Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 366 ｜ NYT, the 'N-Word,' and Becoming Uncancelable

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so

00:00:14.060 far. We've got a great full episode up ahead. I am going to talk about this New York Times

00:00:19.560 reporter that had been writing for the paper for I think about 40 years, 30 to 40 years,

00:00:25.700 a science writer. The cancel mob has officially canceled him. He was fired from his job for

00:00:31.300 repeating a racial slur in a particular context a couple years ago. We'll talk about the ever-changing

00:00:37.760 standards of woke righteousness and why we as Christians get to get off that hamster wheel

00:00:44.700 and look to real righteousness and the rest that we find in Christ. And so I'm going to talk about

00:00:50.020 that story and then bring it back to the freedom that we have in the gospel. And then if I have

00:00:55.420 time, it depends on how long all of that takes. I'm also going to talk to a professor from Cornell

00:01:00.960 who has been, he created this website to chronicle or to call out, I guess, which universities in the

00:01:09.860 United States are teaching critical race theory. So you can go to this website and you can click

00:01:15.680 on a state and it will tell you which universities are teaching critical race theory. And then it'll

00:01:21.020 tell you which courses or which programs they have been putting on that are promoting that kind of

00:01:26.960 ideology, which is really interesting. So I want to talk to him about why he created it, but whether

00:01:31.600 or not that podcast is going to, or that interview will be in today's episode or tomorrow's episode,

00:01:36.380 will just kind of depend on how long it takes me to get through the first part of this episode.

00:01:41.880 Before we get into all of that, I got to clarify some things. So yesterday I was talking about how much

00:01:48.280 I learned from the book, Love Thy Body. And I said that it was a book written by Nancy Pelosi.

00:01:55.340 It was not written by Nancy Pelosi. Now, all of you who have listened to me for a long time,

00:02:00.720 or if you're part of my women's book club with Ali Stuckey on Facebook, you know, it was written by

00:02:04.900 Nancy Piercy. But their names are so similar. And we have to talk about Nancy Pelosi kind of frequently

00:02:12.420 on this podcast that it just slipped out. And I didn't even realize, and I guess Nolan realized

00:02:19.680 on this side until one of you guys, until I listened to it. And then one of you guys reached

00:02:25.340 out to me because I almost couldn't tell if that's really what I said. But then a lot of you guys

00:02:29.400 reached out to me and were like, you know, you said Nancy Pelosi instead of Nancy Piercy. And some of

00:02:34.980 you got a kick out of that, but maybe some of you had no idea what I was talking about.

00:02:38.160 And you really thought that I read a book about theology and our bodies and gender and sexuality

00:02:47.480 written by Nancy Pelosi, and that I got a lot out of it. I think Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi should

00:02:54.040 probably read Love Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. There's a lot of good stuff in there about how

00:02:58.440 Christians should approach things like abortion and sexuality and marriage and all of that good

00:03:04.220 stuff. So Nancy Piercy, not Nancy Pelosi. Another thing that I want to clarify or just maybe bring

00:03:12.540 up is that I got a couple of angry messages, tweets, comments from people who were aghast that I said

00:03:19.000 that I liked Tom Brady and that I liked that I like some songs by The Weeknd. And the reason why

00:03:26.740 people were angry or upset that I said that I liked Tom Brady is because apparently his wife,

00:03:32.340 Giselle calls herself a witch. And I had kind of heard that before. I mean, she kind of seems new

00:03:38.500 age, all the stuff that she posts on social media. But I'm not saying that I think that he is like my

00:03:44.960 moral exemplar or that he's my pastor or that I go to him for life advice or that I am approving of

00:03:53.140 every part of his life and his belief system. I was just saying, I think that he comes across as a good

00:04:01.500 leader and a compassionate teammate to the people that he has played with over the years. And so

00:04:10.220 we don't need to read into all of that. Like we understand that unbelievers are going to have

00:04:15.340 different beliefs than we do. And there are things that we are still going to like about them.

00:04:19.240 There are people made in the image of God and they have gifts of common grace, like

00:04:22.480 talent and leadership abilities and things like that, that we can still admire because they're

00:04:26.840 objectively good. As for The Weeknd, so I didn't bring up yesterday, some people are talking about

00:04:33.100 like this satanic imagery. And every year in the Super Bowl, people talk about certain kinds of

00:04:37.500 satanic imagery. Now, with The Weeknd's performance, it was weird. I remember thinking,

00:04:43.080 this is really weird. There was like almost this messiah-like figure that came down in the middle of the

00:04:48.680 stage wearing this white robe, but it was obviously very dark and it probably was actually supposed to

00:04:54.540 be demonic. I don't actually think this year that people are reading into that. Sometimes it seems

00:05:00.140 like they are, but this year it kind of seems like he meant for it to be supernatural and dark and

00:05:05.380 demonic in that way. And so again, I'm not approving of that. I just think that he is a talented

00:05:12.300 person with unique songs. That doesn't mean that I think that they are wonderful praise

00:05:18.160 and worship songs that glorify God. I just think he's a talented guy. And I thought that his talent

00:05:24.920 was on display at least somewhat during the Super Bowl halftime show. So that's all of that. When I say

00:05:34.620 that I appreciate someone's talent or that I like someone in a certain way, it doesn't mean that I am

00:05:39.660 approving of everything they do or everything they believe in. So for those of you who are confused

00:05:46.280 about that or confused about any of those things, I just wanted to add some clarity. Okay, let's get

00:05:51.520 into our first story, our story that's going to set up the rest of the podcast. A lot of you have told

00:05:56.040 me, I just want to talk theology. Like I want to talk big picture stuff. I'm tired of the news. Well,

00:06:01.300 this episode really will be a lot of that. And I think on Thursday is when I'm going to dedicate an

00:06:07.000 entire episode to nothing to do with the news and politics. And we are going to talk about love

00:06:12.600 since it is almost Valentine's Day and the theology of love. And I know that you guys are going to like

00:06:17.100 that because you've been asking for that. But even today, we're not talking heavy into politics or

