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| Series Theme: "Culture Wars" |
Chapter 20: Specific Battlefronts: 4. Race – 1. Approaching Racism
CONTENTS
PART 20.1 Introducing Prejudice & Racism Definitions of Prejudice & Racism A Look at Ourselves
PART 20.2 Seeking for a more realistic world view Thoughts on Superiority • Political Outlook • Economic Differences • Religious Outlook Effects
PART 20.3 Critical Race Theory (CRT) The Past Changes Activism Personal Testimony Over-Compensation Multicultural There are Differences Back to CRT Summary
PART 20.1 Introducing Prejudice & Racism
Definitions of Prejudice & Racism: The Internet provides, “Prejudice is an assumption or an opinion about someone simply based on that person's membership to a particular group. For example, people can be prejudiced against someone else of a different ethnicity, gender, or religion.” Notice that word ‘against'. Prejudice is negative. Wikipedia states, “Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioural traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.” Again, note the word ‘superiority'.
A Look at Ourselves: Let's try to be honest, if we are part of ‘the West' and not in the lower income groups, we are better off than any previous peoples. We are more affluent and we have more possession and we have greater freedom to have, say, travel experiences, than any generation before us. Where the rest of the world has not caught up with these standards of materialism, it is so easy to assess ourselves in comparison to them in a superior way.
But it is worse than that for, living in the UK, a life in a culture whose history was steeped in division, of mill owners who employed hundreds, of coal mine owners who equally employed hundreds and partly because they needed to reinvest and build bigger and partly because they felt they earned it as ‘the owner', they became rich while the majority remained poor. Welcome to the fallen world. But we also have a history of privilege, of landed gentry who were given land and privilege by kings and queens in the past for their support. Wealth was accumulated by the few to the detriment of the many (Don't panic I'm not advocating communism!). This is the fallen world and as Christians we have to resist the negativities that come with it, we have to seek for truth about reality.
But do we have to feel guilty about this state of affairs, that we belong to an affluent nation (by world standards at least) that has been predominantly white and is accused by the culture activists of suffering ‘white privilege'? Are we to feel bad because so many people in the world are benefitting from technology developments, medical research and much else that came from this country? Even more, should we feel guilty and be constantly apologetic that our nation was involved in the Atlantic slave trade? These are questions we will answer in these next two chapters.
PART 20.2 Seeking for a more realistic world view
Thoughts on Superiority: In the definition above, we noted the words ‘superiority of one race over another' and this is at the heart of the claims of racism behind such organisations such as Black Lives Matter. So let's stop and think about this for a moment and try and obtain a wider perspective, because since the George Floyd murder in 2021, we who are predominantly white have been accused of having this superior attitude in terms of race.
Is any ‘race' superior? (Hitler thought the Germans were the master race). As human beings who stand before God, no, definitely not. But now move away from the word ‘race' to the word ‘country', what is the truth? Is any one country superior (higher in rank, status, or quality) to another? It depends how you look at it. It requires some serious thought – which is usually absent in culture wars. Let's consider some measuring sticks:
1. Political Outlook: Modern culture wars, the more you look into them, have a distinctly left-bias edge to them. In the world at the moment there are two major divisions: democracies versus totalitarian states. The world doesn't like talking about this, that there are countries ruled by a dictator or a ruling elite where vast numbers of people are subservient to that elite who dominate them. These are countries were state-controlled media dominate people's minds. North Korea is probably The classic instant of this.
In some quarters it is fashionable to decry democracy. Churchill once said, “ Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” The fact that democracy is not applied perfectly when big money gets involved, and morality within the nation is often lacking, shouldn't detract from the fact that the alternatives of totalitarianism so often demonstrate a harsh, manipulative control of subservient peoples and often corruption by those in power who secrete away large sums of money in Swiss banks.
2. Economic Differences: Capitalism versus Communism is the primary economic division in the world today, underpinning democracy or totalitarianism. Both have their weaknesses and strengths but the fact of being linked to one or other of those two main political outlooks, is what suggests the former is a wiser approach than the latter, although clearly in the west, within capitalism, there are needs for adjustment to restrict abuses of (financial) power.
3. Religious Outlook: There are, we could suggest, three power blocks in the world: a) those nations with a Christian base (which may be more in name than reality), b) those of a world religion base, e.g. Iran with Islam, India with Hinduism, and c) those that purport to be atheistic, primarily communist countries, e.g. Russia, China etc.
Effects: As far as the culture wars are concerned, two things should be noted: i) the totalitarian countries do not permit dissent and such ferment that the culture wars produce ii) it has been suggested that those totalitarian states help ferment that dissent in order to • make Western nations feel guilty and disempowered, • while using such accusations to cover up their own human rights abuses.
Murrays “The War on the West” admirably documents all of this in great detail, showing the use of racism to demean Western morality and power with guilt, and then use the whole sexuality scene to similarly demean Western morality in the eyes of younger nations. We will use quotes from his substantial chapter on ‘Race'. To see the nature of the war that has become very real throughout society on both sides of the Atlantic, we need to see how life was and now how it has become.
PART 20.3 Critical Race Theory (CRT)
The past: Anyone wishing to understand something of the racial element of modern culture was needs a little understanding of CRT. Traditionally, how things used to be, Murray suggests, was that outside of academic circles and racist organisations, it was deemed discourteous to lump people together and dismiss them simply because of the colour of their skin. An earlier generation had come because of the colour of their skin was a definition of racism. Add racism had become viewed as among the ugliest of human evils… Then, in the early years of the present century, this began to change…. an upsurge of descriptions of white people in terms that would be used about no other group in society.
Changes: He explains its development in America… Critical race theory emerged over decades in academic seminars, papers and publications. From the 1970s onwards…. (some academics) worked to create a movement of activists within academia who would interpret almost anything in the world through the lens of race….. CRT first asserted that race was the most significant factor in hiring decisions at Ivy League universities, and then that it would was the single most important lens through which to understand wider society….. What are the distinguishing marks of CRT was that its assertions were based not on evidence, as it might previously have been understood, but essentially on interpretations and attitudes . This marked a significant shift in the manner in which people were expected to prove assertions. While rarely announcing the fact, rules of CRT had no need for normal standards of evidence. If a person's ‘lived experience' could be attested to, then the question of evidence or data had to find a place further back in the queue if at all…. If one person pointed to evidence that proved America had become less racist, another person could say that he knew this was not to be the case. Why? His own ‘lived experience'…… In many ways, it was a clever move to make. For it is true that no individual's personal experience can ever been fully comprehended. But neither can it be always and wholly believed.
Activism: Have you caught the gist so far, an ideology demanding coloured ‘lived experience prevails over any other sort of evidence. He continues….
So CRT is not merely an ideology, but a strategy for activists to apply. He goes on ….
Personal Testimony: This last point is a strange feature of what is happening. Ignorance maybe, racial prejudice, I'm not so sure. Let me explain. Until the George Floyd incident, having travelled a number of times abroad to teach, both in the east and the west, I have rubbed shoulders, talked, and prayed with people of many nationalities and colours – never aware of their colour, differences yes, colour, no. (The activist will deny the truth of this.) When Black Lives Matter came to our TV screens, I found myself gazing at one BBC TV presenter who had been around a long time and suddenly thinking, “Oh my goodness, he's coloured!” I had never recognized it before. One of my best friends in America is Mexican (with a largely Mexican congregation) but until he told me that, I remained in blissful ignorance that he was anything other than ‘an American'. His co-pastor and wife, who used to be leaders with him - are coloured, I now realise. I put them high on my friendship scale, but colour has nothing to do with it. Perhaps the goal of the activists has been achieved – division!
Over-Compensation: The scale of racial disharmony is widely different either side of the Atlantic. This is not to say racism hardly exists now, because if for no other reason than human beings are fallen, it is almost inevitable as a defence mechanism between races, that needs overcoming. What is sad is that cultural differences – which should be celebrated – are used to weaponize and create racial disharmony.
A Times journalist comment a while back, British television holds up a fun-house mirror to its audience. According to the Creative Diversity Network, as of 2021 ethnic minorities are over-represented in British programming in comparison with their share of the population by nearly a factor of two. Black people are over-represented by 2.5 times. Although gay, lesbian, and bisexual people constitute 3.1 per cent of the population, they constitute 14.2 per cent of the cast in television productions — 4.5 times real life. Ah, this is just ‘affirmative action', some proclaim, while others warn that such strategies merely go to exacerbating differences and creating hostile reactions.
Multi-Cultural? Without looking into the politics of multi-culturalism for the moment, a fun exercise is to learn about the many and varied cultures in the world, each of which bring different glimmers of light into this equation. For instance, I have had interaction with Chinese and Malaysian-Chinese communities, either in this country, or in the States, or in Malaysia, and one admirable thing I note about them (among others) is that they are industrious wherever they are, they are not put off by the rest of the culture where they are living – and they don't complain about prejudice, racism, or not being on an equal footing with others, they just get on, enjoy their own culture – and succeed! But of course we never hear anything of this from the culture activists because it doesn't fit their dogma and certainly undermines their goals.
There Are Differences: In August 2020, the Times reported the following:
The Education Policy Institute, a think tank led by the former Liberal Democrat MP David Laws, this week released a telling piece of research that dwarfs all the anxieties about who sings what. The EPI team has analysed the attainment of pupils in England and Wales over the past ten years. When tested for attainment in English and maths, Caribbean heritage children reach the end of compulsory schooling on average a full school year — 10.9 months — behind their white peers, two and half years behind Indian heritage children, and over three years behind the Chinese. They lag poorer Bangladeshis by about a year and a half, and black children who have come more recently direct from Africa, some with little English on arrival, by more than ten months. Uniquely, the gap between the Caribbeans and the average has widened over the past ten years by two-thirds — a full 4 months.
Wow! The success-rate children appear to queue in line in front of Caribbean children (the base measurement), as: Chinese – 3 years ahead (note my comments above), Indian – 2 ½ years ahead, poorer Bangladeshis – 1 ½ years ahead,, white UK – nearly 11 months ahead (I hesitate to use ‘British' because most would consider themselves British), and recently arrived Africans – more than ten months ahead.
This, of course, raises questions about historic and family expectations, poverty levels maybe, but here's a point to observe: those writers writing about racial activists note they are more concerned to use such comparisons to cause ferment and dissent, than to do anything about helping and bringing change. This is a fact that arises with more than one writer. Also, when challenged such activists may reply with a most shallow, ineffective, and actually impossible-to-implement solution as we will go on to see.
Back to CRT: To quote Murray again, showing the language now being applied in modern America, writing of professors of CRT, they argued, for instance, that America was not merely a white-dominated society, or that America had a white-majority population, but a ‘white-supremacist' society. They claimed that all white people benefited from allowing white-supremacist rule. They claimed that when confronted by their racism, white people deliberately changed the subject or made themselves into the victims. They claimed that there was a specific phenomenon known as ‘white tears'….
Now listen to this very carefully…. They also claimed that whiteness was contagious. For how else to deal with the fact that many black people were not in 100% agreement with the new racial theories and did not all agree with the new ideas being foisted upon everyone? One answer was to claim that black people who were not in agreement that America was an intrinsically racist society were enacting ‘whiteness' or otherwise imbibing it like some terrible disease. After the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the Washington Post even introduced its readers to the concept of ‘multiracial whiteness' as a way to explain how ethnic minorities might have voted for the Republican candidate. Murray goes on to show how, because of media coverage, Americans believe the race situation to be considerably worse than it actually is, exacerbating even more divisions within that society. Well that was only a short way in, to Murray's chapter on Race, but it does go to show something of the deceptions and active strategies that modern Wester societies are struggling with in this war of ideologies.
Summary: Black anti-woke writer, John H. McWhorter perhaps summarizes the situation today: First-wave anti-racism fought slavery and segregation. Second-wave anti-racism, in the 1970s and 1980s, taught America that being racist is a moral flaw. The third wave teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, making all whites who aren't actively fighting it complicit in its persistence.
Without question, the American slavery experience, and the subsequent racial prejudice, especially in the South, has provided the main incendiary fuel that has helped stoke the modern inferno of ‘racial activism' as a key element in the culture wars by the far left, but what is the truth about that? In the next chapter we will provide a comprehensive list of answers to that, courtesy of Douglas Murray, and then in the following chapter we will consider racism and slavery from the perspective of the Bible.
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