Circular Logic and Racism

Bible sources and Christian reason often expose an element of circular logic. Christians believe in the Bible because it is the word of God, and they believe in God because it is written in the Bible. In a statement such as this, one half of the argument presupposes the other. It becomes the classic argument of the ‘chicken’ and the ‘egg’ and which came first. All credibility of either side of the argument is voided and the foundation crumbles. The answer is inevitably found outside of the duality in the statement itself; in the instance above, both God and the Bible are manifestations of the history of human doctrine and ideology hard at work. In Barbara Jeanne Fields essay “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America,” Fields makes a comparable example of circular logic embedded in comments made by Richard Cohen, a journalist for the Washington Post.
In defending the supposition of the existence of a physical race, Cohen uses the example of being able to d...