Latest / Gil I Am / Glenn Loury & John McWhorter...The Moral Insult of Racial Equity

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Glenn Loury & John McWhorter...The Moral Insult of Racial Equity · Gil I Am

0:05
Speaker 1: They're not actually facing the existential challenge. They're not they're
0:09
Speaker 1: not taking life seriously in a way. I'm putting words
0:12
Speaker 1: in your mouth now, but this is what I hear,
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Speaker 1: and you're not You're just not going to stand for it.
0:17
Speaker 1: And what I want to ask you is, how do
0:21
Speaker 1: you know it's not true that we're not as smart
0:22
Speaker 1: if we're not doing that well on the test? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I'm legitimate. Yeah, that's a question.
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Speaker 2: Legitimate question, and we're going to get in trouble for
0:33
Speaker 2: even discussing it. But anybody who thinks we can't discuss
0:36
Speaker 2: it as being religious and not logical? Yeah, how do
0:39
Speaker 2: I know?
0:44
Speaker 1: We're on the way here at the Glen Show. You've
0:46
Speaker 1: tuned in to the Glen Show, Glenn Lawry here around
0:49
Speaker 1: University and the Manhattan Institute, where I'm John Polson's senior fellow.
0:53
Speaker 1: The Manhattan Institute sponsors to Glen Show and every other week.
0:56
Speaker 1: My guess is John mcwater. John is that club University
1:00
Speaker 1: and he writes for the New York Times. So welcome John, welcome.
1:04
Speaker 2: Back, Thank you, Glenn. Good to be here.
1:07
Speaker 3: Congratulations John on having appeared.
1:10
Speaker 1: I guess it was Friday before last as a guest
1:13
Speaker 1: on Bill Maher's program A Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO,
1:18
Speaker 1: I thought you hit it out of the park, John.
1:20
Speaker 2: Thank you. I had fun up there. That's a that's
1:23
Speaker 2: a fun show. It's right, it's it's you know, it's
1:26
Speaker 2: not academic. But then on the other hand, you are
1:29
Speaker 2: expected to talk about real things, and you've got the
1:33
Speaker 2: the pressure of the fact that it's TV and it's
1:36
Speaker 2: not technically live, but you know, it all kind of
1:38
Speaker 2: keeps going and you've got a live audience there, as
1:40
Speaker 2: you know, and it's kind of over before it begins,
1:43
Speaker 2: and so you've got to you've got to get your
1:46
Speaker 2: word in and realize that you only have so much time.
1:50
Speaker 2: You can't go on for a long time, but you
1:52
Speaker 2: don't want to say so little that you haven't made
1:55
Speaker 2: your point. I enjoy that chunge. So yeah, it was.
1:59
Speaker 2: It was a good ton.
2:01
Speaker 3: So I wondered, do you rehearse? Do you prepare?
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Speaker 1: I mean, so you had certain I can't remember them now,
2:07
Speaker 1: but they were so noteworthy at the time. Little turns
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Speaker 1: of phrase, you know, a little like somebody says stupid
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Speaker 1: as a box of hair. That was that was one
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Speaker 1: of yours box of hair was the metaphor. It was
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Speaker 1: Trump but yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, in which case, of
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Speaker 1: course is self evident.
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Speaker 3: But still it's a pretty good way of putting it.
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Speaker 3: Thank you.
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Speaker 2: No, that was that was spontaneous. But of course you
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Speaker 2: go up there with two or three kind of lines
2:37
Speaker 2: that you're prepared to use because they do tell you
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Speaker 2: what the topics are going to be. But in my experience,
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Speaker 2: when you're talking, most of it is going to be spontaneous.
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Speaker 3: You know.
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Speaker 2: I don't use often the things that I was thinking
2:49
Speaker 2: I was going to use, But yeah, I think about
2:51
Speaker 2: it a little because you've got to get your word
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Speaker 2: across and concisely, and you can just watch some people
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Speaker 2: on TV or on podcast who don't quite understand that
3:02
Speaker 2: you can't go on and on and on. You have
3:04
Speaker 2: to have the economy. So yeah, a little. But some
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Speaker 2: of it to me is just like being in front
3:09
Speaker 2: of the classroom. I just go into that same mode
3:13
Speaker 2: where you just you say, you talk the way you
3:17
Speaker 2: normally talk, and next thing you know, you've said something
3:21
Speaker 2: like the box of hair. But yeah, I liked that
3:23
Speaker 2: line too.
3:27
Speaker 1: Who were you on with? You were on the panel
3:28
Speaker 1: with the where he interviews two guests. Who was your
3:32
Speaker 1: opposite number.
3:34
Speaker 2: It was Josh Tarangel, who I really liked working with,
3:38
Speaker 2: partly because we knew about different things. And frankly, before
3:42
Speaker 2: the show we kind of talked about it. I said,
3:44
Speaker 2: you're going to know more about this business of banks,
3:47
Speaker 2: et cetera, and maybe I know a little bit more
3:49
Speaker 2: about language. We informally said we were going to kind
3:52
Speaker 2: of step back when those topics came up. And I
3:54
Speaker 2: thought he was really really good at what he did
3:56
Speaker 2: and what I couldn't believe. I'm making it sound like
3:59
Speaker 2: I've been on the show twenty five times, but he
4:01
Speaker 2: was new. He hadn't been on it for you. You
4:03
Speaker 2: would think he was just, you know, a regular. So no,
4:06
Speaker 2: that was it was good. But I've been I've been
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Speaker 2: struck by how I said my thing about equity. I
4:16
Speaker 2: said that I seen you on with Josh. But I've
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Speaker 2: also sorry, sorry to interrupt, John, That's okay.
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Speaker 1: I was going to comment that I've seen you opposite
4:27
Speaker 1: Michael Aric Dyson. I've seen you opposite Andrew Yang. Is
4:32
Speaker 1: that the Bill Marshaw?
4:34
Speaker 3: So uh?
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Speaker 1: And now this Josh fella, it looks like you're starting
4:39
Speaker 1: to be a regular one of his go to people.
4:41
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, I think I am. I think they they
4:44
Speaker 2: they like the cut of my jib. I've actually, unlike you.
4:48
Speaker 2: I've never been on it with Dyson. It's interesting. He
4:50
Speaker 2: and I are going to do a thing at Syracuse
4:52
Speaker 2: next week.
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Speaker 3: Oh you were not on with him. I'm sorry.
4:54
Speaker 2: I feel like I was, but you were. I was
4:57
Speaker 2: gonna be with you were, But I have been on it.
5:00
Speaker 2: I think what I just did was my fourth time
5:03
Speaker 2: these days. I was on mar In five and I failed.
5:08
Speaker 2: It's the one time I've ever out and out failed
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Speaker 2: on TV. It wasn't embarrassing, but I just didn't have
5:13
Speaker 2: that much to say because they put me on with
5:16
Speaker 2: one some high ranking official from Canada who is not famous,
5:22
Speaker 2: but she really had a way with the line. She'd
5:24
Speaker 2: been on the show before. She was really smart. I
5:26
Speaker 2: forget her name. And George Carlin, and he's a professional
5:29
Speaker 2: comedian and he was making joke Carlin. It's Carlin, and
5:33
Speaker 2: he's making jokes about the Iraq War. And he's the
5:36
Speaker 2: only he's the only person on earth who could have
5:39
Speaker 2: made jokes about the Iraq War and gotten away with it.
5:42
Speaker 2: And I'm not a comedian and so I'm sitting here
5:44
Speaker 2: between this one kind of TV professional and then two
5:49
Speaker 2: this god comic, and it just kind of threw me.
5:52
Speaker 2: I didn't I didn't have any way to I didn't
5:54
Speaker 2: know what to say. I didn't fit, and so it
5:56
Speaker 2: wasn't terrible. But I was not invited back until recently
6:00
Speaker 2: because I just did not make much of a show
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Speaker 2: for myself the one time I've kind of choked on
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Speaker 2: airs and just not. I just wasn't fluent or interesting.
6:08
Speaker 2: And so I'm honored that they've started to have me
6:11
Speaker 2: back because you know, I'm older, I've done more media,
6:14
Speaker 2: I know more. You know, nothing would spook me now,
6:17
Speaker 2: not even George Garland. And so yeah, yeah, I get
6:21
Speaker 2: to do it. I get to do it once or
6:23
Speaker 2: twice a year. I'm happy with that.
