Racial reconciliation should be high on the agenda for American Christians. But the drive for reconciliation, like many other things, can be based on God’s wisdom or modern man’s.

That drive for reconciliation can emphasize the importance for all people of marriage, work, and worship. It can help us to identify each other not by the color of our skin but by the content of our belief. Or, it can lure those with guilt feelings to speak a form of cultural Ebonics by supporting programs of reverse racism and governmental aggrandizement.

Booker T. Washington wrote one of America’s greatest autobiographies, a story of how he rose from slavery to leadership. Washington did not minimize the hardship along the way, but he, like Nelson Mandela after release from prison, put aside bitterness and worked for the progress that could come, if blacks and whites emphasized productive work and effective compassion.

Our government, supported by our tax dollars, already lowers standards in education, employment, and contracting for certain racial groups. Now school discipline is in its sights. Black and Hispanic students in elementary and secondary schools are disciplined disproportionately to their numbers. (This is true for boys in general, but it’s more profitable to focus on race rather than sex.)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has issued a major statement explaining racial policies that once banned black men from the Mormon priesthood, and that excluded all African-Americans from Mormon temples. Although LDS officials rescinded these prohibitions in 1978, the church had never fully addressed their historical roots.

Nelson Mandela endured three months of hospitalization before going home to die at age 95 on Dec. 5, but South Africa’s former president had known far greater confinement.

Section B at Robben Island Prison was Mandela’s home for 18 years. During that time he came to represent black South Africans’ struggle against apartheid, South Africa’s elaborate system of discrimination that denied blacks jobs, education, and even the right to vote.