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The Harvester Podcast is brought to you by the Florida School of Preaching. Listen weekly to take a dive into biblical topics and thoughtful studies on things that matter to our eternal souls.
Welcome to the Harvester podcast, season two, episode 12.
Normally, Forrest Antimaceras of the Orange Street Church of Christ in Auburndale,
Florida, and Stephen Ford with the South Florida Avenue Church of Christ in Lagland,
Florida, are accompanying me.
But this is very busy time of year, and so they are not available at this time, but we've
got to keep up with the schedule.
And so for this episode, we are going to introduce critical race theory.
also known as CRT for short.
And this is something that is definitely a cultural issue in our time and our day and
time.
And so we want to address that as we have been addressing these cultural issues.
Now, a couple things up front.
I want to point out that there is only one race, a human race, and every human is made in
the image and likeness of God according to Genesis 1, 26 and 27.
And so no matter a person's skin color, ethnicity, what side of the tracks he or she came
from, every single one of us, male or female, every single one of us is an image bearer of
God.
And for that reason, we are of intrinsic value, and for that reason it's wrong to kill one
another.
Genesis 9 verse 6 is the first instance of capital punishment.
In fact, James even said that it's not right to
cuss at wanting to curse one, a human being, because he is made in the image and likeness
of God.
And so I will be using race, the word race, quite a bit, simply because that's what the
literature about critical race theory uses that term.
But I just want you to know that I'll try to use a different term where I can, but
especially when I'm quoting them, just know that I realize there's only one human race.
And so really any uh
attack against another human would be racism.
But usually the way it's used in the world, it's uh one ethnicity or one skin color
against another skin color.
And so that's something to be aware of.
Also, I want to point out that in this study, there'll be a lot of, especially in some of
the quotes and stuff that'll talk about the white world, it'll talk about some things that
may be offensive to some people, the terms.
but again the terms are not wrong of themselves is just the way they are identified and
since critical race theory began in the late sixties early seventies i mean that's really
what came out suppose you could say the roots of it may be go further back but most of the
proponents of critical race theory are still alive today they're still lecturing and
they're still on youtube and everything and so it's not like we're making this stuff up
but you can listen to them yourselves and find out what
the kind of things that they teach and so it's all available there.
But basically, critical race theory comes out of um a movement that kind of resisted, that
kind of thought the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s was not really on target,
that it was going to make matters worse than what it was, what they wanted.
And there were two basic things about the civil rights movement that usually when we think
of that movement we think of uh men like Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
and others.
But there are two things that they did not like about that.
Number one, they did not like the idea of quote color blindness end quote.
That is color blindness in their eyes was an attempt to take a person's ethnicity out of
the process.
now when we think of color blindness and i do want to say here also i had a discussion
with a well-known preacher twelve years ago and the reason why notes twelve years ago is
because i first got on facebook twelve years ago for one reason and as to keep up with my
grandkids and my oldest grandchild is twelve years old and so that's why i know it's
twelve years ago about that i got on facebook well at that time i didn't know you weren't
supposed to you know question people what they said on facebook
And so a brother wrote something that I thought was kind of not right.
And he brought up lot of terms like colorblindness.
he brought up a bunch of terms that 12 years later, I guess about 10 years later, I
discovered were really part of this critical race theory.
Where would you hear some of these terms if you had not been exposed to or studying
critical race theory?
and he was speaking of those terms in favor of them trying to promote them and of course i
didn't realize it till ten years after i talked to him where these terms came from and i
look back on them thinking about that brother was influenced by this critical race theory
and no wonder some of the stuff he said was kind of off when compared to the bible with
the bible teaches and so that's kind of behind it but colorblindness is one thing he was
using and so when we think of colorblindness we think of release i do in my
when i heard that first heard that term is like colorblindness is good because i'm i'm
seeing somebody not because of who their ethnicity is i'm seeing them as a human being
equal with me and uh...
you know because of that the law should apply equally to him as well as me uh...
regardless of our skin color or ethnicity there should be no preferential treatment based
on skin color that's what i mean by
color blindness, but in critical race theory, the meaning of color blindness they say
would be a good idea, but since America, they would say, and this is kind of an assumption
based upon the past, that since America is too racially biased for color blindness to
work, it is simply a facade keeping Americans from really dealing with the problems of
race.
