We are in the battle, but we will win with the power of Jesus.
Last year something miraculous happened that I thought was a prophetic declaration of the fact that God is moving on behalf of black Americans. On February 24, both houses of the Virginia state legislature, meeting in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, unanimously passed the most profound apology for slavery I have seen.
Other state legislatures followed suit, including those in Maryland, North Carolina and Alabama. It was an apology landslide!
In 2005, the U.S. Senate started the ball rolling by apologizing for never passing anti-lynching legislation. This movement is so significant, I believe it could launch a spiritual revolution.
Winds of change are blowing. Life and hope are returning to black Americans.
Yet somewhere still inside many African-Americans is a deep sorrow that should have ended with Emancipation but remained because of Jim Crow laws, lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, and segregation. It settled in us because we were targeted for death by white supremacists.
Sadly, now we are killing ourselves. Genocide is usually thought of as one race’s deliberate plan to destroy another race. In our case, we are wiping ourselves out. This is what I call “black self-genocide.” Look at the statistics:
»According to the Department of Justice, the homicide victimization rate for blacks is six times higher than the rate for whites, and 94 percent of black homicide victims are killed by blacks.
»Black fathers are missing from the family. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that nearly 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers—at all socioeconomic levels.
»Although blacks make up only 12 percent of the population, 36 percent of all abortions are performed on black women, the CDC says. The abortion ratio for blacks, which is 491 per 1,000 live births, is three times that of whites.
»Blacks have 2.2 times the sudden infant death syndrome mortality rate of whites.
In the successful 1952-53 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to integrate the public schools, a “doll test” was used to prove that black children suffered from cultural self-hatred because of school segregation.
In 2005, high school student Kiri Davis recreated the doll test for a Reel Works Teen Filmmaking project (reelworks.org). Davis was startled to discover that 15 of 21 black children favored the white dolls. When a black girl was asked on film to choose which doll was “bad,” she chose the black one.
The level of family breakdown, disease and death that plague our race shows me the devil’s wrath is increasing. We are in a battle with evil, but we will win through the power of Jesus Christ.
Many African-American politicians say we should maintain an attitude of unforgiveness toward whites and protest the government instead of repenting for our sins. Even in the face of profound state apologies, some blacks have scoffed at the efforts as too little, too late. Maybe that is what God should have said to mankind after thousands of years of sin: “Too little, too late!”
We need to respond with the love of Jesus and forgive others because Christ forgave us. And instead of rejecting the Bible’s commandments to value unborn children, sexual purity and the sanctity of marriage, blacks should be leading the next spiritual awakening.
Either African-Americans will call on Jesus to save us or we will give up and let the devil destroy us. I believe black Americans will get it right. Instead of being a mission field, we are about to become God’s missionaries to the world.
Wellington Boone is the chief overseer of the Fellowship of International Churches based in Norcross, Georgia. He is also the author of Black Genocide: Tragedy of the American People.