00:06:21.140 heavy into the news cycle. There are tons of news stories that I think that we could talk about today

00:06:26.140 that I want to talk about. There are some illegal immigration policies that are being pushed forth that

00:06:31.800 I think are important for us to talk about. There's that crazy Time Magazine article that said,

00:06:36.780 basically, it used the word cabal, like a cabal of powerful people trying to, quote, fortify the

00:06:42.700 election. And of course, Trump supporters read that as, okay, so you're trying to, you were trying to

00:06:48.000 change the results of the election by ensuring that the laws and the voting policies and all of this

00:06:53.900 were in your favor. And so there's a lot to talk about. But I want to talk about this

00:06:59.820 example of, I think, very arbitrarily applied rules when it comes to the cancel mob and the

00:07:10.100 progressive powers that be and what it means for us and what it means for our theology and then how

00:07:16.100 the gospel actually saves us from the exhaustion of that. Because I think that this is fundamentally

00:07:20.440 more important than a lot of those other news stories that I want to talk about at some point.

00:07:24.760 So this story, a New York Times reporter got fired for saying the N-word a couple years ago. And I

00:07:33.080 will tell you exactly what the context was, because of course, that's a terrible, awful word that we

00:07:38.660 would never approve of saying. But it matters what context it was in and how this all came about,

00:07:47.040 I think. So this is according to New York Magazine, quote,

00:07:50.900 In 2019, New York Times reporter Donald McNeil Jr., working as a tour guide for high school students

00:07:56.240 traveling to Peru, got into an argument with several of them. The debate centered around

00:08:00.880 whether one of the student's classmates deserved to have been suspended over a video that surfaced

00:08:05.280 of her as a 12-year-old saying the N-word. McNeil, according to a statement released by the

00:08:11.000 Times, asked about the context of the word. Was she rapping or quoting a book title or using the word

00:08:16.080 as a slur? McNeil's distinction apparently made little headway with the students who accused him

00:08:20.580 of using the term himself. So apparently when he was asking about the context that this 12-year-old

00:08:27.360 child had apparently used this word and he actually used the full word himself. Two weeks ago,

00:08:35.220 the Daily Beast reported on the students' allegations. At first, Times editor Dean Bacchett argued that

00:08:43.140 McNeil's action was regrettable, but that he deserved another chance to learn from the mistake.

00:08:48.480 But after 150 times staffers wrote to express their outrage, McNeil resigned. In his first statement

00:08:56.220 explaining his decision to retain McNeil, Bacchett explained, it did not appear to me that his

00:09:02.560 intentions were hateful or malicious. In his second statement explaining McNeil's departure, you know,

00:09:07.940 after all of the reporters became outraged, Bacchett wrote, we do not tolerate racist language

00:09:13.680 regardless of intent. Remember that phrase, we'll come back to it. The article goes on.

00:09:21.300 It would be one thing to decide that not only is it unacceptable, so this is the now the author of

00:09:26.780 this article in New York Magazine. It would be one thing to decide that not only it is unacceptable to

00:09:31.540 use the slur, but it is also unacceptable to utter or mention it in any form. It is another thing to

00:09:37.940 different actions as completely indistinguishable, as the Daily Beast appears to have done.

00:09:43.560 What's even more troublesome is when authorities decide to apply the new norm retroactively.

00:09:48.960 Remember that too, we'll talk about that. I know of a teacher who lost her job when a video

00:09:53.580 surfaced on social media showing her reading the word to her class. She was reading from a well-regarded

00:09:59.980 book by a Black author about Jim Crow era racism. The video was a decade old, and yet when it came out

00:10:06.540 last summer, when student activists in the wake of the George Floyd murder were looking to bring

00:10:10.900 change to their immediate surroundings, she became the proximate target. Last summer, after New York

00:10:17.640 Times staffers claimed an op-ed by Tom Cotton put their lives in danger, you remember that?

00:10:23.700 The Times officially apologized for publishing it. Crazy. The official line is that the column failed

00:10:30.140 to meet its standards, i.e., Cotton alleged that Antifa radicals had infiltrated some racial justice

00:10:35.180 protests. He was right. And that its tone was, quote, needlessly harsh. Oh my gosh, what babies.

00:10:42.040 As if the op-ed page had previously been devoid of harsh tones. Now it is applying a no-tolerant

00:10:47.820 standard toward the vocalization of racist language, quote, regardless of intent. So that,

00:10:55.320 I think, was good reporting and analysis from New York Magazine. So a man who had been writing for

00:11:02.320 the Times for decades was forced to resign for an account from teenagers that he repeated this word,

00:11:11.380 which is understandably, off-limits, is understandably a word that we don't like and

00:11:16.780 that we should not condone saying, but a phrase that he was repeating for clarity. He was repeating

00:11:22.840 a word that someone else had said to try to talk to these students about the question that they were

00:11:28.740 posing to him. This was a word that the editor knew, Dean Biket knew, and said that this reporter,

00:11:36.580 McNeil, had said without malice. And yet the standard apparently is that when a forbidden word is uttered,

00:11:42.000 the utterance may be fireable, no matter the context, no matter the usage. And the questions that we

00:11:48.820 should ask are this, does this go for any word? Or is it just racial slurs? What about the C word

00:11:54.140 for a woman? Like, what is the standard? Is there any setting in which an employee can repeat a word

00:11:59.140 and not get fired for it, at least from the New York Times? Why shouldn't context and intent matter?

