Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host, Ramsey's job.
Is Ramsey's job. I am q Ward And if you are just tuning in or hopefully you are still tuned into CIVI excitement, yeah, welcome, stick around.
We're still talking about some important stuff today's show. We're giving you some examples that give us some insight into conservative Christian white men in this country and a lot of the thinking that has caused that group to move a little bit further to the right, well a lot further to the right, and how the implications of their new agenda could affect you know, life in this country and who holds power, who has a voice, et cetera.
So a lot to talk about, but before we get there, let's discuss ba Ba, becoming a a Baba and today's Baba. Sponsored by Friends of the Movement. You can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot com and today we're gonna.
Share a few examples. There's a few people in this story, all of whom are do gooders.
And this comes from ABC seven, and I'll share a statue. One of the most beloved characters in the Peanuts series has found a new home at a high school in Santa Rosa. Franklin, who was African American, was first introduced in nineteen sixty eight, towards the end of the Civil Rights struggle. It was a few days after Martin Luther King Junior's assassination, and a young teacher in the Los Angeles area was motivated to act.
Quote. I cared deeply.
It was after the assassination of MLKA and the frustration and the anger, said Harriet Glickman during an interview a few years ago. On April fifteenth, nineteen sixty eight, Glickman wrote a letter to of all people, Charles Schultz, the creator of the comic strip Nuts, asking him to include a black character.
Quote.
She says, I'm writing you because I want to do something about the vast sea of misunderstanding, fear, hate, and violence. It took some convincing, but two months later Charles Schultz wrote back quote dear missus Glickman, You'll be pleased to know that I have taken the first step in doing something unquote. Even before Franklin debuted, there was a lot of pushback the United Future Syndicate, United Feature Syndicate.
Sorry.
It was worried that some newspapers would protest. Schultz threatened to quit the syndicate and oh sorry, he threatened to quit, and the syndicate had to give in. While Franklin debuted on the beach, meeting Charles Brown with a beach ball, and later on they started the Armstrong Project, which is named after Franklin's last name, to promote the development of an illustrator's cartooning in the black community because representation was solo.
So a lot of allies in that story. And I love that and I'm glad that I was able to share it back to Christian white men have another opportunity to say it, so I will say it. Conservative Christian white men are our brothers, and we.
Will not.
Be a platform that tries to create more divisiveness. That's easier said than done, because in order to talk about things, we have to kind of tell the truth. But our intention is to explain to our listeners what is going on, and we use examples that illustrate the practical application of the data or the interpretation of the data that we're seeing or that is being covered by again journalistic sources in the media space, journalistically credible sources in the media space.
So for the first half of the show, we cited a couple of examples of people who are in prominent positions or have been given platforms that give you insight into kind of how that old school thinking, almost like eighteen seventeen hundred style of thinking has become more prominent and is becoming increasingly more prominent.
You also don't have to draw back that far for examples. Yeah, that's fairly. That's a very good job of expressing that way of thought and trying to live out the ideology of those times. I'm glad you said that.
But this next example, I think does take us back to the eighteen hundred seventeen hundreds. So I'm going to share forgive me, I'm going to do a lot of reading, and then we're going to go back and break it down for you. But I think that this gives you a lot more insight into just how far this cancerous type of thinking can go and how many different areas of society and how many different types of people it can affect. And this minister certainly leaned into this way of thinking.
And we also have another piece of video for you guys as well.
Sure sure, actually, you know what, before we get into this reading, let's let's play that video. So this video comes from Adam Mockler, who's an interviewer on Instagram, and he's interviewed in the In the clip, he's interviewing some some Trump supporters. These are white men, and they let it be known exactly how they feel. And this isn't just something that we found in cherry picked. This is a bona fide viral video. This is not on the margins.
Yeah, this is and this is this is really even considered this extreme right, This is this is.
Almost exactly what a lot of these.
What do I call them?
It's kind of like political satire or like comedians that it was.
