Speaker 1: Meaning a live man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing dig down in the forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause a tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man,
Speaker 1: nobody seen it.
Speaker 2: Nobody else might see.
Speaker 1: You don't need to know many.
Speaker 3: Luck you followed the other story and.
Speaker 1: You got directed like that. That's wain man. Don't blackly
Speaker 1: dang on the panel man, no matter. Man.
Speaker 2: All right, George Bagby, Welcome back to the Jay Burton Show.
Speaker 2: How are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. It's good to be back. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very excited to have you back. Uh. As
Speaker 2: we were discussing off air, this episode is sort of
Speaker 2: a you know, a continuation or a you know, further
Speaker 2: exploration of what we spoke about last time now several
Speaker 2: months ago. But I assume everyone is familiar with you.
Speaker 2: Obviously will allow time for filling at the end, but
Speaker 2: would you like to introduce our topic for today?
Speaker 1: Indeed, yes, we talked previously about controversies in classical schools
Speaker 1: and some of the priorities there that I found myself
Speaker 1: in conflict with. Initially, it was a great surprise to me.
Speaker 1: The Lady Gaga episode, the controversies about sexual ethics, which
Speaker 1: I didn't think was necessary to go very far into.
Speaker 1: I thought that I had I thought I had the
Speaker 1: parents on my side. Certainly it turned out I didn't,
Speaker 1: and there was more of a There was more of
Speaker 1: an element there of wanting to be respectable and not
Speaker 1: saying controversial things that would get you in trouble with
Speaker 1: the left that I didn't appreciate at that time. I
Speaker 1: thought that we were pushing back against the modern world
Speaker 1: in modest and vague ways. I wasn't there to throw
Speaker 1: bombs or anything. I wasn't trying to stoke any controversy.
Speaker 1: I was paying lip service to basic sexual morality. In
Speaker 1: the context of teaching Dante, one of the things I
Speaker 1: did was I explained the image in Dante of the
Speaker 1: barren sand where the usurers and sodomites were marching around
Speaker 1: tilling barren earth forever in hell, and that this was
Speaker 1: a kind of fraud. And I was explaining the images,
Speaker 1: so the image of usurers, they're making something infertile into
Speaker 1: something fertile. They're turning money which does not naturally reproduce
Speaker 1: like animals and agricultural crops naturally reproduce because of their nature.
Speaker 1: They're turning money into something fruitful, and so they're punished
Speaker 1: in the barren sand that does not bring forth any fruit.
Speaker 1: And likewise, the sodomites are forever running tilling the sand
Speaker 1: with their feet because in their lives they had turned
Speaker 1: something meant to be fruitful, which is sex, into something barren.
Speaker 1: And so we see this kind of thing recapitulated endlessly
Speaker 1: in Dante. You know, the gluttons are constantly eating too
Speaker 1: much and vomiting in Hell, and they're surrounded by rotting
Speaker 1: food and such, and sometimes those images are extremely easy
Speaker 1: to understand, but the barren sand was more complicated, and
Speaker 1: so I went in some length on that to explain
Speaker 1: what Dante meant. It turned out to be. It turned
Speaker 1: out to be very controversial just to explain it. I
Speaker 1: even had my dean come talk to me about it,
Speaker 1: and I thought that I had won honor for the
Speaker 1: school by going into that. I had even given a
Speaker 1: lecture at a conference about that instruction about teaching sexual
Speaker 1: moras in the context of teaching literature, because it's a
Speaker 1: major element. It's something that everyone's talking about in their
Speaker 1: own time. It's in pol politics, and my whole presentation
Speaker 1: on that occasion was how to do this innocuously and
Speaker 1: also its importance. Funny enough that particular lecture I had
Speaker 1: an interesting member in the audience, Rod Dreyer, was actually there.
Speaker 1: It was it was the very first time I'd ever
Speaker 1: encountered him. But anyway, I after seven years of that
Speaker 1: first teaching job, my contract was not renewed. That was
Speaker 1: a moment of incredible crisis for me because it was
Speaker 1: a reconsideration of teaching as a career. Would I what
Speaker 1: would I do if I wasn't going to teach? And
Speaker 1: I decided to leave the area. I went and took
Speaker 1: another job with someone that I knew and trusted to
Speaker 1: do more or less the same thing, and got myself
Speaker 1: rank in a new school, and I found elements there
Speaker 1: that I was totally accustomed to. Thankfully, it wasn't my
Speaker 1: teaching responsibility, but this was also an interesting element in
Speaker 1: classical schools just generally, the civil rights narrative from the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties is a particular focus where it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: need to be of Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham
Speaker 1: Jail has become a standard, and this is taught in
Speaker 1: rhetoric classes. It's not taught in a historical context. It's
Speaker 1: not taught in an American history course, modern history course,
Speaker 1: not necessarily anyway, it's a standard in the rhetoric class.
