1 00:00:02,160 --> 00:00:05,839 Speaker 1: Meaning a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping 2 00:00:05,879 --> 00:00:07,960 and wing dig down in the forest. Man, it gonna 3 00:00:07,960 --> 00:00:11,320 cause a tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man, 4 00:00:11,560 --> 00:00:12,160 nobody seen it. 5 00:00:12,240 --> 00:00:17,679 Speaker 2: Nobody else might see. 6 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:20,480 Speaker 1: You don't need to know many. 7 00:00:19,839 --> 00:00:22,039 Speaker 3: Luck you followed the other story and. 8 00:00:22,120 --> 00:00:25,480 Speaker 1: You got directed like that. That's wain man. Don't blackly 9 00:00:25,559 --> 00:00:28,280 dang on the panel man, no matter. Man. 10 00:00:36,119 --> 00:00:38,679 Speaker 2: All right, George Bagby, Welcome back to the Jay Burton Show. 11 00:00:38,679 --> 00:00:39,200 How are you doing. 12 00:00:39,960 --> 00:00:42,719 Speaker 1: I'm doing great. It's good to be back. Thanks for 13 00:00:42,759 --> 00:00:43,200 having me. 14 00:00:44,359 --> 00:00:48,159 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very excited to have you back. Uh. As 15 00:00:48,159 --> 00:00:51,280 we were discussing off air, this episode is sort of 16 00:00:51,320 --> 00:00:54,079 a you know, a continuation or a you know, further 17 00:00:54,560 --> 00:00:58,039 exploration of what we spoke about last time now several 18 00:00:58,039 --> 00:01:01,079 months ago. But I assume everyone is familiar with you. 19 00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:05,000 Obviously will allow time for filling at the end, but 20 00:01:05,640 --> 00:01:07,239 would you like to introduce our topic for today? 21 00:01:08,159 --> 00:01:16,280 Speaker 1: Indeed, yes, we talked previously about controversies in classical schools 22 00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:21,959 and some of the priorities there that I found myself 23 00:01:22,079 --> 00:01:26,680 in conflict with. Initially, it was a great surprise to me. 24 00:01:28,879 --> 00:01:35,480 The Lady Gaga episode, the controversies about sexual ethics, which 25 00:01:36,280 --> 00:01:39,760 I didn't think was necessary to go very far into. 26 00:01:39,959 --> 00:01:42,760 I thought that I had I thought I had the 27 00:01:42,879 --> 00:01:46,359 parents on my side. Certainly it turned out I didn't, 28 00:01:47,359 --> 00:01:52,400 and there was more of a There was more of 29 00:01:52,560 --> 00:01:58,280 an element there of wanting to be respectable and not 30 00:01:58,719 --> 00:02:02,079 saying controversial things that would get you in trouble with 31 00:02:02,159 --> 00:02:07,239 the left that I didn't appreciate at that time. I 32 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:10,599 thought that we were pushing back against the modern world 33 00:02:11,199 --> 00:02:16,039 in modest and vague ways. I wasn't there to throw 34 00:02:16,159 --> 00:02:20,479 bombs or anything. I wasn't trying to stoke any controversy. 35 00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:26,639 I was paying lip service to basic sexual morality. In 36 00:02:26,680 --> 00:02:32,280 the context of teaching Dante, one of the things I 37 00:02:32,319 --> 00:02:37,599 did was I explained the image in Dante of the 38 00:02:37,639 --> 00:02:46,400 barren sand where the usurers and sodomites were marching around 39 00:02:46,599 --> 00:02:53,120 tilling barren earth forever in hell, and that this was 40 00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:57,840 a kind of fraud. And I was explaining the images, 41 00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:04,319 so the image of usurers, they're making something infertile into 42 00:03:04,360 --> 00:03:10,120 something fertile. They're turning money which does not naturally reproduce 43 00:03:10,840 --> 00:03:18,120 like animals and agricultural crops naturally reproduce because of their nature. 44 00:03:18,479 --> 00:03:23,879 They're turning money into something fruitful, and so they're punished 45 00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:28,479 in the barren sand that does not bring forth any fruit. 46 00:03:29,759 --> 00:03:36,960 And likewise, the sodomites are forever running tilling the sand 47 00:03:37,039 --> 00:03:40,919 with their feet because in their lives they had turned 48 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:46,960 something meant to be fruitful, which is sex, into something barren. 49 00:03:48,199 --> 00:03:54,039 And so we see this kind of thing recapitulated endlessly 50 00:03:54,199 --> 00:03:58,360 in Dante. You know, the gluttons are constantly eating too 51 00:03:58,479 --> 00:04:04,680 much and vomiting in Hell, and they're surrounded by rotting 52 00:04:04,759 --> 00:04:08,560 food and such, and sometimes those images are extremely easy 53 00:04:08,599 --> 00:04:12,039 to understand, but the barren sand was more complicated, and 54 00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:15,120 so I went in some length on that to explain 55 00:04:15,680 --> 00:04:19,560 what Dante meant. It turned out to be. It turned 56 00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:25,000 out to be very controversial just to explain it. I 57 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:28,959 even had my dean come talk to me about it, 58 00:04:30,079 --> 00:04:33,000 and I thought that I had won honor for the 59 00:04:33,079 --> 00:04:37,439 school by going into that. I had even given a 60 00:04:37,519 --> 00:04:45,279 lecture at a conference about that instruction about teaching sexual 61 00:04:45,319 --> 00:04:53,120 moras in the context of teaching literature, because it's a 62 00:04:53,199 --> 00:04:57,800 major element. It's something that everyone's talking about in their 63 00:04:57,839 --> 00:05:02,920 own time. It's in pol politics, and my whole presentation 64 00:05:03,120 --> 00:05:08,160 on that occasion was how to do this innocuously and 65 00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:14,600 also its importance. Funny enough that particular lecture I had 66 00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:18,959 an interesting member in the audience, Rod Dreyer, was actually there. 67 00:05:19,319 --> 00:05:21,600 It was it was the very first time I'd ever 68 00:05:21,680 --> 00:05:30,279 encountered him. But anyway, I after seven years of that 69 00:05:30,480 --> 00:05:35,439 first teaching job, my contract was not renewed. That was 70 00:05:35,480 --> 00:05:40,959 a moment of incredible crisis for me because it was 71 00:05:42,399 --> 00:05:47,319 a reconsideration of teaching as a career. Would I what 72 00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:51,720 would I do if I wasn't going to teach? And 73 00:05:51,920 --> 00:05:56,160 I decided to leave the area. I went and took 74 00:05:56,160 --> 00:06:00,560 another job with someone that I knew and trusted to 75 00:06:00,639 --> 00:06:04,399 do more or less the same thing, and got myself 76 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:11,399 rank in a new school, and I found elements there 77 00:06:11,480 --> 00:06:16,040 that I was totally accustomed to. Thankfully, it wasn't my 78 00:06:16,199 --> 00:06:22,920 teaching responsibility, but this was also an interesting element in 79 00:06:22,959 --> 00:06:28,639 classical schools just generally, the civil rights narrative from the 80 00:06:28,720 --> 00:06:34,759 nineteen sixties is a particular focus where it doesn't necessarily 81 00:06:34,839 --> 00:06:40,639 need to be of Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham 82 00:06:40,720 --> 00:06:46,600 Jail has become a standard, and this is taught in 83 00:06:46,959 --> 00:06:51,600 rhetoric classes. It's not taught in a historical context. It's 84 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:54,839 not taught in an American history course, modern history course, 85 00:06:54,920 --> 00:06:59,480 not necessarily anyway, it's a standard in the rhetoric class. 86 00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:07,879 So they analyze the argument and it's it's famous and 87 00:07:08,800 --> 00:07:15,160 taught in like junior high as a standard piece for 88 00:07:15,279 --> 00:07:20,639 intense investigation, and they're working on it rhetorically. They're analyzing 89 00:07:20,800 --> 00:07:26,720 arguments and such. But it is part of the inflated 90 00:07:26,839 --> 00:07:31,839 role of Martin Luther King and his legacy, so that 91 00:07:32,279 --> 00:07:37,839 he is he's taken as a secular saint. And that's 92 00:07:38,160 --> 00:07:42,160 an element that's very widespread. And I encountered that yet 93 00:07:42,199 --> 00:07:50,519 again at my new school. Political salvation story, and that's 94 00:07:50,560 --> 00:07:57,399 a very important American narrative. It figures very large, and 95 00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:01,160 I think that one of the reasons it's there is 96 00:08:01,199 --> 00:08:08,680 to win credibility for Christian schools in America. Moreover, it 97 00:08:08,759 --> 00:08:12,920 is one of the essential beliefs of practically all the 98 00:08:12,959 --> 00:08:19,920 adults involved in the school. They've they've all that they've 99 00:08:19,920 --> 00:08:22,920 all put an awful lot of stock into the narrative. 