Theology in the Raw - 820: Critical Theory and Race Relations in America

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

My buddy Ed joins me on the show to talk about Critical Theory and race relations in America. Ed has a Ph.D. in American Cultural Studies from Bowling Green University and basically spent most of his doctoral work interacting with Critical Theory. Ed also has lots of thoughts about the race conversation and race relations inside and outside the church. Heads up: this conversation is super raw, super honest, and a bit of a "rough draft." Watch this episode of the podcast on YouTube Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you would like to support the show, you can consider that through my Patreon account, patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Support the show for as little as five bucks a month to get access to premium content. Like I've been, well, for instance, I have almost exclusively pushed my Q&A podcast to my Patreon supporters. So it's been a lot easier to manage it that way, where I can just ask them, Hey, what questions do you have? And devote Patreon only podcast to, um, sorry, uh, devote Q and a podcast to my Patreon only supporters. So if you do miss the Q and A's, I know some of you do, I'm sorry, but, uh, um, yeah, you can,

that sounds so sleazy. Oh, you want your Q&A? Well, better support me. That's not the point. So I'm just going to stop because I'm getting myself in trouble. But this whole podcast is going to get me in trouble. I have back on the show, Ed Uzinski, my very good friend, Ed Uzinski. Ed and I go way, way back.

He is one of the most enjoyable human beings I've ever been around. He's a thoughtful guy. He's provocative. He doesn't mind mixing it up. He doesn't mind asking super hard questions. He doesn't mind at all pushing back. And that's what I love about it. I can talk to Ed for hours and we have a long conversation here. So Ed and I, we get into the whole, well, the little backstory. I said, Ed, can you help us think through critical theory and specifically critical race theory because he is somewhat of an expert in that he did he did his phd basically in critical theory or at least that was a huge part of it

and um ed's such a thoughtful guy he's willing to consider things from all angles. He's, um, he thinks thoroughly through things. He doesn't just react. He's very balanced, um, in so many different ways. So that was the goal to talk about critical theory. We did that for the first 10 minutes. And then we ended up getting into the race conversation. And look, I'm going to be the first one to admit that it doesn't have the best brand, the best look when two white dudes in 2020 are talking about race. Now, if you've been listening to the show over the last several months, you know that that's not my typical MO. OK, so hopefully you're not going to judge my entire approach to race by this episode. At the same time, both of us have been in kind of engaging the race conversation for like 15. Well, for me, about 15 years for him goes way back even farther than that.

And we think out loud, we had some good honest conversations here, we push back. I mean, to be honest, there were times when we were so deep in thought and being so honest that I almost forgot that the record button was still on. I don't think I swore. I don't think he swore. But we did. We were just totally honest with just how we're thinking. So take it for what it's worth.

We're thinking out loud through stuff, willing to ask the hard questions. And I might have Ed back on because we might need to clean some stuff up. Okay. I'm just procrastinating because I'm kind of nervous about this one. I hope I don't lose too many listeners, but it is what it is. We're two honest guys. So, all right, let's just jump in. Ed Uzinski talking about race relations in America. All right.

Hey, friends. I'm here with my very good friend, long-term colleague, partner in crime. I don't know if we help each other out or make each other go to dark places, but I have on the show Dr. Ed Uzinski. I don't know if I've ever called you doctor before. We stir each other up, man. That is a good question as to whether we're something positive or negative for each other. So Ed and I go way back to my days at Cedarville University in Ohio. We did church together at Xenia Baptist. I think it it was called i don't know if they changed her name um we've kept in touch

ever since uh i brought ed on because i wanted to talk about critical theory um and critical race theory i know they're not completely different but they're not the same thing. Wait, did I just say the same thing twice? Anyway, I brought Ed on because Ed is, in various ways, I want to say an expert. I mean, you studied this stuff at a PhD level at a pretty top-notch secular university, Bowling Green. So why don't we do this? Yeah. Why are you interested in this conversation? Critical theory, specifically critical race theory. I know you have a personal journey and also an academic journey and those kind of intertwined with each other. So tell us a bit about that. No, that's good, Preston. And so I did a PhD in what is called American Culture Studies. And when I got to Bowling Green, I think it was 2007, 2008,

I didn't even know what critical theory was. And I think I won't even get into all the details of it, but I thought that an analysis of American culture was going to look very different than what it wound up looking like. And what it wound up looking like was being up to my neck in critical theory, which we can keep talking about. But so for five years, I swam in those waters, and I pretty much submitted myself to that worldview very intentionally

because I had already done, and you know this, I had already done conservative theological degrees at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And so I sort of wanted to swing the pendulum all the way to the other side and get a secular view of culture. Ecclesiastes has always been my favorite Bible book. And I think that part of the reason why I love it is because it tries to make sense of the world under the sun apart from God. Right. And so I was just at a point in my life where I really wanted to understand a secular view of the world. And I, and I got one, I got, uh, I got immersed in what we now know as it's critical theory. So that was a – and you say I'm an expert. What I know that is true about me is that I have a better than Twitter understanding of critical theory.

Just like any theological discipline, though, to become an actual expert in critical theory may not even be possible just because it's so wide-ranging. There's so many different voices. There's so many different views views so many of them are contradictory again not unlike going deep in the rabbit hole in any theological tradition you know but I know that I got my share of it for a stretch of time

I know I just feel like a lot of people are talking about it now but for those who maybe don't even know maybe they're hearing it for the first time, critical theory, can you give us maybe the basic definition overview? And then I know that's going to probably lead to lots of other little strands we can chase down. For someone who doesn't even know what that means, what is critical theory? Yeah. And this is what becomes overwhelming, even as I've sort of dug back to this in the last few months and try to reacquaint myself with some definitions and just where in the world you come from. So you'll hear critical theory, you'll hear this idea of cultural Marxism. So most of us don't really are not that well acquainted with Marxism. When we think about Marxists, we think of communist nations that oppress their people and destroy millions of people.

That's usually our understanding of Marxism. But Karl Marx's theory was largely based on the idea that it's an economic philosophy that is looking at people who have means and who have wealth and who control the means of production in a society and then everybody else. OK, so regardless of what anybody thinks about it, and this is where everybody, their minds start running wild when they hear that, you know, especially capitalists who hate what they think Marxism became. But his lens through which he was viewing the world was to look out for the people who he felt were being oppressed or marginalized, the have-nots. So that's the foundation of it. What it grew into over the next hundred years were different schools of thought then that began to look at all different aspects of society through that lens. How does power work in society? And so you get these different strands of critical theory where the goal is to take what is and to deconstruct it to understand why things are the way they are. So we know that this is the case

when it comes to women in society. What is the history of how women have been viewed and how they've been treated largely by men who have had power to do what they want and to make the rules about how society is going to work? Feminist theory embraces a cultural Marxism or what has come to be known as critical theory, by breaking that apart, by starting to erase the lines of what's considered normal. And assuming that wherever the lines have been placed down, they've been placed there to keep women in their place, as an example. So critical theory is an effort to deconstruct that and to see through that with with the aim ultimately and again this is kind of a dangerous assumption even to make at best with the aim of at least leveling the playing field by

getting rid rid of lines that are intentionally there to oppress assuming that those lines are intentionally there to oppress. If there's any unequal outcome, then the assumption is that somebody at the top has intentionally rigged the system. Maybe that's not the best phrase. Established a system intentionally. Or does it need to be intentional? Again, this is where it splinters off. So there's plenty of schools of thought that are just looking for those places where it has been intentional. And there's plenty of history to support that where intentional moves were made. And then there's unintentional things that happen just because it starts to become the water that we swim in

that there start to be biases towards a particular people group that start to get baked into the system so that's where you get these ideas of of a systemic oppression or things get built into the law or they get built into the entertainment industry or built into academia and the books that we read that help to maintain a status quo that's oppressive. Okay. Okay. Well, keep going. I cut you off.

Or are you – is that about it? Well, maybe ask other questions about it. So I don't know if that clears anything up for people or that makes it any – Yeah. So as I kind of understand what you're saying and as i've done and so just for my audience i'm coming in as a learner i mean ed has been dealing with this stuff for a long time um and i i've read a few books listen to some stuff i'm just trying to get my mind around it and i i'm i try to be a slow thinker um and yeah i'll have opinion i'll read something you know we

we got some books here that i can show that i've read and i'm like man that was a garbage book that's my opinion now i'm not going to say like i'm an expert on the topic i'm just saying this is as i'm reading this book or that book whatever you know i i do have a mind that's going as i'm reading you know so i am processing what i'm coming across um but try not to make a global kind of um statement or opinion until i really understand it better which might never be um but so it seems like the marxist strand that is built into critical theory if i can put it like that kind of views the world in terms of you have the the oppressed and the oppressor like either Like either you belong to one category or the other. Would that be correct?

