Article January 18, 1988 Issue

Prayer—the affirmative action that heals racism

Prayer opens doors—for both oppressed and oppressor—that prejudice, hatred, and injustice would close.

Deanna J. Elsom

Brent Staples, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, wrote about the effect prejudice has had upon his life. After describing encounters in which he was mistaken for a criminal solely because of his color, he said he felt he was under pressure "to make myself less threatening."^{"Just Walk On By," Ms., September 1986, p. 88 .}

Today, as in the past, prejudiced actions often seem to be based on something as superficial as skin color. This form of racism weaves its subtle web of prejudice through biased education, blind tradition, unjust laws, thoughtless stereotyping, and so forth. Resistance and violent confrontation follow quickly on the heels of the oppression that racial prejudice brings with it. How can we break through this pattern of reaction and begin to open—for both oppressor and oppressed—mental doors that racism has closed?

Let me tell you about a racial incident in which I became involved. Several years ago my family and I lived in a country where racial discrimination was officially practiced. We had employed a young woman of the disfavored race, and after she'd been with us for a while, she came to me one day in tears. Her younger brother, whom she loved very much, had been arrested by the police. He had broken what seemed to me to be a very inhumane law. She feared that her brother would try to escape and would be killed, because he was resistant to unjust authority. She asked me to pray for her. And so I did. These are some of the thoughts that came to me as I turned to God.

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