100 00:08:23,480 --> 00:08:27,040 But that wasn't that wasn't my role at my first 101 00:08:27,040 --> 00:08:30,560 school or my second school. I never had that on 102 00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:36,720 my on my syllabus. It wasn't in the classes that 103 00:08:36,759 --> 00:08:40,919 I taught, but it's interesting to note that that's that's 104 00:08:40,960 --> 00:08:45,240 a standard, and that that ended up coming back later. 105 00:08:47,159 --> 00:08:49,600 I was given a special role at my new school. 106 00:08:49,840 --> 00:08:54,799 I was given the role of reviewing the history curriculum, 107 00:08:55,200 --> 00:09:03,200 specifically the history curriculum for anti European bias, for the 108 00:09:03,320 --> 00:09:11,559 needless assaults on European heritage in America in particular. Now, 109 00:09:11,559 --> 00:09:15,440 that proved to be an extremely challenging assignment because you 110 00:09:15,799 --> 00:09:21,080 basically just have to go back into old textbooks to 111 00:09:21,159 --> 00:09:26,799 skirt that kind of narrative. But my work in that 112 00:09:27,279 --> 00:09:30,320 was not so important as the fact that I was 113 00:09:30,440 --> 00:09:36,960 given that task. So one of the things I did 114 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:41,039 do is I taught modern literature, and particularly American literature. 115 00:09:42,279 --> 00:09:45,399 I still remember the morning that I began teaching The 116 00:09:45,399 --> 00:09:50,120 Great Gatsby for the first time, and I went to 117 00:09:50,240 --> 00:09:57,080 my favorite diner, a really old diner, and had the 118 00:09:57,120 --> 00:09:59,799 Great Gatsby with me and had my notes in such 119 00:10:00,159 --> 00:10:03,279 and I and I was reflecting. I think I wrote 120 00:10:03,279 --> 00:10:06,840 a letter I frequently did when when I went to 121 00:10:06,919 --> 00:10:10,799 the diner very early in the morning before I taught, 122 00:10:12,320 --> 00:10:15,440 and I was reflecting on how I felt like I 123 00:10:15,480 --> 00:10:19,600 had really made it as a teacher that I was 124 00:10:19,639 --> 00:10:24,360 teaching The Great Gatsby in high school. I felt like 125 00:10:24,440 --> 00:10:28,799 I had really really achieved a landmark in my career 126 00:10:29,600 --> 00:10:33,000 by doing that, and that was that was very satisfying. 127 00:10:35,039 --> 00:10:38,840 But I also taught Flannery O'Connor, who I really love. 128 00:10:40,519 --> 00:10:42,879 We had a tremendous amount to cover in that class, 129 00:10:43,440 --> 00:10:46,440 which was a challenge, but we were reading everything that 130 00:10:46,519 --> 00:10:50,759 rises must converge. So if you don't know this story, 131 00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:54,679 I was. I was talking to Pete Kenyonez about this 132 00:10:54,799 --> 00:11:03,360 story just recently and recapitulated the platform. The story involves 133 00:11:03,679 --> 00:11:07,240 a man named Julian, a young man who's taking his 134 00:11:07,360 --> 00:11:12,039 mother to the doctor. And his mother has gone through 135 00:11:12,279 --> 00:11:17,639 all of the sit ins and bus protests and such 136 00:11:18,240 --> 00:11:24,159 in the South from that period, and she's very worried 137 00:11:24,399 --> 00:11:30,919 to ride the bus with black people. She's very concerned 138 00:11:30,960 --> 00:11:37,360 about public transportation, she's concerned about her safety. Made newly relevant, 139 00:11:37,399 --> 00:11:44,759 perhaps just in recent times. Julian his response to his 140 00:11:44,879 --> 00:11:55,279 mother is fury and resentment. He hates her scruples and 141 00:11:55,360 --> 00:12:00,519 for all of her her so called backwards opinions about 142 00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:05,639 civil rights, which manifest in the short story. She is 143 00:12:05,759 --> 00:12:12,600 very kind. She's an old woman in poor health. She 144 00:12:14,519 --> 00:12:19,159 talks to the black people on the bus. She's totally 145 00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:24,120 respectful to them, though she voices her misgivings with her son. 146 00:12:25,639 --> 00:12:30,759 She gives a black child a nickel, insists on doing 147 00:12:30,799 --> 00:12:38,840 so as an emblem of patronage, which the girl's mother 148 00:12:39,759 --> 00:12:47,799 resents in anger and knocks the nickel out of the 149 00:12:47,840 --> 00:12:56,440 old woman's hand. But her intentions are all benevolent, and 150 00:12:56,480 --> 00:13:01,039 it's clear that that's so, whatever her opinions might be, 151 00:13:01,159 --> 00:13:06,399 whatever we might think of them. The narration is very 152 00:13:06,639 --> 00:13:11,279 clear that Julian is the one in the wrong. He 153 00:13:11,320 --> 00:13:15,639 wants to make an example of his mother. He's responding 154 00:13:15,679 --> 00:13:22,120 to her very angrily, bitterly telling her that she's going 155 00:13:22,279 --> 00:13:30,279 to she's going to embarrass him. Curiously, Julian tries to 156 00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:33,960 interact with the black people on the bus to show 157 00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:37,960 his own political opinions, and he has no idea how 158 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:41,039 to talk to them, and they look at him as 159 00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:46,279 if he's weird, he's out of line. He doesn't succeed 160 00:13:46,320 --> 00:13:50,519 in interacting with them, whereas Julian's mother seems quite comfortable 161 00:13:50,519 --> 00:13:57,720 with them. In interacting, and she has she has more rapport, 162 00:13:57,919 --> 00:14:01,720 seemingly is able to get along, at least until the 163 00:14:01,759 --> 00:14:05,240 final scene where the angry mother knocks the nickel out 164 00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:10,039 of her hand. Well, when that final confrontation takes place, 165 00:14:10,559 --> 00:14:15,639 now they're on the sidewalk and Julian berates his mother 166 00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:19,200 in public and says, now you're going to see how 167 00:14:19,240 --> 00:14:23,440 things really are. Now you're feeling the embarrassment I've always 168 00:14:23,440 --> 00:14:27,919 wanted you to feel. We live in a new era 169 00:14:28,399 --> 00:14:32,799 now where everyone is equal, And in the midst of 170 00:14:32,840 --> 00:14:38,440 his berating her, she collapses on the sidewalk and dies 171 00:14:38,559 --> 00:14:44,879 of a stroke. So it's one of these very compelling 172 00:14:44,919 --> 00:14:52,399 Flannery O'Connor stories where we see we see conflict of 173 00:14:52,919 --> 00:15:00,000 sin in an individual and it manifests in some revel 174 00:15:00,080 --> 00:15:06,679 litory moment which should be a moment of repentance. This 175 00:15:06,840 --> 00:15:11,399 is one of the great themes in O'Connor, and O'Connor 176 00:15:12,240 --> 00:15:16,120 marks at the very end of the story in Narration 177 00:15:17,200 --> 00:15:21,600 that Julian is now entering a new world of pain 178 00:15:22,159 --> 00:15:27,840 and repentance. So she's putting a punctuation point at the 179 00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:36,159 very end in her inimitable brief style. But she's also 180 00:15:36,279 --> 00:15:43,559 pointing about the whole You know, she's indicating the point 181 00:15:43,559 --> 00:15:47,600 of the story in the narration, in these tiny little 182 00:15:47,679 --> 00:15:50,679 remarks in the narration, where it's clear what's going on 183 00:15:50,799 --> 00:15:54,720 according to the narrator. Well, I was teaching this in 184 00:15:54,840 --> 00:15:58,480 my high school class, and my students responded in a 185 00:15:58,559 --> 00:16:05,720 very unexpected way. They were all against Julian's mother. Several 186 00:16:05,759 --> 00:16:07,440 students are saying, she. 187 00:16:07,600 --> 00:16:17,759 Speaker 3: Deserves it, these racist opinions, They deserve public humiliation, punishment, 188 00:16:19,639 --> 00:16:22,120 and this is the point of the story, that she 189 00:16:22,279 --> 00:16:25,000 needed to die. 190 00:16:25,159 --> 00:16:29,240 Speaker 1: And I was pointing out the remarks in the narration. No, 191 00:16:29,360 --> 00:16:31,879 you're not getting what O'Connor is talking about here. This 192 00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:35,399 is actually something much more complex. The point of the 193 00:16:35,440 --> 00:16:41,120 story is not backwards racist opinions, deserving to have to 194 00:16:41,159 --> 00:16:47,480 be publicly humiliated and excoriated and such. The evil in 195 00:16:47,559 --> 00:16:55,480 the story is in Julian. And so that led to 196 00:16:55,480 --> 00:17:03,440 something much bigger. I brought a a selection of quotes 197 00:17:04,079 --> 00:17:10,599 from black American authors to the class and I distributed them. 198 00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:18,000 And my inspiration for that handout, which predated Flannery O'Connor 199 00:17:18,039 --> 00:17:24,200 and teaching literature in that mode. My inspiration was a 200 00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:28,599 book by Robert pin Warren called Who Speaks for the Negro, 201 00:17:29,599 --> 00:17:33,200 which he published in the sixties. And what Robert Pinwarren 202 00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:35,359 did was he traveled around the country and he talked 203 00:17:35,400 --> 00:17:38,960 to Martin Luther King, he talked to Malcolm X, he 204 00:17:39,039 --> 00:17:46,200 talked to James Baldwin. He talked to black educators in universities. 205 00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:51,119 And the point of his book he asked them all 206 00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:54,200 the exact same questions, and he wrote a whole book 207 00:17:54,240 --> 00:17:58,440 of his interviews with them. And the whole point of 208 00:17:58,440 --> 00:18:01,279 his book was they all had different ideas about policy 209 00:18:02,039 --> 00:18:05,519 in the Civil Rights era. None of them had the 210 00:18:05,559 --> 00:18:10,640 same vision. So that is what I distributed to the class, 211 00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:14,960 and I said, you all think you know what's right 212 00:18:15,319 --> 00:18:20,599 with the Civil Rights era, but what did Black Americans 213 00:18:20,599 --> 00:18:27,599 think of this? And among the quotes are black nationalists 214 00:18:27,960 --> 00:18:33,359 who say they need an independent country, a homogeneous racial nation. 215 00:18:35,039 --> 00:18:40,160 Among them are opponents of desegregation, like Zora Neil Hurston, 216 00:18:40,799 --> 00:18:47,119 who says, the Native Americans don't whine about their social 217 00:18:47,119 --> 00:18:51,839 status in America. I take the side of the Indians. 218 00:18:52,400 --> 00:18:56,519 I don't want anyone forcing someone to associate with me. 219 00:18:57,359 --> 00:19:00,000 They should associate with me because I'm a compelling person 220 00:19:00,079 --> 00:19:05,359 and they like me. That's that's what Zaora and Neil 221 00:19:05,440 --> 00:19:08,559 Hurston said, And of course you've got Malcolm X and 222 00:19:08,880 --> 00:19:11,960 MLKA and all the rest. And the whole point of 223 00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:16,400 the of the handout was not this person's right and 224 00:19:16,440 --> 00:19:19,559 this person's wrong. The whole point of the handout was 225 00:19:20,119 --> 00:19:23,759 there are a lot of different opinions here, you know, 226 00:19:23,960 --> 00:19:26,759 if we're interested in what they think about the situation, 227 00:19:27,720 --> 00:19:33,359 we'll note here there's a great variety who speaks for 228 00:19:33,519 --> 00:19:40,759 the negro Robert Penn Warren's evocative question. Well, I ended 229 00:19:40,799 --> 00:19:44,279 up having conversation with the faculty because the whole thing 230 00:19:44,519 --> 00:19:53,319 was about it was about Julian's mother and the glee 231 00:19:53,559 --> 00:19:57,599 that certain students had with her death in the story, 232 00:19:59,279 --> 00:20:03,839 and I talking to my colleagues about this and saying 233 00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:08,039 that I found it quite disturbing that they would gang 234 00:20:08,119 --> 00:20:10,720 up on an old woman in the context of the 235 00:20:10,759 --> 00:20:13,559 story and say she deserves to suffer and die and 236 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:22,160 inhumiliation and not getting the point of O'Connor's O'Connor's tale anyway, 237 00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:32,960 But I circulated my handout that was, in retrospect a mistake, 238 00:20:35,240 --> 00:20:41,559 because there was a there was a scandal soon after 239 00:20:41,599 --> 00:20:46,880 that which I'm not going into but the result was 240 00:20:47,559 --> 00:20:54,640 a new atmosphere of paranoia, of a very unsettled time. 241 00:20:56,039 --> 00:20:59,279 We had a great many faculty meetings, faculty and staff 242 00:20:59,359 --> 00:21:09,440 meetings in which the school's stance on race became the 243 00:21:09,480 --> 00:21:18,680 primary concern of the board. So it turned out I 244 00:21:18,759 --> 00:21:27,319 had enemies after the Flannery O'Connor situation and my efforts 245 00:21:27,359 --> 00:21:30,240 to try to explain the story and talk about the 246 00:21:30,279 --> 00:21:35,039 Civil Rights era with a completely hands off sort of approach. 247 00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:37,240 I wasn't there to say what I thought was right 248 00:21:37,319 --> 00:21:42,200 in the Civil Rights era. The whole point was what 249 00:21:42,279 --> 00:21:45,079 did black Americans have to say about it? And those 250 00:21:45,079 --> 00:21:49,240 were all names that anyone would have heard of, you know, 251 00:21:49,319 --> 00:21:56,079 these weren't obscure people on my list of quotes. But 252 00:21:56,160 --> 00:22:01,799 the controversy it led to this paranoid investigation into the 253 00:22:01,839 --> 00:22:10,519 beliefs of various faculty members, and I was singled out. 254 00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:13,079 So there were two things that led to me being 255 00:22:13,240 --> 00:22:16,640 singled out so far as I know. The first was 256 00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:23,440 the handout. The second was my special role in history 257 00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:31,279 curriculum to root out and replace anti European bias in 258 00:22:31,359 --> 00:22:35,839 the curriculum, needless hostility to white people in the curriculum, 259 00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:46,960 the history curriculum. Soon after this whole investigation commences, I 260 00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:54,039 realize how serious the matter is. Board members start meeting 261 00:22:54,079 --> 00:22:59,880 me after my last class and pull me aside into 262 00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:06,119 the into the work room, a private space, and I 263 00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:11,279 get really incredible questions from them. The first sign of 264 00:23:11,319 --> 00:23:16,079 trouble is a board member of pulling me in. I'd 265 00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:19,920 met him before, but we'd never had a conversation. And 266 00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:23,000 he's also a father in the school, you know, his 267 00:23:24,279 --> 00:23:29,200 children attend the high school. And he says, yes, I'm 268 00:23:29,279 --> 00:23:35,319 here to ask you. Are you a racial segregationist? And 269 00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:40,839 I said no, what would what would give you that inclination? 270 00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:47,960 What would give you that idea? And he said that 271 00:23:48,079 --> 00:23:53,119 he had been told that I was. And I found 272 00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:59,839 that very interesting, especially considering we had one black student 273 00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:09,119 in the entire K through twelve program and she was adopted. Like, 274 00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:17,079 we don't believe in segregation, but is it to facto segregation? 275 00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:22,559 Any critic would say it was. But that's not the statute, 276 00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:27,720 that's not the policy, that's just how it ended up. 277 00:24:29,839 --> 00:24:32,920 So I didn't mention any of that. Of course, that 278 00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:39,119 had grounds to bring up later, but I said, no, 279 00:24:39,319 --> 00:24:44,799 I don't espouse that I don't propose that I'm a 280 00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:51,000 teacher and I'm explaining things I had been given a 281 00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:53,759 history class. I was teaching American history, and this was 282 00:24:53,799 --> 00:25:00,319 American history too, So it began with Reconstruction, and I 283 00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:06,240 was distributing readings and questions primary sources from Reconstruction. I 284 00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:10,920 had edited things for a history reader and handed them 285 00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:16,160 out to the students, and they brought questions that I 286 00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:20,720 had written for class discussion and confronted me with them 287 00:25:22,519 --> 00:25:26,759 and saying, well, what are you trying to say about 288 00:25:26,839 --> 00:25:31,000 civil rights in the reconstruction Europe? And I said, I'm 289 00:25:31,039 --> 00:25:39,119 trying to motivate conversation about it. What