Like either you're in a position of power, wealth, control. And if you are, that's not a morally neutral position. If you have power, wealth, and control, you belong to the group of oppressor. In as much as there is inequality in the world. If you're at the top and there's inequality, then you're part of the problem. Would that be inaccurate? Would that be one strand?

Or is that kind of like, yeah, anybody who would promote and embrace critical theory as a lens to view the world would agree with that? Or is that too simplistic? Well, that's the word that I keep thinking of is that it is simplistic but it's also true so you know i'll speak from my own experience so the people that i was in school with the cohort of fellow phds and academics and and the different um seminars that we went, the different people that we listened to. What I became convinced of is that the most extreme version of this, and I used to come home and tell my wife this all the time, is just setting out to erase wherever there's been lines drawn of authority,

wherever there's been lines of power, wherever there's been lines drawn where things are being called normal, the radical critical fear is to seek and to erase those and get rid of them. And so right now, the easiest way to separate people and to think about people generically is that there are white men who have particular privilege in this culture and who have held power for the hundreds of years that this nation has existed, that fundamentally they are the problem and that they need to be erased in no uncertain terms. And I think that is the radical version of it that people are reacting against

and the different ways that that seeps out into culture. So there are some people, and I do see this in the statements people make, that being both you and I are white, straight men, that that is morally problematic, our very existence, as we participate in these dominant categories of being white, being male, being straight. That's not morally neutral. We are morally problematic simply for...

We could be in a coma. We could be doing Mother Teresa type actions. We could be in a coma we could um you know uh you know we could be doing mother theresa type actions we could be doing whatever but our actions whether they're moral or not is maybe secondary to the category to which we belong would that be some people would see it that way for sure and that there's not a you know even when you talk about moral what one of the things that i started to realize is that there is not a judeo-christianity morality framework behind this right obviously in fact that is viewed as being a tool in the hands of the oppressor over the course of history. There really isn't a moral framework at all to draw upon other than, and I've read so many articles about this, there are good guys and there are bad guys, and the bad guys need to be taken out.

Well, to what end? So that you can become a bad guy now? So that now you can have power how does how does that what is the end game in all of this for those people and honestly i don't feel like the in the extreme version they don't have one they really don't they don't have one that that amounts to a humanistic flourishing for all people it's just a power flip ultimately how would they respond to that because that seems kind of obvious but uh by changing the subject by redirecting um i used to bring that up all the time and so they're they're really you know by getting frustrated by you know

the way anybody does when they feel like they're put in a corner and shown the emptiness of their worldview. It really becomes very nihilistic at the end. It becomes very dark. So, I mean, you sound, from my audience, you sound pretty critical of it, but I don't, you have, you're sympathetic to certain things within critical theory, right? I mean, you would say there are certain things that they, that that school of thought is getting right, or would you say that? I think that critical theory provides us lenses to look through that that are helpful. I don't need to. This is what I keep saying to people. I don't I don't have to embrace its starting point, nor its conclusions to still be able to say that there are observations being made that actually align with what I think is true and that legitimately need to be criticized. Can you give us some examples of that?

And I would say this especially – so we're here to talk specifically about critical race theory. Right. It is undeniable that over the course of the American experience that black people as a as a whole in general have certainly fit the definition of being oppressed. Sure. In general, over the course of the history of this nation and that there has been a group of people that have very intentionally kept them in that situation. have very intentionally kept them in that situation. Right. So the strand of what we're calling critical race theory started in the 70s and 80s and began to deconstruct laws that were in place that were very intentionally put in place that were being used to continue to keep black people as an other. being used to continue to keep black people as an other so i look at situations like that and i think well no that's actually very helpful i don't know a single human that would disagree with that

though like i mean i listen to people on the far right far left and the far right would say that i've listened to at least would would would, uh, you know, uh, frequently, um, acknowledge the horrors and just profound oppression that our white dominated society has had towards black people. Um, yeah, the problem Preston with it is that, and this is where I think it becomes overly simplistic in the conversations that I'm in is the assumption that that's all just completely disappeared. Okay. But that's just disappeared somehow. Yeah. That, that somewhere in the 1960s or, you know, whether it was when Obama became president or when the civil rights act was passed in the sixties, that somehow hundreds of years of what

had been getting taught and passed down just all of a sudden dissolved into thin air. Yeah. All of a sudden, all the laws that had been put in place just suddenly disappeared because they were no longer separate but equal water fountains anymore. Yeah. That's how the whole the whole enterprise just flipped over somehow while we were all asleep and we woke up one day and it all just disappeared. Yeah. And that's what I think is a little I think I think that's overly simplistic and almost silly. where again i i don't i don't personally have not not talked to people wherever they're on the spectrum who don't acknowledge the lasting effects of 400 years of oppression where they would push back is to say when people give the impression that nothing has changed like whoa like people draw a straight line slavery and we're still basically in the same situation. It's that two extremes.

People don't acknowledge any sort of progress versus people who do the opposite. Say we've had so much progress. We've had Obama and there's Oprah and all this stuff. Surely there's somewhere in between. Clearly we're not still in the 1700s,, 1800s or even in Jim Crow. Things have changed a lot. But clearly, you can't just, like you said, think that, oh, we got rid of Jim Crow in 1969. Everything's just great.

But again, I don't hear anybody actually saying that. I hear people critiquing that view. I just don't hear anybody promoting that view. I'm not saying doesn't exist it's just i don't know um do you hear people saying that like what's the problem if we're done we're gone there's no more racism you know um well sure i do that's what i was gonna say i think you know how this goes preston it all depends on who you're talking to what conversations you're in what are we listening to and watching on on social media which is a whole nother issue when it comes to all this just the the voices that are out there

that that that feel authoritative and it feels like it might be a majority of people just because in one comment thread a whole bunch of people take one position and i don't know what to do with that uh but i definitely think here here's what I actually think is happening among. So so here let's make these generalizations. So I'm thinking about my white Christian friends. OK, this is the way that it shows itself in a strange way to me. All this has been going on for these last even just this last year so intensely. Ahmaud Arbery, we see the Ahmaud Arbery video and have a pretty clear explanation of what happened by the guys that did it. If you read the police report, I mean, they were pretty straightforward about what the

assumptions that they made and what it was that they were going to do. And we all got to see that something went way wrong, which sometimes happens when you want to be a tough guy and you go get your guns and you're going to go chase somebody. Sometimes things go really wrong. Okay, forget the race part of this. Sometimes that happens. Right.

When we get to see that video. Now, I watched that video and, I mean, it makes my stomach drop, right? It makes you sick to watch that. If you have any kind of human compassion and empathy and all those words that should be growing in us as Christians, the first response ought to be some kind of feeling. I think you talked about this with Tyler. Yeah. Right. That we should feel something when horrible things happen. Well, I can't tell you how many emails I got. And I wrote an article called How Should We Talk to Our Kids About Ahmaud Arbery? And all it was was just a simple primer on talking to them about justice and

injustice in the world and talking to them about ethnicity, because that's what's being talked about right now. So let's let's use this as an opportunity to talk about that. Talk to them about how to feel with people when they're suffering. OK, indiscriminately, when somebody's suffering, learn to learn to connect to that somehow. I can't tell you how many people responded to that by sending me a Candace Owens video or by sending me a video that was somehow to correct me in my thinking to make sure that I understood that there's this other side politically speaking and that he may have been a criminal and that he's just being used by the liberal left. And that so so the immediate reaction and I know you've heard this because I've listened to some of your guests. The immediate reaction is to dismiss it. The immediate reaction when something is is called racial, whether it is or isn't.

And I don't know that we can always prove what's going on with people when it comes to race but when the immediate reaction is to dismiss that yeah yeah that sounds like what we've done pretty consistently throughout decades since the civil war yeah it's just coming up with ways to continue to dismiss the cries of there being something wrong in our society, in our society. I think Tyler said this or somebody else that I heard, if you won't even acknowledge that there's a problem, how are you going to try to think intelligently about how to fix it? And I really don't believe, I still believe there's a ton of people out there in the church who just don't even believe it's a problem. They've written it off as just a tool of the liberal left or that the Democrats are just using this to race bait us or to divide us.

