Slavery ‘is still with us’

Bishop Edward Braxton of Belleville, Illinois, one of the few African American bishops in the United States, issued a 19-page pastoral letter, “The Racial Divide in the United States: a Reflection for the World Day of Peace 2015”, on New Year’s Day.

The diocese of Belleville is across the river from St Louis, where racial tensions were ignited after the shooting dead of an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, last summer and the decision by a grand jury not to indict the police officer who shot him.

Noting Pope Francis’ World Day of Peace message, and its focus on modern-day slavery, Bishop Braxton wrote that in addition to physical slavery, “there are also forms of social, emotional and psychological slavery: to prejudice, racism, bias, anger, frustration, rage, violence and bitterness in the face of systemic injustices”.

Braxton discussed the range of reactions to police shootings of black men in recent years, and invited his readers to engage in an imaginative exercise in which blacks were the majority, and whites the minority, and how they would feel about these killings.

At the end of his letter Bishop Braxton compared the 1939 film Gone with the Wind unfavourably with the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave.