Category Archives: race

Understanding Academia’s Obsession with Race, Gender, and Identity (Part Two)

5 Replies

In the previous essay I promised to complete my description of Theory (or Critical Theory), which is the framework that makes sense of the “crazy talk” about race, gender, and identity we often hear emanating from the modern university. The original postmodernism, with its two principles and four major themes—discussed in the previous post—takes a playful, skeptical, and ironic stance toward all truth claims. It affirms nothing and criticizes everything. Pure postmodernism cannot function as a philosophy for political activism. For it deconstructs everything and constructs nothing. Whereas science aims to describe the world and radical politics wants to change it, postmodernism wishes only to criticize it.

Social Justice Theory as Applied Postmodernism

According to Pluckrose and Lindsay, Cynical Theories, between the 1980s and 2010 race, gender, and identity theorists drew on postmodernism for the critical parts of their activist theories. Theory uses postmodern knowledge principle to create suspicion of the knowledge claims and narratives of the dominant groups in society. And it uses the postmodern political principle to expose the pervasive presence of power in society and its control over what counts as truth and justice. However, in contrast to the original postmodernism, Theory uses postmodernism’s critical tools only against ideologies and narratives it deems supportive of the oppressive forces in society. It does not turn them against the narratives of society’s oppressed and marginalized.* The latter are treated in practice as true and expressive of justice. The former are treated as false and expressive of injustice. Postmodernism’s universal deconstruction of all truth claims, every power center, and each assertion of stable identity, was transformed into a binary order–a new metanarrative–defined by the division between oppressor and oppressed.

*I don’t have space to define the “marginalized.” As the term indicates, the marginalized are defined by what they are not. They are not the dominant group. Look up Cynical Theories in your favorite search engine.

Social Justice Theory as Reified Postmodernism

After 2010, Theory (Social Justice Theory or Critical Theory) confidently asserted the truth of its critique of knowledge and the political order. The mood is no longer skeptical and playful but cynical and dogmatic. Pluckrose and Lindsey speak of this shift as the “reification” of postmodernism. Within the world of contemporary Theory it is presupposed that any moral or scientific justification of the status quo (the oppressors) is merely an ideology originating from desire to maintain dominance over people with marginalized identities. In contrast, narratives that free and empower marginalized people are by definition true. Social Justice Theory is a strange combination of cynicism and dogmatism, which makes sense only as an arbitrary decision to apply postmodern cynicism to the narratives of one group and superstitious credulity to the other. What motivates this seemingly arbitrary decision? Lust for power, guilt, resentment, and envy or passion for justice?

Ironically, because of Theory’s dogmatic assertion that truth and right are always on the side of the marginalized, a marginal identity has become a coveted possession within the Social Justice universe. And the more marginalized your identity, the higher your status in the new order will be. A person’s identity as marginalized is enhanced when it is constructed by the intersection of two or more marginal identities. In a reversal of postmodernism’s universal suspicion of power, contemporary Theory uses its claims of truth and right to demand submission from the heretofore dominant group. Theory, then, flips the social order on its head. The oppressors become the oppressed, truth becomes falsehood, good becomes evil, and right becomes wrong. And there is no arbiter, via media, no common ground. There are only winners and losers.

Classical Liberalism as the Response to Applied and Reified Postmodernism?

As their response to the irrationality and socially destructive effects of Social Justice Theory’s activist and reified postmodernism, Pluckrose and Lindsey urge a return to classical liberalism, that is, to reason, truth, freedom of expression, civil liberty, common humanity, debate, and evidence-based knowledge.

Next Time: I will explain my partial agreement with Pluckrose’s and Lindsey’s proposal and offer a Christian response to the view of freedom common to both postmodernism and liberalism.

After Whiteness by Willie Jennings—A Non-Review Review

5 Replies

I hate to break promises! Well, perhaps, I’m not breaking my promise. I’m just not able to fulfill it to the degree I had hoped. In the previous post “Race, Gender, and Identity…Oh My,” I promised to reflect next on Willie Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Eerdmans, 2020). I re-read the book this morning—It’s only 115 pages long—and I came away a second time with that I-don’t-get-it feeling. In part, it’s that perplexity I want to explore in this essay.

