Glenn Loury: Race, Racism, Identity Politics, and Cancel Culture

00:00:00.000 | I hate affirmative action.

00:00:02.320 | I don't just disagree with it.

00:00:03.480 | I don't just think it's against the 14th Amendment.

00:00:06.360 | I hate it.

00:00:07.920 | The hatred comes from an understanding

00:00:09.880 | that it is a band-aid, that it is a substitute

00:00:12.400 | for the actual development of the capacities

00:00:14.760 | of our people to compete.

00:00:16.520 | They want to tell African-Americans,

00:00:18.160 | "Pat us on the head.

00:00:19.400 | "We're gonna have a separate program for you.

00:00:22.140 | "We're gonna give you a side door that you can come into."

00:00:25.000 | That doesn't make us any smarter.

00:00:27.280 | It doesn't make us any more creative.

00:00:29.960 | And it doesn't make us any more fit

00:00:34.040 | for the actual competition that's unfolding before us.

00:00:37.360 | - The following is a conversation with Glenn Lowry,

00:00:42.120 | professor of economics and social sciences

00:00:44.220 | at Brown University.

00:00:45.520 | He is one of the great minds and communicators of our time,

00:00:49.580 | writing and speaking about race and inequality.

00:00:53.500 | I highly encourage you to listen to his show

00:00:56.320 | on YouTube and Substack, simply called "The Glenn Show."

00:01:00.960 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:01:02.880 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:01:04.920 | in the description.

00:01:06.040 | And now, dear friends, here's Glenn Lowry.

00:01:09.360 | Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech,

00:01:12.940 | I think is the greatest speech in American history.

00:01:15.440 | If I may, I'd like to read a few words of it.

00:01:17.760 | - Sure.

00:01:18.600 | - And ask you a question about this dream.

00:01:21.120 | "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up

00:01:26.200 | "and live out the true meaning of its creed.

00:01:28.900 | "We hold these truths to be self-evident,

00:01:31.540 | "that all men are created equal.

00:01:33.480 | "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia,

00:01:38.860 | "the sons of former slaves

00:01:40.640 | "and the sons of former slave owners

00:01:42.960 | "will be able to sit down together

00:01:44.540 | "at the table of brotherhood.

00:01:46.000 | "I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi,

00:01:50.760 | "a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,

00:01:54.080 | "sweltering with the heat of oppression,

00:01:56.520 | "will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

00:02:00.760 | "I have a dream that my four little children

00:02:04.240 | "will one day live in a nation

00:02:06.440 | "where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,

00:02:09.700 | "but by the content of their character.

00:02:12.460 | "I have a dream today."

00:02:14.720 | First of all, damn, I mentioned to you offline,

00:02:17.360 | I immigrated to America,

00:02:19.560 | and this is why I love this country.

00:02:20.920 | This is one of the great speeches

00:02:22.280 | that represents what this country is about.

00:02:25.040 | So what is this ideal of equality

00:02:28.360 | that we should strive for as a nation,

00:02:31.320 | that all men are created equal?

00:02:33.420 | What does that mean to you, this equality?

00:02:35.680 | - Well, if we put this in historical context,

00:02:41.780 | King is speaking in 1963 when he gives that speech.

00:02:47.240 | It's exactly 100 years after Abraham Lincoln

00:02:52.480 | signs the Emancipation Proclamation,

00:02:55.560 | declaring the enslaved people to be free.

00:03:00.560 | They're not yet citizens in 1863,

00:03:05.920 | but the end of slavery has become the position

00:03:10.440 | of the federal government

00:03:11.580 | when Lincoln issues that Emancipation Proclamation.

00:03:15.360 | So putting it in context,

00:03:20.840 | enslaved people, 4 million or so

00:03:24.040 | African-descended enslaved people,

00:03:27.220 | how do they become citizens?

00:03:31.320 | How do they become in this status of subjugation

00:03:36.320 | and domination and stigma and exclusion?

00:03:42.200 | How do they become citizens?

00:03:44.320 | It seems to me that that's the heart of it.

00:03:48.800 | The equality that King is talking about

00:03:53.080 | is an equality of status as members of the nation,

00:03:58.080 | as free and equal citizens within the republic.

00:04:03.560 | Now, I think it's really important to understand

00:04:07.480 | that slavery was not merely a legal order,

00:04:12.480 | but it was also a social system

00:04:18.280 | that had the symbolism attached to it.

00:04:22.800 | They had a big journey to make

00:04:25.600 | from their subjugated status as serfs,

00:04:29.400 | as landless people, as uneducated,

00:04:32.040 | unfit for citizenship, really, in the minds of many.

00:04:35.640 | So I think that's what, in 1963, 100 years later,

00:04:40.640 | that King is appealing to,

00:04:44.240 | this idea that when Thomas Jefferson,

00:04:48.360 | in the Declaration of Independence, writes these words,

00:04:52.160 | all men are created equal and endowed by their creator

00:04:56.000 | with certain inalienable rights,

00:04:58.980 | he didn't, Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner,

00:05:03.040 | didn't have in mind when he wrote those words

00:05:07.440 | the people who were slaves.

00:05:09.180 | But by the time you get to 1963,

00:05:13.360 | King is invoking this idea,

00:05:17.640 | all men, and of course he means all persons,

00:05:20.520 | he doesn't only mean men,

00:05:23.240 | he means men and women are created equal,

00:05:25.480 | he wants this idea to be embraced by the country

00:05:30.840 | in reference to the descendants of the African slaves.

00:05:35.040 | That's his dream, that's his idea.

00:05:37.160 | The legacy of slavery would be erased,

00:05:41.160 | that the position of African Americans

00:05:45.260 | would be equalized within the political community,

00:05:49.000 | which is the United States of America.

00:05:51.760 | That's my sense of it, in any case.

00:05:53.720 | - So on a very basic level,

00:05:56.560 | the worth of a human being is equal.

00:05:59.160 | It's just literally the worth of a human being.

00:06:02.620 | So I mentioned to you offline

00:06:03.920 | that I came from the Soviet Union.

00:06:06.800 | My grandfather fought in World War II,

00:06:10.920 | and for Hitler,

00:06:13.300 | the worth of a Slavic person as they were captured,

00:06:18.900 | there's different numbers,

00:06:21.100 | but it's in the hundreds to one German

00:06:24.000 | in terms of the value of the person to the great Germany.

00:06:29.000 | So he wanted Germany to expand

00:06:32.040 | and conquer a large part of the world,

00:06:34.440 | and within that future world, that Third Reich,

00:06:37.680 | the worth of a Russian or a Slavic person

00:06:41.880 | is one hundredth or one thousandth of a German person,

00:06:45.940 | of a pure German person.

00:06:47.680 | So that has to do with not some kind of public policy

00:06:51.140 | or politics or all that kind of stuff.

00:06:53.420 | It has to do with the basic worth of a human being,

00:06:56.480 | and that's what Dr. King is speaking to,

00:06:58.760 | that all people on some kind of deep level

00:07:03.560 | are worth the same.

00:07:07.040 | If you're somehow weighing the value of a person,

00:07:10.800 | we're equal in that basic fundamental worth.

00:07:14.760 | - Yeah, I think that's correct.

00:07:16.480 | I think that's very well said.

00:07:18.480 | I don't know that he had in mind

00:07:20.000 | the position of Slavic people in Central Europe

00:07:23.640 | in the middle of the 20th century

00:07:25.280 | or the first part of the 20th century.

00:07:27.440 | King, I don't know that he had that in mind.

00:07:29.400 | He might well have done,

00:07:31.440 | but certainly that's the idea.

00:07:34.120 | - So you don't think he was really thinking

00:07:35.960 | about this particular civil rights struggle

00:07:40.440 | and the particular struggle

00:07:42.800 | against the backdrop of the history of slavery in America

00:07:47.840 | and thinking about African Americans.

00:07:49.560 | He wasn't thinking about the basic,

00:07:52.160 | he wasn't speaking to the basic worth of all human beings.

00:07:55.120 | - No, I don't mean to say that.

00:07:56.840 | The speech in Washington--

00:08:00.320 | - The dream. (laughs)

00:08:01.960 | - In 1963 at that march

00:08:05.200 | was within the context of the United States.

00:08:08.360 | And it was within the context of the civil rights movement.

00:08:12.320 | There was a movement that was going on.

00:08:14.280 | He was an actor in a political drama that was American

00:08:20.720 | that had to do with the fight over equal rights

00:08:26.360 | for voting, for housing, for employment,

00:08:30.960 | for citizenship of blacks in America.

00:08:34.680 | But King was informed, I think,

00:08:37.640 | by a much broader Christian ethic

00:08:41.400 | of the equality of all persons.

00:08:44.440 | I mean, he gets killed in 1968.

00:08:47.200 | The five years after that speech in Washington,

00:08:51.520 | he spends developing his worldview

00:08:56.520 | and the things that he had to say,

00:09:00.440 | for example, about the war in Southeast Asia

00:09:03.080 | that was going on at that time,

00:09:04.920 | made appeals to universal principles of equality.

00:09:10.800 | He was a pacifist to some degree.

00:09:13.680 | He was against war.

00:09:15.600 | He was a socialist to some degree.

00:09:18.600 | He might not have worn that label publicly,

00:09:21.920 | but he believed in a decent society

00:09:25.000 | where the poor would not go untended,

00:09:27.680 | where healthcare would be available

00:09:29.680 | to people who needed it and this kind of thing.

00:09:32.560 | A humanitarian who saw that the value of a life

00:09:36.960 | was not dependent upon the color of the skin,

00:09:40.240 | upon the native mother tongue that might be spoken,

00:09:43.800 | upon whether male or female.

00:09:46.840 | All persons are created equal.

00:09:49.960 | This is very much the ethic of Martin Luther King

00:09:54.960 | on my understanding.

00:09:56.800 | - Broadly speaking, what do you learn about human nature

00:10:01.400 | by looking at the history of slavery in America?

00:10:05.320 | - Oh my.

00:10:08.400 | - So what does that tell you about people?

00:10:10.640 | - Well, I think of two things right off the top of my head.

00:10:14.140 | One is about the capacity of people

00:10:22.480 | for looking the other way in the face of unethical

00:10:27.480 | and morally profoundly problematic practice.

00:10:36.400 | So, I mean, slavery was controversial.

00:10:39.960 | It was controversial going all the way back

00:10:42.640 | to the founding of the United States of America.

00:10:44.680 | The country was founded on a compromise

00:10:47.800 | where half of the country thought that slavery

00:10:52.560 | was abhorrent and would not have had it countenanced

00:10:57.560 | in the Constitution.

00:10:59.280 | The other half of the country were steeped

00:11:02.120 | in the dependence on the labor of these African captives

00:11:07.120 | and their descendants.

00:11:08.760 | The economy depended upon it.

00:11:10.440 | They owned them as property.

00:11:11.760 | That was their wealth.

00:11:12.760 | Their wealth was invested to some degree

00:11:14.640 | in the value of these human beings.

00:11:17.680 | And in order for the United States to come together

00:11:20.440 | as a confederation of the several colonies,

00:11:24.240 | there had to be a compromise made.

00:11:25.960 | And it was made where slavery was allowed to persist

00:11:30.280 | and the people who were against it

00:11:35.480 | or who thought it morally problematic

00:11:38.880 | were able to countenance the practice

00:11:42.100 | in the Southern states where slavery flourished.

00:11:45.560 | And that went on for 75 years

00:11:47.480 | after the founding of the country

00:11:49.640 | until the crisis of the late 1850s

00:11:53.280 | that led to the Civil War

00:11:55.200 | and ultimately to the emancipation.

00:11:56.880 | So one thing I think about human nature

00:12:00.160 | from the fact of slavery is that the ability of people

00:12:05.160 | to live with terrible, morally questionable practices

00:12:10.640 | and have that as a part of their institutions.

00:12:14.320 | It took a movement, a massive movement of abolitionists

00:12:19.320 | struggling against slavery

00:12:22.160 | for the better part of a century

00:12:24.400 | before that practice could be eradicated.

00:12:29.840 | But the other thing about human nature that I see

00:12:34.360 | is the ability of people to sustain their humanity

00:12:39.240 | under the most awful oppressive conditions.

00:12:44.360 | The enslaved persons, the slaves and their children,

00:12:49.360 | I mean, they were chattel,

00:12:51.480 | they were bought and sold like horses or cattle.

00:12:55.180 | And yet, their humanity was not destroyed by that.

00:13:01.320 | And they were able to sustain their dignity to some degree

00:13:06.920 | in such a manner that once emancipation finally did arrive,

00:13:12.680 | the freedmen and women,

00:13:15.120 | the persons who had been enslaved and who were set free,

00:13:20.040 | were able to, over the following decades,

00:13:25.040 | build a foundation for the development of African-Americans

00:13:32.440 | within the context of American society

00:13:35.640 | that eventually culminated in the Civil Rights Movement

00:13:39.400 | of the middle of the 20th century.

00:13:41.880 | And has led us into the present day.

00:13:44.820 | So, you know, human nature can count in its awful evil,

00:13:50.720 | but human nature can also survive

00:13:55.560 | in the face of terrible evil.

00:13:58.020 | That's what I take from slavery.

00:14:00.320 | - That survival, that flame can burn

00:14:03.480 | even when the world around it tries to put it out.

00:14:07.920 | There's still a little flame of human consciousness,

00:14:11.640 | of spirit, of culture, of whatever the hell that is

00:14:16.560 | that makes humans flourish and makes humans beautiful

00:14:19.600 | that lives on.

00:14:21.040 | - That's very well said, yeah.

00:14:22.200 | I think you put it very well.

00:14:23.960 | There's gotta be some poetic way of expressing that.

00:14:28.040 | - Leave it to the poets.

00:14:30.920 | What about the people that look the other way?

00:14:34.480 | How many people do you think, just regular people,

00:14:38.020 | knew that something is, this is wrong?

00:14:40.780 | Or do people through generations convince themselves,

00:14:44.760 | most people, most regular people,

00:14:46.860 | convince themselves that there's nothing wrong?

00:14:49.580 | - Yeah.

00:14:53.640 | - I ask this question because I wonder

00:14:55.740 | what we're looking the other way on today also.

00:14:59.800 | Because you have to kinda,

00:15:02.640 | if we're, you have to ask yourself these difficult questions

00:15:05.280 | of assuming we're the same people we were back then.

00:15:10.900 | Then we can be flawed in that same kind of way.

00:15:14.220 | We can look the other way just as others have in history.

00:15:18.500 | - Yeah, and you spoke of the European context

00:15:24.100 | and of the Nazis and certainly a lot of people

00:15:28.820 | had to be looking the other way

00:15:31.140 | when the massive crimes that were committed by that regime

00:15:34.820 | were being undertaken.

00:15:36.060 | I mean, railroad cars full of human beings

00:15:39.980 | being taken off to be slaughtered

00:15:41.600 | or to be worked to death in labor camps

00:15:45.360 | or to be gassed, et cetera.

00:15:48.200 | A lot of people had to know about what was going on

00:15:50.760 | and look the other way or enthusiastically supported

00:15:55.760 | the persecution of the Jews and the gypsies and so on.

00:16:00.880 | And I don't know, I wasn't around in 1840.

00:16:05.840 | My sense of the matter is that like many practices

00:16:09.960 | that are unjust, most people thought

00:16:11.880 | that's just the way it is.

00:16:14.040 | I mean, that's the world that they inherited.

00:16:15.720 | They were not moralist, they were not revolutionaries.

00:16:20.220 | They just wanted to go along.

00:16:22.940 | Some people might've been troubled by it

00:16:24.640 | but thought there's nothing that can be done.

00:16:26.440 | Some people might've thought, well,

00:16:28.280 | they're these black Africans, they're not really like us

00:16:32.760 | and they are lucky to be here.

00:16:35.120 | If they were in Africa, they'd be worse off still.

00:16:38.440 | Some people might've thought that.

00:16:40.760 | Some people might've been disturbed

00:16:42.160 | but not been able to see what it is

00:16:44.880 | that they could do about it.

00:16:46.280 | They might've thought, oh, this is disgusting.

00:16:51.400 | This is not something I would wanna have anything to do with

00:16:56.120 | but not knowing whether there's any practical way

00:17:01.120 | of opposing it, that's why you need a movement.

00:17:05.480 | You need for the people who are troubled by the practice

00:17:10.480 | to know that there are others like themselves

00:17:12.940 | equally troubled and as they gather together collectively,

00:17:17.560 | they can exert their influence.

00:17:20.680 | I mean, debates about the wrongness of slavery,

00:17:24.520 | as I say, go all the way back

00:17:26.200 | to the founding of the country.

00:17:27.740 | There were abolitionists and there were people

00:17:30.680 | who opposed the compromise that led

00:17:33.720 | to the framing documents and institutions

00:17:38.480 | that created the United States of America,

00:17:40.720 | opposed the countenancing of slavery in that situation

00:17:45.720 | but it took a while before that could come to a head

00:17:52.200 | and produce the crisis which ultimately led

00:17:56.620 | to the eradication of slavery.

00:17:59.440 | I would note that slavery is not unique

00:18:03.440 | to the United States, it's not unique

00:18:06.120 | to the Western hemisphere, that enslavement of people,

00:18:10.280 | the trafficking in human chattel is something

00:18:14.960 | that one sees on a global basis,

00:18:18.080 | one sees it going all the way back to antiquity.

00:18:22.160 | So we might ask, how is it that people finally came

00:18:26.820 | to turn their backs and eradicate the practice?

00:18:30.040 | That might be the thing worth really trying to understand

00:18:33.820 | because the practice itself is, you know,

00:18:36.960 | there's a wonderful book by the sociologist

00:18:40.520 | Orlando Patterson called "Slavery and Social Death"

00:18:45.520 | that was published in 1982, which is a comprehensive history

00:18:51.080 | and social analysis of the institution of slavery

00:18:55.700 | over 2,500 years, going back to the classical Greek

00:19:00.700 | and Roman civilizations, finding slavery in Africa

00:19:06.480 | amongst Africans, finding slavery in the Middle East,

00:19:09.960 | finding slavery in the Far East,

00:19:11.760 | finding slavery in South Asia, the enslavement of people,

00:19:16.540 | the practice of taking someone as a captive in war

00:19:19.600 | and then instead of killing them, which you could do,

00:19:22.460 | making them into your property was very, very widespread

00:19:27.460 | in human culture.

00:19:29.520 | So, I mean, I like to make this point sometimes

00:19:33.360 | when people are talking about how wrong slavery was,

00:19:36.420 | and I agree without any question

00:19:38.720 | that the practice was profoundly morally problematic,

00:19:45.020 | but I like to make the point that given how wrong it was,

00:19:50.400 | think about how impressive was the accomplishment

00:19:55.400 | of the eradication of slavery.

00:19:58.280 | Now, that was something, I mean, there were 600,000 dead

00:20:01.720 | in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865,

00:20:06.400 | in a country of 30 million people.

00:20:08.480 | That's a lot of dead people who gave their lives

00:20:13.480 | not to eradicate slavery, and in every instance,

00:20:16.960 | probably most of them were just fighting for,

00:20:20.260 | they enlisted or were conscripted into the forces

00:20:25.440 | and they fought and they died,

00:20:27.120 | but the net effect of their having fought and died

00:20:30.500 | was to push along a process

00:20:32.920 | that led to the eradication of slavery.

00:20:34.840 | That's an amazing achievement.

00:20:36.800 | The slaves themselves were largely uneducated

00:20:43.800 | and backward in their,

00:20:47.080 | of course, what else could they have been?

00:20:48.760 | They were kept in captivity.

00:20:50.740 | They were prevented from developing their human potential,

00:20:55.000 | and yet, after the end of slavery,

00:20:58.680 | that population, that 4 million plus African descended people

00:21:03.280 | became the foundation for what a century later

00:21:08.080 | leads to Martin Luther King standing in the Washington Mall

00:21:12.560 | and giving that great speech,

00:21:14.400 | and now here we are 150 years down the road,

00:21:18.260 | and Barack Obama is President of the United States.

00:21:21.560 | Now, he did not descend from slaves.

00:21:23.240 | I think we must not lose track of that,

00:21:25.620 | but he identified as an African American

00:21:29.280 | and was a part of the population

00:21:31.720 | that consisted largely of people who descended from slaves,

00:21:35.900 | and we are, we African Americans are,

00:21:40.840 | for all practical purposes,

00:21:42.920 | fully equal citizens of this great republic.

00:21:46.680 | That has happened within a century and a half,

00:21:49.360 | and I don't know that you can find any parallel

00:21:52.160 | to that kind of transformation in the status of people

00:21:55.840 | from human chattel to full citizens of the republic.

00:22:01.760 | Anywhere in human history, it's certainly worth celebrating

00:22:06.360 | the achievement of the eradication of slavery, I would say.

00:22:10.120 | And it probably started with a few people

00:22:13.320 | that inside their mind dared to rebel.

00:22:18.840 | You know, it's interesting to think about

00:22:20.720 | how it all started,

00:22:22.160 | how in the state of injustice,

00:22:26.320 | the revolution percolates, like where it starts.

00:22:32.800 | You said people that see something is wrong

00:22:35.480 | find each other.

00:22:39.160 | It's in the ideas of charismatic individuals

00:22:42.960 | that not only know that something is wrong,

00:22:44.880 | but are able to tell others about it and be convincing,

00:22:49.880 | and then together gather and rise up.

00:22:54.760 | It's interesting to make this kind of incredible progress

00:22:58.320 | from slavery to where we are today,

00:23:00.440 | to live out the ideal of this all men are created equal.

00:23:04.300 | - Yeah.

00:23:07.000 | - The power of individual,

00:23:07.840 | 'cause I don't know what you think about it,

00:23:10.000 | but I tend to think that a few small individuals

00:23:14.600 | probably originated this.

00:23:16.360 | It's the power of the individual.

00:23:18.280 | 'Cause sometimes we think there's injustice in the world,

00:23:20.340 | what can I possibly do?

00:23:22.180 | I tend to think one person can be the seed

00:23:26.400 | of starting to fix the injustice.

00:23:29.200 | - Sure.

00:23:30.040 | One person here, one person there.

00:23:33.280 | Yeah.

00:23:36.060 | One thinks, of course, of Frederick Douglass,

00:23:38.980 | the massively significant figure who was born in slavery,

00:23:43.980 | who stole his freedom,

00:23:48.800 | and because he was property,

00:23:52.260 | and he decided he was not gonna be property anymore,

00:23:54.720 | and he took it unto himself

00:23:56.100 | to emancipate himself personally,

00:23:59.060 | and who became an educated,

00:24:02.100 | a powerfully articulate,

00:24:04.780 | massively influential person in the United States

00:24:09.340 | and in England,

00:24:10.780 | going around, presenting himself as an embodiment

00:24:16.540 | of human dignity and commitment to ideals of equality.

00:24:21.540 | And, you know, I mean, he's just one person,

00:24:27.640 | but there were others like him.

00:24:30.140 | - Just one person.

00:24:31.940 | All it takes is just one person.

00:24:33.580 | So here we are.

00:24:34.680 | On this topic of equality in the 21st century.

00:24:41.860 | So what does equality mean today?

00:24:45.420 | If you start to think about this idea of equality of outcome,

00:24:50.420 | or the injustice of inequality,

00:24:56.700 | at which point does equality of outcome is just,

00:25:01.020 | at which point is it unjust?

00:25:02.720 | Sort of looking at our world today,

00:25:05.640 | and looking at inequality,

00:25:07.700 | how do we know that some inequality is a sign of injustice,

00:25:13.820 | and some is the way of life?

00:25:16.540 | So what does equality mean when we look at the world today,

00:25:19.620 | different from Dr. King's speech of the basic humanity?

00:25:23.300 | - I don't think King's speech,

00:25:25.600 | I have a dream that one day my four little children

00:25:29.260 | will be judged not by the color of their skin,

00:25:31.380 | but by the content of their character,

00:25:33.380 | requires equality of outcome.

00:25:37.420 | He says his children will be judged

00:25:42.020 | by the content of their character.

00:25:44.580 | That's a conditional statement.

00:25:46.540 | That is, the judgment will depend

00:25:48.940 | upon the content of their character,

00:25:50.920 | not the color of their skin.

00:25:53.980 | But it doesn't follow from that,

00:25:56.780 | that the outcomes, whatever outcomes we consider,

00:26:00.580 | wealth and economic power,

00:26:03.080 | position within the society,

00:26:06.880 | representation in the various professions,

00:26:10.220 | the various measures of social achievement,

00:26:12.980 | doesn't follow from judging by the content of character,

00:26:17.300 | and not color of skin,

00:26:19.020 | that when we look at the end of the day,

00:26:21.340 | at the social outcomes,

00:26:22.700 | that they will be equal across the different groups.

00:26:26.100 | In fact, I think there's a contradiction in the idea

00:26:29.620 | that groups will be equal

00:26:31.780 | in all of the various social outcomes,

00:26:33.980 | that they will be equally successful in business,

00:26:36.900 | that they will be proportionately represented

00:26:40.700 | in the various professions,

00:26:42.180 | that they will have the same educational achievement,

00:26:45.700 | that the occupational profiles will look the same.

00:26:51.060 | If they are, in fact, distinct groups

00:26:54.700 | with their own cultural traditions and practices,

00:26:58.880 | with their own ideals and norms,

00:27:02.020 | various immigrant populations,

00:27:06.020 | people coming to the United States of America

00:27:08.220 | from all corners of the world,

00:27:10.760 | the descendants of the African slaves,

00:27:14.640 | the Black Americans here today,

00:27:17.300 | who are ourselves various,

00:27:19.260 | with different origins and so on,

00:27:21.900 | the different religious practices and commitments

00:27:25.300 | that Jewish or Mormon or Christian or whatever,

00:27:30.300 | however we parcel up the total population

00:27:37.580 | into the various groups,

00:27:38.740 | these groups are themselves different from one another.

00:27:42.780 | They have different norms

00:27:45.220 | within their own cultural practice.

00:27:48.500 | How would we expect if, in fact,

00:27:50.580 | we recognize that the groups are different from one another,

00:27:54.340 | that in a world that is fair,

00:27:56.700 | they would all come out equally represented

00:28:00.000 | in every undertaking?

00:28:00.940 | They're not equally represented,

00:28:03.300 | and that fact, I'm arguing, is in and of itself insufficient

00:28:08.300 | to justify the conclusion

00:28:11.340 | that they're not somehow being fairly treated.

00:28:15.220 | Fair treatment doesn't imply equal outcomes

00:28:18.620 | in a world in which the populations in question

00:28:21.540 | are themselves different with respect to their culture,

00:28:24.660 | their practices, their norms, their traditions,

00:28:27.660 | their beliefs, their ideals, and so on.

00:28:31.380 | The fact of those different norms, traditions, beliefs,

00:28:35.220 | cultural orientations, and ideals

00:28:37.220 | will have consequences

00:28:40.000 | in terms of their different social outcomes.

00:28:44.020 | So I just think it's a mistake that people are making

00:28:47.780 | when they think fairness of treatment

00:28:51.940 | implies equality of outcomes.

00:28:55.980 | It does not.

00:28:57.500 | Is the process by which, we're speaking now

00:29:01.220 | in the midst of the National Basketball Association's

00:29:06.300 | playoffs, I confess to being a Boston Celtics fan.

00:29:10.460 | I mean, I'm just, it's a very good team,

00:29:13.520 | and I'm excited about my Celtics.

00:29:16.020 | We defeated the Brooklyn Nets.

00:29:20.620 | I mean, we defeated Kevin Durant

00:29:25.420 | and Kyrie Irving and company, okay, in a playoff series.

00:29:30.420 | We whipped them, and we're on our way

00:29:33.980 | to the Eastern Conference Finals,

00:29:37.820 | and we're on our way to the NBA Finals,

00:29:39.780 | and I'm, you know, if I were a betting man,

00:29:42.520 | I'd put down a few bucks that the Boston Celtics,

00:29:45.700 | underrated as we are, have a very good chance

00:29:48.540 | of winning the NBA Finals.

00:29:50.660 | Okay, so that's the NBA.

