Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 14, 2022


Ep 581 ｜ What DO White Americans Owe Black People？ ｜ Guest： Professor Jason D. Hill


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Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

169.03903

Word count

6,108

Sentence count

256

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

29

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dr. Jason D. Hill is an independent conservative who bucks against the mainstream narrative about race and racism in the United States. In his new book, "What Do White Americans Owe Black People?" he argues that white Americans owe black people racial reparations.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:00:04.900 American meat delivered right to your front door. Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie, goodranchers.com 1.00
00:00:10.600 slash Allie. Okay guys, we've got a treat for you today. I am talking to Professor Jason D. Hill
00:00:26.960 of DePaul University. We are talking about his new book, What Do White Americans Owe Black People?
00:00:33.700 He's got a very heterodox view on this, and I'm super excited for you to hear this conversation.
00:00:39.880 We're going to talk about this idea of reparations, of racial reconciliation, and what he thinks about
00:00:46.520 this as an independent conservative who kind of bucks against the mainstream narrative about race
00:00:51.600 and racism in the United States. Very enlightening conversation. I know you're going to love it.
00:00:55.940 So without further ado, here is Professor Hill. Professor Hill, thank you so much for joining us.
00:01:03.820 For anyone who may not be familiar, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
00:01:09.460 I am a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, and I specialize in political philosophy and ethics.
00:01:17.260 And I've been there for 22 years. I was born and raised in Jamaica. I came to America when I was
00:01:23.080 around 20, and became a citizen maybe 25 years ago. And I've written a number of books. My most recent
00:01:30.960 book is What Do White Americans Owe Black People? Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Depression.
00:01:36.200 And in my work, I'm seeking to defend American exceptionalism, the American dream, and to show why
00:01:42.300 America is really an unprecedented phenomenon in world civilization and in the world today.
00:01:48.780 Yes, you've written several books. And the title that you just listed really particularly caught my
00:01:56.760 eye. What do white people or what do white Americans owe black people? That's a question
00:02:02.060 that I think a lot of people on either side of the aisle have been asking, particularly over the past
00:02:07.320 almost a year and a half at this point since the George Floyd incident. We've been wondering,
00:02:13.000 okay, what is it? Like, how can we reconcile? How can we satisfy both sides so that we can come
00:02:19.300 together and kind of move past this racially divisive moment that we seem to be in? So can
00:02:25.640 you flesh that out a little bit? Why did you write this book? And how did you come to the conclusions
00:02:30.500 that you did? Well, I really started to write the book because in my previous book, we have overcome
00:02:36.800 an immigrant's letter to the American people, which was really dedicated to the American people and a
00:02:41.500 love letter to the American people. I had grown a little bit tired of what I call the America phobia
00:02:46.240 that I thought was suffusing our culture, hatred of America, because it's a good country.
00:02:52.820 And I saw the reparations movement. That is the idea that whites owe blacks reparations because of
00:02:58.900 either the residual effects of slavery because of something called systemic racism, which I don't
00:03:03.340 think exists anymore, or because of ancestral guilt, I thought was quite divisive in and of itself that
00:03:12.420 reparations had been already paid in the form of affirmative action in the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
00:03:18.200 which in itself brought blacks full legal standing before the law and ended, really terminated and
00:03:25.120 ended formal state oppression for blacks. So legal oppression ended with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1972
00:03:35.620 Employment Act, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And I think we have become a culture of entitlement where an occult,
00:03:42.860 occult, occult of victimology has really descended on this culture. And I don't think that races can reconcile, I think, 0.96
00:03:52.160 individuals as individuals can seek reconciliation among themselves. I don't believe in the idea of racial
00:03:58.900 reconciliation, because that's a sort of a collectivist viewpoint. I believe that individuals
00:04:04.060 acting under the auspices of the grace of God will reconcile among themselves. So I decided to write this
00:04:10.980 book because I thought it was a reparations was really, really highly divisive. And the idea that it could bring
00:04:16.800 the races together was ridiculous, that it would further just divide the races and to try to induce
00:04:24.660 guilt into white people into thinking that because their ancestors might have owned slaves, which again
00:04:31.080 is another fallacy. The majority of white Americans living today, according to my research, indicate that
00:04:36.940 their ancestors came after the Civil War. So even if one were entitled, one were sort of tempted to go with
00:04:44.080 the ancestral argument, which is a form of collectivism. It just wouldn't even work. So I wanted to sort of
00:04:50.960 put an end to this notion that I wanted to take the reparations argument seriously, and to look at them
00:04:56.880 and then to debunk them and to show that reparations have already been made and continue to be made towards
00:05:02.580 blacks in this country. 0.69
00:05:03.940 So the argument is that I hear from people kind of on the other side of this that, okay, yes, the policies
00:05:11.540 that you listed, the programs were put in place that you talked about in the 1960s and the early 1970s.
