Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 359 ｜ Why 'Equity' Is Unjust

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had

00:00:13.420 a wonderful week so far. Today we're going to talk about some controversial things and you

00:00:18.680 might be thinking, well, Allie, don't we always talk about controversial things? And yes, I guess

00:00:24.620 to some people, the things that we talk about might be considered controversial, but this topic in

00:00:29.520 particular is very controversial. And quite honestly, I don't really like to talk about it

00:00:35.520 because of that. We're talking about this idea of racial equity and systemic racism,

00:00:41.520 in particular, as it pertains to Joe Biden and the executive orders that he recently signed that

00:00:48.800 are focused on, quote, racial equity, what this means, some of the double standards that we're

00:00:53.200 seeing in the media, some of the double standards, and I think the hypocrisy that we're seeing in the

00:00:57.840 church, in particular, the evangelical church, when it comes to conversations about race.

00:01:05.220 Whenever I talk about this, they are typically some of my most listened to episodes for a few

00:01:13.080 reasons. Either people are hate listening or hate watching because they say, you know, a white person

00:01:18.080 isn't allowed to talk about race and racism. White people aren't allowed to talk about this particular

00:01:24.380 subject. Or people are thinking, wow, there's not very many people who will talk about this because

00:01:30.620 of the backlash that typically ensues. You're only allowed to talk about it from a liberal perspective.

00:01:36.380 If you talk about it from any other perspective, this issue of so-called racial equity and systemic

00:01:41.600 racism, then you receive a lot of criticism, which is fine. I am totally fine with taking criticism.

00:01:47.420 And I don't pretend. This is called, I mean, you guys know, this episode is called Relatable

00:01:52.540 because we are learning about these tough topics together. And we are digging into the research as

00:01:59.280 much as we can and trying to approach all sides of every issue as well as we can, as fairly as we can.

00:02:05.440 This is obviously a conservative Christian podcast. So that's the perspective that I'm coming from.

00:02:09.860 But I am always trying to speak as truthfully as humanly possible. That becomes very difficult on

00:02:15.240 sensitive subjects that are rightfully emotional. When I say emotional, I don't mean that in a

00:02:21.200 pejorative way. I'm not trying to say that in a negative way. When we talk about racial discrimination,

00:02:26.080 when we talk about racism, when we talk about injustices that have happened in this country and

00:02:31.600 may still be happening in some cases, it is very understandably a sensitive topic. I've had lots and

00:02:37.800 lots of people on that have talked about this subject with me. We have talked about critical race

00:02:44.620 theory until the cows came home. And we probably will continue to talk about that. The reason that

00:02:51.860 we talk about it so much is because it is so often the center of our cultural conversations,

00:02:57.000 even in our theological conversations. I mean, this has been a moment for the past few years in

00:03:02.420 particular for the church and for the country to be talking about this. And so often we accept

00:03:08.900 narratives, we accept talking points, we accept what we see in headlines and chyrons and on social

00:03:15.400 media about race and racism and police brutality and discrimination. And we never dig below the

00:03:20.740 surface because doing so opens you up to being called a racist and a white supremacist. And no one

00:03:26.080 wants to be that. I understand. No one wants to engage in these conversations, especially from a 1.00

00:03:33.660 conservative perspective, because you don't want to be seen as a bigot. You don't want to be seen as

00:03:37.980 heartless. But we have to talk about this stuff because everyone's talking about this stuff. And

00:03:42.340 there has to be multiple perspectives on this. We can't just, for example, listen to the 1619

00:03:47.480 project and take it as fact. We can't, for example, listen to the plethora of podcasts out there talking

00:03:55.000 about how white privilege is damaging our education system, how it is pervasive in everything, how the

00:04:00.840 capital riots showed some surge of white supremacy and white nationalism without digging beneath those

00:04:06.520 accusations and wondering, are they really true? Like, do they actually align with reality? It

00:04:11.340 doesn't make you a compassionate or loving person just because you take whatever the mainstream media

00:04:16.780 tells you about something, or just because you repeat a talking point that you think makes you sound

00:04:22.300 good, or just because you post a black square because everyone else is doing it. That doesn't make

00:04:27.100 you compassionate. That doesn't necessarily put you on the right side of history. As we've talked about

00:04:31.640 before, the right side of history is wherever truth is. Ultimately, for Christians, we know it's 0.92

00:04:37.000 wherever Christ is. And Christ, it's always going to be on the side of truth. Truth, moral, absolute,

00:04:44.600 biblical, factual, scientific, natural truth. And God, His Word, Jesus Christ will never contradict.

00:04:52.400 And so we have an obligation to seek truth. And I'm not saying that I always do that perfectly.

