"An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy" by Kenny Xu

 

An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy

Kenny Xu's New Book Isn't Just about Asians; It's about All Americans

 

I approached this lecture, semester after semester, with the focus of a medieval knight challenging the dragon threatening to incinerate the village. I needed to summon honesty that would slice like a surgeon's scalpel, but also compassion; I needed to exercise cool rationality, while conveying the subject matter's heat. I gazed at my students' faces. They arrived in class from diverse backgrounds: housing projects in crime-ridden inner cities; wealthy, white and Asian suburbs; night jobs as janitors and EMTs; mornings getting five or six little brothers and sisters off to school. There were whites, blacks, Asians. I had told them on the first day that this class in education might, at first glance, appear boring and safe. In fact, I warned, Americans were at each others' throats over the ideas we'd be debating.

 

I walked to the chalk board with the brisk clip of someone bucking herself up. "It's called the achievement gap," I would say. "Americans of East Asian descent, as a group, score at the top of standardized tests." I wrote "East Asians" on the board. "Remember that 'East' part. It will be important later. Then, after East Asians, whites. Then Hispanics. Then blacks. This happens test after test, year after year. The achievement gap persists even among African Americans making as much money as white Americans."

 

I turned from the board to my students. My emotional torniquets were handy. I was ready to mop up any metaphorical blood. I always sought the same reaction: surprise. I never saw it. I was merely speaking the quiet part out loud. Everyone in class already knew, from their "lived experience." They knew that in 2014, for example, in nearby Paterson, a majority-minority city, only nineteen high school students – 3.2% of the eligible student population – were deemed qualified for college. They sat in classes where white and Asian kids were comfortable with mentions of World War II and photosynthesis and black kids from Paterson exchanged nervous looks with each other, and only a tiny few were brave enough to say, "Please tell me what that word you just used means. I don't understand it. I've never heard it before."

 

What surprised me most of all was what I saw on most of my black students' faces. No self-pity. No outraged protests that this could not be true. No insistence that "the white man" was to blame. Rather, what I saw was resignation and determination. "I am going to be different. I am here to work hard and get a degree." My black students were often ruthless Darwinians, steely little capitalists, and American dreamers, believing more firmly than I in the old adage, "Work hard and you will be rewarded."

 

I quoted an article. "'If Harvard admitted students based on their academic qualifications alone, Harvard would be 43% Asian, 38.4% white, 0.7% black, and 2.4% Hispanic, according to a 2013 study by Harvard's Office of Institutional Research. Instead, Harvard's undergraduates in 2013 were 43.2% white, 18.7% Asian, 10.5% black, and 9.5% Hispanic.'" I asked, "Imagine that you are the president of Harvard. Would you admit students based only on academics? Or would you practice affirmative action?"

 

Again, semester after semester, my students shocked me, rather than vice versa. "Admit students to college on merit, not affirmative action," they insisted. When I probed them, they explained. They lived among people who had thrown in the towel. One black student said that he had an able-bodied uncle in his fifties who had never held a job. He had lived his entire life on government largesse. Another student reported a cousin who had child after child by a string of different men. She lived on benefits to single mothers and petty crime. My students vowed that they were going to be different. They were working, sacrificing, and keeping their eyes on the prize. If Harvard admitted 0.7% black students, they would be part of that 0.7%. Maybe not this year, but someday.  

 

"But, if Asians dominate elite universities, won't resentments build up against them?" I asked.

 

"So what if Harvard is mostly Asian? The NBA is mostly black," they'd respond.

 

"You know, my black students are more conservative than I am," I casually remarked to a superior one day.

 

This African American woman replied sharply, "It is not your job to discover their worldview. It is your job to change their worldview. We have to bring them around." Bring them around to a leftist point of view. In short, indoctrinate them, not educate them. Indoctrinate them into believing that any inequity between African Americans and any other demographic is the result of white supremacy and that inequity must be fixed with taxpayer-funded, government programs.

 

I did introduce my students to leftist ideas, but I introduced them to conservative thinkers, as well. I let them decide for themselves which set of ideas were most coherent.

 

"Remember," I said to my students. "The Asians doing really well in American schools are largely from East Asian countries like China, Korea, and Japan. What these countries have in common is a Confucian heritage. In that tradition, the parent-child bond is sacred. This is called 'filial piety.' Contrast that with the current state of the African American family." We watched a Prager University video featuring Larry Elder explaining how progressive policies, begun under President Lyndon Johnson, damaged the black family, driving fathers out of the home, and increasing illegitimacy.