00:05:18.580 That's true. But there have been other forms of oppression. And basically, that's the whole premise of the
00:05:23.340 1619 Project, that basically, oppression and forms of slavery have never really gone away. They've just kind of
00:05:30.620 changed forms over the last several hundred years. And today, it manifests itself in mass incarceration
00:05:37.280 that started with the war on drugs. And some people would argue that, well, the 1960s and the 1970s
00:05:45.160 really weren't that long ago. So people alive today are still being impacted by the systemic racism,
00:05:51.600 the institutional racism that existed in those decades. And that is the cause of the disparities that
00:05:57.880 we see between black Americans and white Americans. So maybe that's what they would say to kind of push back
00:06:05.160 on what you're talking about, that even if systemic racism or institutionalized racism doesn't exist today,
00:06:10.040 the effects are still being felt. And that actually is, you know, the reason for some of the poor outcomes
00:06:18.680 and the trials that black America is going through today.
00:06:21.880 Well, I think it's undeniable that there's still racism in America. I mean, there's still psychotic
00:06:28.120 idiots, which is what racism really is. I mean, racism is a form of psychosis, where you look at
00:06:33.080 someone's morphological characteristics, and you make a judgment based on skin pigmentation,
00:06:38.220 or racial descriptive identity. But the fact that it suffuses our institutions, that our institutions are,
00:06:45.220 by mandate, by decree, racist seems to be empirically false, or universities or corporate systems are inundated with diversity,
00:06:55.380 equity and inclusion programs, where there is, there has been and continues to be a concerted effort to include
00:07:03.300 minorities, especially blacks, in leadership positions, in recruitment positions. I speak as a professor of 25 years in the classroom. 0.86
00:07:10.740 And I can tell you that there is no liberal, or let's strike the word liberal, there is no progressive,
00:07:16.740 in a good sense of progressive, meaning forward looking university that has not taken at as its goal,
00:07:24.420 the business of recruiting blacks into the universities, the whole establishment of black studies, queer studies,
00:07:30.820 women's studies, Chicano studies, you name it, any kind of program that emerged in the 60s was a form of
00:07:38.180 bringing into the domain, and bringing those who existed on the periphery or in the margins of
00:07:44.020 society within the full pantheon of the human community. I think what we really need to talk
00:07:48.580 about is the pathological features that exist within the black community that no, no one wants to talk 1.00
00:07:54.820 about. For example, 74% of African American children in this country are born out of wedlock.
00:08:01.300 Now, on the surface, it doesn't really seem to be alarming. But of the 74%, almost all of them, 1.00
00:08:11.540 about 72, are born into dire poverty. So that's a problem. When you have single mothers largely 1.00
00:08:20.180 raising children without fathers, when children don't have a father figure, when there's already a crisis in
00:08:26.900 masculinity in this country, when men are demonized and stigmatized, and when the state has taken
00:08:33.380 itself to be the surrogate husband and decentivized black fathers from taking care of their children, 0.86
00:08:38.740 and the state itself since the 1960s has taken itself as being the surrogate husband of black women,
00:08:45.220 that's a problem we have to address. Mass incarceration occurs because blacks constitute something like 12 to
00:08:50.740 13% of the population, but commit more than 70% of the crimes in this country. The carjackings,
00:08:56.420 the murders, the rapes, most of those, you cannot fudge the facts. These are just embarrassing facts.
00:09:02.740 I say this as a black immigrant sitting here, but the statistics are there. It's not white people who
00:09:08.820 are going into black communities and killing black people. The black on black crime is horrific. The 0.95
00:09:15.060 murder rates, the intra-racial and the interracial murder rates are disproportionately high. So we have
00:09:23.300 a higher percentage of blacks in prison because a higher percentage of blacks commit crimes in this 0.99
00:09:27.940 country than do whites. Those are the facts. So we have to look at the systemic problems that exist
00:09:34.100 within the black communities that are generationally replicated. Because since the latter part of the
00:09:42.820 civil rights movement, I argue in my book, the state has usurped its role as being the protector of
00:09:49.060 individual rights and has gone much farther in, or further, I should say, in taking the role of being
00:09:57.780 the surrogate, assuming a managerial class that lords it over of previously disenfranchised people,
00:10:06.500 expropriated their agency, told them, you can't take care of yourself, we will give you welfare benefits,
00:10:11.220 we will take care of you. And I've really paralyzed and crippled the agencies of individuals who,
00:10:17.780 during Jim Crow and during the height of segregation, lived often in thriving communities at thriving
00:10:25.540 schools. So I'm not advocating going back to that here. I'm just saying it's sort of ironic that
00:10:30.180 the statistics show that the literacy rates, the 22% of blacks, the out-of-wedlock 1.00
00:10:37.220 birth rate was 22% in 1962. So these are systemic problems and systematic problems,
00:10:47.860 both, that exist within the black community that we cannot just simply point to any disparities or
00:10:54.180 asymmetries between the race and just causally link them to racism. We have to look deeper at other
00:11:00.500 causal factors, I think.
00:11:07.780 And some of those systematic issues that you're talking about, what's interesting,
00:11:11.460 and you talked about the growth of the administration state and the state becoming
00:11:14.500 the surrogate, and that's absolutely true. And even though I do think that this is a bipartisan
00:11:21.060 issue, what's interesting to me is that I believe it's about 95% of black Americans vote for the Democrat
00:11:27.380 Party. And every election cycle, you hear the Democrat politicians vying for their vote to blame
00:11:32.660 the problems in the black community on, you know, Republicans, white people, Christians,
00:11:38.820 conservatives, whatever it is. But black Democrats, or Democrats in general, have been representing and
00:11:45.540 running communities with a high concentration of black Americans for decades, for decades and decades.
00:11:51.860 And so a lot of the problems that we are seeing and that are always blamed on, you know, white 0.67
00:11:57.300 Republicans, I'm not really sure how they're attributed to white Republicans when a lot of these
00:12:02.980 communities have not elected any form of Republican in decades. And so why, why do you think that is?
00:12:09.460 Why do you think there is kind of this cycle of the, of Democrats voting for, or for many black Americans
00:12:18.420 voting for the same politicians that are overseeing so many of the problems that are likely causing
00:12:24.100 a lot of the disparities in a lot of what ails these black communities?
00:12:29.700 Well, one is, I think many of them, many blacks are socially conservative and Christians. And so
00:12:34.660 the irony here is, you would think that they would vote on the other side. A lot of them are caught up in
00:12:40.340 a sort of, like many Americans are caught up in this entitlement mentality. I've lived in this country for 36 years,
00:12:47.460 and I am absolutely shocked at the extent to which this entitlement mentality, which seems so un-American,
00:12:54.260 has spread like fungi across this, if that's the way you pronounce it, fungus, you know what I mean?
00:12:59.460 Fungus across this country. But more importantly, I think that in one respect, the Republican Party has
00:13:07.700 never really offered a viable alternative. That is, it has never really properly reached out to the black 1.00
00:13:12.740 community and said, your values are our values. That is, you believe, can you take care of yourself?
00:13:19.620 Are you responsible for the procreative choices that you make, the reproductive choices that you make?
00:13:24.340 Are they yours? Do you believe in lower taxes for small businesses so that those small businesses can
00:13:30.100 then hire you? Do you believe that the income that you earn, that you send your child to,
00:13:38.340 you should not be taxed on that income, and you should have school choice, vouchers that you should
00:13:44.900 be able to send your children to charter schools? If the Republicans were to lay out a comprehensive
00:13:50.500 and intelligible, in layman's terms, philosophic and political worldview, a lot of black Americans,
00:13:57.860 I think, would reconsider how they vote. But I'm blaming the other side here because I think that
00:14:05.220 they turn up, like Hillary Clinton, who turns up with her fried chicken wings when she was running for
00:14:10.180 the Senate in 19, right? Do we know what she did? I think the Republicans do a similar thing. They sort
00:14:15.140 of make sort of half-hearted gestures. But there needs to be a consistent policy of saying, look, your
00:14:21.540 values are American values, and they're actually aspirational values that you have that are middle
00:14:28.660 class values. And you don't want a bloated totalitarian, large government taking over your
00:14:35.860 life, because then your sovereignty and your autonomy and your capacity to build a better life,
00:14:40.740 your children are no longer yours. In other words, the kind of respect, and just, I'm not saying the
00:14:46.260 Republican Party is disrespectful to blacks, but a show of continued protracted respect by laying out
00:14:53.700 the values that are universal values that all of us hold, really. We're responsible for our lives,
00:15:00.340 we're responsible for the children that we bring into the world. They're not anybody else's
00:15:04.340 responsibility, and the government can properly affect policies that will enhance our economic
00:15:11.060 well-being. If it's laid out that way, consistently, I think we would see a different kind of outcome.
00:15:19.220 Yes, I do also lay a lot of blame at Republicans' feet to simply, you know, they talk about the fact
00:15:26.260 that most black Americans vote Democrats and how to vote Democrat and that's a problem, but they don't 1.00
00:15:32.180 actually pose any solutions or, as you said, offer a viable or an attractive, rather,
00:15:38.340 alternative to voting Democrat. I also think a lot of it is media distortion, that there is a conflation
00:15:44.980 in the media of opposing the organization of Black Lives Matter or supporting good police officers or
00:15:52.660 being opposed to critical race theory and intersectionality with racism, especially now that we're told by people
00:15:59.140 like Ibram X. Kendi that you can't be not racist, you only can be anti-racist or racist, and anti-racist
00:16:05.460 means just agreeing with everything that Ibram X. Kendi says. And so now the conversation about race has
00:16:10.580 become very convoluted to where anything that the right opposes in the culture wars that has to do with
00:16:16.900 race is perceived as racism or hatred of black Americans, which it's not. And so I think that the
00:16:23.460 right is also fighting a little bit of an information and propaganda battle to say,
00:16:29.780 it's just kind of hard to cut through the noise and say, you know what? It's not racist to not
00:16:34.980 support Black Lives Matter, the organization, or it's not racist to be against critical race theory
00:16:40.020 and intersectionality. It's not racist to support good police officers, whatever it is. It can be really
00:16:47.380 hard to be on the defense and kind of explain from a conservative perspective. Yeah, I disagree with
00:16:52.980 a lot of these things, but I want black Americans as all Americans to really succeed. And it seems like
00:17:00.260 sometimes that kind of falls on deaf ears or it's hard to just cut through the noise, quite honestly.
00:17:05.300 I agree with you. I think that as speaking as an independent conservative here, I think that
00:17:12.260 the cutting through that noise is very difficult. But I also think that conservatives have got to
00:17:18.740 sort of admit a couple of things that, yes, America had an ugly racist past towards blacks. It has changed.
00:17:25.780 Yes, there continues to be stupid racists in this country, but the majority of Americans are not
00:17:31.300 bigoted racists who want to destroy the lives of black people. And then to spell out why critical
00:17:39.220 race theory, why the diversity, equity and inclusion movement, why even the reparations movement is
00:17:46.340 really, really harmful. Again, using language that is really, really honest, that is just really,
00:17:52.740 really transparent and to show that it would really, really harm the interests of black people. But I
00:17:59.060 don't think conservatives know how to fight the cultural wars. I don't think conservatives,
00:18:03.860 I mean, I find myself even being canceled by conservatives sometimes because they say,
00:18:07.460 can you just tone it down a little bit? And I'm like, well, I'm toning it down. The far left,
00:18:12.820 people like Ocasio-Cortez and the squad are ratcheting it up, right, and preaching hatred of America,
00:18:18.420 hatred of capitalism, hatred of individualism, attacking Christianity, attacking all religions, 0.62
00:18:24.180 really, but really the Judeo-Christian foundations of this country. And so I have no business toning
00:18:30.580 anything down. If anything, we need to be not increasing the noise volume, but increasing the
00:18:36.340 qualitative nature of our message and being unapologetic. See, I think too often conservatives
00:18:43.380 conservatives are, they're just very quiet and they fight the wrong types of battles.
