Member-only story
Critical Race Theory and Its Crucial Point of Departure
When Barack Obama ran for president, he was a first term senator with no baggage, and his opponents created a controversy through his church pastor.
Obama’s pastor preached Black Liberation Theology. The majority of Americans didn’t care. They never heard of it. But Obama’s opponents said it was an offshoot of Liberation Theology, which originated in Latin America with priests who blended the New Testament with concepts of Karl Marx. Since Obama’s pastor preached a black version of this doctrine people wondered if Obama was as radical as his pastor.
Obama could have explained there was an academic form of Black Liberation Theology that was influenced by the Latin American doctrine, but there was also a form of Black Liberation Theology that developed independently on slave plantations. This organic version was based on the Old Testament story of God liberating his people from captivity, and it developed inside of black churches from Reconstruction up to the Civil Rights Movement. However, Obama’s campaign didn’t find it advantageous to make the distinction. It was easier for Obama to publicly distance himself from his pastor and condemn what his pastor preached. Afterwards, anything that went under the banner of Black Liberation Theology was regulated to the “wrong side of history”.