 

We talked about the fifty-year-old, longitudinal, Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. Experimenters told a child he could have one piece of candy immediately, or two pieces of candy after a short wait. Over time, the children who were able to delay gratification in order to gain a greater reward showed better lifetime outcomes. The presence of the father in the home was correlated with children's ability to delay gratification. Progressives have attacked the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment; they don't like its "conservative" conclusion that children benefit from having their father in the home. After all gender is "fluid," "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," "Heather has two mommies," and single mothers are to be admired. "It takes a village to raise a child." For "village" read "the government, not the parents." In spite of progressive criticisms of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, other studies support the experiment's conclusions. A 2017 study of 33 developed countries concluded that "the absence of fathers from the household … is associated with adverse outcomes for children in virtually all developed countries … this is generally true in terms of both cognitive and non-cognitive skills."

 

"No," I said to my students. "East Asians are not racially superior, and black people are not inferior. Remember, non-Confucian countries bordering East Asian countries have racially similar populations but their immigrants to the US are not acing exams like the immigrants from Confucian cultures. Can we apply this lesson about culture to African American populations? What would happen if black leaders like Al Sharpton began a push for intact families and parental support for academics?"

 

My students sneered. "Al Sharpton is not our leader."

 

"Who is?"

 

They had no answers.

 

I thought of this class lecture many times while reading Kenny Xu's explosive new book, "An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy." Xu is mad as hell and he's not gonna take it any more. His book is a rant. Asian Americans, Xu points out, believe in the American Dream. They have intact families. They practice delayed gratification. They work hard, and parents support their children in their academics. They do not buck authority.

 

In spite of all this, American educational and corporate institutions often discriminate against Asian Americans, for fear of appearing "too Asian" at a time when "diversity" is a value, and "diversity" means visible African American and Hispanic faces in films, classrooms, and corporate suites. Indeed, leftist race activists have resorted to accusing Asians of cheating. So-called Asian-American "cheating" consists of working hard and doing well. The white leftists pushing diversity, Xu points out, are often members of socioeconomic elites, and they are not surrendering their place in the hierarchy for anything. Rather, they are picking and choosing which social groups beneath them in the pecking order will be tapped with the magic wand of preference. Rather than being identified as racial minorities in programs that favor racial minorities, successful Asians are damned as "white adjacent."

 

In place of current concepts of affirmative action, Xu recommends a renewed commitment to meritocracy, the principle that whoever is best qualified for a school slot or a job receives it, regardless of race. Xu reminds his reader that Americans care enough about excellence in sports – for heaven's sake! – that there is no call to produce an NBA team with a representational number of Asian-American players. We should care at least as much about academics and highly responsible jobs in government, industry, and health care as we care about sinking baskets. Xu warns that abandoning meritocracy results in incompetence in high places, and subsequent bad decisions about health, technology, and national policy, bad decisions that hurt all members of society.

 

There are many statistics in "An Inconvenient Minority." Here are some:

 

* In 2020, Virginia's Thomas Jefferson High School for Mathematics and Science, ranked number one in the country, admitted a class that was 73% Asian. Of the 486 students accepted, 6 were black.

 

* In 2018, Asians made up 73% of students at Stuyvesant, a specialized high school in New York City. This is not about high income: almost 50% of specialized school students qualify for free or reduced cost lunch.

 

* The Bronx High School of Science has produced eight Nobel Prize winners. Stuyvesant has produced four. These schools' traditional emphasis on meritocracy has national and international import.

 

* Poor and rich Asian students alike study an average of 13 hours per week. White students study an average of 5.5 hours per week.

 

* In a 2012 Pew poll, Asian Americans, at 69%, were the most likely to believe that hard work results in success, and the most likely to respect traditional family values, and to experience upward social mobility.

 

* In California in 1940, Asian Americans earned on average an amount comparable to the average black American. By 1980, Asian Americans were earning more than average whites and significantly more than blacks.

 

* The arrest rate for whites is 3.6% for blacks, 6.7%, for Asian Americans, 0.8%.

 

* To gain college admission, Asian-American applicants must score, on average, 140, 270, and 450 points higher on the SAT than their white, Hispanic, and black fellow applicants

 

* 15% of Harvard's student body comes from the top 1% of household income; 70% come from the top 20%; 43% of Harvard's white students are affiliated with Harvard alumni, faculty, or donors.

 

* 71% of minority Harvard students come from "well-off backgrounds." In 2004, 41% of black students at the 28 most selective campuses in America were immigrants or the children of immigrants. In other words, racial preferences at elite colleges disproportionately help economically well-off American blacks, and black immigrants, rather than members of the American black underclass.

 

* Black law school graduates who had received a racial preference admission to a tier one law school tend to have lower GPAs at these top schools and, because of these lower GPAs, end up earning about the same as graduates from a tier three law school, that is, the law school they might have been admitted to without any racial preferences.

 

* After Richard Sander's research uncovered the above facts, the University of California spent "close to a million dollars" to prevent Sander from accessing any more facts about its racial preferences and how they affected students' life trajectories, because publication of such material posed "a threat to affirmative action" and to the university's reputation. Apparently how the university's policies affected its students was not the university's concern.