00:18:51.060 So in the division of labor, I think the battle has to be fought on multiple levels. It just can't
00:18:55.460 be fought politically. These conservatives have to make inroads into Hollywood, have to make inroads
00:19:00.100 into comedy, have to make inroads into art, just like the left knows how to fight the battle on multiple
00:19:06.740 fronts, on Netflix, in Congress, in the Senate, in all spheres of life. I think conservatives concentrate
00:19:16.980 too much on the political realm and not on the multiple spheres in which people actually live their
00:19:24.660 lives. I certainly think that's true of elected Republicans, especially. I think elected Republicans,
00:19:33.140 Republicans in Congress do, for the most part, a really bad job of understanding what their constituents
00:19:39.860 really care about, understanding on a cultural level what we're after, what we're pushing against, and they
00:19:45.300 just don't know how to represent that. Whereas, as you said, the politicians on the left are almost only
00:19:52.180 fighting a culture war constantly. And so I do see that. I also see, though, I mean, I do see conservatives
00:20:00.420 who are not in the political realm, but are, you know, whether they're podcasters or whether they're
00:20:06.340 parents, whether they're school board members, they are starting to manifest what you just suggested,
00:20:12.480 realizing that, OK, we've got to provide entertainment. We've got to be we've got to be
00:20:17.520 running for office. That's a political realm thing. But we've got to be changing the minds of our
00:20:21.040 friends and families. As you said, it's a multi front effort. I do see conservatives starting to wake up and
00:20:27.060 realizing the dire consequences of some of this. I mean, there's a lot of different things like
00:20:33.140 gender ideology that I think are damaging, but also this critical race ideology. I think a lot of 0.79
00:20:38.480 parents, even apolitical parents, are waking up like in Virginia to, OK, this is a problem. Whether
00:20:43.840 your child is white or black, this is going to hold children back. It's going to pit them against each 1.00
00:20:48.680 other. This is not a recipe for success in the United States. So I do think that there are some
00:20:53.720 people that are waking up to that and doing exactly what you're suggesting.
00:20:57.940 I think so. And I would like to see more grassroots work between or among the races,
00:21:03.140 you know, between black, like white, white, white middle class moms reaching out to 1.00
00:21:09.220 this is done on the level of in the church, but reaching out to working, let's say, working class
00:21:16.720 moms and saying, look, I know you think and you are you have every reason to you to believe that
00:21:23.260 there still exists racism in America. But let's have a conversation about what critical race theory
00:21:29.220 is really, really about. And let's and is that the world that you really want your child to grow
00:21:35.120 up in a world that he believes or she believes that systemic racism suffuses every single institution
00:21:41.340 that race is still a determinant of destiny and fate. Do you really think that your race,
00:21:47.940 your child's race is going to be is going to determine his fate or his destiny and have these
00:21:53.340 have these conversations? So there needs to be more grassroots conversations. I don't believe in
00:21:58.120 anything like a racial reckoning. I think that's a ridiculous idea or some kind of, you know,
00:22:02.100 like I said, races don't reconcile, it's individuals reconcile. So I think that's one battle that could be fought
00:22:07.400 if if on the grassroots level, individual organizations could get together that comprise
00:22:15.020 different racial groups and have these honest conversations, you know, yes, I know that your
00:22:18.960 race has pure your sense of dignity has been eviscerated by racism from time to time. But that's
00:22:24.060 not the majority of Americans. And and have because people want to be heard, right. And the only platform
00:22:30.900 that a lot of black people feel that will give them some sort of visibility is the nefarious movement 1.00
00:22:36.460 of Black Lives Matter, which is a which is a Marxist American hating institution that wants to destroy
00:22:42.980 the economy and tear down banks. And it's it's it wasn't its charter when I read it years ago before
00:22:48.800 they took it down. And to have these really, really honest and sometimes painful, but non condescending
00:22:55.020 conversations. And that's, that's the way that I don't like to use the word healing. But that's the way
00:23:00.200 that an intelligent conversation is going to happen where people feel visible and feel heard
00:23:06.720 and feel less alienated from their fellow compatriot. You know, it's not something condescending where
00:23:12.640 white people are going to be speaking down to blacks or speaking for blacks, but speaking in conversation