Speaker 1: So they analyze the argument and it's it's famous and
Speaker 1: taught in like junior high as a standard piece for
Speaker 1: intense investigation, and they're working on it rhetorically. They're analyzing
Speaker 1: arguments and such. But it is part of the inflated
Speaker 1: role of Martin Luther King and his legacy, so that
Speaker 1: he is he's taken as a secular saint. And that's
Speaker 1: an element that's very widespread. And I encountered that yet
Speaker 1: again at my new school. Political salvation story, and that's
Speaker 1: a very important American narrative. It figures very large, and
Speaker 1: I think that one of the reasons it's there is
Speaker 1: to win credibility for Christian schools in America. Moreover, it
Speaker 1: is one of the essential beliefs of practically all the
Speaker 1: adults involved in the school. They've they've all that they've
Speaker 1: all put an awful lot of stock into the narrative.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't that wasn't my role at my first
Speaker 1: school or my second school. I never had that on
Speaker 1: my on my syllabus. It wasn't in the classes that
Speaker 1: I taught, but it's interesting to note that that's that's
Speaker 1: a standard, and that that ended up coming back later.
Speaker 1: I was given a special role at my new school.
Speaker 1: I was given the role of reviewing the history curriculum,
Speaker 1: specifically the history curriculum for anti European bias, for the
Speaker 1: needless assaults on European heritage in America in particular. Now,
Speaker 1: that proved to be an extremely challenging assignment because you
Speaker 1: basically just have to go back into old textbooks to
Speaker 1: skirt that kind of narrative. But my work in that
Speaker 1: was not so important as the fact that I was
Speaker 1: given that task. So one of the things I did
Speaker 1: do is I taught modern literature, and particularly American literature.
Speaker 1: I still remember the morning that I began teaching The
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby for the first time, and I went to
Speaker 1: my favorite diner, a really old diner, and had the
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby with me and had my notes in such
Speaker 1: and I and I was reflecting. I think I wrote
Speaker 1: a letter I frequently did when when I went to
Speaker 1: the diner very early in the morning before I taught,
Speaker 1: and I was reflecting on how I felt like I
Speaker 1: had really made it as a teacher that I was
Speaker 1: teaching The Great Gatsby in high school. I felt like
Speaker 1: I had really really achieved a landmark in my career
Speaker 1: by doing that, and that was that was very satisfying.
Speaker 1: But I also taught Flannery O'Connor, who I really love.
Speaker 1: We had a tremendous amount to cover in that class,
Speaker 1: which was a challenge, but we were reading everything that
Speaker 1: rises must converge. So if you don't know this story,
Speaker 1: I was. I was talking to Pete Kenyonez about this
Speaker 1: story just recently and recapitulated the platform. The story involves
Speaker 1: a man named Julian, a young man who's taking his
Speaker 1: mother to the doctor. And his mother has gone through
Speaker 1: all of the sit ins and bus protests and such
Speaker 1: in the South from that period, and she's very worried
Speaker 1: to ride the bus with black people. She's very concerned
Speaker 1: about public transportation, she's concerned about her safety. Made newly relevant,
Speaker 1: perhaps just in recent times. Julian his response to his
Speaker 1: mother is fury and resentment. He hates her scruples and
Speaker 1: for all of her her so called backwards opinions about
Speaker 1: civil rights, which manifest in the short story. She is
Speaker 1: very kind. She's an old woman in poor health. She
Speaker 1: talks to the black people on the bus. She's totally
Speaker 1: respectful to them, though she voices her misgivings with her son.
Speaker 1: She gives a black child a nickel, insists on doing
Speaker 1: so as an emblem of patronage, which the girl's mother
Speaker 1: resents in anger and knocks the nickel out of the
Speaker 1: old woman's hand. But her intentions are all benevolent, and
Speaker 1: it's clear that that's so, whatever her opinions might be,
Speaker 1: whatever we might think of them. The narration is very
Speaker 1: clear that Julian is the one in the wrong. He
Speaker 1: wants to make an example of his mother. He's responding
Speaker 1: to her very angrily, bitterly telling her that she's going
Speaker 1: to she's going to embarrass him. Curiously, Julian tries to
Speaker 1: interact with the black people on the bus to show
Speaker 1: his own political opinions, and he has no idea how
Speaker 1: to talk to them, and they look at him as
Speaker 1: if he's weird, he's out of line. He doesn't succeed
Speaker 1: in interacting with them, whereas Julian's mother seems quite comfortable
Speaker 1: with them. In interacting, and she has she has more rapport,
Speaker 1: seemingly is able to get along, at least until the
Speaker 1: final scene where the angry mother knocks the nickel out
Speaker 1: of her hand. Well, when that final confrontation takes place,
Speaker 1: now they're on the sidewalk and Julian berates his mother
Speaker 1: in public and says, now you're going to see how
Speaker 1: things really are. Now you're feeling the embarrassment I've always
Speaker 1: wanted you to feel. We live in a new era
Speaker 1: now where everyone is equal, And in the midst of
Speaker 1: his berating her, she collapses on the sidewalk and dies
Speaker 1: of a stroke. So it's one of these very compelling
Speaker 1: Flannery O'Connor stories where we see we see conflict of
Speaker 1: sin in an individual and it manifests in some revel
Speaker 1: litory moment which should be a moment of repentance. This
Speaker 1: is one of the great themes in O'Connor, and O'Connor
Speaker 1: marks at the very end of the story in Narration
Speaker 1: that Julian is now entering a new world of pain
Speaker 1: and repentance. So she's putting a punctuation point at the
Speaker 1: very end in her inimitable brief style. But she's also
Speaker 1: pointing about the whole You know, she's indicating the point
Speaker 1: of the story in the narration, in these tiny little
Speaker 1: remarks in the narration, where it's clear what's going on
Speaker 1: according to the narrator. Well, I was teaching this in
Speaker 1: my high school class, and my students responded in a
Speaker 1: very unexpected way. They were all against Julian's mother. Several
Speaker 1: students are saying, she.