 

* The California Institute of Technology admits students on the basis of academics, not race. Caltech's undergraduate student body is 48% Asian. Its endowment is six times smaller than MIT's, but it ranks fifth in the nation in scholarly citations per faculty member, compared to MIT's number two rank.  

 

As we can see, above, Xu reports ample statistics to prove that Asian Americans are doing well at academics, and that academic institutions, from specialized high schools to Harvard, are erecting barriers punishing Asians for their success. Xu's clearly stated conclusions are only part of the story his book tells. Xu alludes to another, equally significant narrative. Xu never spells this parallel narrative out. In this review, I will do so.

 

Xu mentions discrimination Asian Americans have faced. He writes, briefly, about, for example,  the internment of Japanese during World War II. Xu's sketch of anti-Asian prejudice in the US is brief and understated, perhaps suiting what Xu refers to as Asian "humility." He could have written a much more lachrymose account, one that included brutal conditions for Chinese railroad workers, Chinese immigrants assessed as "the meanest slaves on earth," laws against Chinese marrying whites, and against the importation of Chinese wives, resulting in many Chinese-American men being unable to marry anyone, and the 1871 Chinese Massacre, or mass lynching, in Los Angeles. Xu is similarly understated in his page and a half of remarks about anti-Asian violence occurring on the streets of America's cities today. Again, if Xu were tempted to play the pity card, a more detailed account of these deadly attacks, many recorded on video, would be the opportunity to do so, but Xu forgoes the opportunity to play up the suffering of his fellow Asian Americans.

 

Xu mentions, but does not dwell on, treatment of Asians in American film. He could have said so much more. It could be argued that American film, in spite of anti-black racism, has been much kinder to African Americans than to Asian Americans. American film has for decades attempted to address anti-black racism, see, for example, 1934's "Imitation of Life" and 1949's "Pinky." Scroll through online lists of the top American films of the 1930s and 1940s in vain to find any major American film from the 30s and 40s that addressed anti-Asian prejudice in the way that films addressed anti-black prejudice. Hattie McDaniel, in the sympathetic role of "Mammy," won an Academy Award for best supporting actress in 1939. The Wikipedia page of African American Academy Award winners and nominees is 24 pages long. The list of Asian winners and nominees is 17 pages long, and those 17 pages are padded with Caucasians. For example, the British actress Vivien Leigh, who happened to have been born in Darjeeling, and Armenian-American Cher are included as "Asian." It wasn't until 1957, eighteen years after McDaniels' win, that an East Asian, Miyoshi Umeki, won for an onscreen performance, as best supporting actress in "Sayonara." American films have pumped out pretty horrifying depictions of Asians, from 1915's "The Cheat," to 1919's "Broken Blossoms," to numerous Fu Manchu movies, to Mickey Rooney in 1961's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to Long Duk Dong in 1984's "Sixteen Candles," right up to 2019's "Once Upon a time in Hollywood."

 

The perceptive reader will realize, given the above facts, the parallel, unspoken narrative in Xu's book. Xu insists that there is a minority population in the US that has experienced deadly persecution, highly negative stereotyping, and racist legislation, and that, indeed, is discriminated against in the present day, by powerful institutions like Harvard and Google, but that loves this country, respects the law, works hard, and achieves highly.

 

The conclusion a perceptive reader cannot help but draw is that the Asian American narrative threatens the leftist version of the African American narrative. Extremely powerful persons and institutions, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, cultural superstars Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, kindergartens through elite universities using critical race theory curricula, corporations using affirmative action hiring, and entertainment media producing content all insist on a very different narrative. That power narrative asserts the following as unquestionable: the achievement gap and higher rates of violent crime among African Americans are inevitable, they are attributable exclusively to white supremacy, African Americans are powerless to change these trends, and the only solution to the achievement gap and all inequities is for whites to surrender their tangible and intangible goods to blacks. Thus the achievement gap can only be closed by white people giving up school slots to blacks, and abandoning grading and testing completely. Crime rates can be lowered only be "defunding the police."

 

As Kendi puts it, "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." An infamous internet meme, "Equality v Equity," illustrates this approach. Three black males, an adult, a child, and a toddler, are standing on crates behind a wooden fence, attempting to watch a baseball game. The toddler is too short to see over the fence. The adult man gives up his crate so that the toddler can stand on it and see the game. The person with more gives his belongings to someone who has less. That's equity. That's Kendi's "present discrimination."

 

This limited-good, zero-sum worldview has been applied to commodities as diverse as Hollywood films and test scores. Recently NPR film critic Eric Deggans insisted that Tom Hanks, by making well-received films about white heroes, made it harder for films about black heroes to be made. Hanks, to be "anti-racist," must "dismantle … white American heroism."

