Randall Kennedy: The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power

00:00:00.000 | Let's imagine you have a black rapper

00:00:03.040 | who invites people on stage,

00:00:06.840 | and let's suppose they invite a black person on stage,

00:00:09.960 | and they're perfectly happy when the black person

00:00:13.560 | is full out with their lyrics.

00:00:17.200 | They invite a white person on stage.

00:00:20.080 | The white person is sort of mystified,

00:00:23.720 | but it comes on stage and full out with what the rapper says,

00:00:28.200 | including the infamous N-word,

00:00:29.560 | and then the black rapper gets mad.

00:00:31.760 | Imagine the white comedian who satirizes that,

00:00:35.880 | pokes fun at that,

00:00:38.480 | and in poking fun at that, says the infamous N-word.

00:00:43.080 | Am I angry?

00:00:44.040 | No, I'm not angry.

00:00:45.800 | Not angry at all.

00:00:47.700 | The following is a conversation with Randall Kennedy,

00:00:52.680 | professor at Harvard Law School

00:00:54.520 | and author of many seminal books on race,

00:00:57.720 | law, history, culture, and politics,

00:01:00.560 | including specifically on affirmative action,

00:01:03.360 | criminal justice, policing,

00:01:05.640 | and the topic explored extensively in this conversation,

00:01:09.320 | the single most powerful word and slur

00:01:12.160 | in the English language, the N-word,

00:01:14.840 | with a hard R at the end.

00:01:17.000 | Randall has written a book with this word as the title,

00:01:21.040 | N-word, the strange career of a troublesome word.

00:01:24.920 | Please be warned that Randall uses this word

00:01:27.480 | throughout this conversation deliberately and skillfully

00:01:31.480 | to discuss its power and its role

00:01:33.640 | in the history of the United States.

00:01:36.200 | I don't intend to shy away

00:01:38.620 | from controversial topics like these,

00:01:41.040 | and I'll work hard to handle them thoughtfully and thoroughly

00:01:44.720 | with respect and with empathy,

00:01:47.240 | often with several guests

00:01:48.640 | who have very different perspectives on the topic.

00:01:51.640 | In the end, I believe in the power

00:01:53.360 | of long-form conversations to heal divides

00:01:56.120 | by furthering understanding of human nature,

00:01:58.800 | of human history,

00:02:00.160 | and the full diversity of the human experience.

00:02:03.560 | This is "Alex Friedman Podcast."

00:02:05.880 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:02:07.860 | in the description.

00:02:09.080 | And now, dear friends, here's Randall Kennedy.

00:02:12.500 | You wrote a book whose title is "The N-Word,"

00:02:16.200 | spelled out with a hard R at the end.

00:02:18.640 | So let's start with the history of this word.

00:02:20.680 | What is the history of the N-word?

00:02:23.900 | - The word you're referring to is "nigger."

00:02:27.160 | The book that you're referring to is

00:02:29.320 | "Nigger, the Strange Career of a Troublesome Word."

00:02:32.440 | The word dates back to the 16th, 17th century.

00:02:37.600 | It's got a long lineage, in other words.

00:02:39.640 | Basically Latin, basically Spanish,

00:02:45.760 | basically N-I-G, you know, black in various formulations.

00:02:52.200 | We don't know actually how the term nigger became a slur.

00:02:57.200 | So there were words that were close to N-I-G-G-E-R

00:03:04.340 | that were used in various ways.

00:03:06.000 | For instance, N-I-G-G-U-H was used.

00:03:11.000 | N-I-G-G-U-R was used.

00:03:16.700 | And sometimes it was used in a way that seemed to be

00:03:21.100 | just purely descriptive.

00:03:23.420 | We do know that by the early 19th century,

00:03:27.740 | it had become a slur.

00:03:30.540 | It had become a derogatory word

00:03:33.060 | about which people complained.

00:03:35.420 | But exactly how that came about, not altogether clear.

00:03:40.140 | - So it's been 20 years since you've written the book.

00:03:42.300 | What wisdom have you gained about this word

00:03:46.080 | since writing the book?

00:03:47.540 | And maybe having to interact with people,

00:03:49.860 | having to read, having to see,

00:03:52.300 | having to feel the response to the book.

00:03:55.220 | - This book has generated a lot of controversy.

00:03:59.860 | I thought it would.

00:04:01.220 | It's probably generated more controversy

00:04:03.300 | than I had anticipated.

00:04:05.340 | It has certainly generated more,

00:04:07.820 | more different sorts of experiences than I had anticipated.

00:04:14.100 | So for instance, I did not think that writing this book

00:04:19.760 | would prompt people to ask me

00:04:23.380 | to be an expert witness in cases.

00:04:26.780 | And over the past 20 years,

00:04:28.500 | I've been an expert witness in a number of different cases.

00:04:31.580 | I've been an expert witness in a murder case,

00:04:36.580 | in various cases of assault.

