By political Calvinism I mean the tendency within the left to see the structural injustices of the world as inherent and immutable, so baked into the cake of the current context, history, the United States of America, etc., that they will always exist. The stain of injustice can never be rubbed out. This is most obvious when discussing racial dynamics. White people are inherently in possession of white privilege, as many will tell you – most insistently white liberals, in my experience. Well, yes, today all white people enjoy white privilege, though the valence of that advantage varies with other factors in their lives. But the degree and intensity and in fact existence of white privilege is mutable; if we had a real racial awakening and all people worked to end white privilege, it would end. And not only do I not think this is a crazy thing to believe, I think believing it is a necessary precondition to being an agent of positive change!
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I’ve never heard a coherent answer to this: if your average uncommitted white American is told that their white privilege is immutable, that they will oppress people of color simply through existing, what is the motivation to try and change? Consider this from the standpoint of basic psychology. If you are told that you are in some sense fallen, simply by nature of your birth, then why exert yourself trying to change that fact? For someone who is not converted, the insistence that they are stained with political sin from birth simply pushes them to remain apolitical, to give up on racial politics and go back to grilling. People need to feel that their efforts have some meaningful possibility of creating positive change. The message should not be “you have white privilege and nothing you do will ever change that” but “you have white privilege but you can meaningfully contribute to ending it.” The latter is a call to action. The former is theatrics.
I believe that white privilege can be erased and that we can achieve true racial equality, that the traditional inequities of race are mutable and in fact chosen. If I didn’t, why would I bother to try?