Speaker 3: Deserves it, these racist opinions, They deserve public humiliation, punishment,
Speaker 3: and this is the point of the story, that she
Speaker 3: needed to die.
Speaker 1: And I was pointing out the remarks in the narration. No,
Speaker 1: you're not getting what O'Connor is talking about here. This
Speaker 1: is actually something much more complex. The point of the
Speaker 1: story is not backwards racist opinions, deserving to have to
Speaker 1: be publicly humiliated and excoriated and such. The evil in
Speaker 1: the story is in Julian. And so that led to
Speaker 1: something much bigger. I brought a a selection of quotes
Speaker 1: from black American authors to the class and I distributed them.
Speaker 1: And my inspiration for that handout, which predated Flannery O'Connor
Speaker 1: and teaching literature in that mode. My inspiration was a
Speaker 1: book by Robert pin Warren called Who Speaks for the Negro,
Speaker 1: which he published in the sixties. And what Robert Pinwarren
Speaker 1: did was he traveled around the country and he talked
Speaker 1: to Martin Luther King, he talked to Malcolm X, he
Speaker 1: talked to James Baldwin. He talked to black educators in universities.
Speaker 1: And the point of his book he asked them all
Speaker 1: the exact same questions, and he wrote a whole book
Speaker 1: of his interviews with them. And the whole point of
Speaker 1: his book was they all had different ideas about policy
Speaker 1: in the Civil Rights era. None of them had the
Speaker 1: same vision. So that is what I distributed to the class,
Speaker 1: and I said, you all think you know what's right
Speaker 1: with the Civil Rights era, but what did Black Americans
Speaker 1: think of this? And among the quotes are black nationalists
Speaker 1: who say they need an independent country, a homogeneous racial nation.
Speaker 1: Among them are opponents of desegregation, like Zora Neil Hurston,
Speaker 1: who says, the Native Americans don't whine about their social
Speaker 1: status in America. I take the side of the Indians.
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone forcing someone to associate with me.
Speaker 1: They should associate with me because I'm a compelling person
Speaker 1: and they like me. That's that's what Zaora and Neil
Speaker 1: Hurston said, And of course you've got Malcolm X and
Speaker 1: MLKA and all the rest. And the whole point of
Speaker 1: the of the handout was not this person's right and
Speaker 1: this person's wrong. The whole point of the handout was
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different opinions here, you know,
Speaker 1: if we're interested in what they think about the situation,
Speaker 1: we'll note here there's a great variety who speaks for
Speaker 1: the negro Robert Penn Warren's evocative question. Well, I ended
Speaker 1: up having conversation with the faculty because the whole thing
Speaker 1: was about it was about Julian's mother and the glee
Speaker 1: that certain students had with her death in the story,
Speaker 1: and I talking to my colleagues about this and saying
Speaker 1: that I found it quite disturbing that they would gang
Speaker 1: up on an old woman in the context of the
Speaker 1: story and say she deserves to suffer and die and
Speaker 1: inhumiliation and not getting the point of O'Connor's O'Connor's tale anyway,
Speaker 1: But I circulated my handout that was, in retrospect a mistake,
Speaker 1: because there was a there was a scandal soon after
Speaker 1: that which I'm not going into but the result was
Speaker 1: a new atmosphere of paranoia, of a very unsettled time.
Speaker 1: We had a great many faculty meetings, faculty and staff
Speaker 1: meetings in which the school's stance on race became the
Speaker 1: primary concern of the board. So it turned out I
Speaker 1: had enemies after the Flannery O'Connor situation and my efforts
Speaker 1: to try to explain the story and talk about the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights era with a completely hands off sort of approach.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there to say what I thought was right
Speaker 1: in the Civil Rights era. The whole point was what
Speaker 1: did black Americans have to say about it? And those
Speaker 1: were all names that anyone would have heard of, you know,
Speaker 1: these weren't obscure people on my list of quotes. But
Speaker 1: the controversy it led to this paranoid investigation into the
Speaker 1: beliefs of various faculty members, and I was singled out.
Speaker 1: So there were two things that led to me being
Speaker 1: singled out so far as I know. The first was
Speaker 1: the handout. The second was my special role in history
Speaker 1: curriculum to root out and replace anti European bias in
Speaker 1: the curriculum, needless hostility to white people in the curriculum,
Speaker 1: the history curriculum. Soon after this whole investigation commences, I
Speaker 1: realize how serious the matter is. Board members start meeting
Speaker 1: me after my last class and pull me aside into
Speaker 1: the into the work room, a private space, and I
Speaker 1: get really incredible questions from them. The first sign of
Speaker 1: trouble is a board member of pulling me in. I'd
Speaker 1: met him before, but we'd never had a conversation. And
Speaker 1: he's also a father in the school, you know, his
Speaker 1: children attend the high school. And he says, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: here to ask you. Are you a racial segregationist? And
Speaker 1: I said no, what would what would give you that inclination?
Speaker 1: What would give you that idea? And he said that
Speaker 1: he had been told that I was. And I found
Speaker 1: that very interesting, especially considering we had one black student
Speaker 1: in the entire K through twelve program and she was adopted. Like,
Speaker 1: we don't believe in segregation, but is it to facto segregation?
