We don't need to be afraid of CRT

[Bootstrap]

Question for everyone here: What CRT writers have you read or listened to in any depth? Who do you think of when you think of CRT? If you have not read or listened to at least an extended interview with a person, please don't just mention names as though you know them.

I had read nothing before this hit MN. After that, I read various summaries, but Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw were the only two authors I had read, I also listened to some podcasts with Crenshaw. Recently, I have also listened to an hour-long interview with Ibram X Kendi.

I ask this partly because all three of these people would agree with some of the things people have said here, and I wonder what specifically people are reacting against in their writings or those of others.

[Ken]

Question for everyone here: What CRT writers have you read or listened to in any depth? Who do you think of when you think of CRT? If you have not read or listened to at least an extended interview with a person, please don't just mention names as though you know them.

I had read nothing before this hit MN. After that, I read various summaries, but Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw were the only two authors I had read, I also listened to some podcasts with Crenshaw. Recently, I have also listened to an hour-long interview with Ibram X Kendi.

I ask this partly because all three of these people would agree with some of the things people have said here, and I wonder what specifically people are reacting against in their writings or those of others.

I have read a lot of writers on the topic of racism over the years. But zero on the subject of CRT. I tend to be more interested in actual facts and narratives and histories and not esoteric theoretical stuff.

[GaryK]

Of all the talks and messages by Voddie on racism that I've listened to, I don't recall reformed theology being something he mentions or that comes through in any way. Can you point me to where that connection is made?

The connection is the view of what salvation is. If salvation is construed as an eschatalogical and spiritual event accessed through the "finished work" and "PSA," then the present and real work of racial reconciliation, raising valleys and lowering mountains on earth as also in heaven, is work done amiss. If the salvation is on the other hand primarily about the Kingdom of God come on earth as also in heaven and being built by raising valleys and lowering mountains, then the real work of racial reconciliation in our society is important. Voddie opines that racial reconciliation is is already "finished" in the work of Christ and therefore Christians who are advocating for "social justice/righteousness" are focused amiss. He says we don't have to achieve it, it already exists. However, a quick review of our current society makes it clear that racial reconciliation doesn't exist. Part of the work of the Kingdom Christians is to like Jesus work for said reconciliation that doesn't exist. All that said, I'd prefer to get away from debating a "nonpresent" Voddie since he isn't here to speak for himself. I would like to continue the conversation around what I wrote. Are there any specific pieces around what I noted regarding CRT's worthwhile points that you object to? If so, which ones?

I think you are mistaken to think that what Voddie says about racial reconciliation being already finished in the work of Christ is a direct connection to reformed theology. I, by no stretch of the imagination, subscribe to reformed theology and I agree with what he says and here's why. As I stated earlier when I referenced a quote from your paper where you seemed to be implying that Jesus came primarily for the oppressed and seem to imply that again above; He didn't come to reform earthly societies and governments which is where racism has always been a problem. He came to create a new people out of people who used to be part of those earthly societies and governments. He accomplished that by dying for the sins of the whole world and ushering in a new Kingdom with a different kind of government and rules. It is within this Kingdom that true racial reconciliation is found and any other sin issue is solved, because of the final, once for all sacrifice of Jesus. The work of Jesus is sufficient to transform people into His image. Absolutely nothing else can do this.

As for Christians joining with secular movements and earthly governments to deal with sin issues - that's something I don't find Jesus and the Apostles teaching or engaging in. In fact the NT scriptures clearly warn against being yoked together with unbelievers. That's at the heart of my concern about Christians embracing CRT and other secular ideologies to try and accomplish something the finished work of Jesus sufficiently provides for. You seem to be promoting this idea in your paper. This may surprise you, but I find that idea equally as galling as Christian nationalism, which is truly galling to me.

[GaryK]

We build his kingdom not with the tools of the worldly kingdom, but by being the hands and feet of Jesus. By the way of the cross and suffering love.

I pulled this from the What is "the good news thread" so as not to disrupt it. I completely agree with your summary there. But I'm trying to understand how the components of CRT and Marxism you embrace and promote are not tools of the worldly kingdom.

[Szdfan]

Question for everyone here: What CRT writers have you read or listened to in any depth? Who do you think of when you think of CRT? If you have not read or listened to at least an extended interview with a person, please don't just mention names as though you know them.

This was my thought when I asked whether anyone has actually read Foucault. In response to this discussion, I reached out to feminist friends with PhDs. One of them has a history degree and runs a non-profit. The other has a theology degree and is a seminary professor.

Both have read Foucault and Derrida extensively. They have never heard of Gramsci. When I mentioned Hegel, the professor laughed and said, “Hegel is so 20th Century!”