00:29:51.820 | That's the National Basketball Association.

00:29:53.560 | I'm a sports fan.

00:29:54.400 | I like basketball. - Slightly biased

00:29:55.780 | prediction, but yes.

00:29:57.620 | - Yeah, it is somewhat biased.

00:29:59.620 | All I'm saying is, if you take a look

00:30:02.120 | at who the star players are

00:30:04.500 | in the National Basketball Association,

00:30:06.140 | you're gonna find that there's some Eastern Europeans.

00:30:09.460 | You know, there's some really good basketball players

00:30:11.820 | coming out of Eastern Europe, you know,

00:30:15.120 | and more power to 'em, and there are a lot

00:30:17.900 | of African Americans.

00:30:19.700 | We're overrepresented.

00:30:20.800 | There are not that many Jews, as far as I know.

00:30:24.420 | No offense intended there, Lex, but I mean,

00:30:27.180 | the NBA is not equally representative

00:30:33.220 | of all of the different populations in the United States.

00:30:37.460 | Now, we could go into the reasons why,

00:30:39.080 | but I'm just saying the process

00:30:41.380 | by which you get to be playing in the NBA is fair.

00:30:44.580 | If you can play, you can get on the court.

00:30:47.320 | All they're looking for is people who can play.

00:30:51.220 | I think something like that is true

00:30:53.020 | in many different venues.

00:30:56.060 | I expect, if you're a really good technical engineer,

00:31:01.060 | companies are gonna employ you,

00:31:03.180 | and if you can make money, they're gonna advance you,

00:31:07.300 | and you will be able to rise to the top of that profession.

00:31:12.220 | I expect that the people who are engaged

00:31:15.380 | in financial transactions, who are actually making bets

00:31:18.780 | on the market, by and large, are the people

00:31:21.540 | who are good at that activity,

00:31:24.180 | and if you're good at that activity in this world,

00:31:26.180 | in this modern world, you're gonna rise to the top.

00:31:33.300 | I'm not saying that there are no barriers of discrimination.

00:31:37.660 | Of course, there are, of many different sorts,

00:31:40.540 | but I'm saying that to expect that there would be,

00:31:43.540 | okay, I mean, let's look at who's actually writing code.

00:31:46.260 | Let's look at who's actually trading bonds.

00:31:48.460 | Let's look at who's actually starting businesses,

00:31:52.940 | and so on, to say that in a fair world,

00:31:57.120 | I would expect that if blacks are 10% of the population,

00:31:59.980 | they'd be 10% of every one of those things,

00:32:02.380 | is to ignore the reality that the differences

00:32:06.660 | in the culture and practices and norms

00:32:09.860 | of the various population groups will lead

00:32:12.140 | to differences in their representation

00:32:14.840 | amongst people who are outstanding performers

00:32:17.060 | in one or another activity.

00:32:20.060 | - How do you know if the difference in culture

00:32:24.060 | accounts for the difference in outcomes,

00:32:26.900 | or it's the existence of barriers,

00:32:30.140 | especially barriers early on in life,

00:32:32.980 | of discrimination that are racially based?

00:32:35.300 | So if you think about affirmative action,

00:32:38.140 | in which ways is affirmative action empowering?

00:32:44.860 | In which way is it limiting?

00:32:47.480 | For these early development of the different groups,

00:32:50.820 | but let's just speak to African Americans.

00:32:53.060 | We should say that you went to some no-name

00:32:56.260 | Northwestern University at first,

00:32:57.720 | but then you ended up with the great University of MIT.

00:33:00.420 | So that's your, not early, but middle development.

00:33:05.840 | So speaking of the development,

00:33:09.060 | the opportunities, the equality of opportunity,

00:33:13.220 | how do we know we got that equality right?

00:33:15.680 | - Yeah, I'm glad you put it like that.

00:33:19.380 | We were talking about results,

00:33:20.620 | now we're talking about opportunity.

00:33:22.140 | I was taking the position that when King says,

00:33:26.940 | I have a dream, and he envisions a world

00:33:29.540 | where his children will not be barred

00:33:32.280 | from the good things in life

00:33:34.880 | because of the color of their skin,

00:33:36.980 | we're talking about opportunity, not about results.

00:33:41.980 | But opportunity is not just something

00:33:45.300 | that depends upon what the law is

00:33:48.640 | and what public policies are.

00:33:49.940 | Opportunity also depends upon the social conditions

00:33:54.660 | in which people are raised.

00:33:56.780 | The social and economic conditions.

00:33:58.260 | So the child of a poor family that has no resources,

00:34:03.260 | it doesn't have the same opportunity

00:34:06.340 | as a child of a wealthy family

00:34:08.560 | to realize their full human potential.

00:34:11.620 | You asked me how can we tell whether or not

00:34:14.140 | a difference in outcomes is a reflection

00:34:18.960 | of unequal opportunity, or it's a reflection

00:34:22.060 | of differences in culture and interest and practice.

00:34:26.640 | And I don't know that there's a single answer

00:34:29.580 | to that question, but I think one wants to look at the data.

00:34:33.740 | One wants to try to measure, as a social scientist,

00:34:38.740 | I would say what you wanna do is you wanna estimate

00:34:41.740 | the significance of various factors

00:34:47.220 | for determining the outcome.

00:34:48.460 | If the outcome is how much money does a person make

00:34:51.820 | when they work in the labor market,

00:34:53.700 | so you look at their wages,

00:34:55.800 | and you think, well, that depends upon a number of things.

00:34:58.580 | It depends upon how educated they are,

00:35:00.900 | what kind of skills they have,

00:35:02.900 | what kind of work experience they have, and so on.

00:35:06.940 | And those things are all legitimate factors

00:35:09.820 | that might determine how much they end up making

00:35:13.820 | in the labor market.

00:35:15.640 | But you also wanna perhaps, controlling for those things,

00:35:19.660 | see whether or not the fact that they are black

00:35:23.260 | or they are Latino or whatever,

00:35:25.700 | the fact that they are male or that they are female,

00:35:29.300 | the fact that they do or do not speak English

00:35:31.900 | as their native language, this kind of thing,

00:35:34.460 | whether those factors also are implicated

00:35:38.680 | in determining how successful they are in the labor market.

00:35:42.340 | And if you find that, after you have controlled

00:35:46.380 | for the things that are legitimately determining success

00:35:51.380 | and failure in the labor market, like skills and education

00:35:55.180 | and experience, having controlled for those things,

00:35:58.620 | the fact that a person is black or is a woman

00:36:01.580 | or is an immigrant or is of Latino background

00:36:06.580 | also affects their earnings,

00:36:11.660 | then you might conclude that to that extent,

00:36:14.420 | they are not getting equal opportunity in the labor market,

00:36:16.700 | that kind of idea.

00:36:17.760 | But I wanna focus a little bit more here

00:36:22.140 | on what we mean by opportunity,

00:36:23.740 | because it's not just whether employers treat the worker

00:36:28.740 | on a fair and even basis,

00:36:33.120 | irregardless of the worker's racial or ethnic background.

00:36:36.740 | That's one opportunity issue,

00:36:39.540 | but that's at the end of the development process.

00:36:43.740 | They are now presenting themselves to the market,

00:36:46.780 | trying to find work and being employed at this or that wage.

00:36:50.900 | That's the end of the line.

00:36:52.760 | What about the developmental opportunity,

00:36:54.980 | the opportunity to acquire skills in the first place?

00:36:58.760 | That goes all the way back,

00:37:00.220 | that goes all the way back to birth.

00:37:01.580 | It even goes back to before birth.

00:37:03.480 | The mother carrying the infant in the womb,

00:37:09.280 | she has certain nutritional practices

00:37:15.300 | that she might be smoking or drinking alcohol

00:37:18.340 | or something like that.

00:37:19.160 | I'm not saying she is, I'm not saying she isn't,

00:37:20.820 | I'm just saying whether she is,

00:37:22.800 | she is gonna affect the development of the fetus,

00:37:27.040 | the newborn.

00:37:28.000 | Now there's a question of environment.

00:37:32.000 | There's a question of the development

00:37:33.680 | of their neurological potential.

00:37:37.800 | Do they learn how to read?

00:37:39.280 | Are they stimulated verbally?

00:37:42.480 | How many words have they heard spoken?

00:37:44.380 | Are they being nurtured in a home environment

00:37:49.680 | so as to maximize the possibility

00:37:52.760 | of them achieving their human potential?

00:37:55.500 | What about the peer group influences?

00:37:57.900 | What about the values and norms

00:38:00.820 | of the surrounding human communities

00:38:04.440 | in which they're embedded?

00:38:05.860 | Do they encourage the young person

00:38:08.500 | to apply themselves in a systematic way

00:38:13.260 | to their studies and to their focus

00:38:15.860 | on their acquisition of language command

00:38:18.840 | and of their educational potential?

00:38:21.420 | So development is not only something

00:38:25.500 | that is controlled by the society's practices,

00:38:29.740 | it's also something that is influenced

00:38:32.240 | by the cultural background of the individual.

00:38:36.960 | And those things are not equal.

00:38:40.260 | Those things vary across groups

00:38:43.300 | in a very significant way.

00:38:46.540 | And that too will be a factor

00:38:50.220 | determining disparities of outcome.

00:38:53.460 | So when I see outcomes that are different,

00:38:56.000 | I see wealth holding that's different,

00:38:58.740 | I see educational achievement that's different,

00:39:01.000 | I see representation in the professional schools

00:39:03.720 | and law school and medical school

00:39:05.020 | that's different between groups.

00:39:06.820 | One question is, are the institutions

00:39:09.820 | treating people fairly?

00:39:11.020 | But another question is,

00:39:13.620 | do the background in social and cultural influences

00:39:17.220 | equip people in the same way?

00:39:20.620 | And we know that the answer to that,

00:39:22.420 | not in every instance do they equip people in the same way.

00:39:25.820 | And so it makes the judgment,

00:39:27.500 | the moral judgment that we make

00:39:28.740 | when we see inequality of outcome complicated.

00:39:32.580 | Inequality of outcome is a systemic factor to some degree,

00:39:39.100 | but it is also a cultural factor to some degree,

00:39:43.880 | I wanna say, and that's controversial, I know.

00:39:46.760 | A lot of people,

00:39:49.180 | they think of themselves as being progressive.

00:39:52.220 | They wanna point a finger at society

00:39:55.200 | whenever they see a disparity.

00:39:57.040 | But I think that that's a mistake.

00:40:00.100 | I think it misunderstands the difficulty of the problem.

00:40:05.100 | You think that if you get the right law,

00:40:08.580 | if you have the right public policy,

00:40:11.060 | if the right politicians are elected to office,

00:40:13.460 | suddenly those disparities will go away.

00:40:16.060 | And I'm here to tell you that that's a false hope.

00:40:20.740 | And moreover, it is probably the wrong goal.

00:40:26.160 | But I mean, we could go into that.

00:40:28.860 | You were talking about affirmative action,

00:40:30.420 | which is something else altogether.

00:40:33.500 | And you were talking about me and my education,

00:40:35.820 | which is also something that's a little bit different.

00:40:39.260 | And I'm happy to talk about those things.

00:40:41.020 | Northwestern University, by the way,

00:40:43.160 | was a great university.

00:40:44.540 | - I'm just joking.

00:40:45.380 | It's one of the great universities of the world, yes.

00:40:48.060 | - And I studied mathematics at Northwestern University,

00:40:51.120 | which is how I ended up at MIT in the first place.

00:40:53.980 | And I got a very good technical training in mathematics

00:40:58.060 | when I was at Northwestern, so.

00:41:00.020 | - You love both mathematics and human nature,

00:41:03.540 | and so, which is why you ended up going into economics

00:41:08.300 | at one of the great economics programs in the world at MIT

00:41:11.940 | and getting your PhD there.

00:41:13.060 | So one of the many hats you wear is that of an economist,

00:41:16.300 | which allows you to think systematically and rigorously

00:41:19.900 | about the way the world and the way humans work at scale,

00:41:23.000 | trying to remove the full mushy mess of humans,

00:41:28.700 | like a psychology perspective, economics allows you to do.

00:41:33.240 | - Well, economics is one of the social sciences.

00:41:35.800 | I think there's value in psychology and in sociology.

00:41:39.320 | There's a lot to know that doesn't come up

00:41:42.020 | within the study of economics.

00:41:44.060 | We study markets and the dynamics of economic development

00:41:49.060 | and trade and so on.

00:41:54.240 | But yeah, speaking personally, as I was coming along,

00:41:59.160 | I was fascinated by mathematics.

00:42:01.120 | I was good at it and ended up at Northwestern

00:42:04.560 | and took a lot of courses there in functional analysis

00:42:09.560 | and logic and mathematics and dynamical systems

00:42:14.480 | and stuff that I ended up employing

00:42:18.280 | in my graduate studies in economics.

00:42:20.900 | But you're right, I was not satisfied simply

00:42:25.680 | to be proving theorems.

00:42:27.560 | I wanted to be addressing issues of social significance

00:42:32.160 | and economics, I discovered to my delight,

00:42:37.160 | was a field of study that allowed me both

00:42:39.120 | to develop rigorous analytical frameworks,

00:42:44.120 | modeling and precision of logical deduction and inference.

00:42:54.800 | On the one hand, satisfying my mathematical interests,

00:42:59.800 | but on the other hand, could address questions

00:43:02.400 | of social significance like,

00:43:04.640 | why does racial inequality persist?

00:43:07.800 | Why are some countries prospering and growing

00:43:10.380 | and others less so?

00:43:12.920 | Why do the prices of raw materials fluctuate

00:43:16.040 | in the way that they do over time and so on and so forth?

00:43:19.280 | And I ended up falling in love with the application

00:43:24.280 | of mathematical analysis to the study of social issues.

00:43:29.280 | - What to you is beautiful about mathematics,

00:43:32.080 | about mathematical puzzles, about logic,

00:43:35.600 | all those kinds of things?

00:43:36.800 | 'Cause it's still there, the love for math

00:43:40.200 | is still there for you.

00:43:41.160 | So is there something you could speak to?

00:43:43.280 | What is the kernel, the flame of that love?

00:43:46.600 | - It's like magic.

00:43:49.100 | I mean, being able to prove something

00:43:52.800 | and I mean, I think of offhand,

00:43:56.360 | there's no largest prime number, okay?

00:43:58.960 | So how would somebody know that?

00:44:02.520 | Okay, what's a prime number?

00:44:03.480 | So a prime number is a number that has a whole number

00:44:05.920 | that has no divisor other than one.

00:44:08.720 | There are no divisors of the number

00:44:11.040 | that makes it a prime number, like 13 or 19 or 37,

00:44:16.040 | whatever, okay?

00:44:17.520 | So they're prime numbers.

00:44:19.560 | There's no largest prime number.

00:44:20.760 | There are infinite number of prime numbers.

00:44:22.160 | There's no largest prime number, okay?

00:44:23.920 | That's an idea, you can get your mind around it

00:44:25.600 | in an instant.

00:44:26.740 | It doesn't take a whole lot of depth to see the question.

00:44:31.700 | There's no largest prime number.

00:44:33.240 | - I wonder if prime numbers show up in economics.

00:44:35.480 | I mean that--

00:44:36.300 | - Oh, they don't show up in economics,

00:44:37.720 | except in cryptography, I understand that's important.

00:44:40.320 | - Yes, yes.

00:44:41.160 | - For code, you know, in coding stuff.

00:44:44.480 | - And that shows up in economics.

00:44:45.920 | But in terms of models, probably not.

00:44:49.600 | So prime numbers are a little,

00:44:52.740 | you know, in abstract algebra,

00:44:58.760 | it's like they show up in all these places

00:45:00.880 | that are just like beautiful mathematical puzzles

00:45:04.200 | that don't immediately have an application,

00:45:05.960 | but somehow maybe challenge you,

00:45:09.040 | and as a result, push mathematics forward.

00:45:11.440 | Like Fermat's last theorem.

00:45:13.200 | You know, as far as I know,

00:45:15.200 | no obvious real world application,

00:45:18.200 | but it has challenged mathematicians

00:45:19.940 | throughout the centuries.

00:45:21.080 | - Indeed.

00:45:21.920 | - And somehow indirectly progressed the field.

00:45:27.540 | But--

00:45:28.380 | - That the rational numbers are countable.

00:45:31.640 | They can be put in one-to-one relationship

00:45:34.800 | with the integers, you know.

00:45:37.020 | But that the real numbers are not countable,

00:45:38.800 | and there's a lot more real,

00:45:40.600 | quote-unquote, more real numbers.

00:45:41.880 | These are orders of infinity.

00:45:43.360 | This is Cantor, Georg Cantor,

00:45:46.040 | and all that kind of stuff.

00:45:48.880 | Or Gertl's theorem.

00:45:50.840 | I studied this as an undergraduate.

00:45:52.680 | You know, the incompleteness theorem

00:45:54.440 | that there are propositions within any logical system

00:45:58.040 | that's rich enough to accommodate arithmetic.

00:46:02.600 | There are going to be propositions

00:46:04.520 | that you can formulate that are true,

00:46:06.560 | but that you cannot prove to be true.

00:46:09.440 | So the idea that you could systematically develop

00:46:14.680 | a logical framework for mathematical inquiry

00:46:18.200 | that could demonstrate the truth or falsity

00:46:21.800 | of any proposition is not a feasible goal.

00:46:26.800 | This was Hilbert's project, as I understand it,

00:46:30.600 | and Gertl showed that there was no hope ever

00:46:35.280 | of being able to--

00:46:36.120 | - (laughs)

00:46:36.960 | - To demonstrate the closure of logical systems

00:46:40.800 | that were rich enough to accommodate the real numbers.

00:46:43.880 | - That gave an existential crisis to all mathematicians

00:46:47.960 | and scientists alike, and humans,

00:46:50.760 | 'cause maybe you can't prove everything.

00:46:52.480 | - I remember, you know, when I was a junior college,

00:46:56.920 | a community college student

00:46:58.120 | before I transferred to Northwestern,

00:47:00.040 | and I took a calculus course,

00:47:01.840 | and it was a lot of fun.

00:47:04.520 | And it was differentiating algebraic expressions

00:47:09.400 | and integrating and using trigonometric substitutions,

00:47:12.760 | and it was a lot of simple problem solving.

00:47:16.080 | I get to Northwestern,

00:47:17.440 | I take a course in differential equations.

00:47:19.920 | And again, it was a lot of formulaic, you know,

00:47:22.600 | applying, you get a differential equation

00:47:24.640 | of this structure, like if it's linear,

00:47:26.240 | you've got exponentials, et cetera, you can solve it.

00:47:29.800 | And then I took a course that showed, you know,

00:47:32.800 | where the question was not how to solve

00:47:35.600 | any particular functional expression,

00:47:38.540 | but it was proving the existence of a solution

00:47:41.760 | to a differential equation,

00:47:43.560 | where it was like x dot equals f of x and t,

00:47:46.560 | and f is just some arbitrary function.

00:47:49.240 | What do I have to assume about the function f

00:47:52.400 | in order to know that there exists a solution

00:47:54.680 | to the differential equation dx dt equals f of x and t?

00:47:59.680 | And it's basically, they called it a Lipschitz condition.

00:48:03.900 | It's a condition about the bounding of the slope

00:48:08.200 | of the function f as a function of x,

00:48:11.480 | that it doesn't, that you can sort of uniformly

00:48:15.240 | bound the slope on that function,

00:48:17.200 | and then you can use a iterative process

00:48:20.280 | to show that the sequence of, you know,

00:48:23.880 | partial solutions to the thing converges to something

00:48:26.080 | that's a solution to the real thing.

00:48:27.160 | Anyway, again, I'm not gonna bore you

00:48:29.520 | or pretend that I'm a mathematician, I'm not.

00:48:33.000 | But what I'm saying is the difference

00:48:34.120 | between a specific algebraic formula

00:48:38.600 | that you can manipulate and solve on the one hand,

00:48:42.520 | and the abstract question of whether there exists

00:48:45.360 | a solution in the general case,

00:48:48.040 | was like a huge step for me in my study of mathematics,

00:48:53.380 | and the techniques that you have to employ

00:48:56.440 | to address these larger questions and so on.

00:48:59.680 | So I, you know, when I was an undergraduate,

00:49:03.560 | I took the first year PhD sequence in math analysis

00:49:08.480 | at Northwestern from a brilliant mathematician

00:49:11.920 | named Avner Friedman,

00:49:13.340 | and learned about measure theory,

00:49:16.840 | and, you know, learned about

00:49:19.120 | some early functional analysis ideas.

00:49:25.160 | And when I saw that those ideas were being applied

00:49:28.360 | by advanced study in economics, I was delighted.

00:49:32.080 | I found an intellectual home.

00:49:34.320 | So one of the fascinating challenges in mathematics

00:49:38.800 | is to think, how can you,

00:49:42.320 | which echoes the challenge of economics,

00:49:44.660 | what are the properties of an equation

00:49:48.480 | that allow you to say something profound and say it simply?

00:49:53.480 | And so the question of economics is,

00:49:56.040 | how do you construct a model where you can generalize nicely

00:50:00.240 | and say something profound and say it simply?

00:50:03.480 | - So one of the questions,

00:50:05.560 | one of the challenges of economics

00:50:07.720 | is macro versus microeconomics.

00:50:10.320 | - Yeah.

00:50:11.160 | - Is, you know, the world is made up of individuals.

00:50:16.160 | So there's a connection to this,

00:50:17.640 | our discussion of race and discrimination and outcomes

00:50:21.940 | and all those kinds of things.

00:50:24.240 | The world is made up of individuals,

00:50:26.560 | but in order to say something general,

00:50:29.800 | we'll have to construct groups.

00:50:33.640 | In order to analyze the data,

00:50:35.880 | we'll have to aggregate that data somehow,

00:50:37.920 | we'll have to make an average over some set of people.

00:50:41.480 | So what are the pros and cons of looking at things

00:50:46.080 | like equality of opportunity and equality of outcome

00:50:50.120 | based on groups versus based on individuals?

00:50:53.600 | And what are the groups,

00:50:57.320 | if there's any pros to looking at groups

00:51:00.400 | that we should be looking at?

00:51:02.460 | - Okay, well, those are big questions.

00:51:04.340 | I mean, in economics, you're right.

00:51:06.880 | I mean, micro, you have an account

00:51:09.120 | of how individuals make decisions

00:51:11.320 | about spending their money on this consumption side

00:51:14.520 | and about how enterprises make decisions

00:51:16.800 | about what to produce, how much of it,

00:51:20.560 | what inputs to use, what techniques of production and so on.

00:51:24.420 | Individual firms, individual consumers,

00:51:27.940 | and then you wanna aggregate.

00:51:29.120 | So there's a theory of,

00:51:30.120 | so-called theory of general equilibrium

00:51:32.080 | where you think supply and demand in a bunch of markets,

00:51:37.080 | you think prices that move to equilibrate,

00:51:40.900 | but you recognize that the price in one market

00:51:42.980 | affects people's behavior in another,

00:51:44.800 | the markets interacting with each other.

00:51:46.980 | You realize that the behavior of one individual

00:51:49.100 | affects the supplies and available resources

00:51:53.840 | and for other individuals,

00:51:55.460 | so they're knitted together in some kind of systematic way.

00:51:59.900 | And you wanna try to demonstrate the fact

00:52:04.560 | that notwithstanding all these interdependencies,

00:52:07.380 | there exists a solution to the system of equations

00:52:12.080 | that equates demand and supply

00:52:13.920 | across all the different markets.

00:52:15.260 | This is the existence of general equilibrium.

00:52:19.020 | Then you wanna try to say something

00:52:20.780 | about the properties of an equilibrium if it exists.

00:52:24.480 | Is it efficient?

00:52:25.420 | Well, what do you mean by efficiency?

00:52:27.600 | Well, the idea of so-called Pareto efficient outcomes.

00:52:32.000 | These are outcomes that cannot be uniformly improved upon.

00:52:35.320 | Everybody can't be made better off

00:52:36.880 | by an alternative outcome.

00:52:39.140 | You wanna demonstrate the efficiency

00:52:41.240 | of competitive equilibrium.

00:52:43.880 | What do you mean by competition?

00:52:45.220 | You mean that people take their actions

00:52:46.920 | to do the best for themselves that they can,

00:52:51.760 | profits of firms, well-being of consumers.

00:52:54.380 | They try to do the best for themselves that they can,

00:52:57.640 | but they do so in reference to a set of prices

00:53:01.980 | that they believe they cannot control.

00:53:03.580 | That's the criterion of competitive market circumstance.

00:53:08.320 | So does a competitive equilibrium exist?

00:53:11.260 | Do there exist a set of prices

00:53:12.760 | which if everybody recognizes them as given

00:53:15.840 | and responds to those prices

00:53:18.920 | on behalf of their own interest,

00:53:20.800 | the outcome will be supply equaling demand

00:53:24.380 | in all the markets where people are interacting

00:53:26.380 | with one another.

00:53:27.760 | And that requires the use of some concepts

00:53:32.020 | in topology, fixed point theorems and whatnot

00:53:34.220 | that are familiar to mathematics.

00:53:36.040 | Not very deep mathematical results,

00:53:38.260 | but important to economics.

00:53:40.500 | That's all about general equilibrium and whatnot.

00:53:43.160 | But you ask about groups.

00:53:45.060 | - By the way, amazing whirlwind summary of all of economics,

00:53:49.260 | but yes, go ahead.

00:53:50.680 | That was great.

00:53:51.740 | Well, markets of competition, of operator efficiency,

00:53:57.820 | anyway, but yes, groups.

00:53:59.060 | - And prices.

00:53:59.900 | - And prices.

00:54:00.740 | - And by the way, there are some very beautiful

00:54:05.100 | formalizations of everything that I'm saying here.

00:54:10.300 | You end up in vector spaces,

00:54:11.700 | you end up with sets of bundles

00:54:14.980 | of consumption and production.

00:54:16.500 | You end up with convexity.

00:54:17.820 | You end up with hyperplanes, which are,

00:54:21.180 | in this finite dimensional vector space,

00:54:23.820 | which are all of the bundles that have the same value

00:54:28.820 | at a certain price, but you end up with inner products.

00:54:32.500 | It's very pretty.

00:54:36.300 | - Yeah, but you almost forget that it's just a bunch

00:54:38.780 | of humans transacting with each other,

00:54:41.320 | that markets are made up of individuals.

00:54:47.060 | - Markets are made up of individuals,

00:54:48.980 | and in order to carry out this formalization,

00:54:51.460 | you have to make assumptions about the individuals,

00:54:54.580 | and the end result is true in a formal sense,

00:54:58.940 | but may not be true as a representation of the reality,

00:55:03.140 | because it depends upon assumptions

00:55:04.580 | that themselves may not hold.

00:55:06.600 | But at least you know what it is that has to be true

00:55:10.940 | in order for your formal framework to be relevant,

00:55:15.860 | which is already a step in the right direction, I think.

00:55:18.820 | I mean, the formalization is better than the intuition,

00:55:22.500 | the armchair intuition, where we sit back

00:55:24.700 | and we don't really know exactly what we're talking about,

00:55:28.460 | because we haven't pinned it down in a precise way.

00:55:32.980 | I'm in favor of the formalization.

00:55:34.940 | People, they think, what is mathematics

00:55:37.700 | and the social sciences?

00:55:39.160 | After all, we're dealing with people.

00:55:40.480 | People are not automata.

00:55:42.160 | I agree with that.

00:55:43.580 | But the analysis of the interaction of people,

00:55:48.240 | I think, to be rigorous, requires us to be specific

00:55:53.240 | about what we're talking about, about markets,

00:55:55.140 | about consumers, about firms, about profits,

00:55:57.900 | about technology, about preferences,

00:56:00.780 | and that's the language of economics.

00:56:04.520 | But people's behavior depends upon what they seek in life,

00:56:11.540 | depends upon their goals and their objectives.

00:56:15.100 | Those things are at play.

00:56:17.540 | They can be pushed this way or that.

00:56:20.420 | So, I mean, nationalism,

00:56:23.860 | fighting and dying for your country,

00:56:25.660 | religion, sacrificing on behalf of some abstract ideal

00:56:31.740 | of the good or of what is the human situation

00:56:35.660 | and what is the meaning of life.

00:56:38.020 | Economists have to assume that these things

00:56:40.480 | are some particular thing before they can turn the crank

00:56:44.060 | on their machine to analyze the outcomes

00:56:46.860 | of human interaction.

00:56:48.700 | And yet these things, belief in my identity,

00:56:53.700 | the things that I'm willing to sacrifice and die for,

00:56:57.540 | purposes of life that I affirm and pass on to my children,

00:57:01.960 | are important preconditions for actually carrying out

00:57:05.500 | any economic analysis.

00:57:07.060 | And they are subject to manipulation

00:57:08.900 | and to change over time.

00:57:11.220 | And that's not something that economics

00:57:13.580 | has a whole lot to say about.

00:57:15.500 | - Well, is there some general things

00:57:17.940 | that are really powerful in terms of,

00:57:20.000 | you said nation, religion, those are groups.

00:57:24.080 | - Yeah.

00:57:24.920 | - Can you group people nicely

00:57:26.820 | in helping you understand human nature?

00:57:29.400 | So, group them into nations based on their citizenry.

00:57:34.060 | That's geography, right?

00:57:36.700 | The geographic location of your birth

00:57:39.340 | or your long-term residence, or maybe religious belief,

00:57:44.340 | what religion you have believed over time.

00:57:48.500 | Is there groups like that?

00:57:49.700 | And then race.

00:57:51.600 | Is that useful?

00:57:54.700 | What are the pros and cons of looking at outcomes

00:57:59.540 | based on these kinds of groups, race in particular?

00:58:03.880 | - (sighs)

00:58:06.120 | I think there are pros and I think there are cons.

00:58:09.080 | I mean, I am myself, Glenn Lowry,

00:58:11.840 | sits before you right now,

00:58:13.380 | a black American, an African American.

00:58:16.720 | I quote, unquote, I identify as,

00:58:18.880 | you know, that's the way they talk about it nowadays.

00:58:21.280 | I identify as a black American.

00:58:22.880 | My skin is brown, my hair is coarse,

00:58:26.320 | my nose is broad relative to the way

00:58:29.400 | other people's noses look.

00:58:30.960 | My lips are thicker.

00:58:32.640 | That's a consequence of my ancestral descent

00:58:37.640 | from the human population resident

00:58:41.680 | in the African continent in millennia past.

00:58:45.580 | My race.

00:58:47.720 | Here in the United States,

00:58:50.720 | we have various quote, unquote, races

00:58:53.680 | defined crudely in the way

00:58:56.760 | that I just tried to define myself.

00:58:59.840 | - You could say, and I think there is

00:59:02.000 | a very powerful argument,

00:59:03.500 | that these are superficial differences.

00:59:07.480 | I mean, really?

00:59:09.200 | Why should it matter that your eye color

00:59:11.960 | or your hair color or the shape of the bones in your face

00:59:16.960 | or the color, the tone of your skin,

00:59:19.220 | the amount of melanin, how it is that you react

00:59:21.360 | to ultraviolet radiation in terms of your skin?

00:59:26.840 | What is that to the basis of anything?

00:59:30.720 | I mean, that's arbitrary.

00:59:32.280 | That's not meaningful.

00:59:33.320 | Could there really be meaning

00:59:34.680 | in these superficial differences among human beings?

00:59:38.000 | Isn't that an archaic or barbaric way

00:59:40.960 | of thinking about ourselves,

00:59:42.160 | to look at each other's skin color or hair texture

00:59:46.000 | and then to decide, oh, that's a black

00:59:48.540 | or that's a white or that's a Latin

00:59:50.440 | or that's an Asian or that's a whatever.

00:59:54.240 | That's something that we should outgrow,

00:59:57.480 | a person might say.

00:59:59.300 | That's a relic of a kind of tribal society,

01:00:03.300 | of a kind of pre-modern society

01:00:06.840 | where we built real structure

01:00:11.320 | on the basis of such superficial difference.

01:00:14.840 | A person could say that.

01:00:16.000 | On the other hand, I am a black American.

01:00:20.600 | I mean, that's part of my identity.

01:00:22.880 | That's part of my heritage.

01:00:25.500 | It's part of the stories that I tell myself

01:00:29.400 | about who my people are.

01:00:32.640 | Why do I need a people?

01:00:34.240 | Why do I need a narrative of descent

01:00:37.320 | in which I affiliate with a racially defined people?

01:00:42.320 | Do I really need that?

01:00:45.680 | I mean, I think that's an important question.

01:00:48.040 | In fact, this is a confession,

01:00:51.080 | think of myself as black.

01:00:52.360 | I could think of myself as simply human.

01:00:55.040 | I could not identify specifically as black.

01:00:58.960 | I could say, my eyes are brown too, so what?

01:01:03.160 | I'm a brown eye.

01:01:04.440 | I mean, I'm gonna invent a group based on my eye color.

01:01:08.240 | I weigh 290 pounds.

01:01:10.360 | I'm gonna have a body size group.

01:01:12.480 | I'm a plus 200 and that's quote, who I am, close quote.

01:01:17.400 | I don't do that.

01:01:18.800 | I came from Chicago.

01:01:20.000 | Yes, I do have a certain sense of affinity with my hometown.

01:01:23.720 | I'm a Chicago born person,

01:01:26.280 | but frankly I haven't lived in Chicago since 1979.

01:01:29.760 | That's a long time.

01:01:32.120 | I wear my Chicago origins very, very lightly.

01:01:37.600 | I would not go to war with someone from Cleveland

01:01:40.120 | or St. Louis and fight to the death

01:01:42.960 | with that St. Louis person or that Cleveland person

01:01:46.820 | based upon the fact that we come from different cities.

01:01:49.680 | - And you have even abandoned in your heart

01:01:52.080 | the Chicago Bulls.

01:01:53.560 | - There's some Chicago that's still in me, I suppose,

01:01:55.960 | but it's not very deep.

01:01:57.560 | It's not quote, who I am anymore.

01:02:00.360 | And I'm wondering, here I'm trying to pose a question.

01:02:02.840 | Why is it that being a descendant of African slaves

01:02:06.040 | should be who I am?

01:02:06.880 | So there's some answers.

01:02:08.060 | One answer is people will look at me

01:02:12.840 | and deal with me differently based upon what they see.

01:02:15.520 | I don't have control over that.

01:02:19.120 | I'm going to be perceived as a member of a group

01:02:22.400 | whether or not I elect to affiliate myself

01:02:24.960 | with that group or not.

01:02:27.840 | Therefore, I need to be mindful of the fact

01:02:31.640 | that regardless of what my internal orientation is,

01:02:36.640 | the world will perceive me in a particular way

01:02:40.400 | and will perceive me differently

01:02:42.480 | based upon the color of my skin.

01:02:44.120 | So a police officer who stops me at two o'clock

01:02:46.960 | in the morning because my taillight is out

01:02:49.600 | and ask me for my automobile registration

01:02:54.120 | and I reach quickly to the glove compartment

01:02:57.040 | to get my registration and the police officer says,

01:03:00.160 | "Show me your hands."

01:03:01.760 | And I don't quite hear what he says

01:03:03.880 | or I ignore what he says as I'm getting my document

01:03:07.640 | out of my glove compartment.

01:03:08.740 | But the police officer thinks because I have not responded

01:03:11.880 | to his demand to show my hands

01:03:13.440 | that I might be reaching for a weapon.

01:03:15.600 | And the police officer sees that I'm black

01:03:18.400 | and fears that the likelihood that I might have a weapon

01:03:22.040 | is higher because in that town at that time,

01:03:25.000 | a lot of the people who get stopped with weapons

01:03:27.760 | in their car happen to be black and male and so on.

01:03:31.700 | And he pulls his weapon and he discharges it

01:03:34.960 | and I'm bleeding out there and I'm dead now.

01:03:37.560 | And all of that is a possibility that's very real

01:03:40.160 | and it's based upon the color of my skin.

01:03:42.420 | And therefore, when he stops me,

01:03:44.940 | I keep my hands on the steering wheel

01:03:46.940 | and I don't go to the glove compartment

01:03:48.980 | and I'm fearful of the fact that he might mistake me

01:03:52.660 | for a criminal, et cetera.

01:03:54.780 | Or I walk into a high-end store, a clothing store,

01:03:58.420 | I see you're nicely dressed there, Lex.

01:04:00.540 | I'm not, but that's okay.

01:04:02.100 | I do have some good clothes at home,

01:04:04.940 | I just didn't wear them here today.

01:04:07.060 | But you know what I mean?

01:04:07.900 | And the salesman in the clothing store,

01:04:11.580 | either treats me like an old friend

01:04:15.940 | and is warm and welcoming and what can I do for you, sir?

01:04:19.540 | And let me show you this and that

01:04:20.980 | and what are you looking for?

01:04:22.100 | And what, because he thinks I'm gonna spend $1,000 there

01:04:24.220 | that day and he gonna get a 5% commission or whatever it is.

01:04:27.520 | And he either does that or he ignores me

01:04:31.240 | and looks at me with suspicion

01:04:32.540 | and thinks I might be trying to shoplift something

01:04:34.520 | or thinks I'm only gonna spend $50 and not $500

01:04:38.380 | and therefore I'm not worth his time.

01:04:40.460 | And I'm aware of the fact

01:04:42.260 | that when I go into the clothing store,

01:04:44.700 | especially the high-end places where I can buy a good suit

01:04:47.980 | or buy some really good dress shirts

01:04:50.620 | or slacks that fit me well and so on,

01:04:54.220 | I'm aware of the fact that I may not be taken seriously

01:04:57.460 | by the salesman based upon the fact

01:05:00.220 | that he's looking at me and he sees a black person.

01:05:03.140 | And therefore, I dress up before I go out to buy clothes

01:05:08.060 | to get, 'cause I wanna present myself

01:05:10.460 | as not someone who just walked in off the street

01:05:13.140 | but as one of those black people

01:05:14.540 | who is really prepared to spend some money in the store

01:05:17.340 | so that I can be treated with respect.

01:05:18.820 | And I have to carry the burden, such as it is,

01:05:23.740 | of knowing that I need to earn the being taken seriously

01:05:28.740 | by overcoming the suppositions that people may have about me

01:05:34.680 | based upon the color of my skin.

01:05:37.620 | Something like that.

01:05:39.340 | Or I ask myself, what am I gonna teach my children

01:05:43.780 | about who they are and where they come from?

01:05:46.380 | What stories am I gonna tell them about their ancestors?

01:05:50.460 | Who are their ancestors?

01:05:52.340 | Every African-American has European ancestors.

01:05:55.860 | Every black person in the United States of America,

01:05:58.420 | I think that I can say that almost without exception.

01:06:02.660 | We could go to 23andMe and look at the DNA.

01:06:05.900 | They have European ancestors.

01:06:07.100 | They're not purely African.

01:06:08.460 | That's a fact and that's a consequence

01:06:12.260 | of the experience of African-descended people

01:06:16.180 | because it's a mixed population.

01:06:17.960 | My name is Lowry, spelled L-O-U-R-Y,

01:06:21.900 | but pronounced as if it were L-O-W-E-R-Y.

01:06:25.340 | And I gather, if you trace the history of that name,

01:06:28.980 | that it's Scottish.

01:06:30.640 | So somewhere back in--

01:06:33.420 | - So you could identify as a Scot.

01:06:35.900 | - Well, or I could claim some Scottish descent,

01:06:38.880 | but I don't, I don't know who those ancestors are.

01:06:42.180 | And frankly, I don't know who my enslaved ancestors are.

01:06:47.060 | I can't trace my family history back

01:06:49.700 | very far into the 19th century.

01:06:53.160 | But so what stories do I tell my children about who we are,

01:06:57.940 | about who their ancestors are?

01:06:59.340 | I mean, I wanna tell my children some story

01:07:01.900 | and that story is gonna be colored, quote unquote,

01:07:05.300 | by my race.

01:07:08.100 | So even though it is superficial,

01:07:10.620 | and in an ideal world, you might think,

01:07:14.260 | why would human beings, I mean, I read science fiction.

01:07:17.980 | So there's this Chinese writer,

01:07:19.780 | Chixin Liu is his name.

01:07:21.480 | I might not pronounce it exactly right.

01:07:22.940 | C-I-X-I-N-L-I-U, Chixin Liu.

01:07:27.340 | He has a trilogy, "The Three-Body Problem,"

01:07:31.500 | "The Dark Forest," and "Death's End."

01:07:35.820 | Those are the three books of Chixin Liu's trilogy

01:07:38.780 | about how Trisolaris, which is another star system

01:07:42.900 | within a few light years of the solar system

01:07:45.660 | and Earth get into a conflict.

01:07:49.460 | And when the Trisolarans come down to dominate Earth,

01:07:55.420 | suddenly all of these differences between the Chinese

01:07:59.380 | and the North Americans and the Europeans

01:08:02.420 | and the Africans and the South Asians

01:08:04.660 | become kind of insignificant because after all,

01:08:08.140 | the Trisolarans with their advanced civilization,

01:08:11.300 | whose star system is dying,

01:08:14.100 | have their eyes on the solar system,

01:08:15.900 | which has a planet, the third rock from the sun,

01:08:18.020 | that is pretty habitable.

01:08:19.260 | And the difference between us become pretty insignificant.

01:08:24.540 | So we shouldn't need for an invasion

01:08:29.100 | by extraterrestrial beings to have to happen

01:08:34.100 | before we would recognize the common humanity

01:08:38.100 | that we all share that is profound and is deep.

01:08:43.100 | We all descend, in effect, from the same ancestral population

01:08:47.300 | of Homo sapiens who walked out of East Africa eons ago

01:08:52.180 | and have survived amongst all of the different possible

01:08:56.100 | variations of species and whatnot of humanoid population.

01:09:00.820 | The Homo sapiens have flourished, the others have died out.

01:09:04.860 | And here we are and we can just look at the genetic

01:09:08.500 | endowments that characterize our biological essence

01:09:12.540 | and we can see that we are all, quote unquote,

01:09:15.580 | the same beneath the skin and yet we end up

01:09:19.340 | freighting so much weight onto these superficial differences.

01:09:23.500 | So I can see both sides of the issue is what I'm saying.

01:09:27.620 | I can see the argument race is an irrelevancy

01:09:30.100 | because at the end of the day, deep down, it is.

01:09:35.540 | But I can also see the argument that I hold on

01:09:38.420 | to racial identity because A, my racial presentation

01:09:42.820 | colors how other people deal with me,

01:09:46.420 | but B, because everybody needs a story.

01:09:50.020 | You know, everybody needs an account.

01:09:52.580 | You tell me you're Jewish.

01:09:53.620 | I mean, I don't know how deep that is.

01:09:55.420 | I don't know how genetically profound that is.

01:09:57.760 | I do know that it's a culturally profound identity

01:10:02.760 | for a lot of people based upon maybe some of the same

01:10:08.100 | kind of forces that I'm talking about.

01:10:09.660 | A, they won't let you not be Jewish.

01:10:11.860 | You could say you're not Jewish,

01:10:14.260 | but when Hitler is rounding people up,

01:10:16.820 | what you say doesn't have a whole lot to do

01:10:18.660 | with what the Gestapo was about.

01:10:22.100 | And B, you need to tell your children a story.

01:10:24.580 | - Yeah, well, that's the fascinating thing

01:10:27.060 | about this tribalism that you spoke about,

01:10:29.480 | that we form tribes as humans,

01:10:35.580 | throughout human history, form tribes

01:10:37.500 | and have directed hate toward other tribes

01:10:41.460 | and sometimes violence and destruction.

01:10:43.940 | And yet, tribalism allows you to tell a story

01:10:47.900 | to your children, allows you to grow a culture.

01:10:51.400 | There's something about defining yourself

01:10:53.060 | within a particular tribe that allows you

01:10:55.660 | to have a tradition.

01:10:57.800 | You have an article that you wrote

01:11:02.220 | called "The Case for Black Patriotism."

01:11:05.460 | - Oh, yeah.

01:11:06.300 | - So I should also say it's so interesting

01:11:10.780 | because for me personally, I feel,

01:11:15.780 | identify as, believe I am an American.

01:11:21.020 | And yet, within the American umbrella,

01:11:24.140 | it feels that there's a longing for other tribes.

01:11:27.100 | You mentioned Jewish, but what I honestly feel is,

01:11:31.580 | I mean, a lot of it is humor and culture and so on,

01:11:34.460 | is Russian and Ukrainian 'cause that's where I come from.

01:11:38.940 | That's where my family's from.

01:11:40.620 | You know, there's like stereotypical things

01:11:43.300 | that are funny, humorous type of thing about Russians,

01:11:48.300 | showing no emotion, good at chess and math,

01:11:52.800 | into wrestling, drinking vodka.

01:11:57.020 | I mean, there's literally every single stereotype.

01:11:59.620 | I'm in the embodiment of that.

01:12:01.380 | So there's a, you celebrate that in certain kinds of ways.

01:12:04.180 | There's a tradition there within the American umbrella.

01:12:07.260 | And some of it is humor.

01:12:09.140 | Some of it is a little quirks of culture.

01:12:13.060 | But now with the war in Russia and Ukraine,

01:12:15.100 | interestingly enough, even that little thing

01:12:18.660 | becomes also a source of negative tribalism.

01:12:22.940 | But anyway, that context aside,

01:12:26.580 | what is black patriotism and why do you feel?

01:12:31.580 | - I mean, I'm speaking in an article called

01:12:35.180 | "The Case for Black Patriotism" in a particular context.

01:12:39.900 | And what I'm saying basically is very simple.

01:12:45.420 | I'm saying we are African-Americans

01:12:47.580 | and the emphasis should be on the American.

01:12:51.340 | I actually don't even much care

01:12:56.220 | for the framing African-American,

01:13:00.540 | but I'm not gonna fight with people about it.

01:13:02.860 | It's, you know, I don't think it's worth fighting about.

01:13:05.820 | That's not how, I would just say we're Americans

01:13:08.380 | or if you want, we're black Americans.

01:13:11.020 | We're certainly not African.

01:13:12.620 | That is the African-American population

01:13:16.340 | is a population of people who come into existence

01:13:20.660 | here in North America through the cauldron of slavery.

01:13:24.740 | There are also immigrants, immigrants from East Africa,

01:13:28.820 | immigrants from West Africa,

01:13:30.900 | immigrants from Southern Africa,

01:13:32.980 | immigrants from the Caribbean

01:13:34.900 | who descend from an ancestral population, which is African.

01:13:39.140 | We, you know, the history of the world since 1500

01:13:42.820 | is a history in which people of African descent

01:13:46.620 | are scattered because of slavery

01:13:49.420 | throughout the Western hemisphere.

01:13:53.300 | And so here we are.

01:13:56.300 | But the institution of slavery ended in 1863

01:14:01.300 | in the United States.

01:14:04.300 | The struggle that we started out talking about,

01:14:08.820 | which gave rise to Martin Luther King,

01:14:13.420 | giving that speech that you say is the greatest speech

01:14:15.660 | in American history.

01:14:16.860 | And I'm not gonna argue with you about that.

01:14:19.540 | Happened right here in the United States.

01:14:21.340 | - Yes.

01:14:22.180 | - We are, what is the United States?

01:14:25.420 | The United States is a nation of immigrants.

01:14:27.620 | The population of the North American continent

01:14:31.340 | was sparsely populated by an indigenous population,

01:14:34.060 | which was destroyed in conquest

01:14:38.340 | by a European population that settled here in North America

01:14:43.620 | and appropriated the land

01:14:46.260 | and have built a civilization here,

01:14:48.820 | which has been peopled by a large influx

01:14:51.980 | of individuals from Europe, Irish and Italian

01:14:56.500 | and Greek and Slavic and Jewish, Russian Jews

01:15:01.500 | coming in large numbers and so on.

01:15:04.220 | And wave after wave after wave of immigration,

01:15:07.540 | Asian, Latin American population of people

01:15:10.980 | who have come to reside here in the United States.

01:15:13.820 | And we black Americans who descend from slaves.

01:15:17.420 | We African-Americans who descend from slaves.

01:15:20.020 | So here we are.

01:15:21.540 | This is a great nation.

01:15:23.460 | I mean, this is a monumentally significant political force,

01:15:28.460 | which is the United States of America

01:15:31.780 | founded in 1776, 1787,

01:15:36.300 | fought a war of independence from the British,

01:15:41.020 | established a Republic,

01:15:42.900 | which is a confederation of these independent colonies,

01:15:47.900 | which has grown into now the 50 States

01:15:50.700 | of the United States of America, a continental nation.

01:15:54.060 | The richest and most powerful nation on the planet

01:15:58.700 | with massive influence throughout the world

01:16:02.500 | for good and for ill.

01:16:03.700 | That's who we are, I wanna say to black people.

01:16:08.860 | There is no other home for us.

01:16:11.700 | This fantasy of we being a people apart.

01:16:15.460 | Back in the day when I was coming along in the 1960s,

01:16:20.060 | there was something called

01:16:20.900 | the Republic of New Africa Movement.

01:16:23.780 | And they wanted some States in the South

01:16:26.300 | giving over to black people

01:16:27.500 | and we were gonna have our own country.

01:16:29.460 | And that's a joke, it's a fantasy.

01:16:33.460 | It's a mythic, unbalanced,

01:16:37.460 | the unrealistic fanciful politics.

01:16:46.620 | It's not a serious politics.

01:16:48.180 | We're Americans, we're not going anywhere here.

01:16:51.860 | The idea that, and I wanna say this

01:16:54.540 | in a number of different registers.

01:16:56.820 | I wanna say, first of all,

01:16:58.780 | we need to make peace with the fact

01:17:00.540 | that that's who we are and that's where we are.

01:17:03.260 | So nobody is coming.

01:17:06.380 | The world court is not gonna litigate our disputes.

01:17:10.260 | The United Nations is not gonna set up a desk

01:17:13.100 | for people of African descent who reside in North America.

01:17:17.260 | We have to work out whatever our concerns are

01:17:20.220 | with our fellow Americans right here

01:17:22.220 | within the context of American politics.

01:17:25.220 | That means compromise.

01:17:27.340 | That means looking for a framework for political expression

01:17:32.340 | which is broader than our racial identity, et cetera.

01:17:36.420 | So I wanna say that.

01:17:38.260 | But I also wanna say there's no reason

01:17:39.660 | to apologize for this.

01:17:40.860 | There's something positive to affirm.

01:17:42.980 | I take on this question about slavery in brief,

01:17:46.220 | because in fact, slavery was awful and it was wrong

01:17:49.780 | and it was on the backs of the enslaved Africans

01:17:52.900 | and it had consequences that endured,

01:17:56.260 | that have endured long after the termination of the thing.

01:17:59.020 | But I also wanna say, look at what has happened

01:18:01.900 | in the last 150 years for African-Americans.

01:18:05.940 | And I wanna say, look at the vitality

01:18:09.540 | of the institutions here in the United States of America,

01:18:12.780 | of the Democratic Republic of the United States

01:18:15.740 | of America, again, not perfect,

01:18:19.620 | which are malleable enough, these institutions,

01:18:22.780 | to allow for the transformation of the status

01:18:26.500 | of African-Americans such as has occurred

01:18:29.380 | since the end of slavery.

01:18:32.140 | And I wanna say there's a lot to celebrate in that.

01:18:35.020 | So this is our country.

01:18:37.380 | We are full members of the polity.

01:18:43.340 | We have burdens and responsibilities,

01:18:47.780 | as well as privileges that are associated

01:18:50.140 | with our membership in this republic.

01:18:52.260 | That does not mean that we should not fight

01:18:55.260 | for what we believe to be right,

01:18:56.860 | although we are not one voice here, we Black Americans.

01:19:01.140 | It does not mean that we should not protest things

01:19:03.740 | that we think are deserving of protest.

01:19:06.660 | But I wanna say, it does mean that we should not reject

01:19:10.940 | the framework that we're operating in,

01:19:14.580 | because we basically don't have any alternative.

01:19:17.300 | And because when viewed in full context,

01:19:20.700 | a noble and profoundly significant achievement,

01:19:25.020 | the United States of America,

01:19:26.700 | and a beacon to the rest of the world.

01:19:28.900 | I don't wanna go off in some starry-eyed

01:19:31.900 | kind of jingoistic celebration of America

01:19:35.260 | as the greatest civilization, et cetera, et cetera.

01:19:38.140 | But this great nation is our nation.

01:19:43.140 | And I think we do best by beginning,

01:19:47.700 | we Black Americans do best by beginning,

01:19:49.740 | this is my argument in the piece,

01:19:51.480 | by beginning from a framework which accepts that fact

01:19:56.480 | and then builds on it.

01:19:58.060 | - So Black patriotism is not exactly the same,

01:20:07.180 | rhymes, echoes, American patriotism.

01:20:11.100 | So a Black American is first and foremost an American.

01:20:15.980 | - Yeah.

01:20:17.380 | A Black American is first and foremost an American,

01:20:20.140 | and it's a good thing too.

01:20:21.560 | - Let me return to the question of Dr. King

01:20:29.460 | and another powerful, impactful individual, Malcolm X,

01:20:35.780 | to ask you the question.

01:20:37.780 | Well, first, people often perhaps inaccurately

01:20:41.500 | portray them as representing two different ideals,

01:20:47.580 | approaches to the fight for civil rights.

01:20:52.020 | So Martin Luther King for the nonviolent approach,

01:20:56.300 | the peacemaker, and Malcolm X is the by any means necessary.

01:21:01.300 | What do you think about this distinction?

01:21:05.300 | And broadly speaking in Black patriotism,

01:21:08.420 | in the future of Black Americans in the 21st century,

01:21:12.540 | what is the role of anger?

01:21:15.060 | What is the role of protests?

01:21:18.260 | Even violence encompasses a lot of things,

01:21:22.100 | but just aggression and the,

01:21:25.780 | fuck the man we're going to have to make change,

01:21:28.860 | force change.

01:21:29.880 | - Okay, I think you put your finger

01:21:33.040 | on something really important

01:21:34.700 | in the context of we were just discussing

01:21:36.780 | my Black patriotism essay.

01:21:39.140 | And it's not the only story.

01:21:43.920 | There is another story,

01:21:46.100 | and Malcolm X is someone you identify,

01:21:48.700 | and his memory lives on and is powerfully influential.

01:21:53.700 | And I think you see it in Black Lives Matter,

01:21:58.460 | and I think you see it in the protest and rioting

01:22:01.980 | and so forth that has broken out periodically

01:22:04.900 | going all the way back to the 1960s and before,

01:22:07.020 | but especially since the 1960s.

01:22:10.940 | You saw it in Los Angeles in 1992,

01:22:14.580 | the Rodney King civil disturbances that broke out there,

01:22:19.180 | and the balled up fist,

01:22:21.380 | the radical Afrocentric rejection of the American story

01:22:26.380 | that Martin Luther King,

01:22:31.700 | he believed in,

01:22:32.520 | he believed in a magnificent promissory note.

01:22:35.300 | And a lot of people are rolling their eyes

01:22:37.940 | and saying, as you say,

01:22:39.620 | fuck the man, magnificent promissory note?

01:22:42.180 | I mean, just get your knee off my neck.

01:22:46.100 | That's what you can do for me.

01:22:47.180 | Don't ask me to believe in your BS

01:22:49.220 | about some magnificent promissory note,

01:22:51.180 | some founding fathers who were all slave owners anyway.

01:22:54.620 | I mean, just get your knee off my neck.

01:22:56.540 | Now, I can relate to that.

01:23:00.660 | As I mentioned, I grew up in Chicago in the 1950s

01:23:05.020 | and the 1960s.

01:23:06.180 | I remember Malcolm X, I mean, literally in real time.

01:23:10.140 | I remember when he was murdered in 1965

01:23:14.260 | in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem,

01:23:18.060 | in Manhattan, in New York City.

01:23:21.120 | I remember my uncle,

01:23:24.700 | I was raised in a house where my aunt and uncle

01:23:27.900 | were the master of the house,

01:23:29.780 | and my mother and my sister and I

01:23:31.340 | lived in a small apartment upstairs

01:23:34.540 | in the back of this big house

01:23:36.900 | that my successful aunt and uncle owned.