00:04:56.760 And that's why you guys, you help me with that. And you correct me where I'm wrong. And I try my best

00:05:02.280 to write my course when I need to. So anyway, that was just a kind of a long prologue in preparing

00:05:07.860 for what we're talking about today. I understand this is a sensitive topic. I understand that often

00:05:13.000 what I say about it is not popular, and might, you know, rub people the wrong way. But it is my desire

00:05:21.380 to speak as graciously, as gently and compassionately as I can. So today is when I saw this, but maybe he

00:05:29.220 said this yesterday. Let's see. Oh, yeah, it was yesterday. So Biden signed four executive orders

00:05:36.600 that have to do with that have to do with racial equality and what they call racial equity. And

00:05:42.760 before we get into what those executive orders are, I do want to talk about this word equity. And we'll

00:05:49.040 have to do like an entire word watch segment on this, like we did with the phrase held accountable

00:05:53.660 last week. This is not one of those segments. But just quickly, this word equity, you have to

00:05:59.020 understand is different than equality. We're not just talking about equality under the law. We're not

00:06:03.280 talking about equal access to opportunities. Equity doesn't mean maybe what you and I have always

00:06:09.400 thought that it means, which is just fairness, that everyone is treated equally under the law,

00:06:13.780 that the ideals upon which our country was founded, that all men are created equally by God or equal

00:06:20.360 by God with certain unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:06:25.380 That's not actually what equity means. So equity looks at gaps between the races, in particular,

00:06:31.820 between the white race in America and the black and brown race. Now, of course, biblically, 0.68

00:06:36.520 we know that race isn't actually a real category. You won't see talk about race in the Bible. There

00:06:43.860 is the human race. There's different cultures. There's different ethnicities. There's different

00:06:47.580 nationalities. But this idea of race based on skin color, that is a human construct. That's a social

00:06:53.620 construct. But I am speaking in that context. So I do use the language of race. And that's what people

00:07:00.060 who say they're seeking equity, that is what they are looking at. They are looking at that superficial

00:07:06.220 descriptor of white and black. So equity means that you're looking at disparities or you're looking

00:07:12.280 at gaps in outcome between white Americans and black Americans. So, for example, someone who says that

00:07:20.860 they want education to be equitable, their proof that typically people give for the education system,

00:07:29.680 for example, being inequitable, is the gap in outcome. So they would say, because,

00:07:36.220 the average white student has a higher graduation rate than the average black student or because

00:07:40.980 they have higher grades or higher test scores than the average black student, that must mean 1.00

00:07:45.440 that the school system is racist against black people. And the goal of equity would be to close 0.86

00:07:52.340 those gaps. And so they look at disparities of outcome in order to prove inequities. And Kamala

00:08:00.340 Harris, before Biden and Kamala were elected as the president and vice president, she put out

00:08:06.980 a video, which I think was a great explainer for what leftists see equity as. And she explains in this

00:08:15.840 video that equity is everyone ending up in the same place. Now, if you have read, which if you haven't,

00:08:23.600 I highly recommend you read Thomas Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities, he talks about

00:08:30.020 why this argument that a system or an institution is inherently racist and discriminatory based on

00:08:39.720 the gaps that it produces or based on the outcome gaps that exist is actually fallacious. That's not

00:08:46.080 necessarily true. There could be lots of reasons that gaps exist in outcomes that don't necessarily

00:08:51.640 point to any kind of discrimination or any kind of unfairness. And when we assume that gaps of

00:08:57.960 success or gaps in accomplishment or gaps in wealth or whatever it is, exist solely because of racism,

00:09:04.920 solely because of discrimination, that blinds us to other factors that may be going into play.

00:09:10.200 And so that's why you see, for example, in San Diego public schools, they have decided that they are

00:09:15.020 going to just do away with the traditional grading system because there are too many gaps in the grades

00:09:20.920 and too many gaps in success, too many gaps in outcome between the white students and the black and brown

00:09:25.460 students. So rather than seeing, OK, why are these students falling behind and what can we actually do to

00:09:31.280 help them succeed? What tools can we give them? What boost can we give them to make sure they are able to

00:09:38.020 meet this high standard that we have set for all of our students? They've instead just gotten rid of the

00:09:43.300 scale altogether. They've brought everyone down to the lowest common denominator, the soft bigotry of low

00:09:48.620 expectations and have just decided that making sure there are no gaps because there are no standards

00:09:54.020 that exist is actually what is equitable. That is the problem with assuming that all gaps equal some

00:10:01.120 kind of unfairness or racism or discrimination. You're unwilling to look at possibly the other factors

00:10:06.880 that are at play. And here's another fallacy. Here's another another illogic, illogical point of this idea

00:10:15.940 that all outcome gaps or all disparities equal discrimination. There are disparities between,

00:10:22.940 for example, the success of Asian Americans across a variety of categories and white Americans across a

00:10:30.240 variety of categories. If you're looking for the average income, for example, by race or family

00:10:36.440 togetherness or housing ownership or graduation rates from high school and college and even higher

00:10:44.660 education and test scores, you're going to find that Asian Americans are more successful across all of

00:10:51.480 those categories than white Americans are. So if we are saying that the gaps of success or the gaps in

00:10:57.840 outcome between white Americans and black Americans is because of racism, then why don't we also assume 0.76

