Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 272 ｜ Which Black Lives Matter？

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week and that

00:00:15.620 you had a great 4th of July. On Monday, I talked to Abigail Schreier. She is a Wall Street Journal

00:00:21.700 journalist and she wrote a book called Irreversible Damage, the Transgender Craze Seducing Our 1.00

00:00:27.260 Daughters. It was a really insightful conversation and I just encourage you if you have not listened

00:00:32.000 to it or watched it on YouTube to go do that, especially if you are a mom or plan to be a mom

00:00:38.480 one day, but really if you're just a person existing in this world, understanding the problem, at least

00:00:44.380 one perspective on the problem that really is threatening young people, but particularly and

00:00:50.080 disproportionately young girls. It's so important for us to just be aware of what's going on,

00:00:56.060 especially in our school system. So go back and listen to that. Today and on Friday, we are going

00:01:01.980 to talk about culture wars and what the culture wars right now look like and why they exist and

00:01:09.960 what we're supposed to do about them. And these are going to be, I guess, as always, controversial

00:01:16.760 episodes. Someone the other day said to me, you know, you have a lot of controversial takes,

00:01:21.940 which is funny because I don't think that way at all. When I'm preparing these episodes, I'm not

00:01:27.540 thinking, okay, here's my hot take. Here's the thing that's really going to be contentious and

00:01:31.640 make people mad. If anything, I might plan it in such a way to where I'm like, okay, I'm going to be

00:01:38.340 super straightforward and dogmatic on this and then I dial it back. I always try to soften the things

00:01:44.600 that I say to be a little bit more gracious and open and forgiving than maybe I had originally

00:01:50.920 planned or my immediate reaction when I read a news story. My desire is never to be controversial.

00:01:57.520 It would be a lot easier. Like my life would be a lot easier if I was swimming downstream with the

00:02:04.340 rest of culture. But instead you and I were like human salmon. We got to swim upstream, which is not

00:02:10.500 only really tiring to swim upstream, but also the bears try to get you. It would be a lot easier to

00:02:16.140 be like a catfish or a bass or something like that, you know, just kind of like wading in the

00:02:20.620 waters, bottom feeder, like a catfish. But we're not. We are human salmon and we are swimming upstream.

00:02:29.440 And even with the threat of bears, we are called to go against the grain and to go against the current

00:02:35.340 of culture. And like I said, it would be a lot easier if we didn't have to do that. It would be

00:02:41.560 so much easier to agree with the mainstream on everything and understand that it is not my desire

00:02:47.300 to go against the grain for the sake of going against the grain or for the sake of saying

00:02:51.720 something different. My desire is not nuanced. It's not to be controversial. It is not to be a

00:02:58.000 contrarian. I actually really don't like it when people try to be contrarians. Those people are really

00:03:03.320 hard to get along with. I like to agree with people. However, we are beholden to the truth and

00:03:09.900 the truth isn't always nuanced. Sometimes it is. The truth isn't always contrarian, but very often

00:03:16.040 it is. And that is what we are called to. And also understand that I realize that as a fallible

00:03:23.980 and flawed human being that I have my own blind spots. I probably have my own places of hypocrisy

00:03:29.260 and double think that I don't even realize. And my prayer constantly is for God to give me wisdom

00:03:34.780 and for him to help me realize the spots where I am wrong. I don't desire to be wrong. My desire is to

00:03:41.660 always be truthful. And as just an individual, a fallible individual at that, my pursuit of truth,

00:03:48.600 even with the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God is going to be imperfect. So thank you guys

00:03:53.600 for following along, for listening and for learning with me, for pointing out the places where I could

00:03:59.260 have given better insight or more insight and for offering your wisdom to me through all the Instagram

00:04:05.440 DMs that I get in the emails and all of that. This podcast is called Relatable because I am relating to

00:04:13.100 you and relating to your concerns and relating to the things that you're thinking about in a learning

00:04:21.140 process in the pursuit of truth. And one of the truths that we are going to pursue today is going

00:04:27.780 to be the truth of Black Lives Matter. As an organization, what is it and what is the ideology

00:04:34.880 behind it? And is it okay to say the phrase Black Lives Matter if you don't support the organization

00:04:41.440 and what that means? And realize that when I speak about Black Lives Matter and I kind of peel back the

00:04:48.640 layers, a lot of which a lot of you have already peeled and seen other people do the same, I am not

00:04:54.200 talking about Black Americans as a monolith. Unfortunately, there are people on both sides

00:04:59.300 who believe that Black Americans all believe the same things, that they all want the same policy

00:05:03.960 prescriptions, that they all have the same feelings, that they all have the same grievances. And that's

00:05:09.300 just not true. There was a very interesting video by Marcellus Wiley. He is a sports commentator who

00:05:15.860 talked about some of the problems with Black Lives Matter that we're going to talk about today.

00:05:19.780 Terry Crews has critiqued the movement in his own way. And I'm not even saying that those people agree

00:05:24.600 with me. I'm simply saying people aren't a monolith. Of course, Americans aren't a monolith.

00:05:29.880 Conservatives aren't a monolith. Liberals aren't a monolith. And neither are Black Americans. 1.00

00:05:35.160 And so when I am critiquing Black Lives Matter, even though we hear consistently that if you critique

00:05:40.780 Black Lives Matter as an organization, you are saying that Black Lives don't matter,

00:05:44.300 or you are racist and you don't care about what Black Americans think. You want to dismiss them 0.51

00:05:54.700 and dismiss their concerns. And that's not true at all. That is a way to stymie conversation. That

00:06:00.720 is a way to stifle dissenting opinions. That is a way of emotional manipulation. That is a way of

00:06:07.180 bullying to say if you don't support this organization and everything that it stands for,

00:06:11.300 then you are a brutal racist. That's a way to silence people because no one wants to be a racist.

00:06:16.740 So I am going to buck against that and say that, yes, we can care about our fellow Americans who are

00:06:26.200 Black, who look differently than those of us who are white. And we can listen and we can have

00:06:32.280 conversations and we can hear real concerns. And at the same time, I know it's so scandalous and

00:06:38.220 controversial these days and radical these days to hold two thoughts in our minds simultaneously.

00:06:43.820 At the same time, we can look at Black Lives Matter and say, hang on just a second. Is this an 0.92

00:06:50.100 organization that is helping Black lives? Like, is it living up to its name? And unfortunately,

00:06:56.960 while there are so many wonderful pastors that are doing this and helping their flocks discern

00:07:02.640 and walk through the confusing waters of culture, unfortunately, there are too many pastors,

00:07:09.420 too many church leaders that are afraid to say to their congregants, hey, congregants, I see that

00:07:15.440 you're all posting Black squares. I see that you're all posting links to the Black Lives Matter

00:07:20.120 organization. I see that you're all repeating talking points from this organization. Let me help you be a

00:07:25.940 little bit discerning. And that's not to say that that pastor can't also talk about why racism is a sin or

00:07:31.480 how racism manifests itself or whatever. But it seems like pastors who are willing to talk about

00:07:38.220 racism and give their congregants helpful discernment and what that looks like are not

00:07:44.360 also willing to give discernment to their congregants and saying, hey, Black Lives Matter doesn't actually

00:07:49.640 uphold the values that the church should hold. And so, church, I am going to give you some wisdom and

00:07:55.860 give you some insight into why this organization is not one that we should support. If, of course, the pastor

00:08:03.800 believes that, which I am going to make the argument that they should believe that and they should be talking

00:08:08.000 to their churches about that kind of thing. So, as I said, today, we're going to talk about Black Lives Matter.

00:08:14.000 And this is kind of going to be a two-part series about the cultural revolution, the culture war that is

00:08:18.820 going on right now. On Friday, we are going to talk about not Black Lives Matter, but the different 0.60

00:08:24.840 parts of the culture war. Today, we're going to talk about that organization. We're going to talk

00:08:29.580 about the ideology that's driving them, Colin Kaepernick, Frederick Douglass. Then on Friday,

00:08:34.760 we're going to talk about Trump's Mount Rushmore speech, the 2020 election, the destruction of words,

00:08:40.980 the gaslighting that's going on by the media who are saying there is no culture war at all.

00:08:46.080 What are you talking about? And so, we're going to talk about all of that. And you might feel a little bit

00:08:50.680 distressed, as you might in some of my episodes, just by nature of what we're talking about. But I want you

00:08:58.640 to, in these episodes, feeling motivated and feeling equipped and realizing that, yes, there is a moral and

00:09:07.520 political and cultural, unfortunately, war being waged, a spiritual war in some ways being waged.

00:09:15.200 And we need to be aware of these things. We need to know what it looks like. And we need to have

00:09:19.140 tools in our belts to be able to push forward to the glory of God. So, let's get into this

00:09:26.760 controversial stuff. Like I said, many in the Black community have voiced concerns with Black Lives

00:09:33.180 Matter. A lot of conservatives have talked about the problem with it. And we are going to lay those

00:09:39.380 out right now. So, the question among Christians has never been, when we're talking about the subject of

00:09:47.280 police brutality or racism, has never been whether or not Black Lives Matter, at least not in the current

00:09:54.340 conversation. Now, you could argue that 50 years ago, certainly that was not a popular idea in the

00:10:01.960 church that Black lives are equal and Black lives matter, even in the biblical sense. Certainly,

00:10:09.060 there is a history there. But in the current conversation that we are talking about and have

00:10:13.960 been talking about for several years, the question is never whether or not Black lives truly matter.

00:10:19.120 We affirm the reality that Black people are made in the image of God. They are equal in value to

00:10:25.300 everyone else and thus should be treated as such. The questions are the questions that we have

00:10:31.100 wrestled with, that we should be wrestling with. What are the real problems our country and vulnerable

00:10:35.900 communities are facing? What does true justice look like? And with whom should we partner to tackle

00:10:41.920 these issues? And this last question is what we are mostly focusing on today. And we've talked about

00:10:47.460 the answers, possible answers to the other questions as well. In the episode, does the truth matter?

00:10:54.560 We talked a lot about that a couple of weeks ago. So I'm talking specifically about the organization

00:11:00.460 of Black Lives Matter. And like I said, I'm not lumping every activist together. I'm not saying

00:11:05.100 that everyone who cares about racism is a part of this group. I'm not saying that every protester is a

00:11:10.540 part of this group. I am not discounting the real and productive conversations and points being raised.

00:11:16.040 And I'm going to go further into that. We're talking about this organization and what they represent.

00:11:20.720 So according to their site, hashtag Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to the

00:11:26.500 acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murder by combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for

00:11:32.000 Black imagination and innovation and centering Black joy. We are winning immediate improvements

00:11:37.220 in our lives. OK, so it's kind of unclear what some of those things mean. So let's look at the ideology

00:11:44.040 that drives them and ask ourselves if it is manifesting itself in ways that are tangibly

00:11:49.760 helping and tangibly adding what they call immediate improvements to the lives of Black people.

00:11:56.540 The leaders of Black Lives Matter are self-avowed Marxists. And since a lot of people scoff when we

00:12:02.580 say the word Marxist as if it's just a buzzword that has no meaning, I'll play you this short clip.

00:12:07.520 Um, I think that the criticism is helpful. Um, I also think that it might, um, I think of a lot of

00:12:18.440 things. The first thing I think is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Um, myself and Alicia

00:12:24.320 in particular are trained organizers. Um, we, uh, are trained Marxists. So that is a co-founder of BLM

00:12:32.620 saying that we are trained Marxists. Now, Marxism is somewhat of an elusive term, but it is essentially

00:12:39.680 the driving philosophy behind socialism and communism. German philosopher Karl Marx blamed

00:12:45.360 capitalism and the rich for the plight of the poor, believed that a proletariat-led socialist revolution

00:12:50.840 was necessary and inevitable, overthrowing the power of the bourgeois or the rich. Uh, so let's dig a

00:12:58.020 little bit deeper. BLM co-founder Opal Tometi, she is actually a friend of Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz,

00:13:03.760 apparently a member of his church. According to Lentz's Instagram, they've had conversations on

00:13:08.360 Instagram. She penned an article in 2015, um, praising the revolution led by Venezuelan communist

00:13:15.620 dictator Hugo Chavez for their quote, championing of quote, democracy. Now, even Bernie Sanders calls

00:13:23.180 Chavez a brutal dictator. He silenced journalists. He packed the courts. He had protesters jailed and

00:13:29.780 murdered. There's no free speech there. There's no independent judiciary. There's no freedom at all.

00:13:35.400 In 2015, Venezuela's latest dictator, Nicolas Maduro spoke at a summit in New York alongside

00:13:41.400 Tometi expressing solidarity with black Americans who are suffering from racism, which is funny because

00:13:47.800 Maduro certainly doesn't have a record of treating minorities or treating anyone in Venezuela

00:13:52.800 with any kind of care and respect. Maduro is the same as Chavez in that regard, if not worse,

00:13:58.800 brutal, evil, corrupt. Here is some of what he said in that speech. Now listen to this and listen to how

00:14:05.420 similar it sounds to a lot of the rhetoric that you are hearing. We suffer and feel Ferguson. This is in

00:14:11.640 2015. It hurt us. It hurt us to see that the old scaffolding of racism is still intact and is like a

00:14:18.000 ghost that is haunting our peoples. Racism that is just the son of slavery, the direct descendant of

00:14:23.640 slavery and the regime of slavery and segregation and exploitation. Again, notice how similar his

00:14:30.100 rhetoric is to Black Lives Matter. And the guy is literally not exaggerating. This is not hyperbole.

00:14:36.020 Anyone could admit this if they're going to be intellectually honest on any side of the aisle.

00:14:40.740 He is a brutal communist dictator that has helped bring Venezuela further into disarray.

00:14:47.340 Venezuela is starving. Here is a picture that I'll put up if you're watching on YouTube.

00:14:52.580 A journalist at the New York Times took of a man being treated for schizophrenia at one of their

00:14:58.040 hospitals. I mean, this person looks like he has he's definitely dead by now, for sure. This article

00:15:04.960 was written in 2018. This person is certainly dead. He looks like he hasn't eaten in in a year. It is

00:15:13.040 absolutely devastating to look. I'll include this. I'll include the link to this article in the

00:15:18.460 description. And you can just look and let your heart break at the devastation and the suffering

00:15:22.920 that is going on in Venezuela. The one of the most resource rich countries in the world is suffering

00:15:29.660 and struggling. And its people are starving, not because of American imperialism, which is what

00:15:35.820 communist propaganda has been saying for, you know, 100 years about America and what unfortunately

00:15:41.440 someone like Opal Tometi believes, but because of the corruption of their own system and their own

00:15:46.120 people, because of the nature of socialism. It always does this. The article that that picture is

00:15:51.940 from is titled Starving Babies, Molotov Cocktails and Death Threats. One photojournalist,

00:15:56.640 is Venezuelan reality. He talks about being detained several times as a member of the press.

00:16:02.220 The article says that babies are starving to death and dying. Young boys are joining street gangs just

00:16:07.900 because they're starving. They're desperate. They don't know what to do. Venezuelans have lost on

00:16:12.380 average of 19 pounds in the past year. Anyone who tells you that this is somehow, like I said,

00:16:18.700 America's fault is lying. This is socialism. Again, this is an oil rich country that has been ravaged

00:16:24.600 by corrupt socialists. And Nicolas Maduro, one of the most brutal dictators in the world,

00:16:31.020 wants to come to the United States and talk to us about police brutality and racism. Bro,

00:16:37.360 look around your own country. And for Opal Tometi to not only support him, there's a picture of them

00:16:44.920 together, but also support his predecessor, Chavez, which again, unequivocally was a brutal dictator.

00:16:51.040 She actually calls out Bernie Sanders in her article saying that she denounces Bernie Sanders

00:16:55.640 calling Hugo Chavez a brutal dictator. That's insane. Do Venezuelan lives matter? I'm just

00:17:03.440 wondering. You can go to Human Rights Watch's website and read more about the evils of the Chavez and

00:17:10.080 Maduro regimes if you're interested. But this is what Marxists and communists do. They support one

00:17:16.140 another no matter what. They care about ideology, not outcome. The Venezuelan socialists say and

00:17:21.560 believe the right things, according to people like Tometi, so they should be praised, despite the fact

00:17:27.340 that their policies have led exclusively, exclusively to human suffering. Every country in which Marxism

00:17:34.720 has been implemented has resulted in suffering, starvation, and death. The USSR, Eastern Germany, 0.92

00:17:40.800 China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, just to name a few, Marxism is violent by nature. As compassionate

00:17:47.760 as the intentions of Marxism may sound, lifting up the oppressed using, quote, the language of the

00:17:53.940 oppressed, when executed, it always destroys, it never builds. I mean, why do you think some of these

00:18:00.240 things are happening around the country in which not just Confederate statues are getting toppled,

00:18:06.300 but all kinds of statues and monuments are getting toppled. The streets are filled with

00:18:13.260 rioters and looters and businesses are burning down, whether they are Black-owned or owned by 0.96

00:18:19.320 white people, whether they have a sign in their window that says, I support Black Lives Matter or

00:18:24.380 not. This is what Marxism does. All it does is create resentment. That's all it does. It cannot

00:18:30.300 actually build anything. It always promises and then it destroys. It is the most devastating example

00:18:37.020 of over-promising and under-delivering that you have ever seen. And the effects are always devastating.

00:18:44.200 I mean, that's why, for example, in CHOP or CHAZ or whatever it was, in Portland, Seattle, I don't even

00:18:49.900 know. It's all the same to me. That is why they unfortunately lost life due to violence in their own

00:18:59.280 group. They won. They didn't believe in the police coming to help them and they don't believe in the

00:19:04.440 police at all. But Marxism and this kind of socialist mentality that we are going to overthrow

00:19:12.440 the powerful by way of some kind of destructive revolution doesn't actually lead to peace. It just

00:19:18.980 breeds more violence. Unfortunately, a 16-year-old Black boy was killed in CHOP by someone who shot him

00:19:26.020 point blank. So don't tell me that this is an ideology that is leading to peace when we know

00:19:31.300 around the world that it hasn't and it's not leading to peace right now. And this is the ideology,

00:19:35.960 the stated ideology of the Black Lives Matter organization. Every country, like I said, that has

00:19:42.360 been characterized by Marxism has gone down the road of suffering, not just the kind of suffering that

00:19:48.380 you see from starvation and being arbitrarily detained, for example, but also you don't have

00:19:54.660 freedom of religion. You don't have freedom of speech. You don't have freedom of conscience. It

00:19:59.760 is totalitarian in that way. One of the first institutions, because it's totalitarian and

00:20:05.640 because it is looking to exact control, one of the first institutions that Marxists, that communists,

00:20:10.860 that socialists seek to demolish in their revolution is the family. Because no one can have an authority or a

00:20:18.520 value system that is not derived from the state, that is a threat to the state, and Marxists are chiefly

00:20:23.460 concerned with power. We see that characteristic of Marxism in BLM's statements of belief. This is

00:20:30.260 according to their website. The organization seeks to, quote, do the work required to dismantle

00:20:35.400 cisgender privilege, quote, disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family and free themselves from, 0.63

00:20:42.200 quote, the tight grip of heteronormative thinking. If that sounds nonsensical to you, that's because it is.

00:20:47.580 Half of these words were discovered in 2015 by a gender studies professor of intersectional politics.

00:20:56.320 They're not real. And yet, to them, they have meaning. As a piece on Medium points out, BLM is

00:21:03.700 inherently a movement sustained by a politics of blackness that is, Charlene Carruthers reminds us,

00:21:09.560 unapologetically feminist, womanist, and queer. That is, of course, true. The LGBTQ movement and

00:21:18.480 philosophy is inextricably intertwined with Black Lives Matter because those are values of the 0.97

00:21:25.180 founding members. This is precisely why the site mentions mothers three times, but never mentions

00:21:31.800 fathers. You'll see that it mentions parents and mothers, but it will never mention fathers. It is not

00:21:36.820 just because of the, quote, queer roots of the group, but because of its Marxist nature as well. It is

00:21:43.340 their desire to dismantle the familial hierarchy that causes BLM to downplay the universal need for

00:21:51.480 fathers. Marxist thought informs the idea that the centralization or even, I guess, the mere mention of

00:21:57.660 fatherhood is patriarchally oppressive and therefore inherently misogynistic. Therefore, BLM, at least in its 0.92

00:22:04.480 stated mission, not only aims to ignore fatherhood, but to replace it with, quote, villages that

00:22:10.540 collectively care for one another. The problem with this, I mean, again, as compassionate as that might

00:22:17.400 sound, that is a far-left communistic idea that children belong to the community and not to their

00:22:23.180 parents. That's just a way of ensuring their indoctrination by eliminating that parent-child 1.00

00:22:28.340 relationship. Again, you can look at the history of Cambodia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, to see how that

00:22:34.260 typically works out. But the problem with replacing fatherhood or ignoring fatherhood is both biblical

00:22:40.280 for the Christian and also practical. So as Christians, we know that fatherhood is necessary

00:22:44.940 and good. God models the importance of the so-called nuclear family in the Bible, in his creation of Adam

00:22:51.760 and Eve. People like to believe that this is, that his creation of Adam and Eve and the first family

00:22:58.080 that came about was just arbitrary, that it has no meaning, that it is not supposed to be a model for

00:23:03.420 other families, but of course we know that it is. God called it good and very good. His creation of

00:23:08.400 Adam and Eve is the first marriage and family. He emphasizes this throughout the Old Testament and

00:23:13.600 historical accounts of Israel's patriarchs and the New Testament directives towards fathers and

00:23:19.720 families. And he shows this in his own nature, the importance of fatherhood. The relationship between

00:23:24.860 God the Father and Christ the Son is a divine representation of the importance of fatherhood.

00:23:31.980 Furthermore, God calls us, those who have been saved by grace through Jesus Christ, his children and

00:23:37.720 himself our father. You can look at 1 John 3.1. There are also practical consequences of

00:23:44.000 fatherlessness. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 44% of father absent homes are living in poverty,

00:23:51.280 compared to only 12% of two-parent homes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

00:23:56.320 found that children in fatherless households are far more likely to use drugs. 71% of college dropouts

00:24:02.820 are fatherless. 56% of jail inmates grew up in a single-parent home. Additionally, teen pregnancy

00:24:08.880 and juvenile delinquency are both significantly more prevalent in homes without present dads.

00:24:14.300 Now, this is not to diminish the amazing work of single moms. There are, of course, 0.70

00:24:19.680 many children of single mothers who grew up to be wonderful, productive adults. It is simply to say

00:24:25.260 that children thrive most when they are in a situation that God intended for them and created

00:24:31.020 for us, raised by a mom and a dad. He shows this in the beginning of creation. He reiterates it

00:24:38.940 throughout scripture and demonstrates it both in his relationship with his son and with us, his

00:24:43.420 children. So how can anyone who proclaims that Black Lives Matter support an organization 1.00

00:24:49.520 that works against fatherhood, either explicitly or implicitly, when the data so clearly shows its

00:24:56.260 importance for children and their future success, whether you believe in the Bible or not, in God's

00:25:02.180 intentional setup of the family, whether you want to deny that or accept that, you can look at the

00:25:09.820 data that shows us that the lack of fathers in a lack of a father in a child's life leads to bad results.

00:25:18.860 Typically, a higher likelihood of bad results in their own life. So how can anyone who says that

00:25:23.800 Black Lives Matter, you want Black success, you want Black improvement, improvement of Black lives,

00:25:29.440 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 0.56

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 0.92

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.95

00:31:03.840 focused on, but not the 2,600 Black people murdered by other Black people in 2018. And that number is 0.93

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 0.98

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 1.00

00:32:05.960 they had illegally put up, and someone shot and killed this little girl who did nothing to them. 0.53

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 0.86

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 1.00

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 1.00

00:35:39.940 that when police pull back, criminals gain the advantage and black communities suffer both 0.97

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 1.00

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 0.86

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. 0.66

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 0.85

00:37:54.060 she started Planned Parenthood. She was very similar to Nazis in that way. And yet, as we are 0.83

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. 1.00

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 0.69

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 0.75

00:40:00.020 through abortion and through the crime that is unfortunately tragically happening in these 0.98

00:40:06.100 inner city communities. Why? Again, because Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization. 0.86

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 0.98

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 1.00

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, 0.97

00:43:18.380 if you really believe that Black lives matter, you'll want to do all of the things we socialists 0.99

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, 0.69

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 0.98

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 1.00

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 0.98

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 0.52

00:52:56.880 come in third, and white people have been here the whole time enjoying all the rights in the world. 0.93

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 0.96

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 0.97

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 0.99

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 0.95

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 0.88

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.

00:57:56.740 Booker T. Washington says this,

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.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 08, 2020

Ep 272 ｜ Which Black Lives Matter？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript