David French is a national treasure. He brings a record of depth, heart and personal character to his self-identification as a real conservative in an age when so many have lost sight, in one way or another, of what that might mean. He'd finished his law education and embarked on a career when he decided, at age 37, to enlist in the Army Reserve, which led to a tour in Iraq. He has logged stints as senior counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice and Alliance Defending Freedom, both Christian organizations on the front lines of the effort to stem the cultural rot and persecution of the innocent in which identity politics militancy all too often manifests itself.
Given that, and the fact that his credentials as a pundit are an astronomical number of tiers above mine, it's not without hesitancy that I speak of him having a blind spot. It must be discussed, however. I saw it as least as far back as the spring of 2020, when he asked in a piece about George Floyd whether a white person being arrested would have been allowed to die with a cop's knee on his neck. I found such an indulgence in speculation unhelpful given the volatile moment.
Perhaps there were signs earlier. New York Post op-ed page editor Sohrab Amari, after all, penned an essay published at First Things a year earlier entitled "Against David French-ism," the gist of which was a complaint that French lacked a sufficient sense of urgency about signs of assault on bedrock institutions and conventions. The example of reading-hour drag queens in public libraries was Amari's immediate example.
The discussion has been sparked anew by the latest Sunday French Press at The Dispatch. The title, "Structural Racism Isn't Wokeness, It's Reality," makes pretty plain the point French is going to flesh out.
As a master polemicist who prizes clarity, he is able to make a case worth grappling with. He uses the position taken by a couple of McLean Bible Church pastors to launch his argument:
[Congregants complained] that [David] Platt and his MBC colleague pastor Mike Kelsey marched in a Christian black lives matter march and that Kelsey has endorsed the “CRT concepts” of “systemic racism” and “white privilege.” They also condemn Platt for this comment, which argues that the absence of overt prejudice doesn’t absolve one of the problems of racism and racialization:
A disparity exists. We can’t deny this. These are not opinions—they’re facts. It matters in our country whether one is white or black. Now, we don’t want it to matter, which is why I think we try to convince ourselves it doesn’t matter. We think to ourselves, “I don’t hold prejudices toward black or white people, so racism is not my problem.” But this is where we need to see that racialization is our problem. It’s all of our problem. We subtly, almost unknowingly, contribute to it.
The dissenters argue that the “solution to the ‘race’ problem in America is more Bible, not more sociology books. It is not the Bible plus a secular reading list, but sola scriptura.” It’s not just unwise to rely on secular scholarship to address American racism, they argue: It’s unbiblical.
This argument echoes tenets of the secular right-wing consensus on race—that racism exists only when there is individual malign intent, that remedies for racism should be limited to imposing consequences on individual racists, and that there is no intergenerational obligation to remedy historic injustice (“I’m not responsible for my ancestors’ sins”).
Under this mode of thinking, the concept of “equality under the law”—as mandated by the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act—is both necessary and largely sufficient to address the causes and consequences of centuries of slavery followed by generations of Jim Crow.
But on the core issues of American racism, Platt is biblically and historically right, and it’s his detractors who are biblically and historically wrong. These “conservatives” have placed a secular political frame around an issue with profound religious significance. They’ve thus not just abandoned the whole counsel of scripture, they’ve even contradicted a core component of the secular conservatism they claim to uphold.
Where he goes next will hopefully get an airing in the conversation that has ensued over this essay. He cites the scriptural books of 2 Samuel, Nehemiah and Leviticus to bolster his case that a reckoning before God is not only an individual matter but one that spans generations when a society (at least a chosen one) has collectively sinned against a demographic group within it.
Again, as with pretty much any conservative-thinker bona fides, my grasp of theology is undoubtedly dwarfed by French's, but something in me insists that there is more to this than what is presented here. After all, individual responsibility is a cornerstone of the modern conservative movement. There's a basis for the resentment opponents of, say, reparations, feel when exhorted to pony up for long-dead people who may or may not have been ancestors, but share a melanin level.
French makes his most cogent case when he argues that the long-since-discontinued practice of redlining had much to do with neighborhoods and indeed communities being sequestered by race into our present day:
I’ll turn to perhaps the most commonly cited example (because it’s so significant) of how racism can be truly “structural” or “systemic” and thus linger for years even when the surrounding society over time loses much of its malign intent.