00:11:04.100 that the gaps in outcome between Asian Americans and white Americans is because of racism? Well, we don't

00:11:09.480 because it doesn't play into the narrative that Black Lives Matter and many people in the media want to

00:11:15.660 perpetuate because it's popular to do so. And I think that it's also important to note that as long as we

00:11:23.920 assume that every gap, for example, the fact that there are a disproportionate number of black Americans who are

00:11:31.720 dying by COVID, as long as we assume that that is a racial or systemic racism problem, that that is a discrimination

00:11:39.820 problem, and we don't even bother to look at the other factors that may play into that, we are going to miss the

00:11:46.080 actual solutions. That is the problem. So even before we look at any of these executive orders, we have to

00:11:52.100 understand this idea of equity, of trying to put everyone in the same place by assuming that people who are falling

00:11:59.540 behind or certain groups that don't have the same outcomes as another group are being discriminated

00:12:04.660 against, but not other groups that might be falling behind other groups, as I compare to the Asian

00:12:11.300 American and white American gap and the black American and the white American gap, then we are going to miss 0.92

00:12:16.900 the actual solutions. We're not ever going to be able to solve anything. And equity, if it actually means, as

00:12:24.200 Kamala Harris says, everyone ending in the same place, you are going to find, you're going to find a lot of

00:12:32.800 social engineering. And that's really, that's really what is meant by equity, because you can't actually

00:12:38.920 force people to have the same outcomes in life. Individuals are different. Thomas Sowell also talks about a lot

00:12:45.460 how, for example, two siblings of one family, so they have the same background, they have the same

00:12:51.160 socioeconomic status, they're of the same race, they've got the same upbringing, they probably have

00:12:56.180 the same education and the same opportunities presented to them. And yet, very often, siblings

00:13:02.120 will end up in two totally different stations in life. One sibling could be very successful, one sibling

00:13:07.180 could be unsuccessful. Now, if you look at the gap of outcome in their lives, are you really going to

00:13:13.200 say that it was some kind of inequity, it was some kind of unfairness, it was some kind of injustice

00:13:17.700 that led them to two different places in life? No, of course not. It is impossible. If two people 0.54

00:13:23.460 from the same exact background with the same exact opportunities, the same exact access can end up in

00:13:29.320 two totally disparate places in life, then why should we assume that one random person from one state and

00:13:36.260 one background and another random person from another state and another background should all end up in

00:13:41.000 the same place? It is impossible for everyone to end up in the same place. And that should not be our

00:13:46.140 measure of fairness, that should not be our measure of justice. In order to look at whether or not our

00:13:52.640 processes are actually just, we should ask the question, is it treating everyone the same way?

00:13:58.140 Is everyone playing by the same rules? I think a lot of the problems that we have in our country,

00:14:02.900 a lot of the gaps that we see in between groups have much more to do with class injustice than racial

00:14:09.860 injustice. And when we ignore that possibility, when everything is apparently due to systemic racism,

00:14:16.940 and everything is apparently due to racial discrimination, then we miss the possible

00:14:21.620 real problems that are going on. And we miss the real possible solutions. And sometimes you have to

00:14:26.080 wonder if that's the point, like with critical race theorists, if that's the point with some of these

00:14:32.000 activists, that we never really get to a solution, that the gaps are never shrunk, that the problems are

00:14:37.780 never actually addressed. Because a lot of these people, like the leaders of Black Lives Matter,

00:14:43.100 are making a whole lot of money off of talking about this. Booker T. Washington talked about this

00:14:52.080 problem of there being racial activists that are constantly trying to present, or they're presenting

00:15:02.840 solutions in pursuit of particular problems. And you have to wonder if this has become a lucrative

00:15:11.200 business to never find solutions. Because if, for example, you come at this from a conservative

00:15:15.340 perspective, and you say, okay, you know, there are gaps between these two groups, they might be class,

00:15:21.120 they might be racial, maybe it's due to discrimination, maybe it's due to other factors,

00:15:25.640 maybe there are some other things going on. Let's talk about let's talk about school choice. Let's talk about

00:15:30.860 what we can do within our welfare system to incentivize becoming employed rather than staying

00:15:36.180 on welfare. Let's talk about what we can do to incentivize family togetherness. You're immediately

00:15:41.000 shut down as a racist. And we're not even allowed to bring up school choice that that could be a

00:15:45.700 possibility that maybe the school and someone's zip code isn't serving a child well. And that's why

00:15:51.040 they're not succeeding. And the parents should have the funds and should have the ability to choose

00:15:55.460 another school for their child. We're not even allowed to talk about that. Because everyone who

00:16:00.740 was talking about systemic racism and equity is on the left side of the aisle, they're on the side of 0.99

00:16:04.780 the teachers unions, they're on the side of Planned Parenthood, which is disproportionately killing black 0.99

00:16:09.120 children. They're on the side of expanded welfare. And so they never want to talk about other possible 0.87

00:16:14.680 solutions that could actually help. And that's, that's my issue with all the conversations about

00:16:19.260 equity. That's my issue with all of the assumptions that every single gap that we see in success has to do

00:16:25.540 with racism is that no one really wants to talk about solutions. When I ask people who talk about

00:16:30.700 social justice and racial justice, okay, what do we do? You're pointing to these gaps. What do we,

00:16:36.400 what do we actually do? How do we actually solve this? The answer is, well, think about, talk about,

00:16:41.900 do the inner work, read this, read this book. And then it ends up, yeah, do all those things and

00:16:47.140 reparations. So there's nothing else. Like, like there's nothing else that we can do to close these gaps.

