Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Getting Real On Race" with Coleman Hughes

Transcript

"Getting Real On Race" with Coleman Hughes · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
• 0:05
  And this is an interesting occasion to turn the tables a little bit on all zeps.
• 0:11
  And perhaps turn upside down the normal dynamic of my conversations on this show.
• 0:16
  But first, before we get to today's guest, great news, great news.
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  So I don't know how valuable is the next four minutes of your time that you can't just do that
• 3:00
  right now. This episode, as I said, sort of turns the tables a little bit in the sense that
• 3:05
  I'm talking to someone who is more articulate than me and more intelligent than me and less
• 3:10
  woke than me. Coleman Hughes at a startlingly, horrifyingly, terrifyingly young age has already
• 3:18
  made a significant impact on American culture and not through wrapping your rap music,
• 3:25
  which is also something that he does on the side. But mainly through articulating a vision
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  of a kind of a unity of American purpose and a pushback against the fashionable ideas of
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  diversity, equity and inclusion that have come to dominate cultural discourse in the United
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  States and across the the Angelfone world, I suppose. Coleman has testified in Washington,
• 3:51
  DC at a House Judiciary Subcommittee into reparations. He's not in favor of reparations
• 3:57
  for slavery. He himself is a black American. He's of African and Puerto Rican descent. I
• 4:02
  may mention that because it's relevant to so much of what we talk about, it's relevant to race.
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  And as I say, the reason this is interesting to you in particular, this chat, quite apart from
• 4:13
  the fact that these conversations are always fascinating, scintillating, and a naryan episode goes by
• 4:20
  without it being terribly, terribly interesting. But this one in particular, because I quite often find
• 4:25
  myself in the position of the person being sort of skeptical of wokeism and identitarianism and
• 4:31
  identity politics, in this case, it's the other person who's much more articulate than me,
• 4:37
  who's able to do a better job of pushing back at my own wokeness even than I am.
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  Coleman has written in Quellate. He's been published in The Spectator in the New York Times,
• 4:46
  National Review, The Wall Street Journal, without further ado. And I will see you in less
• 4:50
  than two weeks. If you are a hero of sanity, subscriber, please enjoy. You want to learn
• 4:55
  only Coleman Jews.
• 5:07
  I had some great scrambled eggs and some sausage, some potatoes, some coffee.
• 5:17
  It's a breakfast of champions, Coleman. Yes, indeed.
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  I went on a, like, I'm not going to have breakfast thing during the pandemic.
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  Well, I put on enough weight that I was like, in the first year of the pandemic,
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  I was like, oh, I'm probably going to become a fat person. If I continue this 2020 habit of Netflix
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  and ice cream, in 2021, I was like, we had a big lockdown here. And for about 100 days in
• 5:49
  2021, while everyone was getting vaccinated. And I guess I just, I used the opportunity to get
• 5:53
  outside and exercise and, yeah, lift some heavy things. And while I was doing that, I was like,
• 6:00
  change my diet up as well. And the easiest, the easiest way to shave off some calories is to not eat
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  sausage, egg. What else did you have? Potatoes. Yeah. As soon as you get up.
• 6:13
  Because I don't really get it. So you didn't become a fat person, I assume.
• 6:16
  I did not, in fact, I did, in fact, the reverse. I became skinny or the man had been, well,
• 6:20
  not skinny. I became a proper healthy weight. So I'm trying to do, I'm trying to do the exact
• 6:26
  opposite thing. I'm trying to put on weight, which is something, I guess, you know, some people
• 6:34
  would be envious of my situation. But I literally struggle to put on weight if I try.
• 6:41
  Yeah. And, well, it's like put on muscle. Yeah. Okay. Like I struggle to take in enough calories to
• 6:50
  put on either fat or muscle. But again, why would you try? I mean, just be skinny. Like,
• 6:58
  there's a, your skinny is great. Everyone loves the skinny. This is true. But I kind of want to
• 7:02
  see how, you know, like, how strong I can get. You've been watching Marvel movies and you've gone
• 7:07
  exactly what I need. I need to be more like, or where is, why are these Chris Hemsworth and
• 7:15
  all these other Australians, you know, Chris Hemsworth, Josh Saps, all the people you think of when
• 7:18
  your mind goes to try to be attractive Australians. Yeah. Why they're so buffed. Exactly. And I call
• 7:24
  the answer is steroids, obviously. But that's, well, in my case, Chris is pretty clean. But I,
• 7:29
  when I say I get on the juice, I really go on the juice. I have an IP drip of steroids into me right
• 7:35
  now, as we speak. Yeah. I mean, can't you just have lots of what happens if you have 140 grams of
• 7:43
  protein in a day and lift some heavy things two or three times a week? Yeah. I mean, I would struggle
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  to get 140 in a day. I would, that would be like a horrible day of stuffing my fucking face
• 7:57
  and being just like loaded and disgusting all day. That's what the Hemsworths do. Well,
• 8:02
  probably not the little one, Liam, whatever his name is, nobody knows that guy. But that's what
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  the people who have a lot of muscle do. That's true. And they also do steroids. Not all of them.
• 8:13
  But what I'm saying is you don't need to. I know, I know. I know trainers who are very clean and
• 8:19
  very intimate, like, you know, their body is a temple. And they have massive muscles, but they
• 8:24
  have the tremendous amount of protein and of lean protein and a lot of fat. Yeah, I just,
• 8:30
  I know, not a lot of carbs. I just can't do it. I can get like three at most three meals a day,
• 8:38
  plus like a shake. And I'm out. Yeah. So the problem is, this is like a zempick now. The problem
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  is actually it's human error. It's not that your body won't put on muscle. It's the you're not
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  giving your body that what it needs. Right. What about? I just like can't manage just stuff my
• 9:00
  face with enough. It's not that much. It's not that much. I almost had almost 150 grams of protein
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  yesterday. I have these little bags of jerky or like built on chilly dried meat that I sometimes
• 9:15
  like to snack on when I'm peckish. I had two 30 grand bags of those. I had a protein shake
• 9:22
  after I went to the gym. I had tacos for dinner. That was probably 30 to 40 grams of protein
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  in like a meal of tacos. I used a lettuce wrap instead of a taco. Now I say I'm like a real
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  health freak, but this is like it happened to be yesterday. And what else did I have?
• 9:43
  I might have had a lunch. I must have had like a chicken salad or something for lunch.
• 9:49
  There you go. That's 140. Something like that. Well, you got to get me on your diet.
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  Anyway, thanks to speaking with us. Since we haven't spoken in a while and I guess
• 10:09
  we sort of swim in similar parasocial circles but don't know each other well. I'd be
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  in catching up with you about the water under the bridge of the past.
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  Maybe three to five years. Just in terms of our culture. When we have some benefit of hindsight
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  and perspective on say the racial reckoning and the social justice reckoning of the summer of 2020
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  and the changes that have happened to our understanding of diversity. What has been good
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  and what has been bad about the cultural evolution of the past five years?
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  So the past five years it's 2023 now taking myself back to 2018. I was on Columbia's campus halfway
• 10:59
  through my degree. Concerned and and sort of perpetually aghast at the
• 11:11
  unreason in the culture around me about the claims that Columbia University was basically like
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  the Jim Crow South and Black students experienced racism. Quote on Quote every day on this campus
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  as one would read felt like I was living in a world where the actual racism level was like a one out
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  of 10 and the concern about it was a 12 out of 10 and I was very pressing this very black and white
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  view because what you always hear when and I don't know the truth when you brooch these subjects is
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  well of course the fringe of university campuses has always been crazy. I mean they're up they're
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  they're not as they're not representative of anything so you know someone's shouting really
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  loudly through a loud hyalur about how you know what supremacy must be destroyed. Well go back
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  30 years and they were screaming about how you know communism is the path to the future and all that's
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  I mean these these crazies have always been this a wide react. So in my case it was just a matter
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  of my day-to-day life so if if only 5% or 10% of students on campus actually held those views which
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  I thought were nuts it was they completely controlled the campus newspaper they were disproportionately
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  represented among professors and generally generally feared as the people that would cancel you if
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  you were known to disagree with them so people even though they were a minority people would still
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  disagree with them in private right people would have conversations I used to we used to joke that
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  you used to kind of have to come out to your friends as not woke not even anti-woke just like not
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  woke you would have to have that moment where you and another person someone broaches it first
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  like I don't think I'm really into the like woke stuff and there would be this enormous risk that
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  you're taking and if it gets reciprocated there's like this feeling of looking over your shoulder
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  and having had a moment with someone that's what the culture was like so so my concern about it
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  was actually pretty it was pretty directly related to my lived experience of just like can I be a
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  person that says what I think and not get a reputation or not become an outcast in my day-to-day life
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  well you've got a reputation now common you've got a reputation as a scrawny little troublemaker
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  and what would I what would the view when you say that you'd have to sort of privately confide that
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  you didn't necessarily agree with all this woke stuff because some but many of those views were
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  nuts what what are those views that that so first it's like a philosophical framework which which
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  says that all of the institutions that generally have defined American and Western societies such as
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  markets market economies freedom of speech the rule of law and so forth these are all not
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  neutral values or useful constructs to build a society these actually are slanted
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  in principle so as to benefit white straight cis men and to disadvantage black people other
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  minorities women LGBTQ etc all of these things that appear to be neutral or even good are actually
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  white supremacy and bigotry in disguise they are built to benefit some and to disadvantage
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  others and therefore they need to be not just like incrementally improved but basically overthrown
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  and then also anyone who disagrees with this should be cast out and treated like the religions
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  of old would treat heretics and blasphemers that's what I would call like the package
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  because if you just agree with all those beliefs but you you're not before cancelling anyone
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  then it's like we just have disagree philosophical disagreements about the world and that's fine
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  and good but there isn't this added element of purging you know purging any given space of
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  heretics and disbelievers and so what exactly does cancelling look like because the the rebut the
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  retort to purging places of heretics and disbelievers is we've always we've always drawn lines
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  around what kind of people we tolerate in polite society and it used to be people who said the
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  N word it used to be in offices people who slapped their female co-workers on the butts and called
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  them tuts and things evolve and then certain behaviors are regarded as becoming taboo and if you
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  don't want to be on the side of white supremacists and bigots and people who don't understand the
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  importance of addressing the concerns of marginalized communities then yes we are going to respond
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  to your like archaic way of talking or way of behaving by excluding you from polite society but
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  that you know the fact that I don't know person X the fact that you know Scott Adams now doesn't have
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  his his caught his cartoon in a bunch of different newspapers is not cancelling him so to speak
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  he has tons of money he's going to be fine he it is a it is a it is the response of using our speech
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  to respond to his speech and saying that you are not part of you're not expressing ideas that are
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  acceptable in 2023 anymore just as we could have said the same in 1985 that you know I'd
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  like to speak like you're still in 1925 in the deep south what's wrong with that uh so there
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  be nothing wrong with that if we could agree on the meanings of words like white supremacy racist
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  etc if we all agreed that Richard Spencer was a racist and racism is beyond the pale and we have
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  like anything close to a shared understanding of those of of the of what exactly is beyond the
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  pale and where that line is uh then maybe we could you know kind of make those judgments the the
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  problem is you know literally everyone and their mother has been called a racist or believe something
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  that could get them called a racist in the wrong circumstance and uh I could I could cite chapter
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  and verse on it on examples where just totally reasonable and within the pale things have gotten
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  people suspended fired etc we'll give us a few other nominees who aren't so in this conversation
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  though the one example is I I was forget the school I think it's it may be university of southern
• 18:20
  california uh but it's a school in california where a a business professor was giving a a talk to
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  his students about how to conduct business in mandarin chinese and the kinds of phrases that you
• 18:37
  would use to sound native and he used the the word naiga which is uh it's it's a very common
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  chinese sort of waiting word kind of like um in english and when it said fast it sounds almost
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  identical to the n word with with a soft a and if you listen to anyone speak mandarin you'll hear
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  this word probably within a minute and so he said it in order to help people in how to speak mandarin
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  and was suspended from his job because a couple black students in the class um were offended
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  again there's he who was not even speaking english he was speaking chinese and it sounded
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  like like a like a certain word um so is that guy racist or that guy get suspended or even punished
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  doing his job and teaching colloquial mandarin well I would say obviously not I would say
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  it's insane that that guy was punished um and but what allowed for that was an environment where
• 19:43
  racism is defined basically to to mean almost anything um I talk I could give one more example
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  I just recently had this guy Vincent Lloyd on my podcast Vincent Lloyd is a professor at Villanova
• 19:58
  and he is a he teaches religion and philosophy and he is a he's very much woke in his philosophy he's
• 20:09
  very much you know critical race theorist um who I have many substantive disagreements with
