Ordinary Days: Anna, #5

Question everything;

   hold on to what is good!

    (First Thessalonians 5:21)

 

Dear Anna, 

It was fun going through your Connecticut College seminar options with you. I like the one on “Latin language and the culture of Ancient Rome.” Especially since you chose Connecticut so you could study Latin. But all those seminars like “Myths that Made America,” where “Students will examine the ways in which myths naturalize power structures and hierarchies in society that include, exclude, and keep certain people ‘down’”—sounds like a good dose of CRT. It has become the ethos of the academia since my time.

Critical Race Theory, as I understand it, is a legitimate academic pursuit. Critical means questioning things. That’s good. The Bible tells us to “question everything.” We go to college to develop our critical thinking. Race—Racism persist in-spite-of Civil Rights Laws and our best efforts to eradicate it. Why is that so? Theory—-In seeking answers to our questions, we come up with possible explanations for why racism persists.  

The theory is that racism persist because it is deeply imbedded in our nation’s history, founding documents, and laws. In short, irredeemable racism finds its way into all our social structures, even church. To validate the theory requires the complete retelling of our nation’s history (as in the 1619 project), and the dismantling of our political and social structures so that we can reconstruct non-racist institutions.

Meanwhile, such a theory causes us to 1) condemn our present institutions that spring from our founding documents: The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution, as irredeemably racist and thus to be dismantled; and 2) tell victims of racism that their plight, within our present social structure, is hopeless. I think we can tell a sober history of our nation and at the same time honor our founders and our founding documents. The Bible does that, for example, when it tells the story King David: “You have shed too much blood.” (1Chron 28:3)

Danielle Allen, in her book Our Declaration; gives us good reason to honor our founding document. She is an African American classical scholar at Harvard; who believes The Declaration is a wonder worthy of being called “Our Declaration.” Thank you for reading it with me. We’ll discuss with the book between us; and then, off to college you go.

Much Love,

Papa