00:16:53.500 There's nothing else that we can do to solve the problems that people are saying exist. And I'm not

00:17:00.560 saying no problems exist, but if the solution is the 1619 project, which lies about our founding, it

00:17:07.300 tells the ridiculous myth that the revolution was fought based on slavery, which it wasn't, that's been

00:17:14.660 debunked a million times. If the solution is critical race theory, which categorizes all white people as

00:17:19.760 oppressors and all black and brown people as oppressed and implicit bias or anti-implicit

00:17:25.420 bias training, which actually has been found to create more implicit bias. If those are the only

00:17:31.040 solutions, like these crazy academic theories about racism, if our only solutions are, are talking about

00:17:38.580 racism and reading Robin DiAngelo and paying Ibra Max Kendi $25,000 to come speak at our universities,

00:17:45.320 it's never going to be solved. It's just a crock. Like it's almost just like a pyramid scheme for some

00:17:50.900 people. It's almost just a way to virtue signal. And if you really care about injustices that are

00:17:56.400 going on, shouldn't we be doing more than that? Like, shouldn't you be open to maybe talking about

00:18:01.280 school choice? Like, shouldn't we maybe be open to these being class issues in a lot of cases rather

00:18:06.220 than racial issues? The fact of the matter is, is that people in Appalachia are dealing with the

00:18:11.440 same forms of so-called oppression and neglect that black Americans in other parts of the country

00:18:18.700 are dealing with. Like, we're not allowed to talk about those categories. We're not allowed to talk

00:18:24.180 about solutions that might help all of those people. So as long as we focus on outcome gaps

00:18:31.840 being proof of racism, as long as we focus on equity, which means everyone ended up at the same

00:18:37.100 place, which is impossible. It's impossible outside of social engineering and constantly

00:18:42.120 taking capital from some people and giving it to other people who didn't earn it. It's impossible

00:18:47.040 outside of tyranny. As long as we keep refusing to look at class issues, poverty issues, and viewing

00:18:53.800 everything through the lens of race, no kind of injustice that actually does exist is going to be

00:19:00.280 solved. And so Joe Biden doing these executive orders, he did an executive order on housing. We've

00:19:08.520 talked about this before, redressing our nations and the federal government's history of discriminatory

00:19:14.700 housing practices and policies. Now, there has been time, there have been times in American history where

00:19:20.200 there has actually been tangible discrimination against black people in favor of white people. That's

00:19:26.360 absolutely true. And I'm even open to the argument that those effects are still happening today.

00:19:31.560 They're lingering. They're not active. But you could you could make the argument probably that some of

00:19:37.280 those things are lingering. But, you know, we hear, for example, about how in some neighborhoods,

00:19:41.920 how white ownership is more likely than black ownership. White Americans were more likely to get a

00:19:49.980 loan from a bank than black Americans. And so that shows white supremacy. What's never told is that in that 0.87

00:19:55.460 same study, it shows that Asian Americans were more likely to get a loan from the bank than white

00:19:59.880 Americans. So again, if the problem is white supremacy, then you have to explain that gap.

00:20:05.600 So let me look at this particular memorandum that he says is addressing systemic racism and is

00:20:12.540 addressing discriminatory housing practices and policies. So it calls for the reinstatement of the

00:20:19.280 housing affirmatively furthering fair housing rule. And this was something that originally occurred under

00:20:28.060 under Obama. And let me read you. We've talked about this before, but let me read you what Thomas

00:20:34.180 Soule said about this when it was originally enacted under Barack Obama and is now going to be

00:20:41.740 furthered by Joe Biden. So this is what Thomas Soule says. And if you don't know who Thomas Soule is,

00:20:48.920 he's an economist. He says, this is a long quote. In what may be the most ambitious social engineering

00:20:54.320 project undertaken by the federal government, the administration is mapping every neighborhood in

00:20:58.520 America by race. The stated purpose is to use the data to compel local officials to loosen zoning laws

00:21:05.520 and build more public housing, thereby offering more poor inner city minorities better opportunities

00:21:11.180 for housing and education. So that is the stated goal of this, to make sure that there is government

00:21:16.840 housing, that there is low income housing in these nicely developed suburbs so that these people can

00:21:25.780 have access to the same facilities in the same schools that the people who live in the suburbs do.

