Some Thoughts On Christianity & Race Realism
The suspect the church has become increasingly unrealistic about race. I first became aware of this issue in college after noticing that many of my school's African American athletes refused to morally conform themselves to our Christian campus. My peers and I complained about the situation, but our school's administration quickly dismissed our concerns as "racist." Simply noticing our university's increasing crime, immorality, and violence was condemned as hate. We did not yet understand this, but my peers and I had committed the sin of noticing some inconvenient truths. This disturbed me. I did not know how to balance what I was seeing everyday with the claim that recognizing these facts was sinful.
The church is clearly divided. I've heard many sermons condemning racism, and yet almost all Christian congregations remain de facto segregated. I've attended numerous Church of Christs (CoC) across America, and all of them were dominated by a single racial group. This remains true despite years of shrinking CoC membership and rapidly increasing racial diversity. Were all the congregations I attended marked by racism and hate? Or, are there some deeper forces causing division?
Our contemporary racial theology was built on Martin Luther King's romantic dream of everyone being judged by their character rather than their skin color. MLK imagined kids of all races holding hands in a desegregated America. His dream was appealing. It promised an idealistic utopia of harmony among all people. Christians have made his dream our own over the last few decades. Despite massive resistance to desegregation among Southern Christians during the Civil Rights movement, we have now universally accepted MLK's dream and become its most devoted defenders. Today, any Christian who dares suggest that race is more than skin deep is thought to have committed egregious sin.
But if everyone is now equal then why is our society still defined by inequality? Why is inequality particularly apparent in the disparities between whites and blacks in education, economics, and crime? The possibility of innate God created differences between people groups has been condemned as sin, and now we're told the only possible reason for inequality is discrimination and hate. Supposedly, MLK's dream has not become reality because we've not yet rid the world of racism, only when racism has been eliminated can the eschatological utopia of equality be ushered into existence.
America has spent more than sixty years fighting racism. Progress has been made in the legal sphere, but inequality remains as stark as ever in education, economics, and crime. In some ways, African Americans have gone backwards since desegregation. Black business ownership rates have fallen. Black schools that employed black teachers have given way to dysfunctional inner-city schools staffed by white teachers. The African American family has collapsed, and nearly 80% of black children are now born to single mothers. One-third of black men eventually go to prison. Why is this happening? Only one answer is socially permissible: "racism." Racism is the only possible culprit, and thus racism is everywhere. Racism is in the schools, in companies, in the police force. Racism is an evil virus that has infected every aspect of our society.
The consequences of this worldview are now becoming painfully obvious. Our society is increasingly paralyzed by its obsession with racism. Institutions and communities are torn apart by accusations and rage. Suspicion abounds. Racism must be systematically and invisibly embedded everywhere if blacks are still unequal after sixty years of widespread reform. The ghost of racism haunts every corner and creates paranoia in the mind of every person of color: "Those white people are secretly racist. Why else are brown people suffering?"
Inequality will probably remain, however, no matter how many witch hunts are launched against alleged racists. It is my belief that MLK's dream will result in social collapse unless realism is reintroduced. Probably the only way our society can maintain any semblance of diversity is if we first accept inequality as a natural reality. We need to start looking at the data without the hysterical lens of anti-racism. Real racism still exists, but our ability to eliminate its effects seem to have been exhausted (at least in America). It is time to face the facts so that we can address our deep structural problems. The truth must be discovered and accepted before race relations can improve.
Many Christians object to any realistic discussion of this topic by claiming that race does not exist. They shut down dialogue by proclaiming, often with an air of superiority, that "We are all one race, the human race. We are all descended from Adam." Is this true? Or, is it just a way to ignore the problem? I believe there are at least five good reasons to reject this idea and affirm the existence of different races.
First, the human mind instinctively understands race. We stroll down the street and accurately identify the race of every person we pass. Our minds immediately categorize people by race, we barely have to think about it. It's more difficult for us to discern between men and woman than to distinguish between racial groups. Yes, there are some unusual exceptions regarding mixed race people, but we immediately know why those people confuse us. These almost subconscious categorizations would be impossible if race were merely fictional. The youngest children recognize different racial groups, and this often results in awkward conversations with parents. In my experience, people who say race does not exist are usually just pretending to believe that so they can virtue signal against more openly honest people.
Second, saliva DNA tests can determine a person's race with 100% accuracy. Ancestry.com was able to pinpoint my own race down to the specific percentages of national origin. Race is much deeper than skin color. Race is written in our DNA. Every cell in our body contains our race.
Third, human race parallels animal sub-species. As weird as it sounds, races are to humans what breeds are to dogs or cats. Races are just different human breeds. All races belong to the human species, but they represent genetically distinct and recognizable sub-groups. I've mentioned this parallel in discussions before only to be met with the objection that I was "comparing humans to animals." As strange as some Christians may find it, God created humans and animals with similar biological modes of existence, and this similarity extends to the existence of sub-species.