At present, Jennings is an associate professor of theology and Africana studies at Yale University. He also taught at Duke University Divinity School and served as an associate dean while at Duke. His latest book focuses on theological education at seminaries and divinity schools. As someone who has written several books and hundreds of essays, I understand an author’s and a publisher’s desire to select a title that is both descriptive and provocative. Authors want to be read and publishers want to make money. “After Whiteness” is provocative.

Jennings lets us know in the Preface that “whiteness” is not completely synonymous with being white. For Jennings, whiteness is an ideal image of a fully developed human being constructed by Europeans over centuries. This ideal is embodied in the individual white male who has mastered himself and others (especially white females and all non-white people) through scientific reason and technology. He is self-sufficient, analytical, heterosexual, and individualistic, and he objectivizes everything and everyone. According to Jennings, this ideal human being serves as a mold into which Western education—specifically Western theological education—attempts to squeeze everyone. Switching metaphors, the theological school is Procrustean bed in which those who do not naturally fit—women and people of color—are trimmed and shaped according to the ideal pattern. Note the violence in the language. Those for whom whiteness is simply the truth view this educational process as civilizing, uplifting, and empowering.

When I say of Jennings’s book “I don’t get it,” I do not mean that I disagree with him. In fact, I’ve long resisted the ideal he describes as “whiteness,” and I think theological education is long overdue for a radical reformation. I hope to voice my critique of the state of theological education in future essays. What I mean by “I don’t get it” is that Jennings presents his critique and offers his vision as a series of extended metaphors and vignettes. They convey a mood and articulate feelings, but I don’t see a clear vision of the new community of belonging of which Jennings dreams. The book’s subtitle indicates that Jennings’s alternative to whiteness is belonging. From what I read in the book, this community of belonging will be founded on a decision for mutual acceptance of everyone’s identity, their experience, and their stories. What I don’t get is how this book, with its metaphors and stories, offers a critique of “whiteness” (as defined by Jennings) that meets whiteness on its own turf and demonstrates its theological and ethical weaknesses. Perhaps my assessment on this score says as much about me as it does about Jennings. After all, to meet whiteness on its own turf and use its own weapons against it would be to grant it a kind of legitimacy.

I wondered briefly why Jennings used the term “whiteness” in his title only to explain in the Preface that he did not mean “white people.” It’s an eye-catching title, to be sure, and publishers love that sort of thing. But is there more to it? To use the term “whiteness” to describe the Western rational and scientific approach to education, whatever the term’s descriptive truth, seems to me akin to Ibram Kendi’s use of the terms “racism” and “racist” to designate those who decline to support his political policies. That is to say, it tars those who support traditional Western theological education with a term loaded with negative moral implications. Those who support traditional Western theological education, consciously or unconsciously, support whiteness. And surely no one who supports whiteness, with its oblique connection to white supremacy and white privilege, can be a good person.

What I longed to hear but did not was a critique of “whiteness” from a deeply Christian perspective, a stance of profound humility, repentance, faith, hope, and love rooted in the crucified and risen Jesus, empowered by the life-giving Holy Spirit, and directed to the God who is and shall be all in all. I did not see a vision of unity vivid enough, power enough, or profound enough to create Jennings’s desired community of belonging…a vision in which “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). For sure, the unity spoken of by Paul is not that of universal conformity to the ideal of the white male, self-sufficient, isolated, and masterful. Nor is it a unity created by everyone agreeing to accept everyone’s natural and self-chosen identity. It is the unity forged between Jesus Christ and everyone who by giving themselves to Christ are given a new identity as images of Christ who is the Image of God.

Race, Gender, Identity…Oh My

1 Reply

I can already hear you saying to yourself, “Really? You’re going to talk about race, gender, and Identity? Are you crazy? I thought you avoided discussing politics on your blog?” I hear you, and I assure you I am not changing my policy. The problem is that moral issues often become politicized, so that political lines get drawn between partisans based on their stances on moral issues. Since Christianity cannot surrender its moral teaching to the secular order without denying that God is the author of the universal moral law, Christians cannot remain silent on moral issues even if those topics are also matters of partisan political disputes. My discussions of moral issues on this blog will remain apolitical in this sense: I will not argue on theological or rational grounds for a secular public policy. However I would be a faithless theologian, a thoughtless Christian, and a cowardly blogger if I surrendered morality to individual choice or political deliberation.

