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THE THREAT TO A PROGRESSIVE AMERICA FROM ANTI-BLACK ANTIRACISTS
THE NEW RELIGION
THE NEW RELIGION
It must be clear that I do not mean religion as a comparison. I genuinely mean that we are witnessing the birth of a new religion, just as Romans witnessed the birth of Christianity.
Early Christians did not think of themselves as “a religion.” They thought of themselves as bearers of truth, in contrast to all other belief systems, whatever they chose to call themselves. In the same way, The Elect will resist being called a religion, especially since to the modern, individualist frame of mind, it can feel diminishing to be termed an adherent of something larger that channels thought. More recently, one might even feel tarred as “basic,” having failed to curate a unique persona.
However, this resistance will miss the larger picture, which is less about The Elect as individuals than about how we make sense of a way of thinking they share, that seems so obsessive and hurtful from the outside. To make sense of it, we must understand them, partly out of compassion and partly to keep our own lives moving past them. This can only happen if we process them not as crazed but as parishioners.
To do this we must examine the ways in which their new religion so closely parallels older ones. It makes what can seem like a mess of weird opinions and attitudes into something quite coherent.
THE ELECT HAVE SUPERSTITION
It is inherent to a religion that one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief.
Certain questions are not to be asked, or if asked, only politely. The answer one gets, despite being somewhat half-cocked, is to be accepted. The Christian is allowed to ask why the Bible is so self-contradictory, but only if satisfied with an answer like “God works in mysterious ways; what’s key is that you believe.” Why does God allow such terrible things to happen? Because we have free will, perhaps. No one has had a smackdown answer for two millennia anyway, and what’s key is that you believe.
One internalizes an etiquette that it stops there. One is to classify the issues as “deep.” A way to fashion this as of a piece with rational thought is to assume that the relevant questions always lead to more questions.
Elect philosophy requires the same standpoint. One is not to ask “Why are black people so upset about one white cop killing a black man when black men are at much more danger of being killed by one another?” Or, one might ask, only to receive flabby answers after which further questions are unwelcome. A common answer is that black communities do protest black-on-black violence. But anyone knows that the outrage against white cops is much, much vaster. All of 2020 after March was about outrage against white cops. None of 2020 was about black communities aggrieved at their sons and nephews and cousins killing one another, a trend that spiked in poor black neighborhoods nationwide in the summer of 2020 as it had in countless summers before.
Is there a real answer? You will hear that black men are killing one another within a racist “structure.” But as an intelligent person you know that doesn’t answer the question. An elegant way of putting that is that there’s a difference between being killed by a fellow citizen and being killed by a figure of state authority. But does that mean “It’s not as bad if we do it to ourselves”?
We get no real answer at that point except rolled eyes. One is simply not to question, and people can be quite explicit about it. For example, in the “Conversation” about race that we are so often told we need to have, the tacit idea is that black people will express their grievances and whites will agree. “Oh, no, no – you’re caricaturing,” The Elect object – but unable to specify a single thing they might learn, as opposed to what we heathen (see below) might.
Rather, just as the Christian is told that the main thing is to believe, The Elect are taught that the main thing is to not be racist, regardless of what logic or fairness might dictate. So -- we must adjust standards for university admissions to foster diversity so that “diverse” students can contribute their perspectives in the classroom. But then “diverse” students regularly say that they hate being responsible for representing the “diverse” view in the classroom. The Elect’s response? To chalk up that expectation itself as “racism” – despite that this undercuts a prime justification for racial preferences. Question this closely and you just don’t “get it.” Rather, we might just accept this as questions always leading to more questions – and after a certain point, stop asking them.
What you actually don’t “get” in your quest to wring logic out of incoherent positions like these is that for The Elect, being identifiable as Battling Racism, alone and in itself regardless of substance, is sacrosanct. Battling Racism – as in, power differentials -- is to be questioned only in ways that reinforce the idea that The Elect are correct. We scoff at this reductive mindset when reading of the Bolsheviks and Stalin a century ago in black-and-white photos, but cringingly allow it as a new paradigm when it’s on the behalf of black people in America last week on YouTube.