Fourth, only uppity white people pretend race does not exist. If you ask a black person, chinese person, or even someone living in the slums of Brazil, they will immediately understand what is meant by "white people" or "black people." The idea that race does not exist is a uniquely yuppie white phenomenon. However, the rise of post-modern identitarianism has deconstructed the concept of racial blindness, and the future is increasingly conscious of race. Black Lives Matter protestors do not question the existence of black people, and good luck trying to tell someone in China that the Han do not exist. The argument that "race is a social construct" sounds insane to most of humanity.
Finally, and most importantly, the Bible talks about race. Genesis 10 is called the "table of nations" and explains how different races arose from common ancestors after the flood. The Israelites were a race descended from Israel (Jacob) and his 12 sons. The prophets prophesied against racial and imperial groups that were seen as composites of millions of people. The Messiah arose from a specific racial stock with a distinct bloodline stretching back to Abraham. Acts 17:26 reads: "And he made from one man every nation [ethnos] of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place." God created different races out of Adam, and he divided them across the earth.
There are several arguments commonly used in attempts to disprove the existence of race. Some people claim race does not exist because the races slowly blend into each other across vast geographical ranges. This is called the "spectrum argument," but it makes about as much sense as saying colors don't exist because they blend into each other across the rainbow.
Probably the most common argument used by critics is that genetic diversity within races exceeds genetic diversity across races. However, it's also true that two members of the same race are more closely related to each other than to members of another race. There's even the shocking possibility that a parent is more closely related to a random child of their own race than to their own mixed race child (this often creates problems with organ transplants).
There are other arguments against the existence of race, but none of them can negate the common sense acknowledgment by people across the world that race does exists in a visible and meaningful way.
The Bible portrays race as a product of common ancestry. Family members resemble each other because they share genetics, people belonging to the same race resemble each other because they share genetics, and racial communities share genetics because race is literally an extended family.
Of course, to say that race exists does not mean that race should become the central aspect of human identity. Race is one component of identity, and it's not the most important. However, it is still important. We risk disaster in our theology, churches, and society if we become unrealistic about race. The existence of race is not the problem. God created humanity to be composed of different races, and I don't think he made a mistake. However, race does introduce an added layer of social complexity, and that complexity extends into the Church.
The existence of race suggests that we should acknowledge it, but should Christians act upon it? Should we treat race as though it did not exist so that we can fulfill MLK's egalitarian dream? Many will answer in the affirmative, and this desire to ignore race as an actionable part of human identity is where the concept of equality comes in. If we say the races are equal than we can pretend race simply does not matter. However, I think this is a false and dangerous idea that has contributed to our present problems. We should expect to run into problems whenever we choose to ignore some aspect of God's creation. God created races, and I don't think we should act as though he did not.
However, after the 1960s, Christians decided to fix what they perceived as God's mistake. Ever since, the Church has been spreading the idea that races are equal and the same. Except, God did not make every person the same, and God did not make every group the same. God did not create equality. The Declaration of Independence claims "all men are created equal," but that is clearly untrue. No two people in human history have ever been created equal. Every person and group is defined by specific traits and circumstances. Talents are never distributed equally. An ugly person is not physically beautiful. A person with a low IQ is not a genius. A tall person is not short. A weak person is not strong. A black person will never be white. A man cannot give birth to a child. Nobody in the Middle Ages was able to purchase an iPhone. Nigeria will never be Germany. Life is not "fair." The modern American concept of equality is fictional.
This is where a discussion about equality and justice might come in. I do not want to digress too much from the main topic, but "equality before the law" is not racial equality as it is now pursued in twenty-first century America. Inequality is not primarily a justice issue in the United States. African Americans are treated roughly equal to white Americans in court. This is not to say our justice system is perfect, it clearly is not, but it's not our legal system that is driving inequality.
I suspect that racial inequality is being driven by the innate genetic and cultural characteristics of each race. My training is in social studies, and I want to discuss some evidence for my theory in that area before adding some science as well. I believe that unless we accept the truth about this issue race relations will continue to decline as suspicion and chaos increase. I'm not trying to spread hate or divide the Church by discussing these facts. I believe everyone should be treated justly. However, I also believe healthy societies are realistic about God's creation.
Absence is the clearest historical evidence. Unfortunately, there are no successful black societies of significance anywhere in the world. What is success? In this context, I'm using "success" to mean a functional society in which the people are educated and relatively prosperous and crime is low. There is no such society in the world that is predominantly populated by those of sub-Saharan ancestry. There are fifty countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and none of them qualify as successful. How many cities and towns across North and South America are majority black? How many of them are regarded as successful? Where is the real Wakanda? Why did Marvel Comics have to create a fictional country in order to portray a successful black society? The global population of black people is larger than the global population of white people, and yet there's not a single black society that can rival a mid-tier white society. Can we really be expected to believe that every one of these black societies has been held down by racism?
