The video starts off with an angry white guy insulting CRT and claiming that it is idiotic to teach in schools. It then is revealed that this was just the intro for the creator to launch into his platform.
The creator introduces himself as Dr. Cruz despite the cringe-worthy use of Dr. to mean he has a Ph.D. He smugly invites the original creator to a “schooling” by saying, “welcome to class” with a big smile on his face. This is the smug self-righteousness of a bully whose platform is based on being able to censor comments and avoid anyone who disagrees with his position.
He tells us he is going to address multiple aspects of his claim that he got considerably wrong:
The “Critical” in Critical Race Theory refers to Critical Theory which was started by Jewish people afraid of the rise in popularity of a particular German party.
The Critical Theory founders that started the Frankfurt School would have laughed at anyone suggesting that this is Critical Theory. At best, it is the bastardization of Critical Theory that uses the term “Critical” as a defacto claim to legitimacy. It is not.
But furthermore, as Critical Theory was replaced by critical theory (lower case) it began to change forms and the new critical theory had different goals that made it more adaptable to modern times. These changes did not happen 100 years ago as Dr. Cruz suggests, they are relative recent and the critical theory from which Critical Race Theory pretends to adhere to is simply again to sound more legitimate than the truth.
No one who studies this theory has any use for any white person, especially children, to feel guilty about CRT and that White Guilt just gets in the way of learning about CRT.
Again this is not accurate. Critical Legal studies had specific goals of finding race-specific laws and neutralizing them. It was not necessarily successful as the practice behind the laws didn’t change, just the wording.
With this in mind, as an attorney, Derrick Bell started formulating his courtroom defense of black defendants using a new technique. The technique explained a different perspective of his defendant’s situation. In it, he used language that exonerated his client because it thrust the blame for the precursors to the crime directly on the shoulders of the jurors. In the grand style of a southern preacher, he would point at the jurors and squarely accuse them of forcing this poor otherwise innocent man to commit the crimes he was accused of. Since the jurors were mostly white, he would convince them that the only reason this person committed the crime was because he had no other options because of racism. He put the jurors on trial for the crime and all it takes is one juror to feel guilty for how they treated this poor client to acquit. In short, the foundation of the legal defense which spawns CRT is in fact White Guilt.
The only reason that people claim that CRT scholars don’t want to hear about white guilt is because it’s not actionable. Guilt does nothing and because CRT is about advocacy first and foremost, they want action. If the guilt sponsors some sort of reaction like special consideration for black people, then it is the special consideration they are after, not the guilt. This allows them to further chastise people for guilt because guilt does nothing for them when it is considered in isolation.
If you teach young white kids about CRT and labor issues they will grow up to realize that they have more in common with the poor than they do with the rich white people ruining everything.
Let’s just quickly note how he slyly included labor issues. This isn’t about labor issues, but it seems to give him another point of defense. It’s not an honest portrayal of the conflict happening in our schools and it is almost shameless that he chose to include this in his claims defending CRT.
One of the things about this kind of advocacy is that they employ the same techniques they accuse others of. School, to these people is a means of conditioning young students. It’s not so much about education as it is about conditioning them. They make these claims alongside the claims about the dishonest and incomplete portrayal of slavery in our schools–claiming this is how white people condition our children to be racist. It’s really just a smokescreen to get CRT into schools to start the conditioning them as CRT advocates early for their goals.
At the very beginning of CRT, it was clear to the founders and their followers that for CRT to expand its effects it needs a captive audience like the forced education and brainwashing of college students. It was a clear progression that new students in higher ed could easily be recruited to join the advocacy of CRT once they were fed “alternative facts” through mandatory classes in CRT disguised as race-studies combined with loaded and cherry-picked perspectives about black opression. What if they could get the students to be prepared to take action in high school. So that’s what they started to do.
Now granted they hid behind the idea that CRT was a matter of legal scholarship for as long as they could. Now, it clearly is laughable that this advocacy group of educators was teaching the legal aspets of CRT that include shifting the blame for the crimes of black defendents onto the shoulders of white jurors. But to keep bringing this into our schools, we needed a new face for CRT.