That may be true, but it doesn't then erase the fact that there actually really is something wrong here. That's what I was going to say. Both can be true at the same time. There could be all kinds of ideological spins on that event, which there have been. And yet we can still acknowledge that that event was absolutely horrific. Our gut should turn. Our heart should bleed.

And we should do a lot of listening to people who don't just see that event in isolation but historically connected you can't you can't just look at white on black crime and murder in isolation you can't and this is where maybe critical theory is helpful in some regards to help us see the systems the structures the historical connectedness and i do see that as yeah so i mean i i agree with that here's where i struggle is and and tyler it was so helpful when i talked to him about this like i i i am a like a i i'm a big fact evidence-based kind of person i've been my whole life i've been you know the bible says this the bible says that i'm like well where show me the evidence i want to look at the evidence what's the counter evidence and why is this evidence more superior you know that's

just the way my mind operates is that now and some people would say well, you have the privilege because you're a white male to be able to sit back and ask for evidence. While we or people of color might say we have the lived experience, you know, and I just I just have I'm just truly wrestling with that. So like when I saw the film of Arbery, I didn't tweet anything. I didn't do anything. I just sat back and said, okay, well, I need to get my arms around this event. Was he just going on a jog? Did he just come from a house where he raped somebody? None of that's true. You know, well, the job.

But these are I just want to I want to know because like just seeing this clip in isolation tells me I can see. And even if he did look, I'm believe in non-violence i don't believe in the death penalty even if he was a criminal even if he did was running from a murder scene or something i still don't think he should be shot so i mean i either way i can look at this and say this i can acknowledge this is a horrible event and yet i i is it is it is it wrong to ask for evidence? Or what are all the facts surrounding this? I don't think it is. I guess what I always wonder is why, okay?

What is your goal in asking for evidence? So go ahead, You answer that. Yeah, I've got a clear why because I am being socially asked to protest, to fight, to – and that's like I am – look, I have a protest kind of demeanor. But I need to know what it is I'm fighting against. And in that case, I do need facts. I can't just go on anecdotal lived experience without, I'm not erasing those at all. I'm just saying like, if I'm going to acknowledge that there is a systemic problem or problems, then I do need more than anecdotal evidence of that problem. And maybe there is, maybe there isn't.

That's generally where I'm at. I'm trying to get my arms around various... Is there systemic racism among the American police force? I'm going to need lots of... And there's been studies done on this. And to just assume that there is, I can't do that. If I'm going to actually get behind a movement, I do need clear evidence. And I would say that with any issue, right?

I know, Chris, and so would I. So this is where I think the privilege comes in, and this is where I think it gets difficult and potentially offensive to people. Yeah. Okay? Is that we – here's what a – this is a – privilege is such a loaded term. It is. This is a nice convenience. This is a wonderful convenience to have these issues that are coming up in the news that we wouldn't even know about them apart from news, right? We're completely dependent on news even telling us what's going on

around us out there in the world to some degree, okay? And so we can look at these things that have happened in the last couple of years and just try to analyze them in this moment, okay? And try to figure out what's happening in this moment. I think those are totally legitimate questions to ask. I ask the same questions. What really happened? I want to ask that no matter what I see go on, because I know things are always mediated as they're given to me. So I want to know as best as I can know the truth of a situation. problematic, to use that word, when it comes to race is that there really is this massive tome of information that overwhelmingly indicates that this has been a major problem in our society dating before the Civil War that has been politicized and it has been twisted and it's been used by different people groups to their own ends. But at the end of the day, the reality is that there is a racial divide. There is a racial tension.

There is a racial problem. There are effects that we almost never bring up or take seriously that have spilled over from what's gone on for the last couple of hundred years. We don't do that. And I've heard that multiple times even with people that you've been talking to. We don't. We keep talking about the history, and everybody says, oh, yeah, the history. So, yeah, I know things used to be bad. If you really, really get down into it, just even with the police thing,

if you really do a study of how the police set themselves up against black people in the books it's in the books okay if you look at the history of lynching yeah over decades of time and so right away people say oh there was only a few thousand people i mean again if that's your immediate response to that. But seriously, Preston, that's what we do. We just somehow dismiss it, write it up. So where am I going? If you actually look at the history, or better still, if you're in relationship, not with just one person of color, but you actually have real relationships with people and you really do get to listen to people. Okay. And you're in relationship with people. You come away saying

there is, there has been, and there still is some kind of a problem going on. There is, there's some kind of a problem. is that so it just feels vague in general though like what what is what specifically is a problem that we should be actively fighting against and what's the so how do we interesting solve the problem and i know let's let's turn the corner on this because i'm curious to hear what your thoughts are about the white fragility book that you held up to me earlier, where the problem not of white skinned people, but the problem of what now, again, I think this needs to be separated out, but of whiteness in quotation marks, capital W, whiteness. And what is that? It's a mindset. It's a mindset

of superiority or of somehow being better than other people. So again, I think we should just stop and let that one sink in because when I have conversations with people, it's really get defensive quick and really to say, I'm not a, I'm not a Ku Klux Klan member, right?

That's where we run to just so easily. I'm not using the N word directly with people. I just think it's, it's think we can do better than that. I keep saying to my friends, I think our ancestors, again, that's a generalization. We're all coming from different backgrounds. But collectively, if you do the study and you go into the books, our ancestors worked really, really hard to keep us separated. They wanted that. They would be turning over in their graves right now to see all of the work that's being done to bring people together, black and white people together. They were very committed

to the idea that we should stay separate for biblical reasons, for intellectual reasons, for all these different rationale that they had to say, let's stay separated from one another. Let's go back. Go ahead. I don't want to do what you have to do to do that is you have to label people in a certain way that is less than. You have to do that to be able to keep them in subjugation, to be able to keep them in slavery, to be able to keep them out of being Sunday is to have convinced yourself and to have convinced those that you live with that these people deserve to not be part of what we have. These people deserve to be left out somehow. So, again, that is the history. And so for us to just assume that that's just all gone now across the board, that that really does not still exist in the mindset. So I've seen even

all the police things and I don't want to sprawl too much here. I don't, I don't need, and you know, I'm good friends with high ranking police people in our community, right? I'm, I'm tight with police guys, but I don't need studies to, I don't need a study to prove to me that in the situations that they find themselves in, that they might have a, a, a inclination to think that black skin is more predisposed to be doing something wrong than white skin i don't need a study for that and what makes it even worse is that i can find studies that are saying both things okay so i don't even i don't even put that much stock and i'm a researcher pre. You know, I love the pursuit of knowledge,

but I'm highly suspicious of studies that get done. And so to me, there really is a ton of value in the reality that over the course of 50 years of being in relationship with black people, I haven't met too many that didn't suggest that there was a problem when it came to their interactions with police all across the all across this class stratosphere all across the class stratosphere from gangish type dudes that i've hung out with all the way up to phds it doesn't mean that there aren't any examples because now they're out online all over the place right the example that comes out and says i never have ever had a problem with the police no in general my experience in relationship has been and there's something going on there yeah there's something going on there's oh man it's so it's first of all so good um um man what do i want to start backwards or let's see let's go back to the white guy the cop the

cop one you know that that's i think there is i don't know if either of us have the expertise to be able to speak into that i think it's fine to ask questions and whatever but it is it is it is complicated um the question with the police. So here, I guess there will always be racist individuals. There will always be implicit bias because we are Christians and we believe human nature has fallen. Like that will never, ever, ever go away. There will always be isolated incidences of white cops um acting on that implicit bias um prior to the second coming of jesus we will always have isolated incidences of that but you hear my term they're isolated i mean the question is is there widespread systemic spread systemic um and that i i don't know i do think we would need lots of different kinds of

studies to document that because if there is a systemic problem it will be manifested in a disproportionate number of um i would say white cop on black and that that's where the the studies are mixed you read that colman hughes article i mean if i um you know the the number of unarmed white people that have been gunned down by cops or nobody knows who tony tempa is right why don't we know who tony tempa is i mean that guy had a knee in his back for 13 minutes while the white cops were joking about him as he was whimpering and suffocating. 13 minutes the dude was suffocated. And he was a white dude. And nobody knows who he is.

