Latest / Words & Numbers / Episode 423: The Death of DEI?
Transcript
- 0:00Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony and this.
- 0:02Is words and numbers brought to you by the fine people at Khaki,
- 0:09the Center for American Culture and Ideas.
- 0:12Aunt, what's new and exciting in your world this week?
- 0:16I'm caught in a weird situation comes about because of an
- 0:20article I ran across. Wisconsin is now the 50th of the
- 0:2550 states to introduce right to repair laws.
- 0:31I started digging into this and ran across a company, Dorman
- 0:35Products. Dorman Products produces parts
- 0:39for automobiles, aftermarket parts.
- 0:43And what these guys do is they'll go find mechanics and
- 0:48people who work in, you know, automobile factories and
- 0:52interview them and find out what parts are failing in cars.
- 0:57And Dorman will produce better parts.
- 1:00They'll fix whatever the failure thing is.
- 1:02And they market these things as aftermarket products to the
- 1:06extent that places like Napa are starting to only stock, or I
- 1:10shouldn't say only, but to stock the Dorman products instead of
- 1:13the original equipment manufacturer, the OEM products,
- 1:17because the Dorman is better. But this goes back to this right
- 1:21to repair legislation. And, you know, my knee jerk
- 1:25reaction to anything is we're better off without regulation as
- 1:29long as no one's being harmed. But you know, I've got a soft
- 1:34spot here. It.
- 1:35Really irks me when I buy something, The thing is now mine
- 1:40and it's been created in such a way that if I want to get into
- 1:43it to repair it, I end up breaking it because it's
- 1:46designed to break if you attempt to get into it so that the
- 1:50manufacturer can sell me a new one.
- 1:52Well, that does seem to me to be a harm.
- 1:56Well. It also seems to me to be a
- 1:59violation of your property right.
- 2:02Well, not really, because I'm not required to buy the thing.
- 2:06The guy selling it to me basically as is the as is is.
- 2:10You can't take it apart. Yeah, but this is that same
- 2:12nonsense that you get every time you look at that big long list
- 2:16of things you have to agree to every time you use a piece of
- 2:19software. This is just one of those things
- 2:22they say, well, you know, you don't have to buy it if you
- 2:24don't agree to the terms. Well, the term is patently
- 2:27absurd. Yeah, I guess the the purist in
- 2:32me says you should just leave it to the market, but the
- 2:36pragmatist in me says I like this a lot.
- 2:40Well, I like this because you're going to get more hate mail than
- 2:44me this week again. And I got to tell you, I took a
- 2:48lot of hate mail over the recent utterances I made on vaccines.
- 2:53So you can bet we're going to get back to that because you had
- 2:56another person has died from measles in these United States.
- 3:00But that's for another week, because this week and we have a
- 3:03real tragedy on our hands. Mega Millions ticket prices are
- 3:07set to increase. From what to what?
- 3:122 to $5. Wow, they're more than doubling.
- 3:18They say a couple of things. They say that the prizes will
- 3:22get bigger and that more people will win.
- 3:26So it's kind of like toilet paper math.
- 3:28Do you ever see this is the equivalent of 64 rolls of toilet
- 3:31paper? How can one roll of toilet paper
- 3:34be the equivalent of 64 rolls of toilet paper?
- 3:36And I think we're we've got more or less the same kind of
- 3:40nonsense here. But I wonder if this is where
- 3:44people finally look at it and say, well, you know what?
- 3:48No thanks. I, I mean, I doubt it.
- 3:52I think there's always going to be a market for this sort of
- 3:54thing. It's a wholly regressive tax.
- 3:57It hits people who can afford at least and yet they're willingly
- 4:01going to the store and, and buying these things.
- 4:05So, you know, who am I to tell them they shouldn't, but they
- 4:08really shouldn't. And you see where all this is
- 4:11going to lead. People are going to end up
- 4:13broker than before and the multiple states who are in on
- 4:18the lottery will just clear more money off it and the occasional
- 4:22winner will emerge and we'll all say damn I wish I was that guy.
- 4:27Yeah, I'm interviewed every time the the prize gets over a
- 4:32certain amount. I always say the same thing as
- 4:34you have. There's a regressive tax in
- 4:36effect. But I think what's really
- 4:39happening here is the state, and the state has a monopoly on
- 4:42this, right? The state is selling the
- 4:46opportunity to dream. Well, that's why I buy lottery
- 4:49tickets. I know I'm not going to win.
- 4:52I just like to think of all the people I'm going to say very
- 4:56upsetting things to. If I did, James is less
- 5:02concerned with the money than he is what he can tell people to
- 5:05do. With with impunity, right?
- 5:08I can just keep saying it and never really get in trouble ever
- 5:11again. Which would be pretty
- 5:13outstanding. But of course this brings us to
- 5:16the foolishness of the week, as I occasionally do.
- 5:20Aunt, have you a guess? Well, the episode today is DEI,
- 5:25so you got to top that right off.
- 5:27I think I got it licked. What do Bernie Sanders?
- 5:33Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri?
- 5:37Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Representative Anna Paulina
- 5:42Luna, Republican from Florida, have in common.
- 5:46Oh wow, I can't imagine. They are all on board with a
- 5:55piece of legislation that will cap credit card interest rates
- 6:00at 10%. Oh good Lord, come on again.
- 6:04Why is it it's like clockwork? Every 10 years this comes back
- 6:08around. We got to make the same
- 6:09arguments all over again. Well, you might as well just go
- 6:12ahead and make them, because here we are.
- 6:15And this time we've got two Republicans, a Democrat, and an
- 6:19independent slash commie all on board together.
- 6:24And I've said this before, when you see some kind of bipartisan
- 6:28support like this, you can bet your last dollar that you're
- 6:30looking at a lousy idea. Yeah, yeah.
- 6:35And So what happens? You know, what's going to
- 6:37happen? Sooner or later, these fools are
- 6:40going to get this legislation through the right kind of
- 6:43majoritarian nonsense that, well, you know, in Trump's
- 6:48America, this is the kind of thing that we're going to be
- 6:51seeing a little more of, I think, as we go forward.
- 6:56As you know, the populism kind of boils up from the bottom.
- 6:59Well, what's going to happen? OK, great.
- 7:02Banks can only charge 10%, which they will do, and that means
- 7:07everybody who's not worth a credit risk will no longer get a
- 7:11credit card. Yep, Yep, that's exactly right.
- 7:16All the poor people will be without credit cards, and how do
- 7:20you figure that's going to work for them in the long run?
- 7:23Oh well, what's going to happen is those same politicians are
- 7:26going to turn around and say look at these evil banks they're
- 7:29discriminating on the basis of, and they'll list everything
- 7:33except the real reason they're discriminating, which is you're
- 7:37a risk that isn't worth 10%. Yep, that's exactly what they're
- 7:40going to say. And then when people go to those
- 7:43check cashing places just to get a little bit of cash ahead of
- 7:47payday, well now they're going to regulate that and they're
- 7:49going to say, well, now you're leeching off the poor and you
- 7:53can't make a profit either, so they'll go out of business and
- 7:56so on and so forth. If you want people to do well
- 8:01financially, you do well to get out of the markets entirely if
- 8:04you're the government. Yeah.
- 8:07And that will never happen. When I read this story today, it
- 8:10was almost as if we're in an election year already.
- 8:15The people are posturing for the next election.
- 8:19Well, great. Yeah, it seems to never end
- 8:24completely off this topic, but am I correct?
- 8:28I read somewhere recently that is it Canada or UK, one of these
- 8:33countries with a parliament did its election cycle.
- 8:37It's a matter of weeks between the time they say we're going to
- 8:40have an election and they do, and they now have a new
- 8:43government. That can happen in many
- 8:46parliamentary systems. It seems enlightened when you
- 8:51look at how long we go on and on and on, pounding on a very dead
- 8:55horse by the time we're near the end of the cycle.
