Dr. Brown Speaks with Chris Broussard about the Bible and Reparations

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I'm going to speak with Christian sportscaster Chris Broussard about a fascinating topic, the Bible and reparations. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. We're going to have a fascinating discussion today. We are going to challenge a lot of thinking today. We're going to talk as brothers in Jesus today about some of the great controversial issues dividing the church.

You get to weigh in as well 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. This is Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to the broadcast. I'm going to be joined in a moment by nationally known Christian sportscaster Chris Broussard. You may have seen him on Fox or ESPN over the years. In 2012, he was named one of the 100 top black history makers. He has a Christian men's ministry called KING, which stands for knowledge, inspiration and nurture through God.

He is strongly committed to scripture and following Jesus and strongly committed to seeing the church be the church, which means the church stepping up in many ways in terms of race, relationships and righteous living. So we're going to have a great discussion and here's the deal. Once we get into the show, I'm going to ask Chris for his take on some very, very sensitive issues in the body.

You can weigh in if you agree or disagree, you can weigh in. I'm not going to be taking random questions and general Bible questions like I do on other days, but if you want to weigh in, pro or con, on the things that Chris has to say, we're going to do that today. Hey, Chris, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us on the air today. My, it's great to be on man, I'm excited, I'm excited. Awesome, awesome.

With all the broadcasting you do, it's an honor to have you on. But before, before we get into this, just so I can say I did it, all right, I got two questions for you as a New Yorker. Can the New York, can the New York Giants be playoff contenders with Daniel Jones, a quarterback? That's one. And number two, with all the talent on the New York Yankees team, why aren't they leading the division?

Well, I think a few things. One, the Yankees have had injuries as we know. We're glad that Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton have been relatively healthy, but other guys have been injured.

And baseball's fickle like that. So they got a long time, they're still very much alive, they're only a few games I think out of the wildcard, so they'll be fine as long as they can get to the postseason. As far as the Giants, as long as they're in that division, the NFC East, they've got a shot. But right now, I like Dallas because I like their offense, I like Dak Prescott, I think their defense will be much improved with Dan Quinn now as a defensive coordinator. And I like Washington better than the Giants because their defense is tough. Now obviously they're lacking at quarterback, but the Giants have a shot in that division. And I, right now, I think they're probably the third best team as I see it right now.

But Jones is okay, there's obviously a big year for him, he's just got to learn how to protect the ball and I think he's got a lot of other things going for him. All right, I tell you what, I said two questions, but I got to, especially with you being a specialist with NBA, who's going to win the NBA playoffs? I am glad as a New Yorker that you asked me that because I've picked Brooklyn the entire year. Once they got James Harden, I picked Brooklyn. I thought they'd get to the finals and lose to the Lakers before they traded for Harden.

And now that they have Harden, I think they'll win it, obviously they're banged up. But New Yorkers, this is your chance. This is your chance to finally go to the, leave the Knicks and go to the Nets, at least some of them. Brooklyn is in New York. And I'm always talking to long suffering Knicks fans, and it's not Knicks fans, it's long suffering Knicks fans.

That's the official name. And it's time for them to embrace the Nets. You got three all time great players playing in New York, but all everybody cares about is the Knicks.

I think the Nets are bigger nationally than they are locally, but I think it's time to at least embrace, to some degree, embrace the Nets. I got it. Listen, I just had to do it with all my years of radio broadcasting, never talking sports. So I just had to do it once. Okay, thanks. Now you can say, you can wipe that off your bucket list.

I can wipe it off my bucket list. All right. Yeah. All right. So, Chris, when you reached out to me, oh, in the last year, beginning of this year, through a common friend and wanted to talk to him about speaking at your men's conference, we were on the phone talking, just amazed at how many things we shared in common.

And I said, wait a second. I remember your name, not just as a sportscaster, and I'd written about what happened to years ago when you were just honest about your Christian views on TV and almost got blacklisted. What happened? Yeah, this was back in 2013, and let me back up a little bit from there to really give you the full context. In 2007, which is obviously 14 years ago, John Ameche, a former NBA player, came out of the closet as a homosexual. And I had actually covered John when he played for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

And we're friendly, we had a good relationship, really nice guy, liked him a lot. And I began to see the media's reaction to NBA players or really anyone that kind of did anything other than applaud John Ameche. If a player said, hey, yeah, I could play with him as long as he doesn't hit on me or something like that, long as he doesn't bring that in the locker room, whatever, they were getting ripped.