01:23:40.940 | And my uncle was a small businessman,

01:23:42.620 | a barber and a tradesman.

01:23:45.980 | He was a hustler, I mean, legally,

01:23:48.900 | he did what he had to do to make money.

01:23:50.460 | He was very enterprising, not especially well-educated,

01:23:53.800 | but a very intelligent and disciplined

01:23:58.500 | and resourceful provider for his family,

01:24:01.600 | which included myself, my sister,

01:24:04.460 | and my mother and their household.

01:24:07.020 | And we called him Uncle Mooney

01:24:08.460 | because he had moon-shaped eyes

01:24:10.900 | that protruded and were round.

01:24:12.340 | Uncle Mooney, James Ellis was his name, Uncle Mooney.

01:24:17.340 | James Ellis Lee was my Uncle Mooney.

01:24:21.700 | But I'm saying all that to say this,

01:24:24.340 | he admired the nation of Islam.

01:24:27.020 | I mean, King and Malcolm X,

01:24:29.860 | Martin King and Malcolm X differed

01:24:31.620 | along a number of different dimensions.

01:24:33.020 | Malcolm X was a Muslim,

01:24:34.420 | and Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister.

01:24:37.940 | My Uncle Mooney didn't have any time

01:24:41.920 | for these Christian ministers.

01:24:44.100 | He thought that was the white man's religion.

01:24:46.300 | And back in that day, you'd go into a black church

01:24:50.660 | and you'd see a portrait of Jesus,

01:24:53.300 | and he'd be a blonde hair, blue eyed.

01:24:57.260 | He didn't even look like a Mediterranean.

01:25:00.180 | He didn't look like somebody who came from Palestine.

01:25:03.580 | I mean, he looked like somebody who came

01:25:05.620 | from Northern Europe or something like that,

01:25:07.140 | the picture of Jesus.

01:25:07.980 | And my Uncle Mooney rejected that whole thing.

01:25:10.980 | He would be damned if he was gonna bend his knee

01:25:13.940 | to some white Jesus.

01:25:16.340 | But he was not a Muslim either,

01:25:19.620 | but he respected the Muslims.

01:25:22.020 | He brought home their newspaper.

01:25:24.020 | It was called "Mohammad Speaks."

01:25:25.460 | This is the Nation of Islam,

01:25:28.060 | which is the black Muslim movement

01:25:30.700 | founded in American cities in Detroit and in Chicago,

01:25:35.700 | going back to the early, middle 20th century

01:25:40.340 | and growing into a very significant movement

01:25:43.780 | that had a lot of influence.

01:25:44.940 | Louis Farrakhan, controversial figure,

01:25:48.660 | descends from this movement.

01:25:49.980 | It has fractured now and has the major part

01:25:54.980 | of the legacy of the black Muslims

01:25:59.020 | has assimilated itself into Islam proper.

01:26:03.220 | Malcolm X made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina

01:26:08.740 | and came back with a very different vision

01:26:11.180 | about what it meant to be a Muslim

01:26:12.820 | and understood himself to be a part of the large tradition

01:26:16.660 | and religious culture of Islam

01:26:19.380 | that has a global reach.

01:26:20.580 | And he had a different vision when he came back from that.

01:26:23.900 | Some people say that's why he was killed and so on.

01:26:27.260 | I don't know.

01:26:28.460 | I certainly find that to be plausible

01:26:30.300 | that he became the constitutive threat to the sect,

01:26:34.180 | which was the black Muslims and had to be dealt with.

01:26:39.180 | I don't know if we'll ever know the full story on that.

01:26:43.260 | But anyway, what I'm trying to say is

01:26:45.580 | the black Muslims were there, Malcolm X was there.

01:26:47.740 | And in my experience, they constituted a counterpoint

01:26:52.740 | to the position of king,

01:26:55.740 | which depended on a kind of respect

01:26:59.620 | for the best of the tradition of American democracy,

01:27:04.620 | appealing to the better nature of our oppressors,

01:27:10.340 | live up to the full meaning of our creed.

01:27:13.660 | I mean, these are words that he would use.

01:27:15.900 | A magnificent promissory note is what he would think of

01:27:19.500 | as the declaration of independence

01:27:21.260 | and the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, unfulfilled ideal.

01:27:26.260 | And the black Muslims were like,

01:27:30.220 | "Fuck that, we're gonna take care of our own.

01:27:33.940 | We're gonna build our own schools.

01:27:37.020 | We're gonna build our own businesses.

01:27:38.940 | We're not waiting for the white man to do anything.

01:27:42.300 | Get your knee off my neck and get out of my way

01:27:44.260 | and let me take care of my own."

01:27:46.260 | And my uncle respected that.

01:27:47.500 | He respected the straight back,

01:27:49.860 | stand up straight with your shoulders back.

01:27:52.540 | That's a Jordan Peterson, but I mean,

01:27:54.060 | that was way before Jordan Peterson,

01:27:56.140 | but that was his philosophy.

01:27:57.300 | Stand up straight, but just raise your children.

01:28:00.220 | Don't be depending upon welfare.

01:28:02.300 | You're taking welfare from the white man?

01:28:04.940 | You need to get busy.

01:28:05.940 | You need to educate yourself.

01:28:07.620 | You need to clean up your act,

01:28:08.700 | put down the fried chicken 'cause it's gonna kill you.

01:28:13.020 | My uncle Mooney loved this book that Elijah Muhammad,

01:28:18.020 | they called him the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,

01:28:20.380 | who was the founder and the leader of the nation of Islam.

01:28:23.500 | He had a book and all the book said was,

01:28:26.780 | "Be smart, eat green vegetables, don't eat fried food,

01:28:31.340 | don't eat pork."

01:28:32.620 | They're Muslims.

01:28:33.700 | "Don't eat pork and take responsibility for your diet

01:28:38.420 | and be healthy.

01:28:39.820 | And don't be putting a whole lot of pills

01:28:42.780 | into your body.

01:28:43.620 | You don't need to do that

01:28:44.460 | if you just get control of your diet

01:28:45.940 | and you eat properly."

01:28:47.620 | Now, my uncle loved this idea of responsibility for self

01:28:52.620 | and a determination to build.

01:28:56.500 | He respected that in the Muslims,

01:29:00.060 | even if he didn't buy the religious part of it.

01:29:02.900 | And so, and by the way, when my uncle died in 1983,

01:29:08.780 | in 1983, he left me a bequest.

01:29:13.780 | It wasn't money, unfortunately.

01:29:18.060 | It was his complete collection

01:29:21.700 | of the recorded speeches of Malcolm X.

01:29:24.660 | And I have these albums, these are 33 and a third LPs,

01:29:30.180 | there's six of them.

01:29:31.300 | And I have a complete collection,

01:29:34.700 | as best as my uncle could assemble,

01:29:36.180 | of the recorded speeches of Malcolm X.

01:29:37.580 | Now, why did he do that?

01:29:39.220 | He did that because he did not want me to forget,

01:29:42.220 | "Don't be dependent upon the white man.

01:29:43.940 | Build your own, stand up straight with your shoulders back,

01:29:48.060 | proud black man, take care of your business.

01:29:51.540 | Take care of your children.

01:29:53.540 | Pick up the trash in front of your house.

01:29:56.380 | Get busy."

01:29:57.580 | This was this philosophy.

01:30:00.460 | So, violence now, that's another story.

01:30:05.620 | I mean, Malcolm X would say,

01:30:08.380 | "We're gonna defend ourselves.

01:30:09.780 | You're gonna mess with us, you racist Ku Klux Klan

01:30:13.820 | or whatever, we're gonna arm ourselves

01:30:16.300 | and we're gonna fight you back.

01:30:17.460 | You racist police who are oppressing and persecuting

01:30:22.460 | and abusing our people, well, you better be ready

01:30:27.020 | because we're gonna fight you back."

01:30:28.820 | And that too was the spirit that my uncle,

01:30:33.300 | that was a kind of attitude, a kind of posture.

01:30:36.100 | My uncle was not a radical, he was a businessman,

01:30:38.620 | but he respected this idea.

01:30:41.740 | You take your life in your own hands when you mess with us

01:30:45.860 | because we're prepared to defend ourselves.

01:30:48.420 | - So that blood runs in you too.

01:30:50.220 | That thread is, when you write about black patriotism,

01:30:53.420 | that thread is there too.

01:30:55.340 | It's like you embody both the ideal that we're all American,

01:31:00.820 | but also that there is this oppressive history.

01:31:05.340 | There is the powerful that are manipulating you,

01:31:10.340 | that are oppressing you, and you can't just wait around

01:31:16.220 | for things to fix themselves.

01:31:18.340 | You have to take action.

01:31:20.900 | You have to take things into your own hands.

01:31:22.780 | And sometimes that means being angry.

01:31:24.580 | Sometimes that means being violent.

01:31:26.740 | That's there too.

01:31:28.900 | - Yeah, it's there, but here, and the but is,

01:31:33.260 | I don't, me today, Glenn Lowry in 2022,

01:31:37.540 | think that that is the answer.

01:31:40.420 | I don't think that violent rebellion

01:31:43.060 | gets us anywhere at the end of the day.

01:31:46.660 | I think we're past that.

01:31:49.100 | There aren't Knight Rider, Ku Klux Klan,

01:31:52.820 | people breaking down your door and dragging you away.

01:31:55.700 | There are not nooses thrown over a tree limb

01:32:00.700 | where you hang somebody from the tree

01:32:03.540 | because they whistled at a white woman,

01:32:05.380 | or they got too much property in your community,

01:32:07.940 | and you became, you know, they were uppity Negroes

01:32:10.220 | and whatnot like that.

01:32:11.060 | That is a thing of the past in America,

01:32:14.820 | that the situation is no longer the one

01:32:19.340 | that requires that kind of violent reaction.

01:32:23.140 | And that there is, if we look at the net effect

01:32:27.660 | of the so-called rebellions in American cities,

01:32:32.660 | they're negative.

01:32:34.860 | The George Floyd protests,

01:32:38.620 | which became violent and arsonist

01:32:42.020 | in the aftermath of civil disturbance

01:32:44.140 | and whatnot in the summer of 2020,

01:32:47.060 | I think set back the program for African-Americans.

01:32:50.900 | I don't think it advanced it.

01:32:53.340 | I think there are things to be concerned about,

01:32:56.940 | schools that are not working,

01:32:59.140 | police that are not respecting citizens and so forth.

01:33:02.540 | But I think that those are things

01:33:04.900 | that affect white Americans as well,

01:33:07.580 | and that the way to ultimately correct those things

01:33:12.580 | is to make alliance and associate oneself

01:33:19.780 | with Americans who are concerned to change these things.

01:33:23.220 | And I don't think it's properly framed as a racial problem.

01:33:27.660 | And I certainly don't think that, you know,

01:33:32.900 | violent rebellion gets us anywhere.

01:33:37.900 | You know, I get the historical salience of that posture,

01:33:43.420 | and it made a lot of sense

01:33:47.140 | in the early and the mid 20th century.

01:33:49.940 | I don't think it makes very much sense at all

01:33:51.740 | in the early 21st century.

01:33:53.420 | - Well, thank you for allowing me for a brief moment

01:33:57.580 | to try to channel your Uncle Mooney

01:33:59.820 | and maybe Malcolm X in this conversation

01:34:02.300 | as we look forward to the 21st century.

01:34:05.300 | You mentioned that in part you're troubled

01:34:09.980 | by the term African-American.

01:34:13.020 | So words are funny things, until they're not.

01:34:18.020 | So let me ask you about what I think

01:34:20.860 | is one of the most powerful and controversial words

01:34:22.900 | in the English language, the N-word.

01:34:25.580 | So this is a word that I can't say,

01:34:31.820 | that only certain people have the right to say.

01:34:34.900 | I have a friend, Joe Rogan, who has,

01:34:38.900 | what would you say?

01:34:41.740 | There was mass pushback or highlighting

01:34:44.780 | of the fact that he didn't just say N-word,

01:34:48.180 | but said the full word many times

01:34:51.980 | throughout his conversations when referring to,

01:34:55.480 | in a meta way, about the power of words,

01:35:00.540 | especially when related to certain comedians

01:35:03.460 | using those words.

01:35:04.680 | - Yeah.

01:35:07.280 | - What do you think about this word?

01:35:10.380 | Is it empowering?

01:35:12.700 | Is it destructive?

01:35:14.320 | What is it?

01:35:17.580 | What does it mean for race in America?

01:35:20.700 | What does it mean that people like Joe Rogan

01:35:24.500 | were essentially, there's an attack to cancel him

01:35:29.500 | for using the word?

01:35:31.180 | Just as a scholar of human nature,

01:35:33.820 | what do you think about this whole thing?

01:35:36.140 | - This is a phenomenon that interests me.

01:35:39.140 | Okay, the N-word, nigger.

01:35:43.060 | I can say it because I'm Black.

01:35:44.860 | But I mean, I can also say it because I like hip hop.

01:35:48.060 | And when I listen to hip hop, I hear the word all the time.

01:35:50.540 | These niggers ain't did, you know,

01:35:52.620 | watch out for these, you know, et cetera.

01:35:54.660 | I heard the word constantly as I was growing up

01:35:59.020 | as a boy and a young man in Chicago.

01:36:01.700 | Niggers ain't shit.

01:36:03.340 | That was said.

01:36:04.780 | That was, you know, and that could be a reflection

01:36:08.020 | of some kind of pathology

01:36:10.380 | within the African-American community of self-hatred

01:36:13.060 | and so forth.

01:36:14.140 | It could be, or it could just be a colloquial,

01:36:17.460 | linguistic way.

01:36:18.340 | I mean, I assume other groups also have their various,

01:36:23.180 | I don't know how the Irish talk about their Irish brothers

01:36:26.500 | and you know, whatever.

01:36:27.740 | And I don't know how the Jews talk about

01:36:30.660 | the Jewish brothers and whatever.

01:36:33.220 | But Black people, when talking about other Black people,

01:36:35.780 | use the N word all the time.

01:36:39.140 | My nigger, N-I-G-G-A, you know, my nigger.

01:36:45.140 | That is a term of endearment.

01:36:47.980 | My friend, Randall Kennedy,

01:36:50.940 | the law professor at Harvard University

01:36:55.140 | has a book called "Nigger"

01:36:57.420 | and he uses the word in the title of the book,

01:37:00.180 | the history of a strange history of a provocative word.

01:37:04.780 | There's something like that, there's a subtitle.

01:37:06.020 | But the title of the book is N-I-G-G-E-R, colon,

01:37:11.020 | and then he has a subtitle.

01:37:13.300 | I think, of course, the use of the word as a slur

01:37:20.660 | and an insult, which is a part of the history

01:37:25.660 | of Black people in the United States,

01:37:28.100 | the use of the word by the Southern racist segregationists,

01:37:32.060 | we don't want no niggers up in here.

01:37:33.620 | Y'all, niggers have no place in my restaurant,

01:37:36.340 | in my store, et cetera.

01:37:38.180 | That's meant to be an insult.

01:37:40.380 | It's an insult to people, it's a fighting word.

01:37:42.420 | It's a way that you say that to somebody.

01:37:45.180 | It's an invitation for conflict.

01:37:48.200 | - That said, what is it that about this particular word

01:37:53.060 | and also the asymmetry of it

01:37:55.420 | that do you think it's empowering

01:37:57.740 | to the Black community to own a word?

01:38:02.100 | - My honest answer to you is I don't know.

01:38:06.260 | I don't fully understand it.

01:38:08.420 | It has become symbolic in a way.

01:38:11.100 | And the policing of the use of the word,

01:38:13.560 | I can say it, but white people can't say it.

01:38:15.620 | I can say it, I'm not a racist.

01:38:17.260 | I'm not a self-hating Black.

01:38:18.700 | I'm just speaking the language of colloquial English

01:38:24.540 | that has emerged amongst African-Americans

01:38:26.900 | in which that word plays a big role.

01:38:29.380 | But the prohibition on its use by others,

01:38:32.340 | and of course, in the Joe Rogan case,

01:38:34.920 | it wasn't as if he was calling anybody an N-word.

01:38:38.860 | He was simply pointing out that people had said stuff

01:38:42.360 | in which the N-word was a part of what they said.

01:38:45.120 | Now, he did make the statement about,

01:38:47.000 | how did he put it, Planet of the Apes,

01:38:49.780 | that one of the offensive things that he said,

01:38:53.220 | he walked into a room,

01:38:54.100 | there's a bunch of Black guys standing around,

01:38:55.500 | he says, "It's like Planet of the Apes."

01:38:57.340 | - He said it's like Africa, Planet of the Apes.

01:38:59.860 | - Yeah, he should have, and he did apologize for that.

01:39:01.820 | - He should have been a little bit more careful.

01:39:03.820 | - That was an insult.

01:39:05.460 | That was something that,

01:39:09.040 | if you say that and people are offended,

01:39:12.300 | they have a right to be offended.

01:39:13.380 | And if you didn't mean to offend them, you can apologize.

01:39:15.620 | And he did apologize, I accept his apology.

01:39:18.140 | Joe's okay with me, as far as that goes.

01:39:20.680 | In fact, John McWhorter and I, at the podcast that I do,

01:39:25.580 | The Glenn Show, I had a conversation,

01:39:27.140 | part of which touched on the Joe Rogan phenomenon,

01:39:29.540 | and we concluded he didn't really do anything wrong.

01:39:31.780 | I mean, you can like Irma, you can hate him or whatever,

01:39:34.940 | but the idea that he's a racist is kind of ridiculous.

01:39:38.340 | Frankly, I mean, Joe, you know.

01:39:41.860 | If that's your test of what constitutes a racist,

01:39:44.780 | the utterance of the word,

01:39:46.200 | then it's kind of silly, as far as I'm concerned.

01:39:53.380 | - What do you think about the rigorous testing of people

01:39:58.380 | to the degree they're racist or not?

01:40:01.100 | The accusation of racism being a way

01:40:04.180 | to attack, to bully, to divide.

01:40:09.960 | So what are the pros and cons of that, once again?

01:40:13.360 | 'Cause it does reveal the assholes and the racists,

01:40:16.260 | but it can hurt people who are not.

01:40:20.620 | - Well, I think we have a history here in the United States

01:40:25.620 | of blatant racism that goes back a long way

01:40:30.860 | and that has present day echoes.

01:40:33.120 | So there are racists.

01:40:36.020 | I mean, there are people who will look and see,

01:40:38.500 | oh, those are black people,

01:40:39.700 | they're patronizing this business,

01:40:40.980 | I don't want to patronize this business anymore,

01:40:43.060 | who, if their daughter or their son is dating somebody

01:40:45.860 | that is black, they will say,

01:40:47.820 | I really wish you wouldn't do that.

01:40:49.140 | I mean, why are you hanging out with those people?

01:40:50.780 | Don't you know who they are?

01:40:52.620 | There are people, there are racists, okay?

01:40:54.940 | There are black racists, that is black people

01:40:58.060 | who see somebody who's white

01:40:59.740 | and who then invoke a whole lot of stereotypes

01:41:02.460 | or whatever, or have a visceral dislike

01:41:07.460 | based upon nothing other than the color of the person's skin

01:41:11.220 | such people exist, racism is a real thing, et cetera.

01:41:15.180 | On the other hand, I think this throwing around

01:41:19.620 | the accusation of racism,

01:41:22.940 | a college professor is teaching a course.

01:41:25.860 | He says in the context of teaching the course

01:41:29.180 | that the under-representation of blacks

01:41:33.980 | in physics program at this university

01:41:38.180 | is because they score lower on the test than other groups

01:41:42.020 | and they're not qualified.

01:41:44.500 | So say the professor gives a lecture and he says,

01:41:48.900 | we don't have more blacks in the physics department

01:41:50.820 | at this university because there are not enough

01:41:52.500 | qualified blacks.

01:41:54.340 | Somebody in the classroom who hears that,

01:41:57.300 | a black student objects, he's a racist, okay?

01:42:01.980 | That's a power move.

01:42:04.660 | It's a move to try to control the conversation.

01:42:10.180 | It's not an argument, it's an epithet.

01:42:13.900 | You've said that a person who has a particular idea

01:42:16.700 | that you don't like, maybe that idea is

01:42:18.620 | I'm against affirmative action, I think it's unfair.

01:42:21.380 | I was just with Dorian Abbott.

01:42:23.940 | Dorian Abbott is a scientist at the University of Chicago

01:42:29.780 | who published a piece in Newsweek magazine

01:42:34.020 | in which he said that he thought affirmative action

01:42:36.780 | and racial balancing was unethical.

01:42:42.740 | He was invited to give a lecture at MIT,

01:42:44.860 | a very distinguished lecture in his field

01:42:46.620 | based on planetary science.

01:42:49.340 | I don't know exactly what it is.

01:42:51.540 | I'm not a scientist.

01:42:52.880 | But in any case, because he had said

01:42:57.460 | that he didn't like affirmative action

01:42:59.980 | and he thought affirmative action was racist,

01:43:01.780 | that's basically what he said.

01:43:02.860 | Why are we looking at people based upon their race

01:43:05.300 | and decide we should just do it on the merit?

01:43:07.420 | That was his position.

01:43:09.140 | Now, people protesting at the university

01:43:12.340 | where he was invited, MIT, saying that he's a racist

01:43:16.060 | because he had that opinion.

01:43:17.620 | He gets disinvited.

01:43:19.100 | Charles Murray is a popular social science writer

01:43:26.340 | who is famous for his book about IQ, "The Bell Curve,"

01:43:31.980 | one chapter of which chronicles the racial differences

01:43:36.660 | between black and white in performance

01:43:39.420 | on mental ability tests and speculates

01:43:42.980 | about the extent to which such differences

01:43:44.940 | may be connected with the genetic inheritance

01:43:48.260 | of these racially distinct populations.

01:43:51.020 | Now, he could be wrong about everything that he's saying.

01:43:53.860 | The Southern Poverty Law Center

01:43:57.180 | calls him a white supremacist

01:43:59.700 | because he observes that there are racial differences

01:44:04.700 | in measured intellectual ability

01:44:08.580 | amongst Americans of different racial descent.

01:44:11.340 | He could be wrong.

01:44:14.700 | Let me stipulate that he is wrong.

01:44:16.140 | I mean, I don't wanna argue about whether he's right

01:44:18.500 | or about whether he's wrong.

01:44:20.540 | He's addressing himself to a factual issue.

01:44:24.620 | And now the issue becomes,

01:44:26.340 | instead of grappling with the factual questions at hand

01:44:29.900 | and demonstrating his rightness or wrongness

01:44:32.140 | about those questions, the issue becomes his character.

01:44:35.740 | He's a racist.

01:44:37.980 | That's, in my mind, a lot like calling him a witch.

01:44:42.980 | The use of that word now, I think,

01:44:48.060 | has parallels to accusing people of witchcraft

01:44:53.060 | because they have views about substantive questions

01:44:56.860 | that bear on racial inequality or racial difference

01:45:01.100 | that a person finds unacceptable

01:45:04.060 | or that a person disagrees with.

01:45:05.380 | And you think you can shut somebody up.

01:45:07.500 | Crime in the cities of Chicago, St. Louis,

01:45:13.860 | Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, DC is out of control,

01:45:19.260 | some person might say.

01:45:20.940 | Murder rate is high.

01:45:22.580 | Who's committing those crimes?

01:45:23.980 | They're mostly black young men

01:45:26.380 | who are doing the carjackings

01:45:28.340 | and who are doing the shootings.

01:45:29.460 | They're killing each other.

01:45:30.700 | They're making our city unlivable.

01:45:33.220 | Now, that's a hypothetical statement that I offer.

01:45:36.860 | It might be correct.

01:45:39.540 | It might be incorrect.

01:45:41.580 | It might be appropriate.

01:45:43.140 | It might be inappropriate.

01:45:44.340 | It may be true, but something that we would be better off

01:45:47.820 | if people didn't focus on, I don't know.

01:45:50.220 | Responding to someone making that statement,

01:45:54.300 | have you seen what has happened to my city?

01:45:57.380 | It used to be that you could go to North Michigan Avenue

01:46:00.140 | and you could find one after another,

01:46:02.140 | after another high-end shop.

01:46:03.380 | This is in Chicago, my hometown.

01:46:05.780 | And tourists would come and they'd go to the theater

01:46:09.380 | and there were restaurants and they'd go out.

01:46:11.300 | They don't do it anymore.

01:46:12.500 | You know what?

01:46:13.340 | Half of those stores are boarded up now.

01:46:14.460 | You know why?

01:46:15.580 | Because when George Floyd was killed,

01:46:17.820 | black people mobbed in the city

01:46:21.140 | and they burnt and they rioted and they looted.

01:46:23.420 | And it hasn't been the same ever since.

01:46:25.220 | And I'm moving to the suburbs.

01:46:27.060 | I'll be damned if I'm gonna send my children

01:46:29.060 | to those schools.

01:46:29.900 | A person could say that.

01:46:31.500 | They might be right, they might be wrong to say it.

01:46:33.500 | Calling them a racist is exactly not

01:46:36.260 | a rebuttal of what they said.

01:46:39.020 | It's a move.

01:46:39.980 | It's a move to try to take control of the conversation

01:46:43.540 | by accusing someone of having bad character

01:46:45.820 | because they said something that made you uncomfortable,

01:46:48.260 | which you can't deal with.

01:46:49.660 | So you think you can shut them up by calling them a racist.

01:46:52.820 | You might as well be calling them a witch.

01:46:55.100 | You might as well be calling for their head on a platter

01:46:57.180 | because they believe that Satan is Lord,

01:47:00.180 | because that's the kind of quote, argument,

01:47:03.980 | close quote, which is precisely not an argument

01:47:06.380 | that people who invoke that term are using.

01:47:09.820 | And here's what I have to say about that.

01:47:12.180 | It's a fool's errand to try to refute somebody

01:47:17.180 | by calling them a witch.

01:47:18.580 | Likewise, it's a fool's errand to try to rebut

01:47:23.180 | the contrary forces in American politics

01:47:26.300 | that are a reaction often to real things

01:47:29.420 | that are going on on the ground in black communities

01:47:31.540 | in the cities across this country

01:47:33.460 | by calling people a racist.

01:47:35.420 | You may shut them up, but you won't change their minds.

01:47:39.220 | And you know what?

01:47:40.060 | At the end of the day, they're gonna go to the ballot box

01:47:41.780 | and they're gonna vote.

01:47:43.100 | They're gonna pick up their store

01:47:45.460 | and they're gonna move it to the other side of town

01:47:47.620 | or to another town altogether.

01:47:49.740 | They're gonna keep their children away

01:47:51.980 | from places where they think the influences

01:47:53.860 | are harmful to those children.

01:47:55.980 | They may not even talk about it in public.

01:47:58.660 | You can believe that in private

01:48:00.180 | that they're talking about it with each other.

01:48:02.540 | You had better find a more effective way

01:48:05.420 | of dealing with the conflicts in this country

01:48:07.620 | that fall along racial fault lines

01:48:09.860 | than calling people witches,

01:48:11.700 | which is what this, you know, anti-racist.

01:48:16.020 | You're a racist because you think that

01:48:18.100 | they oughta wed like birthright amongst black Americans.

01:48:20.260 | The seven babies out of 10 are born

01:48:21.980 | to a woman without a husband.

01:48:23.700 | Their families are falling apart.

01:48:25.260 | Now, no one says that in public

01:48:26.460 | because they'd be called a racist

01:48:27.780 | if they said it in public.

01:48:29.100 | But as a matter of fact, the families are falling apart.

01:48:32.420 | You didn't change that in the least

01:48:33.860 | by telling people to shut up about it.

01:48:35.940 | Daniel Patrick Moynihan is called a racist

01:48:38.260 | in the 1960s, the late senator,

01:48:40.660 | the late New York senator who was a federal employee

01:48:43.900 | and an intellectual writing reports.

01:48:45.620 | And he writes a report about the Negro family,

01:48:47.540 | he called it in those years.

