Race Relations

Around half of adults across the world hold antisemitic beliefs and deny the historic facts of the Holocaust. This is according to the latest edition of the largest global study of anti-Jewish attitudes by the Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based advocacy group.

The study surveyed more than 58,000 adults from 103 countries and territories representing 94% of the world’s adult population. It found that 46% of them—which when extrapolated to the global population would equal an estimated 2.2 billion people—display antisemitic attitudes. A fifth of the respondents haven’t heard of the Holocaust, during which six million Jews were killed, while 21% believe it has either been exaggerated by historians or it never happened.

According to the survey, the level of antisemitism in the global adult population has more than doubled since it was launched in 2014. The report is the latest among a number of surveys charting a steep rise in antisemitism across the globe.

More than a century ago, 110 Black soldiers were convicted of murder, mutiny, and other crimes at three military trials held at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Nineteen were hanged, including 13 on a single day, December 11, 1917, in the largest mass execution of American soldiers by the Army.

The soldiers’ families spent decades fighting to show that the men had been betrayed by the military. In November of 2023, they won a measure of justice when the Army secretary, Christine E. Wormuth, overturned the convictions and acknowledged that the soldiers “were wrongly treated because of their race and were not given fair trials.”

In January 2024, several descendants of the soldiers gathered at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery as the Department of Veterans Affairs dedicated new headstones for 17 of the executed servicemen.

The new headstones acknowledge each soldier’s rank, unit, and home state—a simple honor accorded to every other veteran buried in the cemetery. They replaced the previous headstones that noted only their name and date of death.

Jason Holt, whose uncle, Pfc. Thomas C. Hawkins, was among the first 13 soldiers hanged in 1917, said at the ceremony, “Can you balance the scales by what we’re doing? I don’t know. But it’s an attempt. It’s an attempt to make things right.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

We all long for justice, for the day when things will finally be made right. In this life, justice happens slowly, haphazardly, and sometimes not at all. But when Jesus returns, all things will be made right.

In Raymond Arsenault’s biography of John Lewis, he recounts Lewis’s mentors and their shared vision of “the Beloved Community.” Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lewis often spoke of “the Beloved Community,” which was “a philosophical theory and a call to service.”

At the successful conclusion of the yearlong boycott in December 1956, King quoted the Book of Matthew and urged the boycotters to “inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.” “Love your enemies,” he recited, “bless them that curse you, pray for them who despitefully use you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven.” “We must remember,” King continued, “… that a boycott is not an end within itself; it is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority. But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”

Placing the goals of nonviolent direct action on such a high moral plane could be inspiring, drawing Lewis and many people of faith into the movement. But as the historian Mills Thornton has noted, King’s frequent allusions to the “beloved community” as a reachable promised land sometimes had the opposite effect, prompting more practical listeners to “dismiss it as a pipe dream.”

It would surprise many Americans, regardless of their race, to know that 2.5 million American Black men are in the financial upper class, according to an exhaustive report produced by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS):

Our new report, Black Men Making It in America, finds that despite the burdens they face—from residential segregation to workplace discrimination to over incarceration—more than one-half of Black men have made it into the middle or upper class as adults. This means that millions of Black men are flourishing financially in America. We find that slightly more than one-in-five (or about 2.5 million) Black men ages 18 to 64 have made it into the upper-third of the income distribution.

In fact, Black men have made marked progress over the last half-century in reaching the upper ranks of the income ladder. The share of Black men who are in the upper-income bracket rose from 13% in 1960 to 23% in 2016. Moreover, poverty among Black men has dropped dramatically over the same time, with the share of Black men in poverty falling from 41% to 18% since 1960. A majority of upper-income Black men in their fifties today were from low-income homes. Half grew up in one-parent families. How did they succeed?

We identified three major factors that are linked to the financial success of Black men in midlife today: education, work, and marriage. Black men who have a college degree, a full-time job, or a spouse are much more likely than their peers to end up in the upper-income bracket as fifty-something men. Included in this group are Black men who attended church regularly as young adults or served in the military. Having a sense of "personal agency" and believing they are responsible for their lives were also major indicators of success.

When the media only focuses on the negative, rather than revealing the facts and stories of accomplishments and prosperity, real harm is done. "First, it renders millions of successful Black men, and the paths they have taken to the American Dream, invisible. Second, it can lead to a sense of hopelessness for young Black men. With so much talk of 'Black failure' today, Black boys may start to feel 'why even bother when the odds are stacked against you?'”