 

Similarly, Asians must be chastised, not lauded, for their success. Xu quotes Ice Cube's over-the-top anti-Asian racism, hate, and threats of violence as expressed in his rap "Black Korea."

 

"Every time I wanna go get a f------- brew

 

I gotta go down to the store with the two

 

Oriental one penny countin' mother-------…

 

"Look, you little Chinese mother------ …

 

"Mother ---- you!"

 

… your little chop suey ass'll be a target …

 

pay respect to the black fist

 

Or we'll burn your store right down to a crisp"

 

Korean families stick together, support each other, work hard, and open stores in underserved neighborhoods. For this, they must be insulted and threatened, not praised. Leftists accuse Asians of "opportunity hoarding." As if opportunity were a limited good, and as if Asians, by grabbing at the brass ring, prevent others from doing so. This is, as Xu points out, the logic and tactics of a Maoist struggle session.

 

Ibram X Kendi writes, "The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies. We degrade Black minds every time we speak of an 'academic-achievement gap' based on these numbers."

 

Asians are inconvenient because Asians throw this powerful narrative into question. In Paterson, NJ, Asian-American students, largely Muslim, attend class side-by-side with African American students. These Muslims are often recent immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan. In Woke parlance, they are the "brown" half of "black and brown." They speak a different language at home than at school. Their parents still dress in saris, abayas, and shalwar kameez. They are members of a religious group for which many Americans feel great hostility and suspicion. They attend the exact same low-rated schools as black students. Even so, Asian-American students in Paterson do better than African American students in Paterson (see for example here).

 

Further, black females attend the exact same classrooms that black males sit in, and black females are doing better at academics than black males. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reports that "Black women currently earn about two thirds of all African-American bachelor's degree awards, 70% of all master's degrees, and more than 60% of all doctorates. Black women also hold a majority of all African-American enrollments in law, medical, and dental schools." The Woke dogma of intersectionality decrees that female black students suffer from misogyny as well as white supremacy. And yet female students are outperforming males. And then there is this difficult fact: whites, on average, score less than Asians. By Kendi's own rule, that any inequality is the result of racism, white students' lower place in comparison to Asians must be explained by anti-white racism and Asian privilege. Absurd. Kendi's and others' insistence that white supremacy is the one-size-fits-all explanation for the achievement gap is transparent in its inadequacy. If Kendi had any compassion for black students at all, he would echo the many black conservatives who insist that culture must be examined.

 

Asian Americans, just by living their lives, prove the critical race theorists wrong. Those who have faced prejudice are not doomed. White supremacy is not the Rosetta Stone that explains everything about black people's lives. African American adults, like all other adults, are equipped with agency, that is, the ability to make choices about their lives. Some of those choices are good, and some of those choices are bad. If adults in the African American underclass were to make different choices, their children's academic and life outcomes would improve.

 

The late, great George Mason University economics professor, Walter E. Williams, published, in 2005, an article entitled "How Not to be Poor." "First, graduate from high school," he wrote. "Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior."

 

To those who insist that white supremacy prevents African Americans from escaping poverty, Williams replied, "Is it racial discrimination that stops black students from studying and completing high school? Is it racial discrimination that's responsible for the 68% illegitimacy rate among blacks? … Among black households that included a married couple, over 50% were middle class earning above $50,000, and 26% earned more than $75,000. How in the world did these black families manage not to be poor? Did America's racists cut them some slack?"

 

To Williams' suggestions, one might add: if you want to thrive as well as just survive, take a cue from Asian Americans. Work together as a family. Keep that nose to the grindstone, at school as well as work, delay gratification, and someday your ship will come in.

 

I return, in my mind, to the lecture I delivered so many times. I never answered the question I asked my students. If I were president of Harvard, would I practice race preferences? I do not believe that any racial group is superior to any other. I believe that there are as many budding Bill Gates and Nobel Prize winners in Paterson as in any other city. I know that the black kids here are deprived. I know that that deprivation is totally unfair and is the result of choices made by adults, not relatively powerless children. I know that most are growing up in fatherless households. I know that Paterson's single mothers are overwhelmed and can't give their kids a fraction of what kids need to thrive.

 

All the breast-beating in the world about the horrors of slavery, and all the articles like this citing statistics that show that strong families can overcome tough circumstances and mold children who advance to society's highest levels, have zero impact on Paterson kids' lives. What does have an impact on their lives? Exactly what has an impact on most of our lives. What is right in front of them: streets full of garbage, loud and violent rap broadcast, day and night, from car stereos, mothers too stressed to offer consistent love, and a popular culture full of cheap images of sex and violence. Too many of the men they interact with are standing on street corners, day in and out, smoking marijuana, drinking from bottles, and lying in their own waste.