I mean, nobody. It didn't create riots among. And, yeah, I would be the first one to say even. I don't know if I want to say this. Again, there's something historically connected. When it does happen to, we don't live in a historical vacuum. So,

so when there's an unfortunate incident where a white person was a victim of police brutality, that doesn't have the same historical symbolism connectedness that when it happens to a black person, I'm still wrestling we have to at least acknowledge that these these aren't yeah does that make it i wouldn't say we have to at least acknowledge it i think that's really really really important yeah okay it's like really really important that it's part of our family mythology that there's this extended and what

if i'm if i'm in a black family that there's this extended history that causes me to have to take very seriously that in an interaction with someone with a gun legally holding a gun on their waist that i gotta find my p's and q's in a way that's different than if i didn't have black skin we just we just have to take that seriously. Here's what I want to throw out about the police, and this is what I think is so messy about it. The police job is horrible. It's horrible to try to step into the situations they're stepping into with black people or white people. So I really do think that they're, in my own reading and trying to get my mind wrapped around it,

I really do think there's a police training problem that maybe even supersedes the race problem, honestly. Misuse of force, there's abuse of power. Just apart from the race, let's just leave that aside for a second. You're saying that's the overarching issue. They're being trained in a certain way that makes it very militaristic. And I read in one of these articles there's 15,000 police forces around the country. So they're all different. They're all getting different kinds of training.

They're all being led in different ways which needs to be taken seriously they have different mixes racially i mean there's a a police officer that's dealing with stuff in downtown dayton is going to be dealing with a different mix of stresses than one who's right here in xenia 20 miles away and so it it is wildly different. And I would even throw this out, though. I mean, are police being trained to think morally? Just let that sink in. I don't hear anybody asking that question.

Where are they getting a moral framework to even try to step into their job being pro-human versus anti-crime okay i mean in the best cases maybe they're getting some kind of a moral training but where are these men and women who are going to work in law enforcement getting moral training and virtue training so that they would even have a mentality that says we're going to value human life period so i gotta go i gotta go here before we forget that requires more training which might require more money so does it make sense to defund the police department if we're actually asking the police to um to have a higher bar of policing. I mean... Here, here's...

No, listen. That doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I don't... We want to spend the money on moral training. We want to spend money on trying to teach guys and men and women to operate differently in our communities. I think that would be a different discussion.

Of course not. And you know that ultimately that's more symbolic at this moment than anything. They're not going to continue to defund police departments. They're not going to do that. Seattle just slashed it in half, I think. I don't know if you saw that. They're letting go of 100 cops. The police chief resigned.

The black police chief. I'll be shocked if it stays that way. Well, I mean, the question will be, will crime go up or down? Will people of color and poor people receive a better life, less crime, less murders? Or will it go up or down? I can't imagine that it's going to go down, take away the police. I don't know. It's a lousy solution.

It is symbolic. We say that it's complicated. I don't think that that's the right solution. That's not what I would be banging a drum about to defund the police. Right. No. a drum about to defund the police right no i understand i do understand the logic of well i understand a piece of the logic of redirecting funds to help get at the core issue of what is ultimately leading to higher crime that there are and here's here's where we have to talk about you

know families the family and what what is leading to to poverty and are there unjust laws that are surrounding that? I mean, there's poverty, clustered poverty combined with the race conversation is far outside my pay grade. But I understand the logic of let's get to the root of some of these issues. I just don't think taking away money from the police and having less cops is the answer i'm speaking as a citizen here not as a as a because again i had this tension of non-non-violence and so on i want to come back though ed to um the whiteness thing individual white people versus whiteness as a broad concept i'm trying to get my mind around that and even like this sense of superiority like some people a lot of people probably assume that like if you are white you belong to a group

that intrinsically sees itself as superior to non-white people now as an end how do i process that because as an individual i'm in a, I'm not even allowed to say, I don't know if I see myself as superior because of my skin. I mean, Robin DiAngelo will say, well, that's just your white fragility coming out. That's you being defensive. Preston, calm down. Hey, you don't need to wield your privilege and get upset. I'm just trying to help you understand how racist you really are.

I'm not sure if i'm really a race well that's that's because you're a racist that is fresh this is where i'm like i don't may and maybe i'm missing something but how do like i i don't personally think i've never consciously experienced a sense of superiority because i'm white is that am i just totally blind is that or could it could some individual white people not actually feel that way even if the general perspective could be true yeah i don't know i don't know if you're blind here's like do you do you think because you're white that do you see yourself as if you're being honest with yourself as superior to a black man or a hispanic i've been taught to be you've been sure yeah i've been taught to be how like give me an example of how you've been taught to be so

so how so this but let me just say this president again when i let me just talk about personal experience because when i first heard that idea of white fragility for example and i read it in an article before the book even came out that i'm pretty sure was from from her robin d'angelo and the article just talked about how whenever the issue of race comes up, in her experience, white people get wildly defensive. Whenever they get exposed to, even some of the things that we've talked about, the history of what's gone on, people get angry and they get knee-jerk defensive. Listen, if people just interacted with those ideas with some semblance of an open mind to the possibility that it could be true and to explore themselves i don't think she'd be making

ten thousand dollars per appearance right now the reason why there's a cottage industry around this whole thing is because i think that there's some truth to how we we don't we lose our minds when race comes up. Let me just say this. That's been my experience even as somebody who grew up. And we didn't say all this. I grew up on about 20 miles on the west side of Cleveland in a very, very mixed environment, mixed with blacks, whites and Puerto Ricans. Okay. And so even there, where we were very mixed up, and we were in really, at least I was in relationships with all three of those populations, you could see how race somehow was a reality for us in that there was definitely divisions in the way people were viewed. Some of that had to do with class.

It had to do with what part of town that you lived in. But there was definitely always still this attitude about those guys over there, from the white people that I grew up around. And I grew up in a very ethnic, um, you know, my, my heritage is Polish and I grew up in an area where there was this, this huge Eastern European diversity, all these different enclaves within Lorain, Ohio. They had an international festival every summer. Okay. Where the floats would be populated with people from different ethnicities, okay? And so even in the midst of that, there was definitely a separation between

those who had white skin and those who had color in their skin, okay? And I could get into specifics, but just let me say that. I grew up with that. Then when you really start to look at history books and you look at the histories that we were taught and you start to analyze TV shows and the messages that TV shows sent us and movies and pop culture, and you look at church. So we're not even talking within the church body, but you look at the way we're taught theology. Like you wouldn't even know there was such thing as a black theologian. Yeah. In most of our seminaries, at least not historically. OK, so so like every thread of my life has implicitly held up white people as being the the holders of truth and black people as being something less than that.

And I know that's a crass, I hate saying it, but you're asking me the question. So, so when I look at myself, I mean, what does the gospel do to me? The gospel tells me in Philippians two to not think highly of myself, but to look out for the interests of other people that has to do with people that have the same color skin as me, people that have different color skin, people that are from different countries, people that are from different class strata. I mean, that's pretty comprehensive. And it's pretty overwhelming when you start to get confronted with yourself. When you start, I say you, I'll say me. When I start to realize the little prejudices that I actually do have towards people, the different prejudices that I have even towards people within my Christian community, it's like our mind just – it seems like our mind naturally gravitates towards creating separations between us and other people.

it sure is a lot easier to do that when you live in a country that has worked really hard to keep a certain class of people always in that position historically, that being black people. So I know people are probably, if they've even listened this far, people are probably losing their mind about that. But I just don't think it's that big of a deal. When Robin DiAngelo says that white people tend to be fragile when it comes to this, I say, yeah, they are. When she says that all of us are then racist under her terms, I'm more uncomfortable with that. When you keep trying to make blanket statements that necessarily condemn everybody to a position that they can never, ever escape from, what I say is, well, that's because you don't actually have the gospel in your presentation. The gospel itself should allow us to escape from it. But see, that's not part of her book. That's not part of her make. Okay. Well, church people should be able to access that. Can you not look at that and say, can you not study that and experience it in conversation to see that white people do tend to

be super defensive when it comes to to race would it i guess i and then and the gospel should change me the gospel should change me and make me able to say well it needs to look different. Yeah. It needs to look different. So I. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm irritating you. I'm irritating you right now. No, no. I love it. That's.