“What happens to a dream deferred?” That opening line from Harlem renaissance poet Langston Hughes has resonated with generations of African Americans over many decades because of the legacy of racism in America, and its soul-crushing propensity to dangle the specter of opportunity while keeping it perpetually out of reach.

Ed Dwight knew this reality firsthand. In 1962, Dwight was the first black man to be selected for an American astronaut training program. He spent years preparing, training, and running experiments at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Nevertheless, because of internal resistance to his inclusion into the program, Dwight was never selected for a NASA mission.

“Just like every other Black kid, you don’t get something, and you convince yourself it wasn’t that important anyway,” said Charles Bolden Jr., one of Dwight’s friends and a former NASA administrator.

After his military career concluded, Dwight eventually put it all behind him. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Denver and eventually became an accomplished artist, with 129 memorial sculptures and over 18,000 pieces in gallery exhibits across the United States.

So, when he was invited to participate in a commercial space flight earlier this year, Dwight initially demurred. “I’m a really busy guy,” said Dwight. “It didn’t make a lot of difference to me at the time.”

But a group of current and former black astronauts intervened, and reminded him of the years he spent training to fill a role he was never allowed to consummate. Because of them, Dwight changed his mind.

And by the time Dwight achieved spaceflight on the Blue Origin vessel, he broke another historic barrier. At 90 years old, Ed Dwight became the oldest person to fly in space, surpassing the previous record holder, former Star Trek star William Shatner.

One of the men who convinced Dwight to take the flight was Victor Glover, Jr. “While he was off the planet, I was weeping. It was tears of joy and resolution,” said Glover. He’d met Dwight in 2007, after receiving one of Dwight’s sculptures at an award presentation. Only later did Glover learn Dwight’s own personal history of unfulfilled longing within NASA.

“I was in the presence of greatness and didn’t even know it,” Glover said. “Sixty years he sat with this and navigated it with dignity and grace and class, and that is impactful to me.”

Blue Origin honored Dwight by naming his seat on the mission after his NASA call sign: Justice.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God does not forget about the sacrifices that his servants make in the process of living faithfully. Do not lose heart, for God is in the business of making wrong things right again.

The northeast Portland location of Pho Gabo, a family-owned Vietnamese restaurant, was forced to close after the restaurant received an anonymous complaint about the smell of the food. The closure prompted swift condemnation from five state representatives of Vietnamese descent in the Portland area.

In response, Portland city commissioner Carmen Rubio instructed the Bureau of Development Services to pause investigating any more odor complaints until the city’s regulations can be evaluated.

The problem stems from the fact that, as currently written, if an inspector travels to the location and can smell anything food-related, they’re required to write it up. The city’s enforcement structure privileges the complaint of one anonymous person over the legion of satisfied customers patronizing the restaurant, which has been in that location for over three decades.

Five Vietnamese American state representatives issued a joint statement: “We believe that, as currently written and enforced, the city’s odor code is discriminatory and not objective by any known standards. We stand ready to work with Commissioner Rubio and ensure that city code is fair and reasonable, and ultimately the city of Portland retains the vibrant food culture celebrating our diverse community.”

A statement from an organization advocating for Asians and Pacific Islanders read, “Long used as a tactic for displacing and removing Asian communities, olfactory racism has deep roots in this country dating back hundreds of years. With this closure, our community is losing a vital small business and reinforcing harmful stereotypes and tropes around Asians, our food, culture, and right to belong.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Selfish behavior can potentially generate great loss for a community; generosity and humility, however, can multiply the blessings within a community.

According to Alyssa Mercante at video game site Kotaku, many gamers today lament what they perceive to be woke culture running amok. According to them, the multiethnic casting of central characters must be a result of diversity consultants forcing racial quotas on otherwise uninterested creators. If not for these overly aggressive interlopers, goes the thinking, the characters would hew more closely to their established norm (which just happens to be mostly male and/or white).

This is especially the case with Sweet Baby, Inc., a creative firm that works with game studios like Remedy Entertainment, publisher of titles like Control, Quantum Break, and Alan Wake 2. Mercante says that there’s a group on Steam, the main PC-gaming marketplace, with 100,000 members, dedicated to detecting which games that Sweet Baby has consulted on. Many such gamers think that Sweet Baby’s influence led to Remedy casting a black actress in one of protagonist roles.