are you preferring here? 290 00:25:39,279 --> 00:25:43,319 This was a subject of argument at the time. How 291 00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:49,839 to affect citizenship for the freed slaves? What was the 292 00:25:49,839 --> 00:25:54,079 best way of going about that? Are their notable differences 293 00:25:54,799 --> 00:25:58,559 between the freed slaves and the white citizens of the 294 00:25:59,599 --> 00:26:06,680 post war or South. This, it seems to me to 295 00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:09,960 be perfectly reasonable, and I don't have any brief for 296 00:26:10,039 --> 00:26:13,359 it other than that. But they were offended by the 297 00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:18,359 tone of some of my questions. They also looked into 298 00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:23,880 the poetry recital for my history class. I had chosen 299 00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:31,359 Donald Davidson's Tall Men an excerpt from it now, just 300 00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:35,400 so you can appreciate, this was the point on which 301 00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:39,279 I got confronted privately by a board member. Soon after 302 00:26:39,319 --> 00:26:44,319 this controversy began. The line that they found so offensive 303 00:26:45,079 --> 00:26:50,599 in The Tall Men by Davidson was, shall I say 304 00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:54,839 the praise of men bright honor? The songs of my 305 00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:59,039 own race and the ways of fighters are something read 306 00:26:59,079 --> 00:27:03,680 in a book only, or graven only in stone, and 307 00:27:03,799 --> 00:27:11,400 not in the hearts of men. So Davidson is reviewing 308 00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:18,039 Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson in his poem. His poem's 309 00:27:18,079 --> 00:27:23,200 title The Tall Men, he refers to many times referring 310 00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:26,759 to the founders of the state of Tennessee, and also 311 00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:32,039 reflecting on modern ways and how easy our modern life is. 312 00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:38,359 We glide effortlessly over the pavement, you know, gently tapping 313 00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:44,480 the gas pedal. We sit beneath air conditioning in office towers, 314 00:27:45,079 --> 00:27:50,640 where our ancestors were carving out civilization in the wilderness. 315 00:27:51,279 --> 00:27:57,440 We're fighting the Indian nations. We're watching their loved ones 316 00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:03,400 massacred and fighting for their place in the new world. 317 00:28:05,519 --> 00:28:08,279 And so he's drawing a contrast there and then saying, 318 00:28:09,519 --> 00:28:12,200 are the ways of my ancestors something we only read 319 00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,519 in a book or is it something that's in our being? 320 00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:27,319 Are we essentially organically connected to our ancestors who founded 321 00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:34,640 our place in America? And he offers a lot of 322 00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:39,000 good material for historical reflection, which I've always resonated with. 323 00:28:39,359 --> 00:28:43,440 I've always been a fan of Donald Davidson. But the 324 00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:49,039 board members decided they were going to cancel the poetry 325 00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:53,279 recitation right at the end of the semester, after everyone 326 00:28:53,279 --> 00:28:57,160 had already memorized it. They singled it out as offensive 327 00:28:58,640 --> 00:29:03,119 and it used the word race. The songs of my 328 00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:07,920 own race and the ways of fighters are engraved not 329 00:29:08,039 --> 00:29:11,119 on stone only, but also in the hearts of men. 330 00:29:13,519 --> 00:29:19,119 They found that highly offensive, and once again I was 331 00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:23,240 pulled aside. I was asked if I was a racist, 332 00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:27,920 and I said, no, it rather depends on what you mean. 333 00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:31,079 But I wasn't going to I wasn't going to address 334 00:29:31,119 --> 00:29:36,240 that under the circumstances. I denied it, and they said, well, 335 00:29:36,279 --> 00:29:40,279 you gave your students this poem to memorize. And one 336 00:29:40,319 --> 00:29:42,920 of the board members, this was a couple of men 337 00:29:43,359 --> 00:29:46,640 that pulled me aside on that occasion one of the 338 00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:50,839 board members said, well, I looked him up on Wikipedia 339 00:29:51,079 --> 00:29:54,720 and he was a racist. Why were you giving them 340 00:29:54,880 --> 00:30:01,920 racist poetry? And I I offered my brief for the 341 00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:11,599 tall Men now the name of my press, a tribute 342 00:30:10,799 --> 00:30:18,240 that resulted in pulling the poem from recitation, and then 343 00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:23,079 I got a very interesting assignment from the board. Now 344 00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:30,039 I believe this was something that was specially decided. I 345 00:30:30,079 --> 00:30:34,599 don't think that it was. I don't think this was 346 00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:38,039 something that everyone was required to do, is what I'm saying, 347 00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:41,799 though I don't know that for sure. I was given 348 00:30:42,359 --> 00:30:47,599 a statement on race that was written by a third party. 349 00:30:49,559 --> 00:30:57,480 The board had found a statement for Christian schools about 350 00:30:57,759 --> 00:31:05,039 civic nationalism, the idea that this was something adaptable and cultural, 351 00:31:05,519 --> 00:31:10,759 nothing intrinsic. The statement went well out of its way 352 00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:20,200 on ostensibly Christian and Biblical grounds to conclude that race 353 00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:28,079 is an Unchristian concept and that anyone that thinks race 354 00:31:28,359 --> 00:31:37,839 exists has anti Christian priors. I was asked to write 355 00:31:38,279 --> 00:31:43,319 an essay in response to this statement and also to 356 00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:55,559 affirm its conclusion. I demurred artfully wrote an essay exhibiting 357 00:31:56,759 --> 00:32:04,839 all of the instances of national differenentfernces, tribal affiliations, ancestry 358 00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:12,839 mentioned in the Bible, and saying this statement being being 359 00:32:13,359 --> 00:32:21,720 emphatically Christian in its effort couldn't mean contradicting the Bible 360 00:32:22,559 --> 00:32:28,759 on matters of ancestry and inheritance and national characteristics, or 361 00:32:28,839 --> 00:32:32,440 even the creation of the nations of the world at 362 00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:37,720 the Tower of Babele. Those are all explicit in Christian 363 00:32:37,759 --> 00:32:43,200 belief and in the Bible itself, So the statement cannot 364 00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:48,319 mean that. The statement instead means that the topic of 365 00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:54,599 race has been dangerously politicized and Christians should avoid the subject, 366 00:32:55,039 --> 00:33:01,200 which I try to find some quality ways to assent to. 367 00:33:02,079 --> 00:33:04,880 This is too dangerous to talk about. People that talk 368 00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:08,839 about it are destroyed and everyone knows that. So for 369 00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:13,440 the sake of the institution, we avoid those subjects, is 370 00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:18,960 what I wrote. Well, the demur was not satisfying to 371 00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:22,319 the board, so we had an interview. They called me 372 00:33:22,359 --> 00:33:25,039 in for a special meeting with the board members to 373 00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:29,640 talk about the statement. Now, the people that gave me 374 00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:35,799 this statement were considering making it the official statement of 375 00:33:35,839 --> 00:33:38,759 the school and putting it on the website. This civic 376 00:33:38,839 --> 00:33:47,079 nationalist statement about race, a statement that they had never 377 00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:51,440 considered that they themselves had not written. They did not 378 00:33:51,720 --> 00:34:00,160 know the issue. So I went to the meeting. The 379 00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:04,359 meeting or the statement was all based on the assertion 380 00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:10,880 that race is a social construct, that it is man 381 00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:16,519 made in fact, that any differences that we might notice 382 00:34:16,559 --> 00:34:20,559 between people are differences of nurture and not of nature. 