Critical Race Theory is anti-Christian, an ideological knot of interconnected falsehoods opposed to the entirety of the Christian faith. However, there is something that it gets right – namely, the importance of systematicity. You see, one of the main operative presuppositions in CRT is that foundational beliefs are, for lack of a better word, foundational. Consequently, a seemingly innocuous belief or behavior (e.g. preferring American food to Chinese food) is viewed as racist because the CRT proponent can, one way or another, connect it to a set of foundational beliefs and/or behaviors deemed to be racist. Consider the example I gave above, that of preferring American food to Chinese food. Here is how one can “prove” that such a preference is racist –

1. One prefers that with which one is most familiar.

2. Regarding cuisine, that with which a non-immigrant American citizen is most familiar with is American food.

3. “American food” is an abstract category under which ethnically-other foods have been subsumed via a process of cultural assimilation.

4. Given that cultures are historically constructed by unique people groups, however, it follows that true “cultural assimilation” cannot take place; rather, what takes place is the theft and modification of cultural elements privileged by the majority culture, and the elimination of those cultural elements the majority culture marginalizes.

5. To prefer “American food,” therefore, is to prefer those foods which have been forcibly removed from their original cultural context, modified so as to lose their culturally distinct otherness, and imperially renamed “American.”

6. Preferring “American food” to Chinese food, in other words, is racist because it is, in fact, an implicit agreement with the racist acts of genocide, conquest, de-personing, whitewashing, and so on.

The argument does not have to be sound. Rather, it has to sound as if it has established a link between the foundational beliefs and/or practices and the innocuous belief and/or practice in question. An attentive person will not give this kind of shoddy thinking a pass; however, those who are emotionally invested in the subject matter might very well be blinded, by their emotional state, to such atrocious reasoning. Yet the truth is that preferring one food to another is not an inherent form of ethnic partiality (i.e. “racism”), although one could possibly be motivated to not eat a certain ethnic food out of his conscious hatred of a particular ethnic group.

CRT Invites Us to See That It’s Self-Defeating

Ironically, what the CRT proponent gets right about systematicity he fails to appreciate when considering his own use of logic. By using any argument to affirm or deny y of x, one is implicitly affirming that the means whereby truths and falsehoods are knowable and known is absolute and universal, not culturally relative. Even when an argument is atrociously bad, the fact remains that an affirmation or denial that x is y rests upon the absolute distinction between x and ¬x. x has properties by which it is knowable and known; either y is one of those properties or it is not. In CRT, then, there is a glaring contradiction in play that obliterates it before it can get off the ground. Simply put:

If racism is inextricably woven into the very fabric of all social institutions and their attendant beliefs and practices, then the very act of affirming or denying that x is racist is in itself a racist action.

One can only “uncover implicit racism,” then, by engaging in an overtly racist action that only can produce racist conclusions. Every intellectual punch and kick against “systemic racism,” in other words, is itself a product of systemic racism and only succeeds in perpetuating it.

Christians Need Systematics

CRT is a self-destructive ideology, but it gets one thing right – it’s emphasis on systematicity. As the church faces infiltrators who claim to be using CRT as an analytical tool, let us take that point to heart. Let us relentlessly pluck and pull at the corrupt foundational beliefs and practices of CRT that set it at odds with itself and all of God’s revealed truth. Let us not lose sight of what the CRT proponents do not lose sight of – the need to attack systems of thought not merely from without, but, more importantly, from within. We must stand our ground, hold firm to the truth, and expose the self-contradictory foundations of CRT. This will require us to move past arguments that are intentionally geared toward raising emotions by focusing in on a particular current event, in an attempt to draw our attention away from the logically and morally corrupt foundational beliefs implied by CRT proponents’ arguments and criticisms, and away from the truth of Scripture.

We must put the effort in to teaching not merely the “practical” truths of Scripture, but the doctrinal system of Scripture from which those “practical” truths emerge. It is one thing to say that we ought to be gainfully employed; it is quite another to teach that we ought to be gainfully employed because we are the imago dei and, therefore, are rational beings who exercise dominion over creation through the numerous vocations we have had, now have, and will have. Similarly, it is one thing to teach that we ought not obey illegal governmental decrees; it is quite another to teach that all men have been given the right and duty of bearing the sword of judgment, thereby retaining the right and duty to resist and depose tyrannical rulers who have, by their tyranny, ceased to function as governing authorities.

CRT proponents are right to think that it is necessary to attack the foundations of a system if one desires to dismantle/destroy that system. However, they are wrong to think that they will ever succeed in doing so, given their ability to reason in any capacity destroys their core beliefs, as well as the beliefs which emerge from those core beliefs. Let us not preoccupy ourselves with cutting CRT’s branches, and thereby allowing it to further spread its roots. Rather, let us openly uproot CRT, in the sight of all, and encourage others to watch as that corrupt tree shrivels and dies.