00:21:30.700 Thomas Soule goes on to say, but the unstated purpose is forced racial integration. The suburbs are just 0.61

00:21:35.760 too white for Obama and his race mongering social engineers. They think they, they think,

00:21:41.840 they geospatially discriminate against minorities, never mind that more and more middle-class black people

00:21:48.520 are flocking to them on their own. He goes on to say, individuals and groups of all sorts have always

00:21:56.060 differed from one another in many ways throughout centuries of history and in countries around the world.

00:22:00.680 Left to themselves, people tend to sort themselves out into communities of like-minded neighbors.

00:22:05.180 This has been so obvious that only the intelligentsia could misconstrue it and only ideologues could

00:22:11.100 devote themselves to crusading against people's efforts to live and associate with other people

00:22:15.720 who share their values and habits. When the world fails to conform to their vision, then it seems

00:22:21.080 obvious to the ideologues that it is the world that is wrong, not that their vision is uninformed

00:22:26.260 or unrealistic. One of the political consequences of such attitudes is the current crusade,

00:22:31.860 remember he's writing this under Obama, crusade of Attorney General Eric Holder to force various

00:22:37.120 communities to become more inclusive in terms of which races and classes of people they contain.

00:22:42.800 Undaunted by a long history of disasters when third party, when third parties try to mix and

00:22:47.340 match people or prescribe that kind of how, what kind of housing is best, they act as if this time

00:22:52.480 it has to work. To those with a crusading mentality, failure only means that they should try,

00:22:57.400 try again, at other people's expense, including not only the taxpayers, but also those whose lives

00:23:04.200 have been disrupted or even made miserable and dangerous by previous bright ideas of third parties

00:23:10.240 who pay no price for being wrong. So what he's arguing is that to Obama, the suburbs were too white.

00:23:19.000 And so forced racial integration by building low income housing in predominantly what he would say

00:23:25.360 where white suburbs was the way to create a more equitable society, equal access, and everyone 0.85

00:23:31.420 ends up in the same place. Thomas Sowell is saying that's not what happens. That kind of forced

00:23:37.100 integration and reconfiguration of the suburbs to do away with zoning laws so there can be government

00:23:42.780 and low income housing in the same places where there's well-developed suburbs, it doesn't actually

00:23:47.380 end in better outcomes for the poor people that move into those areas. And it disregards that there are

00:23:54.340 people of all races who have worked very hard to move out of government housing and low income

00:23:58.660 housing and inner cities where the crime is higher in the schools and a lot of cases aren't as good

00:24:04.020 into the suburbs to have better access and to have safety. It disregards the work that some people

00:24:10.160 have done to go from one station to another. And it claims that it's going to create fairness and

00:24:15.500 equality of outcomes and sameness of outcomes. And it just doesn't work. And Thomas Sowell talks a lot

00:24:21.460 about the intelligentsia and about politicians always trying to conform the world to their

00:24:25.900 vision. And when it doesn't work, they just double down. And this is a perfect example of that happening

00:24:31.300 under Biden. It didn't work under Obama. It's not going to work now. And because the intelligentsia

00:24:36.940 still has this idea of equity, which again is impossible outside of tyranny, and because they have

00:24:42.260 this fallacious idea that all gaps in outcome have to do inevitably and exclusively with racial

00:24:48.440 discrimination, then this is this is the only way in order to manifest and achieve their vision. So

00:24:54.760 this memorandum basically directs the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to examine all the

00:25:00.160 changes Trump made, and then decide whether or not to get rid of them in order to prevent practices with

00:25:05.940 an unjustified discriminatory effect. So my notes say the changes that Trump made. But remember,

00:25:13.160 the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development was Ben Carson. So people are obviously going to

00:25:18.920 try to say that the changes that Trump made were somehow white supremacist and they were they were

00:25:25.240 racist. I guess they would have no problem with incriminating Ben Carson with the same accusations.

00:25:31.800 The housing memorandum will make clear we have to acknowledge the role that the federal government

00:25:35.560 has played through much of the 20th century and implementing and implementing discriminatory housing

00:25:41.400 policies across the United States from redlining to mortgage discrimination to destructive federal

00:25:45.960 highway construction to redress this history. Again, there were times in our country's history when

00:25:54.680 there were discriminatory housing policies. Their redlining is something that has existed. Now,

00:26:01.720 according to the Brookings Institute, people who live in previously redlined neighborhoods today,

00:26:08.440 it doesn't fall along the same racial lines that you would think or that the Biden administration

00:26:16.340 is apparently purporting. And again, with the mortgage discrimination, we constantly hear about that. But

00:26:23.140 remember, whites were not getting mortgages as as often as proportionally as often as Asian Americans. And so if

00:26:33.320 you're going to talk about the gaps between black Americans and white Americans when it comes to mortgages,

00:26:37.420 then you need to talk about the gaps between Asian Americans and white Americans, or you have to

00:26:42.960 abandon this idea that every gap is due to discrimination. It also reintroduces the affirmatively

00:26:48.320 further fair housing rule, a key Obama era revision, like we said, to the 1968 Fair Housing Act that was

