QED
Mark Powell
Stan Grant, flogging a new book and thrashing a dead monarch, has just had an excerpt of his latest exercise in cliche wrangling and incoherent grievance published in the Weekend Australian. It appeared beneath the ominous headline, “The Queen is Dead, the ABC is nervous … I feel empty”. Such is the presence of systemic racism in Australia, apparently, that Grant remains very much the victim. That he collects a handsome salary for hosting Q&A and has an international publisher, Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins, eager to publish every detail of his oppression and torments seems not to have occurred to him. Instead, and not surprisingly, he casts the majority of his lighter-skinned fellow citizens as racist oppressors.
In a stunning admission, which completely contradicts the ABC’s own charter for journalistic objectivity, Grant states:
As journalists, we cling to our objectivity. But that is a lie. Who is objective? What a bloodless idea. There is nothing objective about the way my people—my family—have been treated. And what is objective about this ritual mourning of the White Queen? I am expected to ask questions. To give guests “equal time”*. To make sure all voices are heard. As if truth can be divided and weighed. At other times I can step back, try to be neutral.
At least he’s being honest. It is what Grant has to say about “whiteness”, though, which sounds the alarm. Grant states:
Whiteness is not White people. I have to keep reminding myself of that. It is an organising principle. It is a way of ordering the world. It is an invention. An idea. A curse.
What Grant is referring too here are the underlying tenets of Critical Race Theory. And as many have pointed out, including here, here and here, the social justice movement has morphed into a full-blown religious cult. Dr. Voddie T. Baucham argues in his book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Salem, 2021):
This new cult has created a new lexicon that has served as scaffolding to support what has become an entire body of divinity. In the same manner, this new body of divinity comes complete with its own cosmology (critical race theory); original sin (racism); law (antiracism); gospel (racial reconciliation); martyrs (George Floyd, Breonna Taylor); priests (oppressed minorities); means of atonement (reparations); new birth (wokeness); liturgy (lament); canon (social justice books); theologians (DiAngelo, Kendi, Brown, Crenshaw, MacIntosh, etc.); and catechism (“say their names”).
Baucham’s work is not only one of the most accessible summaries on the subject to date, but also shows that “whiteness” is a whole new cosmology, a way of looking at the world**. Baucham explains how this has taken place by following and retelling Genesis 1’s account of how God created the world.
Day 1: White people created whiteness.
Being white is no longer about a person’s biology but a presumed ideology. Thus, there is a seismic shift from having been created in the image of God — a reality everyone shares — to having been born into a privileged racial group. This obviously destroys any idea of equality between fellow human beings. As Robin DiAngelo and Ozlem Sensoy state in, Is Everyone Really Equal? (New York: 2012):
Although many White people feel that being White has no meaning, this feeling is unique to White people and is a key part of what it means to White; to see one’s race as having no meaning is a privilege only Whites are afforded. To claim to be “just human” and thus outside of race is one of the most powerful and pervasive manifestations of Whiteness.
Day 2: White people created ‘white privilege’
Social justice warriors refer an inherent “white privilege”, which Baucham explains as unearned advantage by virtue of that same whiteness. As Peggy McIntosh — the woman who coined this particular term — explains in her paper, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack:
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognise male privilege. So, I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.
Day3: White people created ‘white supremacy’
Arising from white privilege is ‘white supremacy’. This refers not to the systemic exploitation and oppression of people of colour by those of European background but instead to “any belief, behaviour, or system that supports, promotes, or enhances white privilege.”
This is where one needs to be especially careful in perceiving the subtle shift as to what the phrase “white supremacy” actually means. No longer is it about one group of people thinking of themselves as inherently superior to others; rather, it is any advantage that a particular sub-group enjoys simply because of their mutual association.
Day 4: White people created ‘white complicity’
This is the belief that white people, through the practices of whiteness and by benefiting from white privilege, contribute to the maintenance of systemic racial injustice. As such, according to critical race theory, white people must explicitly acknowledge and repudiate the sin of ‘whiteness’. As the SJW founder of Sojourners magazine, Jim Wallis, states:
Confession leads to freedom…. Without confession to the sin of white racism, white supremacy, white privilege, people who call themselves white Christians will never be free—free from the bondage of a lie, a myth, an ideology, and an idol.
Day 5: White people created ‘white equilibrium’
Flowing from the previous point, white people further their guilt by not continually confessing it. This is known as ‘white equilibrium”: the belief system that allegedly allows white people to remain comfortably ignorant. Hence, the only right response is for reparations of some kind. As Latasha Morrison attempts to explain in her influential book, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation (New York, 2019):
In my work as a bridge builder, I’ve seen how, time and time again, conversations about reconciliation stall when the topic of righting the wrongs comes up. Terms such as reparations, affirmative action, white privilege, and Black Lives Matter are nonstarters for so many folks, in part because they disrupt the listener. They remind him or her that making things right costs something, often power, position or money.
Day 6: White people created white fragility.
Finally, there is what is called, ‘white fragility’: the inability and unwillingness of white people to talk about race due to, allegedly, the iron grip that whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege, white complicity, and white equilibrium exert on them (knowingly or unknowingly). But as Baucham rightly states, “White fragility also serves as a kind of Kafka trap. In other words, it is a denial of guilt that is seen as proof of guilt.”
Claim: You have white privilege and are complicit in white supremacy and racism.
Response: That is not true! (fill in rationale here).
Conclusion: That is just your white fragility fighting for equilibrium.
Day 7: White people never rest from black activism
Baucham doesn’t refer to a seventh day but it’s logical to conclude that under critical race theory there is never any ultimate rest. This is because, as John McWhorter argues, black activism functions as atonement. Or as Baucham writes, “In case you’re wondering about its soteriology [the doctrine of salvation], there isn’t one. Antiracism offers no salvation—only perpetual penance in an effort to battle an incurable disease.”
In the light of all this, it is interesting how Grant still refers to himself as a ‘Christian’. Although, make no mistake, it is not the same faith Grant describes as “a failed European Christianity”. No, for Grant:
Ours was the crucified Christ; crucified as a political act. Our theology is political. It is a theology of liberation. And it is black.
Grant isn’t stretching the truth — his truth, anyway. This is indeed a completely new religion. What the Apostle Paul would describe as being a “different gospel” (Gal. 1:6-9). The end result, though, is not racial reconciliation but a form of toxic tribalism: a message condemning white people as oppressors and exonerates anyone with an indigenous heritage as being a victim.
* If only
** For those interested, see also Andrew Doyle’s The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World
Nelle's journey 