{"id":36357,"date":"2024-03-04T16:07:46","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T00:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36357"},"modified":"2024-03-04T16:07:46","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T00:07:46","slug":"am-i-caught-in-the-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/am-i-caught-in-the-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I Caught in the Trap?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have I fallen into The Identity Trap<\/em>? \u00a0\u00a0In his book, The Identity Trap, <\/em>Yascha Mounk identifies and discusses the seven main themes of what he calls \u201cIdentity Synthesis.\u201d[1]<\/a> Mounk states that Identity Synthesis was \u201cdeeply shaped by the triple influence of post modernism, postcolonialism and Critical Race Theory.[2]<\/a> \u00a0I teach a course titled Cultural and Human Diversity at my university and within that class I teach what Delgado and Stefancic call the \u201cBasic Tenants of CRT\u201d[3]<\/a> \u00a0Because of this, I feel compelled to take time to examine what I teach and see if I have fallen into the Identity Trap.\u00a0 Since CRT is a hot topic and I teach at a Christian University, I pair the basic tenets of CRT with what I believe are examples from scripture.\u00a0 As I begin this topic, I Iet students know that Delgado and Stefancic state that not everyone who subscribes to CRT agree with one another, but what I am covering is what the authors state are the tenets that most people agree upon.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 I also stress that CRT is just a theory, it is only one way of looking at the world.\u00a0 Below are the four tenets that I teach.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u201cRacism is ordinary, not aberrational\u2014\u2018normal science,\u2019 the usual way society does business, the common every day experience of most people of color in this country.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Let\u2019s look at the first part of that statement, Racism is ordinary.\u00a0 I teach my students that biases including discrimination, which by definition racism is a form of discrimination, was most likely seen after the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.\u00a0 We now have people who speak different languages, and research shows we tend to favor our own group.\u00a0 We see biases including discriminatory behavior throughout the Bible.\u00a0 Abraham didn\u2019t want Isaac to marry a Canaanite, Egyptians considered eating with Hebrews to be detestable, Jews and Samaritans did not associate with each other.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Mounk talks about how we as humans tend to discriminate against those who do not belong to our same group.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0For example, a 2005 research study examined the helping behaviors between groups and found that people were less likely to help someone who was not wearing the same team jersey that they associated with.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Is racism an everyday occurrence.? I tell my students that as a White male Christian living and rural Ohio, I don\u2019t know, but I encourage them to listen to the stories of those who may experience racism.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. \u201cMost would agree that our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material for the dominant group\u201d[9]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Do we see anything like this in the scriptures?\u00a0 We know that Solomon took a census of the number of aliens in Israel and conscripted all of them to work in building the temple.[10]<\/a> There was likely psychic and material gain from this forced labor for the Israelites.\u00a0 We also see the wealthy in Israel taking advantage of the poor.\u00a0 In Amos 2, the prophet declares the sins of Israel including selling the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and denying justice to the oppressed.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 This behavior made the wealthy feel superior (psychic gain) as well as the material gain they received.\u00a0 Thus, as the dominant group, they continued to engage in this behavior; there was no reason in their minds to stop doing it.\u00a0 Does this exist in our society today?\u00a0 Looking at what led up to the 2008 US Housing crisis, one might ask, why did US banks target minorities for subprime loans?[12]<\/a>\u00a0 Did they gain materially and possibly psychically from this practice?<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. \u201cA third theme of critical race theory, the \u201csocial construct\u201d thesis, hold that race and races are products of social thought and relations.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        I turn back to what I would have already discussed in class, that all humans were created in the image and likeness of God.[13]<\/a>\u00a0 God created diversity and through adaptation various genetics began to manifest themselves, likely for purposes of survival.\u00a0 I teach my students to recognize the diversity in all people, remembering that one piece of a person\u2019s identify such as race or ethnicity does not define that entire person.<\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n

          \n
        1. \u201c. . . the voice-of-color thesis holds that because of their different histories and experiences with oppression, black, American Indian, Asian, and Latino writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that whites are unlikely to know.\u201d[14]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

