"Sorry/Not Sorry" From the Salvation Army

First: some background.   I grew up in a Salvation Army church.   My mother was an SA minister.  Over the years, I have contributed well in the thousands of dollars to their relief efforts which have always been very valuable for helping those in need.

When the LGBT crowd went after them for not putting HIV+ people in food service and refusing to go along with gay marriage and adoption, I was proud to increase support for their courage in standing up for biblical values.

Now the SA's International Social Justice Committee (clearly too much money) has put out this guidebook on racism, spouting (along with perfectly biblical statements about the evils of racism), the whole CRT collection of absurd claims:

"The problem of racism is pervasive and complex. It is described as prejudice plus power."  So racism can never be black hatred of whites or Jews.

Whoever wrote it is not terribly well educated: 

"Racist national policies can result in segregation, oppres￾sion and, ultimately, genocide. The social outcomes are 

incalculable in their human devastation – slavery, civil 

rights violations, apartheid, Arian supremacy, caste 

system, and more.

Racism negatively." [Emphasis added] Arianism was a third century heresy.  Aryanism is the word they almost knew.

"Racism can be so entrenched in institutions and culture that 

people can unintentionally and unwittingly perpetuate racial 

division. For instance, devout Christians who naively use racial 

epithets or a well-intentioned Sunday School curriculum that 

only uses white photography and imagery." Any Christian using racial epithets needs to get back aboard their time machine.   I heard the N-word used by blacks in high school far more than I have heard it from any Christians that I have known. (I cannot think of one in 40 years of attending evangelical churches.)

"Oppressed people groups invariably experience poor health and housing services, reduced life 

expectancy, lower employment opportunities, lower high school graduation rates, increased 

homelessness and more incidents of violence."

There are many other reasons that have persisted even after racism is no longer part of our legal system and is so offensive to decent people that the only people who use the N-word are black or the trifling number of white supremacists left in America.   (Hold up your hands so I can count you.  Thanks.  That was quick.)

The insistence on seeing racial inequities as based on racism is an attempt to not ask the Left painful questions: do crummy inner city schools hold black kids back?  Does a culture that denigrates education as "acting white" play a part?  To be fair you can trace some of this hostility to antebellum laws prohibiting teaching blacks to read and write.   But that was 150 years ago.  Irish immigrants at the same time were arriving illiterate but decided not to be trapped by it.

The problems of racial inequity are more complex than racism alone, although there are certainly some areas where racism still plays a role.  If I walk into a jewelry store, even dressed casually, the employees do not tense up.  For a black man, I am sure they do.  But very little of American life involves high value transactions.  If a black man walks into most businesses dressed and acting Iike a white man, there are few businesses that will worry.  Walk in dressed like you just arrived from a Compton revival of Boys in the Hood, and yes you will get much the same reaction as a bone skinny white guy wearing raggedy clothes whose head is constantly twitching.

Drop the do-rag and the ghetto slang and watch doors open.  Everyone that I know wants an America where you are judged by the content of your character, not the color of your skin.

The next fundraising letter from the SA will get a short response: "Ask your International Social Justice Committee for help. They have all the answers.  The SA has money for this; help the poor with whatever money these privileged white people are blowing."