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  but his story is that he was teaching a class of 17 year olds that got into the summer program
• 20:26
  and he had done this before and over the course of the six week class his TA who was
• 20:33
  truly woke in the sense of a cancler was upset that only that only four of the six weeks were
• 20:41
  dedicated to anti blackness issues the other two being dedicated to anti immigrant and anti
• 20:47
  indigenous issues and she demanded he changed the curriculum of his course so that every week was
• 20:55
  dedicated to anti blackness issues eventually the the class broke down and they presented him
• 21:02
  with a list of demands and grievances which included his body language being hurtful or
• 21:10
  endangering black students in the class like human he himself is black for whatever that is worth
• 21:15
  and he's a total critical race theory adherent and still was not extreme enough um to the point where
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  this particular TA basically brought the class to a halt by force and um and just
• 21:32
  destroyed the class ended the class because of her complaints about his lack of sufficient
• 21:38
  extremeness um again so is that guy a racist I would I would say the vast majority of reasonable
• 21:46
  people would say absolutely not actually the the person who was nuts in that scenario was the TA
• 21:54
  and yet and yet she won right I mean I mean he isn't it right the fact that she won I mean yeah I
• 22:02
  suppose it sounds like what you're saying is yeah there's always been craziness on campus right now
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  the craziness is taking a particular form and the difference was that in past years perhaps
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  the craziness was sort of quarantined in in its own box on campus and didn't bleed out to to
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  capture the moral high ground that then even administration officials and you know reporters and
• 22:30
  media elites and other cultural institutions felt the need to essentially become loudspeakers
• 22:37
  for the for the crazy um yeah look yeah I mean no I think that that is a difference there there's
• 22:46
  a group on campus too that is like the Christian group for example and they have beliefs about
• 22:51
  what is right and wrong about what should be said in classrooms and the difference is that
• 22:57
  nobody outside of them really listens to them um nobody would be afraid to you know criticize
• 23:05
  religion or Christianity because they don't have any cultural power the administration isn't afraid
• 23:10
  to enforce neutral rules uh or school policies on them and um even though their numbers may have
• 23:19
  been fairly similar to the number of students that were like truly woke so it's not really about
• 23:24
  the number of adherents but it's about people's ability to punch away above their weight because
• 23:30
  of cultural wins and so you started by asking sort of what has changed over the past five years
• 23:36
  I think in 2018 I was worried about this trend partly because of where I happened to be in the
• 23:42
  country I was in a hotbed of wokeness um I think by mid 2020 late 2020 the issues that were
• 23:51
  alive to me and my life became alive for many many more people after George Floyd uh and after
• 23:59
  after the riots and everything the the level of uh wokeness in corporate America and everyday life
• 24:08
  hit a lot of people actually for the first time and and so I felt that the issue I'd been worried
• 24:14
  about and had been sort of minimized for two years was no longer minimized and was you know
• 24:19
  we're really going everywhere in the past two or three years I think it's come down from that
• 24:25
  peak but certainly not to like pre 2013 levels 2013 being the year that the mainstream media began to
• 24:36
  began to channel woke ideas such as white privilege systemic racism etc so the issue hasn't
• 24:45
  disappeared but it's definitely come down from its peak in 2020 2021 it's funny that you say 2013
• 24:53
  because I started at half post live in 2012 that was when it was launched and it was a big deal
• 25:00
  between I guess 2013 and 2015 it was the place to be this 12-hour-a-day streaming talk network
• 25:10
  of which I was one of the founding hosts and there was a segment that I pitched and did in 2013
• 25:17
  about the N-wood and I had a conversation with the executive producer about whether or not
• 25:24
  I mean it was it was just me expressing as a foreign I'm living in America so I had a regular
• 25:29
  segment where I kind of just interview people about have a panel about the the oddities that I
• 25:35
  noticed in America is I had one segment about like how insistent Italian Americans are at calling
• 25:41
  themselves Italian American or Irish American when like nobody's been to Ireland or Italy in their
• 25:48
  family for the past 80 years you know like I'm Italian you're like dude you're not Italian you're
• 25:54
  a certain type of sub-community we get it but you've you've never been to Italy and your parents
• 25:58
  have never been to Italy so what is that phenomenon because that strikes me as a uniquely American
• 26:02
  thing that we don't really do so much in other new world countries and certainly not in in old
• 26:08
  world countries so this segment was about like me finding the N-wood just a curious phrase like
• 26:15
  what's it trying to achieve is it trying to allied the difference between using a slur in
• 26:24
  hatred and simply referring to the existence of the word are we being infantilized by the fact
• 26:29
  that we are pretending not to know the difference between saying the N-wood is the worst word that
• 26:34
  exists and you should never use it against somebody and saying hey N-wood bring me that cake like
• 26:40
  that there's no difference between those two usages so anyway we had this conversation with my
• 26:44
  executive producer and I was arguing I was saying you sort of undermine the whole point of the
• 26:49
  segment if I don't just say the word throughout the whole segment we should just say it and like
• 26:56
  have a disclaimer at the front and say like if this is a word that like you find really offensive
• 27:00
  and just switch off thank fuck he was like just think about how it could look if someone did a mashup
• 27:11
  and a cut up and splice it all together and oh but no one would do that Josh no no one would be so
• 27:18
  and this was 2013 where it's hard for people now to remember but it was not a thing
• 27:23
  for everyone everywhere to be using the phrase the N-wood correct yeah as recently as 10 years ago
• 27:30
  it was not a fireable offense it was not a you know it was not a crazy thing to just be using the
• 27:35
  actual word I had never said the phrase the N-wood in my life in 2013 seriously I mean only when
• 27:44
  talking about the existence of that phrase and I don't think I was breaking huge taboos and I
• 27:51
  don't think that my black friends were secretly clutching their pearls and were horrified they seem
• 27:55
  to still hang out with me when I and maybe it's partly being a foreigner and just sort of getting
• 28:01
  a pass or something but it was a different environment and had I not taken the advice of the executive
• 28:09
  producer and refrain from saying that word it's hard to imagine how I would be employable
• 28:15
  today so 2013 is an interesting an interesting point to in time to point to as the beginning of
• 28:25
  an era of I mean I want to say chilling of speech and behavior but then the work part of my brain
• 28:35
  just goes like what's new what's new I mean there is nothing more predictable than people complaining
• 28:41
  about young people's sensitivities going too far and the next Vanguard of moral conduct being
• 28:48
  a bridge too far and like how do you how do you not wonder whether or not you're an old
• 28:57
  straight white man sitting on his porch railing at kids these days well in what in what respect do
• 29:05
  you mean with the N-wood or with norms in general with norms with just norms in general well at the end
• 29:12
  of the day I think I don't really get to hung up on whether on the generational aspect of it because
• 29:24
  I think you know if you're talking about what's true in the world I don't care if saying something
• 29:30
  true makes me sound like an old fart or whatever I think that's like really arbitrary as far as
• 29:39
  like norms changing I would agree like you know the younger generation at least in recent history
• 29:44
  in America the younger generation has always set itself apart from the older generation by changing
• 29:53
  norms that's not true like throughout human history I think most places in most times like have
• 29:59
  been culturally stagnant for many generations at a time but the question is to what extent do those
• 30:08
  norms serve a useful purpose and I think that can be legitimately debated in any circumstance like
• 30:17
  how arbitrary would it be to agree with the new norms just because it's young people that are
• 30:24
  coming up with it right that seems equally arbitrary as complaining about change simply because
• 30:29
  it's change I think some changes are good other changes are bad and the interesting conversations come
• 30:37
  in discussing them on a case by case basis yeah right and I guess one reason why we are predisposed
• 30:48
  to think of these new ideas as being good ones is because they're able to cloak themselves in the
• 30:53
  mantle of of a problem that we all agree I think is is real like I mean you mentioned Christian
• 31:00
  groups on campus earlier and saying you know there is no nobody feels the need to take the
• 31:07
  need before Christian groups and panda to their claims but one reason for that I would suggest is
• 31:14
  that nobody believes that Christian groups are actually addressing a question that we all need
• 31:19
  that we all agree needs addressing nobody thinks that there is a deep need for us all to come to
• 31:27
  Jesus at this point in time but everybody basically does agree that there are lingering problems
• 31:35
  well you may not but most almost everyone agrees that there are lingering problems of racial
• 31:40
  equality that still need to be addressed in Western societies that racism is still too prevalent
• 31:47
  and that we still have some distance to go before we can regard the job of racial justice as being
• 31:53
  finished if ever therefore the moment you can have this new vanguard of young idealistic people
• 32:01
  articulating policies and new norms that seem to achieve that goal then it's hard to be a 55
• 32:10
  year old straight white male university administrator and stand in their way for precisely the
• 32:16
  Iki the sort of Iki feeling reasons that I just articulated about not wanting to be an old man
• 32:23
  sitting on his porch rattling against the kids does that make sense?
• 32:29
  I mean I understand it I have a different view on it which is
• 32:32
  you know I think that I've been very opposed to racism my entire life and what what's on offer
• 32:48
  since 2013 and woke anti-racist movement let's call it is really it's a reconceptualization
• 33:01