6:27
Speaker 1: Did you notice that our u A t X event
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Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks is sold out?
6:33
Speaker 2: No, now, tell them what that is and remind remind me.
6:38
Speaker 3: Let me see if I've got it. It's Ileana Rich.
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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and it has a University of Austin Austin,
6:47
Speaker 1: Texas connection.
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Speaker 3: Uh, but I should know more than I actually do.
6:53
Speaker 1: I'd have to go and look up the the details
6:56
Speaker 1: and with the Jeff, I got so many events, man,
7:00
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm overwhelmed actually with stuff. I'll ask people
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Speaker 1: to put in the notes for this post, the information
7:10
Speaker 1: about the event on April fourth in New York City
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Speaker 1: where John and I are going to appear together.
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Speaker 3: And we were just talking about.
7:22
Speaker 1: You don't have to travel, and I have to do
7:24
Speaker 1: amtrak down from Providence, which.
7:26
Speaker 3: Is not that bad.
7:27
Speaker 1: No, no, look, traveling is becoming more and more onerous
7:33
Speaker 1: to me.
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Speaker 3: John, I must say in my old age.
7:36
Speaker 2: You mean because of the back, your back problem, that
7:40
Speaker 2: must be awful.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the back problems and you know, getting around, you know,
7:47
Speaker 1: standing on my feet, I get tired and whatnot.
7:50
Speaker 3: Anyway, enough about me.
7:51
Speaker 1: We were talking about the UATX event, will give some
7:54
Speaker 1: reference to it, and then we were talking about just
7:56
Speaker 1: being busy. At least I was talking about being busy
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Speaker 1: and traveling around. I have to go out to Minnesota
8:01
Speaker 1: to a small college where I'm giving a talk, you know,
8:06
Speaker 1: on the lecture circuit.
8:10
Speaker 3: But it'll be fine.
8:13
Speaker 2: The problem with that is that with those small town things,
8:16
Speaker 2: you probably have a two leg flight and then once
8:20
Speaker 2: you get out. I've gotten wary about the small towns,
8:23
Speaker 2: because God bless small towns. But once you get out
8:25
Speaker 2: of the plane, is the small town fifty minutes away,
8:29
Speaker 2: an hour and ten minutes away? And if it is,
8:32
Speaker 2: I've started to usually say no because that's three legs
8:36
Speaker 2: and then you have to do it in reverse. Is
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Speaker 2: this one of those things?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those things, John, where I factored
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Speaker 1: in in the negotiation of consideration of all of these
8:46
Speaker 1: different factors that you have just enumerated, which are indeed
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Speaker 1: exactly as you enumerated them.
8:55
Speaker 3: But I'm being compensated for it.
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Speaker 2: So compensation is nice, But there's also quality of life.
9:01
Speaker 2: I've done a lot of flying this semester, and you
9:04
Speaker 2: deal with one of those hub airports where you've got
9:08
Speaker 2: some long way and one plane is not going to
9:12
Speaker 2: be on time. You can be sure that if you've
9:14
Speaker 2: got four things, one of them isn't going to work.
9:16
Speaker 3: Step you're xing me up. Sorry, but no, you're right.
9:21
Speaker 1: I'll be lucky if all these planes take off and
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Speaker 1: land on time. I'll be lucky because there are four
9:26
Speaker 1: planes involved.
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Speaker 3: You're right. Ooh so, and God help me if a
9:30
Speaker 3: storm should come.
9:31
Speaker 2: In, and then there's the weather and if you live
9:33
Speaker 2: in New York. You're dealing with basically just what this
9:38
Speaker 2: extremely crowded city is. Like Boston can be kind of
9:41
Speaker 2: the same, but New York is pretty nasty in that way.
9:44
Speaker 2: Just so many people, and you know that exhausts me
9:48
Speaker 2: after a while, especially Kennedy. Lagardia is a twenty minute
9:52
Speaker 2: walk from my house, but Kennedy is a trip. There's
9:54
Speaker 2: no way to get to Kennedy without sitting in traffic.
9:57
Speaker 2: There's no way to get from Kennedy without sitting in traffic.
10:00
Speaker 2: Just part of the experience. Yeah, as you can see,
10:03
Speaker 2: I'm right off of this. I just spent some time
10:05
Speaker 2: in Antwerp. Lovely city, but giving some talks about linguistics.
10:09
Speaker 2: But you know, you have to get to Antwerp, so yeah,
10:12
Speaker 2: the network, it's a lot, That's what one would think.
10:18
Speaker 2: It's Belgium actually, but it was nice. But you know,
10:21
Speaker 2: you get into Brussels Airport, lovely place, but you know
10:25
Speaker 2: then you have a half hour train to Antwerp. Nice
10:28
Speaker 2: train too, but still you have to work. So yeah,
10:32
Speaker 2: let me not play a lot.
10:34
Speaker 1: But I want to ask you something about the Bill
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Speaker 1: Martin because you got asked a question. What's the difference
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Speaker 1: between equality and equity, and it gave you the occasion
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Speaker 1: to hold forth. I thought very powerfully, you want to
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Speaker 1: reprise that.
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Speaker 2: Well, What I was trying to get across is that
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Speaker 2: the way we use the term equity these days is
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Speaker 2: it's a fig leaf term, because what people mean by
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Speaker 2: it is we want to make sure that people in
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Speaker 2: this organization, in this body, reflect the demographic proportions of this,
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Speaker 2: that or the other thing. The idea is that there
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Speaker 2: should not be an underrepresentation, for example, of especially black
11:15
Speaker 2: people and Latino people, and to the extent that there is,
11:19
Speaker 2: we're going to force the issue. When you say you're
11:22
Speaker 2: for equity, you don't mean that you're just for equality.
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Speaker 2: What you mean is that draconian measures are going to
11:28
Speaker 2: be taken, always, always involving relaxation of standards, although you
11:33
Speaker 2: may think of it as reconceiving them, but it's always
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Speaker 2: relaxation of standards, with the idea being that true equality
11:40
Speaker 2: must be forced. If there isn't this equality, it must
11:43
Speaker 2: be because of racism, for example, and that therefore special
11:47
Speaker 2: methods are necessary to ensure this equality. Those methods are
11:51
Speaker 2: about equity, And the funny thing is that you really
11:55
Speaker 2: learn about why there is ideological conflict. There are people
11:58
Speaker 2: out there who genuinely think that equity is simply a
12:02
Speaker 2: commitment to equality, that that's all it is, that it's
12:06
Speaker 2: probably this slightly official term for being committed to equality,
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Speaker 2: and they genuinely don't understand or they genuinely don't see
12:14
Speaker 2: why anybody would have a problem with changing standards, having quotas,
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Speaker 2: and doing all sorts of things in the name of
12:21
Speaker 2: equality and calling it equity. And so I was just
12:25
Speaker 2: saying that, you know, and this is something that I
12:27
Speaker 2: had thought of before I got up on the set.
12:29
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought very hard about it, but I thought,
12:31
Speaker 2: equity is like equality, but with something banged out of it.
12:35
Speaker 2: You get rid of the A and the L, and
12:37
Speaker 2: then you've got this word equity. And there's a certain arrogance,
12:41
Speaker 2: or there's a certain no nothingness in the way you
12:44
Speaker 2: bang out those words and pretend that equity means the
12:47
Speaker 2: same thing. And the reason is that these people think,
12:49
Speaker 2: and this is my hobby horse, these people think that
12:52
Speaker 2: what they're doing is okay because it's battling white power.
12:56
Speaker 2: Anything that battles white power is inherently okay. Short maybe
13:00
Speaker 2: of physical violence, and so you're allowed to completely change
13:04
Speaker 2: standards and do affirmative action in the old token black style.
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Speaker 2: I think on the show I mentioned what happened to
13:11
Speaker 2: the conception of token black. Tokenism is okay under equity
13:15
Speaker 2: because it creates a tableau that reflects what they call equality.
13:19
Speaker 2: It's a very false, as I said on the show,
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Speaker 2: wormy and arrogant social policy. Yeah it's worm me.
13:29
Speaker 3: I don't know what. Let me just say.
13:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me say for the record, I think that
13:33
Speaker 1: analysis is brilliant. I couldn't have said it better myself.
13:37
Speaker 1: I can't think you touch on so many interesting points.
