“Race” “racism” and biblical language

“A grouping of nations more closely related to each other than to other nations” is another way of saying “race.” If you don’t like that term, that’s fine, but it’s a real thing, and it affects more than just skin color and eye shape.

I can tell from your profile photo that it’s a waste of money to test you for sickle cell disease. You are also unlikely to be lactose intolerant. Some brief inquiries about your recent heritage would likely tell me that it’s also not worth worrying about Tay-Sachs disease in your kids.

Closer to today’s headlines, it has been an article of faith in our elite class for 50 years that the races are substantially identical, and therefore differences in outcome between races must necessarily be the result of racism. (This is “disparate impact” in a nutshell.) The refusal to consider the hypothesis that there may be a genetic component to any disparate outcomes has driven our ruling class insane, and our cities burn.

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You of all people will appreciate the old quip that the language of Heaven is actually Finnish … because it takes a non-native speaker an eternity to learn!

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I’ve heard this kind of argument being made in conservative Christian circles for years, particularly among Six Day Creationists, of which I am one. I used to hold this view.

I don’t any longer. Others here, particularly John M, have offered more helpful comments than I would have been able to write. I will add some more.

Race can be used in a broad or narrow sense. It can mean the whole human race. It can also mean people of a particular nation or ethnicity. In his book on the history of the English speaking peoples, Winston Churchill refers to the “British race” or the “Saxon race.” That usage is fairly common in older authors. Race can also mean something in between those two categories, as a family of similar nations living close to one another geographically, and therefore sharing certain climatic adaptations like skin color or eye shape. In America, we took in immigration from mostly Western European countries during our formative years. When people talk about the “white race” in an American context, they mean the people from Western Europe who settled the country originally: Germans, English, Scots, Irish, Scandanavian, Dutch, etc.

Even among whites, as Paul Ojanen has noted, certain ethnic differences remain and endure. Dutch differ from Germans differ from English differ from Scot and on and on. Those ethnic differences endure in our churches. If you are not Dutch, it’s going to be awkward, to a certain extent, to be part of a Dutch Reformed church. If you are not Anglo, or not even a native English speaker, being part of a Presbyterian church and loving the language of the Westminster Standards is going to be harder for you than for someone fro whom it feels more familiar. It’s just the way it is.

The recognition of these differences does not imply that we embrace Darwinism, nor that we embrace discrimination or hatred of the Other. For integrity’s sake, however, and for clarity’s sake, I think conservatives would benefit from dropping appeals to racial blindness. One of the reasons the Woke crowd has made the inroads it has is that most people feel instinctively that race is real and that it matters to their identity. They feel this because it is true. They listen to the Woke because they sense that the Woke are attempting to deal with race honestly because they are the only ones with a platform frankly speaking about race. That’s a real shame, because the Woke crowd is spreading a lot of falsehood and evil.

At the end of his podcast on BLM and police shootings, Alex Costa made a comment about loving being black, and how he does not want to be white. He wants to be black. That kind of frank honesty is what we need more of. We don’t need for white people to puff out their chests and do a Sieg Heil or something stupid like that, but we need for people of all races to be able to say, “I like being my race. I don’t want to be another race. I’m not insecure about who I am.”

If more of us, but especially conservative whites, could say such things about ourselves, so much in our racial conversations would improve. Nonwhites would sense that whites were finally being honest. Their respect for whites would increase. The open recognition and celebration of differences would, paradoxically, lead to more harmony rather than discord between different races.

Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, whites in America have felt very uneasy about white identity. By and large, they’ve run away from it, thinking that owning their identity, being OK with being white, will somehow lead to them becoming a Klan member. They’ve also felt this overpowering guilt about being white, and this urge to “do something” to improve the lot of nonwhites. Alex Costa dealt with this in the podcast. The efforts of self-important whites to “help” the nonwhite have mostly backfired. White self loathing does not lead to black success.

If the only way you think about your race is that you despise your own race, or you think that you must endlessly apologize for your racial group or your ancestors, you have a very unhealthy self-image that is, paradoxically, not self-giving but rather narcissistic and self-serving. The pathology of whites in America is very screwed up. It can be cured through honesty.

I’ll end by saying, “It’s OK to be white.” Being white is not the most important thing about me, but is a true thing about me. I see no need to run away from it.

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I will add another comment. A book I would recommend reading if you want to read a conservative dealing honestly with race in some sense, read Pat Buchanan’s Death of the West.

That book will open your eyes to many of the anxieties that are fueling Trump and other national populist figures.

