From time to time I direct our attention to various aspects of social and racial injustice, something I don’t really experience since I’m not a minority. Last week, Rodney Stevens, a black writer and life coach born and raised in South Carolina, now living in Columbia, SC, wrote an essay published in the Wall Street Journal. I thought it was instructive, offering hope and perspective. Here is some of what he wrote:

Many of the authors, commentators and journalists who spend all their energy thinking and talking about race today fail to acknowledge how much has improved with regard to race in this country. There are countless successful black Americans today—doctors and lawyers, entrepreneurs and academics, journalists and artists, compassionate politicians and famous Hollywood actors. Their numbers will keep growing as long as we remember six things:

• First, every life mat­ters. Mine is not one cell more or less valu­able than any­one else’s. That this idea has to be de­bated or de­fended is lu­nacy.

• Sec­ond, racism still ex­ists but it is no longer sys­temic. Those who claim that racism is every­where to­day are delu­sional.

• Third, we tend to think too highly of our in­di­vid­u­al­ity. My color, weight, sex and sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion are four of the least in­ter­est­ing things about me. I am a South­erner and love South­ern food. Now that is in­ter­est­ing.

• Fourth, po­lice­men have to be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions, as is be­ing done more and more.

• Fifth, do what law en­force­ment of­fi­cers ask you to do. Ob­vi­ously that won’t solve every prob­lem be­cause po­lice­men are hu­mans, not an­gels. But that’s part of life. Sim­ply do­ing what the peo­ple in blue ask you to do would dras­ti­cally re­duce need­less con­fronta­tions, in­juries and deaths.

• Sixth, if you must talk about race, be gra­cious and re­spect­ful. Dis­cus­sions about it shouldn’t be an­tag­o­nis­tic—one’s race isn’t a choice, af­ter all—but for some rea­son many pop­u­lar fig­ures in­sist on mak­ing the sub­ject as un­pleas­ant as pos­si­ble. – Rodney Stevens, Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2020

I hope that you will take what you need from Rodney’s perspective, but I hope we will all practice the sixth recommendation.

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Colossians 4.6, NIV)

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3.28, NIV)