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2022 Equipping Conference – Darrell walks through the timeline from Marxism to CRT. He also gives five reasons why CRT is unbiblical.
Darrell Harrison’s Personal Blog: https://deacondarrell.com Darrell’s Reading List: https://bit.ly/dbh_mustread Just Thinking Blog & Podcast: https://justthinking.me G3 Ministries: https://g3min.org
All right, our next speaker is Daryl Harrison. He serves as the Dean of Social Media at Grace To You, the media ministry of John MacArthur who in this church needs no introduction. The job Dean of Social Media is a title and job that Phil Johnson invented out of whole cloth as an excuse to get Daryl to come work at Grace To You.
At Grace To You, Daryl is responsible for overseeing the ministry's social media strategy. He has a blog called Just Thinking For Myself, which as of May 2022 has more than 74 ,000 subscribers. He is the lead host of the Just Thinking podcast, one of the most influential long-form Christian podcasts in the world with more than 4 .9 million episodes streamed since its debut in December of 2017.
Daryl is the 2013 Fellow of Black Theology and Leadership Institute, yeah, you have to say it that way, at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a 2015 graduate of the theology and ministry program at Princeton, currently in the final phase of certification as a biblical counselor with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors.
Daryl and his wife, Melissa, reside in Valencia, California. They have three adult children, Colin, Naomi, and Yasmin, each of whom resides in their native state of Georgia. And Daryl is going to begin by telling you about a brand new product that Just Thinking Ministries is going to be releasing probably before the end of this session.
Please welcome Daryl Harrison.
So that product that Jim is alluding to there, Virgil and I were just sort of rehashing some of the moments from the Q &A, which we just had a ball, the Q &A just went by way too fast. I mentioned the phrase, build black better.
So I was just mentioning to Virgil, I said, you know what, that should be on a t-shirt. So I said, Virgil, make that happen, text Dwayne, tell Dwayne, get that on the t-shirt. We're going to put it in quotes, but we're going to have Act 1726 underneath it to appoint people to have a better biblical anthropology of ethnicity.
So he's working on that right now as we speak. So it'll probably be available on our website before I'm done as a t-shirt. So I'll give you guys, once you give me the thumbs up, we'll, okay, good, awesome.
Well I have the unenviable task of speaking to you guys right after lunch. And that goes for me too, because I just ate. So I need to make sure that I keep my attention span healthy here as well. So thank you all for coming back today.
It's really great to see you all here. As Virgil mentioned, I'm in the same boat as him, first time ever in Idaho. This place is absolutely gorgeous. It is absolutely, I mean, stunningly gorgeous up here, unbelievable.
But then when you understand what the climate is out in California, anywhere outside of California is, you know. So thank you all for having us here. My wife Melissa, I speak on her behalf as well. And again, not to embarrass anyone, but I do want to commend Pastor Jim for inviting us up here, because when you're speaking to any audience, but especially an audience that's comprised primarily of a congregation at a particular church, when you bring someone like me and Virgil to come in and talk about the stuff that we talk about, the way we talk about them, it takes some courage to do that.
Trust me, there are, and I'll take the blame for this, Jim, you don't have to take the blame for this at all about what I'm about to say. This is Daryl Harrison saying this, Jim Osman has nothing to do with this.
But there are some cowardly pastors out there right now. But Jim Osman is not one of them. So I want to commend Jim, I want to commend the elders, the leadership, the members of Kootenai Community Church for having the courage to deal with these issues head on.
We're privileged to be here. So thank you so much for having us. I want to talk with you this afternoon about the interconnectedness of critical race theory and Marxism. The interconnectedness of critical race theory and Marxism.
And when it comes to understanding critical race theory, what you and I must initially realize is that critical race theory is not some kind of Big Bang proposition. And what I mean by that is that critical race theory as a worldview is not a belief system that just came about ex nihilo.
Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase, ex means out of, nihilo means nothing. It's where we get our English word nihilism, nihilist. Critical race theory is not some worldview that came out of nothing. It's not some Big Bang idea like the Big Bang evolutionists try to explain away creation.
Critical race theory has a definitive genesis, it has a definitive origin, and that origin begins with a worldview that was originally advanced by two 19th century German philosophers, one of whom was Karl Marx, who lived from 1818 to 1883, and the other was his compatriot, Friedrich Engels, E-N-G-E-L-S.
Engels lived from 1820 to 1895, and that worldview that I'm speaking of is commonly referred to today as Marxism. There's an ideological umbilical cord, if you will, that inexorably connects critical race theory with Marxism.
And let me pause right here and say, the reason I chose this topic to speak with you about today is that one of the first lies that you'll hear from an advocate of critical race theory is that critical race theory has nothing to do with Marxism.
That's one of the first lies you will hear them say. Nope, critical race, well, arguably, the first lie might be that critical race theory is not taught in schools. That's a lie. But immediately after that, they're going to say to you that critical race theory has nothing to do with Marxism.
Well, I'm here to prove to you that it does, has its origins in Marxism. So as I said earlier, there's an ideological umbilical cord that inexorably is there, is permanent. It inexorably connects critical race theory with Marxism, and that connection, that umbilical cord is a mutual disdain for and contempt of capitalism.
Like Marxism, critical race theory views capitalism as the fundamental cause of racism in America. That's because in critical race theory, capitalism is what breeds white supremacy. And it is white supremacy that critical race theorists, or crits, so if you ever hear me use the term crits, C-R-I-T-S, crits is just a shortened form of critical race theorists.
They refer to themselves as crits. It's white supremacy that crits say they want to dismantle in American society. Like Marxism, critical race theory is fundamentally a philosophy of class struggle. Fundamentally, critical race theory is a philosophy of class struggle.
Marxist professor Dr. Epifiano San Juan Jr. expresses that view in a 2005 white paper he wrote that's published in the Michigan Journal of Race and Law titled, From Race to Class Struggle, and here's a term you heard Virgil use earlier, subtitled, Reproblematizing.
Critical Race Theory.
