What Are We Thinking and What Must We Do?

Day after day my news feeds—like yours—are filled with stories of racism. The media, universities, the National Education Association, Progressive politicians, and many of our religious leaders assert or simply parrot that America is systemically racist.

“Systemic” is not your every-day word.

Systemic indicates a system that affects the entirety of something: a policy, practice, and set of beliefs that are established as normal, normative, or customary throughout a political, social, or economic system.

“Racism” is the belief that one’s own race is superior and has the right to dominate others.

Does racism exist?

Of course. Racism has existed since humans formed cliques to splint their insecurities both individual and group. Racism is wrong, shortsighted, narrow. It does violence to us all.

But let’s be clear: Racism by definition is not what’s being asserted about American society.

Systemic racism is the current declaration, a virulent racism that afflicts every aspect of American life, history, and social structure; a formative racism to establish, perpetuate, and secure domination by white people. Given this, America should be burned to the ground, its flag desecrated, its borders ignored, its children indoctrinated, its educational theory reframed, and its history denounced.

Is this assessment accurate? Schools are teaching our K-12 children that it is. Corporations are coaching white employees to be less white. The military is conducting training designed to ferret out systemic racism within the ranks. The media is peddling the notion that white Christianity and Catholicism originated racism and evangelical belief is devoted to perpetuating white supremacy.

Are we on the right track? How are we thinking about this? What is our course of action?

Discussing whether or not America is inherently or systemically racist, Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, made an observation that I’ll paraphrase for brevity and clarity.

Given that blacks are 12% to 13% of the American population, there literally aren’t enough black voters to elect a president of the United States who is black. People of all other skin tones had to vote for President Obama. And you say, “Well, of course. That’s obvious.”

Indeed! That’s the point. If every white person in America is a racist, there is no numerical way that Barak Obama could have been elected POTUS—even if every other person of color voted for him.

A systemically, thoroughly racist society, would not have allowed an Obama presidency. A racist society would not allow Kamala Harris to be vice president. A racist society would not allow Clarence Thomas to be a Supreme Court Justice, or Thurgood Marshall before him, or Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State, or Colin Powell to be a four-star General, or Ben Carson to serve in a presidential cabinet.

Are there, and have there been, instances of racism in America? Sure, but again, that’s not the current narrative being advanced. Does racism need to be addressed where it exists? You bet it does! But before this can occur, the problem needs to be identified accurately.

Hanson also points out the irony that some of the folks screaming the loudest about racism are some of the most privileged people in the United States, indeed in the world: LeBron James, Meghan Markle, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama; athletes with multi-million-dollar incomes; Olympians. These critics are the epitome of the American dream, yet they denigrate the culture and country that make their lives possible.

I’m not buying what these folks say, at least not at face value. They’re obviously unhappy, but what’s the true cause of their discontent?

It can’t be systemic racism, as Hanson points out, and if it’s not access to the American dream, then what is driving this complaint?

In his interview, Hanson used another word that is not part of everyday language: existential.

If you listen, what people are voicing is, “I’m unhappy because I don’t feel like I’m as viable or valuable a human being as the people I perceive as viable and valuable, i.e. all white people in this case. This is an existential complaint.

Existential: relating to existence, especially human existence, and an individual’s freedom to make choices.

Existence: Why am I here? Do I matter? Am I significant?

Who’s responsible for this existential crisis?

Critical Race Theory (CRT) teaches that every white person alive in America—roughly 60%-76% of the population, depending on how people define their ethnicity—and every white person of any age who has ever lived in America, is/was a racist and is to blame. Every American institution is racist. Capitalism is racist. The dirt under your house is evidence of racism—unless you are a person of some color other than white. The American flag invokes racial terror.

I have no question but that those advancing CRT believe in the theory and accompanying curricula that they are introducing into our schools system (with help and incentive from Federal funding). But it’s a narrative without substance, a story based upon a contrived notion.

For CRT, The 1619 Project, and systemic racism to be true and accurate of America’s founding and development, all of the historians who’ve studied and written America’s history must be delusional, professionally motivated by malice of forethought to advance a deception; they must be deceivers, prevaricators, and liars en masse, with near-absolute consistency of outcome in their scholarly endeavors, and cohesive collusion unlike anything the world has ever known.

