Ep 616 ｜ Why Black America Votes Democrat ｜ Guests： Shemeka Michelle & Delano Squires
Episode Stats
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Summary
Delano Squires ( ) and Shamika Michelle ( ) join Allie and Allie to discuss abortion, LGBTQ+ issues, and the media s attempt to paint a picture of Black America through the lens of the Black community.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. This episode is brought to you by our friends
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at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie. That's goodranchers.com slash Allie.
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All right. I've got a really fun conversation for you today with two guests, Delano Squires.
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You've seen him on Relatable before. And also Shamika Michelle. She is a contributor for
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Jason Whitlock's Fearless. She has amazing commentary and amazing insight. We are going
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to talk about the issues specific to Black America, how we as Christians should be approaching them
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with both truth and in love. But we're also going to talk about this issue of abortion and how the
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media is framing it and really how the media tries to conflate LGBTQ issues, abortion issues with
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so-called racial justice. And we'll also kind of critique a little bit of how the church
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is responding so timidly to all of these things. You're going to love this conversation. Wait till
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the end where they just, they will give you so much fire. You will leave this conversation feeling
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really inspired. I'm excited for you to hear it. So without further ado, here are our new friends,
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Delano and Shamika. Thank you guys so much for joining me. Delano, this is, I believe, your second
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time on the show. This is your first time on the show. So can you first tell us who you are and what
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you do? I am Shamika Michelle and I'm a contributor for Fearless with the Blaze. So thank you for having
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me, Allie. I appreciate it. Yeah, of course. And Delano, you are a contributor as well for Jason.
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Correct. Okay. So today we're going to talk about quite a few things. I just want to get both of
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your reactions to them and just respond in whatever order you guys want. So we were talking before the
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before the camera started rolling about this $40 billion that has been secured for Ukraine,
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Ukrainian defenses. And Mitch McConnell, who is a Republican senator, he said a couple days ago that
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we all agree. He said in a press conference, we all agree that this is the most important thing
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going on in the world. Well, I don't think any of us deny that it's important or I don't think any of
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us have a lack of compassion for the Ukrainian people. Absolutely. But there's a lot that's going
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on that is affecting our daily lives. I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you think like that
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what's going on in Ukraine is the most important thing in your lives or what's going on in the world
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right now? Yeah, I don't agree. When I'm at the gas pump, I don't agree. When I am at the grocery
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store and my bill is higher than usual, I don't agree. And I think Mitch McConnell and so many
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others are so out of touch with the common person that they say ridiculous things like this, not
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realizing the strain that everyday people feel. So no, I definitely don't think it's the most
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important, not to me and not to many people that I know. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel the same way. I mean,
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as Shamika said, I see gas prices creeping back up. But I think the comments from Mitch McConnell
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reveal sort of what some people will call the uniparty, which is that Democrats and Republicans,
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when it comes to certain issues and war is one of them, seem to be more on the same page with each
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other than they are with the American public. So that the notion that the most important thing
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for U.S. senators to be focusing on is maintaining the sovereignty of Ukraine, as opposed to addressing
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the issues in America, is one of the reasons that both groups get called globalists. And I think that
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label is fitting and appropriate. Yeah, especially when you are considering the fact that our own
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countries' borders are not being protected, our own sovereignty is not being protected, our own
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democratic processes are not being protected by the very same people who say that the number one
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priority of American politicians is to represent the interests of Ukraine. I mean, just a few things
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that are going on. Obviously, you mentioned high gas prices, inflation that is affecting all kinds of
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goods and services, the border wide open. We've got a fentanyl, opioid, homelessness crisis in many
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American cities. I mean, look at the American towns, especially in the Rust Belt. They're completely
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gutted because both parties have really kind of outsourced our manufacturing, outsourced our jobs.
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People are struggling and suffering there. Murder is up in major cities. Suicide is up among young
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people, I think in large part due to a lot of the policies that forced young people into isolation
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for the past two years. And then thinking of democracy and liberty, the DHS has a disinformation
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board. The DOJ is going after concerned parents that are complaining to school boards. The House
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Judiciary Committee confirmed yesterday people can't find baby formula, literally cannot feed their
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babies here, here in the United States. This is happening to the constituents of the people who say
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that really our focus should be on Ukraine. That's just, that's just incredible to me.
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It would be as if me as a husband and father, if I told my wife that my most important priority
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is the condition of the woman down the street, her household, to make sure that she's fed and her
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children are fed while our family is starving and feeling insecure. So when I hear people like Mitch
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McConnell and a lot of other congressional Republicans speak this way, again, to me, it just tells me that
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they don't really understand their top priority and are not as concerned with American interests as they should
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Right. That's why America first is so important to me when I hear a politician say that or anyone say that I'm paying
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attention. Do you really believe America first? And you have to have that as one of your talking points.
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So one of the things that you believe to even get my attention in the first place, I don't want someone that's
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paying attention to everything outside of America. America first, because that's where I live.
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That's where my children live. And that's what I want to make sure is great. And, you know, if people
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would get offended when Trump would say, make America great again, and you would have a lot of people
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saying, when was it ever great? Where there was a time that I even remembered that it was great.
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You could leave your doors unlocked. You didn't have to worry about crime the way, you know, we do now.
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America was great. And I think we can still have that if we put America first. If we're going to
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focus on everything else, we're never going to get there.
