Ep 581 ｜ What DO White Americans Owe Black People？ ｜ Guest： Professor Jason D. Hill
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Summary
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
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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American meat delivered right to your front door. Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie, goodranchers.com
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slash Allie. Okay guys, we've got a treat for you today. I am talking to Professor Jason D. Hill
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of DePaul University. We are talking about his new book, What Do White Americans Owe Black People?
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He's got a very heterodox view on this, and I'm super excited for you to hear this conversation.
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We're going to talk about this idea of reparations, of racial reconciliation, and what he thinks about
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this as an independent conservative who kind of bucks against the mainstream narrative about race
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and racism in the United States. Very enlightening conversation. I know you're going to love it.
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So without further ado, here is Professor Hill. Professor Hill, thank you so much for joining us.
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For anyone who may not be familiar, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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I am a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, and I specialize in political philosophy and ethics.
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And I've been there for 22 years. I was born and raised in Jamaica. I came to America when I was
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around 20, and became a citizen maybe 25 years ago. And I've written a number of books. My most recent
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book is What Do White Americans Owe Black People? Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Depression.
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And in my work, I'm seeking to defend American exceptionalism, the American dream, and to show why
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America is really an unprecedented phenomenon in world civilization and in the world today.
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Yes, you've written several books. And the title that you just listed really particularly caught my
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eye. What do white people or what do white Americans owe black people? That's a question
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that I think a lot of people on either side of the aisle have been asking, particularly over the past
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almost a year and a half at this point since the George Floyd incident. We've been wondering,
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okay, what is it? Like, how can we reconcile? How can we satisfy both sides so that we can come
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together and kind of move past this racially divisive moment that we seem to be in? So can
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you flesh that out a little bit? Why did you write this book? And how did you come to the conclusions
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that you did? Well, I really started to write the book because in my previous book, we have overcome
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an immigrant's letter to the American people, which was really dedicated to the American people and a
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love letter to the American people. I had grown a little bit tired of what I call the America phobia
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that I thought was suffusing our culture, hatred of America, because it's a good country.
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And I saw the reparations movement. That is the idea that whites owe blacks reparations because of
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either the residual effects of slavery because of something called systemic racism, which I don't
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think exists anymore, or because of ancestral guilt, I thought was quite divisive in and of itself that
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reparations had been already paid in the form of affirmative action in the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
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which in itself brought blacks full legal standing before the law and ended, really terminated and
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ended formal state oppression for blacks. So legal oppression ended with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1972
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Employment Act, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And I think we have become a culture of entitlement where an occult,
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occult, occult of victimology has really descended on this culture. And I don't think that races can reconcile, I think,
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individuals as individuals can seek reconciliation among themselves. I don't believe in the idea of racial
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reconciliation, because that's a sort of a collectivist viewpoint. I believe that individuals
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acting under the auspices of the grace of God will reconcile among themselves. So I decided to write this
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book because I thought it was a reparations was really, really highly divisive. And the idea that it could bring
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the races together was ridiculous, that it would further just divide the races and to try to induce
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guilt into white people into thinking that because their ancestors might have owned slaves, which again
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is another fallacy. The majority of white Americans living today, according to my research, indicate that
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their ancestors came after the Civil War. So even if one were entitled, one were sort of tempted to go with
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the ancestral argument, which is a form of collectivism. It just wouldn't even work. So I wanted to sort of
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put an end to this notion that I wanted to take the reparations argument seriously, and to look at them
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and then to debunk them and to show that reparations have already been made and continue to be made towards
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So the argument is that I hear from people kind of on the other side of this that, okay, yes, the policies
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that you listed, the programs were put in place that you talked about in the 1960s and the early 1970s.
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That's true. But there have been other forms of oppression. And basically, that's the whole premise of the
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1619 Project, that basically, oppression and forms of slavery have never really gone away. They've just kind of
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changed forms over the last several hundred years. And today, it manifests itself in mass incarceration
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that started with the war on drugs. And some people would argue that, well, the 1960s and the 1970s
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really weren't that long ago. So people alive today are still being impacted by the systemic racism,
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the institutional racism that existed in those decades. And that is the cause of the disparities that
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we see between black Americans and white Americans. So maybe that's what they would say to kind of push back
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on what you're talking about, that even if systemic racism or institutionalized racism doesn't exist today,
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the effects are still being felt. And that actually is, you know, the reason for some of the poor outcomes
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and the trials that black America is going through today.
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Well, I think it's undeniable that there's still racism in America. I mean, there's still psychotic
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idiots, which is what racism really is. I mean, racism is a form of psychosis, where you look at
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someone's morphological characteristics, and you make a judgment based on skin pigmentation,
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or racial descriptive identity. But the fact that it suffuses our institutions, that our institutions are,
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by mandate, by decree, racist seems to be empirically false, or universities or corporate systems are inundated with diversity,
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equity and inclusion programs, where there is, there has been and continues to be a concerted effort to include
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minorities, especially blacks, in leadership positions, in recruitment positions. I speak as a professor of 25 years in the classroom.