- 8:58But for crying out loud, I I don't even know what to say
- 9:03about this. This is such a profoundly bad
- 9:06idea that it could only be a bipartisan 1.
- 9:10Look, this is basic economics. It's very much akin to the tube
- 9:14of toothpaste. You can pound down on one place
- 9:16is going to come up in the other.
- 9:18You can restrict the quantity or you can restrict the price.
- 9:22Take your pick and whichever 1 you restrict, the markets going
- 9:25to react on the other one. Go ahead, put a cap on the
- 9:28price, the markets going to pull back on the quantity.
- 9:31This is an even more obvious and Dumber example of the same
- 9:36phenomenon of surge pricing being disallowed by governments
- 9:42in the name of price gouging. What we talked about on the
- 9:45previous episode or one back from that, that New York State
- 9:49capped the charges for broadband and AT&T, yes, said, look, we
- 9:56can't make money, we're leaving and now there's no broadband.
- 9:59Yep, Yep, that's right. And AT&T are They're the
- 10:01villains. Right.
- 10:03Yes. They're the bad guys here
- 10:05because it's never the fools who try to wrangle forces beyond
- 10:11their control with policy. It's never them.
- 10:14It's always the corporation who is there to make a profit and
- 10:18nothing else, which I think dovetails nicely into what we're
- 10:23talking about today. But before we do, I would be
- 10:26remiss, Ant, if I didn't address a very, very healthy criticism
- 10:31that we have faced in the past week or two when it became clear
- 10:35that episode 420 of Words and Numbers was not about marijuana.
- 10:40I. Know we both missed that
- 10:43entirely. What on earth were we thinking?
- 10:45It must have been all that we we were smoking at the time that
- 10:48clouded our vision. That was such an obvious thing
- 10:52to do, and yet we didn't. Yeah, yeah, we dropped the ball
- 10:55there. Yeah, without question.
- 10:57And to all of you who have sent your very callous remarks to
- 11:04both of us, I would assume, yeah, this one's on us.
- 11:07Sorry. Yeah, sorry about that.
- 11:09But we should go back and look at that.
- 11:12Some years ago, when Colorado was one of the 1st or among the
- 11:16first states to legalize marijuana, we did an episode and
- 11:20we wrote a couple of op eds saying that, look, the sky is
- 11:24not going to fall here. Everything's going to work out
- 11:26fine. We should go back and revisit
- 11:27that. It's been some years now.
- 11:29It has, and I suspect people in Colorado might sing a different
- 11:33song at this point. I think a lot of people who were
- 11:36ambivalent about legalization are now sick of the nonsense
- 11:40that it brings. Oh, really?
- 11:43And I think a lot of politicians are absolutely addicted to the
- 11:46tax revenue. I'd be interested in getting
- 11:49back to it myself. Oh, what an interesting twist
- 11:52that now it's the public who doesn't want it, but the
- 11:55politicians do. Yeah, I mean, look, I live in a
- 11:59state in which marijuana is legal.
- 12:01And, you know, I have a very heightened sense of smell.
- 12:05I can actually smell it driving down the highway literally every
- 12:10day when I'm on the roads. People around my car are smoking
- 12:14weed in their cars left and right.
- 12:17That's really not a great thing. Now, apart from that sort of
- 12:21thing, would you know that we had a legal weed regime here?
- 12:25I don't think you would. It doesn't pop up in any other
- 12:29way. We have the same problems every
- 12:32mid sized city has. Maybe a bigger homeless problem
- 12:36than some, but I don't think that has much to do with the
- 12:39availability of legal weed. I think that might have been the
- 12:42case in Colorado early on, where losers flocked to the state
- 12:48because they just wanted to get high all the time.
- 12:51But here I don't think that's the issue.
- 12:53Nonetheless, it would be interesting to get back to that
- 12:55one. So let's maybe stick a pin in
- 12:57that, see where it takes us. For One Stop shopping for all
- 13:02things James and Aunt, visit our website wordsandnumbers.org.