Diversity, Inclusion, And Equity (carefully reordered so as not to refer to the literal death of America as DEI) has the same goals as CRT, makes the same claims as CRT and is sweeping through our schools because the students of the original CRT scholars are now the teachers in K-12. They have left higher education and are now expanding their cult viewpoint to indoctrinate students earlier.
Conclusion
My general response is that Dr. Cruz is simply a willful victim of the CRT cult who uses his platform and his Ph.D. to influence people to support the publically palatable aspects of CRT while denying the more apocalyptic and nihilistic.
Dr. Cruz has appropriated the struggle of supposed inner-city black citizens, a trope that wil never die thanks to CRT, to use victim mentality to make his claims that he is oppressed like all black people are oppressed. To someone not so fortunate as to have the advantages he has had by virtue of his skin color, his claims seem specious and his arguments seem intentionally misleading.
He has provided us with three explicit untruths about Critical Race Theory (listed above). He suggests that we read the works of a number of CRT Scholars and triggers his band of mouth-frothing followers to spew their venomous support for his views all over the comments. He does this with impunity because not only does Tik Tok allow creators with dishonest motives to eliminate all but the most glowing support comments, it also limits comments to 150 characters. He is free to provide multiple alternative facts that simply cannot be corrected or sourced in such a short format. This is the dangerous side of Tik Tok and Dr. Cruz has it down.
If you find that you are unconvinced about the risk associated with bringing CRT into our schools under such optimistic names as D.E.I. (actually DIE, but you get the point), simply consider this. Critical Theory is designed to express an alternate point of view as part of a wider curriculum of thought. It is supposed to take it’s place at the discussion table as one potential way to view a subject. That is not the case with CRT.
CRT offers their point of view as the only point of view. This extreme perspective coming from a small fraction of the small fraction of our country (less than 14%) is being told not as an alternative consideration, but rather as the only fact available. This is not relying on students to explore options and decide for themselves, this is brainwashing students and children as young as they can possible be. Though not officially CRT, Kendi’s work on Anti-Racism provides us with the same dichotomy: Either you are a racist or you support his radical extremist view of what racism is and how it affects a small portion of our country. Kendi even suggests that we introduce our children before school to the struggle between the races. How is this effective at coming together as a country–it’s not. That’s not the goal of Kendi, of anti-racism, or of CRT. Their priority is to bring about the literal deconstruction of our racist country from the roadways to the skyscrapers–all models of oppressive white supremacy. Read Derrick Bell’s last book to see that this is the real goal of antiracism and CRT. Quit listening to the pretty parts of CRT and look at what it is really saying.
The Declaration of Independence provided justification for the sovereignty of the colonies by appealing to natural rights that should be afforded to all free people. While it describes a belief that a group of people can rely on their chosen government to ensure that some of their natural rights are protected, it does not go so far as to describe the entire spectrum of natural rights available. In fact, though it introduces 3 securable natural rights, it fails to address the majority of rights that all free human beings should be afforded as that was beyond the scope of what the document was written for. It was literally a way to describe the grievances we had against the King of Great Britain and establish some rhetoric in flowery language that justified our actions against the King while seeking our independence.
The 3 rights listed as part of the responsibility of government were only 3 ways in which our past government failed to support its people. There are numerous other ways that the government may have failed, but they are less likely to be justification for overthrowing the government. There are definitely other natural rights that could not be agreed upon and were therefore omitted. Ideals such as property ownership and safety are among some of the other rights that government should secure, but they lied outside of the scope of this document and its purpose. It is literally a series of complaints or charges against the King of Great Britain first and foremost. Then secondarily it provides justification in the abstract for our independence. Hence the name.
Why am I bringing this up on Tok-Bak?
I was swiping along in Tik Tok when I came across a passionate fellow talking politely and convincingly about the Declaration of Independence and why the introductory paragraph is so important in a modern context. His name on Tik Tok is @dariusibell and his video is linked below.
PREFACE
I first want to take this moment to state clearly that I appreciate Darius Bell and I am not trying to discourage him or to make any bad claims about him. He is polite and engaging and passionate about this subject. These are all things that I admire. He is a great content creator and this is a space to discuss our differing opinions. Absolutely no disrespect is intended by this post. I am grateful to have this discussion with him.
Darius quotes the following lines from the Declaration of Independence and claims that to understand the Constitution, you must first understand the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…
To understand this passage, let’s break it into its components:
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
This simply states that no proof of these concepts needs to be presented because all people would automatically, intrinsically agree with these ideas.
that all men are created equal
It is commonly accepted that the use of the term “men” during this time referred to humankind, not just males and certainly not just white males. It takes the risky stand that upon birth (creation), all humans are equal. Though they do not explicitly make this claim, it can be assumed that the equality to which all humans are created is in the eyes of their creator. In other words, God sees all people as equal upon creating them. Trying to support any other context in which all people are created equal or should be considered equal fails to account for people born with disabilities, deformed, having only a short time to live, or mentally, or developmentally deficient to name a few. Any context in which you would like to claim that in the eyes of men, all new humans are equal would have to account for these humans that by society’s view are anything but equal. This contextual equality is expanded in the next phrase.
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights
This is a qualifying statement that describes the set of characteristics that qualify equality. In other words, upon being born, all people are given certain rights that are equally afforded to all human beings, called unalienable Rights. The problem, of course with this notion, is that before we had societal structures that articulated these Rights for us, the list of “unalienable Rights” was significantly smaller and likely only included things like the right to breathe, to consume food, to grow, to live, etc. It could be argued that the right to kill animals was a natural right afforded to humans given the biblical claims that man was given dominion over the beasts. But there was nothing that guaranteed these rights to you–there were no natural rights that the Creator defined. All rights are defined by those who agree to them and all rights are given by society. And even then, those rights are suspendible for the benefit of the society if necessary, so unalienable is a bit of a hyperbole that is unfounded logically, but nonetheless, we can move one.
Regardless, this run-on sentence continues by delving into some of the unalienable rights afforded to people by their creator.
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Now, we have 3 explicit natural and unalienable rights which ought to be afforded to all humans upon being born. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. All of these concepts are extremely symbolic and difficult to describe without context, but that is to be expected because the goal of this document was not to discuss these concepts, but rather to air grievances against the King as justification for our independence.
Life, at least seems the most reasonable. Being born grants you the right to live. However, being born alone does not guarantee you the right to live. Being born deformed often denied you the right to live as societies would discard deformed or unviable babies. Being born in the wrong place at the wrong time could result in your untimely death. Heck, being born at all was a miracle as the rate of fetal and maternal death was outrageous at the time. So while this is a nice sentiment, it fails to articulate reality for the newly created. It’s hyperbole and philosophy, not literal.
Liberty, however, doesn’t make sense in any context before societies were formed, when humans had the ultimate form of liberty. It wasn’t until humans began to work together that they became obligated to each other despite their right to liberty. When participating in a relationship with another human being, your right to liberty is mitigated by your promise to sacrifice your own liberty for the protection that having an agreement provides. We found out quickly that those who allowed their natural liberty to be given qualifications in exchange for defense or cooperation had an evolutionary advantage not afforded to those whose liberty is unchecked. So Liberty is contentious in this abstract sense, but in the context of a declaring justification for your independence as a colony or collection of colonies, it makes more sense.
The pursuit of Happiness is by far the most abstract right articulated by our forefathers when trying to justify our independence. With no way to define happiness in a way that satisfies every person, they knew that this was a poor choice to add. In the original draft of this document as well as other state-level constitutions, the pursuit of happiness is replaced by the natural right to own property. Again, this last concept is more about metaphoric freedom and happiness than it is about a quantifiable or measurable aspect of human life. To wit, for some, surviving would qualify for happiness, while for others, having a thriving plantation with a thousand slaves might qualify for happiness. Surely the forefathers do not mean that each individual should be granted the right to their own pursuit if such a pursuit violates others.
