In this episode Trent sits down with Deacon Harold to talk about his upcoming book on Catholic responses to racism, the perils of critical race theory, and what the authentic Catholic response to racism should be.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. You’ve probably heard in the news recently a lot of talk about critical race theory or CRT, about efforts to teach critical race theory even in elementary schools. So how should we as Catholics respond to ideas like critical race theory or how should we respond to the sin of racism? I invited an excellent guest on today to talk to us about that. His name is Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers. He’s an evangelist speaker. He has a Master’s in theological studies at the University of Dallas. He hosts a national weekly broadcast on modern day radio and he’s the author of several books, including Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality and Father Augustus Told Him: The Slave who Became the First African-American Priest.
So really excited to jump into this topic. I have another video on my channel that deals with the subject of anti-racism and Ibram X. Kendi. So if you guys are interested in that, be sure to go and check out that video. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to this channel and to support us at trenthornpodcast.com so we can keep on bringing on amazing guests like Deacon Harold. Deacon, welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Thank you. It’s great to be with you and I am a subscriber and a huge fan of Counsel of Trent. I even have you on my phone when I listen to you on the plane when I’m traveling around the world. So it’s great to be a guest on here. I’m truly honored. Thank you for having me.
Trent Horn:
Well I’m glad that you’re on the show, Deacon Harold, because the genesis of today’s episode was the last time I saw you, I’m really glad I got to see you in person because with COVID and the pandemic, it feels like we’re all stuck in these little Zoom meetings, but we are at a conference right here in Dallas, Texas where I live. So you got to speak there, I spoke, and we were talking, you were telling me about a future book that you’re writing with Ignatius Press. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah, so my first book which you mentioned, Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality, is by Ignatius Press and they approached me about doing a second book. So during COVID, I have been speaking and then writing articles about a Catholic response to racism. So Ignatius thought that’d be a great book. So as part of he book, what I’m doing is I’m critiquing three secular approaches to race that are being adopted or inculcated into the Catholic ethos today. One of them is the Black Lives Matter movement. Not the words Black lives matter, but the Black Lives Matter movement. The second is liberation theology and the third is critical race theory. Now, out of all those three, the one that I was least familiar with was critical race theory. So I’ve been doing a deep dive into it in preparation to write that section of the book. That’s what I’m going to be addressing today.
Trent Horn:
Very good. So then let’s jump into it because I think honestly most people were not familiar with it really up until about … I mean I had heard about critical theory for some time, especially in biblical criticism and other kinds of postmodern theories, things like that, but I wasn’t as familiar with critical race theory. I think a lot of people, Deacon, it’s kind of taken them by surprise like suddenly now it’s all in the news, being taught in schools, and we don’t know what to make of it because we haven’t heard of it much before. What’s a good summary then that you could give to our viewers and our listeners? Just elevator pitch, what is critical race theory?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Okay. Great question. Well the first thing to keep in mind is that critical race theory is just that, a theory. Okay. It’s based on an intellectual hypothesis that has the premise that race is not about categorical differentiation or biological distinction within a species, but a socially constructed instrument used to exploit and oppress people of color. Okay. So that’s basically what it is. Now, the origins … See, one thing I try to do, where’s the source documentation?
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So I was like where’s the source document for critical race theory? Interestingly, it didn’t exist til 1989. Okay. So what I’ve discovered in doing research is that critical race theory comes out of critical legal theory which in terms comes out of, as you mentioned, Trent, Marxist influence critical theory.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Right. So critical legal theory examines how the law and legal institutions serve the interest of the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of the poor and the marginalized, and that comes out after drawing from the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, a political philosophy geared toward the subversion of this societal framework that dominate and oppress people. So you can see the seeds of even communism and socialism out of that kind of thinking.
Trent Horn:
So there’s kind of like we have to always sort of avoid extremes. It seems like this is going to the category of talking about race solely in this sociological oppressor-oppressee when it is more complicated than that because the people who would say there are no biological differences, clearly we have biological differences among us and there’s a solid Catholic way of understanding the diversity of the human community. Of course, there are people who have socially applied those biological differences in very wicked ways. So it seems like they might … Maybe it’s appealing, Deacon, because there are kernels of truth here, but then they’re running far past it with stuff that is not true.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Excellent point, Trent, and here’s the interesting thing. You think about how do we approach race from a Catholic perspective. All right? So here’s something very interesting. You can’t use the Bible for that. What do I mean? Race as we understand it today as biological differentiation within the species is not really something that’s rooted in scripture because scripture doesn’t worry about race as the color of one’s skin, but it’s more tribal and national when they talk about race. All right?