01:48:48.980 | If I use the word Negro,

01:48:50.100 | now they're gonna call me a racist if I'm a white person.

01:48:52.260 | I can't even use the word Negro,

01:48:54.220 | which is a historically legitimate reference

01:48:57.620 | to the descendants of the slaves,

01:49:00.820 | enslaved people, which we were, as black Americans,

01:49:03.420 | proud to use until yesterday.

01:49:05.460 | So all of this linguistic policing

01:49:09.060 | is a sign of weakness.

01:49:12.100 | It's false black power.

01:49:15.500 | People will cede you the ground.

01:49:17.140 | Okay, you don't want me to use that word,

01:49:18.380 | I won't use that word anymore.

01:49:19.420 | Okay, you don't want me to talk about that in public?

01:49:21.260 | All right, I won't talk about it in public anymore.

01:49:23.580 | I don't wanna be called a racist, okay,

01:49:25.020 | so I won't express my opinion.

01:49:26.780 | You haven't changed anybody's mind.

01:49:28.580 | You know, so--

01:49:30.820 | - And you've also mentioned that for that,

01:49:34.540 | you haven't changed anybody's mind,

01:49:36.020 | but also for things like in universities and institutions,

01:49:40.260 | there's a diversity, inclusion,

01:49:42.980 | and equity kind of meetings and education and so on.

01:49:46.740 | And I believe I read somewhere,

01:49:48.540 | I've been, like I mentioned to you offline,

01:49:51.020 | big fan of your Glenn show, people should listen to it.

01:49:55.100 | It's amazing.

01:49:56.900 | There's also just interviews of you that I've listened to.

01:49:59.780 | I believe you mentioned somewhere

01:50:00.820 | that even those kinds of meetings,

01:50:02.740 | people might sit through and nod along,

01:50:05.940 | but that doesn't necessarily mean that's making progress,

01:50:09.780 | that they may not,

01:50:10.900 | they may actually be bottling up a frustration.

01:50:15.620 | The fear is that that's going to result

01:50:17.700 | in a pendulum sort of pushback

01:50:22.580 | towards this idea of forced appreciation,

01:50:26.060 | like forced anti-racism kind of thing.

01:50:30.980 | - I talk about this often in my podcast,

01:50:34.020 | that's the Glenn show, you know,

01:50:35.340 | and you can find the Glenn show on my YouTube channel

01:50:38.700 | and also at Substack.

01:50:39.980 | - Yeah, you have a great Substack.

01:50:42.740 | You and your friend do Q&As

01:50:44.900 | and all that kind of stuff on Patreon.

01:50:46.780 | - Yeah.

01:50:47.620 | - So yeah, so people should definitely follow you.

01:50:49.620 | It's a brilliant conversation. - Check us out.

01:50:51.420 | - But yeah, I mean, one concern is that

01:50:53.860 | the superficial policing,

01:50:58.780 | this is a part of political correctness,

01:51:00.340 | you know, the insistence that you only use certain words,

01:51:02.700 | that you only talk in a certain way,

01:51:04.460 | is a phony kind of power

01:51:06.860 | because it doesn't actually persuade people

01:51:08.620 | about the issues that are at hand.

01:51:10.700 | Instead, it forces them underground

01:51:13.340 | in their talk about these issues,

01:51:15.420 | and that's problematic.

01:51:19.180 | Much better that we have overt and explicit

01:51:23.460 | and honest disagreement,

01:51:25.900 | to the extent that there are disagreement

01:51:28.300 | about things that are going on,

01:51:30.180 | than that we have a superficial kind of,

01:51:33.660 | you know, a conversation that is purged

01:51:39.860 | of any real biting,

01:51:42.980 | you know, discomforting confrontation

01:51:47.220 | with the realities of the situation at hand.

01:51:49.900 | And for black Americans, I think one big part

01:51:52.180 | of the reality of the situation at hand

01:51:54.620 | is violent crime, violent crime.

01:51:58.020 | You know, a police officer is afraid when he stops a car

01:52:01.180 | because it's an 18 year old driver in the vehicle.

01:52:04.180 | He's got dreadlocks, he's a black person,

01:52:06.820 | the car doesn't have the right license plate.

01:52:09.340 | He's afraid to deal with that person.

01:52:12.300 | And one of the reasons he's afraid to deal with them

01:52:13.900 | is because a few who look like him

01:52:16.620 | are behaving violently.

01:52:18.300 | Their violence is usually perpetrated against others

01:52:20.620 | who look like themselves, but not always.

01:52:23.540 | And that reality doesn't get changed by,

01:52:28.140 | you know, telling a newspaper writer who writes about it

01:52:32.540 | that they are a racist, or enforcing within a newsroom,

01:52:36.340 | you can't cover that story in that way

01:52:38.340 | because to do so would be racist.

01:52:41.460 | I think it's a monumental mistake.

01:52:46.740 | To enforce a closure on public discussion

01:52:51.740 | based upon a calculation that if we allow people,

01:52:55.980 | if Twitter allows this kind of post,

01:52:58.820 | if the Washington Post runs this kind of story, et cetera,

01:53:03.780 | you end up with a superficial politeness,

01:53:12.700 | but a subterranean, seething resentment

01:53:17.420 | that only makes matters worse.

01:53:19.580 | - If I can get your comment, maybe you have ideas,

01:53:24.500 | because it does seem that this kind of attack works,

01:53:29.500 | of being called a racist, being called,

01:53:35.140 | maybe not sexist, but somebody, you know,

01:53:40.260 | like we're going through a Johnny Depp trial now, right?

01:53:44.260 | It's a defamation trial, and the reason

01:53:46.620 | it's a defamation trial is because

01:53:48.420 | all it took is a single accusation of Johnny Depp

01:53:51.420 | being somebody who sexually and physically abused Amber Heard

01:53:56.420 | and all it took is just a single article.

01:53:59.460 | No proof was given except the accusation itself,

01:54:04.460 | and the world believed it.

01:54:06.780 | So it's effective.

01:54:09.580 | So how do you fight back if it's so damn effective

01:54:13.140 | that you can just call anybody racist?

01:54:15.340 | And it works.

01:54:16.980 | It's hard to wash off.

01:54:18.260 | It's, you're, you know, you're not proven

01:54:24.700 | in the court of law or anything like that,

01:54:28.660 | but we get those articles, we get that label,

01:54:33.580 | and then the world moves on

01:54:34.980 | and just assumes that person is racist.

01:54:37.300 | So how do you, do you have any ideas how to fight back?

01:54:40.980 | No, I don't, frankly.

01:54:42.220 | Just highlighting the fact.

01:54:44.620 | Listen, Roseanne Barr, who made this statement

01:54:46.700 | about Valerie Jarrett, she made some kind of ape-like

01:54:49.660 | reference to the whatever, and her show got canceled,

01:54:52.380 | and she's a racist.

01:54:54.740 | So first of all, pointing it out, I suppose,

01:54:56.900 | is one of the most powerful things,

01:54:58.300 | that the hypocrisy of it, the...

01:55:03.060 | You say it works.

01:55:05.500 | I guess you're right.

01:55:06.740 | It used to be that calling someone a communist worked.

01:55:09.980 | I mean, going back to the late '40s, early '50s,

01:55:13.860 | Red Scare, McCarthyism, and whatnot,

01:55:18.060 | and the person might've belonged to a club

01:55:21.860 | that was pro-Soviet Union in the 1930s

01:55:24.740 | when they were in college.

01:55:25.900 | They might've voted for the socialist candidate,

01:55:28.140 | Henry Wallace, in the presidential election of 1948.

01:55:31.940 | They might belong to the Communist Party.

01:55:33.900 | They might think Karl Marx was right about a whole lot

01:55:37.260 | of stuff about capitalism and whatnot,

01:55:39.540 | and they got called a communist or a Marxist,

01:55:42.340 | and it could've ruined their career,

01:55:43.860 | could've ruined their lives.

01:55:45.300 | And a lot of people shut up about it,

01:55:49.580 | and it went on for a long time,

01:55:51.860 | and in a way, it kind of still is going on.

01:55:56.860 | I mean, you call somebody a Marxist,

01:55:58.420 | if you can make that stick,

01:56:00.460 | they're certainly not gonna get elected president

01:56:02.340 | of the United States.

01:56:04.500 | But I don't know about this.

01:56:06.260 | I think, you know, I once read this book

01:56:10.700 | by a German political scientist

01:56:13.780 | called Elisabeth Neule Neumann.

01:56:16.780 | That was the writer's name, Elisabeth Neule Neumann.

01:56:21.780 | The book was called "The Spiral of Silence,"

01:56:24.580 | and the argument was there can be some views,

01:56:30.060 | some issues in society that get defined in such a way

01:56:34.580 | that it's inappropriate to hold those views.

01:56:37.300 | And as a result, people who don't wanna be shamed,

01:56:40.940 | who don't wanna be ostracized, don't express those views.

01:56:45.940 | And when they don't express them,

01:56:47.500 | anybody holding the view,

01:56:48.740 | because they don't hear it said by others,

01:56:50.860 | think that they're the only one

01:56:51.980 | or one of the few who hold the view,

01:56:54.260 | and so they don't wanna be the only one out there

01:56:56.700 | saying something, so they keep it to themselves.

01:56:59.260 | So now this view, this attitude in society

01:57:02.900 | could be held by a large number of people,

01:57:06.540 | but because of the fear that if they were to express it,

01:57:11.540 | they'd be ostracized, no one says it.

01:57:14.940 | And since no one is saying it,

01:57:16.700 | the others who hold the view don't know

01:57:18.860 | that they're not alone,

01:57:20.100 | that they are not the only ones who hold the view,

01:57:24.340 | and hence they keep silent.

01:57:25.620 | That could be an equilibrium.

01:57:26.740 | It could be a relatively stable situation

01:57:29.540 | in which the emperor has no clothes,

01:57:32.020 | everybody can see that this dude is naked, okay?

01:57:36.660 | But everybody thinks that, you know,

01:57:39.220 | I don't wanna be the only one to say it.

01:57:41.100 | And so we all kind of collaborate in this charade

01:57:44.740 | of keeping the view to ourselves.

01:57:47.300 | Then along comes an event that somebody decides

01:57:54.700 | to defy the consensus and to speak out.

01:57:59.700 | It could be a little kid who,

01:58:01.500 | in the story about the emperor has no clothes,

01:58:03.300 | doesn't realize that he's not supposed to say

01:58:05.960 | that the emperor is naked.

01:58:07.980 | The thing about the kid in the story

01:58:10.020 | who says that the emperor is naked

01:58:11.340 | is not that he's saying it,

01:58:12.800 | it's not even that other people hear him saying it,

01:58:17.540 | it's that everybody knows

01:58:19.180 | that everybody else heard him say it, okay?

01:58:23.020 | The kid who speaks out and says the emperor has no clothes

01:58:27.100 | creates a circumstance in which it's common knowledge

01:58:30.100 | that the emperor has no clothes.

01:58:31.340 | Now, common knowledge does not just mean knowledge.

01:58:34.020 | It does not even mean widespread knowledge.

01:58:36.500 | It means comprehensive knowledge

01:58:38.500 | of other person's knowledge of the thing, okay?

01:58:42.540 | So the spiral of silence is a equilibrium

01:58:46.020 | that is susceptible to being undermined

01:58:49.820 | by a process of a kind of cumulative process,

01:58:53.820 | a snowballing process of revelation

01:58:56.300 | that you're not the only one who thinks this way, okay?

01:59:00.260 | - It's fascinating to think that there's an ocean

01:59:02.260 | of common knowledge that we're waiting for the little kid

01:59:05.620 | to wake us up to, different little parts of it.

01:59:09.000 | - That's correct, and the little kid, by the way,

01:59:10.780 | could be somebody like Donald Trump,

01:59:12.620 | only more effective than Donald Trump.

01:59:15.220 | Somebody who is smarter than Donald Trump,

01:59:17.300 | somebody who is shrewder than Donald Trump,

01:59:20.180 | somebody who figures out that when Colin Kaepernick

01:59:25.700 | takes a knee at a football game and says,

01:59:29.140 | "I'm not gonna stand for this president's allegiance,"

01:59:31.420 | that a vast number of people are very unhappy about that.

01:59:36.420 | Somebody who understands that when a Black Lives Matter

01:59:42.220 | activist stands up with his ball fist and says,

01:59:44.980 | "Burn this bitch down," about a city

01:59:47.500 | in the United States of America,

01:59:49.780 | that a lot of people are upset about that, a lot of them.

01:59:52.660 | A person, a shrewd politician,

01:59:55.860 | a shrewd manager of public image

01:59:59.700 | could build on and create a circumstance

02:00:03.940 | in which more and more people will feel safe

02:00:06.620 | to express that view, and the more who express it,

02:00:10.220 | the safer those who have yet to express it,

02:00:12.020 | but who hold it, will feel in expressing it.

02:00:14.980 | And to the extent that the view is very widespread,

02:00:18.060 | but is kept under wraps, an explosion could happen.

02:00:22.020 | And you could look up at tomorrow

02:00:23.020 | and have a very different country than you had today

02:00:26.340 | because the conspiracy of silence, the spiral of silence,

02:00:31.340 | ends up getting unraveled by somebody who steps out

02:00:35.780 | away from the consensus, dares to take the slings and arrows

02:00:39.180 | of exposing themselves as a naysayer,

02:00:41.780 | but taps into a sentiment that's very widespread.

02:00:45.860 | And I fear that with respect to many racial issues,

02:00:50.500 | this is the situation that we actually confront,

02:00:53.940 | that it could unravel in a very ugly way.

02:00:57.220 | - But it could also unravel in a beautiful way.

02:01:00.100 | So it's depending.

02:01:02.260 | There is a spiral of silence, you're saying,

02:01:04.340 | and it could be, 'cause speaking of children,

02:01:07.820 | charismatic children, there's a guy named Elon Musk.

02:01:11.700 | (Lex laughing)

02:01:12.540 | Who might be a candidate for such an unraveling, right?

02:01:16.860 | You mentioned the person that speaks out

02:01:20.060 | could be a Donald Trump, but in this current situation

02:01:23.380 | that we live in, like as this week,

02:01:25.820 | Elon has purchased Twitter.

02:01:28.260 | - That's what I hear.

02:01:29.420 | - And is pushing for, in all kinds of ways,

02:01:34.300 | the increase of free speech on Twitter.

02:01:37.460 | And speaking about some of the issues

02:01:40.480 | that we've been speaking about here with you,

02:01:44.540 | but maybe in broader strokes,

02:01:46.380 | about just the fact that you have to,

02:01:49.260 | it's okay to point out that the emperor wears no clothes

02:01:52.900 | and to do so from all sides in a way

02:01:55.940 | that everybody's a little bit pissed off, but not too much.

02:01:58.900 | What do you think about this whole effort of free speech

02:02:02.660 | in these public platforms?

02:02:06.020 | Elon in particular, Twitter, you're a avid Twitter user,

02:02:10.260 | but just public platforms for discourse

02:02:14.320 | for us as a civilization to figure stuff out.

02:02:18.840 | - Yeah, well, the people on the left are very upset

02:02:22.560 | about the possibility that Elon Musk and Twitter

02:02:26.560 | will be more open to provocative public speech

02:02:33.160 | that has heretofore been banned or suppressed.

02:02:37.300 | And I think they might be right to be concerned

02:02:41.500 | that that could happen.

02:02:42.980 | I don't know enough about the technology

02:02:45.260 | and about the market to really,

02:02:47.660 | social media and whatnot,

02:02:50.420 | it seems like it's a complicated system of interactions

02:02:54.500 | between people and who the users are

02:02:56.340 | and so forth and so on.

02:02:57.540 | I do know that that New York Post story

02:03:02.460 | about Hunter Biden's laptop was real news

02:03:06.300 | and could have affected the outcome of the election

02:03:08.900 | and it was suppressed

02:03:10.500 | and that Twitter had a role in suppressing it.

02:03:14.340 | I do know that the question

02:03:16.700 | of where the COVID-19 virus originated

02:03:19.100 | in the role that a lab leak account could have played

02:03:22.940 | in the public processing of that event was real news

02:03:27.860 | and that it was suppressed by people

02:03:29.820 | who were trying to control misinformation, disinformation,

02:03:33.780 | Russian disinformation campaigns and whatnot.

02:03:36.900 | So Twitter has users, I'm one of them

02:03:40.780 | and it has a lot of users.

02:03:42.120 | It's not as big as Facebook, I gather, it's not,

02:03:44.900 | but it's important, the ability to construct

02:03:49.780 | counter platforms where people moving around and whatnot.

02:03:53.660 | It's a kind of network dynamic

02:03:56.460 | that maybe I should understand it better than I do

02:03:58.500 | being a social scientist, but--

02:04:00.260 | - I don't think anyone understands it,

02:04:01.820 | even people inside Twitter, which is fascinating.

02:04:05.460 | It's a monster because of just the bandwidth of messaging

02:04:09.500 | and you don't know who is a bot and who is a human.

02:04:12.660 | That's a fascinating dynamic.

02:04:14.300 | And the viral nature of negativity.

02:04:19.100 | All of those dynamics, of course,

02:04:22.800 | you are probably the right person to understand it

02:04:25.700 | from a social scientist perspective,

02:04:28.100 | from an economics perspective,

02:04:29.980 | but nobody really understands.

02:04:31.860 | And it's fascinating within that domain,

02:04:34.780 | how do you allow for free speech,

02:04:38.900 | not allow for free speech, encourage free speech,

02:04:41.520 | defend free speech, and at the same time,

02:04:45.300 | manage millions of ongoing conversations

02:04:49.260 | from just becoming insanely chaotic.

02:04:56.340 | Sort of from Twitter perspective,

02:04:58.660 | they want people to be happy, to grow,

02:05:02.020 | to actually have difficult, critical conversations.

02:05:05.420 | And the problem with humans

02:05:07.580 | is they think they know what that is

02:05:09.900 | and they think they can label things as misinformation,

02:05:14.300 | as counterproductive for healthy conversations, in quotes.

02:05:18.780 | And the problem is, as we are learning,

02:05:22.100 | humans are not able to do that effectively.

02:05:25.280 | First of all, power corrupts.

02:05:27.780 | There's something delicious about having the power

02:05:30.920 | to label something as misinformation.

02:05:33.180 | You do that once for something

02:05:35.780 | that might be obviously misinformation,

02:05:37.820 | and then you start getting greedy.

02:05:39.780 | You start getting excited.

02:05:40.940 | It feels good.

02:05:41.900 | It feels good to label something as misinformation

02:05:45.940 | or disinformation that you just don't like.

02:05:48.860 | And over time, especially if there's a culture

02:05:51.020 | inside of a company that leans a certain political direction

02:05:55.140 | or leans, in all the groups that we talked about,

02:05:57.540 | leans a certain way, they'll start to label

02:06:01.260 | as misinformation things they just don't like.

02:06:03.660 | And that power is delicious and it corrupts.

02:06:07.540 | You have to construct mechanisms,

02:06:08.980 | like the Founding Fathers did,

02:06:10.580 | for somehow preventing you from allowing that power

02:06:14.700 | to get too delicious.

02:06:15.840 | At least that's my perspective on what's going on.

02:06:19.700 | - Well, I'll just tell you personally,

02:06:21.300 | I'm excited about the prospect.

02:06:23.340 | I'm glad to see Musk making the move that he's making,

02:06:25.860 | and we'll see what happens at Twitter and so forth.

02:06:29.100 | - You're looking forward for the, what did he say?

02:06:33.180 | Let's make Twitter more fun.

02:06:35.140 | I'm looking forward to the fun.

02:06:38.160 | You've talked about, you are at a prestigious university.

02:06:43.220 | - Brown University.

02:06:44.220 | - Brown University.

02:06:45.400 | And you've mentioned that universities might be in trouble.

02:06:50.220 | I think it's with Jordan, but everywhere else,

02:06:52.400 | the barbarians are at the gate.

02:06:54.980 | Who are the barbarians at the gate of the university?

02:06:59.740 | So first of all, what is to you beautiful

02:07:03.540 | about the ideal of the university in America, of academia?

02:07:08.540 | And what is a threat?

02:07:12.100 | - Well, you know, a university is dedicated

02:07:15.300 | to the pursuit of truth,

02:07:18.420 | and to the education and nurturing of young people

02:07:23.420 | as they enter into the pursuit of truth,

02:07:26.600 | to doing research and to teaching

02:07:28.840 | in a environment of free inquiry and civil discourse.

02:07:34.720 | So free inquiry means you go wherever the evidence

02:07:40.880 | and your imagination may lead you,

02:07:43.560 | and civil discourse means that you exchange arguments

02:07:46.540 | with people when you don't agree with them

02:07:48.180 | on behalf of trying to get to the bottom of things.

02:07:50.680 | I think the university is a magnificent institution.

02:07:56.560 | It is a relatively modern institution.

02:08:00.400 | I mean, last 500 years or so,

02:08:02.760 | I mean, there are universities that are older than that,

02:08:04.680 | but the great research universities of the world,

02:08:08.520 | not only here in the United States,

02:08:10.900 | are places where human ingenuity is nurtured,

02:08:15.400 | where new knowledge is created,

02:08:18.160 | and where young people are equipped to answer questions

02:08:22.920 | that are open questions about our existence

02:08:26.260 | in the world that we live in.

02:08:27.960 | You can trace to the university much,

02:08:30.940 | if not most of the advances in technology

02:08:34.900 | and resourcefulness and our understanding

02:08:36.720 | of the origins of the species,

02:08:38.500 | of the nature of the universe, cosmology, et cetera,

02:08:41.560 | science, the pursuit of humanistic understanding,

02:08:45.600 | the nurturing of traditions of inquiry,

02:08:48.160 | so forth, so that's the university.

02:08:50.440 | Barbarians at the gates.

02:08:51.800 | The people who are trying to shut down open inquiry

02:08:56.080 | at the university on behalf of their particular view

02:08:59.140 | about things are a threat to what the university stands for,

02:09:04.140 | and they should be resisted.

02:09:06.400 | So if I'm inquiring about the nature of human intelligence,

02:09:13.280 | and I wanna study differences between human populations

02:09:16.320 | and their acquisition of,

02:09:18.120 | or their expression of cognitive ability,

02:09:22.020 | that's fair game, it's an open question.

02:09:24.600 | If I wanna know something about the nature

02:09:27.240 | of gender affiliation and identity

02:09:31.280 | and gender dysphoria and whatnot,

02:09:34.580 | that's fair game to study in a university.

02:09:36.440 | You can't shut that down, you shouldn't be able to,

02:09:40.000 | by saying, I have a particular position here,

02:09:44.040 | I'm a member of a particular identity group,

02:09:45.760 | suppose I wanna study the history of colonialism,

02:09:49.160 | and there's a narrative on the progressive side,

02:09:53.440 | which is colonialism's about Europeans dominating

02:09:56.480 | and stealing or whatever, whatever,

02:09:57.920 | and I happen to think, well, there's another aspect

02:10:00.480 | to the story about colonialism too,

02:10:02.040 | which is that it's a mechanism for the diffusion

02:10:05.080 | of the best in human civilization

02:10:06.800 | to populations that were significantly lagging behind.

02:10:10.400 | With respect to that, it brought literacy

02:10:12.900 | to the southern hemispheric populations

02:10:15.360 | that were dominated in the process of the colonizing thing.

02:10:19.060 | It's complicated.

02:10:20.160 | I'm not taking that position, by the way.

02:10:22.240 | I'm just saying somebody at a university

02:10:24.760 | should be able to take it up and pursue it

02:10:28.540 | and engage in argument with people about it.

02:10:30.280 | I'm talking about race and ethnicity,

02:10:31.840 | but this extends to a wide range of things.

02:10:34.600 | Suppose we're talking about climate,

02:10:36.680 | and one person says the Earth is endangered

02:10:38.720 | because carbon in global warming, et cetera, et cetera,

02:10:42.520 | and another person says, no, wait, no, wait,

02:10:44.760 | look at where we stand in the 21st century.

02:10:48.160 | We're vastly richer than our ancestors just 250 years ago.

02:10:51.400 | We have much more knowledge about that

02:10:53.240 | and so forth and so on.

02:10:54.080 | 250 years from now, human ingenuity will have devised

02:10:59.080 | in ways that we cannot even begin to anticipate

02:11:02.760 | all manner of technological means for managing the problem.

02:11:07.760 | There's no reason that we should shut down

02:11:11.360 | industrial civilization today

02:11:14.320 | because we fear the consequences of it

02:11:16.880 | when in fact we are vastly richer than our ancestors

02:11:20.480 | and those who come up two centuries after us

02:11:22.280 | will be vastly more effective at dealing with problems

02:11:25.840 | than we are now.

02:11:27.240 | Let's, it's, you know, et cetera.

02:11:28.560 | I'm not actually making that argument.

02:11:30.780 | I'm just saying the tendency to try to say,

02:11:34.600 | oh no, that person is a climate denier.

02:11:36.920 | They can't pursue that area of inquiry

02:11:40.200 | is against the spirit of the university.

02:11:44.400 | I think the barbarians at the gates

02:11:47.080 | has to do with the people who think they know

02:11:50.440 | what the right side of history is

02:11:52.060 | and try to make the university stand

02:11:54.140 | on the right side of history.

02:11:55.600 | My position is you don't know

02:11:58.620 | what the right side of history is.

02:12:01.140 | And the purpose of a university

02:12:02.840 | is to equip you to be able to think about

02:12:05.040 | what is the right side of history?

02:12:07.480 | What is the solution to the dilemmas that confront us

02:12:11.880 | as human beings living on this planet

02:12:14.440 | with the billions that we are in the condition that we are?

02:12:17.720 | So the identitarians,

02:12:22.440 | the ones who want to make the university

02:12:24.360 | kowtow to their particular understandings

02:12:28.940 | about their own identity.

02:12:30.400 | We now have at Brown University and various other places,

02:12:36.100 | we don't do Columbus Day anymore.

02:12:38.300 | We do Indigenous Peoples Day.

02:12:40.600 | When that day comes up in October,

02:12:42.900 | we don't talk about Columbus.

02:12:44.340 | They're taking down statues of Columbus

02:12:45.940 | all across the country and so forth and so on.

02:12:48.620 | I'm not arguing anything here other than

02:12:52.000 | that the latter day position,

02:12:56.260 | BIPOCs, black, indigenous, and other people of color,

02:13:03.520 | the latter day position that the university has to reflect

02:13:07.580 | a particular sensibility about these identity questions,

02:13:12.000 | I think it's a threat to the integrity of the enterprise.

02:13:14.880 | - I don't think you're overstating it.

02:13:16.560 | I tend to be, just from my limited knowledge

02:13:21.000 | of MIT, but perhaps it applies broadly.

02:13:25.360 | I think the beauty of the university, broadly speaking,

02:13:29.880 | is the faculty and the students.

02:13:31.960 | And the problem arises from the overreach

02:13:38.520 | of a overgrowing administration

02:13:46.040 | that gives, again, thinks that it knows enough

02:13:51.040 | to make rules and conclusions based on a set of beliefs,

02:13:56.120 | and then based on that, empowers a certain small selection

02:14:00.180 | of students to be the sort of voices of activism,

02:14:04.880 | of a particular idea.

02:14:07.080 | And not, I think activism is beautiful,

02:14:10.080 | but not just activism,

02:14:11.320 | but anybody that disagrees is shut down.

02:14:14.760 | And that, I think, the blame lies with the administration.

02:14:19.760 | So I think the solution is in lessening,

02:14:23.220 | just like the solution with too big of a government,

02:14:25.680 | too big of a bureaucracy,

02:14:27.200 | is there needs to be a redistribution of power

02:14:32.080 | to what makes universities beautiful,

02:14:34.640 | which is the old students and the young students,

02:14:38.840 | old students being professors.

02:14:42.240 | So the scholars, the curious minds,

02:14:45.920 | the people that are in this whole thing

02:14:48.140 | to explore the world, to be curious about it,

02:14:51.180 | on a salary that's probably way too low

02:14:53.340 | for the thing they're doing.

02:14:54.720 | That's the whole point.

02:14:57.000 | And then the administration just gets in the way

02:15:01.080 | and is the source of this kind of,

02:15:05.800 | I would say that, in your beautiful phrasing,

02:15:08.980 | I would say the administration is the barbarians

02:15:11.300 | at the gate.

02:15:12.180 | So the solution is smaller bureaucracies,

02:15:15.440 | smaller administrations.

02:15:16.880 | I have to, on this point, you had this conversation,

02:15:18.920 | you put on your self-stack with Jordan Peterson

02:15:23.160 | about cognitive inequality.

02:15:25.400 | I think it's titled "Wrestling with Cognitive Inequality."

02:15:28.400 | This particular topic of just IQ differences between groups,

02:15:34.540 | why is this, why is it so dangerous to talk about?

02:15:40.380 | Why this particular topic?

02:15:42.880 | - Well, it's like you're calling black people inferior.

02:15:45.060 | It's like you're saying they're genetically inferior.

02:15:46.920 | That's what people are saying.

02:15:48.560 | It's like you're rationalizing the disparity of outcomes

02:15:51.840 | by reference to the intrinsic inferiority of black people.

02:15:55.960 | If you say cognitive ability matters for social outcomes,

02:16:00.960 | if you say cognitive ability exists,

02:16:03.660 | people really are different

02:16:04.680 | in terms of their intellectual functioning.

02:16:07.240 | And if you say cognitive ability differences

02:16:09.920 | are substantial between racially defined populations,

02:16:14.920 | the sum of that, there is cognitive ability,

02:16:17.200 | it matters, and it differs by race,

02:16:19.260 | is the conclusion that outcome differences by race

02:16:22.700 | are in part due to natural differences

02:16:26.240 | between the populations.

02:16:28.000 | People find that to be completely offensive

02:16:30.800 | and unacceptable.

02:16:32.200 | So that's what I think is going on.

02:16:34.040 | - Can you steel man that case

02:16:37.240 | that we should be careful doing that kind of research?

02:16:40.600 | So this has to do with research.

02:16:46.480 | It's like the Nazis used Nietzsche in their propaganda.

02:16:51.520 | You can use, white supremacists could use conclusions,

02:16:58.500 | cherry pick conclusions of studies to push their agenda.

02:17:04.880 | Can you steel man the case that we should be careful?

02:17:07.040 | - Yeah, I can do it at three levels.

02:17:08.520 | One is, what do we mean by cognitive ability?

02:17:11.520 | So there's many different kinds of intelligence

02:17:13.640 | a person might say.

02:17:15.360 | How good are IQ tests at measuring

02:17:18.240 | other kinds of human capacities

02:17:20.760 | that are pertinent to success in life,

02:17:24.240 | like temperament, like emotional intelligence, and so on.

02:17:27.680 | So intelligence is not a one dimensional thing

02:17:31.000 | measured by G.

02:17:32.660 | The cognitive psychologists talk about G,

02:17:36.000 | the general intelligence factor,

02:17:38.440 | which is a statistical construction.

02:17:41.400 | It's a factor analytic resolution of the correlation

02:17:46.400 | across individuals in their performance on a battery

02:17:49.720 | of different kind of tests.

02:17:50.720 | And they use that to define a general factor of intelligence

02:17:55.720 | and a person could say, that is a very narrow view

02:17:59.880 | of what human mental capacities actually are.

02:18:04.760 | And that it's much better to think about

02:18:07.880 | multi-dimensional measures of human mental functioning

02:18:12.520 | rather than a single cognitive ability measure,

02:18:15.320 | a so-called IQ, which is a narrow construction

02:18:20.320 | that doesn't capture all of the subtle nuance

02:18:26.160 | of human difference in functioning.

02:18:28.280 | Functioning is not just the ability to recite backwards

02:18:33.860 | a sequence of numbers, I say, eight, seven, nine,

02:18:36.080 | five, three, two, you say, two, three, five, seven, eight,

02:18:39.220 | nine, it's not just that.

02:18:40.980 | Intelligence is a complex management

02:18:45.980 | of many different dimensions of human performance,

02:18:49.600 | including things like being able to stick with a task

02:18:54.600 | and not give up, things like being able to discipline

02:18:58.800 | and control your impulses so as to remain focused

02:19:02.040 | and so forth.

02:19:03.520 | That could be one dimension.

02:19:04.580 | I could start by questioning the very foundation

02:19:07.520 | of the argument for racial differences

02:19:10.580 | in cognitive ability by saying that your measure

02:19:14.580 | of cognitive ability is flawed.

02:19:18.320 | I could go to a higher level.

02:19:19.820 | I could say, what we're really interested in

02:19:23.840 | is social outcomes and the question of what factors

02:19:28.840 | influence social outcomes extends well beyond

02:19:31.440 | mental ability to many other things.

02:19:33.960 | So here's an example.

02:19:35.400 | Visual acuity, how well do you see?

02:19:41.980 | You're not wearing glasses, I am.

02:19:43.920 | Visual acuity varies between human beings.

02:19:48.960 | Some people see better than other people do.

02:19:52.160 | Visual acuity can be measured.

02:19:54.680 | I can put you at the chart and you can,

02:19:57.040 | can you identify and read that bottom line

02:19:58.800 | in small print or not?

02:20:00.280 | So we can measure visual acuity and it varies

02:20:02.580 | between human beings.

02:20:04.000 | Visual acuity is partly genetic.

02:20:07.520 | I think that's undoubtedly true.

02:20:09.860 | We inherit genes that influence whether or not

02:20:12.200 | we are nearsighted or farsighted or astigmatic or whatever.

02:20:15.880 | So visual acuity differs between people

02:20:19.640 | and can be measured and is under genetic control.

02:20:23.720 | On the other hand, corrective lenses allow for us

02:20:28.060 | to level the playing field between people

02:20:29.740 | who are differently endowed in terms of visual acuity.

02:20:34.120 | Likewise, social outcomes are what we're really interested

02:20:37.200 | in, employment, earnings, whether or not

02:20:40.520 | they're law abiding, how do they conduct themselves

02:20:42.920 | and their families and so forth amongst individuals.

02:20:45.720 | Yes, social outcomes are influenced by so-called

02:20:48.720 | cognitive ability, but they're influenced

02:20:50.240 | by many other things as well.

02:20:52.360 | If there are interventions that can be undertaken

02:20:55.540 | in society that level the playing field

02:20:58.240 | between people who have different natural endowments

02:21:00.440 | of cognitive ability, the fact that people

02:21:03.280 | or groups differ in cognitive ability

02:21:05.840 | becomes less significant.

02:21:07.540 | Just like it's less significant that people differ

02:21:10.140 | with respect to how well they see when corrective lenses

02:21:13.440 | allow for the leveling of that playing field.

02:21:16.960 | There are in fact interventions, educational interventions,

02:21:20.760 | early childhood interventions that have been shown

02:21:23.760 | to level the playing field to create better life outcomes

02:21:26.800 | for people even if they happen to be endowed

02:21:30.000 | with low intelligence.

02:21:31.000 | So a second level of arguing against this whole program

02:21:35.360 | of research on human differences in intelligence

02:21:38.240 | is to observe that yes, human beings

02:21:40.360 | and perhaps racially defined groups may differ

02:21:43.320 | on the average in intellectual endowment,

02:21:46.560 | but there well may be social interventions

02:21:49.120 | that level the playing field, whether it's in education

02:21:52.000 | or in other kinds of programmatic interventions,

02:21:55.160 | especially for the poor.

02:21:57.280 | A final level of argument is the one that you alluded to,

02:21:59.880 | which is that if you talk like this,

02:22:02.100 | you're gonna encourage a kind of politics

02:22:04.260 | which is very ugly, and it's best to frame the discussion

02:22:09.260 | in ways that don't put emphasis on racially defined

02:22:14.480 | natural differences between populations.

02:22:17.600 | That's an argument that I am myself personally

02:22:21.360 | conflicted about.

02:22:24.420 | On the one hand, I think, you know,

02:22:27.280 | those people are just stupid, it is racist, okay?

02:22:32.280 | On the other hand, I think the calculation,

02:22:36.520 | we shouldn't do this kind of research.

02:22:38.160 | Suppose I'm at the National Science Foundation,

02:22:40.080 | a research team submits a proposal,

02:22:42.360 | the proposal proposes to undertake a study,

02:22:44.760 | the study would explore the extent to which people

02:22:48.540 | and racial groups differ with respect

02:22:50.480 | to their intellectual performance

02:22:52.520 | and how that's influenced by their genetic

02:22:55.020 | and environmental interaction.

02:22:56.860 | And I decide not to fund the study

02:22:59.120 | based on a political calculation

02:23:01.840 | that the subject is too sensitive,

02:23:04.600 | and if you explore that subject,

02:23:06.580 | you might get the wrong answer,

02:23:08.280 | and if you get the wrong answer,

02:23:09.900 | the white supremacist will be encouraged.

02:23:12.480 | Well, that is presuming before the research is done

02:23:17.480 | that I know the outcome of the research

02:23:19.780 | and that I can calculate what the political consequence

02:23:23.060 | of the research outcome is gonna be.

02:23:25.280 | That's assuming the thing before you even know

02:23:27.680 | what the thing actually is, it's a kind of omniscience.

02:23:30.400 | It presumes that you as the master of the universe

02:23:35.400 | can tell people what it is that people

02:23:38.120 | are being treated like children,

02:23:39.380 | what it is that they're capable of knowing

02:23:41.540 | and what it is that they're not capable of knowing.

02:23:44.080 | It would be like someone saying to Einstein,

02:23:47.480 | I don't know about that special relativity theory,

02:23:49.760 | you know, it could well lead to the development

02:23:52.320 | of technologies that would allow nuclear weapons,

02:23:54.400 | or someone saying to Oppenheimer,

02:23:55.760 | who was a physicist overseeing the Manhattan Project

02:23:58.860 | where the US developed nuclear weapons capacity,

02:24:02.160 | don't carry out that project because the results

02:24:07.000 | of acquiring that knowledge may be more

02:24:08.840 | than we can deal with.

02:24:10.440 | Or someone saying to someone doing biomedical research

02:24:13.720 | who's interested in exploring the nature of the human genome,

02:24:19.240 | don't carry out that experiment,

02:24:20.920 | that cloning undertaking, whatever,

02:24:22.760 | because the consequences could be deleterious.

02:24:26.040 | Well, the consequences could be deleterious.

02:24:27.800 | The consequences could also be the cure of cancer.

02:24:30.200 | The consequences could also be being able

02:24:32.480 | to generate electric power

02:24:33.700 | without producing carbon effluent.

02:24:36.720 | So who are you to tell me, you being the person

02:24:40.640 | in the political position to control the research,

02:24:44.160 | what the consequence of doing the research is?

02:24:46.120 | I think I don't want to cede that kind of power

02:24:50.840 | to politicians over the course of human inquiry.

02:24:55.840 | So yes, I would want there to be regulations

02:24:59.760 | governing the use of biologically sensitive

02:25:03.920 | and potentially dangerous pathogens in a lab,

02:25:07.360 | in Wuhan, or anyplace else.

02:25:10.120 | I would not want to simply leave that to laissez-faire.

02:25:13.320 | On the other hand, I think that the tendency

02:25:16.680 | to try to shut down inquiry on behalf

02:25:20.440 | of supposed adverse political consequences

02:25:24.260 | is the road to ignorance and impoverishment

02:25:27.660 | at the end of the day for humankind,

02:25:29.500 | denying ourselves the potential benefits

02:25:31.620 | of that kind of inquiry.

02:25:33.120 | I think we need to take our chances with inquiry

02:25:35.680 | rather than to try to control it.

02:25:37.080 | And I feel that way about the exploration

02:25:39.440 | of human intelligence as much as anything else.

02:25:42.820 | - So you've asked me to steel man the case

02:25:44.680 | against research on IQ of the sort

02:25:47.560 | that Charles Murray is famous for popularizing.

02:25:51.200 | And I've said, A, your measure of intelligence

02:25:54.820 | is single-dimensional and it ought to be multi-dimensional.

02:25:58.360 | I've said, B, the consequences of people's differing

02:26:02.040 | in intelligence depends not only

02:26:04.000 | on the natural endowments of the people,

02:26:05.900 | but also on the environment and the potential

02:26:09.820 | for intervening in that environment

02:26:12.320 | through one or another kind of instrument

02:26:14.320 | as the metaphorical example of the use

02:26:17.360 | of corrective lenses to level the playing field

02:26:20.080 | between people with different visual acuity indicates.

02:26:25.040 | But finally, I've said, yes, research on racial differences

02:26:29.600 | in IQ can foster political beliefs

02:26:33.840 | that we would regard to be obnoxious.

02:26:38.360 | On the other hand, to presume that what we don't know yet

02:26:41.680 | and might find out from the research is gonna be harmful

02:26:44.920 | is to assume a kind of presumption

02:26:48.280 | or of knowing what the outcome of unknown processes might be,

02:26:52.840 | which we ought to be very slow to embrace,

02:26:55.740 | because if we had done so in the past,

02:26:57.840 | we wouldn't have nuclear power.

02:27:00.000 | There's a lot of things that we wouldn't know.

02:27:01.160 | I mean, what were people saying about Darwin

02:27:03.360 | and exploration of the evolution and origin of the species?

02:27:07.960 | They were afraid that it was gonna, in effect,

02:27:10.360 | disprove the religious-based accounts of,

02:27:14.520 | what were they saying about Copernicus and et cetera,

02:27:17.440 | et cetera, so, you know.

02:27:19.760 | - That was a masterful layering of, quote,

02:27:24.760 | wrestling with the cognitive inequality.

02:27:26.840 | You dragged in nuclear research,

02:27:28.560 | Copernicus, Darwin, biomedical research with genetics,

02:27:32.800 | even COVID and the lab leak.

02:27:37.160 | I mean, that was just fun to listen to.

02:27:39.880 | Okay. - Okay.

02:27:40.720 | (Lex laughing)

02:27:42.920 | - Let me ask you about your politics.

02:27:44.840 | So you've recently said that you're a conservative-leaning.

02:27:48.440 | Maybe that's a day-to-day thing.

02:27:51.040 | Maybe you can push back.

02:27:52.200 | So you have somebody like your friend, John McWhorter,

02:27:55.880 | who we could say is on your left, to the left of you,

02:28:01.720 | and then you have somebody like Thomas Sowell,

02:28:05.680 | who maybe is to the right of you.

02:28:09.440 | - Yeah, probably.

02:28:10.280 | - And yet there's a lot of overlap between the three of you.

02:28:14.040 | So to what degree does politics affect your view on race

02:28:19.040 | in America, and maybe to what degree does your view

02:28:24.680 | on race affect your politics?

02:28:26.700 | - Okay.

02:28:29.400 | - And that, for people who don't know,

02:28:31.520 | has shifted over time.

02:28:33.840 | You've been on quite a rollercoaster,

02:28:36.240 | as anybody who thinks about the world should be.

02:28:39.760 | - Well, let's begin with the fact that I was trained

02:28:44.760 | as an economist in a tradition

02:28:48.080 | of what many people would call neoliberalism.

02:28:52.760 | I was trained at MIT, which was not a right-wing place

02:28:57.760 | by any means, but it was a place where you learned

02:29:02.960 | about markets and about the benefits

02:29:06.760 | of capitalism as a way of organizing society,

02:29:11.760 | the virtues of free enterprise,

02:29:16.200 | the fact that the pursuit of profit

02:29:18.000 | was not necessarily a bad thing,

02:29:19.660 | but it well might be the road to prosperity

02:29:22.740 | and to economic growth, the idea that private property

02:29:26.020 | and individuals seeking to acquire and succeeding

02:29:29.180 | in acquiring wealth did create inequality,

02:29:33.280 | but it also created opportunity,

02:29:35.040 | and it also expanded our knowledge and our control

02:29:38.080 | over the physical environment in which we're embedded,

02:29:40.640 | and et cetera.

02:29:41.960 | So we were not Marxists at MIT,

02:29:47.120 | although we did read Marx.

02:29:48.200 | I mean, those of us who were intellectually curious,

02:29:50.120 | you read Marx.

02:29:50.960 | Marx was an important figure in the history of the West,

02:29:53.920 | and I think Marx should be read in Capital,

02:29:56.720 | three volumes, et cetera,

02:29:58.760 | alienation of labor and whatnot,

02:30:01.720 | the implications of modernization,

02:30:04.360 | of the advent of industrial capitalism, et cetera,

02:30:08.920 | that kind of dynamic deserves to be studied

02:30:12.480 | and to come at it in a critical way,

02:30:15.080 | informed by the intellectual inheritance of Marx and Marxism.

02:30:21.380 | I think that's a part of a full education

02:30:23.840 | in social philosophy and economic analysis

02:30:28.340 | that open-minded person ought to acquaint themselves with.

02:30:32.320 | But at the end of the day,

02:30:33.320 | I think that the free marketeers have the better of it.

02:30:38.320 | I think the story of the 20th century,

02:30:43.180 | as far as economic development is concerned, reflects that.

02:30:47.860 | I think that the experiments

02:30:49.260 | where centralized control over economic decisions

02:30:54.260 | was the order of the day failed.

02:30:57.680 | I think that the fact of the 21st century rise of China

02:31:01.860 | as a force has a lot to do with the spread of, in effect,

02:31:06.740 | capitalist-oriented modes of economic exchange,

02:31:11.460 | freeing up prices, markets, property, and so forth,

02:31:15.500 | although obviously it's a complicated

02:31:18.020 | political economic system, I'm talking about China.

02:31:21.320 | But I think that the story of the 20th century

02:31:26.040 | and the hope for the 21st century

02:31:28.240 | is that prosperity is enhanced

02:31:31.660 | through the free exchange of goods

02:31:35.740 | and the pursuit and acquisition of property

02:31:40.100 | by people in a more or less capitalist-oriented system.

02:31:45.100 | That's the view that I hold.

02:31:49.860 | I guess that makes me a conservative, I don't know.

02:31:52.340 | I wanna say that's not to the exclusion

02:31:56.560 | of a social safety net.

02:31:58.400 | I'm not saying that old people in an ideal social system

02:32:02.800 | would be left to their own devices

02:32:04.440 | regardless of whether or not

02:32:05.440 | they had saved for their retirement.

02:32:07.340 | I'm not saying that the ideal

02:32:11.080 | of extending decent access to healthcare to all people,

02:32:15.280 | regardless of whether or not they can afford it,

02:32:18.000 | decent access to education to people,

02:32:20.840 | regardless of whether or not they can afford it,

02:32:22.920 | is standing in the way of prosperity.

02:32:25.680 | I don't believe that.

02:32:26.940 | I think the mixed economies that we see in Northern Europe

02:32:29.560 | and in North America are a balancing

02:32:34.560 | of the virtues of free enterprise, property,

02:32:37.880 | and the pursuit of wealth on the one hand

02:32:40.480 | against the needs to have a decent society

02:32:44.200 | in which people who fall between the cracks,

02:32:46.560 | nevertheless, are bolstered

02:32:49.080 | through a sense of social solidarity

02:32:51.560 | that is accommodated by our common membership

02:32:54.520 | within a single nation state,

02:32:56.840 | which is why I think nationalism is important,

02:32:59.240 | and it's why I think borders are important,

02:33:02.120 | because without a coherent polity

02:33:06.440 | who can see themselves as in a common situation

02:33:11.440 | and agree through their politics

02:33:15.080 | to support each other to some extent,

02:33:17.480 | you can't sustain a safety net,

02:33:18.940 | you cannot have a social safety net for a global population,

02:33:23.040 | you can only have a social safety net

02:33:24.640 | for a bounded population

02:33:27.000 | who have a sense of common membership

02:33:30.040 | in an ongoing political enterprise,

02:33:33.000 | which they pay their dues through their taxes

02:33:35.640 | in order to sustain it.

02:33:36.920 | There's a balancing that has to go on.

02:33:38.880 | So that's the first thing that I would say about my politics.

02:33:42.160 | I'm a neoliberal economist.

02:33:44.000 | I believe in markets, I believe in prices,

02:33:46.160 | I believe in profit.

02:33:47.760 | Corporations are not an incarnation of evil.

02:33:51.020 | Corporations are a legal nexus

02:33:53.460 | through which production gets organized

02:33:56.580 | in which you solicit the cooperation of workers,

02:34:00.460 | of people who provide capital,

02:34:02.340 | of people who provide raw materials

02:34:04.020 | and input of customers, and so on,

02:34:06.700 | and that functionality allows for the production of goods

02:34:11.700 | and their distribution and their earning of income

02:34:16.580 | and its distribution, which at the end of the day

02:34:20.480 | is the foundation of our prosperity.

02:34:22.160 | Corporations are people too.

02:34:23.440 | Mitt Romney got in trouble for saying that in 2012.

02:34:26.640 | But corporations are nothing but a legal fiction.

02:34:28.720 | The corporation is not a person as such,

02:34:32.080 | but the nexus of contracts and relationships

02:34:35.060 | amongst the stakeholders who intersect

02:34:38.040 | in the context of the corporation

02:34:41.280 | is the way in which we organize

02:34:43.180 | the massively complex set of activities

02:34:46.320 | that are necessary in order to produce economic benefits,

02:34:50.920 | in order to feed people,

02:34:52.000 | in order to have everybody with a cell phone in their pocket,

02:34:54.980 | in order to be able to travel from one side of a continent

02:34:57.840 | to another on a device that is with almost absolute certainty

02:35:01.660 | gonna safely take off and land,

02:35:03.980 | and in order to be able to build cities, et cetera.

02:35:07.480 | - But to the markets, the ideal of the market

02:35:10.560 | collide with the ideal of all men are created equal.

02:35:14.920 | The identity, the struggle that we've been talking about

02:35:17.720 | of what it means to sort of empower humans

02:35:21.340 | that make up this great country,

02:35:23.280 | do they collide and where do they collide?

02:35:26.280 | - Well, markets are gonna produce inequality,

02:35:29.320 | and all men being equal is a statement

02:35:32.220 | about the intrinsic worth of people,

02:35:34.420 | not about the situation that will come about

02:35:36.960 | when people interact with each other through markets,

02:35:39.300 | because people are actually different.

02:35:41.840 | And because there are factors

02:35:43.120 | that are beyond anybody's control called luck and chance

02:35:46.240 | that you and I both invest,

02:35:49.240 | it looked a priori like your investment and my investment

02:35:51.520 | were equally likely to succeed.

02:35:53.640 | But as a matter of fact, ex post facto,

02:35:55.640 | your investment succeeds, my investment doesn't succeed.

02:35:58.840 | I don't have wealth and you have wealth.

02:36:01.020 | That is an inevitable consequence of a environment

02:36:04.280 | in which both of us are free to make our investment choices

02:36:07.640 | and where the consequences of investment

02:36:09.800 | depend in part upon random circumstances

02:36:12.600 | of which no one has control.

02:36:14.760 | But you asked me about my politics

02:36:16.360 | and I was just trying to lay down a foundation

02:36:18.420 | by saying I begin as an economist

02:36:22.440 | in the tradition of liberalism, Adam Smith and so forth,

02:36:27.000 | John Maynard Keynes for that matter and so forth,

02:36:29.400 | that Milton Friedman and so forth,

02:36:34.400 | that Paul Samuelson, Bob Solow, James Tobin and so forth,

02:36:42.280 | Thomas Sowell, yes, that appreciates property,

02:36:46.700 | the virtues of free enterprise,

02:36:49.240 | the set of institutions that allow for security of contract,

02:36:55.320 | a rule of law, things of this kind.

02:36:59.120 | So that's one thing to say about my politics.

02:37:02.120 | Another thing to say about my politics,

02:37:03.600 | and you're right, I've moved around,

02:37:06.120 | is that I began South Side of Chicago, black kid,

02:37:09.960 | I was a liberal Democrat.

02:37:12.400 | I encountered the economics curriculum at the MIT

02:37:17.400 | and I became trained in economics

02:37:19.800 | in the tradition that I've just described.

02:37:21.880 | And I encountered also the Reagan Revolution.

02:37:27.480 | This is the late '70s and early '80s.

02:37:30.480 | These are big debates about economic policy and so on.

02:37:34.380 | And I found a lot to admire in the supply siders,

02:37:41.320 | the people who were saying,

02:37:43.360 | let's get the government out of the way,

02:37:45.240 | the people who were worried about national debt,

02:37:47.440 | which is a lot more now than it was then,

02:37:49.520 | the people who were worried that the welfare state

02:37:52.040 | could be too big, that the incentives of transfer programs

02:37:55.360 | could be counterproductive, that you had a war on poverty,

02:37:58.400 | and we did have a war on poverty, and poverty won.

02:38:00.840 | And there's a lot of evidence that the war on poverty

02:38:04.400 | was lost by the people who were trying to,

02:38:06.720 | quote unquote, eradicate poverty in our time.

02:38:09.680 | That incentives really do matter,

02:38:13.520 | and that the state, which is driven by politics,

02:38:17.440 | is often unresponsive to the dictates of incentives,

02:38:20.640 | whereas markets eliminate people who are inefficient

02:38:24.320 | and who are not cognizant of the consequences of incentives

02:38:27.160 | 'cause they can't cover their bottom line

02:38:29.360 | and they won't persist for very long

02:38:31.260 | if they can't cover their bottom line.

02:38:32.560 | They're forced to respond to the realities of differences

02:38:35.720 | in costs and benefits and so forth

02:38:37.400 | in a way that governments can cover

02:38:39.480 | because they have their hand in our pocket.

02:38:41.920 | They can cover their losses and they can make accounts

02:38:45.600 | balanced notwithstanding their mistakes

02:38:47.280 | because they can take my property by fiat,

02:38:50.960 | by the power of the state, the tax collector comes,

02:38:53.240 | if I don't pay, he seizes my holdings,

02:38:56.000 | and they can carry on in that way.

02:38:59.060 | They need the corrective influence of markets

02:39:02.800 | in order to be responsive to the realities of life.

02:39:05.560 | I mean, I may not like it that prices are telling me

02:39:10.520 | that something that I wanna do is infeasible.

02:39:12.880 | I may not like it, but what the prices are telling me

02:39:15.700 | is that the costs of doing it exceed the benefits

02:39:20.300 | to be derived from doing it.

02:39:22.040 | And if I persist in doing it, notwithstanding that,

02:39:24.200 | I'm gonna run losses and those losses will accumulate.

02:39:26.920 | And the net effect of that over an entire society

02:39:30.840 | is stagnation and ultimate attenuation

02:39:34.520 | of the economic benefits that might be available

02:39:36.840 | with people.

02:39:37.680 | Again, I think if you look at the developing world

02:39:40.600 | in the post-colonial period,

02:39:42.040 | the second half of the 20th century,

02:39:43.960 | that's exactly what you see.

02:39:46.000 | Planning doesn't work.

02:39:48.000 | Centralized control over resource allocation doesn't work.

02:39:50.680 | Okay, so I became more conservative in that respect,

02:39:54.840 | but I also, and this has to do with race,

02:39:57.240 | lost faith in the posture of the state

02:40:04.360 | and the posture that what became

02:40:07.680 | of the Civil Rights Movement.

02:40:08.760 | I mean, the Civil Rights Movement, you quote King, 1963,

02:40:11.680 | the Civil Rights Movement starts out as,

02:40:13.800 | we want equal membership in the polity,

02:40:17.880 | but it becomes a systematized cover,

02:40:24.120 | I'm going to argue, for deficiencies

02:40:32.160 | that are discernible within black American society,

02:40:37.160 | which only we could correct.

02:40:38.960 | That's a very controversial statement.

02:40:41.640 | I make it with trepidation.

02:40:43.520 | I don't take any pleasure in saying it,

02:40:47.320 | but here's what I'm talking about.

02:40:49.040 | So I'm talking about the family.

02:40:52.320 | So the family is a matter internal to the community

02:41:00.000 | about how men and women relate to each other

02:41:03.280 | and engage in social reproduction, childbearing,

02:41:06.500 | the standing up of households,

02:41:09.780 | the context within which children are developed,

02:41:12.320 | are maturing, and so forth and so on.

02:41:14.640 | So the African-American family is in trouble.

02:41:17.720 | I think I can demonstrate that by reference

02:41:20.920 | to high rates of marital dissolution,

02:41:24.320 | by high rates of birth out of wedlock and so forth.

02:41:30.000 | You can't even say that,

02:41:32.000 | the African-American family is in trouble.

02:41:34.720 | Violence.

02:41:35.560 | Homicide is an order of magnitude more prevalent

02:41:39.320 | amongst African-Americans

02:41:40.440 | than it is in the society as a whole.

02:41:43.020 | This is behavior, it's behavior of our people.

02:41:46.480 | I speak of black people.

02:41:47.600 | Of course, we're not the only people in society

02:41:49.760 | for whom violence is an issue.

02:41:51.600 | It's an order of magnitude more prevalent

02:41:54.440 | in our communities.

02:41:56.800 | I'm talking about schooling and school failure.

02:42:00.160 | So we have affirmative action as a cover,

02:42:02.800 | it's a band-aid on differences in the development

02:42:06.040 | of intellectual performance,

02:42:07.980 | which is only partly a consequence

02:42:10.260 | of the natural intelligence of people,

02:42:12.800 | and largely a consequence of how people spend their time,

02:42:16.720 | what they value, how they discipline themselves,

02:42:20.140 | what they do with their opportunities,

02:42:23.760 | how parents raise their children,

02:42:25.880 | what peer groups value, and things of this kind.

02:42:28.520 | The Asian students who are scoring off the charts

02:42:30.920 | on these exams are doing it,

02:42:33.220 | not because they're intrinsically more intelligent

02:42:35.400 | to other people, but because they work harder,

02:42:38.220 | because their parents are more insistent

02:42:39.840 | on focusing on their intellectual performance,

02:42:43.200 | because they're disciplined,

02:42:45.100 | because of the way that they devote their time

02:42:46.880 | and their resources to equipping their children

02:42:50.400 | to function in the 21st century.

02:42:52.560 | This is what I believe.

02:42:53.460 | I think it's demonstrably the case,

02:42:55.500 | and it is a factor in racial disparity.

02:43:00.140 | The way that the civil rights movement has evolved

02:43:03.020 | under the wing of the Democratic Party

02:43:05.940 | into an organized apologia

02:43:08.540 | for the failures of African-Americans

02:43:12.660 | to seize the opportunities that exist for us now

02:43:16.020 | in the 21st century, but did not exist

02:43:19.320 | in the first half of the 20th century,

02:43:21.140 | the way in which the civil rights movement has become

02:43:23.740 | an avoidance mechanism for us not taking

02:43:28.340 | we African-Americans responsible,

02:43:29.940 | this is Glenn Lowry, not everybody's gonna agree with it,

02:43:33.260 | is part of what makes me a conservative.

02:43:36.780 | I am tired of the bellyaching.

02:43:38.940 | I'm tired of the excuse me, white supremacy.

02:43:41.520 | It is, in my mind, a joke.

02:43:45.660 | I lament the fact that that kind of rhetoric

02:43:49.260 | is so seductively attractive to African-Americans

02:43:53.900 | and so widely adopted by others.

02:43:57.520 | And as I am fond of saying, at the end of the day,

02:44:02.860 | nobody is coming to save us.

02:44:04.780 | I mean, higher education, MIT, Caltech, Stanford,

02:44:09.340 | where the future is happening,

02:44:12.280 | that is about mastery over the achievements

02:44:17.940 | of human civilization, such as they manifest themselves

02:44:21.500 | in the 21st century.

02:44:22.340 | There's no substitute for actually acquiring mastery

02:44:26.380 | over the material.

02:44:27.380 | There's no substitute for that.

02:44:30.300 | To be patronized, to have the standards lowered,

02:44:34.900 | they wanna get rid of the test.

02:44:37.140 | They wanna tell African-Americans to pat us on the head.

02:44:40.240 | We're gonna have a separate program for you.

02:44:43.060 | We're gonna give you a side door that you can come into.

02:44:45.860 | That doesn't make us any smarter.

02:44:48.100 | It doesn't make us any more creative.

02:44:49.960 | And it doesn't make us any more fit

02:44:54.860 | for the actual competition that's unfolding before us.

02:44:58.400 | Now, you wanna be 10% of the population

02:45:01.460 | that's carried along for the next 100 years?

02:45:04.000 | You wanna be a ward of the state in the late 21st century?

02:45:09.000 | You go ahead, because the Chinese are coming.

02:45:12.220 | You're not gonna hold them back.

02:45:13.780 | The world is being remade every decade

02:45:16.380 | by new ways of seeing and new ways of doing.

02:45:19.680 | If you don't get on board with the dynamic advancement

02:45:23.820 | of the civilization in which we are embedded,

02:45:26.220 | you're gonna end up being dependent on other people

02:45:29.460 | to look kindly upon you.

02:45:31.420 | And this story that you've got, this bellyache,

02:45:35.000 | this excuse, "Ancestors were slaves,"

02:45:41.140 | it's only gonna work for so long.

02:45:45.140 | So that makes me, I suppose, a kind of conservative.

02:45:49.180 | I hate affirmative action.

02:45:51.460 | I don't just disagree with it.

02:45:52.620 | I don't just think it's against the 14th Amendment.

02:45:55.500 | I hate it.

02:45:57.060 | The hatred comes from an understanding

02:45:59.020 | that it is a band-aid, that it is a substitute

02:46:01.540 | for the actual development of the capacities

02:46:03.900 | of our people to compete.

02:46:05.700 | I'd much rather be in the position

02:46:08.440 | of having them try to keep me out

02:46:10.840 | because I'm so damn good,

02:46:12.740 | like they're doing with the Asians,

02:46:15.300 | than having them have to beg the Supreme Court

02:46:18.480 | to allow for a special dispensation on my behalf

02:46:21.220 | because they need diversity and inclusion and belonging.

02:46:25.740 | It's not just diversity.

02:46:27.180 | It's not just diversity and inclusion.

02:46:28.660 | It's diversity and inclusion and belonging.

02:46:31.640 | I'm whining because I feel like I don't belong.

02:46:34.660 | That's a position of weakness.

02:46:37.500 | It's pathetic.

02:46:40.300 | And it's only political correctness

02:46:42.220 | that keeps people who can see this,

02:46:43.900 | and believe me, a lot of people can see it,

02:46:46.060 | from saying so out loud.

02:46:49.300 | - So you want the black American community

02:46:52.300 | to represent strength?

02:46:54.300 | - Correct, and I want us to deal with what it is

02:46:57.020 | that we have to deal with in order to be able

02:46:58.780 | to project strength in an increasingly competitive world.

02:47:03.780 | - Let me ask you,

02:47:09.020 | I know you said you're angry

02:47:10.580 | or dislike affirmative action.

02:47:14.140 | Let me ask you about something

02:47:16.060 | that even to my ear cut wrong.

02:47:19.220 | Now I'm relatively apolitical.

02:47:23.060 | So President Biden, when he was running for president,

02:47:27.220 | gave a campaign promise that he will nominate a black woman

02:47:31.620 | to the US Supreme Court, saying, quote,

02:47:34.460 | "The person I will nominate will be someone

02:47:37.060 | "with extraordinary qualifications, character,

02:47:39.700 | "experience, and integrity," first sentence.

02:47:43.100 | Second sentence, "And that person will be

02:47:45.580 | "the first black woman ever nominated

02:47:47.900 | "to the United States Supreme Court."

02:47:50.720 | Do you wish he only said the first sentence

02:47:53.180 | and not the second?

02:47:54.420 | - Yes, I wish that he had only said the first sentence,

02:47:58.780 | even if his intention was to do what he said

02:48:01.000 | he was gonna do in the second sentence.

02:48:03.580 | In other words, I wish that he had simply said,

02:48:06.300 | if I have the opportunity to nominate someone

02:48:07.980 | to the Supreme Court, it's gonna be

02:48:09.340 | a superbly qualified person to carry out that position.

02:48:13.060 | And he might've kept to himself his intention

02:48:15.420 | to name an African-American woman to that position,

02:48:18.700 | and then going ahead and named an African-American woman

02:48:21.060 | to that position, and I'm sure that Katonji Brown-Jackson.

02:48:25.420 | I don't doubt that she's exceptionally qualified.

02:48:27.220 | She has a distinguished career.

02:48:28.660 | She served as a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

02:48:31.700 | She's a graduate of Harvard Law School.

02:48:33.060 | She has a background.

02:48:34.700 | You do not have to be a world-class

02:48:39.580 | constitutional legal scholar to get onto

02:48:41.820 | the United States Supreme Court.

02:48:43.700 | A lot of members of the United States Supreme Court

02:48:45.860 | have had different kinds of legal careers

02:48:48.580 | before they were elevated to that position.

02:48:50.700 | Earl Warren of the famed Warren Court of the 1950s and '60s

02:48:56.580 | was a politician as well as a leading jurist and whatnot.

02:49:01.140 | I mean, many kinds of people in the US Supreme Court.

02:49:03.220 | I have no doubt that Judge Katonji Brown-Jackson

02:49:06.980 | is a qualified member to be on the Supreme Court.

02:49:10.140 | I wish that Biden had not done what he did.

02:49:13.820 | He could have just appointed a black woman

02:49:16.180 | by saying that he was limiting his considerations

02:49:18.900 | to black women, and what are black women

02:49:20.460 | as a percentage of all potential appointees

02:49:23.460 | to the Supreme Court?

02:49:24.980 | 3%?

02:49:26.660 | 4%?

02:49:27.500 | I don't know, we could look the number up.

02:49:30.740 | By saying that, he puts an asterisk on the appointment,

02:49:33.500 | but it's worse than that,

02:49:34.780 | because she will live down the asterisk

02:49:38.980 | if a person is inclined to do that.

02:49:42.340 | She will have the opportunity to show through her performance

02:49:45.900 | exactly what kind of jurist she is,

02:49:47.300 | just as Justice Clarence Thomas has shown

02:49:49.860 | through his performance that he was qualified

02:49:52.740 | and more than qualified to be

02:49:53.900 | on the United States Supreme Court.

02:49:57.500 | What I disliked was the pandering.

02:49:59.740 | He was seeking votes from black people by pandering to us,

02:50:06.260 | and he's treating us like children.

02:50:09.020 | Why should I care what color the person is

02:50:12.140 | who's on the United States Supreme Court?

02:50:14.420 | What I should care about is what kind of opinions

02:50:17.700 | they're gonna write when they're on the United States.

02:50:20.020 | Do I suppose that being a black woman

02:50:22.020 | means that you're gonna write different kind of opinions

02:50:23.940 | than others?

02:50:24.780 | Perhaps, perhaps.

02:50:27.500 | That kind of identity politics

02:50:30.700 | at the highest level of American legal establishment

02:50:35.100 | is something that rubs me very much the wrong way.

02:50:38.820 | What I should care about is the nature

02:50:42.700 | and the future of the law.

02:50:43.740 | I'm actually struck by this

02:50:45.660 | because the court is conservative.

02:50:49.820 | It has six conservative members on it,

02:50:53.780 | and it has three liberal members on it.

02:50:56.340 | And if I were, and I'm not a liberal Democrat,

02:51:02.660 | the highest concern that I would have

02:51:04.860 | about an appointment to the Supreme Court is,

02:51:07.500 | is this a person who is going to be effective

02:51:11.020 | in advocating my liberal views

02:51:13.980 | within the highest council of American law?

02:51:16.980 | Now, the fact that that person is a woman

02:51:19.940 | or is a black person is way down the list

02:51:23.140 | of the things that I would think are important

02:51:26.300 | to the kinds of opinions that they're going to write.

02:51:29.620 | So, I mean, I think Joe Biden,

02:51:33.340 | this is just a piece of a larger political strategy

02:51:39.380 | to cobble together a coalition

02:51:41.620 | that'll be successful at the polls

02:51:43.940 | in sustaining Democrats.

02:51:45.620 | Jim Crow 2.0, this whole characterization

02:51:49.900 | of the conflict in the States

02:51:52.860 | about election security and voting rights

02:51:56.100 | is another part of that strategy.

02:51:58.420 | He is pandering to black voters.

02:52:01.900 | He is trying to frighten us,

02:52:04.900 | thinking that if the Republicans win,

02:52:06.860 | our rights will be taken away.

02:52:08.660 | And I think it is a infantilization

02:52:14.660 | of African-American politics.

02:52:16.300 | I think black people ought not to be as concerned

02:52:20.300 | about the color of the skin

02:52:21.740 | of a person who is serving in government

02:52:23.900 | as they are about the content of their character

02:52:26.860 | and the focus of their political

02:52:30.620 | and ideological orientation,

02:52:32.740 | which for me would be center or even center-right,

02:52:37.300 | but that's me.

02:52:38.980 | - And it should not have a significant impact.

02:52:41.380 | Nevertheless, he said she can overcome the asterisk,

02:52:43.860 | but to me, it was deeply disrespectful

02:52:46.220 | that anyone would give an extra asterisk

02:52:50.300 | to have to overcome.

02:52:51.620 | He didn't have to say it.

02:52:52.780 | All he had to do was do it.

02:52:53.980 | If he wanted to put a black woman on the court,

02:52:55.620 | then he could have just gone ahead and done it.

02:52:57.380 | The reason he said it is because he wanted black people

02:52:59.700 | to vote for him by saying it.

02:53:01.500 | And I'm saying that treats us like we're children.

02:53:04.460 | - It's not a political statement.

02:53:05.700 | I just thought as a leader,

02:53:06.780 | that was not, that was kind of disgusting.

02:53:11.260 | Let me ask you about Thomas Sowell.

02:53:13.820 | You mentioned him.

02:53:14.740 | He's a colleague and somebody who was an influence.

02:53:19.300 | What, in the space of ideas,

02:53:22.580 | so what broadly, what impact has he had on your ideas?

02:53:27.580 | And how do you think he shaped the landscape of ideas

02:53:32.980 | in our culture in general?

02:53:35.100 | - I think Thomas Sowell, he's in his 90s now.

02:53:37.500 | He's been around for a long time.

02:53:39.100 | - He's still got it.

02:53:40.260 | He's still going at it.

02:53:41.340 | - He's still going at it.

02:53:42.180 | Books continue to come out.

02:53:43.140 | I think he's a great man.

02:53:44.380 | I think Thomas Sowell, regardless of his race,

02:53:49.020 | he's black, is one of the 100

02:53:54.020 | most significant economists of the 20th century.

02:53:57.780 | He has chosen as his subject,

02:53:59.620 | a substantial part of his subject,

02:54:01.300 | subject to investigate the deep causes

02:54:04.940 | and consequences of racial disparity

02:54:07.980 | of one kind or another.

02:54:09.660 | He's written fundamental books about that.

02:54:12.860 | Many of them.

02:54:15.620 | He's a social philosopher.

02:54:17.700 | He is a economic historian.

02:54:20.700 | He is a combatant in the conflict of ideas

02:54:25.700 | around how to think about society

02:54:27.740 | and this beyond racial differences,

02:54:30.180 | although race has been a big part of

02:54:32.020 | what he's written about.

02:54:33.220 | He's been critical of affirmative action,

02:54:35.380 | and he didn't just stand back and wag his finger.

02:54:37.900 | He got busy looking at the consequences

02:54:39.780 | of affirmative action in societies all around the world,

02:54:42.660 | and he's written books about that.

02:54:44.580 | He's been critical of the narrative

02:54:47.380 | about civil rights and racial inequality.

02:54:50.300 | He believes in small government.

02:54:51.740 | He doesn't think that efforts to redistribute income

02:54:55.580 | have proved to be the solution

02:54:57.340 | to the problem of racial disparity.

02:55:00.220 | Tom has not been honored by the committee

02:55:02.700 | that hands out Nobel recognition in economic science

02:55:06.780 | and probably won't be because he's controversial,

02:55:09.380 | and I reckon that that committee would be loath

02:55:13.300 | to encourage the blowback that they would be sure to receive

02:55:16.500 | if they were to take a controversial

02:55:19.300 | and politically focused and expressive

02:55:23.700 | black conservative and honor in that way.

02:55:26.460 | So I think another reason is that Tom,

02:55:29.020 | as a methodological matter,

02:55:31.900 | is not especially quantitative.

02:55:34.220 | He pays attention to data,

02:55:35.340 | but he doesn't do statistical analysis,

02:55:37.860 | and he doesn't do modeling.

02:55:39.820 | So from a methodological point of view,

02:55:41.700 | he's not a cutting edge,

02:55:43.860 | kind of mathematically sophisticated,

02:55:47.740 | kind of quantitatively statistically oriented,

02:55:51.700 | but he does descriptive stuff.

02:55:53.100 | He writes in a style that is much more

02:55:56.740 | like a social historian than it is

02:55:59.420 | like a mathematically trained analytical economist.

02:56:04.100 | On the other hand,

02:56:04.940 | he is an economist in the Chicago School,

02:56:07.420 | Milton Friedman and George Stickler,

02:56:09.900 | prominent amongst his teachers,

02:56:11.860 | who takes price theory,

02:56:15.140 | which is the analysis of the interplay of market forces,

02:56:20.140 | mindful of incentives,

02:56:24.100 | and so on to implement the basic insights

02:56:29.100 | from economic science.

02:56:32.060 | There is no free lunch.

02:56:33.060 | I mean, there's always gonna be a cost

02:56:34.420 | to anything that you do and so on.

02:56:36.420 | People respond to incentives,

02:56:37.660 | demand curve slope downward.

02:56:40.180 | You know, competition tends to work best

02:56:42.100 | when people are free to enter and not, and so on.

02:56:44.980 | I mean, that kind of thing.

02:56:46.780 | But Tom is also a social historian and a philosopher

02:56:51.700 | in the tradition of Friedrich von Hayek.

02:56:54.820 | One of Tom's books I've deeply admired,

02:56:57.820 | "Knowledge and Decisions,"

02:56:59.900 | is an extension of the Hayekian arguments

02:57:02.980 | about the limits of central planning and whatnot.

02:57:08.980 | So I think Tom Sowell, Thomas Sowell,

02:57:13.140 | African-American, born, as I understand it, in Louisiana,

02:57:17.460 | raised in New York City,

02:57:20.500 | graduate of Harvard College, a military veteran,

02:57:23.780 | a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago,

02:57:29.100 | a black conservative social scientist

02:57:31.700 | of very high stature.

02:57:33.380 | I think he's a great man.

02:57:34.500 | - And one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century.

02:57:37.740 | And you're saying implicitly deserves a Nobel Prize.

02:57:42.740 | - Yeah, I do think so.

02:57:45.420 | I mean, Hayek was awarded by the committee.

02:57:49.780 | Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist

02:57:53.100 | who wrote about economic development,

02:57:54.380 | wrote a famous two-volume work,

02:57:56.420 | "An American Dilemma" about the status of blacks.

02:57:59.380 | I mean, I think Tom could be, you know,

02:58:03.580 | put in that company very easily without any difficulty.

02:58:06.020 | - I agree.

02:58:07.060 | - Daniel Kahneman, so it doesn't have to be numerical.

02:58:09.900 | - Psychologist, United Economist,

02:58:11.980 | Eleanor Ostrom, the political scientist

02:58:15.900 | who was honored in a joint prize given to her

02:58:17.980 | and Oliver Williamson 15 years ago or so.

02:58:21.860 | He could be put in that company really quite easily.

02:58:24.620 | - Let me ask you, you mentioned Obama in the very beginning

02:58:29.780 | that we were talking about.

02:58:34.260 | How did it feel that seems like forever ago,

02:58:38.140 | that in 2008, Barack Obama became president?

02:58:41.740 | Now at that time, perhaps you identified

02:58:45.820 | as conservative already, but how did,

02:58:48.940 | so politics aside, just in general,

02:58:53.940 | how did it feel that in 150 years

02:58:59.860 | where this country has come along?

02:59:03.260 | - Well, yeah, I didn't identify in 2008

02:59:07.300 | as a conservative to the same extent that I do today.

02:59:10.740 | I was kind of in transition yet again.

02:59:15.940 | I was excited by the Obama candidacy.

02:59:18.340 | At first I was skeptical because after all, he's not black.

02:59:23.100 | The man's father is a Kenyan

02:59:27.380 | and the man's mother is a white American

02:59:31.780 | and he identifies as black.

02:59:34.980 | I find it interesting that the first black president

02:59:38.660 | of the United States, and I could have put inverted commas

02:59:41.100 | around black, and the first black vice president

02:59:43.980 | of the United States,

02:59:45.860 | neither of them descend from American slaves.

02:59:48.380 | Kamala Harris's father is of African ancestry in part.

02:59:54.660 | He's a Jamaican immigrant

02:59:55.940 | and her mother is an Indian immigrant.

03:00:00.260 | She was Kamala Harris raised up largely in Canada,

03:00:05.260 | though born in the United States.

03:00:11.300 | Barack Obama is, as I've said, of mixed ancestry

03:00:17.260 | and neither of his parents are the descendants

03:00:20.140 | of American descendants of African slaves.

03:00:26.260 | But blackness is flexible.

03:00:30.940 | It's something that you can put on

03:00:35.380 | or you can take off to a certain degree for some people

03:00:38.500 | and so be it.

03:00:41.580 | I was excited.

03:00:43.220 | Our time has come.

03:00:44.540 | Hope and change.

03:00:47.220 | We are the ones we've been waiting for.

03:00:51.060 | These are slogans from 2008.

03:00:54.580 | I can't believe I bought that crap.

03:00:57.500 | - Oh, interesting.

03:00:58.340 | Let me push back here.

03:01:00.060 | You talked about, I mean, to me, a Jew is a Jew.

03:01:04.060 | Skin color is skin color.

03:01:07.700 | I mean, Barack Obama is black when it matters,

03:01:15.100 | when you're talking to a white supremacist,

03:01:20.740 | when you're talking to, if you're a slave owner, he's black.

03:01:25.740 | Just like you said, when Hitler comes around,

03:01:30.660 | a Jew is a Jew.

03:01:31.580 | It doesn't matter how you identify, doesn't matter what.

03:01:35.780 | So in that sense, don't you think that Barack Obama

03:01:40.220 | is black in the most powerful of ways,

03:01:43.380 | which is designating how far the MLK, the Dr. King vision?

03:01:48.380 | - Oh, sure.

03:01:50.140 | And look, I said it a little bit tongue in cheek.

03:01:52.740 | - Yes, yes, of course.

03:01:54.100 | - But I think Obama has been very careful

03:01:57.140 | about manufacturing a kind of public persona

03:02:00.860 | that is intended to position him in the most effective way.

03:02:05.860 | - You mean like every politician?

03:02:10.780 | - Yeah, like every politician, sure.

03:02:12.580 | And that the racial identity piece is an aspect of that.

03:02:17.180 | I mean, anything I say here would only be speculation

03:02:21.300 | because I have no facts about the personal history

03:02:24.180 | of Barack Obama.

03:02:25.020 | And I accept Barack Hussein Obama,

03:02:27.060 | as Hillary Clinton once said,

03:02:29.180 | I take him at his word about whatever she was talking about.

03:02:34.180 | Well, was he a Christian?

03:02:35.820 | I think is what the question was.

03:02:37.700 | And there was some right wing attack on Obama

03:02:40.860 | for having been raised for some years in the Philippines

03:02:45.540 | and all of that, or Indonesia, I beg your pardon,

03:02:48.420 | in Indonesia and his stepfather and all of that.

03:02:51.540 | But she took him at his word and I take him at his word

03:02:54.940 | about his racial identity.

03:02:58.100 | No.

03:02:58.940 | - But you were captivated by the power of his words

03:03:01.700 | and you regret to the degree you were captivated.

03:03:04.380 | - Well, I mean, I think in retrospect,

03:03:06.420 | that whole campaign looks like a pie in the sky

03:03:09.900 | kind of fairy tale.

03:03:13.140 | We are the ones we've been waiting for.

03:03:15.780 | I can't quote exactly that speech

03:03:17.860 | that he gave in Grant Park in Chicago

03:03:19.860 | when he was announced as the winner of the election.

03:03:23.740 | But today is the day that the rise of the ocean stopped,

03:03:27.500 | or words to this effect.

03:03:28.900 | I mean, those who doubted that we could do it,

03:03:32.820 | that tonight is your answer, this was gonna be a new day,

03:03:35.420 | it was gonna be a new regime.

03:03:36.980 | Well, it wasn't a new day and it wasn't a new regime.

03:03:40.100 | It was American politics more or less as usual.

03:03:43.140 | Barack Obama turns out not to be the Messiah.

03:03:46.380 | Maybe there should be no surprise in that.

03:03:48.480 | Race relations got set back during Obama's tenure.

03:03:52.640 | My beef with Obama is that, okay, you're black.

03:03:57.900 | You say you're black, you're black.

03:03:59.580 | You got elected, now we have a black president.

03:04:02.300 | A black president.

03:04:04.140 | You can do stuff that nobody else could do.

03:04:09.060 | You're a black president.

03:04:11.020 | You could tell the people burning down the city

03:04:13.860 | to get their butts back in their houses and to stop it.

03:04:17.580 | You could tell the race hustlers,

03:04:22.980 | the Al Sharptons of the world,

03:04:24.520 | not only has our time come,

03:04:28.260 | for those who supported my campaign,

03:04:30.740 | your time is over for those who wanna carry on

03:04:36.140 | a advocacy rooted in racial grievance.

03:04:40.260 | The election of myself to this highest office proves

03:04:44.060 | that the institution of this state are legitimate

03:04:46.720 | and open to all comers.

03:04:49.220 | I think Barack Obama, when the SHIT hit the fan,

03:04:55.160 | if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

03:04:58.220 | I deeply regret that he said that.

03:05:00.180 | He's president of the United States.

03:05:02.460 | The color of his skin and the color of Trayvon's skin,

03:05:06.500 | the correlation between those two things,

03:05:08.100 | if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

03:05:09.460 | Now he says, when he said it,

03:05:12.340 | he only meant to sympathize with the parents.

03:05:15.660 | But in fact, when he said it

03:05:16.940 | from the highest office in the land,

03:05:19.460 | and then sent his attorney general, Eric Holder,

03:05:21.580 | out to enforce this narrative,

03:05:24.660 | he doubled down on a racial narrative

03:05:27.460 | that I think is actually false.

03:05:29.980 | I think the story that systemic racism in America

03:05:34.940 | as reflected in policing that terrorizes black people

03:05:38.300 | because of the color of their skin is demonstrably false.

03:05:42.700 | I think that the central threat to black lives

03:05:47.380 | is violent crime perpetrated largely by black people

03:05:52.380 | against other black people.

03:05:54.440 | I think there is such a thing as police brutality,

03:05:56.300 | and I think there are reasons to have regulations of police,

03:05:58.820 | but I think it is a second order issue

03:06:02.240 | in terms of the quality of life of African-Americans.

03:06:06.980 | I think Obama could have told the people

03:06:08.820 | who after Freddie Gray died in police custody

03:06:11.980 | in a van in Baltimore,

03:06:14.060 | and who undertook to burn that city down,

03:06:16.800 | to get their asses off the street

03:06:19.260 | and go back to their apartments and stop it.

03:06:21.060 | I think he could have said in the aftermath

03:06:22.820 | of Michael Brown being shot dead by Darren Wilson

03:06:26.560 | in Ferguson, Missouri,

03:06:27.900 | and there was a grand jury deliberation

03:06:30.740 | that elected not to indict Officer Wilson,

03:06:34.060 | and people took to streets in that city

03:06:35.700 | and stood on top of vehicles and so forth and so on.

03:06:39.260 | He could have told them,

03:06:40.740 | "We don't mob around courthouses in this country.

03:06:43.620 | "We respect the rule of law.

03:06:45.920 | "Get your butts off the streets

03:06:48.400 | "and back into your apartments."

03:06:49.820 | He didn't do that.

03:06:50.860 | So--

03:06:53.380 | - To push back a little bit.

03:06:54.660 | - Yeah, good, push back.

03:06:56.740 | - I think you're asking Barack Obama,

03:06:59.620 | the first black president of the United States,

03:07:04.460 | to do the thing that I think should be done

03:07:07.240 | by the second black president of the United States.

03:07:09.740 | I think his very example,

03:07:11.780 | given the color of his skin,

03:07:13.400 | was the most powerful thing.

03:07:17.480 | And actually doing some of these hard Thomas Sowell type of,

03:07:22.820 | Glenn Loury type of strong words about race,

03:07:26.940 | it may be too much to ask,

03:07:28.780 | given the nature of modern day politics.

03:07:31.660 | He is a politician.

03:07:33.260 | - He is a politician.

03:07:34.140 | He needed to get elected. - We are playing politics.

03:07:35.180 | - He needed to get reelected.

03:07:36.820 | - Yeah.

03:07:38.340 | - It was in his second term

03:07:39.620 | where most of what I'm talking about happened,

03:07:41.300 | so he wasn't facing further election.

03:07:43.020 | But Obama was, what, 46 or 47 when he was inaugurated?

03:07:48.020 | He served for eight years, so he's in his mid-50s.

03:07:52.100 | He's got another half century or 40 years of life,

03:07:54.820 | God willing.

03:07:55.660 | His post-presidency, I think,

03:07:58.940 | was what was primarily on his mind.

03:08:00.620 | Not getting elected to anything,

03:08:03.100 | but being enshrined in a certain way.

03:08:05.260 | And the persona that he is now embodying,

03:08:10.260 | which depends upon a racial narrative

03:08:14.840 | that I and Thomas Sowell and others object to,

03:08:18.140 | I think was very much in the forefront of his mind

03:08:21.320 | when he made decisions as the chief executive officer

03:08:23.700 | of the country that we've all now have to live with.

03:08:28.700 | - Yeah, but the fact is he opened the door

03:08:34.380 | in a way that hasn't been done in the history

03:08:36.900 | of the United States,

03:08:40.700 | that I don't see there being even a significant discussion

03:08:47.500 | when an African-American, a black man or a black woman

03:08:52.060 | runs for president, maybe a black man, let's say,

03:08:54.920 | 'cause there still hasn't been a woman president.

03:08:56.960 | I just see that that broke open the possibility of that.

03:09:01.000 | That's not even a discussion.

03:09:02.560 | And that example by itself, I mean, to me,

03:09:05.960 | the role of the president isn't just policy,

03:09:08.760 | it's to inspire, it's to do the Dr. King thing,

03:09:13.760 | which is, I have a dream.

03:09:16.780 | And Barack Obama is an example of somebody

03:09:19.480 | that could give one hell of a speech.

03:09:21.240 | It got you to believe.

03:09:23.840 | - Obama is a smooth operator without any question.

03:09:26.880 | He's a master of his craft.

03:09:28.400 | He did the impossible.

03:09:30.760 | I mean, he beat Hillary Clinton in that primary fight,

03:09:34.240 | and he beat John McCain in that general election,

03:09:37.960 | and hats off to him.

03:09:39.100 | And moreover, he remains a iconic figure

03:09:43.080 | in American culture.

03:09:43.920 | I don't think there's any doubt about that.

03:09:46.120 | Let me just mention, Clarence Thomas is also black.

03:09:50.080 | Clarence Thomas has a story that is vivid and inspiring,

03:09:56.000 | just like Obama's story.

03:09:57.400 | He overcome obstacles, just like Obama did.

03:10:00.060 | I mean, extreme poverty and so forth and so on.

03:10:02.620 | Clarence Thomas has served longer than any other member

03:10:07.260 | of the United States Supreme Court.

03:10:09.420 | He is one of nine justices,

03:10:13.160 | and it's three equal branches of government.

03:10:15.620 | So Clarence Thomas, by my arithmetic,

03:10:18.360 | personifies 1/27 of the American state.

03:10:22.520 | He is an iconic figure.

03:10:28.680 | His example should be an inspiration

03:10:31.960 | to Americans of all races,

03:10:33.860 | but especially of black American youngsters.

03:10:36.380 | He happens to be conservative.

03:10:38.880 | He's very conservative.

03:10:40.080 | So fucking what?

03:10:43.680 | He too deserves to be in that pantheon.

03:10:46.520 | He is not.

03:10:47.820 | By the custodians of American education,

03:10:50.800 | Clarence Thomas's name is not on that many schools.

03:10:53.160 | Barack Obama's name will be on many of them.

03:10:55.240 | I'm not equating them.

03:10:56.520 | They're different people.

03:10:57.440 | The offices are very different.

03:10:59.520 | But the same logic that you just used

03:11:01.960 | to extol the significance of Barack Obama's ascendancy

03:11:06.960 | could and should be applied to Clarence Thomas,

03:11:10.220 | in my opinion.

03:11:12.000 | - Yes, but it's the office,

03:11:15.400 | but also there's a resume and there's accomplishments,

03:11:20.400 | but then there is oratory and charisma

03:11:23.620 | and a number of Twitter followers.

03:11:25.460 | So there's ability to captivate a large number of people.

03:11:30.380 | And that's a skill.

03:11:33.120 | That's a skill that correlates,

03:11:35.840 | but is not directly connected to

03:11:38.760 | with how impressive your resume is.

03:11:40.840 | - I agree.

03:11:41.680 | - However, the judicial function,

03:11:43.120 | the judge doesn't go out and give speeches of that sort

03:11:45.400 | because it's exactly antithetical to what he's doing.

03:11:48.240 | He's a custodian of the law

03:11:50.360 | and that's not a popular figure in American policy.

03:11:54.760 | He doesn't stand for election and it's a good thing too.

03:11:57.720 | So I take that point.

03:11:59.720 | Here, I wanna say something else though that's provocative.

03:12:02.320 | The next black president,

03:12:03.720 | you say the first black president

03:12:05.280 | shouldn't have been the one to do that.

03:12:06.960 | The second one should,

03:12:08.480 | is more likely than not gonna be a Republican.

03:12:10.520 | I don't have a particular person in mind.

03:12:12.400 | I'm just saying.

03:12:13.240 | - I agree.

03:12:14.320 | I agree.

03:12:15.160 | (laughing)

03:12:15.980 | I agree.

03:12:16.820 | (laughing)

03:12:17.660 | And that's why it's gonna be super fun.

03:12:19.560 | Let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat

03:12:25.400 | and give advice to young people.

03:12:27.560 | So if you're talking to somebody

03:12:28.960 | who's in high school and in college,

03:12:31.080 | what advice would you give them about their career,

03:12:34.320 | about life in general,

03:12:37.320 | how to live a life they can be proud of?

03:12:40.200 | - Well, I'd say the world is your oyster.

03:12:44.160 | I mean, first order of business, you're not a victim.

03:12:46.000 | I don't care what color you are.

03:12:47.040 | I don't care you're male, female, you're gay, straight,

03:12:48.680 | whatever, the world is your oyster.

03:12:51.240 | You are so privileged.

03:12:52.320 | You sit here in the United States of America,

03:12:54.040 | a free country, a rich country,

03:12:55.320 | everything is possible for you.

03:12:56.820 | Believe me, you can do anything.

03:12:58.660 | Secondly, I would say mastery over the medium

03:13:07.040 | in which we're embedded is the key to the future.

03:13:11.800 | So get educated, focus, work hard,

03:13:15.420 | invest in your future by acquiring the skills

03:13:21.160 | that you need to be able to navigate the 21st century.

03:13:23.980 | I would say the Chinese are coming

03:13:28.520 | and I don't mean anything against China.

03:13:30.340 | I just mean to say the world's a small place

03:13:32.200 | and it's getting smaller.

03:13:34.520 | And you better get moving and you better get moving quickly.

03:13:39.520 | I'd say your identity, your coloration, your orientation,

03:13:47.360 | your category is not the most important thing about you.

03:13:52.360 | So the temptation to limit yourself,

03:14:00.960 | I give this speech to my kids.

03:14:03.120 | I would say, I quote James Joyce.

03:14:08.120 | He has a passage in "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man"

03:14:15.760 | in which he says, "Do you know what Ireland is?

03:14:21.180 | Ireland is an old sow that eats her pharaoh."

03:14:26.960 | This is Joyce.

03:14:28.920 | He says, Stephen Dedalus is the character

03:14:32.680 | that he has in mind in this chronicle.

03:14:35.320 | He says, "Your ethnic inheritance,"

03:14:39.920 | he's talking about Irish nationalism,

03:14:42.020 | "are like nets holding you back.

03:14:46.280 | That your challenge is to learn how to turn those nets

03:14:49.760 | into wings and thereby to fly."

03:14:53.520 | Okay, flying into the open skies of modern society.

03:14:58.200 | Don't be your grandfather, don't be your father.

03:15:02.520 | Don't wear your thing so heavily

03:15:04.400 | that it keeps you from being open

03:15:06.000 | to everything that's new in the world.

03:15:08.700 | Wear it lightly.

03:15:10.540 | Yes, everybody comes from somewhere,

03:15:12.240 | but it doesn't have to be where you end up.

03:15:14.400 | So you're not your father, you're not your grandfather.

03:15:18.540 | You are this wonderfully blessed human being

03:15:24.960 | in the middle of, going into the middle of the 21st century.

03:15:28.460 | And don't miss it.

03:15:32.440 | Don't live blinkerly, don't live small, live big.

03:15:37.440 | Live big and wear your history lightly.

03:15:46.080 | Yeah, everybody's got a mother tongue.

03:15:51.320 | Everybody's got a story, everybody has a people.

03:15:54.400 | But the world is a small place.

03:15:56.720 | I love that you're quoting an Irishman.

03:16:02.440 | (laughing)

03:16:03.480 | One of the greatest writers of the 20th century,

03:16:05.720 | a profound one, but an Irishman nevertheless.

03:16:09.520 | The levels of humor within that is not lost on me.

03:16:14.480 | Let me just mention the great Ralph Ellison,

03:16:16.920 | the African-American writer, "Invisible Man"

03:16:19.280 | is his masterpiece, embodied this spirit.

03:16:23.920 | Okay, we black Americans, we do come from somewhere,

03:16:26.720 | that coming from somewhere is from slavery in America.

03:16:29.760 | That's our ancestral heritage.

03:16:32.840 | But that's not what we are.

03:16:35.040 | Skin and bone, these are superficial things, the spirit.

03:16:40.040 | And if I were a more religious person,

03:16:41.840 | I could give a whole disposition about that.

03:16:44.160 | But it's the spirit, it's that light that's inside.

03:16:46.260 | That's who we are.

03:16:47.400 | And our challenge is to live in the fullness of it,

03:16:50.760 | as opposed to this blinkered thing.

03:16:53.440 | When we don't look left, we don't look right.

03:16:55.200 | We're just fitting within this template

03:16:58.340 | that we inherit, that is a travesty, really.

03:17:02.760 | - Glenn, you've lived an incredible life,

03:17:06.120 | a productive one, but just representing

03:17:09.080 | some powerful ideas, some powerful ideals.

03:17:13.240 | But life comes to an end.

03:17:15.900 | - Yeah.

03:17:18.440 | - Do you think about your death?

03:17:20.920 | Are you afraid of it?

03:17:24.100 | - Well, it is a really interesting coincidence

03:17:29.100 | that you posed me that question,

03:17:31.680 | because I'm coming from a funeral.

03:17:35.100 | Today is Sunday.

03:17:40.200 | On the preceding Tuesday, five days ago,

03:17:43.400 | I was at the funeral of Eugene Wesley Smith,

03:17:48.180 | who was my brother-in-law.

03:17:51.640 | He was my sister's husband.

03:17:54.600 | My sister, Leonette, passed away in August of 2021.

03:17:59.600 | Her husband has died at the age of 68

03:18:04.760 | in April of 2022, and I was at his funeral.

03:18:10.980 | He died suddenly of a heart attack

03:18:14.140 | that came completely out of the blue.

03:18:15.640 | He seemed to be in perfect health.

03:18:17.340 | He was a magnificent human being.

03:18:20.420 | I could go into the details, but, you know.

03:18:23.400 | Take my word for it.

03:18:24.600 | He was a businessman, a steel trader, metals trader.

03:18:29.140 | He would buy and sell.

03:18:30.900 | He worked mostly from his home office.

03:18:32.720 | He had clients, counterparties,

03:18:35.240 | people he did business with all over the world.

03:18:37.580 | He had three sons, one of whom is in his early 30s,

03:18:44.140 | two of whom are in their late 30s.

03:18:45.800 | These are my sister's children.

03:18:48.040 | She's deceased, now he's deceased.

03:18:50.520 | The older two sons are severely developmentally disabled,

03:18:54.540 | and although they're in their late 30s,

03:18:57.420 | they're not independently viable.

03:18:59.900 | They don't function effectively.

03:19:02.040 | They have to be cared for.

03:19:03.340 | That responsibility has now fallen to the family,

03:19:08.280 | but mainly to the surviving son,

03:19:10.960 | who lives with his wife and his two young children,

03:19:14.100 | and has assumed the responsibility.

03:19:17.100 | They've cared at home, my sister and her husband, Wesley.

03:19:20.500 | Eugene Wesley Smith,

03:19:22.400 | cared for their disabled sons at home.

03:19:25.000 | They didn't wanna see them institutionalized.

03:19:26.720 | They had some help from programs at the state

03:19:29.300 | and social worker and so on,

03:19:30.460 | but they mainly took on the burden

03:19:32.440 | of caring for them at home.

03:19:34.580 | Anyway, I go on at length here,

03:19:36.220 | and I don't know how much of this

03:19:37.720 | you will choose to make use of,

03:19:39.340 | and it doesn't matter, really.

03:19:41.280 | I'm just trying to respond to your question.

03:19:43.220 | I was asked to offer some remarks at the funeral,

03:19:49.280 | and I offered them.

03:19:50.340 | I spoke well of this great man.

03:19:56.120 | He was a great man.

03:19:57.000 | He had a straight back.

03:19:59.000 | He was a stand-up guy.

03:20:00.160 | He could be counted on.

03:20:01.640 | His word was his bond.

03:20:02.680 | He had broad shoulders.

03:20:04.160 | He carried a lot of people with him,

03:20:06.460 | business associates, family members,

03:20:08.920 | and so forth and so on.

03:20:10.600 | He had a huge heart.

03:20:12.080 | He was a giving and kind person.

03:20:13.960 | He had a great mind.

03:20:15.200 | He was an intellectual,

03:20:16.240 | even though as a businessman,

03:20:18.320 | much of his day was taken up with the minutiae of contracts

03:20:23.320 | and the details of the order being delivered

03:20:27.520 | and not being delivered,

03:20:28.440 | of the quality of the product,

03:20:30.120 | of the financing, and so forth and so on.

03:20:32.120 | - There was still a powerful mind there.

03:20:34.140 | - Yeah, he was a powerful mind,

03:20:35.320 | and he studied, he read books,

03:20:37.240 | he was interested in music and art.

03:20:39.040 | He's a spiritual seeker,

03:20:42.240 | had been ordained as a child minister in his youth,

03:20:46.200 | and while he remained a master of the Christian canon,

03:20:51.200 | he also explored Eastern religion and other spiritual paths

03:20:58.400 | and kind of stood above any particular tradition

03:21:01.880 | as a man who believed in God,

03:21:03.720 | but thought that God manifest himself in many ways

03:21:06.880 | to human beings and that there was much to learn

03:21:09.400 | from other religious traditions as well.

03:21:12.020 | This is Wesley.

03:21:13.200 | We called him Wesley by his middle name,

03:21:14.640 | Eugene Wesley Smith, may he rest in peace.

03:21:17.000 | 68, that's five years younger than I am right now.

03:21:20.960 | He dropped dead without any warning.

03:21:23.200 | I could too.

03:21:24.220 | So--

03:21:26.920 | - How did that make you feel?

03:21:29.000 | What were the thoughts in your mind leading up to it,

03:21:31.660 | having to give that speech in the days that followed?

03:21:34.360 | - Well, first of all, I wondered,

03:21:35.200 | what would I say, what would I say?

03:21:36.640 | And there was no way to prepare,

03:21:38.440 | and I decided, I rehearsed in my mind this,

03:21:42.160 | he had a straight back, he had broad shoulders,

03:21:43.760 | he had a big heart, he had a great mind,

03:21:46.040 | he had a capacious spirit and whatnot,

03:21:49.480 | and I used that as a template for making my remarks.

03:21:52.440 | But my main thought was, my God,

03:21:54.520 | life is precious and life is fleeting,

03:21:57.460 | and death is a part of life.

03:21:59.700 | My death is a part of my life.

03:22:03.240 | And I thought, well, I wanna take better care of myself

03:22:07.200 | than I do, et cetera, et cetera.

03:22:09.940 | But I also thought a lot of this is not in my hands at all.

03:22:13.640 | I thought one should have his affairs in order.

03:22:16.840 | My brother did not have all of his affairs in order

03:22:18.880 | in the sense that there is a lot of,

03:22:21.520 | things are going to probate, there was no will,

03:22:23.520 | there's, it's kind of unsettled.

03:22:25.920 | I don't want that to happen to my surviving family members.

03:22:30.280 | I wanna have my affairs such that should heaven forbid,

03:22:34.440 | I fall over one day and don't get up again,

03:22:37.080 | people don't have to scramble about

03:22:39.800 | how to take care of things from that point forward.

03:22:43.400 | - But as a human, are you afraid?

03:22:45.360 | In your own heart? - I'm afraid.

03:22:48.320 | Now, I read this wonderful book called "The Swerve."

03:22:51.320 | It's about Lucretius.

03:22:53.800 | It's about the nature of things,

03:22:56.600 | which is this great classical work from the Roman period

03:23:00.320 | by this guy, Lucretius.

03:23:03.680 | And I'm trying to think of the name of the author,

03:23:05.500 | but you could look it up.

03:23:06.520 | "The Swerve" is the book.

03:23:07.800 | It won a National Book Award or a Pulitzer Prize.

03:23:10.840 | And it's the history of the recovery of this book

03:23:13.640 | by one of these Italian, Renaissance Italian people

03:23:20.760 | who would go into the monasteries in Central Europe

03:23:24.440 | and look through the scrolls,

03:23:26.520 | and they discover these classical works from antiquity,

03:23:29.500 | which had been lost through the Dark Ages,

03:23:31.800 | and they republish and read these works.

03:23:36.920 | And Lucretius's great work on the nature of things

03:23:41.040 | was one of these books, Poggio Bracchelini.

03:23:45.320 | I don't remember the Italian guy's name,

03:23:46.960 | but this all could be looked up.

03:23:49.320 | - Yeah, Poggio Bracchelini, 15th century.

03:23:52.780 | 15th century, and the name of the author

03:23:58.180 | is Stephen Greenblatt.

03:23:59.880 | - Yeah, Stephen Greenblatt, a magnificent book

03:24:02.400 | and a terrific story.

03:24:04.960 | Anyway, one of Lucretius's points, he was an atheist.

03:24:09.880 | I mean, he was a Roman.

03:24:11.600 | I mean, he didn't believe in mysticism,

03:24:15.200 | and he argued it's irrational to be afraid of death.

03:24:20.200 | Why should I fear death?

03:24:21.960 | Death is coming to all of us.

03:24:23.400 | The point of being afraid, I mean, I'm wasting my time

03:24:27.080 | fearing something that I have no ultimate control over.

03:24:30.160 | It's irrational to be afraid of death.

03:24:34.320 | - Yeah, because you can't predict when it happens.

03:24:37.320 | You only know that it happens, so why be afraid?

03:24:43.120 | How's that go?

03:24:43.960 | - And therefore live every day fully,

03:24:45.160 | live every day purposefully, and so on.

03:24:50.160 | But these are all just words.

03:24:52.680 | I don't wanna die.

03:24:55.080 | I wanna live forever.

03:24:55.920 | I'm not gonna live forever.

03:24:57.520 | I don't wanna suffer.

03:24:59.720 | I see people suffering.

03:25:01.080 | I saw my late wife, Linda Datcher Lowry,

03:25:04.240 | Dr. Linda Datcher Lowry,

03:25:06.800 | professor of economics at Tufts University,

03:25:10.000 | whom I met in graduate school at MIT,

03:25:12.420 | black woman from Baltimore.

03:25:14.720 | We married, we raised two sons together.

03:25:17.280 | She died at the age of 59 from metastatic breast cancer,

03:25:22.160 | and I watched her suffer, and I watched her die,

03:25:24.320 | and it took a while.

03:25:25.480 | And we cared for her at home right up until the very end.

03:25:30.400 | She died in our bed with our sons on either side of her,

03:25:35.040 | and the dog curled up by the door,

03:25:38.360 | the porch door in the bedroom, and she expired.

03:25:42.120 | And I watched her suffer, and I watched her die,

03:25:45.600 | and I don't wanna suffer.

03:25:46.920 | Who does?

03:25:48.420 | I don't wanna die.

03:25:50.120 | I am likely to suffer before I die.

03:25:53.180 | I am likely to see my death coming and to lament it.

03:25:58.940 | There's a book by Richard John Newhouse,

03:26:02.940 | the theologian, called "As I Lay Dying."

03:26:07.340 | "As I Lay Dying," Richard John Newhouse.

03:26:10.260 | He had stomach cancer, and he thought he was dying,

03:26:15.980 | and he wrote this book, "As He Lay Dying."

03:26:18.780 | And then he recovered.

03:26:19.900 | It went into remission, and he had another couple of years.

03:26:24.260 | He thought he was dying, and he had another couple of years.

03:26:27.300 | And I can remember meeting him at a bookstore

03:26:30.860 | in suburban Boston when he was on a tour.

03:26:34.260 | He was a friend of mine,

03:26:35.980 | a theologian and a public intellectual.

03:26:38.760 | He founded the Institute on Religion and Public Life

03:26:43.420 | in New York City, which still exists, Richard John Newhouse.

03:26:47.820 | And he's contemplating his own death

03:26:49.380 | from the point of view of a Christian minister.

03:26:51.320 | He was first a Lutheran pastor,

03:26:53.340 | and then he converted to Catholicism,

03:26:55.860 | or as he would have put it, "I returned to the church,"

03:26:58.300 | 'cause he thought the Renaissance was over.

03:27:00.860 | I mean, I'm sorry, the Reformation, Richard thought,

03:27:03.700 | was over.

03:27:04.540 | He says, "There's only one church," et cetera.

03:27:08.020 | Get into theology stuff here.

03:27:11.220 | But I'm saying all that to say,

03:27:14.220 | I read that book aloud to my wife, Linda,

03:27:16.580 | "As She Lay Dying" in that bed.

03:27:18.020 | I read that book.

03:27:19.620 | And it was filled with hope.

03:27:21.860 | I mean, it first acknowledged the dread.

03:27:25.380 | Yes, I lie dying.

03:27:27.820 | I don't wanna die.

03:27:29.380 | I'm a Christian minister.

03:27:30.700 | Christ was raised from the dead.

03:27:32.500 | I'm supposed to believe in everlasting life,

03:27:34.160 | but the fact of the matter is,

03:27:35.100 | this is me and I'm lying here and I'm dying.

03:27:37.620 | This is the end of me.

03:27:39.020 | How are you gonna do anything

03:27:41.460 | other than dread the end of me?

03:27:42.940 | So let's acknowledge that I don't wanna die, okay?

03:27:45.500 | I'm just gonna tell you that up front.

03:27:47.860 | But that is not the end of,

03:27:53.060 | my death is not the end of life.

03:27:55.660 | I have lived well and fully.

03:27:58.140 | I will go and do my best right up until the end.

03:28:01.320 | I will accept what is inevitable.

03:28:05.520 | And I will hold out this belief.

03:28:06.980 | And he's a Christian minister, so he holds out this belief.

03:28:09.340 | And he knows that the belief is not rational.

03:28:11.980 | It's not a reasoned, deductive, scientific conclusion.

03:28:16.820 | It's spiritual in the most fundamental way.

03:28:21.440 | It is something that people hold onto and they have hope.

03:28:25.000 | And he had hope.

03:28:26.000 | I don't know if I have that hope.

03:28:29.320 | I used to be, but I'm no longer a Christian

03:28:34.320 | and I'm no longer a theist, really.

03:28:39.560 | I'm with Lucretius there.

03:28:42.520 | I mean, there's no magic that's going on here.

03:28:46.600 | There's no unseen hand behind the scene

03:28:49.440 | that's arranging things.

03:28:51.140 | What I believe is that when I look at the natural world,

03:28:54.040 | I see the evolution of the species.

03:28:56.560 | I see the organic development of the planets.

03:28:59.800 | I mean, the Earth is going to not exist

03:29:02.520 | in a finite number of years.

03:29:04.500 | I think with a very high probability,

03:29:06.320 | the sun is gonna die.

03:29:08.520 | It's gonna implode.

03:29:10.560 | It's gonna go supernova, whatever is gonna happen.

03:29:13.240 | And there's not gonna be any there there.

03:29:16.820 | - What's the meaning of life, Glenn Loury?

03:29:19.760 | What's the meaning of life?

03:29:21.220 | - Yeah, let's go, let's go.

03:29:24.020 | What's the why?

03:29:25.120 | Or is that something economists and social scientists

03:29:30.060 | and mathematicians are not equipped to answer?

03:29:32.360 | Shirley.

03:29:34.380 | - You know, I think we try to live well

03:29:37.300 | and meaningfully within our time.

03:29:39.660 | We bond, we reproduce, we try to pass on,

03:29:43.180 | and we accept our limitations and our mortality.

03:29:48.260 | We try to contribute.

03:29:50.640 | And that's through our children and through our work.

03:29:57.820 | And we're in this together.

03:30:02.060 | We're not in this alone.

03:30:03.640 | We are connected to other people.

03:30:06.480 | I get a lot of gratitude out of teaching.

03:30:11.120 | I'm a teacher.

03:30:12.040 | My students are gonna outlive me.

03:30:16.080 | They're gonna have students.

03:30:18.340 | I'm a writer.

03:30:19.720 | My writing is gonna outlive me.

03:30:20.900 | I don't wanna be self-important or pretentious here.

03:30:25.140 | I doubt that I'm gonna be the James Joyce

03:30:27.220 | of the 21st century.

03:30:29.100 | They may not be reading my stuff in 100 years,

03:30:31.460 | as people will certainly be reading Ulysses in 100 years.

03:30:36.460 | But I try to have an impact on the world that I'm a part of

03:30:43.020 | and try to leave a legacy that's dignified.

03:30:47.100 | I could give some flowery words here,

03:30:49.220 | truth-seeking and whatnot.

03:30:51.120 | - What about love?

03:30:52.220 | - Love.

03:30:53.060 | - What role does love play in this life thing?

03:30:59.100 | - Love makes the world go round.

03:31:01.300 | Without love, what have we got?

03:31:03.420 | We don't have family.

03:31:13.180 | We certainly have missed out

03:31:15.220 | if love is not a central part of our existence.

03:31:18.420 | But stop asking me questions like that.

03:31:20.380 | - Thank you for doing everything you do,

03:31:24.260 | for thinking the way you do,

03:31:25.380 | for being fearless and bold in the Glenn Show

03:31:30.380 | and your writing and your work and just being who you are.

03:31:33.340 | Thank you for being you

03:31:34.980 | and thank you for giving me the huge honor

03:31:37.100 | of spending your extremely valuable time with me today.

03:31:39.820 | This was awesome.

03:31:40.860 | - It's been my pleasure, Lex, I mean, really.

03:31:42.740 | And it has been like four hours, man.

03:31:44.860 | I mean, you're wearing me out.

03:31:46.340 | - Love it for me.

03:31:47.780 | I love it.

03:31:49.300 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

03:31:50.820 | with Glenn Lowry.

03:31:52.020 | To support this podcast,

03:31:53.380 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:31:55.820 | And now let me leave you with some words

03:31:57.860 | from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

03:32:00.420 | If you can't fly, then run.

03:32:02.740 | If you can't run, then walk.

03:32:05.180 | If you can't walk, then crawl.

03:32:07.620 | But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.

03:32:12.500 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

03:32:15.340 | (upbeat music)

03:32:17.940 | (upbeat music)

03:32:20.540 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Glenn Loury: Race, Racism, Identity Politics, and Cancel Culture | Lex Fridman Podcast #285

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