How Mutual Accountability Can Break the Cycle of Fear

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Collin Hansen
Do you feel tired of fighting the same racial battles over and over tired of waiting for the next racial controversy? Tired of more hostility and animosity, tired of the same old ideologies that don’t work, tired of the same arguments and getting nothing done? George Yancey is tired, but not so tired to give up hope. That’s why he wrote beyond racial division, a unifying alternative to color blindness and anti racism published by IVP. Nancy is a professor at the Institute for Studies of religion at Baylor University, specializing in race, ethnicity and religion, EMC describes colorblindness as a path that goes nowhere and anti racism as a path full of dangerous animals. As an alternative he proposes mutual accountability.

Collin Hansen
He believes this approach will produce a group that wants to address and not ignore unfair racial outcomes. This group realizes anti racism cannot produce sustainable change. These are my people NC rights. The big question we struggle with today, Yancey argues is this, how do we recover from our history of racial abuse? In ways most of us considered to be fair, he joins me now on gospel bound to discuss why he’s skeptical of activism and protest. Why he doesn’t call America racist. Why diversity training doesn’t work, and why he thinks we need unity before Justice, amxong other topics. I’ll also ask him a couple questions about his other new book one faith no longer the transformation of Christianity in red and blue America published last year with New York University Press. Dr. Yancey. Thank you for joining me on gospel bound.

George Yancey
Thanks for having me.

Collin Hansen
Let’s just jump right in. What’s the biggest difference that you observe in American life when it comes to race? Since you began writing on the subject?

George Yancey
Probably the biggest difference is that the question on whether or not people of color are fully human has Fortunately, the answer completely. I think there was still when I was I mean, I’ve been writing for a little while. So I think when I first started writing, well, probably most people thought, yeah, blacks and Hispanics are fully human. That wasn’t that was that you could take that for granted. When you’re talking to people, I think today, you probably can. So I think that’s a big change, a big shift.

Collin Hansen
And it’s a big shift. I thought it was interesting in the book that you observed that African Americans have more agency now than in any other time in history. I thought that was some helpful perspective as well. What’s the difference between calling American society racist versus calling it racialized?

George Yancey
Well, for me, racialized means that race matters. And I think no one really can argue that maybe we still have all the controversies of racism matter why all the controversies. So I don’t even want to really argue that. So it gets me in a place where I can have a conversation with someone, you know, because they’re not defensive automatically. Once you start saying, this is a racist society, then for some people, they can’t hear you because they’re defensive. They’re in their defensive posture that they don’t, they don’t, they don’t want protect themselves. So for me, I have to think about what’s useful for conversation and the racialized societies a more useful way to conceptualize it.

Collin Hansen
Now, this was another it’s graphically illustrated in your book Beyond racial division. But could you just describe or explain the cycle of dysfunctional racial relationships? I thought that was a really helpful way of describing this pattern that feels like we’re constantly stuck in.

George Yancey
Yeah, so what happened is, there’ll be a racial incident of some sort, some sort of racial controversy, perhaps a shooting, perhaps some sort of controversy at the school board, something, something will happen, and it’ll blow up. And it’d be national news. And then you’ll get the protests, usually from people who are more into the anti racism can’t get this protest against whatever this is, and they’ll go on for a while. But then those who won the camp have what I call colorblind will, they’ll start to counter protests, they’ll say, you’ve gone too far.

George Yancey
And those are counter protesting. And then that will go on and there’ll be there’ll be at each other’s throats for a little while. And then things will sort of calm down as we get further from away from the incident will sort of be in equilibrium. And then another incident, and then look at the protests, the counter protests and the calming down. And another question it’s and, and that just goes on and on and on. And it’s the cycle that we’re stuck in, in this country.

Collin Hansen
I wondered as I was reading the book, is sometimes I was wondering if you were making more politically pragmatic observations or if they were based on certain studies, or really those two things can go hand in hand or if they more came from a principled place and and one of those questions was related to your skepticism of activity. and protest. Now, of course, anybody reading about the Civil Rights Movement is naturally in the United States is naturally going to think about activism and protest in positive terms. But you mentioned how that cycle of backlash continues. So maybe explain what makes you skeptical of activism and protest for advancing the cause of justice today?

George Yancey
Well, I’m not arguing about the activism back in the Solarize. Because that was a different time. Right. And, and that was a time where, yeah, people were not fully willing to admit that people of color could be fully human. And, you know, there was these overt, very racist practices that were that we were engaging in. And so that sort of protest seemed to have its place why things happened is that that’s that’s becomes our, our default, that becomes our go to that there’s an incident we do the protests. And the problem is that people today, don’t envision themselves people back then actually envision themselves as racist.

