Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism

[0:00] Welcome, everyone. It's my pleasure to introduce to you our speaker. My name is Sean. I'm a pastor of Trinity Cambridge Church, and it's our joy to host Dr. George Yancey here this evening, and along with other supporting churches who have helped promote this event, Settled My Road, Whole Fellowship Church, and Beacon Community Church, and Ruggles Street Baptist Church, we want to thank you guys as well.

[0:24] And Dr. George Yancey, he's a sociologist. He teaches at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has been writing on a number of subjects, including our subject for today, racial bias, racism, as well as academic bias.

[0:45] And he first wrote his book on this topic in 1995. And so it's something that he's been thinking about for a long time. And I first encountered Dr. George Yancey through his book, Beyond Racial Gridlock, which at that time, when a lot of things, a lot of conversations were raging, it was the most helpful, by far, book that I've read.

[1:09] And he has since built on that and published recently, this past month, the new book, Beyond Racial Division. And Dr. George Yancey is unique because he brings, he combines the academic rigor of a social scientist with his profound faith and his understanding of Christian theology.

[1:29] And so we're really excited to present this to you tonight. So please welcome with me Dr. George Yancey. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[1:44] Thank you. I just want to start off with a question. If our Christian faith means anything, why do we sound so much like everyone else on a moral issue such as race?

[1:57] We're not talking about mathematics. You know, we're not talking about, well, Christian saying the same thing about mathematics, 2 plus 2 is 4. Okay, that's fine. But this is a moral issue. So why do we sound like everyone else?

[2:08] I don't think we should. I don't think we have to. And that's what I want to talk about tonight. I am a professor and I'm a Christian.

[2:20] And I believe that truth is truth. And if it's truth and you find it through science or if it's true, you find it through theology. It's still true. And my experience is that good science and good theology goes together.

[2:33] And when they don't, either you have bad science, you have bad theology or worse, you have both. So this afternoon, I am going to talk theologically.

[2:44] I'm also going to look at research because I think that there is a way we can talk about race that's going to actually be better, where we can be more productive than we have been.

[2:56] And I think that that's reinforced by Christian principles. And I think it's reinforced by what we find out in academia. So that's my approach. Can Christianity teach us anything unique about racism?

[3:09] Or is it just math and we sound like the rest of the world? And of course, my answer is yes, and I want to look at that. So that's my premise. Okay.

[3:21] Let's get started. We live in a racialized society. And by that, a society where race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, of opportunities, and social relationships.

[3:33] In other words, race matters. The fact that society has defined me as an African-American man matters in how I experience things, in the opportunities I get.

[3:45] And your race matters too. Sometimes I hear whites say, well, I don't really have a race. Yes, you do. Your race matters because it impacts your life opportunities, your social experiences.

[3:59] And I'm not saying that all the experiences are bad. I walk on the basketball court when I used to play, and say, hey, let's pick the black guy. You know, so it's not always a bad thing.

[4:10] On the other hand, I'm pulled by the cops. I wonder a little bit. So it matters. And the way it's matter in our society, the way it's matter in the United States, I think that there's two irrefutable claims one can make.

[4:26] And the first is this. We've had centuries of racial abuse in our society, from whites to non-whites.

[4:37] I don't think there's any argument about that. Nor the second claim, that a lot of the overt types of racism we've had historically no longer apply today.

[4:49] We don't have a Jim Crow today. We don't have slavery today. We're not putting Japanese internment centers today. Now, some people use it as rhetoric, but if you study history and then look at today, it's not happening.

[5:05] So this then leaves the big question. How do we deal with the effects of the centuries of racial abuse and the structures it's created in a way where people see it as being fair?

[5:17] And that's what we're struggling with today. And to deal with that struggle, I'm going to look at two major ways. Am I supposed to point it? Okay. Two contrasting views about racism and how we deal with it.

[5:31] The first view is this. That racism is something that is overt and done from one individual to another individual. So it is racist if I mistreat you because of your race.

[5:43] If I say I don't like you because you're white or I like you because you're Hispanic. It is racist if you don't get a job because someone says, I'm not hiring people with that race. It is overt. And thus, those who have this idea about race tend to advocate what's known as colorblindness.

[6:00] And their solution to dealing with racism is that we will treat everyone the same racially. I'm not going to see race.

[6:12] We're going to say race no longer matters. So that it doesn't matter if I'm going to hire you. It doesn't matter how I'm going to treat you. I'm going to be colorblind. That is one of the ways people answer this big question.

[6:24] How do we deal with essential racial abuse? We're going to ignore race and treat everyone the same. The second, racism is structural as well as individualistic.

[6:37] And social institutions can perpetuate racism even when people don't intend for them to be racist. So it's not about whether or not you personally are racist.

[6:48] Social institutions in our society can perpetuate racism. Now, today, the people who try to deal with this use what's known as anti-racism.

[7:00] And as Sean reminded me when he was driving me here is that the king of anti-racism today is in Boston, right? Kendi. So I'm sure you all have heard of the term anti-racism.

[7:13] And I'll go into a little bit on how I wanted to find it in a little bit. But it's the idea, look, we have social structures that are racist. So we must be intentional. We can't just ignore. We can't just be colorblind.

[7:23] We must intentionally try to deal with racism. And today, we tend to call it anti-racism. So I want to take these one at a time because my argument is that they both fail.

[7:36] And then, even though they're very different in their outlook, I'm going to argue they fail for the same reason. And then, I want to try to look at a Christian approach. That's going to be my argument for today, all right?

[7:49] So let's first take the first one, colorblindness. Is colorblindness viable? All right. So if colorblindness is viable, if we have a pretty fair society, in other words, if society is pretty fair, then we can ignore a race.

[8:11] If people have equal chances, we can ignore a race because it's not going to matter that much. There are things that we do tend to ignore that are not that important. We tend to kind of ignore, say, hair color.

[8:23] You know, it's not really that important. We don't totally ignore it. I mean, if you prefer blondes, okay, fine. But we kind of ignore hair color because it's really not that important overall.

[8:35] So that's the question. Now, if society is not fair, though, then to ignore race means that we're ignoring a problem. If you have a wound, you don't correct that wound by not treating that wound because then it gets worse.

[8:52] So that's the question. And what do we know? There are reams of research on this subject. Is society fair racially? I'm going to give you a few, just a few studies.

[9:05] I could spend, if I had prepared and I could find it, I could spend this next hour going to study answering this question.

[9:15] So here's a few examples. This paper, 2017, found that there's no real decrease in racial discrimination when it comes to hiring over the past 25 years.

[9:26] Now, how do they know this? They do something called an audit study. It's kind of one of the studies you probably see like in TV shows where they take a white person and then a black Latino person and they apply for a job.

[9:42] And then they are careful to make sure that their resumes, their applications are roughly the same. It can't be exactly the same when people go, hey, you know, did you just copy this? Is this plagiarism?

[9:53] But they're roughly the same. They do this over a number of people, a number of employers so that we get a good sampling. And what we know is that if you're, and they signal, by the way, they signal whether or not you're white or black by things such as names.

[10:09] So my name is probably not that distinct of George Yancey, but if I was Leroy Yancey, people would probably think, you know, that he's more likely to be African American. What they find is that due to this signal, European Americans are called back for interviews more often than African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

[10:28] But here's the interesting part. You know, let's say that European Americans are called back 10% more than African Americans and Hispanic Americans. You can say, well, maybe 25 years ago it was 20% more, so we're improving.