 

Government programs? White guilt? There is no deficit of these "solutions" here in Paterson. Men sleep on the street across from the Salvation Army. They could sleep inside but doing so would require that they surrender drugs and weapons and many choose not to comply with those requirements. Skeletal junkies, white and black, beg and prostitute themselves steps away from treatment centers, welfare offices, and Catholic Charities. They are adults and have made their choices. The students walking past them on their way to school are what we all were once – relatively powerless children, vulnerable to the choices of adults, adults like the nearby junkies; adults like the distant president and ubiquitous race activists.

 

Do I want Paterson kids to go to Harvard? Yes I do. When they graduate from local high schools, are they at all prepared to benefit from being airlifted onto the Harvard campus? No, they are not. Is there any force in America right now communicating to Patersonians the practices that will prepare children in Paterson's black underclass for Harvard? If there is, I don't know what it is. And I despair.

 

Kenny Xu's book speaks important truths. America's Kendi-mandated flight from meritocracy is harming and will further harm America. Asian-Americans are discriminated against exactly because of their investment in the American Dream. A national return to traditional values will advance America in general and Asian Americans specifically.

 

But I hope and pray that we don't stop there.

 

I hope and pray for these ideas to be applied more widely than they are now in cities like Paterson. Yes, there are charter schools, old-fashioned parents, and other pockets of resistance to Woke. We need more. We need brave voices that will speak up for personal responsibility, delayed gratification, for stable, two-parent families to support academics, for respect for the authority of teachers, for standards, for orderly classrooms that facilitate learning, rather than the "indoor street corners" condemned by veteran Paterson teacher Lee McNulty in this video.

 

Let's remember who will benefit first and most from a return to traditional values. An Asian-American student rejected by Harvard who later accepted a place at a lower tier, but still respectable, university will be okay in the long run, in spite of the unfairness of race preferences that discriminated against him. Yes, Asians like Kenny Xu will benefit from a return to traditional values, but Xu's strong background will stand him in good stead in spite of the left-wing, anti-Asian, anti-meritocratic racism he has faced. Rather, those who will benefit most from any return to traditional values will be the innocent African American children who have been damaged by well-meaning but destructive policies, policies that have effectively shut them out of a full intellectual life.

 

Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery

"Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe" by Dr. Voddie T. Baucham. Book Review

 

"Fault Lines": Dr. Voddie T. Bauchman's New Bestseller Exposes Critical Race Theory's Danger

Yes, Things Are Scary Now, But Dr. Bauchman Offers Hope

 

"Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe" by Dr. Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., is the number one bestseller in its category in Amazon as of this writing in early August, 2021. The book was released in April, and yet it already has five thousand customer reviews, 94% of which award the book five-stars. Given that "Fault Lines" is not receiving the kind of major-media, saturation coverage that a bestseller might expect, many of those thousands of reviews are fueled by enthusiastic word-of-mouth.

 

"Fault Lines" deserves its phenomenal success. Don't let its "Evangelical" subtitle fool you. I'm no Evangelical, but I will happily join my five-star review to the thousands of others. Baucham's presentation of the history and current profile of critical theory is accessible to all readers. Even non-Christians can benefit from understanding how the majority faith of Americans is being corrupted. Finally, as a Christian, Baucham offers hope for the future. Even non-Christians can apply some of Baucham's recommendations.

 

"Fault Lines" is one of many recent books struggling to take readers by the hand and guide them through our current cultural moment, of pupils suddenly being asked to inform their teachers of their "preferred pronouns," of toppling statues, burning cities, and careers ruined by one suspect utterance. "Fault Lines" belongs on the same bookshelf as James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose's "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody," as well as Douglas Murray's "The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity." "Cynical Theories" goes into greater detail on the roots of today's hysteria, and its authors are Christophobic atheists who hold up a vague and unhistorical notion of "The Enlightenment" as our salvation. Douglas Murray, a former Christian and current atheist, appears to despair of any hope; rather, he's given to dire prognostications: "The US is on the brink of Civil War;" Murray has said; the Western world is "standing on the precipice" of cultural annihilation.

 

Voddie T. Baucham has one up on Lindsey, Pluckrose, and Murray. Yes, Baucham recognizes how bad things are. "The United States is on the verge of a race war, if not a complete cultural meltdown," Baucham predicts. But Baucham offers hope, and he offers healing. He finds both in Christian faith. Again, though, you don't have to be a Christian to benefit from reading "Fault Lines."

 

"Fault Lines" is very reader-friendly. Lindsey and Pluckrose offer much more detailed and academic surveys of how Marxism's twisted evolution lead to the concept of "microaggressions" and social media videos in which obese women insist that if you aren't sexually attracted to them you are a bigot. Like those authors, Baucham also introduces his reader to influential progenitors of Woke like Antonio Gramsci, Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Peggy McIntosh, but more briefly. Clearly, Baucham exhibits the Evangelical's zeal to reach the maximum audience with the deepest truths, while never allowing academic jargon to get in the way. This is a book you could understand even if you were reading it in a noisy and crowded subway car. Its ease of reading in no way diminishes its profundity.

