No to the Politics of “Whiteness”
Written by Christopher F. Rufo |
Thursday, September 7, 2023
The vision of racialists, whether on the left or right, is pessimistic: the first is driven by a spirit of vengeance, the second by a sense of inferiority. They are two sides of the same coin. Despite real tensions and disparities, Americans are, on the whole, a tolerant, cooperative people who aspire to a colorblind standard, derived from the natural rights tradition, that remains the best guidepost for the country’s future.
In recent years, I have devoted considerable time to exposing the radical Left’s politics of “whiteness,” which posits that white identity, culture, and power are irredeemably oppressive and must be “abolished” in favor of alternative modes of being. “Whiteness” represents the metaphysical essence of left-wing race politics: an irreducible force of evil, a master synonym for racism, oppression, inequality, and suffocating bourgeois norms; anything saturated with its properties can be automatically categorized and condemned. In practice, the politics of whiteness has translated into the demonization of European-Americans in primary school curricula, the performance of elaborate “white privilege” rituals in the workplace, and outright segregation in many public institutions. All of it is done to solve “the problem of whiteness.”
Some pushback has resulted. In the years following the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, conservatives have exposed the poisonous politics of left-wing racialism, shutting down some of the bureaucracies that push it and proposing a reaffirmation of the ideal of colorblind equality. Unfortunately, some on the right would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, preferring instead to adopt the basic framework of identity politics and simply reverse its polarity. Dismayingly, a sentiment is rising in some corners of conservative politics that the answer to left-wing identity politics is right-wing identity politics.
The main argument for this position is that colorblind equality is unattainable. Left-wing racialism has been embedded in our institutions, laws, and policies to such an extent that it cannot be rolled back using conventional means. All politics is friend-enemy politics, this faction argues, and given the demographic decline of European Americans, whites will eventually need to activate “white racial consciousness” to secure their basic interests. European Americans once had robust ethnic identities, but after generations of assimilation and intermarriage, those distinctions have lost their salience and consolidated into a homogenous, generalized “white identity.” If there is to be a racial spoils system, then each group must get its share—including whites.
How should we evaluate this argument? First, as an empirical matter, some basic facts should be acknowledged. Yes, left-wing racialism is indeed now deeply embedded in America’s institutions, and the demographic balance of the country has shifted in recent decades. And yes, the basic racial classification system in the United States broadly delineates continental origin—Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia—in a way that is not arbitrary or meaningless. Terms such as “white,” “black,” “Latino,” and “Asian,” while often obscuring important variations within such groupings, have become the lingua franca and are useful shorthand descriptors for many purposes.
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Singing in the Face of Suffering
Although the best comfort comes from God’s word, Christians have for centuries reflected on the hardships of life in light of the truth of God’s word in those seasons and written beautiful poetry shaped by the ideas and principles of the Scripture to find perspective and hope in God.
God’s people have never been strangers to sorrow and suffering. In His final instructions in the Upper Room, our Saviour warned us,
Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world (John 16:32–33).
Those words had particular application to the scattering of the sheep after the Shepherd was struck (cf. Zech. 13:7, Matt. 26:31) in His arrest by the Jewish Priests and condemnation by the Romans, but nonetheless we have come to know all to well the abiding application and truth of the Saviour’s words: In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
Affliction and tribulation are not unique to the New Covenant Church. The faithful in the Hebrew Church suffered greatly at the hands of their pagan neighbors and the wicked within the Old Covenant Church as well.
The ancient foe of God’s people works with hateful cunning and power to drive God’s people to despair. In the face of the rage of the devil and his minions, God’s people have for millennia cried to Him in song seeking both aid and solace, for they have learned: He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.
During my time at Grove City College, I spent many hours in Harbison Chapel playing hymns and psalms. Apart from reading the Scripture, there are few things more spiritually fruitful than meditating upon the prayers and praises offered by God’s people from of old.I. Comfort from the Psalter
Growing up Lutheran, we chanted from the Psalter each Lord’s Day, but Presbyterians have a special love for the Psalter and singing from it is an essential part of the worship of God. It is right that in sorrow we turn first to the Psalter for words to sing and pray, since they are words given by God’s Holy Spirit to the Church expressly for our use in prayer and singing.
The Old Covenant saints were often acquainted with affliction at the hands of the wicked, and their experiences can teach us how to suffer and grieve well as God’s people. In their sorrows, the Old Covenant saints found comfort from God’s coming victory. The Trinity Psalter Hymnal provides an excellent resource for Christians who are grieving and lamenting to call out to God in faith and hope.
