Thread by @AlsoACarpenter

TIL there is no Left or Right.

But seriously, there's a bazillion issues that are considered systemic by (what I know as) the Right, and NO ONE on the Left (as I know it) claims all inequalities are systemic.

But I guess if this makes the apologetics easy, have at it.

https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1359925609032474636

2/ Further - specifically when it comes to racism (which is what this is really about, we know) - what I believe is dangerously lacking in many such "Left vs. Right" analyses is recognition of racism as a specific, historical, contingent, social problem that exists in its own

3/ right, as an evil to be addressed uniquely, not as a specie of some wider, neutral, philosophical divide.

Attempts to fold it into a wider philosophical analysis like “structuralism” vs. “individualism,” “universalism” vs. “particularism,” even general “neutral” and

4/ "objective" enlightenment vs. backward superstition and irrational stereotyping, eschews racism's unique history and existence in the very creation and fabric of American life, culture, and institutions.

Racism is not reducible to a specie of some other philosophical

5/ conflict that can be argued about on “race-neutral” terms. It can only be discussed and addressed for what it historically and actually is. (And it is also itself the source of many of our more “general” social philosophies anyhow.)

Just as, in Keller's terms, Biblical

6/ justice “diagonalizes,” so racism “diagonalizes” across broader social philosophies as it is not just a specie or product of one or another of these social philosophies.

It's an historical, non-race-neutral fact to be grappled with at a very brass-tacks level.

7/ And I say this all as a huge Keller fan.

I just think there is an apparent tendency to mis-characterize and cheaply categorize ideas and movements in order to put them in opposition to Christianity - obscuring the unique and pervasive character of issues like racism -

8/8 primarily for the sake of apologetic arguments.

(It's also IMO, symptomatic of a very Eurocentric philosophical approach to issues of social justice. See Robert Williams' "Taking Rights Aggressively," for example.)

Anyhow, just my opinion. All love for Keller, really.