00:23:17.680 with them because they're having these conversations with the critical race theorists and the Abraham
00:23:22.120 Kennies of the world who are really poising the minds of their children. 1.00
00:23:24.740 You know, one thing, and maybe you can help us work through this, because the majority of people
00:23:34.440 who listen to this podcast are suburban women Christians. And I would say that that is the next
00:23:43.300 frontier for the social justice, racial justice ideologues. Actually, they're already really conquering
00:23:49.880 this, this frontier through, through really a lot of white guilt, and some of using some of the
00:24:00.700 rhetoric that you just talked about having honest conversations, building bridges, but really the
00:24:05.460 conversations that are being had in like, white Christian suburban social justice world are not two
00:24:12.360 way conversations. They're conversations with a lot of stipulations and a lot of rules that are placed
00:24:17.200 only on white people. That, I mean, I'm not just thinking about, you know, some abstract idea. I'm
00:24:23.420 actually thinking about a specific group that a lot of Christians have been a part of that say
00:24:28.280 that, okay, white people, when you're talking to black people, you're not allowed to argue with them. 0.70
00:24:33.220 You're not allowed to push back on them. You're not allowed to say your own experience with any kind
00:24:37.040 of discrimination. If they want to cuss at you, if they want to yell at you, then you just have to let
00:24:41.500 them do that. That is what, that's how we're going to accomplish reconciliation. And you also have to
00:24:46.660 admit that you are inherently racist, whether or not you believe that you're racist. You have to
00:24:50.500 divest of your whiteness and your white privilege. I think that's also where the conversation stops
00:24:55.980 for a lot of white women who don't like racism and don't find themselves racist. Of course, they 1.00
00:25:01.640 don't want to be called a bigot. But when the conversation involves only being demeaned and
00:25:05.880 condemned for something that they don't feel like they're guilty for, well, a lot of people are going
00:25:09.900 to run for the hills and there will be no individual reconciliation there. So I don't know. Can you just
00:25:14.700 help us like work through that? How do we navigate that as people who want relationships with people
00:25:20.260 who feel like they're victims of racism? But, you know, the conversations like that, that are so
00:25:25.620 one-sided, they really just don't seem to work. Well, as someone who's written about white privilege
00:25:30.540 and how complicated that whole phenomenon is, like somebody living in Appalachia without any teeth,
00:25:34.760 no health care and running water, I don't see how that person is enjoying white privilege. I would say 0.89
00:25:39.700 to white suburban moms who are middle class is that, you know, you approach a black person,
00:25:44.640 first of all, unapologetically. Your whole demeanor is like, I don't see you as a problem and I don't
00:25:51.680 see myself as a problem. You don't exist as a problem for me and I don't exist as a problem.
00:25:57.560 I can't apologize for who I am in the world, but I want us to have an honest conversation and I want
00:26:03.220 to hear experience. And like any debate, you set the ground rule to respect. That is,
00:26:07.200 we're going to, there'll be mutual and reciprocal show of respect and civility
00:26:12.400 and reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements. And that is, you take your own
00:26:17.140 agency as a white person very, very seriously. You don't approach it apologetically. You don't
00:26:22.400 apologize. What are you supposed to do with your whiteness? I mean, if you're dressed in blackface, 0.98
00:26:26.500 you're going to be canceled, right? You're sort of annihilating your existence. You can't do it.
00:26:30.920 You're white. And that's just a basic fundamental part of your existence. And you approach that in a 0.99
00:26:36.200 very unapologetic way that you're not here to apologize for being white. You're not here to 0.82
00:26:40.760 apologize for your, even your whiteness, but you're here to really understand. You're both
00:26:47.040 there to understand the experiences of each other and to hear the stories of each other and to find
00:26:54.520 in that hearing moment solutions that will work for both, both parties. And I think if we come
00:27:02.340 without a sort of prefab agenda of converting each other to the other's perspective, but it's,
00:27:08.780 it's, it's, it's, whites have got to divest themselves of this apologetic notion because
00:27:15.480 the other side, blacks are going to be like any other group, you know, be like, see you as prey 1.00
00:27:23.440 and, and seize upon your guilt. And with, without, without any forethought of malice,
00:27:28.960 see that as a sort of weakness and conversations have to operate from a source of strength.