They were called, you know, Neanderthals and backwards and this and that. And so I wrote a blog for ESPN.com stating that I'm a Christian. And I believe in, you know, orthodox biblical principles and values regarding sexuality and other things, that I was for traditional marriage between one man and one woman, that I believe sex was for marriage between a man and a woman, you know, all that type of stuff. And that I talked about my relationship with L.V. Granderson, who's the openly homosexual, and he was an assistant sports editor, NBA editor at ESPN, the magazine at the time. And we were good friends. We played on several rec basketball leagues together. We'd have lunch together, we'd talk and we'd actually talk about this. You know, I talk about my biblical beliefs and he'd talk about, you know, his lifestyle and we'd have our little disagreements, but always cordial, always simple. And we were legitimately friends. And I spoke about that and said, look, we're going to have disagreements.

L.Z. believes that I take my views and beliefs from a mistranslated, outdated book. And I believe I don't agree with his lifestyle. But yet we can be friends, we can respect each other, we can love each other and yet disagree. So I said, we're going to disagree on things, but we can disagree without being disagreeable. I kind of did that for the entire society. So let's not bash Christians or others who may not fully agree with this lifestyle or whatever.

Let's just understand we're different and we disagree and we can make room for everyone in this society. And it was very positively received. I received thousands of comments on it and 90 percent of them were positive, even ones from homosexuals. And Mike and Mike in the morning, which was the top sports show, sports talk radio show throughout the country for for many years, they actually read two thirds of the column on the air.

They said this is the best. Mike Greenberg said this is the best explanation I've seen on this topic. And he read they read parts of it on the air. And so it was very positively received six years later. I think that's where ESPN got the idea to put me and Elzy Granderson on this show called Outside the Lines together. Now, this was the morning of Jason Collins, who played for the New Jersey Nets, who was still in the league at the time, not a star, but, you know, he was a player and he came out in an article, of course, illustrated as openly as homosexual. And so they were having me that morning on sports sports center.

And I was on, I think, maybe three or four different hits on the various sports centers. And just as an objective reporter, I wasn't giving my opinion. I was just telling as I was texting with coaches and players and executives in the league what the general views were. I was actually the first one to alert Kobe Bryant on Jason Collins coming out. And and so I was just saying, hey, some, you know, generally guys are favorable and they're fine with it. You know, some think it could be uncomfortable in the locker room or, you know, just various whatever the views were.

But mostly guys were, hey, it's fine, you know, whatever. And then they put me on Outside the Lines later that day. And Outside the Lines is a show where your your personal views and opinions often come into play more. And so they put me on with LZ.

And people thought, oh, this was planned ESPN did this on purpose. We I didn't even know I was going with LZ until I sat down in the chair and we were remote. So he was in a different place than I was.

And and I sat down and, you know, we're checking in and he's there and I'm like, oh, wow, OK, cool. So they brought us on because of my article, because they knew we were friends and they knew we were on different sides of this topic. And so in the midst of the conversation, I shared about, you know, my article in 2007 and how our views were different. And LZ was sharing his viewpoint and we're doing it very respectfully. And it was a good conversation. No, no hatred or anything. And finally, the the host who was a fill in host that day, he asked me, well, Chris, because because my Christian faith was coming out in my answers as to why I believed in traditional marriage and things like that.

And so he asked me, they will hate. Jason came out as a Christian in the article. He, you know, talked about him being a Christian as well.

What do you think of that? And so I just said, look, the Bible gives, I'm paraphrasing, but the Bible, you know, gives us principles and values and commands Jesus gave us to live by. And I don't believe if you're if you're going if you're unrepentantly going against Jesus's teaching, whether that's adultery, fornication between heterosexuals, whatever, then I think I wouldn't characterize you as a Christian because I don't believe the Bible does. We all can fall short in sin, of course.

