Ellen White on Racial Equality

That Ellen White held to no latent doctrine of inherent inferiority for the Negro is supported by the fact that she explained the apparent or real deficiencies of the Negroes of her time as the result of slavery and subsequent oppression. Writing to Edson White and his wife, Emma, shortly after they had begun their labors among the Negroes in Mississippi, she said:EGWCRR 108.1

My children, you will meet with deplorable ignorance. Why? Because the souls that were kept in bondage were taught to do exactly the will of those who call them their property, and held them as slaves. They were kept in ignorance, and were untaught. Thousands of them do not know how to read .... They are taught that they must not think or judge for themselves, but their ministers must judge for them ....

This is a favorable field for the working of seducing spirits, and they will have success, because of the ignorance of the human minds so long trammeled and abused as their bodies have been. The whole system of slavery was originated by Satan, the tyrant over human beings whenever the opportunity offers for him to oppress. Whenever he can get the chance he ruins. Now there are those who are intelligent. Many have had no chance who might have manifested decided ability if they had been blessed with opportunities such as their more favored brethren, the white people, have had. ^{1Ellen G. White, Letter 80a, 1895 (to J. E. White, August 16, 1895).}

The important point here is that she explains the condition of ignorance as a result of slavery and lack of opportunity, not as an inherent racial defect. Ellen White’s denunciations of slavery are as passionate and thorough going as anything she ever penned:EGWCRR 109.1

One finite human being compelling another to do his will, claiming to be mind and judgment for another, and this sentiment, that has Satan for its originator, has presented a history, terrible, horrible in oppression, tortures and bloodshed.

Man is God’s property by creation and redemption, but man has been demanding the right to compel the consciences of men. Prejudices, passions, satanic attributes, have revealed themselves in men as they have exercised their powers against their fellow men.

All is written, all, every injustice, every harm, every fraudulent action, every pang of anguish caused in physical suffering, is written in the books of heaven as done to Jesus Christ, who has purchased man at an infinite price, even His own life. All who treat His property with cruelty; are charged with doing it to Jesus Christ in the person of His heritage, who are His by all the claims of creation and redemption. And while we are seeking to help the very ones who need help, we are registered as doing the same to Christ.

A correct knowledge of the Scripture would make men fear and tremble for their future, for every work will be brought into review before God, and they will receive their punishment according as their works have been. God will give to the faithful and true, patience under trial. ^2Ibid

One never finds Ellen White giving support to the myth that there was such a thing as a “contented” slave, or that the Southern white man was the Negro’s “best friend.” Even in 1895, her picture of the treatment received by Negroes is not a pleasant one:EGWCRR 110.1

Here are your neighbors, poor, beaten, oppressed; thousands of human beings suffering for the want of educational advantages; many, so many, who need to hear the gospel preached in its purity .... This neglected field has been presented before me in its sinfulness and degradation because of the treatment received from the whites. ^{3Ellen G. White, Letter 5, 1895 (to “My Brethren in Responsible Positions in America,” July 24, 1895)}

Perhaps her clearest statement of “equality” was made the next year, in 1896, when she described the Negroes as “men standing in God’s broad sunlight with mind and soul like other men, with as goodly a frame as has the best developed white man.” ^{4Ellen G. White, Manuscript 7, 1896 (“The Colored People”)} In this same letter she spoke of the crippling effects of racial prejudice, saying that “lives are embittered by the prejudice against them, being stigmatized as unworthy to associate with the whites, even in the worship of God.” ^5IbidEGWCRR 110.2

She speaks of the fact that “there are keenly sensitive minds that brood long and intensely over the oppressions suffered, and the slights they are made to feel,” and she asserts that “even commiseration is humiliating, because it calls the sensitive mind to the misfortune that excites pity.” ^6IbidEGWCRR 110.3

Ellen White asks in this context: “Cannot the children of God see that in conceding to the prejudice against the color of race, they are giving their influence to sanction a long course of neglect, of insult, of oppression? Will not the Lord call those to account who have had a part in this work?” ^7IbidEGWCRR 111.1

She clearly enunciated the principle that all men are equal, and called on all Christians to adhere to this principle regardless of the consequences:EGWCRR 111.2

