{"id":35922,"date":"2024-02-26T12:15:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T20:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=35922"},"modified":"2024-02-17T02:22:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-17T10:22:13","slug":"the-struggle-and-the-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-struggle-and-the-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"The struggle and the hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kenan Malik, writing from a distinctly British perspective, seeks to put our current social and political issues into their historical context. He effectively takes his readers on a journey to understand the history of racism and how it has gotten us to where we are.[1]<\/a> In his own words, \u201cOne theme of this book is the need to comprehend both the immense significance of the Enlightenment and the depth of the contradictions and paradoxes that rent it.\u201d[2]<\/a> He goes on to establish that although inequality and exploitation among humans have existed since the beginning of time, it was Immanuel Kant who \u201cnot only established a taxonomy of race, but also imposed value judgments upon them.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Personally, I appreciated Malik\u2019s explanations and history lessons. Admittedly I\u2019ve often heard people state that race is nothing more than a social construct, but I hadn\u2019t completely grasped what they meant until now.[4]<\/a> As we\u2019ve read about previously, tribalism is hard-wired into us as humans.[5]<\/a> We naturally divide the world into \u201cus\u201d and \u201cothers\u201d. It\u2019s almost comical (but not quite) to read Malik\u2019s inclusion of one famous historian\u2019s perspective on my own native Pennsylvania:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy\u201d, asked Benjamin Franklin, one of the great figures of the American Enlightenment, \u201cshould Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them?\u201d \u2026 And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also.\u201d Only \u201cthe Saxons\u201d and \u201cthe English\u201d were truly white. \u201cI could wish their Numbers were increased\u201d, Franklin lamented.[6]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

On one hand, we have the inescapable reality that as humans we naturally discriminate, dehumanize and fear those who are not part of our \u201cin-group.\u201d Thus, we are prone to do all sorts of mental gymnastics such as create racial boundaries where none exist in any real biological sense. On the other hand, we know that in Christ we are freed from that old way of thinking. In Christ \u201cthere 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.\u201d (Galatians 3:28 ESV) I\u2019ve run across the loveliest reminder of how this was already true in the person of Jesus, which we can see if we look closely at his genealogy. Not only did Jesus\u2019 lineage include male and female (well, obviously it did, but Matthew went out of his way to honor some of those women); it also included ancestors of Jewish as well as Gentile origin. Ruth the Moabitess and Rahab were Gentiles. Tamar was likely Gentile and even Bathsheba was originally married to a Gentile, namely Uriah the Hittite.[7]<\/a> Jesus himself transcended in-group vs. out-group barriers, even as he was obviously incarnated into a male, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Aramaic speaking body.<\/p>\n

Malik embraces writer Thomas Chatterton Williams\u2019 perspective on transcendence, which is a little different than Jesus\u2019 but still worth considering. \u201cTo transcend race, to break the bounds of identity politics, requires us to resurrect radical universalism not as an idea but as a social movement. It requires us to think of racism, not as a singular problem, but in its connection with other forms of inequalities. It requires us to restitch the economic and the political. To transcend the concept of race requires not just an intellectual revolution, but a social one, too.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if we will ever experience an intellectual let alone a social revolution. But as we struggle against all forms of inequality, I am reminded that we can be hopeful even in the midst of the battle. Theologian Esau McCaulley in his book Reading While Black<\/em> encourages us that our faith, specifically the discipline of Bible reading \u201cplaces its greatest hopes in the character of God as it emerges from the entirety of the biblical story. It builds on the great truths of God as creator, liberator, savior and judge.\u201d[9]<\/a> And so my hope for humankind, the only way we will transcend our differences, lie in our hope as God as creator, liberator, savior and judge.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Keenan Malik \u201cWhat We Get Wrong About Race.\u201d August 9, 2023 on TRIGGERnometry podcast. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7vajeuKADyc<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Malik, Kenan.\u00a0Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics.\u00a0<\/em>London: Hurst, 2023. <\/em>Ch. 1.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> As an aside, I found this article on the topic of race as a social construction, if you\u2019re looking for another explanation: https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Agarwal, Pragya. Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias<\/em>, London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2020. 43.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Franklin, Benjamin (1918; first pub. 1755) Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Etc, William Abbatt.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Kenneth E. Bailey. Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. <\/em>Downers Grove, IL: Intervarisity Press, 2008. 42.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Williams, Thomas Chatterton (2019) Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, John Murray. 137.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Esau McCaulley. Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2020. 165.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kenan Malik, writing from a distinctly British perspective, seeks to put our current social and political issues into their historical context. He effectively takes his readers on a journey to understand the history of racism and how it has gotten us to where we are.[1] In his own words, \u201cOne theme of this book is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2489,3049],"class_list":["post-35922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-malik","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35923,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35922\/revisions\/35923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}