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And I can tell you that there is no liberal, or let's strike the word liberal, there is no progressive,
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in a good sense of progressive, meaning forward looking university that has not taken at as its goal,
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the business of recruiting blacks into the universities, the whole establishment of black studies, queer studies,
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women's studies, Chicano studies, you name it, any kind of program that emerged in the 60s was a form of
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bringing into the domain, and bringing those who existed on the periphery or in the margins of
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society within the full pantheon of the human community. I think what we really need to talk
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about is the pathological features that exist within the black community that no, no one wants to talk
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about. For example, 74% of African American children in this country are born out of wedlock.
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Now, on the surface, it doesn't really seem to be alarming. But of the 74%, almost all of them,
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about 72, are born into dire poverty. So that's a problem. When you have single mothers largely
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raising children without fathers, when children don't have a father figure, when there's already a crisis in
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masculinity in this country, when men are demonized and stigmatized, and when the state has taken
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itself to be the surrogate husband and decentivized black fathers from taking care of their children,
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and the state itself since the 1960s has taken itself as being the surrogate husband of black women,
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that's a problem we have to address. Mass incarceration occurs because blacks constitute something like 12 to
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13% of the population, but commit more than 70% of the crimes in this country. The carjackings,
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the murders, the rapes, most of those, you cannot fudge the facts. These are just embarrassing facts.
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I say this as a black immigrant sitting here, but the statistics are there. It's not white people who
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are going into black communities and killing black people. The black on black crime is horrific. The
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murder rates, the intra-racial and the interracial murder rates are disproportionately high. So we have
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a higher percentage of blacks in prison because a higher percentage of blacks commit crimes in this
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country than do whites. Those are the facts. So we have to look at the systemic problems that exist
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within the black communities that are generationally replicated. Because since the latter part of the
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civil rights movement, I argue in my book, the state has usurped its role as being the protector of
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individual rights and has gone much farther in, or further, I should say, in taking the role of being
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the surrogate, assuming a managerial class that lords it over of previously disenfranchised people,
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expropriated their agency, told them, you can't take care of yourself, we will give you welfare benefits,
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we will take care of you. And I've really paralyzed and crippled the agencies of individuals who,
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during Jim Crow and during the height of segregation, lived often in thriving communities at thriving
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schools. So I'm not advocating going back to that here. I'm just saying it's sort of ironic that
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the statistics show that the literacy rates, the 22% of blacks, the out-of-wedlock
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birth rate was 22% in 1962. So these are systemic problems and systematic problems,
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both, that exist within the black community that we cannot just simply point to any disparities or
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asymmetries between the race and just causally link them to racism. We have to look deeper at other
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And some of those systematic issues that you're talking about, what's interesting,
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and you talked about the growth of the administration state and the state becoming
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the surrogate, and that's absolutely true. And even though I do think that this is a bipartisan
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issue, what's interesting to me is that I believe it's about 95% of black Americans vote for the Democrat
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Party. And every election cycle, you hear the Democrat politicians vying for their vote to blame
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the problems in the black community on, you know, Republicans, white people, Christians,
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conservatives, whatever it is. But black Democrats, or Democrats in general, have been representing and
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running communities with a high concentration of black Americans for decades, for decades and decades.
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And so a lot of the problems that we are seeing and that are always blamed on, you know, white
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Republicans, I'm not really sure how they're attributed to white Republicans when a lot of these
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communities have not elected any form of Republican in decades. And so why, why do you think that is?
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Why do you think there is kind of this cycle of the, of Democrats voting for, or for many black Americans
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voting for the same politicians that are overseeing so many of the problems that are likely causing
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a lot of the disparities in a lot of what ails these black communities?
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Well, one is, I think many of them, many blacks are socially conservative and Christians. And so
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the irony here is, you would think that they would vote on the other side. A lot of them are caught up in
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a sort of, like many Americans are caught up in this entitlement mentality. I've lived in this country for 36 years,
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and I am absolutely shocked at the extent to which this entitlement mentality, which seems so un-American,
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has spread like fungi across this, if that's the way you pronounce it, fungus, you know what I mean?
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Fungus across this country. But more importantly, I think that in one respect, the Republican Party has
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never really offered a viable alternative. That is, it has never really properly reached out to the black
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community and said, your values are our values. That is, you believe, can you take care of yourself?
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Are you responsible for the procreative choices that you make, the reproductive choices that you make?
