GYC 2009: unASHAMED

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

David Williams:  The Racial Divides

David Williams

The Racial Divides, Part 1

The Racial Divides, Part 2

The Racial Divides, Part 3

The Racial Divides, Part 4

The Racial Divides, Part 5

The Racial Divides, Part 6

For your benefit, the topic we're dealing with, and you're in the second half, so you missed the first half, I'll just touch on a couple key points that you missed, is why do so many well-meaning Christians discriminate against others every day, is our general topic.

There's some core principles that we spent time on at the beginning that are really important in terms of the whole series that I'm doing, the six-part series that I'm doing.

Importantly we are centrally focused on John 17 and Christ's call for unity.

I am emphasizing as we think about Christ's call for unity, the fact that Jesus himself said that when we are 1, even as he and the Father are 1, the world will believe and the world will know that he has been sent.

So that the unity is not just political correctness, it's not just a good idea, it's a command from God because it's 1 of the more effective ways in which we can witness.

In fact, the spirit of prophecy indicates that the single strongest witness that can be born that God has sent his son into the world, and she's elaborating on John 17, is the harmony and union existing among Christ followers.

It is essential to us accomplishing the tasks that God has given us to do.

And I also emphasize in each of my presentations that there's the promise of what can be accomplished when we humble ourselves before God, when we look at the challenges that we face, when we are kind and loving, the spirit of prophecy says if we would only do this, there would be 100 conversions to the truth where now there is 1.

So partly what I'm saying is that although we don't talk a lot about unity, unity is 1 of the most effective mechanisms, strategies of evangelism.

And in my last 2 seminars, that's tomorrow morning, we will centrally go into John 17 and centrally go into the spirit of prophecy to understand how can we get this unity, what are the steps we need to take, and what are the promises of God for dealing with us.

Okay, what you missed was my presentation on John chapter 4, where we looked at Jesus's encounter of the woman at the well, and that the Samaritan woman that Jesus encountered was someone of a different ethnic group, of a despised ethnic group, someone that the social rules said he should have nothing to do with, and Jesus, someone who was negatively stereotyped in many ways, and Jesus rose above them and those stereotypes and in fact ministered to this person.

I then tried to make this real by looking at an area where I have been doing research at a national level and health policy that has to do with disparities in medical care by health care providers in the United States.

And I gave several examples of them just to make the point that the average person and certainly the average Christian and the average Adventist would think, I would never stereotype people and treat them differently.

I would never discriminate against others and I'm just showing you, not research on us, but research on physicians.

Some of the most educated, respected health professionals in the country.

I'm going to repeat this 1 study, I showed several others, but let me repeat this 1 study for those of you who have just come in to give you context because we're going to move forward from this point.

This study, for those of you who just came in, is an example from a report that was done, that was requested by the United States Congress, that was completed by the Institute of Medicine, which is the highest medical authority in the country.

I happen to have served on the panel of 12 experts that they brought together for this.

This is just 1 of over 200 studies in different areas of medicine that showed the same pattern.

Todd was an emergency room physician at the UCLA Medical Center.

When a patient comes to the UCLA Medical Center with a broken bone in their arm or legs, the physicians call that a long bone fracture, is there a difference by ethnicity in whether the patient receives pain medication or not?

Todd went back through the medical records for an entire year at UCLA and found that of Hispanics who came to UCLA with a broken bone in the arm or legs, 56 percent, 55 percent of Hispanics did not receive any pain medication compared to 26% of non-Hispanic whites.

Striking pattern when he statistically adjusted for all the other potential explanations, the single strongest predictor of whether a patient received pain medication or not was Hispanic ethnicity.

He did a second study, and he looked to see how patients expressed pain, how providers could identify the way in which the pain patients were in, because 1 hypothesis was that maybe Hispanics manifest pain in a cultural way that providers are just not cluing in on.

And what he found was that physicians could equally tell the severity of pain in Hispanic patients versus other patients, but you could see systematically they prescribed less pain medication.

Todd moved from UCLA to Emory University in Atlanta, repeated the same study at the 3 largest emergency rooms in Atlanta, looking at black and white patients and found exactly the same thing.