00:12:05.160 Why should the word, why should the word said matter more than that which actually speaks to a person's

00:12:11.620 character, which is why it was said and how it was said? And these standards are retroactively

00:12:17.780 applied. How far do they go back? You might remember the Boeing director who had to resign

00:12:23.500 last year because of an article he wrote in 1987 that women shouldn't be in military combat, which,

00:12:29.520 by the way, I agree with that. They shouldn't be. We've talked about that before. This article was

00:12:35.480 uncovered and he apologized and he resigned. This was an article that he wrote in 1987 of a perfectly

00:12:42.160 logical and a perfectly rational position. It's maybe it's arguable, you could say, but that women

00:12:49.260 shouldn't be in combat. That's a perfectly rational position to hold. Even today, he wrote it in 1987

00:12:55.380 and he was made to resign. But so these rules that we are retroactively applying to people who may have

00:13:05.200 broken the rules before they even existed and which aren't even sensibly applied today, we are saying

00:13:12.560 they are absolute. I mean, it's quite the paradox. It's quite the contradiction that we've found

00:13:18.460 ourselves in. Maria Navratilova, the famous female tennis player, you might remember she was dropped as an

00:13:24.260 ambassador of the LGBT group Athlete Ally. I think it was last year or 2019. She was targeted by

00:13:31.280 transgender activist groups because she said that it is unfair for men to compete against women in

00:13:37.900 tennis or in sports in general. And of course, that is true. But she was made to apologize. She was

00:13:43.100 dropped from this organization that she had worked with for a very long time. But Ibram X. Kendi, author of

00:13:49.480 How to Be an Anti-Racist, said on a Zoom meeting the other day with the New York State Association for

00:13:53.480 Independent Schools, that he and his wife were horrified when his daughter came home and said

00:13:58.640 that she was a boy. And he said that they were going to do everything that they could to affirm

00:14:02.780 the goodness of being a girl. First time that I have agreed with his logic, by the way. I haven't seen

00:14:08.840 any reports from CNN or MSNBC or transgender activist groups, anyone besides conservative media,

00:14:17.060 saying that this was problematic, that he didn't just immediately accept his daughter's declaration

00:14:22.720 of being a new gender. Nicole Hannah-Jones, writer for the New York Times and author of the largely

00:14:28.860 fictional 1619 Project, has two tweets from 2016 that include the N-word fully typed out, which,

00:14:35.360 look, I understand people argue that it's different when Black people say it, and I get the argument.

00:14:40.880 But remember, the statement around the reporter being fired for repeating the word in 2019

00:14:47.140 was that the New York Times doesn't tolerate the use of slurs, quote, regardless of intent.

00:14:55.820 And so apparently these very absolute and strict and retroactive rules are applied to some people,

00:15:01.520 but not to others. If what they actually mean by regardless of intent is regardless of white

00:15:08.480 people's intent, then they need to just go ahead and come out and say that. And by the way, when

00:15:13.380 Nicole Hannah-Jones was asked about these tweets by a Washington Free Beacon reporter on Twitter,

00:15:17.920 she doxxed him by replying to the tweets, by publicly posting the cell phone number

00:15:22.320 in response to his inquiry. I mean, what just a terrible, miserable person always doing stuff like

00:15:29.620 that, like cannot receive any pushback whatsoever. I've watched it happen many times, just so vicious.

00:15:36.640 The point is, the rules are different for everyone. Like they're very strict and they're

00:15:42.600 very absolute, and yet they're changing constantly. And they apply to people differently based on who

00:15:50.180 knows what. If you are, I guess, sufficiently woke, if you've done enough performative activism,

00:15:57.420 or certainly if you're a woke person of color who has contributed to the anti-racism movement,

00:16:02.940 then there are different rules for you, according to the progressive cancel mob than for the white

00:16:08.620 science reporter or the Boeing executive or the female tennis player, apparently.

00:16:13.200 But if you don't fall into the right categories that the progressive cancel mob arbitrarily decides

00:16:18.040 upon today, then no matter what you've done, no matter what kind of good, what kind of activism

00:16:24.100 you have done in your life, you will be labeled a racist and you will be canceled or a transphobe

00:16:28.880 or a homophobe, whatever it is. It doesn't matter how kind you've been to people, how well you treat

00:16:33.720 people or your employees, or what a good friend you are, what a nice neighbor you are, how awesome

00:16:40.100 of a parent you are, how much time and energy and effort you've put into caring for the vulnerable

00:16:44.720 in your community. Or if you posted a black square and announced that you were going to commit to

00:16:49.520 anti-racist inner work last summer on Instagram, if you say the wrong thing, or if you said the wrong

00:16:55.440 thing many years ago, according to today's rules, and you don't have sufficient woke credentials or

00:17:00.440 you don't fall into the right intersectional categories, then you are immediately and

00:17:05.380 automatically exiled. It didn't matter that Navratilova as a lesbian had been representing

00:17:11.900 LGBT issues for decades. She said the wrong thing according to today's rules. It doesn't matter that

00:17:19.900 Tom Brady has played with and befriended and mentored football players of all different skin colors for

00:17:26.960 decades. He is still going to be accused, at least implicitly, by a player on the losing team that

00:17:37.580 he called him some kind of unrepeatable slur, and all of leftist Twitter is going to believe that

00:17:43.660 automatically because Brady doesn't hate Donald Trump enough and probably embodies white privilege.

00:17:52.020 On the other hand, if you do have the right credentials, you can say almost anything and

00:17:58.960 it's ignored. For example, if you're Joe Biden, you can say things like, quote, poor kids are just as

00:18:03.660 smart and talented as white kids, or that you don't want your kids to grow up in a school that's,

00:18:08.920 quote, a racial jungle, or that all gas station owners have Indian accents, or saying, quote,

00:18:14.420 you ain't black to black people who voted for Trump, or eulogizing a former KKK grand wizard.