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Yeah, I agree. I mean, some people are offended by that. They think that that means that you lack
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empathy or compassion for other people. But it really is a great metaphor to talk about it like
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a family, because countries really are like families. We care about our neighbors. If our neighbor is in
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trouble, we obviously want to help them, but not at the expense of my kids. Like if I told,
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like if my husband told us, okay, we're going to let every person in from the neighborhood,
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we're not going to vet them. We're not going to look at their background. We have no idea what
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they're bringing in our house. We are going to let them eat. We're going to give them all of the
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protection and the resources that's in our home. And not in addition to getting those things ourselves,
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but instead of us, then that would make him a bad husband. That would make him a bad father.
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That would make him a bad provider. And in the same way, when you're putting other countries
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before your own country, that makes you a bad leader. That is actually lacking compassion.
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Some people just don't seem to understand that. I don't know.
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Right. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about, we were also talking about this before the camera
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started rolling. We'll kind of go into this in general, but specifically in relation to Roe v.
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Wade and the abortion issue, which is obviously, especially hot right now, something that people
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are really talking about. I read this article in the Washington Examiner, a big city teachers
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unions say Supreme court draft overturning Roe v. Wade is racist. Of course it's racist.
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I didn't even see the article, but I knew, I knew how.
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Exactly. You knew. So this is what the Chicago teachers union said. The same forces that want to
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erase black history and black votes, what trample the rights of transgender students and our queer
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siblings. So again, they put it all together like we were talking about and build walls around our
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country. Again, going back to what we were talking about are continuing their attacks by threatening
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a woman's right to choose. Delano, can you tell me why these issues are always conflated like abortion
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and LGBTQ, they're seen as like racial justice issues. What's going on there?
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I've been thinking about this because I, I like to name things, right? I like to come up with terms.
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So what I think the left does, they understand that they're pushing a radical agenda, but they
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understand if they push it in a traditional way that a lot of their constituents will be resistant
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to it because their constituents don't want to see more cisgender, heterosexual males telling people
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what to do. So they said, let's dip it in chocolate. Let's make black people the face of it.
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And we will turn, for instance, what used to be called gay rights, which was basically a lot of
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middle-class white men who wanted to access the privileges of middle-class bourgeoisie, you know,
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normalcy, be able to buy a house and get an education and have a job, have a partnership that's
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recognized by the state, pass on property. That has transformed into the LGBTQIA2S plus agenda,
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impressive, which now I get a lot of exercise on it. But now if, if you notice every time the
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president mentions transgenderism, like on the transgender day of remembrance, he will always
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talk about the transgender black girls and women of color who are being assaulted and, and, you know,
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victims of crime in the streets because this in effect is a black scene. So you, you inoculate
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yourself from charges of racism, if you make every part of your agenda, a racial justice issue. So
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same thing with abortion. Now they're saying that if black women aren't able to terminate their
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pregnancies, right, that this is a function of white supremacy. So we've come to the point where
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fewer black children being born is liberation and more black children being born. If Roe v. Wade is
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overturned is, as I said, an aspect of white supremacy. And so this will continue. So it's
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the, the LGBT stuff, abortion, climate change, what they call climate change will be framed as
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black folks who live in and around cities and the name New Orleans and other people who live,
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you know, on the East coast, they're the ones who will be most in danger from climate change.
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So that's why we need to take over one sixth of the economy and steer it in the right direction
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to avert this existential crisis. All while the Obamas still live in their waterfront,
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their beachfront mansion. So, of course, so chocolate covered Marxism. That's what I'm going with.
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I heard Janet Yellen. She's the treasury secretary. I don't know if you guys saw her exchange with Senator
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Tim Scott. I don't think I have the clip because I forgot to ask for it, but she, um, was saying,
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you know, Roe v. Wade being overturned or women not having enough access to abortion is going to
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negatively impact the labor participation rate. It's going to have a negative impact on the economy.
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And, you know, most of these women, she said they're in poverty and they're black.
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And Tim Scott, what a person to say that to Senator Scott said, well, I just think that as
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a black guy who was raised by a mother in abject poverty, I'm happy to be here as a United States
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Senator. And that was just the perfect, simple response because it like also what's amazing
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about that statement is that she represents the very same side who calls conservatives callous for
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bringing up the economy when it came to COVID. They called us grandma killers for that. But now she's
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saying, so babies need to be placed on the altar of the economy, which is also stupid because like
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you actually do economically speaking, need more children and need more people to like replace
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the older generations for labor force participation. It's all crazy. What do you think about that?
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Shamika, what do you think about her response that black women need abortion in order to be successful?
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Ali, like Delano was saying, I think anytime they want to get black people involved or pull on our
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heartstrings, they wrap anything in racism. When they were talking about illegal immigration,
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they brought in black people. They felt like we should be understanding for minorities. And I'm
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thinking, well, somebody floating in on an inner tube is certainly different than my ancestors that
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were brought here unwillingly, you know, and when they want to talk about voter suppression,
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oh, black people, you know, this is going to take you back to Jim Crow. They're doing the same thing
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with abortion. They always do that because black people fall for it so much. We are, you know,
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so compassionate and we're so afraid. When I heard them say that they were going, you know,
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if they overturn Roe versus Wade, be careful. They can overturn civil rights. I said, oh gosh,
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they're going to do the same thing that they've done with everything else. And listening to Janet
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is offensive to me because I'm a product of rape. My mother was raped at 14 by a complete stranger.
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I was born to her at 15. If she had the choice or if someone was forcing her to have an abortion,
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I would not be here. So when they talk as if that is the only option for, uh, black women or poor
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women, that's just simply not true. I was born to a 15 year old. She of course had to work hard to
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take care of me, but she did it. And here I am. So it's possible. So when I hear people speak about
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that, you don't talk about the possibilities. Like all you talk about is the negative aspect of it.