- 13:08We give a special shout out to our Patreon sponsors who help us
- 13:11keep the lights on. If you'd like to contribute, go
- 13:15to patreon.com/words and Numbers.
- 13:19But for now, Aunt, we made a promise last week that we would
- 13:23discuss DE I3 initials that we have not ever used on this
- 13:28podcast, I don't think. And this is the big week.
- 13:31So where does one begin unpacking such a profoundly
- 13:38horrible idea? Well, I started by looking up
- 13:43some polling to see what what is Pew saying about it, for
- 13:48example. And the questions, it's
- 13:52important here when you look at polls to read carefully the
- 13:56question that's asked. And here the headline is, and
- 14:00this is coming from Pew, a majority of workers say focusing
- 14:03on DEI at work is a good thing. And not so fast.
- 14:07Well, here's the question. It's telling us what percentage
- 14:10of employed adults said that in general, focusing on increasing
- 14:16diversity, equity and inclusion at work is.
- 14:20And then you've got good thing, bad thing, what have you.
- 14:23And you've got 56% of people saying mainly a good thing.
- 14:28Now, here's what I find fascinating about the question.
- 14:32Of course, the headline is 56 percent or a majority say DEI is
- 14:35good, but read the wording. It says in general, focusing on
- 14:42increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is mainly.
- 14:46So you've got two general qualifiers there, the in general
- 14:49and the mainly, Yeah. And as I'm reading this, I'm
- 14:52thinking, you know, if I were given this question, and I'm not
- 14:56a huge fan of equity issues to begin with.
- 15:00But as I'm reading the question and it gives the in general and
- 15:03the mainly I'm focusing on the inclusion and I'm saying, yeah,
- 15:07you know what, inclusion, this is important to me.
- 15:10I could see responding, yeah, this is a good thing given the
- 15:14qualifiers in that they're listing out separately.
- 15:16Diversity, equity, inclusion is 3 separate things.
- 15:19I think it's even worse than that.
- 15:21I think that in a lot of these polls people are presented with
- 15:26something like this. Are you in favor of diversity in
- 15:30the workplace? Who's going to say no to that,
- 15:35right? Are you in favor of inclusion in
- 15:40the workplace? It seems to be saying the same
- 15:43damn thing, but who's going to say no to that?
- 15:45Are you in favor of equitable outcomes?
- 15:49Anybody you know going to say no to that?
- 15:51And yet you have all kinds of specialized knowledge, right?
- 15:55So you know what these questions are really getting at, you know,
- 15:58how polls are constructed and on and on and on.
- 16:02And even you just admitted a second ago you might have
- 16:04checked off that box without even thinking.
- 16:06About it, yeah. Mm.
- 16:07Hmm. Well, what's it going to be like
- 16:10when regular people who don't think about this kind of thing
- 16:12every minute of their lives, What are they going to do?
- 16:15They're going to go for it every single time.
- 16:17And then the pollsters are going to say, meaning to say, the
- 16:22people who commissioned the polls, meaning to say political
- 16:26actors who want these answers are going to say the American
- 16:31people are so broadly in favor of DEI.
- 16:34Why are we even talking about it?
- 16:35Right. And yet we know anybody with an
- 16:39ounce of sense knows that that's not true.
- 16:42That's not true at all. And this goes back in our
- 16:45history for a very long while, right?
- 16:48We've got a traditional problem centered right around these
- 16:53ideas that goes back. I mean, look, you can make the
- 16:57case, I think strongly so, that all of this is brought about by
- 17:01the Once Upon a time condition of slavery.
- 17:04Now the honest question to ask is how long does that continue
- 17:07to be a valid reason to keep chasing these things?
- 17:12At some point you have to say, look, it's been 160 years or so.
- 17:16Aren't we kind of done with this?
- 17:19Or is this going to be a built in problem for the rest of all
- 17:22time? Yeah.
- 17:24We're at the point now where I cannot meet someone who was ever
- 17:30enslaved, and I never enslaved anyone.