A black patient with a broken bone in the arm or legs going to an emergency room in Atlanta is less likely to get pain medication than a white patient.

And so we were left with a question, and this is just 1 study of at a time the Institute of Medicine report was released in 2003 there were 200 studies that document this in the published scientific medical literature.

The question is how on earth do we make sense of it?

How is it possible that well-meaning, highly educated health professionals in the U.S., working in their usual circumstances, going to work every day, seeking to do their best, I honestly believe, for all of their patients, how is it possible that they could create a pattern of care that is so discriminatory?

Because remember, I just gave you the example of pain medication, but for those who have, here in the last hour I showed you this occurs in every area is probably best documented in the area of cardiovascular treatment but it's true in every area of medicine.

How why would race matter so much in terms of how patients are treated?

And what are the implications of that for us as Christians?

And could it be, could it be that we could treat people differently in the same way and not even be aware that we are doing it.

There are multiple explanations for the potential of these differences.

1 of the most compelling, 1 for which there was some evidence back in 2003, 1 for which there's a lot more evidence today, is a phenomenon called unconscious or unthinking discrimination based on negative stereotypes.

There is a large body of social scientific research.

So this is a robust finding, this is not about Americans, it's about people, It's not about racial stereotypes, it's about stereotypes.

What this research indicates is that when you hold systematic negative beliefs about a group of people And you meet someone from that group.

It's an automatic process and it's an unconscious process.

You will treat that person differently and honestly not know that you did it.

You've got to get this because it's a central point.

It's called unconscious or unthinking discrimination based on negative stereotypes very well empirically documented in the US and in other societies.

It is linked to the way the human mind processes information.

It's linked to what social psychologists call processes of group categorization.

All of us process the sensory input that we receive every day into groups.

It's 1 of the ways that we use in terms of perception to make sense of our world and to simplify all of the information we receive.

And what categories do you view negatively?

What the research shows, When you have some groups that you systematically look at negatively, you will treat a person, an individual from that group differently.

And importantly, you would not know that you have done it.

If you didn't get pain medication, you're in pain, whether it was conscious or unconscious.

But it's a process of how all of us handle information that all of us need to be aware of.

And so the question is, is there negative stereotypes of groups?

Can race provide a way to think about this?

And I want to show you quickly a few slides to document the persistence of race in American society and I'm just going to show slides.

And first we want to celebrate the good news.

I'm showing you slides, let me go back to this 1.

I'm showing you slides that illustrate the dramatic changes in American society and the question of race in the last 50 years.

Do you think Negroes should have as good a chance as white people to get any kind of job or do you think white people should have the first chance at any kind of job?

This question was first asked in 1944 and what I'm showing you is Other points over time where the identical question has been asked in national sample of whites in the United States.

And you can see the dramatic increase that the percent of people who said Negroes should have as good a chance as whites to get any job, in 1944 less than half of whites believed that.

And you could see over time, by the last time the question was asked in 1973, over 96% of whites said, yes, everybody should be equal.

So there's been a dramatic change in this country, and we should celebrate that, on the principle of equality.

This is the flip side of the question or white should have the first chance at any job.

Back in 1944 the first time the question was asked you can see that 54% of whites said oh white should have the first chance at any job, believed in affirmative action for whites.

The dramatic change over time by 1972, the last time the question was asked, you could see that less than 5% of whites said that.

So it's a dramatic change, we can celebrate the changes we have made on race as a nation.

However, what the research also shows, that although there is this universal commitment to the principle of equality, there is what researchers call a principle implementation gap.

There is more support for endorsing equality in principle than endorsing policies that would achieve it.

And I will give you 1 example just to illustrate the point.

So this is a question, some people feel that if black people are not getting fair treatment and jobs, the government in Washington ought to see to it that they do.

Others feel this is not the federal government's business.

Have you had enough interest in this question to favor 1 side or the other?

Should the government in Washington see to it that black people get fair treatment and jobs or is this not the federal government's business?

This has to do then with policies to implement it.

There's a lot of stuff going on here What I want to illustrate I show you the data on the principle We saw that before And I'm showing you the data on the implementation.

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Series

David Williams: The Racial Divides

The Racial Divides, Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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