WAKING UP TO REALITY:

Let's apply this more concretely, to the United States of America. Enforcing the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause and passing the Civil Rights Act was (and is) necessary to end overt, legal discrimination, but it was hardly sufficient to ameliorate the effects of slavery and Jim Crow. These effects are so embedded in our system that powerful people often perpetuate those structures even when they lack any racist intent at all.

To illustrate this reality, 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.

One of the solutions to this problem is permitting more multi-family housing in wealthier communities. But that's exactly when NIMBYism rears its head. Even if every member of a local zoning and planning commission isn't racist, there are multiple non-racist reasons for them to resist greater population density. There's traffic congestion. There's school overcrowding. There's the potential consequence to property values. There are environmental objections. There are a host of related infrastructure concerns.

These non-racist reasons to block multi-family development are a reason why even the most deep-blue, race-conscious progressive neighborhoods so often bitterly resist new development, school zoning changes, and other concrete reforms that would grant individuals in historically segregated neighborhoods greater access to the educational and economic opportunities of historically white communities. 

Time and again, there are non-racist reasons for wanting to maintain the structures racists created. Thus, you can begin to understand the cultural and political divide. A person who harbors absolutely no racial animus gets angry when they're told they're perpetuating systemic racism, or that racism can exist without malign intent. To be told you're perpetuating racism when, in your heart of hearts, you know you're making choices based on road safety, your child's education, or the beauty of your environment can feel deeply offensive.

Conversely, a person who lives in the midst of the economic and educational deprivation originally created by racists are understandably angered when they're told there is no racism present when powerful people repeatedly block reforms that would change the status quo. Justice fails when the same unjust outcomes are perpetuated, even though the newest generation of elites may possess different intent.

So how is a Christian to respond? First, let's go back to scripture and recognize that the obligation to "act justly" is intergenerational. If there is injustice that predates our personal power, it is still our obligation to do what we can to set it right. Second, when you see these racist structures at work, you recognize that you need sociology, history, and economics to help understand not just their reality, but their remedy.

"Sola scriptura" doesn't tell us how we should zone our communities, district our schools, or protect civil rights. Indeed, there's an entire Christian doctrine of common grace that teaches us that truth can come from many sources. Even those "conservatives" who resist David Platt likely understand this in their daily lives. Is it the case that we can rely on non-Christian wisdom in, say, military strategy, trade policy, and law enforcement tactics, but when trying to untangle the effects of centuries of racial oppression, the Bible alone will be our guide? 

Now for a note about conservatism. I simply don't grant that the dissenters' objections to Platt are "conservative." Right-wing, yes. Conservative? I object. Years ago, my friend Rod Dreher wrote that "the business of a conservatism with integrity is not to impose an idealistic ideological narrative on reality but rather to try to see the world as it is and respond to its challenges within the limits of what we know about human nature."

I love that framing. Applied to race, it means that when we discern "the world as it is" (complete with understanding the structures that racists built) the policies a conservative might propose will be different than those of a progressive, in part because conservatives often (but not always) have a different view of human nature and human frailty than their friends on the left. 

In other words, a conservative might have a different conception of "what works." Progressive-dominated institutions haven't cracked the code. Can conservative ideas do any better?

A conservative like me is suspicious of the effectiveness of central planning to ameliorate systemic injustice. I'm less likely to want to pour money into vast, centralized public school bureaucracies and more likely to empower school choice to grant families options in the short term and to provide competitive incentives for public schools to improve over the long term.

With regards to zoning, I'm more likely to suggest that property owners should be granted more economic freedom and that limits on multi-family housing are perpetuated by limiting people's freedom to buy and develop land. The balance between planning and property rights should tilt more towards liberty. NIMBYism exists in part because government authorities sometimes control my backyard more than I do.

When it comes to inequities in policing, a conservative should double down on the Bill of Rights and seek to restore the original, expressed intent of America's civil rights laws, which were explicitly designed to grant victims financial compensation when the state violates their rights. 

Regardless of my ideology, the objective is justice. It's not "conservative" justice or "progressive" justice. It's simply justice. So if my ideology leads me astray, and the solutions I propose are inadequate to the enormity of the task, it's my moral obligation to rethink my philosophical frame. 

Finally, it is vital to approach the immense challenge of racial justice with an extraordinary amount of humility. Christians should not be so easily triggered by words that sound "progressive" or which they believe might be "inspired by CRT." A movement that long derided the "snowflakes" on the other side now reacts as if allegedly offensive pastoral word choice is a microaggression all its own.

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