But are you repentant? And so that's basically what I shared. And to be initially ESPN loved it. I got a call right after the show. We'll tell you what, hang on. Hang on right there. So 2007, things went well. You expressed yourself, why you as a Christian, a post homosexual practice.

Now, 2013 started well, but then there was a bit of a backlash. That's when I got involved. That's when I first took note of Chris Broussard, not just the sportscaster, but Chris Broussard, the unashamed Christian, began to write about him. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome back, friends, to The Line of Fire. I am speaking with Chris Broussard, well-known sportscaster, sports commentator, and strong Christian leader. So we're just, we're going to get into the subject of the Bible, reparations, the church leading the way in righteousness, and trust me, we're going to hit on some controversial subjects and have very candid interaction.

You can interact as well at 866-34-TRUTH. So Chris, after Jason Collins came out as gay, and then you were asked by ESPN, you're opposite L.C. Granderson himself, openly gay, you have, you have the conversation, starts going well, and then I began to hear about it when things weren't going so well.

What happened? Yeah, initially, I heard from someone at the show, right after the show, got a text, oh, that was great. I wish I had been there. You guys handled a very hot-button topic in a respectful, cordial, simple manner.

It was great. They almost thought like it was a model for how we should discuss this thing with people that disagree. ESPN called me, and they, initially I thought, they called me about 15 minutes after the show, and I thought, the top executive, one of the top executives, I thought, you know, it was going to be controversy, he said, hey, that was great, we thought it was excellent, we're just trying to figure out, do we want to use you as a reporter on this story, or as a commentator, sharing your views, and I said, look, I'm fine either way. And then about an hour later is when the backlash came, and The View, CNN, MSNBC, Al Sharpton, I mean, it was all over the place, and I was getting criticized and crushed, and ESPN said, look, they called me later that night, hey, they wanted me to release a statement, I released a statement, they didn't ask me to apologize, I told them, I said, I'm not going to apologize, they said, no, we wouldn't ask you to, but just, their concern was that I could cover the NBA going forward, and obviously that was fine, but a couple days later I actually went on a show called The Breakfast Club, which is an incredibly popular morning talk show in the black community, and I was on for about ten minutes on a phone interview, and it really was a great opportunity to share what the Bible says about this topic, because you hear unbelievers always say, well, Leviticus says you can't eat shrimp, and you can't wear blended cloth, and this and that, and they use that to disregard what the Old Testament says about various forms of sexuality, and so I was able to talk about the parts of the Old Testament that we do still follow that are backed up and reiterated in the New Testament, talked about the ceremonial laws, not necessarily being needed to be followed as the moral laws still are, and things like that, and it didn't even share New Testament scriptures on this issue, which a lot of people don't share, they mostly just throw out the Old Testament scriptures, and so it was really a great opportunity to witness about this even on a show like that, so basically that's what happened, and I got a lot of backlash from outside of ESPN, but ESPN didn't, there was no suspension, there was nothing negative, and then I left ESPN in 2016, but they had offered me another contract, it had nothing to do with this, it wasn't like they weren't trying to extend me, I just, you know, I thought it was a better opportunity at Fox, so that's basically what went down.

Got it. Yeah, well, God bless you for being a model there, and for speaking the truth, I addressed the backlash, and you know, someone's gonna get martyred now, you know, in terms of career or blacklisted, because of just saying what the gospel said, but one key principle is that the history of good relations, the history of interacting openly and honestly with those who differed with, was a key to moving forward, okay, you sent me something very well written, a lot of scripture, a lot of thought behind it, for my interaction and feedback about the subject of reparations, which you would phrase differently, but I want to give a perspective first, and then you'll get to introduce things before our break at the bottom of the hour, and then pursue them, and I'll play the devil's advocate or even respond with comments that are coming in on social media and things like that, but candidly, when I've heard over the years of the idea of reparations for slavery, as someone that's worked with multiracial churches for years, someone that's ministered around the world, so constantly in different ethnic settings and things like that, as someone who recognizes America's past sins, et cetera, I always thought it was this crazy idea, like, what are you talking about? And so that was my perspective. And I think most conservative Christians, especially white conservatives, like, what are you talking about? This is some crazy liberal idea of distribution of wealth, and, you know, I'd think, for example, of Abraham Lincoln's comments in the second inauguration, so in the midst of Civil War agony, he said that God may well let the war continue until, quote, every drop of blood drawn with the last shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, and that the war was the country's woe due. So that the horrors of the Civil War, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, that was the first judgment on us and a payment to set people free, and then there were steps that were taken in the centuries that followed. And I'm looking at quotes, for example, from Columbia professor John McWhorter, who's in favor of reparations, but said we've had them, affirmative action in the late 1960s, Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which forced banks to invest in inner cities, et cetera. These are reparations in his view.