00:18:19.420 You can do all of that if you're Joe Biden and you're fine because you have power. You say the

00:18:23.880 right things now and you are going to be in a position to be able to direct money and influence

00:18:29.200 to the causes that progressive activists like. So it's all well and good. This is all what happens

00:18:35.320 when right and wrong is subjective. When they're based on the latest whim of the social justice

00:18:40.800 mob, rather than an innate grounding principle, this is a small group of loud people that directs

00:18:47.860 corporate policy, that directs, unfortunately, the policies that are pushed by the Democratic Party,

00:18:52.900 even sometimes the Republican Party, that are pushing particular curriculum, that are able to

00:18:58.420 silence people on social media, get them doxxed, and get them fired because they hold the cultural

00:19:04.740 reins. It doesn't indicate everyone on the left. It doesn't represent even, I think, the majority

00:19:11.180 of the left or the majority of Democrats, certainly not the majority of the country, but they have been

00:19:16.320 given power because they are told yes over and over again. When they want someone fired, that person

00:19:22.280 gets fired. When they want a corporate policy changed or some kind of woke message displayed by a

00:19:28.720 corporation, they get that. When they want the NFL to say or do something or donate money,

00:19:34.280 then they get it. So just like toddlers, they are told over and over again, yes, that their temper

00:19:41.160 tantrums are completely justified and they're going to work. And so what do they do? They pitch a fit over

00:19:46.620 and over again, and they don't care who gets canceled or who gets fired in their wake. Now, look, I don't

00:19:53.380 know that the reporter did the right thing by repeating the racial slur, even if it was just a reference.

00:19:59.860 I wouldn't have. Like we all know it's an ugly, terrible word with a long, ugly, terrible history

00:20:06.860 that I would prefer no one use. But I also absolutely believe in fair, even impartial standards for

00:20:15.240 everyone. In objective definitions of fireable and not fireable that are defined by principles,

00:20:21.140 not by emotions, not by mob outrage. And I absolutely believe that intent and context

00:20:27.760 matter. I believe that time matters. How long ago something was, how old you were, where your

00:20:33.020 heart is, who you are now. All of these things should be factored in before making judgments and

00:20:38.740 cancellations that tarnish people's reputations and in some cases ruin lives. The lack of objective

00:20:45.560 standards of ever moving goalposts is exhausting, not just with this, but with everything. What is

00:20:52.800 acceptable when it comes to stances on gender, on sexuality, the family, justice, race, it seems to

00:20:59.020 be changing every day. But unless these changes that we see in culture are moving toward greater

00:21:08.960 conformity to God and what his word says is good and right and true, then we as Christians do not

00:21:16.060 need to worry about them because we don't abide by them. Because God's goalposts do not move.

00:21:22.660 Let me tell you some good news. Christians do not have to try to keep up with this madness

00:21:28.360 because you can't, okay? I want you to take a deep breath and I want you to realize that you cannot,

00:21:35.000 you cannot keep up with the ever changing standards, with the ever moving goalposts of

00:21:40.700 the progressive cancel mob. You will never say all of the right things. You will never do all of the

00:21:45.340 right things. That inner work, that divesting of your privilege, the decolonizing and deconstructing

00:21:51.720 of your faith, the listening and learning, the adopting the social justice language, the performative

00:21:56.520 activism to try to fit in with the mainstream will never be enough. It'll never be enough.

00:22:05.000 The religion of the woke is merciless. It is exhausting. It is always changing based on

00:22:10.460 absolutely no grounded principle. Trying to avoid cancellation by saying and doing all of the right

00:22:16.660 things to please the progressive powers that be is a hamster wheel that I am very glad to tell you,

00:22:22.700 Christian, you can hop off of. We don't need the ever changing standards of the world.

00:22:28.160 We have a standard already in Christ. He set the perfect standard. He and he alone represents perfect

00:22:34.560 righteousness. And if by grace through faith, you have put your faith in him, you have that

00:22:39.360 righteousness, no matter what the world says. Second Corinthians 5 21. For our sake, he made him

00:22:45.540 to be sin who knew no sin so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. So in Christ,

00:22:53.340 you and I, Christians are the righteousness of God already right now, not because of anything we've done,

00:22:58.900 but because what he by grace did for us. You are made holy and acceptable before God because of what

00:23:05.520 Jesus has done for you on the cross. And if you follow him, if he is the savior for your soul,

00:23:10.120 if he is the Lord of your life, then you have already been made perfect and completely eternally

00:23:16.020 uncancellable. That is good news. That's really good news. Matthew 10 says,

00:23:22.420 do not worry about those who can hurt your body. Fear the one God who can throw your body and your

00:23:27.220 soul into hell. And in Christ, you are reconciled to made friends with forgiven by the only one

00:23:33.240 who has the power and the right to destroy both you and me as sinners, because he is a holy and

00:23:40.500 perfect and just God. And if that is true, if we are saved from that, if we are reconciled to the God,

00:23:47.840 the all-powerful God who has the authority to destroy all things, to destroy you and me

00:23:53.740 completely justifiably, then what do we have to fear? As Romans 8 says, if our God is for us,

00:23:59.600 who can be against us? 8, 33 through 35, who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who

00:24:06.380 justifies, who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised,

00:24:12.000 who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us, who shall separate us from

00:24:16.980 the love of Christ? The answer is no one. No one and nothing, no power, earthly or supernatural,

00:24:22.880 can separate God from his children. And this is all important because the cancel mob doesn't just

00:24:27.820 go after what is objectively right and wrong. Like we know some words are wrong. We know some actions

00:24:32.800 are wrong and are actually cancelable, not just according to the world standards, but according to

00:24:37.940 God's standards. But when those two standards differ, when worldly standards and God's standards are not the

00:24:44.560 same, when the worldly rules are constantly changing and arbitrarily applied, we don't have to worry

00:24:50.180 about catching up with them. That is what I'm saying. And that is the relief that I'm offering

00:24:55.420 in the gospel. God is the standard bearer. He is the rulemaker. And Hebrews 13, 8 says that he does not

00:25:02.660 change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We don't have to worry about keeping up with worldly

00:25:08.540 standards of wokeness and righteousness. And in fact, if we do, we will be at some point in disobedience

00:25:15.400 to God because the world's definitions of righteousness, of justice, of goodness, of morality

00:25:21.140 are all contradictory to God. James 4, 4 says, therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the

00:25:27.180 world makes himself an enemy of God. We don't want to be an enemy of God. We don't need or want worldly

00:25:33.240 definitions of right and wrong, correct, incorrect, just, unjust. We have Christ as our standard. And

00:25:38.920 through the power of the Holy Spirit, we become more like him, more obedient to God, more conforming

00:25:45.140 to God's standards of right and wrong, more truly biblically just, more truly biblically loving, more

00:25:51.200 gentle, more gracious, more generous, kinder, more in love with truth, more hopeful, more joyful.