From Race to Class Struggle, Reproblematizing Critical Race Theory. And in that white paper, Dr. Epifiano San Juan Jr. says this, quote, a first step in renewing critical race theory is simple to state but difficult to execute.
We must begin with the concept of class as an antagonistic relation between labor and capital and then proceed to analyze how the determinant of race is played out historically in the class-conflicted structure of capitalism and its political slash ideological processes of class rule, unquote.
Now, please understand that when Dr. San Juan says that critical race theory can be used to analyze how the determinant of race is played out historically in the class-conflicted structures of capitalism, he doesn't mean by analyze, he's not saying that in the sense of engaging in an objective critique of society up against an objective standard or an objective benchmark of truth and justice.
That's not what he's saying. So if I were to say to you, if I'm a college professor and I ask you, I give you a book to read and I say, give me a critique of this book, normally what you're going to do is read the book and you're going to develop a critique that takes your own personal bias out of it.
You're going to try to be as objective as possible. That's what you and I think of when we think of the word critical. We take ourselves out of it and we do an objective assessment of what the situation or the circumstance or issue is.
But in critical race theory, that's not what they mean by critical. In critical race theory, the word critical means to criticize. It means to find something everywhere, to criticize. It doesn't mean analyze.
So in the terms, in the context of how Crit uses the word critical race theory, critical always means to criticize. You're finding something to criticize in everything, everything. Don't miss that in the aforementioned white paper that I mentioned from Dr. Eppifiano San Juan, that the subtitle was re-problematizing critical race theory.
That word re-problematize is important to note because critical race theory is designed, by design, it's designed, as I said, to criticize literally every aspect of Western Judeo-Christian culture, whether it be social, cultural, political, or ecclesiastical with regard to the church.
It's designed to criticize Western Judeo-Christian society through a Marxist lens, so as to create new problems and re-problematize old ones. That's why Kutna Community Church, through the lens of a critical race theorist, is a racist church because there's too many white people here, there's too many white people.
Here.
Virgil nailed it earlier. The onus within woke ecclesiology, woke church, and woke churches with woke pulpits, who say they want a multi-ethnic congregation, is to say they want a multi-colored congregation.
But it's always churches like Kutna Community Church that that onus is placed upon. It's never black churches. Black churches are never expected to become more white, but white churches are always expected to become more black, more dark.
But see, the thing is that every church, every true church, is already multi-ethnic. You can have a room full of a thousand white people, and you probably have 50 ethnicities in that room. I'm going to talk about that more tomorrow, or is it tomorrow or this afternoon, I think it's this afternoon.
But the point is this, is that in critical race theories, everything is viewed through a Marxist, sociocultural lens, everything. Critical race theory reaches back into history to resurrect such historical, sociocultural issues as slavery, redlining, voter discrimination, civil rights discrimination, etc., in order to re-prosecute, or better, to re-problematize those issues as present-day realities.
So what you'll see on CNN is you'll see Patrice Colors, one of the three co-founders of Black Lives Matter, will come on CNN and banter on and on about how blacks were discriminated in the 1960s as if that discrimination is still a reality today.
So that's an example. They'll reach back in history, bring a historical reality back into the present day, and argue that historical reality as if it's a present-day reality, when it's not. So they're re-problematizing it.
Race, as Critts defined it anyway, is merely one means of re-problematizing American society so as to achieve their Marxist ends. Critical race theory does not define race as a fixed, immutable, and static aspect of one's personhood that is grounded in biology, or science, or for that matter, theology, as what we saw in Virgil's presentation in referencing Acts 17, 26.
In NASB, that verse reads, and he, that is God, made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.
This is why we can ask our partner, Dwayne Atkins, hey, we need a t-shirt with Bill Black better on it, because of Acts 17, 26. Virgil said it earlier, every Christian is an apologist, and you need to be able to walk out of this room today with a better biblical anthropology of race, and I'm going to always put that word in air quotes because it's non-existent, I'll talk about that more this afternoon.
But as Virgil pointed out, that word nation is the Greek word ethnos, so the biblically accurate apologetic is not race, it's ethnicity, it's ethnicity. For those of you who may not be as familiar with our podcast as some others are, we have an episode, one of our earlier episodes that Virgil and I did, we titled it A Biblical Theology of Soul Food, and in that episode, we walk you from Genesis 11 in the diaspora from the Tower of Babel, where God commanded all the people to go out and to live on all the face of the earth, we take you from Genesis 11 to Acts 17, 26, which basically says the same thing as Genesis 11, and we explain to you biblically why there's country music, why there's Latin music, why there's jazz, why there's Cuban food, why there's southern food, why there's Mexican food, why there's, because God commanded his people to go and populate the entire earth.
Trick question, so don't raise your hand too quickly. How many of you have ever eaten at a restaurant that specializes in racial cuisine? Y 'all are smart. How many of you have ever eaten at a restaurant that specializes in ethnic cuisine?
Exactly.
Anyone ever gone online to purchase a cookbook that specializes in racial recipes?
No. Why?
Because of Acts 17, 26. The word is ethnic, ethnic recipes, it's ethnic cuisine. It's not racial cuisine, it's not a racial cookbook, it's ethnic. That's the word, because there is no such thing as race.
Consider that truth in a lot of these words by the late Dr. Robert Walt Sussman from his book titled The Myth of Race, in which he writes this, quote, what many people do not realize is that racial structure is not based on reality.
Anthropologists have shown for many years now that there is no biological reality to human race. There are no major complex behaviors that directly correlate with what might be considered human racial characteristics.
There is no inherent relationship between intelligence, law-abidingness, or economic practices and race, just as there is no relationship between nose size, height, blood group, or skin color, and any set of complex human behaviors.
However, over the past 500 years, we have been taught by an informal, mutually reinforcing consortium of intellectuals, politicians, statesmen, business and economic leaders, and their books, that human racial biology is real, and that certain races are biologically better than others.
The biologically deterministic racist worldview has been tested and disproven consistently, and yet its proponents have remained resistant to all empirical scientific evidence for more than 500 years, unquote.
I'm going to dive into this even further in my message this afternoon, so don't miss that. But viewing race, and Virgil touched on this earlier, viewing race as a subjective and changeable social construct whose meaning shifts with the political and cultural winds, as opposed to viewing it as a biological or scientific reality, doesn't achieve for critical race theorists the eschatological utopia that they desire, in which cultural Marxism replaces capitalism, and wherein the current hierarchical power structure is inverted, so that intersectional minorities, meaning blacks, LGBTQA, become the new oppressor class, and conversely, white supremacist capitalists, like all of you here, become the new oppressed class.
So as much as crits talk about equality and equity, what they really want is to just invert the current societal dynamics, so that they're in charge. This is what they want. It has nothing to do with equality, nothing to do with equity.
They want to invert the current social structure, so that they're the oppressor, and the people who don't look like them are the oppressed. That eschatological vision is precisely why I argue that critical race theory is not merely an ideology or a philosophy, but is an all-encompassing worldview.
This is what you have to understand about critical race theory. CNN, MSNBC, they'll tell you all the time that critical race theory is just a sort of ideology that began in the upper echelons of legal academia.
No. It's an entire worldview. It is an entire worldview. And I say that in light of what Dr. Epifanio San Juan, Jr., whom I quoted earlier, who in the same white paper that I cited earlier on reproblematizing critical race theory, could say this, quote, we need to reinstate the Marxist, let me pause right here.
This is why I love working with Virgil and stuff like this, because we don't just, as I said, it's giving you our opinion. I'm quoting you from source, first-hand source material. These are critical race theory Marxists who are saying the quiet stuff out loud.
We are quoting them. Dr. Epifanio San Juan is one of the few Marxist critical race theorists who dares to say, yes, we do leverage Marxism to advance this eschaton that we want to have come to fruition in society.
He says this, quote, we need to reinstate the Marxist category of class, there it is, derived from the social division of labor that generates antagonistic class relations. Critical race theory can be renewed by adopting class struggle as the means of resolving racial injustice through radical structural transformation, unquote.
So, what crits do is they leverage, see, fundamental to Marxism is division, is classes. Everything is a class, everything. Critical race theory is doing the same thing. They pit blacks against whites, boys against girls, different ethnicities against others, different socioeconomic classes against others, different life experiences against others.
Everything is classified. Everything is organized in the classes toward the goal of what Dr. San Juan said with his own words, to generate antagonistic, to pit those classes against one another in an antagonistic reality.
So, critical race theorists, they want blacks hating whites. They want whites hating blacks. They want the poor to hate the rich. They want the rich to despise the poor. They want the poor to envy the rich.
They want the rich, again, to disdain the poor. Everything is classism in critical race theory. Some of you may be familiar with some of the exercises that are now going on in public schools. Anyone ever heard of what a privilege walk is?
Critical race theorists in public schools now are having their class, their students go through what are called privilege walks. So, what they'll do is they'll line their students up in a line. Everybody's lined up in one straight line.
And what the teacher will do is they will, they'll say to the students, well, if you have your own bedroom, take a step forward, privilege. If you get an allowance, take a step forward, privilege. See what they're doing?
See, that's the class that's left behind there. See what they've done? Just that quick, they've established one class versus another class. So now these students back here are looking at me. You see how quick that can happen?
That's how it happens. And let me say this, I don't want to show off hands, but if there's anyone in here who's remotely or directly associated with the public school systems here in Kootenai, critical race theory is what I call a stealth ideology.
It's a stealth worldview. And what I mean by that is don't be so naive as to think that when critical race theory hits your school system, that it's going to hit that school system and say, hey, hi, I'm.
Critical race theory.
Here I am. I'm critical race theory. No, that's not how it works. Critical race theory is a stealth ideology. It's going to enter your school system as ethnic studies. It's going to enter your classroom as social and emotional learning, SEL.
It's going to enter your workplace as DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's going to enter your workplace as ESG, environmental, social, and governance. It's not going to be called critical race theory.
So don't be looking for CRT in your school. Look for ethnic studies. Look for social, emotional learning. Look for the stealth vernacular and the stealth wording that still teaches the same stuff, but it's not going to be called critical race theory.
I promise you that if you're white and you work in corporate America, really whether it's corporate America or not, DEI is coming after you. DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, is nothing more than legally codified hiring discrimination based on skin color.
Its goal is to keep white people out of positions of power. The irony that it's called diversity, equity, and inclusion is that when you examine the data of companies that have diversity, equity, inclusion officers, DEI officers, 95 of them are black female.
So what's the diversity in that? So I want you to understand that these people have an agenda. That's why I say it's a worldview. It's an entire worldview. That's why in critical race theory, race is not a fixed idea.
It's changeable. It's not just about skin color. It's a whole cultural construct. Race can be how much money you make. Race can be how many children you have. The more children you have and you're white, the more racist you are.
Dr. San Juan is saying the quiet part out loud. We need to reinstate the Marxist idea of class so as to create these antagonistic class relations. You see, the tenet of adopting class struggle is precisely why statistics, particularly certain socioethnic economic data, are such valuable weapons for critical race theorists.
See, critical race theorists, they subjectively use statistics as a means to form and to promote the misleading narrative that any socioeconomic differences that may exist, particularly among blacks and whites in America, are actually disparities and that those disparities are solely the result of inequities brought about in society by an oppressive capitalistic system that is grounded in white supremacy.
Hence, the recurring accusation on the part of critical race theorists of systemic racism in America. But you see, here's the thing. Not every difference is a disparity. There's some people in this room that I'm older than.
There's some people in this room that I'm younger than. Is that age variance a disparity?
No.
It's simply a difference. It's simply a difference. Not every difference is a disparity. But the critics will use statistics to say, well, because the average white family in Kootenai, Idaho, makes X thousands of dollars a year, where the average family in Atlanta makes X thousands of dollars.
That's a disparity that needs to be fixed. It's just a difference.
It's just a difference.
It's not a disparity. But see, what talking about it as a disparity does, see, that gets the government involved. That gets the Department of Justice involved. It gets the FBI involved. It gets Black Lives Matter involved.
No, we need to fix that disparity. And the fix is never to bring the person on the low end of the disparity up. It's always to bring the person on the top end down by taking from that person and then redistributing their wealth to somebody else.
Now the Bible calls that stealing. Now the government may call it equity, but the Bible calls that stealing. In my Bible in Exodus 20, that's called stealing. But they'll use statistics. They'll just subjectively use statistics like that.
Some of you may have read a book called Divided by Faith. That's exactly what that book does. I know of many churches around the country that were using that same book as a Bible.
Study.
All that book does is subjectively present statistics and calls the variances depicted in those statistics as proof that America's racist. But not every difference is a disparity, and not every disparity is the fault of society that is a society that's discriminatory.
Some differences are just that. They're just differences. They're just differences. Rightly did economist and author Thomas Sowell assert in his book titled Discrimination and Disparities that, quote, the emphasis on complex statistical analysis in economics and other fields, however valuable or even vital, such statistical analysis may be in many cases can lead to overlooking simple but fundamental questions as to whether the numbers on which these complex analyses are based are in fact measuring what they seem to be measuring or claim to be measuring.
What can be disconcerting, if not painful, are the simple and obvious fallacies that can pass muster in intellectual circles when these fallacies seem to advance the prevailing vision of what is called social justice.
What Sowell is saying here is that in social justice, in the social justice narrative, nothing needs to be proven. All you have to do is assert. Doesn't need to be proven. This is how black social justicians especially, this is how they play the race card.
Because they know that in the current milieu where everyone is so sensitive to saying something wrong to a black person, to doing something wrong to a black person, if a black person says that they're being treated in justice, nobody's going to challenge that.
And they know this, so they milk it for all they can get. They're still milking the Trayvon Martin situation from 2013. This is what gave life to Black Lives Matter. They milked the George Floyd situation.
They pimped George Floyd. Black Lives Matters pimped George Floyd for the sake of narrative and pushing an agenda. Now we come to find out. As Virgil and I told you, a year and a half ago, we dropped six hours of content on Black.
Lives Matter.
We told you who these folks were, but no, no, no, T4G didn't listen, TGC didn't listen, all kind of evangelical leaders didn't listen. Now what are we finding out? They're spending the money on mansions, private jets, private security.
They're lining the pockets of their family members with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Patrice Colores, the lead founder of Black Lives Matter, was complaining a few weeks ago that the government requires them to file a Form 990.
Just Thinking Ministries is a 501c3 organization. We have to file a 990 with the IRS every year. But Patrice Colores said, no, we shouldn't have to file a 990 because that's racist. Now we know why she didn't want to file that 990.
On our 990, we have to tell the IRS where our donations are coming from and what we're spending them on. They didn't want to do that. They didn't want to have to do that. And now we know why. Some have said the BLM really stands for Buy Large Mansions, is what it really stands for.
My point is this. Contrary to what may appear to be the reality as you survey the critical race theory landscape, not everyone views socialism in such an affirming way as does Dr. Epifiano San Juan, Jr.
For example, Dr. Chuy Mbetwa has authored a book titled Why Africa is Poor. And in that book, Dr. Mbetwa says this, quote, socialism is not adept at finding solutions to serious problems. Its emphasis on collective responsibility over and above individual responsibility rolls over lingering individual capacity to configure self-extricating measures out of crises.
In the long term, socialism robs individuals of the opportunity to acquire skills for personal emancipation. Socialism struggles, Dr. Mbetwa says, socialism struggles when it attempts to function as a propeller of wealth, unquote.
Now the end of that quote by Dr. Mbetwa, that socialism struggles when it attempts to function as a propeller of wealth, brings up an incredible irony with respect to socialism. I mean, think about it.
In order to have socialism, you need capitalism.
You ever thought about that?
Otherwise, where are the socialists going to get the stuff that they want to steal from you and give to somebody else? You need capitalism to produce that stuff. So without capitalism, there can be no socialism.
Notwithstanding what Dr. Mbetwa says, that socialism struggles when it attempts to function as a propeller of wealth. Just by definition, socialism, by definition, and socialists want you to believe that socialism is the way to material prosperity.
But in socialism, you have to take that prosperity from somebody else and then redistribute it to somebody else who doesn't have it.
How is that prosperity?
Again, that's stealing. You see, socialism fundamentally is antithetical to the universal principle of reaping and.
So on.
Socialists say, and critical race theorists say, and this is really why the world, not just America, is really in the shape it's in right now. We are in the shape we're in right now because nobody wants to suffer the consequences of their own decision.
The entire abortion industry is built on that presupposition. Oh, you got pregnant? Don't worry. You don't have to deal with the consequences of that. You can kill the baby. Just make this appointment with Planned Parenthood, we'll take care of it in an hour.
You can go on and live your life as if nothing happened. We have an entire population right now that wants to live as if nothing happened. That's why we're in the mess we're in right now. This is why your taxes are so high.
Because you're paying for the mistakes that other people have made but that they don't want to live with. But my Bible tells me that you reap what you sow, that every person is going to be rewarded on the basis of their individual efforts, for the better or worse.
But we have an entire world now where nobody wants to suffer, nobody wants to have to deal with the responsibilities and consequences of independent, volitional, willful decisions that they themselves made.
Student loan forgiveness. Again, that's another example. You took on the loan. You took on the debt. Why shouldn't you have to pay it back? That's a universal principle. In Proverbs, I forget which Proverbs it is, but it says that God honors the person who keeps their promise even at their own hurt.
See, the Scriptures has answers for all this stuff. To ask somebody else to pay off your student loan debt that you willfully undertook is a sin. But nope, I don't want to have to deal with the consequences of that.
I don't want to have to have that responsibility. So Mr. Biden, please. But that's where we are now in America. Stuff that God says no to, we'll just go to governments and look for the government to say yes to it.
So how do we get here? I've spoken to this point about the ideological connectedness between critical race theory and Marxism, but there's a chronological connection as well, which I alluded to earlier, and that chronology begins with what is known as critical theory.
So if you're taking notes, I'm going to walk you chronologically through how we got from Marxism to critical race theory. That first point in this chronology is known as critical theory or CT. Critical theory defined provides a specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy with regards to a critique or a criticizing of mass culture.
So what critical theory did, it looked at all of society through the lens of Marxism, looking at inequities, what's not fair, what's not right. In other words, critical theory criticizes all aspects of culture through the lens of Marxism.
Also known as the Frankfurt School, critical theory is a philosophical and sociological movement spread across many universities around the world. It was originally located at the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.
That's why it's regarded and called often the Frankfurt School, because it was based, the Institute for Social Research was based in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute was founded in 1923 by a wealthy German-Argentine Jew by the name of Felix Weil, that name is F-E-L-I-X, last name is W-E-I-L.
Weil founded the Institute for Social Research with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany. After 1933, the Nazis came in and they forced the closure of the Institute for Social Research because the Institute was headed by Jews.
So obviously when the Marxists came in, they wanted the Jews out. But the Institute didn't just shut down just because they were kicked out by the Nazis. What happened was that the Institute relocated itself to the United States at Columbia University in New York City.
And as I stand here today, the Institute for Social Research is still located at Columbia University in New York City. It is the Institute for Social Research which several decades later in the 1970s gave rise to a movement known as Critical Legal Studies or CLS.
So now we've gone from CT to CLS. As a movement, Critical Legal Studies was comprised predominantly of a group of white neo-Marxist legal scholars who sought to study the impacts of legal jurisprudence in America but through a Marxist, a Marxian construct of equality and justice.
It was a CLS movement that, and this is very important for you to remember. It was the CLS movement in the 70s that initiated a shift from Marxism being fundamentally a philosophy of economic class struggle, what I call orthodox Marxism.
Orthodox Marxism was primarily a movement undergirded by trying to equal the playing field economically. But the CLS movement in the 70s, the Critical Legal Studies movement, came in and initiated a shift from Marxism being viewed purely as an economic ideology to one of identity struggle.
Identity. So it's not now only economic struggle, it's identity struggle. It's what I call cultural Marxism. So you begin with economic Marxism, now you have cultural Marxism. From the CLS movement in the 1970s arose what is known today as Critical Race Theory.
So we go from CT to CLS to CRT. Similar to the CLS movement, the CRT movement began with a group of black neo-Marxist legal scholars who met at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the summer of 1989 under the belief that their predecessors in the CLS movement didn't move the dial far enough to the left for black people in America.
So what these folks did, these black Marxist lawyers, when they got together at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989, they're looking at what their predecessors did, but these guys at Madison are more extreme Marxists than their predecessors were.
So in the Critical Legal Studies movement in the 70s, those folks were content with the legal victories that black people gained in the 60s and 70s. They were content now with Brown v. Board of Education, that outlawed segregation in public education.
They were content with the fact that blacks now had the Civil Rights Act into law. They were content that black people now had the Voting Rights Act into law. They were fine with that. But now you've got this sort of new wave of black Marxist legal scholars coming in and saying, nope, that wasn't enough.
By the way, among that group of black legal scholars that gathered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989 was Derrick Bell, the late Derrick Bell, who is known as the father of critical race theory.
Also among that group was Ms. Kimberly Crenshaw. Kimberly Crenshaw is a black womanist who is credited with founding the idea of intersectionality. They were part of that group in 1989. So crits among the, this initial group of black Marxist legal scholars, they didn't see the CLS movement as being radical enough.
So what did they do? They endeavored, as I explained earlier, to use critical race theory to reproblematize things, to resurrect old history and reproblematize it. Now, I have a PowerPoint version of the same presentation that I use depending on the venue I'm at.
And in that PowerPoint presentation, I have a slide titled, You Can't Win, parenthetically, if you're white. So critical race theory, you can't win. What do I mean by that? What do I mean that you can't win?
Listen to what Dr. Daniel Sabotnick, professor of law at Turrell College of Law in Central Islip, New York, and author of the book titled, Toxic Diversity, subtitled, Race, Gender, and Law Talk in America.
Listen to what he says in a white paper that he wrote in 1998, published at the Cornell University Journal of Law and Public Policy, titled, What's Wrong with Critical Race Theory, subtitled, Reopening the Case for Middle Class Values.
This is why if you're a white person here today, you can't win. The deck is totally stacked against you. Dr. Sabotnick says this, quote, With control of race discourse in their hands, critical race theorists turned their attention away from the legal academy and toward American culture in general.
What he's referring to there is that shift I told you about from the CLS movement to the CRT movement, where you go from economic Marxism, economic struggle, to cultural Marxism. With control of race discourse in their hands, critical race theorists turned their attention away from the legal academy and toward American culture in general, and this they have done with enthusiasm.
Developing and then applying new methods for the purpose and scouring the broad landscape of American life, they have found race and racism implicated in a terrifying array of institutions and practices.
Whites, then, stand accused and have remained largely undefended, unquote. Now, please hear what Dr. Sabotnick is saying. When he says that critical race theorists have found race and racism implicated in a terrifying array of institutions and practices, he's not saying that they have found objective evidence of racial practices in these institutions.
That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is that critical race theorists are alleging that these institutions are racist and that that's all they have to do. So when he says that whites stand accused and have remained largely undefended, that's what I mean when I say you can't win.
If you're white, you can't win this. It's unwinnable. It's unwinnable for you by design. People often ask virtually me, well, what can I say, you know, when someone walks up to me and they say I'm racist but I'm really not?
Well, that's the first mistake you made. You don't reply to them at all. You don't. You don't. It's a setup. It's a setup. You ignore them. You ignore them. You don't try to prove to somebody that you're not racist.
Don't do it. That's how you steal their power back from them. They're trying to get you. There's a formal term for what's happening here. It's called narratology. It's the idea of using narrative to advance an agenda.
This is why within critical race theory and liberation theology as well, life experiences... Listen, can I just step back from my notes one second? I don't mean to get political here. I really don't. But I have to say this, and with all due respect to anyone in this room who may have voted for President Biden, I apologize in advance, but when you get your press secretary out here, a black lesbian womanist as your press secretary, and you're trying to tell me someone who lives in Los Angeles County, where in certain parts of Los Angeles, and I am not lying, gas is approaching $10 a gallon, when you look me straight in the face through a camera and you tell me that your president, Joe Biden, that he has life experience, he's sensitive to how I feel because he's lived this, you're gonna lie to me in my face and tell me that?
That's narratology. That's an example of narratology. The goal of narratology is to frame a narrative so that it connects with you emotionally. This is what happened with George Floyd. White people coming out of the woodwork.
Listen, I saw the video one time. I'm not gonna watch it again. I saw it one time. I saw it one time. Visually, you never forget it. Never forget what you saw. But don't come to me under the presumption that what, because George Floyd was black, that I am somehow vicariously connected to what happened to him because my skin's the same color.
Don't insult me like that. Don't insult me, President Biden, by telling me, well, life experience, you can understand where... No, you can't. You're being chauffeured everywhere you go by taxpayer-funded limousines that are filled with taxpayer-funded gas, by taxpayer-funded bulletproof glass, bulletproof metal, with taxpayer-funded armed security, and you're telling me you can understand how...
Bro, but that's the goal of narratology is to frame a narrative so that you're gripped by the story. You ignore the facts. You ignore the fact that George Floyd was high on drugs. Not excusing what happened, but see, I wasn't there.
I can either put myself in the shoes of that police officer or in the shoes of George Floyd, but this is what critical race theorists try to do. This is why you can't win because all they have to do is just say that something's racist.
That's all they have to do. People have often asked me, well, give me a 30-second elevator definition of critical.
Race theory.
If that's something you're thinking today, here you go. Critical race theory is built upon one main presupposition, but it's supported by three other presuppositions. So you have one main presupposition, and it's supported by three others.
But if you want one simple definition of what critical race theory is, critical race theory is this. Critical race theory is the belief that racism is the normal, common, and everyday experience of all people of color in America, period.
There you go.
Critical race theory is the belief that racism is the normal, common, and everyday experience of all people of color in America, period. That is the foundational presupposition upon which critical race theory rests.
Now what this definition omits or ignores is what I call the reality of intra-ethnic racism, which is the racism that black people exhibit toward other black people. But see, this is how crits make their money.
Crits make their money on the naivete of people who default to a definition of racism being only as it relates to white people and black people. It's never black people and black people. It's like we said in the Q &A, never had a white person call me nigger.
Had plenty of black people call me nigger. All kinds of stuff I can't even say on this podium about black people. Here's an example, though, how that definition has been embraced by the society. Again, no need to prove it, just say it.
The UCLA School of Public Affairs and Critical Race Studies says this on their website, quote, CRT recognizes that racism is ingrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual race, now listen to how stupid this sentence is.
The individual races need not exist in order to know that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. Now, the reason that sentence is stupid, you assert that the individual races need not exist to know that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture.
Now, how do you get institutional racism if there's no individual races? See, here's where you have to become a theologian. You have to stop becoming, you have to stop being a sociologist, an anthropologist, and you must become a theologian at this point.
Because to whatever extent there was or is institutional racism, and there was, I don't deny that, Virginia and I are both historians. Matter of fact, if you're taking notes, there's a book titled The Color of Law by Dr. Daniel Rothstein, The Color of Law, How the Government Redlined America.
It's an excellent book on the story of redlining that originated under the Roosevelt administration coming out of World War II. Virginia and I are both historians. We'll readily acknowledge, yep, redlining was a reality in this country once.
Jim Crow was a reality once in this country. Slavery was a reality in this country once. The Black Codes, the peonage system in the South during post-reconstruction was a reality. Voting discrimination, education discrimination, yeah, all that was a reality.
But every last one of those realities has been rectified in law, every last one of them. That's not to say it doesn't happen still. I'm saying that there are laws to remediate when it does happen. But the UCLA School of Public Affairs says, yep, we recognize that racism is ingrained in the fabric and system of the American society.
This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. See, power structures, that's Marxist vernacular. Whatever you see, power structures or radical, whatever, radical, that's Marxism.
CRT identifies that those power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color, unquote. That's from the website of the UCLA School of Critical Race Theory and Public Affairs.
You don't have to prove it, just say it. Now, if I were to ask these folks at the UCLA School, you know, give me objective evidence that this is a reality, they'll probably throw some statistics at me and say that those statistics prove that these are disparities.
But see, the argument on statistical disparities is grounded in the myth of equality. Equality is a myth. This world was never designed for everyone to be equal. What you want in a society is equity. You don't want equality, you want equity.
Give you two examples from scripture, you can write these references down, go to 1 Kings 3, you don't have to go there now, but just write down 1 Kings 3, you can go back and read the text later. 1 Kings 3 gives the account of King Solomon adjudicating the situation between the two women who were prostitutes, by the way, who were arguing over which mother was the rightful owner of the baby.
One baby had died, there was one baby was alive, both mothers were arguing that the baby, that the child was theirs. King Solomon had to adjudicate that situation, which he did. Solomon adjudicated that situation based on what the truth was.
Now see, equity would have done this, I'm sorry, equality would have done this. Equality would have done this when the one mother, after Solomon had had a sword brought to him and he's threatening to cut the baby in half, see, equality would have said, would have been on the side of the mother who said, yes, cut him in half.
So that's equality, because each mother would have gone home with half a dead baby. But see, equity, as Virgil pointed out, equity is based on an outcome that is rooted in the truth, not making sure everybody goes home with the same amount of stuff.
Equity is the goal. So King Solomon adjudicated that situation based on what the truth was, what the objective truth was, which meant that one woman went home with a baby and one woman didn't. See, society would say, no, it's not fair that either one of them goes home without a baby.
So we got to cut the baby in half. That's equality, but the Bible teaches that we are to pursue equity. Do a word search on the word equity in your Bible. Every single time, I think it's one, I think it occurs in scripture, the word equity occurs 22 or 23 times in scripture.
Twenty-one or 22 of those times, it speaks of equity in terms of righteousness, doing what is right. Not ensuring that you have this or that you don't have that. But the narrative goes on. All you have to do is assert that America is a white supremacist country.
As example, by the UCLA website on the School of Public Affairs and Critical Race Theory. And those words that I just read from that website, they accurately frame the main presupposition, presuppositional thesis of critical race theory.
That is, that race is endemic to every aspect of American life. This goes back to what I said earlier, that the word critical in critical race theory doesn't mean to analyze, it means to criticize. It finds race everywhere.
Racism everywhere. It's everywhere. That's the primary thesis upon which critical race theory makes its money. I want to quote again Dr. Daniel Subotnick from his book, Toxic Diversity. Dr. Subotnick says this, quote, if race is central because racial supremacy is central to American culture, that's precisely what critical race theory argues, that all features of American culture are presumed tainted.
In such an environment, racism can be presumed and need not be proved. That's how critics make their money, because they don't have to prove anything. That quote from Dr. Subotnick is precisely why I say if you're a white person, again, you can't win with critical race theory.
Because in critical race theory, the only sin is the sin of being white. Or to put it another way, it's the sin of not being black. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 verses 14 through 16, for the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died.
And he died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. And here's the key, 2 Corinthians 5 verse 16, therefore now we recognize no one according to the flesh.
Now, I take that verse literally. That's why if you're here now and you're a believer in Jesus Christ, I don't view you as a white man, as my white brother. I don't view you as my white sister. You're either my sister or my brother, period.
There is no distinction as it relates to melanin. There is no black church or white church or Hispanic church or Latin church. We're all one. We don't recognize each other anymore according to the flesh.
Contrary to Paul's exhortation, 2 Corinthians 5, critical race theorists recognize every person according to the flesh, whether it's your ethnicity, your gender, or some other intersectional aesthetic of your personhood.
Now, I haven't given you the main presupposition of critical race theory, which is, again, that racism is essentially everywhere. There are at least three supporting presuppositional theses, which are these.
Number one. Number one is what's called the interest convergence or material determinism thesis. Interest convergence or material determinism thesis. The interest convergence thesis holds that racism benefits and advances the interests of white people always and only at the expense of black people.
So, again, the presupposition is that because you're white, you're automatically doing better than I am because you're white, and that you're doing better than I am. And interest convergence presupposes that you're doing better than I am because you took something from me in order to get where you are.
Number two is what's called the social construction thesis. Social construction thesis. This thesis holds that race and races are products of social thought and relation, not fixed biological or scientific realities.
Karl Marx believes the same thing. This is why in critical race theory, racism is mutable, is changeable, is fluid. Like I said earlier, it's not just about your skin color. It can be anything because it's a social construct.
Beware of anything that has attached to it the word construct. Beware, run from it. Race is a social construct. It's fluid. It's changeable. It can mean one thing one day and another thing the next. The third presupposition is this, is what's called the voice of color thesis or the VOC.
VOC thesis. The voice of color thesis holds that ethnic minorities are better suited to talk about systemic oppression and marginalization. In other words, if you're white, you have no right to say anything because you're the problem.
So you need to shut up and listen. Just shut up and listen. That's what the voice of color thesis holds. If you're white, shut up. You're the problem. Be quiet and just listen. This is like Virgil alluded to this earlier.
This is why you'll hear white liberals, even within the church, you'll express your biblical worldview to them. And they'll say, oh, you need to go listen to black voices. Except those black voices never include people like me and Virgil.
Last time I checked, I'm black and I have a voice. But they don't want to hear from us. So we know what they mean by that. Go listen to your Patrisse Cullors. Go listen to Black Lives Matter. Go listen to Jackie Hill Perry.
Go listen to Thabiti Onyipoye. Don't listen to, mm-mm, not that black voice.
Right, Virgil?
We're black.
We're just not the right kind of black. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, two of today's most influential critical race theorists, acknowledge, quote, that critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt.
I'm still quoting Delgado and Stefancic. It also draws from certain European philosophers and theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, unquote. Now, in saying that, what I just read to you, in saying that what Delgado and Stefancic don't tell you, what they don't tell you is that all three of those men, Gramsci, Foucault, and Derrida, were all Marxists.
And here they are giving them credit in their book, Critical Race Theory, An Introduction. They're crediting three Marxists. In fact, Antonio Gramsci is widely regarded today as the godfather of cultural Marxism.
Again, those three names were Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. In the book titled The Devil and Karl Marx, Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, makes the following assessment of today's culture against the backdrop of Marxism in the chapter in that book titled Fundamental Transformation.
Where have you heard those words before? In that chapter, Dr. Kengor says this, quote, please listen closely to this because he nails it. In a crucial respect, classical Marxism and cultural Marxism will always bear an essential enduring commonality, one that explains a lot about today's modern left.
Both classical Marxists and cultural Marxists see history as a series of struggles that divide the world into hostile slash antagonistic groups of oppressors and the oppressed. Both seek out victim groups as the anointed group that will serve as society's redeemer group.
The victim group becomes the agent for emancipation in ushering in the new and better world. The Marxist must always then be on the search for the newest victim class, which in turn must always be made aware of its victimization.
That's what's happening right now in the current milieu that we find ourselves where black people can't even get out of bed by themselves in the mornings because they're victims of everything. Continuing to quote Dr. Kengor, its consciousness, he says, must be raised.
In classical Marxism, this was simple. The victim group was identified by class economics. It was the proletariat, it was the factory worker. In cultural Marxism, however, this has not been so simple because the culture is always changing.
The victim group is constantly being searched for a new by the cultural Marxists. They are looking less for factory workers than cultural workers. Forget the factory floor that project filled long ago.
The new recruiting ground is the classroom floor, the campus, the university, the schools. That is where the cultural workers who can usher in the fundamental transformation are being sought and being found.
These modern cultural revolutionaries are succeeding magnificently in redefining everything from marriage and family to sexuality and gender. You are especially seeing this in public schools now in grades starting as early as kindergarten.
You've got these cultural revolutionaries, as Dr. Kengor describes them, putting rainbow flags everywhere, Black Lives Matter flags everywhere. They're teaching gender ideology, transgender sexuality in their textbooks.
You need to be listening to what Dr. Kengor is saying here. Your schools right now are populated with cultural Marxists teaching your kids. Dr. Kengor closes with this. He says, the modern cultural revolutionaries are succeeding magnificently in redefining everything from marriage and family to sexuality and gender.
This is where today's Marxists in America and the West are toiling hard. They are working diligently on the cultural front. That is where they are confident that they can finally take down the West and this Judeo-Christian bedrock that Marx and a long line of disciples of his looked to smash.
Now, there's much more that I wanna say about critical race theory, but let me just end with these. I'm gonna give you five reasons why critical race theory is unbiblical. Five reasons why critical race theory is unbiblical.
Number one, critical race theory is unbiblical because it categorizes image bearers of God into groups for the purpose of causing division and antagonistic class struggle. I have proven this in their own words.
It categorizes image bearers of God into groups for the purpose of causing division and antagonistic class struggle. Number two, CRT is unbiblical because it imparts sinful motives to certain of God's image bearers solely on the basis of the color of their skin.
This is especially true if you're white. You're guilty just by being white. Your sin is that you exist. It imparts sinful motives to certain image bearers of God solely on the basis of the color of their skin.
Number three, CRT transfers the guilt of presumed sins of those from past generations to those of present generations. That's what I call sin by proxy. So if you're a white person here today, the presumption is that your ancestors owned slaves, people who look like me.
And again, because all you have to do is assert it. You don't have to prove it. That makes you guilty by proxy. So you're a proxy for your ancestors and thereby you're guilty for what they presumably did.
Hadn't been proven though. You don't have to prove it. It's just presumed. That's why I call it guilt by proxy, sin by proxy. You're guilty by proxy. Number four, CRT is unbiblical because it is rooted in the sin of ethnic partiality.
That's James chapter two, verse nine. CRT is unbiblical because it is rooted in the sin of ethnic partiality. And then number five, critical race theory is unbiblical because it promotes materialistic covetousness and envy under the false pretense of justice and equity.
It promotes theft under the false pretense of justice and equity. Now, let me end with this. I wanna close here with the fundamental questions each of us must consider. And that question is this, is critical race theory compatible with Christianity?
I wanna answer that question by quoting you from a passage in an article titled Christianity or Critical Race Theory written by Dr. Eric B. Watkins. Dr. Watkins is senior pastor of Harvest Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Marcos, California.
The article that I'm about to quote from, by the way, can be found rather in the October 2021 issue of Table Talk Magazine. That publication is done by Ligonier Ministries. But in that article, again, it's titled Christianity or Critical Theory, Dr. Eric B. Watkins writes this, quote, is critical theories worldview compatible with Christianity?
This is an important question. While it may be possible to find Christians who endorse critical theory, it is nearly impossible to find critical theorists who endorse Christianity. This is because Christianity is an overarching system of thought that seeks to define reality and posits objective moral values.
According to critical theory, Christianity fosters unsafe ideologies and institutions that perpetuate anti-scientific thought, intolerance for certain sexual behaviors, parochialism, patriarchy, and a punishing authoritarianism for any who do not conform.
Pre-Enlightenment Christianity is seen as stuck in the dark ages of intellectual barbarism, and the post-Enlightenment church is viewed as perpetuating colonialism, racism, sexism, chauvinism, and homophobia.
Critical theory is critical of virtually all worldviews, including Christianity. Its goal is human autonomy from any objective authority whatsoever, unquote. Now, contrary to what many Marxists, crits, and black liberation theologians will have you believe, critical race theory is not merely some innocuous, innocent way of promoting anti-racism or teaching people about the history of racism in America or of understanding how the power dynamics of white supremacy have operated in this nation.
For example, in a video produced by an organization called Liberated Ethnic Studies, public school educator by the name of Teresa Montano said the following to a group of fellow public school teachers, and I'm quoting here.
This is why you need to be on point, especially if you have children in public schools. Listen to what Teresa Montano said, quoting her. And I told you earlier, critical race theory is not gonna come into your schools and your place of business as critical race theory.
It's gonna come in as ethnic studies into your schools. Montano says this, quote, "'Ethnic studies is more than pedagogy and content. "'Ethnic studies is about creating change in the community. "'And what you will see in the lessons that we teach "'are how classroom teachers "'can begin to use critical race theory "'connected to ethnic studies "'in a way to empower and to create "'social justice activists out of our students.'".
Unquote.
Well, there you have it. In their own words. In their own words. If you wanna know, again, number one, one of the lies of critical race theory is that critical race theory is not taught in public schools.
Well, yes it is. You just heard a crit acknowledge that. So if you wanna know what the goal is of critical race theorists trying to beat down the doors to get CRT to be taught in public schools, there you have it.
Their goal is not to educate your children. Their goal is to create social justice activists out of your children so that your children come home hating you. Now, if you think I'm exaggerating, you just sit back and watch.
Their goal is to send your children home hating their parents, disregarding parental authority, transitioning your child so that your boy, your six-year-old boy comes home, says, Daddy, I think I'm a girl.
There you have it. In their own words. There is nothing innocuous or innocent about critical race theory. Critical race theory is an all-encompassing worldview, one that is steeped in cultural Marxism and that shares the same teleological ends as that which I quoted earlier from Dr. Paul Kengor, namely, the takedown of the West and its Judeo-Christian bedrock.
I believe, Jim, we're on break till three. Thank you all very much.