Speaker 1: Any critic would say it was. But that's not the statute,
Speaker 1: that's not the policy, that's just how it ended up.
Speaker 1: So I didn't mention any of that. Of course, that
Speaker 1: had grounds to bring up later, but I said, no,
Speaker 1: I don't espouse that I don't propose that I'm a
Speaker 1: teacher and I'm explaining things I had been given a
Speaker 1: history class. I was teaching American history, and this was
Speaker 1: American history too, So it began with Reconstruction, and I
Speaker 1: was distributing readings and questions primary sources from Reconstruction. I
Speaker 1: had edited things for a history reader and handed them
Speaker 1: out to the students, and they brought questions that I
Speaker 1: had written for class discussion and confronted me with them
Speaker 1: and saying, well, what are you trying to say about
Speaker 1: civil rights in the reconstruction Europe? And I said, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to motivate conversation about it. What are you preferring here?
Speaker 1: This was a subject of argument at the time. How
Speaker 1: to affect citizenship for the freed slaves? What was the
Speaker 1: best way of going about that? Are their notable differences
Speaker 1: between the freed slaves and the white citizens of the
Speaker 1: post war or South. This, it seems to me to
Speaker 1: be perfectly reasonable, and I don't have any brief for
Speaker 1: it other than that. But they were offended by the
Speaker 1: tone of some of my questions. They also looked into
Speaker 1: the poetry recital for my history class. I had chosen
Speaker 1: Donald Davidson's Tall Men an excerpt from it now, just
Speaker 1: so you can appreciate, this was the point on which
Speaker 1: I got confronted privately by a board member. Soon after
Speaker 1: this controversy began. The line that they found so offensive
Speaker 1: in The Tall Men by Davidson was, shall I say
Speaker 1: the praise of men bright honor? The songs of my
Speaker 1: own race and the ways of fighters are something read
Speaker 1: in a book only, or graven only in stone, and
Speaker 1: not in the hearts of men. So Davidson is reviewing
Speaker 1: Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson in his poem. His poem's
Speaker 1: title The Tall Men, he refers to many times referring
Speaker 1: to the founders of the state of Tennessee, and also
Speaker 1: reflecting on modern ways and how easy our modern life is.
Speaker 1: We glide effortlessly over the pavement, you know, gently tapping
Speaker 1: the gas pedal. We sit beneath air conditioning in office towers,
Speaker 1: where our ancestors were carving out civilization in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: We're fighting the Indian nations. We're watching their loved ones
Speaker 1: massacred and fighting for their place in the new world.
Speaker 1: And so he's drawing a contrast there and then saying,
Speaker 1: are the ways of my ancestors something we only read
Speaker 1: in a book or is it something that's in our being?
Speaker 1: Are we essentially organically connected to our ancestors who founded
Speaker 1: our place in America? And he offers a lot of
Speaker 1: good material for historical reflection, which I've always resonated with.
Speaker 1: I've always been a fan of Donald Davidson. But the
Speaker 1: board members decided they were going to cancel the poetry
Speaker 1: recitation right at the end of the semester, after everyone
Speaker 1: had already memorized it. They singled it out as offensive
Speaker 1: and it used the word race. The songs of my
Speaker 1: own race and the ways of fighters are engraved not
Speaker 1: on stone only, but also in the hearts of men.
Speaker 1: They found that highly offensive, and once again I was
Speaker 1: pulled aside. I was asked if I was a racist,
Speaker 1: and I said, no, it rather depends on what you mean.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't going to I wasn't going to address
Speaker 1: that under the circumstances. I denied it, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: you gave your students this poem to memorize. And one
Speaker 1: of the board members, this was a couple of men
Speaker 1: that pulled me aside on that occasion one of the
Speaker 1: board members said, well, I looked him up on Wikipedia
Speaker 1: and he was a racist. Why were you giving them
Speaker 1: racist poetry? And I I offered my brief for the
Speaker 1: tall Men now the name of my press, a tribute
Speaker 1: that resulted in pulling the poem from recitation, and then
Speaker 1: I got a very interesting assignment from the board. Now
Speaker 1: I believe this was something that was specially decided. I
Speaker 1: don't think that it was. I don't think this was
Speaker 1: something that everyone was required to do, is what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: though I don't know that for sure. I was given
Speaker 1: a statement on race that was written by a third party.
Speaker 1: The board had found a statement for Christian schools about
Speaker 1: civic nationalism, the idea that this was something adaptable and cultural,
Speaker 1: nothing intrinsic. The statement went well out of its way
Speaker 1: on ostensibly Christian and Biblical grounds to conclude that race
Speaker 1: is an Unchristian concept and that anyone that thinks race
Speaker 1: exists has anti Christian priors. I was asked to write
Speaker 1: an essay in response to this statement and also to
Speaker 1: affirm its conclusion. I demurred artfully wrote an essay exhibiting
Speaker 1: all of the instances of national differenentfernces, tribal affiliations, ancestry
Speaker 1: mentioned in the Bible, and saying this statement being being
Speaker 1: emphatically Christian in its effort couldn't mean contradicting the Bible
Speaker 1: on matters of ancestry and inheritance and national characteristics, or
Speaker 1: even the creation of the nations of the world at
Speaker 1: the Tower of Babele. Those are all explicit in Christian
Speaker 1: belief and in the Bible itself, So the statement cannot
Speaker 1: mean that. The statement instead means that the topic of
Speaker 1: race has been dangerously politicized and Christians should avoid the subject,
Speaker 1: which I try to find some quality ways to assent to.
