POLITICALLY CORRECT FASHIONABLE RACISM IS STILL RACISM

Recently, I attended an open-mic at the Urban Justice Center (UJC), NY, NY. It was a pleasant evening until one participant began raging against “white privilege” in her impassioned poem. She received hearty applause. I even applauded her poem until I began to think about it a bit and decided that this was racist.

The more I thought about it, the more troubled I became. I needed an outlet and found it on the UJC blog. I wrote:

·       I guess that at the UJC racism is fashionable as long as the racism is directed against “Whites.” Although I have heard a lot about “white privilege,” I haven’t seen any evidence of it. What I have seen is that racist statements are privileged and protected as long as they are directed against Whites. The UJC needs to publicly reject this double-standard.

·       If the UJC is serious about providing a “supportive environment,” as it claims, it must make its programs supportive of all peoples, regardless of their skin color.

·       Certainly, there is racism among all people groups. However, this must be dealt with through the courts, using evidence to prove that a law has been broken, on a case-by-case basis, and not by condemning an entire people, without any evidence of discrimination. When you indict an entire people, you have surrendered any claim to the name “justice” and have become the racist you have deplored, promoting your own form of hatred.

·       Urban Justice Center, I hope you will reconsider your stance that sees certain skin colors as profiting from the alleged "injustice of white privilege." Not only is this charge unfounded, such a charge encourages division and even violence against those who are allegedly profiting from such an injustice, bringing to mind the Hutus who had exterminated the Tutsis because of this very thing.

One UJC employee responded, and I tried to argue that indicting an entire group of people by virtue of their skin color makes little sense. I therefore posed these questions:

·       How white must the skin color be for someone to be considered “White?”

·       Do all Whites profit from having a certain skin color? What about those Whites who haven’t profited from their skin color? How about those who didn’t get a job or university acceptance because of Affirmative Action? Did they profit from “white privilege.”

·       What about a White who marries a Black. Have they too partaken in “white privilege?” And their children? How would you classify them? Are they only partially guilty of “white privilege?”

·       Do lighter people-of-color also partake of this injustice?

I was hoping that these questions would illuminate the injustice of charging someone with “white privilege” without any supporting evidence of wrongdoing, but it didn’t. I was also hoping that this employee would see the hypocrisy of calling the name “Urban Justice Center,” while it is clearly unjust to indict someone without any evidence. Even worse, to indict an entire group of people according to their pigment!

And what does this say about UJC’s written but hypocritical assurance that they are providing a "supportive environment?" I guess this only pertains for those of certain skin tones?

After accusing me of having “insecurities about this topic,” the UJC employee asked me to define “white privilege.” I answered:

·       Although "white privilege" had been institutionalized during slavery and "Jim Crow" days, it is no longer institutionalized. There are no laws that favor Whites. Yes, there are racist Whites but there are also racist Blacks. Racism must be challenged in both groups as it arises. It arose in the UJC. However, it is not challenged but defended.

·       The charge that Whites are favored by "white privilege" might serve as a charge against certain individuals. However, it is UNJUST to apply this indictment to an entire race or color!

The employee then charged that it is my statements that are promoting racism and that I have wrongly called the entire UJC “racist.” I responded:

·       I am not calling the entire UJC “racist.” However, I have seen that many progressive institutions not only tolerate reverse racism and provide an environment where reverse racism is encouraged –- with your degrading statements about me, you are even encouraging racism – but even promote it.

·       It is inevitable that such talk promotes crime against Whites. In fact, this seems to be happening. We find that a greatly disproportional amount of crime is committed by people-of-color against Whites, and this is not only in the area of property crime and assaults, but also rapes. White rapes of non-Whites are almost non-existent. We cannot say that at all about this reverse.

·       Even White political candidates are alleging widespread discriminatory practices against people-of-color without a shred of evidence. They allege that there is a systematic attempt to incarcerate people-of-color. These charges are unfounded, inflammatory, and manipulative.

Unless this racism is exposed for what it is and rejected, we will all suffer. I am not saying that discrimination against people-of-color should be overlooked. However, charges of discrimination and their evidences must be addressed by the justice system and not by the mob.

Mao, Humanity, and Faith

The way we think is the way we live. Our lives show off our values in sometimes horrific ways:

·       Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday. Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian… compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million. 

The extermination of 45 million wasn’t simply a matter of poor judgment. Instead, it had been the result of genocidal values. Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine, reports that in 1957, Mao stated:

·       I’m not afraid of nuclear war. There are 2.7 billion people in the world; it doesn’t matter if some are killed. China has a population of 600 million; even if half of them are killed, there are still 300 million people left. I am not afraid of anyone.

For Mao, people, even his Chinese people, were little more than numbers. In the atheist/communist estimation of things, humans might have risen to the level of “animals,” but still entirely expendable to achieve their great progressive vision.

