A blurb from an article at the Sovereign Nations website.
https://sovereignnations.com/2019/06/06/black-identity-theories-secular-or-sacred/?utm_campaign=meetedgar&utm_medium=social&utm_source=meetedgar.com&fbclid=IwAR2G3I59mG8UJvJudfS9FjSe_IihdbeIGT6XhSZvcuyB74I_Br9ODu8m1Sw
As you read this keep in mind that “Sovereign Nations” is supposed to be the good guys opposing the slide of the Southern Baptist Convention into Critical Race theory and Intersectionality. With friends like this we might as well just let the enemies have their way.
The article is insightful in terms of its analysis of the origins of Critical Race theory but once she (Ariel Gonzalez Bovat) moves away from analysis to solutions she goes completely off the tracks. In point of fact I agreed with what I was reading until this statement,
“Cross’s model of black identity was an attempt to merge black culture with the unbiblical label of being black as a “race”.”
Black as a race is unbiblical? I’d love to see her prove that.
The fact that race exists is seen in,
1.) Pharmaceuticals that are developed as designed particularly for people of particular races.
2.) The reality of matters like this,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/30/family-3-year-old-leukemia-plead-bone-marrow-transplant-donor/1293400001/?fbclid=IwAR2l7g2lMSpMekovIaqEGm0pY9E9-RXPgRD5Et9dXaHGIYQG_V951GSZEoU
3.) Forensic Science routinely can identify people from bones found. If Race was merely a social construct forensic science could not identify the races of the deceased by merely looking at bones long in the ground.
4.) The fact that some races are uniquely given to certain diseases while other races are not. For example the black race is given to sickle cell anemia. If race were only a social construct why would this be the case?
Ariel Gonzalez Bovat goes on to write,
“We can reject secular reasoning that asserts our skin color or culture should be our primary identity marker. Skin color is not tied to culture, race does not exist. Prayerfully, this article has proven that Cross and other secular theorists have succeeded in merging race, skin color and culture, creating that firmly held “social construct” that continues to reinforce the necessity of keeping the word “race” in our language, which ultimately informs how we view each other. We are not the totality of our skin color or ethnic culture.Our skin color does not define us, nor does it inform our identity.”
Bret responds,
“Fine we are Christians first, but the fact that we are Christians first does not mean that our skin color or race doesn’t contribute to the informing of our identity.
Second, this assertion is nothing but Gnosticism. Who God has created us to be in terms of race, culture and ethnicity, maleness or femaleness, all contribute mightily to our identity.
Third, she has embraced the postmodern idea that creaturely realities assigned by God are only social constructs that are malleable. This is the opposition to CRT in the Southern Baptists.
Fourth, this smack of hyper individualism… atomistic individualism which treats the corporate categories we are created with nominalistically. Our race, ethnicity, tribe, and family, are assigned to us by God. This view quoted above would make man a single integer which provides for himself his own creaturely identity.
Ariel Gonzalez Bovat is drinking from the well of postmodernism when she starts insisting that race / ethnicity is a social construct. This idea of social construct was barely heard of until the last 20 years or so and now it has been pushed into our social consciousness as an article of faith and those who advocate this are providing either a prime example of gas-lighting or else are themselves suffering from unspeakable insanity.
Race, ethnicity, sex, nationality, citizenship, etc. are all good and creational, God-ordanied categories.When people like James White and some of the authors at Sovereign Nations ignore these realities they are the enemy and we need to fight them perhaps even more then those who they are opposing since the James White crowd are putatively our friends. The statement on social justice that MacArthur spearheaded also said explicitly that race is a social construct, thus demonstrating that MacArthur has his head up his southern most orifice on this subject. All of this is, quite frankly, not merely unwise but completely dishonest. Dear reader, if you haven’t listened to Al Mohler’s exposition of the Table of Nations that he did in chapel you need to do so to learn just how bad it is because slippery Al also reduces ethnicity to language and “worldview” (i.e., religion).
IS THERE ANYBODY WEARING A WHITE HAT OUT THERE OR IS IT THE CASE THAT NOT ONLY THE BAD GUYS ARE WEARING BLACK HATS BUT THE OPPOSITION WHO IS TRYING TO STOP THE BAD GUYS ARE ALSO WEARING BLACK HATS?
I appreciate the work that groups like AIG and CMI are doing in exposing the unscientific nature of life arising through natural undirected processes. However, in their zeal to stress our oneness in Adam, they’re missing the good points you bring out in your post. It’s as though they read Acts 17:26 and come to a full stop. I once sent them an excerpt from an article I’d read on blood transfusions and include it here:
“I am frequently asked why a potential donor’s race is listed on the FDA approved “Uniform Donor Questionnaire” for volunteer blood donation. Besides ABO and Rh, there are over 30 major blood systems important in transfusion medicine. Our extended blood type is determined by the presence or absence of various membrane-bound sugars and proteins inherited from our parents. Most blood groups follow simple population genetics, meaning their distribution tends to be clustered in similar racial or ethnic populations. One example is in the Rh system. Approximately 15% of the world’s population is Rh negative. However, in the Asian donor population, only 1 in 1000 are Rh negative. As most people procreate with mates of similar ethnicity, similar genetic traits are reinforced.
As you are aware, race is important in tissue and hematopoietic stem cell transplants. In essence, the transfusion of cellular blood components IS a tissue transplant. Patients exposed to non-self red cell antigens through transfusion may produce antibodies against the sugars and proteins on the red cells that are different from their own. These antibodies, depending on type and strength, may trigger severe transfusion reactions and even death.
Source(s):
Medical Director – Regional Blood Center
Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine Physician