And of course, there's race again, but ethnicity.
In other words, they are saying colorblindness is just, well, I almost said whitewashing,
but I don't want to, no pun intended there, but it's almost like whitewashing the
differences, just covering over the differences of different ethnicities.
And of course, there is value in different cultures.
I've been on several foreign mission work, and I've always appreciated some of the culture
that I've found.
Although some culture is downright unscriptural, uh but that's why the gospel is needed.
But uh they did not like the idea of colorblindness that is making all ethnicities as if
they're equal.
Secondly, critical race theorists did not like from the civil rights movement, they did
not like the idea of integration, where people of all races come together to share values,
political power, etc.
integration they would say causes people to downplay their racial differences in favor of
seeing a common humanity and in other words i guess it's the same kind of thing with the
color blindness they want to keep all the different ethnicities and they saw that
integration would would would kind of ruin that they would say that the dominant group and
is true well you know there's
And the thing about this is there is some truth to this.
And so when you think about like back in you know, 17, 1800s before the Civil War, where
slavery was a real big issue and it was in North and South in the United States, and it
was just a terrible thing that that went on for so long.
But sometimes critical race theorists will see the present as if it were still the past.
and although we've you know got a long way to go when it comes to if ethnic relationships
and things like that we we've come a long way since where we were uh...
even in my lifetime i've seen that we have come a long way but it is true that sometimes a
dominant uh...
majority group in this case the you know caucasian uh...
whites of the united states way back in in in those days where the majority group
And to a certain extent, they did destroy the values and culture of the minority group,
although when it comes religiously, uh well, I don't know.
I just knew a brother in Christ.
He's deceased now, but he wrote a master's thesis 20, 25 years ago on the pastoral
oversight, why it's so common in some of the what we would call predominantly
African-American churches.
uh
his basic conclusion was and he gave me a copy of it this long before electronic uh...
versions of the thing could be had so it was a bill chunk of paper but anyway his
conclusion was basically that when uh...
the slaves came over a lot of the the the owners would allow them to have their own church
services in a building even though they might call it the methodist church and i call this
and i call that uh...
they were
you separated from the caucasians are the whites and then they would do their own religion
even though a name was on the outside but when they practice their religion and by the way
the one that wrote this thesis was of african descent that when they practice their
religion and they practice it you know kinda like they did in the tribes back in africa
where you had the chief and so the chief became the the the authority the authority
And so uh as the Civil War went on and the Emancipation Proclamation and then as the
former slaves started uh going out into the states and such, they carried that with them.
And then even today in churches, according to his thesis, you have that as a major problem
in many of the, least in my area, I've seen this, predominantly black churches and that is
the
where the preacher's in charge of everything.
And the elders and deacons are just treated as kind of like his counsel.
And I've been to Africa uh nine or 10 times since 2005, and I've seen how these tribal
things work with the chief and all of that.
And uh it's a great eye-opening experience.
Those of you who have heard me talk about this, you know that I've said in the past that
when I went to Africa for the first time, I saw what I think is the closest
to Bible culture that I've ever seen in this world.
The way the families are set up, the way the marriages take place, uh the way the chiefs
and all that stuff work, uh that is the closest thing to what I understand the Bible
culture to be like on this earth.
But that's a whole other lesson we could look at.
But another thing, and so those two things are what really caused Critical Race Theory to
pick up, is that they were against those two tenets of the Civil Rights Movement.
the idea of color blindness and the idea of integration.
And you can see some of this stuff with Malcolm X.
Malcolm X was kind of like the antithesis of, well, don't know if that antithesis is the
right word, but he did not believe the same thing that Martin Luther King Jr.
did about civil rights and all that kind of thing.
Malcolm X kind of went against, opposed some of the things Martin Luther King Jr.
was doing.
the year or the weekend, um well, I the week that Robert R.
Taylor, Jr.
passed away, my wife and I were at the Memphis School of Preaching Lectureship, and I
believe their lectureship ended, well, we had some time to kill.
There was no more lectureship.
The lectureship was over, but the funeral was not until, I guess maybe their lectureship
ended the day before the funeral, and we had the hotel room that night, and the funeral
was in the afternoon.
We were going to leave that morning, but we stayed around for the funeral, and we had
about
sometime to kill swindle to the civil rights museum in memphis and i would recommend
anybody go there to visit and really interesting but they had a little display in there
about malcolm x and how he did oppose and he would win against kind of some of things
martin Luther king junior was trying to do uh...
but that's another situation but but anyway this race consciousness was something that was
the very very prominent in uh...
with malcolm x all right uh...
but critical race theory uh...
Basically, uh one of their tenets also is deconstruction and reconstruction and what they
mean by that and this is kind of a Marxist uh take on things.
uh Marxism is behind this as well as a lot of these isms like communism, socialism, uh a
lot of these isms.
uh But anyway, Marxism viewed the status quo as the oppressor.
status quo as the oppressor.
And then the common folk, well, and what Marx meant by the status quo was the rich and
wealthy who could own land and the common people could not own land.
And so Marxism set it up with the idea that everyone's either an oppressor or the
oppressed.
And as that applies to critical race theory, the status quo of the American system, the
constitution and all that
because of the slavery and all that that was allowed to go on, that is the oppressor.
And so then the common folk, or in this case, those with dark skin, those who were brought
over as slaves, they're the oppressed.
And that was certainly true during slavery, no doubt about it.
But they would say that that system, the American system with its constitution and stuff,
since it's still there today, that same system that brought about all that slavery,
are allowed all that slave of course they would say brought it about is still there so
that is the oppressor that's a status quo and so we've got to remove totally remove all of
that from the status quo and so by doing that there must be a deconstruction that you take
the status quo you go through that line by line everything that is against
Well, we're going to say racist to use their terms, but everything that is prejudicial,
that is biased, that is oppressive, you've got to get rid of that.
And you get rid of that, you don't clean it up, you get rid of it totally and put
something else in its place.
And that sounds good on the surface, but not really how it's applied.
It's not good because instead of rep...
place instead of cleaning it up.
Like say, for example, um, you know, land ownership, let's say land, you know, mortgages
or whatever, you know, and, um, you know, if, if, if, if only the wealthy could buy land,
not because they didn't have the money, but well, well, let me see.
Let me, let me see if I can put this better.
Um,
I'm trying to think of something else, something just crossed my mind, but it left me in
here.
To illustrate this, if, say the tax law, so the tax law, say the tax law, well that's
pretty intricate too.
Well let's say a uh store owner, let's say back in the day when people could just buy a
handshake, make a deal.
So if a store owner would only shake hands with the white people to make a deal, and he
would not shake hands with the black person,
they would say get rid of the handshake.
But the better thing to do is keep the handshake but make it include all different skin
colors.
And so that would be, you wouldn't have to deconstruct the handshake, but just make sure
that it includes everybody.
And so you would clean it up instead of do away with it.
But that's not what they do.
They take the deconstruction, tear it out of there, then put it with something else.
Now the best example that was given
and uh...
this was given in a source i had uh...
ryan chapman he gave this example you know the member of the church anything like that but
he had a pretty good example of this he said consider academia what has happened to
academia and so uh...
a prime example of this deconstruction reconstruction is the process in academia and so
critical race theorist analyzed academia and saw three values that are part of the status
quo in academia
those three values are objectivity, being neutral, and being balanced.
And so critical race theories, a theorist said that these values are from the quote white
world, end quote.
And so just think about that.
So you can't be objective because they would say that's racist, that's biased, that is
oppressive.
Being neutral is oppressive and being balanced is oppressive.
Now I do understand that, you know, people may not have rightly applied objectivity.
They may not have rightly applied neutrality.
They might have not rightly applied balance, but to say that those principles are
oppressive and get rid of them.
You see, that's a big difference between cleaning up the objectivity to make it truly
objective, cleaning up neutrality by making it truly neutral and claiming it.
cleaning up balance and making it truly balanced.
And so the principles of objectivity, neutrality and balance need to stay.
Whatever wrong application they were making of that in the past needs to be corrected, but
those principles need to stay.
Now, because objectivity is oppressive part of the problem, they would say do away with
it.
Now you think about some of these big universities going on.
And of course this Doge thing that
our new president brought in to see where all the money's going.
It's kind of bringing some of this stuff out, but you take away objectivity and that's
what you have a lot in these universities.
They're not objective at all.
It's subjective morality.
It's subjective ethics, these kinds of things.
You take away neutrality.
If you can't be neutral and neutral is you're not going to take sides.
Now you might believe a side or another side, but you can't teach someone your side of it.
You have to teach it neutrally.
and then but but see if you do away with neutrality then what are you gonna have?
You're gonna be favoring one side or the other.
You're gonna favor one side basically.
And then balance, if you take away balance, now balance is simply stating if you give one
view there's an opposition like take the theory of evolution.
Well you know you can teach the theory and that's all it is is a theory but to be balanced
you would teach creation along with it.
and make and allow the people to make up their own mind but you can't do that because
that's oppressed and you know balance is oppressive and so these things in academia
objectivity neutrality imbalance part of the status quo part of the oppressing you gotta
do away with it when you think about what that did to the news media and you wonder why
the news media is so messed up over the last twenty years or so because they can't be
objective because that's part of the problem
So what are they?
Very subjective.
You can't be neutral because that's in their mind, the oppressive status quo neutrality.
And so they're one sided talking about the mainstream media.
You can't be balanced because you know, balance is oppressive.
And so you got to only give one side of the story.
And man, we see that all over the place today.
Do we not?
uh Just one side of the story.
I know Fox News a long time ago had that, they came up with the slogan, fair and balanced.
Well, know, fair and balanced, that balance is a catch term to a lot of people because of
this critical race theory.
And so there they'd be talked about as if they were, you know, uh, I'm going to say
racist, but racist or, know, they're bad because they're, they're balanced.
You know, they even claim to be balanced.
But, uh, these are things that, that again, this deconstruction reconstruction,
stuff comes along.
Now we talked about authenticity a few episodes back and we mentioned this there and
here's you know another situation here that authenticity isn't what they mean by
authenticity is not what we mean by that what I mean by that you know when I hear the term
authenticity I think genuine real but what they mean by that as we discussed earlier is
that authenticity is you have to go against the status quo
in order to be authentic.
Or in their terms, critical race theorists would say you have to resist color blindness.
You have to resist integrating into what they would call the white world in order to be
authentic.
And so if you're a dark skinned color person, but you still believe in object neutral and
balanced, well, you're part of the problem.
And that's why you can have people in prominent positions
in our country that are dark skin color, they don't buy into the critical race theory.
Well, they'll just get kicked aside.
They'll just get, you know, you know, they'll get torn down verbally and all that.
And, know, uncle Tom and all this kind of stuff, which, know, if, uh, if anybody ever read
those books or the book, um, uncle Tom's cabin, you'll know that uncle Tom was a hero with
a plot.
He wasn't some trader.
You want some, you know, Judas or something like they make him out to be now, but there's
another.
story behind that as well as to how that got changed around.
But the real Uncle Tom was a Christ-like figure in the novels.
But anyway, a quote here, major theme of critical race theory reflects the colored
intellectuals' persistent battle to avoid being rendered inauthentic by the pressures of
adapting to the white world.
And so authenticity is resisting integration.
And we see that a lot here.
Now the basic uh premises here, you what evidence do critical race theorists use to show
that the status quo is oppressive, et cetera?
Well, number one, well, actually there's two main sources.
Number one, they draw on their own experiences or the experience of others they know that
support their thesis.
and so there'll be a lot of storytelling about what happened to me back in the day,
happened here, what happened there.
And uh it's true.
And I taught a class in a very prominent city in Florida.
And uh I learned so much from that class because there were people older in that class
that went through the civil rights movement.
uh They could tell me of some of the experiences that they had.
that were just shameful that what people, what white people did to them was just shameful.
And I know other brethren from other parts of the country, the same things were done.
That's just, you know, just hard to believe.
And that fact for a long time, I guess I had more confidence in my brethren maybe, but I
didn't think that that stuff happened, but it did.
It did back in the day.
And so there was a lot of bad things that happened.
And so a lot of stories are told.
and then and and and perpetuated down to the ages uh...
have r i will say that i was very encouraged uh...
when the uh...
recent some recent things happen with uh...
mister floyd who is who was killed uh...
there was a podcast and had three young men are actually that young guy middle-aged and
older guy all from african descent and the host asked him at the very end you know have
you ever been treated
uh...
have you ever been treated wrongly by white brethren and not a single one of them said
they had and again i was from a guy from his thirty early thirties again as forties and
then as fifties uh...
and i thought that was pretty good that none of them said they had of course i was just
three guys in their experience but anyway uh...
the main sources of critical race there's uses it
you know, the experiences or experiences of others that they know.
They also point to unwanted racial disparities in America.
And they'll throw out uh statistical differences between racial groups, such as infant
mortality rates, life expectancy, incarceration rates, and income rates.
And they always see those as being related to ethnicity or skin color.
And so since critical race theorists are subjective and political, they do not objectively
consider the possibility of other explanations.
And of course there is a gap and a lot of that just has to do with, well there's a number
of factors, I'll just put it like that.
All right, but that's kind of a uh basis of critical race theory.
uh They do not think of racism, quote unquote, as most Americans usually do.
And uh critical race theorists, they do have an interest in how racism relates to power
structures.
And so that's something that can be talked about later.
uh But as we think about,
how we can better improve relations between ethnicities.
And there's some other things that we could talk about critical race theory, but we're
kind of running out of time for this episode.
But again, just think of how we are made in the image and likeness of God.
And of course, in my life, I mean, I don't know.
I did live in Lincoln, Florida back in the late 60s as a three and four year old.
I did ask my dad one time, were there actually signs in Lakeland that said, you know,
white only?
And he said, yeah, there sure were.
And then I've heard of members of the church even back in the 50s and stuff who were
members of the KKK.
Couldn't believe it.
But the sources that told me that, I have no reason to doubt the accuracy.
And so this stuff has been, you know, there is real racism, has been in the past.
maybe there is today although i think it's a lot lot lot lot lot less than what used to be
but just think about we're all made in the image of lightness of god every single one of
us is the image of lightness of god we are god-bearers and so we must treat each other
that way also keep in mind that the gospel is for all and i think about matthew's account
of the gospel he begins in
you know, going to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
But yet it ends, make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
Son, and the Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I've commanded you, and lo, I'm
with you always, even to the end of the world.
and then we also need to think about jesus invitation come all you labor and heavy laden i
will give you rest that anybody who is wearing heavy laden who's tired of sin no matter
skin color matter his background ethnicity jesus is the answer
and if we bring people to jesus bring ourselves to jesus we won't have the issues that
uh...
critical race theories to have seen and perhaps over the life i know they've overblown but
we'll see each other as jesus sees us and that's a goal that all this can seek to attain
and so we're gonna close this for now and i know
I wanted to get into more and I'd love to have the discussion with my brothers, Forrest
and Stephen, but we'll kind of pick this up perhaps in another episode.
But as it stands now, we will close this season two out.
appreciate your listening to us and we'd invite your feedback.
Again, you can email me at brian, B-R-I-A-N at fsop.net and that'll come direct to me.
but we appreciate your listening to us and we look forward to season three but we will
have a few episodes we call them bumper so it's uh...
in between the seasons and we have some good lessons coming up on leadership and so we
appreciate your being here with us and uh...
we love you and we pray that you will have a good life in christ and that you will live
with him eternally please join us next time as we discuss these important things