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Are they yours? Do you believe in lower taxes for small businesses so that those small businesses can
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then hire you? Do you believe that the income that you earn, that you send your child to,
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you should not be taxed on that income, and you should have school choice, vouchers that you should
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be able to send your children to charter schools? If the Republicans were to lay out a comprehensive
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and intelligible, in layman's terms, philosophic and political worldview, a lot of black Americans,
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I think, would reconsider how they vote. But I'm blaming the other side here because I think that
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they turn up, like Hillary Clinton, who turns up with her fried chicken wings when she was running for
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the Senate in 19, right? Do we know what she did? I think the Republicans do a similar thing. They sort
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of make sort of half-hearted gestures. But there needs to be a consistent policy of saying, look, your
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values are American values, and they're actually aspirational values that you have that are middle
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class values. And you don't want a bloated totalitarian, large government taking over your
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life, because then your sovereignty and your autonomy and your capacity to build a better life,
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your children are no longer yours. In other words, the kind of respect, and just, I'm not saying the
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Republican Party is disrespectful to blacks, but a show of continued protracted respect by laying out
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the values that are universal values that all of us hold, really. We're responsible for our lives,
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we're responsible for the children that we bring into the world. They're not anybody else's
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responsibility, and the government can properly affect policies that will enhance our economic
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well-being. If it's laid out that way, consistently, I think we would see a different kind of outcome.
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Yes, I do also lay a lot of blame at Republicans' feet to simply, you know, they talk about the fact
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that most black Americans vote Democrats and how to vote Democrat and that's a problem, but they don't
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actually pose any solutions or, as you said, offer a viable or an attractive, rather,
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alternative to voting Democrat. I also think a lot of it is media distortion, that there is a conflation
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in the media of opposing the organization of Black Lives Matter or supporting good police officers or
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being opposed to critical race theory and intersectionality with racism, especially now that we're told by people
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like Ibram X. Kendi that you can't be not racist, you only can be anti-racist or racist, and anti-racist
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means just agreeing with everything that Ibram X. Kendi says. And so now the conversation about race has
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become very convoluted to where anything that the right opposes in the culture wars that has to do with
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race is perceived as racism or hatred of black Americans, which it's not. And so I think that the
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right is also fighting a little bit of an information and propaganda battle to say,
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it's just kind of hard to cut through the noise and say, you know what? It's not racist to not
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support Black Lives Matter, the organization, or it's not racist to be against critical race theory
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and intersectionality. It's not racist to support good police officers, whatever it is. It can be really
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hard to be on the defense and kind of explain from a conservative perspective. Yeah, I disagree with
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a lot of these things, but I want black Americans as all Americans to really succeed. And it seems like
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sometimes that kind of falls on deaf ears or it's hard to just cut through the noise, quite honestly.
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I agree with you. I think that as speaking as an independent conservative here, I think that
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the cutting through that noise is very difficult. But I also think that conservatives have got to
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sort of admit a couple of things that, yes, America had an ugly racist past towards blacks. It has changed.
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Yes, there continues to be stupid racists in this country, but the majority of Americans are not
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bigoted racists who want to destroy the lives of black people. And then to spell out why critical
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race theory, why the diversity, equity and inclusion movement, why even the reparations movement is
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really, really harmful. Again, using language that is really, really honest, that is just really,
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really transparent and to show that it would really, really harm the interests of black people. But I
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don't think conservatives know how to fight the cultural wars. I don't think conservatives,
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I mean, I find myself even being canceled by conservatives sometimes because they say,
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can you just tone it down a little bit? And I'm like, well, I'm toning it down. The far left,
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people like Ocasio-Cortez and the squad are ratcheting it up, right, and preaching hatred of America,
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hatred of capitalism, hatred of individualism, attacking Christianity, attacking all religions,
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really, but really the Judeo-Christian foundations of this country. And so I have no business toning
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anything down. If anything, we need to be not increasing the noise volume, but increasing the
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qualitative nature of our message and being unapologetic. See, I think too often conservatives
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conservatives are, they're just very quiet and they fight the wrong types of battles.
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So in the division of labor, I think the battle has to be fought on multiple levels. It just can't
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be fought politically. These conservatives have to make inroads into Hollywood, have to make inroads
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into comedy, have to make inroads into art, just like the left knows how to fight the battle on multiple
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fronts, on Netflix, in Congress, in the Senate, in all spheres of life. I think conservatives concentrate
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too much on the political realm and not on the multiple spheres in which people actually live their
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lives. I certainly think that's true of elected Republicans, especially. I think elected Republicans,
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Republicans in Congress do, for the most part, a really bad job of understanding what their constituents
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really care about, understanding on a cultural level what we're after, what we're pushing against, and they
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just don't know how to represent that. Whereas, as you said, the politicians on the left are almost only
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fighting a culture war constantly. And so I do see that. I also see, though, I mean, I do see conservatives
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who are not in the political realm, but are, you know, whether they're podcasters or whether they're
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parents, whether they're school board members, they are starting to manifest what you just suggested,
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realizing that, OK, we've got to provide entertainment. We've got to be we've got to be
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running for office. That's a political realm thing. But we've got to be changing the minds of our
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friends and families. As you said, it's a multi front effort. I do see conservatives starting to wake up and
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realizing the dire consequences of some of this. I mean, there's a lot of different things like
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gender ideology that I think are damaging, but also this critical race ideology. I think a lot of
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parents, even apolitical parents, are waking up like in Virginia to, OK, this is a problem. Whether
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your child is white or black, this is going to hold children back. It's going to pit them against each
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other. This is not a recipe for success in the United States. So I do think that there are some
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people that are waking up to that and doing exactly what you're suggesting.
