does it matter that he apparently set up chairs and a bathtub on the court for baptisms, and went door to door with Pastor Patrick Ngwolo, letting residents know about Bible studies and grocery deliveries?

I have read about the century of racism that contributed to the Third Ward and many other wards becoming tough places. I oppose the politics and philosophy of the Black Lives Matter organization, but books I’ve reviewed in WORLD show that for a long time black lives didn’t matter, much, in the eyes of many whites. You might read Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name, which shows the virtual post-Reconstruction re-enslavement of sharecroppers and others, and David Oshinsky’s Worse Than Slavery, which describes Jim Crow justice. Concerning recent years, Jason Riley’s Please Stop Helping Us shows How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. -Marvin Olasky, July 16, 2020, in World Magazine.

Marvin goes on to write about what George Floyd might have become had he been given a second chance. Again, you can read the whole article here.

I think sometimes we forget that we were all saved by grace.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2.1 – 5, NIV, emphasis mine)

[Peter said, ] “No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we [good, religious Jewish people] are saved, just as they are.” (Acts 15.11, NIV)

Then his master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. (Matthew 18.32 – 35, ESV)