As I promised in my previous post “What A Year It Has Been,” I want to share my reflections on three books I read this year. Ibram Kendi, How To Be An Antiracist, Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, and Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsey, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—And Why This Harms Everybody. I do not plan on doing full reviews of these books. Perhaps I will do that later. I want, rather, to set before you the central arguments of each and then reflect theologically on the issues raised.

Ibram Kendi, How To Be An Antiracist

How To Be An Antiracist is a rhetorically brilliant book. The point of each chapter is woven in and around a compelling autobiographical story. The story draws the reader into the narrative that produces the knowledge claim of the chapter. This technique, I think, fuels the persuasive power of the book. However I found myself needing to disengage my emotions from Kendi’s enthralling story to examine his argument rationally.

The book aims to teach readers “how to be an antiracist.” In the minds of most people racism is one of the ugliest character traits imaginable and racist individuals are rightly discredited from public respectability. So, the average reader opens the book with the expectation of agreeing with the author. After all, how could a person who repudiates the ugly doctrine of racism not also wish to be an anti-racist? As you begin reading the introduction and the first chapter, however, you realize that you and Kendi are working with different definitions of racism. Most people think of racism as a conscious attitude of animus toward a particular racial group and a racist as an individual who harbors such attitudes. A person who does not harbor racial animus and attempts to treat all people regardless of race with equal dignity and fairness is not a racist. This is the common sense view.

Kendi includes the common understanding of racism and the racist character type within his definition of racism, but he expands his definition to include unconscious attitudes and seemingly innocent actions and inactions. For Kendi, racism is the hidden, implicit ideology that justifies the interlocking system of public policies and practices that creates and sustains inequity—that is, unequal possession of life’s (mostly material) goods—between racial groups. A racist is someone who by what they do or what they neglect to do supports this system of policies. An antiracist is someone who refuses to support and actively resists the racist system of policies.

In this way, Kendi shifts the locus of racism from self-conscious attitudes of individual racists to the unconscious system of values, policies, and practices that structures American society. These values and practices include the free market economy, meritocracy, color blindness, and mere equality before the law. All these values tend to perpetuate the status quo and, hence, are racist, according to Kendi’s definition. The evidence for systemic racism is the de facto inequity in income, housing, education, health care, and other measures of wellbeing between white people as a whole and people of color as a whole. Even if no one harbored conscious racist feelings or exhibited commonly identified racist behaviors, this lack would not disprove the racism of the system and those who participate in it. Your feelings of goodwill toward all people do not prove that you are not a racist. Only your active support for public policies that promote equity and your active resistance to policies that sustain inequity qualify you as an antiracist. There is no neutral ground such as might be designated by the term “not-racist.”

In Kendi’s lexicon, racism’s center of gravity has shifted from the moral core of the individual to a diffuse socio-political order. Yet he retains the emotionally loaded moral terms “racism” and “racist” to describe the character of this order. The effect is to make it grossly immoral not to support the political policies that Kendi thinks will best ameliorate the inequities among the races or to lend support to policies and values that Kendi thinks will perpetuate the status quo. Kendi is a bit coy about stating his antiracist political policies in clear terms, but I think we can infer from his criticisms of the free market economy, meritocracy, color blindness, and mere equality before the law that he would favor policies designed to achieve greater material equity among the races even if it means abandoning these principles.

Don’t miss this shift: policy differences arise not simply from different rational conclusions about what means will best achieve agreed upon goals but from profound differences in moral character. To support traditional liberal policies—free markets, merit-based reward systems, individualism, and so on—is a racist act, whereas to support policies designed to produce equity—equality of outcomes—is an antiracist act. The first is morally wrong and the second is morally right. The categories by which to evaluate public policy shift from sound or flawed reasoning to good or evil motives.

I will save my theological assessment of How To Be An Antiracist until I have summarize the other two books.