At our house, we love to go out to eat.  We live in a small city, so we get excited when a new restaurant opens, especially if the chef brings an ethnic flavor to the menu.  But we don’t just eat what some people might consider “ethnic food”, because all food is someone’s ethnic food.  Sometimes our multiethnic family will go to a restaurant where the offerings are classic American dishes derived primarily from European immigrants, and the talk around the table might drift to what it would be like if we re-created the dish at home in OUR kitchen, re-creating the dishes by possibly taking OUT an ingredient or two that we don’t appreciate, and adding a few things to add some new flavors to make the dish – in our opinion – better.

Like deconstructing a recipe to recreate a dish to make it better, Critical Race Theory (known as CRT for short) explores the legacy of race and racism on US law and policy making in the past and present in the hopes of creating a better and more just future for all.

Authors Robert Chao Romero and Jeff M. Liou and their book Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation have written about the intersections of faith and CRT.  Over the next few weeks, we are going to take our time on the Antioch Podcast to walk through this seminal book, talking about its ideas.  This week, we are starting in the opening chapter with the question, “When did you first recognize structural racism?”