00:25:57.040 Have you noticed how unhappy some of your friends are who are chasing the ever-changing

00:26:02.860 standards of worldly wokeness? How hypercritical they are of themselves and others? How unable they

00:26:09.640 are to enjoy life, constantly trying to evade cancellation by saying and doing all of the

00:26:15.260 politically correct things? How hard it is sometimes for them to give grace to people, to give people

00:26:20.460 the benefit of the doubt, all while accusing everyone else of lacking tolerance and nuance?

00:26:25.620 Like how their definition of sin and sanctification have changed? How their definitions of

00:26:30.620 justice and holiness now look nothing like the Bibles, even while co-opting some decontextualized

00:26:36.680 biblical vocabulary? How hard they feel like they have to try to prove themselves worthy and good and

00:26:44.600 tolerant and open and progressive and anti-racist. And at the end of the day, they're still unsure

00:26:49.820 that they've done enough to prove to themselves and to other people that they're truly righteous.

00:26:55.040 Have you noticed how exhausted they are? It's because it's a trap. Because in Christ, as Christians,

00:27:01.680 we are already made righteous. The fear and the trembling that we feel toward the cancel mob should

00:27:07.140 be morphed into a reverent fear directed toward the God of our souls. God has graciously told us what

00:27:13.700 standards to reach, what examples to follow, what love looks like, what justice means. He has graciously

00:27:19.500 revealed all of that to us in his word. There are no good ideas about morality to borrow from secular

00:27:25.640 culture. A lost world has no power whatsoever to teach us about love or mercy or honesty or generosity,

00:27:32.640 none. And you will be exhausted trying to learn and pass their tests, which are not fairly graded

00:27:38.740 because they don't have a fair rubric. Let me read this long passage to you to remind you of what

00:27:44.820 exactly the Christian is called to. I think that this is a good summary. Ephesians 4.17-32. You

00:27:52.100 guys know I love Ephesians. Quote Ephesians all the time. Quote, you must no longer walk as the

00:27:57.360 Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from

00:28:02.700 the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They've

00:28:06.820 become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

00:28:11.500 But that is not the way that you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were

00:28:16.420 taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner

00:28:20.820 of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to

00:28:26.440 put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having

00:28:32.020 put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of

00:28:37.200 another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the

00:28:43.740 devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that

00:28:49.440 he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only

00:28:54.740 such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve

00:29:00.840 the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath

00:29:06.740 and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another,

00:29:14.540 tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. That is what God calls us to.

00:29:21.220 That is what God empowers us to do. The world will tell you that it's hateful, that it's not enough,

00:29:27.280 that it's wrong, that your definition of love is wrong, that you have to adopt and adapt to theirs.

00:29:33.260 It will beckon you to follow its guidelines, to chase after its approval. Praise God that you get

00:29:38.040 to say no to that. You get to say no to the exhaustion and yes to the rest and the peace that is found

00:29:43.500 in life and God. The world's burden, cancel culture's burden, the religion of progressivism's

00:29:51.060 burden. Uh, the, the burden of, of politics and trying to fit in perfectly, uh, with those around

00:30:00.420 you is heavy. And the yoke of those things is difficult. Jesus's burden is light and his yoke

00:30:06.820 is easy. So you get to hop off the hamster wheel. You get to find peace in the fact that there is

00:30:12.280 righteousness to be found in Christ and wisdom and power from the Holy Spirit that dwells in you

00:30:17.000 when by grace through faith, you believe in and follow Jesus. Uh, James three, 14 through 17,

00:30:22.980 I think is a perfect depiction, a perfect contrast of worldly wisdom, uh, and the ever-changing

00:30:28.640 standards of the outrage mob, uh, with the wisdom of God and his saints quote, but if you have bitter

00:30:36.240 jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the

00:30:41.660 wisdom that comes down from above, but it's earthly on spiritual demonic for where jealousy and

00:30:46.980 selfish ambition exists. There will be disorder and every vile practice, but the wisdom from above

00:30:53.200 is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial

00:31:01.040 and sincere, open to reason and impartial and peaceable. How different from the rabid approach of

00:31:08.800 the cancel mob? Um, all right. I do have time to, uh, talk to this professor from Cornell about, uh,

00:31:18.420 the project that he has developed this, uh, website. And it really does tie into, um, what we have been

00:31:25.720 talking about, what we've been talking about with the arbitrary standards of the world. You guys know,

00:31:30.100 we've talked about critical theory and critical race theory a lot on this podcast. It's the perfect

00:31:34.920 depiction of the subjective arbitrary standards based on, um, based on ideas and based on a kind

00:31:42.240 of partiality that is sinful. According to God, it is corrupt. It is historically inaccurate. There is

00:31:49.900 no part of it that is, uh, redemptive. There is no part of it that accomplishes reconciliation. Um, I want

00:31:56.920 to read you this excerpt that's going to serve as our, um, as our transition into the conversation that I'm

00:32:03.400 about to have. And it is from Ariel magazine. And I just thought that it was, um, uh, a great,

00:32:10.120 a great representation of, uh, what critical race theory does and its consequences. And this article

00:32:18.300 is titled utopian dreams and totalitarian nightmares, the coerced morality of critical race theory. And it

00:32:25.860 is by Justine waters. So she includes an extract, uh, from, uh, diversity from one diversity council's

00:32:35.480 cultural competence action plan for South Lake, Texas. Uh, it was presented to the local school

00:32:40.700 board for adoption in August, 2020. It says this no microaggressions are defined as everyday verbal

00:32:46.900 or nonverbal snubs or insults, whether intentional or unintentional. See that whole thing is, is a part of

00:32:54.600 an ideology. It's part of critical race theory that no matter the intent, if the wrong person says it in

00:32:59.500 the wrong way, the wrong time, then it is cancelable no matter the intent, no matter the heart, no matter

00:33:04.420 the context, uh, which communicate hostile derogatory or negative messages to target persons based solely

00:33:10.860 upon their marginalized or underrepresented group membership. Uh, the article then analyzes this are all

00:33:18.140 of us guilty until proven innocent for everything we don't do as opposed to being innocent until proven

00:33:23.560 guilty of actual harms. We do cause. If so, we can only earn back our innocence by selling ourselves

00:33:29.600 into permanent servitude to a utopian ideology in which we ceaselessly strive to make the world perfect.

