On the day when five Dallas police officers were assassinated by a black militant, a Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, ran an op-ed by columnist David Waters saying it was “time for white people in America to tell white police officers to stop killing black men.”
The column entitled, “Time for white churches to speak out about police shootings,” demands “white churches” need to take the lead because “this isn’t a black problem. It’s a white problem.”
The paper, owned by Gannett and operating under a banner reading, “Part of the USA Today Network,” ran the piece Thursday in response to the police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
It reads, in part:
White ministers must explain why these never-ending police shootings have nothing to do with “black-on-black” crime.
Why they aren’t byproducts of fatherless homes or single mothers or children raised out-of-wedlock.
That those are symptoms of a larger problem — a shameful legacy of white supremacy that goes back generations and lives on in our genetic makeups and mind sets.
White people in the pews must confess that our system of justice — and it is our, we built it and control it — still isn’t colorblind.
That we are so blinded by our great privilege and good intentions that we still can’t see that the problem is us, not them.
That we shouldn’t have to be told over and over that black lives matter. Period.
Let the confession and repentance begin this Sunday.