Marc Roby: Today we are completing our break from studying theology to look at some current topics of great importance from a Christian perspective. In the past thirteen sessions we have gone through the history of Marxist and neo-Marxist ideologies and have shown how these anti-Christian ideas have invaded our educational system. And today we are going to look at what is arguably the most significant manifestation of these ideas in America today, the Black Lives Matter movement. Dr. Spencer, how do you want to begin?
Dr. Spencer: By quoting Jesus. In John 8:31-32 we read, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” [1] Then, in John 14:6 we read that Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Marc Roby: Those quotes will probably strike many of our listeners as a strange way to begin a session on the Black Lives Matter organization.
Dr. Spencer: But I think it is exactly the right place to begin because, as I hope to show, this organization is built on a web of lies. As Christians, we must stand for truth. As Jesus told us, he is the truth and the truth will set us free. One of the characteristics of totalitarian regimes is that they do everything possible to force people to at least outwardly agree with lies. Our society is rapidly moving in the direction of a soft totalitarianism, to borrow an expression from Rod Dreher’s book Live Not by Lies.[2] This totalitarianism is not, at this point, one enforced by the government with physical force, it is one enforced by the social-justice-warrior mob, striking out at people by taking their jobs, harassing them in public and generally making life miserable if you dare to disagree with their ideology. And the Black Lives Matter movement is a prominent part of this soft totalitarian state.
Marc Roby: What, specifically, are you referring to when you say that the Black Lives Matter organization is founded on lies?
Dr. Spencer: First of all, there is the lie that young unarmed black men are being wantonly gunned down by racist police all over our country. On the Black Lives Matter website they continue to say that “In 2014, Mike Brown was murdered by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.”[3] And we often still hear people say that he was shot while holding his hands up in the air saying “Don’t shoot me.” That is a lie, plane and simple. There have been several careful investigations and all of the forensic evidence and reliable testimony agree. Michael Brown assaulted officer Wilson in his car, tried to take his gun from him and was shot in the hand while reaching into the car, he then ran from the officer, but turned and moved back toward him in a threatening way.[4] The Black Lives Matter narrative is simply a lie.
As an example of how pervasive this lie has become, let me read a quote from the United Teachers of Los Angeles regarding what conditions they think must be met before they can return to teaching students during this Covid-19 outbreak. They make an argument that funding should to be taken away from the police and given to the educational system instead. In making the argument they wrote, “Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue.”[5]
Marc Roby: That’s amazing! They actually claim that police violence is a leading cause of death among blacks?
Dr. Spencer: Well, perhaps they would try to justify this outrageous lie by pointing out that they said it was a leading cause of “death and trauma”, which of course makes the statement strictly non-falsifiable since you can’t quantify trauma. But if they would make that argument it would be completely disingenuous nonsense. The statement is a clear lie. And this is being put out by a very large and powerful teachers union. One can only imagine what other lies these teachers promulgate in the name of social justice.
Marc Roby: But this statement fits perfectly with the information you have shown about these neo-Marxist ideologies taking over our schools.
Dr. Spencer: I’m very sorry to say that you’re right, it does fit. But let me give just a few facts to show what a monstrous lie this is.
Marc Roby: Yes, please do.
Dr. Spencer: In 2019, according to FBI statistics, there were 7,484 blacks murdered in this country.[6] Also, according to the Washington Post, when you look at the statistics for fatal police shootings over the past four years, they are amazingly consistent.[7] About 1,000 people a year are killed by police in this country, which is a surprisingly large number, but becomes much less surprising when you realize that there are on the order of 50 million interactions between police and citizens a year, so fatal shootings occur in about one out of every 50,000 interactions.
Marc Roby: Yes, that does make the number sound less awful, but it is still too many.
