Principles of Critical Race Theory

The following principles come from chapter 1 of Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, “Hallmark Critical Race Theory Themes.”

Christians could disagree with one or all of these ideas, but not a single one is inherently hostile towards Christian beliefs and practice. Indeed, if the central ethic of Christianity is love towards one’s neighbors, then all of these CRT principles should interest any Christian, not just an academic researcher. Furthermore, given how racist the history is of most Christian organizations and institutions in the U.S., such organizations should be actively researching and humbly learning from Critical Race Theory in an effort to align themselves better to guiding principles of our religion.

The six principles below are all direct quotations from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, except for numbers 2 and 5, which are paraphrases. I follow each principle with my own explanation. 

1. “Racism is ordinary, not aberrational” (p. 8). To say that racism is ordinary is not to say that it is good or acceptable. Rather, racism is part of our social fabric, to the point that we don’t even recognize it many times. This is a moment for humility in admitting that the Church is often racist and, more broadly, that systemic racism does exist.

2. Racism is maintained by “interest convergence” or “material determinism” (p. 9). If you rolled your eyes (or wanted to roll your eyes) at the above mention of systemic racism, then this second principle will help to understand the reality of systemic racism. We should not need slave whips or lynching trees to be persuaded that racism exists (Christians in the 19th and 20th centuries had slave whips and lynching trees and still did not believe in racism as a social evil). “Interest convergence” is the idea that white people do not have any direct interest in eradicating racism. At times, white interests converge with anti-racist interests, and so something positive occasionally results. The point for the church is the need to recognize our general investment in white interests and to throw ourselves equally into the interests of others. (As a side note but related to this point, I would strongly urge you to study a variety of liberation theologies, particularly evangelical liberation theologies, although you should always start with Gustavo Gutiérrez.)

3. “Race and races are products of social thought and relations” (p. 9). We must - we must - accept that “race” is a social construct. That’s it for this point. If you don’t accept that (and I don’t assume that everyone does, because I know a lot of different kinds of people), then let’s talk.

4. “Each race has its own origins and ever-evolving history,” a concept referred to as “differential racialization” (pp. 9-10). In other words, while race is a harmful social construct, not everyone who has suffered from racism has suffered in the same way. This is an important recognition on the part of critical race theorists, particularly in the U.S. context, because racism does not refer only to the experience of African Americans, as significant as that experience is in our national and ecclesiastical history.

5. No person has a single, easily stated, unitary identity; this concept is known as “intersectionality” and “antiessentialism” (p. 10). Conservative Christians in the U.S. probably experience an internal, even visceral, resistance to this statement much like they do towards statements about social constructs. Rather than getting into identity formation here (and why I, as a convinced and orthodox Christian, consider myself to be a convinced, postmodern anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist), let me simply remind us that, whatever we consider our identity to be, Jesus Christ called us to utterly renounce that identity.

6. “Black, American Indian, Asian, and Latino writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that the whites are unlikely to know” (p. 11). This principle is related to the development of “legal storytelling” in which minorities share their experiences with(in) the justice system in part to undermine the master narrative of impartial justice. This point should be non-controversial, so again, please try to calm any resistance that you may feel. We are not all authorities or experts even on matters that are close to our experience. But we are all experts on our personal experience. So at least in regard to that experience, we deserve to be listened to and taken seriously - a principle of even greater urgency and application in relation to the downtrodden and marginalized.