Just satire, right, right, But there's a lot of people who do political satire and they do political jokes.
Oh yeah, the commentary, and they go out on high light, yeah, to highlight the hypocrisy exactly.
Okay, So he's one of these people that does this, and this video of his is particularly viral.
And so though we meant the positions of those being interviewed being satire, No, no, no, those real people. Rather that be the case, I wish, but no, they're real people. So let's play the video.
First, Yeah, or dash majorities of people, including women. The women didn't receive the rights of it until the nineteenth Amendment nine and.
We fixed that. I don't think that was a good thing. You don't think so. I don't think it was a good thing. I believe the nineteenth Amendment.
Yeah, every woman, every person, women, men, black, white, whatever, has equal dignity under the law and before God. That doesn't mean they have the same roles and should have the same influence in the society.
Who should have it's in our society?
Christian leaders, why Christian interest? Christian chose that he wants to be a day one dictator. Would you be okay with him extending that throughout the rest of his presidency?
No, I don't think so. It's that you hate a democracy though.
Yeah, we're a constitutional republic.
We're a democratic republic. No we're not. You don't think so.
No, we're a constitutional republic. These two things aren't mutually exclusive. If you have mechanisms that allow people to vote representatives and those representatives vote for you, that is a representative democracy, right yeah, sure, But it's also a constitutional republic, not mutually exclusive.
This so we have two senators for each state.
Well, those representatives are elected by the people, by us. We go out and we vote every November seventh or whatever, and we elect these people.
Okay, So.
First thing I want you to know is that you know, you can't see the gentleman in the video, but he's probably early to mid twenties visibly. So for people that feel like, oh oh, this old conservative Christian white men sort of thing as an old guy problem, it is not.
It has not been since at least twenty sixteen. I would go back as far as two thousand and eight when Obama was elected that it really started to take root, because again, there's been a lot of fear that these people are going to lose power, and then who will they be? How does everyone feel about us? We've done all this harm. We've taken land from these people, we've taken lives from these people. If we're no longer in power,
people might retality. These are real fears that these people live with, and so they hold on to this power as much as they can get. And a gentleman like that, who in two thousand and eight was probably I don't know, I can't do the math, but he was a child, I'm sure, has grown up in a world where that fear has taken center stage and it is particularly pronounced among again those white Christian men heterosexual women. So there's one example of a young man who and how he feels.
Right now, we're going to go to another example. This is a much older man because obviously they're on the menu too when it comes to this. So I'm going to share a bit from your web. But a prominent megachurch pastor has asserted that Reverend Martin Luther King Junior was quote not a Christian at all. Jacob MacArthur, an eighty five year old white male pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, made the claim during a
sermon last month. LGBTQ Nation reports. In his remarks, he criticized a group of evangelical pastors known as Together for the Gospel tf org for honoring King several years ago. Right wing Watch reported quote, teforg bought into the receptiveness of the woke movement and the racial baiting that was going on a couple of years ago, and it literally
put them out of existence. MacArthur said, goes on to say the strange irony was a year later they did the same thing for Martin Luther King, who was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral. He goes on to say, I'm not saying King didn't do some social good, and I've always been glad he was a pacifist, or he could have started a real revolution.
What a slap in the face there, anyway, if only he had started a real revolution, right, he's still talking.
So, but you don't honor a non believer who misrepresents Christ in everything about the Gospel.
Okay.
I want to make sure that we're calling him by his full name, Reverend doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. And I want to make sure that people know that his doctorate was in theology. So bear that in mind as I continue to read per LGBTQ Nation. MacArthur previously said, quote, the Bible is abundantly clear slavery is the heart of what it means to be a true Christian, and Christianity does not free slaves. Christianity does not give equal social rights.
Jesus did not propound equal rights, and he did not upset the social order. Rather, they all affirmed that with great fear of God and great respect, you are to be submissive to your masters. Whether they're good and gentle, or whether they are unreasonable, you are to submit. MacArthur also takes an anti LGBTQ plus stance, claiming gay people don't really exist. No one is gay. People cannot commit a or sorry, people commit adultery, people commit sins of homosexuality.
They lie, they steal, they cheat, He said, according to the friendly atheist quote, that's like saying, you know, I keep robbing banks, but I'm a robber. I'm a bank robber. What am I going to do? I'm a bank robber. That is not an excuse for what you do. MacArthur added, there are certain kinds of impulses that lead people in that direction, yes, but I think one of the really deadly aspects of this is to let people define themselves as gay. Okay, so thank you for bearing with me
for that reading. So here we have someone who is talking about doctor Martin Zu King, someone who is suggesting that there should be a hierarchy in society and that there is a biblical basis for people to adhere to this hierarchy. Professing to speak for Jesus. Jesus never said this, blah blah blah. As if that meant Jesus not saying something was him saying something.
Does that make sense? Yeah, The absence of him saying that we shouldn't do this is him saying that they should. Right, exactly, thank you for cure.
You're so much better, saying so thank you for that, all right, And then of course he goes on to attack lgbt Q I A plus brothers and sisters. And so we'll start there, okay, because we can talk all day about slave stuff and doctor King, but let's start.
Where where we are right now.
First thing is that there is indeed a scientific, factual, objective basis for homosexuality. A quote that I like to use a lot is that homosexuality is found in I forget the exact number, but it has been observed in hundreds of species. Right, homophobia has only been observed in one species. Indeed, there was the other day and I put it on my story. I believe it was an NBC that reported that they that the scientific community first
encountered hump back whales mating habits. Right, they got a photograph of the mating and video and all that sort of stuff, right, And.
The twist was that both of the whales were male.
And when I shared it on my story, I put bust on the bottom.
That was funny, It's hilarious. But again I think that makes the point.
You know that homophobia is only found in one species, right, And the.
Fact is very interesting that it's classified a phobia, right, because it's it's more hate than fear. And we you and I go back and forth about this on this show a lot. We we create like this escape hatch by calling hate fear because then it lets people and almost they're scared of us.
They don't.
They're scared of home of homosexuality. And it's not fear, it's hate, it's othering. It's this group of people does not And here we go again, think love or pray the way that I do, so it's wrong and instead of me looking like a bad person, I'll pretend that I'm afraid of this and the harm that it could do to me, even though it has nothing to do
with you. Yeah, there's no aspect of your life that's affected by the life of someone who loves, thinks, prays, sings, dances, or worships different than the way that you do it, as long as they don't try to force you to do it like they do it. And again, there is a group of people historically that does exactly that. Yeah, you have to think, love and pray the way that I do, or you're damned by God because I said so.
And I think that that's what this John MacArthur individual is doing. Again, he's a pastor of a megachurch in California, ball places.
But again, it gives you.
Some insight into that white Christian nationalist way of thinking. Okay, so first thing I do want to say again is that a bank robber identifying as just a bank robber, that's what I do.
I rob banks.
There is that that is a false equivalency there that might sound.
It's intentional false equipment. R right, it's the lowest intellectual denominator that he could use to stir up a group of people that already feel how they work. Yeah, right, so they could feel more morally centered and not like bad people for believing what they believe. If he gives that type of example that they can point to and say, Okay, yes, yeah, that's the same. That's like saying I'm a bank robber and blah blah blah. No, it's not the same.
Again, there is a scientific basis for anyone who cares to do any research on this. And I would not profess to speak for my LGBTQ I A plus brothers and sisters, but on this space, in this moment, I want to make sure that that was at least addressed.
Okay, so let's go back a little further.
Where he's talking about slavery and really kind of like the stratification of people in a society or whatever. This is literally how people would interpret the Bible in the seventeen hundreds, sixteen hundreds.
This is literally how people interpret the Bible in twenty twenty four. And even now we can see where this when this story happened. Yeah, yeah, so you can see how they We don't have to go back in time so you can find people that think, thank you, thank you and represent this ideology.