So I mean, that would have been my reaction, like, what are you talking about? We've done things, we've tried to fix the past, we just move on the best we can and keep trying to make an equal playing field moving forward. What kind of a liberal, crazy idea is this? And that's the way it's portrayed primarily on the conservative side on the right, and yet you're coming at things from a biblical angle and not using the word reparations so much. So take a few minutes to present this and why you think this is something where the church needs to lead the way.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much to get into here. I could address, you mentioned John McWhorter and a few other things. I don't know if you want me to address that. But look, initially when slavery was ended, whites understood, at least those that were on the side of emancipation, that just freeing African Americans and throwing them into society without any reparations or restitution, any land, any money, any, it would just be crazy. And so that's when it was determined that African Americans would be given what?

40 acres and a mule, each family. Well, because that would have given African Americans a legitimate opportunity to assimilate economically into the American mainstream. That 40 acres, of course, and a mule was never given to African Americans. So the cause of reparations was initially like, yes, of course we got to do this. But it was never done. In fact, the only reparations that were given at that time were to slave owners or former slave owners in Washington, D.C., who were paid approximately or as much as $300 per ex-slave or per slave that they lost due to emancipation. Then there was Reconstruction.

All right. So we didn't get the 40 acres and a mule, but Reconstruction came with the government going down into the South to make sure that African Americans were given their rights. And that lasted for like eight years. And what you saw was that African Americans were making progress. You had many African American elected officials, senators, congressmen, you had all of that.

But then after eight years, it ended. And when it ended, Jim Crow took its place. And Jim Crow was essentially de facto slavery. And so you had African Americans back on the plantations as sharecroppers, not, you know, slaves, so to speak. But essentially it was de facto slavery.

And so, you know, Jim Crow, we all know the history of that up to 1960. As far as affirmative action being an answer for reparations, that's just not accurate. Affirmative action, initially the thought was that it was to serve as a recompense, so to speak, for slavery. But affirmative action was not just for black people, and isn't, hasn't been just for black people. In fact, white women, when you look in terms of high-ranking jobs and things like that, they've benefited more from affirmative action than blacks have. And now I'm not saying blacks haven't benefited. We have. Some of us.

I did. My father was in that first wave of African Americans in the late 60s, early 70s, who got his job in a corporate job because of affirmative action. So I've benefited from it personally, but most blacks haven't in that way. And so white women have benefited more than black men.

White women in most part, for the most part, are married to white men. So I can make an argument that the white family has benefited more economically and financially than the black family has from affirmative action. If you're going to, if there's going to be a reparation or restitution for slavery, and it's not just slavery, and I mean, I don't know how much time I have, but the argument doesn't, it doesn't start and end in slavery. But if there's going to be reparations or restitution for the racism and white supremacist actions of the past, then it has to be specifically for African Americans. And to be honest, specifically for descendants of American slaves. And I would argue there's differences in the black community, but I would argue also African descendants, African descendants who came to America, say, prior to 1950. Because Africans coming over now, whose parents came over in the 70s from Nigeria or Ghana or the Caribbean, they, it's a whole different situation for them. So I, there are many that they should not be included in this discussion. If they can get reparations from the European nations that colonize their lands or their nations or enslave them in the Caribbean or South America, that's a different thing. But as far as American reparations, that's, that's the discussion there.