00:27:35.040 So again, I always go back to honesty, you know, admitting, no, yes, there, there has been an ugly
00:27:40.160 past in this country. There still continues to be racism, but don't ever admit that because you are
00:27:47.980 white, you have to be a walking practitioner of racism like Ibram Kendi wants you to admit. So 0.76
00:27:52.820 be, look into your heart and be honest and admit that, you know, you intend, you want to do good,
00:28:00.620 that we're all agents of good in some way in the world. And the more honest one can be with another
00:28:06.280 person, I think the more meaningful the conversation can be. But starting a conversation, I have to say,
00:28:14.340 with apologizing for being white, with admitting that because you're white, you're a systemic walking
00:28:20.300 practitioner of racism is a recipe for failure. Because what you've done is you've made blacks into 0.64
00:28:26.100 victims and stamped them with imprimatur of innocence. And you've put them beyond the pale
00:28:33.160 of criticism, you've put them beyond the pale of questioning. And you have to make it clear that
00:28:38.460 in the conversation, there's going to be mutual addressing of stories that, that, that you're
00:28:47.040 listening respectfully, but you're also going to ask critical questions and critical questions
00:28:51.060 are going to be asked of you. I would love it. I love when people approach me that way,
00:28:55.800 because it means that they take me as an equal, that they show me respect that they're not being
00:29:00.380 condescending. And everyone wants that show of respect and that show that I'm being treated as an
00:29:07.800 equal in this, in this, in this kind of situation.
00:29:17.120 One thing that's difficult is after, say, you know, a news story comes out that involves, say, a white 0.84
00:29:23.260 police officer, and, and a black person, an unarmed black person, where there was the story of the border
00:29:30.480 patrol agent, that, you know, he was on his horse, and the story came out that he was whipping migrants,
00:29:36.680 but he wasn't actually this, you know, the context was also published, that that's not what was happening.
00:29:41.660 And yet, I think what we're very often told is that, in order to be loving as a white person, we kind of
00:29:50.480 have to affirm whatever narrative, whatever the popular mainstream narrative is, after a news story, involving a
00:29:58.640 negative interaction between a white person and a black person. And in order to, like, to bring up
00:30:03.740 facts, I hear the facts, you know, actually about police brutality in the United States, or here's
00:30:07.640 what really happened in that story, or here are some statistics that refute the narrative that is
00:30:12.120 being perpetrated. If you do that, you're accused of being what is, like, the worst thing ever in
00:30:18.100 Christian social justice world, and that is unempathetic. You're called unloving, of course, you're called 0.99
00:30:22.560 racist and white supremacist and all these things. So how do we balance, like, speaking the truth, I think
00:30:27.880 correcting false narratives is a very loving thing, no matter what it's about. In the same
00:30:32.460 way that when you turn the lights on for someone in any way, you know, they don't like it, they're
00:30:37.140 frustrated because they were sleeping, but it's actually the loving thing to do. You don't want
00:30:40.260 someone to sleep the day away. It's been hard when people have told me hard truth that I didn't want
00:30:44.520 to know or have been corrected in some way, but it always ultimately ends up being good. But when it
00:30:48.980 comes to racial narratives in the United States that are not necessarily based on fact, I think most
00:30:55.040 people are really scared to bring up facts that refute what Black Lives Matter says or any
00:31:00.600 mainstream narrative about it. How do we balance that? How do we balance, like, the truth in love,
00:31:05.260 listening to someone's experience with empathy, but also, you know, not affirming things that simply
00:31:10.440 aren't true, you know, about something like systemic racism?
00:31:14.440 It's never going to be easy, and there will be pain, and there will be probably some sort of
00:31:20.040 fear of anger. There's no easy answer, but I think that the way that one presents oneself
00:31:24.000 is very important. That is, if you present yourself as we're all children of God,
00:31:29.140 and I'm approaching you not as a white woman or a white man or a white person speaking to a Black
00:31:34.300 person, but I'm approaching you as your brother in Christ or your brother in God, and that's the way
00:31:40.260 I see you fundamentally, and you really mean that, and you look that person in the eye,
00:31:44.560 and people can spot a fake, and so you're approaching this from a humanistic Christian
00:31:51.160 religious god-like perspective. That is, I feel as much the suffering in my own being when I see
00:31:59.960 someone being shot by a police, regardless of the statistics, whether that person is white, Black,
00:32:06.520 Mexican. I feel in my body the same kind of pain that you feel, and you really mean it because if you 1.00
00:32:13.120 are truly a child of God, you will feel when an earthquake hits Haiti and 10,000 people die,
00:32:19.860 or a tsunami hits Indonesia, and so if you truly are a child of God, you feel that suffering,
00:32:26.720 you feel the loss of life, and if you approach people, I find in that way that, yes, I'm a white
00:32:32.220 person, and you're a Black person, and I can never inhabit your experiences, and you can never inhabit mine, 1.00
00:32:37.060 but there's a deeper humanity that we share. We are children of God, and we are brothers and sisters
00:32:41.720 in God, and I'm approaching you not as primarily a white person. I'm approaching you as your brother
00:32:49.340 or your sister in God. That is a profound paradigm shifter. I mean, you have gotten to that person's
00:32:57.760 heart. You have broken through a lot of barriers. You have depoliticized the conversation and shifted
00:33:03.860 it into a deeper, deeper, deeper realm, and as someone, I must tell you, who was raised Catholic,
00:33:10.980 became an entranced atheist for 20 years, and then had a conversion experience, and I'm a firm
00:33:16.340 believer now, and I have a very strong relationship to God, and can't imagine not having God in my life.
00:33:22.240 I find that when I approach people in that way, when I say, look, I respect your position, I disagree with
00:33:29.080 it, but I'm here to have understanding, and I approach you not as an antagonist, but as your
00:33:35.700 brother in Christ. You know, you see the change in the person's demeanor, because you see the armor
00:33:44.760 getting off, because you're not there to have a fight. You're there to see, you come with a spirit
00:33:49.860 of empathy and understanding, and I think that is both an underestimated and under-pursued strategy
00:34:00.120 that has not been undertaken, and that's why I said it's outside of the show that racists can't
00:34:06.340 reconcile, because racists collectively can't do that. That takes individuals relating to individuals,
00:34:11.160 one person to another person, saying that on a grassroots level, and if a village, a whole nation of
00:34:21.220 whites were to do that to Blacks, or to comport themselves that way to Blacks, we could have a soul 0.70
00:34:28.020 revolution in this country. We really could.
00:34:30.820 You know, I think a lot of people want that. They certainly, we certainly don't enjoy the racial tension
00:34:37.520 and the racially divisive rhetoric that we see, and just the tension, I think, that a lot of
00:34:45.420 people feel surrounding these conversations. I love what you said about starting from a place of
00:34:50.720 humanity that is not political. Yes, I think it's important to talk about facts. I think it's important
00:34:56.320 to counter false arguments, bad arguments, false narratives, and things like that, but starting with
00:35:01.480 humanity and our connection as human beings, it changes the game. So thank you so much for sharing
00:35:07.340 all of that. I could ask you a thousand more questions, but can you tell everyone where they
00:35:12.160 can follow you, how they can support you, where they can buy your book?
00:35:16.160 You can buy my book on Amazon, because you get a fantastic discount there. So it's, it's, the book
00:35:23.520 is What Do White Americans Owe Black People, Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Doppression on Amazon, and
00:35:27.720 check out my other books there. And you can follow me at Twitter at Jason D. Hill 6, and on Facebook
00:35:34.760 at Dr. Jason D. Hill 1913. Yes, on Facebook. I'm always looking for my increase. In fact,
00:35:43.080 in my book, I also thank my Facebook community because they're so, they're so loving and supportive
00:35:47.140 of my work. Oh, good. Well, I'm so glad to hear that. I know that you'll get a lot of kind messages
00:35:51.120 from my audience. It's just what they do. And I encourage people to encourage you and reach out
00:35:56.500 to you and just tell them, tell you what they think about the interview. So thank you so much for
00:36:01.260 taking the time to talk to us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I feel so blessed
00:36:05.260 to have met you and to have been on your show. Thank you.