Dr. Spencer: I agree. But the same data from the Washington Post also show that only about four percent of these people killed by police are unarmed, so that is about 40 a year on average. The data further show that about 23% of those unarmed people are black. So, in other words, there are, on average, slightly less than 10 unarmed blacks shot and killed by police a year in this country, but there are over 7,000 blacks murdered every year. So, for every unarmed black person shot and killed by police there are more than 700 black people murdered. And FBI statistics show that of the blacks who are murdered, roughly 88% are murdered by other blacks.[8]
Now, let’s consider just one other cause of death among blacks; heart disease. According to the American Heart Association, over 93,000 blacks died of heart disease in 2011.[9] That is, of course just one of many potential causes of death, and that is almost a thousand times the number of unarmed blacks shot and killed by the police, so the idea that police violence is a leading cause of death, or even death and trauma, is utter nonsense. The LA teacher union is simply lying, and outrageously so.
Marc Roby: Those numbers are astounding. And they are completely out of line with the narrative you hear on the evening news.
Dr. Spencer: The mainstream news media in this country have blood on their hands in my opinion. Every time an unarmed black person is shot by police it is a major news item virtually independent of the circumstances. You never hear about the fact that about 46 police are killed by blacks each year in this country.[10] The careless and lopsided reported then stokes the public perception and rage against police.
Marc Roby: Which then results in greater violence against police and more burned out stores and so on.
Dr. Spencer: And those stores are predominantly in poor neighborhoods, which reduces their access to stores and raises prices. And, when the police back off on policing, as has happened in the wake of virtually every one of these publicized shootings of black men, more blacks get killed as a result of violent crime. And, as we saw, over 700 times as many blacks are murdered as are shot and killed by police each year, so we can assume that there are quite a few innocent lives lost as a result of the main-stream press, many politicians and, of course, the Black Lives Matter organization endlessly pushing this false narrative.
Marc Roby: That is entirely tragic. But what about the claim of systemic racism? The numbers of unarmed blacks killed by police are obviously not what the popular narrative would lead you to believe, but that alone doesn’t prove that racism isn’t the cause.
Dr. Spencer: No, it doesn’t. But out of the roughly 1,000 people shot and killed each year by the police, about 18 on average are unarmed white people.[11] In other words 80% more unarmed white people are killed by police each year than unarmed black people. You don’t hear that on the news and no one riots in the streets because of it.
Marc Roby: But of course, the Black Lives Matter organization and those who agree with it would say that blacks only comprise about 13% of our population, and whites are about 76% of the population[12], so you would expect more unarmed whites to be shot than unarmed blacks.
Dr. Spencer: They would say that. But the percentage of whites or blacks in the population is not the right number to use to figure out whether or not police racism is a problem. The more relevant number would be the percentage of whites or blacks who commit crimes. And, as Heather Mac Donald has reported, “blacks constituted 62 percent of all robbery defendants, 57 percent of all murder defendants, and 45 percent of all assault defendants in America’s 75 largest counties in 2009, the latest year for which such county data is available, though blacks made up only 15 percent of the population in those counties, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.”[13]
Marc Roby: Ah, but the Black Lives Matter organization and its followers would say those numbers simply prove racism yet again. Racism is why so many more blacks are arrested and tried for these crimes.
Dr. Spencer: And that is yet another lie. The fact is, that the percentages of different races arrested and tried for crimes agrees very well with the percentages based on the reports of the victims of these crimes, who are overwhelmingly black themselves.[14]
Marc Roby: Well, that shoots down that argument. Unless, of course, you want to believe that black victims lie and state that their assailants were black, when they were, in fact, white.
Dr. Spencer: And that’s the problem with all of these lies. The data are readily available to show that they are lies, and yet the mainstream press, politicians and others continue to repeat them over and over again. And people die as a result. Both police officers and innocent black citizens and others. And police shootings aren’t the only place this lie of assuming a disparity in numbers has a racist cause, shows up. It is also the lie that fuels the affirmative action programs in university admissions and also in hiring.
Marc Roby: Can you illustrate that?