00:26:55.240 rolled back by President Trump. The provision creates an extra safeguard against discriminatory housing

00:27:00.260 practices by requiring jurisdictions that receive federal funding to look for and analyze patterns of housing

00:27:07.120 discrimination. And then present a plan to address the practices if they exist. Okay, that's fine. I don't

00:27:13.560 have any problem with that. Where there is discrimination happening. But again, you have to show the

00:27:17.800 discrimination. You can't just show the gap where discrimination is actually happening. That should

00:27:23.620 absolutely be addressed. That is an injustice. I'm against discrimination. I don't want people to be

00:27:28.780 unfairly discriminated against. Now, Thomas Sowell would argue that there are different forms of

00:27:33.300 discrimination. Some of them are justified. Some of them are not. He would argue that in discrimination

00:27:38.360 and disparities. Again, recommend that book. But where there is unfair discrimination against people,

00:27:44.100 in particular because of their race, I mean, that's egregious or because of their class, then 1.00

00:27:49.160 absolutely investigate that, change that. And so if that were all this was doing, I would be totally fine

00:27:56.400 with that. The problem is the social engineering aspect that comes with it. Another thing that Biden

00:28:02.460 said he was going to do, he said, I'm rescinding the previous administration's harmful ban on diversity

00:28:07.200 and sensitivity training. Now, remember, that's a euphemism for critical race theory. Christopher Ruffo

00:28:12.340 uncovered critical race theory training that's happening on the federal level and various federal

00:28:17.300 agencies, even happening to a certain extent in the military. And if you're listening to this, maybe for the

00:28:24.560 first time and you don't know what critical race theory is, I have a lot, a lot of episodes on critical

00:28:30.740 race theory, talking to people who are experts in that field, talking to academics about it,

00:28:35.580 talking to people of all different backgrounds of what it is. So we have taken pains on this podcast

00:28:41.300 to specifically define what critical race theory means and what it actually looks like. I won't spend

00:28:47.140 too much time on it today because you guys have heard me talk about this so much, but go back and

00:28:51.600 listen to previous episodes where we have talked about critical race theory. I'll link at least a couple

00:28:56.680 of them in the description of this episode, but it drives people apart. It categorizes people by race.

00:29:03.840 It says, hey, all white people, you have privilege, you are oppressors, you are inherently racist, 0.99

00:29:10.420 and you have perpetuated a white supremacist system just by nature of your being white. It's not enough for 0.99

00:29:19.360 you to just not be racist. You have to be anti-racist. Oh, and conveniently, in order to be anti-racist,

00:29:25.840 that actually means latching on to all of these leftist policy prescriptions and ideas. And all

00:29:31.900 black people and black and brown people, but specifically black people in critical race theory, 0.94

00:29:36.620 you are oppressed. No matter your station in life, no matter what opportunities you have been given,

00:29:42.100 you are on the side of the oppressed. And critical race theory says that it seeks to liberate

00:29:47.820 America and liberate different systems from the racism that is so systemic and has such a tight hold

00:29:57.100 on the United States. But it doesn't actually do that. It creates resentment. It creates violence.

00:30:03.840 It creates hatred. It creates more bias. It creates self-hatred, and it creates hatred of people who don't

00:30:10.160 look like you. It splits people into unfair and inaccurate categories of oppressed versus oppressor

00:30:16.200 based on immutable characteristics that you cannot change. It is, in itself, racism. It's a different

00:30:23.380 kind of racism, but it is racism. So when people in our federal government, when the military,

00:30:29.300 when in employment training, you are learning that, hey, white people, you are all part of white 0.96

00:30:33.500 supremacy. And hey, black people, you have all been oppressed in some way, and we have to 0.99

00:30:37.580 use unequal treatment of the races in order to achieve some kind of equity. Then, of course,

00:30:44.680 you're going to get more division. It's not going to bring people together. That's not the nature of

00:30:48.860 critical race theory. That's not the goal, by the way. It's not even the stated goal of critical race

00:30:53.440 theory is racial reconciliation. That's not what it's trying to do. It is trying to. It says it's

00:30:59.940 trying to even the playing field, but really what it's trying to do is tip the playing field in one

00:31:04.480 direction to make up for historical injustices. Look, you don't accomplish justice through a different

00:31:11.580 kind of injustice. You don't accomplish love and reconciliation through hate and division.

00:31:16.240 It's just not going to happen. So President Trump signing the executive order that got away or that

00:31:22.740 got rid of critical race theory in federal training and in any training of any agency that had anything

00:31:30.620 to do with the federal government was very good. It was very good. It was based on fact. It was based

00:31:34.800 on research. It was based on what we know about the damaging effects of critical race theory. But

00:31:39.640 of course, Biden wants to make sure that we that we have that back in our back in our federal

00:31:48.600 government. And of course, if you say anything about this, oh, you don't like diversity and

00:31:53.020 sensitivity. No, you the person who says that to you just doesn't know they don't know what's going

00:31:59.820 on. That is a euphemism used to bully you out of actually criticizing what these trainings entail.