00:33:35.740 Uh, we will need to constantly seek to expose all the myriad forms of dislove that might arise in any

00:33:41.940 human interaction and set about converting everyone to enthusiastic love of all that is good. According to

00:33:47.700 the infallible definition of goodness decreed by an omniscient subset of perfect human beings,

00:33:52.560 social justice activists seem to be engaged in something along those lines. That is

00:33:56.940 an, uh, extremely apt definition of critical race theory and what the social justice elites are trying

00:34:04.140 to do and push perfect description of something like Robin DiAngelo's white fragility. The article says

00:34:10.420 white morality is little more than slavish obedience motivated by fear and self-preservation, not virtue,

00:34:16.860 and its dependency on a vast bureaucracy of public surveillance monitoring and intimidation. If not downright

00:34:23.140 violence or excommunication, identity politics is more like a theocracy or a Maoist cultural revolution

00:34:29.280 than a genuine improvement on social justice. And yes, of course, this is always how it goes. This is how it's

00:34:35.680 gone throughout the 20th century. I told you guys about how in the Maoist revolution and the cultural

00:34:41.540 revolution in China in the 20th century, how they would have these things called struggle sessions where

00:34:46.480 someone who had the wrong idea or said the wrong thing or had a dissenting opinion would be taken into the

00:34:51.680 public square and would be publicly tortured, would be publicly chastised, would be yelled at, and would be

00:34:58.560 emotionally and physically abused for having the kind of wrong idea. That's no different than the cancel mob today.

00:35:04.100 That's no different. And remember, it's not just for things that are objectively wrong. It's also

00:35:08.900 things like, remember, taking care of babies, taking care of babies when she was canceled and she was

00:35:15.000 targeted for simply donating to the Trump campaign or Dr. Crenshaw, the professor that I had on last week,

00:35:20.940 who simply said, does it matter that some people don't want their daughters to share bathrooms with

00:35:26.520 boys? She was targeted by a small but loud mob who wanted her fired from Baylor University. And so it's

00:35:35.840 not an improvement on social justice. It is much more like a heartless puritanical theocracy,

00:35:45.700 something that you would see in the Scarlet Letter, more than any kind of progressive or tolerant utopia

00:35:51.500 or some kind of evil Maoist revolution, which killed, by the way, tens of millions of people

00:35:56.780 throughout the 20th century. It's not good. Don't be fooled by it, Christian. And thankfully,

00:36:01.380 through the gospel, we have an escape from it. You get to get off the hamster wheel. All right.

00:36:06.740 Now we're going to talk a little bit more about critical race theory and how it's infiltrated

00:36:11.620 colleges and what we can do about it with Professor William Jacobson, Cornell Law School professor. Here he is.

00:36:21.500 Professor Jacobson, thank you so much for joining me. You started this website, criticalrace.org. Can

00:36:34.100 you tell us what it is and why you started it? Sure. Well, the what it is, it's a website devoted

00:36:40.480 to documenting critical race training on campuses around the United States. And what it is, is we have

00:36:47.360 a map of the United States, we have various school entries, and you can hover over the map and click

00:36:55.800 on your state and click on your school and see what activities they have going on. Now, some of the

00:37:00.860 activities you may like, some of the activities you may not like, it's actually a very neutral

00:37:05.980 database. Well, we have our own views of critical race training, and we don't think it's helpful to

00:37:11.140 education. Nonetheless, this is a resource that really anybody can use. And that's why what it is.

00:37:19.500 Most of what we have on there are things the schools tell themselves, the schools tell their

00:37:24.560 students. Everything is sourced and everything is linked, no rumors or anything like that. And so

00:37:30.520 there's a link for everything and you can see what's going on. Now, this is not a list of schools to

00:37:36.300 avoid. We don't take a view on any particular school. It's really a resource for parents and

00:37:42.240 students so they know what they're getting themselves into if the student attends this

00:37:47.060 college. Now, the reason I created it was I've been watching a lot of these developments over the

00:37:53.200 years and I follow them. I have a website called Legal Insurrection, and we have followed these things,

00:37:58.620 but it really crystallized last spring in June when the president of Cornell University

00:38:05.560 assigned as suggested reading to the entire campus, the book How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi.

00:38:14.760 And in fact, that book was going to be the basis for summer discussions at Cornell University,

00:38:20.720 and they made it available to everybody free of charge online electronically. So I went and I read it,

00:38:27.600 and I was actually pretty shocked because the philosophy there is quite discriminatory. It's actually the

00:38:34.300 opposite of what Cornell's non-discrimination policy is. He explicitly advocates current discrimination

00:38:42.640 in order to remedy past discrimination. So it's an advocacy for discrimination. It also sets up a very

00:38:50.320 coercive paradigm, which is you are either anti-racist, and that's the word, or you are racist. There's no in

00:38:57.980 between. So the traditional American civil rights notion of treating people fairly without regard

00:39:04.700 to skin color, et cetera, has no place in that universe. You're either with them or you're against

00:39:10.800 them. And if you're not with them, you are racist. He refuses to recognize any concept of being non-racist.