  of racism as much as it is just saying we need to address this right it's it's not just saying we
• 33:09
  all have to get up and work harder at achieving Martin Luther King's vision it's actually presenting
• 33:17
  a different philosophy of what is and isn't racism so the problem is I disagree with that philosophy
• 33:25
  right can you think about the competing visions here of the Martin Luther King one and then the new one
• 33:31
  so Martin Luther King's goal with respect to race he had goals with respect to economics and
• 33:38
  Christianity and and other aspects to him as well and pacifism and anti-imperialism so forth
• 33:43
  but with respect to race his goal was to get closer and closer to a nation in which racial identity
• 33:50
  was viewed as insignificant that he would say when you know we will not ask your race if you're
• 34:01
  if you're if you're we will only ask if you're a brother injustice he's he would say as I look out
• 34:06
  I don't see I see black faces and white faces intermingled like a river um he was asked about
• 34:15
  interracial marriage once and he rejected the term because he said properly speaking races don't
• 34:20
  marry individuals marry and then there is of course his famous I have a dream speech of uh
• 34:27
  little white children holding hands with little black children and the the underlying goal of
• 34:33
  getting less and less interested in race um for for every conceivable reason and opposing racial
• 34:44
  discrimination in in all its forms and and racialized thinking in all its forms and racial stereotyping
• 34:50
  in all its forms in all its forms that is a goal that I'm I'm very much animated by but that's
• 34:59
  a different goal than what woke anti racism proposes um woke anti racism comes out of the
• 35:08
  critical race theory tradition which was an explicit rejection uh in some ways of the civil rights
• 35:15
  tradition and early critical race theory is said as much they said that this critical race theory
• 35:21
  grows out of a dissatisfaction with the rhetoric of the civil rights of the mainstream civil rights
• 35:28
  vision they think that it's impossible to be truly racist to white people for example um and
• 35:38
  and therefore encourage all kinds of uh you know frankly hate speech so long as it's directed in
• 35:46
  the proper direction um explain that the it's impossibly racist against white people
• 35:53
  not because it's impossible to be bigger towards white people but because to be racist you need
• 36:00
  it needs to be the powerful actor doing the thing is that right yes there's a there's a new philosophy
• 36:08
  which this is not a philosophy that comes anywhere from the civil rights movement uh it comes from
• 36:14
  the critical race theory critique of the civil rights movement which is that racism equals prejudice
• 36:20
  plus power so and black people don't have power allegedly in America so therefore black people can't
• 36:27
  be racist we can be prejudiced I can say oh hey Josh I don't like white guys like you I don't want
• 36:34
  my daughter marrying a like I like you although with with you that wouldn't be a problem um I mean
• 36:40
  also you're definitely not gonna get any protein advice now so so all that would count as prejudice
• 36:48
  which is in the critical race theory view a lesser evil than racism it's also it's perhaps not nice
• 36:55
  but it's not the same as you saying analogous things to me because you as a white man have the power
• 37:02
  to keep me down in society and white society in general has the power to to keep black people down so
• 37:11
  your prejudice is backed by the power in some sense of white supremacy broadly and
• 37:18
  common do you object to the to the underlying philosophical kind of conceit here or just the way
• 37:24
  it's being applied at the moment because it strikes me that to to assert that prejudice is worse when
• 37:31
  it's coming from a powerful group than when it's coming from a powerless group is not a crazy idea
• 37:37
  I mean I don't think it's crazy I don't think it's crazy at all yeah but the maybe the problem is now
• 37:43
  that if you actually look at the mechanics of what is permissible and what is not permissible
• 37:48
  in polite society today you would have to say that it's the retrograde white guy who is in the
• 37:54
  position of least power to articulate views that may contraven the the kind of vanguard of moral
• 38:02
  thinking and if you are in a if you are either a minority in a group member of a minority or a
• 38:10
  hyper performative university educated white person a Robin D'Angelo say who who proves themselves
• 38:19
  to be even more woke than any minority is then you can really express whatever prejudices you want
• 38:28
  and they're not they're not that bad because you're you're punching up when in fact you're actually
• 38:33
  on top punching down that's right and I think the the greatest tool of someone that actually has
• 38:42
  power is to convince you they don't have power because then they claim underdog status and that's
• 38:50
  actually very useful look no one would deny that for the majority of American history white people
• 38:57
  have had more cultural power and more political power more more of every kind of power you you
• 39:03
  could name but the fact is things have changed things have changed and there is a group of people
• 39:11
  you know activists professors scholars on the issue of race experts and quotation marks I would
• 39:18
  say that will never admit in principle that things have changed no matter how much they do change
• 39:25
  I think that I'm actually seeing reality more clearly in saying that black people have
• 39:30
  quite a bit of power right now at the time I'm speaking the mayors of the top five most populated
• 39:36
  cities in America are all black you have to go to number six to get the first white mayor
• 39:43
  it's interesting to know that that is the truth that there is no level of political office that a
• 39:49
  black person hasn't inhabited there's like like what are we talking about when we say black people
• 39:58
  have no power let me answer that rather than treating it as rhetorical I think the answer would
• 40:06
  economic wealth is still disproportionately held by non blacks there is still
• 40:13
  an underrepresentation of black people at the highest echelons of American capitalism
• 40:19
  I guess that would those would be the two that when you talk about economic you know the share
• 40:25
  of the economic pie blacks are getting left out right okay so if we're just going to talk
• 40:30
  with a share of the economic pie or wealth in particular certainly almost all of that wealth
• 40:36
  held by quote-unquote white people is held by the top 0.1% of white people I mean do the others have
• 40:44
  power it's a it's a it's a it's a dubious construct because what we're talking about is really
• 40:54
  the wealth in you know like you could basically erase the top 1% of wealth holders in the country
• 41:05
  and then you'd be having a very different conversation what about you know the 70 or 80% of people
• 41:11
  that don't have that much wealth at all right and how how are they throwing around their wealth
• 41:18
  in ways that keep people keep black people down it's a little bit dubious to me but I would
• 41:26
  totally acknowledge on at the median white people have more wealth and black people
• 41:33
  and you know Asians have higher incomes than whites and are on track to have more median wealth
• 41:39
  than whites soon and I can guarantee you knowing well few will take seriously the argument that
• 41:46
  white people are relatively disadvantaged with regard to Asians when when they do surpass them
• 41:54
  in wealth I think there are many different kinds of power economic power is one of them
• 42:00
  and black people as a group have less of it no doubt I would say cultural power is another thing
• 42:05
  and black people probably have more of it at this point you know cultural cultural power is like
• 42:12
  the ability to to enforce the norms that your group cares about culturally and black people I
• 42:23
  think have been extremely successful at doing that two examples of which are the fact that black
• 42:32
  face and the n-word are now completely beyond the pale whereas 15 years ago basically you could
• 42:39
  you could do black face on TV and as you said you could say the n-word the fact is a certain portion
• 42:48
  of black people are just offended at baseline by those two things and it's not about whether
• 42:55
  that offense is right or wrong it's about the fact that that feeling has now been enforced as
• 43:02
  the norm for the whole country that's cultural power when you're able to do that as a group basically
• 43:07
  enforce your feelings as norms or the feelings of your group is it even the case do you think that
• 43:15
  this is predominantly coming from black people getting offended when they hear the n-word or is
• 43:22
  there a like to what extent is all of this a consequence of the kind of critical race theorizing
• 43:30
  of in universe in academia and white people trying to I don't know be on the right side of history
• 43:41
  and to what extent is that a bottom-up expression of black frustration that things aren't moving
• 43:49
  fast enough that's a good question I don't really have a neat answer to it but my gut says it's both
• 43:56
  I think it's both that that some percent of you know non-elite not you know not decision-maker
• 44:09
  top-level decision makers in the black community are offended by those things and that those are
• 44:17
  to some extent because of their historical resonances third rails and very offensive to
• 44:24
  I'm not sure it's a majority but like definitely a strong sect of the black community and then
• 44:30
  there's also the the sort of over-eager white ally phenomenon the person that
• 44:40
  you know gets more offended than black people do at any given slight but who is themselves white
• 44:47
  and is like the most eager to cancel people I mean this is a big phenomenon I think we've seen so
• 44:54
  I think it's a it's a marriage of those two things I wouldn't want to reduce it to either one
• 44:59
  yeah and then I mean it's interesting I remember thinking about 2013 like up to 2020 I
• 45:07
  remember posting something on Facebook that was like a meme that said what privilege doesn't
• 45:14
  mean that all whites are better off than all blacks it means that of all the problems that are
• 45:21
  white person faces like racism isn't one of them or something like that and I thought that was
• 45:29
  a neat way of articulating what black people were trying to get white people to understand about
• 45:35
  the way that I guess yeah privilege operates and functions and now in 2023 I'm not sure one
• 45:44
  could say the same thing I mean as you pass through life in big corporations and in government
• 45:49
  with explicit diversity equity and inclusion policies it's pretty clear to me I mean my brother
• 45:56
  was talking to a very highly educated Indian Australian woman and she was saying sort of
• 46:05
  embarrassly like of course I can get a job absolutely anywhere in a way that you can't you know
• 46:10
  and she sort of pointed gesture to her face and her skin color and then my brother said well also
• 46:17