00:32:05.920 And he says abolish the offensive counterfactual 1776 commission. So the 1776 commission

00:32:12.900 was put together by various people and then touted by the by the Trump administration and was placed

00:32:21.780 on the White House website as a counter to the 1619 project, which we mentioned a couple of minutes

00:32:27.560 ago. And it was supposed to be a more patriotic and a more realistic and a more historic rendering of

00:32:34.700 the founding of the United States. Now, I personally had some problems with the 1776 commission. Not that

00:32:39.560 I don't agree with the spirit of it, because I do. I agree with what it was trying to accomplish.

00:32:46.600 And of course, I am a patriotic person. I love the United States. I love the ideals and ideas upon

00:32:51.180 which we were founded. But it didn't have a whole lot of sourcing. And so you could actually see how

00:32:56.460 someone would read the 1776 commission and how you would think it was just a whitewashing of history

00:33:00.980 or glossing over of the things that actually happened. But to say that it's counterfactual

00:33:07.140 and the 1619 project isn't, which I'm sure is something that that Biden would never say,

00:33:13.700 the 1619 project had problems. I mean, read the Atlantic, read the various even liberal professors

00:33:20.540 and academics and historians who have come out against the 1619 project and said, this is just

00:33:25.880 not true. The revolution was not fought over slavery. It was not fought to uphold slavery.

00:33:32.020 That's not why the revolutionary war happened. And actually, the 1619 project has had to come out.

00:33:37.860 Even Nicole Hannah-Jones had to come out and say, well, you know, I meant that it was part of it. It

00:33:43.040 was part of the revolution, but it wasn't really it wasn't really the only reason or the main reason

00:33:48.260 why the revolution happened. Well, that just dismantles the whole thing. That's what the whole

00:33:51.800 1619 project is founded upon. The idea that the only reason why America was founded, the only reason

00:33:57.480 why we wanted to gain our independence was to perpetuate slavery. That's the entire premise

00:34:01.860 of the project. And she's already had to come out and back up and say, well, that wasn't totally true.

00:34:06.560 Of course, it's not totally true. She's had to come out and say, look, this wasn't this wasn't

00:34:10.780 supposed to be historical. This wasn't supposed to be completely accurate. It was supposed to be a

00:34:15.300 narrative. And that's what all of this is. That's what the 1619 project is. That's what critical race 0.96

00:34:19.900 theory is. That's what many claims of systemic racism, at least today in 2021 is. It is about an

00:34:26.340 overarching narrative. That is why you get people saying that, oh, objective truth and data and

00:34:31.020 bringing up facts. That's unempathetic. And that's just a part of of white supremacy, of course, because

00:34:35.900 those actually get in the way of talking about things like equity and talking about things like

00:34:42.240 the 1619 project, which is not true because it is a narrative that we are supposed to emotionally buy

00:34:47.760 into. We're not supposed to pick holes in it using data and facts. So for President Biden to say that

00:34:55.220 the 1776 commission is offensive, I would love to know what's offensive about it and counterfactual

00:35:01.200 when it was in rebuttal to a much more counterfactual project, the 1619 project. I mean, I find that very

00:35:09.240 predictable, but it's also it's also pretty funny and it's also pretty sad. He says unity and healing must

00:35:15.900 begin with understanding the truth, not ignorance and lies. I totally agree with that. I totally agree

00:35:20.980 that unity is not going to be accomplished under false pretenses and in healing is not going to be

00:35:26.820 accomplished under false pretenses. But if you're talking about ignorance and lies, let's not talk

00:35:32.460 about the 1776 project. Let's talk about the 1619 project. Let's talk about critical race theory. Let's

00:35:37.680 talk about some of the curriculum that these kids are learning in schools, that America has always been

00:35:42.820 this endemically and this systemically and institutionally racist place where no one has

00:35:47.880 been able to get ahead except for white people. That is not true. That's not true. And to be fair, 0.72

00:35:53.720 I do not think that we need to have, quote, patriotic education. I remember President Trump saying that

00:35:59.340 and I was like, I don't want patriotic education. I don't. I want truthful education. I want it to be

00:36:05.460 factual. I want us to look at the real injustices that have existed in American history.