Detroit was once called the "Paris of North America." That was 1940, when the city was 90% white. Today, Detroit is 90% black and has a vastly different reputation. It is now famous as a bankrupt post-apocalyptic landscape. In 2012, the police chief referred to the city as a "war zone" unfit for visitors. At the same time, many of the city's properties were being sold for just one dollar. Detroit suffered from the deindustrialization of the American Midwest, but it's difficult to escape the fact that Detroit's collapse perfectly paralleled the decline of the city's white population.
Sub-Saharan Africa has been called the "dark continent." It has never produced a significant civilization. Black Africans never independently invented the wheel, a written language, or a calendar. Historians dispute whether they ever built a two-story building or domesticated animals before the were subjugated by Islamic slave traders. Much of post-colonial Africa reverted to anarchy after it gained independence from Europe in the 1960s. 'The Vice Guide to Liberia' is one darkly humorous free online documentary about an African state's return to cannibalistic barbarism. Africa's largest state, the People's Republic of the Congo, is a mere geographic expression for a massive region of chaos, poverty, and disease.
South Africa was once considered the last best hope for post-colonial Africa. When blacks emerged from under white Apartheid in 1995, the country they inherited was a developed first world country with nuclear weapons. The transfer of power was peaceful, and Nelson Mandela led the country forward with enormous international goodwill. Today, 25% of South Africans are infected with HIV, only 2% of murders are prosecuted, and the country is accelerating towards every form of social collapse. It took black Africans less than 25 years to destroy a first world state, and they destroyed it without ever resorting to open war.
Haiti is racially the blackest state in the Western Hemisphere, and it's also the poorest. Almost 99% of Haitians are black. The country has been independent of France for over 200 years. Yet, despite centuries of independence and a remarkably homogeneous population, Haiti is a disaster of a country. Does anyone really believe Haiti's crushing poverty and dysfunction were caused by an almost non-existent white population that was driven from power two centuries ago?
The African diaspora has not performed better abroad. I've lived in a majority African American city, visited the ghettos of Paris, and had close contact with Africans working and studying in China. Across the planet, the "black part of town" is equated with poverty and crime. Some of the African American neighborhoods I've visited look remarkably like Africa: dilapidated homes without windows, naked children urinating in the streets, gunshots late at night, garbage strewn everywhere, insane people screaming. We should be startled that deep in the heart of the world's superpower are recreations of Africa whose populations are overwhelmingly of African ancestry. These people left Africa centuries ago, their grandparent's grandparents have no memory of slavery, Jim Crow laws have not been enforced since 1965, and black children have access to free education and welfare. Yet, in the absence of direct oversight, these people have reverted to the lifestyle of their African ancestors. This was not supposed to happen.
Before we move on from history, I want to address the so called "Egyptian race controversy" that is sometimes used to argue against the historical evidence for race realism. The controversy centers on those who claim black people created Egyptian civilization, and thus that successful black societies are possible. The ancient Egyptians, however, were Caucasian, and thus the whole argument is irrelevant. DNA analysis of mummies has shown that the ancient Egyptians were actually more closely related to modern Europeans than to the modern population of Egypt. One study found that 70% of British men are related to King Tut. It seems Queen Victoria was not the first English monarch to rule Egypt. I visited the Louvre Museum in 2009 and remember being shocked that ancient Egyptian statues portrayed them with blue eyes. Modern Egyptians are 8% sub-Saharan, but even that small percentage is a recent addition attributed to the Islamic slave trade. The ancient Egyptians possessed no sub-Saharan DNA.
I have a decent amount of personal experience with the American public education system, and I periodically refamiliarize myself with the academic literature. For more than a decade in these circles the obsession has been to discover a way for educators to eliminate the academic performance gap between whites and blacks. It would be an understatement to say that "many things have been tried." Part of the inspiration for charter schools was the hope that one of them would finally discover a formula for achieving racial equality in the classroom. Thousands of charter schools later, however, nothing has worked. Trillions of dollars have been spent, but no progress has been made. The score gap between whites and blacks on the SAT college entrance exam has not changed for decades. An occasional exception sometimes emerges, a school reaches near parity, attracts considerable attention, and then sinks back into the old situation for no discernible reason. The racial achievement gap always reasserts itself.
Among the most prevalent explanations for the education gap is that it correlates primarily with "socioeconomic status" rather than race, so blacks under-perform because they tend to be poorer. While poverty is certainly part of the issue, however, it's not the whole story. Impoverished white students consistently score better on the SAT than black students from upper middle-class families. The gap is specifically connected to race.
Finally, I want to talk about what intelligence scientists say about racial equality. The mainstream media routinely claims that ideas about racial differences based on innate qualities like genetics are outdated pseudo-science. The reality is exactly the opposite. In 1994, the world's top intelligence scientists released a statement entitled 'Mainstream Science on Intelligence' with the intention of refuting these recurring media claims. The scientists reaffirmed that large differences in average IQ exist between races, and that the difference is 50-80% genetic in origin. In other words, it seems that blacks are born less intelligent than whites. Hundreds, if not thousands, of IQ tests have been administered across populations, long term studies on identical twins have been conducted, and decades of international education data have been dissected. Global testing shows that the average IQ in Europe is roughly 100, Asia is 105, and the average in sub-Saharan Africa is around 70. These facts are well known to scientists, but they're utterly rejected by our equality focused churches and media. IQ is not everything, but this research demonstrates that innate qualities like intelligence do differ across racial groups.
Which explanation is more believable: that blacks are victims of an ancient international racist conspiracy to keep them impoverished; or, that God created sub-Saharan Africans with genetically lower IQs? The evidence seems to support the second theory, but many Christian egalitarians claim that noticing this is an egregious sin. Unfortunately, these egalitarians usually win debates on the topic, and any Christian who commits the sin of noticing inconvenient truths is crucified by public opinion and shamed out of the church. Thoughtful realists generally can't compete against those who use racial issues to signal dedication to variations of critical race theory. And yet, how can we allow the church to descend into racial confusion without at least trying to have more reasonable discussion on the topic?
Is there any chance of a future Wakanda? Is there any hope that a successful black society will finally emerge after six thousand years? Anything is possible. The future of genetic editing could result in the permanent alteration of black genes. Population genetics could unexpectedly drift in a new direction. Increased mobility could result in a black upper class migrating somewhere with the intent of creating a "talented tenth" society. There are numerous possibilities, but none of them seems likely in the foreseeable future.
What should Christians do with this politically correct information? What are the implications of accepting inequality? Does this mean we should return to segregation and slavery? I think the primary lesson is that we should stop spreading blame. Inequality is not the result of racism and hate; it's the outgrowth of God's creative design. Perhaps we can finally breath a sigh of relief and recognize that white people are not criminally responsible for every African catastrophe or black man sent to prison. We should stop telling black people that whites are holding them back and secretly plotting against them. In my experience, many African Americans are more realistic about their race's average intelligence, but it's often white people who spread myths about systematic racism that result in so many black folks feeling paranoid about society.
I think we should also allow our churches and societies to reorganize themselves organically. We do not need racial quotas, affirmative action, or diversity zoning laws. We're never going to fix the race problem by shoving low-income apartment complexes into the middle of white suburbs. Merely exposing poor black kids to "better schools" will not fix inequality. We should accept that white people are different than black people, and that both races will naturally want to organize their communities in different ways.
I do not think we should reintroduce segregation. We all have friends of other races, and we often are that friend to someone else. Also, there will always be racial outliers who want to cross over into another race and explore that community's lifestyle. This has happened for thousands of years, it will continue, and I do not think it should be forbidden unless it starts undermining communities (like mass immigration). Formal segregation is not a reasonable solution, and its enforcement comes with many moral complications.
Before concluding, I would like to briefly address Galatians 3:28 because it's so often used to argue against the acceptance of any form of race realism. Paul wrote: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." I completely affirm this verse and believe we should regard all Christians as united in Christ. I do not, however, believe Paul was saying Christians should ignore racial, economic, and sexual differences. Why is homosexuality a sin if Jesus erased sexual differences? Paul specifically made a distinction between the roles of men and women, and he was not an early supporter of the transsexual movement. Those Christians who still cling to extreme interpretations of MLK's dream have badly misrepresented Paul's meaning.
Finally, I want to say that one of the biggest reasons the equality myth survives is that it gives people an excuse to think that they're morally superior to black people. I'm thinking mostly, but not entirely, of conservatives who claim black people are poor because of their own bad decisions and immoral behavior. The implication of this thinking is that "I must be better than black people because I worked hard and have a higher moral character." No, most people's success is the result of inherited gifts alone with the circumstances and family into which a person were born.
Most people will reject everything I've written about this topic because they want to believe that people define their own destinies. Race realism will probably remain a minority position in the Church, but I think it's important for at least some Christians to start thinking and writing about it. Racial issues are not going away, and they're even becoming more problematic. America and Europe, in particular, are becoming more diverse, and diversity is creating conflicts that we should approach with a wisdom rooted in God's created order.
*This article is not intended to encourage hatred or negative stereotypes. All humans belong to a single family descended from Adam and Eve. We are all cousins, even if the various branches of our common family have diversified in big ways. I hope that Christian readers will recognize the importance of thinking and discussing racial issues in our divided age.