  because you're really good at what you do and she was like oh yeah yeah of course I mean like
• 46:21
  without saying but the fact that we live in a climate where she had internalized the fact that
• 46:27
  her being a woman and her being a person of color were now an undoubted advantage if you hold
• 46:32
  all other variables equal makes me wonder whether or not it's even true anymore to for that phrase
• 46:39
  that phrase about white privilege I mean in a sense now we're all in the boat of understanding
• 46:46
  that our tribal identity boxes are salient as we move through this world and the scales have
• 46:54
  somewhat tipped and if you're a perfectly equally qualified person of color that is clearly now
• 47:02
  an advantage so it's not really just about the about who has the cultural clout to be able to
• 47:07
  say what they want to say and define the terms of the conversation it's also in a practical sense
• 47:12
  in terms of redressing that economic inequality there are cultural norms in place now that
• 47:20
  will have to necessarily over time redress that inequality and the question becomes then how
• 47:26
  faster do we want to do it right I mean you know you it is now the case I also have another friend
• 47:33
  who works for a big pharmaceutical company and he's a senior executive but that company has an
• 47:40
  explicit policy of gender parity by a date that is so soon I think it's 2026 or something
• 47:48
  that in order to achieve it there is just no point in applying for anything if you're a white
• 47:53
  white guy like it's not going to happen they just have to they have the targets now that
• 48:00
  that have put such speed around this that that he basically he doesn't have a future doesn't have
• 48:09
  doesn't have a professional future beyond where he is and I don't know how to feel about that I don't
• 48:14
  know whether to feel you know what there have been glass ceilings all over the place that have
• 48:18
  been unspoken and cigar smoke shrouded old boys clubs where deals got made and people of color and
• 48:27
  women got excluded and the pendulum needs to swing back a little bit and now it's now it's my turn
• 48:33
  and we'll find some kind of equilibrium or whether I should feel the train to to justice has
• 48:40
  gone has become completely derailed and deranged and there's lost sight of the guiding vision of
• 48:45
  Martin Luther King and Gandhi and Mandela and we need a serious course correction what do you think
• 48:54
  tell me what I should do well first of all the idea that it's your turn somehow assumes that your
• 49:03
  of one entity with the white generations that came before you which is a view that I reject
• 49:10
  you only experience your life in your lifetime right like in what sense is discriminating against
• 49:16
  you a payment or an undoing of the fact that your father or grandfather abstractly had benefited
• 49:24
  from some old boys clubs or some from some pro white discrimination I'm not actually she's
• 49:31
  since they definitely never did because my like on my dad's side they were Jews who have been
• 49:37
  put shut on also forever and were his whole family were exterminated but in the in the concentration
• 49:43
  camps so like but even in the purist case so so so that's one critique which is that this whole
• 49:50
  thing is so messy and and and it assumes things about people's life stories and ancestors that are
• 49:57
  just so often not true because it's so coarse grain but even in the purist case where it's like
• 50:04
  you know your grandfather was you know went to Yale and was a white Protestant in the 1940s or
• 50:15
  something and you know went into advertising and basically worked at like madmen and benefited
• 50:22
  from all kinds of unearned privileges of that culture I'm not sure how discriminating against
• 50:29
  that person's grandson in any sense undo undo undoes the injustice that happened some 80 years ago
• 50:39
  right I don't think that that is actually how justice works like it doesn't cancel out
• 50:45
  um nor nor does doing something for me because I'm black and my my my ancestors were slaves
• 50:55
  in America nor does discriminating in favor of me cancel out somehow the injustices that my
• 51:03
  grandfather say lived through I've never really heard someone articulate a plausible theory of how
• 51:10
  that how that gets us closer to justice well let me try I think you're framing it as
• 51:18
  retributive when in fact the goal is supposed to be that the retribution is an unwanted side effect
• 51:26
  of the lifting up of a historically disadvantaged community so I mean I think I think you would have
• 51:32
  to take as a given something that you and I probably think isn't true but you would have to take
• 51:39
  as a given that it's harder to get by in the modern world as a person of color than it is
• 51:43
  as a white person and then if that's true you look at the the underrepresentation of people of color
• 51:50
  in positions of power uh political economic uh corporate where's the underrepresentation in
• 51:57
  political power that's not true that's true not true in America so let's talk about economic
• 52:03
  side suppose um and then you would have to say or let's let's say let's say females then let's
• 52:10
  take women there is still I believe in underrepresentation a significant underrepresentation of women
• 52:15
  in positions of power right political and business
• 52:20
  reparate relative to how many women want those jobs are relative to the population
• 52:27
  relative to the population yeah I'm not sure that's the relevant benchmark but
• 52:33
  right again I actually don't know I I'm not going to speak out of turn because I don't study this but
• 52:38
  I think the more relevant benchmark would be like relative to how many women want to be
• 52:44
  top politicians it wouldn't it wouldn't at all shock me if um men as the more like kind of like
• 52:51
  power hungry potentially narcissistic of the two sexes were more overrepresented among people
• 52:57
  who think they should run the world yeah I mean the dig the more you dig the the messier it gets
• 53:06
  doesn't it because then the feminist would say well why is it that women think that they don't want
• 53:10
  to be in positions of power if that were true and could that be because we have certain assumptions
• 53:16
  about caring for children and certain assumptions about who's the breadwinner and certain assumptions
• 53:22
  about what women ought to be interested in and uh you know so then you have all this cultural stuff
• 53:28
  I guess I guess the original point I was sort of groping towards is if you're going to end up
• 53:34
  in a just society and you're coming off the back of hundreds of years of injustice towards certain
• 53:39
  groups then you can imagine one of the tools that you would use being sort of putting a thumb
• 53:45
  on the scales of elevating those groups and maybe even admittedly over promoting some of those
• 53:54
  groups who are underqualified knowing that the reason why they're underqualified is for all all
• 53:58
  all kinds of historical reasons that they don't have the same resources and they don't have they
• 54:02
  haven't historically had the same education and they haven't historically had the same
• 54:06
  access to the hallways of power and so you put them in those hallways of power perhaps without
• 54:12
  having achieved all of the things that technically they're supposed to have achieved if they were
• 54:16
  born with a silver spoon in their mouth and in so doing you accelerate the the march towards
• 54:24
  justice but in the process of doing that you're also discriminating against white guys therefore
• 54:30
  the justification for discrimination against my friend who works at the pharmaceutical company
• 54:34
  is not that there's some philosophical principle in terms of it being just to punish him for the
• 54:40
  sins of the full fathers but that he is collateral damage in an attempt to to more quickly
• 54:47
  redress scales that have been imbalanced for hundreds of years I think the the effects of
• 54:54
  creating that quote unquote collateral damage like the harms of that in the long run probably outweigh
• 55:00
  the whatever benefits are accrued there because I mean look you know there's an argument Shelby
• 55:08
  steel has made which is I think a useful way to frame this you know before the 1960s virtually
• 55:16
  every area of American society was racist and segregated including you know not just corporate
• 55:25
  America but sports for example right like the NBA was excluded black people the MLB obviously
• 55:36
  famously Jackie Robinson was the first to break the color color line and so forth and now we think
• 55:42
  of the NBA for example as a disproportionately black sport as a sport that black people dominate
• 55:48
  given that some three quarters of the NBA is black but let's not forget the NBA was just as racist
• 55:56
  as everywhere else in society what happened is that when they finally opened their doors black people
• 56:04
  excelled at it excelled at it to the point where it was not at all necessary to implement affirmative
• 56:10
  action even though the rationale could be applied to any given sports league just like it could to
• 56:19
  corporate America you could say this institution has excluded black people for this long therefore
• 56:24
  we need to put a thumb on the scale there are just many institutions you know where black people
• 56:30
  didn't need the the thumb on the scale because it was immediately obvious that that black people
• 56:37
  excelled at those things and then slowly those institutions became less and less racist over time
• 56:46
  to the point where it's hard to even imagine an NBA without black people but so what we're talking
• 56:53
  about in these other institutions is where where black people as a whole did not immediately
• 57:02
  outperform or perform to at the highest levels in these institutions and the question is
• 57:09
  do you try to address the underlying issues and in public education and in the pipeline such that
• 57:18
  you get an increasing number of say black neurosurgeons over time without having to
• 57:26
  rig the standards by which you judge neurosurgeons to get that kind of true equity that exists in
• 57:34
  many sectors in the performing arts and sports etc or do you just get impatient and rig the results
• 57:45
  to where you want them to be regardless of whether the people who cross the finish line
• 57:50
  are actually as qualified and skilled as as their white peers I think that that strategy is
• 57:58
  short-sighted it creates a rational reason to expect that black beneficiaries for instance of
• 58:07
  affirmative action are maybe less qualified because you've judged them by a lower yardstick
• 58:13
  right you've created a reason for people to doubt the credentials of black people at the top level
• 58:20
  of any given sector and so it's not it's not clear to me that the costs outweigh that the benefits
• 58:31
  outweigh the cost of that strategy it's interesting yeah I mean the NBA example is easily
• 58:38
  explicable because even if you had a cohort of people who had fewer resources and inferior
• 58:44
  schools to the rest of the population they can still play basketball and be interested in basketball
• 58:48
  so all of their all of their intrinsic kind of capacity for playing basketball is unimpeded by
• 58:56
  their economic circumstance or by discrimination the attributes that you need to bring to the table
• 59:01
  to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company those really do need to be fostered by great schools and
• 59:08
  lots of resources and certain cultural norms and so on that are unavailable to a cohort of people
• 59:15
  who don't have them so is there any compromise between the biggest the reality is I mean societies
• 59:25
  are complex these issues are hard it's really difficult to say well let's just keep on working at
• 59:32
  public school at improving public schools and just be patient just sit down I mean the criticism
• 59:40
  would be telling us to sit up the back of the bus and sit down the shut up and just take be
• 59:45
  grateful for whatever we've got be grateful that we're no longer under Jim Crow and you know over time
• 59:52
  very very gradually very very slowly maybe not you but maybe your kids but maybe not your kids but
• 59:57
  maybe your grandkids or your great grandkids will finally live in an America where we've adequately
• 1:00:02
  funded public schools well enough that you can have a shot at having a roughly roughly equal
• 1:00:09
  representation on the boards of America's top companies well you can I mean that's one option
• 1:00:17
  or you can take box B where we just do it right now and we make it taboo to run a company that
• 1:00:23
  doesn't have a proportional number of people of color on its board and bam what what is that
• 1:00:29
  achieved anyone anyone going up for a board director spot is already in the top x percent of the
• 1:00:35
  nation and and is not who we're thinking about when we think about who the state should intervene
• 1:00:41
  to help who this right and you know I don't know I mean it seems to be a lot of the focus of
• 1:00:49
  justice at the moment and equity like you have a representation of people in politics on the
• 1:00:54
  boards of of Fortune 500 companies the people the people up for those spots are already so freaking
• 1:01:02
  privileged there they are not the like to me that is like the world's smallest violin type stuff
• 1:01:11
  when we when the fact that the board of some company is now diverse I mean this is this is this is
• 1:01:19
  absurd to me we're talking about people already in the top 1% of income and wealth probably in most
• 1:01:24
  cases if you're up for that um these are not people who these are the last people in the world
• 1:01:31
  regardless of of their sex or gender who who need the state to intervene look at their skin
• 1:01:39
  and distribute racial spoils or gender spoils this is it's it's um to me it's a totally cynical argument
• 1:01:47
  on the point of people that are already doing that well relative to the median American to say well
• 1:01:54
  because of my race or my gender I need such and such a dispensation um well I mean okay but the cut
• 1:02:04
  doesn't the same principle and then I'll take you let it and then to point to and then to point
• 1:02:10
  okay well there's the same principle hole for for okay so
• 1:02:15
  your your your substantial point was about like gradual progress versus immediate progress yeah um
• 1:02:24
  I so
• 1:02:25
  so it it just depends whether the the immediate progress may not be real progress the the immediate
• 1:02:35
  probably I mean you you can't just push a button uh lower the standards for one race whether
• 1:02:43
  that is admissions to college admissions to a job uh criterion for a promotion just lower the
• 1:02:50
  standards from you know 18 onward for one race of people and say oh look we've gotten really
• 1:02:58
  immediate progress well it's yes but you've only done that by defining down the but by lowering
• 1:03:06
  the bar by which we used to measure progress that's that's a false kind of progress like hat in
• 1:03:13
  some way it's actually it's actually kind of a conceptual problem because say you are a social
• 1:03:19
  scientist that you just want to you want you want to really measure to what extent um black human
• 1:03:27
  capital skills have increased or decreased over the past like however many years you need
• 1:03:34
  by definition a non-moving bar against which to measure that kind of stuff but if you're moving
• 1:03:41
  the bar lower and then noticing more people clearing it it's a it's a conceptual it's actually a
• 1:03:50
  farce to say that you've made progress rather than just lowered the bar for some people right not
• 1:03:55
  others so you can view this as immediate progress but I'm more inclined to view it as fake progress
• 1:04:02
  and it's it's progress that relies on our all like a spiral of silence it relies on us never talking
• 1:04:12
  about what goes on behind closed doors in university admissions etc it relies on the fact that
• 1:04:22
  a university's admission policies are allowed to be kept secret now what is the what is the following
• 1:04:29
  thought experiment tell you if every college student in the country on their acceptance or rejections
• 1:04:36
  letter received an honest full account of why they were accepted or rejected including the racial
• 1:04:46
  component component of that which is to say if if my my Asian friend got a rejection letter from
• 1:04:53
  Harvard saying look you had a great application you had a great SAT scores had you been black we
• 1:05:01
  would have accepted you but we have too many Asians I'm sorry okay so everyone in the country got
• 1:05:09
  that kind of honest read of why they got in or didn't get in somewhere I think affirmative action
• 1:05:16
  would probably end in a week maybe not certainly there would be enormous levels of dissatisfaction
• 1:05:24
  with the policy so if you agree with that what does it tell you that the only reason there is not
• 1:05:32
  that kind of mass mass backlash is because we don't get the honest feedback it it tells you that
• 1:05:40
  it's a policy that actually relies on secrecy in order to get consent and in that way it's not so
• 1:05:50
  different than you know policies of torture during the war in Iraq where it's called you know they
• 1:05:56
  call it enhanced interrogation and they don't tell the public about it and it operates on secrecy
• 1:06:03
  so the public supports it imagining that it's like you know not all that bad and then you see the
• 1:06:09
  waterboarding and suddenly everyone's against it it's like if we saw the waterboarding and we saw
• 1:06:14
  how people and we're seeing a little bit of this with the Harvard affirmative action case and the
• 1:06:17
  stuff that's been subpoenaed but you have people in back rooms at college campuses saying you know
• 1:06:24
  we've uh we've got too many of this race we we need we need another of this race and I've got one
• 1:06:29
  here I've got you know an Asian with a this score and do we need any more of those now throw
• 1:06:35
  throw that one away you know like the how the sausage gets made is actually quite ugly to to most
• 1:06:40
  people and I think it survives precisely because we're we don't look at it that's interesting in the
• 1:06:48
  case of college admissions it's less true in the case of uh corporate America where I think it's
• 1:06:55
  becoming more overt and more accepted and more understood that that these considerations are made
• 1:07:01
  I mean they made quite overtly in my workplace in the sense that after every show I mean on my
• 1:07:06
  radio show not this show obviously where I run things but I work for the public broadcaster and
• 1:07:11
  after every show my producers have to devote time to filling out a spreadsheet which itemizes the
• 1:07:16
  race sexuality agenda characteristics disability status and so on of guests to make sure that you
• 1:07:25
  just to match ourselves against aspirational targets of diversity it would be perfectly well accepted
• 1:07:33
  that if we were having a panel conversation on television here about I don't know indigenous
• 1:07:40
  issues that you would need an indigenous face or multiple indigenous faces on that panel whether
• 1:07:46
  or not they were necessarily the best or most informed people about like the specific policy obviously
• 1:07:50
  if you were talking about the lived experience of being an indigenous person then you'd need an
• 1:07:54
  indigenous person but if you're talking about I don't know the economics the economic redress of
• 1:07:59
  historical injustices or something like that then it's possible that you could have world experts who
• 1:08:04
  did not hail from that particular community but that is now even saying that now is that something
• 1:08:09
  that some people will disagree with and that you know could in five or ten years become taboo so I do
• 1:08:15
  see shifting sands here where the march towards identitarian equity is coming out from the shadows
• 1:08:24
  and asserting itself as as a primary face you kind of good that we all have to get on board with
• 1:08:29
  yeah that example doesn't strike me as problematic because yeah I think it would be crazy to
• 1:08:35
  even though it's happened in history to discuss the history of an ethnic group without
• 1:08:40
  any anyone from that any expert from that ethnic group there um if you made and what you're
• 1:08:47
  discussing I mean obviously if you're talking about the history of an ethnic group then you need
• 1:08:51
  someone who's who's experienced it you know and as well no that's not necessarily true it's
• 1:08:56
  possible that you could have a historian of of like Burmese you know ancient Burma who is not
• 1:09:02
  himself Burmese is not sure definitely yeah um but in the more general case of like a corporation
• 1:09:12
  that I don't know like sells M&Ms or something random um to what extent is it actually important to
• 1:09:21
  have a person of x-rays doing any given job I'm just I'm very my maybe my point of view is seen
• 1:09:31
  as radical now but I can just tell you personally as a small business owner my podcast being a small
• 1:09:37
  business I will only ever get someone that is best for the job and I'm not looking at their race
• 1:09:43
  or their gender and I would um I think that's the right attitude to have and I would never demand
• 1:09:51
  that that others I wonder if all of this also just comes from a disagreement on this understanding
• 1:09:57
  about the nature of human expertise uh which is brought into starkness when you use examples like a
• 1:10:04
  a neurosurgeon because that's something some an an area where we can all agree that you want the very
• 1:10:09
  very best and that there is such a thing as the very very best and that the stakes of not having the
• 1:10:15
  very very best are huge I think a lot of people especially if they don't run businesses and haven't
• 1:10:21
  taken risks and are not creative types and are not shooting for the stars and don't have like the
• 1:10:27
  same sort of psychopathic creative ambitions and aspirations as someone like us may that they
• 1:10:35
  sort of just see the world as being like people muddling through and there's a lot of evidence for
• 1:10:40
  this I mean you know look at the caliber of people who end up running our countries for example
• 1:10:45
