Thread by @DennyBurk

I’ve thought a lot about this article since reading it yesterday. It’s hard to formulate an apt response because the author does not define what he means by racism, systemic or otherwise.

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nytimes.com/2021/07/18/opi…

If he means that Christians should fight against racial partiality or racial animus, then of course there can be no disagreement about that. It is our moral duty to love our neighbor and to treat them with equal weights and measures.

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But if he means that Christians must fight against “racism” defined as any racially disparate outcome, then there is no necessary moral obligation to do that. (More on that below)

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dennyburk.com/is-systemic-ra…

So that’s why the argument of an article like this one is so difficult to evaluate. The terms are undefined. But they need to be defined because of the prevalence of unbiblical ideologies that dominate discourse about race. Christians have to make clear distinctions.

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This is not to deny that racial partiality or racial animus can infect “systems.” It certainly has—with redlining and Jim Crow being two of the most obvious and uncontroversial examples. And there are others.

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But these uncontroversial examples are not the same as what is often put forth as “racism” in CRT. One doesn’t have to be a critical race theorist to have take onboard some of this baggage. That’s why clarity in terminology is key to engaging this discussion.

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