“It’s absolutely not true,” said Kyle Rowley, Remedy game director for Alan Wake 2, when asked on X whether Sweet Baby mandated the casting. And when Mercante spoke to people at both Remedy and Sweet Baby, she found the opposite to be true.

Kim Belair, CEO of Sweet Baby, Inc., said, “Sweet Baby is, at its core, a narrative development company. That means anything from script writing to narrative design to narrative direction, to story reviews. One of the things that we do offer is cultural consultations or authenticity consultations … but the perspective is never that we’re coming in and injecting diversity. For the most part, it’s the reverse. It’s that a company has created a character, and they want to make that character more representative and more interesting.”

Sweet Baby co-founder David Bedard insists that the diversity of representation in video games is a byproduct of developers wanting to make the game better for all players. Blair said, “We are not censors. We have no interest in false diversity or in tokenization. We have an interest in making stories better, and making characters more interesting, and in developing a stronger language around narrative design…Those are the things that we are really passionate about.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

You don’t have to be politically liberal or woke or whatever to consider the needs of others as more important than your own. That’s the kind of life that Jesus modeled and that the Apostle Paul wrote about.

In 1939, Lloyd Dong and his family were having difficulty finding a place to live. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1884 and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 were part of a series of racially exclusive laws and ordinances designed to prevent Chinese immigrants like the Dongs from being able to successfully settle down. But the Dongs did eventually find a place, thanks to Emma and Gus Thompson, two Black entrepreneurs who first rented and then eventually sold a house in Coronado, California to the family.

That act of kindness helped the Dongs become a part of American society. Now, generations later, the Dongs want to honor the Thompsons by donating $5 million of the proceeds of the sale of that property to a scholarship fund for Black students. Lloyd Dong, Jr. said, “Without them, we would not have the education and everything else.”

Ron and his wife Janice are both retired educators who understand the value of education, which is why they’re also working to have the Black Resource Center at San Diego State University named after the Thompsons. Janice said, “It may enable some kids to go and flourish in college that might not have been able to otherwise.”

The Thompsons initial gesture of hospitality seems even more miraculous when you consider the context. Emma and Gus Thompson originally traveled to Coronado from Kentucky to work at a local hotel, and built their house in 1895, before many of the restrictive racial housing covenants were enacted. The Thompson’s property in Coronado originally featured a residence and a small boarding house on the upper floor of a barn, intentionally created to house vulnerable people with no other place to go.

Jo Von McCalester, a professor at Howard University, said, “It was just something understood that marginalized people in San Diego had to rely very heavily on one another. One family’s sacrifice can shape the lives of so many.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we pass on the generosity that we’ve received from others, we model the generous love of God who lavishes on all without regard for status, heritage, or bloodline.

In his book Forgive, Tim Keller tells the story of a friend of his who was a PhD student at Yale. Keller’s friend once told him that modern people think about slavery and say, “How could people have ever accepted such a monstrosity?” Keller continues:

My friend said, “That’s not the way historians think. They ask: considering the fact it was universally believed by all societies that we had the right to attack an enslaved, weaker people, and since everybody had always done it, the real historical question is, why did it occur to anybody that it was wrong? Whoever first had that idea?”

My friend then answered his own question, pointing out that the first voices in the fourth, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries who called for the abolition of slavery were all Christians. And the Christian, who called for this justice, believed there was a God of love, who demanded that we love our neighbors—all our neighbors—as ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln biographer Jon Meacham notes, “There was no evident political gain to be had for Lincoln [to be anti-slavery]; quite the opposite. So why did he … state so clearly that slavery was unjust?”

Someone close to Lincoln pointed to the following story:

One morning in … the city [Lincoln] passed a slave auction. A vigorous and comely [young woman] was being sold. She underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they pinched her flesh and made her trot up and down the room like a horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said, that “bidders might satisfy themselves” whether the article they were offering to buy was sound or not.

The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of “unconquerable hate.” Bidding his companions follow him he said, “By God, boys, let's get away from this.”

Meacham concludes, “That experience formed one element of Lincoln's reaction, if not the main one. ‘The slavery question offered bothered me as far back as 1836 to 1840’, Lincoln said in 1858. ‘I was troubled and grieved over it.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, are we today troubled and grieved by the injustice of the world?