00:39:18.440 A non-racist is somebody who simply goes around treating everybody fairly, treating everybody

00:39:23.900 weak, you know, equally, is in fact racist unless they become an activist. So this was very alarming

00:39:31.460 to me. That was furthered when in July of that year, the president of the university announced that

00:39:38.860 she was starting an initiative to push anti-racism teaching and training into every aspect of the

00:39:46.700 university. Now, she left the details to be worked out by the faculty senate and others, but by topics,

00:39:53.700 it included curriculum, possible mandatory course requirements for students, possible mandatory

00:39:59.900 training for faculty. And so this was extremely alarming to me. And so we started to look into

00:40:07.120 critical race training, anti-racism training, and gather the data. But what really pushed us over the

00:40:13.660 edge to starting this website is feeding off of what the university had announced, several hundred

00:40:21.720 faculty, students, and staff signed an open set of demands in September, fulfilling or calling for

00:40:30.660 the university to fulfill this anti-racist initiative. And those, some of the things they called for

00:40:36.180 included explicit discrimination in hiring and promotion. They called for racial discrimination

00:40:43.900 in promotion and hiring, that certain people of certain races should be hired and promoted above

00:40:49.100 others, which is completely shocking because that's actually illegal. What's even more shocking is that

00:40:55.500 numerous law school faculty signed on to this, and now it's over at the faculty senate. So it actually,

00:41:02.640 and I've gone back over my timeline here, actually was after this September set of demands that we

00:41:08.320 made the decision to construct a separate website because we don't feel that parents and students

00:41:14.440 know what's going on. The way I was feeling is somebody applying to Cornell has no clue what is

00:41:20.260 really going on on this campus. I'm not saying they shouldn't apply. All I'm saying is people need to

00:41:25.760 know, and that's what our website does. And tell me what you think the practical implications

00:41:30.680 of this kind of anti-racist theory would be, obviously, discrimination, at least when it

00:41:36.820 comes to admissions or when it comes to choosing faculty. What other consequences do you think this

00:41:45.080 has for students, for society in general, if we are saying the only way to rectify past wrongs

00:41:50.720 is to now commit wrongs against other groups today?

00:41:55.060 Right. And now that you mention it, I haven't thought of it this way. This whole philosophy is

00:41:59.300 essentially two wrongs make a right, which we've all been taught, or most of us have been taught as

00:42:04.500 children is not actually a good thing. And so what I think it does, it really creates a fissure

00:42:12.320 on campus because you are either with them or you are against them. And if you're against them,

00:42:18.880 by definition, you are racist. Forget about what your views actually are. Forget about how you conduct

00:42:24.820 your life. And so you set up this conflict on campus of the anti-racist versus the racist,

00:42:31.500 but it's completely constructed by them. It's not reality. Most people on campus are non-racist.

00:42:40.560 They go about their life. They don't get involved in politics. They don't get involved in activism.

00:42:45.520 They treat everybody fairly. They don't discriminate. That whole cohort of people who might,

00:42:52.700 who is almost certainly a majority of students on campus are now branded racist. And that is a

00:42:58.520 coercive tool that is used for political purposes on campuses. We see it all the time, but particularly

00:43:06.920 this year, it's us versus them. And I think that's entirely negative for a campus. It's also very

00:43:15.080 coercive. You don't learn things by being coerced. The school might be able to force you as a freshman or

00:43:22.000 sophomore to take a course where they teach this stuff. And we all know the vast, vast majority

00:43:28.220 of students are just going to sit there and shake their head and go along to get along because they

00:43:33.460 don't want to be called names, but it doesn't change any minds. It doesn't convince anybody.

00:43:39.480 It perpetuates what's been going on that they claim is negative. So I think what's the downside?

00:43:46.100 It brands people who are not racist as racist because that's the way they've constructed it.

00:43:51.380 It demonizes large sections of the campus. It coerces large sections of the campus,

00:43:58.160 and it doesn't change any minds. I don't know how it could get any worse than that.

00:44:02.220 Right. And we kind of skipped by in academia or just in society in general, in politics,

00:44:08.560 in the social and cultural sphere, the debate of the premise of critical race theory, which is that

00:44:15.180 America, even in 2021, is systemically and pervasively racist. And therefore, everyone in

00:44:23.000 particular who is white is at least complicit, if not actively a part of all of these racist systems.

00:44:30.420 And you could see how, if you believe that, and that is your premise, how people who don't fight

00:44:35.100 to dismantle that kind of systemic racism, in the same way that you would say someone who sees bullying

00:44:40.900 happen and just walks right by it, well, that's not enough. You need to fight against that bully.

00:44:46.460 You could see how Ibram X. Kendi goes to his, gets to his conclusion, if you believe in the premise

00:44:55.240 that America is systemically racist in 2021. But I would say that is debatable at best. And we're not

00:45:03.760 even allowed to push back against that premise to say, is America in 2021 systemically racist to

00:45:10.160 where we actually do need to discriminate against other, other groups in order to make other groups

00:45:15.540 feel better or to lift them up? Right. That's right. They set the parameters of the conversation.

00:45:21.240 The parameter of the conversation is that we need to upend our society because it's systemically

00:45:26.620 racist. Now, I don't accept that that's true. There may be inequalities. There are inequalities in

00:45:31.100 many aspects of life. But systemically, we're actually anti-racist. We have laws, we have

00:45:37.560 enforcement, we have bureaucracies. The law does not sanction racism. That is what a systemically

00:45:45.260 racist society would be, where the law actually upholds racism. And it doesn't here. So it's not

00:45:51.800 a systemically racist. That's not to say there aren't things that can be improved. But they have

00:45:56.320 created this construct where everything needs to be torn down. And if you're standing in the

00:46:01.000 way of that, you must be complicit in the system. And if you are supporting the system,

00:46:05.760 they call you a white supremacist. Now, I'm old enough that when people when I grew up and people

00:46:11.000 were called white supremacists, it was people who had explicitly racist views, right? It was not people

00:46:17.220 who simply support the existing system we have, maybe want to improve it, maybe want to, you know,

00:46:23.840 do other things. And so they demonize people. And they try to set people back on their heels

00:46:29.720 by applying phrases to them and characterizations to them, which are not actually accurate. And I

00:46:35.680 think the one thing you've pointed out, the systemic racism is a very pernicious view of things,

00:46:40.840 because if that is the truth, then everything needs to be torn down. And we know that's not true.

