Fools Rushing in

In white Evangelicalism the main challenge of “wokeness” isn’t that churches will embrace CRT, it’s that fear of CRT will drive churches away from necessary engagements with the challenges of race in America. How a dispute over adoption makes this point: https://t.co/ipqSQfiuwB

— David French (@DavidAFrench) May 16, 2021

When I teach literary criticism, the first thing I tell my students is that "criticism" in this context does not mean:  “You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.”  It means evaluation and analysis based on a stated and explained and defined standard. 

But the point is lost on David French, as it is on most people who hear “Critical Race Theory” and think the label is all the explanation they need:

And while I’m a firm supporter of transracial adoption, I also think that a true “best interests of the child” adoption standard should include an analysis of whether the family is thoughtfully approaching the unique challenges that will face their adopted kids.

This isn’t critical race theory. This is life. This is experience. You can try to be as colorblind as you want, but your child will not be. He or she will be keenly aware of his or her differences. Your community will not be. And it is on the parents to prayerfully and carefully prepare for this reality. We do not yet live Martin Luther King’s “content of your character” dream, and while we do not, it is imperative to prepare parents for the world as it is.

No, it isn’t “critical race theory.”  At all.  Mr. French doesn’t even try to define CRT; he just tosses the rhetorical hand-grenade because he thinks it strengthens his argument about adoption laws.  CRT may well address issues of trans-racial adoption.  But given the complexity of CRT and public policy issues surrounding adoption, this simplistic shibboleth doesn’t do his argument any good.  Mostly because he isn’t thinking critically; he’s just engaging in criticizing.

Critical thinking means taking into account all of the issues involved in a complex subject.  It does not mean criticizing public policy because you don’t like it, or it doesn’t fit your ideas about race, or even criticizing the idea of “race” by saying “it’s all white people’s fault.”  Critical race theory is a critical examination and analysis of the American legal system, a legal system founded in the English common law (by adoption, by most states) and the U.S. Constitution, which includes among other now amended-out-of-authority provisions such as the 3/5ths compromise.  But the words are still there, and so is the effect.

To put it in simpler terms, there is a public discussion now about racial covenants, covenants in title chains that restrict real property from being owned by, basically, non-whites.  The Supreme Court ruled such covenants are unenforceable almost 60 years ago; but the language remains in the chain of title.  For various reasons, mostly related to the property law of England (developed out of the common law of England), such language can’t be expurgated from chains of title; at least not easily, or with one sweeping court decision.  The words are still there; and some people still feel the effect of those words, although they are powerless words.  This is one area that Critical Race Theory addresses.  And it’s hardly being critical of racial attitudes or even of other races, to address that legal issue in terms of Critical Race Theory.  One could even say such analyses are themselves critical, in the sense of being important.

We use “critical” in so many different ways.  But then, when it’s convenient, we use it in only one way, and insist it is the only way the word can be used.  Critical race theory is not critical of the theory of race (although it should be, but not for simple reasons) nor is it a way of saying race is important or paramount in human affairs (although it is, so long as white people are served by the concept, which is why any examination of it upsets them so).  It is “critical” of the law and a legal system that, as I say, since at least 1789 (although truly it goes back to at least 1619) enforces the idea that race is a protected category in law, at least when the race is deemed “white.”

Mr. French is afraid of words he clearly doesn’t understand.  He equates his version of “critical race theory” (which seems to be criticism, as in condemnation, of whites as a race) with the new term, “woke.” Which he is at pains, as are all white people, it seems, to distinguish from the works of his plaster saint, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I know all of this seems a bit niche, an argument about an issue that affects only a small minority of American families. Yet it’s important nonetheless, for reasons that extend beyond the adoption community. The word “woke” is not a synonym for wrong—especially in a culture that weaponizes words to reinforce tribal alignments. 

In fact, in white Evangelicalism the true challenge of “wokeness” isn’t that congregations will embrace critical race theory, it’s that fear of critical race theory will drive congregations away from thoughtful, necessary engagements with the world as it is—a world that is still too far removed from the hope of King’s dream.

White evangelicals are Mr. French’s niche, and I leave that to him. I don’t mean to denigrate him here.  It’s his ideas I disagree with.  And I consider it a violation of a sort of Godwin’s Law whenever white people invoke Dr. King’s “dream,” as if that was the only, or even the most important, thing he ever said.  It is small wonder the social justice Dr. King advocated for his entire life leaves people like David French afraid of the idea of being “woke.”

I agree we define words into weapons to reinforce tribal alignments, but pointing that out is not he same thing as critically examining the problem.  Mr. French in fact perpetuates he problem by using “critical race theory” and “woke” as shibboleths for avoiding the problems those terms raise (some of which they are meant to raise).   Besides, a congregation of white evangelicals who adopted critical race theory would be a congregation of academicians and law professors.  That, too, is rather far removed from Dr. King’s “dream.”  That “dream” is not where we are headed until we can have an honest discussion about race in America.  “Wokeness” and critical race theory are two efforts to start that discussion.  So far, we are still objecting to letting that happen.