Race and the fear of the other

The West needs to abandon its doctrine of race. Race is an Enlightenment category that continues to separate and divide people, and the consequences run deep and continue to make their presence felt. NFL players cannot bring themselves to stand for the US national anthem, and would rather kneel to make the point that the race divide still runs deep in the land of the free and the home of the brave. In Britain, we may not have had the history of Jim Crow laws in our past, but we have been as much to blame for the same thinking that makes race such a problem in the modern world.

The concept of race is has its roots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as modern science studied and categorised other species, and sought to do the same with humans. Writers such as Adam Smith, David Hume and Emmanuel Kant held a patronising view of more primitive human societies, and all used the term ‘race’ for the first time in its modern usage (compare and contrast with Luither and Calvin, though beware of poor modern translations in English that may include ‘race’). The early years of the colonial age threw together people of widely different cultures and languages. It was also the height of the Atlantic slave trade, an evil built on the understanding that Africans were from an inferior race.

Murder, race hatred, and nationalism

The tragic death of Jo Cox MP has had a cauterising effect on political debate over the last couple of days. Politicians seem embarrassed for the way they have been treating each other in the referendum debate. Perhaps now, cooled tempers can allow us to think respectfully and with humility about the great judgement we each have to make this week. So far the debate has focused mainly on three issues: the future trajectory of the economy, democracy, and immigration. You can read the tea leaves how you please on the first, have a reasoned argument about accountability on the second, but it is immigration that really raises the blood pressure. So let me here make my contribution to the debate as a Christian who believes passionately in biblical nationhood, but who is appalled by racism and nationalism.

Is it true that the opposite of internationalism must be racial hatred? Is the only way to avoid racial hatred to have open borders and not to care about our own culture, language and history?