Dr. Ruckman and Gene Kim slipped up big time in their comments on blacks and racism.
I think Gene Kim was just trying to defend Ruckman and doesn't really understand black culture. I actually attended a nearly all-black school at one point in my youth and have a lot of black friends from different states.
I've said it before, Ruckman is from "that" generation and spent a lot of time in "that" region of the US in "those years". My guess is that at one point, Ruckman got bullied or beat up by a couple of black dudes for being a nerdy white guy (I say that half jokingly and half as a serious guess), and this caused him to hold some bitterness, possibly a grudge against black people for not understanding him. On the other hand, it's possible that the black people in the areas he spent time in were not as well-educated yet during the years immediately following the open-discrimination culture against blacks in America. Speaking as someone who knows black people, I imagine there was some animosity (as we can clearly see there obviously still is today) from blacks towards what whites had done to them in the past that kept that circle of distrust going between the 2 cultures even after those years.
One of my black friends was a Chief in the Navy who I worked alongside every day in Afghanistan, and we talked about these issues from time to time. My black friends are very comfortable talking about topics of racism with me, as I'm half-Korean and tbh I have a decent amount of black culture in me since youth, and I actually identify with the importance of keeping it real, not being fake, which is the biggest aspect of what makes it easy for me to bond with black people imo. Speaking as a half-Korean who has had diverse cultural experiences living in different parts of the US, I can say that cultural norms are socially engineered into people from birth, it's a nature/nurture thing. So while the first step in not being racist is judging the individual, not their group, pressures to conform to your ethnic group's cultural norms are absolutely real. I have given some of my black friends crap from time to time because they can sometimes talk like black people are the only people who ever went through slavery and persecution in the world, when in fact Koreans were actually in slavery for longer than them and under 2 nations at different times: Japan and China, and only recently did Korea go from being a 3rd world country to a 1st world country. A few of them don't like when I say this, but they respect that I keep it 100 with them instead of just trying to pander to them just because they are black, plus they know I'm spittin' facts and just trying to help them see a different angle.
White culture, not individuals which we judge first but the culture, has its own issues. There is more social engineering from youth to behave in a political manner and speak in a politically correct way, with less emphasis on keeping it 100. There can also tend to be a feigned way of presenting yourself as more intelligent than you are in an attempt to distance yourself from black culture (as the 2 predominant cultures in America are black and white: the others, Asians, Indians, Hispanics have less of a distinct culture in America, which is why they tend to either adopt the cultural styles in dress, speech, behavior, etc, of either black culture or white culture, or they remain what we call FOB's, Fresh Off The Boat, and start their own little Chinas or little Koreas and isolate themselves from assimilating at all into American culture). But the feigned intellect whites culture, not the individual but the cultural norm, often employs can many times be a subtle form of racism in and of itself because it's not being honest but is attempting to cheat an appearance of higher-class intelligence over the black culture here (and stands out like a sore thumb to ethnicities that factually have higher average IQ: like Koreans, who factually according to multiple statistics do very well in school compared to most ethnicities, which is one reason we went from 3rd world country to 1st world so fast), and brings me back to what my friend the Chief said: Racism still exists in America, but for the most part it is just more subtle than before, and involves more politics and tact.
Whatever the reason, Ruckman clearly did not understand black culture yet attempted to speak about it as if he knew about it. This is my problem with Ruckman: he did the same thing with music and composers. He was a good drawer/painter, but I'm certain I would swipe the floor with him in the composing department. The cultural influence / social engineering of the Baptists was evident in his writings there too, as he took a very illogical position on what "godly music" is. I made an entire video refuting all of the Baptist's silly claims about music and really they all need to get over themselves on this point because I am right as a professional-level composer and they are wrong.
However, it is a fact that Ruckman's understanding of the Bible was bar-none far beyond most people in the world's who have published any Christian literature themselves. Despite his flaws, he was still very high IQ. He also kept it real. Meaning he kept it real between him and God in his prayers asking God to reveal the truth of the Bible to him, he didn't just play politics with his seminary under the stronghold that classy scholars of the past like John Calvin must have been right. To be honest, he even kept it real with his ignorant form of racism, something all pastors today would be terrified to do. I know for a fact watching many pastors who do that feigning the higher class things while throwing blacks under the bus in subtle ways are racist by their actions, they don't just come out and say it. At least Ruckman did even though he was dead wrong. But you gotta respect the man was real and transparent, he didn't hide is opinions and put up a fake image pretending to think something he really didn't. On the other hand, famous pastors out there who pretend to be intelligent have said things like "what, you think there's going to be a ghetto in heaven?" to defend the self-righteous heresy of Lordship Salvation, to which the entire room laughed. That, right there, is subtle racism, and it is far more cowardly than anything Ruckman ever did.
#BOOM
