Ep 272 | Which Black Lives Matter?
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about the culture wars, why they exist, and what we are supposed to do about them. I also talk about why it is important for us to be aware of what is going on in our school system.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week and that
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you had a great 4th of July. On Monday, I talked to Abigail Schreier. She is a Wall Street Journal
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journalist and she wrote a book called Irreversible Damage, the Transgender Craze Seducing Our
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Daughters. It was a really insightful conversation and I just encourage you if you have not listened
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to it or watched it on YouTube to go do that, especially if you are a mom or plan to be a mom
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one day, but really if you're just a person existing in this world, understanding the problem, at least
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one perspective on the problem that really is threatening young people, but particularly and
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disproportionately young girls. It's so important for us to just be aware of what's going on,
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especially in our school system. So go back and listen to that. Today and on Friday, we are going
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to talk about culture wars and what the culture wars right now look like and why they exist and
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what we're supposed to do about them. And these are going to be, I guess, as always, controversial
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episodes. Someone the other day said to me, you know, you have a lot of controversial takes,
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which is funny because I don't think that way at all. When I'm preparing these episodes, I'm not
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thinking, okay, here's my hot take. Here's the thing that's really going to be contentious and
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make people mad. If anything, I might plan it in such a way to where I'm like, okay, I'm going to be
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super straightforward and dogmatic on this and then I dial it back. I always try to soften the things
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that I say to be a little bit more gracious and open and forgiving than maybe I had originally
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planned or my immediate reaction when I read a news story. My desire is never to be controversial.
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It would be a lot easier. Like my life would be a lot easier if I was swimming downstream with the
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rest of culture. But instead you and I were like human salmon. We got to swim upstream, which is not
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only really tiring to swim upstream, but also the bears try to get you. It would be a lot easier to
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be like a catfish or a bass or something like that, you know, just kind of like wading in the
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waters, bottom feeder, like a catfish. But we're not. We are human salmon and we are swimming upstream.
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And even with the threat of bears, we are called to go against the grain and to go against the current
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of culture. And like I said, it would be a lot easier if we didn't have to do that. It would be
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so much easier to agree with the mainstream on everything and understand that it is not my desire
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to go against the grain for the sake of going against the grain or for the sake of saying
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something different. My desire is not nuanced. It's not to be controversial. It is not to be a
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contrarian. I actually really don't like it when people try to be contrarians. Those people are really
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hard to get along with. I like to agree with people. However, we are beholden to the truth and
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the truth isn't always nuanced. Sometimes it is. The truth isn't always contrarian, but very often
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it is. And that is what we are called to. And also understand that I realize that as a fallible
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and flawed human being that I have my own blind spots. I probably have my own places of hypocrisy
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and double think that I don't even realize. And my prayer constantly is for God to give me wisdom
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and for him to help me realize the spots where I am wrong. I don't desire to be wrong. My desire is to
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always be truthful. And as just an individual, a fallible individual at that, my pursuit of truth,
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even with the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God is going to be imperfect. So thank you guys
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for following along, for listening and for learning with me, for pointing out the places where I could
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have given better insight or more insight and for offering your wisdom to me through all the Instagram
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DMs that I get in the emails and all of that. This podcast is called Relatable because I am relating to
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you and relating to your concerns and relating to the things that you're thinking about in a learning
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process in the pursuit of truth. And one of the truths that we are going to pursue today is going
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to be the truth of Black Lives Matter. As an organization, what is it and what is the ideology
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behind it? And is it okay to say the phrase Black Lives Matter if you don't support the organization
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and what that means? And realize that when I speak about Black Lives Matter and I kind of peel back the
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layers, a lot of which a lot of you have already peeled and seen other people do the same, I am not
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talking about Black Americans as a monolith. Unfortunately, there are people on both sides
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who believe that Black Americans all believe the same things, that they all want the same policy
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prescriptions, that they all have the same feelings, that they all have the same grievances. And that's
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just not true. There was a very interesting video by Marcellus Wiley. He is a sports commentator who
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talked about some of the problems with Black Lives Matter that we're going to talk about today.
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Terry Crews has critiqued the movement in his own way. And I'm not even saying that those people agree
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with me. I'm simply saying people aren't a monolith. Of course, Americans aren't a monolith.
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Conservatives aren't a monolith. Liberals aren't a monolith. And neither are Black Americans.
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And so when I am critiquing Black Lives Matter, even though we hear consistently that if you critique
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Black Lives Matter as an organization, you are saying that Black Lives don't matter,
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or you are racist and you don't care about what Black Americans think. You want to dismiss them
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and dismiss their concerns. And that's not true at all. That is a way to stymie conversation. That
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is a way to stifle dissenting opinions. That is a way of emotional manipulation. That is a way of
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bullying to say if you don't support this organization and everything that it stands for,
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then you are a brutal racist. That's a way to silence people because no one wants to be a racist.
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So I am going to buck against that and say that, yes, we can care about our fellow Americans who are
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Black, who look differently than those of us who are white. And we can listen and we can have
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conversations and we can hear real concerns. And at the same time, I know it's so scandalous and
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controversial these days and radical these days to hold two thoughts in our minds simultaneously.
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At the same time, we can look at Black Lives Matter and say, hang on just a second. Is this an
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organization that is helping Black lives? Like, is it living up to its name? And unfortunately,
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while there are so many wonderful pastors that are doing this and helping their flocks discern
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and walk through the confusing waters of culture, unfortunately, there are too many pastors,
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too many church leaders that are afraid to say to their congregants, hey, congregants, I see that
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you're all posting Black squares. I see that you're all posting links to the Black Lives Matter
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organization. I see that you're all repeating talking points from this organization. Let me help you be a
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little bit discerning. And that's not to say that that pastor can't also talk about why racism is a sin or
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how racism manifests itself or whatever. But it seems like pastors who are willing to talk about
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racism and give their congregants helpful discernment and what that looks like are not
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also willing to give discernment to their congregants and saying, hey, Black Lives Matter doesn't actually
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uphold the values that the church should hold. And so, church, I am going to give you some wisdom and
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give you some insight into why this organization is not one that we should support. If, of course, the pastor
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believes that, which I am going to make the argument that they should believe that and they should be talking
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to their churches about that kind of thing. So, as I said, today, we're going to talk about Black Lives Matter.
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And this is kind of going to be a two-part series about the cultural revolution, the culture war that is
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going on right now. On Friday, we are going to talk about not Black Lives Matter, but the different
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parts of the culture war. Today, we're going to talk about that organization. We're going to talk
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about the ideology that's driving them, Colin Kaepernick, Frederick Douglass. Then on Friday,
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we're going to talk about Trump's Mount Rushmore speech, the 2020 election, the destruction of words,
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the gaslighting that's going on by the media who are saying there is no culture war at all.
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What are you talking about? And so, we're going to talk about all of that. And you might feel a little bit
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distressed, as you might in some of my episodes, just by nature of what we're talking about. But I want you
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to, in these episodes, feeling motivated and feeling equipped and realizing that, yes, there is a moral and
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political and cultural, unfortunately, war being waged, a spiritual war in some ways being waged.
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And we need to be aware of these things. We need to know what it looks like. And we need to have
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tools in our belts to be able to push forward to the glory of God. So, let's get into this
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controversial stuff. Like I said, many in the Black community have voiced concerns with Black Lives
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Matter. A lot of conservatives have talked about the problem with it. And we are going to lay those
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out right now. So, the question among Christians has never been, when we're talking about the subject of
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police brutality or racism, has never been whether or not Black Lives Matter, at least not in the current
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conversation. Now, you could argue that 50 years ago, certainly that was not a popular idea in the
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church that Black lives are equal and Black lives matter, even in the biblical sense. Certainly,
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there is a history there. But in the current conversation that we are talking about and have
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been talking about for several years, the question is never whether or not Black lives truly matter.
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We affirm the reality that Black people are made in the image of God. They are equal in value to
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everyone else and thus should be treated as such. The questions are the questions that we have
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wrestled with, that we should be wrestling with. What are the real problems our country and vulnerable
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communities are facing? What does true justice look like? And with whom should we partner to tackle
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these issues? And this last question is what we are mostly focusing on today. And we've talked about
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the answers, possible answers to the other questions as well. In the episode, does the truth matter?
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We talked a lot about that a couple of weeks ago. So I'm talking specifically about the organization
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of Black Lives Matter. And like I said, I'm not lumping every activist together. I'm not saying
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that everyone who cares about racism is a part of this group. I'm not saying that every protester is a
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part of this group. I am not discounting the real and productive conversations and points being raised.
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And I'm going to go further into that. We're talking about this organization and what they represent.
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So according to their site, hashtag Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to the
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acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murder by combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for
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Black imagination and innovation and centering Black joy. We are winning immediate improvements
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in our lives. OK, so it's kind of unclear what some of those things mean. So let's look at the ideology
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that drives them and ask ourselves if it is manifesting itself in ways that are tangibly
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helping and tangibly adding what they call immediate improvements to the lives of Black people.
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The leaders of Black Lives Matter are self-avowed Marxists. And since a lot of people scoff when we
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say the word Marxist as if it's just a buzzword that has no meaning, I'll play you this short clip.
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Um, I think that the criticism is helpful. Um, I also think that it might, um, I think of a lot of
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things. The first thing I think is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Um, myself and Alicia
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in particular are trained organizers. Um, we, uh, are trained Marxists. So that is a co-founder of BLM
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saying that we are trained Marxists. Now, Marxism is somewhat of an elusive term, but it is essentially
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the driving philosophy behind socialism and communism. German philosopher Karl Marx blamed
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capitalism and the rich for the plight of the poor, believed that a proletariat-led socialist revolution
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was necessary and inevitable, overthrowing the power of the bourgeois or the rich. Uh, so let's dig a
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little bit deeper. BLM co-founder Opal Tometi, she is actually a friend of Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz,
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apparently a member of his church. According to Lentz's Instagram, they've had conversations on
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Instagram. She penned an article in 2015, um, praising the revolution led by Venezuelan communist
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dictator Hugo Chavez for their quote, championing of quote, democracy. Now, even Bernie Sanders calls
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Chavez a brutal dictator. He silenced journalists. He packed the courts. He had protesters jailed and
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murdered. There's no free speech there. There's no independent judiciary. There's no freedom at all.
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In 2015, Venezuela's latest dictator, Nicolas Maduro spoke at a summit in New York alongside
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Tometi expressing solidarity with black Americans who are suffering from racism, which is funny because
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Maduro certainly doesn't have a record of treating minorities or treating anyone in Venezuela
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with any kind of care and respect. Maduro is the same as Chavez in that regard, if not worse,
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brutal, evil, corrupt. Here is some of what he said in that speech. Now listen to this and listen to how
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similar it sounds to a lot of the rhetoric that you are hearing. We suffer and feel Ferguson. This is in
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2015. It hurt us. It hurt us to see that the old scaffolding of racism is still intact and is like a
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ghost that is haunting our peoples. Racism that is just the son of slavery, the direct descendant of
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slavery and the regime of slavery and segregation and exploitation. Again, notice how similar his
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rhetoric is to Black Lives Matter. And the guy is literally not exaggerating. This is not hyperbole.
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Anyone could admit this if they're going to be intellectually honest on any side of the aisle.
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He is a brutal communist dictator that has helped bring Venezuela further into disarray.
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Venezuela is starving. Here is a picture that I'll put up if you're watching on YouTube.
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A journalist at the New York Times took of a man being treated for schizophrenia at one of their
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hospitals. I mean, this person looks like he has he's definitely dead by now, for sure. This article
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was written in 2018. This person is certainly dead. He looks like he hasn't eaten in in a year. It is
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absolutely devastating to look. I'll include this. I'll include the link to this article in the
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description. And you can just look and let your heart break at the devastation and the suffering
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that is going on in Venezuela. The one of the most resource rich countries in the world is suffering
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and struggling. And its people are starving, not because of American imperialism, which is what
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communist propaganda has been saying for, you know, 100 years about America and what unfortunately
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someone like Opal Tometi believes, but because of the corruption of their own system and their own
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people, because of the nature of socialism. It always does this. The article that that picture is
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from is titled Starving Babies, Molotov Cocktails and Death Threats. One photojournalist,
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is Venezuelan reality. He talks about being detained several times as a member of the press.
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The article says that babies are starving to death and dying. Young boys are joining street gangs just
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because they're starving. They're desperate. They don't know what to do. Venezuelans have lost on
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average of 19 pounds in the past year. Anyone who tells you that this is somehow, like I said,
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America's fault is lying. This is socialism. Again, this is an oil rich country that has been ravaged
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by corrupt socialists. And Nicolas Maduro, one of the most brutal dictators in the world,
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wants to come to the United States and talk to us about police brutality and racism. Bro,
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look around your own country. And for Opal Tometi to not only support him, there's a picture of them
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together, but also support his predecessor, Chavez, which again, unequivocally was a brutal dictator.
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She actually calls out Bernie Sanders in her article saying that she denounces Bernie Sanders
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calling Hugo Chavez a brutal dictator. That's insane. Do Venezuelan lives matter? I'm just
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wondering. You can go to Human Rights Watch's website and read more about the evils of the Chavez and
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Maduro regimes if you're interested. But this is what Marxists and communists do. They support one
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another no matter what. They care about ideology, not outcome. The Venezuelan socialists say and
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believe the right things, according to people like Tometi, so they should be praised, despite the fact
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that their policies have led exclusively, exclusively to human suffering. Every country in which Marxism
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has been implemented has resulted in suffering, starvation, and death. The USSR, Eastern Germany,
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China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, just to name a few, Marxism is violent by nature. As compassionate
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as the intentions of Marxism may sound, lifting up the oppressed using, quote, the language of the
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oppressed, when executed, it always destroys, it never builds. I mean, why do you think some of these
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things are happening around the country in which not just Confederate statues are getting toppled,
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but all kinds of statues and monuments are getting toppled. The streets are filled with
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rioters and looters and businesses are burning down, whether they are Black-owned or owned by
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white people, whether they have a sign in their window that says, I support Black Lives Matter or
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not. This is what Marxism does. All it does is create resentment. That's all it does. It cannot
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actually build anything. It always promises and then it destroys. It is the most devastating example
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of over-promising and under-delivering that you have ever seen. And the effects are always devastating.
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I mean, that's why, for example, in CHOP or CHAZ or whatever it was, in Portland, Seattle, I don't even
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know. It's all the same to me. That is why they unfortunately lost life due to violence in their own
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group. They won. They didn't believe in the police coming to help them and they don't believe in the
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police at all. But Marxism and this kind of socialist mentality that we are going to overthrow
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the powerful by way of some kind of destructive revolution doesn't actually lead to peace. It just
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breeds more violence. Unfortunately, a 16-year-old Black boy was killed in CHOP by someone who shot him
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point blank. So don't tell me that this is an ideology that is leading to peace when we know
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around the world that it hasn't and it's not leading to peace right now. And this is the ideology,
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the stated ideology of the Black Lives Matter organization. Every country, like I said, that has
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been characterized by Marxism has gone down the road of suffering, not just the kind of suffering that
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you see from starvation and being arbitrarily detained, for example, but also you don't have
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freedom of religion. You don't have freedom of speech. You don't have freedom of conscience. It
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is totalitarian in that way. One of the first institutions, because it's totalitarian and
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because it is looking to exact control, one of the first institutions that Marxists, that communists,
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that socialists seek to demolish in their revolution is the family. Because no one can have an authority or a
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value system that is not derived from the state, that is a threat to the state, and Marxists are chiefly
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concerned with power. We see that characteristic of Marxism in BLM's statements of belief. This is
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according to their website. The organization seeks to, quote, do the work required to dismantle
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cisgender privilege, quote, disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family and free themselves from,
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quote, the tight grip of heteronormative thinking. If that sounds nonsensical to you, that's because it is.
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Half of these words were discovered in 2015 by a gender studies professor of intersectional politics.
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They're not real. And yet, to them, they have meaning. As a piece on Medium points out, BLM is
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inherently a movement sustained by a politics of blackness that is, Charlene Carruthers reminds us,
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unapologetically feminist, womanist, and queer. That is, of course, true. The LGBTQ movement and
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philosophy is inextricably intertwined with Black Lives Matter because those are values of the
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founding members. This is precisely why the site mentions mothers three times, but never mentions
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fathers. You'll see that it mentions parents and mothers, but it will never mention fathers. It is not
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just because of the, quote, queer roots of the group, but because of its Marxist nature as well. It is
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their desire to dismantle the familial hierarchy that causes BLM to downplay the universal need for
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fathers. Marxist thought informs the idea that the centralization or even, I guess, the mere mention of
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fatherhood is patriarchally oppressive and therefore inherently misogynistic. Therefore, BLM, at least in its
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stated mission, not only aims to ignore fatherhood, but to replace it with, quote, villages that
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collectively care for one another. The problem with this, I mean, again, as compassionate as that might
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sound, that is a far-left communistic idea that children belong to the community and not to their
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parents. That's just a way of ensuring their indoctrination by eliminating that parent-child
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relationship. Again, you can look at the history of Cambodia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, to see how that
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typically works out. But the problem with replacing fatherhood or ignoring fatherhood is both biblical
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for the Christian and also practical. So as Christians, we know that fatherhood is necessary
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and good. God models the importance of the so-called nuclear family in the Bible, in his creation of Adam
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and Eve. People like to believe that this is, that his creation of Adam and Eve and the first family
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that came about was just arbitrary, that it has no meaning, that it is not supposed to be a model for
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other families, but of course we know that it is. God called it good and very good. His creation of
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Adam and Eve is the first marriage and family. He emphasizes this throughout the Old Testament and
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historical accounts of Israel's patriarchs and the New Testament directives towards fathers and
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families. And he shows this in his own nature, the importance of fatherhood. The relationship between
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God the Father and Christ the Son is a divine representation of the importance of fatherhood.
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Furthermore, God calls us, those who have been saved by grace through Jesus Christ, his children and
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himself our father. You can look at 1 John 3.1. There are also practical consequences of
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fatherlessness. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 44% of father absent homes are living in poverty,
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compared to only 12% of two-parent homes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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found that children in fatherless households are far more likely to use drugs. 71% of college dropouts
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are fatherless. 56% of jail inmates grew up in a single-parent home. Additionally, teen pregnancy
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and juvenile delinquency are both significantly more prevalent in homes without present dads.
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Now, this is not to diminish the amazing work of single moms. There are, of course,
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many children of single mothers who grew up to be wonderful, productive adults. It is simply to say
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that children thrive most when they are in a situation that God intended for them and created
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for us, raised by a mom and a dad. He shows this in the beginning of creation. He reiterates it
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throughout scripture and demonstrates it both in his relationship with his son and with us, his
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children. So how can anyone who proclaims that Black Lives Matter support an organization
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that works against fatherhood, either explicitly or implicitly, when the data so clearly shows its
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importance for children and their future success, whether you believe in the Bible or not, in God's
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intentional setup of the family, whether you want to deny that or accept that, you can look at the
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data that shows us that the lack of fathers in a lack of a father in a child's life leads to bad results.
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Typically, a higher likelihood of bad results in their own life. So how can anyone who says that
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Black Lives Matter, you want Black success, you want Black improvement, improvement of Black lives,
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as Black Lives Matter says that they do, how can you be implicitly or explicitly against the Western
00:25:36.860
prescribed, as they call it, nuclear family, which is just a mom and a dad? How can you be against
00:25:41.940
the presence of a father? As of 2018, 65% of all Black households in the United States were without a
00:25:49.240
present father that's higher than the households of any other ethnic group? Now, Black Lives Matter and
00:25:55.220
similar activist groups will say, well, you know, we don't talk about that. Or when we do talk about it, we only
00:26:01.900
talk about it as a result of systemic racism. That's what leftist activists will say. They will say the high
00:26:07.820
number is because of mass incarceration. That's why we need an overhaul of not only policing, but of our
00:26:14.320
justice and prison systems in general, which they assert are systemically racist. But the numbers don't
00:26:21.180
support that theory that incarceration is the historical driver of fatherlessness. According to the Bureau of
00:26:27.060
Labor Statistics, the rate of fatherless homes in the Black community were already on the rise before the sharp
00:26:33.320
increase in Black incarceration in the 1970s through the 90s. Based on the numbers, it is more likely
00:26:39.500
that the breakdown of the family caused the rising crime rates than the other way around. It has also
00:26:45.360
been asserted that fatherlessness in Black communities is part of the, quote, legacy of slavery. And that is
00:26:50.860
partly true. I do believe that to be partly true. As Ta-Nehisi Coates explains in a piece in The Atlantic,
00:26:57.780
which obviously I disagree with a lot of what he says, but I do think he's a very
00:27:02.100
insightful and talented writer and he's very interesting to read. He writes in a piece in
00:27:08.060
The Atlantic that Black children have always been more likely to be born to single mothers and that
00:27:12.980
that was obviously due to slavery when slavery existed. And of course, that's true. But does the
00:27:19.600
legacy of slavery explain why, as his same article shows in The Atlantic, that the fatherless rate among
00:27:26.540
Black Americans was fairly steady until the 1960s and then skyrocketed? I don't think so.
00:27:32.100
That just doesn't correlate that the fatherlessness rate was about the same from slavery until the
00:27:38.460
1960s and then all of a sudden went up. And again, that's before the so-called trend of mass
00:27:44.720
incarceration started to happen. And slavery, it cannot be to blame for the white fatherlessness
00:27:51.500
rate going up at the exact same time. So in the 1960s, both the white fatherlessness rate and the
00:27:57.380
black fatherlessness rate skyrocketed and has continued to increase since the 1960s. And so you
00:28:03.280
can't say the legacy of slavery is to blame for white fatherlessness that has gone up at the same
00:28:08.920
rate. Can you? Of course not. As economist Thomas Sowell argues, nearly 100 years of the supposed
00:28:14.220
legacy of slavery found most Black children being raised in two parent families in 1960. But 30 years
00:28:20.660
after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of Black children being raised by a single
00:28:27.360
parent, which is true. Now, that is his argument for why, that the welfare state was and is the biggest
00:28:35.300
driver behind broken up families in the Black community and in white communities. I would also argue
00:28:41.820
that for all demographics, the sexual and moral revolution of the 1960s helped deprioritize
00:28:48.660
marriage before, helps deprioritize getting married before you have sex and have children. But no matter
00:28:57.440
the reason for fatherlessness, we know the importance of present dads, both biblically and practically. So if
00:29:04.080
Black Lives Matter, and they do, by the way, eternally, why would Christians support an organization
00:29:09.540
actively discouraging and seeking to dismantle the one thing we know kids and communities of all
00:29:16.420
ethnicities need most? Present fathers and coherent families and cohesive families. The idea of a
00:29:23.740
collective village family, like I said, is a communist idea. And you can study the way totalitarians have
00:29:29.780
always first sought to break up the family in that way and put kids under collective care so they can
00:29:34.920
become indoctrinated agents of the state. Why would we support an organization whose driving ideology
00:29:41.640
is one that has manifested itself in violence and division throughout the world? What good can that
00:29:47.180
bring? Now, I'm going to get into some other parts of that and the way some people answer that question
00:29:54.040
from the other side in just a second. So some people say in response to all of this, that Black Lives Matter
00:29:59.960
is still helping the Black community because they are helping to save Black lives. But is that really
00:30:05.800
true? Like, is that what they're doing? There were, according to the Washington Post, 15 unarmed Black
00:30:11.260
people killed by the police last year. Every one of them important. Every one of them made in the image
00:30:16.020
of God. Every one of them worth paying attention to. Every one of those cases should be investigated.
00:30:21.400
All cases where someone is killed should be investigated. And if a police officer murders someone,
00:30:26.560
they should be held accountable. They should go to jail for the rest of their lives,
00:30:29.280
just like anyone else. But there were 15. 55 police officers were murdered in 2018,
00:30:35.400
according to the FBI, just for a little perspective. And we don't even know how many of
00:30:40.540
the Black Americans who were killed by police were killed by white police officers, presumably
00:30:48.060
fewer than 15, since we know that typically minority police officers police minority communities,
00:30:55.020
typically. So the few times a white police officer kills, kills a Black American are what BLM is
00:31:03.840
focused on, but not the 2,600 Black people murdered by other Black people in 2018. And that number is
00:31:11.660
similar throughout the years. Every year, there are more Black murder victims than any other ethnicity,
00:31:16.520
and they're not being killed by white people. And by the way, white people are mostly killing
00:31:21.400
white people. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that 18 people were killed on one Sunday, May 31st,
00:31:28.000
making it the single most violent day in Chicago in six decades, in 60 years. The most violent day
00:31:36.100
in Chicago. There were at least six Black children murdered over the weekend, according to CNN.
00:31:42.080
We will put their pictures up as I read their names. Sasoria Turner, eight years old, shot and
00:31:48.900
killed in Atlanta. Her mom was getting off the interstate, trying to turn around, get out of the
00:31:53.620
way of the protesters that were at this Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by a police
00:32:00.240
officer. Apparently, she got in the way. She was trying to get out of the way of these barricades that
00:32:05.960
they had illegally put up, and someone shot and killed this little girl who did nothing to them.
00:32:12.880
By the way, again, this is not justice. Exacting revenge, exacting revenge, period. But exacting
00:32:19.300
revenge on people who did nothing to you is not justice. So you can stop telling me that these
00:32:24.900
riots in the street are about justice. They're not. Royda DeMarco Giles, also eight years old,
00:32:31.420
in Hoover, Alabama, shot and killed in a crossfire at a mall. Davon McNeil, 11, Washington, D.C.,
00:32:37.440
visiting family in D.C. when he was shot and killed. Natalia Wallace, seven, Chicago, playing
00:32:41.800
outside, shot and killed. Six-year-old in what seems to be a drive-by shooting in San Francisco
00:32:46.360
over the weekend. Police, yes, police, are investigating this, still trying to figure out
00:32:52.820
what and why. These stories come out of Chicago every week. Just a couple weeks ago, this three-year-old
00:32:59.580
boy was shot and killed in a shooting in Chicago. Anyone remember Tyshawn Lee? You probably don't.
00:33:05.180
You might not even know his name. He was a nine-year-old boy who was black that was playing
00:33:09.140
basketball when a gang member that he knew lured him into an alley, shot him in the head
00:33:13.740
point-blank, murdered by a gang member named Dwight Boone Doty, who, according to the Washington
00:33:19.920
Post, laughed about it, made a joke about it when he was asked about it, showed no remorse
00:33:24.400
whatsoever. And Black Lives Matter is openly calling. This is why I bring this stuff up. I know
00:33:30.120
that some of you are thinking, well, that's not their focus, and it's fine. I'm going to talk about
00:33:33.680
that in just a second. You're right. They don't have to focus on everything, but I'm making a point
00:33:37.660
with all of this, that with all of that happening, disproportionately in black communities, Black Lives
00:33:43.380
Matter is openly calling for the defunding of the police. According to YouGov, only 16% of Americans
00:33:49.840
are in favor of that, which is honestly, it's too high, but it's still a minority of Americans
00:33:54.520
are in favor of defunding the police because most people understand that that would be insane.
00:34:00.220
Reforms? Sure. Accountability? Sure. There's a New York Times article that goes through all of the
00:34:06.120
different forms of accountability and some forms of police reform that the vast majority of Americans
00:34:11.620
are for. Most of us agree that we want transparency. We want accountability. We want better,
00:34:17.820
improved policing and training and all of that. I think police officers want that.
00:34:22.860
But defunding? Abolition of the police department? Absolutely not. And that's what's happening in
00:34:29.160
Minneapolis right now. Let me read you an excerpt from a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Jason
00:34:34.560
Riley, who, by the way, is black. The political left, with a great deal of assistance from the
00:34:39.900
mainstream media, has convinced many Americans that George Floyd's death in police custody is an
00:34:45.660
everyday occurrence for black people in this country, and that racism permeates law enforcement.
00:34:50.280
The reality is that the carnage we witness in Chicago is what's typical. Law enforcement has
00:34:54.900
next to nothing to do with black homicides, and the number of interactions between police and low-income
00:34:59.940
blacks is driven by crime rates, not bias. So long as blacks are committing more than half of all
00:35:05.100
murders and robberies, again, this is according to Jason Riley, murders and robberies while making up
00:35:10.760
only 13% of the population, and so long as almost all of their victims are their own neighbors,
00:35:16.640
these communities will draw the lion's share of police attention. Defunding the police or making
00:35:20.820
it easier to prosecute officers will only result in more lives lost in those neighborhoods that need
00:35:27.580
protecting most. Reports about race and policing that omit relevant facts to push a predetermined
00:35:33.720
narrative are not only misleading but harmful, especially to blacks. We know from decades of experience
00:35:39.940
that when police pull back, criminals gain the advantage and black communities suffer both
00:35:45.380
physically and economically. A common assumption among liberals is that the movement of inner city
00:35:49.880
jobs to the suburbs in the late 1960s is what led to the higher rates of crime, violence, and other
00:35:55.480
social pathologies associated with ghetto life. But this gets the order wrong. The business flight took
00:36:01.000
place after the rioting, not before. Will history repeat itself? That's a great question, and I think it's
00:36:06.160
rhetorical because we know the answer. The answer is yes. Anyone with means is going to leave cities like
00:36:11.380
Minneapolis who are currently defunding the police, and the people who are going to be impacted are
00:36:15.600
going to be the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the children, who are not going to be able to move
00:36:22.000
and are going to not only suffer from lack of economic opportunity but also higher crime, which are
00:36:28.540
disproportionately, these crimes disproportionately committed by men. And so people who are vulnerable
00:36:34.400
are going to be affected most by this. And what about abortion? Here is another unfortunately tragic
00:36:42.100
taker of black life from 2012 to 2016. This is also according to Jason Reilly in the Wall Street Journal.
00:36:48.600
According to the health department, more black babies were aborted than were born. Terminated were
00:36:55.220
136,426 pregnancies of black women, and black women gave birth to 118,127 babies. That is the highest
00:37:06.260
rate even if you adjust for income levels. Planned Parenthood preys upon these minority communities
00:37:12.700
knowing that they're going to be able to convince these people to have abortions. Abortions pay their
00:37:16.800
bills. You can say it's only 3% of what they do. They're still murdering babies and making money off of
00:37:21.680
it. I don't care whether it's 0.5% of what they do. It's still evil. And they prey upon these
00:37:27.600
vulnerable women who find themselves in unfortunate and desperate situations, and they know they can
00:37:32.220
make money off of them. Margaret Singer founded Planned Parenthood on eugenics for the exterminate,
00:37:37.860
the quote, quote, extermination of the Negro. That is the language that she uses. You can Google that.
00:37:44.760
You can look that up. You're going to be able to find it. That is not a myth. That's not an exaggeration.
00:37:49.200
Margaret Singer had ties to the KKK. She was a white supremacist. That is part of why
00:37:54.060
she started Planned Parenthood. She was very similar to Nazis in that way. And yet, as we are
00:38:01.780
knocking down statues that have nothing to do with white supremacy, the same people are praising
00:38:07.800
Planned Parenthood. It's pretty amazing. And Black Lives Matter, by the way, supports abortion and
00:38:14.020
supports Planned Parenthood and supports Joe Biden expressly for that reason of supporting
00:38:18.940
abortion. Now, here's something that I think all sides should talk about and should care about.
00:38:24.560
We should talk about the Black maternal mortality rate, which is much higher than other rates. And
00:38:30.500
that could be playing into, unfortunately, this high number of abortions that Black women are having.
00:38:35.800
But one side will tell you that it's only because of institutional racism and no access to proper care.
00:38:41.420
But even though I do think that those definitely could be factors, absolutely, in it, but the reality
00:38:49.280
is, is that according to the CDC, Hispanic women have a lower maternal mortality rate, not just in Black
00:38:54.500
women, but also white women. And they are on average comparable economically to Black women and
00:38:59.380
presumably would also may also experience discrimination. Again, that's according to
00:39:04.360
the CDC. And so where are the studies into the why that go beyond the cursory political talking points?
00:39:11.760
And look, I'm not saying that there are no Black organizations that care about this stuff.
00:39:17.380
There are. Like I said, Black Americans are not a monolith. No group is a monolith. I think the majority
00:39:23.800
of Black America cares about this stuff from the conversations that I've had, the things that I've been
00:39:28.840
reading, you know, the haters that listen to this podcast think that I don't listen to the other
00:39:33.760
side. You would be surprised if you looked at my library of books and the things that I listen to and
00:39:39.240
the things that I watch that are of people of the other side that help me also shape my views. But
00:39:46.920
these Black lives are not the Black lives that are being brought to our attention by Black Lives Matter,
00:39:54.140
even though this is how the majority of Black Americans who die in an untimely way are dying
00:40:00.020
through abortion and through the crime that is unfortunately tragically happening in these
00:40:06.100
inner city communities. Why? Again, because Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization.
00:40:12.060
They exist for Marxism. Marxism seeks to divide and conquer to create oppressors in the oppressed in
00:40:18.620
order to call for a socialist revolution. And focusing on the thousands of Black lives lost to
00:40:23.900
abortion and homicide every year, they don't, that doesn't accomplish what they want in the way of
00:40:29.360
Marxism. But focusing on the few times a white officer shoots a Black American does. And if that's
00:40:36.000
what they want their focus to be, I know if you're on the other side of the aisle and you're listening to
00:40:39.860
this, I already know part of your rebuttal to what I'm saying and I'm going to address it.
00:40:44.860
But they don't have to focus on every issue facing the Black community. I understand that. They can
00:40:50.440
have their scope be narrow. If they want to focus on the few times that a Black person is killed by a
00:40:56.740
white police officer, I don't think that's a bad thing. I do think that we should be having
00:41:01.040
conversations about that. I don't think that we should ignore when that happens. And I'll talk a
00:41:05.440
little bit more about that in a second. If they want that to be their focus, then so be it. But the
00:41:10.360
problem is, it's not that their scope is actually very narrow, so that it only focuses on racialized
00:41:17.000
police brutality. Their scope is actually very wide. They are really focused on a much larger
00:41:23.300
revolution that includes the dismantling of entire systems they claim to be racist, not just ending
00:41:29.400
police brutality. Police brutality and white supremacy are simply the wedges that they use to
00:41:34.500
divide and conquer. So people say, oh, well, they're just focused on police brutality. No, they're not.
00:41:39.520
It's that they're focused on a lot of issues that are not helping Black lives. That's the problem.
00:41:45.740
They're focused on, in a lot of ways, not always, but in a lot of ways, the wrong things and the wrong
00:41:52.040
kinds of solutions, the Marxist solutions that have always ended in division and suffering. And
00:41:57.380
they are focused on dismantling the traditional family, which we know will disproportionately and
00:42:04.640
unfortunately negatively affect Black young people and especially Black young men. And that's why
00:42:11.780
they have the name Black Lives Matter instead of Black Lives Taken by Racist Police Officers Matter,
00:42:18.560
not because they are actually doing the work on behalf of all Black lives, which I would applaud,
00:42:24.860
by the way, but because they picked a name that no one could argue with in order to be able to exert
00:42:31.400
influence over all sectors of society, from social media to corporate America. They picked a phrase
00:42:36.920
that no one disagrees with because no one does disagree with it. So that if you don't support
00:42:41.380
them, they can assert that you don't believe that Black lives matter. So everyone is bullied into
00:42:47.800
supporting them because no one wants to be a racist because very few people are truly racist.
00:42:53.460
And they want to prove people who, you know, share Black Lives Matter posts and say they support the
00:42:59.340
organization. They want to prove that they're not. They have bought into this lie that if you
00:43:03.540
don't support the organization, you don't believe that Black lives matter. And that's just not true.
00:43:08.000
The phrase and the group are obviously different. Of course, Black lives matter. But the question is,
00:43:12.920
what do you mean when you say that? Which Black lives and why? And if you're going to say, well,
00:43:18.380
if you really believe that Black lives matter, you'll want to do all of the things we socialists
00:43:23.520
tell you to do, then no, there are a lot of people who aren't going to get on board with that.
00:43:28.720
Here's an interesting Noam Chomsky quote about propaganda that I think applies here.
00:43:33.560
That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be
00:43:39.440
against and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means because it doesn't mean anything.
00:43:44.920
Isn't that the case here? Have they created a phrase that no one can morally be against but
00:43:49.780
doesn't have any real actual meaning? Now, one good thing that I do think has come out of all of
00:43:56.300
this, even in the disagreements between the various organizations, I think one good thing that has come
00:44:02.480
out of this is that we're talking about these things. My concern is that the sincere voices that
00:44:08.460
are talking about real racism and real problems, racism or not, facing the Black community are being
00:44:16.080
drowned out. People who are presenting real solutions that are talking about real reforms,
00:44:21.180
having substantive conversations that they are being lumped together with organizations like Black
00:44:27.480
Lives Matter and drowned out. For example, there was a case of a young man with, I believe he had
00:44:33.060
special needs, Elijah McClain, who was, in my opinion, abused by police officers in Aurora, Colorado.
00:44:39.860
The video is online. It's tragic. It's heartbreaking. You can watch it. It was at night. He was wearing a
00:44:46.400
ski mask and he was anemic. And so his family said that he often got cold. So he wore this mask. And
00:44:53.000
maybe you could see because of that why someone might be skeptical of a man walking at 2 a.m. with a mask
00:44:58.840
on. But it doesn't matter because he wasn't breaking the law. He was saying while police officers,
00:45:04.900
multiple police officers, this little kid had to be no more than, you know, like 160 pounds,
00:45:10.060
multiple police officers on him, unarmed, saying, hey, I can't breathe. Sorry. Sorry. I didn't mean
00:45:15.140
to. He vomited saying, sorry, I didn't I didn't mean to do that. I just can't breathe properly.
00:45:19.720
Like I said, he was a small guy. He wasn't going to overpower these officers. He was unarmed.
00:45:24.540
He was clearly scared. He was given ketamine to sedate him by the EMT. He went into cardiac arrest
00:45:30.800
on the way to the hospital. He was put on life support and he died a few days later. I'm sorry.
00:45:35.460
But unless there's another part to the story that I don't know, you can't tell me that this situation
00:45:39.580
was OK. I mean, again, unless I just don't know a part of the story that he required this much
00:45:45.160
force. I wasn't there. I don't know. And you all know how much I love and respect good police officers.
00:45:50.560
But we have to be able to say, hey, this is not all right. This is not how it should have gone.
00:45:56.020
We should care. We should all care about the stories of people doing nothing wrong,
00:46:01.060
like the story of Justine Damon, a white woman who was literally shot and killed by a cop when she was
00:46:06.820
walking in her pajamas after she called them to report a man in her alley that she thought was
00:46:11.740
abusing someone. We should all care about these situations that are obvious instances of injustice.
00:46:18.420
They're insane. These cases don't happen every day. Thankfully, as far as we know,
00:46:23.100
they don't happen happen very often at all. But we should care when they do. Absolutely.
00:46:28.200
What I fear is that radicals have so monopolized this conversation for their cultural revolution,
00:46:34.620
not just Black Lives Matter, but Antifa, the far left white saviors like Robin DiAngelo,
00:46:39.520
who is just so wonderfully being raked over the coals by people all over the map right now and is
00:46:44.760
making thousands and thousands of dollars on anti-Black racism. But that's another story.
00:46:51.660
I fear these people are dominating the conversation. I'm thankful for the conversation that maybe
00:46:56.800
they have brought to light. But I fear that they're dominating the conversation. So they were unable
00:47:01.840
to separate the radical Marxists from the people saying, hey, over here, here are some real solutions.
00:47:07.480
Here's a different perspective. Here's the real injustice that's happening. Here are the real
00:47:11.680
solutions that are happening. And I'm afraid for us, honestly, as conservative Christians,
00:47:17.260
that we will turn our heart away from people like Elijah McClain, because we're afraid of buying into
00:47:22.540
a Marxist narrative. I don't want that for us. I don't want that for us. I think that we need to
00:47:27.400
be discerning about what Marxism is and what it isn't. We need to be discerning about the hashtags that
00:47:33.320
we use, that the organizations we promote, the slogans that we use, the words that we use,
00:47:37.760
like anti-racism and social justice terminology that, again, is more propaganda, that doesn't
00:47:43.300
have any substantive meaning. We need to be careful about that. But that doesn't mean that
00:47:47.200
we should harden our hearts against injustice that really happens. As Christians, we have to
00:47:51.940
be discerning. We are not affiliated with the narrative. We don't pledge allegiance to a
00:47:55.780
political party. We are flawed, which means that we are biased, that we have blind spots,
00:48:00.800
like I said at the beginning of this. And I pray constantly for God to show me where I am coming
00:48:05.620
up short and where I'm wrong. I don't want to be wrong. I don't want to say things that are not
00:48:10.480
true, but I'm an imperfect person. So I know that I have gotten it wrong in the past, but it is my
00:48:15.320
desire to look at the whole picture. And that is what I'm trying to help us do on this show.
00:48:20.640
The whole picture is that injustice exists, but not always where the mainstream tells you that it does.
00:48:27.700
And it should be talked about, but not always in the way that the mainstream tells you that it should
00:48:31.640
be. And there are problems, but not always the ones the mainstream says that there
00:48:35.420
are. We shouldn't be in denial about problems that are facing all vulnerable communities. And we
00:48:40.840
shouldn't only bring them up when it's politically expedient. That is true on both sides, by the way.
00:48:46.640
And just as we can't say that all the problems in the Black community are due to racism, we also can't
00:48:51.940
say that there is no racist person in America. Do any of us as Christians who believe that the heart
00:48:58.480
is desperately wicked, that we are depraved sinners in need of a Savior, really think that racism is an
00:49:04.180
possibility, that someone couldn't hate someone based on the color of their skin? Of course.
00:49:08.880
Of course there are. There are people who hate for a number of reasons. And of course, God just calls
00:49:13.640
this hate. He says, if you hate someone in your heart for any reason, he doesn't qualify or specify,
00:49:19.120
then that's murder. So by the way, the people who are saying that one skin color can't be racist
00:49:24.140
against another skin color, or someone who is of a lower station in life can't be accused of true
00:49:30.540
hate or an ism against someone in a higher station in life. That's not true. That's not the
00:49:35.480
qualification that Jesus gives us in the Gospels. If you hate, if you, anyone, universal you, hate
00:49:40.980
someone in your heart, that is murder. But that also includes people who hate someone because of
00:49:45.160
their ethnicity, because of their culture. They might hate children. They hate women. They hate the
00:49:49.960
elderly, the disabled. They hate Christians, Jews, whatever. There are people who hate, and there are
00:49:55.040
people who hate, like we said, based on someone's melanin count. And hate can absolutely manifest
00:49:59.780
itself in ways that hurt groups of people. And we have seen that in American history as well. And
00:50:06.040
you can hear a more nuanced and thorough explanation of that by going back to last Friday's episode.
00:50:12.520
That said, I also believe and see that America is the least racist. This is such a controversial
00:50:18.440
statement, but I have heard many Black Americans say this, that America is the least racist that we have
00:50:24.280
ever been. We're only 244 years old. We endured the moral stain of slavery. Hundreds of thousands of
00:50:30.580
men gave their lives to end it. Black people continued in many ways to have limited access
00:50:36.500
to equal rights after that. We had Jim Crow, segregation, all of it. And we should know about
00:50:41.660
it. We should learn from it. We should call it the evil that exists there. But we should also recognize
00:50:46.100
the amazing progress that we have made in such a short amount of time. We have gone from
00:50:51.420
segregation and Jim Crow to black billionaires, millionaires, scholars, professors, Supreme
00:50:56.160
Court justices, congresspeople, producers, directors, artists, cabinet members, a president
00:51:00.700
of the United States named Barack Hussein Obama. You can't tell me that that means nothing. I
00:51:06.480
understand it doesn't mean everything. I understand that it doesn't erase any injustice that actually
00:51:12.160
does exist. It doesn't change people's personal experiences and feelings. I'm not trying to do
00:51:17.720
that. But it also doesn't mean nothing. And yes, there are still disparate outcomes for black people
00:51:23.260
in America. And there may be multiple answers to these problems and reasons for them. Again,
00:51:28.000
I encourage you to read Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell. He talks about
00:51:31.540
all of the disparities that exist and the why behind them. But consider that some of the people who are
00:51:38.120
telling you that racism is the only reason for these disparities, that discrimination is the only
00:51:44.220
reason for these disparate outcomes, and that Marxism and that socialism, anti-capitalism are the only
00:51:50.980
solutions to these things, are purposely and politically trying to drive a wedge, purposely
00:51:57.080
trying to cause chaos, purposely trying to start a revolution. And then there are just some ignorant
00:52:01.940
people, especially ignorant white people, who just don't know and they're just going along because
00:52:06.660
they don't want to be considered a bigot. Is there any country in the world, besides maybe
00:52:13.900
South Africa, where the minority groups are doing as well as and even better than the majority? Is
00:52:23.720
there another country where a group was oppressed as badly as black Americans were, as black slaves
00:52:32.140
and black people under Jim Crow were, that have excelled as much and as quickly as black Americans have?
00:52:38.480
I don't know of them. And in what other country, by the way, again, besides probably South Africa,
00:52:45.700
are the minority groups the top earners in society? In America, it's Indian Americans and East Asian
00:52:51.360
Americans that have the highest graduation rates, highest test scores, highest median income. Whites
00:52:56.880
come in third, and white people have been here the whole time enjoying all the rights in the world.
00:53:02.180
In what other country is that possible? In what other country does that exist? That is why the
00:53:07.680
most immigrants come to the United States every year. They know that there is opportunity here for
00:53:12.040
people of any skin color. In what other world, in what other country, would someone like Colin Kaepernick
00:53:18.340
become a multi-millionaire of tens of millions of dollars he is worth for kneeling during the
00:53:23.220
national anthem? He had a deal with Nike. He just signed a deal with Disney. Tens of millions of
00:53:28.300
dollars he has earned just by being an activist. He tweeted on the 4th of July saying that black
00:53:34.160
people aren't going to celebrate your white supremacist holiday because black people have
00:53:38.460
been brutalized and oppressed. Using Frederick Douglass' What to a Slave is the 4th of July,
00:53:42.660
that's something I saw a lot on 4th of July. But by the way, like if you study Douglass, he was,
00:53:49.780
you should read his stuff. You should read What to a Slave is the 4th of July. It's really good.
00:53:53.740
You'll find that he loved America and believed he came to this conclusion later in life. The
00:53:59.320
Constitution in its original form is an anti-slavery document and actually sets the basis for the
00:54:05.640
anti-slavery argument. And he was correct. Kaepernick is richer than 99.9% of all people
00:54:13.380
in the world, including white people. In no other country would his story be possible. But you want
00:54:18.960
to say, people want to say that white supremacy is not just a problem, but is our main nemesis here?
00:54:25.140
Again, I'm not saying that there are no white supremacists that exist, but can we look around
00:54:30.180
in 2020 and really believe that this is the issue of our day when the majority of black Americans are
00:54:36.000
being killed by abortionists and other black men every day? Or is it that white supremacy is the buzz
00:54:41.620
phrase that is used to divide us? Unfortunately, this is another tragic part of all of this when it's
00:54:47.120
used to describe everyone and everything. It loses its meaning. So people who are actually white
00:54:52.040
supremacists who believe that white people are supreme can't get called out because everyone
00:54:58.240
is a white supremacist. That means people, when people are called that, they just don't care.
00:55:03.400
Like it's when someone hears that phrase, they just assume that someone is being hyperbolic or that
00:55:09.500
they're just completely making it up because that's what happens when words lose their meaning. And that is
00:55:15.000
really unfortunate. This is being used to launch a cultural revolution where we take down not just
00:55:20.360
Confederate statues, which I've said, if communities want to peacefully do that, democratically do that,
00:55:25.980
that is their decision. I get it. But Union soldier statues, founders monuments, and get this,
00:55:31.760
a statue of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the black abolitionist,
00:55:37.480
was toppled in Rochester, New York by the mob. He did just as much for freedom for all in this country.
00:55:45.000
As any other patriot did, toppled. I would just like to point out that none of the white people
00:55:51.820
toppling statues and talking about racism would have been abolitionists. Like there's just no
00:55:56.600
evidence of that kind of moral fortitude in their life. And none of the so-called Antifa members would
00:56:01.540
have actually fought fascists in World War II. Why? Because they would have been the fascists. That's
00:56:05.640
just true for the radicals. For the radicals. I'm not talking about all of the many sane people who
00:56:12.160
are having productive dialogue. For the radicals, none of this is about racism. This is about Western
00:56:17.960
civilization. This is about destroying America and rebuilding a socialist dystopia. They're talking
00:56:24.500
about how racist Mount Rushmore is. Mount Rushmore. When Obama visited it, it wasn't racist. When Bernie
00:56:30.480
Sanders visited it, and both of them said how awesome and great it was and how it made them proud to be
00:56:35.940
un-Americans, no one had any problem with that. But all of a sudden, we care about that. There's so
00:56:41.420
much more that we could talk about. We could talk about Trump's speech in front of Mount Rushmore
00:56:47.240
right now since we just ended with that. But I am going to talk more about that on Friday and the rest
00:56:52.320
of the culture war that doesn't just have to do with race, but really just how we're understanding
00:56:56.900
history, how we're breaking down the language. And I'll relate it to 1984, which I'm reading in my book
00:57:02.140
club. You can join Women's Book Club with Allie Stuckey on Facebook, and you can just pick up
00:57:06.340
exactly where we are. You can wait for the next book, but we are going through 1984 right now. It's
00:57:11.500
extremely pertinent to everything that's going on. I do want to just finish with a quote by Booker T.
00:57:17.860
Washington and just encourage you guys when you feel like human salmon and you're alone among all of the
00:57:25.720
catfish just waiting around in the still water. I know that's not how it works if you're swimming
00:57:31.800
upstream and the catfish are in the still water. I understand that my analogy is breaking down a
00:57:35.820
little bit. But for those of you who, like salmon, are swimming upstream and you're scared of the
00:57:40.500
bears that are going to get you, understand, one, that you're not alone, that there are a lot of us
00:57:47.040
who are swimming upstream right next to you, and also that it doesn't matter that you're in the minority.
00:57:52.280
It doesn't matter that you might be the only one around you who sees things clearly.
00:57:58.240
A lie doesn't become truth. Wrong doesn't become right. An evil doesn't become good
00:58:03.080
just because it's accepted by a majority. And human history proves that to be true,
00:58:08.820
that when the minority really, no matter how small, speaks up for the things that are right and true
00:58:14.400
and good, even if we disagree within this minority, as long as we are willing to have productive dialogue
00:58:20.700
and to talk with compassion about real problems and solutions, we can push forward and push back some
00:58:26.160
of this Marxist darkness. And I'll be talking more about that on Friday. Okay, I will see you guys then.