George Yancey
And and they weren’t a shit. Some of them were not ashamed of that. Today, it’s a it’s a different type of environment. And that type of protests actually can create this sort of backlash. I know it did back then. But the sort of backlash it’s creating today is more sustaining. Because what’s happening is the people click back on today, they and I’ve heard them out. I’m not saying I agree them. They feel like they’re on the side of civil rights. They feel like the protesters are the ones who are racist, they feel like they’re colorblind, and they’re trying no race, and these people are bringing up race, that sort of mentality can sustain itself in a way that I don’t think it could have back then when when the mentality was we I keep people in their place. In a society that’s that’s trying to head towards a sort of a, a tolerance, a liberal tolerance of all people that Atkinson saints of this one can.

George Yancey
And so I’ve no reason not to believe that the protests can can generate these this kind of practice. Am I saying that there’s never a ton of protests. I’m not saying that I’m not saying even today, there’s never type of protests. But I fear that people are relying on that too much. And what I’ll give you is short term victories, it will delegate to short term victories. But the short term victories are fragile victories, which means that you have to keep protesting, keep the pressure on, or you have to lose completely because you’ve not changed anyone’s minds. And that is what’s really troublesome.

Collin Hansen
I think it might be helpful here for people to have a little bit of broader context, you and I are having this conversation against the backdrop of some of the trucker protests, especially in Canada, and also emerging in the United States. And we normally think of protest as being something from the left. This, of course, is coming from the right. And I saw somebody observe that now the right will be able to see that protest is often counterproductive, this kind of protest when it comes to the political, the political tenor of the country.

Collin Hansen
And so it’s not necessarily something that’s specific or exclusive to race. It’s and also, maybe maybe the ultimate example, in a different episode I did with Ryan Berge, a political scientist for this podcast gospel bound, we discussed the huge decline of Christianity in the early 1990s in the United States. And the number one thing that I found it to be correlated to was the anti abortion movement was abortion protests. And abortion protests were framed extremely negatively in the media, and a lot of people left Christianity as a result of that negative framing. And so is that is that a fair observation about how this fits into a broader context of post civil rights, organization and public protest?

George Yancey
I do. I do. And in fact, I’ll even go one further. I forget the name of there was a Democrat pollster, who told the Democrats that when y’all are protesting, you’re losing votes. Now, if you bring up the issue, without this sort of protest, you actually gain votes. But when you are protesting, you’re losing votes, and that person will a fire that person didn’t want to hear what he had to say. But all he said is he’s not even saying you shouldn’t protest as a moral thing.

George Yancey
He’s saying protesting is not effective for what you want. And once again, you know, you can get temporary victories, people don’t, you know, just to get rid of you for a little while. But those are not lasting victories. Those are not those are not really moving the needle towards where we want to be where which is a society that we can have much more of a racial communication, less racial, alienation, less racial tension.

Collin Hansen
Well, I’m glad you mentioned the backlash though to the civil rights era as well because and operated differently, depending on what level you’re studying. Because, you know, certainly here in Birmingham, where you had some of the most spectacular protests, they were extraordinarily effective on a national level, they were not effective at all on a local level in the sense that they lead to formal integration, but they did not lead to changed attitudes, at least not in that generation.

Collin Hansen
And that the tragedy there is witnessed by the the death of the four little girls in September of 1963, by the bombing. And so even the most courageous, and we would say that we would all, you know, celebrate kings protests in Birmingham in spring 1963, even those produced quite a backlash, we probably need a protest at that point, because what we’re trying to change was overt laws, right, that designated blacks as second class citizens.

Collin Hansen
Now, we don’t I mean, I know people, and we could get into happy what people mean, when they say more white supremacist society and racism. But with be honest, we don’t have those laws today. So and your audience was, was the federal government was was these new shows? And yeah, so I think that I honor those protests. Cuz I think the ones that day, though, usually, that’s not the case. And we’re at a point of, we don’t have that sort of loss today, what we have to do is change perspectives within individuals. And here protesting is not the most effective way

Collin Hansen
of doing that. Now sketch, really, what is the purpose of your book, this mutual accountability, which includes active listening, and this is, of course, your, your alternative to some of these dead ends or frustrations that we’ve been discussing? And you asked this question is the purpose to create a fair society or to punish modern whites for our society, centuries of racial abuse? And if I’m understanding you correctly, in the book, that seems to be an important way that you can trust mutual accountability with anti racism? I think

George Yancey
it is one of the ways you know, and I know there are people who are anti racism, and they may disagree with the way I’ve characterized the movement, but I read them, I read the literature. And the question has come back to as shown in the literature, where anti racism is about communicating with whites, rather than telling whites what to do. And I’m open to that I may have missed something, maybe there’s a book I need to read. But the major books that, you know, Metro books simply do not. They do not allow us to communicate with each other, they dictate to whites what whites are supposed to do.