383 00:34:23,159 --> 00:34:27,679 And they said that the belief of anyone that claims 384 00:34:27,679 --> 00:34:31,280 to be a Christian, that believes that there are differences 385 00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:36,360 between the nations of the Earth is outside of the 386 00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:42,119 Christian communion in a serious way. That's what the statement said. 387 00:34:42,639 --> 00:34:46,280 So I went to the meeting, and I was prepared 388 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:50,960 to talk about what I had written, but I decided 389 00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:55,960 to start the meeting with questions to the board, which 390 00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:02,400 turned out to be all that was necessary. First, I 391 00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:08,199 was well aware that the civic nationalist position is one 392 00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:14,480 of the key targets of the race critics of the time. 393 00:35:15,079 --> 00:35:21,159 So Ibram Kinsey and Robin DiAngelo and Tom Nahasi Coats, 394 00:35:22,079 --> 00:35:28,199 they all excoriate the civic nationalists because they all believe 395 00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:32,119 that race is real, and they believe that races are 396 00:35:32,159 --> 00:35:40,039 divided into two groups, oppressor races and oppressed races. Therefore, 397 00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:46,480 everyone must note who is being oppressed and who the 398 00:35:46,519 --> 00:35:51,159 oppressors are, and anyone who refuses to do that by 399 00:35:51,199 --> 00:35:57,599 taking a civic nationalist stance are, according to them, the 400 00:35:57,639 --> 00:36:03,440 worst racists of all and deserve primary focus for attack. 401 00:36:06,679 --> 00:36:10,440 Now this is in the literature and in the journalism 402 00:36:10,519 --> 00:36:14,800 and such. This is broadly known, but they obviously did 403 00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:20,719 not know that. So initially I asked them if they 404 00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:25,679 were aware that that was the mainstream on the matter. 405 00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:35,920 They were all in a panicked situation. They were desperately 406 00:36:36,039 --> 00:36:42,639 trying to get out of out of the gaze of 407 00:36:42,679 --> 00:36:48,000 their enemies. They did not want to be accused of 408 00:36:48,079 --> 00:36:53,760 being racist. They were extremely afraid that they would be. 409 00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:59,440 They were considering issuing this statement as a way of 410 00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:05,280 getting out of that. What they thought was a mainstream position, 411 00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:10,599 an uncontroversial position, was actually quite controversial and would not 412 00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:14,960 have saved them. So I told them, if you make 413 00:37:15,119 --> 00:37:18,920 this the official policy of the school, if you require 414 00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:22,960 us all to publicly assent to this, if you post 415 00:37:23,039 --> 00:37:29,480 this on your website, you will increase hostile attention on 416 00:37:29,599 --> 00:37:35,639 the institution. These are your enemies. This is how they think. 417 00:37:37,159 --> 00:37:40,280 No matter what we might think, this is what they think, 418 00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:43,239 and they hold all the cards. They have all the 419 00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:48,280 power to destroy you. You can't duck this by making 420 00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:53,159 a civic nationalist statement. So though it may be what 421 00:37:53,199 --> 00:37:56,840 you sincerely believe, though you might think this will get 422 00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:00,480 you out of trouble, if you were to make this statement, 423 00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:04,360 you should make it privately. You should not make it 424 00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:10,840 a public statement. They were completely unaware of this. None 425 00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:14,400 of them had heard of the writers I mentioned. None 426 00:38:14,440 --> 00:38:16,679 of them were aware of the state of the discourse, 427 00:38:17,639 --> 00:38:21,360 because for them, this was a brand new problem that 428 00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:26,440 had them all afraid. So that was my first question 429 00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:28,760 to them, Do you know these writers? Do you know 430 00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:30,920 what they would say about you? Do you know what 431 00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,119 will happen if you make this a public statement of 432 00:38:33,159 --> 00:38:37,280 the school. They didn't know the writers, they didn't know 433 00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:39,280 what they said about them, and they had no idea 434 00:38:39,360 --> 00:38:41,039 what the implications would be if they made it a 435 00:38:41,039 --> 00:38:48,559 public statement. So I advised caution. Second, I said, do you, 436 00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:54,320 gentlemen believe well, how did I say it? I wrote 437 00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:58,440 it down here? Would you tell a Jew that race 438 00:38:58,599 --> 00:39:05,920 is a social construct? This question had never occurred to them. 439 00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:12,800 They looked at one another in shock, and they looked 440 00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:15,960 back at me, and they said, no, no, we would 441 00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:20,920 not do that. And I said, so you have. You've 442 00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:24,159 got a statement that you can't tell someone outside of 443 00:39:24,159 --> 00:39:29,199 your own immediate circle. What I could have said is 444 00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:31,920 you've got a statement on race you cannot share with 445 00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:39,920 anyone outside your own race. The thought had never occurred 446 00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:44,320 to them. Of course, we could have taken in another direction. 447 00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:46,280 Would you tell a black man that race was a 448 00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:53,519 social construct, that it wasn't real? They wouldn't. But I 449 00:39:53,599 --> 00:39:56,840 decided to stick with I decided to stick with the 450 00:39:56,840 --> 00:40:04,079 biblical nation, a biblical race, if you will. Lastly, I 451 00:40:04,159 --> 00:40:09,239 asked them, do you believe do you sincerely believe the 452 00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:16,159 Bible teaches that race is a social construct made by 453 00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:22,559 the action of human beings and not through any other reason. 454 00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:31,960 And my source which I brought up, what about the 455 00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:37,119 Tower of Babel? Did God providentially divide the peoples of 456 00:40:37,159 --> 00:40:44,440 the earth? Does that represent divine intention? This had also 457 00:40:45,079 --> 00:40:47,639 never occurred to them, though they did read my essay. 458 00:40:47,679 --> 00:40:55,840 Presumably they were more interested in my demurl. So I asked, 459 00:40:56,360 --> 00:40:58,920 does the Bible teach race as a social construct? They 460 00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:08,280 had no answer. They found the thought disturbing. So I concluded, 461 00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,480 and I said, you have a statement your enemies may 462 00:41:11,559 --> 00:41:15,639 not see because they will destroy you for it. You 463 00:41:15,679 --> 00:41:18,559 have a statement that you cannot share with anyone outside 464 00:41:18,559 --> 00:41:23,679 of your own special circle, and you have a statement 465 00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:34,000 that you cannot assert is biblically true. This is a problem. 