Racial Justice

Confronting Racial Disparities in America, From Cradle to Grave: A Reading List

Brad Mason4 Comments

Wealth Gap and More

[A]s surely as the law has outlawed racial discrimination, it has affirmed that Black Americans can be without jobs, have their children in all black, poorly funded schools, have no opportunities for decent housing, and have very little political power, without any violation of antidiscrimination law. (Alan Freeman, “Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law,” p. 1050)

Following 200 years of slavery, the Civil War, the abandonment of Reconstruction, and 100 years of both legal and de facto nationwide Jim Crow, it should be no wonder that in the 21st century, the average “White” child is born into a family with ten to twenty times the wealth of a “Black” peer…

1 “Systematic Inequality: How America’s Structural Racism Helped Create the Black-White Wealth Gap”

2 “The Black-White Economic Divide Remains as Wide as in 1968”

3  “Whites Have Huge Wealth Edge Over Blacks (but Don’t Know It)”

4 “The racial wealth gap: How African-Americans have been shortchanged out of the materials to build wealth”

…regardless of family structure or parents’ education…

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The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 1: A Survey of the “Traditional Civil Rights Discourse”

Brad Mason7 Comments

CRT Porch Article 1 Image

Though I’ve covered Critical Theory generally, I’ve begun a new series on Critical RACE Theory proper, over on The Front Porch! I’m attempting to approach the subject in a more historical manner that I hope will facilitate greater understanding of the subject.

As a layman, I find that learning a subject through its actual historical milieu helps me not only remember the right words, phrases, and concepts, but, more importantly, helps me understand them. And it is understanding which seems most lacking in evangelicalism when it comes to Critical Race Theory (CRT). As such, I hope over the next few posts, in the most conversational manner possible, to not only provide the nuts and bolts of this broad ideology as presented by its chief advocates, but to also, as it were, tell the story of CRT, before moving into any critical assessment.

So grateful they were kind enough to publish it! Please take a look and let me know your thoughts!

Part 1: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 1: A Survey of the ‘Traditional Civil Rights Discourse’”

Part 2: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 2: The Segregationist Discourse and Civil Rights Retrenchment”

Part 3: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 3: A Bridge: Dr. Derrick Bell”

Part 4: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 4: Alan Freeman and the Contribution of CLS“

Part 5: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 5: A Misalignment of Frames: Integrationism“

Part 6: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 6: A Misalignment of Frames: The ‘New Right’“

Part 7: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 7: A Race Intervention Into Critical Legal Studies“

Part 8: “The Christian and Critical Race Theory, Part 8: the Harvard Story and the Birth of ‘Critical Race Theory’“

Interlude: “The Christian and CRT, an Interlude: The Most Segregated Hour and Liberal Integrationism“

More to come!

Racial Justice is Not “Liberalism”

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Machen 2

We reject theological liberalism–defined by J. Gresham Machen in Christianity and Liberalism as a “different gospel” from the Scriptural gospel. (43, 44)

Above is the first “Denial” listed in the “Report of the ad Interim Committee on Racial and Ethnic Reconciliation to the Forty-Sixth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America.” Every time I read this line, I think, “yep,” and keep reading. No alarms.

But as time and debate has continued since its publication and adoption, I’m starting to wonder if many within the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition see this inclusion as a contradiction of the rest of the document, especially among the self-described “Machen Warriors.” I fear that Machen’s personal political and sociological views have been illegitimately folded into his definition of “Liberalism” by modern hagiographers.

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