"An injury to one is an injury to all."

Near the end of her Ted talk "Racism Has a Cost for Everyone," Heather McGhee draws this conclusion from her years of research on the American economy and public policy. Does that statement sound familiar? I immediately thought of 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul talks about Christians as the body of Christ. In verse 26, Paul says, "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it."

Paul recognized that when we live in community, we are interconnected like parts of a body, and what we do impacts others in the community. In a Christian community, we are representing Christ, so Paul urges that "there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other (v. 25)." He understood that if we mistreat one part of the community, the whole community suffers, and if this happens in a Christian community, we are failing to represent the love of Christ.

After years of research investigating problems in the American economy, McGhee identified a root cause to many of these problems: racism in public policymaking. Her conclusion was that racism doesn't just hurt the people of color that it targets. Racism hurts everyone.

"An injury to one is an injury to all."
"If one part suffers, every part suffers with it."

In her Ted Talk, McGhee summarizes these ideas with some powerful and engaging stories. In her book, The Sum of Us, she goes into much more detail with many examples of the damage that racism has caused to all Americans. But she also shows how when communities come together across racial lines, the community gains.
It's not a zero-sum game. As Christians, this shouldn't be news to us - if we've been paying attention to Paul.