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a pastor in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s, was called by the historian Andrew Manis “one of the least known but most impactful figures in the civil rights movement.” He was, by his own estimate, arrested in peaceful protests some 30 to 40 times. His house was bombed with his whole family inside one Christmas Eve. His church was subjected to three different bombing attempts

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act and lawyers sought injunctive relief to force Arkansas to integrate Central High in Little Rock. On that very day, Shuttlesworth organized the integration of Phillips High School in Birmingham, driving his own two children to the school to enroll them.

He was met by a white mob that beat him with baseball bats, chains, and brass knuckles. As he was beginning to lose consciousness, Shuttlesworth recounts that “something” said to him: “You can’t die here. Get up. I have a job for you to do.” In the hospital later that day, a reporter asked Shuttlesworth what he was working for in Birmingham. He responded: “For the day when the man who beat me and my family with chains at Phillips High School can sit down with us as a friend.”

When Bernard Robins saw the three officers eyeing him from their department cruiser, it was a familiar look. He’d been stopped by police multiple times before as a teen and young adult, but previously chalked up those encounters to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was also familiar because he’d logged plenty of time in a cruiser himself, as a member of the LA Police Department.

So, he conducted himself as he always does in these scenarios – he kept things polite, kept his hands in plain view, and informed the officers that he also wore the badge. None of that mattered to these officers, who still handcuffed Robins, despite no wrongdoing on his part.

Off duty that day, Robins had been spending time in pursuit of his passion, filmmaking. Having just come from a shoot for a film he’d written, Robins was chatting with a lighting tech that he knew. Police eventually detained Robins because they suspected the tech of criminal activity, but failed to release him even after he supplied them with identification confirming his status as an officer.

Robins says that after returning to work, his supervisor and many of his colleagues were generally supportive. Nevertheless, he wondered if his fellow officers would have his back out in the field, particularly after he discovered rumors that he was gang affiliated, a charge he vehemently denies. Robins eventually sued the department, accusing members of a gang unit of racially profiling him.

Robins said the incident shook his faith in policing, causing him to reconsider whether he could still participate in the organization he’d been so excited to join just three years prior. During his mandated sessions with a police psychologist before his return, Robins had been encouraged to just put on the uniform and see how it felt. It was the same unform that he’d previously been proud to wear. Robins said, “All I did was put the uniform on, but it just felt too uncomfortable.” And after that, he told his supervisor that he was done.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes taking a stand for what is right involves relinquishing power and position. It also means telling the truth, even when it comes at a cost to one's career prospects.

Community leaders in the Kansas City area have been breathing sighs of relief after the news that Ralph Yarl is expected to make a full recovery.

Sixteen-year-old Yarl was shot in the face after ringing the doorbell of the wrong home in an attempt to pick up his younger siblings. His plight went viral on social media, sparking outrage because local police initially declined to charge the shooter, 84-year-old Andrew Lester. After a series of local protests and national media coverage, Lester was charged in connection with the shooting, which prosecutors believe involved a “racial element” because Lester is white and Yarl is black.

Still, many were in high spirits after a photo began circulating of Yarl seated next to attorney Lee Merritt on an outdoor patio, smiling in the sun. Despite being in recovery from a traumatic brain injury, Yarl was referred to as “a walking miracle with a head of steel.”

Yarl’s mother said her son had a bullet in the left frontal lobe in his brain until it was removed by a team of surgeons. She said, “Had the bullet hit his head a fraction of an inch in any other direction he would probably be dead right now.”

Yarl’s aunt also provided an update: “Ralph is currently at home with his family. He can ambulate and communicate. A true miracle considering what he survived.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even in the face of overwhelming wrongdoing and injustice, God can heal, renew, and restore.

Puerto Rican rapper Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, also known as Bad Bunny, recently opened the telecast of 2023 Grammy Awards. It was the first time a musical act that does not primarily speak or sing in English was featured in such a prestigious timeslot. As a result, many Latin American people beamed in pride at seeing someone from their culture (or one adjacent to theirs) be represented on such a big stage.

But one particular detail caused a stir in the immediate wake of the telecast. Viewers responded in real time on social media platforms to the way that Bad Bunny’s performance was captured by the live closed-captioning text at the bottom of the screen. His words and music were not transcribed, but rather described simply as “non-English.”