466 00:41:34,079 --> 00:41:44,119 And I left it, and the meeting dissolved, and I 467 00:41:44,159 --> 00:41:49,679 walked away from that meeting with a singular conviction that 468 00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:55,079 I would either be asked into leadership because they didn't 469 00:41:55,119 --> 00:41:58,880 know what was going on and I'd made that clear 470 00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:09,199 to them, or I couldn't stay in retrospect, I believe 471 00:42:09,559 --> 00:42:13,800 that all of the interviews, all of the tests I 472 00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:18,840 was given, in particular the essay I was asked to write, 473 00:42:19,039 --> 00:42:26,599 were efforts to find grounds to fire me that did 474 00:42:26,639 --> 00:42:31,199 not pan out. I stood by everything that I had 475 00:42:31,239 --> 00:42:36,400 said in class an out. I stood by all opinions 476 00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:39,880 that they actually had had approached me. At one time, 477 00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,159 another board member had come to me to ask for 478 00:42:44,599 --> 00:42:49,840 all of my handles on the Internet. He asked if 479 00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:53,360 I had Facebook. I did not. He asked if I 480 00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:58,280 was on Twitter. I was not. I had never had 481 00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:03,159 a presence on Twitter at that time. I had a 482 00:43:03,199 --> 00:43:11,280 Facebook account, but it had been deleted years previous. He 483 00:43:11,519 --> 00:43:17,280 then wanted to get any blog articles I had written 484 00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:23,920 in my life. And I went to the interim headmaster, 485 00:43:24,039 --> 00:43:25,960 who was a friend of mine and who was very 486 00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:29,760 supportive of me through the whole thing, a very humane 487 00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:35,559 man who I'm still friends with. He's no longer at 488 00:43:35,599 --> 00:43:40,760 the institution. Many are not this is. This all happened 489 00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:44,760 years ago. So one of the reasons I decided to 490 00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:49,599 talk about it. I asked him about that. I said, 491 00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:57,800 so they want they want MySpace articles I wrote in college. 492 00:43:58,119 --> 00:44:04,559 This is outrageous that I'd be subjected to such scrutiny 493 00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:09,280 at this occasion in my career that a college student 494 00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:15,960 wouldn't have some controversial opinion or other. This is obviously 495 00:44:16,119 --> 00:44:21,480 an effort to fire me and cancel me. And he 496 00:44:22,159 --> 00:44:27,239 was very sympathetic and said that he thought that it was. 497 00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:31,840 It was paranoid and bad policy. It was. It was 498 00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:37,920 extremely discouraging to everyone I talked to. And I don't 499 00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:40,559 know what other faculty we're going through at that time. 500 00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:45,239 I only know my own experience because I went through 501 00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:50,639 all of those encounters alone. But when I walked out 502 00:44:50,639 --> 00:44:57,039 of that inquisition about the race statement, I knew that 503 00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:01,239 I would either I would either come out with enhanced 504 00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:08,440 position or I would have to leave. There wouldn't be 505 00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:12,880 any means for me to stay, and I did not 506 00:45:13,039 --> 00:45:18,679 want to stay. I talked with my wife many times 507 00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:22,679 in that period saying I want nothing to do with 508 00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:27,760 these people. The sooner that I can leave this arrangement, 509 00:45:28,079 --> 00:45:31,519 the better. But of course I didn't want to lose 510 00:45:31,519 --> 00:45:34,920 my contract. I had nothing to go on on for 511 00:45:35,519 --> 00:45:39,000 besides my salary. You know that that was the way 512 00:45:39,039 --> 00:45:47,400 I supported my family. So it was a very uncertain period. 513 00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:52,920 Soon after, maybe a couple of weeks after, I got 514 00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:59,320 a call another meeting with the board. So I went, 515 00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:11,559 and this this was right after exams, midterms, and we 516 00:46:11,559 --> 00:46:14,239 were all coming back to the school for class. In 517 00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:21,159 a couple of days, I had everything graded and I 518 00:46:21,199 --> 00:46:26,000 sat down in the room with the board members and 519 00:46:26,039 --> 00:46:31,320 they said, we've decided that we will part ways. We 520 00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:35,280 have decided you are not in violation of your contract 521 00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:42,880 or the code of conduct. No doubt they had been 522 00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:47,960 looking for ways that I was. Because the next step 523 00:46:48,239 --> 00:46:53,519 was they helped me gather my things. I gave them 524 00:46:54,000 --> 00:47:00,840 the graded tests, and they escorted me off campus and 525 00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:06,199 told me not to come back. They also gave me 526 00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:10,360 a statement in writing that in the name, in the 527 00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:13,400 name of the board, that I would be paid the 528 00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:18,840 remainder of my contract, and indeed I was up till 529 00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:22,599 the very last paycheck, which I caught a couple of 530 00:47:22,679 --> 00:47:30,360 years later. In the midst of all of that, I 531 00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:35,000 got a public confrontation by an officer of the school, 532 00:47:36,639 --> 00:47:41,519 the person that I had talked to about the quotes 533 00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:48,559 about from from the Black American writers in relation to 534 00:47:48,599 --> 00:47:54,599 the Flannery O'Connor episode. She confronted me in a public 535 00:47:54,639 --> 00:47:59,719 place in front of my friends and called me a 536 00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:11,360 white nationalist and excoriated me. And after that I realized 537 00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:17,320 I had I had serious opponents in the structure of 538 00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:20,639 the school. Then then it made more sense to me 539 00:48:22,039 --> 00:48:25,719 the kinds of confrontations that I'd had, the board member 540 00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:29,679 asking me if I was a racial segregationist and such. 541 00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:35,719 It made a little more sense that someone in the 542 00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:43,880 structure had taken a side against me and was saying 543 00:48:43,920 --> 00:48:51,320 things about me unknown to me at that time. So 544 00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:58,400 it's a it's an interesting circumstance, and I want to 545 00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:05,360 I want to try to explain the position of the 546 00:49:05,400 --> 00:49:11,519 board because I like these people. In spite of everything 547 00:49:13,119 --> 00:49:17,199 and I feel like they did something honorable to me 548 00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:26,519 under the circumstances of honoring my contract, for instance, last paycheck, 549 00:49:26,639 --> 00:49:35,440 notwithstanding whatever I got it eventually. These were professionals, these 550 00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:43,079 were accountants, These were our ends, These were people with 551 00:49:43,159 --> 00:49:49,880 small businesses. These were people that had put extraordinary resources 552 00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:55,599 and time to set up an institution they could trust 553 00:49:56,039 --> 00:50:04,079 to educate their children. That is a really extraordinary achievement. 