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And I am a prime example of the possibilities. So it's personal to me. Right. And they're,
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they're people, even if someone did grow up in exclusive hardship, even if a person was born
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into poverty and then they were homeless and never really did contribute anything to society,
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they were never productive. That's still a human being. And it seems to me like the pro-abortion side,
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like Janet Yellen, they simply forget about the humanity. Even if Tim Scott never became Senator
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Scott, it still would have been wrong to abort him. It still would not have been a good justification
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just because his mom is poor, because he's a human being. And it seems to me like the left
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forgets that. And a lot of people fall for it. Even professing Christians kind of fall for the whole,
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like abortion is compassionate. Abortion is racial justice thing. It's bizarre to me.
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I think it, it underscores, um, and particularly for the left, when you detach policy, um, and I'll
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say this as a Christian, when you detach policy from a sense of objective morality, this is where you get
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to, you get to the point where life is not, does not have inherent value. It has conditional value.
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And one of those conditions is the economic security of the mother. And another is whether
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the mother wants the child. And if you have those two, right, then you've got a green light. But if
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you don't, if you're missing one of them, then it's, well, this is not, you know, it's not a good
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time for her. She can pursue, you know, educational opportunities. So when Janet Yellen speaks in,
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in, in one sense, she's actually being honest about how the left sees human life. She's reading
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from a feminist script that was written a long time ago that says that the ultimate use of a
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woman's time and energy is in the labor force. Um, that says that marriage and family are forces
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of oppression. Children are opportunity costs because look at how much more you could be doing
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with your life. Um, so it, it, I think you see all of those things coming together. And to,
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to Shamika's point, they know exactly the buttons to push to, um, inflame may not be the word, but,
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but to, to excite and flame the black community. This is what I call the Selma syndrome,
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where they take America's racial history, right? Which at times has been very ugly. So,
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so we don't have to paper over that, but what they do instead of saying, this is what happened then
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and look how far we've come since then. They say, this is what is waiting at your door. So you need
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to give us the power to keep from going back into Jim Crow, to keep from Brown versus board of ed being
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reversed or loving versus Virginia being reversed. Um, and, and they know exactly the buttons to push.
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Um, and, and when they do it, that's how you get to your point. Evangelicals, black and white,
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the ones who talk about racial justice, the ones who talk about social justice and racial disparities,
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who some of them have been against abortion for a long time, but because of the way it went about
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of, of, if Roe was overturned, because they will have to give some of that credit to the former
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president, to president Trump, they want to get as far away from that as possible.
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So now the talking point is, well, you, if Roe's overturned, you Christians better show that
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you're pro all of life from womb to tomb and you, we need bigger government and, and, you know,
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the government is our dad and he needs to pay up. And, and I'm just like, no, no words of celebration,
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no thanking God for his grace in this particular area, but it's, it's, so you see the secular left
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left and the religious left, right. Who, who they're shedding their skin of, of theological
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conservatism as we're, we're seeing that before our very eyes. I mean, there's some people
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and I, and I'll, I'll end on this point. Um, uh, a lot of, some of your listeners may have
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heard of Jamar Tisby, um, who's deep in the anti-racism game, used to work with Ibram
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Kendi. I signed up for his newsletter because I'm a glutton for punishment. And he said that
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him and one of his, uh, co-hosts on his podcast to self-identify Christian black men were talking
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about abortion. And if you just read it, you would never think that these were two Christian
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black men because they had all the talking points. We're men, so we shouldn't talk about
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this. Um, this is safe activism for white conservatives, white, uh, conservatives use
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Roe versus abortion. Um, uh, they talk about the disproportionate effect it has on black folks
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and they use that against us. And at no point did he ever talk about the obligations that men,
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including black men have to the mothers of their children, um, and the children themselves. It's
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always about more government spending and more of what white people should be doing to help. Um,
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I'm assuming he thinks to help black folks. And you see all of that playing out, even in the words
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that Janet Yellen said to Tim Scott. Both of y'all are touching on kind of emotional manipulation that
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you think are used against black people to try to, I guess, just fundamentally get them to keep
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voting Democrat and to believe that, you know, their real enemy is white supremacists or white
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evangelicals. Um, why do you think that is effective? Because I think it's about 92% of black
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Americans do vote Democrat. And we're even talking about people that maybe we would consider
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conservative Christians in some ways, at least as far as like sexuality and stuff goes, they still
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will vote Democrat. I mean, why, why do you think that is? Personally, for me, it's the way I was
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raised and not necessarily at no time. Did my family sit me down and say, Hey, you have to be a
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Democrat. Yeah. But I remember when Ronald Reagan won and I remember my family saying things like, Oh my
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God, this is the antichrist because his name was Ronald Wilson Reagan. He, he has six letters in each
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name. And so it was six, six, six. Yes. And so I'm young, but I remember this and I went to,
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that kind of stuff has been around for a long time because people on both sides still think that kind
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of thing now. Yeah. And I went to a, an all black school so I can remember teachers just being, you
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know, saying pretty much this was horrible. So very early on, I formed white Democrat, good,
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because they love Jimmy Carter, white Republican bad. Now this is me at six, five, five, six years old
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being able to make that correlation just by what I'm hearing everyone say. And then growing up in the
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black church, we always had Democrats to come during election time to speak in the church. And this was
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just, they were who, you know, we had our arms open to. So I always thought Democrat is for us. And it
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wasn't until I got older, actually when Obama was in office, because I was one of the people that voted
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for him because he was black. So actually when he was in office, I started seeing things that didn't line
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up and it's made me think this doesn't line up with what I actually believe. Like what was it and what
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kind of gave you that revelation? Well, for one, he seemed to push a lot of the LGBTQ agenda. And for
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me, that didn't line up with Christian values. And I was raised in the church. So I'm like, wait a minute,
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that's not looking right. And I saw a lot of race and I kind of got caught up in it a little bit,
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just feeling like, oh, I'm black. So I'm automatically oppressed. It didn't matter that
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I was living in a four bedroom, three bathroom house. It didn't matter that we had two Mercedes
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and a Cadillac in the driveway. I was, I'm oppressed because I'm black. What do you mean? And so it just
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had that message, that message of oppression. Do you feel like that was indoctrinated,
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indoctrinated in you at a young age? Or do you think that Obama kind of exacerbated that or made
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you feel that way? I think he made me see that I was wrong about it. But I do think that I was raised
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again, nobody set me down, but just being observant and listening to people, I think I felt, okay,
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we're less than. And then when Obama just began, when he was in office, a lot of things began to come
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to light. And I'm like, that makes absolutely no sense. It does not line up. And so when people
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ask me what made me become conservative or why do I identify with conservatism? It wasn't really just
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like a certain light bulb that came on or a decision. I think I decided what I'm voting for
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does not line up with what I actually believe, what I always have believed.