- 17:33Therefore, there are no victims and there are no villains
- 17:36anymore. There might be a condition that
- 17:39none of us are really responsible for.
- 17:42I'm ambivalent in a lot of ways and how we address that.
- 17:46But to say that there's a group of people who are villains and
- 17:49another group who are victims is wholly incorrect.
- 17:53That's just nonsense. And yet here we are.
- 17:57You know, from the time the Civil War ended to the time of
- 18:00the civil rights movement, we got roughly 100 years, and it's
- 18:04100 pretty rough years in our history.
- 18:08You know, you would think that the 13th, 14th and 15th
- 18:10Amendment, something we've talked about often, would have
- 18:14sufficed to fix the problem that we had.
- 18:17They didn't. They just didn't, and that
- 18:20problem lingered for 100 years. Well, OK, then it was time for
- 18:26the civil rights movement, the civil rights era if you prefer.
- 18:29And we get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the introduction of
- 18:36this thing and affirmative action.
- 18:39Notice what it's called, affirmative action.
- 18:42Who could be against an action that is affirmative?
- 18:45Right. What kind of heartless, soulless
- 18:48Wretch would you have to be? But there were a group of people
- 18:51back at the time who said, you know, if you pass this into law,
- 18:56there will be quotas. There will be hiring quotas all
- 19:01across the country. And Hubert Humphrey, who
- 19:06championed this bill like no one ever championed anything,
- 19:10famously said if you can find quotas in this bill, I'll eat my
- 19:14hat. Well, the ink wasn't try on the
- 19:18page. And companies were coming up
- 19:21with and governments were coming up with quota systems.
- 19:24Why? How else would you know you were
- 19:26successful, right? You have to count X before, and
- 19:31then you have to count X after. And the after result has to be
- 19:35better than the before result. And the only way is to count.
- 19:39And the minute you start counting, congratulations, now
- 19:42you've got quotas, because how else will you know what to aim
- 19:46for? Well, the American people put up
- 19:51with this for a long time. They didn't like it, but they
- 19:55put up with it because they knew in their hearts there had been a
- 19:59real problem, and they didn't want to be part of a continued
- 20:02problem. So OK, But by the time I'm in
- 20:07Graduate School in the 1990s. Affirmative action was a hot
- 20:12button issue and it had all but run its course, and that was in
- 20:17the mid 90s. By the late 90s, you see it
- 20:19falling apart everywhere. It gets beaten back at the
- 20:22Supreme Court level, right? It's getting dismantled
- 20:25everywhere you can find it. And what is the radical American
- 20:30left to do? Then they come up with this
- 20:33brand new and completely unrelated idea.
- 20:37It had nothing to do with affirmative action.
- 20:39No, no, this is completely different.
- 20:40It was called multiculturalism. Do you remember that one?
- 20:43Yo-yo. And who could be against multi
- 20:47meaning many in culturalism meaning many cultures?
- 20:50Yes, that's a good thing. Sure.
- 20:53Yeah, except it had all of the exact same goals, maybe with a
- 20:58couple of more tacked on as affirmative action had when
- 21:02affirmative action had just died a few years before.
- 21:04So what do you know? Multiculturalism dies, kind of a
- 21:08still birth in a lot of ways, does some damage for a while and
- 21:12just disappears. And then, as if by magic, some
- 21:16years later, DEI shows up. I ask you, aunt, how is DEI
- 21:21different from affirmative action?
- 21:24No, no it's not. It's got flashier packaging.
- 21:28It's nice that you would speak the absolute utter truth of the
- 21:31matter. It's not any different.
- 21:35Well, OK, do we need it? I guess that would be the only
- 21:40question to ask, right? Because if the answer to that is
- 21:44yes, well, I guess we're going to have to say maybe we will
- 21:49always need it. Are the minorities living among
- 21:54us somehow so incapable that they can't succeed without
- 22:00something like this? Or is it the case that the white
- 22:03majority is so horrible that this outcome is preordained?