[10:42] But look at that study where it says. There's been no decrease over the past 25 years. So this is not something that, well, yeah, we still have some vestiges that are happening, but we're getting better.

[10:55] We're not getting better. Another example. Driving while black. This study was done in Ohio. Another study was done in other states.

[11:07] Driving while black is, are African Americans pulled over more than European Americans? All of these have been equal. And so it's kind of an easy study to do. You videotape who's driving so you can see the race of people in the cars.

[11:22] You see who's pulled over, and then you just, you know, is it different? And it is. African Americans are pulled over more often than European Americans.

[11:35] Well, maybe blacks drive faster. Well, they got the take, so they can actually see that. And the bad news is, we're just as bad drivers as you white people are. Not better, but not worse.

[11:50] And then here's the kicker. You know when you don't get this discrepancy? At night. It's hard to see the race of the person driving at night.

[12:04] So driving while black is a real thing. It's not just something African American people say. Now, I doubt that people say that have actually done the research to know this, but they have instinctively found that, figured out.

[12:16] If you're black, you get pulled over more. Residence of segregation. Now, maybe you in Cambridge have conquered this.

[12:28] I know in Texas, we have black parts of towns and Hispanic parts of towns, and even some Asian parts of towns. We have residence of segregation. And that means that you have black schools and Hispanic schools.

[12:40] And what this research found out is that this segregation impacts, and there's a lot of other ways segregation impacts people of color, but there's just one of the ways.

[12:51] Through schools. Because we have the black school, the black school is not funded as well or as high quality as the Brownlee White School. I actually did not go to a black high school.

[13:04] I went to a Hispanic high school in the school that I went to. Long story, not worth going into. And our Hispanic high school was lousy on a lot of things. You know, we were lousy in football.

[13:16] We were lousy in academics. We're good at one thing. In fact, we won state every year, and it wasn't even close, that one thing was industrial arts. We build a home.

[13:28] I say we, I didn't ever do that. But the school would build a home every year. They start from scratch, build a home. Carpentry, bricklaying, everything.

[13:40] They were great at state and dad. Well, think about that. This most Hispanic school really doing a good job teaching people how to be carpenters, which is nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with teaching people how to do masonry, all that other stuff, except the white high schools in my school, in my city, they were good at seeing their kids to college.

[14:02] So when I went to college, a local college, I hardly ran to any of my kids from my alma mater. I ran to a lot of kids from the other white schools. Who's going to run our country? Kids who build homes or kids who go to college?

[14:16] Well, yeah, there's nothing wrong. And for some people, believe me, some of my students, they need that instead of going to be in my class. But think about the Hispanic school teaches the kids to build homes.

[14:28] The white school teaches the kids to go to college. One last one, really relevant, since we're hopefully coming out of COVID. Got to ride in a plane without a mask for the first time in two years, so hopefully we're coming out of COVID.

[14:41] You ever wonder why African Americans and Hispanic Americans were less likely to get the vaccine? Well, here's one of the reasons, perhaps, why.

[14:54] There's evidence of racism in the beliefs and practices of healthcare professionals. This study, they looked at 37 studies, and 26 of them, they found evidence of racism. Sometimes in the ways they were treated, sometimes in the ways that they were tended to, like what tests they were given.

[15:12] So the experiences of African Americans and Hispanic Americans is, I go to the healthcare system, I'm going to be treated worse than European Americans. Listen, African Americans still remember Tuskegee experiment.

[15:28] So when you put that in, and I'm not saying that African Americans and Hispanic Americans were smart not to get the vaccine, okay? But I'm just trying to explain why they were less likely to do that.

[15:40] You put that experience in there, makes you a little bit wary of people saying, you've got to put this in your body. All right. All this is to say is, we do not live in a society that is fair.

[15:55] It is not, once again, this is not Jim Crow, this is not slavery. I hate when, you know, professional athletes say, they're treated like I'm a slave. read your history, son.

[16:07] No, they're not. But African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, there are issues here. And being blind to them is not going to make them go away.

[16:21] So when you go to a person of color and say, hey, look, let's ignore race, and this is happening, they're not likely to want to go along with that. And they know that the wound will not get healed until it is bandaged.

[16:37] So colorblindness does not work. And people trying to enforce colorblindness, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes, that does not work either. Okay.

[16:51] Anti-racism. So people can argue about what anti-racism is. And so what I did in my book was I read, at the time, the popular books on anti-racism.

[17:05] You know, I read Kenny's book, I read D'Angelo's book, you know, I read White Supremacy and Me, So You Want to Talk About Race. So I read, those were the popular books at the time, because I wanted to not get what, read what some academic wrote that all of five other people read.

[17:20] I wanted to read what other people, because I know that, I write popular stuff, I write academic stuff. I know it's going to get read more. All right. Sometimes the academic stuff is very important, but I know it's going to get read more. So I read the popular books, and I treated it as a social scientist.

[17:36] What were the common themes in all these books? To understand it. To understand what anti-racism, because that's what people are reading, and that's how people are interpreting what anti-racism is. And I boiled it down to three, there could be more, but I want to keep it as simple as possible.

[17:52] So I boiled it down to three. The first thing is to be very proactive in dealing with racism. That racism is not something that we sit back and wait for it to happen and then deal with it.

[18:07] No, we deal with it proactively. We're very aggressive stance on racism. That that is one of the things that was in all the books. That, you know, we can't hold back and wait.

[18:19] No, it's out there, we've got to seek it out and we've got to defeat it. Second, work to dismantle all aspects of racism.

[18:30] So racism is not just that you don't use the N-word. Racism is in our social structures, it's institutionalized, it's in a lot of different dimensions, a lot of different institutions, and we have to be aggressive and look at it in its multiple facets.

[18:46] And if this was what anti-racism was left with, I'd probably be, you know what, this is pretty good because I agree with both of these things. It's the third one that's the problem. I'm just going to pre-warn you, some people may not like this and that's fine, but I will challenge you if you push back on this, find me the example of the anti-racism book that doesn't do this, this third one.

[19:07] And this is where the problem is. The responsibility of whites is to do what people of color want. When I read these books that came out again and again and again, now what they asked differed.

[19:22] Sometimes they said, well, you know, what whites should do is deny their own racial identity or what whites should do is to provide money and support or what whites should do is to preach anti-racism to other whites.

[19:34] But it was never a conversation. These white people, this is what you ought to do. And I think this is what is the problem with anti-racism.

[19:45] Now, that's my opinion. But what does research say about where anti-racism takes us? Is that our approach successful? Well, one of the things that anti-racism talks about is training people, diversity training.

[20:02] Now, not all diversity is anti-racism, but a lot of it is. And here's what we know about diversity training. It has little long-term effect on prejudice. What will happen is you'll go through the diversity training and if we take a survey right afterwards, you will see a reduction of prejudice.

[20:20] And then we do one six months later and it'll be going back. And by the way, this is not a single study. This is what we call meta-analysis. And meta-analysis is multiple studies and we see the total effect of that.

[20:31] So this is not just one study which will have some weaknesses. This is a lot of studies showing that diversity has little long-term effect on prejudice. It's kind of like when you send your kid off to Bible camp.

[20:43] Right? Kid comes back, kid makes up his bed now and the kid eats the vegetables and the kid's, you know, and then six months later the kid is, you know, no longer making up the bed and, you know, and I hate that that has brown stuff in it, you know, all that.

[20:59] It goes back. And I think that's the effect of diversity training. It gives you a temporary high and it goes away. Now, you might say, well, at least you get that temporary high.