Residential segregation, through redlining and other means—especially when combined with profound employment discrimination and educational disparities—resulted in the creation of large communities of dramatically disadvantaged Americans. Because of centuries of systematic, de jure (by law) oppression, they possessed fewer resources and less education than those who didn’t suffer equivalent discrimination.
While the passing of the Civil Rights Act meant that black Americans had the right to live elsewhere, they often lacked the resources to purchase homes or rent apartments in wealthier neighborhoods with better schools. Indeed, to this day, the median net worth of a black family ($17,150) is roughly one-tenth the median net worth of a white family ($171,000). That means less money for down payments, less money for security deposits, and overall fewer resources that enable social mobility.
The phrase "lacked the resources" strikes me as veering uncomfortably close to the denial of agency on the part of black Americans, and maybe even an indulgence in pity. After all, from whence did our black middle class and professional class come? The notion that most blacks are consigned to these communities is exactly why black conservative commentators have used the term "plantation" to describe the effect of dependency resulting from decades of public policy designed to provide material aid without an attendant assumption that it would lead to a more integrated American social fabric.
French makes glancing reference to "conservative solutions" but ends the piece by steadfastly asserting that structural racism is a given that society must deal with.
I encountered into a Twitter exchange about this via two tweets from the Washington Examiner's Kaylee McGhee White, which I was gratified to come across:
Kaylee McGhee White
@KayleeDMcGhee
·
I have some thoughts on this, which I’ll probably write about. But for now I’ll just say this: if my pastor got up on Sunday morning and told me I needed to check my white privilege, I would leave that church.
Kaylee McGhee White
@KayleeDMcGhee
Replying to
There is a huge difference between acknowledging racism as it exists today and catering to the narrative of systemic racism, which is toxic, false, and destructive. Any church pushing that narrative is not doing itself or its members any favors.
Her Examiner colleague Quin Hilyer chimed in with a useful elaboration:
Quin Hillyer
@QuinHillyer
Replying to
I don't agree w/the definition of "racism" that French seems to use here. "Racism" is not power or results. Racism is an attitude. Current "inequity" may RESULT from past racism, but it isn't in itself racism, & the fix should thus be far more subtle than French seems to suggest.
If one is not extremely careful about the use of the term "racism," one invites the danger of the blind spot I mentioned above. While Trumpists and Neo-Trumpists have to an unfortunate degree boneheadedly co-opted the backlash against the encroachment of Critical Race Theory (and, yes, it is appropriate to use that term even as its definition has expanded beyond the original parameters set in the 1970s), that encroachment's reality is undeniable. Kids are being indoctrinated with it in your local school system. The idea that a post-racial society not only still eludes us but that to aspire to it is somehow pernicious has been mainstreamed.
Then this morning I found a piece by Lee Siegal at City Journal which makes an important contribution to this conversation:
The curious thing is that, even with tens of thousands of Internet public prosecutors working night and day, very few examples of genuinely racist language surface in this turbulent, chaotic country of 330 million people. Excepting the tiny minority of people who belong to organized right-wing hate groups, anyone even fractionally socialized has known for decades that the N-word, to take the worst racist term, is taboo, along with most other pernicious slurs. And anyone with the slightest bit of emotional intelligence understands that people who do use the word when quoting other people or texts—as clueless or maybe arrogant as that may be in our current climate—do so because they themselves are not racists and have no fear of being perceived as such.
Siegel fleshes out the consequence of letting racialist wokeness cloud one's perception of the reality of one's own living circumstances:
Empty forms bespeak empty hearts. Cries of racism are the new white racism. Now, to use a hypothetical example, if a modestly middle-class white male resident of Montclair meets a wealthy black neighbor who makes more in six months than the white male has made in his whole working life, or if he runs into the jazz great who lives in town and who has won no fewer than seven Grammys, then the average white guy doesn’t have to feel that twinge of lower economic or social status in comparison with theirs. On the contrary: thanks to the 1619 Project and the totalizing framework of systemic white racism, he can regard these elevated figures with condescending pity. It turns out that they are, and always will be, dependent on his status as master of their fates.
I'll be on the lookout for further conversation about this. I'd be gratified indeed to see French clarify or modify his stance in the French Press essay. It just doesn't ring true, and several of his kindred spirits think so.
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