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Alright, well I figure since we did two cryptocurrency episodes in a row, I owe you a little something else. So we're going to go back to this Ruslan KD conversation with Marcus Pittman and see where it takes us.
I don't think we'll get through the whole thing. We've been going super slow. That's my fault because I just talk way too much. And what we might do instead is jump to his Eric Mason interview because I guess this dude on the right interviewed Eric Mason.
And a lot of people are very interested in what I think about that. So we'll see. Maybe I'll do that one. But for now, let's just continue here with Ruslan. Ruslan. Ruslan. It's like Mulan. Ruslan.
I want to have more conversations where we talk about the real problem. I believe police brutality is real. I believe police racism is real. I've been a witness to it. A friend of mine, black guy, passenger seat, 4 a .m.
My taillight's out. Police pulls us over and only wanted to talk to this guy who wasn't even driving.
Especially in Georgia. It sounds like you have an issue with the solutions. I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt.
Yes, because that's the conversations that aren't happening.
I have an issue with both the solutions and with the perceived problem. And I think Marcus does as well. Because the reality is that every person with a brain understands that there's a certain percentage of people, a very small percentage of people, that are racist.
And so the cross-section of what those people do for a living is going to be across the board. So there's going to be some racist teachers. There are going to be some racist doctors. There are going to be some racist police, just like there's some racist rap artists as well.
And so nobody denies that there are some racists out there. What we do deny, though, is you guys seem to think it's the worst problem since all of history. And it's so rampant. It's so common. And the facts don't bear that out.
So I do have a problem with that. But definitely also the solutions. I think Marcus, what he tries to do in some of these conversations, is to sidestep the whole issue, whether or not systemic racism is real.
Just to totally sidestep it. Let's just jump to the conclusions and the solutions. Just to make sure we're on the same page, even in biblical justice terms. And I think that that is definitely a strategy that you could use.
I argue both, though. I think both are important. But I totally understand why Marcus does it the way he does it. The solutions definitely have to be in play here when we talk about these things with our friends.
Because you hit what you aim for. And if what you're aiming for is evil, like so often what the social justice advocates in the church are aiming for is just pure evil, then we've got to fight that. We just have to fight that.
I would agree with you. We need to have those solutions. Everybody debates statistics.
So you just acknowledged police brutality is real. Yes. It sounds like you have a soft acknowledgement that systemic racism could be real or is real.
I would assume it is for the sake of the conversation. It is real. Respect it. Beautiful. Of solving the problems. So solving the problems. But I wouldn't say that white people are inherently racist because they're white.
I don't believe that. I don't believe that. But there are some people that do.
Like whiteness. Okay. I just had a whole conversation with somebody about this. Let me give you my context. The people that first shared the gospel with me were older black men. My entire complex was all black folks.
My best friend's mom was selling drugs, went to prison, got radically saved. She got so radically saved that everyone in our apartment complex got saved. There was about eight families there. There was two Russian families, six black families, and maybe one Hispanic family.
Long story short, the folks that were sharing the gospel with me were folks that were taking me to community service, were folks that were in my life when there was no father figure. And I'm good with my dad now.
So that's my exposure to the gospel. I then go early on in my encounters, early on mentors, on a scholarly level, whether that was in the spoken word scene, whether that was community college, were all Christians who loved Jesus, had been married for decades, and held upper degrees in sociology and all these things.
So just taking a basic sociology course, you've probably seen my video because Apologia reacted to it. I have a video trying to understand a pro-choice Christian, where it's me and one of my mentors and us disagreeing about the issue of pro-choice and how wrong I think he is, right?
Just a small thing. The dude totally loves the Lord. He totally loves Jesus. And it's just like he's justice-minded and just so compassionate and empathetic and sympathetic and whatever elsethetic you want.
He's just a great guy. Just a great dude. Just a small thing, though. He thinks that it's good to kill your own children. Well, let me rephrase that. He thinks it's cool to kill your own children before they're born.
So just a tiny little thing. Great dude, though. He just loves Jesus. He just has this one small thing where it's like, yeah, the kid in the womb, just off it if you want to. Because, you know, whatever.
Yeah, just a tiny little thing, Ruslan. So that's my paradigm. That's my paradigm. My paradigm is these beautiful, loving, Jesus-centered, justice-advocate Christians who think it's legitimately okay to kill your own children.
Just a tiny little thing.
Mentored me early on were not white liberals trying to shame me of whiteness. That's not where this comes from. None of this stuff comes from this. It comes from older men who are patient, who love Jesus.
I say all that to say when—.
They love Jesus. And you know how you know they love Jesus? It's because they never shamed me for being white. I know they were like, cool, you could kill your own children if you want to. I know, but they didn't shame me for being white.
That's how I know they just love Jesus. You know what I mean?
The issue of whiteness is presented, right? I've never understood whiteness to mean solely somebody's white skin. That's in the least of terms. This is critical race theory. Okay, go ahead. Explain to me.
This is critical race theory. What's critical race theory? What I'm telling you?
You're talking about whiteness and assuming that there's this idea of whiteness and all these sort of things.
This is where I almost died, by the way. I had laughed at him so hard. Just wait, it's coming.
I think you recommended a video with Pastor—I want to get his name right.
Pastor Roy Dockery, which you should talk to him.
No, it's the third option. Third option, Miles McPherson. I watched that, and that was critical race theory through and through, man. A lot of times I think we're seeing is we're seeing these people who say, I'm not a Marxist.
I don't ascribe to critical race theory. It's like, well, just because you say you don't or you don't ascribe to certain parts of Marxism. Nobody likes the death count of Marxism. We say, well, I don't like the death count of Marxism.
But it seems to me like it's OK to take some of these core tenets of these things and say, well, but I'm not a Marxist. And what we're seeing is, well, yeah, you are. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. No, you're not.
And it's like, this is why I get to like, well, let's just get to the solutions. Because I think we both acknowledge, I would acknowledge that George Floyd was a problem. Right. Like not not the person.
Sorry. The incident that the police that happened with the police, like that was a problem. Like they messed up. Like, yeah, that's a problem.
And before we move on to George Floyd, just back it up a little bit. You said that that is critical race.
Ruslan, Ruslan smells blood in the water here. That's why he stopped the conversation. So last week we talked about how Ruslan will always say that's a different issue. Like always when it's when it's not a different issue, it's like the right issue.
But he's uncomfortable talking about it. That's one of his strategies. But one thing that Ruslan is really good at in this interview is sensing, you know, where there's a chink in Marcus's armor here.
So Marcus just used the term critical race theory and Marxism and stuff like that. And I've used those terms myself. You know, that's something that I've used. I don't think it's bad to use those terms.
It's totally legitimate and all that kind of stuff. I don't use them as much as I started out using them. And the reason why is because of exactly what Ruslan is doing here. So what Ruslan wants you to do is he's going to try to get you to put out a definition of Marxism or critical race theory.
And Ruslan knows full well there's no one definition of these things. He knows that people pick and choose. They take some insights over here. They add them over here. They combine it. They're syncretizing this stuff.
And that's what you do. Like Walter Strickland, the professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, who's a critical race theorist and loves black liberation theology, he won't agree with every single thing that James Cone teaches.
But he does agree with many heretical things that James Cone teaches. But what he does is he syncretizes it with regular evangelical theology. And so this is a tactic on Ruslan's part. He wants to put Marcus on the defensive here.
And I think he does a decent job doing that with Marcus. So he senses blood in the water. Give me your definition.
Okay, so first of all, can you define critical race theory?
No matter what Marcus says he's kind of trapped here. No matter what Marcus says here, he's going to say, well, that's not how I understand it. I had a sociology professor. He loved the Lord. He just liked to kill babies.
He liked killing babies, but he loved the Lord. But that's not how I ever understood it. It's like he knows full well that you could say that no matter what the definition Marcus gave here. And I'm not going to say that I'm immune to this.
I've done this kind of thing. I've fallen for this crap before. And so I get it. I get it. This is not a criticism of Marcus at all. But Ruslan, he's an effective communicator. So he senses blood in the water, and he's going to go after it.
And that's kind of what we're about to see here.
Yeah, critical race theory is believing that there are these institutions or systems of racism that are, one, inherent within an individual.
Vertical race theory believes that racist systems are inherent in an individual. You just said that out loud.
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that. I meant that, one, I put two parts together.
My recommendation for you, if somebody tries to get you in a definition of some big, gigantic system of beliefs, that I would just say, no, I'm not going to do that. You know full well what we're talking about here.
You've been talking about systemic racism. You believe in whiteness. You believe in all this stuff. We're talking about that. You know full well what we're doing. I would suggest not even getting in the weeds here, especially if it's an adversarial conversation like this.
