Like it or not, racism is voluminous, virulent and violent in America today. Not only that, but America is rapidly descending into a harsh police state in which police forces are equipped, not as normal policing agencies, but as full armed militias. Recalling that, in Communist Yugoslavia and Romania, the police were called "militsia," and armed as military rather than police, this should be chilling to Americans as they face another election.
I did not hear this matter raised at all in the Republican candidates debate, and likely one should not have expected in on FOX Broadcasting (it is a travesty to refer to them as "news"), because FOX is comfortable with the idea of a police state. They constantly "justify" the brutal racism in which the militsia/police gun down unarmed black boys and humiliate and degrade black people on a regular basis.
It was not so many years ago that white Christians in the South would hang an innocent black man just for sport or to "keep niggers in their place." Those of us old enough to remember this so well can, perhaps, see more clearly what is going on in America today. Right wing howling about the accusation will not save a single African-American life or protect a black university professor from being treated like a suspected criminal under the most mundane of circumstances.
Will any of the present candidates address the problem? Will anyone in the Orthodox Church address the problem? Not likely. Far too many of us are concerned with depriving others of rights, not defending those who rights have been trampled upon.
Dr George Gabriel adds (in his response to my editorial)
Add to these horrors, widespread gerrymandering, redistricting of election districts to break up large black American voting districts into separate smaller ones grafted onto larger white and more distant ones to make black districts smaller, more difficult to travel to for voting. Also some states, not only in the south but even in PA and the midwest, have done this and have closed polling stations on Sundays and greatly limited the hours they are open on work days. In the south, the black churches traditionally bus their people after services to the distant polling stations. Now this new tactic by white republican governors has made voting impossible for many elderly and poor blacks. Many of these states even require IDs of elderly rural blacks in order to vote now, these are old folks who have no form of ID, not even a birth certificate, photo credit cards, bank counts. etc.
The Voting Act of 1965 (by Pres. Lyndon Johnson) secured voting rights for blacks by federal law. Now the Law is trampled upon and virtually ignored by white so-called Christians.
I don't believe anyone in the Orthodox Church will address this problem, even though the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus is Greek Orthodox (of Greek and German descent).
Re: the Republican Debate on Fox — it got worse when most of the candidates began confessing their Christian faith and devotion. To his credit, however, at least Trump refrained from this ultimate hypocrisy.