What is most important about these three supposed natural rights is that they represent the three most applicable rights to justify our independence. Leaving out the natural right to own property shows that the founding fathers believed that we had other natural rights that could be used to justify independence, but chose these three abstract rights as their hill to defend our sovereignty on.
That to secure these rights,
Here, there seems to be some confusion as to which rights the founders were referring. From my understanding of your perspective, they somehow weren’t articulating rights (like the three they had just outlined), but rather were simply declaring that some undisclosed collection of rights was supposed to be secured. Hopefully, you can see that the hyphen ensures a connection between the three rights defined in the sentence before. The emphasis in this statement was “that to secure THESE rights,” meaning the right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness were to be secured.
Governments are instituted among Men
This defines the group of people that are designated to secure the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. This is their belief that mankind creates a government that is charged with securing at the very least, these three rights for their people.
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
This line simply justifies the powers of the government to secure Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness for those people governed by said government.
Don’t stop here
In a prudent analysis of this document, you must consider the next two major claims. As with every sentence prior, this next part articulates more specifically the reasons why these abstract beliefs are important to their situation.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The only reason that the previous 3 rights were defined along with the duty of a government to secure these rights–justified by the support of the governed is that it lays the foundation for the laundry list of complaints listed that justify our goal to be independent from England.
This phrase explains how whenever a government works against these three Rights should be overthrown. In fact, the governed are obligated, upon being denied these three basic rights, to overthrow the government and install a new government. They should do so to protect the original 3 declared rights as well as a new previously unmentioned right to Safety.
It gets a little murky to continue, but for thoroughness, let’s at least finish out the first paragraph of this long document.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Having laid down the justification for their actions, they seek to describe a set of conditions that clarify the need, or rather the obligation of governed people to overthrow their government and to defend their new government.
From this point until the final paragraph, the Declaration of Independence outlines all of the ways that the King of Great Britain violated these rights and others, obligating them to seek their own independence. To be clear, this document is mostly about complaining about their former ruler and using those complaints to justify establishing their own government in the hopes of better securing the three (or four) rights indicated previously.
I would like to be clear that had they felt that the King of Great Britain had violated other natural rights that governments ought not to violate, they would have declared them. The fact that they didn’t declare all of the rights available to the people was because their complaints all fell within the abstract bounds of these three, self-evident laws of nature. Undoubtedly, if they wanted to articulate the sum total number of rights for a government, they would create a separate document that detailed such things. Perhaps, a Constitution or something similar would work.
It is inappropriate to assume that this letter, written to justify our independence, is the foundation for a system of beliefs that extends past their narrow usage unless our Constitution fails to support these rights.
Your Claims and Emphasis:
The Phrase “All men are created equal” refers to all mankind regardless of race or gender or age (boy or girl?).
You failed to mention viability, health, intellect, emotional stability, or function and seem to think that all men are created equal is a term that describes society’s view of newborns. We know as a matter of fact, that there is only one possible context in which all humans are created equal–that’s in the eyes of their creator as described in the next phrase of the same document. Historically, babies that came into the world deformed were discarded by some cultures. Deformed, crippled, mentally unstable, developmentally disabled humans have never been considered “equal” except in the eyes of their creator.
To be honest, this is your attempt to toe the line of trendy wokesters who wish to point out that all men included black men. Of course, it included black humans. Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves but had a black family that he loved, wrote the first draft of the document. In the first draft, there were numerous citations of the immorality of slavery, but those had to be removed to get all 13 colonies to sign. Regardless, by including this phrase the way it was written, Jefferson laid the foundation for the emancipation of those enslaved. Without it being written the way that it was, justification would not exist under the constitution. This is something to be thankful for, not to decry as American hypocrisy–it’s what ensured the freedom of enslaved Africans. And the majority of the population of the United States upon its creation supported the literal belief that all humans are created equal, most of the population was against slavery. The problem was that the sparsely populated Southern states had the money and textiles we thought we needed to unite. We compromised the majority belief in the abolition of slavery in order to provide for the common benefit that having the southern states included in the union would provide.
