Jonathan Tran, Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism. AAR Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion Series. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.
The theological/methodological claim: It is not the case that racism or ideological dehumanizing of non-white people motivated powerful landowners and industrialists to exploit them.
It is rather the case that the industrial revolution and the concomitant demand for natural resources required that capitalists exploit laborers maximally. Racism emerged as a rationalization for that exploitation. Christian evangelism assisted that racist rationalization by adding the motivation of converting the “heathen” Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. and by individualizing the gospel to protect the conscience of the exploiter. [By making material prosperity an indication of God’s favor, Protestantism (Calvinism in particular) further gaslighted the poor and particularly the non-white population.][1]
The current anti-racism campaigns/books/organizations will not do away with racism because they provide only a salve for the conscience of some Whites while doing nothing to change the real problem, which is racial capitalism.
Capitalism is an instance of disordered desire (concupiscence). The insatiable desire for more (money, status, privilege) dehumanizes the capitalist and makes the laborer into a commodity. Dr. King’s phrase for this was “thingify.” Because r>g (the return on investment is greater than the return on one’s labor (growth), wealth is more important than income and inherited wealth increases the gap between rich and poor.
The gospel is summed up in the proclamation that all creation belongs to God and that humans are stewards of the earth and stewards of relationships with other humans. In the Incarnation God inhabited not only humanity but all creation. Life in Christian community embodies the self-emptying (dispossession) of God in Christ so that although the Church is not Christ, Christians living in community give themselves to each other and to creation. This life is true freedom and produces the joy of freedom, despite and in the midst of the suffering that community for the sake of other humans and all creation entails. [This is what New Testament scholar Michael J. Gorman calls cruciform living].[2]
This is already and not yet the revolution that Marxism aims at but can never achieve because it can give no moral accounting for the self-emptying life except the martyrdom of the heroic individual. The revolution for which all creation groans began with the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and is carried on by repentant communities of Christians who model and call for a different way of thriving in community.
Tran makes his points with two extended case studies. The first case study is the Chinese immigrants to the Mississippi Delta. Brought to the Delta during Reconstruction to fill the labor gap, the Chinese rejected the exploitation and left the plantations. They opened the only grocery stores that would serve the emancipated Blacks who were kept in economic bondage (share-cropping) by the plantation owners. The Chinese became rich by making a living the only way they could, i.e. by exploiting the freedmen. The Chinese were evangelized by Southern Baptists, thus providing them with an individualized gospel that emphasized salvation as escape from hell and enabled them to justify their primary value of maximizing their families’ opportunities into the next generation. They did not need to think about the exploitation of their more vulnerable neighbors.
The second case study is Redeemer Community Church started by several Asian Americans and located in the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco. Members of Redeemer started a software and tech consulting company (Dayspring Partners) and a private school (Rise University Preparatory School). Dayspring minimizes the gap between the pay of the CEO and of the lowest paid employee (3:1) pays workers a just wage and puts profits into community micro-loans. Rise reserves 80% of its places for residents of Bayview/Hunters Point (majority Black and Latinx) and charges tuition of $2,100/year, raising the rest of its operating funds from foundations/donors.
Redeemer and its offshoots are not perfect; Tran does not claim that they are. He offers them as an example of the revolutionary character of the gospel when put into practice.
[1] This is not a point that Tran makes.
[2] This is not a point that Tran makes.
The theological/methodological claim: It is not the case that racism or ideological dehumanizing of non-white people motivated powerful landowners and industrialists to exploit them.
It is rather the case that the industrial revolution and the concomitant demand for natural resources required that capitalists exploit laborers maximally. Racism emerged as a rationalization for that exploitation. Christian evangelism assisted that racist rationalization by adding the motivation of converting the “heathen” Africans, Asians, Native Americans, etc. and by individualizing the gospel to protect the conscience of the exploiter. [By making material prosperity an indication of God’s favor, Protestantism (Calvinism in particular) further gaslighted the poor and particularly the non-white population.][1]
The current anti-racism campaigns/books/organizations will not do away with racism because they provide only a salve for the conscience of some Whites while doing nothing to change the real problem, which is racial capitalism.
Capitalism is an instance of disordered desire (concupiscence). The insatiable desire for more (money, status, privilege) dehumanizes the capitalist and makes the laborer into a commodity. Dr. King’s phrase for this was “thingify.” Because r>g (the return on investment is greater than the return on one’s labor (growth), wealth is more important than income and inherited wealth increases the gap between rich and poor.
The gospel is summed up in the proclamation that all creation belongs to God and that humans are stewards of the earth and stewards of relationships with other humans. In the Incarnation God inhabited not only humanity but all creation. Life in Christian community embodies the self-emptying (dispossession) of God in Christ so that although the Church is not Christ, Christians living in community give themselves to each other and to creation. This life is true freedom and produces the joy of freedom, despite and in the midst of the suffering that community for the sake of other humans and all creation entails. [This is what New Testament scholar Michael J. Gorman calls cruciform living].[2]
This is already and not yet the revolution that Marxism aims at but can never achieve because it can give no moral accounting for the self-emptying life except the martyrdom of the heroic individual. The revolution for which all creation groans began with the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and is carried on by repentant communities of Christians who model and call for a different way of thriving in community.
Tran makes his points with two extended case studies. The first case study is the Chinese immigrants to the Mississippi Delta. Brought to the Delta during Reconstruction to fill the labor gap, the Chinese rejected the exploitation and left the plantations. They opened the only grocery stores that would serve the emancipated Blacks who were kept in economic bondage (share-cropping) by the plantation owners. The Chinese became rich by making a living the only way they could, i.e. by exploiting the freedmen. The Chinese were evangelized by Southern Baptists, thus providing them with an individualized gospel that emphasized salvation as escape from hell and enabled them to justify their primary value of maximizing their families’ opportunities into the next generation. They did not need to think about the exploitation of their more vulnerable neighbors.
The second case study is Redeemer Community Church started by several Asian Americans and located in the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco. Members of Redeemer started a software and tech consulting company (Dayspring Partners) and a private school (Rise University Preparatory School). Dayspring minimizes the gap between the pay of the CEO and of the lowest paid employee (3:1) pays workers a just wage and puts profits into community micro-loans. Rise reserves 80% of its places for residents of Bayview/Hunters Point (majority Black and Latinx) and charges tuition of $2,100/year, raising the rest of its operating funds from foundations/donors.
Redeemer and its offshoots are not perfect; Tran does not claim that they are. He offers them as an example of the revolutionary character of the gospel when put into practice.
[1] This is not a point that Tran makes.
[2] This is not a point that Tran makes.