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I think most black people are conservative. I think they just vote wrong. And thankfully,
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I began to see the light around the time when Obama was in office. And I'm like, what am I doing?
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So 2016, I knew for sure I wasn't voting for Hillary because absolutely not. I wasn't completely sold on
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Trump because at this point, I'm going through the whole what's wrong with me that I hear him,
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I understand what he's saying. I like, and I agree. They're telling me this man is racist. He's
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misogynist, but I'm a black woman and I like him. Something's wrong with me. So, you know, it was
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just kind of, you know, a gradual awakening for me. And I do think it started during Obama's term,
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I think, um, part of what is going on, and I don't, I don't know when this change happened,
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is that, um, blackness, however, people sort of define it, which historically has been, you know,
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about skin color and phenotype and what people look like, eventually morphed into a political
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identity. And the left is big on political identities, right? So when people say identity
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politics, that's part of what they're talking about. Um, so I think it really, what really
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brought it out was, you know, the infamous when Biden said, if you don't know if you vote
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for me, the other guy, then you ain't black. And there were some people, one of them being
00:25:38.040
Nicole Hannah Jones, who said, let's not, she tweeted and deleted, let's not act as if we
00:25:43.140
don't know the difference between racial blackness and political blackness. Um, and even though
00:25:50.280
she was criticized for it, I think her assessment of what actually is, is accurate. And I think
00:25:55.960
that's how a lot of people and a lot of black folks look at it. It's like, um,
00:25:59.360
if you vote for a Republican, if I go in the barbershop and I, and I say, Hey guys, I'm
00:26:04.800
a Republican. No, they already call me a Republican, by the way. Um, and I say, Hey guys, I'm going
00:26:10.160
to, I'm a Republican. Somebody is either going to say or think this guy's a sellout. Now they'll
00:26:16.700
lie to you and say, Oh, it's about Trump, but it's not about Trump. Cause they, they said
00:26:20.720
the same thing about Bush, Reagan. Um, so it's not really about Trump, but it's the fusion
00:26:28.240
of those two things that I think is the big problem. Actually my most recent column for
00:26:31.880
the blaze is entitled, uh, the president's right. I ain't Biden black. And I go into talking
00:26:38.240
about political blackness, which in the spirit of, um, charity and attribution, I call Biden
00:26:44.660
blackness. That's my new term for it. And I say what it is, is the same thing we were
00:26:49.860
talking about before how, um, voting preferences get turned into a racial identity and how the
00:26:57.820
left's agenda gets wrapped in, you know, um, racial justice terms. And as long as that remains
00:27:05.940
the case, as long as the average black person feels like voting for Democrats and particularly
00:27:12.080
in national elections is the black thing to do is going to be hard to move people.
00:27:17.120
And then part of it is just in general, the status quo is, is what it is. Right. So that,
00:27:24.100
that level of inertia I've heard you say before, like, um, I'm paraphrasing. So forgive me if I
00:27:30.480
get it wrong, but it's like a dead fish can just sort of sit on the water. But I think the salmon has
00:27:36.980
to swim upstream. So it takes a lot more energy to go against the current than it does to stay with
00:27:40.640
the status quo. And I think that that, that inertia, that political inertia has set in over
00:27:45.820
the course of decades. Um, and it's hard to move people. And going back to what I was saying
00:27:52.340
in 2020, when the article started to come out, that a small subset of black men were moving towards
00:28:00.060
Trump after four years of being told he's racist, then you see what the left did. They got Maxine
00:28:05.620
Waters, they got Jim Clyburn. Um, I feel sorry for these people. These, these black men, oh,
00:28:10.180
their mother's an apology. They got the academics. They got the pundits to say that, um, black women,
00:28:16.360
black men vote for Trump because they hate black women or because they want to be like white men.
00:28:21.080
All of those things are meant to keep people in line. And unfortunately, um, we're at a point
00:28:27.360
and that we've been here for a while, but, um, within black America, quote unquote, you can be anything
00:28:34.500
you want to be, you can rap about selling drugs, shooting people. You can be, um, uh, you can be a
00:28:42.480
Cardi B want to be, um, you can do all sorts of things except be a conservative out loud and proud.