Speaker 1: This is too dangerous to talk about. People that talk
Speaker 1: about it are destroyed and everyone knows that. So for
Speaker 1: the sake of the institution, we avoid those subjects, is
Speaker 1: what I wrote. Well, the demur was not satisfying to
Speaker 1: the board, so we had an interview. They called me
Speaker 1: in for a special meeting with the board members to
Speaker 1: talk about the statement. Now, the people that gave me
Speaker 1: this statement were considering making it the official statement of
Speaker 1: the school and putting it on the website. This civic
Speaker 1: nationalist statement about race, a statement that they had never
Speaker 1: considered that they themselves had not written. They did not
Speaker 1: know the issue. So I went to the meeting. The
Speaker 1: meeting or the statement was all based on the assertion
Speaker 1: that race is a social construct, that it is man
Speaker 1: made in fact, that any differences that we might notice
Speaker 1: between people are differences of nurture and not of nature.
Speaker 1: And they said that the belief of anyone that claims
Speaker 1: to be a Christian, that believes that there are differences
Speaker 1: between the nations of the Earth is outside of the
Speaker 1: Christian communion in a serious way. That's what the statement said.
Speaker 1: So I went to the meeting, and I was prepared
Speaker 1: to talk about what I had written, but I decided
Speaker 1: to start the meeting with questions to the board, which
Speaker 1: turned out to be all that was necessary. First, I
Speaker 1: was well aware that the civic nationalist position is one
Speaker 1: of the key targets of the race critics of the time.
Speaker 1: So Ibram Kinsey and Robin DiAngelo and Tom Nahasi Coats,
Speaker 1: they all excoriate the civic nationalists because they all believe
Speaker 1: that race is real, and they believe that races are
Speaker 1: divided into two groups, oppressor races and oppressed races. Therefore,
Speaker 1: everyone must note who is being oppressed and who the
Speaker 1: oppressors are, and anyone who refuses to do that by
Speaker 1: taking a civic nationalist stance are, according to them, the
Speaker 1: worst racists of all and deserve primary focus for attack.
Speaker 1: Now this is in the literature and in the journalism
Speaker 1: and such. This is broadly known, but they obviously did
Speaker 1: not know that. So initially I asked them if they
Speaker 1: were aware that that was the mainstream on the matter.
Speaker 1: They were all in a panicked situation. They were desperately
Speaker 1: trying to get out of out of the gaze of
Speaker 1: their enemies. They did not want to be accused of
Speaker 1: being racist. They were extremely afraid that they would be.
Speaker 1: They were considering issuing this statement as a way of
Speaker 1: getting out of that. What they thought was a mainstream position,
Speaker 1: an uncontroversial position, was actually quite controversial and would not
Speaker 1: have saved them. So I told them, if you make
Speaker 1: this the official policy of the school, if you require
Speaker 1: us all to publicly assent to this, if you post
Speaker 1: this on your website, you will increase hostile attention on
Speaker 1: the institution. These are your enemies. This is how they think.
Speaker 1: No matter what we might think, this is what they think,
Speaker 1: and they hold all the cards. They have all the
Speaker 1: power to destroy you. You can't duck this by making
Speaker 1: a civic nationalist statement. So though it may be what
Speaker 1: you sincerely believe, though you might think this will get
Speaker 1: you out of trouble, if you were to make this statement,
Speaker 1: you should make it privately. You should not make it
Speaker 1: a public statement. They were completely unaware of this. None
Speaker 1: of them had heard of the writers I mentioned. None
Speaker 1: of them were aware of the state of the discourse,
Speaker 1: because for them, this was a brand new problem that
Speaker 1: had them all afraid. So that was my first question
Speaker 1: to them, Do you know these writers? Do you know
Speaker 1: what they would say about you? Do you know what
Speaker 1: will happen if you make this a public statement of
Speaker 1: the school. They didn't know the writers, they didn't know
Speaker 1: what they said about them, and they had no idea
Speaker 1: what the implications would be if they made it a
Speaker 1: public statement. So I advised caution. Second, I said, do you,
Speaker 1: gentlemen believe well, how did I say it? I wrote
Speaker 1: it down here? Would you tell a Jew that race
Speaker 1: is a social construct? This question had never occurred to them.
Speaker 1: They looked at one another in shock, and they looked
Speaker 1: back at me, and they said, no, no, we would
Speaker 1: not do that. And I said, so you have. You've
Speaker 1: got a statement that you can't tell someone outside of
Speaker 1: your own immediate circle. What I could have said is
Speaker 1: you've got a statement on race you cannot share with
Speaker 1: anyone outside your own race. The thought had never occurred
Speaker 1: to them. Of course, we could have taken in another direction.
Speaker 1: Would you tell a black man that race was a
Speaker 1: social construct, that it wasn't real? They wouldn't. But I
Speaker 1: decided to stick with I decided to stick with the
Speaker 1: biblical nation, a biblical race, if you will. Lastly, I
Speaker 1: asked them, do you believe do you sincerely believe the
Speaker 1: Bible teaches that race is a social construct made by
Speaker 1: the action of human beings and not through any other reason.
Speaker 1: And my source which I brought up, what about the
Speaker 1: Tower of Babel? Did God providentially divide the peoples of
Speaker 1: the earth? Does that represent divine intention? This had also
Speaker 1: never occurred to them, though they did read my essay.