But let me... All right. I'll tell you what, here's what we do. Here's what we do. When we come back, we got a short break, we come back in your, in your, your presentation that you sent me, you, you start with scripture. I mean, you lay out a preamble, but then scripture, scripture, scripture, that's something we all agree on is scripture. So let's come back and start with some scripture arguments and then we'll unpack this.

If you differ, feel free to call. That's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us on the line of fire today, speaking with Christian sports commentator, Chris Broussard. And Chris and I began interacting, oh, somewhat regularly early in this year, end of last year, and got to talk about a document that he had written up on the subject of reparations and the church. And I asked him to come on the air so we could talk about this because in Chris's view, the church must lead the way. This is not the government to side around us. The church must lead the way.

And again, here's, here's what I'm thinking. Okay. I'm Caucasian, right? Jewish. My mother came over from England as an orphan, was raised by other relatives here. So that's, you know, earlier last century, my grandparents and my father's side came over from Russia. My grandfather died in his forties as a painter. And it was because of fumes that he inhaled, the cancer, et cetera.

And my dad had to start supporting the family as a boy, you know, what, 11, 12 years old. So what in the world do we have to do with, why are we thinking about reparations for what past generations did to others? You know, so these are, these are the typical questions, reactions that come up as I look at this, someone who loves righteousness and wants to honor the Lord, et cetera. So Chris, the reason I had you on the air, I told you I'll, I'll raise other issues or play the devil's advocate was to have the discussion, was to flesh this out, you know, was to say, okay, let's, I want, I want to hear a perspective that we don't often hear. And we understand that equality of outcome is not something we're looking for, but there are other, there are other righteousness issues that come up.

So as a man of God and a lover of scripture, why does this interest you? Well let me quickly say, first of all, this is the only way I see that we're going to get full closure on the racial issue in America. And we, I think most blacks certainly, and many whites, if not most, I think most whites want closure on this issue.

The only way to have closure is to have restitution. And so that's one thing. And also it's not based on need, it's based on what's just and fair. We as Christians are the hunger and thirst for righteousness. So what's righteous is what's important, not necessarily what is needed. So if I steal $1 million from LeBron James, he's fine. He doesn't need that $1 million back, but he should get it back and I should go to jail and pay the price because that is right, not based on his needs. So that's the situation here. Most African Americans, or many, certainly need it, but many don't.

And that's where a lot of whites look at, well, LeBron James, Chris Broussard, the different people like that don't need it. But here's, I'm going to get to the scripture. The scripture, we all know the story of Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19, when he was saved, gave his life to Christ, and he immediately upon getting saved said he went and gave half of his possessions to the poor.

And if he's cheated anybody, he's paid them back four times that amount. And Jesus said to him, today, salvation has come to your house. So looking at what Zacchaeus did, that was evidence of his salvation. Then of course we go to the Old Testament, and there are many scriptures in the Old Testament that support restitution. Exodus 12 verses in the 30s, when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt, God told Moses, go tell the Egyptians to give you articles of silver and gold and for clothing. And the Bible says that the Lord caused the Egyptians to give the Israelites what they asked for. Deuteronomy 15 talks about how when you release men who have served you for seven years as slaves, don't send them away empty handed.

Give them liberally from your flock and your threshing floor and your wine press and so on and so forth. So basically, send them out prepared to survive in the real world, because it's just common sense that if you release people from slavery, you need to give them something to survive and thrive. Numbers chapter five talks about it, Proverbs 14 talks about it.

And it really boils down to this, Mike, quickly. Great America, there's a book by Ira Katznelson, a Jewish scholar, who is called When Affirmative Action Was White. And whites have received affirmative action for roughly 400 years in this country.

Again, it wasn't just slavery. It was the Homestead Act, which gave 10% of the United States land mass to white Americans, essentially for free. 1.6 million whites benefited from that, including European immigrants. And roughly 46 million adult Americans are benefiting financially from the Homestead Act today, and those are white Americans.

That's more than the black population in the country. You look at the GI Bill from 44 to 1956, which benefited the white GIs, but very few of the black GIs. The Social Security Act, the Wagner Act, which created the unions that gave whites pensions and benefits and unions, but they could keep blacks out of the unions. You look at the Federal Housing Administration loan of the 30s to the 60s that gave $120 billion of government-backed, low-interest mortgages to white families.