The counter argument is that America’s history is written by white people to advance their racial agenda and retain power. This argument is an insult to legacy black historians and scholars. The implication is they sold out, taught and published lies at the expense of their black brethren, and are thereby complicit in subjugating their own to white masters within academia, business, and American life.

It is spectacular naivety to put forward the notion that a vast number of both old and modern historians, sociologists, philosophers, authors, etc. who largely agree upon the fundamental events of a multi-century history and culture are wrong about everything they’ve written and taught. That a journalist, not even an historian or student of human behavior, finally figured out the truth about America’s founding—i.e. The 1619 Project—clearly implying that all those who preceded her were totally wrong, even duplicitous, is preposterous.

By the way, Hannah Nicole-Jones, author of The 1619 Project, made news this week for asserting that Cuba, which is experiencing a revolution, is the most equal, multi-racial country in the hemisphere. She attributes Cuba’s “success” to Socialism. The ignorance of this view is appalling—yet we are busy subsidizing with Federal tax dollars her history of America so our school children can be as educated as she is about how the world works. I think Ms. Nicole-Jones should take some of her new-found money as a tenured prof at Howard, fly to Miami, and interview a few Cuban immigrants on why they felt compelled to make homemade boats out of garbage and risk their lives to escape Cuba for America.

But, I digress.

Historians come in all colors, male, female, and all socio-economic strata. Those examining America’s success story derive from all over the world. Their historical work is cohesive on the basic, fundamental elements of American history. The necessary, collective failure of integrity required for CRT, systemic racism, and The 1619 Project to be the real story of America is so monstrous as to be ludicrous.

So, if systemic racism is mythical, and CRT is highly suspect, we are left again with the question: What is the real reason underlying all the unhappiness being voiced these days? And why is the unhappiness metastasizing?

For all the anecdotes, repeated narratives, and volume of unhappiness being expressed, there is a common theme: The existential questions of: Do I matter? Am I a significant person? Do I possess the right of self-determination? Am I secure? Do I have value?

Who will answer our existential questions?

There are two options. Only two.

Given the size of our discontent and the volume of our unhappiness, only government or God are big enough to manage discord, discontent, doubt, and disillusionment of such magnitude that it disrupts history, narrative, cultural cohesion, and even rationality.

Government or God?

Government: The allure of Socialism and Communism is that the government ensures equality and provision for all. There are no poor and no rich. No boundaries, no borders. No one greater than, none lesser than. Trust the government and the government will take care of you. All you have to do is relinquish your self-determination to the governing authorities, trusting that they know best and will do what’s right. The allure of Capitalism is that you can achieve whatever you dream. If you work hard, then you can realize security for yourself and derive existential meaning based upon performance. All that is required is that you devote your soul to the master of profitability and be willing to settle for existential worth based upon achievement. Best of luck when you no longer achieve.  

God: His pledge is to provide all that you need according to His riches in Christ Jesus. The only requirement is that you dispense with self-reliance and bow your knee to His leadership in every aspect of life, rely upon Him, believing that as a good God, He will care for you, provide for you, secure you, and follow through on His pledge to you. Self-determination is yours for the choosing.  

So, you can look to government or you can rely upon God.

The primary trouble with government is that government is incapable of providing reliable answers to existential questions. Government has no soul. Government is neither moral nor immoral. Government is a structure, a bureaucracy, the repository of the rule of law.

The workings of a government are executed by people and are no more reliable than the people who form the function of government. Politicians make promises, but provide few reliable promises. Humans are fickle, remarkably fallible, and easily intoxicated by power.  

Those who lead us, like all humans, are driven by the same existential needs we are. Looking to them and the government they form to reliably provide for our existential longings assumes they’ve found the answers themselves and can deliver the same for us.

