Latasha Morrison's Be the Bridge

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris, we are going to talk today about a book that is very popular, maybe you've heard about it at your church or your small group, it's called

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Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison and the subtitle is Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation.

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Now I've heard of Latasha Morrison before, I've even heard of the book, I did not realize though how influential and popular this book was and the organization that Morrison started.

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Some of you may have actually heard of Latasha Morrison as well, because during the

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Crew 19 conference, she said this,

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I don't know if you remember this. I'm going to read this and then you say we lament. Lord, we acknowledge that we have learned to do right, we did not seek restorative justice that benefits all, we have not defended the oppressed, we have not taken up the cause of the fatherless or pleaded the case of the widow, instead we have mocked and punished the poor with our partisanship and our apathy,

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Lord have mercy. We lament that we stood by as systemic and institutionalized racism became founding pillars and structures in America and within the church,

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Lord have mercy. We have allowed agendas of empire to become prominent within your church, we understand the empire aims to take and oppress, we have replaced your kingdom with the empire mentality,

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Lord have mercy. We have formed and developed church structures and denominations while excluding the voice of your global church due to racism and racial segregation,

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Lord have mercy. We acknowledge the racial hierarchies and structures of privilege many have benefited from, many have been oppressed by,

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Lord have mercy. We have ignored the cries of children because they were not our own, we have discounted the pain of mothers because they were not our own, we have turned a blind eye to the affliction of brown and black men and women because they were not our own,

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Lord have mercy. We have replaced your supremacy with idolization of a nation and racial identity,

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Lord have mercy. We have not required justice, we have not loved others well, and we have not walked in humility and in our brokenness,

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Lord have mercy. We cry out to you, oh God our Redeemer, as the only one who can save us from ourselves, show us our blind spots, don't let us hide from you in our shame and guilt, restore us to your perfect union that can only be found in Jesus Christ, Lord show us how to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with you,

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Lord have mercy. Jesus come to me, all you,

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Jesus said come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,

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Lord with deep sorrow we lament, in the powerful name of Jesus, let it be so.

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Okay, so that's the clip from the CRU 2019 conference, this is before the

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George Floyd stuff, this is earlier than a lot of you who are probably listening were aware of the topic of social justice or critical race theory, so she was, she's been doing this for a while, and again, these are all staff workers at one of the largest

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Christian organizations out there, now I had kind of forgotten about that, but then it got put back on my radar because of someone running for governor in the

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Republican primary here in Virginia named Glenn Youngkin, goes to a church called

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Holy Trinity Church in McLean, Virginia, and he signed a statement basically committing to reading this book, so I'm assuming he's read it or he's going to read it, called

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Be the Bridge, there it is, it's LaTosha Morrison's book, and so it's a woke statement from the church,

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Glenn Youngkin signed it, he's saying he's a Republican, and I know many of you who probably don't care about this if you're from outside Virginia, but if you're in Virginia, this matters a whole lot, by the way, side comment here,

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I just found out something else about him yesterday, not only does the NRA not know where he stands on gun rights, but the

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Virginia Citizens Defense League also does not know where he stands on gun rights, so figured

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I would put that out there for those who might still be on the fence, but anyway,

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I looked up the book because I wanted to know what is this book teaching, and then

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I found out it was very popular, and a lot of churches are using this, and not just churches, a lot of even businesses are using the organization that LaTosha Morrison, Be the

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Bridge it's also called, started, the resources that they have, so here's again a screenshot from Holy Trinity Church, they endorse not just her book but her as a speaker, as a activist and a writer, here's her organization, some screenshots, we empower people in culture toward racial healing, equity, and reconciliation, one of the things they offer is the whiteness intensive, and that is not nine months without the sun in a cave somewhere, it's understanding the construct of whiteness, and I'll read for you, it says the whiteness intensive is an in -depth offering they have to understand the construct of whiteness, you got eight courses taught by Be the

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Bridge educators, and it goes through the history of whiteness, how it shaped systems, cultures, relationships, structures, as well as you personally, and it's values -based, but they can add a faith -based component if you want that, so again, not marketing it just to churches, but to secular entities as well, which

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I think of ACSI, the Christian school accrediting agency, using Walter Strickland's Unify Ed, you start looking into these activists that are for racial equity, inclusion, diversity, et cetera, in evangelicalism, you find out they have an organization, and it's like a rush to provide these resources because businesses are paying for this, many of you who live in the corporate world, you know that, you probably had to go through this equity, diversity, inclusion, sensitivity training within the last year, implicit bias training, whatever, it's more, it's just a growing market right now, and so there you go, free market, quote -unquote capitalism at work, even still, even in this, right, but this is part of what she offers with her organization, so the book is sort of the main foundation of the whole thing, and so I wanna go through what