98% of the recipients were white. That's what created the nice white suburbs. And those suburbs had contracts where you couldn't sell to black people. And then on top of that, they went into the black neighborhood and redlined them and made it almost impossible for you to get a mortgage and insurance for your home, and your property value decreased. It's been estimated that the average black family has lost $212,000 simply because of redlining. So there's all of that beyond slavery.

It's not just slavery. There's all of that beyond slavery that has created a racial wealth gap where the average white family has eight times the wealth of the average black family. And we know wealth is more important than income. Income will eventually allow you to build wealth, but wealth is what enables you to survive the hardships that come our way in life.

And most blacks are living, we're living off income, not accumulated wealth over the generations that white Americans, because of the government, because of things they've been given and legislation from the government, they've been able to build wealth to the point, Mike, where a white family led by a person with nothing more than a high school diploma has more wealth than a black family led by someone with a master's degree. And so that is why I believe restitution needs to be made. Now, let me get to the church quickly, and then I'll take any questions, comments, whatever. The church should be out in the forefront of this. We know, all of us, the direction of this country spiritually is a mess. And it is there, it's getting more and more antagonistic toward Christianity. The way we as Christians, the reason we can't combat it is because we're divided. And Jesus himself said, a house divided cannot stand. And so most black Christians vote Democrat, not because they agree with the social issues, but because of the economic issues and the inclusiveness that's more open in the Democratic Party, whereas the most white Christians vote Republican. And so we're too divided to combat the onslaught against the church. I'm saying if white Christians were the loudest, strongest, most progressive voice for whether it's reparations, some form of restitution, social and racial justice and equality, then black Christians would be willing to side with them.

And most blacks, even non-Christians, you've got a lot of black Muslims and Jews who agree with traditional marriage, or anti-abortion, and want religious liberty, and all of those things. If we could unite then on what is biblical on the left and what is biblical on the right, that could be combined in a kingdom agenda, not a right wing or a left wing agenda, but a kingdom agenda that I think would create such a, that's a large group of people of all races who can make more of an impact on this country for the Lord. I actually think it could spark revival because when you meet the book of Acts, chapter two and chapter four, when they met the economic needs of believers, the Bible says they were adding to the church daily. So when you meet the economic needs of people, that's a form of evangelism. And so I think that would be a tremendous witness for the church. And let's face it, Mike, the image of white evangelicals is canceled in this culture. That is a way that white evangelicals could, one, represent the Lord in truth, in my view.

And then that also would shed this image that they're elitist and racist and really more about capitalism than they are about Christ. And I'm not saying let's perhaps socialism, cause this isn't about taking money from individual whites. This is something that would be, it could be private sector and government could do this.

And so that, that is what it's about. And we know, look, with the bailout in 2008, the corporate bailout was estimates of range from seven and a half trillion dollars to $29 trillion. The bailout in 2020 for COVID, $4 trillion.

America could have the money if it has the desire. And again, that's how you bring closure. Let me end it with this. No matter how successful you are as an African American in this country, for the most part, there is tension between you and your country. The fact that it's black, we have to talk about the obstacles you're going to have because of your skin color in your own country. The fact that we have to tell you, don't talk back to police, do this, do that, their whites don't have to tell their kids.

That in your own country, all the obstacles we have in our own country is a result of the tension that we feel, even though we love America, the tension we have with our country. And it's based on there's been no closure, no restitution. If I come to your house, Mike, tonight, steal your car. And then a week later, come back to you and say, Mike, I'm sorry, I can't believe what I did that was wrong. Forgive me, but I don't give you the car back. Now you're like, well, there's tension between it. No matter how nice I am to you going forward, I'll pay your bus fare.

I'll pick you up from work because you don't have a car anymore. All of that, no matter how nice I am, until I give you the car back or buy you a new one, there's going to be tension and an issue and no closure. That's what we're facing in America. There is no closure on the racial issue. And racism was mainly about its capital and resources. White America got tangible financial resources from its racism.