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I think so. And I would like to see more grassroots work between or among the races,
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you know, between black, like white, white, white middle class moms reaching out to
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this is done on the level of in the church, but reaching out to working, let's say, working class
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moms and saying, look, I know you think and you are you have every reason to you to believe that
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there still exists racism in America. But let's have a conversation about what critical race theory
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is really, really about. And let's and is that the world that you really want your child to grow
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up in a world that he believes or she believes that systemic racism suffuses every single institution
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that race is still a determinant of destiny and fate. Do you really think that your race,
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your child's race is going to be is going to determine his fate or his destiny and have these
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have these conversations? So there needs to be more grassroots conversations. I don't believe in
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anything like a racial reckoning. I think that's a ridiculous idea or some kind of, you know,
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like I said, races don't reconcile, it's individuals reconcile. So I think that's one battle that could be fought
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if if on the grassroots level, individual organizations could get together that comprise
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different racial groups and have these honest conversations, you know, yes, I know that your
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race has pure your sense of dignity has been eviscerated by racism from time to time. But that's
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not the majority of Americans. And and have because people want to be heard, right. And the only platform
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that a lot of black people feel that will give them some sort of visibility is the nefarious movement
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of Black Lives Matter, which is a which is a Marxist American hating institution that wants to destroy
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the economy and tear down banks. And it's it's it wasn't its charter when I read it years ago before
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they took it down. And to have these really, really honest and sometimes painful, but non condescending
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conversations. And that's, that's the way that I don't like to use the word healing. But that's the way
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that an intelligent conversation is going to happen where people feel visible and feel heard
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and feel less alienated from their fellow compatriot. You know, it's not something condescending where
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white people are going to be speaking down to blacks or speaking for blacks, but speaking in conversation
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with them because they're having these conversations with the critical race theorists and the Abraham
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Kennies of the world who are really poising the minds of their children.
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You know, one thing, and maybe you can help us work through this, because the majority of people
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who listen to this podcast are suburban women Christians. And I would say that that is the next
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frontier for the social justice, racial justice ideologues. Actually, they're already really conquering
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this, this frontier through, through really a lot of white guilt, and some of using some of the
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rhetoric that you just talked about having honest conversations, building bridges, but really the
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conversations that are being had in like, white Christian suburban social justice world are not two
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way conversations. They're conversations with a lot of stipulations and a lot of rules that are placed
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only on white people. That, I mean, I'm not just thinking about, you know, some abstract idea. I'm
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actually thinking about a specific group that a lot of Christians have been a part of that say
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that, okay, white people, when you're talking to black people, you're not allowed to argue with them.
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You're not allowed to push back on them. You're not allowed to say your own experience with any kind
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of discrimination. If they want to cuss at you, if they want to yell at you, then you just have to let
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them do that. That is what, that's how we're going to accomplish reconciliation. And you also have to
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admit that you are inherently racist, whether or not you believe that you're racist. You have to
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divest of your whiteness and your white privilege. I think that's also where the conversation stops
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for a lot of white women who don't like racism and don't find themselves racist. Of course, they
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don't want to be called a bigot. But when the conversation involves only being demeaned and
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condemned for something that they don't feel like they're guilty for, well, a lot of people are going
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to run for the hills and there will be no individual reconciliation there. So I don't know. Can you just
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help us like work through that? How do we navigate that as people who want relationships with people
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who feel like they're victims of racism? But, you know, the conversations like that, that are so
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one-sided, they really just don't seem to work. Well, as someone who's written about white privilege
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and how complicated that whole phenomenon is, like somebody living in Appalachia without any teeth,
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no health care and running water, I don't see how that person is enjoying white privilege. I would say
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to white suburban moms who are middle class is that, you know, you approach a black person,
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first of all, unapologetically. Your whole demeanor is like, I don't see you as a problem and I don't
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see myself as a problem. You don't exist as a problem for me and I don't exist as a problem.
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I can't apologize for who I am in the world, but I want us to have an honest conversation and I want
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to hear experience. And like any debate, you set the ground rule to respect. That is,
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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,
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
00:26:36.200
very unapologetic way that you're not here to apologize for being white. You're not here to
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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.