           <\/p>\n

          For this tenet, I turn to the Gospels.\u00a0 Why do we have four different Gospels?\u00a0 Are there differences found in each of the Gospels?\u00a0 Did each person experience Jesus differently based upon who they were, their past, their needs, their expectations?\u00a0 Does my Black friend who grew up and lives in Cleveland experience the world differently from me?\u00a0 Yes, he does, but unlike proponents of standpoint theory, I believe he can communicate to others what life is like for him.[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

          I appreciate Mounk\u2019s critique of CRT, I believe there is some truth to CRT and Mounk’s critique, but it has unnecessarily become a polarized issue. David French in an article on CRT quotes a tweet by Christopher Rufo who said his goal was to generalize everything cultural as being CRT and to cast CRT in a negative light.[16]<\/a>\u00a0 As a result, there is so much emotion tied to CRT that people are being reactive <\/em>and get caught up in emotional triangles<\/em> involving it.[17]<\/a>\u00a0 As with any new theory, we need to step back, differentiate<\/em> ourselves from the emotions and take time to process (System 2 thinking<\/em>) and pray.[18]<\/a>\u00a0 After reviewing how I teach CRT, I do not think I have fallen into the Identity Trap, \u00a0I stay away from the emotions, I see it as just a theory and do not use it to define all that I teach, \u00a0and I try to evaluate it through the a scriptural lens.<\/p>\n

          [1]<\/a> Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time<\/em>, (New York, Penguin, 2023).<\/p>\n

          [2]<\/a> Mounk, 65.<\/p>\n

          [3]<\/a> Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic Critical Race Theory: An Introduction,<\/em> 3rd<\/sup> ed.\u00a0 (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 8.<\/p>\n

          [4]<\/a> Delgado and Stefancic, 8.<\/p>\n

          [5]<\/a> Delgado and Stefancic, 8.<\/p>\n

          [6]<\/a> Genesis 24:3, 43:32; John 4:9 (CSB).<\/p>\n

          [7]<\/a> Mounk, 203.<\/p>\n

          [8]<\/a> Mark Levine, Amy Prosser, and Stephen Reicher, \u201cIdentity and emergency Intervention: How Social Group Membership and Inclusiveness of Group Boundaries Shape Helping Behavior,\u201d Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(4) 443-453.<\/p>\n

          [9]<\/a> Delgado and Stefancic, 8.<\/p>\n

          [10]<\/a> 2 Chron. 2:2.<\/p>\n

          [11]<\/a> Amos 2:6-7<\/p>\n

          [12]<\/a> Nick Carey, \u201cRacial predator loans fueled the US Housing Crisis: Study,\u201d Reuters, Oct 13, 2010, https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE6930K5\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

          [13]<\/a> Gen. 1:26-27<\/p>\n

          [14]<\/a> Delgado and Stefancic, 11.<\/p>\n

          [15]<\/a> Mounk, 72.<\/p>\n

          [16]<\/a> David French, \u201cHow the Fight over Critical Race Theory Became a Religious War,\u201d The Dispatch, April 10, 2022, https:\/\/frenchpress.thedispatch.com\/p\/how-the-fight-over-critical-race?s=r<\/a>.\u00a0 Another interesting article is Benjamin Wallace-Wells, \u201cHow a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory,\u201d\u00a0 The New Yorker,\u00a0 June 18, 2021.\u00a0 https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/annals-of-inquiry\/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

          [17]<\/a> Edwin Friedman A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix.<\/em> (New York: Church Publishing, 2007).<\/p>\n

          [18]<\/a>[18] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>, (Canada: Anchor Canada, 2013), 20-21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Have I fallen into The Identity Trap? \u00a0\u00a0In his book, The Identity Trap, Yascha Mounk identifies and discusses the seven main themes of what he calls \u201cIdentity Synthesis.\u201d[1] Mounk states that Identity Synthesis was \u201cdeeply shaped by the triple influence of post modernism, postcolonialism and Critical Race Theory.[2] \u00a0I teach a course titled Cultural and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"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":[1],"tags":[3092],"class_list":["post-36357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mounk-dlgp03","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36357","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\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36358,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36357\/revisions\/36358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}