[21:11] But the problem is there are also some problems with diversity training as well. Am I doing the wrong one?

[21:26] Oh, there we go. Okay. For example, this research found that diversity training can generate a backlash, which means that for some whites, as with diversity training, they actually have less respect for people of color than they did before.

[21:45] They feel resentful about what's happened. Now, I don't think it has to be this way. In fact, I think diversity training can be done in which that does not happen.

[21:56] But we're looking at what we're doing right now. And we're fueled by certain assumptions. This is the result that we're going to get. Here's something else that I found interesting.

[22:07] This research found that when you teach about privilege, white privilege, because that was a big theme in a lot of the stuff on anti-racism. When you teach about white privilege, you can create less sympathy for whites, but your sympathy for people of color does not increase.

[22:20] And what she found, she and her team found, was that you do this talk, you know, training on privilege. Marginalized people of color, people don't feel any more sympathetic for them.

[22:33] People who are already sympathetic don't feel any more because they already were there. People who are not sympathetic to them, they don't get more sympathetic. But people who were sympathetic to people of color, you teach them about privilege, they feel less sympathetic to marginalized whites, homeless whites, whites of substance abuse.

[22:52] They're less sympathetic. Because, hey, if they have privilege, why are you homeless? So this becomes a dysfunction. Then, once again, I think there are ways you can teach about privilege that doesn't do this, but you have to be careful.

[23:11] This is, to me, this study is almost the dagger in the effectiveness of anti-racism training. What this researcher did is that they looked at companies, and they asked the question, how can we, how can the companies increase the number of managers of color?

[23:29] So they looked at the companies, they looked at the number of managers of color, then they went away, came back five years, and looked at who had increased, who didn't, and what techniques they used.

[23:41] You know, those who did mandatory diversity training actually had fewer managers of color five years later. Those that had grievance committees had less managers of color five years later.

[23:54] Now, these are the things, efforts in order to increase managers of color. Those that said, here's how you have to hire people, dictated to the managers how they have to hire people, had fewer managers of color five years later.

[24:06] The ones who, and I'm going to get into the second, who engaged those, because there were companies that actually increased managers of color. Those are the ones who actually went to their current managers and engaged them, rather than dictate to them.

[24:20] They're the ones who actually increased managers of color. So, as a very practical manner, techniques that, of trying to get people to do stuff, actually could backfire.

[24:35] So, anti-racism, in some ways, it seems like a good theory, but it doesn't work in the real world. There's other studies that I'm not even, you know, there's studies I put up there about how diversity training actually creates a compliance among people.

[24:53] So, they don't think there's a problem because now we've had training. And how when people are given social justice reasons for hires, that those people who are hired then are seen as less competent.

[25:06] Look, this is the real world, folks. This is what the research shows you. Go back to those anti-racism books and see if they have any research that anti-racism actually works. That'd be my challenge because when I read those books and they don't.

[25:21] Now, maybe there's a book out there that I've not read that does, but the books that I did don't. So, what's happening? Both these approaches lack something.

[25:34] Now, I'm going to get all theological on you. You had the science, so now you get the preacher. The scientist is better than the preacher, by the way. Human depravity.

[25:49] Here's my argument. Now, both of us will talk about human depravity of certain groups, but human depravity doesn't start when we're talking about other groups. Human depravity starts when I talk about myself. I start with myself when I talk about human depravity, and then I look at human depravity of others.

[26:04] When we recognize human depravity crosses boundaries, it changes how we look at things, and it changes the sort of answers, the sort of ways we approach it.

[26:17] I think there's a core element of being a Christian. There's all sorts of scriptural backing for human depravity. I'll just throw some of these up there. Think about it this way. If we did not have this human depravity, if we could get there on our own, we wouldn't need Jesus.

[26:34] We could earn our own salvation. This is a core element of what our faith is. This is not just some sort of side issue when you think about it. We don't think about it a lot because who wants to think about how depraved they are, but it is very key.

[26:49] When we look at it, it is an incredible difference between how Christians see the world, and how, I would say, those are more secular to see the world.

[27:00] Maybe you can find other religions that also appreciate it, but if you have a more humanistic approach, it's very different. In grad school, I was introduced to the notion of human perfectibility as we say the Enlightenment thinkers.

[27:13] That had an impression on me because I was a Christian at the time and I was able to contrast that to my understanding of the nature of humans. I want to talk about that a little bit because I think that this really is very telling because when you start with one premise as opposed to another, you come to different conclusions.

[27:30] Human perfectibility. Humans become better with education. The idea is if we educate people, they will learn how to become better and our society will become better.

[27:42] All right? So education is the solution that if we educate people the right way, they'll become less racist, they'll become less sexist, they'll become more giving, more loving.

[27:54] We need to educate. People are a blank slate and with the right education. And this is part of the philosophy of the Enlightenment movement and you can see it today. What's going wrong with people who haven't gotten bad education or no education.

[28:07] And you'll hear that. You know, that is the problem. We've got to change the education. We've got to socialize people differently. I mean, what is the argument in the school system? We've got to socialize people differently, right? Right? Here's another one.

[28:24] Another aspect. Humans are rational creatures who could become convinced to become better. Rationality. In other words, the idea was rationality is going to replace religion. Instead of religious superstition, we're going to be rational.

[28:36] Now, at the time I was in grad school, I didn't have something I have today and that's kids. Because if I had kids at that time, I would have talked about rationality because kids are not rational.

[28:49] But the notion is we're rational, you educate us correctly, we'll grow up to become good, solid citizens and we'll change society. There's a lot of different ways this can go.

[29:02] The most common way that people recognize is when you understand Marxism, what Marxism is about. It's about, you change that economy to a rational economy based on communism, people will be socialized in a better way.

[29:17] And it's not just about changing the economy. If you understand Marxism, the structure and superstructure, the economy is a superstructure, everything's built upon that and everything gets better. Not just the economy, everything gets better.

[29:29] So that is something that is, you don't have to do this Marxism, but that is the notion that we have. We change, we educate people, things will get better.

[29:40] We can make humans perfectible. Humans have the ability to overcome our problems. Now, here's where it really comes down when it comes to looking at racial issues.

[29:55] If you take that mentality, if our insight is taken, is adopted, we can move to the end of racial alienation. If you adopt anti-racism and people become anti-racist, we will conquer this.

[30:10] You need to come follow our anti-racism. Or, if you follow colorblindness, you know, people can see it easier with anti-racism, but it's just as strong as colorblindness. About a year, maybe a year and a half ago, I was on Facebook seeking knowledge.

[30:31] Because I have, my oldest is a seven-year-old, just turned seven, and, you know, I was thinking about talking to him about racial issues. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there on birds and bees, which, talking about sex, which I'm grateful about, because that's another topic I need to talk to him about.

[30:47] Not excited about that one either. But there was nothing on race that I was comfortable with. And so, I went on Facebook and I just put a query out there, and sometimes I get on Facebook and I just kind of put stuff out there and let people fight over it, and I just have fun.

[31:03] But I was actually being honest, and I was, you know, I know that I am a race scholar, but this is the first time I've had a five-year-old. And I'm just like a clusisist parent like the rest of y'all.

[31:14] Those of you who are raising kids of color, how do you talk to them about racial issues? What's your approach on that? I just want to get some advice. Well, on top of the advice, I got a lot of people pushing back, and their pushback was this.