00:28:49.820
Yeah. Right. And if you are, then you will get smacked on the wrist and told either to get back
00:28:55.300
in line or get out of the community. So that that's one border wall that the left is actually
00:28:59.520
good with. That's how they police the culture. And they say, will you shame? Now we won't shame
00:29:04.520
you for doing black, white, Chinese, or candy strike. We won't shame you for doing all sorts of
00:29:08.680
crazy stuff. Right. But if you say you're going to vote for a Republican, right, that's where we draw
00:29:14.660
the line. Yeah. And it's not just emotional manipulation of black Americans, but there's
00:29:20.540
a lot of emotional manipulation towards white people and especially white Christians as well,
00:29:25.760
that we're not allowed to talk about certain things or we're not allowed to think about certain
00:29:29.740
things or bring certain things up. And I think that is, that's also part of the, like the bullying
00:29:37.100
and the intimidation to this narrative that the oppression of black Americans and the reason for all of
00:29:43.600
the disparities, whether they're economic disparities, graduation disparities, crime
00:29:47.960
disparities, abortion disparities, that they're all because of like the oppression of white people
00:29:54.280
and really white Republicans are like white Christian Republicans somehow. And it really is
00:29:58.760
kind of like the 1619 narrative that every disparity goes all the way back to 1619 when the statistics
00:30:05.000
just don't show that like the breakdown of both the black and the white family really started in the
00:30:09.100
1960s. The rise in incarceration and crime started before the war on drugs. It started in the 1960s.
00:30:15.800
It really started with the welfare state, but not just like the black family and black America,
00:30:20.320
but also white America in a lot of ways was negatively impacted and broken by that.
00:30:25.600
It goes back to these progressive democratic policies that they are, these policies are actually
00:30:32.260
to blame for a lot of the disparities that we're seeing today. But if you bring that up or you bring
00:30:37.560
up that, Hey, like maybe these behaviors or these values in any community would not produce good
00:30:45.060
results. And then of course, like I definitely am told that I can't say that or I'm racist. For
00:30:51.020
example, we talked about the other day, we were talking about the abortion issue. Something that you
00:30:55.560
hear a lot is that black women are more likely to die in childbirth, which is actually true, but there's a
00:31:03.460
lot that is covered up there. But then I was digging into the numbers and I actually found that the
00:31:07.700
number one cause of maternal mortality for all races, but disproportionately black women is actually
00:31:15.240
homicide, homicide by their domestic partners. And black women are like eight times more likely than
00:31:21.160
a woman of any other race to be killed while they're pregnant or postpartum. But again, I bring that
00:31:27.520
up. I get a million messages saying, how dare you bring that up? We're working on this. You just don't
00:31:31.820
know about it. And that's our job. I'm like, are you? Cause I never hear about it. So yeah,
00:31:36.440
anyway, there's just a lot of manipulation and intimidation. I feel like we feel like we can't
00:31:39.980
have open, frank conversations about it. Right. And when you talk about the maternal health of black
00:31:45.260
women, it would always stump me like, well, my great grandma had this many. And you know,
00:31:50.660
you look around and you see people would have nine and 10 kids and I'm like, well, they weren't dying.
00:31:56.860
So that's what kind of made me say something's not right about this. It's not simply because
00:32:01.520
they, because they're black, that they're dying. There has to be something else. And a lot of
00:32:06.860
people just won't do the extra research. They'll hear, oh, it's not good for black women to have
00:32:12.080
children. Okay. And they'll just stop at that. But common sense would say there has to be something
00:32:18.740
deeper than just skin color, look into it. And that's what I wish people would do more of is to
00:32:23.860
stop, not, not stop at skin color and actually look into it. Cause it doesn't make sense. When you think
00:32:30.260
about just your family having as many kids as they did in those times early, they would get started
00:32:37.240
very early and they would be fine. You know, drop a baby and go back to work. You know, drop another
00:32:43.600
one 18 months later. Right. You know, it has to be something different. And so I want people to start
00:32:48.420
doing a little more research and stop stopping at skin color. Yeah. Well, that would stop us from,
00:32:54.540
it also stops us from actually finding solutions to those things. Because if there is a reason that black
00:32:59.480
women are dying at a higher rate in the hospitals, and if we're only assuming that it's racism, well,
00:33:04.260
what if it's something else? Like what if it's hypertension or what if it's heart disease, which
00:33:08.040
is more prevalent, which actually that is the answer that's more prevalent among, among African
00:33:12.580
American women. But if we're not allowed to say that because it's racist, well, then people are
00:33:16.220
going to continue to die. Right. So it's almost like the solution, especially with Black Lives Matter
00:33:20.360
and stuff is not actually to save black lives. Right. No, it's not. Because Black Lives Matter
00:33:24.500
is more about white people, what white people think, say, and do. And this is the entire racial
00:33:32.480
justice scam is all about this. Right. It's not about black lives and prioritizing the needs of
00:33:37.900
black people. It's about punishing white people for what we believe their ancestors did, you know,
00:33:43.760
hundreds of years ago. And those two things are not the same thing. Being pro-black and anti-white are
00:33:48.640
not the same thing, obviously. But yeah, even as you talked about maternal mortality, I've seen,
00:33:55.240
you know, some of the research. What people often don't realize is that Hispanic women have lower
00:34:00.640
maternal mortality rates than white women, even though they access prenatal care less than white
00:34:06.480
women. So the straightforward racial narrative doesn't doesn't really hold. I do think a lot of
00:34:13.500
it. I think some of it is hereditary because obviously if you're predisposed to certain
00:34:17.760
chronic diseases that can make pregnancy more difficult. I don't doubt that some of it is
00:34:24.800
differences in care. But one thing that people don't really talk about, and this gets to part of
00:34:31.160
what you were saying in terms of homicide being the number one issue, is when you have a breakdown