Keep going. Keep going. So with D'Angelo and the book White Fragility, she gives all these examples of examples where white people were agitated by having a race conversation but i don't is it just having a race conversation or the terrible way in which she's going about it like her ideas to me are just just very very unthoughtful, sweeping. It reminds me of a fundamentalist pastor who is presenting horrible ideas in a terrible way, making generalizations. And when somebody says, yeah, I'm not really buying that, then they're accused of not embracing the truth. I'm like, it's your idea.

It's you that i don't buy like like can i give you an example here yeah okay i got the book in front of me here um so she's just make this clear i'm not a robin d'angelo apologist by any stretch okay so that's the thing i think she does all kinds of things in there that are over the top, which is what you also do when you're trying to sell books, okay, and you're trying to create a platform for yourself. But go ahead. Keep going. Give me an example.

She gives all these examples of how she was so, like, just – she doesn't even see it. So pandering, so paternalistic, so smug and arrogant. She gives an example here of – this is on page 74, 75. And I've got, I mean, I've got almost every page is littered with, or you can't see it over there. This is littered with just like, how can you say that? How can, or how can you give this example, which makes you look so terrible and think

that like, you're so like self not even aware of like how smug you are. But so she gives an example of doing this, you know, diversity training. And, um, I don't know if I'm going to get, I don't know if I'm going to get it all.

So, so there's a person that in the training, a white person gives a story of how they came to realize how they need to listen to black people more. And she gives an example where she was like this, you know, black lady was protesting something and, and she actually,

it was a, it was a really beautiful example of a white person coming to grips with some of their implicit racial bias. But when she, she actually imitated the black lady who was talking, and as Robin DiAngelo says, in a stereotypical black voice, and then when she was done telling the story, Robin DiAngelo says,

I understand that you gained valuable insight from that interaction, and I thank you for sharing that insight with us. I'm going to ask that you consider not telling that story in that way again totally shame the person in public when they maybe possibly did some i mean was she imitating the black woman in a black voice because she was being stereotypical or is that just the way the person talked i mean i you know like i don't and she says, we shouldn't be ashamed of black skin. Like we shouldn't, you know, whatever, like let's. And so it's like, I don't, I don't even, maybe it was problematic, maybe not.

But do you literally miss the, the, the great growth this person has had to publicly shame them for simply the way they retold the story. And she immediately began to protest. And so I interrupted her and continued. Immediately began to protest. And so I interrupted her and continued. So let me give you, let me give it an analogy. Cause I do a lot of like leadership training on LGBT stuff. And one thing that I tell people not to do is use the word homosexual. So let me give you a parallel story, a, maybe an older conservative Christian saying, you know what? I had a couple of homosexuals move in next door. And at first I was really annoyed, but then I, you know, prayed to God, like, God, give me the grace to like reach out to my homosexual neighbors. So they walk over with a bunch of cookies and

said, Hey, you know what? I just want to thank you for moving into the neighborhood. I'm, you know, my name is so-and-so. I'm so thankful you're here. Here's some cookies. And I've really grown to love, you know, my homosexual neighbors. What if I jump in as my, you know, as Robin DeAngelo says, you know, thank you for sharing that. But I would ask that you never share the story in that way again. And the person's like, what would I do? Like, well, you said the word homosexual. That's just dehumanizing.

And, like, I just shut that person down even though like okay they use the word that they shouldn't use but goodness can't you see that but she does that all throughout the book and i'm i'm sitting here thinking like you you sound like so many radical fundamentalist pastors that i'm just giving you the truth don't get defensive what you don't you don't want to grow as a person? Okay, well, you're being fragile. Anyway, we don't need. I totally agree with you. So now we're critiquing. We're critiquing her as a presenter. Just stay with me. I told you I'm not an apologist for her. It makes my skin crawl, too. I've seen videos of her and I'm like, I can't, I'm not using that anywhere. I don't, I don't like her vibe. I don't like the, the, um, the elitist, all the reasons that people are railing against her. Okay, great. Is what she's saying worth at least thinking about white people again stay with me because the majority i can hardly name i've tried to do this i as i'm chuckling to myself about this whole thing even across my life

when i like i told you when i first heard the idea of white fragility and people white people in particular just not being able to talk about race. I'm like, oh yeah, it's just so true. Like the only people that I feel like are, are much easier able to do that are people that grew up in more environments. Like you've even said, Preston, where you grow up in LA and you grow up at least around racial difference or in the community I grew up in, you've at least got a chance to try to have a conversation about race. But most people are hyper reactive. And it's not just so again, I feel like you're almost too easily dismissing it. Yes, sometimes they're reacting. And I've seen this even in my own settings where these trainings are going on. Sometimes people are reacting against a statement

that they don't think is true. Sometimes people are reacting against a statement that they don't think is true. Sometimes people are reacting because they're now in a trap, which is what I feel like is happening now that they can never get out of. They can never win. Do you want me to come talk to you when something happens in society or am I supposed to stay away from you right now because something happened in society? Do you want me to try to have open and honest conversations about how I feel? Or is that centering my whiteness now? And it's a total trap right now. Okay, I get that. And I've watched it happen. And it's not fair. And it's maybe an overcorrection now where white people are always wrong about everything in every situation. No, that's no good. So again, Christian, filled with the spirit. Can I take Robin DeAngelo's years of experience?

She has at least she has sat in these environments and not dismiss everything that she's saying and ask the question, why do white people tend to be defensive about race in general? in general. If you bring up the history of lynching and Preston, I've done this even with my crew, you know, I'm on staff with crew. Yeah. With conversations that I'm having with other white staff and their immediate reaction to any suggestion about race is to get defensive. It's to assume that this is just a tool of critical theory. It's to assume that it's the liberal Democrats. It's to right away when guys are kneeling in the NFL, when guys are kneeling in the NFL. There weren't hardly any conversations in the church with people I'm hanging out with about why is it? What are the underlying causes that might cause a guy to do something that is going to be wildly reacted against? something that is going to be wildly reacted against and he knows that why are we not talking about what is underlying that instead of having conversations about respect for the flag no

solely which it turned into here here's here's why yeah so i i feel like the good stuff in white fragility and with any book, the Quran, okay, there's good stuff. You know, there's nothing is just completely off. So maybe it's the, the helpful points of that book and other books like it.

Maybe it's stuff that I've already kind of been awakened to on some level for a while now. And I've seen, I mean, because of you of you dude you're the one that told me to read the autobiography of malcolm x which wrecked my life in a good way i mean that was just so brutally eye-opening um why why is that talk talk about that for the sake of you know this conversation that you've been listening to it i mean that so i mean it's been what 15 years since i read it but i i just remember following his journey from childhood teenage adulthood and just

in as much as it's possible through somebody else's autobiography to see the world through their eyes living as a black kid in the you know 30s 40s 50s um in a very you know obviously not not just so that what it was eye-opening was even the well-intentioned white people to show how belittling and disempowering they were the story of that school teacher who he speaks highly of that really saw him as an amazing student and everything, but then said, yeah, you'll never make it in life. Or he wanted to be a lawyer or something. Yeah, yeah.

Like, well, Malcolm. Yeah, that's not for you. And just marinating in what it was like growing up as a black kid who was very innocent, but slowly began to see how corrupt the system is and how white supremacy bleeds into so many areas of life. It was super eye opening. And I love it. I was so thrilled to have that kind of awakening. And maybe that's more my demeanor. I love seeing where I need been wrong and where i've been blind and um and even now there's loads of things i'm sure i'm blind to so um so when it comes to the race and you know another book that we haven't talked about you kind of hinted around it but james cone uh the cross and the lynching tree dude that book is incredible incredible how lynchings that didn't happen that long ago

100 years ago they were publicized in a newspaper and people would bring their families to show up at the next the lynching in the town square this is insane and and and for him to connect the dots between the black Christian experience in that time with the crucifixion of Jesus and how lynchings were connected historically to the lynching of Jesus and how people saw a symbolic connection there, what that did to their faith. That was a brilliant, brilliant insight. So I guess when people people today like d'angelo and others are kind of drawing attention to some of these blind spots that we've had i guess i i've i don't know and i don't want to sound like i i haven't arrived okay i'm not saying but like i i'm

like yeah totally i absolutely like that's not it's does anybody deny that and you're saying yeah a lot of people deny that yes white people do uh push back and all this stuff i'm like okay that that's that's that's lame yeah to not acknowledge any kind of historical connectedness between our deep dark past and today or not acknowledge that there are structural societal um things that there's not implicit racial bias i mean i guess i've just assumed these things to be true for so long that i don't need some white lady to no president i think that's good and you know what so this is this is um this is helpful it's helpful even hearing you say that because that's what grates me too, okay, about her. I don't need her to point that out to me.