 

Helen Pluckrose, a plump woman, has the courage and integrity to take on the excesses of extremist feminists and fat activists. Murray is a gay man who critiques extreme LGBT activists. Baucham is a black man, and a descendant of slaves. He grew up in the hood and he currently serves as dean of theology at the African Christian University in Zambia. He tackles Black Lives Matter and critical race theory.

 

Yes, Baucham has a PhD and is a preacher and professor. But our Woke overlords judge qualifications not on training or intelligence but on identity, and on the grounds of identity, Baucham is qualified to stand head to head with Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Baucham devotes 31 pages of his 251 page book to his own biography. Baucham has traced his maternal ancestry back to slaves in Alabama, Virginia, and Texas. He traced his paternal ancestry to a slave in North Carolina. He was born to a teenaged mother who married his teenaged father in a "shotgun wedding." The marriage didn't last and Baucham has no memories of being in an intact family. For decades, that lack of a father and a family life "haunted" him. His cousin Jamal was shot to death by a fellow drug dealer while he was selling crack. His absent father freebased cocaine in Baucham's presence, was shot five times in a crack-related incident, and eventually succumbed to the damage cocaine did to his heart.

 

"I grew up poor, without a father, and surrounded by drugs, gangs, violence, and disfunction in one of the toughest urban environments imaginable … I didn't just survive, I thrived! Not because of government programs or white people 'doing the work of anti-racism'" but because of his mother. Baucham credits his single mother with keeping him on the straight and narrow. She did this by impressing upon him a sense of agency and accountability. He was always certain of two things: "My mother loved me, and if I got out of line, she'd kill me." To conform to peer pressure from his black "homeboys," Baucham purposely underperformed in school. Baucham's mother visited his school and got him back on track. Young Voddie once wore a t-shirt featuring images of Malcolm X and Elijah Mohammad. At the time, "I was more black than Christian." In fact, his mother was a Buddhist and he was raised as a Buddhist. He converted to Christianity after contact with a Campus Crusade for Christ staffer.

 

Moving to Africa affected Baucham deeply. "Most Africans would give all they had to get to America." He realized he didn't have to, because he was American. He also realized that his ancestors were enslaved by fellow Africans. Those sold west were relatively lucky. "Thank God they were not sold to the Arabs! The Arab slave trade lasted more than thirteen centuries and .. few Africans sold to the Arabs even survived." Life in Africa taught Baucham that "culture does matter … not all cultures are equal … Christian culture has produced the highest levels of freedom and prosperity … in the world … transforming culture is a laudable and worthwhile goal."

 

These are remarkable statements that defy Woke at every turn. Baucham rejects cultural relativism that says that, say, a culture where girls undergo FGM is no worse than cultures that do not practice such mutilation. He refuses to join in Woke demonization of the West. And he says that "transforming culture is a laudable and worthwhile goal." Many on the left condemn calls for conforming to Western civilization, capitalism, or middle-class values as "imperialism." Rather, the larger culture must change to accommodate minority culture. If black kids are not doing well in school, that is because of racism, and the racist culture must be dismantled. Objective truth and the scientific method are denounced as white supremacist. Black children are presumed to possess superiority at music, sports, and storytelling about their own life experience. These "Afrocentric" skills must become the new standard, in place of "white" excellence at math, science, or literature.

 

"Our pursuit of justice must be characterized by a pursuit of truth" Baucham says, citing Leviticus 19:15. With that and other Bible verses in mind, Baucham interrogates the many lies of Black Lives Matter, a movement founded on lies. Baucham is fearless; his sentences advance like a warrior marching into battle. His weaponry consists of facts. Never does he quiver or hesitate or apologize, as some white critics might do, for fear of appearing "racist." Baucham recognizes that there is in fact nothing racist about truth. Baucham cites the research on police shootings published by Roland G. Fryer, Jr, the National Academy of Sciences, David J. Johnson, and the Washington Post. There is no epidemic of racist white police officers killing unarmed black men. In fact "it is white people who are actually shot at disproportionately high rates when the number of interactions with police is tallied up."

 

BLM counters that numbers alone do not tell the full story, because, they say, white cops murder black people under circumstances that would never result in the killing of a white suspect. On June 11, 2020, John McWhorter published "Racist Police Violence Reconsidered" in Quillette. Quillette is a fine publication, but this important piece should have appeared in McWhorter's home publication, The Atlantic, which has a larger circulation. Perhaps it was too controversial – that is, too truthful – for The Atlantic. McWhorter cites case after case where whites died in police custody in circumstances that parallel the death of blacks in police custody, starting with a comparison between the deaths of George Floyd and Tony Timpa. Baucham makes the same sort of comparisons. Baucham cites numerous whites, adults and children, who died after brandishing fake guns, as did the African American child, Tamir Rice. Baucham similarly walks through misperceptions around the police shootings of Philando Castile, Michael Brown, and Breonna Taylor.