00:34:39.440
in the order in terms of family formation, when marriage disappears, and you're in a perpetual
00:34:46.960
state of co-parenting from conception through child rearing, that introduces a level of stress
00:34:54.780
into a relationship that I cannot believe is good for women. I know I was on my best behavior when my
00:34:59.740
wife was pregnant with all our kids. And I told her, I said, you're at your most pleasant when you were
00:35:05.320
pregnant. She was like, I know that is true. But I was very cognizant. I didn't want to do anything
00:35:13.440
to stress her out. And imagine being in a situation where you're not married to the father of your child,
00:35:21.980
right, where he has not made any lifelong commitment to you or your kids. And if you are managing
00:35:30.060
relationships with other fathers of your children, all of those things are stressors. When you're
00:35:36.460
calling him and saying, hey, I have an ultrasound appointment today. Can you make it? And he's like,
00:35:40.900
I'm not, I don't want to be, you take care of it yourself. You expect to remain calm after that. So
00:35:47.520
I never even see that part of it come in because whenever it deals with disparities, racial
00:35:52.880
disparities, any issue having to deal with what black people can actually control gets taken off
00:35:59.240
the table. It's always structural this, systemic this. So I think that's one big issue. You brought
00:36:06.580
up something in terms of the guilt trip that's laid at the feet of white evangelicals. I don't believe
00:36:13.860
any white person. Certainly not any white Christian owes me anything other than the love that the
00:36:19.720
Bible says I'm owed as a fellow human being and brother in Christ. That's it. And in fact, what
00:36:28.120
they're doing both within the church and outside of the church is they're robbing me. They're robbing
00:36:36.900
me of my agency. They're robbing my children of their agency. When they say the key to Delano's
00:36:43.220
children growing up and flourishing, you know, they love that word is for me white guy to be a
00:36:52.840
better person, to make better decisions, to spend my money in certain ways, to send my kids to certain
00:36:57.920
schools. It's not about him. It's not about what he does. It's not about him and his wife, the
00:37:01.760
household that they create. It's not about their family culture. It's not about their values. It's
00:37:05.860
about mine. And that level of narcissism is, is robbery. And in the same way that Congress actually
00:37:13.480
has laws against stolen valor for people who say that they were in the military and they, you know,
00:37:17.580
I was, I, I won the battle of Pyongyang and all you did, you were a reservist for four years.
00:37:23.480
But to me, this is stolen honor. And I, and I, it really, I, it's the hardest thing for me to
00:37:32.440
control when I write or when I'm on social media, which I probably should not be on as much as I
00:37:36.980
am, is to not just go completely crazy on these people because I, I want their image bearers.
00:37:44.740
But when, when a man comes to steal something from me that belongs to me.
00:37:51.500
And, and, and I know that that's what they're doing to my kids.
00:37:54.520
And, and I resent that. And I'm, I'm trying to ask God to work on my heart
00:37:58.120
because of that. But, but, but really, but seriously. So I, I, I just want whether it's
00:38:05.460
white person, Asian, Hispanic, black, to again, just give me what I'm owed. That's love.
00:38:15.160
And I, and I'll do the same for you and we can live harmoniously in this world. But if you come
00:38:19.440
to me and tell me, you know, sit down there, boy, I, I, I got this.
00:38:30.560
Be quiet. You're oppressed. I'm, I'm working on it.
00:38:41.500
Listening to you say that, Delano, it makes me think about how every year at Christmas,
00:38:46.340
you have a lot of black people saying, I'm not going to let my child think that, you know,
00:38:51.440
and I don't want to say it. I don't know how many kids watch the show.
00:38:54.140
But if you, right, if you really believe that, then why the rest of the year do you wait
00:39:01.720
for this white person to come in and save you and take the credit for the hard work that
00:39:08.100
So you're saying at Christmas, black people say, oh, I don't want my kids to think some
00:39:15.400
But it's like, then the rest of the year, that's what you're waiting on.
00:39:18.400
You're waiting on the white man to come and give you a gift.
00:39:25.400
You know, I see that like from the pulpit as well.
00:39:28.140
Like there are two different messages that kind of social justice pastors preach to their
00:39:32.360
white congregants versus their black congregants.
00:39:34.540
Their white congregants is like, oh, you have collective repentance to do.
00:39:38.440
You have collective, you know, grief and reparations to pay and you need to, yeah, divest of your
00:39:49.740
And basically tell black people like you have exclusively been sinned against in all of your
00:39:55.880
Even the sin struggles that you have are probably a result of some kind of systemic oppression.
00:40:02.760
Like if you think that your problem isn't that you're separated from God without Christ
00:40:08.600
and you think all the problems are really because of white people or really because of
00:40:14.400
I mean, you can critical race theory yourself straight into Hades that way.
00:40:20.440
Both are equally dead in sin apart from Christ.
00:40:29.220
It's a robbing for pastors to do that, to preach the gospel of repentance to one side
00:40:33.020
because of their skin color, because they can handle it, but not to black people because
00:40:38.180
I mean, you, that means you don't care about them.
00:40:41.560
You don't care if they go to hell because you would rather feel better about yourself
00:40:45.520
and then feel maybe better about themselves than preach the gospel, which is that we are
00:40:56.960
I was just going to say, it seems that they get mad because I don't hate white people.
00:41:04.860
Like, where am, where is it written that I'm supposed to hate white people?
00:41:09.220
And if you're a Christian, then you would know that's absolutely evil, you know, to
00:41:14.800
And so I now look at it like when people get mad or they want to say I'm a coon or Aunt
00:41:21.440
It's just funny to me because I'm like, you're mad that I'm not walking around angry every
00:41:29.120
Well, that's what we were striving to be was happy and getting along with each other
00:41:35.800
But now you're telling me that I'm wrong because I don't walk around hating white people every
00:41:43.020
And I don't even understand how any preacher could stand in the pulpit and justify preaching
00:41:49.840
a message that would cause people to go out and hate someone because of their skin color.