Creator–>people–>Government
The creator creates people. People create Governments. But the part you left out conveniently is that Government defines Citizens. By being a part of a society that is governed by a government, there are certain rights that you gain that may or may not correspond directly to your unalienable rights. The government maintains its right to define citizens by enabling the citizens to make changes to the government. The problem is not that the government is oppressing people, it’s that people have gotten lazy and have given the government the jurisdiction to protect all of us at the cost of some of us. With a country as huge and diverse as we are, there are bound to be conflicts. But it is unreasonable to say that we are being denied our life, liberty or our ability to pursue happiness because we have gotten fat and apathetic and allowed the government to be controlled by businesses rather than people.
The government is designed to protect your rights, it does not define your rights.
This is where you are mistaken. The government defines which of your rights it is responsible for securing. You have the right to life, but try living without a government…you wouldn’t be able to today. So the founders declared (only to support their independence) that a government’s role is to defend 3 of your rights. It defines them clearly as LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. It also tangentially refers to SAFETY and originally referred to OWNING PROPERTY. So we know that the founding fathers felt that there were a lot of rights that were unalienable, but that it was the Government’s minimal obligation to secure and defend these three to five rights. Period. This is only in the context of justifying the need for independence if we are honest about the goal of the document. It spends all but a few flowery run-on sentences describing the atrocities we faced under the King of Great Britain.
At no point does it limit the government to only addressing these three to five rights. At no point does it say that governments can’t define other rights. At no point does it give a comprehensive analysis of government responsibilities—it merely describes the reasons we had grievances against our last government. It justifies our desire to cut all ties with England and to secure the future of our own independence. They had plans for defining our rights more clearly in a document that wasn’t mostly a laundry list of grievances against the King. They would outline established rights under the constitution where they belong.
Government -> people -> Creator
So you use the Declaration of Independence, a document with the very specific purpose of outlining the justification for our independence, to claim that they didn’t want the government to define the rights afforded to the people by the government they created. Why would the founders want to limit the rights of a government that they were just about to create for themselves in a paper designed to justify why they overthrew their previous government? They don’t.
Regardless, you never support that claim. It’s not included in any of the text you copied and you don’t describe how it is that you think they came to that conclusion while mostly bitching about England. You have taken great liberty with this document and provided absolutely nothing to support your claims. There is a great sense of humility as they state that the 13 colonies patiently endured the suffering of King’s rule, but they never make any claims about how dangerous it is to trust a government because it is imperfect like the people who created it. It never comes close.
The closest you could possibly get to that kind of statement is when they say, based on their present experience in justifying their overthrowing of the government, that IF A GOVERNMENT fails to support these three (and a fourth, safety) things, the people should overthrow the government. That is the only acknowledgment of the imperfect nature of a government. Furthermore, it describes a remedy that ensures that people > government and not the other way around.
For your claim to hold water, a reasonable human from anywhere in the world should be able to listen to your grievances against your government in which you clearly outline how it is impossible to overthrow the tyranny of your current system. You would have to justify, as the founding fathers did, the claim that the people should overthrow their government. And keep in mind, it’s going to be much harder to do that since we share a country with them unlike England. Severing ties with our current government, justified or not, is not going to be easy and is likely to result in so much death and destruction that the small liberties you think you would be securing would be obliterated by the more pressing needs of survival as food supplies stopped, utilities stopped, internet and phone communications stopped. Literally, should you choose to do as our founding fathers did, you would kill off most of the people in this country. And after just a short period of time, there would be such a backlash that civil war would ensue. Which puts us in the perfect space to be taken over by a true despot like Putin or Xi.
Where does it say that they recognize that governments are prone to suffering from the same imperfections that people are? Where does it claim that governments are more important than the Creator? Using this document to support the idea that the founding fathers were intentionally not defining our rights is only reasonable considering this document was about the general concept that everyone should agree upon that justifies our independence. It does not limit the government and its role in any way other than to say that if the government fails to support these three fundamental principles, the people have the right to overthrow the government. To make your argument, you have to provide proof or justification as the founding fathers did in the Declaration of Independence, that it is failing to support your life, your liberty, and your pursuit of happiness. You have done none of that, so your claims are literally unfounded.