If it's with a buddy, like a friend or something like that, and it's a side conversation, sure, talk to your heart's content about whatever you want. But this is a tactic. And you can even see Ruslan's very pleased with himself here.
You can even see, you just said that out loud. And he thinks he's so cute, right? But this is a tactic. So just the reason I'm bringing it up is because you may see this tactic again. They use this kind of thing all the time.
I'll never forget when Big Eva circled the wagons around Tim Keller. And what's-his-face from mortification to spin was like, Tim Keller can't be a Marxist because he's not an atheist. And Marxism is an atheist thing.
And it's like, are we children? Are we idiots here? You think we're idiots? That's what you think we are? Because obviously we know he's not an atheist. But what we're saying is he believes a lot of very objectionable Marxist tenets.
It doesn't mean he believes everything in the Marxist handbook, but he believes enough for us to say, hey, those are some Marxist beliefs that you're holding there, Tim Keller. That didn't come from the Bible.
When you say that everyone should be paid a fair living wage, that didn't come from James where it says that you withheld his wages by fraud. That's a totally different thing, Tim Keller. That comes from the Marxist playbook.
We're not also saying, and you believe every single thing that Marxist says. It's an annoying tactic. I want you to be ready for it. People love to use this all the time. You can see how pleased Ruslan is with his deployment of this very effective, at least in his opinion, tactic on Marcus.
And, listen, Marcus, I wonder if this took you aback a little bit because it's like when somebody says, oh, so you believe the sky is blue? Can you define the sky? You're almost like, what? You don't want to insult the guy.
It's like, Marcus, I'd love to hear if this is kind of where you're at, just being taken aback by it. It's like you don't want to insult him, but at the same time, are you an idiot, dude? The sky, we know what we're talking about.
I can't define what the sky is, but it's right there. You can see it. You know what I mean? We know what it is. You talk about it all the time, that kind of stuff. So anyway, very, very ridiculous. It's a very common tactic.
Be on the lookout for it and try not to fall for it. I'm not saying Marcus fell for it.
He had to do what he had to do here. People who are born inherently oppressive based on their race, that's one. That's an actual tenet.
Ruslan is pretending like he doesn't know what Marcus is talking about. He knows exactly what he's talking about. This is all posturing. It's really disappointing that this guy is so popular when it seems like his major expertise is just how to posture like a social justice warrior.
I just told you I rejected that. I know you do. But you said that was critical race theory. He doesn't reject that, by the way. He doesn't reject that, by the way. He thinks that white people participate in a system that is inherently to their benefit.
It's a white supremacist sort of racist system, and the fact that someone is born white means that they're part of it. They benefit from it. Maybe they don't want it. Maybe they don't like it, but they benefit from it.
He does believe that. He's pretending like he doesn't, but of course he believes that.
You just said that was critical race theory.
That is critical race theory. That's one element of critical race theory. Okay, so when I said whiteness.
God bless Marcus because he's being super patient with Ruslan, and Marcus is much better suited for a conversation like this than I am because I wouldn't have had as much patience. It's like, you said that's critical race theory.
And it's like, yeah, critical race theory has a bunch of tenets, and we have a 45-minute conversation here. I can't go into all of them. You know full well what I'm talking about. Stop playing dumb games.
You know what I mean? This is the point. People will try to trap you like this where it's like, define it. And it's like, well, you know, it's this and that and this. No, I don't believe that. I don't believe that.
But it's like, it's just a tactic, guys.
When I say whiteness has nothing to do. Whiteness is not about my white skin.
That's what I said. You said that's critical race theory. The idea of whiteness is absolutely a tenet of critical race theory, 100%.
Okay, but how do we define whiteness? I don't know. What is whiteness?
Do you have an answer? This is what these people are talking about. He's just playing a game.
Marcus, what is whiteness? Do you have an answer? It's like he knows full well what it is. You know what it is.
It's me and all these people. They're talking about these sort of things.
Okay, so I'm asking you, what do you think whiteness is?
I don't think. I would say it's. Marcus doesn't think it's real, right? So why would you be asking a person to define something that he doesn't even think exists? How do you define a unicorn? It's like, well, I think it's not a real thing, so I don't really define it.
But I've seen pictures, and he's got the thing. You know what I mean? His horn can pierce the sky. Ruslan, you believe in whiteness, so why don't you define it? Listen, this is your crazy, not my crazy.
You've got to define your own crazy, dude.
I would say it would be. Personally, if I were to say it, I would say it would just be culture. White culture, right?
I don't think it's that at all.
But you see, this is a tactic. He wants you to keep talking. So now, no matter what Marcus says, he's going to say, no, that's not it. And then he's got Marcus on the defensive now, you see? And this is where a lot of social justice wars will try to put you on the defensive.
They want you to get the answer wrong, and it's a rigged game. The answer will always be wrong. And so whatever it is that you say, they're going to say, and then now they're in the position of teaching.
They're in the position of power. It's the same scam that they run when with anything a white person does, it's wrong. No matter what it is, it's wrong, and you should do the other thing. And it's a tactic to keep you on the defensive.
What do I mean? I mean if a white person moves into a black neighborhood, well, that's racist because you're gentrifying my neighborhood, dog. Move out of the neighborhood. And so now you're like, okay, I'll move out of the neighborhood.
And then they say, well, that's racist, dog, because now it's white flight, dog. And it's like no matter what it is, Ruslan over here, he'll be like, and he'll get it right. Now you're on the defensive, and Ruslan can teach you what's what.
This is a tactic that is endemic to social justice advocates in the pagan culture, but sadly in the church as well. And Marcus is holding his own here. But the thing is it's like I don't believe this is not my story.
I don't have to define whiteness. I don't talk about whiteness. I don't believe in whiteness. This is not my story. You tell me what's going on. You believe in this stuff. This is your game. This is your scam.
This is your fantasy. It's not my story. It's like when people talk to me about the ridiculous aspects of certain conspiracy theories. It's like, well, if you're going to say like this is just an example.
If you're going to say that 9 -11 didn't happen the way the 9 -11 Commission said it happened, then tell me what happened. And I look at you, and I'm like, listen, just because I don't believe the fantasy that they found the dude's passport somehow from the burning building.
They found an intact passport in the rubble, and it wasn't burnt or nothing. They could read it. I don't believe that. That's insane what they said there. That didn't happen. But just because I don't believe your story doesn't mean I know what happened.
I don't know what happened there. But this is your story, not mine. This is your fantasy, not mine. I know you didn't find that passport in the rubble that burned down that building. I know that something there doesn't fit.
So whatever did happen, I know that didn't happen. So it's your story though. You see what I'm saying? It's not my story. That's not what they say it is. Okay. What do you think they're thinking? Let's do this.
Let me ask you this. Marcus is being so gracious. He's like, okay, fine. I've told you mine. I'm wrong. So why don't you tell me what's what? Tell me what whiteness is.
This way. If we're being charitable, okay, Augustine, essentials and unity, liberty and non-essentials, charity and all things. If we're being charitable. This is such another scam. When Dr. Eric Mason says whiteness and you're being charitable, do you think he means your white skin and your white culture or my white skin and my white culture?
Yes, I do.
This is because I've seen a lot of Eric Mason and I've studied his interactions on the issue of race. And Dr. Eric Mason is one of the most obvious racists in history. He hates and I mean hate with a capital H white people.
Right. And you know, he does mean that he taught, he means white people like people with white skin. That's what he means by whiteness. And he does not like those people. You could eat. He's the angloid guy.
I mean, this is the dude that from a pulpit used a racial slur against white people. He only angloid on the inside. Like, like, like this is the guy who hates white people. And he even talked in that exact sermon about hating white people.
He said, if I don't, if I'm not careful, I'm going to allow my hatred be my center instead of Christ. And he's like, he's admitting it. And so I said at the time, I was like, very glad that he admitted it, you know, because we all have besetting sins that we struggle against.
And so someone that will say, Hey, I've got this sin in my life. I'm fighting against it. That's commendable. So good on Eric Mason. But maybe you should sit this race conversation out until you sort yourself out.
Right. Because you probably don't know what you're talking about. If you're in the midst of your hatred of, of gets all those angloids out there, you know what I'm saying? So, so yes, I do think that, but, but notice this other scam.
I do want to talk about this one last scam, and then we're going to get into the rest of Wilson's thing some other time. Cause I have to go. But, um, the charity scam, there's a scam, the charity scam, and they use the Augustine quote all the time, charity in all things.
And it's like, that's great. I like that quote too. I think Augustine was dead on. But the thing is though, charity in all things doesn't mean put your, check your brain at the door. And when Eric Mason is talking about them angloids on the inside, like, like we don't have to be stupid and say, Oh yeah, that dude's totally normal.
Like he, he loves white people. He just loves white people. You know, that's why he said that they be angloids on the inside. Like that's, that's stupid. That's being naive. It's not naivete in all things.
It's charity. So being charitable. Yeah. Eric Mason's a racist dude and he has no business preaching and he has no business teaching on the issue of race because he himself is a racist. You know what I mean?
And I don't, and, and, and Eric Mason, I don't know if you know this, but you can't get away with it by, by, by being racist, by claiming that you've got some white friends. We tried that. We tried that.
I think he means being privileged. Okay. Like there's a privilege with white inherent privilege or in a, in a, in a racial class that sort of defines or that, that gives people a easier access. I would deny that.
You do. He does mean privilege, but you also need white skin because the Obama's kids have privilege, right? Like the Obama's kids have privilege, but they're, they're not, that's not whiteness though.
It's called whiteness for a reason because you need to have the white skin. And by the way, it doesn't matter how poor or privileged you are. Whiteness is privilege. Even if you're poor, that's a privilege.
Okay.
Let's do it. What else do you think he could mean? Do you think that you think it's just strictly about white privilege?
If someone tries this scam on you to get you to define it and get you to describe it and get you to talk like eventually you just got to put a stop to it. Ruslan, I've talked a lot. I've given you, I don't believe this fantasy.
You do. So you tell me what whiteness is. Put him on the defensive because this is his scam. This is his story. It's not yours. Saying all white people are privileged.
No, I don't think so. Why don't you, what do you think he means? Why don't you define whiteness? So for my understanding, whiteness
Marcus gets there because he's like, he's probably sick of being on the defensive here and he probably picked up on that because Marcus is a smart dude. He's a smart dude. So he picked up on that.
And again, this is my understanding. It's not me speaking on behalf of Dr. Eric Mason. It's not me speaking on behalf of sociology. This is just my understanding. The way I've always, it's always been presented to me.
So, so, so stop, stop it right there. Right? Stop it right there because the wizard revealed his scam. He just did everything I said about this dude, about this whole thing being a scam, a tactic to get Marcus on the defensive.
He just revealed that to be true because Ruslan's just saying, this is just my understanding. I'm not speaking for Eric Mason. And it's like, yeah, yeah, I know all the other stuff that we're talking about.
People on your side believe this stuff. So just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it's not part of the definition. It's not part of the thing. And so he revealed this to all be a scam. No matter what Marcus would have said, he would have been like, you just said that out loud, huh?
And like he could have, and he's going to maneuver the way that it is to his advantage. This is a big scam. This is a wizard spell. And it's really annoying. So just be ready for it because when the scammer that's going to scam you with the idea of whiteness comes to you and says, there's this whiteness, you got to be scared about it.
And then he tries to get you to define what he means by the whiteness. Realize that is a scam. This is not my story. This is your fantasy. You got to tell me what's going on with this fantasy.
Whiteness, white isn't a culture. You could say Western culture or Judeo-Christian culture, or I don't know what your ethnicity is. Are you Irish? I don't want to presume. Scottish, right? I'm Armenian.
I have a lot of friends that are Irish. That's culture. That's culture, right? Whiteness is a social construct. It's not an ethnicity, right?
But it requires white skin though. It's not an ethnicity, granted, but it requires white. Like there's no country called white, right? Obviously we get that. There's no nation called white. We understand that.
But to pretend like it's not connected to your white skin.
My understanding, and this is again, this is from my understanding. When someone's saying whiteness, they're saying a self-identified view that one is superior. It could be overt or it could be subtle.
That the way whiteness is about viewing the world as this view, this view, this position is superior and everyone else is slightly beneath, not because of anything they've done or haven't done, but just because whiteness is superior.
In an environment where whiteness is in control, where whiteness has built the systems,.
Where the whiteness is in control. I think what we're seeing now is an overcrowding. He literally just, in a longer form, described what Marcus was just saying. He just said the same thing, that you're born into this system because you have the white skin and whiteness is in control.
So you benefit from the systemic oppression or whatever it is, from the white skin that you have because you were born with it. Marcus said that same thing earlier in different words and Ruslan was like, dog, you just said that out loud.
Like he was crazy. This is a scam, dude. This is a scam. Ruslan, dude, stop scamming people, man. You maneuvered Marcus here and we can all see it and we can all see what the result is and we don't like it.
We don't like it very much. Anyway, I said that I was going to leave like seven minutes ago and now I'm really late. So I got to go. I've got some work calls to make. I'm six minutes to an important work call.
Not that important, but I should probably do that because I should keep my appointments. So anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.