Psalm 68
Although the enemies of God’s people may have their day and inflict horrible wounds upon God’s holy ones, the psalmist instructs us to draw comfort from the certain glorious triumph of our God.In Psalm 68, David looks forward to the day when all those who hate God and His people will be scattered and perish and God restores joy to His people in His glory:
God shall arise, and by His might Put all His enemies to flight;In conquest shall He quell them. Let those who hate Him, scattered, fleeBefore His glorious majesty, For God Himself shall fell them.Just as the wind drives smoke away, So God will scatter the arrayOf those who evil cherish. As wax that melts before the fire,So vanquished by God’s dreadful ire, Shall all the wicked perish.
But let the just with joyful voice In God’s victorious might rejoice;Let them exult before Him! O sing to God, His praise proclaimAnd raise a Psalm unto His Name; In joyful songs adore Him.Lift up your voice and sing aloud To Him who rides upon the cloudsHigh in the spacious heavens. The LORD, that is His glorious Name.Sing unto Him with loud acclaim; To Him be glory given.
The Trinity Psalter Hymnal uses a setting from the Genevan Psalter for Psalm 68, which is both profound and powerful in the way it emphasizes the words and gives hope that God will set all things right.
Psalm 80
As Book III of the Psalter (Psalms 73-89) draws to a close, the psalms seem to focus increasingly on the plight of God’s people as the pagans from the nations come in and oppress the servants of the Living God. Book III (Psalm 89) even seems to end with the question, “Is God still King?”
Psalm 80 calls out from deep anguish to God as the “Shepherd of Israel.” The psalmist (Asaph) reflects on God’s mighty throne “above the cherubim” and on God’s past grace toward His Church: “you who led Joseph like a flock.”While God had planted His people in a good land and shown great care for them in the past, the psalmist quickly turns his attention to the urgent need for restoration and help, because the nations have come in and ravaged God’s helpless people (organ setting):
A strife you have made us to neighbors around,Our foes in their laughter and scoffing abound.O LORD God of hosts, in your mercy restore,And we shall be saved when your face shines once more.
When the enemies of God have come into the Church, His people can be assured their Redeemer will restore His people and give them peace afresh.
Psalm 94
In our grief and sorrow at injustice, God’s people’s thoughts inevitably turn to vengeance. But God has reserved vengeance for Himself (Cf. Deut. 32:25, Rom 13:4), and so He has provided psalms and prayers for His people to use for this very purpose. One of them is Psalm 94. The Book of Psalms for Worship contains an excellent setting (Tune: Austria):We have already witnessed the media transition from reporting on events to now seeming to imply the victims of a mentally ill woman are somehow to blame for an act of unspeakable horror because she comes from a more culturally acceptable community of people than those who are part of a Christian school.
As the wicked use the slaughter of children and elderly to advance an agenda of demonic mutilation of the human body and effacing of the imago Dei, God has provided in the Psalter words both of abundant comfort and prayer:
God, the LORD, from whom is vengeance, God, Avenger, O shine forth!Judge of all the earth, O rise up! Pay the proud what they are worth.O LORD, how long will the wicked, How long will the wicked gloat?From their mouths they pour out violence, Of themselves all wicked boast.
Who the ear made, can He hear not? Who formed eyes, can He not see?Who warns nations, will He strike not? Who men teaches, knows not He?All the thoughts of men the LORD knows; Knows that but a breath are they.Blessed the man whom You reprove, LORD; Through Your law You point his way.
God is aware the wicked seem to be on the ascent and they sit in power for too long. But the saint can take heart, God sees, hears, warns, and teaches. And one day God will give His people rest:
Give him rest from days of trouble Till the wicked are brought down.For the LORD stays with His people, He will not forsake His own.Righteous judgments will be rendered, Justice will return again;Those of upright heart will follow In the way of justice then.
The psalter is our best comfort in affliction, because the words come from God Himself. It is said that when Martin Luther, when he received news of his father’s death, he took his Psalter and went to his room for the rest of the day, and there he found the sufficiency of God’s comfort.
As we sing the Psalter in affliction, we are joining a great company of God’s people stretching back thousands of years who looked to God and His word when they lack the strength to press on.
II. Comfort from the Hymnal
Although the best comfort comes from God’s word, Christians have for centuries reflected on the hardships of life in light of the truth of God’s word in those seasons and written beautiful poetry shaped by the ideas and principles of the Scripture to find perspective and hope in God.
This Is My Father’s World
A well-loved hymn whose third stanza seems especially appropriate for the past week (organ setting):
This is my Father’s world: O let me ne’er forgetThat though the wrong seems oft so strong,God is the Ruler yet. This is my Father’s World!The battle is not done. Jesus who died shall be satisfied.And earth and heaven be one.
The reign of God does not immediately nullify our sadness and sorrow. But Christ who died will make all things new and will have the last say. These words point us forward to one of the closing visions of the Scripture:
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:2–4).