[31:26] Why are you talking to your kid about race? Why are you even bringing up race? Don't worry about marries and good black Christian men. We're about raising good Christian men, and that's all you have to worry about.

[31:36] Now, why were they telling, why were, and as you probably imagine, most people who are saying this were white, so why were these people telling me as an African-American how to raise my kid?

[31:48] It wasn't just rudeness. It's, they believed that if we all become colorblind, we'll end racism. You adopt our perspective, we end the problem.

[32:00] Now, contrast this with the notion of human depravity. Human depravity.

[32:12] Humans are inherently selfish, and that cannot be taken away with education. A couple of colleagues of mine did some really interesting research, because here's what we know. This is like a foundational knowledge in sociology.

[32:24] Education makes things better. So, you look at education and race, racism. And every study that uses education as a variable, as what we call an independent variable, measuring some race aspect of racism as a dependent variable, every time education, the more education people have, the less racist they are.

[32:44] No matter how you measure it, the more education they have, the less racist people are. So, my colleagues said, well, that's interesting. So, what do people actually do? So, they looked at questions on, would you, how willing are you, now these are just whites, how willing are you to move into a neighborhood that's racially mixed?

[33:04] How willing are you to send your kids to racially mixed school? And, once again, more educated whites are, more willing they are to send their kids to racially mixed school, more willing they are to live in a racially integrated neighborhood.

[33:16] So, then they looked at some data to see whether or not education actually did have this effect. And, they looked at the data to see where did whites actually live, and where did they send their kids to school.

[33:28] In fact, the more educated whites were, the less likely they were to send their kids to an integrated school, the less likely they were to live in an integrated neighborhood. So, what's happening here? The whites are saying, yes, I'm more educated, I'll send my kids to these schools, I'll live in these neighborhoods, when actually comes, you know, rubber hits the road, no.

[33:46] No. What if education doesn't make you a better person? What if education gives you more ability to hide your sin? There's no guarantee education makes you a better person.

[34:08] Only by accounting for our desire to protect our own self-interest can we deal with group conflict. We have to be honest. Everyone comes in here with a self-interest, regardless of your race or position.

[34:23] And that can take over and that can create a situation that's untenable. We have to find a way of dealing with that. We have to have some checks on us as we enter into these conversations.

[34:41] Doesn't mean that we don't get to initiate what we want and desire. Of course we do. but we are not going to get everything. And my experience is when humans get everything, that's usually not a good thing.

[34:58] Only holding each other accountable can we find solutions for racial alienation. Here's the crux of it. We have to find ways of holding each other accountable and working together to find solutions.

[35:10] what happens is that one group will win out for a period of time. Just for simplicity to say, let's say the colorblind versus the anti-racism group. One group will win out for a little while.

[35:23] The other group, they are shut out now and they're going to do everything they can to sabotage that group. And then when they will win and the other group will fight it.

[35:34] And then that's what we're doing. And you can look at issue after issue. What's up with the school board stuff? Well, let me tell you what's up with the school board stuff. You know, while all these protests.

[35:46] And I'm not getting into what CRT is or anything like that. You know, you want to bring up the questions, that's fine. I'm just saying this is what's happening as a sociologist. For a while, a group of educators could do what they want to.

[35:57] And so they decide on racial issues, they're going to institute programs that are more progressives. I would say more anti-racism than CRT. The other group caught wind of it and now they're protesting.

[36:09] And now they've gotten some wins. They took out, you know, a governor. And that was a major issue. They're going to get some more wins. Because they don't have any skin in the game.

[36:21] They didn't have any say in this. Why not tear it down? And they'll get some wins. And then the other group will come fighting back again. And then we'll go again and again and again. And that's what's happening.

[36:31] We don't have anything sustainable. So, what I call a mutual accountability approach or a collaborative conversations approach is a Christian-based approach. I'm going to stop for a second.

[36:43] It's Christian-based, but anyone can do it if they're willing to. It's kind of like forgiveness. I mean, forgiveness is kind of Christian-based value, but anyone can forgive. And what science shows you is the more you forgive, the healthier you are.

[36:57] Okay? So, even though it's Christian-based, I'm not saying only Christians can do it. In fact, I hope we Christians do it, and then I hope other people do it. But if other people want to come and me talk to them about it, I will.

[37:08] Because I think it's important to do. Whereby we recognize that all people always have a sin nature that has to be accounted for. Thus, everyone has to work towards healthy interracial communications to solve racial problems.

[37:19] Here's where the mutual problem comes in. And here's where every single person has its responsibility. We all work together to have healthy communications. say, I want to make sure I'm being clear on this.

[37:33] I'm not saying the solutions have to be mutual. In fact, my inclination is they probably won't be, at least most of them won't be, some may be.

[37:46] I'm not saying the solutions have to be some sort of colorblindness. It has to be on the table. If people bring on the table, it has to be on the table to discuss. So, the solutions are not going to be some sort of egalitarian solutions necessarily.

[37:59] But, everyone's responsible for coming in and having a healthy conversation. And their responsibility is not removed from you no matter what your race, political ideology.

[38:10] No. We come in to have the conversation in a healthy way. Okay. Okay.

[38:23] So, I critique the others empirically. Is there empirical work to justify this? There is some that needs to be more and I'm trying to work on some more right now. It's a couple exciting opportunities I'm working on right now.

[38:35] But, there is some to suggest this is a better way to go. For example, we know that under the right conditions, interracial contact helps to alleviate bias. Now, how's it under the right conditions?

[38:46] Now, just because you have contact with people of different races doesn't mean that you're going to be all lovey-dovey. But, under the right conditions, you will get less bias with interracial contact. This means we should be encouraging this contact under the right conditions.

[39:05] Having common group identity increases positive feelings. Right? I mean, I'm in Boston or close to Boston and it wasn't too long ago that New England Patriots were pretty good.

[39:20] Oh, I know. That's bad, huh? Well, they did make the playoffs last year, so that they... When they were good, wasn't there like a, hey, we're all in this together and these other differences don't matter as much?

[39:36] Because he had this common group identity. This common group identity. And we know this is the case. When I was in college, I thought my dorm was the best because these were the guys I was with.

[39:48] But yet, whenever we went to a football game, then the dorm differences didn't matter because now our common identity was the whole school. So the more... We should be encouraging us to think of how to have a common identity and less polarization.

[40:03] And part of what this approach is, building community instead of polarization. Perspective taking. As I said, you can do diversity training to be more effective.

[40:17] And one of the things they found out is perspective taking shouldn't be effective. So if I learn how to take the perspective of other people, if I learn how to listen to other people and take their perspective, that has a more effective change than if I'm just sitting there and listening to them talk to me.

[40:33] We've got to encourage perspective taking. We've got to encourage the extraordinary communications where I learn about the perspectives of others and try to incorporate that. Collaborative conversation in an atmosphere of mutual support creates relational compliance.

[40:52] If people have had a chance to have their say and are heard and have something, you know, not just heard and we're going to dismiss, but, you know, take into account as we try to fashion the solution, they may not get everything, but you know what?

[41:06] They're going to actually work to make it successful rather than work to tear it down. Because the way we do things today, a group wins and 40% of the country is trying to tear down their efforts.

[41:21] And that's no way to go. But collaborative conversations with mutual support will help us to have that sort of volitional compliance. Was there another one there?

[41:37] Oh, yeah. Skill development. That's just, it's very important we develop skills. Part of, you know, I think one of the fair critiques of my approach is do we have the skills for it?