00:36:11.140 I'm totally fine with talking about how the founders owned slaves, even while they were

00:36:15.860 writing something like the Declaration of Independence, which was completely counter to

00:36:19.620 some of the lives that they lived. Like, I want to talk about the problems that America has faced

00:36:26.080 and that we have not dealt with well. I want to talk about 1619. I want to talk about how we

00:36:31.720 completely and unjustly and tragically and inhumanely brought human beings, 0.99

00:36:39.120 bears of the image of God over from Africa to be slaves against their will. Like, I want to talk

00:36:44.760 about all of that. I want to talk about Japanese internment camps. I want to talk about how the

00:36:48.900 Irish and the Italians were discriminated against. I am completely in favor of talking about all of

00:36:54.720 the injustices that America has allowed to endure, that America has perpetuated. But I will not let

00:37:02.040 America be lost in an exclusively negative narrative because that is also not true. Frederick Douglass

00:37:09.460 knew what a lot of people today have apparently forgotten, that the ideals upon which we were

00:37:14.260 founded that are stated in the Declaration of Independence, that we were all created equal by a

00:37:19.200 creator who endowed us with certain unalienable rights, that that was a seed of liberty. He called the

00:37:24.660 Constitution a glorious liberty document, even as someone who wasn't a beneficiary of all of the rights

00:37:30.140 that were acknowledged in the Constitution. He knew that the way to anti-slavery, the way to abolition,

00:37:36.260 the way to true equality, where everyone was treated equal under the law, the way to human rights was

00:37:42.540 not to get rid of the Constitution, as people like Nicole Hannah-Jones and so many proponents of Black 1.00

00:37:49.340 Lives Matter and so many left-wing activists want to do today, was not to get rid of what America was 0.96

00:37:54.920 founded on, was not just to say, wow, the founders were hypocrites. So America is just a myth. 0.85

00:37:59.400 American exceptionalism isn't real. He knew that the way to anti-slavery and the way to justice

00:38:04.140 was not just through the biblical knowledge that we're all created in the image of God,

00:38:08.900 but also what was represented in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

00:38:12.460 And he understood that liberty, that these crazy and radical and new ideas that America was founded

00:38:18.900 upon, that no other country in the history of the world had even tried to found themselves upon,

00:38:23.140 that it was a seed and that it was going to grow and grow throughout history. So of course,

00:38:28.100 we didn't manifest those promises perfectly at the very beginning, in 1776, certainly not in 1619.

00:38:36.580 Of course, we weren't manifesting those ideas perfectly. We never thought that they would.

00:38:42.200 But we knew that the seed of liberty would grow and grow and grow and that the arc of American history

00:38:48.540 has been towards justice, that it has been towards liberty, that it has been towards equality for all,

00:38:55.700 that that that is the direction that it has gone, even while realizing how many injustices that we

00:39:01.380 have allowed to perpetuate. No one has righted their wrongs as quickly or as valiantly or as

00:39:06.720 courageously as America has, even acknowledging our imperfections. And that's, I think, where we need

00:39:14.560 to come to, that we are proud of our country. We're thankful for the ideals and the ideas upon which we

00:39:20.980 were founded. But, but we also recognize that there have been very real injustices that have existed

00:39:27.760 and where true injustices exist. I'm talking about injustice of process. I'm again, not just talking

00:39:33.600 about unequal outcomes because that's inevitable for every individual. We need to, we need to right

00:39:40.240 those wrongs, but they're not going to be done through critical race theory. They're not going to be

00:39:43.660 done through the 1619 project. Like President Biden said, unity and healing has to begin with truth,

00:39:49.500 not ignorance and lies. And so that's, that's all I'm trying. That's all I'm trying to do. And that's

00:39:55.040 all I'm a proponent of. I'm ready to talk about the good and the bad and the ugly of today and of

00:40:00.980 yesteryear, but I am not ready to say that America wasn't built on good foundational principles and that

00:40:07.200 we have never lived up to the promises that the founders made. That's not true. That's just not true.

00:40:13.480 There is no data to prove that. There is no evidence of that. And that's not reality. And

00:40:19.040 we can not unite under that false pretense. I know today wasn't as specific as I wanted it to be.

00:40:24.600 There was a lot more that I, there's a lot more that I wanted to talk about, but unfortunately I've,

00:40:29.100 I've got to go. I wanted to talk a little bit more about this condom or this charge of systemic racism.

00:40:35.200 And if it's actually true, I know that's scandalous to even question today, but what people mean by

00:40:42.180 systemic racism and how Biden says he's going to dismantle it and what people on both sides of

00:40:46.860 the aisle say systemic racism in it is and how we combat it and how we don't combat it.

00:40:51.880 But I don't have time for all of that. I kind of got into a quibble on the word equity for a while,

00:40:57.180 which is why we, we didn't make it to all the parts that I wanted to, but I hope this is just

00:41:02.100 at least kind of food for thought for you. And if you know, you're on the other side of the aisle

00:41:06.720 and you hate what I said, I do appreciate you being here and listening to the conservative

00:41:12.420 perspective on some of this. All right, I've got to go tomorrow. I'm talking to Alex Berenson,

00:41:18.400 all about COVID, the COVID vaccine, some of the regulations, some of the craziness that we're

00:41:23.620 seeing with opening things back up, even though cases are higher than they were when things closed

00:41:27.860 down in places like California and Michigan and New York and all of this craziness.

00:41:31.320 He is really, really good on the subject. He has been talking about this for a very long time.

00:41:36.000 And so I'm super excited for you to listen to that conversation. So I will see you back here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 27, 2021

Ep 359 ｜ Why 'Equity' Is Unjust

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript