"Erasing Race"

Wheaton Professor Calls for “Erasing Race”

“God created a race—the human race—in his image. All people are part of that one human race,” said Vincent Bacote, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College, in a lecture given Thursday, August 2, on Fuller’s Pasadena campus. Bacote is one of several prominent visiting professors teaching intensive courses at Fuller this summer.

In the lunchtime lecture, titled “Erasing Race,” Bacote described several problems with using race as a way of considering or classifying people. “The language of race orients us toward thinking about different people as different species,” he said, with “whiteness” conferring certain privileges and access not given to others. Certainly there is differentiation among people, but “categorizing others by race makes it impossible for us to act fully Christian,” he claimed. “Intentionally or not, whiteness becomes a kind of idolatry.”

Striving to be “color-blind” is not the solution, Bacote maintained, because in doing so we do not acknowledge the fullness of others’ cultures. “We need, rather, to replace race with the concept of ethnicity,” he said, “which is far more complex.” Referring to the parable of the Good Samaritan, he called for a commitment to taking care of others as we take care of ourselves—and often that “other” is someone very different from us. “We must do the hard work of really getting to know that person,” he said, and understand that this will take much time and patience, and that there will be misunderstandings along the way. “We must recognize it is a long, challenging, and difficult process,” he emphasized, “but a process that will bear much fruit.”

Bacote is author of The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper, and his has also appeared in such publications as Re:generation Quarterly, Urban Mission, Christianity Today, and Journal for Christian Theological Research. His lecture was sponsored by the African American Church Studies Office at Fuller.