The High Cost of White Evangelical Silence on Hate Crimes Against Blacks
By: Rev. Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner
Faith leader, author, lecturer, lawyer, businesswoman, educator, trusted advisor, mentor and political strategist, Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner has made an indelible imprint in American Politics and in the Faith community
There is an inexcusable and disheartening silence from White Evangelical Christians over the unprovoked killing of Richard Collins III, at the University of Maryland. Collins, age 23, was a member of the ROTC. He was recently commissioned as a second Lieutenant in the army, and scheduled to graduate from Bowie State University. His father, a military veteran, said his son loved lacrosse, soccer and was a runner. Collins was African American. His killer, age 22, was white nationalist, Sean Christopher Urbanski, a University of Maryland student, charged with murder and assault for the attack that University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell called “totally unprovoked.” Urbanski is a member of a Facebook group called Alt-Reich Nation.
Since hearing the news, I have anguished over one question: “Why did White Evangelical silence over this unprovoked attack by this White man on the Black man bother me so much?” Certainly racial attacks against African Americans by White Americans is not a new phenomenon.
My answer came in reading the response of the judge where the attacker was held without bond. “He is an absolute danger to the community,” she said. I believe that the real “danger to the community” about which the judge spoke, did not just apply to the killer. It applies, as well, to White Evangelical Christians, professing a faith rooted in justice for the oppressed, but whose silence over America’s “open season” on Black lives, can only be read as consent.