Speaker 1: Presumably they were more interested in my demurl. So I asked,
Speaker 1: does the Bible teach race as a social construct? They
Speaker 1: had no answer. They found the thought disturbing. So I concluded,
Speaker 1: and I said, you have a statement your enemies may
Speaker 1: not see because they will destroy you for it. You
Speaker 1: have a statement that you cannot share with anyone outside
Speaker 1: of your own special circle, and you have a statement
Speaker 1: that you cannot assert is biblically true. This is a problem.
Speaker 1: And I left it, and the meeting dissolved, and I
Speaker 1: walked away from that meeting with a singular conviction that
Speaker 1: I would either be asked into leadership because they didn't
Speaker 1: know what was going on and I'd made that clear
Speaker 1: to them, or I couldn't stay in retrospect, I believe
Speaker 1: that all of the interviews, all of the tests I
Speaker 1: was given, in particular the essay I was asked to write,
Speaker 1: were efforts to find grounds to fire me that did
Speaker 1: not pan out. I stood by everything that I had
Speaker 1: said in class an out. I stood by all opinions
Speaker 1: that they actually had had approached me. At one time,
Speaker 1: another board member had come to me to ask for
Speaker 1: all of my handles on the Internet. He asked if
Speaker 1: I had Facebook. I did not. He asked if I
Speaker 1: was on Twitter. I was not. I had never had
Speaker 1: a presence on Twitter at that time. I had a
Speaker 1: Facebook account, but it had been deleted years previous. He
Speaker 1: then wanted to get any blog articles I had written
Speaker 1: in my life. And I went to the interim headmaster,
Speaker 1: who was a friend of mine and who was very
Speaker 1: supportive of me through the whole thing, a very humane
Speaker 1: man who I'm still friends with. He's no longer at
Speaker 1: the institution. Many are not this is. This all happened
Speaker 1: years ago. So one of the reasons I decided to
Speaker 1: talk about it. I asked him about that. I said,
Speaker 1: so they want they want MySpace articles I wrote in college.
Speaker 1: This is outrageous that I'd be subjected to such scrutiny
Speaker 1: at this occasion in my career that a college student
Speaker 1: wouldn't have some controversial opinion or other. This is obviously
Speaker 1: an effort to fire me and cancel me. And he
Speaker 1: was very sympathetic and said that he thought that it was.
Speaker 1: It was paranoid and bad policy. It was. It was
Speaker 1: extremely discouraging to everyone I talked to. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what other faculty we're going through at that time.
Speaker 1: I only know my own experience because I went through
Speaker 1: all of those encounters alone. But when I walked out
Speaker 1: of that inquisition about the race statement, I knew that
Speaker 1: I would either I would either come out with enhanced
Speaker 1: position or I would have to leave. There wouldn't be
Speaker 1: any means for me to stay, and I did not
Speaker 1: want to stay. I talked with my wife many times
Speaker 1: in that period saying I want nothing to do with
Speaker 1: these people. The sooner that I can leave this arrangement,
Speaker 1: the better. But of course I didn't want to lose
Speaker 1: my contract. I had nothing to go on on for
Speaker 1: besides my salary. You know that that was the way
Speaker 1: I supported my family. So it was a very uncertain period.
Speaker 1: Soon after, maybe a couple of weeks after, I got
Speaker 1: a call another meeting with the board. So I went,
Speaker 1: and this this was right after exams, midterms, and we
Speaker 1: were all coming back to the school for class. In
Speaker 1: a couple of days, I had everything graded and I
Speaker 1: sat down in the room with the board members and
Speaker 1: they said, we've decided that we will part ways. We
Speaker 1: have decided you are not in violation of your contract
Speaker 1: or the code of conduct. No doubt they had been
Speaker 1: looking for ways that I was. Because the next step
Speaker 1: was they helped me gather my things. I gave them
Speaker 1: the graded tests, and they escorted me off campus and
Speaker 1: told me not to come back. They also gave me
Speaker 1: a statement in writing that in the name, in the
Speaker 1: name of the board, that I would be paid the
Speaker 1: remainder of my contract, and indeed I was up till
Speaker 1: the very last paycheck, which I caught a couple of
Speaker 1: years later. In the midst of all of that, I
Speaker 1: got a public confrontation by an officer of the school,
Speaker 1: the person that I had talked to about the quotes
Speaker 1: about from from the Black American writers in relation to
Speaker 1: the Flannery O'Connor episode. She confronted me in a public
Speaker 1: place in front of my friends and called me a
Speaker 1: white nationalist and excoriated me. And after that I realized
Speaker 1: I had I had serious opponents in the structure of
Speaker 1: the school. Then then it made more sense to me
Speaker 1: the kinds of confrontations that I'd had, the board member
Speaker 1: asking me if I was a racial segregationist and such.
Speaker 1: It made a little more sense that someone in the
Speaker 1: structure had taken a side against me and was saying
Speaker 1: things about me unknown to me at that time. So
Speaker 1: it's a it's an interesting circumstance, and I want to
Speaker 1: I want to try to explain the position of the
Speaker 1: board because I like these people. In spite of everything
Speaker 1: and I feel like they did something honorable to me
Speaker 1: under the circumstances of honoring my contract, for instance, last paycheck,
Speaker 1: notwithstanding whatever I got it eventually. These were professionals, these
Speaker 1: were accountants, These were our ends, These were people with
Speaker 1: small businesses. These were people that had put extraordinary resources
Speaker 1: and time to set up an institution they could trust
Speaker 1: to educate their children. That is a really extraordinary achievement.