Mao and others were murderers. Dismissively, we call them “revolutionaries” or “idealists” to dignify their horrors.

But why shouldn’t we regard human lives as the necessary cost to accomplish our ideals? Perhaps a good idea, if achieved, is worth the price, even of the murder of 45 million?

Genocide is never justified! Why not? According to the Word of God, we are endowed with inestimable value, having been created in God’s very likeness. Without this revelation, genocide will always remain an option, however much we deny it.

Only the Bible stands against the degradation of humanity. Today, we remain numbers. We called “wet machines,” and are regarded as just another member of the animal kingdom. We are no more than products of our environment and genetics, lacking freewill, driven exclusively by deterministic forces, which dictate all of our choices. Should we be surprised when we are treated according to our diminished status?

Bobby Jindal and Progressive Put-Downs

 

  The Progressives are in battle-mode over Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s statements about no-go zones in Western Europe:

• “If we’re not careful the same no-go zones you’re seeing now in Europe will come to America,” Jindal said. “What is not acceptable and what you’ve seen in Europe and this is a very serious particular threat, you’ve got those that do want to try to impose a form of sharia law. And sharia law is antithetical, mutually exclusive of freedom, in treating women as first-class citizens, it is antithetical to the values we hold dear. And you see, third, fourth generation immigrants in the U.K., France, in other places in Europe that don’t consider themselves part of those societies and that’s very dangerous.”

If Islamic no-go zones governed by a sharia beachhead aren’t a reality, then the Progressives have a case that Jindal is just stirring up needless panic. However, if a bubonic plague is stalking the West, we want to know about it, even if it does make us uneasy.

Daniel Pipes, a former official in the U.S. departments of State and Defense and teacher at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the U.S. Naval War College, and Pepperdine University.  is the author of 12 books on the Middle East, Islam, and other political topics. For a long time, he had denied the existence of no-zones. However, he has recently modified his views. While he still maintains that there are no absolute no-go zones where the police and military are unable to enter:

• Governments often choose not to impose their will on Muslim-majority areas, allowing them considerable autonomy, including in some cases the Shariah courts that Emerson mentioned. Alcohol and pork are effectively banned in these districts, polygamy and burqas commonplace, police enter only warily and in force, and Muslims get away with offences illegal for the rest of the population. 

• The Rotherham, England, child sex scandal offers a powerful example. An official inquiry found that for 16 years, 1997-2013, a ring of Muslim men sexually exploited — through abduction, rape, gang rape, trafficking, prostitution, torture — at least 1,400 non-Muslim girls as young as 11. The police received voluminous complaints from the girls' parents but did nothing; they could have acted, but chose not to.

• According to the inquiry, "the police gave no priority to CSE [child sexual exploitation], regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime." Even more alarming, in some cases, "Fathers tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being abused, only to be arrested themselves when police were called to the scene."

• Worse, the girls "were arrested for offences such as breach of the peace or being drunk and disorderly, with no action taken against the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault against children."

• Another example, also British, was the so-called Operation Trojan Horse that flourished from 2007 until 2014, in which (again, according to an official inquiry), a group of school functionaries developed "a strategy to take over a number of schools in Birmingham and run them on strict Islamic principles."

This problem is compounded by the jihadic intentions of the Islamic writings, which require world domination. Ibn Khaldun, the 15th century Tunisian historian, states:

• In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force... The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense... Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.

Here’s some of the Koranic basis for this:

• “Make war on them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion (Islam) reigns supreme, (Koran 8:37)

• “When the Sacred Months are over, kill those who ascribe partners [like Jesus] to God wheresoever ye find them; seize them, encompass them, and ambush them; then if they repent and observe prayer and pay the alms, let them go their way’.” (Koran 4:5)

• “…kill the disbelievers wherever we find them” (Koran 2:191) and “murder them and treat them harshly” (Koran 9:123), and “Strike off the heads of the disbelievers” (Koran 8:12, cp. 8:60).

Perhaps Jindal has a good reason for his concerns. Add to this the many confessions of ex-Muslims about a program of internal Jihad to overthrow the West, and we have the beginnings of a real plague.

Perhaps also the Progressives want to believe, against rationality, that if we would just be kind, gentle, and understanding enough, our Islamic populations will gladly reciprocate. While this strategy has proved successful with some, a Hitler will not fall into the group. Neither will a Mohammad!

Persecuted Christians and Christian Political Involvement

What is the calling of the church? How should we show off Christ to this world? Should we become political and speak out against injustice, namely the genocide against Christians? The jacket of The Global War on Christians by CNN writer John L. Allen Jr. gives us some idea of its extensiveness:

•  From Iraq and Egypt to Sudan and Nigeria, from Indonesia to the Indian subcontinent, Christians in the early twenty-first century are the world’s most persecuted religious group. According to the secular International Society for Human Rights, 80 percent of violations of religious freedom in the world today are directed against Christians.