George Yancey
And I understand the emotional sentiment of that, because people could have felt dictated to for so long. So I understand the emotional behind it. But I know practically doesn’t work. And practically, it’s not bringing people together. It’s polarizing. So I can’t go along with that I cannot support something that is going to polarize us more, since we’re already so deeply polarized.

Collin Hansen
One of your giftings, obviously, is your your academic study in sociology. And one of the things you point to are any number of studies that show that anti racism does not work? I guess the question is, if anti racism doesn’t work, why do so many people keep trying?

George Yancey
That gets me into talking about motivations of people, which is always a scary thing, a part of it? I think, some people, I think poverty, emotional, you know, part of it is people are frustrated. And, and sort of like, if you have kids, and they’re doing wrong, you may know, this isn’t the best thing beats, I’m just shut up and eat your food or whatever, you know, you’re just give us this, get this done. I mean, and so there’s, that’s part of it, you know, we’re impatient people.

George Yancey
So I think that’s part of it. I think other people, it may be that they’re engaged in anti racism, because it’s the thing to do. And so you want to be safe, and you want to, and you want to make sure that people know that you’re doing something, you do anti racism, because everyone’s saying that that’s what you need to do. And I suspect some organizations to anti racism for that same very reason. We can say, Hey, we are trying to anti racism, therefore, we can’t be engaging in racism, per se. So I think those are a couple of things. You know, the frustration, the the eagerness that gets up and done, but ultimately, it’s counterproductive.

Collin Hansen
So mutual accountability is your alternative to to colorblindness and anti racism, we focused on anti racism. Let’s talk about color blindness. I guess the question is there. Why doesn’t colorblindness work? You know,

George Yancey
it would if we, if we truly have a society where people of different races were treated? Exactly the same buyer institutions, but we have reams of research showing that that’s not the case. You know, we don’t when it comes to occupational discrimination, that there’s still research on that happening. residential segregation, there’s still research on that criminal justice system, a lot of research showing on how various so if you’re, if you’re going to ignore something then you have to ignore something that’s not going to hurt you if you ignore it.

George Yancey
But if you ignore the gaping wounds have been created through these racial differences, these racial inequalities, then they don’t go away, they don’t get better, they just get worse. So we can’t do that we got to find some way of having some level of whether you want to call it equity or justice or equality. You know, I know they mean different things. But if you want to have some sort of fair racial society, perhaps that’s a good way of looking at it, you got to do something, you gotta figure out what you’re going to do, you can’t just ignore it and hope that it goes away,

Collin Hansen
which has been a pretty common response to ignore it. And then to blame anybody who talks about those ongoing and justices, or ongoing inequities. Now, again, in your work as a sociologist, you run into a lot of data that shows that diversity training does not work, I’d be interested to know why. Why that’s been shown to fall short of its goals.

George Yancey
You know, to me, the most interesting study, I mean, there’s a lot of studies that show a lot of adverse effects that can come out diversity training. And so I can go into some of those if you want. But to me, the most interesting study is this meta analysis. And I’m not always a big fan of meta analysis. But I think that this one seems to be very well done. And what it shows is that if you look at what happens immediately, after diversity training, you do see some effects. But then if you look, six months later, all the effects of prejudice reduction have gone away. So what I think has happened is that diversity training is sort of like sending your kid off to bible camp. And then they come back, and then they make up their bed and they eat all their food. And you know, and they call you Yes, ma’am. Yes, sir.

George Yancey
And, you know, because they’re being a good Christian. And then six months later, the beds a mess, you know, they refuse to eat their vegetables, and they’re back to Mom and Pop. So it doesn’t take. And even even when people I mean, it’s better if it’s not just a one shot thing, but even that doesn’t seem to have a lasting effect. Diversity training in of itself, and there are ways in which you can make it better. Yeah, you have a self though diversity training is not a solution, especially the type of diversity training that tends to arise out of anti racism, which is much more confrontational, there’s no evidence of that works whatsoever, where there is evidence that if you do things that are more hands on perspective, taking that that can be helpful. But the sort of aggressive anti racism doesn’t really appear to work.