This was a disappointment for viewers hoping to see a live transcription of Bad Bunny’s Spanish lyrics, considering that he’d been nominated for Album of the Year. That oversight was particularly galling, according Melissa Harris-Perry of WNYC, because it was so avoidable.

Harris-Perry said, “Bad Bunny does not generally or ever perform in English, right? I mean, this should not have been a surprise.”

Dr. Bonilla is director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (at CUNY), and a guest of Harris-Perry’s podcast . Bonilla says that Bad Bunny is so important to Puerto Rican audiences in part because of his refusal to cater to English-speaking audiences, which is causing the industry to change.

Bonilla said, “Okay, you're making history here. For the first time, you have a Spanish language act nominated for Album of the Year. This is the largest streaming artist in the world. You know that he sings and speaks only in Spanish. Do better, Grammys.”

The good news is that this is less a function of malice than of lack of planning or intentionality. Hopefully, the Grammys will be ready the next time they feature a Spanish-speaking act so prominently in their telecast.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Language is one of the ways that we define and reinforce culture. The church can also be sensitive to this and welcome other language speakers into God's family. We can assist in that mission by accommodating the languages of vulnerable people with less power or influence.

When Rose Wakefield pulled into a gas station in a Portland suburb to purchase some gas nearly three years ago, she left feeling that she had been racially discriminated against. In late-January, 2023, a jury agreed in her favor. After successfully suing the corporations involved, Wakefield was awarded one million dollars in damages.

The damages were so high because the behavior Wakefield encountered was so egregious. This was not only from the gas station attendant who refused to pump her gas because he said he doesn’t serve Black people, but also from the representatives at the corporate complaint line who failed to take her report seriously.

During closing arguments, Wakefield’s attorney Greg Kafoury convinced the jury that a large judgment would force the corporate defendants to explain their failure to respond appropriately. This included failing to record Wakefield’s initial phone call (and subsequently deleting a follow up voicemail), and doctoring the employee personnel file to make it appear as though he was fired for different, unrelated conduct.

Her attorney added, “A cop who erased evidence would go to jail for it.”

The Oregonian, Oregon’s most prestigious and longest-running newspaper, recently launched a special project entitled “Publishing Prejudice,” examining its historic complicity in reinforcing white supremacy in the state of Oregon. According to editor Therese Bottomly, the project was launched in the wake of the 2020 public demonstrations against racism after the murder of George Floyd.

Bottomly said, “Some institutions, including a handful of newspapers, responded to the moment with sustained examinations of their histories in pursuit of strengthening the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, The Oregonian looked inward as well.”

Part of the problem is that many residents aren’t aware of Oregon’s history. Bottomly continues, “Oregon was founded as an exclusionary state openly hostile to people of color, and Portland today remains the whitest major city in America.” Investigative reporters were dispatched to review the archives and document the various ways that the paper has reinforced the ugly stain of racism as part of its legacy. The series of articles reviews the paper’s coverage of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s, and many other contentious issues in its more than 170 years of existence.

Bottomly said, “I thought we would find the newspaper had missed stories, ignored major cultural movements, and been behind the times. And, yes, we found sins of omission, to be sure. But the gravest mistakes were sins of commission.”

It was surely a difficult decision for Bottomly and her staff to delve this deeply into such sordid chapters of their history. But she has no regrets. “This has been a painful and necessary exercise of self-examination. This history is hard to read but you must. And you must hold us to our pledge to always do better.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Each of us bear a responsibility to tell the truth about our history and the roles we play, not just as individuals but as members of families, organizations, and nations. In situations where we've inherited a godly legacy, we should rejoice. Where there is a legacy of sin, we should repent.

Viola Davis has been hailed as one of the greatest actresses of her generation. According to one film critic, watching her act is to watch someone draw on “private hardship” and then “witness a deep-sea plunge into a feeling.” Davis claims that there is one memory that defines her “private hardship.”

When she was in third grade, a group of boys made a game out of chasing her home at the end of the school day. They would taunt her, yelling insults and slurs, throwing stones and bricks at her, while she ducked and dodged and wept.

One day, the boys caught her. Her shoes were worn through to the bottom, which slowed her down. The boys pinned her arms back and took her to their ringleader, who would decide what to do with her next. They were all white, except for the ringleader. He identified as Portuguese to differentiate himself from African Americans, despite being nearly the same shade as Davis. Unlike her, he could use his foreign birth to distance himself from the town’s racism: He wasn’t like those Black people.

