Race, racism, and racial politics continue to bedevil America. 

I’ve shared my views of race and racism, and on race, racism, and social justice, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Civil Rights Movement. I’ve talked about re-establishing order in urban streets and the Defund the Police movement. I’ve been particularly vocal about the danger of “Woke” ideas for American culture, the threat of “Wokeness” upon education, and the growing influence of “Woke” philosophy upon the Church.

I tried to develop a Christian worldview perspective—though I do not claim to be a philosopher or a theologian or anything other than a person who sees through a glass darkly—to avoid partisan views, which I find singularly unmotivating and inconsistent on both sides of the aisle, or even to buy-in to any ideological philosophy, though anyone who actually reads my writing will know I am conservative, little “c”.

For all this, I find it frustrating that some people seem to think they know what I believe, yet apparently have never read my writing, and others who presume to know what I believe based upon some portion of what I’ve said, or, they simply disagree and therefore find my point of view uncompelling. 

A number of things bother me, here in no particular order:

• When I listen to conservative friends, liberal friends, and a few black friends whatever their ideology, it seems to me they are not listening to one another. By this I mean, for example, that I hear different concerns and the same words used with different meanings.

• I don’t like it when people use social media in an in-your-face fashion, posting “Blue lives matter” or “All lives matter,” both of which I affirm, not alongside but seemingly in opposition to “Black lives matter,” which I also affirm. Why must these value statements be set up as “versus” rather than “both/and”?

• There are extremists on both the Left and the Right who seemed to have gained an outsized voice, who are shouting their vitriolic messages so loudly, and who have been given so much airtime in Big Media as well as Big Social Media that other moderate, i.e. reasonable, voices are drowned in the cacophony. This includes groups like Black Lives Matter or Antifa on the Left and Proud Boys or KKK on the Right, along with various white supremacists, militias, anarchists, and others promoting overthrow of the American political system.

• Black Lives Matter has pulled off an amazing and unprecedented coup gaining alignment and hundreds of millions of dollars from American corporations, universities, public schools, and professional sports associations and leagues. The group has done this in part due to the tragic death of Georg Floyd at the hands of police officers and in part because of the genius of their name. Who can or wants to speak against “black lives matter”? Of course, they matter, but the organization is anything but a simple racial justice advocacy group. It is thoroughly grounded in Marxist theory, promotes anti-biblical values and goals, and whether intentional or not, in much that it does advances a new racism in the name of anti-racism. What’s enormously concerning and frustrating about this is that the supportive corporations, educational, and entertainment organizations noted above are all diving in with both feet, afraid of being labeled anything but supportive, and seemingly doing this uncritically, thus embracing values that can or will undermine their very existence in a free, democratic, and capitalist society.

• Critical Race Theory, now promoted by BLM and being taught in universities and until recently the federal government, is a dangerous and damaging set of ideas that undermines potential for racial reconciliation. There is no redemption or forgiveness in CRT. No dissent, only submission. MLK, Jr. would not recognize and I don’t think support much of what claims to be heir to the Civil Rights Movement. Support for Black individuals realizing the full measure of their citizenship, for sure. Peaceful nonviolent protest, absolutely. Rejection of American constitutional ideals and free enterprise, No. Promotion of Black justice vs objective, truthful justice as such, No. Violence in the name of justice, No. Identifying race as the end-all-be-all of life, No.

• “Defund the Police” makes no empirical or even common sense, yet it is being embraced by cities across the country. But it was not long ago that the Clinton Administration touted its effort to put 100,000 more police officers on the streets. What happened to this? School teachers have long been told, “Don’t punish the class because one kid misbehaves.” Yes, bad or rogue or evil cops exist, and they should be discovered and removed if not put in prison for their own crimes. Yes, sad incidents have occurred in which a black person has been killed by a police officer, only later to discover that this was not a “righteous shoot.” But the number of times this has occurred per capita and accounting for the number of incidents and shootings that take place is very small. This is not to minimize or trivialize the loss of life. It is not to argue that racism does not exist in the criminal justice process. It is simply to say that criminal justice reform and accountability for bad cops can happen without defunding police departments. This is an emotional, unwise over-reaction. 

• I do not agree that “silence is violence,” nor do I agree that all white people are by definition racist any more than I think all black people are racist or possess some other negative characteristic. To argue this is itself racist because it condemns an entire category of people based on an assumption, based on the sin of given individuals. 

• Race politics in America is in a bad place to say the least. Right now, it’s extremists with the loudest voices screaming at each other on the opposite end of the teeter-totter. No real change will take place until right values are identified and embraced:

                     --That all individuals are created equal and loved by God. No one race is better much less supreme. No one race is entitled. 

                     --What people of all races hold in common as human beings is more and greater than what our minds determine divides us.

The Church needs to speak to the moment, not touting Right or Left but applying the whole counsel of God.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020    

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