13:42
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm inclined to want to say things like
13:45
Speaker 1: it's a bluff. Everybody can see how phony it is.
13:49
Speaker 1: There'll be backlash. These people who think they're getting equality
13:53
Speaker 1: are really getting patronized.
13:55
Speaker 3: They're getting tolerated.
13:56
Speaker 1: They're being treated like they're little spoiled brats who you
13:59
Speaker 1: don't want to provoke too much because they know that.
14:02
Speaker 1: People know you'll throw a tantrum, and so they placate.
14:04
Speaker 2: You on social media.
14:05
Speaker 1: I modifying you by pretending. But they're pretending because mediocrity
14:12
Speaker 1: is actually what it is. And you know, mastery over
14:15
Speaker 1: the command of a discipline or a talent or a
14:18
Speaker 1: job or whatever it is, is also what it is,
14:20
Speaker 1: and there really is no substitute at the end of
14:23
Speaker 1: the day for the objective demonstration of competency. Throwing out
14:28
Speaker 1: the tests, you know, skewering the people who want to
14:31
Speaker 1: make judgments is all a kind of power play. And
14:36
Speaker 1: you're being tolerated, and you'll only be tolerated to a
14:39
Speaker 1: certain extent, so you know it's going to blow back
14:43
Speaker 1: on you, and you're in a position of weakness. It's
14:46
Speaker 1: full power. It's a kind of false power that is
14:51
Speaker 1: built on a very shaky foundation.
14:53
Speaker 3: Something like that.
14:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. And you know, I'm hearing from various
14:58
Speaker 2: people who are, you know, appalled at what I said,
15:02
Speaker 2: who think that it was irresponsible of a college professor,
15:05
Speaker 2: irresponsible of a public intellectual as it were, to present
15:10
Speaker 2: such an oversimplified conception of what equity is in a
15:15
Speaker 2: highly viewed venue. And you can really see the reason
15:18
Speaker 2: why I always tell you I don't think it's a
15:20
Speaker 2: bluff is because these people writing me are not bluffing.
15:23
Speaker 2: They genuinely think that this conception of how equality works
15:27
Speaker 2: that we call equity is the way it's supposed to
15:29
Speaker 2: be and that nobody could possibly question it. One person
15:31
Speaker 2: even wrote me and was you know that they were
15:35
Speaker 2: keeping it cool, but they said, John, you went to
15:39
Speaker 2: a Quaker school. And this was somebody else who was
15:41
Speaker 2: involved with that realm of things. You know, you should
15:43
Speaker 2: understand these things as if it's that self evident. You
15:46
Speaker 2: know that it's a certain kind of Christianity, or it's
15:48
Speaker 2: a certain kind of especially with the Quakers, it's a
15:52
Speaker 2: you know, a kind of leftist commitment. This is somebody
15:55
Speaker 2: who thinks that if you are anywhere left of center,
15:57
Speaker 2: you could not have any problem with this conception of equi.
16:00
Speaker 2: And you know, it's one of those things. I get
16:02
Speaker 2: so damn tired of this particular thing that gets thrown
16:04
Speaker 2: at you. You're oversimplifying, they say. But the same people
16:08
Speaker 2: who tell you that you're oversimplifying and speaking in clear
16:11
Speaker 2: language and having a little bit of emotion, just a
16:13
Speaker 2: little we'll talk exactly that way, write exactly that way
16:17
Speaker 2: about racism. The people who tell you you're oversimplifying will
16:20
Speaker 2: happily write about twenty twenty three as if we're in
16:23
Speaker 2: about nineteen fifty five, and nobody will say anything, and
16:27
Speaker 2: nobody in their world will say anything. No editor will
16:29
Speaker 2: have anything to say to them. It's disgusting. You know,
16:32
Speaker 2: why are those people so upset when somebody says something
16:36
Speaker 2: they don't agree with in a way that's understandable. I
16:38
Speaker 2: think that they could see past it, but they can't.
16:41
Speaker 2: They oversimplify all the time, and not just the extreme ones.
16:44
Speaker 2: Everybody doesn't. You know, I get tired of being accused
16:46
Speaker 2: of that particular thing. Okay, how dare you go ahead?
16:55
Speaker 1: Okay, but I want to try to make the case
16:57
Speaker 1: for equity. You're getting the spirit of, you know, the
17:03
Speaker 1: Devil's advocate and you know, the spirit of tell them
17:06
Speaker 1: both sides of the story here, and I think I
17:08
Speaker 1: think the case has two major prongs. One of them
17:14
Speaker 1: has to do with standards. Standards are relative whose standards
17:18
Speaker 1: And the other has to do with opportunity. It's not
17:20
Speaker 1: a level playing field. So when you enforce quote equality,
17:26
Speaker 1: close quote as you're a standard and you don't recognize
17:32
Speaker 1: that both the rules of the game are up for grabs.
17:36
Speaker 1: I mean, the rules of the game have evolved. They
17:39
Speaker 1: reflect power relations, dynamics and so forth, and they reflect
17:42
Speaker 1: history and also that the starting point for people people
17:46
Speaker 1: don't start at the same starting point, and they want
17:50
Speaker 1: somehow to make that a part of the conversation. And
17:53
Speaker 1: when you say equality, it's like you're taking some givens
17:56
Speaker 1: and you're taking them off the table for or debate.
18:01
Speaker 3: Uh. And you're you, you've got your rigid assessment.
18:03
Speaker 1: You know, you've got your sat you know you've got
18:06
Speaker 1: your you know your standards, and you're you're hiding, but
18:13
Speaker 1: you know, you're kind of hiding behind a procedural fig
18:16
Speaker 1: leaf and you're not engaging the substantive questions of social morality.
18:21
Speaker 3: And and whatnot.
18:23
Speaker 1: So equity contextualizes the assessment of talent and the uh
18:31
Speaker 1: uh social obligations in the face of history and ask
18:35
Speaker 1: us to engage the full problem and not just the
18:39
Speaker 1: the yardstick measuring you know, how fast are they running
18:42
Speaker 1: the race. It's not just how fast they're running in
18:44
Speaker 1: the race. It's everything that went into it, from the
18:45
Speaker 1: way the track is laid out, to who had a
18:48
Speaker 1: chance to train and develop and so forth like that.
18:50
Speaker 1: And this little cartoon of the kids standing at a
18:53
Speaker 1: fence where one kid can't see over until you put
18:55
Speaker 1: her on a higher box is a very nice rep
19:00
Speaker 1: presentation of this idea. But I think the real issue
19:05
Speaker 1: is where's the boundary are you? Are you going to
19:08
Speaker 1: include everything or are you just going to like start
19:11
Speaker 1: from the status quo ante and then make your judgments
19:17
Speaker 1: without taking on board how it is that we got
19:20
Speaker 1: where we are something like that.
19:22
Speaker 2: John, Yeah, sure, But the problem is, and here's some oversimplification,
19:27
Speaker 2: all of that is well intended thinking designed to grapple
19:35
Speaker 2: with the fact that brown people in the United States
19:40
Speaker 2: often aren't as good at taking standardized tests as other people. Really,
19:44
Speaker 2: most of this comes down to that and whether or
19:47
Speaker 2: not you can be granted something on the basis of
19:49
Speaker 2: having filled in some bubbles and answered some short questions
19:52
Speaker 2: if you're not good at that, the issue is we've
19:55
Speaker 2: got to come up with a way of getting around
19:57
Speaker 2: that instead of giving people practice in the tests. And
20:01
Speaker 2: that's where I become implacable. I just I cannot budge
20:06
Speaker 2: and say that that's okay. All of these pretty words
20:09
Speaker 2: about opportunity, et cetera. Are fine, but not when what
20:12
Speaker 2: you're really doing is trying to exempt black and Latino
20:15
Speaker 2: kids from standardized tests. Because you're calling us a dumb
20:18
Speaker 2: and I can see how a well, a good thinking
20:21
Speaker 2: white person might figure we don't have long enough to
20:24
Speaker 2: fix why it is that they aren't good enough at
20:26
Speaker 2: the tests, or deep down they might be thinking we're
20:27
Speaker 2: just not smart enough to take the test. They figure
20:30
Speaker 2: we must make a pretty picture to show that we're
20:32
Speaker 2: not racist, and that's probably the right thing to do.
