The Sins of Different Sub-Cultures, and the Color of Repentance

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Introduction

Last week, something of a discussion broke out in response to a statement from Brian Sauvé about how blacks could join his church, of course, but in order to be welcome they would need to repudiate black culture, a culture filled with all sorts of dysfunction.

Now when I say “discussion broke out,” I mean something more akin to dog-piling, and so it is not my intention to interact too closely with Brian’s statement. The dog-pile is now of a sufficient size. From Ogden’s subsequent responses and clarifications, it is clear that they believed that some level of explanatory damage control was necessary—and I am glad that they saw the need to address it.

I don’t want to join the dog pile, but I do want to address some of the larger issues that were dislodged as a result of the fracas . . . because it is very clear to me that American culture is screwed up on ethnicity. Red, and yellow, black and white . . . we are all screwed up.

What I want to do here is zoom out just a bit, and talk about the nature of cultures and subcultures, and why it is important for us to be very careful as we talk about them, and even more careful as we define them. The points I want to make here touch on the original sentiment as expressed by Brian, but the main things I want to chase are things I saw and heard in the general melee that followed his initial statement.

Brian’s target was legitimate, but he really shouldn’t have used the phrase “black culture” as the way to describe the cluster of sins he was aiming at. And so a strong reaction against the perceived slam was also called for, although we could have used less of the tea-kettle noises. What I want to do here is sort through some of the “talking at cross-purposes” stuff, and then move on to address some of those malevolent white voices that entered the chat later on, the ignorance and malice of which are an embarrassment to decent white people everywhere. The judgment with which you judge you shall be judged, and so if the measure is to be that each ethnic group is represented by their worst members, I guess that leaves white people now represented by these guys. Oh well.

One Judicious Response

New Christendom’s Take on Black Culture: Clearing Up Misconceptions with @KJBrigg pic.twitter.com/H8ZqOBrxi1

— CenterForBiblicalUnity (@biblical_unity) September 24, 2025

One of responses that I appreciated greatly, tone and content both, was this one, off to the right. Not only did I appreciate it, so also did a number of people on both sides. Particularly noteworthy was his refusal to take offense at what Brian said. He differed with it, but understood quite clearly where outsiders had gotten the impression they have gotten. If you haven’t seen this response yet, I encourage you to take a few minutes—there is a lot of value there.

Briggins is quite right that the majority of blacks do not come from the streets, and that they reject the glorification of criminality. But he is also correct that the black community generally has done an inadequate job of refusing to let the lawlessness of antinomian rappers and other miscreants define the whole group. And I would say it has been worse than “inadequate”—when the BLM riots were in full swing how many black members of Congress lined up to denounce all such violence? While it is quite true that thugs in the alley don’t represent all blacks, it should be obvious that elected representatives do in fact . . . represent.

In all honesty, blacks are to be faulted for a big part of the mess they are in. Why? Because for years they were safe in the back pocket of the Democratic Party. They would vote consistently and overwhelmingly for the people whose policies were destroying them. And now—life being the way it is—in the very moment when numerous blacks are abandoning the Democratic Party, some Internet wiseacres on the right are trying to chase them back.

In Obama’s first run for president, around 5% of blacks didn’t vote for him. In Trump’s second run for the presidency, around 16% of blacks voted for him. That was quite the erosion. And of course, this is the moment when a number of whites—I mean online whites, people who say they’re white (who knows?) and while on the subject I want Corey Mahler to take a DNA test—start to display the kind of white ugliness that gave the Democratic lies much of their plausibility.

But Briggins is correct that the majority of black Americans do not live that way, and he is also correct that the black community generally needs to fire their PR firm, which has been telling whites for a generation or more that they are in fact that way . . . or at least the authentic ones are. This ideal of faux-authenticity is why, when a polished black graduate of Harvard Law decides to run for office in some black district, he promptly descends into the argot of the streets. Sup, homies.

Like listening to Hillary put on a campaign-trail-Southern-accent back in 2008. The whole thing is humiliating, and bad enough to make the fillings in your molars ache.

But with this said, and all qualified agreements noted, there is one additional factor that I would want to throw into this discussion pot. Quite apart from the culture of gang-bangers in the inner city, it remains a fact that—wherever they live—approximately half of all black children today are growing up in a fatherless home. This by itself is a top-tier cultural disaster, and for all kinds of reasons . . . not just regarding crime statistics.

And here is the interesting thing. Today, the number of white children growing up in fatherless homes is around 18%. The last time black fatherlessness was at that level—18%—was back in 1960. Just five years after that, Daniel Moynihan issued his famous report entitled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. In short, the fatherless crisis in white families today is at roughly the same level that it was for black families in 1960, back when Moynihan first noticed the developing crisis.

And this crisis in our families today, both colors, was the doing of . . . white people. This was the project of do-gooding white people, brimful of uplift and sunshine, people who were going to fix all our social ills in the name of a Great Society, ladling good intentions over the tops of everyone’s heads. The intentions were really good, I tell you . . . hey, how’d we get on this road?

Equally Sinful?