There’s an important point here — academia is dialogic in which the conversations in each field shift over time and that where we on the outside think the discussion is, isn’t often where the discussion is.

I often feel like I’m looking in a weird fun-house mirror whenever I read these kinds of threads on MN, that I’m looking at some sort of bizarro alternative reality that really doesn’t reflect the world I or many of my fellow liberals live in.

For example, I remember several years ago, numerous posters here accusing liberals of following Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” playbook. I had never read “Rules for Radicals.” I had never heard of Alinsky. Nobody I knew had heard of him or read him either, but somehow we were all following his playbook and trying to destroy America. Um, OK.

There seems to be frequently an in vogue accusation about how liberals are trying to destroy America and Western Civilization. Now it’s CRT. Previously, it was “Rules for Radicals” and “Political Correctness.” I’m confident that at some point in the future it will be something else.

I think one of the dynamics of these kinds of online discussions is that we really don’t know as much as we think we do (myself included). Many of these discussions remind me of undergrad term papers where students who don’t really understand the theories they are talking about.

[JimFoxvog]

I never understood those scriptures about raising the hills and lowering the valleys as advocacy for "limited good" or that some people had to come down in order for others to come up. I understood those scriptures to be about the hope and dream that the work of Jesus Christ was going to remake the landscape.

I believe there are ways in which some people have to come down in order for others to come up.

Some people need to come down in their power of other people for these others to be empowered.

Some people need to stop using more than their fair share of the world's limited resources in order for others to have their fair share.

[Robert]

I never understood those scriptures about raising the hills and lowering the valleys as advocacy for "limited good" or that some people had to come down in order for others to come up. I understood those scriptures to be about the hope and dream that the work of Jesus Christ was going to remake the landscape.

I believe there are ways in which some people have to come down in order for others to come up.

Some people need to come down in their power of other people for these others to be empowered.

Some people need to stop using more than their fair share of the world's limited resources in order for others to have their fair share.

I had always understood them as ways to make straight roads. In olden times, roads followed the land. When someone of great importance was coming, they would work to straighten the road to honor the one coming. This way the person of importance did not have to walk up and down hills, but had a straight easy path into the place they were heading.

How does that translate into bringing some people down? It is about a road, not people as I understand it. Yes, I learned that from Willard Swartley in seminary.

[Neto]

An article about CRT showed up on BBC this morning.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57908808

I've seen this explanation before, but the author referenced the idea of a difference between equality and equity, using the illustration of a short person needing more boxes to see over a fence than a tall person. The idea is that some should have more help in order to access the same level of opportunity. In its application to past policies that sought to give special (additional) assistance to the "under-privileged", some persons at whom this was aimed have said this is demeaning, reducing the importance of their achievements. They wanted an equal playing-field, so that no one could say to them "You didn't build that, it was given to you w/o equal merit." An objection to this feeling might be raised on the basis of the pride involved, but as I've said before, not all pride is wrong. I think that in-so-far as one is being proud in comparison to another person, it is wrong, but not when one is measuring one's current position against one's past position. (Paul writes something from which I derive this, but I don't recall the reference right now.)

But I have two areas of severe restraint when it comes to CRT.
One, it is politics. I think that within the church, yes, we should give additional assistance to some people, in order to help them have equal opportunity. (Think of the additional assistance we offer to people with physical handicaps, like wheel-chair access, etc. In this sense we are "raising them up, giving them a level of assistance we do not offer to those w/o these limitations.) But I strongly believe in the separation of the Christian from the state. That political activism - attempting to force the government to live in peace - that is where I was when I first moved from patriotism to pacifism (largely due to Hippie philosophy as interjected into 'Mennonite pacifism' of the MCC variety in the 70's). So I do not enter into any effort to force the government or any other secular entity to offer the extra assistance. I believe that this is something that can, and should, be done on the personal level, acting as Christians. Incidentally, that is what Jesus did.
Two, any notion that someone needs to be pushed down in order to give the less-privileged an equal opportunity is (in my opinion) utter nonsense. In the context of the example I referenced above, that would be like crippling everyone who can walk, in order to "lift up" those whose physical disabilities have put them in wheel chairs. Or. like cutting the legs off of the tall person so that he or she is now the same height as the short person.
(I do think that some people would benefit from voluntarily submitting themselves to this type of limitation on a temporary basis - the wheel chair, not the cutting off of one's legs - so that they can better understand what it is like to be in that other person't position. In the context of ethnic inequality, I would recommend the book "Black Like Me".)