The Scripture does not tell us our grief is something to suppress or to dismiss as “worldly,” but God does promise us there will come a day when all the causes of grief and sorrow are removed forever. That is something to sing about!
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The Witness of Truth & Integrity
How easily we can overlook our own ability to bring the Word of God to bear in our daily interactions. What if we thought more deeply about our beliefs, responsibilities, and everyday choices as we dwell together before a watching world? We are resident foreigners with an eternal citizenship in heaven (1 Peter 2:11). Remembering this divine reality changes the way we interact on earth. Imagine how mighty a witness we would be as countless thousands of Christians deploy into the culture every single day with one visual in mind: We are a city on a hill.
Let’s not be surprised. The world is a dark place, and attacks on Christianity by our culture are in abundant supply. A quick scroll through your social media feed or a fifteen-minute segment of the evening news will prove that. While some might say, “It’s worse than ever!” we must admit that somewhere in the world it’s always been like this. Jesus put it this way when preparing His own disciples for His departure: “In this world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33).
As Christians, it’s more than likely that our faith in Christ will bring us attacks, slander, workplace discrimination, and the loss of friends and opportunities. In the midst of such treatment, there is a temptation to fight fire with fire. But what if we saw times like these as a great opportunity to be a witness? What if our most powerful witness was found in using weapons of warfare that look nothing like the culture’s? As Christians, we are the light of the world. We are a city on a hill (Matt. 5:14). But how can light be light when it looks like the darkness?
The Apostle Paul was no stranger to trouble and dealing with difficult people, yet he continued to encourage the church to preserve its witness in the midst of a wicked culture. “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Col. 4:5–7). These words were penned by the same Paul who was slandered by false teachers and had his integrity questioned in Corinth (2 Cor. 10–11). Yet, Paul continued to make every effort to guard his witness by proclaiming the truth and walking with integrity. His heart was wide open to the church (6:11), he exemplified his own words to “owe no one anything” but to love others (Rom. 13:8), and he poured his life out as a drink offering (2 Tim. 4:6). He was a wonderful example of truth and integrity. How can we maintain our witness in today’s culture? By reflecting the character of Him to whom we bear witness.
The enemy’s strategy has not changed. Darkness will stop at nothing in tempting you to behave like the world in times like these.
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Reflections on Race and Racism
Perhaps the most important thing to say about race, in the typical American sense of the word,[1] is that it does not exist. Unlike sex, it has no biological reality, and unlike ethnicity, it has no cultural reality. The human community simply is not divided into half-a-dozen (or whatever) racial groups united by distinct genetic markers or a common culture. Let me explain this claim. The idea that race exists did not originate in Scripture. Scripture speaks of all human beings descending from one man, and thus the only “race” it knows is the one human race. Scripture distinguishes among humans, but does so in terms of people-groups.
Race and racism are obviously controversial issues. Writing on the subject is a thankless task, bound to provoke accusations that an author is enthralled by some nefarious ideology and insufficiently enlightened by a better one. This essay has no agenda either to call out the church for racism or to strike the death blow against wokeness. It simply offers reflections on race and racism intended to help Reformed Christians work through these matters in humble, wise, and Christ-honoring ways. Five basic ideas guide these reflections. (A terminological note: I use “antiracist” to refer to scholars and activists who use this term to describe themselves, not as a general term for all people who think racism is immoral. Although antiracists differ amongst themselves on some issues, they share many core convictions addressed below.)
1. Race Does Not Exist, although Racism Does.
Perhaps the most important thing to say about race, in the typical American sense of the word,[1] is that it does not exist. Unlike sex, it has no biological reality, and unlike ethnicity, it has no cultural reality. The human community simply is not divided into half-a-dozen (or whatever) racial groups united by distinct genetic markers or a common culture. Let me explain this claim.
The idea that race exists did not originate in Scripture. Scripture speaks of all human beings descending from one man, and thus the only “race” it knows is the one human race. Scripture distinguishes among humans, but does so in terms of people-groups. Egyptians, Babylonians, Israelites, and dozens of others had different customs and religions, but they were not different races. The geographical theatre in which the biblical story unfolded, at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, ensured that biblical writers were familiar with people of dark skin, light skin, and many shades in between, yet they gave no hint of regarding Cushites and Galatians (Celts) as racially separate.
Contemporary genetic science comes to the same conclusion. Mapping the human genome is one of the most amazing scientific accomplishments of recent decades. By studying the genetic information of living humans and comparing it to DNA from human remains of past millennia, genetic scientists have been able to reconstruct the migration of peoples and their inter-breeding with other peoples in ways hitherto impossible. Data is still coming in and scientists will undoubtedly modify their reconstructions, but one basic conclusion is clear: the modern conception of race has no genetic basis. People around the world are related to each other in complex and often counter-intuitive ways. Who would have thought, for example, that Western Africans are more closely related genetically to Western Europeans than to Eastern Africans? Population-groups have certain genetic markers distinguishing them from other population-groups, but this does not translate into anything corresponding to the “races” of modern mythology.[2]
Furthermore, race has no cultural reality because, unlike ethnic-groups, modern races (“black,” “white,” “Asian,” etc.) do not share a common culture. Rather, they consist of a multitude of groups with often very different histories, languages, and the like.
