Adoption and Postmodern Tribalism

 

Perhaps you have been following the story about President Donald Trump’s recent choice for the Supreme Court in the United States of America.  And perhaps you have heard the opposition to his pick of Amy Coney Barrett because of her adoption of black, Haitian children.  How can this be a bad thing?  To understand this reasoning, one has to understand the changing worldview in the West from Modernity to early Postmodernity to late Postmodern tribalism.  We need to understand that all the talk about ‘Postmodernity’ is unhelpful if we do not recognize the changes from early to late Postmodernity.

 Modernity could say, 'All lives matter' because of its belief in nature and science and truth--essentially still agreeing with pre-Modernity and religious faith on such issues as objective truth and the fundamental reality of nature/Creation.  Modernity did not always oppose racism and could even end up with Apartheid and eugenics!  But an opposition to racism during Modernity was also possible.  And it could lead to adopting black children into white families or interracial marriage.  

 In early Postmodernity, the celebration of diversity, the notion that truth could be constructed and was relative, and the inclusion of the marginalized could still oppose racism by adopting black children into white families and by supporting interracial marriage.  

 But late Postmodernity is tribal, and one of the aspects of this is critical race theory--a combination of Marxist social theory stemming from the early 20th century and Postmodernity's rejection of objective truths--an objective truth such as that race is subordinate to the fact that all are human beings.  Under this construct, one must say, 'Black lives matter.'  

 Marxist critical theory is a long struggle through the institutions of culture.  Like Marxist political and economic thought, critical theory interprets society in terms of power: the domination of one group over another.  In its racial articulation—critical race theory—it involves a struggle against 'whiteness'.  Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility and Willie James Jennings' After Whiteness are examples of this iconoclasm: the destruction of ‘whiteness’ in all its cultural dimensions.  Claiming not to be about actual 'whiteness,' just the culture of whites, it fails to make any sensible distinction and, as a racialist theory, is, inevitably, racist.  But, as a Marxist theory, it is also coercive and violent: more than statues are being torn down.  Critical race theory combines critical theory from Marx with Postmodernity.  The tribalism of late Postmodernity produces a racialist interpretation of society.  The Marxist element contributes violent struggle and oppression, from cancelling culture to street violence to fake news to denunciations to the flouting of laws and decency.  As a Postmodern Marxism, it unapologetically alters everything to support the great struggle, deconstructing history, education, religion, law, etc.--all the pillars that establish culture.  Moreover, in its critical race theory form, it treats ‘white culture' as a homogeneous hegemony to be toppled, including the Christianity that is intertwined with such a construct.  Once melted together into ‘whiteness’ and ‘Christianity’, it is then a single entity to be torn down.  

We can now answer the question.  How can a good thing, adoption, become a bad thing simply when the person adopting is white--and Christian--and the person adopted is black?  In this new age of Postmodern tribalism, with its critical race theory, the adoption of a black child from Haiti by a white American Christian would be seen as a further domination by whites, an example of ‘whiteness’.  Given the assumptions, given the tools of interpretation from critical race theory, it all makes sense.  Yet in this very logical result, the hideousness of the assumptions and theory and the destructive cruelty of Postmodern tribalism are revealed for what they are.