Wright's Theology as Victimology
By Anthony B. Bradley
Black Liberation theology actually encourages a victim mentality among blacks.
John McWhorters' book Losing the Race, will be helpful here. Victimology, says
McWhorter, is the adoption of victimhood as the core of one's identity--for
example, like one who suffers through living in "a country and who lived in a
culture controlled by rich white people." It is a subconscious, culturally
inherited affirmation that life for Blacks in America has been in the past and
will be in the future a life of being victimized by the oppression of Whites. In
today's terms, it is the conviction that, forty years after the Civil Rights
Act, conditions for Blacks have not substantially changed. As Wright intimates,
for example, scores of black men regularly get passed over by cab drivers.
Reducing black identity to "victim" distorts the reality of true progress. For
example, was Obama a victim of widespread racial oppression at the hand of "rich
white people" before graduating from Columbia University, Harvard Law School
magna cum laude, or after he acquired his estimated net worth of $1.3 million?
How did "rich white people" keep Obama from succeeding? If Obama is the model of
an oppressed black man, I want to be oppressed next! With my graduate school
debt my net worth is literally negative $52,659.
The overall result, says McWhorter, is that "the remnants of discrimination hold
an obsessive indignant fascination that allows only passing acknowledgement of
any signs of progress." Jeremiah Wright infused with victimology, wielded
self-righteous indignation in the service of exposing the inadequacies Hilary
Clinton's world of "rich white people." The perpetual creation of a racial
identity born out of self-loathing and anxiety often spends more time inventing
reasons to cry racism than working toward changing social mores, and often
inhibits movement toward reconciliation and positive mobility.
McWhorter articulates three main objections of victimology: First, victimology
condones weakness in failure. Victimology tacitly stamps approval on failure,
lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns that are
self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or presented as unpreventable
consequences from previous systemic patterns. Black liberation theologians are
clear on this point: "People are poor because they are victims of others," says
Dr. Dwight Hopkins, a black liberation theologian teaching at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.
Second, victimology hampers progress because, from the outset, it focuses
attention on obstacles. For example, in Black liberation theology, the focus is
on the impediment of Black freedom in light of the Goliath of White racism.
Third, victimology keeps racism alive because many Whites are constantly painted
as racist with no evidence provided. Racism charges create a context for
backlash and resentment fueling new attitudes among whites not previously held
or articulated, and creates "separatism"--a suspension of moral judgment in the
name of racial solidarity. Does Jeremiah Wright foster separatism or racial
unity and reconciliation?
For black liberation theologians Sunday is uniquely tied to redefining their
sense of being human within a context of marginalization. "Black people who have
been humiliated and oppressed by the structures of White society six days of the
week gather together each Sunday morning in order to experience another
definition of their humanity," says James Cone in his book Speaking the Truth
(1999).
Many black theologians believe that both racism and socio-economic oppression
continue to augment the fragmentation between Whites and Blacks. Historically
speaking, it makes sense that Black theologians would struggle with
conceptualizing social justice and the problem of evil as it relates to the
history of colonialism and slavery in the Americas.
Is black liberation theology helping? Wright's liberation theology has stirred
up resentment, backlash, Obama defections, separatism, white guilt, caricature,
and offense. Preaching to a congregation of middle-class blacks about their
victim identity invites a distorted view of reality, fosters nihilism, and
divides rather than unites.
Anthony B. Bradley is a research fellow at the
Acton Institute, and assistant professor of theology at
Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. His PhD dissertation is titled,
"Victimology in Black Liberation Theology."
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