Mesmerized by Pigmentation

The Threatening Racial Obsessions of the Cool Kids

In the early seasons of the TV show American Idol, the first few episodes always highlighted regular people who showed up to the open auditions. The producers of the show alternated between showing the early auditions of people with natural - sometimes amazing - vocal talent, and others who were not so fortunate in the talent department. The auditions of unfortunate singers were generally provided for their comedic value. These contestants were often so manifestly bad as singers that they came across as hilarious.

In later years, though, American Idol stopped using footage of the contestants whose perception of their own abilities was so out of sync with reality. Maybe the producers and viewers grew bored with the repetition of it all. I don’t know. But I have wondered if, after a while, people started to become uncomfortable with the incessant mocking and laughing at people who were obviously delusional. One of the judges, Simon Cowell, was sometimes willing to speak honestly to the contestant, suggesting that perhaps they were pursuing a path they weren’t actually suited for. And even though it seemed harsh at times, the viewers kind of knew that Simon was really doing the contestant a favor.

It is striking to me that so many people wander around with a delusional impression, not only about themselves, but believing that others will of course share in their delusion with them. It was not infrequent to find that the contestants’ off-kilter assessment of themselves was fueled by a parent, usually a mom, who adhered to some wildly over-realized (to put it charitably) commitment to her child’s self-esteem, so-called.

Now it is very tempting at this point to draw attention to the parallels these hapless American Idol contestants share with the transgender crowd. Like the delusional Idol contestants, the even more troubled transgender activists would have us all participating fully in their own delusional view of themselves. It is also very tempting to ponder how the American Idol producers, who exploited the misguided contestants for their own financial gain, bear striking similarities to that part of the medical community which exploits troubled transgenders for the medical community’s own financial gain. But as tempting as that is, I have something else on my mind.

This past week on X/Twitter, a user who goes by “@voyager19” tweeted out a computer-generated image that speculatively represented what Jesus could have looked like. The image was accompanied by the poster’s commentary, condescendingly suggesting that modern Christians would be surprised to discover that Jesus might have had brown skin. For posting this opinion, the man was thoroughly schooled by other Twitter users on the fact that it was hardly a surprise to Christians that Jesus was/is a Galilean Jew. The poster subsequently beat a hasty retreat and deleted his tweet without explanation.

If there are some who have become enthralled by the possibility of a music career that they are manifestly unsuited for, there are others, far more numerous than disappointed American Idol contestants, who have become completely mesmerized by the color of human skin.

A surprising number of people have concluded that skin color is a veritable skeleton key which can unlock our understanding of everything. Melanin, in their fevered imaginations, is the secret decoder ring that decrypts the root causes of all our social ills. It is the Rosetta Stone for explaining all human conflict. This kind of race essentialism thus creates an inexhaustible supply of sociological theories and, more importantly, invented moral obligations which can be used by its devotees to bludgeon their neighbors. Contrary to the teaching of that Galilean Jew we mentioned earlier, racial obsessives like to produce “heavy, cumbersome loads” that they can put “on other people’s shoulders”.

And so we have seen ideas like Critical Race Theory (CRT) take hold in the imaginative worldview of the social and political elite. CRT suggests that the world should be understood as being in continuous tension between oppressors and the oppressed. And you won’t be surprised to learn, the line of demarcation between oppressors and oppressed is magically also the line between light skin and dark.

Downstream from CRT is its petulant bastard child known as Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). If cronyism and Marxism had a baby, it would look uncannily similar to DEI. Notwithstanding the high falutin mumbo jumbo which encrusts it, DEI represents a rejection of merit in favor of - you guessed it - hiring on the basis of skin color, among other attributes.

Now the point of this walk down leftism lane is merely to observe that a significant part of the culture, one might even say the elite establishment within American culture, has become so enthralled by the color variations of human skin, that it has set its course firmly away from the historical American ideal of colorblindness. Or, to put it in more famous words, our cultural elites have rejected the view that it is the content of our character, rather the color of our skin, that matters.

Not surprisingly, the shift toward race essentialism is having entirely predictable effects, inevitably undermining any possibility of maintaining a shared American identity. But more important even than the debilitating effects it is having on American social cohesion, this delusional obsession with skin color is also finding its way into Christian organizations, including the church itself.

Over the last 2-3 years, I myself have listened to recordings of talks given to Cru Ministries leadership, to cite just one example, in which the principle of colorblindness in matters of race is openly and explicitly rejected. The Village Church, an influential evangelical mega-church in the Dallas TX area, has advocated for the view that heightened racial self-consciousness is a pre-requisite for ever rightly loving one’s neighbor. They have explained that people are actually incapable of understanding either themselves, or others, except through a racially tinted lens.

The BLM summer of 2020 was also revealing of the state of American evangelical leadership, and not in a good way. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to Google the many examples of Christian pastors publicly condoning the toxic, race-obsessive worldview that animated the riots that year.

I’m sure it is completely coincidental that these shifts toward race essentialism among Christian ministries and churches has coincided so neatly with similar shifts in the secular culture. Nothing to see here folks. Move along. These are not the droids you’re looking for.

But if I can pull my tongue out of my cheek for just a second, the adoption of these views within Christian circles makes such racial obsessions intensely personal. That’s because obsessions about skin color, stinking up the culture, have been mostly an annoyance if you can set aside all the burning and pillaging that often attends these ideas. But within the body of Christ itself, race-centric delusions are a more personal threat. That’s because race-essentialism transforms the church from a haven, to a threat, for multi-racial families.

I myself do not live in a world with the kind of bright shining racial lines imagined by race essentialists. I do not inhabit a family that is all one race, or all another. None of my grandchildren would be categorized by race obsessives as being “white” — not one of them. Asian, African and Hispanic children are all represented among the treasures of my life. The hip and trendy skin-color obsessives within the church, those who insist that it is impossible to see or understand one another except through a racially tinted lens, are actively complicit in something that, left unchecked, would damage the love and community within mixed-race families like mine. If you are a CRT-believing Christian, and you nudge my African grandson to conclude that his white father is inescapably his oppressor merely because his father is white, then you are my enemy, and the enemy of my children and of their children after them. When you try to sow despair and bitterness in the heart of one of my mixed-race grandchildren, telling her that she is a victim of oppression, when she has actually been surrounded by love and warmth all her life, you have become my enemy. Your pigmentational delusions have become a threat to the health and well-being of my children and grandchildren. You may very well have even made yourself an enemy of God.¹ In such a case, my personal enmity should be the least of your concerns.

One might think that Christian leaders, supposed followers of the one who said “stop judging by mere appearances”, would not be encouraging believers to…you know…judge by mere appearances. But if that seems painfully obvious to you, then you are clearly not one of the cool kids of modern Christianity.

If you are pigment-obsessed, harboring the belief that oppression is everywhere an artifact of skin color, then you have made yourself blind to, and uncomprehending of, the love, joy and intimacy that exists within families where skin color is irrelevant to human value. If your concept of race would teach a brown child to doubt his white parents’ love, you are not just delusional, you are actively the baddie.

Race essentialists conceive of themselves as possessing a superior knowledge and moral standing. But their self-perception is, like that of the comical American Idol contestants, wildly out of kilter with reality. When your philosophy of race, however virtuous and knowing it might make you feel, must inevitably try to sow seeds of mistrust and resentment within loving families, you are not virtuous, you are malevolent.

Just so we’re clear.

1. There are six things the LORD hates—
no, seven things he detests:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that kill the innocent,
a heart that plots evil,
feet that race to do wrong,
a false witness who pours out lies,
a person who sows discord in a family.

Proverbs 6:16-19