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Oh, puh-lease. :face_vomiting:

Forgive me for opening both barrels here, but this is exactly what I am talking about.

I think everything you just wrote is incredibly condescending. Always keeping the spotlight on color. Color. Color. Color. So I, as a “white person” am supposed to win the respect of “black people” by celebrating my “whiteness.”

I’ve been thinking about this quote from MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech recently:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

It’s so ironic to me. Everyone wants to liken this present insanity to the Civil Rights Movement. Everyone wants to talk about all this “race” stuff like they are channeling their inner MLK – like we’re finishing what MLK started or something. And yet what’s so ridiculous to me is that everyone wants to keep talking about skin.

MLK’s dream was not that “white people” would celebrate “black people,” and that “black people” would celebrate “white people.” His dream was that people would not be evaluated according to their skin color at all. That no one would appeal to someone else on the basis of their skin color. That we wouldn’t treat one another differently on the basis of our skin color.

“By the content of their character.” What a great phrase. And yet here we are just continuing to insist on framing everything on skin color. Black and white. Blanket appeals about white people and their “screwed up pathology.” Blanket appeals about how I can win the respect of “black people.” It’s just so sad to me that people still talk like this.

I simply return to my original assertions. We’re never going to do anything to fix the problem until we are willing to treat one another as members of one race.

I don’t want any black person to respect me on the basis of how I celebrate my whiteness. And I don’t want a black person demanding that I respect them on the basis of their skin color either. Let us all respect one another on the basis of the content of character, and more importantly, on the basis of the Imago Dei, and our common heritage in our father Adam.

Celebrate your whiteness. Celebrate your blackness. Celebrate your hair color. Celebrate your eye color. Fine, yes, amen. God has made us all what we are, and he deserves every praise due his name. Let his works praise him. But good grief. The idea that we would seek respect from one another because of the color of our skin is insane.

Morgan Freeman had it right:

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Well, you’re right. There are different medical risks in each of us based on our family history. You got me. I yield the field.

Oh, wait a second. Just because people have different medical risks based on their genealogy doesn’t mean we are different races. I have a higher risk of prostate cancer and heart disease based on the genes I received from my parents. This differs from my adopted brother whose ancestry and medical history is largely unknown.

But he’s white, and we look similar. Are we different “races?”

:roll_eyes:

Local overrides general. You’ve not proven your point re:health. He can tell… based on your skin color. By looking at you.

You’re just begging the question by saying that’s not race. The point is that race has a meaning that nobody interprets to mean non-human. So if you insist on it meaning non-human, then of course it’s an absurd word. That seems to me to be what you’re doing.

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It is true that no one on this forum is arguing that race distinguishes between groups who are non-human. But everyone on this thread (I think) has been treating race as a valid social classification, which I reject. It wasn’t until I pressed this issue that John produced the application of health.

If you were to limit the the use of the word “race” to the context of classifying physical and medical traits, then in theory, I have no issue with that. But look around you. That isn’t how the term is used in our society — or even in this forum — at all. We apply skin color to social identity. We make skin color as the basis for how we are to actually treat and think about one another. It isn’t because of medical or physical traits that we are asked to identify our “race” on a 4473 form, for example. It isn’t because of medical or physical traits that Ben just argued that I should treat black people a certain way.

So if you think we need a word to be used to distinguish skin colors as a matter of physical fact, and race is the one you want to use, then I get it. But I don’t think you can divorce the word race from the way it’s applied in our culture, which I think you acknowledged somewhere in this thread.

The world is in desperate need of the church standing on the truth that from the one man Adam descended all the human race. That truth, and all of its implications, coupled with the gospel, is the balm that the world needs. That’s all I really want to hammer. And with that I’ll yield the discussion.

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True. But if he changed it to Irish people, do you have an objection to how He exhorts you to treat your fellow man?

Edit: sorry. I hadn’t read to the end where you said you were done.

On that we agree. But the beautiful diversity (if I may be so cliche) is also worth celebrating.

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I agree with Ben. I highly suggest one do a study on the topic of natural affection and the sin of lacking it. I have a document of over 80 pages single space of quotes on natural affection and the use of the word race in church history. The topic is well treated in church history. The color blindness view is unbiblical and not historically Christian.

I don’t follow. So a person that does not “celebrate” their whiteness is guilty of astorgos? My understanding of this sin is that it has to do with a mother not having natural affection for her infant, or a man having no sense of affection for his kin. But skin color? Really? What am I missing?