“She’s ugly!” he said.

“I don’t know why you’re saying that to me,” she said. “You’re Black, too!”

The ringleader screamed that he wasn’t Black at all. He punched her, and the rest of the boys threw her onto the ground and kicked snow on her.

Davis went on to be nominated for two Oscars. But she realized that not only had she remained that terrified little girl, tormented for the color of her skin, but that she also defined herself by that fear. All these years later, she was still running. … Davis’ early life is dark and unnerving, full of bruises, loss, grief, death, trauma. But that day after school was perhaps her most wounding memory: It was the first time her spirit and heart were broken.

Global missions expert Paul Borthwick remembers living in Boston after the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings of April 2013. Most people were suspicious of Muslims in their community. Borthwick says,

I was traveling from Boston Logan airport about two weeks after the bombing. As I stood at the gate waiting for my flight, I noticed a young woman standing very much alone at her newspaper stand. She wore the hijab head covering of a conservative Muslim woman. I sensed that the Lord wanted me to speak to her. I approached her and greeted her with “As-salaam alaikum,” the Arabic greeting that means “Peace be onto you.” The woman burst into tears.

I immediately thought I had insulted her or said something wrong or pronounced a word incorrectly. I apologized and asked what I had said wrong. She said, “No, what you said was perfect. I’m crying because I’ve been standing here over two weeks now since the Boston Marathon bombing, and you are the first person who has even spoken a word to me.”

Her name was Aisha. Borthwick concluded, “How will someone like Aisha ever know God’s love if everyone in our community avoids her?”

A Chicago teacher thought he was doing something helpful for his students, but his refusal to receive constructive feedback ultimately resulted in a swift suspension. According to Principal Joyce D. Kenner, the White teacher, unidentified pending an investigation, hung a black doll by its neck with the pull cord from the projector screen at the front of the class.

The White teacher told Principal Joyce D. Kenner that he thought dangling the doll in the center of his classroom would help its owner claim the item, Kenner told students and parents last week in an email.

Because of its visual similarity to lynching, the teacher’s Black colleague approached him to inform him that the doll’s hanging was potentially offensive. That initial interaction devolved into a shouting match, which one student recorded on video.

Parents were subsequently told via email that the administration had spoken with both teachers, and the teachers themselves also discussed the situation at length with their students. Meanwhile, the incident was referred to the district for a formalized discipline process.

The Chicago Teachers Union wrote in a subsequent tweet “We understand the investigation is ongoing, but practices that mitigate the harm of racial biases must also be ongoing and consistent, in our schools.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Mature believers are those who can receive criticism and apologize for offenses, rather than stonewalling and counterattacking.

While rumors of racial slurs and other untoward behavior continued to encircle New Jersey mayor Sal Bonaccorso, he steadfastly denied any involvement, calling the accusations offensive. But once evidence proved otherwise, the mayor was forced into a quick about-face. Mayor Bonaccorso said in a YouTube video, “It was wrong. I am embarrassed and ashamed to have spoken that way about a race of people.”

His swift admission was prompted by the release of several audio recordings as part of an investigation. It unearthed not only the racial slurs themselves, but the fact that the city of Clark Township had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements and other legal proceedings to prevent them from being found.

The recordings were part of a lawsuit that had been drafted by Antonio Manata, previously a lieutenant with the Clark Police Department. He had complained for years of rampant racism and sexism in the department, but felt his progress at reporting the troublesome behavior had been stonewalled by the mayor and other top leaders. To document the behaviors, Manata made a series of secret recordings of the mayor and other high-level CPD officers. When he threatened to expose them, the town agreed to pay large sums of money to get him to drop the lawsuit and relinquish the recordings.

At a town council meeting after the story came to light, Bonaccorso tried to plead his case with the community, saying he disagreed with the decision to settle. But Clark resident La’Tesha Sampson, said she was disappointed at the mayor’s lack of apology. She called his initial response “really, really disturbing.”

The criticism after that council meeting is what prompted the mayor’s YouTube apology. Bonaccorso says he’s learned a lot from recent protests for racial justice, especially those that occurred in the wake of George Floyd’s killing during the summer of 2020. He just hadn’t learned enough to be truthful about his mistakes … at least not until he had no other choice.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for leaders who made a show of respectability but gave voice or thought to evil in private.