So there's some, you know, a lack of humility maybe in there somewhere. There's the pride thing when you're getting jabbed by somebody. Like who does she think she is? Okay, so I got to wrestle with that. You got to wrestle with that in your own way. But one of the things that, that happened for me, and I'm trying to remember which of these stories, cause I've had a couple of them that I want to tell you. I just remember thinking everybody gets this. Okay. So I remember in the mid 1990s, maybe it was around when all the Rodney King stuff was happening. And we were having this

conversation inside of the Paratroop organization that I've been a part of for, you know, almost 30 years. And I can remember thinking, I don't want to do this. Like, again, the things like everybody gets this. There is not really a race problem. People see the world the way I see the world, which was having grown up in a really mixed environment. OK. And I remember going to this big, large gathering that we had and I was shocked to hear the things that were being said. And I remember sitting in the back of the room and I don't remember the details of it now, so I'm not even going to try to make them up. But they were saying some really non-empathizing things. They were saying some very white supremacist thing okay

before that was even being used as language and i remember just sitting there thinking oh my gosh so and i'm because i've been getting in these discussions even with some of my black friends on staff and trying to convince them it's not as big of a problem as you keep saying that it is and then i went to this meeting and heard what people were saying, and I just sat there and thought, I'm wrong. Yeah. I'm wrong. And then I started to really try to take seriously what are people's histories,

their own personal histories, because it really matters. It makes a big difference. Lisa Fields said that. Yeah. That she grew up around nothing but black people. Okay? And I had friends like that in college who grew up on the east side of cleveland they only knew black life in cleveland and i knew i met white people who for the very first time i met white people who had never had an interaction with a black person when i went to kent state at college first time

well they've got wildly different views and experiences when it comes to race and racial interaction and where they're at in this conversation. And I've said this. So in the mid-90s, in my parachurch organization, we started having these conversations and reading these kinds of books. Well, now I'm part of another branch of the same crew organization, and I feel like they haven't even hardly started to have the conversation yet. It's like they're 30 years behind. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.

It's never been a topic of conversation for them. Wow. So to be fair, man, I think people are all over the place. I think people are all over the place. people are all over the place. I think people are all over the place. The tide of history has been to encourage us as white people to think of ourselves as better than non-white people. That's the tide of history. It doesn't mean we're all at different places individually. The tide of history in this country has been to do that. And so can I do some both and thinking? Can I take an honest, hard look at myself in the mirror and see where I may still be holding on to some non-gospel, un-Christian partialities and separations?

Can I do that and not feel like then I've got to carry around guilt? Okay, so we haven't even talked about white privilege. I don't feel guilty about the privileges I have. I just feel more of a stewardship responsibility. I feel, again, it's not even just racially. I've got all kinds of privileges that I'm aware of, you know, and so I need to steward them, not feel guilty about them. Yeah. So the conclusions that a lot of these non-Christian authors especially wind up taking us to, I'm not worried about those.

I'm not spending all my time criticizing their conclusion. I'm taking the best of what I think they're offering me in terms of a critical theory lens, and I'm trying to apply the gospel to it to look at life differently. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's a good reminder. I mean, I, yeah, I do feel like I swim in slightly different waters than a lot of Christians do. So like when you say that, that it's shocking how behind some of these subcultures of Christianity are behind on the race conversation or you've

never even considered, never even read a black theologian or something. I'm like, gosh, that's just weird. But I guess if that is, does exist on higher levels than I realized, then yeah, then we need to, um, keep having that conversation. You know, the whole thing of privilege is tricky. And this is where, and again, I'm not an expert um i'm i'm i'm thinking through i just i see these terms just thrown around with not a lot of thoughtfulness i don't mean that in a negative way in a neutral way like i does it doesn't seem like they've it just seems like on a sociological psycho psycho social psycho social level there's various ways in which people can have privileges and certain my big my big thing i've yet to hear somebody really critique this it's

kind of a thinking out loud thought but um certain contexts social geographical context Certain contexts, social, geographical contexts, determine what privilege is. If I, as a white evangelical male, give a speech at Berkeley, is my white maleness, straightness cisgenderness is that is that helping in that situation my evangelicalness or is it actually a hindrance if i'm um and we can talk about athletics too this is something well i'll say that for a second but like it depends on the context like are but certain environments does my evangelicalness my whiteness bring me privilege? You would be just stupid to literally like to not say it does in some context, maybe in many contexts, but just to make a blanket statement of everywhere I go, every situation, my whiteness helps me. I just I don't see that as just sociologically a little naive. In 2020, is it being a white evangelical is that does that helpful i mean no and again i think i'm totally with you on this i'm totally with you on that perspective

what's interesting is the person who popularized it peggy mcintosh if you go to her website maybe you've already done this but go go to Peggy McIntosh's website and you'll see she's got this whole list of disclaimers. I don't know when she added them, but this whole list of disclaimers, one of which is exactly what you're saying. The concept of privilege, even though she is a white liberal feminist and is definitely skewed in that direction, she still was making a generic statement to say that this observation of privilege was just one that caused her to start to empathize with people differently, people of color in particular. And she said, but privilege, this is

a great exercise just to think of all the different levels of privilege that you have in society. And again, I don't know what, I don't even remember what she says to do with them then. I think, I think her ultimate conclusion is to, is to be able to empathize. No, that's helpful. Yeah. Do you think our, do you think our background in athletics, um, contributes to how you and I are processing this? Um,

for sure. Like I grew up in a, I grew grew up in a fairly so i was a poor white kid in a largely hispanic um so so so my social class was you know low um yeah and ethnically i had like white wealthy christian or white wealthy friends but they weren't in my neighborhood so i kind of had this weird you know poor white kid in a hispanic neighborhood so i had friends on both sides but um and there was i there was in california man it's different than the south i keep coming to grips with that but there's racial tensions not nearly as pronounced as when i hear people describe the south but man in athletics it's um i mean you want to win the game you can care a lot it's just like and you go home to your own sort of neighborhoods whatever but like i don't know i just maybe i never saw myself as

a supremely better player because i'm white because it just doesn't make sense like just look at my batting average like either it it's better. It's not either this picture, whatever his character called, you know, either he struck me out and had a 92 mile an hour fastball. I couldn't hit. And I was like, dude,

you got a killer fastball. You know, um, it's, it's, when it comes to athletics, it's like raw talent is what everybody's going to value. And,

uh, the ethnicity does not, I don't say it doesn't matter but it's like i don't know have you thought about this at all or am i making stuff no i've thought about it a ton so we could explore why there were no black quarterbacks until a certain point in time we could explore why there still are no blacks in certain positions of power within these leagues but let's just lay that aside for a second because i feel like what you're saying, not intentionally, but I feel like what you're saying is a little bit of a misapplication of the point. So I was a white guy at a most playing basketball at a school that was

mostly made up of black guys playing basketball. I think there were two of us that were white on my varsity team, my senior okay so was that a was that a was that an advantage no not in that context but overall the the the you'll you'll see this written in different ways all over the place i saw this book called uh how the ir Became White. Have you ever heard that book? No. What a great title. Write that one down, How the Irish Became White. And so this is why. I feel like we need to set up ahead of time one or two topics and then really dig down into them because I feel like we and i love talking to

you preston and i love that we do this but when it comes to these things i really feel like we would be better served if we really could do a deep dive into some of this stuff so we're supposed to we're supposed to be on critical theory he did that well i know well i so irish people at some point achieve their whiteness and were assimilated into white society. One of the main ways that they did that was the stance that they started to take towards black people, because at one time Irish people were treated like about on the same level as other dark skinned minorities in this country when they first came over. And part of and again, this is this is you can you can read the history of how this happened okay that's still different than the black experience they weren't enslaved for 200 years and they didn't experience but the point is it's always better to have white skin in this