If government reliably answered existential questions, then our land would be at peace, our homes harmonious, and our culture a panacea of tranquility. Thus, it seems clear that the unhappiness in our land is because America has decided to depend on government, systems, groups, and bureaucracies to answer the existential questions plaguing us. Our unhappiness is because these entities are incapable of consistently delivering or securing existential meaning.

Yet, we persist. Even if on the wrong path, it feels regressive to stop, turn around, and retrace our steps. So, we march onward, and if resistance is encountered, we tend to run faster and harder down the path.

Thus, videos instructing first-grade children how to masturbate? Teaching pornography literacy to K-12—and when parents express outrage, the New York Times defends the teacher. Teaching K-12 kids racial discrimination and hatred while blocking parental notice of sex change initiatives in children too young to be given an aspirin by the school nurse. Defunding police and wondering why crime soars? Because students get incorrect answers, mathematics is racist? National Geographic’s assertion that smoke from fireworks on July 4th is racist because of the communities it drifts over? That aborting a full-term baby is reasonable and is not infanticide, the murder of our own offspring? Or that everyone to date has gotten everything wrong about America; we alone are enlightened?

Desperate times, a desperate need to have existential questions answered—these create desperate measures enacted by desperate people. We all do this when subjected to sufficient duress. No human is exempt from desperation.

But why?

Why do humans persist in advancing desperation upon desperate maneuver when by all observation the tactic is a failed endeavor?

It’s because the alternative is a humbling outlier.

The alternative is to bow the knee to God and pledge allegiance to Him and His Kingdom.

It is no mystery why pride is one of the deadly sins. Our dedication to hubris—excessive pride—makes fools of us, and if we persist in our excessive pride, it costs us our eternity, not to mention or present.  

Scripture says, “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man.”

Blaise Pascal observed that there is a God-shaped hole in every person that functions like a vacuum. The majority of us insist with prideful arrogance upon attempting to fill this hole with anything other than God: Money, power, sex, position, status, recognition…. The deal is, whatever we put into the hole in an attempt to fill it, disappears, sucked into the vacuum. The dedication we exhibit to embrace any alternative to bowing our knee to God, the more desperate the sucking sound becomes. Desperation begets increased desperation.

It’s our choice: government or God. A sucking sound in our souls or existential satisfaction.

Government needs you. That is, government needs your tax dollars and politicians need your vote.

God doesn’t need you. There is nothing you can provide that will enhance His Kingdom or His self-existence. He is not desperate for you or anything else.

His appeal to you to join His Kingdom and family has everything to do with answering your existential needs and nothing to do with what you bring to the table.

Love. Acceptance. Viability. Value. Significance. Security. Place. Since our existential needs are essential to our human wellbeing, God who is absolute and eternal will not trust existential supply to anyone or anything other than Himself. God pledges on His own honor to supply richly, not only an answer, but also ample provision for all existential longing we humans possess.

All that is required is humble recognition that He is God and we are not.

Dylan sang, “But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed / You’re gonna have to serve somebody / Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord / But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Americans, and humans in general, are desperately mad and disconsolate because we are finding our best ideals failing to address our existential questions. In response, we throw more bad ideas after the bad ideas we’ve already put forward, wondering why we keep getting bad outcomes, while growing more and more disconsolate and divided.

Let’s pay reparations. Let’s demonize everyone with white skin. Let’s tear down a dead statue. Let’s burn down our town. Let’s remove the rule of law. Let’s wreck our government. Let’s throw out a history that recounts our desperate struggle and declare a new history that suits a more popular narrative. Let’s eliminate those who disagree with us. Let’s cover our eyes to the historical fact that all of this has been tried before with disastrous outcomes. 

That we are voicing our discontent in absolute terms like systemic racism indicates that we are absolutely desperate.

The alternative is to tell ourselves the truth.

I think we sense that our hubris would not survive.

The alternative is to bow our knee to God.

I think we sense that this means our human system is bankrupt.

The alternative is to humbly implore God for His intervention, guidance, and security.

While this would resolve and secure the answer to our existential needs, it would cost us our pride, delusion, and desperation.

But there’s a divine probability it would heal our country and we its citizens. And there is every certainty that God will secure us if we declare Him to be the ruler of our lives.