20:34
Speaker 2: And then you start really thinking about how much do
20:37
Speaker 2: our previously maintain standards matter, et cetera. But as I
20:41
Speaker 2: used to say, more than I say now, how would
20:43
Speaker 2: you like that standard apply to your own kids? How
20:46
Speaker 2: would you like your children evaluate it according to this
20:50
Speaker 2: idea that they have to be, you know, put up
20:52
Speaker 2: on a box because the thing is the cute cartoon
20:55
Speaker 2: with the box is nice. You were born short, so
20:58
Speaker 2: we're going to put you on a tall It's not
21:00
Speaker 2: your fault you were born short. Do people not fucking
21:03
Speaker 2: realize that the analogy here, if we're talking about tests,
21:06
Speaker 2: is you were born dumb, and so we're gonna let
21:09
Speaker 2: you in any way. Do people not understand that I
21:12
Speaker 2: am truly and folks, I am not performing This truly
21:16
Speaker 2: does insult me. What frustrates me even more is that
21:19
Speaker 2: so many black people don't understand the insult. It's a terrible,
21:23
Speaker 2: terrible thing. The only way I can justify it is
21:26
Speaker 2: to imagine that people just get impatient. They don't want
21:29
Speaker 2: to do the hard work. They want to just make
21:31
Speaker 2: things look better faster, because we all have bigger fish
21:34
Speaker 2: to fry or something. But no, it won't. It won't
21:37
Speaker 2: do at all. It won't do. And I actually, I
21:42
Speaker 2: want to say quickly, I tweeted myself on mar last week,
21:46
Speaker 2: which I do not usually do. I'm not into looking
21:48
Speaker 2: at myself on shows and clipping pieces, but because of
21:51
Speaker 2: all this blowback I'm getting, I just decided, no, folks,
21:54
Speaker 2: I do not think it was oversimplified, and I'm going
21:56
Speaker 2: to put this here on Twitter where people can see it,
21:59
Speaker 2: because I think what I said is something lots of
22:01
Speaker 2: well intentioned, intelligent people are thinking, but you're just not
22:05
Speaker 2: supposed to say it. And my job certainly is to
22:07
Speaker 2: say it on national television as a black man inaccessible language.
22:12
Speaker 2: I'm glad I did it, and I'm gonna do it again.
22:15
Speaker 1: Well you're doing it right now, and I want to
22:18
Speaker 1: just drill down on the point.
22:21
Speaker 3: I want to drill down on the point.
22:22
Speaker 1: Okay, So here's mcwater, and mcwater says the issue is
22:25
Speaker 1: the test.
22:26
Speaker 3: Okay, when it all is boiled.
22:29
Speaker 1: Down to it, the issue is the Blacks and the Latinos,
22:31
Speaker 1: especially the Blacks are getting low scores on average on
22:35
Speaker 1: the tests, and all of this smoke, all of this
22:41
Speaker 1: stuff they're thrown up in the air, is a cover
22:45
Speaker 1: for the terrifying possibility that we might not be that
22:49
Speaker 1: smart on average. I assume the mcwater that I know
22:54
Speaker 1: in love thinks we actually are, on average, at least
22:56
Speaker 1: in our basic inherent capacities, as smart. But he doesn't
23:01
Speaker 1: want us to be exempted from having to certify that
23:04
Speaker 1: we actually have command over the material.
23:07
Speaker 3: By doing the test.
23:10
Speaker 1: Okay, So this dodge that people are willing to engage
23:13
Speaker 1: in about getting rid of the test where they really
23:15
Speaker 1: are living in bad faith. They're not, they're not actually
23:18
Speaker 1: facing the existential challenge. They're not. They're not taking life
23:22
Speaker 1: seriously in a way. I'm putting words in your mouth now,
23:25
Speaker 1: but this is what I hear, and you're not. You're
23:28
Speaker 1: just not going to stand for it. And uh, what
23:30
Speaker 1: I want to ask you is, how do you know
23:33
Speaker 1: it's not true that we're not as smart if we're
23:35
Speaker 1: not doing that well on the tests?
23:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a legitimate Yeah, that's the question.
23:43
Speaker 2: Legitimate question, and we're going to get in trouble for
23:45
Speaker 2: even discussing it. But anybody who thinks we can't discuss
23:48
Speaker 2: it as being religious and not logical, yeah, how do
23:51
Speaker 2: I know? And you know what, I don't know. However,
23:56
Speaker 2: I sense it very powerfully from my experience with people
24:00
Speaker 2: of all colors over the past fifty seven years, and
24:03
Speaker 2: I don't think that we've been given a chance to
24:05
Speaker 2: show what we can do. And you know, one thing
24:08
Speaker 2: that makes it rather clear to me is, as we've discussed,
24:12
Speaker 2: kids of African and Caribbean ancestry have much less of
24:16
Speaker 2: a problem with this sort of thing than Black American kids.
24:20
Speaker 2: I don't know of data that show that a Nigerian
24:24
Speaker 2: immigrants kid does better on those sorts of tests, but
24:26
Speaker 2: I know anecdotally that it is certainly true that you know,
24:29
Speaker 2: these things like the SAT don't throw that kid as
24:32
Speaker 2: easily as they throw a native born Black American kid.
24:35
Speaker 2: And frankly, it's the same genes or of anything here
24:38
Speaker 2: in America. There's more mixture with white people. And so
24:41
Speaker 2: for me, that is one piece of evidence that it's cultural.
24:45
Speaker 2: And you know this is. This is very anecdote, but
24:47
Speaker 2: I'm going to use it because I was thinking it
24:49
Speaker 2: as I saw it on my way. I'm not gonna, yeah,
24:56
Speaker 2: I can. On my way back from Antwerp, back from Brussels,
25:01
Speaker 2: I had occasion to be near a guy and he
25:07
Speaker 2: was you could tell from you know, little things he
25:09
Speaker 2: would say to the flight attendant, you know, t or
25:11
Speaker 2: coffee or something like that. He's a black American man.
25:14
Speaker 2: He wasn't he wasn't African, he wasn't Caribbean. He's from
25:17
Speaker 2: Cleveland or something. And he's on the plane. It was
25:20
Speaker 2: a seven and a half hour flight. I happened to
25:24
Speaker 2: notice that this guy had no reading material of any kind,
25:28
Speaker 2: never picked any up. He didn't have a he didn't
25:31
Speaker 2: have a kindle or anything like that. He didn't read
25:33
Speaker 2: the whole time. He didn't watch a movie, he didn't
25:36
Speaker 2: watch any TV. At one point he picked up the
25:38
Speaker 2: little thing that shows pictures of what you're supposed to
25:41
Speaker 2: do if the plane crashes, as if anybody would be
25:43
Speaker 2: alive down there to do it. But he takes a
25:45
Speaker 2: look at that, and then he takes a look at
25:47
Speaker 2: the magazine, but he never really reads it. That guy
25:49
Speaker 2: just sat there the whole time, often just looking off
25:52
Speaker 2: into space. And he wasn't that sleepy. He wasn't sleeping
25:55
Speaker 2: most of the time. And you know what that Now,
25:58
Speaker 2: there could have been any number of things things going on,
26:00
Speaker 2: but I remember looking at him and thinking, he's not
26:03
Speaker 2: interested in anything whatsoever. He doesn't have any interest. He's
26:06
Speaker 2: a human being without any interests. And it got me thinking,
26:09
Speaker 2: you know, I wonder, I wonder if he grew up
26:12
Speaker 2: in a home where he was never pointed towards anything
26:15
Speaker 2: in the natural give and take of things, what's interesting?
26:18
Speaker 2: What do you look at? What do you pay attention
26:19
Speaker 2: to in his upbringing? Clearly nothing much. Now that may
26:23
Speaker 2: not have been a black story. It may have just
26:25
Speaker 2: been him, But I remember thinking the difference here, I'm
26:28
Speaker 2: very close to done. The difference here is that you
26:30
Speaker 2: imagine South Asian kids growing up where, even if their
26:33
Speaker 2: parents aren't intellectuals, there's a sense, just from intonation, you'd
26:36
Speaker 2: better do well on that test. You have to worry
26:38
Speaker 2: about that test. I don't think that that guy's parents
26:41
Speaker 2: spoke that way. They didn't say, don't pay attention to
26:44
Speaker 2: the test, but they weren't telling him to be interested
26:47
Speaker 2: in anything. Now I'm on thin ice here because I
26:49
Speaker 2: don't know anything about this person. But it got me
26:51
Speaker 2: thinking about how people are raised. What interests you that's sure,
26:56
Speaker 2: that's not his brain or his IQ.
