Dear Matthew,
I don’t usually sign open letters or participate in public demonstrations. I tend to think they are ineffective or incomplete forms of political activism. One has only to notice the lack of attention given to pro-life demonstrations by the corporate media. So why, you might ask, did I sign the recent open letter to US bishops, asking them to join the “march against racism” in Washington DC on August 28?
I can understand why some Catholics keep their distance from anti-racist demonstrations. For complicated historical reasons, the fight against racism has been co-opted by a progressive and often anti-Christian Left. Unlike the pro-life cause, opposition to racism is a common theme of left-wing media. Meanwhile, conservative Christians in Trump’s America have taken up the cause of nationalism combined with a stubborn attachment to the outworn structures of free-market capitalism, which continues to ravage marginalised and underprivileged communities. All this has led many conservative Catholics to dismiss the issue of structural racism, ceding it almost entirely to the concern of the Left – which has its own ulterior motives for taking up the anti-racist cause.
But both progressives and conservatives are in need of a correction from the Catholic bishops. As Pope Pius XI made clear in Mit Brennender Sorge, the injustices of racism remain the concern of the Church and of all serious Christians. That’s why I hope the bishops will raise their voices in a public way, to the rebuke of progressives – and of the conservatives who collaborate in giving over the cause of anti-racism to un-Christian forces.
Regardless of whether any direct malice towards Black, Hispanic and Native American communities remains today, these groups still suffer real injustice by their exclusion from participation in the common good. Christians who remain complacent about the unjust exclusion of their brethren are accountable to God, and at risk of offending against both justice and charity.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Culbreath
***
Dear Jonathan,
The signatories of the open letter lament that no Catholic bishop was willing to co-chair Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington. You hope to rectify this failure by convincing Catholic bishops to join this new march, organised by Al Sharpton. But there is a notable difference between the two events. In the first, the bishops were invited but did not go. In this second, they are not invited but you would have them go all the same.
The Civil Rights Movement grew out of the black churches. Catholics who joined it were performing an ecumenical as well as a political task. By contrast, Black Lives Matter (an official “partner” of the march) is shaped by the anti-religious views common among the members of Antifa and the Democratic Socialists of America. Catholic support is not sought by the leaders of this march. They have no desire to be joined by people they regard as bigots. They do not want to march beside you.
It is no accident that BLM has resulted in vandalism of Catholic churches. Its orientation is fundamentally anti-religious. Nor is the problem merely that Black Lives Matter is hostile to Catholic concerns. It is distant from the concerns of the black community, which is more culturally conservative, more religious, and more supportive of policing than are the leaders of Black Lives Matter. As Cardinal Wilfred Napier, a black South African, observed, “A brief study of the founding statement of Black Lives Matter indicates the movement is being hijacked by the interests and parties committed to dismantling the very values, structure and institutions which have over the centuries undergird[ed] the best civilisations and cultures.”
Joining Sharpton’s march will not rescue anti-racism from anti-Christian forces. It will instead make well-meaning Christians complicit in a movement that is in fact opposed – as Cardinal Napier notes – to our civilisation and our faith.
Yours,
Matthew
***
Dear Matthew,
We are in agreement about the motives of the organisation called Black Lives Matter. I am convinced that BLM, Antifa, etc have only assumed the banner of anti-racism as a cover for more nefarious ends (ie a destructive moral individualism), which will prove to be more injurious to racial minorities if they are allowed to come to fruition. But since the open letter does not assume any association with these organisations, I found its content worth approving for its own sake.
Although there are several “partners” of Sharpton’s march whom I cannot condone, there are also “faith-based” organisations such as the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA). The JCPA has explicitly admitted that they have important disagreements with some leaders of the BLM movement. (In one statement, it appears that among the problems the Jewish community has faced with the BLM movement is antisemitism.) Nevertheless, the JCPA says “these disagreements should not be a pretext for lack of engagement.”
Likewise, it does not seem undesirable that Catholic leaders should lend their voices to a good cause which is supported by questionable parties, even if those parties are affected by anti-Christian sentiments. While those entities are attempting to hijack anti-racist sentiment, it would be a mistake to identify the whole anti-racist movement, which is rooted in the pains of real injustice, with the forces that seek to abuse it.
All this being said, I do not wish to pretend that joining a march will suffice to “rescue anti-racism from anti-Christian forces”, or that such a demonstration is the most important kind of activism for addressing racism. I merely hope that the bishops can incite Catholics to work for racial justice, and at the same time exert a moderating influence upon a movement fraught with many painful emotions.
Further measures will have to be more concrete and aimed at improving the conditions of marginalised communities. In this vein, I think Senator Marco Rubio’s push for reindustrialisation will do more for racial minorities than any amount of raising awareness through public demonstrations, however justified I think the latter are.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Culbreath
***
Dear Jonathan,
I want to press you on exactly what “good cause” this march is for. You oppose “structural racism”, which you say exists “regardless of whether any direct malice towards Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities remains”. How do you measure it? Is it present – as Ibram X Kendi and other theorists of the current anti-racism would say – wherever there are unequal outcomes? If so, that leads to some conclusions that I would hesitate to embrace.
If all inequalities of outcome are due to a malign privilege propped up by “structural racism”, then one must logically conclude that the stunning achievements of American Jews are somehow unearned. Many supporters of the current wave of protests have concluded exactly this. A variety of professional athletes and celebrities have voiced support for the protests in anti-semitic terms, prompting Kareem Abdul-Jabaar to ask, “Where is the outrage over anti-semitism in sports and Hollywood?” His question has gone unanswered.
No doubt there are many ways of understanding “structural racism”, but all of them strike me as trivial, meaningless or false. Trivial if “structural racism” is nothing more than a high-toned way of decrying racial hatred, something all well-meaning people deplore. Meaningless if the term cannot be precisely defined. False if it is taken as an indictment of every unequal outcome.
Yours,
Matthew
***
Dear Matthew,
You are correct that “structural racism” is ambiguous, so it is important to separate the true from the false. The woke protesters of structural racism do not seem to understand what the term means either, as they often appeal to contradictory and hypocritical standards to judge it.
In Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, St John Paul II speaks of the “structures of sin”, which he defines as “the sum total of the negative factors working against a true awareness of the universal common good”. Similarly, John XXIII teaches in Pacem et Terris that “it is in the nature of the common good that every single citizen has the right to share in it” – albeit in different and unequal ways.
The popes are applying the doctrine of distributive justice, which describes the ruler’s obligation to include all his subjects in the participation of the common good. I take structural injustice to be a failure in distributive justice: a failure on the part of the ruler or the state to order society so that all of its members may participate in the common good.
Structural racism is rooted in the sins of past generations, but it is perpetuated in the present by economic injustice. Past oppression and segregation thrust Black Americans into a condition of proletarianisation. The present inequities of unbridled capitalism locks them into their proletarian state, setting the conditions for innumerable social and moral dysfunctions to follow (drugs, depression, crime, etc). Effectively, this is to exclude them from the common good.
Woke “diversity training”, which guilts its subjects into confessing their “white privilege” and “implicit bias”, ultimately misses the mark. Structural racism does not operate on these emotive and ideological terrains – as you say, well-meaning people everywhere decry racial hatred. Rather, structural racism is a function of the defective distribution of material resources, in which racial minorities are confined to proletarian destitution. Complacency with such a system, if it does not involve racial hatred, does still involve complicity with racial injustice.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Culbreath
***
Dear Jonathan,
If what you just wrote could be printed on a banner, I would be tempted to march beneath it. Though the citations of papal statements do not altogether clarify how you understand the terminology of critical race theory, I am persuaded that you mean nothing by it with which I really disagree. All the same, I believe that Christians who align themselves with the current anti-racism, including by joining this march, make a mistake.
Consider liberation theology. Certainly some people identified with that movement proved to be orthodox. But the movement’s overall effect was to suggest an identification between the Communist Manifesto and the Magnificat, class struggle and Christian charity. Neither Latin American politics nor the Latin American Church greatly benefited from this confusion. A Catholic of sufficient subtlety may call himself a socialist without thereby embracing heresy. But doing so is (I think I can say) bound to confuse more than it clarifies. If he in fact opposes a great part of what most people actually identify with socialism – just as you oppose a great part of what people actually identify with anti-racism – the confusion will be intensified.
The current anti-racism is racialist. It does not offer an economically inclusive, racially neutral programme for swelling the ranks of the petit bourgeoisie. It does not exhort us to unite around common loves. It encourages us to think of ourselves as members of irreconcilable groups. It makes a religion of vengeance and blood. Any marriage between this movement and the Christian faith is a mistake, no matter how lengthy and complicated we make the prenup.
Yours,
Matthew
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