- 22:10Because those are the only two possibilities.
- 22:14When you talked about diversity, you said, you know who can be
- 22:17against it? You talked about affirmative
- 22:18action. Who could be against that?
- 22:20The word multiculturalism, same thing.
- 22:22Who could be against it in in all three cases?
- 22:25And I think so too with this Pew survey that I'd looked at, it's
- 22:29phrased as as a good thing. Of course you want diversity, of
- 22:33course you want multiculturalism, so on and so
- 22:35forth. What's not stated anywhere is at
- 22:39what cost. And that becomes the problem, I
- 22:42think, when people look around. And I observed it first hand
- 22:45when I would sit on more than one faculty hiring committee and
- 22:51somebody on the committee would invariably say something like,
- 22:55and I'm paraphrasing, but the words are pretty close to what
- 22:58the person actually would say. First thing I did is I went
- 23:01through the resumes and I took out all the males or I took out
- 23:05all the whites or whatever it was so that we can look only at
- 23:10whoever the favored class is that they want to look at.
- 23:13And that's the cost is you're now in what you perceive as
- 23:18pursuing a justice, you're actually imposing a tremendous
- 23:21injustice on other people. And that's fine if those other
- 23:29people are the people that brought about the injustice.
- 23:32Right. Yes.
- 23:33If they are somehow guilty, yes. As a remedy, I'm all in favor of
- 23:38that sort of thing. But when you look at people and
- 23:41you say, I know you haven't done anything wrong, but somebody who
- 23:45looks like you did Once Upon a time, so you're going to have to
- 23:48pay, that doesn't sit right with me at all.
- 23:53I mean, not at all. So where does that leave me?
- 23:57I've got a couple of things here that they're really hard to
- 24:01square. And I can tell you, Aunt, when I
- 24:03was out on the job market in the Academy, I would every now and
- 24:07again have to write up a diversity statement.
- 24:12Do you even know what that is? You know, I've just missed it.
- 24:16I missed it by maybe two years. So you're like a couple years
- 24:19younger than I am. I didn't have to do that ever.
- 24:23You mean think about this, a diversity statement?
- 24:27What am I supposed to write right?
- 24:29Yeah, you're teaching political philosophy.
- 24:31What? What kind of diversity are you
- 24:34looking for? I mean, there's all kinds of
- 24:36good diversity, then there's all kinds of lousy diversity.
- 24:39I mean, we don't want Nazis coming in, right?
- 24:42I would say Marxist, but colleges love Marxist for some
- 24:46reason. But OK, we can at least all
- 24:48agree that Nazis are terrible. Should we be open to the
- 24:51possibility of a Nazi political scientist?
- 24:54Well, given that nobody's open to the possibility of a
- 24:57Republican political scientist, I suspect that's out of the
- 25:00question. Right.
- 25:01I mean, there's a an old observation, I think it was
- 25:05Thomas Sowell, who said, you know, if you want to talk to me
- 25:08about diversity, show me how many Republicans are in your
- 25:10sociology department. That's not a bad idea actually,
- 25:16because at the university level, what diversity really means is a
- 25:21black progressive, a white progressive, a lesbian
- 25:24progressive, a Hispanic progressive.
- 25:27There's only that kind of diversity, right?
- 25:30Diversity of viewpoint that doesn't exist.
- 25:33Anywhere, which is ironic given that the whole product of the
- 25:36university is thought and ideas. Right.
- 25:39And this is so obviously true that no one would dare
- 25:45contradict me. They would prefer I didn't make
- 25:49this argument. They would prefer nobody thought
- 25:52about these things. But nobody would dare say I'm
- 25:55wrong. And that's really telling.
- 25:59So how far can we go holding one group of people accountable for
- 26:04another group of people's misery?
- 26:08That's an actual honest question.
- 26:12I don't know the answer to that. I don't think we can do it at
- 26:15all, but I only think we can't do it at all if everything we do
- 26:21has to be part of the grievance Olympics.
