MAKING RACISM APPEALING

 

 

Many of us are wondering how the racism inherent in Woke and Critical Race Theory (CRT) could ever have found a welcome in the Church. What has made these racist theories palatable?

 

Dr. Michelle Reyes is a speaker, author, CRT activist, and the Vice President of the Asian American Christian Collaborative who has written for TGC and the ERLC. In her website, she has written appealingly in favor of CRT:

 

·       White privilege relies on racialization, a system of values that says one group of people is superior to all others because of the color of their skin. This system has been weaponized to justify the cruel treatment of and discrimination toward non-white people throughout American history. White privilege is both a cause and legacy of racism. It is a conscious act rooted in historic inequities, and it continues to reinforce systemic racism today. When it comes to racial trauma, displacement, the cruel treatment and discrimination of people of color, or the country’s history of slavery, we have to acknowledge the role of white privilege.

 

Historically, of course, slavery has been a blight upon our USA history and a good example of white privilege. It had served as a useful way to justify the brutalities of slavery and segregation.

 

However, slavery has been a stain upon all peoples and civilizations, upon people of color and whites. The CRT narrative conveniently forgets that fact that it had been black people who had kidnapped other blacks to sell them into slavery to both whites and people of color. Even today, Muslims carry on black slavery. Native Americans had also done so with other Native Americans. Why then simply denigrate whites based upon this practice!

 

Reyes insists that whites are still trying to hold on to their “privilege,” but where is the evidence for this? Instead, whites seem to be so motivated by guilt and/or compassion that they are desperately trying to make amends for the sins of this nation. This has impelled them to implement many programs with the intentions of helping, even though they had inadvertently harmed the black community. Corporate America has even helped to fund the racist BLM. Reyes continues:

 

·       But if we aren’t willing to sit with the weight of guilt when it comes to the sins of racism, we will never understand that we are the problem. Unless we acknowledge the existence of white privilege, we can’t understand our own complicity in it.

 

Instead, white America has done much to acknowledge its sinful past. Shelby Steele is a columnist, documentary film maker, and a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, Steele argues that the black community now suffers more through paternalistic programs and the victimization narrative than they do from their Jim Crow legacy:

 

·       What I've encountered in my life, most often in the white world, is good will, is people have who have wanted to help me. When I was younger and starting a career, people who mentored me, who really felt it was important to give me the best opportunity to pursue my dreams. And my sense is that that's really been an experience for most blacks who have tried to venture out and develop themselves.

 

·       One of the most remarkable things in all of human history is the degree of moral evolution, that white Americans have made from the mid-60s to this day. No group of people in history have morally evolved away from a social evil that quickly and to that degree in this sort of short span of time. And very often, in our calculations in thinking about race, we don't give whites credit for that.

 

Instead of the continual denigration of an already guilt-ridden white America, we need some Biblical perspective. We are all sinners who need to confess and to turn from our sins (Romans 3:23). To place guilt on the backs of only one skin color is racist, and its fruit is mutual destruction.

 

While it is true that whites, on the average, fare better economically and educationally than blacks, Reyes and CRT believe that these disparities are the result of systemic racism (SR), even if unintentional. Even if they cannot prove this, they can still dogmatically claim that racism lurks in the heart of every white:

 

·       Each of us needs to do the hard work of examining our own biases and actions. We cannot separate the past from our present. They are interconnected. Repenting for the sins of historic slavery and its current iterations in our society is a necessary step in beginning to work toward a more equitable and just future, both inside and outside the church. (Reyes)

 

When does repentance for the same sin cease? For how long must the nation punish itself for its racist sins? Will there ever be forgiveness. Will we ever be able to move on?  

 

Sin continues to claw at each one of us, whether in the form of selfishness, covetousness, or unforgiveness. We are all in the same boat. Consequently, we all need to examine ourselves. This is the road to brotherhood, equality, and dignity rather than to bearing false witness and growing racial divisions. But have we instead embraced hatred?

 

Reyes wrongly assumes that once racist, always racist. This is clearly untrue. Every law that had maintained SR has been struck from the books, sometimes replaced by laws that favor those deemed to be “oppressed.”

 

Does SR still clandestinely exist? Racist temptations dangerously abound across the color spectrum. However, this nation has already eliminated all forms of SR from the books. We must give credit where credit is due!

 

I am encouraged by my many black brethren who courageously acknowledge that change must begin in our own hearts and then to extend to our own communities.

 

Voddie Baucham (“Fault Lines”), has been willing to subject himself to abuse by challenging the SR narrative. According to Baucham, the evidence against systemic racism is impressive:

 

·       According to federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, in interracial violence involving blacks and whites, white perpetrators account for 15 percent of the cases while black perpetrators account for 85 percent. In other words, far from there being an epidemic of whites “hunting down innocent, unarmed black men,” when it comes to interracial violence, black people are overwhelmingly more likely to victimize white people than the other way around. (Baucham, 166)

 

·       A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black assailant than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop. (Baucham, 166)

 

Baucham has even written:

 

·       I reject the idea that America is “characterized by racism,” or that racism is an unavoidable byproduct of our national DNA. In fact, I believe America is one of the least racist countries in the world. (201)

 

Ironically, the way up is the way down, by humbling ourselves to acknowledge our sins and need before a God, who is waiting for us to turn to Him:

 

·       “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)