Review: A Catholic prayer for racial justice
Demonstrators in Washington on Aug. 28, 2020, during the "Get Your Knee Off Our Necks" Commitment March on Washington 2020 in support of racial justice. (CNS photo/Olivier Douliery/pool via Reuters)Readers harboring even a minimal compunction for societal failings such as racism, white superiority, inequality and the absence of simple Christian charity might rightly be troubled by Alessandra Harris’s new work, In the Shadow of Freedom. Bolstered by extensive research and passionate prose, Harris makes a compelling argument for Catholics in particular to pay more heed to reconciliation and healing for the racist history of the United States.
Subtitled “The Enduring Search for Racial Justice,” the book outlines the history and experience of African Americans from the slavery era to modern times as part of its larger argument.
A journalist and novelist, Harris is a co-founder of the Black Catholic Messenger, which since 2020 has examined issues in the Catholic Church from an African American perspective. With three books of fiction to her writing credit, Harris moves into narrative nonfiction with In the Shadow of Freedom. While the book comes across at times as a work of journalism or a university thesis, it contains a provocative message destined to prick the conscience of even the most complacent reader.
Harris sets the tone early by citing the Rev. Bryan N. Massingale, the African American scholar and theology professor at Fordham University: “Racism functions as an ethos, as the animating spirit of US society, which lives on despite observable changes and assumes various incarnations in different historical circumstances.”
The book is structured into four main areas of focus: slavery (1619-1865), the Jim Crow era (1865-1965), the northern ghettos of the United States (1915-68) and hyperghettos and prisons (1968-present). By delving into the cruel mistreatment of African Americans in our present as well as our past, Harris makes a compelling case that despite the gains of the civil rights movement, African Americans are not far removed from the injustices of the Jim Crow era—a time Harris describes as “neoslavery.”
“The economic devastation in Black inner-city communities in the late 1970s and early 1980s coincided with the launch of the war on drugs,” Harris notes. She suggests that the federal government’s efforts to combat lawlessness and drug trafficking paved the way for massive public expenditures in policing, prisons and incarceration.
“The punitive measures of over-policing, arrest, and incarceration of the African American communities that began under the Johnson administration and poured billions of dollars into waging war against Black Americans did not result in safer streets or less crime,” she writes. “Instead, divestment in social programs to remedy the root causes of poverty resulted in even more devastation and violence in low-income communities.”
Is Harris going out on a limb here in suggesting that the rise of inner-city ghettos in many U.S. cities is a deliberate act of government policy rather than a case of unintended consequences? Whatever the root causes, there is no denying the author’s expertise and passion in shedding light on so many present-day examples of urban life gone terribly wrong.
Harris devotes significant time to the questions of over-policing and mass arrest of primarily young Black males. It is an elaboration of the case the author made in an August 2021 essay for America in which she argued that Catholics should seek racial justice in a number of ways, including “demilitarizing” the police and diverting funds originally intended for law enforcement toward remedial activities such as education, addiction and mental health treatment programs, and community violence prevention.
The author offers the practice of restorative justice as a progressive response to a legal system in crisis. Restorative justice emphasizes the victim and community harmed by a crime, rather than the retributive “state versus perpetrator” concept. It accords with Catholic social teaching by holding offenders accountable for their actions while offering opportunities for forgiveness and healing. For Harris, restorative justice is “a promising alternative” to the punitive system in place throughout the legal system.
“The call for restorative justice, reparations, and repair is a call for Americans to become conscious and then outraged enough to demand—and be part of—the change that needs to happen,” Harris writes. “Answering the call will cost people: their comfort, their security, their privilege, maybe even some wealth. But the moral and spiritual toll of doing nothing exacts a greater price on our collective humanity. Without justice there is no restoration; without change there is no repair.”
Harris links restorative justice, with its emphasis on restoring the humanity of the imprisoned, parolees and those who are now labeled “ex-cons,” with a message for all Catholics concerned with racial justice and community healing. “This is especially important in a society that has dehumanized Indigenous people and people of African descent since North America was colonized. Part of the process of recognizing the humanity of all people is a greater respect and understanding for people who commit harm.”
She quotes Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical, “Populorum Progressio,” which calls for human communities free of discrimination based on race, religion, nationality and “servitude to other men.” Harris also cites Pope Francis’ encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” which denounces racism as “a virus that quickly mutates and instead of disappearing, goes into hiding and lurks in waiting.”
In addition to these papal pronouncements, Harris relies extensively on social workers, researchers and other authorities to make many of her arguments. As such, a detailed bibliography would have been a welcome addition to this work.
Nonetheless, In the Shadow of Freedom is an important work that needs to be taken seriously in these divisive times. This book is a committed Catholic’s prayer for racial justice to pierce a collective dark night of the soul. As Harris said in an interview shortly after the book’s release, “I did not realize how stressful it would be to write this book when I took it on. I had no idea that I would embody the pain and trauma of the Black people I wrote about in the book. I also did not realize the extent I would have to reckon with my own Catholic faith in light of the church’s history with blessing, participating in, and theologically supporting the Trans-Atlantic slave trade for centuries.”
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