Rather than continue exploring CRT, I would rather consider two questions. The first is “What are we trying to fix: man or society? If race is what most needs fixing, what solutions are being offered? Second,”Who is getting played in this dramatic moment in American history?”
1. Fix Society: All ideologies focus on fixing society. Timothy Keller quotes Beatrice Webb, a remarkable and foundational British social activist, who, starting in the late 1800s, gave her life to establishing the British social welfare system. She said she based her ideas for fixing society on the foundational idea that man was good. In 1925, she lamented that mankind had “a bad impulse,” an impulse that made every good and worthy social system (almost) useless. This is a sad, but tame example. Others who try to fix society are the legendary and mostly Marxist extremists who caused over 150 million deaths in the 20th century, trying to get rid of the bad people who stood in the way of their ideal society.
Fix the Person: Christianity and centuries of Western culture have focused on fixing the person. We all rebel at being called sinners, but the diagnosis of universal sin allows the resurrected Jesus to actually fix any person. The opposite focus, the focus on social rights and entitlements of mankind, cannot and has not fixed (they would say unleashed the potential) of the person.
Solution Offered: The CRT solution is to shame, cancel, and remove the racists. Then society can finally provide the equity of outcomes that Beatrice Webb sought. Ms. Webb’s solutions were tame but removing the racists when all white people and the American society and government are systemically racist is a ferocious path. Who will accomplish all this purging? The answer, I assume, since CRT focuses on the problems, is that new government institutions will do it. The message is: tear it down, defund it, disestablish the white legal/justice system, remove all bigoted religious influence and do so violently since it is impossible to establish justice by voting. Then, they imply, we can rebuild a just society. Where has that worked?
2. “Who’s Getting Played?” Who will be the losers? Who will be abandoned along the side of the road? I propose three losers. First, African Americans. If society really is no better in 2020 than it was in 1955, the African Americans, who were played by LBJ and other elites in the 1960s, will be played again this time. What makes anyone think that this time will be different? This is sad beyond endurance.
Second, Christians, and especially Christian pastors and leaders overlap. We are so all-in on social justice, imagining it as biblical justice on offer, that we urge people to read Robin DiAngelo and Ibram S. Kendi. We quote them, use their terms and ideas as if CRT and Christianity are overlapping ideas with a bit of different lingo. I realize that we are ashamed of decades of inaction and embarrassed by how badly we have treated African American brothers and sisters in the churches, even recently. But that shame should not lead us to adopt a postmodern fatalist worldview founded on power, oppression, and resentment with only a group identity.
Third, ordinary Americans, including immigrants who are just trying to avoid stirring anything up or getting noticed by the system. That is, of course, the mindset of people lost in a bureaucracy or in an occupied nation. Do not think; do not act or react; do not feel; just keep your head down. What is wrong with that? It is not life, liberty, or the pursuit of anything worthwhile. It is despair, substance abuse, and suicide worse.
Who Are the Winners? Not the young ‘woke’ who are sincere but sad pawns. I see two sets of elites: The moneyed elite and the virtue elite. The moneyed elite actually invents and produces things (iPhones), while the other elite lives in the world of ideas and ideology (politics and universities). One is rational, the other is not. One focuses on wealth but is indifferent, the other focuses on virtue but is envious of the moneyed elite. As for foreign elites, they prey on the weaknesses we have plenty of. Who’s about to get played? (END)