  these are these are not fantastic people you can swap out one straight white guy in a suit for
• 1:10:50
  another straight white guy in a suit it comes from a privileged background and went to a nice
• 1:10:53
  school like they're not that great and there's there's there's a lot of that too and maybe we're
• 1:10:59
  confusing the sort of boring pipeline of privilege to mediocre upper management jobs including
• 1:11:08
  potentially the prime ministership of a country by Australia with the real rarity of being being
• 1:11:16
  truly truly accomplished at what you're doing and and truly great and like how really rare it is
• 1:11:25
  to find someone who who has that sprinkle of pixie dust who is competent and empathetic and
• 1:11:32
  ambitious and like in any particular role it really does make a difference whether you get the best
• 1:11:38
  or the second best person and especially over time in a sort of natural natural selection kind of
• 1:11:45
  sense like if you're consistently getting the third or fourth best person to do something
• 1:11:52
  then the mediocrity multiplies over time and people who run their own businesses and produce
• 1:11:59
  their own artworks kind of know this instinctively in a way that maybe social justice activists and
• 1:12:05
  middle managers done yeah maybe so you know in my view is that people should be allowed to care
• 1:12:16
  about excellence first if they want to if whatever business you're running if you want to be
• 1:12:25
  monominical and within the bounds of ethics pursue the very best person for every single job I think
• 1:12:32
  you should be allowed to do that and I think society is better off when
• 1:12:40
  we we allow people to do that and when we demand the very best of our top decision-makers
• 1:12:46
  the fact that you know politicians and top decision-makers top officials are quite often mediocre
• 1:12:56
  I think is not is is to me a problem right because you know the historical examples of really great
• 1:13:07
  leaders we tend to look back on and say well wasn't it amazing that we had Abraham Lincoln at that
• 1:13:13
  time in the country or or whoever it was and yet most of the ones we see around today seem to be
• 1:13:18
  mediocre well I think it really matters that we have as many excellent people and judge people
• 1:13:25
  based on on merit and don't settle for for second best I mean look if you settle for the second best
• 1:13:35
  vice president because you needed your vice president to be a black woman not naming any names
• 1:13:41
  um what happens when uh when the president dies well you've just changed the course of history
• 1:13:48
  by not having the best person in charge because you wanted to I guess abstractly correct for some
• 1:13:58
  historical injustice what is best I mean this this is that I'm not sure that's a great example it lands
• 1:14:04
  with me like the presidency or the vice presidency because that is something where I do think it's
• 1:14:10
  legitimate for people to think about the role that that office plays in representing the nation as
• 1:14:16
  a whole and representing America's faith to the world and so on there was something electrifying
• 1:14:22
  about election night in 2008 and it wasn't just because Obama was so knowledgeable and so articulate
• 1:14:29
  it was like wow this has happened we've we've done it like it's happened America America's
• 1:14:36
  official face to the world is a black guy like what is best what is the best vice president I mean
• 1:14:44
  you know the Obama effect the Obama effect I think is an interaction effect between his excellence
• 1:14:52
  and his merit and his being black and and what his being black said about the population that
• 1:15:01
  elected him ultimately it says right right it was a reflection of the American population it's
• 1:15:08
  not that oh it's amazing Obama's black yes it's amazing that we elected a black man yeah right right
• 1:15:13
  and and and he would have been if he were um if he were black equally black but like far less
• 1:15:21
  impressive he would have been a huge embarrassment to the world and obviously Trump was in many ways
• 1:15:28
  an embarrassment in in the way that he acted and represented and held himself in the office
• 1:15:38
  look I suppose I suppose best I mean in this particular case of Kamala Harris best would you
• 1:15:44
  would want best to include the possibility that the person could successfully win an election
• 1:15:50
  if current president chooses to only serve one term so the the White House currently finds
• 1:15:56
  itself in a pickle with a very very very old president who not many people are enthusiastic about
• 1:16:03
  and no one on the bench to replace him with so I suppose in that context it was it was a missed
• 1:16:09
  opportunity but I just think there's that there are so many considerations that go into what makes
• 1:16:13
  and look you know did McCain's did McCain's choice of Sarah Palin have anything to do with the fact
• 1:16:18
  that Palin was a woman or was he I don't know I actually don't know the history of this but
• 1:16:25
  and I was pretty young at the time I was probably 12 at the time but in so far as it was that's
• 1:16:32
  I mean I just it it it astounds me that people are willing to settle for
• 1:16:39
  what is not the best when it comes to the most important jobs in in the country because they are
• 1:16:48
  worried about what it looks like and it's to some extent they have to be worried about what it looks
• 1:16:52
  the what it looks like in order to win but in that case it really seemed like a huge backfire when
• 1:16:59
  people heard her speak and doubted his judgment for having you know basically picked a woman
• 1:17:10
  or picked her because of whatever superficial reasons right I don't know I I want to defend merit
• 1:17:16
  here I want to defend that there are better and worse state crafters better and worse managers
• 1:17:23
  and although it may be difficult in any given situation to really pick out who is best it often
• 1:17:29
  isn't difficult and we shouldn't let these superficial qualities of the melanin content of my
• 1:17:35
  skin or whether you know the the which gonads I have affect my decision to the to the best of my
• 1:17:44
  ability I want to come back to before we wrap a cancel culture and Scott Adams this whole Scott
• 1:17:54
  Adams thing do you have you followed that do you understand what happened yeah I think I do can
• 1:17:59
  you explain it to people so um so Scott Adams is a a political commentator and a fairly famous
• 1:18:10
  cartoonist who is responsible for the long-running Dilbert comment much loved and widely syndicated
• 1:18:18
  he's been a commentator I mean for many years and he was I think a supporter of Trump is I don't
• 1:18:25
  think that's too strong he was hard to pin down he would talk a lot about he predicted the
• 1:18:30
  Trump was going to win he predicted Trump was going to win and yeah he said Trump was a brilliant
• 1:18:35
  persuader and I think he did have some insight into how Trump communicated
• 1:18:41
  where he was I think able to successfully see through some of Trump's more crazy statements
• 1:18:48
  into what his real goals were and I think that made him he kind of plugged a hole in the conversation
• 1:18:54
  around like you know mind reading Trump and maybe he went too far on that sometimes but
• 1:19:02
  in any event he's been a political and cultural commentator for a long time
• 1:19:07
  he has nuanced and sort of politically mixed views on the topic of race such as supporting
• 1:19:15
  reparations and supporting certain aspects of BLM I think that he's as a commentator popular
• 1:19:24
  on the right he will quite often stake out uncharacteristic viewpoints but defend them with whatever level
• 1:19:34
  of rigor and so the other day he said on a live stream he said he made some really inflammatory
• 1:19:43
  into my ear racist comments about essentially I mean people can look it up for themselves but he
• 1:19:49
  basically said you know I'm done my biggest advice to white people is to just get the hell away
• 1:19:57
  from black people and the reason he said this is because he saw a Rasmussen poll which found that
• 1:20:04
  it asked people the question is it okay to be white which is a very strange question
• 1:20:10
  not even sure really what it means and I think in part of this might explain this with
• 1:20:16
  misunderstanding it apparently was a bit of a white supremacist kind of like the okay symbol thing
• 1:20:22
  five years ago we were aware of this apparently like white white racist would say it's okay to be white
• 1:20:28
  and that would be a slogan so perhaps some cohort of the black respondents to this poll understand
• 1:20:31
  that and they're like no it's not fucking okay to be white in that sense so two things on that I
• 1:20:37
  remember reading an essay years ago by Wesley Yang maybe five years ago where people put
• 1:20:43
  it's okay to be white flyers up on a campus and it created like a campus meltdown I don't know
• 1:20:50
  whether that group was like white supremacist per se so I can't speak to that what I can't speak
• 1:20:58
  to is I don't think that ever got widespread or popular enough for like a majority or plurality
• 1:21:05
  of people pulled to like know that that's a signal for something okay but beyond that it's just
• 1:21:10
  like a crazy thing to ask someone it's like what does that actually mean it's okay to be white it's
• 1:21:15
  such a provocative and like meaningless sentence because because what would it mean if it's not okay
• 1:21:25
  to be white that you should stop being white well how does one do that being white man I mean to be
• 1:21:30
  not an action it's a be a car or to be like like what to be a to identify as white as an important
• 1:21:38
  part of your you know racial identity or to think that being white is racially silence like it could
• 1:21:43
  right it could mean any of those things exactly it's it's not clear what it means it's a terrible
• 1:21:49
  polling question because the results the results you get back may not may not mean anything specific
• 1:21:56
  anyway the point is this rise mucin pole found that only like 50% roughly of black people said yes
• 1:22:06
  and the other for roughly 48% either said like like maybe 20 20% said no and then the rest were like
• 1:22:13
  I don't know or like you know gave gave other answers so he took this to mean that quote-unquote 50
• 1:22:22
  percent of people but black people don't think it's okay to be white which is on the in the first
• 1:22:27
  place a misreading of the poll because 50% didn't answer no they answered a mix of either no or I
• 1:22:34
  don't know or whatever and then secondly I think it takes it doesn't take into account how confusing
• 1:22:41
  the question is and meaningless the question is um but anyway he extrapolated from this
• 1:22:48
  razz mucin pole to say that basically black people constitute an anti white hate group that the
• 1:22:56
  level of anti whiteness in the black community is so profound and widespread that my advice to white
• 1:23:02
  people is to just stay the hell away from black people and that's how he put it and he put it like
• 1:23:07
  that without caveat without anything um and then the next thing he said in that two-minute video clip
• 1:23:14