I encourage you to go back through your video and outline it the way that I have. See if you can find support for your claims that you may not have mentioned. I have no doubt that you believe what you are saying, but I am afraid you have misinterpreted both the goal of the Declaration of Independence, and the role of government in securing 3 clearly declared rights. Furthermore, I want you to consider that the founding fathers were about your age, they were young and living in much different times. The idea that we hold every word they used to such a high standard that we are willing to devote entire fields of study to them is elevating them to a status that denies their own human nature. They were not perfect and to use their words in explicit support for claims that are this esoteric in nature is demanding of them the perfection that would be hard for God to achieve, let alone a young, imperfect human surviving a war and harsh conditions in a foreign land.
If you would like to write a response to this post on this server, let me know. I would gladly welcome your input and will give you full privileges to contribute your response. This will likely remain a conversation between you and I as this is my server and I don’t promote it or advertise it. It’s still just a pet project that allows me to articulate my position on a Social Media post.
I respect your opinion and hope that you are not offended in any way by my analysis. I look forward to your reply if possible.
This was his video in response to my analysis of the wealth gap.
When he posted a video claiming that Ben Shapiro said, “It’s not that you look black, it’s that you act black…” and then made some flippant comments about how that affects the wealth gap, I replied that he never said that.
Show me where Ben Shapiro says, “The problem is not that you look black, the problem is that you act black?”
Just in case you thought that this Content Creator had done his research and found that statement in the full clip, here’s the full clip:
You can see clearly that he never uses the terms “look black” or “act black”. This by itself proves that this Content Creator is willing to lie to his viewers. Literally, he makes this claim and cannot support it.
But this is not about whether or not a Content Creator is lying when he paraphrases someone incorrectly, the question is more about the content of Shapiro’s argument.
When the announcer asks the question
Given this disparity, how can you argue that race is not a driving factor in income inequality?
Announcer, https://youtu.be/OiRZp-mhqW0?t=2376
It is clear to see that as soon as the first panelist starts flailing about in dismay because Shapiro said, “Because it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with culture.” Suddenly Shapiro changes gears. It’s obvious.
No longer is he trying to prove that it is culture, but he is taking the opposition’s position that it’s all about race and asking about these other factors.
He foolishly assumed that anyone watching this video could see clearly that when he says, “Oh yeah, then explain to me…” he is asserting that if race is the only issue, then explain this to me. Are they true for the entire race? Or are they true for a subculture within the black community? Are all black people failing high school? No. Are all black people poor? No. Are all black people equally responsible for half of the murders in the country every year? No. So if the answer to every one of these issues is “No, not all black people are affected by these factors” then it can’t be about race.
You know what [if it’s all about race], explain to me why black kids aren’t graduating high school.
He’s sitting there speaking with a panel of people who have graduated high school and gone on to graduate from college. Does the Content Creator honestly believe that Shapiro is unaware that not all black kids are failing to graduate high school? Of course, not all black kids are failing to graduate. But if it’s about race, then presumably all black kids would be failing high school. It’s not about race, but he continues with the questions.
Keep in mind, he is asking, “Okay, if it’s all about race then…”
Explain to me why black kids are shooting each other at rates significantly higher than white kids are.
https://youtu.be/OiRZp-mhqW0?t=2396
So he continues right along the lines of the worst stereotypes of black people to ask, “If it is about race, do all black people share these characteristics?” If you say, “yes”, then the stereotype is valid. He knows it is not the case. It’s not all back people. It’s not the entire race that is like this.
If it’s not about race and yet there are some black people who are ultra-violent, some who are poor, some who are rich by illegal means, some who are apathetic, some who are trapped. These are all different cultures within the black community. It is patently foolish to assume that there exists a single black culture in the United States. Foolish and insulting, in my opinion.
But this is the argument that people like this Content Creator are supporting. He is literally trying to say that all black people participate in a single black culture. The Content Creator even goes so far as to say that all black people have a look, or act the same–something that Shapiro never says.
