George Floyd

[joshuabgood]

Also, I just want to know from those who are arguing with me, you know who you are...is your position that all the black people who experience racism, microaggressions, being stopped 49 times like Philando castille, 7 times like Sen Scott, all Keeshon and Daniel Pollards stories..in your view is this systemic racism just all in their heads. And that you are better positioned to analyze their reality than they are?

Because that is what it sounds like to me you are saying. And if so, that seems like an arrogant position to take.

I fully believe racism exists in our day and that black people experience it. It's inexcusable. I confront it when I see it in my friends.

I just find it hard to accept when another white person comes across as better positioned to analyze my reality than I am. That's what it feels like to me when I reject both left and right ideologies and simply try to live out how I believe Jesus would live in my surroundings. I'm then classified in the category of "white fragility" or not open to learning. How is that not also arrogant?

Ok we are getting somewhere. Would you mind explaining how I am analyzing your reality by discussing broad social trends? It isn't my goal to do so. I am trying discuss broad social trends and systems and histories.

[HondurasKeiser]

I get the sense that you think that the concept of systematic racism has been pulled out of the ether, especially in regards to policing.

That’s not true. There’s a significant body of academic work that has been done on these issues. There are experts in these fields.

I am well acquainted with its origins, history and the academics that promote the package of ideas that is more broadly called Critical Theory from which notions of racism as systemic and racism as animus + power come from. I wouldn't call its proponents experts in the same way that Dr. Fauci is an expert in the field of epidemiology as their field of study isn't a science and is rather something like an antiphilosophy. Rather they are theorists with a flawed understanding of people, society and history.

The recognition of systemic racism in US culture long precluded any critical race theory. Racism stands a problem with or with out critical race theory. Furthermore is an empirical reality. Just ask some black people close to you. Even if they know nothing about critical racism, if you are willing to listen. To folks like Keeshon, please read his essays, you will learn.

I understand racism precedes and exists independently of notions like structural, institutional, systemic, epistemic or systematic racism. I also understand that systemic racism is something that can exist, though I disagree with the notion that it can exist independently of particular racist individuals. Thus Jim Crow, the Nuremberg Laws, Apartheid, Red-Lining and Chattel Slavery are all examples of systemic racism upheld and enforced by people that were truly racist in the traditional Merriam-Webster sense. It may or may not be an empirical reality today but for that to be true we would need to see empirical evidence not anecdotal evidence which you seem to be saying is all that matters. Listening to people's stories is important, I suggest we listen to the stories of police officers as well; but anecdotes are not empirical evidence and do not give us the whole story.

[HondurasKeiser]

I’m aware of your views on critical theory, but I don’t agree and will just leave it at that.

We could delve into it; just really get into the weeds once and for all. It seems like some of us have been dancing around the edges of this thing for almost a year.

I am confused though by you holding up Fauci as the “gold standard” of expertise for the soft sciences. Fauci is an epidemiologist, which is a hard science. Criminology and police science are soft sciences, which are more closely related to sociology (which originated critical theory) than they are to epidemiology.

I think you’re comparing apples and oranges. Your definition of expertise isn’t clear to me.

My mistake for not writing more clearly. I was holding Fauci up as an expert in his field - though I recognize that epidemiology is not of the same stuff as sociology or political science. Thus when it comes to police reform we ought to look to similar experts in fields of sociology, law and criminology to help us tease out best practices for policing and crime reduction. Currently though, it seems we are being led by political organizers in a fool-hardy campaign to defund or abolish the police. If Fauci tells us that wearing a mask and social distancing is important in the effort to end the pandemic and if all the right people tell us that the mobs seeking to end the lockdowns are foolish and selfish, why suddenly is there wisdom in the mob when it comes to police violence and crime? Why not listen to the experts in the pertinent fields?

As for Critical Race theorists qua experts? They trade in a theory that sees all of reality through a particular lens and they can never manage to see life any other way. That doesn't strike me as terribly scientific. They may have grown out of sociology but not all sociologists are Critical Theorists...thankfully.

[GaryK]

Also, I just want to know from those who are arguing with me, you know who you are...is your position that all the black people who experience racism, microaggressions, being stopped 49 times like Philando castille, 7 times like Sen Scott, all Keeshon and Daniel Pollards stories..in your view is this systemic racism just all in their heads. And that you are better positioned to analyze their reality than they are?

Because that is what it sounds like to me you are saying. And if so, that seems like an arrogant position to take.

I fully believe racism exists in our day and that black people experience it. It's inexcusable. I confront it when I see it in my friends.

I just find it hard to accept when another white person comes across as better positioned to analyze my reality than I am. That's what it feels like to me when I reject both left and right ideologies and simply try to live out how I believe Jesus would live in my surroundings. I'm then classified in the category of "white fragility" or not open to learning. How is that not also arrogant?

Ok we are getting somewhere. Would you mind explaining how I am analyzing your reality by discussing broad social trends? It isn't my goal to do so. I am trying discuss broad social trends and systems and histories.

Here are two examples.

In this society we favor white culture. We prefer it. Our systems were built that way. We have conversely marginalized people of color...in one sense the system seems to prefer them in prison. We built it that way.

This suggests that all white people are guilty by association. That includes me. I reject the idea that I have conversely marginalized people of color when I know in my heart that I have been trying very hard, especially the last 10 years, to un-marginalize them in every way I can. I have spent the last 20 years of my life promoting the NT Kingdom system wherever I find myself, as an alternative to all the political/worldly/manmade systems/constructs of our day. After all, it has a much longer history than the systems you talk about. The NT Kingdom system, I believe, is the only system that has the potential to solve any social ailment in any society by changing people one heart at a time.

Further, if you haven't please read Keeshon Washington's essays online regarding racism/favoritism also within the CA community. He is a school teacher, FBEP alum, that works at Tidings of Peace, a very conservative CA school in York. And when you do...if you take a learning stance, you may find yourself moving on some points.

Here you seem to have concluded that I am not open to learning and that if I would be I would probably find myself moving toward your position. That is what I feel from those who hold to positions like yours. They know me better than I know myself and what is in my heart for the NT Kingdom.

[GaryK]

What I just mentioned in my previous post about the NT Kingdom system is the reason I connect with what Voddie Baucham says in this video clip. I'm going to try to find the full video because I want to see what he says further.
[video][/video]

[appleman2006]

What I just mentioned in my previous post about the NT Kingdom system is the reason I connect with what Voddie Baucham says in this video clip. I'm going to try to find the full video because I want to see what he says further.
[video][/video]

Yes yes yes yes and yea. I will Try and expand more tomorrow.

[temporal1]

GaryK:
.. I'm going to try to find the full video because I want to see what he says further.

torture! it stops mid-sentence!

[barnhart]

I can't see that the common definition of "race", basically the white/nonwhite divide, is any older than 15 century European colonialism. So obviously it will not correspond one to one with concepts in the Bible. But we certainly can make applications.

[GaryK]

I can't see that the common definition of "race", basically the white/nonwhite divide, is any older than 15 century European colonialism. So obviously it will not correspond one to one with concepts in the Bible. But we certainly can make applications.

For me this raises the question: what would it look like in real life if those of us who say we embrace the two-kingdom way of life would reject the common/modern left/right definitions of "race" and act upon the biblical definition?

[MaxPC]

For me this raises the question: what would it look like in real life if those of us who say we embrace the two-kingdom way of life would reject the common/modern left/right definitions of "race" and act upon the biblical definition?

Indeed and amen! Those definitions are political nomenclature not Biblical.