In the course of all the online back and forth, I was asked by Joel Webbon if white culture and black culture were equally sinful. It is a point I intend to develop further in a minute, but in the moment, I said this:

There are at least two layers here. One is the issue of anarchistic criminality. The other is the sin of hubris, wanting to ascend the sides of the north. There is sinfulness as measured by bloody mayhem, and there is sinfulness as measured by ingratitude, conceit, and secularizing idolatry.

Which culture is more sinful? A small aboriginal tribe, given to head-hunting and cannibalism, or the culture of high rebellion headed up by Nimrod, mighty hunter before the Lord?

If we are talking about neighborhoods in America, the black districts are far more dangerous. But if we are talking about the building of the secularist Babel, then white culture is by far the worst. It wasn’t the Nigerians that gave us Kant and Nietzsche. The black thug just wants my wallet. The Nietzschean bronze pagans want to take my soul. Of course the commies want my soul also, but nobody gets that. It already belongs to Jesus.

I believe, for example, that I could walk across Martha’s Vineyard at two in the morning, and not have to worry about getting mugged. I would not have the same chirpy disposition if asked to do the same thing in Harlem. In short, I would not have to worry about common criminality in the former instance, and I would in the latter. But the liberal white ladies who inhabit Martha’s Vineyard, and other places just like them, are doing far more damage to the world. Their husbands work in the city for various international banks, and as the Byrds taught us so well in their banger album Sweetheart of the Rodeo . . .

And don’t forget that these liberal white ladies will give millions of dollars to whatever Menshevik the Democrats run in 2028. And a much higher percentage of white people will vote for that commie, whoever he is, than the percentage of blacks who rob, stab, rape, or murder.

White people in America, downstream from centuries of cultural blessing that were bestowed on us through the legacy of Christendom, have been industriously trashing it, throwing all away. Kant, Nietzsche, Darwin, Hobbes, Sartre, the lot. Scripture teaches us that to whom much is given, much is required. The nations of the West have sinned against much greater light, and consequently their sin is that much greater. Whites have been despising two millennia of grace. Compare that to the handful of centuries that blacks have had, with much of that time being in a really complicated relationship with white people. We have despised incalculable blessings, and need to be confronted with the fact.

For us to be vaunting ourselves as superior in this moment is like the prodigal son, right before he ran out of money, taking pride in the fact that he was a better speller than the barmaid who rang up his last tab.

The white superiority guys can’t have it both ways. They cannot celebrate how much civilizational grace we have been given without also acknowledging how greatly we have abused it in the sin of throwing it all away. To whom much is given, much is required. Were we given much? Or not? How much cultural grace have white people despised over against how much cultural grace black people have been given? Step up to the microphone, look me in the eye, and answer the question.

And I do know that after I post this, I will be called a race traitor. But it is not treachery to want people to repent of their sins. Jeremiah was a patriot, but the courtier-scum surrounding the throne did not grant him that description.

Equal Weights and Measures

I had no problem with Brian Sauvé calling out particular sins that blacks are susceptible to. This is a place where the apostle Paul provided us with an example, when he told Titus to deal with the Cretans sharply. There was an endemic problem with Cretan culture, and Paul did not want Cretan converts to be tracking those problems into the church. But he gave this instruction on the supposition that the exhortation could be heard, and that Cretans could become “sound in the faith.”

I wouldn’t even have a huge problem if we were to call such things “black culture,” provided we played by the same rules when talking about white culture. Otherwise, this is taking the worst behavior on the part of some blacks and making that behavior representative of black culture, and yet, when we turn to the worst behavior on the part of some whites, we treat that as a very obvious anomaly. Thus white people get judged by Dante and Bach, and they get judged by “Viper” Brown, warlord of the South Side. Pretty convenient. This is what competition experts call “cheating.”

In all the confusion, I saw someone saying that blacks don’t get to appeal to Frederick Douglass, or George Washington Carver, or anyone like that because that is not the reality today. The representative black today would have to be someone like P. Diddy. Okay . . . so then why do whites get to appeal to George Washington or Charlemagne? And not Gavin Newsom? They don’t have a George Washington Carver, sure enough. But we don’t have a George Washington.

Upstream Responsibilities

Now it is customary at this point in the argument for people to say that the reason that white people have wandered from the path is because of the secret machinations of the Jews. We look at our bad behavior and say that we would have been alright if it hadn’t been for all those secret meetings and cabals and stuff. I mean, after Jews got all that porn streaming into all the motel rooms . . . what were we supposed to do? We were helpless, I tell you.

This kind of blame-shifting and buck-passing is about the most unmanly thing that anyone might come up with to do. And the fact that it is self-serving can be seen in the fact that people who think this way won’t let blacks shift the blame to whites in the same way. Whose idea was it to create financial incentives to prevent pregnant black girls from marrying the father? Take that idea outside and look at it in the sunlight. That’s a white people idea, right there.

You might protest that it was actually a white liberal idea. I see. True, but remember the rule you introduced earlier. Ethnic groups are to be evaluated by their worst representatives, and the only variable allowed in the discussion is the amount of melanin in the skin.