00:46:46.180 We are a system which tries to enforce non-discrimination. We have non-discrimination laws.

00:46:52.160 Campuses, more than anything, have enormous bureaucracies devoted to non-discrimination.

00:46:57.920 It's the priority on virtually every campus on this country. So I think that this notion that

00:47:05.280 we need to tear everything down, and we need to brand everyone who doesn't agree with us as a racist

00:47:10.040 is so pernicious. And it's really, I think, tearing a lot of campuses apart.

00:47:14.820 Yeah. And you know, I think some people would argue that there actually is discrimination on

00:47:18.300 college campuses, but it's not against it. It's against groups like Asian Americans, perhaps,

00:47:25.380 or white Americans in the admissions process. There have been people that argue that that is

00:47:29.960 actually a form of institutionalized discrimination and racism against groups that are typically not

00:47:35.140 seen as the victims of that. And so that would meet Ibram X. Kendi's definition of what it means to be

00:47:41.060 anti-racist, to actually discriminate, to try to make up for past discrimination.

00:47:45.780 My last question for you is, what parents and what potential university students need to be on the

00:47:53.800 lookout for when they're trying to figure out if the college that they are applying to,

00:47:59.760 if it teaches things like this? Because a lot of times it's covered in euphemisms like diversity

00:48:04.840 and inclusion training. What do they need to be looking for?

00:48:08.140 Right. I think you're right. They use the euphemism of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:48:12.460 And equity is the key word, because equity does not mean equality. A lot of people mistake that.

00:48:18.560 They think equity, equality, it's the same thing. Equity is equal results. And that's why sometimes,

00:48:26.420 in Kendi's view and other views, you have to discriminate to get those equal results. Because

00:48:31.140 we know, historically, for reasons that have nothing to do with race, that different groups perform

00:48:36.600 differently in different aspects of society. And that's a natural occurrence. It's not necessarily

00:48:42.260 the result of racism. It's the result of a complicated set of factors. On campuses now,

00:48:48.440 and there have been lawsuits against Harvard, which I think is, there is a lawsuit against Harvard that

00:48:53.240 I think is going to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging the affirmative action that Harvard

00:48:59.500 has. And the people who are most discriminated against statistically were Asian Americans or people

00:49:05.440 of Asian descent who had to receive some enormous multiple higher on SAT scores and grades to be

00:49:13.620 treated fairly, who had a one-tenth chance with the same grades and SAT scores of getting in. And that's

00:49:20.160 really at the forefront. And that really shows the complexity of this issue, that there are systems in

00:49:26.280 place now meant to address historic discrimination, which themselves may be discriminating. And the courts will

00:49:34.280 have to decide that. But that is, I think, one of the conundrums here is, and we saw this out in

00:49:39.780 California, where there was a proposition passed, I think it was 30 years ago, I might be off on the

00:49:44.740 number of years, to essentially do away with affirmative action in higher ed admissions as

00:49:50.700 discriminatory. So it basically said you cannot discriminate on the base of race and other factors

00:49:55.800 in admission. And that essentially did away with affirmative action. And there was just a proposition

00:50:00.620 this year, in a year when Biden won, where they were going to undo that, and they would now allow

00:50:06.640 discriminatory admissions practices. And it lost significantly in California. So I think, you know,

00:50:13.460 we have to sometimes put aside the people who run the campuses, and the student activists who run the

00:50:21.040 campuses from the rest of the population. I don't believe a lot of these practices are actually popular in the

00:50:28.320 general population. They're, I don't believe they're popular among non whites, even because I think

00:50:33.900 most people in the country recognize that discrimination is a bad thing, no matter who it is

00:50:38.540 against. And I don't think that a lot of other racial or ethnic minorities necessarily adopt these

00:50:46.240 proposals, because they statistically have been the victims over the last several years.

00:50:51.760 Yep, you're absolutely right. I think most people agree that meritocracy is fair. Most people agree

00:50:56.860 and true equality, not this convoluted definition of equity. Most people agree that we shouldn't be

00:51:02.340 discriminating against any group in pursuit of some kind of cosmic, intangible, anti-racist

00:51:08.260 justice, or Ibram X. Kendi's definition of justice, anyway. Thank you so much for what you do. Thank you

00:51:14.920 for creating this website. Send anyone, you know, anywhere that you want them to go, to your websites,

00:51:22.200 sites, or to any work that you've written. Tell them how they can support you.

00:51:27.000 Sure. The website that we just created is called criticalrace.org. My main website is

00:51:34.020 legalinsurrection.com. That's legalinsurrection.com. That's a politics and law website, which deals with

00:51:40.700 a lot of other issues. Or you can just Google my name and you'll find out plenty about me. Some good,

00:51:45.920 some not so good. Well, thank you so much, Professor. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

00:51:50.360 Take care.

00:51:56.160 All right, guys. Hope you enjoyed that episode. I was just thinking as he was talking in that

00:52:01.100 interview, just how opposed that idea that Ibram X. Kendi and many critical race activists

00:52:07.480 posit, how opposed it is to Christianity that, yes, it is enough to love God and love your neighbor.

00:52:13.840 People who want to cast Jesus as this kind of social justice revolutionary who dismantles,

00:52:20.340 all of the systems that we don't like. It's just not what we read in God's word. It is enough

00:52:24.900 to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself, no matter what they look like, no matter what their

00:52:29.460 background is. Remember, God's definition of justice is both truthful and impartial. It doesn't

00:52:34.600 discriminate against people based on what they look like or based on how much money they have,

00:52:39.540 no matter their status. And so it is diametrically opposed to what we believe is good and right and

00:52:44.120 true. Once again, I'm encouraging you, get off the hamster wheel of woke definitions of righteousness.

00:52:49.720 They're ever-changing. And quite frankly, according to God, they're not righteous, but we do have

00:52:54.040 objective truth and standards in God's word. And hallelujah, praise God for that. All right,

00:52:58.620 we will be back here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 09, 2021

Ep 366 ｜ NYT, the 'N-Word,' and Becoming Uncancelable

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