In my opinion, I think it is important to recognize that there are a few different groups (I’ll suggest 4) of people at odds in this whole Critical Race Theory (CRT) debate in the Church.
This is a long thread, I apologize, but I truly think we need to make these distinctions:
2/ The 1st group are just your run of the mill racists. You know the crowd. They are loud and all over the internet.
3/ They believe that slavery and Jim Crow are ancient history, the racists were the KKK types who are now hard to find, the sexual revolution and Great Society—even the CRM itself—destroyed the Black family and led to degenerate behaviors that explain the VAST racial disparity
4/ we’ve seen since the Civil Rights Movement (CRM); in short, Black people suffer in our nation because of their own inferior culture and behaviors. This group, IMO, are just carbon copies of their segregationist forbears, fearing "force" and impositions of the federal
5/ government, advocacy of states’ rights, federalism, radically free enterprise, freedom of association, increased privatization, the mythic view of American meritocracy, opposition to public assistance, all couched in the polemics of anti-communism and civil religion, but
6/ repackaged in race-neutral language. In other words, George Wallace without the “N”-word. There is no point arguing about CRT with these folks. They literally haven’t caught up to a full-throated endorsement of the late 60’s CRM and know so little of King that they think
7/ they’re quotation of “I have a dream” makes their case, hahaha. As such, they are not really IN this conversation at all. Just traditional racist noise.
8/ A 2nd and larger group are what Gary Peller has called, “liberal integrationists.” (There is of course overlap between all of these groups, but we're simplifying.) White liberals in the late 1960s and early 70s, with the support of many within the Black middle class,
9/ successfully reinterpreted the message of the CRM. Rather than addressing the subordinated circumstances of Black Americans, the liberal integrationists centered their continuing civil rights work on the analytics of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation, thereby
10/ eschewing race-consciousness in favor of “neutral standards” and idealized “merit.” This group believes the answer to racial domination is to overcome prejudice through knowledge, overcome discrimination through “neutrality,” and overcome segregation through integration,
11/ and most centrally, to never allow “race to count for anything.” Seeing race, allowing it to count, is itself understood to be racist. (This was quite good for the White establishment when it was time to fix things they'd broken, hahaha.)
12/ To be clear, this is an historical ideology—it was not read from the book of nature nor found in the pages of the Bible, but was an absorption of the message of the CRM into White Americans’ existing ideals of liberalism by casting the CRM as part of a broader social movement
13/ from particularism to enlightened universalism. For a fuller explanation, see:
thefrontporch.org/2020/10/the-ch…
14/ This group rejects CRT not because it contradicts the Bible but because it contradicts their own dearly guarded social philosophy of liberal integrationism and color-blindness. CRT certainly feels like an attack on their “worldview,” but it is not actually an attack on their
15/ BIBLICAL worldview, but on they received social philosophical “worldview.” As a result, they are really only able to point to (1) how CRT contradicts their liberal images, and/or (2) some bad view held by some CRT’s (or adjacent) that are not actually definitive of the
16/ framework nor research program itself, even if often present. The 3rd group would be (what I’d consider) consistent antiracists. This group may or may not even be familiar with CRT. Those who are familiar see CRT similar to any other framework, set of ideas, analytical tool
17/ ideology, or what have you; that is, it is not found in the Bible, just as integrationism is not, nor in the plain book of nature, but is either useful in understanding race, racism, American history, and the current structure of our society, or it is not.
18/ Maybe historical liberalism perpetuates and safeguards the subordination of peoples while it is claiming to liberate them? Maybe colorblindness leaves oppressed groups unable to “name their reality” and address it?
19/ Maybe antidiscrimination law itself is capable of legitimizing illegitimate inequalities? Maybe racism is, in fact, part of a caste system at the very heart of the construction of American ideals, institutions, and distributive processes?
20/ Maybe, because of this, we can understand the circumstances of subordinated peoples better by analyzing their intersecting social locations within socially constructed in-out groups?
21/ These—even the Christian antiracist understands—are important questions asked by CRT, and its answers are often illuminating. They may contradict our current, contingent, man-made, liberal social ideology, but they are certainly no more or less compatible with a Biblical
22/ worldview than is the prevailing ideology, exemplified by group 2. Where there is error, reject it. This is no different than Platonism, Aristotelianism, Rationalism, Materialism, Empiricism, Idealism, Positivism, Libertarianism, Egalitarian Liberalism, Americanism, etc.,
23/ all of which you and I and the Church as a whole have drawn many concepts, categories, and arguments that have, by God’s grace, often enriched our faith, our societies, and our cultures.
24/ In short, the goal of Christian antiracism is to oppose and dismantle racism as it actually exists in our current historical context, using all the tools provided in God’s providence and common grace, in the name of Jesus and for the advancement of His Kingdom.
25/ The 4th and final group are the grifters. The grifters just say whatever needs to be said to their side to make an income, build a platform, or whatever. They can be told over and over what they’ve gotten wrong, but they will never relent; their brand depends on it.
26/ My hope is that they really only play to those with itching ears who are not engaging with open minds anyhow. Of course, this group can intersect with any of the above. I think making these distinctions will help navigate our path forward. At least IMO.
27/27 Though these are very broad generalizations, I suppose a next step is for the smart people to craft ways to respond (or refrain from responding) to each these groups in accordance with their ideology and intentions; we shouldn't interact with them all in the same manner.
28/27 Edit on tweet #14: most Christians within this group, I'd argue, nevertheless believe CRT contradicts their Biblical "worldview," but largely because they don't recognize that their social philosophical integrationist "worldview" is distinct from their Christianity and is
29/27 an historical, contingent, man-made construction.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.