So reject the double standard where you get to introduce other variables when it comes to your ethnic identity, but other folks don’t get to do that, not at all. Grow up. Get a Bible. Stop judging others by a standard that you would be loathe to have applied to you. This would be called Biblical Ethics 101.

A Long Track Record

Perhaps you have had this experience. You have had a long discussion with someone, and it is pretty complicated one. You hammer out definitions and work through difficulties, and you think you are finally getting somewhere. And then, for the last twenty minutes of that conversation, some brand new third party walks into it. He is a chatty person, and he also believes that he has grasped the gist after the first couple of minutes. The problem is that he hasn’t. He somehow believes that the entire conversation began just five minutes before his arrival. He has misconstrued the whole thing, and at times has managed to get it completely upside down.

I have been writing on ethnic issues for decades—on blacks, on whites, on Jews, on Scythians, and occasionally on Brits. I have written four books on ethnic issues. I grew up in a segregated town, and was part of the desegregation turmoil. I remember Spiro T. Agnew, governor of Maryland, admonishing black leaders 1968 for their failures of leadership, which really were genuine failures, and I also remember the serene and polished prejudices of that era’s whites, and perhaps I might point to all the black lawn jockeys to reinforce my point.

Now of course, this obligates no one to agree with me, and it does not make my positions correct—although I certainly do believe them to be correct, that part being my job. But what it does mean is that people on the web who just joined the conversation usually have no idea what my position actually is. They take the categories and parties that have coalesced in the few years since COVID was inflicted on all of us, and they insert my views into those categories. I believe the phrase I am looking for is willy-nilly.

But I am willing to treat black Americans as my fellow Americans, and as a pastor, I do not believe that their sins are off-limits—in 2016, I wrote This Crimson Carnage. In that same year, I defended ethnic generalizations as a necessary pastoral tool. I have confronted the enormous folly of the Revoice-for-Nazis approach. And it is possible to object to how Israel is being made an international pariah without being in any way a theological Zionist. I wrote that baby in 2006.

In short, I am an advocate of a consistent biblical worldview approach to all matters of ethnicity and tribes, and this consistency has been displayed and exhibited over the course of multiple decades. But in online exchanges I am frequently up against someone who just emptied his off-label bottle of red pills twenty-two months ago, with some of them being of the delayed-action sort, and that is why they are just now kicking in. Not only has this resulted in serious weirdness, it has resulted in an oscillating and serious weirdness. This is not thinking biblically over the course of years, but is rather what it looks like when men are blown about by every wind of doctrine.

I am a Bible guy, and there is a clear biblical position on all of this. Scripture teaches on it, and not in a few isolated places either. That position is to be determined by exegesis, and not by figuring out what sort of outrageous statement will generate clicks from fellow click hounds, however based they might think themselves to be.

True Repentance

There is no way that ethnic tensions could be as pronounced as they currently are without a lot of deep sin going into the generation of those tensions. But ethnic tensions are not the result of a white person waking up one day and thinking he needs to start despising people who are darker than he is. Neither is it the result of black people suddenly lurching into a policy of violence and mayhem.

There are two errors to avoid when it comes to the kind of repentance that is needed in an hour like ours. One is to approach the whole thing in a simplistic spirit, calling for people to repent of all their behavior, but only starting at the precise moment the rioting started. But repentance is also needed for all the decisions and policies that led to the conditions that made the rioting seem like a reasonable way out. It isn’t, but why do people come to believe that?

The second mistake is that of starting at the wrong end—this happens when we start by confessing the sins of the other guy. That gets us nowhere, and just perpetuates the conflict. You can confess other people’s sins all day long and your joy will not come back.

So here is the gospel.

Jesus of Nazareth was true man and true God. He lived a perfect, sinless life, and was betrayed by the authorities. They railroaded Him, and He was nailed to a cross. On that cross, He was under the curse of God. God poured out the wrath that was due to us for our incorrigible sinning on Him as our perfect representative. He was the sacrifice that provided propitiation, not only for us, but also for the whole world. He was laid in the grave, and was dead for three days and three nights. On the third day, He rose from the dead and appeared to His disciples over the course of a number of weeks. At the conclusion of that time, He ascended into Heaven, from which place He has been enthroned as the Lord of Heaven and earth. All authority everywhere has been granted to Him. This is what must be said of any man who was crucified until dead, and who came back from the dead three days later. That man owns the world.

Now here is the altar call.

Because of that death and resurrection, it is possible for you to stop being an online idiot about the Jews. Because He triumphed over death, it is possible for you to turn away from the sin of blaming white people for your black ass laziness. Because He defeated the devil at the cross, it is possible for you white liberals to realize that your “third way” was actually just slow compromise and not in any way a principled alternative. Being a squish is not a fruit of the Spirit. Because He died as the Messiah of Israel, it is possible for you Jews to look on the one whom you pierced, lamenting the unbelief of your fathers. Because He died as the Christ of the Gentiles, it is possible for you antisemites to confess that it was your hatreds that put Him there.

The cross of Jesus Christ is a doorway, and all of you—yes, all of you—are invited to come through it. But once inside, the rules of the house are that you must love one another,