If someone is discontent or ungrateful for the physical attributes God has assigned to them, then I could certainly affirm this to be sin, but not sure I would go to astorgos to make that case.

Not sure what you mean by the “color blindness view.” But perhaps I haven’t been clear. I am not arguing that we should deny the plain reality that people have different skin color. The Bible embraces this reality (Jeremiah 13:23). Anyone with two working eyes sees plainly this reality. It’s reality. It’s good. And as I said, God is to be praised for all of his works.

What I am arguing against is the notion that these differences in skin color actually provide a basis for how we should treat one another.

So, I know I said I was done, and I really don’t think I have the stamina to continue this thread much longer, but I am going back and re-reading some of these posts more closely, to try and make sure I am hearing everyone clearly.

John, can you please maybe reiterate what you’re saying in this paragraph to help me understand better? It sounds to me like you’re suggesting that genetic differences among races (as you’d define them) are one of the components contributing to differences in economic outcome. Am I hearing that correctly?

I believe this is the main sense that the NASB translators are using the word.

The Civil Rights Movement was the framework that we as a country used for race for approximately 50 years. Sure, there were Black Power guys in Philly and white racists in Lower Alabama, but they were a fringe of a fringe and had essentially no cultural impact.

But the Civil Rights Movement failed on its own merits: 50 years later, there are persistent inequalities between racial groups in America, with each group having its own advantages and disadvantages on its ledger.

We have a few choices:

  1. We can Civil Rights Movement harder (this is the basic Republican approach).
  2. We can move to an explicit system of racial hierarchy (this is the woke approach).
  3. Something completely different (essentially nobody is proposing anything meaningfully different).

To the extent that we have not hewed to MLK’s colorblind society, it has been to apply unequal weights and measures in a way that benefits racial minorities. Everywhere that discrimination is openly practiced in America today, it’s practiced on behalf of racial minorities and against whites. It’s easy to look up the different LSAT scores needed to get into various law schools, and they differ by race. Everyone knows that “equal employment opportunity” laws only benefit whites in the most extreme circumstances. And yet various differences in outcomes have persisted over 50 years. I’m not sure what we’d expect to get out of Civil Rights Movementing harder.

Part of the reason why the elites in 2020 have gone insane is because the Civil Rights Movement has failed. Our elites have lighted on the idea of “systemic racism” as the explanation for racial disparities. The idea is that there is a grand, silent conspiracy against blacks (and maybe Hispanics, but maybe not Asians depending on the exact topic) that even whites themselves may not be aware of. Where can you find this systemic racism? That’s unclear, it’s sort of a colorless, odorless gas that floats through America. To the extent that it’s measurable, it’s only measurable in disparate impacts, which are taken as prima facie evidence of racism due to an a priori assumption that the races are essentially the same–except of course for skin color.

If your adopted brother is white (i.e. European heritage), then you share an enormous amount of DNA with him. Not nearly as much as you share with your parents, but much more than you share with, say, a Rwandan.

For each generation you go back on your family tree, you have 2^generation ancestors at that level of the tree. Your parent’s generation has two ancestors (2^1). You have four grandparents (2^2), eight great-grandparents (2^3) and so on. By the time you go back 30 generations, you have over a billion slots on your family tree (2^30 = 1,073,741,824). 30 generations ago was 750 years ago, or approximately the time of Acquinas. There were far fewer than a billion people alive on planet Earth in 1270, meaning that you will have far fewer than a billion ancestors wandering around at that time. That means that some of your ancestors who were alive in 1270 are taking up multiple spots on your family tree. Of the billion or so slots on your 30th generation family tree, how many of those folks also show up on your brother’s family tree? Or mine? (If you can’t tell from my avi, I’m also of northwest European heritage.)

Now imagine some guy getting off the plane from Samoa. How many of his ancestors from his 30th generation show up on your family tree, and how many of yours on his? It’s a way, way, way lower number. Will you share some ancestors from that time? You might. But the impact of those guys/gals on your respective genetics is likely going to be less than the impact of the folks who show up on your chart over and over and over again.

Your genes are the biological part of you. In the question of nature vs. nurture, the “nature” side is 100% genes. We can (and should) argue about how much nature impacts us vs. nurture, but everything on the “nature” side of the equation is genetics.

If you want to say, “it’s all just skin color,” I can’t stop you, but you’re going to be missing a lot.

And with that, I’ll go ahead and bow out also. Thanks for the good, challenging discussion.

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