[Soloist]

An article about CRT showed up on BBC this morning.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57908808

I've seen this explanation before, but the author referenced the idea of a difference between equality and equity, using the illustration of a short person needing more boxes to see over a fence than a tall person. The idea is that some should have more help in order to access the same level of opportunity. In its application to past policies that sought to give special (additional) assistance to the "under-privileged", some persons at whom this was aimed have said this is demeaning, reducing the importance of their achievements. They wanted an equal playing-field, so that no one could say to them "You didn't build that, it was given to you w/o equal merit." An objection to this feeling might be raised on the basis of the pride involved, but as I've said before, not all pride is wrong. I think that in-so-far as one is being proud in comparison to another person, it is wrong, but not when one is measuring one's current position against one's past position. (Paul writes something from which I derive this, but I don't recall the reference right now.)

But I have two areas of severe restraint when it comes to CRT.
One, it is politics. I think that within the church, yes, we should give additional assistance to some people, in order to help them have equal opportunity. (Think of the additional assistance we offer to people with physical handicaps, like wheel-chair access, etc. In this sense we are "raising them up, giving them a level of assistance we do not offer to those w/o these limitations.) But I strongly believe in the separation of the Christian from the state. That political activism - attempting to force the government to live in peace - that is where I was when I first moved from patriotism to pacifism (largely due to Hippie philosophy as interjected into 'Mennonite pacifism' of the MCC variety in the 70's). So I do not enter into any effort to force the government or any other secular entity to offer the extra assistance. I believe that this is something that can, and should, be done on the personal level, acting as Christians. Incidentally, that is what Jesus did.
Two, any notion that someone needs to be pushed down in order to give the less-privileged an equal opportunity is (in my opinion) utter nonsense. In the context of the example I referenced above, that would be like crippling everyone who can walk, in order to "lift up" those whose physical disabilities have put them in wheel chairs. Or. like cutting the legs off of the tall person so that he or she is now the same height as the short person.
(I do think that some people would benefit from voluntarily submitting themselves to this type of limitation on a temporary basis - the wheel chair, not the cutting off of one's legs - so that they can better understand what it is like to be in that other person't position. In the context of ethnic inequality, I would recommend the book "Black Like Me".)

I think the key here is voluntarily. John the Baptist lowered himself so that Jesus would be elevated. Jesus lowered Himself so that we could be saved. Its one thing if we chose to give up ice cream and send our money to the needy instead, its another thing to have someone deny us ice cream to help the poor.

Also, if they object to the boxes, society seems to like boxes. Most of these equality things I've seen are not based on equal playing field but in many aspects it seems like the short person analogy fits. Not enough women in STEM? give them free money. The funny thing is, this doesn't always apply with that logic. Not enough men in nursing? given women more scholarships. I have yet to see a scholarship for male nursing. I'm sure they exist, but this problem seems ignored outside of some men beating their drums. Even among Conservative Mennonites... it confuses me to no end how we can offer nurse training for free to ladies and refuse to offer it to men even though women end up married, not working outside of the home and do not use the degree for more then a few years on average. The male on the other hand often is the primary breadwinner.

[Szdfan]

Two, any notion that someone needs to be pushed down in order to give the less-privileged an equal opportunity is (in my opinion) utter nonsense. In the context of the example I referenced above, that would be like crippling everyone who can walk, in order to "lift up" those whose physical disabilities have put them in wheel chairs. Or. like cutting the legs off of the tall person so that he or she is now the same height as the short person

I have a couple of issues and questions with this.

I completely agree with you that there is unlimited good. However, material resources are not unlimited and the attempt to make the unequal distribution of resources more equal is not like crippling everyone in order “lift up” others. This past week, two billionaires flew to the edge of space. Are Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos unimaginably wealthy because of inherent attributes like the ability to walk? Why should Amazon warehouse workers labor under inhospitable working conditions in order to maximize profits so that their boss can spend millions to fly into space? Is restricting Jeff Bezos’s ability to make billions of dollars so that his employees can have a greater share of Amazon’s profits or have better working conditions “pushing” him down?

The wealthy aren’t wealthy because they are more deserving of their wealth than the rest of us or that they have inherent abilities and attributes that the rest of us don’t. There’s a bunch of complicated and intersecting reasons why the rich are rich and the poor are poor. Some of it has to do with personal choice and some of it has to do with systematic structures beyond any one person’s control.

Right now, there’s a lot of anger in my corner of the world that the meat-packing monopolies are manipulating the market in order to maximize profits for their shareholders. Many of the ranchers in my area are struggling to make it because of the artificially low cost of beef. Breaking up the monopolies so that ranchers can get a more fair price for their cattle isn’t like physically crippling the shareholders of JBS.

Also, as I read your comments, I kept thinking about Mary’s declaration in the Magnificat:

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.

What do you think Mary is talking about? What are the characteristics of God that she’s describing here?