- 26:23Where do I get my jersey? Because I want to start claiming
- 26:28that I've been done wrong. Well, not me, but people who
- 26:32looked like me and, you know, not in this lifetime, but yeah,
- 26:358 or 10 generations ago. And it has a lasting effect on
- 26:38me right now here. So what am I entitled to?
- 26:47When you look at the United States and what you often see is
- 26:51a country doing its level best to do the right thing, It's hard
- 26:56to do the right thing. We get confused as a people, we
- 27:00get sidetracked. We do all kinds of things that
- 27:04are suboptimal. And yet at the end of the day,
- 27:08until very recently, and we'll have to see how present day
- 27:12contemporary history plays out, but anytime you were looking for
- 27:16the morally courageous attitude on the world stage, you looked
- 27:20to the United States. I mean, that's pretty good.
- 27:27I mean, that's really good. And yet it's never enough.
- 27:32I would like to know when it will finally be enough.
- 27:35Because one thing I've noticed and you have two, if you did
- 27:39even a moderate amount of digging around on this DEI
- 27:43business, company after company after company, they're dropping
- 27:46this like a hot potato. Everywhere you look, there's
- 27:50another company saying, you know what?
- 27:52Not anymore. Because it's not helpful to them
- 27:56as corporations to do this. If it were, they would do it
- 28:01voluntarily and they'd never even talk about it.
- 28:03They would just do it. But now they're saying not only
- 28:08are they talking about it, they're talking about it in the
- 28:10negative. And every corporation that you
- 28:13look at is walking as far away from this as they can as fast as
- 28:17they can. There will still be a few that
- 28:19don't, and I think that's fine as long as your shareholders
- 28:22permit it. Knock yourselves out the owner
- 28:26of the company, he gets that call and if the owner is a group
- 28:29of shareholders, and that's fine too.
- 28:33But I don't want to invest in a company that expends loads of
- 28:36resources trying to accomplish this.
- 28:38Oh, more than that, I wouldn't want to work there.
- 28:41I want them to expend loads of resources trying to make a
- 28:44profit, which is what a business is for.
- 28:48It's not for meeting out some form of hand fisted social.
- 28:52Justice, yeah. And remember, for those who are
- 28:56squeamish about profit, remember what this means.
- 28:58A company that is laser focused on profit.
- 29:02Is. By definition, laser focused on
- 29:04satisfying the customer because that's how you get.
- 29:08Profit. That's right.
- 29:10That's right. And one of the ways you satisfy
- 29:12customers is by treating people with respect.
- 29:16Yeah. All across the board, right?
- 29:18Most companies don't have to be told this.
- 29:21Some do, but most don't because it kind of goes without saying.
- 29:26Those that need to be told it end up either learning it
- 29:29quickly or going out of business.
- 29:32Yeah, the only large group of people dedicated to a common
- 29:35cause who don't have to learn this are government employees.
- 29:38Yeah. That's literally true.
- 29:41Let me point out something here, because you asked several times
- 29:45How much is enough? How long until we're done with
- 29:48this? I submit that the answer is
- 29:52never. And the reason the answer is
- 29:55never is because the people who promote DEI&DEI like things.
- 30:03And by promote, I don't mean people who are necessarily just
- 30:06for it, but people at the top who are the organizers who make
- 30:09a living from this sort of thing.
- 30:13They have an incentive to make sure that relations between
- 30:19minorities and majorities are never healed, because the moment
- 30:25those relations are healed, those people are out of work.
- 30:28They have an absolute vested interest in keeping this rolling
- 30:33right along. And you've heard me before refer
- 30:36to the civil rights industry in the United States rather than
- 30:39the civil rights movement, right?
- 30:41Because it is an industry now, people's carts are attached to
- 30:46this horse. Therefore there can be no end to
- 30:51the struggle. But here's an interesting
- 30:54question for you, aunt. We're quickly coming up to a
- 30:58time when white people will be a minority in the country.
- 31:02Yes, we are quickly coming to that.
- 31:05What happens then? Right.
- 31:10Do they remain the villain forever?
- 31:12Oh, I'm pretty sure they do. And I point for evidence to what
- 31:16is this new term white adjacent? What the hell?
- 31:21When people point out, for example, you know the argument,
- 31:23well, minorities don't have a decent opportunity here and so
- 31:27on and so forth. And people point to Asians who
- 31:31outstrip whites in terms of education, in terms of income.
- 31:36In fact, one of the you and I had written an op-ed on this a
- 31:39couple of years ago as an empirical response to this claim
- 31:43that women are paid less, that minorities are paid less.
- 31:48And we looked at the data broken down by gender and by race, and
- 31:53what gender slash race earns by far the highest wage in the
- 31:58United States. It's Asian women.
- 32:03And having known a bunch of them, I'm not the least bit
- 32:06surprised. So to answer your question, you
- 32:09know, we're already at this point where I've heard Asians
- 32:12referred to as white adjacent, or in other words, yeah, they're
- 32:15not really minorities. And so when whites become a
- 32:18minority, whites will still not be minorities.
- 32:21Not really. They have the soul of a
- 32:24majority, even if they're an American minority, right?
- 32:27So we might as well keep going right down that same tired old
- 32:30road. But up until recently, I would
- 32:33have said we're getting to the point, but I think we've gotten
- 32:36to the point where you just can't get any more out of that
- 32:40horse. You can't.
- 32:42And, you know, you talk about the civil rights industry and
- 32:47we've observed you and I, as we've gone to high schools
- 32:50throughout the country, we've seen first hand the
- 32:54relationships amongst white and black students in classrooms in
- 32:59public schools in this country. Now, of course, we're only
- 33:02seeing them for one day, but we are seeing them actually
- 33:04interacting remarkably. They're just a bunch of students
- 33:08put together. It's not like when you and I
- 33:10were in school and there was a clear delineation between the
- 33:14white students, the black students, this kind of thing.
- 33:16You don't see any of that. I didn't see any of that.
- 33:19And that tells me the civil rights industry now, given that
- 33:24race relations are, of course, they're not perfect, but they're
- 33:28way better than they were in the past, the civil rights industry
- 33:31is going to insist that they aren't.
- 33:35Well, it has to keep doing that or it goes out of business.
- 33:38Right. They're going to be, in effect,
- 33:40perpetrating a fraud and saying that we have a problem when in
- 33:43fact we don't. I think ultimately that's right,
- 33:49and I'll take my foot off the gas for a minute and say I
- 33:54suspect that we still have enough by way of racial tension
- 33:58that we might want to address it somehow.
- 34:01But addressing it in a way that dumps more gasoline onto that
- 34:05fire is probably not the way to go.
- 34:09Yeah, and here I love Morgan Freeman has a great quote.
- 34:12The actor Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes asked him this same
- 34:16question. So what should we do about race
- 34:19relations? What can we do to improve them?
- 34:21And he says quit talking about race.
- 34:26Not a bad way to go because we've gotten to the point now
- 34:31people forget how important this reality is.
- 34:35We've gotten to a point now where people aren't being
- 34:39lynched. You say aren't.
- 34:42Are not being lynched. That's.
- 34:44Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
- 34:45And I've said before that I fully believe my black fellow
- 34:50citizens when they say that they're not treated well by the
- 34:53police. I believe it.
- 34:55I think there are all kinds of problems that we face as a
- 34:59society. But is having any sort of quota
- 35:04for anything the way to address that?
- 35:07Is that what promotes healing in any way?
- 35:11And I would submit that it does not, that it it actually does
- 35:17more harm than good. And when you ask the question,
- 35:20when will it end, the only answer to that question is
- 35:25never. And if the honest answer is
- 35:28never, then it has to end right now, today.
- 35:33And that's all the time we've got this week on words and
- 35:35numbers. Until next time.
- 35:37Send us e-mail wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com.
- 35:40Try to be nice to one person who doesn't deserve it till next
- 35:44week. Can't take it easy.
- 35:44See you next week, James.