Dr. Spencer: Absolutely, let’s talk about my field of Electrical Engineering. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2017, there were 586 US citizens or permanent visa holders who received PhDs in Electrical Engineering in America.[15] Of those, just 19 of them were black and 323 where white. In other words, there were 17 white graduates for every black one. Therefore, the odds of being able to fill a particular faculty vacancy with a black person, as opposed to a white person, is roughly 1 in 18, or 5.5%.
Marc Roby: That’s not a very good probability.
Dr. Spencer: No, it isn’t. I can tell you for a fact that for the 25 years I served on the faculty at UC Davis, starting in 1986, we were always open to hiring any qualified black candidate. There is a lot of pressure to have a more diverse faculty. But the reality is that the pool of candidates is simply too small to allow it to happen.
Marc Roby: Of course, yet again, Black Lives Matter and its supporters would say the small number of black PhD graduates in Electrical Engineering is, of course, the result of racism.
Dr. Spencer: Yes, they would. And that would again be a lie. There aren’t enough blacks graduating with bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering, which is necessary before you can go on for a PhD. And then you go back and find there aren’t very many black students who even want to take Electrical Engineering in the first place, and there aren’t many that have good enough math and science skills coming out of high school.
Marc Roby: And, again, BLM would say this is all evidence of systemic racism.
Dr. Spencer: And that is again completely false. I’m not saying there isn’t any racism anywhere along the line, that would be stupid. But there is no evidence that it is a significant factor and there is a great deal of evidence that it isn’t a factor. Consider Asians for example.[16] The percentage of Asians in engineering is way higher than their percentage of the population, why is that? According to the Black Lives Matter view, it must be that our society is racist against whites too and is most favorable toward Asians. But that is silly.
Now, I don’t think Asians are in some way genetically superior at mathematics and science than others. I don’t know for sure the exact reasons for the difference in numbers, but it seems all but certain that a major part of the reason is that the Asian subculture in this country highly values education, so their children are expected to work hard and, in addition, that subculture highly values degrees in engineering, medicine, law and other such disciplines.
Marc Roby: That sounds reasonable.
Dr. Spencer: Because it is reasonable. The idea that a racial disparity in some outcome is always caused by racism is simply unfounded and ridiculous on the face of it. If that were the case, then the NBA should be sued for being radically racist because over 80% of the players are black.[17] But, fortunately, sports is one of the few things left in this country that is a true meritocracy.
Thomas Sowell, in his wonderful book Intellectuals and Race, points out that such differences were often incorrectly used in the early 20th century to justify believing that some races were inherently superior to others. That was wrong, and it is just as wrong now to assume that all such differences are caused by racism.[18]
Marc Roby: That’s a great point. We shouldn’t just assume the cause of any disparity without looking into the problem further and establishing real cause and effect.
Dr. Spencer: That’s right. Our school system is clearly failing blacks, but the problem is not entirely the school system’s fault. The black subculture in this country not only does not value education, it actually looks down on and discourages people from working hard and succeeding. In our previous session I mentioned books by Jason Riley[19] and Candace Owens[20], they are both black and grew up in less-than-ideal circumstances, and they both tell about being teased and laughed at for wanting to do well in school, and they are far from the only ones. It is called “acting white” if you want to do well. Jason Riley makes an astute comment on this, he wrote that “A culture that takes pride in ignorance and mocks learnedness has a dim future.”[21]
Marc Roby: That seems like quite an understatement. But, once again, I must point out that BLM and its supporters would claim that the problems in the black community are all left overs from slavery and the Jim Crow era.
Dr. Spencer: And that is yet another lie. We went over some statistics last time to show that black families were doing much better prior to the mid-1960s. They went downhill after that. So the cause cannot pre-date the 1960s. There is no doubt, of course, that slavery and Jim Crow put blacks in a bad position in this country, and doing what we can to create real opportunities for blacks, and others who are poor and disadvantaged in any way, is all well and good and Christians should be supportive of those efforts. But we have to be sure we are addressing the real problem, not an imagined one, or the proposed solutions will do no good and, in fact, will often do more harm.
