Help Me Hate White People

In his great dystopic novel, 1984, George Orwell depicts a totalitarian society, called Oceania, in which the government produces in its citizens a hatred for their enemies, real and imagined, that's as deep and ugly as it is irrational. One way the state achieves this is by requiring daily something called the "Two Minutes Hate."

Every day the citizens of Oceania gather in front of large screens on which is projected the image of an "enemy" of the state, a man named Emmanuel Goldstein, who is giving a speech. The citizens are taught to loathe Goldstein who may not even exist, and as part of their loathing they participate in two minutes of hysterical invective directed at the person on the screen.

Orwell describes it thus:

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room....the Hate rose to a frenzy.

People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the top of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen....The horrible thing about the Two Minute Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.

Within thirty seconds any pretense was unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture to smash faces with a hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

I thought of this awful display of hatred while reading an article about a black "theologian" named Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Mercer University associate professor of practical theology, who wrote a prayer in which she implores God to help her hate white people. The prayer is included in a best-selling devotional titled A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal.

The prayer opens with these words:

“Dear God, Please help me to hate White people. Or at least to want to hate them.”

The prayer continues, “At least, I want to stop caring about them, individually and collectively.”

Walker-Barnes explained that she has no desire to hate openly racist white people and “strident segregationists” because they are “already in hell,” but instead, she wants to hate “the nice ones.” Specifically, Walker-Barnes said she wants to hate the “Fox News-loving, Trump-supporting voters who ‘don’t see color’ but who make thinly veiled racist comments about ‘those people.’”

“Lord, if you can’t make me hate them," she pleads, "at least spare me from their perennial gaslighting, whitemansplaining, and White woman tears,” the prayer says. “Lord, if it be your will, harden my heart. Stop me from striving to see the best in people. Stop me from being hopeful that White people can do and be better. Let me imagine them instead as white-hooded robes standing in front of burning crosses.”

On her Twitter feed she wrote this:

In all truth, my family and my personal experiences have given me millions of reasons to hate White people,” she added. “The hatred would be justified. I could even find biblical precedent for it.

Well, I doubt it. Any theologian who actually earned her degree would know Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount: "I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44). If Christians, even the ones who are theologians, are called upon to love even those who persecute them, how does someone who calls herself a Christian justify hatred of those who don't persecute her at all?

Indeed, I can't imagine an uglier, more unchristian prayer than this, nor can I imagine a God whose second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as you love yourself (Matt. 22:37-40) being at all pleased by it, although I can well imagine such a prayer as Ms. Walker-Barnes' being very pleasing to Satan.