Trent Horn:
Whether you’re a Jew or a gentile.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Exactly. Exactly.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So what the Bible does, there’s some very beautiful things that says … What does Paul say? There’s no longer Jew or Greek or slave or free or you can hear Black or white. We’re all one under the body of Christ.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Right? So that’s the thing the Bible emphasized. In fact, there’s no physical description of Jesus. There’s no what color He was, how tan He was because that wasn’t important. The message of Christ was important.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So what critical race theories have to do, they have to ignore biology, but that’s something that we’re seeing today. We’re seeing, for example, marriage … In order to come to a cultural understanding of marriage, you have to read to find what the words actually mean. So marriage comes from the Latin [matrimonium 00:07:40].
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Matri is a derivative of the word mater which means mother and monium is a suffix ending in Latin which means the state or condition of something. So marriage literally means the state or condition of motherhood.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So if you want to redefine that, you have to change what those words mean and that’s what they’re doing and one of the tenets of critical race theory is negating biology. Well it has nothing to do with biology. It has to do with one person, one race or one group of people oppressing another group of people. So you have to ignore the fact that … This is shocking, Trent.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
You’re white and I’m Black. There’s literally a physical difference between the two of us.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
I’m darker than you, Trent, but that doesn’t mean that you’re better than me or I’m better than you because-
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
… what this does ultimately, it actually instead of bringing people together, it actually separates you.
Trent Horn:
It creates this idea-
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
It works for further division.
Trent Horn:
… that for me to have an interaction with you as if I have to start with an assumption that you and I already have an antagonism between us and that’s just something that we have to accept and work around whereas I’d rather say, “Why should I accept that?” Now, I will say obviously people are going to have innate prejudices and biases and that’s not just with race. People have that towards gender, nationality. We all have these different things, but to … I’d like to hear your comment on this about what is most concerning about critical race theory. It seems to me that it takes things that you always have to be aware of and makes it into this is just the system you have to work through and it’s just inevitable you’re going to have this oppressor-oppressee system based on race or class. It almost seems like it creates the very problems it seeks to solve.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
No, you’re exactly right. One thing though that you mention that I think is important, and I’m going to talk about this in much more depth in the book, is that it sets up this natural tension between races, but that comes out of the critical theory where it really comes of what’s called the Hegelian dialectic which, again, I’m going to explain much more deeply in the book because it’s philosophical, but the idea of the Hegelian dialectic, I’ll keep this very, very simple, is that there’s thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. So in other words-
Trent Horn:
They go together.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Exactly. So you have this idea, you have this counter idea, and the clash of those two things develop a synthesis which is a new idea. So you have to set up these pinnacles of conflict in order to advance. That’s basically the idea. So why this is problematic, for example, it says racism in the United States is normal and not an aberration. That’s one of the tenets. It’s normal. No, it’s not normal and we know that because we know that as believers in Jesus Christ and as Catholics that racism is a sin. It’s not normal.
Trent Horn:
And not even that, but think about what happens when a racist, a video of legitimate racism is put on TikTok or on Twitter. What happens? The community rallies around the victim. Even in cases where it’s muddled and we’re not sure what is going on, the community is … It goes viral and people denounce the racist act, either the actual act or the perceived act. So I think on both counts you’re right. It’s not true.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Absolutely. Another one of the tenets that’s problematic for us as Catholics is that legal advances or even setbacks for people of color tend to serve the interests of dominant white groups. That’s one of the tenets. It’s called material determinism. So in other words, for example. They’ll say that when you’re going for a job, as a person of color I would hate the fact that someone is choosing me simply because I’m Black. You have two people that are equally qualified and they give it to the Black person solely because of the fact … No. Now, okay. You should look at, okay, if the person is not equally qualified, they’ll still give it to the person of color because they have to have a quota or they have to have … To me, that makes no sense.