00:41:55.140
Like, how can you do that and call yourself a Christian or a pastor?
00:41:59.820
You know, you should just like, that's just wrong to me.
00:42:05.740
I'm thinking of Ezekiel 18 where, I mean, prophet, it's a long treatise in terms of the
00:42:13.720
son not being responsible for the sins of the father and the father not responsible for
00:42:20.100
It talks about oppression and murder and so on and so forth.
00:42:22.660
And again, it's so patronizing because what ends up happening is that white people, both
00:42:28.640
in and outside the church, who think this way, believe that they are more responsible
00:42:33.780
for the actions of their great grandfathers than I am for the actions of my son.
00:42:38.320
And that doesn't make any sense because I'm raising my son.
00:42:44.960
And as I said, that type of thing is patronizing.
00:42:47.420
But the other thing, and I'm sure you've seen this, Allie, is that this type of
00:42:51.700
oppression based theology within the church, the evangelical, you know, theologically
00:42:58.840
conservative, quote unquote, church also is what silences women who are either feminist
00:43:11.280
This is why they can't speak on anything having to do with transgenderism, because that would
00:43:16.160
put them in the oppression driver's seat and they don't want to do that.
00:43:20.340
And this is why they've been so quiet on the issue of abortion, because again, the more
00:43:25.900
they speak out publicly on abortion, particularly in light of the leak around Roe, the more they
00:43:31.740
get grouped in with the, you know, the hands made, handmade tales, Republican, Trump, ultra
00:43:38.380
MAGA crowd who they want to avoid at all costs.
00:43:41.320
So one of my earlier columns, which this is one of my favorite titles or concepts, is that
00:43:47.160
these women, right, both in and outside the church who have spent their entire lives fighting
00:43:54.080
for the rights of women and saying women have been oppressed and liberation.
00:43:57.240
I finally found a group of men that they can submit to.
00:44:03.320
And that's why you said they will not touch that.
00:44:05.160
Well, they're totally submitting to men who call themselves women.
00:44:12.000
And if they do, they want to steer it back to a conversation about, you know, systemic oppression,
00:44:23.640
And in the same way you talked about, you know, that, that theoretical pastor, their theology
00:44:29.440
is, is boxed off because they can only go in a certain direction on certain issues and
00:44:35.740
anything else that, again, would make them play the role of oppressor, they won't touch
00:44:42.160
I've noticed with a lot of women who I know to be pro-life, these are big Christian women
00:44:47.280
influencers I'm thinking of on Instagram and they are believers.
00:44:51.580
And they're probably conservative in most of their theology and maybe a lot of their
00:44:56.040
politics, but they're, these, this group that I'm thinking of is not so scared of being
00:45:01.280
like labeled MAGA as they simply are hurting their friend's feelings, who has a different
00:45:06.380
opinion than them, or like just getting criticism or getting comments.
00:45:10.540
And so I have seen a couple, there are a couple of people that I'm thinking of that
00:45:17.420
But what I do notice, and I'm not, I don't want to criticize because I'm like, you know
00:45:23.800
I know that you're worried about getting criticism.
00:45:26.140
The thing that I see though, is that it's so different from how they respond when like
00:45:31.300
police brutality happens or alleged police brutality, even if they don't have the whole
00:45:35.920
Like with the abortion thing, the posts that I'm seeing from this crowd, they're so shrouded
00:45:40.660
in caveats, so much explanation, so much nuance.
00:45:46.340
I know this is going to hurt some people's feelings.
00:45:49.580
I know this complex, but me personally, I would rather not kill babies, but that's just
00:45:57.080
Like, but then if it came to like, oh, that story, which ended up being bogus about the
00:46:02.100
border patrol, like whipping, it's like, this definitely happened.
00:46:06.260
This is racism and they don't, they don't even care.
00:46:10.200
And it's because it's not really about justice.
00:46:13.140
It's about what, or is the secular progressive side going to applaud and what are they going
00:46:20.540
They really want to be liked by both camps so much.
00:46:24.200
They think that if they're winsome enough, if they're nice enough, if they're trendy enough,
00:46:28.380
if they give just an inch on some of like the more secular stuff, then, you know, they
00:46:34.180
won't be criticized and they'll just be liked by everyone.
00:46:36.680
But Stephen was full of grace and truth and he was stoned to death.
00:46:40.440
It makes me feel like they don't believe this one simple little thing.
00:46:47.800
You know, if you really truly believe that you don't really worry about who's going to
00:46:53.160
be angry with what, with what you have to say, if you know, you're standing on the side
00:47:00.420
And I get so critical a lot of times of Christians.
00:47:02.940
I am a former, and I always say former, ordained minister because it makes me so angry when
00:47:09.840
I see people that profess to be Christians be so weak and be so timid and not stand up
00:47:21.200
When I say something and I really feel like I'm standing in truth and I really feel like
00:47:25.500
I'm standing on God's side, it doesn't matter the hateful comments that I get.
00:47:29.720
It doesn't matter how many people want to jump in my inbox and say something mean.
00:47:34.280
It doesn't matter if my neighbor gives me a weird look when I come out of the house, you
00:47:43.080
And I think a lot of people have really gotten away from that and they forget about that.
00:47:48.320
And so they are worried about what someone else is going to think and how they feel about
00:47:52.460
them and I just don't care because I'm going to hold him at his word, period.
00:47:58.120
You know, if God said it, then it has to be true.
00:48:00.740
So you're going to make sure I have a place to stay.
00:48:03.300
You're going to make sure I have food to eat and to be able to feed my children and I'm
00:48:09.180
And I have to stand on that and believe that because look at what's going on around us.