[41:50] And I say probably right now our country doesn't. So part of the more make this work is we're going to have to develop skills to learn how to actually listen, to learn how to have communication, to communicate in an effective manner.

[42:03] Because communication is not just sitting and yelling at people. Yeah, you're communicating, but it's not getting through. Skill development. Is a key to do successful diversity training.

[42:20] See it one time. Okay. Implication of this approach. First, no one has all the right answers. All right? No group has all the right answers.

[42:31] No person has all the right answers. But we can need better answers by working with each other. And, you know, there's actually research showing that one of the reasons why diversity is good is you bring in these different perspectives and people learn how to work together and people can see things they didn't see before.

[42:47] That's one of the reasons why diversity works. All right? So if we, if that's true, then we should bring in different voices to get better answers, to see shortcomings.

[43:01] second point. We need intentional efforts to collaborate with to collaborate with conversation. I'll be very clear about this. This is not, hey, let's just have a dialogue and then we just go to Twitter and we just have a dialogue.

[43:19] We need productive dialogue, which means we need to learn how to have productive dialogue. And there are techniques that we can learn and that we can teach each other. So the conversation is intentionally to be collaborative, intentionally be productive.

[43:35] Unless anyone think that I'm just talking about, hey, we just talk about it and nothing gets done, the purpose of this conversation is to solve problems. Now, good relationships is going to be a result of that. But good relationships is not the intention of these conversations.

[43:58] There we go. All right. The needs of everyone must be respected. So this is a conversation where we're going to go into and say, okay, what needs does everyone have?

[44:14] Can we respect them? Because that is what's going to get by you. Trying to figure out what people really, and also trying to figure out what people really want and what they really need. Because sometimes we want everything, but we don't need everything.

[44:26] And if you're married, you know that sometimes giving up a want to meet your spouse's need is a very smart thing. It's like this.

[44:37] Do you want to win the argument now or do you want to lose, or do you want to win the argument later? Because the one you win now is going to cost you later on. All right? So is that really a want or a need? And we need to have that conversation when it comes to racial issues as well.

[44:51] What's a want and what's a need? Skills of active listening and productive communication is valued. So active listening. When I interview people, I engage in what's known as active listening.

[45:07] Maybe I should do this all the time. Probably make me a better person. I'm working on myself. Active listening is listening for understanding. I'll give you an example.

[45:18] So about 10 or 12 years ago, I wrote a book on atheists. And to get the information from that book, I interviewed a lot of atheists. Altogether, my research team, our research team interviewed about 50 atheists.

[45:32] I probably interviewed about 25 of them. As a Christian, I was not in agreement with what they were talking about. But I wanted to understand why they rejected religion and what their perspectives was.

[45:44] And so I listened for them. I listened for understanding. And one of the ways I did this was when I heard them out, I would rephrase what they were saying in my own words so that I knew whether or not I understood them or not.

[46:02] That's listening for understanding. Now, let's not listen so I can get the next debate point in. Because there was no debate there. I was listening to understand them. I mean, if you don't understand where a person comes from, how do you even disagree with them?

[46:14] Sometimes we're so eager to prove them wrong, we may even agree with them more than we think. And productive communication. There's research out there that shows that when people feel threatened by what's communicated to them, they shut down and literally cannot hear you.

[46:33] One thing I like to say to Christians is, you know, you could be 100% right in your outlook, 100% wrong in how you deliver it. You'd be sinning against that person even though you're right. So what we want is learn how to communicate to people where they can actually hear us.

[46:49] I'd like to give two examples, one from people who are more conservative, one from people more progressive on how they say things that shut down conversations. And the person's going to still be there looking like they're listening, but they're not listening.

[47:02] All right? So here's my first example. When a person says, I do not see race. I understand where they're coming from.

[47:12] What they're trying to say is, I'm not going to mistreat you because of your race. But what a lot of people of color hear is this important part of me, I don't recognize.

[47:24] It doesn't matter to me. That important part. Now, I'm an African American man. Being an African American is not my most important social identity. Being a child of God is.

[47:37] But it is an important part of my social identity. It is part of what shapes me. It's not the only thing, but it's an important part of it. So, I want people to understand that part of me.

[47:48] All right? I want people to understand that. It's hard to say, you know, I, to say something such as, you know, my race is not important to me because then you're talking about yourself. But when you don't see race, what you're telling me, what a lot of people of color hear, you know, is you don't see an important part of who I am.

[48:07] All right? I've dealt enough people that I don't become defensive, but a lot of people of color will if you tell them, I don't see race. From the other end, when you throw out terms such as racism and white supremacy, I guarantee you a lot of whites are shutting down at that point in time.

[48:27] Because their idea of racism and supremacy, white supremacy, is the KKK members running through the town. and you can say, no, no, no, no, academically, that's, come on, let's be real, folks.

[48:39] Let's be real. You can use a different term. You can use a different term. You know, the way people interpret racism is nooses. All right?

[48:51] And that white person is going to think, I, that is not me. You're using that term about me, and that is not me. And that person will no longer hear what you have to say.

[49:02] And what you may say may be great, but they cannot hear it. And let's just say, I'm, I'm telling policing, yes, we do that all the time with people we care about.

[49:14] You don't tell them police around your friends, you'll have those friends for much longer. Because, trust me, I don't say everything that pops into my mind. That would make me a monster. And you don't want, you don't want that.

[49:25] Yes, there is, there's some amount of tone policing in relationships. Period. And it's not always fun, but it is what it is. Once again, do you want to communicate to feel good, or do you want to communicate to get to break through?

[49:39] You know, it's your choice. Work for solutions that are win-win instead of win-lose. Let's try to find ways where everyone feels like they got something.

[49:53] You know, if you enter in negotiations and the person feels, in an ex-negotiation, you feel they got nothing, why are they going to keep working with you? Why are they going to keep working with you? Negotiations, dealing with issues, we want to find out what people really need and how we can meet those needs.

[50:11] And sometimes you can meet those needs with something that's pretty simple. And why not do that? Sometimes, sometimes it's not going to be as easy. And you know, let's acknowledge that as well. We should work towards win-win and try to avoid win-lose as much as possible.

[50:28] Now, there's more to this. You know, obviously, there's more to this. You know, I could go more into some of the research looking at how this could be effective and I could look into some of the techniques and some of the procedures and larger ideas about this.

[50:45] So there is more to this. But I just want to give you all an introduction to this perspective, which I think is a much more viable perspective. If I had an elevator talk, you know, if I was on an elevator on the fifth floor and someone said, hey, what's your book about?

[50:59] I'm worried about the first floor so I have like 20 seconds. It's just about this. My book is about how we can solve racial issues or learn how to have better conversations with each other so we can solve problems where everyone wins and get away from one group winning and the other group losing.

[51:18] In a nutshell, that's what this is about. Now, executing it is not as simple but that's what this is about. Now, I was told to go to the last slide that if you didn't get a book and you're interested in one, you can scan that and get one.

[51:33] I know that some of y'all got the book by registering early enough which it should teach you. Register as early as possible. And I know we'll get some questions but thank you for your time and God bless.

[51:46] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. George-Yancey. We are now going to transition to the question and answer time.

[52:01] There are two mics at the bottom of the stairs on the other side. So if you have a question, please come line up on either mic. And please note that this is a time for questions and answers.

[52:13] It's not a debate platform. It's not for you to air your own opinions or to argue with Dr. George-Yancey but for you to ask him questions and to respectfully listen to what he has to say on these subjects.

