Eric Mason Has Some Opinions on Real Estate Development (Part 7)

There, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. Right, all right, well, let's continue our response, review, watch party of Dr. Eric Mason's TED Talk on biblical reparations.

He's into this. He's been defending this. He's been doubling down and all that kind of stuff. And so, let's see how far we can get today. Now, I just want a quick response to some people in the comments section.

A lot of people think I talk too much, that I need to let him talk more. And, yeah, you're probably right. I do talk too much. I wonder how many words I've said on YouTube at this point, just like total.

How many words do you think old A .D. has said on YouTube? It's got to be millions and millions. I don't know. I don't know how to count that kind of thing. But, yeah, that's how we do it here on the YouTube channel.

I will try my best to let him complete his thoughts. But sometimes things just pop into my mind, and I just have to say them. Otherwise, I'll forget them. So that's how we do it here. If you don't like it, I'm sorry about that.

But the good news is, if you do want to hear all of Eric Mason's wisdom uninterrupted, it's very possible to do. You can go to his YouTube channel. In fact, give him a little help. Give a brother a little help.

I'm going to go ahead and like this video. Go ahead. Give it a video. Give his video a like. It's epiphanyfellowship .com. He has about 2 ,500 subscribers. Give the guy a little help. Go ahead and see.

Here it is right here. Epiphany Fellowship. Go ahead and give him a little bit of help. I think that would be very nice. We've gotten a lot of entertainment from this TED Talk, and so it's only fair to give his channel a like.

Go ahead and subscribe. I'll subscribe. Here we go. I'll subscribe. I'll even hit the notifications bell. I can get all the notifications whenever he drops some new pearls of wisdom. So let's jump into it today and see how far we can get.

Eric Mason's Reparations Argument and the Vox.com Source

Type of reparation. Look all of this up. It's all in here.

Oh, by the way, so this is where I've already broke my rule, by the way. But I wanted to say this. So I was looking up some of the references. He said, look it up. So when someone on the stage says, look it up, it's polite to look it up.

And so I looked it up about this reparations. He was talking about the Tuskegee experiments, the internment camps and stuff like this. I'm almost 100 sure that his reference for this is Vox .com because if you look at there's an article on reparations on Vox .com, which is like the pagan of the pagan sources, right?

It's okay that he's but if you look at the way that this article is written, it's in order. Everything he said about reparations is in there, like the numbers, the money amounts, the dollar amounts.

And he does it in order from Holocaust to the internment camps to South Africa. He basically is like reading off of Vox .com. I'm pretty sure that probably on his iPad here is Vox .com. It's pretty interesting because he makes it seem like he did all this research.

But it's really just a Vox .com article. I'll try to remember to put the link in this video section, the comment section here. It's pretty funny, I thought.

Biblical Restitution, 40 Acres and a Mule, and Christian Responsibility

Reparations, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act. I could go on and on and on. And somebody said, what about 40 acres in the mule? Well, President Johnson had the land returned it to the Confederates.

He gave us 40 acres in the mule family and then had the Confederates return the property that was supposed to be ours. As a matter of fact, when slave owners got out of slavery, they gave them acres of land.

One man got 80 acres in Texas. And still his family is financially benefiting off of his reparations to this day. I could go on and on and on and on and on with reparations in the way they have been in unequitable ways in which America slapped black people in the face by the way it's been treated.

It's not black people though. Because remember, he's talking about all these examples of reparations and they were wronged. People were wronged and they didn't get reparations or they did get reparations but not enough.

But the thing is Eric Mason has never been that person. He's pretending to be that person. He wants the stacks even though he didn't go through it. So it's just like every biblical example, every biblical law, every passage and every example he used from history actually works against his case that he should somehow get some stacks or some drip or some whatever it is.

It's just amazing. He can't help it because there are no examples of doing the thing that he's attempting to do. And even if there were examples, it would still be against biblical law because biblical law is very, very clear.