Speaker 1: There are very few people that have the time and
Speaker 1: resources to do such a thing, and the charge of
Speaker 1: racism would cancel all of them, would destroy their careers,
Speaker 1: would destroy the institution they had built. We know the
Speaker 1: forces that would act against them, We know how ruthless
Speaker 1: they are, and their rally to try to avert that
Speaker 1: disaster makes perfect sense. The fact that they didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on, the fact that they did not
Speaker 1: know the state of the discourse is not in the
Speaker 1: least unusual. Who's reading White Fragility leftists? You know, we
Speaker 1: may know the thesis of those books, but they don't
Speaker 1: make for edifying reading. Let's let uh, let's let prude
Speaker 1: and dimes handle things like that. They can tell us
Speaker 1: what's going on there, so we don't have to read
Speaker 1: it right? Do you even read the prudentialist in our
Speaker 1: friend Dimes from Canadia? They're doing wonderful work there. But
Speaker 1: these these middle class folks with so many virtues, and
Speaker 1: I'm I don't think that I'm overstating this. I have
Speaker 1: tremendous sympathy for these people. They don't want to touch
Speaker 1: the likes of me with a ten foot poll and
Speaker 1: I've learned through heart experience I can't trust them because
Speaker 1: of the huge disparity between me and them. I'm utterly
Speaker 1: at their mercy. They could bankrupt me by tossing me
Speaker 1: to their enemies to distract their enemies from their throats.
Speaker 1: And that's the situation until we find some way to
Speaker 1: set up an independent institution that's not vulnerable to such
Speaker 1: tax and that leadership that will protect their own people.
Speaker 1: I don't see a way, not for me, anyway to
Speaker 1: tease Chetta at a school. I chose to teach at
Speaker 1: this school for particular reasons. And this this all fell
Speaker 1: apart in in the course of the controversy in obvious
Speaker 1: and unspoken ways, and it was a it was an
Speaker 1: extremely important experience. It was it was based on my
Speaker 1: transition out of that I started driving Uber. I was
Speaker 1: I had no desire to go and work for any
Speaker 1: employer at that point, but I had a family to
Speaker 1: care for, and so I started driving Uber full time
Speaker 1: soon after that, and UH was able to make things
Speaker 1: work doing that for a while. Now I've I've mostly
Speaker 1: transitioned out of that and have other other means to
Speaker 1: support my family. But I've been I've been privately burgh.
Speaker 1: Let's see, I've been a private contractor just self employed
Speaker 1: since then. And Tall Men Books is my major effort.
Speaker 1: What have I done with all of this, all this
Speaker 1: initiative and time between now and then? I started Tall
Speaker 1: Men Books, which is a reference to the poem that
Speaker 1: once got me in such serious trouble. It is my slogan,
Speaker 1: and I want everyone to remember that the bones of
Speaker 1: tall men lie in American earth, and those are our
Speaker 1: ancestors who gave us our inheritance. This is not something
Speaker 1: that we just read in dusty old books. This is
Speaker 1: the blood that flows in our veins. So that's my story.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to be able to conclude it here with
Speaker 1: you today.
Speaker 2: There are several things there. One just this morning I
Speaker 2: wrapped up Brad Kelly's excellent book Darkened Earth. I don't
Speaker 2: have the copy in front of me. He'll be on
Speaker 2: to discuss it soon. But the sort of inciting incident
Speaker 2: is an academic cancelation. And you know, one of the
Speaker 2: things that he talks about that is that sort of
Speaker 2: slow dawning realization that they're not on your side, right,
Speaker 2: that you have been sort of singled out and selected out,
Speaker 2: and people are acting to sort of preserve their own skin.
Speaker 2: And I'd imagine that's sort of a difficult transition to
Speaker 2: go through, right, realizing that while you may have friends,
Speaker 2: they're not in a position to protect you. And interesting
Speaker 2: note there, and again I think that you're check kind
Speaker 2: of pick a through line. There's something interesting as well
Speaker 2: to the degree to which, you know, kind of good
Speaker 2: conservatives in quotes are really the only believers in the
Speaker 2: kind of civil rights mythology of a previous era. And
Speaker 2: they think that by you know, holding that position and
Speaker 2: retreating to it, that they can protect themselves. And that
Speaker 2: is plainly not true. You know, as you've said, the
Speaker 2: people who accuse them already have disdain for those figures.
Speaker 2: And you know, no matter how many times you've guided
Speaker 2: a group of you know, seventeen year olds through letters
Speaker 2: from Birmingham jail. That will not protect you from the mob.
Speaker 2: It's by no means a deterrent. Absolutely Well, George, we've
Speaker 2: sort of wrapped this story and now you were, you know,
Speaker 2: on your own, you have your your book sales. Is
Speaker 2: there any sort of advice or something you could offer
Speaker 2: to someone in a similar situation, right, someone who's sort
Speaker 2: of going through a cancelation?
Speaker 1: Oh my, I think we we have plenty of examples
Speaker 1: in our circles of people that have encountered these pressures
Speaker 1: or been forced to switch careers, been identified as deplorable
Speaker 1: on whichever grounds. It's. It's a really difficult thing to
Speaker 1: deal with. And I'm I made the the difficult choe
Speaker 1: of trying to stick with what I knew and trying
Speaker 1: to support my family off of that. And it's taken
Speaker 1: a while to make that a viable means of income,
Speaker 1: and it's taken many sacrifices. We must continue to network
Speaker 1: among people of our own beliefs and build up organizations
Speaker 1: to support one another. The Old Glory Club has been
Speaker 1: extremely helpful to me, help me find people to work with,
Speaker 1: help me find talent to do things that I don't
Speaker 1: know how to do myself, and has offered me tremendous
Speaker 1: solidarity and also of financial support. The Old Glory Club
Speaker 1: gave me a grant for a series of books that
Speaker 1: I've been republishing, The Chronicles of America. Just as an example.
Speaker 1: I've had very kind private individuals arrange fundraisers for me
Speaker 1: when I've been in special need. This is something that
Speaker 1: I'm very humbled and deeply grateful for. My family and
Speaker 1: I are just overwhelmed with the kindness that people in
Speaker 1: the organization have shown to us, and it's done us
Speaker 1: tremendous good. Recently, I was able to get a dentist
Speaker 1: from my daughter through private gifts from friends. But obviously
Speaker 1: we want to be more independent and self sufficient. I've been.
Speaker 1: I've been in business for myself now for several years.
Speaker 1: I've got a wife and three children. I have to
Speaker 1: travel a lot to support my family, but it's also
Speaker 1: offered all sorts of new rewards. It's wonderful to work
Speaker 1: in my field with my material and what I know best.
Speaker 1: That's sometimes I think that maybe I should move into
Speaker 1: something more traditional in terms of employment, but we also
Speaker 1: know that that's an extremely difficult thing to do now too.
Speaker 1: My advice for those who are under these pressures, facing
Speaker 1: cancelation or going through it is network with those you trust,
Speaker 1: get advice, consider relocation because when you go through a cancelation,
Speaker 1: when you are excluded from the community on grounds that
Speaker 1: you think dangerous thoughts, you believe unpalatable things, it may
Speaker 1: be time to find different community to network with. After
Speaker 1: my cancelation, I lost a lot of valuable social contacts
Speaker 1: in my town. And many of these people they meant
Speaker 1: me well. They never had problems with me, they never
Speaker 1: attacked me. They offered me their support privately that they
Speaker 1: thought what was going on was dreadful, was wicked. They
Speaker 1: are subject to the same kinds of social forces as
Speaker 1: the board members were. Their careers could have been attacked,
Speaker 1: they could have been brought under suspicion. They wanted to
Speaker 1: stay out of attention, and I can't blame them, but
Speaker 1: it means that I became a dangerous person to associate with,
Speaker 1: which I think plenty of people on your podcast certainly
Speaker 1: can relate to. This is a common story among us.
Speaker 1: So identify the friends who aren't afraid to be seen
Speaker 1: with you. Identify the friends who are not afraid to
Speaker 1: associate you publicly. Those are the kinds of people that
Speaker 1: we need to rally with in with the unusual challenges
Speaker 1: that we face today. It's those that you can trust,
Speaker 1: those that will be known by your side in public.
Speaker 1: Those are the most valuable connections that we can cultivate.
Speaker 1: Go into business with those people, relocate to be near them.
Speaker 1: If you can't get along with your family under the
Speaker 1: under the circumstances, family ties are always the deepest and
Speaker 1: should be the ones that we primarily look for. Family
Speaker 1: will help you. Family will will get up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night when you're all sick and imperiled.
Speaker 1: Family will come and defend your house from a mob.
Speaker 1: It is a special kind of friend that will stand
Speaker 1: with you and do that. And I'm extremely proud and
Speaker 1: humbled to have many of those friends, many of which
Speaker 1: most of which I've come to know after the cancelation.
Speaker 1: So socially, it's been very instructive, very painful, but also
Speaker 1: very instructive and very rewarding. Some of the things that
Speaker 1: I've encountered since that whole ordeal.
Speaker 2: Well, as we've said, people know where to find you, George,
Speaker 2: I'll be sure to put those links in the description.
Speaker 2: It's good to have you back on. I know obviously
Speaker 2: you've been very busy, but I enjoy our episodes immensely,
Speaker 2: so thank you.
Speaker 1: It's a great pleasure. Thanks for making time for me.
Speaker 2: As far as my stuff, Jay Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube,
Speaker 2: anywhere you listen to podcasts, this is what I do.
Speaker 2: I was just kind of doing some tabulating and realized
Speaker 2: I've been doing this for two hundred and twenty five days, right,
Speaker 2: not all that long. And as George said, all right,
Speaker 2: striking on on your own can be It can be
Speaker 2: a little intimidating, right, you're sort of jumping into an
Speaker 2: abyss and you'll have been great, right. I couldn't do
Speaker 2: it without your guys support. It's you know, what pays
Speaker 2: my mortgage, So thank you all so much. If you're
Speaker 2: wondering what you get for your support, get the episodes
Speaker 2: early in ad free on Patreon, Substack, or gum Road.
Speaker 2: Also check out our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness Coaching. JD's
Speaker 2: another guy right who's you know, started a business with
Speaker 2: guys like us. Check him out, support him, tell him
Speaker 2: I sent you and George. It was great speaking to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, to everyone to know home, keep
Speaker 2: your head up. I can't last for ever. But what