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Thread: I love running @PublicDiscourse because our authors help me clarify my thoughts and beliefs. They think deeply, identifying the foundational principles at play in contemporary debates, and drawing on expertise in an array of disciplines. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/featured/race-and-racism-in-america/
In the collection linked above, @RyanTAnd and pull together some of the most thoughtful essays that PD has published on Race and Racism in America. We also describe some of the fault lines that define current discourse on these topics.
As @albertmohler Mohler pointed out, critical race theory assumes that all meaning is constructed and views all human interactions through the lens of power and oppression. It emphasizes the power of social structures in determining the lives, choices, and beliefs of individuals.
Many conservatives recoil from such claims, emphasizing the importance of individual choices, calling on all people to simply treat each other well and objecting to the idea of “systemic racism.”
To people of faith, calls to repentance and wokeness sound suspiciously like a secular religion in which there is no possibility of redemption or reconciliation, only endless resentment and futile attempts at reparation.
Being called “racist” simply by virtue of being white conflicts with an understanding of sin as requiring the active assent of the will.
A couple of years ago, some fellow Catholics started talking about the idea of structural sin in the context of racism, and I recoiled. But they were citing John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I felt like I couldn't just brush this off.