The person who commits the crime is the one who makes restitution to the ones who he committed the crime against. It's very clear in biblical law. That's a standard that you can't counter it. You can't deny it.

It's undeniable. And so even if he could find examples, I could easily just counter with, yeah, but it goes against God's law and a Christian should not be advocating things that go against God's law.

It's just that simple.

Who Owes Restitution Under Biblical Law?

I'm saying America because I think the church should be leading this effort. Now why should the church be leading this effort? It should be leading the reparations effort because the slave ships that came over here that were led by people who were calling themselves Christians.

So reparations needs to be comprehensive, though, not just economic.

Listen to this. So the Christians should be the ones leading the effort because Christians were the ones on the slave ship. And so Christians, I guess, is an oppressor group. If you're following along with the way this all works, Christianity is an oppressor group, which if Eric Mason was consistent, he'd have to agree with that.

He'd have to agree with that. And so there's Christian privilege. And so the Christians have to do this because it's the Christian's privilege. But the thing is, though, Eric Mason is a Christian, you would assume.

So those are his people that were on the slave ships that were enslaving the Africans. He's got to own that. Once you were not a people, now you are a people. So Eric Mason is in that oppressor community of Christians.

So he should be the one giving money to people that are, I guess, what were the Africans when they came back? Were they pagans? Were they Christians? What were they? You see, these categories, they're never really clean, crisp categories.

Because if you're going to go with the whole narrative of Christians and Christian privilege, well, Eric Mason is benefiting from Christian privilege. And so he should be the one leading this forefront of paying reparations for the slave ships that his people, as Christians, because, Eric, your people are Christians.

Your people were the ones who enslaved them. That's how this narrative goes. But actually, Eric Mason identifies more with his blackness. And so his people are black people. When he says my people, he's talking about other blacks.

That's an unchristian viewpoint. That's not how you do this. When he talks about his people, he should be talking about Christians. So he's got to own that. If Christians were the ones running the slave ships and they owe reparations, which they don't, obviously categories of people don't owe restitution for anything because that's not how God's law works.

But if they did, Eric Mason would be in the category of someone who owes money to someone else. I guess owe it to himself maybe. I don't know how this works. It's all insane. It's all insane. That's another way you know it's not God's law because God's law can't be reduced to absurdity.

And this gets so absurd. The reparations get so absurd. My background is 60 European, 20 African, 20 Native. And so I guess my 60 part pays my 20 part how much? I don't really know. Maybe they only pay 60 or 20 or how much benefit do I get?

Do I get 20%, 60%, 40 Because they stole the Native's land too so maybe I get 40%. You see, it's absurd.

The whole thing is absurd. Why should reparations be comprehensive and not just economic? I'm not saying not economic or money. I'm saying in the Bible, a lot of their reparations was economic. Don't get it twisted.

He wants the money too. Economic alone. But one of the things that's very, very important is that—. See, listen, listen.

He can't help but believe the Bible. See what he's saying? In the Bible, it was economic alone. Economic alone. But he wants more than money. He wants money, yes. Don't get it twisted. He wants those stacks.

But the Bible only talks about stacks if you're going with his narrative. I'm not believing any of this nonsense. None of that was reparations. But if you're going with his narrative, the Bible talks about monetary compensation.

But it's not enough for Eric. It's not enough for Eric because Eric isn't going with the Bible here. He calls this a biblical case, but it's not. This is Eric Mason's case. Really, it's Ta-Nehisi Coates' case and Vox .com's case.

That's really what it is. So he wants more than stacks even though the Bible only talks about stacks. He wants more. See, this is how a covetous heart works. It's always something else. It's always more.

How much does he want? Well, just a little bit more. That's how covetousness works. This is a sermon dripping with covetousness. He can't stay with the Bible because the Bible doesn't give him what he covets.

He wants it. He wants those stacks. He wants the counseling. He wants the whole nine. Let's see what he wants because this is where it gets a little crazy.

A Comprehensive List of Slavery, Post-Slavery, and Current-Day Harms

Reparations has to fit what's been lost. So what has been lost has to be repaired. The core meaning of reparations is to repair because the offenses, listen, the offenses against blacks have been comprehensive.

So let's do a list. Let's do a list during slavery. Let's do a list during post-slavery. And let's do a list during current day. Let's do it. Let's do it, family. Slavery, we were kidnapped, exported as property, removed from our heritage.

Black sexuality, we became a sexualized being to the white man and white woman, beat our culture out of us, personal dignity stripped, caused spiritual divisiveness between us and those who would call themselves our spiritual brothers, a total breaking down of the family structure, manhood destroyed, womanhood destroyed, children stripped of their innocence and upbringing, economic disenfranchisement, and created and falsified a culture of hatred that exists in our context to this day.

Post-slavery, we got segregation. For uprooting the economy of thriving black communities across the nation, from Atlanta to Black Wall Street, the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Washington, D .C., Chicago, Illinois, Harlem, you name it, L .A., different economic hot spots were uprooted because of jealousy and frustration and a desire for subjugation.

Not only that, gentrification is an issue in post-slavery even to this day. Gentrification is actually a today problem. But then we go to unlawfully locking up black men.

Gentrification, Property Values, and the Logic of Real Estate

Yeah, so what's the restitution, the biblical restitution for gentrification? Show me the scripture. Show me the proverb. Show me the prophecy. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. Don't hold your breath if you're waiting for that one.

You'll never hear it. You'll just never hear it. This is a nice list, but, you know, and some of this stuff is very sad, no question about it. Some of this stuff is very hard to hear. You know what I mean?

You ever read a book about slavery and stuff like that? If you believe the worst of the narratives, which, you know, there's always debates on how bad it was, how good it was, how peaceful it was, how violent it was, but let's just believe the worst of it.

Let's believe the worst of it. Everything he's saying here is 100 accurate and even worse, let's say. So what's the restitution? What's owed? What's owed? Because you've already admitted that the Bible talks about money, paying back money, goods, gold, silver, that kind of stuff.

But you want to go further. You want more. You want more than what the Bible itself says. How could you call this a biblical case for anything? Because you just abuse the text. Nothing in the Bible has promoted what you seem to be promoting here.

How could you call this a biblical case without blushing? How could you do that? It sounds like talcum X, that Sean King. This is a Sean King case for reparations. This isn't the biblical case for anything.

You're trying to tell me, because this is what Eric Mason is trying to get you to believe. He's trying to get you to believe that the psychological damage, the sexualization of people, the trauma, the emotional trauma, this is all new.

God didn't know about that back in Israel's time. In Israel's time, when people were enslaved and stuff like that, there was no psychological trauma. No, there was nothing like that. There was no familial breakdowns or anything like that.

There was nothing like that. Slaves weren't sexualized in Bible times. There was nothing like that, because if God had known about that, he would have certainly put in counseling or other kinds of reparations in the law of Israel.

This is what you're being told here. I want you to really think about what would need to be true in order for Eric Mason's perspective here to actually be accurate, because he wants more than cash. He wants those stacks, but he wants more.

He wants other things, because there's trauma connected to African slavery that I guess in the old days they didn't have. That's preposterous. That's preposterous. We can see in the old times that slavery was no picnic.

That's the idea that people give you. Like, oh, Roman slavery was just great. It was just like employment. It was wonderful. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm sure back in the day slavery was actually way better.

It was probably just like me clocking into work. That's probably what slavery was like back in Jesus' time. That's crazy, guys. Do you really think? And then furthermore, think about it this way too. Let's just say it was.

Let's just say slavery was great back then. So God didn't have to worry back then about the emotional trauma and the family breakdowns and the sexualization of people. He didn't have to worry about that for then.

But you see, God is God, and he knows all things, and he knows the future because he created the future. He commands the future. So you don't think God would give us a little bit of a hint that maybe one day there's going to be this African slave trade.