No matter what the gain or the loss, we must act nobly and courageously in the sight of God and our Saviour. Let us as Christians who accept the principle that all men, white and black, are free and equal, adhere to this principle, and not be cowards in the face of the world, and in the face of the heavenly intelligences. We should treat the colored man just as respectfully as we would treat the white man. And we can now, by precept and example, win others to this course. ^8Ibid

She condemned racial prejudice as a moral evil. And she said: “Those white people who appreciate the ministry of Christ in their behalf, cannot cherish prejudice against their colored brethren.” ^{9Ellen G. White, Manuscript 107, 1908 (“The Color Line”).}EGWCRR 111.3

In speaking of the South as a “difficult” field, she did not suggest that this was so because of any inherent inferiority of the Negro, but “because of the white people who have the slave master’s spirit, with the slave master’s cruelty in exercising the same, as if the blacks were no more than beasts; and to be treated worse than the dumb animals because they are in the form of man, having the marks of the black—Negro—race.” ^{10Ellen G. White, Letter 223, 1899 (to J.E. White, June 22 1899).}EGWCRR 111.4

In the letter to Frank Belden already mentioned, she refers to the “degrading habits taught them by the ...whites,” and in the same letter, in what might be her only direct allusion to lynching, she says:EGWCRR 111.5

The colored people have had before them the example of commonness and adultery. These evils are all through our world, but when the poor, wretched, ignorant race, who know scarcely anything of purity and righteousness, do commit sin—sin that committed by white people is scarcely condemned—colored people are tortured to death whether proved guilty or not. And the nation that permits this bears the name of Christian. God says, “Shall I not judge for these things?” ^{11Ellen G. White, Letter 165, 1899 (to F.E. Belden October 22 1899).}

The evidence which thus far has come to light tends to indicate that Ellen White believed that, inherently, the Negro was fully and totally equal to the Caucasian, and that the differences she may have observed were the result of environmental influences, and where these differences reflected backwardness, she laid the blame, not on the Negro, but on his white oppressors.EGWCRR 112.1

The question is often asked, What would Ellen White have written had she been writing to the American of today, where the trend of the nation, through its courts and government, and in the opinions of many of its people, is quite different from what it was in the first decade of this century? This, of course, is a question that can never be answered with certainty. As in 1908 she called for the acceptance of segregated churches, she hastened to pen the words “until the Lord shows us a better way.” But any reliable projection of what she might say today must be grounded in a thorough and balanced understanding of what she said in her day, and what the conditions were and what it meant to the people to whom it was first directed.EGWCRR 112.2

That understanding must take notice, when considering the subject under discussion here, of a letter written in 1900 to a worker in South Africa, another country with acute racial problems:EGWCRR 113.1

In regard to the question of caste and color, nothing would be gained by making a decided distinction, but the Spirit of God would be grieved. We are all supposed to be preparing for the same heaven. We have the same heavenly Father and the same Redeemer, who loved us and gave Himself for us all, without any distinction. We are nearing the close of this earth’s history, and it does not become any child of God to have a proud, haughty heart and turn from any soul who loves God, or to cease to labor for any soul for whom Christ has died. When the love of Christ is cherished in the heart as it should be, when the sweet, subduing spirit of the love of God fills the soul-temple, there will be no caste, no pride of nationality; no difference will be made because of the color of the skin. Each one will help the one who needs tender regard and consolation, of whatever nationality he may be.

Ask yourselves if Christ would make any difference. In assembling His people would He say, Here brother, or, Here sister, your nationality is not Jewish; you are of a different class. Would He say, Those who are dark-skinned may file into the back seats; those of a lighter skin may come up to the front seats?

In one place the proposition was made that a curtain be drawn between the colored people and the white people. I asked, Would Jesus do that? This grieves the heart of Christ. The color of the skin is no criterion as to the value of the soul. By the mighty cleaver of truth we have all been quarried out from the world. God has taken us, all classes, all nations, all languages, all nationalities, and brought us into His workshop, to be prepared for His temple. ^{12Ellen G. White, Letter 26, 1900 (to W. S. Hyatt, February 15, 1900).}