That sugar, cotton, tobacco, rice, that's what made America the superpower it became. That was all built on the backs of black Americans who've never gotten a portion of that. And so there needs to be closure and then we can forget all this trigger stuff and all these others, how I feel. I don't care if an individual white person doesn't like me, even if it's because I'm black.

I care if they can affect my livelihood and that's what reparations would do. We come back. I'm going to throw objections at you and you're going to give me 30-second responses.

Oh, people getting heated up in the comments section. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining me today. As promised, we're going to touch on some sensitive issues, my guest, Christian leader and sportscaster, Chris Broussard. Okay, you're used to doing things by the clock with segments back and forth, so I'm actually ...

I normally don't do this, but I'm actually looking right at my clock to time things, so I'm going to give you 30 seconds to respond to each objection. All right, Chris? Right. Right. Okay.

One of my colleagues I discussed with him, respected African-American leader. He said, you can make a case for this, but the biblical response is forgiveness. That's the only way to move on.

What do you say? Forgiveness and justice are two different things. If someone comes into my house and kills my children, I can forgive him, but he still needs to go to jail, so he doesn't do it to anybody else, so he learns from it, and so other people see what happened to him and don't do it themselves, so it's a deterrent to others. This has nothing to do with forgiveness. African-Americans have clearly forgiven white people. This is about justice.

All right. Looking at what someone lived in South Africa under apartheid, person of color, it says all this is going to do is just deepen racial division because you're constantly playing into this and exaggerating, not exaggerating, but exacerbating the issue by constantly playing into it instead of saying, let's move forward. Your response? This would actually give closure. Nothing else is going to give closure. Wouldn't whites love to stop talking about race? As long as this is accompanied by fixing the textbooks, by no further types of discrimination, this will give closure, and so I think this is ending it. We're not creating a divide. The divide is being created already.

We're just trying to give closure to the divide that's already there. All right. As long as you perpetuate the victim mentality, you don't breed a spirit of an overcomer, and this is perpetuating the victim mentality.

False. I'm very successful in my life. I don't have a victim mentality. I have a realistic mentality. When Americans talk about any of our national, international enemies, are we playing the victim role?

No. We're saying we need to deal with this so calamity doesn't come our way, or we're not oppressed or taken over. Victimhood can be a part of your journey, but it's not a destination, I say to people. I don't think like a victim.

I think realistically, and you can do that and still live victoriously. You mentioned that Africans who've come over to America in more recent decades are doing fine. We've gotten calls from folks who identify as AAA, African, African-American, and they say, we're doing fine. We're doing fine in the society.

We came over here and had to be self-starters, but we're doing fine. Why is it that they can start from scratch as immigrants and do just fine with the same skin color, but others who've been here for centuries with the same skin color can't? Some that come over are already educated or even have a good amount of money from the countries they came over, but a lot don't have that. But they're coming over, their viewpoint is different, because what they came from was in many cases was you didn't even have the opportunities we have here in America, so they're very much more excited about the opportunities that do exist, and they have a different mentality. African-Americans who've been here and experienced racism and lived under it have a different viewpoint.

So I think that is a big part of it. If I get freed initially, I'm just happy with any little thing that's freedom. But as I grow and I experience my humanity more and I become more of a liberated mentality, then I want more than just sheer freedom.

I want what is due me and what I should get from. I was in a meeting decades ago in a church that was very activist in helping the poor and refugees and take them into our home, and the famed Christian civil rights leader John Perkins was speaking at our church, actually liked us a lot, and said, by the way, don't get nervous to the whites there, he said, I'm not asking for your money. He said, because if you gave it to the blacks, he said, you'd get it back tomorrow because that's how you got to be rich in the first place. Now, he was half joking in what he was saying, but what about the argument, if you look at people who win the lottery and things like that, that most of them end up in the worst financial shape, if suddenly people who have not had certain amounts of money are entrusted with it, maybe it's going to make things worse in the end, and then they'll be more embittered by it.

So rather than bringing closure, you're just almost cursing people with this. No, well, most, I think most lottery winners don't actually end up worse. Some do, but not most. But reparations could come in various forms. It could come in programs, it could come in tax exemptions, it could come in, you know, various things like that. Like what if Harvard, which benefited from slavery, gave 3% of its endowment to Howard University and HBCU? Harvard's endowment is 13 times more than the endowments of all 100 HBCUs combined.