554 00:50:04,199 --> 00:50:06,519 There are very few people that have the time and 555 00:50:06,599 --> 00:50:13,199 resources to do such a thing, and the charge of 556 00:50:13,679 --> 00:50:19,239 racism would cancel all of them, would destroy their careers, 557 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:25,639 would destroy the institution they had built. We know the 558 00:50:25,679 --> 00:50:28,760 forces that would act against them, We know how ruthless 559 00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:36,679 they are, and their rally to try to avert that 560 00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:42,360 disaster makes perfect sense. The fact that they didn't know 561 00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:45,199 what was going on, the fact that they did not 562 00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:49,440 know the state of the discourse is not in the 563 00:50:49,519 --> 00:51:00,880 least unusual. Who's reading White Fragility leftists? You know, we 564 00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:03,400 may know the thesis of those books, but they don't 565 00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:06,840 make for edifying reading. Let's let uh, let's let prude 566 00:51:06,880 --> 00:51:10,559 and dimes handle things like that. They can tell us 567 00:51:10,599 --> 00:51:12,440 what's going on there, so we don't have to read 568 00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:18,840 it right? Do you even read the prudentialist in our 569 00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:26,760 friend Dimes from Canadia? They're doing wonderful work there. But 570 00:51:27,679 --> 00:51:35,320 these these middle class folks with so many virtues, and 571 00:51:35,519 --> 00:51:38,079 I'm I don't think that I'm overstating this. I have 572 00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:43,920 tremendous sympathy for these people. They don't want to touch 573 00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:47,599 the likes of me with a ten foot poll and 574 00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:57,599 I've learned through heart experience I can't trust them because 575 00:51:57,639 --> 00:52:04,400 of the huge disparity between me and them. I'm utterly 576 00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:12,760 at their mercy. They could bankrupt me by tossing me 577 00:52:13,559 --> 00:52:23,159 to their enemies to distract their enemies from their throats. 578 00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:38,480 And that's the situation until we find some way to 579 00:52:41,559 --> 00:52:44,760 set up an independent institution that's not vulnerable to such 580 00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:52,840 tax and that leadership that will protect their own people. 581 00:52:55,159 --> 00:52:59,199 I don't see a way, not for me, anyway to 582 00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:06,920 tease Chetta at a school. I chose to teach at 583 00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:10,880 this school for particular reasons. And this this all fell 584 00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:15,360 apart in in the course of the controversy in obvious 585 00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:22,440 and unspoken ways, and it was a it was an 586 00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:27,400 extremely important experience. It was it was based on my 587 00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:33,199 transition out of that I started driving Uber. I was 588 00:53:33,679 --> 00:53:37,800 I had no desire to go and work for any 589 00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:41,320 employer at that point, but I had a family to 590 00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:44,800 care for, and so I started driving Uber full time 591 00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:51,280 soon after that, and UH was able to make things 592 00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:54,880 work doing that for a while. Now I've I've mostly 593 00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:58,239 transitioned out of that and have other other means to 594 00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:03,400 support my family. But I've been I've been privately burgh. 595 00:54:03,480 --> 00:54:08,239 Let's see, I've been a private contractor just self employed 596 00:54:08,679 --> 00:54:14,760 since then. And Tall Men Books is my major effort. 597 00:54:16,119 --> 00:54:19,599 What have I done with all of this, all this 598 00:54:19,679 --> 00:54:23,159 initiative and time between now and then? I started Tall 599 00:54:23,199 --> 00:54:28,599 Men Books, which is a reference to the poem that 600 00:54:29,599 --> 00:54:35,480 once got me in such serious trouble. It is my slogan, 601 00:54:37,519 --> 00:54:42,320 and I want everyone to remember that the bones of 602 00:54:42,480 --> 00:54:46,280 tall men lie in American earth, and those are our 603 00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:52,119 ancestors who gave us our inheritance. This is not something 604 00:54:52,159 --> 00:54:56,159 that we just read in dusty old books. This is 605 00:54:56,519 --> 00:55:06,199 the blood that flows in our veins. So that's my story. 606 00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:11,159 I'm glad to be able to conclude it here with 607 00:55:11,199 --> 00:55:12,480 you today. 608 00:55:17,039 --> 00:55:21,880 Speaker 2: There are several things there. One just this morning I 609 00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:30,519 wrapped up Brad Kelly's excellent book Darkened Earth. I don't 610 00:55:30,519 --> 00:55:33,480 have the copy in front of me. He'll be on 611 00:55:33,559 --> 00:55:37,599 to discuss it soon. But the sort of inciting incident 612 00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:42,559 is an academic cancelation. And you know, one of the 613 00:55:42,599 --> 00:55:45,920 things that he talks about that is that sort of 614 00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:50,360 slow dawning realization that they're not on your side, right, 615 00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:52,760 that you have been sort of singled out and selected out, 616 00:55:53,199 --> 00:55:56,400 and people are acting to sort of preserve their own skin. 617 00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:01,320 And I'd imagine that's sort of a difficult transition to 618 00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:04,159 go through, right, realizing that while you may have friends, 619 00:56:04,199 --> 00:56:09,280 they're not in a position to protect you. And interesting 620 00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:15,800 note there, and again I think that you're check kind 621 00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:18,679 of pick a through line. There's something interesting as well 622 00:56:18,760 --> 00:56:21,880 to the degree to which, you know, kind of good 623 00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:28,159 conservatives in quotes are really the only believers in the 624 00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:32,159 kind of civil rights mythology of a previous era. And 625 00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:35,039 they think that by you know, holding that position and 626 00:56:35,039 --> 00:56:37,840 retreating to it, that they can protect themselves. And that 627 00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:41,400 is plainly not true. You know, as you've said, the 628 00:56:41,400 --> 00:56:44,440 people who accuse them already have disdain for those figures. 629 00:56:45,039 --> 00:56:47,400 And you know, no matter how many times you've guided 630 00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:50,079 a group of you know, seventeen year olds through letters 631 00:56:50,119 --> 00:56:53,440 from Birmingham jail. That will not protect you from the mob. 632 00:56:53,840 --> 00:57:05,679 It's by no means a deterrent. Absolutely Well, George, we've 633 00:57:06,599 --> 00:57:09,880 sort of wrapped this story and now you were, you know, 634 00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:14,000 on your own, you have your your book sales. Is 635 00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:16,960 there any sort of advice or something you could offer 636 00:57:17,079 --> 00:57:19,920 to someone in a similar situation, right, someone who's sort 637 00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:21,320 of going through a cancelation? 638 00:57:23,639 --> 00:57:32,039 Speaker 1: Oh my, I think we we have plenty of examples 639 00:57:32,280 --> 00:57:38,639 in our circles of people that have encountered these pressures 640 00:57:39,360 --> 00:57:46,559 or been forced to switch careers, been identified as deplorable 641 00:57:47,679 --> 00:57:55,039 on whichever grounds. It's. It's a really difficult thing to 642 00:57:55,079 --> 00:58:00,000 deal with. And I'm I made the the difficult choe 643 00:58:00,559 --> 00:58:04,440 of trying to stick with what I knew and trying 644 00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:11,239 to support my family off of that. And it's taken 645 00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:15,000 a while to make that a viable means of income, 646 00:58:16,639 --> 00:58:25,480 and it's taken many sacrifices. We must continue to network 647 00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:32,920 among people of our own beliefs and build up organizations 648 00:58:33,519 --> 00:58:39,360 to support one another. The Old Glory Club has been 649 00:58:39,719 --> 00:58:46,400 extremely helpful to me, help me find people to work with, 650 00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:51,000 help me find talent to do things that I don't 651 00:58:51,039 --> 00:58:57,119 know how to do myself, and has offered me tremendous 652 00:58:58,000 --> 00:59:05,199 solidarity and also of financial support. The Old Glory Club 653 00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:10,199 gave me a grant for a series of books that 654 00:59:10,280 --> 00:59:16,880 I've been republishing, The Chronicles of America. Just as an example. 655 00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:24,280 I've had very kind private individuals arrange fundraisers for me 656 00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:32,840 when I've been in special need. This is something that 657 00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:38,199 I'm very humbled and deeply grateful for. My family and 658 00:59:38,239 --> 00:59:43,480 I are just overwhelmed with the kindness that people in 659 00:59:43,519 --> 00:59:48,079 the organization have shown to us, and it's done us 660 00:59:48,159 --> 00:59:55,280 tremendous good. Recently, I was able to get a dentist 661 00:59:55,360 --> 01:00:03,159 from my daughter through private gifts from friends. But obviously 662 01:00:03,239 --> 01:00:08,719 we want to be more independent and self sufficient. I've been. 663 01:00:09,760 --> 01:00:13,920 I've been in business for myself now for several years. 664 01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:18,920 I've got a wife and three children. I have to 665 01:00:19,239 --> 01:00:26,000 travel a lot to support my family, but it's also 666 01:00:26,119 --> 01:00:32,280 offered all sorts of new rewards. It's wonderful to work 667 01:00:32,519 --> 01:00:36,480 in my field with my material and what I know best. 668 01:00:37,880 --> 01:00:42,920 That's sometimes I think that maybe I should move into 669 01:00:42,960 --> 01:00:46,519 something more traditional in terms of employment, but we also 670 01:00:46,639 --> 01:00:49,760 know that that's an extremely difficult thing to do now too. 671 01:00:54,199 --> 01:00:58,840 My advice for those who are under these pressures, facing 672 01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:06,880 cancelation or going through it is network with those you trust, 673 01:01:09,119 --> 01:01:17,159 get advice, consider relocation because when you go through a cancelation, 674 01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:24,679 when you are excluded from the community on grounds that 675 01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:32,800 you think dangerous thoughts, you believe unpalatable things, it may 676 01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:42,159 be time to find different community to network with. After 677 01:01:42,440 --> 01:01:47,760 my cancelation, I lost a lot of valuable social contacts 678 01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:54,079 in my town. And many of these people they meant 679 01:01:54,119 --> 01:01:57,480 me well. They never had problems with me, they never 680 01:01:57,519 --> 01:02:03,039 attacked me. They offered me their support privately that they 681 01:02:03,039 --> 01:02:10,559 thought what was going on was dreadful, was wicked. They 682 01:02:10,559 --> 01:02:14,039 are subject to the same kinds of social forces as 683 01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:19,840 the board members were. Their careers could have been attacked, 684 01:02:20,639 --> 01:02:24,360 they could have been brought under suspicion. They wanted to 685 01:02:24,440 --> 01:02:32,920 stay out of attention, and I can't blame them, but 686 01:02:33,000 --> 01:02:37,679 it means that I became a dangerous person to associate with, 687 01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:43,119 which I think plenty of people on your podcast certainly 688 01:02:43,320 --> 01:02:46,079 can relate to. This is a common story among us. 689 01:02:48,960 --> 01:02:52,800 So identify the friends who aren't afraid to be seen 690 01:02:52,880 --> 01:02:57,199 with you. Identify the friends who are not afraid to 691 01:02:57,239 --> 01:03:02,599 associate you publicly. Those are the kinds of people that 692 01:03:02,679 --> 01:03:08,840 we need to rally with in with the unusual challenges 693 01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:14,119 that we face today. It's those that you can trust, 694 01:03:15,079 --> 01:03:20,320 those that will be known by your side in public. 695 01:03:22,320 --> 01:03:26,000 Those are the most valuable connections that we can cultivate. 696 01:03:26,639 --> 01:03:32,599 Go into business with those people, relocate to be near them. 697 01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:36,119 If you can't get along with your family under the 698 01:03:36,280 --> 01:03:41,119 under the circumstances, family ties are always the deepest and 699 01:03:42,119 --> 01:03:48,239 should be the ones that we primarily look for. Family 700 01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:50,360 will help you. Family will will get up in the 701 01:03:50,400 --> 01:03:55,440 middle of the night when you're all sick and imperiled. 702 01:03:56,920 --> 01:04:01,760 Family will come and defend your house from a mob. 703 01:04:05,360 --> 01:04:08,280 It is a special kind of friend that will stand 704 01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:12,159 with you and do that. And I'm extremely proud and 705 01:04:12,280 --> 01:04:17,480 humbled to have many of those friends, many of which 706 01:04:18,039 --> 01:04:23,000 most of which I've come to know after the cancelation. 707 01:04:25,239 --> 01:04:31,800 So socially, it's been very instructive, very painful, but also 708 01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:37,800 very instructive and very rewarding. Some of the things that 709 01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:40,519 I've encountered since that whole ordeal. 710 01:04:46,719 --> 01:04:49,519 Speaker 2: Well, as we've said, people know where to find you, George, 711 01:04:49,760 --> 01:04:52,800 I'll be sure to put those links in the description. 712 01:04:53,760 --> 01:04:55,840 It's good to have you back on. I know obviously 713 01:04:55,880 --> 01:04:58,920 you've been very busy, but I enjoy our episodes immensely, 714 01:04:58,960 --> 01:05:00,480 so thank you. 715 01:05:00,760 --> 01:05:03,119 Speaker 1: It's a great pleasure. Thanks for making time for me. 716 01:05:04,280 --> 01:05:08,039 Speaker 2: As far as my stuff, Jay Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, 717 01:05:08,159 --> 01:05:11,440 anywhere you listen to podcasts, this is what I do. 718 01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:14,480 I was just kind of doing some tabulating and realized 719 01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:17,559 I've been doing this for two hundred and twenty five days, right, 720 01:05:17,639 --> 01:05:21,159 not all that long. And as George said, all right, 721 01:05:21,199 --> 01:05:24,119 striking on on your own can be It can be 722 01:05:24,119 --> 01:05:26,880 a little intimidating, right, you're sort of jumping into an 723 01:05:26,920 --> 01:05:29,840 abyss and you'll have been great, right. I couldn't do 724 01:05:29,840 --> 01:05:33,039 it without your guys support. It's you know, what pays 725 01:05:33,039 --> 01:05:35,360 my mortgage, So thank you all so much. If you're 726 01:05:35,360 --> 01:05:37,960 wondering what you get for your support, get the episodes 727 01:05:37,960 --> 01:05:40,960 early in ad free on Patreon, Substack, or gum Road. 728 01:05:41,480 --> 01:05:44,800 Also check out our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness Coaching. JD's 729 01:05:44,800 --> 01:05:47,679 another guy right who's you know, started a business with 730 01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:52,239 guys like us. Check him out, support him, tell him 731 01:05:52,239 --> 01:05:54,760 I sent you and George. It was great speaking to you. 732 01:05:56,440 --> 01:05:59,559 Thank you very much, to everyone to know home, keep 733 01:05:59,559 --> 01:06:15,239 your head up. I can't last for ever. But what