 

Baucham says that antiracism is a new cult, in competition with, and infecting, Christianity. Like Christianity, antiracism has its own versions of sin, law, gospel, martyrs, priests, means of atonement, new birth, liturgy, canon, theologians, and catechism. Baucham offers examples of each of these. Antiracism is unlike Christianity in that "antiracism offers no salvation;" only "perpetual penance" and "incurable disease." One thing antiracism does not have, does not value, and indeed condemns, is objective fact arrived at through traditional scholarly routes like the scientific method. "The quest for objectivity is tantamount to a quest for white supremacy." Baucham mentions one influential Woke classic, Peggy McIntosh's 1989 essay on "white privilege." Baucham points out that McIntosh's exercise "is a classic example of grievance studies in that it was based entirely on assumptions, anecdotes, and personal observations, and completely devoid of scholarly research."

 

The religion of antiracism directly contradicts Christianity in multiple ways, and yet Evangelicals are abandoning Christianity and embracing Woke. Except for passing mentions, "Fault Lines" does not mention Catholicism, but Catholics, too, are abandoning central Christian teachings in favor of critical race theory. America, the Jesuit magazine, is leading the way, for example here. Sojourners is a prominent Christian magazine. It was founded by Jim Wallis, a self-described Evangelical Christian. Unless they confess to "the sin of white privilege," Wallis wrote, "white Christians will never be free." Baucham contrasts Wallis' fiat with Christian scripture, which declares that Jesus Christ frees those who believe in him and repent of their sins.

 

Baucham points out that antiracism concocts a Kafka trap, that is a rhetorical prison where no matter what any white person says or does, his speech and action will be interpreted to "prove" that he is a white supremacist. Concepts like "white fragility" and "white equilibrium" are tools in this trap. Anyone who disagrees with any aspect of antiracism is met with "That's your white fragility speaking" if they are white, or "That is your internalized racism," if they are not white.

 

Black people's "lived experience," recounted in anecdotes, is sacrosanct and must be honored, and never examined. Baucham calls this "Ethnic Gnosticism," that is, the belief that being a member of a certain ethnic group endows that group member with knowledge that no one outside the group can ever lay claim to. Ethnic Gnosticism insists that there is a "black perspective" that all black people share. If a black person disagrees with Woke, he is "broken." Baucham, because he criticizes antiracism, is "broken." He is not an authentic black person. The people declaring that he is not an authentic black person are themselves often white. The Woke similarly condemn, Baucham reports, black conservatives like John McWhorter and Thomas Sowell.

 

Be the Bridge is a self-described "non-profit organization." Non-profit or not, its founder Latasha Morrison has done quite well. She is represented by the same talent agency that represents Olympian Simone Biles, singer Alanis Morissette, and award-winning journalist Bob Woodward. Be the Bridge hosts an online store where one can purchase a $299, eight-course "Whiteness Intensive" indoctrination "taught by a diverse group of Be the Bridge educators;" a $40 "anti-racist hoodie;" and a free webinar entitled "A Discussion on [sic] Self-Care, Lament, & Trauma for People of Color." On its Facebook page, Be the Bridge offers a self-description. "We inspire and equip ambassadors of racial reconciliation to build a community of people who share a common goal of creating healthy dialogue about race."

 

According to one Amazon review of her bestselling book, Morrison, in a directly un-Biblical manner (see Ezekiel 18:1-4), holds all whites guilty for sins committed by other, long dead white people. Conversely, she does not hold blacks guilty even for contemporary crimes against non-black people, or against their own kin. "She holds Whites' skin color against them and calls them privileged … plenty of white people have not been born into privileged homes and have been labeled derogatory terms such as 'white trash.' Where is her call for Blacks to grieve black gang violence, violent crimes done against non-black people, or the cost of the abandonment of black children by their fathers that leads to societal evil affecting all people? Did I miss where she called for the Blacks whose ancestors were slave owners to lament over their part in slavery? Or for all the African-Americans whose ancestors played a part in selling/trading their countrymen?"

 

Baucham says that Be the Bridge it is a "go-to resource" for Evangelicals. Baucham, like the above-quoted Amazon reviewer, faults Be the Bridge for an unbiblical view of guilt. "Morrison's work … is replete with references to generational guilt." Baucham quotes the "rules" for white Be the Bridge members. Whites must never speak to non-whites as if they, the white people, are equal. They must always speak and act as inferior, submissive, guilty, and tainted. They must not share their understanding, they must assume themselves guilty no matter what their intentions are, they must never refer to objective facts, and they must remain silent and passive when being publicly cursed, insulted and accused of racism. Truth in advertising demands that Latasha Morrison retitle her work, "Be the Punching Bag." Indeed, Be the Bridge commandments for how white people are allowed to behave are reminiscent of requirements for the accused at Maoist struggle sessions.