[52:24] So please use this opportunity for that. And now, please. Thank you for coming, Professor-Yancey. I'm really glad that we invited you to come to speak to us.

[52:34] I've read your Shattering Paradigms blog over the past couple of years and I've really appreciated the thoughtfulness of your writing on that platform. I think one thing I wanted to ask you in response to what you said is it doesn't make sense to me why you would set up colorblindness as the contrasting perspective to anti-racism that's also inadequate.

[52:55] Because I think what you're contrasting against is maybe racial obliviousness. Just saying that, we don't see any differences in racial experience. We've solved all of our racial problems since the civil rights era so the job is done.

[53:11] And I would call that racial obliviousness. And colorblindness is this ideal that you articulated that we will try to treat people the same, to treat people fairly independent of their racial identity.

[53:24] And so the really troubling disparities that you highlighted about policing, employment, housing, medical care, I think isn't the ideal to remove those disparities through equal and fair treatment rather than somehow that colorblindness is not enough and we have to somehow even reverse the disparities or reverse the treatment to have some kind of reverse racial discrimination in order to eliminate disparities.

[53:55] Yeah. So I guess what I'm hearing you is colorblindness doesn't fairly represent those who are just oblivious to the racial issues.

[54:06] Right. I think there's something to that. I would say that you know that those who advocate and what's interesting is I actually had a hard time finding people who were advocating it as far as through blogs.

[54:23] You know, you get a lot of people but you talk to people all the time who push a colorblindness mentality. What I would argue is that this sort of mentality the obliviousness also I think leads to colorblindness.

[54:36] In other words we don't need to do anything about race because we've conquered it. Now, to be fair there are those who push a colorblindness who do acknowledge their disparities but they think the disparities go away when we endure race.

[54:53] That contrasts to anti-racism because anti-racists who would say yeah, we should treat people equally but they argue that we have to change institutions and structures and those who push back says no, we don't have to change institutions and structures we just have to get rid of a few bad apples.

[55:10] So, for example, police shootings. Those with the more colorblindness perspective or oblivious if you will will say yes, there are some bad police officers.

[55:22] We get rid of bad police officers then everything's fair. Those who push anti-racism would disagree with that saying it's not just a fact of a few bad police officers it is we have an institution that works against people of color and we have to correct that.

[55:40] So, I do think that they do have these contrasting views on what is wrong and how we can fix it. Does that sort of make sense? I see what you're saying but I would still personally say that I hold I want us to all move towards the ideal of what I'm calling colorblindness which is which is is this you know future where where people are treated the same and there is no unfair treatment based on skin color.

[56:11] And I think even when we get if I could snap my finger and that were the case right now in terms of treatment I think disparities would still exist and those disparities would still take you know years and decades to disappear because that's that's how you know that's how human progress in history works.

[56:30] And I think the anti-racist approach would be would be to say that the disparities are the disparities need to go away now and and the disparities even if we have to take approaches that are racially discriminatory that's okay if it's in the service of eliminating disparities and so I would I would say that colorblindness is is actually the unifying better way in that's that's that's neither anti-racism nor racial obliviousness.

[57:05] Yeah I you know I think if you can step a finger and and there would be no mistreatment I don't know what the anti-racist would accept that but I know that they don't see how that could that could possibly happen and so it's sort of like a myth out there you know we can't step our fingers and and so the difference becomes then all right how do we get there and so if you think the way you get there is okay let's everyone treat everyone equally and we'll eventually get there then you're more in the colorblindness camp you think the way you get there is we have to change social structures you're more in the anti-racism camp I think that is a dividing line between the two since we can't step our fingers and and and and be there instantly thank you thank you thank you so much for speaking with us I really like the model that you showed about coming to this mutual accountability and struck me that those skills that's not just the problem to racism right like that's the whole polarization game in everything that we're dealing with right now and maybe the question

[58:12] I had I know this is more introductory but in terms of thinking about this practically how do you envision you know it's not enough to just tell people we need to talk right like I feel like a lot of the strength of that kind of thing comes from modeling from like actually experiencing being heard by someone else from being in these conversations but I don't know of anything you know going on that is bringing people to any kind of table or encouraging them so I'm just curious what are steps or what are things that you have seen or promising things that could lead to this type of being carried out yeah I understand the question there are a few organizations that are doing something similar Better Angels is one of them Game Changers is doing something similar on the west coast but there's but yeah but people don't know about that so what I'm very realistic in that this is not something that's going to happen overnight I'm not thinking it's going to happen in my lifetime

[59:15] I'm hoping it's going to happen in my son's lifetimes that we really start changing the culture of society to where we value conversations real conversations in a way we don't so what am I doing right now you know I'm doing some research I'm doing research on training within churches and how churches can better I'm also getting an opportunity to get into some school systems because if we can reach our kids maybe that that will be a way of getting things started I hope in time maybe to be able to get in some businesses as well to change the way we do diversity training I want to do some research to show that this is more effective because we show this more effective think about it this way assume that you are a president of a college or assume that you are a CEO or heading up a school district you know that if you bring in and I'm not saying this is right or wrong I'm just saying this is just put yourself in their mind if I bring in this anti-resistant program I'm going to get the people who are saying you're woke you're woke if I don't bring it in

[60:19] I'm going to get people say hey you're so what if there's a program where you can bring it in and it actually has good results but it doesn't trigger the you're woke thing and the other says well I can make progress if that program exists I think it catches on like wildfire now that's where the research comes in I think there's enough background research suggesting this will work but what we don't have is actual research showing results and that's what I'm working on trying to generate right now so yeah I do see a path forward but I'm realistic this is not I wish I could tell you hey this time next year things will be so different but you know I'm just a backward sociologist from Waco so what do I know thank you thank you yes I thank you so much for a really fascinating talk I was invited here by a friend from West Gate Church Raphael and I'm so glad that I came I want to ask a question that's a bit like weird but I'll try to keep it tight what did the scriptures say about racism and how is the mutual accountability approach that you've outlined draw on what the scriptures say about racism and the response to racism and given that I know that there are a lot of pastors in the audience what would your advice be to them in terms of approaching dealing with racism from the perspective of faithfully living out our calling as believers rather than a response to racism as a problem it's from the standpoint of like as Christians we're called to do X therefore this is the implications for how we interact with people who are different from us okay all right so the answer first question is really easy race did not exist in scriptural times you know there's a race race emerged around 13th 14th century as part of the transcontinental slave trade and that's when we really define racial groups the way we do today now that doesn't mean the scripture is silent it's just if you're asking purely on racism it doesn't say anything because it wasn't there what I like to think about is the Samaritans because I think that's the closest thing that you have if you look at the history of the Samaritans the Samaritans were remember

[62:32] Nehemiah when people were harassing him was trying to rebuild that was the Samaritans Jews did not like the Samaritans so given that what should we preach on racism look at the Samaritans what did Jesus do he told a story where the Samaritan was the hero what did Jesus do the Samaritan the woman in the world was a Samaritan so he intentionally went out of his way ministered to her and here's the thing that really when Jesus is blunt when Jesus throws tables and when Jesus says you whitewashed scriptures who's he talking to is he talking to Samaritans no he's talking to Romans no he's talking to his own people about that and the leaders about that when was the woman in adultery but he didn't talk to her in that way now he talks about their sin he doesn't he said you're great but he has talked with compassion sensitivity Jesus gets riled up with his own group and I fear as Christians we're the opposite with our own we're compassionate with others we get riled up

[63:43] I think that's a good direction for a pastor to preach on how you deal with racial issues now that gets back to racial issues obviously even though race was not directly in the Bible how do we treat those who are in our outgroups and there the Bible has a lot to say on how to treat people who are outgroups so that's what my advice would be to any of you pastors out there from a scientist not a pastor himself sorry I just really appreciate you coming I just had some questions about I think you mentioned I think from my understanding of anti-racist pedagogy it seems like there is a lot of overlap in that and what you're saying about mutual accountability but I know you've emphasized kind of that anti-racist pedagogy really emphasizes systemic and structural change which I think is very much true but what I wonder is does your kind of take and perspective on mutual accountability does that well firstly do you think that systemic and structural change is not the right way to go I think there are a lot of studies as you've mentioned where it's trying to like press it on people who are not interested in taking it doesn't work right diversity training shows that a lot of work in schools show that but I wonder yeah so do you think there is any space where we should be kind of trying to make change on a systemic and structural level and also when you say mutual accountability is that only on a one-on-one interpersonal kind of level or is there any way to kind of have that accountability on a larger level for purposes of like equity great questions thank you all right so yes I mean one of the things is this is actually about doing structural change because to me you do structural change by bringing people together not by saying here's a structural change you're going to accept it or you know like or lump it so remember it's conversations to make change to solve problems so I do think that that that that this is about structural change it's not just about we feel good together your other question is really good because yeah one-on-one we can see this but is this something so let me just give a hypothetical all right on how

[65:54] I can see how we do this because I do think this is something that that is not just one-on-one although one-on-one we may develop the skills in order to do this better but I don't think it's just that what if the school boards protest what if we did something like this we took some of the the parents who were really angry and some school board members and we trained them in how to engage in clap conversations we you know put them up you know Tim some sort of retreat or something like that and we guide them through a conversation to find out what's our curriculum can meet the needs the school board's trying to meet and be acceptable to the parents now maybe we can't find that curriculum but what if we can if we could do that if we could do that and they come back and say you know what we're not gonna do this we're gonna do that because this actually teaches about the racial history we want to teach teaches kids about you know structural problems but doesn't but does it in a way that these people don't find insulting would that not be a better because now you have a program that is sustainable no one's gonna protest this program because the parents are gonna go to the other parents and go yeah we bought onto this program so this is not just a one-on-one this we could actually make changes churches could do this it is a confident in the church bring people together for conversation to build community rather than fostering each other and trying to see who's gonna win out in the book I tell and this has to do with race tell about church split I went through and we had two sides and I was definitely on one of the sides

[67:35] I was I was younger then I was on the young people's side you know we we didn't want to go back to the hymns and we wanted you know and it was that sort of split I admit I did not even consider the perspective of the other side okay we might have been able to find compromises but we didn't even try and that's the mentality we got so so yes this is not just a one-on-one obviously this could help our relationships you know one-on-one level but I think it goes beyond that yeah thank you so much um I think kind of a follow-up question kind of connected to that I appreciate you saying that I'm I'm a teacher so school board issues are something I understand um very closely and um I think one question I have is I think when you when talking about this in a church kind of setting I think there's a recognition of our like you said our human depravity right our sin our innate sinfulness and I wonder in a lot of these school board issues I think you're right there there's a possibility it can work and there's possibly it can't when it when it can't what is our position what is our role and our responsibility as

[68:38] Christians who understand this that the depth of our issue is our sin and not just like these surface issues what is our role to play when it when they do buttheads and there doesn't seem to be either side giving any kind of compromise or perspective or authentic perspective perspective perspective I think I understand your question correctly you're saying all right as a Christian we know that human depravity but if we go in this setting not everyone's gonna be a Christian and human depravity is up so like I said I will talk this on a non-Christian basis and when I do that the scriptures are gone so what I do then at that point is I talk about there are some sociological theories that are very applicable ethnocentrism group interest theory uh confirmation bias so because truth is truth I can talk about this to a non-Christian audience and they can say you cannot bring up God Bible anything like that I'm perfectly fine with that in fact in 2010 I wrote a book with Michael Emerson uh that's an Oxford University press book and of course there's it wasn't a Christian book at all where we where we approach this but we don't use scripture so we can't talk about it uh in a way that is not scripture we can go go to the audience that and adjust to that because the notion of human interest uh that has been documented very well in academia and so there are ways we can talk about it thank you uh thanks Professor

[70:04] Yancey I really enjoyed your talk um quite um I'm also not a pastor so okay um and I work at a university but I think some of the issues are very similar what's going on at the university and elsewhere in the church from what I can see um and you know I want to make sure I'm you know I enjoyed your talk I'm gonna read your book I'm really looking forward to learning more about this topic but I want to make sure I'm not just like that kid coming back from bible camp where I'm all inspired but how do I you know how do I you know continue this and my question is like I really it really resonated me with this uh the win-win scenario so you know I direct a program to increase underrepresented minorities in STEM at this university and and also the pre-med program but in in order for me to do that I'm working with mostly white colleagues and and so my white colleagues thinking we're making a lot of progress but when I talk to my black students feel isolated it's like not enough progress so when it's I'm not seeing win-win then I'm stuck in the middle I'm thinking how do

[71:09] I know it's a win is it because we're having the conversation or it's a win because it's so incremental but then how do I communicate you know so when I'm in the middle I get a community I get two forces coming opposing me from different areas and pulling me but and I also want to be respectful of my white colleagues where they really are trying and they really are trying their best but how do you assess when you're winning and it's a definitely a certain win-win yeah I mean yeah that's a really interesting question uh what I would suggest and by the way in the back of the book I do talk about ways people can continue on so you can keep on that high hopefully there are things I suggest that we can do and it's things I'm trying to start together uh and I you know I wonder if it's possible to take a group of the black student and a group of the white colleagues and to pre-prep them say we want to have a conversation we don't have a debate we want to understand each other all right so and in fact have ground rules on just understanding each other because my sense of it because you know I've been on both sides of things I've been on the side of look you know it's not happening as fast as you are but things are happening and people don't understand they're happening and the other side is man when is this going to take place and so I think it would benefit the professors to hear the frustrations of the students and the students to hear what is good happening uh but I think you have to be very careful how to do it so it doesn't turn into a fight and say we just want to understand each other this is going to be a meaningful understanding which is not is not a debate and all we're going to do is try to understand where people are coming from and I wonder if there could be some good that comes out of that and it's not going to solve the problem completely I mean I'm realistic enough to know that but it may bring more understanding and maybe maybe it'll encourage students hey we have made some progress we want to push for more but we've made some and some professors may say well you know what maybe we can find ways to accelerate this so and and that may be incremental but it may be incremental in that at least they're coming together a little bit closer so that's one possibility that

