Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
America’s two warring views of race
America’s two warring views of race
Jun 4, 2025 12:20 PM

America’s current racial strife has roots deeper than recent controversies involving the police. One factor greatly exacerbating these tensions is the contrast in worldviews over the relative importance of “race” in one’s life and how those in dialogue view the American founding, according to Ismael Hernandez, executive director of the Freedom and Virtue Institute and a longtime lecturer at Acton University.

Hernandez has elucidated these contrasting approaches in two new episodes of “Freedom and Virtue” the podcast.

Hernandez first traces slavery to every nation and culture, then places the origins of modern racism in the 17th century, when exploration brought cultures into contact with one another. Racial categories originated when observers emphasized “certain true biological differences” which are “seemingly irrelevant” but “tend to be very visual.”

This racialized view was weaponized by such forces as “mercantilism, trade, Darwinism: All this gave a new twist of justification to an ancient institution: the institution of slavery,” he says. “Darwinists are the first ones to give to racism some semblance of scientific validity.”

In contrast, what emerges uniquely from this time period is not slavery but the kernel of the abolitionist movement, rooted in biblical sources and Western civilization.

Hernandez then contrasts the “natural law/integrationist/personalist” approach — which sees the individual as having a primary identity apart from any group membership — with the “dialectical separationist” or “collectivist” approach.

“The first stream that has informed race relations in America from the beginning of our nation is what we can call the natural law/integrationist approach, or the personalist approach,” he says. In this view, “the individual person stands sui generis in the midst of the group, so the group doesn’t have priority over the individual.”

“America benefited from the fact that the idea of individual freedom is an individual value,” Hernandez says, a worldview which “took root only in the Christian West.” He contrasts that with the collective view that dominated the pre-modern world:

The slave could conceive freedom, but not as an institutional value. If I was a slave, I wanted to be free — but I wanted to be free so I could return to munity e back and enslave the other. There was no opposition to slavery as an institution.

Adherents to the natural law/personalist stream believe that the “biblical context and the American constitutional framework, over time, could e social, economic, and political racial stratification, precisely because the individual matters and not the group. Embedded in those principles was the seed to the answer of the problem,” he says. “The Constitution was not perfect, but it was neither tragically flawed. Its principles, its basic principles were not those of white supremacy but the principles of liberty.”

Hernandez says this biblical, optimistic view fueled the civil rights movement of the 1960s, led by Martin Luther King Jr.

Hernandez contrasts the natural law tradition, which upholds the integrity of the individual, with the “dialectical separationist approach, or the collectivist approach.” Hernandez also calls it “the dialectic of antagonism,” aptly personified by Malcolm X. In this view, “race is a basic reality, a sort of practical absolute, the heart of individual identity, what we can call racialist essentialism. The very substance of what it means to be human cannot be understood apart from the concept of race at the heart of identity,” he says.

This view sees “the crimes of ethnocentrism, colonialism, imperialism, and racism” as creating an “oppressive and irreformable system” in the United States and the West generally. Ironically, this leads black liberationist collectivists to read U.S. history the same way that “rabid racists read history.”

This has “a precursor in the Marxist understanding of human nature … The very nature of man is collectivized in Marx,” he says. “In Marx, class was what moved history, but in this dialectical system … it is race that is a catalyst.”

As in Marxism, this understanding of race and race relations in America emphasizes “collective identity, collective innocence, and collective guilt. The racial group takes priority. … The only way to end this tension is the acquisition of power” by the group – something Orlando Patterson calls it “sovereign freedom.” To proponents of this collectivist dialectic, “the individual can e an impediment to our progress.”

This view aligns with the policy platform of Black Lives Matter and its allied organizations.

By extension, one can extrapolate that this view deemphasizes investment in improving one’s own, God-given potential in favor of a zero-sum struggle for collective power. The world, and countless families, are literally poorer for it.

You can listen to each podcast in the two-part series below:

Your browser does not support theaudio element.

Your browser does not support theaudio element.

Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X on March 26, 1964. Marion S. Trikosko. This photo has been cropped. Public domain.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on 1 Peter 4:7-11   (Read 1 Peter 4:7-11)   The destruction of the Jewish church and nation, foretold by our Saviour, was very near. And the speedy approach of death and judgment concerns all, to which these words naturally lead our minds. Our approaching end, is a powerful argument to make us sober in all worldly...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on 2 Timothy 3:1-9   (Read 2 Timothy 3:1-9)   Even in gospel times there would be perilous times; on account of persecution from without, still more on account of corruptions within. Men love to gratify their own lusts, more than to please God and do their duty. When every man is eager for what he can...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on Psalm 119:9-16   (Read Psalm 119:9-16)   To original corruption all have added actual sin. The ruin of the young is either living by no rule at all, or choosing false rules: let them walk by Scripture rules. To doubt of our own wisdom and strength, and to depend upon God, proves the purpose of holiness...
Verse of the Day
  1 Timothy 6:17-19 In-Context   15 which God will bring about in his own time-God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords,   16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.   17 Command those who are rich...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on Mark 6:1-6   (Read Mark 6:1-6)   Our Lord's countrymen tried to prejudice the minds of people against him. Is not this the carpenter? Our Lord Jesus probably had worked in that business with his father. He thus put honour upon mechanics, and encouraged all persons who eat by the labour of their hands. It becomes...
Verse of the Day
  1 Peter 5:10 In-Context   8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.   9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.   10 And the God of all grace, who...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on Proverbs 3:27-35   (Read Proverbs 3:27-35)   Our business is to observe the precepts of Christ, and to copy his example; to do justice, to love mercy, and to beware of covetousness; to be ready for every good work, avoiding needless strife, and bearing evils, if possible, rather than seeking redress by law. It will be...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on Psalm 51:1-6   (Read Psalm 51:1-6)   David, being convinced of his sin, poured out his soul to God in prayer for mercy and grace. Whither should backsliding children return, but to the Lord their God, who alone can heal them? he drew up, by Divine teaching, an account of the workings of his heart toward...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on Psalm 91:1-8   (Read Psalm 91:1-8)   He that by faith chooses God for his protector, shall find all in him that he needs or can desire. And those who have found the comfort of making the Lord their refuge, cannot but desire that others may do so. The spiritual life is protected by Divine grace...
Verse of the Day
  Commentary on Today's Verse   Commentary on Mark 12:28-34   (Read Mark 12:28-34)   Those who sincerely desire to be taught their duty, Christ will guide in judgment, and teach his way. He tells the scribe that the great commandment, which indeed includes all, is, that of loving God with all our hearts. Wherever this is the ruling principle in the soul, there...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved