Critical Race Theory (CRT) is one way of processing race-based oppression in the United States in an attempt to rectify racial injustice.  It is primarily a sociological tool that focuses on analyzing past and present acts of injustice.  Its potential contribution is that it can hopefully document and highlight past and present injustices in our country. 

Discussions involving CRT often seem to force us into the false dilemma of assuming there are only two options: either supporting CRT or being guilty of doing nothing.  My goal is to point us to the need for a better theory and better practice.

One problem with CRT is that it is, as its name reminds us, a “theory,”—and like most theories, it is only one way of looking at the data.  I believe things like racism and oppression are more complex and more deeply rooted in all of us.  We are all by nature broken people.  Simplistic answers like CRT’s radical division of all people into one of two groups: oppressors (who are entirely in the wrong, whether they realize it or not) and the oppressed (who are entirely in the right), can only take us so far.

At the end of the day, things like racism, oppression, and even systems like CRT, all involve and describe relationships among people.  Relationships are complex learned behaviors.  And no two of us are identical.  Each of us have our own life experiences and our own way of processing things.  Oversimplistic generalizations in CRT are at best broad brush-stroke pictures.  Things are simply more complex than they often appear. 

Another significant problem is that CRT narrows our attention to a single social problem, as if that were the only problem our culture faces.  While not downplaying the significance of racism’s great and grievous blight on our nation, there are many other sins and problems around us that also create heartache and suffering.  Here we are reminded of the forced isolation and loss of jobs associated with COVID, current political and social instability, increasing child abuse and broken families, ongoing issues of alcohol and substance abuse, and even hunger and poverty especially in the broader world around us.  While not minimizing racial injustices, we need a more comprehensive approach to all the social problems we experience.

I frankly disagree with CRT philosophically as a theory.  It is based on a number of underlying presuppositions I don’t hold as well as an analysis of data (number of blacks killed versus whites, etc.) that is skewed and often inaccurate.  For a very different approach to CRT from what one hears in the popular media, see Voddie T. Baucham Jr.’s recent book Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Salem Books, April 2021).  He provides a very different analysis of the statistics underlying sociological and historical data regarding races in America.  He himself is black, raised in a poor single-parent home in inner-city LA, a sociologist by training, with an earned Ph.D., and has served as both a pastor and currently as a dean in a seminary.  Regardless of your position, I think he is worth listening to.  He is a careful researcher and writing on a topic close to his own heart.

Then there is the level of practice.  I believe we need to focus on strategies for genuinely changing people’s minds and hearts and not simply on assigning blame.  At this point in our history, legal processes in America have done what they could over the years to remedy racial injustices through outlawing various forms of social injustice and discrimination.  We have now entered a new period requiring new strategies for moving forward—strategies that will actually change people’s minds and hearts from the inside out.  My perception is that CRT has often, in practice at least, given up on normal processes for promoting social change, adopted a more radical social agenda, and promoted such things as protests and riots.  I believe that there are better ways to bring about social change.

We need a positive approach of actively seeking healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation—and for me, this is the natural outgrowth of spiritual resources, especially Christ and the gospel.  At the very least, we need people who are willing to invest in relationships with others in need, especially those who are different from ourselves: racially, economically, and educationally.  For a dozen years my wife, our four children, and I lived in a half-black and half-white neighborhood in Philadelphia and were involved in a church that sought to be “multi-cultural,” as we called it, but perhaps “multiethnic” would be more accurate today.  We wanted to be distinctly racially mixed as a congregation: half-black and half white, where we could try to learn to live together, worship together, do things together, and invite each other into our homes.  We sought to listen to each other and devise ministry strategies that would reflect both of our often very different cultural backgrounds.   Being cross cultural is never easy; it takes time and work; but it is also worth it all.  My point here is that when I hear about Critical Race Theory, I frankly don’t hear a desire to heal and transcend the social and cultural divides in America.  I don’t see the same spirit of God-centered love and compassion that I witnessed first-hand on almost a daily basis during our 12 years in Philadelphia. 

Published as a Letter to the Editor in our local newspaper, the Charlton Villager, in their July 23, 2021 issue.