Trent Horn:
Well there’s a bigotry also. It’s interesting. I find some of the most problematic, even racist, things are those who claim to denounce racism. They peddle what I would call a bigotry of low expectations, this idea that they claim to be enlightened when it comes to race, but they treat people of color and these other groups as, “Oh, well we have to give special treatment because they can’t do any better on their own because of this social system working against them.” Of course, what’s hard, Deacon, I feel like is are there racist people out there? Well sure. There’s sexist people. There’s anti-Catholic people. There are people who hate unborn children, but I wouldn’t say that the vast majority of people who are pro-choice hate the unborn or something just like people who are trying to understand racial issues, I’m not saying the majority of them are racist. But when you try to turn everything into this system and especially indoctrinating children with it, with this idea of this inherent antagonism, that’s really worrying.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
No, you’re absolutely right. I love what you said about the idea of low expectations as well. That’s something that I think is actually holding our communities back. Another one of these tenets here is that members of minority groups periodically undergo what they call differential racialization or the imposition of negative stereotypes depending on the needs or interests of white people. So I’m like, “Oh, wait a minute now.” Think about this, Trent. How do we even come to an idea of racism? Because you’re not born racist. Think of little kids that play together on the playground. My wife is Irish so my kids are mixed.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
But when I see my kids play on the playground with a Black kid or a Hispanic kid or Asian kid, they’re just playing. They don’t look at color. They just … Because kids don’t see that. What happens is over time, they look at television and media starts to creep in or they hear dad telling a joke-
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
… or something like that and they start to learn. So racism is something that’s learned. It’s not something that’s innate or inherent within us. So for critical race theory to say that stereotypes are being used by white people to denigrate Black people, no. I mean because think about it. There’s all kinds of racial things about Italians for example.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Or Irish or different things like that.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So there’s positive and negative images. So what we can’t allow it to do is those negative images to define a particular race and say this is characteristic because I saw it on TV. Those images aren’t true. We have to look to the teachings of our faith and to see that God created all of us made in his image and likeness and we need to see people the way God sees them and that’s the key.
Trent Horn:
Well it’s interesting, your point about children. I would say I’ve never met a child under the age of seven who was racist and I’ve never met a child under the age of seven who was pro-choice because when they see people regardless of their skin color or their development in the womb, children just see other human beings. They see that they are different and sometimes they want to understand those differences like someone’s taller or shorter or if a child meets someone for the first time who’s missing a limb, it’s like, “Okay. Well how do I understand this?” You tell them, “Well look, God made us. We’re all different in many different and blessed ways, but we’re all human because God made all of us from conception onward.” That’s what we need to talk about with children to appreciate the diversity and beauty and the dignity of every human being.
Trent Horn:
So let’s talk though about … Especially this is coming up. I think most people are getting the real pushback, Deacon Harold, that if this was just something that was in university ivory tower, whatever, they study dumb things there all the time, but it’s this idea that like … And what I think some of these people are saying is, “We’re not trying to teach critical race theory to elementary school students. That’s something you guys have made up. We’re not trying to do that,” but they are trying to do that, right? Because even at the ages of five, six, seven years old, they’re teaching that anti-racism. Do you think they’re being disingenuous if they say, “We’re not really teaching this to little kids?”
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Oh, yeah. They’re simply lying because that’s not true. I’ll prove it to you. One of the areas of critical race theory that I’ve been delving into is this thing called intersectionality.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
All right. So that an individual cannot be identified solely with one particular group. It’s an intersection between race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, all that kind of stuff. So in other words, what critical race theory would say … Again, this is critical race theory, but they’re saying, “Well wait a minute. We need to take into account intersectionality. So if you’re Black lesbian with a learning disability, then this all this intersectionality needs to play into it.” We already know that the educational system is already being infiltrated by the transgender movement, by all these other elements, and critical race theory is playing right into that. So it is absolutely disingenuous for them to say that they’re not trying to indoctrinate children into this way of thinking. That’s exactly what they’re doing.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
In fact, I know there’s even school boards that are being … There’s movements trying to convince school boards to adopt this into their programs just like they’re doing with transgenderism right now.
Trent Horn:
Right. It’s not like they’re trying to teach elementary school students about diversity or kindness or not being bigoted, but trying to promote the … What I don’t like, Deacon, is trying to say that these particular theories about systemic racism, and of course in the past, we had laws, that the very laws themselves were used to oppress people of color and some of them even hang over into today. I know in Louisiana, I think a person of color couldn’t get buried in a cemetery because a cemetery had some old rule in there from 1947 saying Black people couldn’t be buried there, but I would say that’s the exception. That’s not the rule. But then trying to tell little kids, “Oh, well the way everything is set up … To tell the white students, “If you’re succeeding, that’s because of your race. You didn’t earn,” and to tell a person of color that, “If you are failing, that is because of something that is completely beyond your control,” it seems to like it creates a culture of helplessness instead of actually affirming a person’s inner dignity so that they don’t have this defeatist attitude. Do you see where I’m going with that?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. Yeah, I totally see that. You’re absolutely right and the thing is what that does, it sets up this dichotomy. For example, white people now have to apologize for being white. So you’re throwing these labels on entire groups of people without looking at individual responsibility.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
What they fail to differentiate is systemic racism within … As you mentioned because there were laws that actually promoted and encouraged racism, Jim Crow laws-
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
… and before that, the Dred Scott verus John F. Sandford Supreme Court decision 1857 said Black people were property and not human beings, so they were woven into the fabric of the law. We get that, but now there are in our culture today laws that prevent that from ever happening again.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So you can’t … So you have to differentiate systemic racism as we just discussed and people within systems who are racist.