  is look I've done a lot for the black community in my life but I'm done I'm done helping black people
• 1:23:21
  all like all I do all all that happens is I get called a racist so get the hell away from black people
• 1:23:28
  and I'm done helping black people so I I was um I was pretty pretty shocked at these comments I
• 1:23:35
  thought I thought they were racist um later Scott Adams I think in an interview a day or two later
• 1:23:42
  he clarified on hotep jesus's podcast um that actually what what he meant was this he really
• 1:23:52
  just meant of course you should be friends with your black neighbor higher black people never
• 1:23:59
  discriminate against anyone on account of their race but that he is tired of being as a white guy
• 1:24:08
  called a racist whenever he weighs in uh about uh race issues and so he he the point he retreated
• 1:24:18
  to in later interviews was way more defensible um but then he you know he gave no apology or any
• 1:24:28
  any indication that there was a difference between the first thing he said and the later things
• 1:24:32
  he said and he basically I think I think he should have apologized and maybe he hasn't I'm not aware
• 1:24:38
  but I don't think so he should have said something like look what I said is not what I meant
• 1:24:45
  because uh you know if you heard what I said you would never think what I really meant was
• 1:24:51
  don't discriminate against black people ever associate with black people higher than be friends
• 1:24:56
  but I'm tired of being called a racist what he what he basically said is look if you thought
• 1:25:01
  what I was saying was racist then you are captured by the mainstream media you're not a
• 1:25:06
  sophisticated consumer of information if you thought I meant anything other than
• 1:25:12
  don't discriminate against anyone and I'm tired of being called a racist then you're basically
• 1:25:18
  like uh you've been duped which I thought was really disingenuous
• 1:25:24
  it's interesting I mean he's a person who has always used hyperbole and uh you know is like
• 1:25:31
  a student of persuasion I had him on my last podcast and we released that on this podcast
• 1:25:36
  before this whole snafu so people can go back and listen to it he has a lot of thoughts about
• 1:25:41
  like you're leading a good creative life and ambition and sort of you know kind of like he was
• 1:25:47
  very into sort of Dale Carnegie and kind of like you know think and grow rich and Napoleon Hill and
• 1:25:53
  like he's he studies language persuasion propaganda that sort of thing so I think he finds ways
• 1:26:01
  of articulating things that are going to be maximally inflammatory and vomits out thought experiments
• 1:26:07
  in his head uh without thinking about the impact or perhaps with thinking while thinking about the
• 1:26:13
  impact and courting it and he probably thinks there's a kernel of truth and he would be right in
• 1:26:18
  this that there is a kernel of truth in having a conversation about the danger of racial groups
• 1:26:27
  entering hyper defensive crouches and and how that can provoke tribal backlashes and so at the
• 1:26:35
  my understanding of the most generous interpretation of what he's saying is if it were the case that one
• 1:26:41
  racial group had reached such a position of antagonism towards another that they didn't even
• 1:26:47
  think that it was okay to be the other then the sense then the other would be justified in rejecting
• 1:26:55
  its assistance to that racial group and none the and that would that would then trigger a downward
• 1:27:03
  spiral of accusations of racism from one group to the other that's like the meta narrative that I
• 1:27:08
  think he is actually provoking he's actually demonstrating while he's he's misguidedly provoking it
• 1:27:15
  but I agree that when you say those words they are just on their face that is a that is racist what I
• 1:27:23
  then what then just sort of made me exhausted I was going to say distress me but didn't distress me
• 1:27:28
  I was just like was all of the media simply saying that he'd had a you know a racist tirade or
• 1:27:36
  something like that and never explaining what never explaining anything of what I just said so that
• 1:27:42
  some cohort of people who hear that he had a racist tirade and didn't even really care about him
• 1:27:46
  we're gonna go back and listen to it and then they're gonna go what doesn't sound exactly like a
• 1:27:49
  tirade he's not saying like are those end words need to get out of here he's it we do ourselves
• 1:27:56
  a disservice when the mainstream media failed to do the work of explaining why he's mistaken about
• 1:28:02
  the points that he's making he's making because then regular people just smell rats when they read
• 1:28:06
  articles like this one that I'm just looking at an Al Jazeera I've just been googling around
• 1:28:12
  it's not enough to cancel racist like Scott Adams toxic racist must be erased figuratively speaking
• 1:28:19
  from mainstream culture relegated to the internet's corners and the whole thing doesn't have any
• 1:28:24
  explanation of like what you just said all it all it says is that all it says is racist tirade
• 1:28:30
  there's some races Josh I couldn't even find I couldn't even find a link to the quote unquote tirade
• 1:28:37
  itself in the scene I took it's so annoying how the mainstream media reports anything like this
• 1:28:45
  because they will just give the their company political line whether that is the Fox News line
• 1:28:51
  or the CNN line often they will not even link to the primary source and so I have to take it on
• 1:29:00
  on faith essentially that this is what happened and it's so annoying it's become a horrible
• 1:29:05
  tendency in the mainstream media to not trust the public enough to just give us the link report
• 1:29:11
  the story uh straight down the middle and let us come to our own conclusion the only place and
• 1:29:18
  this was the BBC this was so many places didn't even didn't even quote him in full and more than
• 1:29:23
  you know a couple of words the only place I was able to read any context was the LA Times so
• 1:29:28
  congratulations to the A Times which had a piece that had some context but again no links to the
• 1:29:32
  actual thing but like this Al Jazeera piece simply says Adams said this on this recently on his
• 1:29:37
  popular YouTube channel based on the current way things are going the best advice I would give
• 1:29:41
  to white people is to get the hell away from black people beyond sharing and sharing this
• 1:29:46
  sickening slice of best advice Adams repeatedly referred in his dire tribe to people who are
• 1:29:51
  black as members of a hate group or a racist hate group and said he would no longer help black
• 1:29:56
  Americans that's the entire extent right so they don't they don't even mention the poll right
• 1:30:01
  I don't mention the poll right so it's not like he woke up one day and said black people are a
• 1:30:05
  hate group it's he interpreted a poll to be clear I think he interpreted that poll poorly and I
• 1:30:11
  think he thinks that too because what he said in follow up indicated that he was skeptical of
• 1:30:18
  his first interpretation of the poll of taking it at face value because he's a pretty usually
• 1:30:22
  informed consumer of polls and very skeptical of polling in general which is part of the reason
• 1:30:27
  why he predicted Trump's victory and beyond that I think one reason the mainstream media doesn't
• 1:30:34
  report these things straight is because and and to be clear with the way Scott put it first I was
• 1:30:40
  I was offended by I thought it was racist right like he's telling white people to get the hell away
• 1:30:45
  from me I'm a black person that that that is a horrible message and one that I would hate for
• 1:30:51
  people to actually live by um but he made other points that are legitimate legitimate uh conversations
• 1:31:02
  that the mainstream media doesn't want to talk about um so like one thing he said is his timeline
• 1:31:09
  is filled with videos of black people beating up white people um so this is this is a legitimate
• 1:31:17
  thing to talk about in terms of violent violent crime is disproportionately committed by black people
• 1:31:24
  but I would challenge him on two points one is you know just because something's in your timeline
• 1:31:31
  that may say more about your algorithm than it does about reality and secondly you know over
• 1:31:38
  over 90% of violent crime is same race right you are far more likely in the abstract to be
• 1:31:48
  you know beat up by or killed by someone of your own race than by someone of a different race the
• 1:31:53
  overwhelming majority of the victims of black criminals are black crime victims so his timeline
• 1:32:02
  might have been filled with videos of black people beating up black people or white people
• 1:32:06
  beating up white people but his algorithm obviously is is influenced by a certain narrative
• 1:32:14
  but look the media doesn't even want to talk about the overportionality of black crime to begin with
• 1:32:20
  the fact that you know 50% of the murders are committed by 13% of the population
• 1:32:24
  because it's an uncomfortable conversation and if they engage with it in a down the middle
• 1:32:31
  journalistic way they would not only be addressing his racist comments they would also be
• 1:32:37
  addressing certain uncomfortable facts that they they prefer to sweep under the rug
• 1:32:44
  common will you answer a few first eight questions for our premium subscribers I'd like to
• 1:32:49
  end with with just some random rule shot questions first thing that comes into your mind okay
• 1:32:53
  okay what the machine or appliance in your house aggravates you the most
• 1:32:59
  ooh my teleprompter probably I have a teleprompter for reading things on my podcast
• 1:33:08
  and do you have one of those at least do you have a do you have a pedal or is there a scroll
• 1:33:13
  on the mouse yeah I scroll on my mouse which kind of looks awkward I it's it's surprisingly difficult
• 1:33:21
  to actually read you know several paragraphs in a row without making any mistakes I find
• 1:33:29
  um you don't know that I mean I've been a newsreader guy you know not a newsreader but you know
• 1:33:34
  presenting things on TV I've got a little more respect for those guys yeah it's it is harder than
• 1:33:40
  people think I mean it's not a hard it once you know how to do it but it is like writing a bike
• 1:33:43
  when you do you need to learn how to do it properly and make it look natural I mean you should just
• 1:33:47
  do away with it man you're such an articulate guy you you can wing it I'm not sure about that
• 1:33:52
  uh that was just a little taste of our first day questions which you'll be able to hear all of
• 1:34:00
  if you subscribe to uncomfortable conversations not just the questions but of course all of our
• 1:34:05
  banter around them which become a subsequent little episode of themselves if you do subscribe you
• 1:34:10
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  content including opportunities to connect directly with me you can subscribe at uncomfortable
• 1:34:21
  conversations.substac.com or follow the links in the the podcast description otherwise I'll see you
• 1:34:28
  next time.