Marc Roby: Yes, you obviously can’t cure the disease if you don’t know what it is.
Dr. Spencer: And the current narrative says the problem is all racism, which is simply not true. I’m sure that racism and the injustices of the past play a role, but they are not the main problem. Inner city schools are part of the problem, but there are wonderful things being done with charter schools and yet many on the left oppose them because they don’t fit their narrative and are opposed by the teacher’s unions, which overwhelmingly support leftist politicians. [22] So these wrong ideas make it impossible to really solve the problems.
I think the most reasonable probability is that the welfare state brought about by President Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s is a major factor as we discussed last week, but another factor is, without a doubt, the neo-Marxist ideologies that have been taught in our schools and pushed by many different groups since that time. These ideologies feed on finding groups of people who can be viewed as victims and then stoking hatred and bitterness toward the group labeled as an oppressor.
Marc Roby: Certainly, being labeled a victim removes hope that you can do much about the problem on your own. It puts you at the mercy of somebody else.
Dr. Spencer: And that is a serious problem. In a recent interview, Ben Carson the black former neurosurgeon and current Secretary of housing and urban development, said, “Please don’t allow yourself to be manipulated to believe that you’re a victim and that somebody else is causing all of your problems … the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you”.[23]
Marc Roby: The LGBT movement is another example of forming groups of so-called victims.
Dr. Spencer: Exactly. And, by the way, the Black Lives Matter organization is very strongly tied into the whole LGBT movement, which is born out of the same hate filled neo-Marxist ideology. It is all about trying to gain power by claiming that all of your problems are caused by those in power now. One problem with Marxists and neo-Marxists of all stripes is that they are certain that their problems are not their own fault. Their problems are caused by some oppressor class.
Marc Roby: Which would be you and me; white, male, heterosexual Christians.
Dr. Spencer: You’re quite right that right. On the intersectionality scale I’m pretty sure we have a negative score. But Christians, on the other hand, correctly recognize that each individual person’s biggest problem is not someone else, it is himself. We are sinners. We need to fight against our sin and we need to be saved from our sins. Racism is not the main problem, and it is clear that the Black Lives Matter organization and others on the left know this.
Marc Roby: Now how is that clear?
Dr. Spencer: Because they don’t really want to end racism, they want power. They have defined racism in a new and completely destructive way. According to them, a black person cannot be racist. You have to be in power to be racist. And all white people are, by definition racist. That is just plain stupid, and racist. If you want to solve the problem of racism you need to first state what the objective is, in other words, what does a society without racism look like? The answer was given by Martin Luther King in his I Have Dream speech. He said he wanted his children to be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin, and if that were completely true, it would be the end of racism.
Marc Roby: Yes, I see your point. The BLM organization and the whole intersectionality, critical theory mindset says that race, sex and so on are all that matter.
Dr. Spencer: Right. If BLM and their supporters are successful in achieving their goals, you won’t have a society without racism, you will simply have a flipped power structure where whites, males and Christians are on the bottom and black women lesbians are on top. But there will still be racism and hatred. All that will have changed is which group is in power. And that doesn’t do any of us any good. We should be working to end racism and the idea that all whites are racist is not helpful. If you just met me for the first time and you notice that I am a white male, what does that tell you about me?
Marc Roby: Well, I’m pretty sure the only things I could say for sure are that you are a white male.
Dr. Spencer: That’s absolutely right. You know nothing of significance! You don’t know if I’m married or divorced or whether I have children, you don’t know what I do for a living or whether I’m a kind and generous person or a monster. You know nothing of significance. You can tell much more about me by observing how I’m dressed and groomed and how I behave than you can by knowing my color or sex. But the current neo-Marxist ideologies would have you believe that the only things that really matter are my color and sex and so on. The idea that you know anything of significance about me just by knowing my color is an extremely racist idea. The critical race theory courses being forced upon so many people these days are terrible. They foster hatred and division, they are openly racist, they make the whole situation much worse and should be thrown out. People should refuse to take them.