Trent Horn:
What I would say though, Deacon, is that there are systemic racism that still exists that this group, the CRT advocates, won’t accept. For example, back in 1915, Harvard had quotas because they were worried there were too many Jewish students at Harvard. Now, there’s the concern that there are too many Asian students. The Asian applicants, they excel at all of the metrics to get in. So what they do is they say, “Oh, in your personal interview, well we didn’t think you were very personable or we didn’t think that you were very …” Only for the Asian students, that you lack these personal traits that we thought make for a good college student. If they did that to a Black student, it would be an outcry to do that, but this idea of …
Trent Horn:
I guess this goes into the idea of equality and equity too. That one comes up all the time because you and I would agree well we should be promoting everyone should be given equal opportunities and treated equally under the law, not well we have to jerry rig the system so there if Black people make up 14% of the population, then they have to make up 14% of everything when different groups are going to have different interests and preferences. It’s kind of like people say, “Why aren’t there more women running Fortune 500 companies if women are half the population,” but that same group doesn’t worry why aren’t half of all kindergarten teachers men. It seems very selective when they care about these things.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah. No, I agree with you. It goes back to this lie of the culture that in order to be equal, you have to be the same.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Right? So in the Book of Genesis, we see that God said male and female, He created them and be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So it’s exactly because of their differences that they’re able to have unity. So there’s unity within distinction and that is a principle that we’ve completely lost today. So they’re saying in order to be equal, you have to be the same so unless men are doing what women do and women are doing what men do and this, then no one is equal.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
That’s not true. So you see … So what you’ve been discussing, Trent, is the repercussions of that kind of thinking in our culture today.
Trent Horn:
Well let’s talk then about, as we have a few minutes left, what then is the authentically Catholic way to combat racism, racial bias. What is interesting before we answer that question, I will say I would tell the CRT advocates and others who want to say America is racist, this or that, I would ask them, “Well here’s my statement. We live in the least racist time in America’s history.” I would say, “If you can’t …” Actually, I have asked them online, Deacon Harold, “Is this true?” They’re not willing to affirm that. I say, “Well if you can’t, when in our history were we less racist than now?” I mean it does boggle my mind what they want to try to rewrite reality as, though you can comment on that if you want, but also what is then the Catholic way to promote action against the sin of racism?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Yeah, that’s very important. I think the first thing we need to do is define what racism is. Before COVID, I was out speaking to the parish and one of the folks found out that I went to Notre Dame. He’s a Notre Dame fan. So he comes up to me and he goes, “Oh, you went to Notre Dame? What position did you play?” I could see the metrics in his mind, right? The calculus was big, Black guy plus Notre Dame equals football when the truth is I had an academic scholarship to Notre Dame, the first person in my family ever to go to college.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
So what he should have asked me was, “Oh, you went to Notre Dame? What did you study?”
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Because that’s what he would have asked me. People say, “That was racist. That was racist.” No, it wasn’t racist and here’s why. Prejudice means that you’re making a determination about someone without any factual knowledge just based on subjectivity. Okay.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Racism is that prejudice, but what makes it racist is the added dimension of I’m saying this or I’m thinking this because my race is superior to your race.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Now, he didn’t say that to me because he thought, “Well my race is better than your race. That’s why I’m going to pigeonhole you as a football player.” No, he was ignorant. So it was prejudice, not racist. So we can’t convolute those things.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
But the main thing is we have to see people made in the image and likeness of God. That’s what Mother Teresa did. When she saw someone, she saw Jesus in the person standing in front of her. I think we need to appreciate the gifts of cultural diversity. For example, one of the things that we can do in the parish because one guy contacted me and goes, “My parish is,” his words, “country club white, but we have all these people of color around that we want to attract into our church. How do we do that?” I said, “Well one of the things you can do, for example, if you’re St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, all you have pictures is of Elizabeth Ann Seton in your church, how about bringing in pictures of St. Kateri Tekakwitha or Martin de Porres. Make the church look like the people that you want to attend there.”