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I think the book is about, I have a lot of quotes lined up here, we're gonna show that it's tied to critical race theory, and then

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I'll have a little announcement at the end, so let's go through the book, she talks about her own experience in getting woke, she doesn't call it that, but it's an awakening,

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I think she might even use that word, but she says that she went to East Carolina University, and there she finally heard for the first time about her

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African culture in an unfiltered way, and something shook loose in her, now I remember when

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I first went to college, I thought, it's a miracle anyone gets out of here and still is conservative, I can't understand how people can endure this kind of indoctrination, and I know that's pretty common, so to go to East Carolina University, and to have that be the place where she learned about who she was, well,

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I'm just saying, it makes sense, given the rest of the book, she talks about sitting in class, and she was just learning so much, a sense of pride welled up in her, but then also, she began to realize that her people deserve justice, and she had discontent, she said she had this realization awakened, there's the word, awakened within me, indignation, pain, and a holy discontent, so she says a holy discontent, but if you read the book, there's almost kind of like an axe to grind slash revenge component that comes out with, and slavery, of course, is at the top of that list, people today who share the same biological traits as many of the slave masters in the

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American context are vilified, they have to make up for what their ancestors or people who just look like their ancestors did, and that's not a holy discontent, but that's what she claims it is, she says

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I'd come to learn the ways the white church in America had perpetuated slavery, segregation, and racism, she talks about that she embraced her ethnic identity, and the greater the chance, let's see, she would be rejected by white people, and so she's saying that the more she embraced who she really was, she truly was, the more that white people, some white people would see her as angry and unsafe and likely to make trouble, so that shouldn't really be the case, you'd think, if you're embracing your cultural heritage in some way, that you become more a pain in the neck, or that people view you that way, hopefully you become a better citizen, you become more aware of just even,

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I think, I forgot, someone said this a while ago, but if you don't appreciate your culture, how will you appreciate other people's?

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I've realized that myself, the more I've learned about my own family history, the more

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I appreciate other people's family history, and that should be the way it goes, but it doesn't seem like it's that way, at least for Latasha Morrison here, she appreciates her to the exclusion of others,

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I'd come to realize that race is both a political and a social construct, so she realized that, she realized that she was a racist, she had engaged in white supremacy, colorism, because she didn't like the fact that she was very dark skinned, and she talks, there's a story in here,

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I didn't put the quote there, but where she goes to get some cosmetics, and they don't have her particular,

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I think in Texas somewhere, Austin, and they don't have her particular color of her skin for foundation,

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I think it was, and so she says, she retributes it to white supremacy, it can't be like a free market thing, where like there's just not a lot of people in that area who would buy that, it has to be white supremacy, and you'll see that throughout this, which is a very critical race theory, kind of derived understanding, so I see it when

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I, you know, there's a lot of hints to this, I see a lot of what's driving this is probably related to an insecurity she has, and an identity crisis she has, she says this,

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I was the minority in the minority as a high school junior, the black girl who wanted nothing more than to celebrate her ancestors, so she was yearning for something, even as a kid, that she did not have, that she's still trying to find, or think she's found, now we're together, she says, facing the truth of our past, and it was awkward for all of us, that was in college, it just, it was awkward talking about the past, and her own cultural ethnic background, etc.,

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she says, I considered my cultural isolation, considered how every time I saw another person of color, and couldn't make my way across the room to speak,

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I gave a silent nod, it was a way to communicate solidarity to other people of color, living or working in a predominantly white space, a way of saying you're not alone, but as a black woman in Austin, I still felt painfully isolated, and this is when she's going to church,

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I think she's on staff at a church at this point, and she's saying this, it's almost like she feels more solidarity with the people that share her ethnic identity, than she does with people who share her

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Christian identity, and I don't, I mean, I could probably say a lot, but we have a lot of material to get through, that, it's a problem, when that's the case, it's just a problem, when that trumps your, the brother, and the brotherhood you have as believers, and connection you have to sisters in Christ, and brothers in Christ, so she says, in college, as a new follower of Christ, I began to process my childhood,

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I acknowledge the things that were holding me back in my relationships with others, this issue with my mother being the primary among them, so she had an issue with her mom, she said her mom would sometimes call her daddy a black jelly bean, as a way of deriding him, and each time she said it, which was quite often, she looked at her own skin, and noticed how it was the same shade as her father's, and she internalized those comments, came to believe she was making, her mother was making fun of her, so she had insecurity from her mom, her parents had a divorce, and the divorce, she says, affected her, and whenever it was brought up, she would be upset, and cry, so these things are all things she, you know, this book about racial reconciliation, she brings all this up, and an observation that I have,

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I don't know this is true across the board, but I've just observed this, in some situations, that those who fall for the woke stuff, tend to be those without strong family backgrounds,

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I don't know why that is, now, so there are exceptions, I know there are exceptions to that, but there's usually a problem somewhere along the line, like you go back, and you find out there's a bad relationship with the dad, or the mom, they didn't feel like the dad protected the mom, or the mom was deriding the dad in this case, or whatever, there's some kind of a identity crisis that's caused by that, and that seems to lead someone towards the social justice movement, for whatever reason,

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I could analyze it more, but we don't have time today, conversely, those with very stable, and secure family backgrounds, don't tend to fall for it as much,

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I'm just saying, I've noticed that, someone should probably do a study, and look into it more, maybe one day

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I will, but one thing I just wanted to mention, so she then, she has this sort of problem, and she,

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I see the way that she blames the white church, quote unquote, as it's almost like blaming them for her problems, it's this, it's sort of externalizing this issue, it's the problem in her life, with her identity, and insecurity, it's caused by these other people, it's caused by these outside forces, the white church is part of it, so she says when she moved to Austin in 2012, to join a staff at a white church, she had a holy discontent reached a boiling point, the longer she worked in the church, the more she came to see that it wasn't a credible witness for racial reconciliation, and she chose to work there, so she's saying this job she had, she's angry at them, and because of this, they're not a witness for racial reconciliation, and she says that Christians still refuse to actively confess and repent, still, so Christians not repenting, not confessing, confessing what?

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Adopting Jim Crow laws, perpetuating the sin of racism through segregation, turning a blind eye to beatings and lynchings, America also continued to remove indigenous children from their homes and families, it's everything that's bad that's happened in American history, of course, abortion is not mentioned, which is interesting to me, labor union racism is not mentioned, you know, the things that the democrat party, like eugenics, that's not mentioned, but you know, all these other things are interesting, but Christians are responsible for this, and this is what you hear all the time, it's

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Christian's fault, and it's like, why would you want to join the church after you hear that? Why? I mean, that's like saying, let's join the

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Ku Klux Klan, because they've changed, and they're reformed, and they're not racist anymore, that's ridiculous, no one would want to do that, and if you make the church out to be like that, why would you want to join it?

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But she makes the church out to be like this, and I seriously doubt that the church she was working for, that hired her in Austin, was promoting segregation, or, you know, they hired her, again, they hired her, like, they're paying her, she's not white, right?

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So, but they're complicit in this, they're part of the problem, that's where you can start to, that clues you into the fact that critical race theory is at play here, because it's these secret microaggressions, etc.,

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that are driving this, that are just as bad, or the continuation, supposedly, of slavery, etc.

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So, it seems like she has an axe to grind, there's a jealousy that forms in her, she says, I was uncomfortable,

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I was comfortable and familiar with white culture, which doesn't sound like it, but that's what she says, she was comfortable and familiar with it, and she goes through all this, she knew their music, and their movies, but they never had to learn about the history or culture of my people.

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Now, interestingly, she never really had to learn about it until college, she says that, essentially, I mean, she knew some things, of course,

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I'm sure, but she, her awakening was college, but she's blaming white people for not knowing the history of her people, and that's such a problem, and so this is where I see a jealousy, and, you know, if the majority of the population, or if the rest of the population isn't familiar with 16 % of the population, somehow that's their fault, they need to be familiar, they need to be knowledgeable about that, and if they're not, they're a problem, and that's part of the reason she has

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Be the Bridge, so she takes people through what seems to be a conversion process, so she kind of got woke, now she's gonna help others become woke, and here's some quotes that clue you into this, she says,

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I asked my friends to explore their own family histories and ways they might have been complicit in racism, kind of an interesting question to ask, right, your friends, you know, hey,

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I just need you guys to look into your, go to, to get your DNA done, or go to Ancestry .com,

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and I want you to see if there's any racism there, so we can be, I guess, the federal heads of our particular ethnic groups, and then,

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I guess, have some kind of reconciliation, she says empathy would allow her to sit in someone else's pain, empathy's a big part of this, you gotta have empathy, you gotta put yourself in their shoes, of course, it's kind of impossible, because you don't have their lenses, so it's like this, you're never quite getting there, but you have to try to get this empathy, and it's expected that white people would have this for those who are minorities, she says that one of the people in her group was crying since she hadn't experienced humiliation, pain, or embarrassment because of race, so it's a white person that she's crying, this is a weird kind of reaction here, guys, like she has someone who's crying because they never felt discrimination, and that's a problem, they should have felt it, they didn't though, because they're white, is the presupposition here, and together, she says, we led her to lay those fears and insecurities at the foot of the cross, we were all equal and whole, okay, if that's true, then why go through this process, right, if we're all equal and whole at the foot of the cross, and these are

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Christians that she's having this study with, why go through this whole process of, you have to feel guilty because you haven't faced discrimination, and I have, right, then she says, we have to have the hard conversations so that we can move to a place of deep lament,

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David, in the aftermath of his sins, sought God's mercy on behalf of his child, you're gonna find a lot of scripture twisting here, here's one of the examples of it,

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David confessed an actual sin that he did, he sinned against the Lord by having adultery with Bathsheba, right, she then makes this out to be like sinning for your ancestors' sins, or structural racism or something, you have to lament those things like David lamented his sin, there's two different categories here,

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I mean, yeah, you do need to feel sorry for and repent of sin that you actually commit, but she's saying, do it for the people that share your biological features, it's not what

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David did, she says, there's no shame in wanting to be treated equally, no guilt in using your voice to shine a light on the history of racism, you can step out of the shadows, you can speak truth to power, this is where it's all leading, you go through this conversion process and then you speak truth to power, then you become an activist, it's totally political, and what does that look like?

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Well, she details some of it, she says, next step is a costly one, especially to those in positions of power and privilege, what is it?

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Making wrongs right, which means reparations, we call this kind of reparations restitution, but reparations might also take the form of creating previously unavailable opportunities or closing advantage gaps for those who have suffered marginalization, it might look like a wealthy white man funding a museum to commemorate the slaves such as the

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Whitney Plantation, it might look like a predominantly white church hiring a preacher of color, just as Gateway Church, her home church in Austin did, maybe it looks like a business advancing people of color into corporate leadership positions, et cetera, et cetera, it's all, it's the quotas, the decentering, the whiteness, and giving, putting your money behind it, it's, it always gets to this eventually, it gets to this power money thing at the end of it, and her book is no exception to this, when it comes to the gospel, there's some straight up false teaching in this,

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I'm gonna read you some quotes and I'll explain, she says, these conversations that she had in this group that she had formed to talk about race issues, set the stage for the launch of Be the

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Bridge, an organization committed to bringing the reconciliation power of the gospel to the racial divide in America, so what they're doing is supposed to be the gospel, we're bringing the gospel to the racial divide, okay, how are you doing that?

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She says, the truth is that each ethnicity reflects a unique aspect of God's image, no one tribe or tongue or people can adequately display the fullness of God, the truth is that it takes every tribe, tongue, and nation to reflect the image of God in his fullness, and she quotes

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Galatians 3, 28, which says there's no Jew, Greek, slave, nor free in Christ, all are one, well, that has nothing to do with, that has everything to do with the barrier of the

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Jewish law, and adding to the gospel, which is what she's doing, it's actually against what she's doing, adding to the gospel by creating these boundaries based on law -keeping, ability to keep law of some kind.

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She makes it out, though, that for some reason, this is teaching that God's image is somehow a compilation, a composite of every tribe, tongue, and nation, and you don't really have the image of God in, like, a white person or a black person, you need both of them to have the image of God, that is, that is anti -biblical, guys, that is against what the

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Bible teaches, totally against what the Bible teaches, you are made in the image of God, it's not a question of, well, your race makes you part of the image of God, this almost sounds pantheistic -ish, this is weird, guys, and it should be,

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I mean, just that alone, this book should be off anyone's list, I'm sorry, this is not Christian theology here, we're in a different religion now, but it gets worse, she says our

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Western society is highly individualized, and our measure of morality is based on individual guilt or innocence, we've, um, why should

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I repent of racism? She says the answer to that is, um, if you never owned slaves or did anything quote -unquote racist, uh, that in the

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Bible, guilt and shame are communal, and they point to the need for corporate repentance, so you basically have to take the shame and the guilt of the group that shares your biology, or your social position, etc.

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She says like Ezra and Daniel have been personally innocent of the offenses against God, but they did not try to distance themselves from the collective sin of their people, he owned, um, they owned their part in the member of the community, so they're basically taking responsibility for their community, now here's the thing, guys, um, few things, number one,

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Ezra and Daniel had unique positions as prophets in a nation that had a specific covenant with the

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Lord, and they, and as a prophet, they represented that nation before the

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Lord, something unique about that relationship, guys, that does not apply to all of us in America, okay, that we,

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I, you know, represent my country before the Lord, now, I mean, you can sort of, I guess, choose to take a prophetic stance on some things, but it doesn't, there's clearly a big difference between that relationship that God had with a covenant people and representatives of that covenant people who emissaries

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God had sent to them, and then us in a whatever nation state that we happen to live in, so that's one thing that I wanted to say, the other thing is,

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I think there's a lot of projection going on here, because she wants people to sit in lament and guilt for what other people have done, and so they, she wants them to feel an individual sense of participation in that, whereas with Ezra and Daniel, and you see this in scripture in other places, there's, there's an acknowledgement that the nation has gone, has committed idolatry and broken the covenant with God, the nation has done this, and, but Ezra and Daniel are saying that as the collective nation, this is what the nation has done, they are in sin, but it doesn't say that Ezra and Daniel are sitting in that guilt themselves and saying, you know,

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I'm, she tries to make a lot about the personal pronoun, like, I think Ezra uses we have done this or whatever, but what

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Ezra is not like, Ezra clearly separates himself, and Daniel clearly separates himself, and the prophets clearly did that from the people, they were

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God's emissaries to the people, and that's the relationship that she's not, she's conflating here.

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Now, what she does next, though, is, this is the real, you know, if you, if you're confused about that, here, it'll clear up in a minute here, this is where it gets bad, she says, you need to ask for forgiveness for your participation in racism or structural privilege, so that's a sin, it's a sin to just benefit, supposedly, from your white privilege, okay, that's not a sin, that's, biblically, you can't justify this, but she's trying to from scripture, and then, here's the kicker, guys, here it is, right here, we have altered the nature of the gospel message in order to remain focused on our personal piety at the expense of caring for the needs of others, we confess we have created a gospel that is manageable so as to avoid entering into pain, struggle, and discomfort of bearing one another's burdens, and therefore, we have failed to fulfill the law of Christ, forgive us for how our neglect of the true gospel of Jesus Christ has allowed a system of injustice to flourish and thrive, guys, she just conflated law with gospel, she did it right there, she said that it's, the gospel is, has been altered because it does not include the law of Christ, right there,

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I pointed this out before, social justice advocates do this all the time, they take their social justice law, which is not even biblical, they read it into the text of scripture, and then they say that that's part of the gospel, okay, let me repeat that, they take their social justice law, they read it into the text of scripture, and then they make it part of the gospel, and it ends up with a false gospel, because that's exactly what

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Galatians was about, you're adding to the gospel works, you can't do that, the gospel is about what Jesus did, not what we do, other, if it is, then we're in trouble, we are in big trouble, so LaTosha Morrison's in trouble, unfortunately, and the people that follow her, now, unless someone says,

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I don't see any critical race theory in that, I wanted to show you, here's the proof in the pudding, the seven elements of critical race theory, according to Richard Delgado, this is from his book,

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Critical Race Theory, an Introduction, he says, racism is normative, race is a social construct, white privilege maintains white dominance, color blindness keeps minorities in subordinate positions, majority groups tolerate advances for racial justice only when it benefits them, voices of color have access to special knowledge, and history should be reinterpreted according to minority experiences, that's it, that's critical race theory, all these elements are in this book, guys, number one, racism is normative,

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LaTosha Morrison says, we spoke about the subtle comments and actions that felt degrading, and I explained how these constituted microaggressions, so she drills down deep into what people say, reading racism into things, in our bridge groups, we've explored how the soil of America is steeped in racism, so even the soil, there's racist soil there, she says, she engaged in colorism, which means she essentially also has white supremacy, and even though she's black, she adopted the values of white supremacy, so black people aren't off the hook, you know, everyone can engage in white supremacy, and they do, it's just common, we can point to current systems of oppression, she says, police brutality and inequity in systems of education in predominantly white, nonwhite communities, so racism is normative, number two, race is a social construct created in order to allocate privilege, this is called the social construction thesis, she uses the term white privilege quite a bit, actually,

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I think that's another point, we're gonna get there in a minute, so as far as being a social construct, she says that quite a bit as well, she says, there are two perceived types of minorities, assimilated or non -assimilated, these perceptions create internalized racism, colorism, and our own racial prejudice against other groups and one another, they often determine whether a person is hired or fired, and what opportunities are open to that individual in the current social construct, so the social construct controls benefits, and it's attached to race, the truth, she says, is that race is a social construct, one that has divided and set one group over another from the earliest days of humanity, again, she says, race, as we know it, is a political and social construct created by man for the purpose of asserting power and maintaining a hierarchy, here again, race is a social and political construct that has no place in the kingdom of God, she says this over and over, race is a social construct,

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I pointed out before, I pointed it out yesterday, this denies the organic nature of race and culture, which

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I think is what you find biblically, and it makes this artificial thing you can manufacture, and so it's just, it's out of step with,

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I think, how we even understand race, just in a, just a normal kind of natural organic way.

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Then, here's the third principle of critical race theory, white privilege maintains white dominance, and she talks about white privilege quite a bit, she says that she wanted someone to recognize the ways that they benefited from white privilege and how that brought guilt and shame, again, she talks about, let's see,

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Brooke Park confessed that she'd often been dismissive of the experience of people of color, and she'd given the system, the police, government officials, people in positions of power, the benefit of the doubt, instead of assuming the best of the person who was victimized, she repented of using her white privilege to ignore things or opt out of when witnessing the truth, and that got tough, it was tough for her to come to terms with her white privilege, she mentions it again, number four, colorblindness keeps minorities in subordinate positions,

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Latosha Morrison says this, this does not mean that we take a colorblind approach to community, too many Christians believe that the ultimate goal should be seeing the world without color, and some even pretend to already be in this holy place, so she denies colorblindness, number five, majority groups tolerate advances for racial justice, only when it benefits them, this is the interest convergence theory by Derrick Bell, here's what

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Latosha Morrison says, enforcing a law didn't dismantle racism, she's talking about the civil rights laws, diversity doesn't disrupt systemic racism,

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I told someone that she knew, nor does it kill racist abuse, so civil rights, all of that, doesn't kill racism, didn't really change anything, systemic racism, still there, not going away, you know, it's not about law, it's this, and this coincides with Derrick Bell's theory,

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I mean, I'm pretty sure it's just kind of downstream from him is where she got this, that, you know, those things didn't really do much, because it just changed forms, that's what

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De Martisby says, right, racism just changes forms, never goes away, number six, voices of color have access to special knowledge, as a standpoint of epistemology, here's what

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Latosha Morrison says, if you're white, if you come from a Geordie culture, you'll need to bend low in a posture of humility, you may need to talk less and listen more, opening your heart to the voices of your non -white brothers and sisters, you'll need to open your mind and study the hard truths of history without trying to explain them away, you'll need to examine your own life and the lives of your ancestors, so that you can see whether you've participated in, perpetuated or benefited from systems of racism, she says, acts like passing the microphone to a person of color and listening are important, again, voices of color have this special standpoint that white people need to listen to, to get this special extra knowledge, and then number seven, finally, history should be reinterpreted according to minority experiences, and this is called today memory studies, and you see the difference between history and memory studies, history has an objective element to it, you're trying to reconstruct what happened in the past, memory studies is only about what, it's internal, it's in someone's mind, how do they remember something, so how does a social group remember something that happened in history or didn't happen, as the case may be, so here's some, just a few things, a sampling of some things she says, she talks about some friends she has that said that there were slaves in the south that loved their masters, and they were treated like family, and she says she was, she was just shocked, she was practically speechless this was said to her, and she couldn't find all the words to give a brief inductive history lesson, instead,

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I mean, look at the pride in this, instead, she says, I told her I'd read the slave narratives, and that there was no love or care in slavery,

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I mean, this is what she says, no love or care in slavery didn't exist, never happened, can't find me one example of it, now that's an absolute statement, let me read for you the interview of Mrs.

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Mariah Hines, born July 4th, 1835, in Southampton County, Virginia, she was a slave on James Pressman's plantation, and the interview was conducted

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March 23rd, 1937, by the Works Project Administration, and I will read it to you, just a portion of it, not only, she says, was master good, but his whole family was too, when the weather was good, we worked in the fields, and on other little odd jobs that was needed, done, we slaves would eat our breakfast, and go to the fields, dare, won't, no hurry, scurry, lots of times, we got in the fields, and the other slaves had been in the field a long time, there was times, though, we had to get to it early, too, especially, if it had been rainy weather, and the work had been held up for a day or so, master didn't make us work at all in bad weather, neither when it got real cold, the men might have to get in fire, wood, or something of that sort, but no all day work in the cold, just little odd jobs, we didn't even have to work on Sundays, not even in the house, master and the preacher both said, that was the

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Lord's day, and you won't suppose to work on that day, so we didn't, we cook the white folks' vittles, it's food, on Saturday, and lots of times, day eight, cold vittles on Sundays, master would sometimes ask the preacher home to dinner, you're plenty welcome to go home with me for dinner, but you'll have to eat cold vittles, because ain't there no cooking on Sundays in my house, lots of times, we slaves would take turns on helping them serve

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Sunday meals, just because we liked them so much, we hated to see missy fumbling around in the kitchen, all out of her place, we didn't have to do it, we just did it of our own free will, master sometimes gives us a little money for it, too, which made it all the better, master and missus was so good to us, we didn't mind working a little on Sundays in the house, master had prayer with the whole family every night, prayer for us slaves, too, any of the slaves that wanted to join him could, or if they wanted to pray by themselves, they could, and it goes on and on and on, and right about now,

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I hope that you who are listening are offended by LaTosha Morrison, absolutely offended, that she would minimize the lived experience of a minority person in the

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United States who was in slavery, LaTosha Morrison was never in slavery, but she minimizes the experience of some people who were, because it doesn't fit her critical race theory paradigm, that's disgusting guys, and I hope you see it for what it is, and she accuses those, and in this case,

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I guess it's a white person who ended up, who defended the idea that there were slaves that had this kind of a relationship with their master, which by the way, we get into the whole biblical angle to this as well,

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I mean, if there, I would wonder, LaTosha Morrison, if there's no slaves in America who ever experienced that in biblical times,

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I don't know, maybe the book of Philemon, is there a possibility that that's even possible, what about in Hebrew slavery, was that possible,

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I mean, can, is it always just pure abuse, and that's all slavery ever is, and can be, in the experience of a master -slave relationship, well, if that's the case, then we have a problem with our

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Bible, not just American history, we have a problem with our Bible, and I hope you see it guys, it's absolutely disgusting, this, all credibility is gone from LaTosha Morrison, if that's what she actually thinks, and she says that she studied it, she doesn't have time to give a history lesson to this person, well, she would have had to give a history lesson to more than just that person, she would have had to give a history lesson to Maria Hines, or Mariah Hines, depending on how you pronounce her name, anyway, you can find this stuff online, by the way, it's very easy, just go to the

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Slave Narratives Works Project Administration, read them, they didn't all have this experience, some of them had terrible experiences with their masters, but not all of them did, and that's what critical race theorists want you to think, no lover cared in slavery, she says, the majority of cultures must understand non -white perspectives and the truth of historical narratives, there it is, standpoint epistemology applied to history, the monument, she says, that stone mountain, these are confederate monuments, speak a kind of false history, justifying the

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Civil War and continuing to inflict pain on generations of African Americans, including me, well, these are memorials, guys, when you look at most of these monuments, they're memorials to men who lived, who sacrificed, sometimes to mothers,

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I saw the Mother's Monument was taken out of Raleigh, and it's a sad thing to me, because you look at the inscriptions that the people who put them up, put there, so that you would know what you're looking at, they're the interpretive markers, and it's just glossed over, ignored, can't be for bravery, can't be for,

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I don't know, camaraderie, fighting for home, sacrifice, can't be for any of those things, it's just justifying the

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Civil War and inflicting pain on African Americans, she says, Christopher Columbus and his people oppressed the natives, stole their resources and brought disease that disseminated the native populations, yet we celebrate

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Columbus Day as a national holiday, there you go, Christopher Columbus was responsible for everything that came after him, the conquistadors and what they did, it's

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Columbus's fault, Francis Scott Key, the slave owner who'd written the Star -Spangled

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Banner, she says, has a racist verse that says, no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of the fight or the gloom of the grave, and there's a number of possibilities for why this line was the way, he included this in one of the verses of Star -Spangled

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Banner, but it is not necessarily because he's a racist, and he's like, we just want to kill slaves, no, he's saying that the

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Americans are going to fight those, and here, I'll give you some possibilities, those who are slaves because they're part of the less free

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British, they're citizens of Britain, and the word was used not just about African Americans in the

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United States, guys, the word was used to talk about civil slavery, it was used quite broadly, so that is a possibility, or it could be the fact that the

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British had former slaves in one of their regiments, and he's talking about them, and how the

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Americans are going to defeat them, but it's not justifying slavery in this verse, it's not saying that he has a desire to kill slaves because of the fact that they're slaves, or hirelings, the

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British also would hire out soldiers sometimes, so she's putting the worst possible spin on the

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Star -Spangled Banner, and calling it racist, and then she says, as I read, oh, the

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Declaration of Independence, there you go, she's, people were upset that Facebook had flagged it as hate speech, a meme that included that, and then she said, but had they considered the language of it, had they considered the context of the founding document, founding fathers weren't saying that all

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God's children were created equal, they were saying that some landowning men of European descent were created more equal than others, right, if you read the

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Declaration of Independence, and the poetic flourish at the beginning is not the most important part of it, by the way,

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I know many don't seem to realize that, but the all men are created equal is defined later in the document by going through the chain of abuses that Great Britain put on the citizens of the

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United States, and the point was supposed to be that you're not treating us like British subjects,

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British citizens, you're making war on us, we are like you, we are created equal, like you, and it was on a civil level, and it did not include, it wasn't egalitarian, it wasn't about the, it didn't mean that, we just needed to demolish every hierarchy, and that's what the founding fathers were after, that's not what they were after, it's very specific if you read the document, what they're talking about, and I would encourage

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LaTosha Morrison to go read it again, the founding fathers, let's see, okay, the three -fifths compromise, she says in the

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Constitution of the United States, we were called three -fifths of a human, that's not true, they were, it was for purposes of representation that slaves were counted as three -fifths, but they weren't, it wasn't, it wasn't like they're valued at three -fifths of a human, it was for purposes of representation, they're going to count for three -fifths of a human, because in the

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South, where there were more slaves, they wanted full representation for the slaves, because they were humans, that's argument was made, and then in the

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North, in some states at least, they wanted less representation, so they had more political control, that's, the moral element really wasn't there, like people think, so I want to read for you this, because she says this, it's interesting, here's her experience, and gives you an idea of kind of how she works, and I find it manipulative, the language she uses, she says, when

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I arrived at a plantation, a weight settled over me, I walked toward the plantation house, and within seconds, sweat poured out of every pore of my body, there was no shade, no breeze, only a heavy hot oppression, as bad as the heat was, oh, the bugs, mosquitoes landed between the sweat beads on my arms, sucking me dry, the crickets raised a ruckus in the fields, on the steps of the plantation, some cockroaches, the size of prunes, ran under the floorboards, and tucked away in one of the corners was a black and yellow spider, the size of my fist,

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I walked up onto the porch, and stood there quietly, in the midst of the bugs, and the heat, looked across my ancestor's concentration camp, and imagined what it must have been like, to work those fields, now,

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I don't know if she's read someone like Mariah Hines, and her experience, but there,

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I mean, you can go read the slave narratives, and you can find the bad examples, you can find the good examples, but this was life for everyone, before air conditioning, and suburban living,

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I mean, we, everyone had to contend with bugs more, and anyway, she said, she considered the beatings, the separations, the generations who have been born, lived, worked, and died there, her imagination was no match for the truth though, a guide met her, told her the facts, slaves were treated like animals, and they slept on top of one another, and commonly chained to the floor at night, they couldn't escape, she didn't hear that the slaves of Louisiana were well fed, or treated like family, the guide didn't tell us that the slaves were grateful for their education, or their religious conversion, instead, he told us the truth about forced labor, beatings, rapes, and murders, and this is what she wants everyone to think all of slavery was, that's it, now,

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I don't know about this particular plantation she's talking about, I don't know what happened there, exactly, but you can, you get a sample for the manipulative way that she,

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I mean, everything goes into how bad it was for, you know, the sweat, and the mosquitoes, everything is this experience of oppression, and that's the only thing you're allowed to believe, you cannot have any kind of nuance in your belief about that, or else, you're,

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I guess, a racist in her mind, so this kind of acid eats at the founding fathers, it eats at the founding documents, and then she shows you that, it eats at everything, and yesterday,

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I know I had posted a video, I was out in Richmond, and I showed the Monument Avenue, and the Robert E. Lee Monument, specifically, and what's happened there, and I talked about how this memory, these memory studies, and this revisionism, it's a form of revisionism, is completely changing the way, the perception that people have of someone like a

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Robert E. Lee, they're taking sources that weren't taken seriously for good reason, and now, it's orthodox opinion, you may not deviate from it,

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Robert E. Lee beat his slaves, and to think otherwise means you are insensitive and racist, or something like that, well,

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I had recommended some books last episode, at least one, I know, which I think is on my shelf, it's the

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Robert E. Lee by Douglas Southwell Freeman, but I wanted to recommend this,

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I forgot that someone had sent me this, Robert E. Lee for kids, Robert E. Lee, a history book for kids, by Ann Wilson Smith, and so,

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I just wanted to plug that, because it was sent to me, and she writes for Shotwell Publishing, is where you can find this, and it's a history book for kids, it's got illustrations and stuff, and it just talks about the character of Robert E.

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Lee, who he was, and so, if you have kids, and you want them to know some of the truth about that particular historical figure, then you can go check that out, so I wanted to plug that at the end here, in closing though,

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I don't do this to drag you guys down, I do this to provide resources for you, because I know a lot of churches are using Latasha Morrison's book, this will help you, if you're a patron, you'll have access to this slideshow, and it'll outline the specific quotes, and you can go to them, and you can see the parallel, here's critical race theory, here's what

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Latasha Morrison says, and so, if someone says this is a great book, you say, well, that's critical race theory, and if they say prove it, you can prove it, so that's more the point of this, we're going to do some more of this, because I think repetition is good, the more you understand critical race theory, by repeating those principles over and over, the better equipped you are to argue this in your local setting, and at your church, and one of the things that I've realized this week, is that within the next few years, there's going to be a huge demographic shift in pastors, a lot of pastors are retiring, and young people are going to be taking over, and we need to be prepared at our local church levels, to be able to not accept someone who is on board with Latasha Morrison's views, a woke pastor, either raise someone up from within the church, and carry on the legacy of the good pastor you had, or find someone who you know for a fact does not agree with critical race theory, and we're going to,

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I'm going to give you some more tools on this, this is the beginning of these steps, but I've just been convinced I need to give you more tools, and we got some great tools coming up, let me tell you, so look forward to that.