I do not know how many contemporary Reformed Christians believe that race is a biological and cultural reality, but they would be well-advised to abandon such a spurious notion.
Race, instead, is a figment of the human imagination. One way to put it is that race is a social construct.[3] Certain people in a certain historical context developed the notion of distinct human races. Although social constructs are not necessarily bad or unhelpful, this one was pernicious. Europeans constructed race in conjunction with the colonization of the Americas and the African slave-trade, and they used it to justify the subjugation of non-Europeans and the elevation of Europeans as morally and intellectually superior.[4]
This explains why racism exists even though race does not. (I take “racism” as treating and judging people not according to what is true about them but according to their racial categorization.) Social constructs can be powerful. Often what we imagine to be true shapes our thoughts, feelings, and behavior more strongly than what is actually true. Christians should understand this. Scripture emphasizes that there is no God but one. Yet idolatry exists and it is seductive. Baal was a construct of the human imagination, but it inspired people to dance around altars cutting themselves and provoked Israel to forsake the living God who redeemed them from bondage. Race is something like a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are based on fabrications, yet they can powerfully re-shape the lives of those who buy into them. They scare people into moving off the grid, rejecting life-saving vaccines, or hording gold coins under their mattress. Likewise, race is based on lies, but the idea became very important to those who believed those lies and forced others to live as if they were true.[5]
2. The Interests of Truth and Peace Call for De-Racialization.
If race is a fabrication of the sinful imagination, there seems to be one fundamental and necessary response: Deal with the idea as the lie it is. Stop acting as though race is real. Stop treating and judging people according to what is false. As people are unlikely to escape Baal-worship until they cease to think and act as though a powerful deity named Baal exists, so people are unlikely to escape racism until they cease to think and act as though race exists.
Some of what this entails is obvious, even if easy to overlook. Most of us have become aware of racial stereotypes and made efforts to give them up, but we all need to stay alert and keep striving to put them aside. Most of us have been warned about the hurt caused by racist jokes, although many people still tell them privately now and then, thinking no one is harmed. But whether in public or private, that is acting as though a destructive lie were true. Or consider some people’s habit of mentioning a person’s racial categorization when it is irrelevant: the European-American, for example, who relates a funny incident at the grocery store and describes one of the people involved as an “Asian guy,” although it has no bearing on the story. Perhaps she intends nothing malicious, but she perpetuates racial thought-patterns that have wrought profound harm.
Recognizing the myth of race calls for de-racialization. That is, to live by truth and at peace with all our fellow humans, we ought to (continue to) strip our minds of racial categories and treat our neighbors without respect to them.
What I just wrote is highly controversial. Its most prominent opponents, however, are not unrepentant racists but antiracists. For antiracists, the preceding paragraph promotes color-blindness, the idea that we should not see other people’s race. They believe this is a terrible thing that impedes racial justice and reconciliation rather than promotes it.[6] Progress, they argue, requires seeing racial tensions and dynamics everywhere. When “whites” do not see race, it manifests their dominant place in society and their privilege over others. “Whites” need to become increasingly cognizant of their “whiteness” and hence remain aware of others’ different identities.[7]
These antiracists have legitimate concerns. If wrongs have been done in the name of an imaginary concept, it is surely impossible to rectify wrongs and change course without mentioning that concept. To return to a previous analogy, the Old Testament prophets did not pretend as though they had never heard of Baal or ignore the seduction of idolatry. Likewise, battling racism throughout de-racialization should not mean that we simply stop talking about race and hope that this clears things up. Antiracists are also rightly concerned about an alleged color-blindness that sees the world only through the lens of one’s own cultural assumptions. Ceasing to judge people according to racial categorization should not mean making one’s own culture the universal standard. Cultural diversity is generally a good thing.[8] Finally, antiracists correctly oppose a color-blindness that evaluates all formally identical racial statements identically. For example, an African-American who says “black is beautiful” and a European-American who says “white is beautiful” make formally identical statements. But in the context of American history, they obviously do not communicate the same thing.[9]
These concerns should keep us from a simplistic color-blindness, but if we are concerned about truth and peace, our goal ought to be the elimination of thinking and acting in racial terms. The best strategy for getting there is open for debate, but it is far-fetched to think that the concept of race might disappear by demanding that people see all things through the lens of race.
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