It's going to be like nothing the world has ever seen before. It's going to be way worse than slavery back then. And so here's what restitution looks like. You don't think he would give us some hints?

It's like the same argument where it's like, okay, there was no homosexuals, you know, like the way we understand it back in the day, right? And so God wasn't talking about that. But you don't think he knew that eventually there was going to be loving homosexuals?

Like it's just so it beggars belief. Like there's nothing really consistently Christian about this presentation at all when you think about it. Like why would anyone believe this? Like God just didn't know about the trauma.

He didn't know about the trauma that was coming, so he didn't give us any he didn't even give us a clue in the Bible about, you know, the counseling that's required because of all the emotional trauma.

Get real, Eric. Come on, man. This isn't new. Slavery always has all kinds of issues associated with it, familial breakdowns and things of that nature. This is how it is. I mean even if you look at the law of God in the Old Testament, it actually addresses some of this stuff about how the families, you know, there's issues within the families.

And if a man wants to stay with his family, he doesn't want his kids, so what does he do and stuff like that. Like it's just it's all there. And common sense tells you that slavery back then was not fun, right?

It was no picnic. It was probably pretty brutal. So it's like the things that you have to believe, you have to really you have to really suspend all rationality in order to buy into a presentation like this.

It's just so preposterous. It's so preposterous. This is the perfect word. It's preposterous.

Dropping the property value in neighborhoods like this where we live and then people come in and then the people who have been here for generations can't benefit or they've been renting so long and there's been so much of a destruction of the culture here that they haven't been able to make use of the opportunity.

Their house may have been bought back in the day for $25 ,000. Nowadays the house is probably worth $250 ,000 to $600 ,000. A developer comes in to a person that's not really educated about what they're supposed to be getting and people just constantly let the city even letting, some cities even letting developers come in and undercut, not setting rules and giving fair market value for properties.

But people coming in and buying them say, we'll give you $120 ,000 and let you go, but then not realizing that there's not much better than what they can give for $120 ,000 after they sell the house that they had.

And then that person flips the house, puts $150 ,000 in it, and they sell it for five times the cost. And when you put all of that together, they have been absolutely unadulteratedly economically disenfranchised.

Then all of a sudden you have coffee shops in the community. People walking dogs and jogging and black folk are being looked at and now preyed upon by police because the police didn't come around there when we was in the community.

But now that somebody else is in the community, they're down in the community because the community's changed. But then that's the inequity cycle in our community. And the schools were closed, but soon as white folk move in the community, now the schools reopen.

They have grand openings. They get all this money poured in, all because the Negroes are gone.

Real Estate, Covetousness, and the Parable of the Vineyard Workers

Why don't you calm down? You know what I mean? Because you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what you're talking about. So what's the biblical solution here? Because this is the biblical case, right, for reparations, right?

So what's the biblical solution for someone not knowing the value of their property or not having the skill set to put money into it, increase the value and stuff like that? What's the biblical solution there, right?

You should calm down. Yeah, the biblical solution is probably not to do what you can to educate people about the value of property and things like that and how to negotiate and things like that. That's probably not the biblical solution.

No, no, no. The biblical solution is to engage in price setting, right? So you can't sell your property unless it's this much, right? That's probably it, probably something like minimum wage, right? I mean the rhetoric is good, and he's obviously very emotional about it, but if somebody buys something from me, I'm trying to think of an analogy here.

I'm trying to think if I had to sell my house, right, and somebody comes into my area and says, and I want to sell my house for, I don't know, let's say $150 ,000. And somebody comes to me and says, I'll buy your house for $200 ,000.

That's a great deal. That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, wow, I only wanted $150 ,000 for this. That's a great deal. And so I sell it for $200 ,000. I walk away. I feel good about it. The person who bought it from me walks away.

They feel good about it. You see, the thing is like they prefer to have the house than they prefer to have their $200 ,000. I don't really know why because from my perspective, I'd rather have the $200 ,000 than the house.

It's like this is weird because like we're both feeling good about this, and I don't really know why he's feeling good about it because from my perspective, I got the better deal. That's what every transaction ever, that's how it is.

When you buy a cup of coffee for $5 from Starbucks, some people would rather have the coffee than the $5. Now, that doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand that, but some people do, and that's totally fine.

In fact, Starbucks doesn't understand that because they'd rather have the $5 than the cup of coffee. So it's like everyone walks away feeling good. And then I go about my merry way. I do whatever it is I'm going to do with the $200 ,000.

Then a few months later, I look at my old neighborhood. I go back. I have a little nostalgia. I go back, and it looks like they fixed up my house a little bit, or maybe they knocked it down and they're rebuilding something else on it.

And all of a sudden, it's on the market. And I'm like, oh, wow, let's see what's going on here. And they're selling it for $300 ,000 or $400 ,000. Now, I might feel like I got bamboozled. Maybe they knew something I didn't know and stuff like that.

I might feel in my heart like, man, I should have held on to it. I could have had $400 ,000. But what's that feeling that I'm feeling, right? Like if I get angry and I'm starting to scream like he's doing, you know what I mean?

Like some kind of deranged socialist. What's that feeling that I'm feeling? I used to feel this feeling all the time. It's called covetousness. It's called greed. Because a minute ago, you were happy with what you got.

And now today, I put a little work into it. I had the ability to see. I had a skillset that saw this value for what it was. You didn't have it. But did I rob you? No, I didn't rob you. No, I didn't rob you.

The Vineyard Workers, House Flipping, and Closing Exhortation

I'm kind of speechless, guys. I'm kind of speechless because just the economic, this is an unbiblical way to look at economics. Like there's a parable about this, right? You remember the parable of the vineyard workers where he goes out to the the master goes out to the square.

He sees idle men, and each man, he says, go to my field, and I'll pay you a certain amount. And then what happens is that the people that worked in the beginning, they get pissed. They're mad about this exact thing because the guy that got hired at the end got the same money they did.

And what does the master say? He says, didn't you agree with me? You thought it was a good deal. You thought it was a good deal. So I'm giving you what you're owed. We talked about this. We made a deal.

Maybe there's something I'm missing in this example. Maybe he's talking about something specific where the person lied to the person or extorted them in some way. I don't know. It seems like there must be something missing here, the story he's telling where he's getting all, you know, like that.

There must be something I'm missing because he can't be this ignorant about how prices are set, how the real estate values. Oh, man. Like could you imagine being so angry because he's angry here about someone flipping a house?

Like and somehow flipping a house is unjust. So the idea of I bought a house for $100K. I put $50K into it. Now I'm selling it for $300K. Like you don't understand how that works and that's somehow unjust.

Putting a certain amount of money into a house can sometimes increase the value more than the amount of money you put into it. Like this is real estate 101. Like you don't have to even know anything about real estate.

All you have to do is watch one of those stupid flipping shows, those fantasy shows to know that there's sweat equity that goes into it. There's know-how. Like there's entire YouTube channel. Oh, my goodness gracious.

You don't have to be you don't have to spend money on college to know how this stuff works. Like there's YouTube channels, free content that will show you for your buck, what's the best thing you could do to your house right now to increase the value more?

So you put in a hundred let's just use fake numbers. You put in $1 ,000 into your house and it raises the value $5 ,000. And that knowledge that you know what to do, like for example, you don't put new windows into your house because it doesn't really increase the value too much, but you might put new, you know, something else into your house, right?

That knowledge is worth money. That knowledge is worth money. And so just because you're too covetous to understand that that knowledge and that time and that effort and the risk involved in that whole thing is worth money doesn't mean you were ripped off.

That doesn't mean that you're owed reparations. You be nice. Be nice, AD. Be nice. Let's end the video there. I think I might need to calm down. Anyway, I hope you found this podcast video helpful. We're going to continue this.

Hope you found it helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.