So as the video continues, we can see more about Ben Shapiro’s views. Needless to say, the Content Creator is afraid to show you the entire clip.
The announcer asks the question to the panelists:
There might be…there will be a disparate impact on different groups of people that doesn’t necessarily mean, I think what you’re saying…it doesn’t necessarily mean something racist is going on even though there’s a racial impact so the question was about where do you draw the line between something that might have a racial impact but is not inherently racist?
When the announcer is citing “the question”, he’s citing the question about the wealth gap. How do you determine that it’s racist? What is the deciding factor? This is the most important question. If you are going to make the claim, what informs you that it is true?
To which Ben Shapiro delivers his entire point in this video.
It’s called evidence of racism. When there is no evidence of racism it’s probably not racism.When there is actual evidence of racism it’s probably racism.
Bem Shapiro https://youtu.be/OiRZp-mhqW0?t=3200
The fact that everybody jumps from there’s inequality to there’s inequity; just because there is inequality doesn’t mean there has to be inequity.
Ben Shapiro https://youtu.be/OiRZp-mhqW0?t=3206
When one panelist claims that there is bound to be racism, Ben Shaprio states:
I agree that it exists, but the problem that I am seeing, and the problem with the general conversation is that there is no solution in simply saying “There’s racism out there” How does that solve anything? And when you talk about institutional racism, what does that mean?
Ben Shaprio: https://youtu.be/OiRZp-mhqW0?t=3173
He then asks for any literal example of racism in the law in the justice system, etc. and he will agree that it is racism. He even cites a case where a cop shot an unarmed black man in the back in South Carolina and stated clearly that it was racism and needs to be dealt with.
He continues:
The idea that you can graft a narrative onto something when there is no evidence of racism but rather that there must just be racism somewhere out there in the ether. That doesn’t solve problems for anybody. It creates more problems for people because now they grow up in a milieu, in an environment where they are told that every obstacle they face is from some shadowy, nameless, faceless group that is out to get them simply because of the color of their skin. They will never succeed in that environment.
Ben Shapiro,
Perhaps the most damaging part of the panel discussion was when Ben Shapiro, after listening to the first panelist go on about how inappropriate it is for a school where the majority of students are black to have a white administration. She wanted to say that a black person should be the principal for example. This is a common sentiment. But this is the key element here. Ben Shapiro shuts down the race issue right here:
The question I was going to ask is, ‘It’s not any person of color?” I assume. I mean if they were going to staff the school with Laura Connely, and Thomas Sewell, and Condaleza Rice, and Clarence Thomas, you’d be standing up against that and say, ‘these are not real black people’ I assume.
Bem Shapiro https://youtu.be/OiRZp-mhqW0?t=4243
This shows clearly that not all black people are the same. Not all black people share the same experience. These famous black people would be more than competent at running the school, but the panelist didn’t mean ANY black person. Why not? If all black people are the same, any black person should be sufficient. They aren’t. She meant black people from the culture that the school was in. This culture is not shared by all black people.
It’s also important to note the second panelist admits that he grew up wealthy and has no perspective about poverty. He lived the first half of his life in Zimbabwe after he was born in America. He never really thought about racism or was affected by it until lately. But even then, he just thinks about it with respect to the police. This is the point that I am making.
Ben Shapiro wraps it up quite honestly when asked if he ever thought about what it would be like if he had been born black. Admittedly, he comes close to messing up when he states that he came from a stable family with two parents in a safe neighborhood…nearly implying that he couldn’t have the experience as a black person, but then he states:
I understand why people would be more wary of police officers given the fact that many police officers are going to react to disproportionate crime statistics with stereotypes. I understand that.
Bem Shapiro https://youtu.be/OiRZp-mhqW0?t=4869
I think the reason that David is asking the question is that…because there is this idea out there that every person who is born white is born privileged. And I don’t think that that is accurate. Just like I don’t think that every person that is born black is born into a horrible situation. I think that we are all born as individuals and if we can start seeing each other that way, we’ll all be a lot better off.