So this regression in the way of thinking about other people in society, and this almost placing.
People above and below other people.
That is not consistent with what the country was founded on, which is probably why the country was established with the separation of church and state. But nor is it consistent with indeed the natural state of human human beings, the natural offering of human beings. One of the things that we say on this show often is that talent, intelligence, gifts,
skills are evenly distributed throughout populations. Opportunities are not. In other words, you're going to find people who are just as capable, people are just as brilliant, people are just as talented, and all colors and all you know, tribes, and you know what I mean. This is just kind of a thing that happens with a large enough population, and if you notice tendencies that suggest otherwise, there are probably external factors to that population that are creating those.
Tendencies. And it is intellectually dishonest at this point to not acknowledge the last part, right, those who kind of go out of their way to pretend that that's not the case. You know, there's you know, a gentleman the other day saying that all of the great moves forward throughout history have been because of European white man. Straight faced he said, wow to Roland Martin of all, yeah, yeah,
I saw that. Yeah, I mean even that in of itself, and he was using that as a way to kind of dismiss slavery as some evil, as some necessary evil, which I don't think he understood made it worse. Right, if you were arguing that that was necessary and had to happen, it's still awful. But if that's what you really thought, you'd be a less evil person. If you didn't think it was necessary at all, you just felt like doing it, that makes you worst off, sir. You
don't look better. And what you're trying to say does not elevate the group of people that you're trying to elevate the way that you think. Sure, so they're intellectually dishonest on purpose to try to elevate themselves, but it makes them morally corrupt, which they don't take into account when they're saying these things out loud.
Well, now you're understanding why this prominence of again, this way of thinking that's found so often among white evangelical conservative men in this country is it's not well founded. It's not based in objective truths. It is not intellectual at all.
It is.
Intellectually dishonest. It is immoral, and it is very widely shared in terms of a way of thinking in these circles. And these people are politically engaged very much so absolutely the projectaries.
They're voting locally, and they're they will not miss an opportunity to I wish I had I wish.
I had the data in front of me right now, because you're you're not wrong, Q. The I have the data. It's it's semi phone somewhere. But it says something like white men make up I don't know, thirty some percent of the country something like that. I don't know if this is the right number, so don't hold me to it the numbers.
I'm the same.
But then it goes on to say that white men make up so let's say, if they make up thirty percent of the country, which.
Again I don't know.
It goes on to say that white men make up sixty percent of elected officials, sixty eight percent of police, you know, fifty five percent of judges.
But not about the semantics. It's just disproportionate, right, absolutely, in the favor of that same group of people, right so if the numbers are wrong, forgive us right.
And so when you start to realize and understand that, and you recognize and respect that there's a lot of this thinking that is prominent among this group. It's not universal among this group, but it's prominent, then you recognize that, Okay, this is something we need to pay attention to. These aren't just fringe groups. These are powerful people. They have platforms, they have stages, and they're affecting other people's way of thinking.
So we'll leave that one right there. We never have enough time, never have enough time. We moved through that way too quick, but you know that's the way it goes, right. We got an hour, so we try to give you what we got.
So I'd like to.
Thank you once again for tuning in the Civic Cipher. I had been your host Ramsy's job. He is Ramsey's jaw. I am q ward and we want to thank you guys for continuing to rock with us. Please follow us, like comments, support share at Civic Cipher on everything.
Yeah, TikTok, TikTok. I'm getting on TikTok. Ramsey said I should, so I'm giving so I don't know how to TikTok. But you know, you guys can help me out a little bit like this man.
But you know you can follow Cube at I Am q Ward. You can follow me at Ramsey's Jaw, and everything else is at Civic Cipher. Hit the website Civiccipher dot com and download this and in previous episodes, send us a line, let us know if there's something we need to know about or need to talk about on the show.
And keep on riding with us, and until next week, I'll peace