00:04:41.000 | I've been an expert witness in cases involving tort cases,

00:04:46.000 | intentional infliction of emotional distress.

00:04:49.580 | I've been an expert witness

00:04:50.780 | in a number of employment cases.

00:04:53.480 | I had not anticipated that,

00:04:58.040 | nor had I anticipated the extent to which

00:05:02.340 | people would get in trouble for using my book.

00:05:07.340 | Every year, there are teachers who are suspended

00:05:12.660 | or who are fired because they will excerpt

00:05:17.300 | a chapter of my book.

00:05:18.940 | Let's imagine, and this is not,

00:05:22.140 | I'm not imagining things as this happened.

00:05:24.700 | A teacher is teaching, for instance,

00:05:28.780 | the Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

00:05:31.960 | The word nigger appears in that book over 200 times.

00:05:36.240 | The teacher, trying to be earnest,

00:05:39.320 | trying to be sensible, trying to be serious,

00:05:42.900 | will excerpt a part of my book

00:05:46.820 | to acquaint students with the history of the word

00:05:51.420 | and maybe the history of controversy

00:05:53.580 | involving the use of the word in this particular novel.

00:05:58.000 | The teacher will give it out,

00:06:00.220 | hand it out to the teachers, hand it out to students,

00:06:04.080 | and there have been a number of teachers

00:06:06.140 | who've been suspended or worse because of that.

00:06:09.720 | Students will get upset, go home, tell their parents.

00:06:15.140 | Their parents will storm to the school

00:06:16.980 | and say that this is terrible.

00:06:19.820 | The teacher is, quote, "using the word nigger"

00:06:24.020 | in an offensive way, and oftentimes,

00:06:27.540 | administrators will basically abandon the teacher.

00:06:32.540 | Whenever this comes to my attention,

00:06:36.600 | I write, I'll write the superintendent of schools

00:06:42.580 | or I'll write the principal,

00:06:43.900 | or sometimes I'll write an opinion editorial piece

00:06:48.540 | for the local newspaper, but every year,

00:06:51.580 | there are teachers who are disciplined for using my book.

00:06:56.580 | I had not anticipated that.

00:07:00.760 | - And what is the nature of the letter or the op-ed

00:07:04.300 | that you write on why they shouldn't be disciplined

00:07:08.100 | or to the degree they should be or shouldn't be?

00:07:12.780 | - There's not been one case,

00:07:15.100 | there's not been one case that has come to my attention

00:07:20.100 | in which it was even remotely sensible

00:07:25.100 | for the teacher to be disciplined.

00:07:27.460 | And what I say is that, number one,

00:07:32.900 | frankly, I go through, what I write

00:07:37.420 | is almost a synopsis of my book.

00:07:40.140 | Number one, this is an important word in American history.

00:07:44.420 | It is a word that is explosive,

00:07:48.060 | that's why people get so upset.

00:07:49.700 | It's a word that's volatile,

00:07:51.340 | it's a word that has typically been used in a terrible way.

00:07:56.340 | It's a word that is part of the soundtrack

00:08:02.300 | of racial terrorism in the United States.

00:08:05.260 | So people ought to know about this word.

00:08:07.460 | I mean, if you're interested in knowing the real history

00:08:11.460 | of the United States,

00:08:12.480 | if you're interested in knowing about lynching,

00:08:15.620 | if you're interested in knowing about the way

00:08:17.700 | in which black people have been terrorized

00:08:20.740 | in the United States, you need to know this word.

00:08:23.460 | You need to know that history.

00:08:24.680 | So you need to know why it is

00:08:26.180 | that people are upset about the word,

00:08:28.620 | but it doesn't end there.

00:08:31.160 | You have to know that, and if you know that,

00:08:35.860 | then that knowledge should equip you to be careful.

00:08:40.860 | It should equip you to know that,

00:08:46.360 | to know the range of context in which this word appears.

00:08:52.420 | But again, it doesn't just end there,

00:08:56.540 | because especially young people,

00:08:59.240 | you tell that to young people,

00:09:00.620 | they nod, they read, they understand that.

00:09:04.100 | But then, but then what?

00:09:05.940 | But then they turn on their radios and they turn on,

00:09:09.260 | they listen to Spotify,

00:09:10.700 | they listen to some of their favorite entertainers.

00:09:15.220 | They listen to Dr. Dre, they listen to the Ghetto Boys,

00:09:19.540 | they listen to Snoop,

00:09:22.540 | and they listen to NWA.

00:09:27.540 | What do they hear?

00:09:30.060 | They listen to standup comedians.

00:09:33.740 | They listen to Dave Chappelle.

00:09:36.500 | They listen to Cat Williams.

00:09:39.200 | They, you know, what do they hear?

00:09:43.360 | They hear the word nigger, or nigga,

00:09:47.180 | being used in a lot of different ways.