Collin Hansen
i There’s a quote in here that I just immediately marked, and I thought, Well, I’m gonna need to ask him to explain this to me, because it goes so much against what I’ll hear from a lot of other sources today. And you write this, we need unity, before we can get justice, people of color should demand that they have their voice heard. But we do not have to demand that others Shut up. As I mentioned, I think a lot of people would disagree with that, why not? Search for justice first, so that we can get unity out of that justice.

George Yancey
Okay, so let’s play this out. Let’s say you have your group and you know what justice is. So you go, and there’s bill is a great deal, you’re gonna beat them down to get justice, and you’re gonna beat them down to get the laws you pass in this society, what’s gonna happen, at some point, they’re going to have power. So the laws you pass, they’re going to either change them to they’re less effective, or they’re gonna get rid of them, the practice you’ve put in, they’re going to remove them completely, because you never spent the time to bring them along. You want to justice immediately. Now, I understand that, but But you have to know that reality is what it is.

George Yancey
That type of active activism does not create a lasting justice, unity, where we get people coming in and buying in, and we take the time to work with that. And then we make those changes, that creates a stainable institutions rather than one that goes back and forth. The all the whole, the controversy in school boards. So what probably happened was, there’s a group of people who, for for the sake of justice, they want school boards to implement. Now, I’m not gonna get into this click right there, you’re not less important, but they want to implement certain changes. But what happened, they didn’t spend the time to bring people along.

George Yancey
They didn’t want the white parents to have a seat at the table. They want to dictate what the curriculum is going to be. And that was why parents aren’t, as you can see, it’s hard to turn out some school board members. Now I’m not happy about them doing that. I don’t want people thinking, Oh, he’s happy to know. But that is what I would expect to happen because you did not spend the time to create the Unity needed for justice. I don’t know when you get justice without unity. Honestly. Usually what happens is a group wins out and then they dictate what what justice is.

George Yancey
And that’s it’s usually not justice, because in the interest of that group, justice is something that people have to come together and learn We all think that we’re arguing about it’s a sort of colorblind ish type of everyone has the same responsibilities. First read the book. You know, that’s not what I’m arguing. And second, no, I think that justice does look like people of color getting something more than than press wise because our his are centuries of abuse. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t abuse people back. It doesn’t mean that wicked is ignore other people, as we try to move forward towards that. We got to bring people to us with us and move forward rather than worry to our own, and then you’re gonna, you’re gonna have to take what we give you. That’s gonna lead to justice.

Collin Hansen
I think as as people can tell, listening to you, George, about beyond racial division, that there’s a lot of evidence here that you don’t need to be a Christian to be able to agree with this is simple sociological study, methodology, results, outcomes, things like that. But of course, as a Christian, you do make certain support, you argue, make certain arguments for your case. So mutual accountability, as as a Christian, and I was left as I reached the, the end of the book, and I’ve often been discouraged by how far how far Christians have fallen short in their efforts to make a difference on this.

Collin Hansen
And yet, you still gave me some hope. But I’m also wondering, is there really any, anything that can bring that justice or lasting hope apart from Christ, because I’m looking here at your theological basis for mutual accountability, and you’re right, this that, that we need Christ because of our inability to overcome our innate depravity. And at some level, it seems as though you’re advocating that there has to be ongoing forgiveness, as opposed to a priority on punishment? I’m not sure how that works apart from Christ, just describe how you, you’re trying to make this argument as a Christian specifically.

George Yancey
Yeah, so you know, it gets the larger question on what do we as Christians, what do we expect, before we go off to our reward, what sort of society we’re gonna have, I don’t think we’ll ever completely get there. Alright, so I don’t think that we’re going to be able to do to correct all the wrongs in society straight in every pass level, every mountain, but we can do better. And so my vision is, we do better. Um, it’d be great, you know, we could create heaven on earth. But the dangers of trying to do that is a lot of times, people try to create heaven on earth do a lot of damage. But we can make things better.

George Yancey
We can we can, we can have less hostility, we can have more humanity, less polarization, I believe we can do better. And if we if we keep doing better, than we are being a blessing to others in our society, as well as others within our churches, so I get I mean, look at any issue, you know, we’re not gonna get rid of all crying beforehand, we’re not going to get rid of, of all sexism beforehand, we’re not gonna get rid of any dysfunction for heaven. But doesn’t mean we don’t work towards making it better. And so that’s sort of how I come down on that. But I, you know, I think that’s a deep philosophical question on what we as Christians should do, since we know that that is not going to be perfected till till the afterlife. But still in this life, we have much work to do.