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Early Christians did not think of themselves as “a religion.” They thought of themselves as bearers of truth, in contrast to all other belief systems, whatever they chose to call themselves. In the same way, The Elect will resist being called a religion, especially since to the modern, individualist frame of mind, it can feel diminishing to be termed an adherent of something larger that channels thought. More recently, one might even feel tarred as “basic,” having failed to curate a unique persona.
However, this resistance will miss the larger picture, which is less about The Elect as individuals than about how we make sense of a way of thinking they share, that seems so obsessive and hurtful from the outside. To make sense of it, we must understand them, partly out of compassion and partly to keep our own lives moving past them. This can only happen if we process them not as crazed but as parishioners.
To do this we must examine the ways in which their new religion so closely parallels older ones. It makes what can seem like a mess of weird opinions and attitudes into something quite coherent.
THE ELECT HAVE SUPERSTITION
It is inherent to a religion that one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief.
Certain questions are not to be asked, or if asked, only politely. The answer one gets, despite being somewhat half-cocked, is to be accepted. The Christian is allowed to ask why the Bible is so self-contradictory, but only if satisfied with an answer like “God works in mysterious ways; what’s key is that you believe.” Why does God allow such terrible things to happen? Because we have free will, perhaps. No one has had a smackdown answer for two millennia anyway, and what’s key is that you believe.
One internalizes an etiquette that it stops there. One is to classify the issues as “deep.” A way to fashion this as of a piece with rational thought is to assume that the relevant questions always lead to more questions.
Elect philosophy requires the same standpoint. One is not to ask “Why are black people so upset about one white cop killing a black man when black men are at much more danger of being killed by one another?” Or, one might ask, only to receive flabby answers after which further questions are unwelcome. A common answer is that black communities do protest black-on-black violence. But anyone knows that the outrage against white cops is much, much vaster. All of 2020 after March was about outrage against white cops. None of 2020 was about black communities aggrieved at their sons and nephews and cousins killing one another, a trend that spiked in poor black neighborhoods nationwide in the summer of 2020 as it had in countless summers before.
Is there a real answer? You will hear that black men are killing one another within a racist “structure.” But as an intelligent person you know that doesn’t answer the question. An elegant way of putting that is that there’s a difference between being killed by a fellow citizen and being killed by a figure of state authority. But does that mean “It’s not as bad if we do it to ourselves”?
We get no real answer at that point except rolled eyes. One is simply not to question, and people can be quite explicit about it. For example, in the “Conversation” about race that we are so often told we need to have, the tacit idea is that black people will express their grievances and whites will agree. “Oh, no, no – you’re caricaturing,” The Elect object – but unable to specify a single thing they might learn, as opposed to what we heathen (see below) might.
Rather, just as the Christian is told that the main thing is to believe, The Elect are taught that the main thing is to not be racist, regardless of what logic or fairness might dictate. So -- we must adjust standards for university admissions to foster diversity so that “diverse” students can contribute their perspectives in the classroom. But then “diverse” students regularly say that they hate being responsible for representing the “diverse” view in the classroom. The Elect’s response? To chalk up that expectation itself as “racism” – despite that this undercuts a prime justification for racial preferences. Question this closely and you just don’t “get it.” Rather, we might just accept this as questions always leading to more questions – and after a certain point, stop asking them.
What you actually don’t “get” in your quest to wring logic out of incoherent positions like these is that for The Elect, being identifiable as Battling Racism, alone and in itself regardless of substance, is sacrosanct. Battling Racism – as in, power differentials -- is to be questioned only in ways that reinforce the idea that The Elect are correct. We scoff at this reductive mindset when reading of the Bolsheviks and Stalin a century ago in black-and-white photos, but cringingly allow it as a new paradigm when it’s on the behalf of black people in America last week on YouTube.
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