Trent Horn:
Right.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Simple things like having a potluck where you can invite the Black parish down the street, the Hispanic parish down the street, Asian parish down the street. Have people come. Have a potluck, people bring their cultural foods, and then have the people get up and talk about their experience. This is what it’s like being Hispanic living in this city or here’s what it’s like being Black and trying to live my Catholic faith in this diocese. Just hear people’s experiences and their stories and empathize with them and learn from them and get to know people. [inaudible 00:26:33] will say, [Hebrew 00:26:33], right? [Hebrew 00:26:35] in Hebrew means knowledge that’s gained by experience. Know that person and not just look at them and see a color and have a stereotype. I think conversation and dialogue is essential as well.
Trent Horn:
So you’re saying to combat racism, instead of what critical race theory does to divide people into these antagonistic classes, we should treat them as individuals with gifts, talents, and inherent dignity. What a remarkable idea, Deacon Harold.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
That’s our Catholic faith, but we just simply have to be Catholic. We have to put God back into society. I think what’s happening that we’re seeing today, Trent, is that instead of being made in image and likeness of God, people are trying to make God in their own image and likeness. That was lie. You will be like God. You don’t need God. You know why? Because you’re your own God.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. You know what’s beautiful though being Catholic and dealing with an issue like racism? Catholic means universal. So I loved taking teens when I took them to World Youth Day in 2005 and 2008 and when you get there, especially on the last day when you’re with everybody out on the … You go to a big field and wait for the pope to arrive for mass so there’s hundreds of thousands of people there. You see people, Catholics from every country around the world, Pacific Island, from the Middle East, from Northern Europe, from Southern Europe, from Africa, from Ghana, and you walk around and you just see we are all different, but these are blessed differences all united in one thing, our universal faith. So I think that’s one of the great things about being Catholic. It’s that our faith is not you have an orthodoxy where you’re like I’m Russian orthodox or I’m a Greek orthodox or I’m a Southern baptist or I’m evangelical Lutheran. It’s like well no, what’s great about being Catholic is we just have this universal identification. So it just rocks.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Probably wind up talking about Father Augustus Tolton, another first Black priest in the United States who was rejected from every seminary in the United States because he was Black, ended up going to Rome and becoming a priest, sent back to the United States to Quincy, Illinois to be a priest there where the people kind of welcomed him, but the priests then rejected him. So he lived a life rejection of in your face racism, born a slave and become the first African-American … Why did he stay Catholic? I mean after everything he went through if he would have left the church, nobody would have blamed him.
Trent Horn:
Yeah.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
But why did the … The most important question though is why did he stay? In the face of such bigotry and hatred, Father Tolton was able to discern what many people fail to perceive and don’t fully appreciate, that what the Catholic Church actually teaches is true and good and beautiful despite the people in the church that are all sinners in need of God’s mercy. Father Tolton recognized and acknowledged that personal sin of human weakness is not greater or more powerful than the strength of objective truth found in the Catholic faith. He said that the Catholic Church frees us from a double slavery, that of the mind and the body. She frees us from both and he said she, the church, is the church for our people.
Trent Horn:
Well Deacon Harold, thank you so much for being able to be on the show today. Where can people go to learn more about your speaking, about your books? Where can they go to get ahold of you for all that good stuff?
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
I made it real easy, just simply deaconharold.com and everything’s there.
Trent Horn:
Awesome. Well I’ll encourage our listeners go check out deaconharold.com. Thank you all for listening. If you’re not a subscriber like Deacon Harold is, he’s a faithful subscriber to Counsel of Trent, be sure to do that. Like this video and subscribe. If you’re listening on podcast, please consider leaving a review on iTunes or Google Play. That’s always helpful and help us to bring on more great guests like this. Check out trenthornpodcast.com where, if you go there, you get access. If you support our channel at trenthornpodcast.com, you get access to my catechism study series, covers the whole catechism, my New Testament study series, covers the whole New Testament. You aren’t going to want to miss that at trenthornpodcast.com. Deacon Harold, thank you once again for being on the Counsel of Trent podcast.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers:
Thank you for having me and may God bless you and continue the great work that you’re doing for the church.
Trent Horn:
Thank you, Deacon, and thank you all for listening and I hope you all have a very blessed day.
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