Fences can be positive. They can help to demarcate the intimately personal from the impersonally public, the particular from the general, the church from the world. Not fences, but most walls need to be torn down. Of course, no one should confuse our White policeman neighbor with Jesus Christ who, without waiting to receive our service, breaks down dividing walls that separate us from each other, and without destroying our uniqueness as persons and cultural groups, makes us one in himself. But we give thanks to God that the policeman was at least human enough to be ashamed of what his wall signified and humble enough to tear it down as a gesture of gratitude.
Walls suggest permanence, isolation, impenetrability, and alienation.
Two groups of people who are the same in so many ways, and yet are different, with different histories and experiences. A Black Christian Perspective Most of the old and new walls that separate us, like the one between my family's property and the policeman's, have to begin to be torn down from the White side rather than from the Black. It was, after all, White people who erected them in the first place. This does not mean that we Blacks have no responsibility from our side. That's one of the reasons why race relations, despite integration, have been at such a low ebb in our country since the 1960s.