country in general than it is to have black skin do you get um affirmative action scholarships do you are there privileges in quotes that are being given to you for being a minority right now? Yes. That's not the point. The point is that in general, because of the way the country has been constituted over centuries, it is better to have white skin than to have dark in general. Would you say – i mean obviously historically nobody with half a brain would deny that historically the question is as we progress and move forward is that still as dominant of a truth or is it less does it still exist on what level

and as tyler said to you progress depends on where you're looking from yeah and whether you thought there was a problem to begin with and what i'm saying is what concerns me is i still think that the majority of white people that i talk to they don't dude whether it was in the 90s so this is the thing i've got 50 years now i'm 52 years old okay started having these conversations in my teen years where I started to become aware of race. OK, so I'm saying over the course of four decades. And then I became a Christian in my 20s. So, again, we're not even because I think there's a difference between the way the Christian community should be handling this and the way the larger community is handling this. I feel like that's a separate discussion almost. like this okay i feel like that's a separate discussion almost but by and large the attitude whenever there's a flag that gets waved by black people saying hey we got a problem over here we

a socioeconomic problem we've got a law problem we've got a way that we're being portrayed in culture problem we got a problem with the police We got a problem when it comes to housing. The immediate reaction in general has not been one to say, how do we fix that? What could we do? Okay. What's been the history that's got us there? And is there something that we can do now to help change it? The immediate reaction is defensiveness. It's to talk about criminality. It's to talk about black on black crime. It's to talk about how there's not enough black fathers in the home. It's to talk about how all we need is the gospel. That's the latest one that I keep watching. All we need is the gospel. And I say, well, all we've had is the gospel for hundreds of years when all this horrible stuff

was going on. What were those Christ followers doing with the gospel back then i'm not saying we need more than the gospel but we need to change our lenses yeah because we've already made some preconceived commitments to saying if we've made a preconceived commitment to saying there's not a problem this is just a tool of the liberal media this is just academic junk that's trickling down to popular culture if we just we're dismissing it through those means wait real quick though i don't i don't the defense though seriously when people say you give a string of examples when people say the black on black crime and fatherlessness they're not saying there's not a problem they're're just saying, let's look at some of the core roots of... No, they're not, Preston. I can't even let you say that. No, they're not. Because any of the people that say that to me don't come right back and say, let's see how we can fix both the systemic problem, which systemic problem is more than just police.

Like that's, it's been overly simplified now when police. Like that's that's it's been overly simplified. Now, when we talk about systemic problems, now it's just the police, which is so complicated that, again, we don't ever really have to take seriously that it's been hardwired. Certain things have been hardwired into our into our nation. And the way that we think about these things, we don't ever have to really look at that. We just dismiss it. It's always dismissive. Okay, so I hear you saying like when people say,

yeah, but fatherlessness, yeah, but black-on-black crime, that's not because they're actually trying to address it. That's their way of saying it's not this, it's not that. that thank you for coming go back to my white suburb kind of thing no and here's one that'll light the fire i'm i just was writing a piece the other day titled white and black fragility okay so this will make people happy so we just talked about what i think white fragility is it's just it is aiveness, like an inability to even entertain the possibility that these things could be true. Black fragility is now we can never say we need to do something about the family. We can never say you are being used as a tool of Democrats, that there may be actually a political system that would better serve what it is that you're after instead of just going along with the Democrats all the time. We can't even have that conversation.

That gets shot. All of that gets shot down immediately. trying to transcend the polar extremes as a Christian, we should be able to look down on that and say both sides are wrong in certain of their conclusions. And both sides need to be able to come to the table with some empathy and humility and not just listening, never pushing back. I'm not saying that, but actually really listen. Yeah. Okay. Instead of defending of defending like i think some of my white friends now they so hate liberal media yeah they so hate democratic politics that they've they've skewed themselves from even being able to have a christian response to these things anymore they they can't think with christian eyes yeah because they're so filled with hatred. Get this. They're so filled with hatred towards their perception of this other side. And I'm not,

I get it. I totally get it. But you can't even construct a Christian emotion called empathy or weep with those who weep. right you don't even know how to access that in these situations because all you're doing is hating on the other side i would say that that is a byproduct of being partisan whether you're on the left or the right news outlets and there's sociological reasons for this i mean they're clickbaity they're trying to provoke anger that's why you're going to go on to another article and that's howological reasons for this. I mean, they're clickbaity. They're trying to provoke anger. That's why you're going to go on to another article, and that's how they make money. These traditional media outlets, they're dying.

I mean, they're literally starving for money and attention, so they will do whatever it takes to get attention. What's just psychologically, how do you get attention? You provoke somebody's anger. And so both sides. But why are you falling for that, Christian? Why are you falling for that? Yeah, that's that's a

deeper yeah totally it is or we say people say that there be the black people are being used by the democrats and i say white evangelicals are being used by the republicans we're all being used man why are you falling for it why do you really really believe that you're standing over here in the truth shouting and screaming at that side over there that's not what we're called to i'm serious no i agree as followers there's something twisted about that on both sides yeah yeah on both sides um okay slightly different turn when you're talking about like i mean this kind of has to do with everything we're talking about but how do you respond i'm not sure what i think about this yet so it's a genuine

question when people say look we had a when people say you know there's such a massive race problem america we had a democratically elected black president um we had you know oprah winfrey worth what 2.2 billion i don't know how many billions of dollars she's worth we have um you know colin kaepernick getting paid millions of dollars to kneel before the anthem you've heard you've heard these arguments and i i could genuinely i could see both sides for me on the one hand i'm like okay a few anecdotal examples doesn't discredit the claim that there is something more systemic systemic doesn't mean 100 will never make it it just means that much they're still systematic problems on the

other hand it is a little bit i don't know i just kind of like smile a little bit when oprah winfrey worth billions of dollars is talking about white privilege and i'm like i don't know it'd mean a little more if you had somebody who's stuck in endless poverty even though they're working hard to say that but somebody is like one of the most powerful humans in america um worth billions of dollars it does it doesn't mean as much i don't know so i don't know i kind of i can see both sides of that kind of argument citing individual examples of super super powerful successful people of color um it does seem to question a little bit how systemic things are i don't know what do you think about that how do you respond to that i just think it's both and again i think

it's both and what is both like what what's the both and what's the end in the sense that and you said this at the very beginning my goodness and i see people rage about this too i wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world i don't think now again that's a pretty blanket statement because i've only been to a handful of other countries but i'm going to grant that I think that in terms of overall freedoms and opportunities in general, you are way better off here no matter what color you are and no matter what your current sociological status is. Poverty looks different here than it looks over in India. Right. Okay. There's problems with that, but I'll throw that out on the table. I saw a Modelo commercial the other day. You know the beer Modelo? Yeah, it's good beer. If you look at those, the one I saw the other day was on this

boxer. I forget his name now, but the tagline is it doesn't matter where you come from. And of course all these Modelo commercials are about a rags to riches story. Okay. Which is interesting. I don't know why they're doing this. I haven't studied it at all, but they're all rags to riches. It doesn't matter where you came from. It matters what you're made of. Okay. And we all salute that. We, we love that idea. Okay. As Americans, we do. And can I say to that that that's a true statement? I yeah. You know what? I got all kinds of examples because there's free will. OK, this is where the theology enters into it, because there's free will.

People get to make choices in the midst of whatever circumstances they find themselves in. And by God's grace, they may rise up out of it and become something special. On the historical timeline, you may become something special because of choices that you make. That is absolutely true. Both and. And where you come from does matter. Does matter. Of course it matter. It does matter. Of course it matters.

It does matter. So, again, can we mature to a point of being able to suggest that both of those are true, that if you're born into the world and you immediately have resources and you're playing Monopoly and the cards have already been dealt and you're holding a whole bunch of them, you are in position to succeed. Now, you still got to make choices, but you're still in position to succeed differently than the person whose first role is to wind up on your properties that have already been bought up.

That person is at a disadvantage. Now, they can quit. They can throw in the towel or they can keep rolling and scratch and claw and try to find their way through around the board. They can do that. But they definitely are at a disadvantage. or they can keep rolling and scratching claw and try to find their way through around the board. Okay. They can do that. But they definitely are at a disadvantage. Totally.

So can we say that both of those are true without having to freak out? Yeah. No, absolutely. And that's, yeah. To me, it's just, again, it seems so obvious that it's shocking. And this is where some people on the white fragility side and i even i keep notes in the back of my books like where they talk about stuff where do they mention this whatever and i have a category here of moral agency of the individual and you can see never mentions it there's there no individual, there's no moral agency. There is no, it's all structural systemic.