Marc Roby: Alright, so how should we, as Christians, respond to this whole neo-Marxist movement.
Dr. Spencer: We must reject lies and live according to the truth. Which is why I quoted Jesus at the start of this session. The Black Lives Matter organization is a Marxist organization built on lies. If they really believed that black lives matter, they would not be in favor of defunding the police, they would be in favor of more police and better training for police so that poor black communities could be safer and more prosperous. They would care more about the 7,000 plus blacks murdered every year, mostly by other blacks, than they do about a handful of unarmed blacks shot by police. Who, by the way, were criminals and would not have been shot had they cooperated with the police. If they really cared about black lives they would not be in favor of abortion, which disproportionately kills black babies, nor would they be opposed to the traditional family, which gives black children the best possible hope for a decent future.
Marc Roby: We spoke last time about how damaging it is for children to grow up without a father.
Dr. Spencer: And yet, the Black Lives Matter website used to say that “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and went on to talk about collective care in “villages”.[24]
Marc Roby: You said it used to say that, so it doesn’t anymore?
Dr. Spencer: No, they have changed their website to be less open about their real beliefs and goals, although it still has plenty of information to show how radical their views are and to show that their main agenda really has nothing to do with preserving black lives.
The bottom line is that black lives do matter. They matter just as much as any other lives do. And because they matter, we should not support the Black Lives Matter organization. And Christians absolutely cannot support this organization because it is a Marxist, racist, anti-family, anti-authority, anti-God, anti-Christian organization.
Marc Roby: What else must Christians do?
Dr. Spencer: We must, as the Christian Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, live not by lies.[25] In other words, we must never knowingly speak, support, agree with or in any way go along with what we know to be a lie. For example, God created man male and female. It is a lie that there are more than two genders. It is a lie that all white people are racist or that all white people have succeeded only because of white privilege. Candace Owens wrote, “Let’s face it, those born in America after the 1980s are among the most privileged human beings ever to walk the face of the planet.”[26] And she was talking about blacks as well whites and all others, and she was completely correct.
Marc Roby: I have to agree with that statement. All of us who have born in America are privileged because of it.
Dr. Spencer: I completely agree. As Christians we must never judge a person by the color of his or her skin or by any other trait over which the person has no control. But many traits are mostly, if not entirely, in each person’s control. Things like how you behave, how you dress, how hard you work, whether or not you are respectful of others and so on. It is perfectly appropriate for you to be judged based on these. And Christians must judge based on the Bible. So, for example, laziness and lying are wrong. Vulgar speech and sexual immorality are wrong. These are not just social constructs and every culture is not equally good.
And we must seek to solve the real problems plaguing our world, which are difficult. We must not give in to the all-to-easy idea that our problems, or anyone else’s problems, are someone else’s fault, even though there is sometimes some truth in that statement. We must take personal responsibility and we must respect other people enough to expect the same from them, while also doing what we can to truly help those who are at a disadvantage to help themselves. We must oppose racism and injustice of every kind. And, most importantly, in all things, at all times, we must be submitted to the Word of God and only believe, speak and do that which is in agreement with his Word.
Marc Roby: And his Word is truth.
Dr. Spencer: Yes it is, and we must speak truth when we speak. We do not have to oppose politically correct speech and actions every single time we see them, we must be as wise as serpents. But we must never speak lies ourselves just to get along. We must never give implicit or explicit approval to actions that are against the Bible. Our purpose is the glory of God, our place is that of creatures made in God’s image, and our priorities are to be set by God.
If we compare our country to utopia, then it looks pretty bad. But utopia is, quite literally, nowhere. That is what the word means. We must compare our country to the other alternatives and work to make it better, not tear it down. Utopia does not exist. Heaven, on the other hand, does exist, it is real. And it is the home of righteousness. And none of us belong there or will ever be there without radical change. We must be born again. Our sin must be removed. And so, I look forward to getting back to discussing theology in our next session.
Marc Roby: And I do as well. I want to point out that the transcript for this session has even more footnotes and references than normal because we couldn’t take the time to go over every detail in our discussion today. And, finally, let me close by reminding our listeners that they can email their questions and comments to info@whatdoesthewordsay.org. We would love to hear from you.
[1] All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® (1984 version). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™.
[2] Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, A Manual for Christian Dissidents, Sentinel, 2020
[3] https://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/, viewed on 10/19/20
[4] See “DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE REPORT REGARDING THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE SHOOTING DEATH OF MICHAEL BROWN BY FERGUSON, MISSOURI POLICE OFFICER DARREN WILSON”, March 4, 2015, available at: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf
[5] UTLA, The Same Storm, but Different Boats: The Safe and Equitable Conditions for Starting LAUSD in 2020 21, July, 2020, pg. 11, available at: https://www.utla.net/sites/default/files/samestormdiffboats_final.pdf
[6] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-1.xls
[7] John Sullivan, Liz Weber, Julie Tate and Jennifer Jenkins, Four years in a row, police nationwide fatally shoot nearly 1,000 people, Washington Post, Feb. 12, 2019, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/four-years-in-a-row-police-nationwide-fatally-shoot-nearly-1000-people/2019/02/07/0cb3b098-020f-11e9-9122-82e98f91ee6f_story.html
[8] The FBI data only break out the race of the offender and victim for murders with a single victim and a single offender. For 2019, in 2,574 out of 2,906 cases blacks were murdered by other blacks, which is 88.6%. See https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls
[9] See https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@smd/documents/downloadable/ucm_472910.pdf
[10] According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, an average of over 55 police have been killed in firearm related incidents per year in the last four years. (Using their data for 2016 through 2019 yields 169.5 deaths a year on average [https://nleomf.org/facts-figures/officer-deaths-by-year] and their data for 2019 and 2020, that 79 out of 236, or 33.4%, of deaths are “firearms related” [https://nleomf.org/], and assuming that percentage for all four years yields 56.7 deaths a year.) And, according to Heather Mac Donald, “the Department of Justice has found that police officers are five times more likely to die at the hands of a black suspect than a white suspect.” (Heather Mac Donald, False Testimony, City Journal, Sept. 26, 2019, available at: https://www.city-journal.org/police-shootings-racial-bias) Putting these numbers together reveals that about 46 police are killed by blacks each year in this country.
[11] Using data from Sullivan et. al., (Ref. 5), roughly 40 unarmed people are shot and killed a year and 45% of them are white, which is 18.
[12] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
[13] Heather Mac Donald, False Testimony, City Journal, Sept. 26, 2019, available at: https://www.city-journal.org/police-shootings-racial-bias
[14] Ibid, “In New York … blacks were 72.6 percent of known shooting suspects in 2018, according to victim and witness identifications (those victims and witnesses being overwhelmingly black themselves).”
[15] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19301/data
[16] Thomas Sowell shows data for Asians that clearly show their superior performance in America; is this because of racism? No. See, Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, Basic Books, 2013, pp 4-5
[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA
[18] Sowell, op. cit., pg. 17
[19] Jason L. Riley, Please Stop Helping Us, Encounter Books, 2015
[20] Candace Owens, Blackout, Threshold Editions, 2020
[21] Riley, op. cit., pg. 50
[22] Riley, op. cit., pp 114-134
[23] https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/07/24/hud-secretary-ben-carson-warns-some-in-black-lives-matter-protests-are-being-manipulated/
[24] https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/, viewed in June, 2020
[25] Dreher, op. cit. pg. 17
[26] Owens, op. cit., pg. 94
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