Collin Hansen
I’ve been talking with George Yancey about his new book Beyond racial division, a unifying alternative to color blindness and anti racism. I want to ask a couple questions about his previous work one faith no longer the transformation of Christianity in red and blue America, as we work through the two main arguments of that book, explain the significance of your conclusion that academics from mainline Christian denominations have more sympathy toward non Christian groups than they do toward their more conservative religious peers?

George Yancey
Yeah, so that came out of a survey that I send out to academics first, and then I use some data from a national sample. And basically, they in my survey, and the data that they’re asked to rate people, I don’t do it 100 scale how much they liked them. I found consistently as mainline Protestants, and in the national sample, it was theologically liberal Christians, they rated atheists and Muslims above conservative Christians. So that’s what I mean that that this indication that progressive Christians more liberal Christians prefer atheists and Muslims to conservative Christians and are quoted data seem to back that up as well.

George Yancey
And I’ve also since I’ve studied this, I’ve also just listened to progressive Christians that I think is pretty true. I think we listen to them. They complain about because they’re Christians at a rate that they don’t about Muslims. Definitely not about Muslims and even about atheists, some of them combined with some atheist, but not nearly as much as conservative Christians,

Collin Hansen
if I understand your argument correctly, it seems to come down to the fact that progressives care more about politics than theology. Is that right?

George Yancey
That’s a little. It’s a little bit more nuanced than that. I think they care about social justice issues and social justice issues to check the politics. I don’t think it’s directly about politics. Got it? I think they have a certain social justice framework that they’re looking at.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. No other other main argument from the book, wondering, were you surprised to conclude that progressive Christians and conservative Christians have diverged so much in their core values that they ought to practice or they thought they ought to be thought, to practice suit to separate religions? And I just want to read this quote, because I think it’s so bold and clear about your argument here. You right, if there is a civil war within Christianity, it is progressive Christians who understand that fact and have reacted accordingly. They are the ones who are most likely to take the initiative to condemn conservative Christians, and thus most likely to direct negative stereotypes toward other Christians and quote,

George Yancey
yeah, yes, I’m surprised. You know, I think my realization that just came over time when I, when I first saw some data, indicating that that because the Christians prefer non Christians to consider Christians, I was like, that’s interesting. I didn’t immediately jump to those two different religious groups. But as I started looking at some of the qualitative information and start listening to how people were talking and analyzing it, I just sort of is started making sense to me, that’s how I made the day so I don’t know my surprise. But yeah, I mean, it is an interesting finding.

Collin Hansen
So those two questions have been with George Yancey about one faith no longer the transformation of Christianity in red and blue America. Okay, George, I’ve got a final three that I always wrap up with on gospel bounce. So we’ll do these fairly quick. First question is, how do you find calm in the storm?

George Yancey
Well, I have three boys, a six, five and three year old so my calm comes when I go to sleep. It’s hard to be calm otherwise.

Collin Hansen
That’s fair. Sleep. I love it. It’s asleep, like Jesus on the seat. Second, where do you where do you find good news today?

George Yancey
I think I find good news is in some of my relationships, some of the people I see. I mean, some of my friends obviously have struggles, but a lot of them are making progress alive. I have some friend who just found a really great job and things this nature saw, I think in relationships in the communities where I try to find really find good news.

Collin Hansen
Great. And what is the last great book you’ve read?

George Yancey
You know, that’s interesting, because I rarely read any fiction anymore. So monster picker last minute book will not be a fiction book. I really enjoy talking about race from Isaac Adams. I read that book a couple of months ago, and is you know, it’s sort of book that I wish I could write but I’m not a pastor now. And it goes on some of the themes I’ve talked about in my book only it’s about how pastor would facilitate such conversations.

Collin Hansen
I’m so glad you said that Isaac was a guest earlier in the season cool on gospel bound. And I think it’s, it’s fair to say that your two books could be read very much as companions. If you if you needed an argument for why you need to practice Isaac’s pastoral approach to race in your church, then you would read your book, beyond racial division, a unifying alternative to color blindness and anti racism. Yeah, my guest on gospel bound is been George Yancey, Georgia. It’s just been great to talk. And I’m glad again, you brought that up because it’s a that’s what I’m trying to accomplish is direct people toward these productive resources. That’ll help them to go deeper on these difficult topics. So thanks again for writing this book.

George Yancey
Thank you. God bless