[73:19] I would think you know but I would definitely want to set I would definitely do it setting ground rules on how the conversation has to happen so that it's not an attack either way thank you so much thank you hi thank you for being here and talking to us about race especially in the church I was wondering when you're talking about arguments in society between one who wants like systematic change which is like the anti-racism side and the other side I've seen that it's more of the it's not necessarily colorblind because those who I've talked to in my family who extended family who might be colorblind would rather just sit and be silent whereas I feel like those who counter protests seem to be more angry at any change so with that in mind how would you approach conversations that seem like a win-win when one wants to shed light on here are systemic problems that I feel like should be changed and the other would rather not change anything yeah well obviously part of that is they're going to have to figure out you know why they don't want to change and why they do want to change it and see what they can you know so that but I want to go back to what you said you know that there's a group that it's not necessarily colorblind but they just don't want to engage is that capture so I wonder how much of that group is a group that doesn't have doesn't hold to either side okay see all right here's I think this helps understand the situations because the problem is the people are allowed us the ones who get heard all right so critical race theory it represents something to people whether they understand what it is or not is almost irrelevant critical race theory signals something to people all right so there's a there's a poll out there that I think is very insightful shows that 25 percent of the people hate critical race theory 20 percent of people love race theory and 55 percent are somewhere in the middle so we think that the 20 25 percent is the whole country but it's not 55 percent of people some of them may lean one way the other some of them don't know much about it some of them are like you know what both these sides I can't go to either one of these sides because I understand both sides and I don't agree with anyone's sides half the country is to some degree or not not in this polarization the polarized people get all I mean they write the blogs they on the TV shows they get a look to

[76:01] Congress they're the ones who make all the noise some of the people I think you're describing you know are not colorblind but they're not anti-racism they're just in that middle and they don't know what they want to do or they want or they've they want to stay side they want to engage because they don't find the right venue this is why I'm hopeful for that this sort of idea can catch on because I think there's a lot of people it'll be attractive to who aren't you know I I realize that someone who's who's deeply embedded in either colorblindness or anti-racism at first is not going to want to have a conversation so we have to find other people who are more one of the conversation and visibly drag them along so I think that that's where the dynamic but I say I I think you can find something people who don't want to change people do want change if they're willing to engage the question is are they willing to engage in a helpful way and that's the key thank you so much thank you last question yes okay thank you dr. Yancy for everything today and I think from a Christian's first perspective of depravity and grace there's like a lot of beauty in in the in the compassion that in this approach to racial healing but I also know that especially it's like you early a lot of people would say that it's a tall ask to tell people who have suffered pain and adversity to basically make concessions towards a group that have caused the pain and say oh how can I express just like demand justice but also do it nicely right without insulting them right so I think obviously it's hard to you know have just true justice outside of Jesus but how do you how do we encourage people who the first emotion they feel is anger and pain and encourage them towards compassion even and but also while recognizing you know what what anger is righteous and what you know the real injustice there you know how do we do both those things now there's multiple levels to this question here so so let me try to tackle this first our emotional angst and anger sometimes what we need is to just vent to people to let people know we're angry and there's a place for that one thing that I think is key is that you know if I have a friend who's hurt and they want to vent to me that's not the time for me to say well that won't work right for example I'll just give you an example you know if I'm with a woman who's been abused and she's talking about how awful men are that's not time for me to say well not all of us are awful if she's talking about well you know they should if a guy's accused of rape he should be thrown in jail and keep throwing away that's not me tell talk to her about due process rights right now if she says now George

[78:48] I want you to write the congressman to get rid of due process rights at that point I would have to say you're asking me to do something I have the right to be convinced it's the right thing to do now if you want to talk about how awful men are and stuff like that given what happened to you I understand but if you're going to ask me to do something as a human as a child of God I have a right to be convinced it's the right thing to do you can ask me and if I have to I'll trouble look you know due process right means something to people look like me we're the ones who real so you know for me to ask due process rights to be jettisoned I have to be convinced so so there's that level of it and sometimes and I'll say this to white sometimes when a person calls vitting that's what it is and I think that you know the right thing to do is let them vent until they ask you to do something then you do have the right to say you know I'm not convinced to do that you want a shoulder to cry on if you want someone to vent to I'm here for you I'm your friend right now let's get to that point of doing something all right it is a fine line sometimes between justice and revenge and here's a classic example of this in Cuba passista was cruel and that led to Castro taking over now same people who supported Castro's take over what happened when Castro took over did he produce justice or did we not see an improvement in human rights in Cuba because the same sort of power that led to the takeover was now maintained by

[80:32] Castro and used as an iron fist someone who's victimized can grow up to victimize others in fact research shows that this happens a lot being victim doesn't mean that you're going to be the best moral person for everything that's hard to hear but it's true so we each other we need to listen to victims but not just to victims we have to work together and that's where it comes in so when the person is ready to work is there gonna be more emotional cost for people color than whites probably most likely yes but here's the reality that's how things get changed so you have to decide is it worth it to change things you know as I sometimes hear people say something to the effect of well look you know I can't have that come and by the way there are times I cannot have the conversation with people too I get off Facebook sometimes because I cannot have the conversation with people sometimes so taking a break is sometimes you need that because sometimes you do want to feel like put your hands around someone's neck and that's not a godly feeling to have so you take a break and you know and all of us need that from time to time all right all of us need a break from time to time all so I'm not saying that you're a person called you have to always be on and always be ready for an answer and no no no no no no no but if you want change this is how people change so when I hear people say something like well you know what I'm tired of talking about this why don't you go read a book and then come to me I'm like really someone comes to you and said they want to understand and you send them to a book what we as

[82:15] Christians if someone says you know I really understand Jesus well go read this Tim Keller book and then come back talk to me about it we wouldn't because we know that we've lost an opportunity to talk to someone about Christ so unless I'm in the stage where I'm like I need to be away from this for a while if I am I'm away from everyone except for my family of course and close friends unless I'm in that stage I want to talk to people who honestly want to talk about it now if I if I figure out soon that they don't honestly want to talk about it and they just want to rage and just want to then then yeah I pull away but someone honestly wants to talk about something and I tell them no then yeah my my chance to impact their life has just been greatly diminished and it's on me now that is that is hard a hard thing to hear in an emotional state I get that but that's also reality that's that's just the reality of it it's I know in my life if if I say hey you know I'm understand something about you know if I go to a woman I'm understand something about how you feel about how you know how men treat you and she's well why don't you go read a book I'm like well maybe it may be that big of a deal to you after all if you're not getting to spend any time now you may say you're cruel but come on that's the way it is we can wish is a different way or we can even accept reality the way it is and you know I just choose to accept reality and so the path forward the path forward is for us to work together I believe at the end of the day and once you can't you can't preordain the solutions because that's part of what what drives you away is you say I have a agenda we're gonna do this agenda no matter what I think at the end of the day if we engaged in this 20 years from now we'll be a lot closer to justice if we keep doing what we're doing right now because we'll get sustainable systems and people of color will not get everything they want but they'll get a lot more than what we're getting right now because you can you can win the presidency and you can get you know the people in office and in four years it's all gone or you can build relationships and build something that's sustainable and maybe you don't get everything you get 80% of it but it's gonna be there so you decide which one you want now someone in in the emotional they're not ready for that decision and once again maybe what they need is to vent and get to the point to where they're there and that's fine and sometimes you need to drop away from it but the long term I believe this this is the better path towards just and to make sure the justice is not turning to revenge and if we understand human depravity we understand that justice can turn into revenge thanks for the question thank you for engaging with Dr. George Yancey and I don't want to just tell you to go read a book but but I do want to tell you since Dr. George Yancey is going to soon travel back to Texas and won't be here so we won't be able to talk to him he does actually address very specifically a lot of these questions that you guys have raised for example how does Christianity uniquely shape us and equip us to deal with these issues you know how do we how does how about the fact that there are people who are emotionally pained and hurt in the past like isn't unfair to ask them to come to the table you know and have a conversation all these questions are really well addressed in his book beyond racial division so I encourage you to all get get a copy of it if you didn't register early enough to get one today and and let's all give a round of applause to

[85:51] Dr. George Yancey thank you for coming