 

Baucham mentions Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor and author Jarvis J. Williams. In a shocking YouTube video, Williams claims or insinuates that white people have never been lynched, that white people invented slavery, that white people were never enslaved, and that the Confederate flag can mean only one thing to those who brandish it: white terror against black and brown people. Williams said he was so afraid when he saw a Confederate flag in Tennessee that he had to leave the area. In fact if Williams were open to actual facts, I could show him archival photographs of lynched whites, I could show him numbers proving that these lynchings of white Italian and other immigrants, including German immigrant Robert Prager were no one-offs, that white people have in fact been enslaved, in their millions, by Muslims, that there were white slaves in the US, see, for example, here, that the indenture system of whites was slightly better than, but in many respects comparable to, slavery, and that there are abundant images of African Americans wearing, flying, or otherwise embracing the Confederate flag, which suggests that not all black people interpret it as he does. One response to Williams' comments on YouTube reads, "I’m Hispanic  and brown when I see a confederate flag I think Dixie, a war that was won for freedom, the dukes of hazard and gone with the wind! Im not offended never have never will ! I recognize history and learn from it! I don’t dwell in it !" Finally, it is very disturbing to hear a Christian preacher insist that no whites were ever lynched, given the notorious history of the lynching of the Jewish man Leo Frank.

 

Baucham details behind-the-scenes politicking around critical theory and the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention. Concerned Baptists put forward a resolution on critical race theory and intersectionality. The original document boldly asserted that "critical race theory and intersectionality are founded upon unbiblical presuppositions descended from Marxist theories and categories, and therefore are inherently opposed to the Scriptures as the true center of Christian union." The rest of the document was equally forceful and clear. Politicking watered the document down and that watered down document was all the public saw. Baucham fearlessly names the names of those who promoted Woke at the expense of the Bible, and engaged in what he calls a "deliberate act of duplicity." It is never more clear than in this account why Baucham titled his book "Fault Lines." Clearly, his own life will be quite challenging because of this book's forthrightness. As in the wider society, congregants at Christian churches are being separated by an ideological divide as difficult to mend as the fault line ripped into the earth after a large quake.

 

Baucham speaks to black people as his own mother spoke to him. Baucham's mother emphasized personal responsibility. Baucham, too, emphasizes personal responsibility. Like so many other conservatives, he cites the importance of fathers. He also emphasizes the importance of education and he is not afraid to talk about the statistics that indicate that African Americans commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes, and that most of those crimes are committed against fellow African Americans. Baucham points out the folly of many voices, like that of Lebron James, who insist that African Americans are afraid to leave their homes because white people might hunt and kill them. Rather, African Americans are much more likely to commit a violent crime against a white or Asian person than vice versa. "Black people are overwhelmingly more likely to victimize white people than the other way around … a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black assailant than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop." Black people themselves support the presence of police in their communities, and black voters and black politicians participated in tough-on-crime measures during the crack epidemic that devastated black communities.

 

Baucham believes that the deadliest destroyer of black lives in the US is abortion. "Though black women make up less than 13 percent of the population, they account for 35 percent of all abortions. In major cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, more black babies are aborted than born … nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood's abortion clinics are in minority neighborhoods."

 

Again, Baucham does offer hope. His hope is distinctively Christian, and it entails features that used to be part of everyday life in the West: repentance, forgiveness, starting anew, a belief in progress, a belief that all of us were created by one loving, creator God, and that we are all connected by that shared creation. Tom Holland, author of "Dominion," and Douglas Murray are both atheists, and they are both astute observers who recognize that society needs routes out of resentment, recrimination, and the lust for revenge, and Christianity provided those routes. Baucham, a Calvinist, does not expect his every reader to become Christian. We must, therefore, find some way to respect these Christians traditions in a post-Christian society. Otherwise, the Pagan tribalism that Baucham labels "ethnic Gnosticism" and the no-exit, permanent struggle session mandated by critical race theory will destroy the bonds that hold Americans together.

 

"There can be no reconciliation without justice," Black Lives Matter claims. Baucham replies, and the all caps are in his original reply, "YES! AND THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THAT JUSTICE! … Antiracism offers endless penance, judgment, and fear … I am not an African. I am not an African American. I am an American, and I wouldn't want to be anything else. America doesn't owe me anything. America has blessed me beyond measure. If anything I owe America. More importantly, I owe my Savior, and, by extension, I owe my brothers and sisters in Christ." What can one say except "Amen"?

 

Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery