I'll likely have more to say about this problematic review in time, since I know something about both the histories being debated as well the reviewer and a co-author, going back to our time together in seminary. 1/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/reparations-a-critical-theological-review/

For now though, the fact that Deyoung equates "America" with the "United States" in his opening critique of the book's supposed historical inaccuracy, would be hilarious for both its geographic naiveté and historical anachronism if it weren't so revealing of its nationalism. 2/

Deyoung: "As a point of historical fact, it also bears mentioning that Kwon and Thompson wrongly assert that 12 million human beings were 'caught in the slave trade between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries in America' (87)...3/

..."when the total number of slaves brought to America was just over 300,000, with the vast majority going to Brazil and to the Caribbean." First, Brazil and the Caribbean are part of "America." The United States is a single nation-state in a much larger land with that name. 4/

Second, the long story of enslavement in the Americas — which I believe the authors are calling upon Christians to repair — begins in the 15th and 16th centuries, long before US founding in the late 18th or the fixing of its borders in the 19th/20th. 5/

Third, the Caribbean story is also part of the U. S. story, including U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as well as imperial proxies in Cuba, Haiti, and most of the rest of the Caribbean. Saying "the vast majority went to the Caribbean" is not a win here. 6/

Fourth, Deyoung claims that his concern is primarily for gospel witness and theology, but seems peculiarly focused only on vindicating the U.S., rather than owning Christian culpability for much wider and longer settler-colonial violence. This must be what's really at stake. 7/

To be fair, the authors themselves use "America" to refer to the US sometimes and should be more clear. However, this opening critique does not serve clarity. Instead it acts to reduce the scale of injustice and advance the claim that white supremacy is ultimately "amorphous." 8/

This is not the sort of confession that must be the beginning of real theological reckoning or imagined future absolution. Indeed, the review explicitly refuses to grapple with specifics: "I don’t want to provide a historical analysis of Reparations." 9/

It also refuses other evidence: "Neither do I want to focus on the sociological and economic claims of the book...Neither am I going to attempt to sketch my assessment of race in America." Got it, so let's do theology without history? Analysis without observation? 10/

Instead, he wants "to provide a theological assessment of the book’s theological claims." I recognize this move well from our shared theology courses. It's a call for systematic analysis within a closed system of biblical citation that focuses on individual guilt/salvation. 11/

It's easy to claim that real repair would be impossible because history is too complicated and white supremacy too amorphous when you refuse to engage the specifics of these histories and social realities or countenance tangible claims on lost labor, land, and liberty. 12/

This is for call for reconciliation in the present without dwelling too much upon the truths of our past, a sort of social forgiveness without collective repentance or meaningful repair. Yet, the reviewer tells us that the book "is not clearly shaped by the Gospel." 13/13