26:58
Speaker 1: You know, my your courage and your candor, because you know,
27:02
Speaker 1: you are kind of out there on a limb. You're
27:03
Speaker 1: talking about culture and people that get mad at you,
27:06
Speaker 1: and you're and it's anecdotal. You're telling a story about
27:09
Speaker 1: a particular person. You don't have systematic data, so they'll say, you.
27:12
Speaker 2: Know, one guy, I don't even know.
27:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, although it has the power of the novelist anecdote
27:18
Speaker 1: in the sense that you know, the vivid, concrete illustration
27:22
Speaker 1: captures something that we all know from our common sense,
27:25
Speaker 1: lived experience as a where is true about It's true
27:28
Speaker 1: about people, And I expect the generalization that you're making
27:32
Speaker 1: across racial ethnic lines is broadly true. I mean, you know,
27:36
Speaker 1: I think it's it's hard to deny that. But I
27:40
Speaker 1: want to step back a little bit because I want
27:43
Speaker 1: to distinguish between this argument the causal argument. We have
27:46
Speaker 1: differences and performance on the test, what are the rudimentary
27:49
Speaker 1: bases of these? Is it, you know, some kind of
27:52
Speaker 1: genetic thing going on is the cultural thing going on,
27:54
Speaker 1: the causal argument, and we could argue about that all day.
27:58
Speaker 1: But there's a difference between that and the kind of
28:00
Speaker 1: the philosophical kind of existential I keep wanting to use
28:04
Speaker 1: that word again, because I'm thinking about the existentialist, you know,
28:06
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the idea of, you know.
28:09
Speaker 3: Living up to the.
28:11
Speaker 1: Possibilities of your freedom, you know, about being honest with
28:15
Speaker 1: yourself about life, and the idea that you don't know
28:19
Speaker 1: for sure about the inferiority question, about the question, Okay,
28:24
Speaker 1: they're doing less well on the test, how do you
28:26
Speaker 1: know it's because they're not just on average less intelligent.
28:29
Speaker 1: You don't believe it. I don't believe it. You don't
28:32
Speaker 1: want to believe it, but you don't know. And the temptation,
28:38
Speaker 1: the temptation to run from the inescapable necessity of demonstrating
28:47
Speaker 1: your competence both to others and to yourself by embracing
28:53
Speaker 1: this narrative of historical victimization, and this kind of you
28:58
Speaker 1: think you get an exemption, you know, this is kind
29:00
Speaker 1: of I'm gonna trump your performance card with my moral claim,
29:08
Speaker 1: my claim of you know, anti racism. In this case,
29:13
Speaker 1: the equity move that you are, that you're critiquing, is
29:17
Speaker 1: in a way a kind of try to play that card,
29:20
Speaker 1: that card that the historical mistreatment of my people therefore
29:24
Speaker 1: entells me to be exempt from You know, you're enforcing
29:27
Speaker 1: of a certain standard of judgment, and I think there's
29:33
Speaker 1: no way around that dilemma, the dilemma of having to
29:37
Speaker 1: demonstrate your competency. I mean, if I were to say
29:40
Speaker 1: on a banner or a bumper sticker, black people have
29:43
Speaker 1: something to prove that we're not more criminal, that we
29:51
Speaker 1: don't neglect our children that were just as smart as
29:55
Speaker 1: anybody else. We have the burden of dispelling the suppositions
30:03
Speaker 1: about us that some people are inclined to arrive at
30:08
Speaker 1: based upon what they see in the world, and we don't.
30:13
Speaker 1: That's respectability politics. They have a name for it. I mean,
30:16
Speaker 1: the idea that you would even take that up. So
30:21
Speaker 1: I think, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
30:23
Speaker 1: But one of the things that terrifies me about getting
30:26
Speaker 1: rid of the test.
30:29
Speaker 3: Is like it concedes, it.
30:34
Speaker 1: Calls the whole thing off when we haven't actually done
30:37
Speaker 1: the job yet.
30:39
Speaker 2: Yep, that's exactly.
30:41
Speaker 1: And that's not equality, man, That is so far from
30:43
Speaker 1: equal dignity, from a sense of equal standing, from being
30:48
Speaker 1: able to look people in the eye and feel confident
30:51
Speaker 1: within yourself that you're their peers.
30:56
Speaker 2: That's horrible, it is. And you know, we need to
31:03
Speaker 2: respond to a certain kind of person who hears this.
31:06
Speaker 2: And you know, there, you imagine a black and white picture.
31:11
Speaker 2: They've got their arms crossed and they're looking down at us.
31:13
Speaker 2: You're criticizing the culture. No, folks, you have to be
31:19
Speaker 2: more nuanced than that. What Glenn and I are doing
31:22
Speaker 2: is not saying black people are no good. That's not it.
31:27
Speaker 2: If I say that a black family, and I'm speaking
31:30
Speaker 2: specific a Black American family is less likely to make
31:35
Speaker 2: it seem like it is absolutely the measure of the
31:38
Speaker 2: human that you try your best on that test, and
31:41
Speaker 2: we really want you to do well on it. If
31:43
Speaker 2: that is less present in a Black American household than in,
31:47
Speaker 2: for example, an immigrant South Asian household, that doesn't mean
31:50
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with black people. I'm not pointing a
31:52
Speaker 2: finger and frowning. And there are all sorts of reasons
31:55
Speaker 2: why it might be. It's partly a matter of class,
31:58
Speaker 2: it's partly a matter of what Black America inherited from
32:01
Speaker 2: the countercultural mood of the nineteen sixties, which was begun
32:04
Speaker 2: by white people. It's all sorts of things that I've
32:07
Speaker 2: honestly written about, partly in The Times and then in
32:09
Speaker 2: my two books, Losing the Race and Winning the Race.
32:11
Speaker 2: It's not about blaming and anger. It's just saying that
32:14
Speaker 2: the reason is not racism. But I will say this,
32:17
Speaker 2: there is a problem with one corner of black culture
32:20
Speaker 2: where I would have to have a judgment, and that
32:22
Speaker 2: is much academic and journalistic black culture, where I don't
32:27
Speaker 2: think that people in that world understand how unique it
32:30
Speaker 2: is that they have this watch cry that somebody says
32:34
Speaker 2: that we're not good at something, and your response is
32:36
Speaker 2: why should we have to prove it? Rather than proving it,
32:39
Speaker 2: that notion that it's a valid answer to say why
32:42
Speaker 2: should we have to prove it, you must be a racist.
32:44
Speaker 2: And to really think that that's a mic drop, that's weird.
32:47
Speaker 2: I'll bet it's relatively unprecedented in human history. That's a
32:51
Speaker 2: black thing, but not just a black thing. It's a
32:54
Speaker 2: specific thing. It's an educated, enlightened, post nineteen sixty six thing.
33:01
Speaker 2: And yeah, I've got some judgments on that just like
33:03
Speaker 2: you guys have judgments on me. I think you need
33:05
Speaker 2: to stop that. If you can't prove it, then you
33:08
Speaker 2: have no right to resent people for supposing that you
33:11
Speaker 2: can't do it. And the fact that we were brought
33:13
Speaker 2: here as slaves doesn't change that, Nor does Jim Crow,
33:17
Speaker 2: nor does redlining. None of those things change that basic fact.
33:22
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, except you know I'm not sorry. That is
33:25
Speaker 2: something that our educated class needs to face up to. Glenn,
33:28
Speaker 2: I agree with you completely.
33:34
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think now on the top of my
33:36
Speaker 1: head about what the genesi this might be. And you
33:38
Speaker 1: know what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about E. Franklin
33:40
Speaker 1: Frasier's book Black Bourgeoisie. This is I don't know what,
33:46
Speaker 1: maybe nineteen fifty three or something like that. It was
33:49
Speaker 1: published initially French. You couldn't get maybe it's a little early.
33:53
Speaker 1: It couldn't get published in English, and initially it was
33:55
Speaker 1: published and we're originally in Paris, and it's this, uh,
34:02
Speaker 1: this is a great sociologist, Franklin Fraser. And the thing
34:09
Speaker 1: that I remember most vividly from the book that he's
34:13
Speaker 1: in veighing against is phony pomp us, pretend status manufactured
34:20
Speaker 1: by the black elites as a kind of.
34:25
Speaker 3: Parallel to the real.
34:26
Speaker 1: Status which was reflected in the structures of the larger society.
34:32
Speaker 3: And they had.
34:36
Speaker 1: Glenn say it again because you broke it, Okay, but
34:38
Speaker 1: I'll say it again, Okay. What I said was, I
34:41
Speaker 1: was trying to recall the argument of Fraser's book and
34:43
Speaker 1: his the contempt, the finny veil contempt that he has
34:46
Speaker 1: for the phony status seeking kind of faux grandeur, which
34:53
Speaker 1: is not real achievement, but it's a kind of mimicking
34:56
Speaker 1: of the white world's.
34:58
Speaker 3: Real achievement with these.
34:59
Speaker 1: Parallels negro Uh, you know, elite organizations and activities from
35:08
Speaker 1: the sororities and the fraternities, the way that the historically
35:11
Speaker 1: black colleges a run the.
35:13
Speaker 3: Class of the aliens.
35:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cotillions, and the and the and the secret
35:19
Speaker 1: societies and the and the and the and and the
35:24
Speaker 1: the kind of it being a mirror image of real
35:28
Speaker 1: status that was built on actual wealth and control over
35:33
Speaker 1: the apparatus of the society. And it was you know,
35:37
Speaker 1: you're black, and so you had your separate black sphere
35:39
Speaker 1: in which you could kind of create these status distinctions.
35:44
Speaker 3: Among black people. And uh, the fact that it would
35:50
Speaker 3: often be.
35:51
Speaker 1: A h dodge over actual uh competition with your with
36:00
Speaker 1: your peers who were not black. But is that a
36:11
Speaker 1: period piece or you think that that sentiment, you say,
36:14
Speaker 1: the class of intellectuals and journalists and writers who are
36:18
Speaker 1: black and who would exempt themselves from the necessity of
36:21
Speaker 1: demonstrating competency simply by playing this card, you think that's
36:25
Speaker 1: still a contemporary issue.
36:30
Speaker 2: I think that what Fraser was writing about was a
36:35
Speaker 2: different world in many ways. So for example, I'm not
36:37
Speaker 2: sure how many people are having cotillions, so to speak,
36:40
Speaker 2: And that tone was a lot of what he was
36:42
Speaker 2: writing about. He was writing about a certain kind of
36:45
Speaker 2: person in a still segregated America, where a certain sliver
36:50
Speaker 2: of black people felt value in things like learning Greek
36:54
Speaker 2: and having cotillions and all these formal clubs, the idea
36:57
Speaker 2: being to show yes. But the things what they were
36:59
Speaker 2: doing was they thought they showing yes, we're as good
37:01
Speaker 2: as all of the rest of you. But you could
37:03
Speaker 2: say that all of it was kind of a hollow show.
37:05
Speaker 2: The new people doing this, though, I think it's not
37:07
Speaker 2: so much that they're saying that they shouldn't have to
37:09
Speaker 2: show their competence. It's that they're saying it on behalf
37:13
Speaker 2: of other black people, which I think that black boys
37:15
Speaker 2: Rosie then often were less concerned with. They're saying that
37:18
Speaker 2: black people in general should be able to be mediocre,
37:21
Speaker 2: that that's part of people being allowed to be human,
37:23
Speaker 2: that we or that we shouldn't have to prove it
37:27
Speaker 2: unless we feel like it. It is racist to tell
37:30
Speaker 2: us that we're not good at something, because that's insulting.
37:33
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's rather simplistic thinking. And then with them themselves,
37:38
Speaker 2: I think they wouldn't say that they shouldn't have to
37:42
Speaker 2: prove anything. But because most of them, is this safe
37:46
Speaker 2: to say, yeah, yeah, most of them even today, tend
37:49
Speaker 2: to limit themselves to only writing about race issues, and
37:52
Speaker 2: so they don't feel themselves as in competition with white
37:54
Speaker 2: writers because they're writing about different things, they're interviewing different people.
37:58
Speaker 2: And I've heard pretty recently that at one media organ
38:04
Speaker 2: that I will not name that, the editor and it's
38:08
Speaker 2: not The New York Times, the editor has had trouble
38:11
Speaker 2: getting black writers to write about something other than race.
38:13
Speaker 2: He's asked them to and they say, no, what I
38:15
Speaker 2: want to do is this, and there's a value to it.
38:17
Speaker 2: But if you ask me, it's a little nineteen seventy
38:20
Speaker 2: as if nobody else would write about these things, if
38:22
Speaker 2: black people didn't. That's not as true as it used
38:24
Speaker 2: to be. But it does mean that you probably don't
38:26
Speaker 2: feel like you're in competition with white journalists. You feel
38:29
Speaker 2: like you're in competition with other black ones. But that's
38:31
Speaker 2: a very different feeling. But now I take your point.
38:34
Speaker 2: I definitely I take your point.
38:38
Speaker 1: Well, what I'm thinking now is that because let's see,
38:42
Speaker 1: we had the Don Baton, the music conductor on the
38:46
Speaker 1: show incognito, So that's a pseudonym.
38:50
Speaker 2: When very quickly I want to reinforce because of a
38:53
Speaker 2: certain Twitter thread that I noticed, or more than a few,
38:56
Speaker 2: I am not Don Baton. That was not me, It
38:59
Speaker 2: was another person, continue clet.
39:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was another person incognito on the show. We
39:04
Speaker 1: had Jamie be Beeman. Isn't he your friend?
39:07
Speaker 3: The actor?
39:09
Speaker 2: And now Jamie's doing a substack, folks, He's really he's
39:13
Speaker 2: really going for it. Yeah.
39:16
Speaker 1: We had Vincent Lloyd recently, the African American scholar at God,
39:23
Speaker 1: where is he.
39:26
Speaker 3: In Tarnsylvania?
39:27
Speaker 1: No?
39:28
Speaker 3: Or is it now that this thing was that dart?
39:31
Speaker 2: Oh? God, where is he? Villanova Vanillanova as they used
39:36
Speaker 2: to call it.
39:36
Speaker 1: Right, And next week I'm going to interview Unfortunately we
39:40
Speaker 1: couldn't do it this week with you, John, A couple
39:43
Speaker 1: of students from the Stanford Law School are going to
39:45
Speaker 1: be talking about stuff that's going on out there.
39:48
Speaker 3: On free speech things.
39:49
Speaker 1: But anyway, I mentioned all of these there's a threat
39:52
Speaker 1: that connects them, which is young, pre professional and early
39:58
Speaker 1: professional African American writers, intellectuals, scholars, musicians, artists. You find
40:06
Speaker 1: this in the museum curator world as well, are up
40:09
Speaker 1: in arms, driven by identity considerations to challenge standards. You know,
40:15
Speaker 1: what makes for a beautiful symphony that's worth performing today?
40:22
Speaker 1: How does an actor do her craft even when she
40:24
Speaker 1: has to portray characters whose views she does not herself
40:27
Speaker 1: personally embody? And if that makes you feel comfortable, how
40:31
Speaker 1: do we talk about it?
40:33
Speaker 3: You know, the.
40:37
Speaker 1: Issue of the Tell your Ride seminar that Vincent Lloyd
40:42
Speaker 1: was associated with, and how you do that? So, but
40:45
Speaker 1: the substantive work of the organization or the institution is
40:49
Speaker 1: to some degree becoming captive to the identity dynamics. I mean,
40:55
Speaker 1: that's one illustration of which is don't tell me I'm
40:58
Speaker 1: not good. Don't tell me I have to measure up
40:59
Speaker 1: to your when you know, a conductor says no, not
41:04
Speaker 1: like this, like that, you know, And you want to
41:08
Speaker 1: bring your non European lift experience to bear on the
41:12
Speaker 1: deliberation about how to perform this symphony.
41:15
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's happened. Yeah, this kind of thing, I'm
41:19
Speaker 2: sure that's happened. I'm sure it's happening. Yeah, black conducting,
41:23
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's coming. And don't impose your standard on me.
41:27
Speaker 2: You know, why can't we do it in our own way? Yeah,
41:31
Speaker 2: that's going to be interesting.
41:32
Speaker 1: Actually, we haven't really given a lot of attention to
41:36
Speaker 1: this dimension of the problem that standards are relative. I mean,
41:40
Speaker 1: what do you say, for example, to somebody who says,
41:42
Speaker 1: I need to have a black sufficient representation in the
41:48
Speaker 1: orchestra in order to draw people, and I need to
41:51
Speaker 1: make the music that we play somehow more reflect the
41:55
Speaker 1: diversity of the potential audience in order to draw people
41:58
Speaker 1: into the seats in the theater. And your insistence on
42:02
Speaker 1: a kind of rigid interpretation of the European canon as
42:05
Speaker 1: it's always been done, because you've defined that to be excellent,
42:10
Speaker 1: is really asinine. It's kind of rigid, it clinks to something,
42:16
Speaker 1: when in fact it should be organic and it should
42:19
Speaker 1: be open to the ebb and the flow of the
42:22
Speaker 1: changing currents of the milieu within which it's embedded.
42:27
Speaker 2: No classical music everything. Now, of course there are you know,
42:33
Speaker 2: gray zones. But classical music is a majestic thing, majestic
42:38
Speaker 2: for many reasons. There are black people who've written it majestically.
42:43
Speaker 2: Those people should be played more than they have been
42:45
Speaker 2: in the past, and not just Florence Price. That is
42:48
Speaker 2: certainly the case, but the idea that if there are
42:52
Speaker 2: only so many black bassoon and obo players, that if
42:56
Speaker 2: there are only so many black people in the audience
42:58
Speaker 2: for classical music, if it's below thirteen percent, then there's
43:03
Speaker 2: some sort of tragedy and it means that black people
43:06
Speaker 2: are not welcome, that the symphony orchestra isn't welcome to
43:10
Speaker 2: black people. It may feel good to say that, you know,
43:13
Speaker 2: it can feel good in many ways depending on who
43:16
Speaker 2: you are, but it doesn't necessarily make sense. For one thing,
43:19
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with black people being underrepresented in classical music.
43:24
Speaker 2: I mean, how does it hurt Black America If you know,
43:27
Speaker 2: we only get so much viola and we only get
43:29
Speaker 2: so much moler Why do we have to think about
43:32
Speaker 2: it that way at all? And really, if bringing more
43:36
Speaker 2: black people in means that you start doing music that
43:40
Speaker 2: involves charismatic and repetitious rhythm, and music like that is
43:46
Speaker 2: majestic in its own ways too. But if the idea
43:49
Speaker 2: is that to bring black people in, you have to
43:50
Speaker 2: start doing some pieces that jam as in the same
43:53
Speaker 2: rhythm over and over again, with lots of improvisation, et cetera, no,
43:57
Speaker 2: because that's not what classical music is. And frankly, it's
44:01
Speaker 2: almost condescending to put those two forms together and call
44:05
Speaker 2: them the same thing just because black people might like
44:08
Speaker 2: one more than the other. And the thing is that
44:12
Speaker 2: music that is, you know, making your head bop, et cetera.
44:15
Speaker 2: Black people, you know, we all have plenty of ways
44:18
Speaker 2: of accessing that music. We don't need to go to
44:20
Speaker 2: the symphony hall to hear it, and frankly probably shouldn't.
44:25
Speaker 2: And you know, you might want to say, bring in
44:28
Speaker 2: African drumming, you know, like the most complex form of
44:30
Speaker 2: this rhythm based kind of music, and you know you might,
44:34
Speaker 2: but that's not classical music. Why what's the point unless
44:38
Speaker 2: you're going to have all the drumming. Suppose the typical
44:42
Speaker 2: black couple doesn't want to go in and listen to
44:44
Speaker 2: twenty minutes of the drumming in all of its complexity.
44:48
Speaker 2: But then the rest of it is Mohler and something
44:50
Speaker 2: by Brahms, and maybe they're not particularly interested in that.
44:53
Speaker 2: And if they're not, who cares? People are just trying
44:57
Speaker 2: to have something to be upset about.
45:01
Speaker 1: Aren't you playing fast and loose with what's a really
45:05
Speaker 1: hard problem, which is the construction and evolution of a cannon.
45:09
Speaker 1: You keep just saying it's classical music, it's classical music,
45:13
Speaker 1: as if that was somehow not itself already a historically
45:18
Speaker 1: produced aggregation. That I mean, I'm not against it or
45:23
Speaker 1: for it in saying this, I'm just saying it's it's
45:25
Speaker 1: within the realm of human manipulation. It didn't just fall
45:28
Speaker 1: from the sky. And by invoking it in that way,
45:32
Speaker 1: it's like you inure yourself against the urgings of those
45:36
Speaker 1: who want to continue to innovate in some sense. So,
45:40
Speaker 1: I mean, I understand the impulse, and I'm not against
45:44
Speaker 1: anything or for anything here. I'm just saying it looks
45:47
Speaker 1: like it's a hard problem to me to know when
45:50
Speaker 1: you would allow you know, that kind of thing to
45:53
Speaker 1: come in and color and alter, you know, the thing
45:58
Speaker 1: that you cherish, the thing that you call me.
46:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I should clarify because I just did a
46:03
Speaker 2: Times piece where I said that we do need to
46:06
Speaker 2: reevaluate in some ways what we consider to be, for example,
46:10
Speaker 2: higher or lower, what is classical, et cetera. As in
46:13
Speaker 2: much American musical theater I think is artistically cut from
46:18
Speaker 2: the same cloth as opera. And I think that the
46:22
Speaker 2: idea that Pouccini is classical music but most Happy Fella
46:27
Speaker 2: and show Boat and Titanic are not classical music, I
46:32
Speaker 2: don't think it makes any sense. And I think that
46:34
Speaker 2: the main reason we think of opera somehow higher is
46:37
Speaker 2: because it tends to be in other languages, and so
46:39
Speaker 2: we can't understand what the people are saying. If it
46:41
Speaker 2: were sung in English, I think it will be much
46:42
Speaker 2: clearer that Madam Butterfly is not somehow higher art than
46:47
Speaker 2: show Boat. It's just that it's in Italian. So yes,
46:51
Speaker 2: and we do need to make sure that we're not
46:54
Speaker 2: being too fussy about what classical music is because things
46:58
Speaker 2: do have to change. But It comes down to what
47:00
Speaker 2: I always say, whatever we let in should not be easier.
47:04
Speaker 2: The idea should not be to make it less of
47:08
Speaker 2: a challenge to appreciate, to make it less artistically rich.
47:11
Speaker 2: And what's artistically rich? What I mean is if the music,
47:14
Speaker 2: unless it's a particularly elaborate form of it, if it's
47:18
Speaker 2: based on the same thing over and over and over again,
47:21
Speaker 2: where your joy in it is the charismatic feel that
47:24
Speaker 2: it gives you to move your body to it. If
47:27
Speaker 2: the music is jamming, that's not the same. Nor is
47:30
Speaker 2: it the same if you're doing something that would make
47:32
Speaker 2: more sense at a Pops concert. Now, a Pops concert
47:35
Speaker 2: might have some really good music, but if you're doing
47:38
Speaker 2: something like the overture to flat or mouse except set
47:44
Speaker 2: to a disco beat, or if you're doing John Phillips
47:47
Speaker 2: Sousa marches, which are you know, so easy? You know
47:50
Speaker 2: any child would love John Phillips Sousa marches. That's different
47:54
Speaker 2: from wrapping your head around you know, maybe just part
47:57
Speaker 2: of Tristan and he's olda or trying to get what's
48:00
Speaker 2: good about a Brahms symphony that you're not going to
48:02
Speaker 2: immediately whistle. I don't want to see it dumbed down
48:05
Speaker 2: just so that brown people will come in. If classical
48:08
Speaker 2: music is so white, I honestly believe so what, we
48:12
Speaker 2: have plenty of access to our own music in other places.
48:15
Speaker 2: I don't get the concern.
48:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like. I like the way you put all
48:23
Speaker 3: of that.
48:24
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm thinking about science, you know about
48:26
Speaker 1: mathematics right now.
48:28
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm thinking, you know, the.
48:29
Speaker 1: Hard stuff, the complexity, the brilliance that when you see
48:33
Speaker 1: an absolutely intricate and deeply reasoned and profound elaboration of
48:40
Speaker 1: of human intellect, as you know in the in the
48:42
Speaker 1: various constructs and imagined you know, developments that then have
48:47
Speaker 1: their own uh, their their own language, their their own
48:51
Speaker 1: way of articulating the insights. And you know, these things
48:56
Speaker 1: are not self evident. They their layers and depths of
48:59
Speaker 1: of of reflection and you know, human imagination. When I
49:04
Speaker 1: you know, I agree there's something there. It's very hard
49:09
Speaker 1: to put your hand on what it is. But you know, uh,
49:13
Speaker 1: pop science and science are not the same thing.
49:17
Speaker 3: No, there are there.
49:21
Speaker 2: Rankings and their classifications. And some people are going to say, oh,
49:25
Speaker 2: we got over that low brow, middle brow, high brow
49:27
Speaker 2: stuff decades ago. But No, a lot of it was
49:30
Speaker 2: thrown out rather deliberately because people didn't want to hurt
49:33
Speaker 2: black people's feelings once again. And there's plenty of high
49:37
Speaker 2: art that's come from us. Our feelings, you know, we
49:39
Speaker 2: don't need to be preserved in that. Our feelings do
49:42
Speaker 2: not be do not need to remember when I used
49:44
Speaker 2: to speak English. Our feelings do not need to be
49:48
Speaker 2: catered to that extent. But yes, of course there is
49:52
Speaker 2: high brow, middle brow, and lowbrow. I find those classifications
49:55
Speaker 2: very easy, and it has nothing to do with white
49:57
Speaker 2: and black. But everything is not the same. A fifth
50:00
Speaker 2: of Beethoven, remember, don't remember Beethoven's fifth set to a
50:06
Speaker 2: disco version of that year. Yeah, I remember that being
50:10
Speaker 2: played in the street. It's damn ketchy. It's not as
50:13
Speaker 2: good as the real thing. It's not that everything is music.
50:16
Speaker 2: Things can be ranked. A fifth of Beethoven is like
50:18
Speaker 2: a nice piece of candy. The symphony is, you know,
50:22
Speaker 2: beef Borgen and so there there's no harm in saying
50:26
Speaker 2: those things. And I just worry that in the music
50:29
Speaker 2: world it's going to start being considered wrong. So, yeah,
50:32
Speaker 2: I remember, I remember talking to Michael. There was I
50:35
Speaker 2: got Michael Morgan was a black conductor. He worked out
50:40
Speaker 2: in Oakland. Unfortunately he passed away youngish, rather recently, but
50:43
Speaker 2: he was doing great work. And he and I we
50:45
Speaker 2: met a few times back when I was in California,
50:48
Speaker 2: and he had a sense that to bring black people
50:52
Speaker 2: into the classical music world, to bring black audiences in,
50:56
Speaker 2: you had to change your sense of what classical music was.
50:58
Speaker 2: And what he meant was, you know, bringing in jammy
51:00
Speaker 2: or kinds of music. And he was brilliant. He was
51:03
Speaker 2: brilliant at what he did. But at the time I
51:05
Speaker 2: never said anything. I didn't I didn't express my discomfort
51:08
Speaker 2: with that, and I would have liked to have talked
51:10
Speaker 2: about it more with him. Now I wonder whether he
51:13
Speaker 2: had come to change his mind on that or whether
51:14
Speaker 2: he thought so. Maybe he could have taught me something,
51:16
Speaker 2: But it's an issue. Yeah, what kind of music do
51:19
Speaker 2: you pay people in?
51:21
Speaker 3: I was just going to observe.
51:22
Speaker 1: But I think there's a theme here about you know,
51:24
Speaker 1: the visceral, you know, the thing that comes up from
51:26
Speaker 1: the loin. You know, the thing that is when you
51:29
Speaker 1: you know you're it's a brain stem thing. You know,
51:30
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about it, and the and the thing
51:33
Speaker 1: that's up in the frontal lobe, the thing that's you know,
51:36
Speaker 1: that's highly intellectual and uh whatnot. And I that that
51:42
Speaker 1: theme has to be everywhere, doesn't it. I mean, it's
51:44
Speaker 1: got to be for example, in the church, where where
51:48
Speaker 1: people get religion and they allow the feelings of the
51:51
Speaker 1: spirit to possess them, which many religious sophisticated people would
51:58
Speaker 1: take as a kind of lower level or infantile spirituality.
52:02
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, I mean, I can move you
52:04
Speaker 1: with a hymn or with a preacher who gets up
52:06
Speaker 1: in the pulpit and shouts and theatrics, but have you
52:10
Speaker 1: actually thought deeply about the dilemmas and the impossibilities of
52:15
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of thing that in Aquinas or
52:18
Speaker 1: somebody uh or the guy Augustine and the City of
52:22
Speaker 1: God or whatever would be you know, grappling with the
52:24
Speaker 1: meaning of life at some more reflective or deeper level.
52:28
Speaker 1: But that's just one example. You're going to see it
52:30
Speaker 1: in music, You're going to see it in a in
52:32
Speaker 1: a lot of things.
52:33
Speaker 3: I mean, the party.
52:36
Speaker 2: There's room for both as far as I'm concerned. In
52:39
Speaker 2: this thing called life. It's just that do you put
52:41
Speaker 2: them in the same places. That's all, you know, Episcopalianism
52:45
Speaker 2: and Baptism.
52:47
Speaker 1: You know, I think you object, I do I get this,
52:50
Speaker 1: not right, John, that you object to this coloration of
52:54
Speaker 1: the African essences somehow being you know, visceral and not
52:58
Speaker 1: cerebral as somehow being you know, you say, we dance,
53:02
Speaker 1: you know, we dance, We we you know we're gonna party.
53:05
Speaker 3: You know, our thing, our trope is.
53:10
Speaker 1: Rhythm, not the heart knows discipline of the kind of
53:15
Speaker 1: dedicated kind of you know, mastery of the canon of
53:21
Speaker 1: the craft, something like that.
53:23
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, I mean, yeah, the our thing is
53:26
Speaker 2: rhythm as opposed to mastering, not going with the rhythm,
53:33
Speaker 2: which is what it is. You know, the rhythm is
53:34
Speaker 2: the easier thing. The rhythm is what comes naturally. But
53:38
Speaker 2: if you kind of resist the temptation of the rhythm,
53:41
Speaker 2: then you start inventing things like watches and the like.
53:46
Speaker 2: What we're being saddled with is that which is easiest.
53:49
Speaker 2: And if anybody thinks I don't know how elaborate jazz is,
53:51
Speaker 2: they need not think it. And you know what else,
53:53
Speaker 2: if anybody thinks that the reason I distrust rhythm is
53:56
Speaker 2: because I can't dance, I would surprise you. I don't
53:59
Speaker 2: dance as badly as you probably think. I don't dance
54:03
Speaker 2: the way you know I would like to. You're right,
54:06
Speaker 2: you can tell, but not as badly as a lot
54:08
Speaker 2: of you probably think. I can move.
54:11
Speaker 3: It's not that.
54:12
Speaker 2: It's just that rhythm has its place. It can be
54:16
Speaker 2: even a large place. But for us to be associated
54:19
Speaker 2: only with the visceral and the immediate, it's a slur.
54:23
Speaker 2: It's completely a slur, no matter how thrilling. A certain
54:27
Speaker 2: kind of white person finds black black intuitiveness and what's
54:33
Speaker 2: it called. We are not indigenous, we're authentic. That authenticity
54:39
Speaker 2: is moving to the beat. Well, that's cute, but there's
54:42
Speaker 2: a lot more to being human than that.
54:46
Speaker 1: Okay, John, I think we put in our time here.
54:48
Speaker 1: It's an hour of conversation. I suggest we end on
54:51
Speaker 1: that note.
54:51
Speaker 3: I like it. I like it a lot.
54:53
Speaker 1: Let me remind people that if you want to submit
54:55
Speaker 1: a question for John and I to entertain in our
54:58
Speaker 1: monthly Q and A need to become a paying subscriber
55:02
Speaker 1: to the Glenn Show, that's Glennlowry dot substack dot com.
55:06
Speaker 1: We welcome you, but thanks a lot, John, appreciate your
55:09
Speaker 1: time and very imploying conversation.
55:12
Speaker 2: I've been prickly today.
55:13
Speaker 3: Sorry now it's all good. It's all good. Take care,