00:48:13.840
I can't afford financially or spiritually to be weak and not do anything.
00:48:25.840
I think you hit on an excellent, both of you hit on an excellent point, which is both primarily
00:48:32.480
theological, but also bleeds into political and cultural as well, which is what people
00:48:43.100
We need more people with some steel in the spine because it's, as you said, and I've seen
00:48:48.520
that dynamic too, there is no nuance or grace or understanding for the alleged racist.
00:48:54.660
People have no problem going at them with the fury of a thousand sons.
00:49:01.020
But when it comes to issues, again, like abortion or even people who deny Genesis 127, whether
00:49:09.280
that's on abortion or transgenderism, then the argument suffers a death of a thousand caveats.
00:49:18.040
And I think, to Shamika's point, for people who believe that they have the truth and are
00:49:23.020
standing on God's truth, to be so timid and weak and mealy-mouthed is, to me, that seems
00:49:32.240
like it would be sinful because God is saying, I have said this, right?
00:49:41.640
And part of it is because many conservatives, their highest desire is the respectability
00:49:53.940
And this is why when they get in left-leaning platforms, whether it's the Atlantic or New
00:50:00.060
York Times, they always, at best, they'll tickle to the left and then they'll punch.
00:50:08.320
They'll tickle to the left and then they'll punch to the right.
00:50:12.220
Gosh, I can think of a thousand people that that describes.
00:50:18.100
Even some, you know, congressional Republicans, it's easy for them to criticize the ultra-maga
00:50:32.680
But it's easy for them to criticize those people.
00:50:35.120
It's a lot harder when they're doing an op-ed in New York Times or the Atlantic to speak
00:50:41.340
truth as it relates to sex and gender because they don't want to be criticized by the left.
00:50:46.940
And I think once you realize that the left uses that fear of being shamed to control us
00:50:53.240
in the same way we talked about how they use certain tools to control black voters.
00:50:57.400
Once you throw that off and you say, you know what?
00:51:02.360
I'm not going to let somebody who believes that Rachel Levine is a man and Leah Thomas
00:51:07.720
is a man tell me what I should think or dictate morals to me.
00:51:12.800
I'm not going to let somebody who thinks that a child should and could be aborted up even
00:51:20.660
And you call you call that a reproductive justice and you use the prospect of rape to
00:51:27.580
manipulate me emotionally all while you would fight for the rapist to get off death row.
00:51:37.820
I'm not letting people like that make me feel bad about standing on God's truth.
00:51:56.100
And I think our silence over the years, that's why we're here.
00:51:59.620
You know, I think a lot of people were silent when I think it was the baker didn't want to
00:52:07.940
And now we wonder why we have kids transitioning at eight years old.
00:52:13.240
We were silent then when we should have been speaking up and when we should have been loud.
00:52:24.020
That's why we look like we're living in Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:52:27.320
That's why we look like we don't know if we're coming or going because we have been quiet for way too long.
00:52:35.400
And for the Christians who think, oh, well, I don't want to wade into politics.
00:52:42.700
These are fundamentally theological and theologically fundamental issues.
00:52:49.460
The world will tell you these are culture war issues.
00:52:52.720
Abortion, gender, sexuality, marriage, family, the big ones that are controversial that a lot of Christians don't want to talk about because they don't want to be unloving.
00:53:00.380
That goes back to the first chapter of the Bible.
00:53:02.280
So you're telling me as a Christian you can't even defend what the first chapter of the Bible says?
00:53:11.380
It bleeds into the political and cultural realm, but it's downstream from what we believe about God.
00:53:17.000
And you mentioned, you know, you think it's sinful, the death by a thousand caveats, which I love.
00:53:26.640
I think it is because when people try to soften what God's word says about sex or sexuality, gender, abortion, all that stuff, they're essentially saying that they are more loving than God.
00:53:38.060
That how God says something is not loving enough.
00:53:43.340
And someone who thinks that they should soften what the Bible says to appeal to the world, you're essentially making yourself God.
00:53:49.740
You're essentially saying, well, yeah, God said that, but let me let God off the hook here.
00:53:56.460
I know he said that, but let me tell you the culturally relevant, nicer, nicer way to put that.
00:54:11.300
So everything that he says and does, he does out of love.
00:54:13.820
The most loving thing that we can do is agree with him.
00:54:16.260
And gosh, why wouldn't we have the courage to be loving?
00:54:19.780
That's the same way it is for the white savior complex.
00:54:22.540
When the white people feel like they need to fix what's going on with black people because we're so oppressed.
00:54:27.600
They feel like, okay, let me come in with my white skin, ride in on my white horse to fix what's going on.
00:54:33.740
Well, I don't need you to because someone rode in on a donkey and it's been done already.
00:54:38.440
You know, so I get so mad when I see people not really, you know, speaking up and speaking out.
00:54:51.420
I need everybody to join hands and, you know, really speak out against these things that we know are just absolute error.
00:55:04.140
Thank you so much for giving the encouragement at the end, just like the call to courage.
00:55:10.640
So seeing someone stand up, take the arrows from the world and being willing to say, rather than looking at that person and saying, oh, I'm glad that's not me, standing up and saying, you know what?
00:55:25.180
It's worth it, not just for us, but gosh, for our kids too, for future generations.
00:55:29.720
At the very least, we want to be able to say that we stood up when it counted.
00:55:37.260
Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
00:55:39.360
That will be the only day that, you know, perfect justice and righteousness reigns.
00:55:43.340
But until then, we are called to be obedient and that's what he gives us the strength to do.
00:55:47.520
So thank you guys for doing that and for giving us an example in that.