•  The Open Doors Estimate, based on decades of tracking the realities of persecution in some of the darkest corners of the earth, is that roughly one hundred million Christians today suffer interrogation, arrest, and even death for their faith, with the bulk located in Asia and the Middle East. The overall total makes Christians the most at-risk group for violations of religious freedom. (37)

I don’t think that we can turn our back on such suffering, even if it is taking place over-seas. However, many evangelicals teach that any form of political engagement represents a betrayal of the Gospel. One wrote that:

• [Political engagement] is culturally impotent in dealing with the depraved hearts, minds and souls of a pagan world. Satan is pleased when any discourse designed for Christ and His gospel is turned into a political rally to pacify unsaved people in their sin while at the same time creating a superficial morality that is not based upon the salvific work of Christ alone! The tragic result is unredeemed people are left to feel comfortable and safe in a ‘Christian morality’—yet they are still lost, still dead in their sins.”

While many evangelicals would agree with these sentiments, others regard this stance as extreme, arguing that turning our back on our brothers, when we can do good, is sin (James 4:17). Instead of the model of “Gospel-in-opposition-to-politics,” they argue that the Gospel requires our involvement, even in politics – that the light of Christ should be reflected in all areas of life. At the least, we are called upon to be a light on a hill, exposing all forms of evil and oppression:

• Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the court (Amos 5:14-15)

• Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:16-17)

• Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. (Eph. 5:11)

Will this activity change the heart of the oppressor? Perhaps not, but this should not be our only concern. It is not God’s only concern. He is also concerned about restraining evil (Rom. 13:1-4), and so should we be!

Meanwhile, others claim, “You can’t legislate morality.” Perhaps not, but legislation can restrain evil, as Martin Luther King poignantly argued:

• “It may be true that a law can’t make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

In essence, the argument against engagement goes like this: “We have to trust in God and not political involvement.” However, this argument is neither biblical nor logical. It sets up an unbiblical distinction between God’s workings and ours. For instance, no one would say:

•  I am not going to see the doctor for my broken arm; I will just trust in God… I will not attempt to fix my toilet; I will just trust God to fix it… I will not dress my open wound; God will do it for me.

Instead of our efforts contradicting God’s efforts, they often work together. We trust that God will work through our efforts and the doctor’s medicine. The two are not in opposition! We therefore can entrust the welfare of the persecuted Christians to the Lord as we attempt to raise an outcry against the persecution.

Similarly, others argue:

• God prophesied that the Christians would be martyred. It’s also according to His will. Therefore, we should not oppose this martyrdom.

However, appealing this argument might be, this too it is neither logical nor biblical. Let’s demonstrate the incoherence of this argument:

• Everything that happens, our omnipotent God either causes or allows – even the evil. Consequently, everything that happens, is according to His knowledge and will, even those things that grieve Him (Eph. 1:11).  Therefore, we should never oppose anything – genocide, rape, kidnapping…

Of course, this is logically and biblically absurd! The Bible requires that we oppose many things, even knowing that God allows them to happen.

Evangelical, Michael Spencer, criticized his fellow evangelicals for neglecting the Gospel in pursuit of political activity:

• Christians have been so wrapped up in the political process and especially over the last couple of years…that we have ignored our number one mission, which is to tell the world about a loving and merciful God.

Of course, the political arena is filled with dangers. However, we cannot draw an impassable line between politics – the greater arena – and the rest of life. Politics and evangelism are not in opposition! It is possible to show Christ to the world through political involvement. William Wilberforce did this through his 30 year struggle in the British Parliament to abolish the evil of slavery. And he still speaks today of the Gospel!

Political involvement can be an expression of Christian love and oneness – one of the most potent forms of evangelism. Jesus prayed that all believers would be one in love:

• “I pray… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23)

The world will be more inclined to believe when they see the reality of Christ in our midst. How are we to express this love for the brethren? Not through our silence regarding their genocide! In the Times of Israel, Michael Lumish writes:

•  One of the great tragedies and hypocrisies of the current moment is the Christian and western-left failure to speak out against the persecution of Christians throughout Muslim lands… What I find absolutely flabbergasting is the fact that while western progressives claim to care about universal human rights they show virtually no interest in the human rights of Christian minorities in the Middle East and much of Africa.  Western-left moral hypocrisy is, of course, nothing new to those of us who concern ourselves with such things.  I expect the progressive-left not to care when Muslims attack and murder other Muslims or when they attack and murder Christians or Jews.  What surprises me a tad, I suppose, is the fact that so few western Christians care either.

Lumish understandably interprets our silence as a lack of concern - a lack of love and unity. What kind of Christian witness is this?