And I'm like, that's a healthy corrective to the other person who's going to say it's all individual, just work hard. Everybody has an equal opportunity. That's, that's just naive. But to swing the other side and to say that moral agency, moral responsibility, individualism, even if you have some cards stacked against you um yeah it has to be a both and but even even here i mean we i don't to reduce everything to race again thinking out loud i just question

i mean physiologically i mean if you if you're a short, not good-looking, socially awkward, overweight white dude, and you're a super athletic black guy that's good-looking, has good social skills, he may have certain cards stacked against him based on whatever color of his skin the socioeconomic whatever but like there's other things that we should consider too that do give somebody certain amounts of privilege in certain context you know people that are super short or super tall you know if you're seven two uh you're you're gonna you're gonna walk through life with everybody staring at you everybody looking weird you might not get hired as easily subconsciously because people don't want a

seven foot two waiter that everybody's gonna stare like i just they're so we're sociologically complex beings and this is where i resist any kind of oversimplification of what it is to be human in a complex society i do see that happening in some branches of the race conversation but so do i and but so even the way you started this whole thing this is kind of this is how annoying i've become and i didn't do it to you because i'm because we're going back and forth but the very first thing you said was to boil everything down to race. And what I wanted to say right away is, well, you don't have to do that. Why are you accepting that premise? Now, I know that Robin might be doing that and some of her colleagues and see this is how they

operate. They, in the academic world, I think they have some really whacked out places that they wind up going to and statements that they end up making. And you and I both know that part of the reason they do that is to get published because you don't get published being middle of the road or trying to figure out how to come into the middle. You get published by saying wild stuff

and then making defenses for it. And then guess what happens? What you're doing is you're spurring a whole bunch of works over here. They're going to react to it. It's almost like there's this implied understanding that we need to keep saying wild things. Yeah. Okay.

I, this is, you just did it. The lens of privilege is a fascinating lens to look through. It's hugely complex. It's super interesting. We should be really careful about drawing too many hard and fast conclusions about cause and effect. Okay, it's chaos theory in some ways.

It's just you got all these parts that guess what? I believe a sovereign God causes things to work themselves out according to his will and his purposes, regardless of where you came from or what color you are, all these other things that we've talked about. OK, I really I believe that over this whole thing. sociologically speaking, and looking at life under the sun, okay, looking at life under the sun, even apart from God, it takes me down some other paths where I can pull out the race idea, for example, and I can make observations about what's happening racially. I can make some observations about that. It doesn't mean that there's not any other factors at play, but can I make some observations about race? If you're the type of person that is basically shutting that down immediately, which is what I see happening too much, then you're not being honest about things. The same thing I used to

say at Bowling Green when they would try to say that it all comes down to this. OK, it all comes down to race or power. And I would say, yeah, it's actually more complicated than that. You're not being honest. You're not being intellectually or academically honest about that. You sound just like my fundamentalist brethren over here who are being just as dishonest. And I thought that in a Ph.D. program, even at a liberal secular school, there would be a commitment. And so I was wrong about this to finding the truth that really is gone now. OK, just like everybody's suspicious, suspicious. It's gone. And so that I at least then want to believe that you'll do what's best for humanity and for us as people.

That's largely gone. I can remember very specific conversations of saying stuff like that. That won't help us be able to bridge the gap between one another. And I remember one woman in particular saying, I don't want to bridge the gap. I'm not interested in making peace with the other side. And I'm like, okay. When you view the other side as KKK members, you're not having a conversation with them. Or men, period.

Okay, again, because this is gender, it's sexuality, it's race. You go after all these different categories. And so I say, well, you guys aren't being honest. Because there's a lot of other reasons why it is that black people wind up in some of the spots they wind up in that go beyond just white supremacy i say that to them when i'm with my white friends though who are immediately sending me candace owens videos on the eve of ahmad arbery being shot in the middle of the road by two guys who chase him down my first reaction is yeah you're not being honest here man what is it yeah i mean there's there's a lot of really amazing black intellectuals that

would have a very different perspective than the kind of dominant anti-racist um but you know i don't know if you paid attention to like glenn lowry i mean john mcwarder these are kind of dominant anti-racist um but you know i don't know if you paid attention to like glenn lowry i mean john mcwarder these are kind of the new you know thomas souls of the day or whatever but they're not they're not they're not republican they're not particularly conservative um uh but they're just they they they're they do question some of the dominant narratives as black men who do have the lived experience um but i don't what is it i mean i mean she's she's got some interesting stuff to say but she's so political brandon uh tatum same thing i don't know if you've seen him yes i've seen him listen so here's what's interesting about all those guys and i'm not

saying this to dismiss them because i don't disagree with everything they're saying. Not at all. They've got a lot of – yeah. Listen, the point is you need to be – you, if you're a Christian, should still be coming from a worldview that believes in truth. Right. So we need to do a little more work though than just to react against everybody that we hear from and immediately think we've got the truth. I at least appreciate you, Preston. You need to read more. Dig a little deeper. Go beyond just articles that have been written or the latest study that's come out.

Maybe dig a little deeper and read a book or two, okay? Seriously. Wait, me? No, all of us. Oh, I was going to say I've been reading books. That's all I do is read books. I know. No, I know.

So you're going deeper down into the rabbit hole, and things are always a little more complicated down there. Yeah. So what's interesting though about all those guys is if you go and read all of their bios, they really are coming from these very privileged places to begin with. Even Coleman Hughes that you sent. Yeah. I mean he's 23 years old. They're all Ivy Leaguers. Yeah brand the former nfl player so i'm i'm not so what does that mean it doesn't mean then that i'm dismissing everything they're saying it just means that they are definitely part of a group of

people that have that have tried a different path to get where they're at than the black people that are on the east side of Xenia over here right now. Okay. I'm just, I'm just making that statement. There are, I think Lisa Fields was saying that, I can't remember all of them now that I've listened to all these, but, um, you know, she made the statement that they don't necessarily, they're not representing the mass of black people that are out there. What I think they're doing, okay, besides the fact that they are coming from privileged places, maybe largely because of choices that they've made, largely because of having intact homes, maybe, I don't know. I don't know all their details.

I mean, how many black people do wind up as ivy league professors that's still that's a minority of guys okay what i hear them railing against are liberal politics what i hear them railing against is overly simplistic liberal politics that are using black people to further a particular white political aim which they don't say that very often, but it is a white political aim, and they're sick of being used by white liberals for their own aims. And so they are taking the other side to say, let's stand on our own two feet. We don't need white people to go to bat for us in the way that they're trying to go.

We don't need Robin DiAngelo. You don't need white people to go to bat for us in the way that they're trying to go. We don't need Robin DiAngelo. Right. You don't need that. Police definitely have a more complicated job than just to go around looking for black people to kill. There is something to be said for, you know, not being out at midnight and staying on certain streets. I mean, there is something to be said for that. Okay. is something to be said for that okay overly simplistic because in some communities you can be minding your own business and trying to stay out of trouble and still get pulled over because

you're black yep there are plenty of stories to that end okay but i think that's what the majority of the thomas soul i've heard you reference him you know i've read all those guys and i think they make some great conservative insights um and i think they hate white liberal media or any liberal media doesn't matter what color they are so i would even say i would say some of the more black this is why i brought them up because candace owens is hyper partisan brandon tatum he wears his maga hat you know these are and they're thoughtful but they're not intellectuals um the ones that i'm referring to aren't there they would be liberal in the classic sense um or all partisan they're just not on the radical woke liberal white left and that's where they say these radical left white people uh think they're doing us a service

and they're actually hurting the black community but um we gotta end on that bro because i got another interview right now like literally right now so i gotta cut you off dude and we're just getting warmed up and we said lots of stuff that we should probably go back and edit but we're not going to we're gonna let it sit so it all needs to be edited out and ed usinski at gmail.com. Send all your... Nobody knows how to spell your name, man. Don't spell it. Don't give them any real address or anything. Thanks, bro, for being on. Appreciate you.

Love the conversation. Always walk away challenged and a better person, man. So appreciate you. Let's do it again. All right. Take care, dude. See you. Bye. person man so appreciate you let's do it let's do it again all right take care dude okay see you you