Something like that could help Howard University become not just a great black school, but a great American school overall. And so it could be various forms, or it could be cash. If people are free to spend money the way they want to, when, you know, Israel and other groups have been given reparations, they're not told how they can spend it. The key is, let's make this right. And there will be closure.

And if blacks go out and waste the money, then shame on us. And we have no, you know, we couldn't continue to cry racism as long as it's not continued to be perpetuated. We would, you know, like I said, closure is one of the biggest reasons for doing this. All right. And then last objection I'm going to throw at you, because I want to take the last three minutes just for some practical reflections. But thankfully, the waters have been stirred with your comments, which is the whole goal of discussing these things. Okay. Just very, very quickly here on the righteousness issue and all of this.

Well, tell you what, let's just let's be practical, okay? Let's say, all right, we're looking at a society which to me is built on a lot of falsehoods. Yes, I understand black Americans have talks with their kids about police that white Americans generally don't have to have.

On the other hand, I know the myth of hands up, don't shoot, and that gets perpetuated and then whole things are built on that. I'm concerned that there's so much that's happened in America now. The left woke reaction, the extremism, the extremist elements of the BLM movement, and all of this, that we're not dealing so much with everyone wanting to do the right thing, but with radical elements that want to destroy America and that won't be happy until every white person feels guilty for being white. So how can we move forward without reacting to the extremes on either side, and even just in a practical way, having conversations, what would you say to your white brothers and sisters in the last three minutes? I would ask my white Christian brothers and sisters to listen to African Americans because whites get defensive. I think you and I were on the same call yesterday when an African American Christian leader was talking about how a good white friend of his, a Christian, would just refuse to even listen to him try to explain racism in America and what blacks feel, what blacks go to. Most white American Christians do not know true American history. Yeah, they know African Americans were slaves and they think that was almost like a little blind spot in American history and everything else was, we're a city on the hill manifesting destiny. You know, everything we did was right because we're this great Christian nation and that's not the case. I mean, to take color out of it, just look at how human beings have been treated in the past by Americans.

They happen to be black and Native American and sometimes Asian, but they were human beings overall. That's not Christian the way they were treated. And so I think there has to, white American Christians, I would ask you to just listen to your brothers and sisters of color rather than just being so defensive.

And we need to vote on both sides quickly. I'll say we need to give grace. We're going to have an open, honest, transparent discussion about race between whites and blacks. Then I as an African American have to give grace. If you say something that I find offensive, you say, well, why don't you just get married and stop having all these kids out of wedlock? I can't just roll you a racist and end the conversation. I have to hear you and respond with grace. And if I talk about America's history and how it was racist and this and that and the Southern Baptist Convention was founded to protect slavery and on and on and on, you have to be able to listen to that without getting emotional and ending the conversation too. So we have to extend grace and allow one another to be offended in this type of conversation if we're going to move forward.

Yeah. And that's, that's the key thing and friends, that's, that's my goal in having Chris on the air to discuss this. It's not, and look, I've, I've shared what my impressions were in the past, things that Chris has challenged me to think about, arguments that I would raise to this day or arguments I've heard from others. So I, I'm not having Chris on and say, hey, look at me, I'm so woke, check me out. Nor am I having Chris on to argue against what he's saying.

But Chris, you know, being a radio host all these years, I've listened to a lot of people and many African Americans have said exactly what you said. We just want you to listen. We're not even asking you to respond a certain way, but to listen. And as I look in some of the comments that are scrolling in front of me on YouTube and Facebook, there is that defensiveness. And again, I know a lot of it comes from the radical left and we're reacting to that. So the key thing is we can't react. We're supposed to be children of God and that means we can't react. And that means we say, okay, I love God. I love my neighbor.

So my neighbor has an issue. I want to sit down and understand that now we can disagree or I can be enlightened and change my view, but at least we're going to do our best to understand each other. Hey Chris, God willing, we will continue this discussion at other settings and I'll share some of the feedback we get in the days ahead. Thanks for coming on. All right brother. Thank you. God bless you. God bless you.