00:09:51.800 | And so they need to know about that as well.

00:09:56.660 | What are people doing?

00:10:00.580 | How does one explain the fact that Dick Gregory,

00:10:05.580 | Dick Gregory was a comedian, activist,

00:10:10.380 | friend of Martin Luther King Jr., a true activist.

00:10:14.280 | I mean, he had a very,

00:10:15.180 | he had a flourishing career as an entertainer

00:10:19.220 | that he abandons in order to struggle for racial justice

00:10:24.220 | throughout the United States and including the deep South.

00:10:28.500 | How does one explain the fact that the,

00:10:31.020 | he wrote several memoirs,

00:10:32.580 | but his first memoir is called "Nigger, a Memoir."

00:10:37.580 | How does one explain that?

00:10:40.980 | How does one explain the way in which,

00:10:44.940 | how does one explain Richard Pryor?

00:10:48.180 | I mean, Richard Pryor's best album is "That Nigger's Crazy."

00:10:53.180 | Well, was Richard Pryor trying to put down black people?

00:10:57.220 | How does one explain that?

00:10:58.820 | One can only explain that by getting deeper into the word,

00:11:02.500 | by understanding that yes,

00:11:05.320 | this is a word that has been used in a derogatory way.

00:11:08.660 | This is a word that has been used to put people down.

00:11:12.540 | This is a word that has been used to terrorize people.

00:11:16.100 | You gotta know that.

00:11:17.940 | But you also have to know that this is a word

00:11:21.460 | that has also been put to other uses.

00:11:24.900 | There are artists, there are entertainers

00:11:29.620 | who have used this word, like Dick Gregory used it,

00:11:34.620 | to put up a mirror to American society

00:11:38.420 | and say, "Look at this word

00:11:39.900 | "and look at the terrible way in which it's been used.

00:11:42.880 | "We don't want you to look away.

00:11:44.000 | "No, don't look away.

00:11:45.860 | "We're not, no euphemism, no asterisk,

00:11:49.560 | "no N-word, no, nigger.

00:11:52.240 | "Now we want you to look at that

00:11:55.260 | "and we wanna talk about that."

00:11:57.020 | James Baldwin.

00:11:58.320 | James Baldwin, there was a documentary

00:12:02.900 | about James Baldwin a couple of years ago,

00:12:06.900 | highly lauded documentary.

00:12:10.440 | The title that was given to this documentary was

00:12:13.460 | "I Am Not Your Negro."

00:12:15.260 | That's not what James Baldwin said.

00:12:17.760 | Anybody can go to YouTube right now, take a look.

00:12:22.080 | James Baldwin said, "I am not your nigger."

00:12:25.340 | And then he went on to talk about that.

00:12:27.920 | Well, James Baldwin wasn't, again,

00:12:31.500 | he wasn't trying to cover up anything.

00:12:34.660 | He wanted people to face the facts of American life.

00:12:38.980 | And it seems to me that if you're a teacher

00:12:43.060 | and you want to have your students face the facts

00:12:46.760 | about American life, well,

00:12:49.140 | you've got to grapple with the word nigger.

00:12:51.860 | Now let me just quickly say,

00:12:53.800 | teachers have a tough job.

00:12:56.120 | And if we're talking about students,

00:13:00.040 | of course, there's a wide range of students.

00:13:02.500 | Am I saying that one ought to give my book

00:13:05.520 | to kindergartners?

00:13:07.480 | No, kindergartners are probably not ready for such a book.

00:13:11.800 | Third graders, probably no, not third grade.

00:13:16.320 | If we're talking, however, about people in the 10th grade,

00:13:19.880 | do I think the 10th graders can read my book?

00:13:21.980 | Yeah, sure, absolutely.

00:13:23.480 | 11th graders, 12th graders, people in college,

00:13:26.680 | there are people in college.

00:13:28.660 | There are people in college.

00:13:29.580 | There are people in law schools.

00:13:32.100 | Teachers in law schools have been disciplined

00:13:35.440 | because the word nigger has come out of a teacher's mouth.

00:13:41.720 | Why?

00:13:42.680 | In a couple of cases recently,

00:13:44.760 | teacher would be reading a court opinion.

00:13:49.280 | The word appears in the court opinion.

00:13:52.120 | The teacher pronounces the word, ah.

00:13:54.500 | Students get up, leave in a huff, report the teacher.

00:14:01.320 | There's some instances in which teachers have been,

00:14:03.720 | under those circumstances, have been disciplined.

00:14:06.720 | In my view, that's bad.

00:14:10.000 | And people ought to say it's bad.

00:14:13.160 | It's bad pedagogically.

00:14:16.360 | And frankly, in many of these instances,

00:14:20.880 | it's not only bad, it's stupid.

00:14:22.600 | And I don't mind saying that.

00:14:23.920 | I think that some of these instances

00:14:25.440 | in which teachers have been disciplined, absolutely stupid.

00:14:28.760 | People say, well, the teacher used the word.

00:14:31.080 | Excuse me, used the word?

00:14:33.120 | It'd be one thing, it'd be one thing

00:14:36.240 | if a teacher looked at a student

00:14:39.420 | and called the student nigger.

00:14:42.120 | Get out of here, nigger.

00:14:45.000 | That'd be fine.

00:14:47.000 | Discipline, that's teacher, that's bad.

00:14:49.700 | But that's not what's going on.

00:14:53.360 | You don't have, none of these are cases

00:14:56.480 | in which you have an individual

00:14:58.960 | who is a stranger to another individual

00:15:01.440 | and this word just sort of comes out.

00:15:04.120 | No, what we have here is a class

00:15:07.880 | involving a person who is a teacher

00:15:13.440 | interacting with students,

00:15:15.800 | talking about subjects in which

00:15:19.400 | it would be perfectly understandable

00:15:21.680 | why this word would emerge as a subject of conversation.

00:15:25.380 | Now, under those circumstances,

00:15:29.240 | it's somehow wrong for a teacher

00:15:32.640 | to utter this word.

00:15:35.680 | In my view, the answer is no.

00:15:37.280 | And I said that 20 years ago.

00:15:41.320 | I say it even more emphatically now.

00:15:44.060 | - Still, it is one of the most powerful words

00:15:48.560 | in the English language.

00:15:50.480 | And there's a kind of responsibility

00:15:54.480 | that we as humans should have with words,

00:15:57.200 | with statements.

00:15:59.440 | That word, if not used skillfully,

00:16:02.800 | if not used competently,

00:16:04.480 | even when just read from a legal transcript,

00:16:07.120 | can do more harm than good.

00:16:10.960 | - I agree with what you say.

00:16:12.640 | Yes, words are powerful.

00:16:15.840 | Words do matter.

00:16:18.160 | And so I am certainly not suggesting

00:16:22.920 | that people be lax.

00:16:25.080 | I'm not suggesting that people be irresponsible.

00:16:30.080 | It's precisely because words matter, however,

00:16:36.600 | that we need to be willing to face words

00:16:41.600 | and grapple with words and talk about words

00:16:46.400 | and talk about the history of words,

00:16:48.240 | precisely because words matter.

00:16:51.000 | And among other things, it seems to me,

00:16:54.720 | it's important to understand

00:16:56.440 | that words can mean different things in different contexts.

00:17:01.360 | It's not the case that a word

00:17:06.640 | means the same thing in every context.

00:17:10.880 | The word discriminating.

00:17:14.020 | Sometimes it's a very bad thing.

00:17:18.820 | That person discriminates.

00:17:20.840 | And when you, again, intonation of voice means something.

00:17:26.360 | If I say, "That person discriminates,"

00:17:29.520 | and I'm obviously being disapproving,

00:17:32.680 | implicitly what I'm saying is that person

00:17:35.880 | distinguishes between things on an unjustifiable basis,

00:17:42.280 | and that's a bad thing.

00:17:44.360 | On the other hand, that person has discriminating taste.

00:17:49.080 | Oh, that means something very different.

00:17:50.720 | That means that the person differentiates

00:17:55.080 | in a way that shows that they understand

00:17:58.200 | the difference between excellent, good,

00:18:01.820 | and not so good, and we think that that's a good thing.

00:18:05.640 | So words can have different,

00:18:07.760 | words can mean different things in different contexts,

00:18:10.920 | and it seems to me that that's something

00:18:12.620 | that actually we ought to recognize.

00:18:16.440 | We ought to recognize and talk about.

00:18:19.760 | - Well, some words enter this territory of being a slur,

00:18:24.760 | and it seems like when they cross the line

00:18:27.640 | into being a slur, there's the number of contexts

00:18:32.640 | in which it's okay to mention it

00:18:35.540 | exponentially decreases, right?

00:18:38.780 | - No, no, I'm gonna resist that a little bit,

00:18:42.460 | because the whole idea of slurs, slurs change.

00:18:47.460 | Yankee was a slur.

00:18:54.320 | Yankee was a slur in 18th century United States.

00:18:59.040 | Slur today, New York Yankees, I'm a Yankee fan,

00:19:05.920 | I'm a Yankee.

00:19:07.400 | Queer, queer.

00:19:12.560 | This is in my lifetime, there was a time,

00:19:17.440 | you queer, and people would really run away from it,

00:19:23.520 | and that was a bad thing.

00:19:26.380 | And then, thank goodness, gay liberation movement,

00:19:31.380 | gay liberation movement, basically,

00:19:34.740 | we're not gonna run away from this.

00:19:37.080 | We're gonna grab this, quote, slur,

00:19:40.900 | and we're going to affix it to ourselves,

00:19:45.020 | and we are going to repurpose it.

00:19:49.420 | Now, the word queer is, again, can it be a slur?

00:19:53.820 | Yeah, it can be a slur, doesn't have to be,

00:19:57.140 | and it seems to me that it's important for people

00:19:59.340 | to know about how a word, a symbol,

00:20:04.340 | in some contexts can be a slur,

00:20:06.600 | in some contexts doesn't have to be.

00:20:09.300 | So the whole idea of what's a slur,

00:20:14.100 | that's a complicated idea in and of itself.

00:20:18.620 | It's very complicated.

00:20:20.460 | It's, if I may say, almost fascinating how language evolves.

00:20:24.580 | But if we were to kind of have a minute-by-minute

00:20:29.060 | evaluation of the most powerful,

00:20:31.980 | intensely slur-like words in the world,

00:20:37.300 | I think the N-word with a hard R at the end,

00:20:40.380 | which is the title of your book,

00:20:42.140 | is number one on that list.

00:20:44.900 | - Well, probably so, and of course,

00:20:47.140 | that's one of the reasons why I wrote a little book about it.

00:20:49.900 | - Yeah, but it hasn't, even since you wrote

00:20:52.220 | a little book about it, it seems like it's maintained

00:20:55.180 | its number one status.

00:20:56.540 | You mentioned queer.

00:20:58.020 | Maybe queer was in the top 20, I don't know, for a while,

00:21:05.020 | and now it's sliding into the top 1,000,

00:21:08.660 | and the N-word is at the top.

00:21:11.140 | - You're absolutely right.

00:21:12.260 | The origins of this book, I clearly remember.

00:21:17.260 | I was at my office, and I was thinking about lecture topics,

00:21:22.460 | and I get invited to give lectures from time to time.

00:21:26.260 | And I was thinking, well, what might make

00:21:31.300 | for an interesting lecture?

00:21:32.380 | And all of a sudden, the word nigger popped into my mind.

00:21:37.220 | Now, this is a word, I've grown up with this word.

00:21:39.620 | I mean, there's never been a time in my life when,

00:21:43.780 | at least in my conscious life,

00:21:49.060 | in which this word's been absent.

00:21:54.660 | I mean, in my household, for instance.

00:21:56.660 | In my household, my parents are black people.

00:22:00.940 | My parents were refugees from the Jim Crow South.

00:22:04.620 | I was born in the Deep South, South Carolina.

00:22:07.900 | In my household, I heard the word nigger used

00:22:12.580 | in every possible way.

00:22:15.540 | I heard it used as a slur.

00:22:18.140 | I also heard it used with respect to people

00:22:21.540 | who were praised.

00:22:23.460 | My father, I clearly remember my father, whom I revere.

00:22:29.620 | That's the smartest nigger in the world.

00:22:33.980 | That's the bravest nigger in the world.

00:22:36.100 | That's the baddest nigger I know.

00:22:38.420 | He wasn't putting people down.

00:22:40.540 | This is the way he talked.

00:22:41.940 | And I grew up hearing this word in various ways.

00:22:46.780 | And so I was thinking to myself,

00:22:48.220 | God, where did this word come from?

00:22:50.900 | And one of the first things I did,

00:22:52.260 | I clearly remember just jumping up out of my seat,

00:22:54.900 | running up to the library, Oxford English Dictionary.

00:22:58.460 | When did this word first appear in English?

00:23:01.020 | What was the history of the word?

00:23:03.460 | And then what really sort of grabbed my attention

00:23:07.820 | is I get my computer going,

00:23:13.700 | and I asked the computer system,

00:23:19.300 | give me every case,

00:23:24.220 | every federal court case in which this word appears,

00:23:29.340 | thousands of cases.

00:23:32.340 | And then I said, oh my goodness, this is really interesting.

00:23:35.980 | And then I started just cataloging all the different cases.

00:23:40.980 | There came a point, I'd say probably about a month into this,

00:23:45.380 | I compared the number of times nigger came up

00:23:52.860 | with other sorts of slurs.

00:23:54.540 | So for instance, kike, K-I-K-E,

00:23:58.140 | long time derogatory word for Jews.

00:24:03.140 | How many times has this word come up?

00:24:05.660 | There was a time in which the word appeared,

00:24:09.860 | but nothing like the infamous n-word, nothing.

00:24:14.860 | And then what about wetback?

00:24:17.660 | What about, and then I just,

00:24:20.940 | let me just take a look at all the other slurs.

00:24:24.220 | Nothing came close, not even remotely close to nigger.

00:24:29.220 | And I think it has something to do with,

00:24:31.500 | I think it has something to do with the uniqueness

00:24:36.500 | of the color line,

00:24:39.260 | particularly as it pertains to African-Americans.

00:24:43.740 | I think that the fact that nigger

00:24:49.300 | sort of occupies such a unique status among slurs,

00:24:54.300 | I think that's a reflection of the unique stigma

00:24:59.900 | that has been imposed on African-Americans.

00:25:04.340 | - It's hard to know the chicken or the egg

00:25:07.020 | why one word is able to so distinctly and clearly

00:25:14.700 | encapsulate this struggle between races

00:25:19.300 | that is throughout American history.

00:25:21.980 | I mean, they didn't have to probably be so,

00:25:23.660 | but it came to be that way.

00:25:25.500 | - It became that, and not only that,

00:25:27.220 | not only that, but of course,

00:25:28.760 | the nigger spurred other slurs.

00:25:33.540 | So Arabs, sand niggers.

00:25:36.840 | The Irish, the niggers of Europe.

00:25:43.800 | Women, the niggers of the world.

00:25:46.540 | - John Lennon even has a song.

00:25:48.060 | - That's right.

00:25:49.660 | Well, I think Yoko Ono, I think,

00:25:51.260 | had something to do with that song.

00:25:53.260 | So, I mean, it is a slur that has spawned other slurs.

00:25:58.260 | And again, this is, that's why,

00:26:03.660 | as you indicated a moment ago,

00:26:05.020 | this is a quite unique term.

00:26:09.960 | - But are you conscious,

00:26:13.500 | are you deliberate in you saying this word?

00:26:16.220 | So let me just say from a personal experience,

00:26:19.180 | maybe my upbringing, where I came from,

00:26:21.580 | in my daily life, I don't think I've ever heard

00:26:26.820 | that word with a hard R said as often,

00:26:30.700 | used clearly in my life, said,

00:26:32.580 | I've heard it today more than I have ever heard

00:26:35.540 | in my entire life.

00:26:37.220 | And I think there's a few people who listen to this,

00:26:42.340 | that will be listening to this

00:26:43.540 | and will be very uncomfortable.

00:26:45.780 | I would say not in a bad way, probably in a good way.

00:26:50.780 | I'm uncomfortable now and I am almost introspecting

00:26:54.380 | and trying to figure out why am I uncomfortable.

00:26:57.460 | And I think even the title of your book

00:27:00.660 | is making me think that.

00:27:02.060 | Just looking into my own mind and trying to understand,

00:27:05.860 | wow, words have power.

00:27:07.820 | And why does it have so much power?

00:27:09.580 | But are you deliberate in that action?

00:27:11.460 | And by the way, not only are the people listening

00:27:13.700 | to this sweating, this will be on YouTube in part.

00:27:17.500 | And YouTube, the people on the other side will be sweating.

00:27:22.820 | What do we do with this?

00:27:24.540 | - Yeah, well, am I deliberate?

00:27:27.340 | The answer is yes.

00:27:30.220 | And let me unpack that a little bit.

00:27:33.420 | First, that's right.

00:27:35.980 | I mean, am I deliberate?

00:27:38.780 | Yeah.

00:27:39.620 | I deliberately wrote a book called

00:27:43.940 | "Nigger, The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word."

00:27:47.580 | And was that deliberate?

00:27:49.300 | Yeah, that was quite deliberate.

00:27:50.660 | - But the title could have been N-word versus--

00:27:53.300 | - The title could have been N-word, sure.

00:27:56.100 | The title could have been N-word.

00:27:57.380 | The title could have been a book about a word

00:28:02.060 | that causes pain to many people.

00:28:04.660 | I could have named it that.

00:28:07.060 | There are many titles I could have used.

00:28:09.740 | Did I want a title that would be provocative?

00:28:15.260 | Did I want a title that would grab people?

00:28:18.260 | The answer to that is yes.

00:28:20.220 | I'm a writer.

00:28:22.380 | I want people to read what I write.

00:28:24.860 | Was I being sensationalistic?

00:28:28.540 | Well, I mean, if you wanna put it like that, yes.

00:28:33.540 | I'm not embarrassed to say that.

00:28:36.740 | I mean, I'm sure that when people write books,

00:28:39.620 | they think really hard about their titles

00:28:41.260 | and they try to get a title

00:28:42.220 | that will grab people's attention.

00:28:45.740 | I know people, respect people very deeply,

00:28:50.740 | who never, it's a matter of principle,

00:28:54.980 | never utter this word.

00:28:59.260 | And I've talked with people, I've had people say,

00:29:05.180 | I read your book, let's talk about it,

00:29:07.980 | but let's be very clear, I'm not gonna use the word.

00:29:11.060 | I've had many conversations with people

00:29:13.460 | who've asked me not to use the word.

00:29:15.420 | I was on a, the first time this came up was a book tour.

00:29:21.300 | It was 20 years ago when the book first came out

00:29:25.420 | and I was on one of these call-in shows

00:29:30.100 | early in the morning.

00:29:31.820 | Time came to call in, seven o'clock.

00:29:35.100 | I call in at five or seven.

00:29:37.180 | Right before I go on, the host of the show says,

00:29:40.100 | oh, by the way, we have a strict policy here at the station.

00:29:45.100 | We never use this word.

00:29:48.140 | And I said, well, gosh, I wish you had told me this earlier.

00:29:50.620 | Does this mean then that you're never going to pronounce

00:29:54.860 | fully the title of my book?

00:29:57.100 | And she said, that's right.

00:29:58.620 | And I had to make a choice right then and there.

00:30:00.700 | Am I gonna go on or am I not?

00:30:03.580 | What'd you do?

00:30:04.420 | I went on and I abided by the station's rules.

00:30:08.500 | And fine, we had a perfectly fine conversation.

00:30:12.300 | And there is a place for euphemism.

00:30:17.780 | The American language is a very supple language.

00:30:20.420 | There are lots of words that one can use.

00:30:22.860 | I do not get angry with people who don't,

00:30:27.860 | they say as a matter of principle,

00:30:29.420 | they're not gonna use the word, fine.

00:30:30.860 | I'm willing to, I understand where they're coming from.

00:30:34.900 | And often I will defer to their wishes.

00:30:38.740 | All I say is, I want people to understand

00:30:42.580 | where I'm coming from.

00:30:43.780 | I'm not just using this word willy nilly.

00:30:48.340 | There's a pedagogical reason.

00:30:50.180 | There is a reason for why I'm saying what I'm saying.

00:30:54.760 | There is a reason why I use the word.

00:30:59.980 | - Can you make the case why using the word is a good idea

00:31:04.100 | and can you make, can you steel man the case

00:31:05.980 | why it's a bad idea?

00:31:07.340 | Maybe you've heard from some critics.

00:31:09.020 | - Yes.

00:31:09.860 | - Who said that you saying this word out loud

00:31:12.460 | is actually causing a lot of harm.

00:31:13.940 | Not like harm because people's feelings are hurt,

00:31:17.820 | but increasing the amount of racism and hate in the world.

00:31:21.220 | - Yeah, critics.

00:31:22.740 | Let's start with the critics.

00:31:25.540 | One, again, going back to when the book was first published,

00:31:30.540 | I remember going to, it was the first bookstore I went to.

00:31:34.540 | And I talked about the book, had a very, you know,

00:31:37.180 | talked, asked questions.

00:31:39.860 | And the last comment, wasn't a question,

00:31:43.580 | but the last comment was made by an elderly black man.

00:31:47.500 | I called on him and he said,

00:31:54.060 | "I've listened to what you've had to say

00:31:56.140 | "and I appreciate what you've had to say."

00:31:58.640 | But he said, "But I remain unconvinced.

00:32:03.000 | "And I remain unconvinced because when I was coming up,

00:32:08.920 | "this word was used to put me in the back of the bus.

00:32:15.620 | "And this word was used to prevent me from voting.

00:32:20.120 | "And this was the word that was used to justify me

00:32:23.960 | "never being called as a juror.

00:32:26.000 | "So to me, this word has only one meaning.

00:32:32.080 | "It's a terrible meaning.

00:32:35.780 | "I'm never going to use the word.

00:32:38.260 | "It hurts me when I hear people use the word,

00:32:42.560 | "especially those who don't know anything about the,

00:32:45.840 | "you know, really about the history of it."

00:32:49.000 | And he went on to say, "I think that your book,

00:32:53.640 | "though well-intended, is probably going to be seen

00:32:58.020 | "by some people as giving them permission to use the word."

00:33:01.880 | And then he stopped.

00:33:04.500 | And I thought that there was a lot of power

00:33:07.740 | behind that gentleman's comment.

00:33:11.000 | I think that what he said is probably correct

00:33:15.600 | insofar as there are probably some people

00:33:18.680 | who read the book, there are probably some people

00:33:21.840 | who are listening to our conversation right now

00:33:24.560 | who will think that I'm giving people permission

00:33:30.760 | to use the word.

00:33:36.140 | You know, I have said that I'm not.

00:33:43.160 | I want people to understand the word.

00:33:46.980 | I think that there is a burden that comes from,

00:33:50.600 | whenever you utter a word like this.

00:33:53.800 | But that's a critique, and I think there's strength

00:33:58.920 | to that critique.

00:33:59.760 | I'm not gonna say that that's a ridiculous critique.

00:34:01.880 | I think that there is something to that.

00:34:04.640 | And by the way, I should say, and that's why

00:34:06.960 | I would say to anyone, that's right,

00:34:12.120 | if this word comes out of your mouth,

00:34:13.780 | you are taking on real responsibility.

00:34:17.440 | So for years, it doesn't happen so much now,

00:34:19.600 | but they were, I'd say for about the first five years

00:34:24.080 | after this book was published,

00:34:26.120 | I would get an email at least once a week.

00:34:31.120 | And it would begin like this.

00:34:34.420 | You know, dear Professor Kennedy, I read your book

00:34:39.040 | and I'm calling to ask you a question.

00:34:41.260 | And as soon as I saw that,

00:34:44.520 | I knew what the question was gonna be.

00:34:46.120 | And what the person would say is the following.

00:34:49.400 | I like rap.

00:34:50.800 | And then I knew what was coming.

00:34:52.800 | I like rap, I'm white, and I have black friends

00:34:57.800 | and we listen to rap and we're driving in the car

00:35:01.560 | and we're listening to the song.

00:35:03.800 | We start humming along and singing along.

00:35:08.760 | And my black friends sing along.

00:35:11.640 | And when nigger or nigga comes up, they sing,

00:35:16.040 | and I don't know what to do.

00:35:18.440 | Is it wrong for me to sing along?

00:35:21.520 | This happened so often that I'd say about after the,

00:35:27.400 | about the 10th time I got in such an email,

00:35:30.080 | I wrote a form letter.

00:35:32.000 | 'Cause I didn't wanna just, you know, take up time

00:35:35.760 | writing, you know, sort of crafting letter

00:35:38.800 | after letter after letter.

00:35:39.620 | So I wrote a form letter.

00:35:40.460 | And basically what I said was, listen, number one,

00:35:43.060 | you know, I'm flattered that you're asking me,

00:35:45.920 | but number one, you should have a conversation

00:35:50.160 | with your friend.

00:35:51.320 | Number two, no matter what your friend says,

00:35:55.920 | let me put something else for you to consider.

00:36:00.440 | Let's suppose for the sake of discussion

00:36:02.420 | that your friend says, oh, doesn't bother me.

00:36:05.500 | I know where you're coming from.

00:36:06.740 | We're just enjoying the music.

00:36:09.160 | I don't think that this is a racist utterance,

00:36:12.680 | you know, coming out of your mouth.

00:36:13.840 | Let's suppose that your friend says that.

00:36:16.600 | That doesn't end matters because let's imagine

00:36:20.560 | the following, let's imagine that you're in a theater

00:36:23.920 | and you're waiting for the, you know, film to start.

00:36:29.900 | And you're just, you know, talking with your friends

00:36:33.580 | or singing with your friends or just, you know,

00:36:35.600 | kicking back with your friends.

00:36:37.300 | And they're talking about nigger this or nigga this.

00:36:42.760 | And you say it, you the white boy say it.

00:36:46.860 | And the next thing you feel is a fist,

00:36:52.200 | a big fist in your mouth that has been launched

00:36:57.200 | by a person that you did not see who was right behind you.

00:37:01.360 | All this person saw was a white person saying nigga.

00:37:04.880 | And the next thing, pow.

00:37:09.520 | That's not, you know, some sort of overheated scenario

00:37:14.520 | coming from some law professor's mind.

00:37:17.600 | That is a very plausible scenario.

00:37:21.320 | So you have to be worried about lots of things,

00:37:24.800 | including mistake.

00:37:26.840 | So my advice to you is be prudent.

00:37:31.840 | I would stay clear of the word unless,

00:37:35.240 | unless you're very certain and unless

00:37:38.320 | if you're called on it, you feel you're in a position

00:37:42.000 | to defend yourself, defend what you're doing.

00:37:45.800 | But the prudent thing would be to stay clear.

00:37:48.800 | - There's so many questions I wanna ask there.

00:37:51.040 | One is about the violence and the legal aspect of that.

00:37:53.440 | It's very interesting.

00:37:54.520 | You raise that in the book.

00:37:55.880 | But, you know, I do wanna bring up

00:37:58.800 | something I probably disagree with you on,

00:38:02.460 | which is you say that there's not a significant difference

00:38:05.320 | between the different variations of the N word.

00:38:07.960 | The one, or maybe you don't.

00:38:11.800 | I just listened to a bunch of your interviews.

00:38:13.960 | So there's the version with the ER at the end,

00:38:18.960 | version with a GA at the end, and then GRO at the end.

00:38:25.160 | These are all different versions.

00:38:28.000 | And I feel like in that list of powerful words,

00:38:31.640 | you know, I feel like there's a distinction.

00:38:34.520 | I feel that the number one spot is the one with the hard R.

00:38:39.400 | And I don't know, maybe you can try to shed light,

00:38:44.400 | but I feel like the one that ends in GA

00:38:51.160 | is really far down the list in terms of modern culture.

00:38:55.320 | So this is, we talked about the evolution of the words

00:38:57.720 | and the word queer, for example.

00:39:00.000 | It feels like, maybe because of rap, because of comedians,

00:39:03.480 | because it's become much more,

00:39:06.640 | it lost so much of its power.

00:39:08.480 | - Well.

00:39:10.800 | - Or you don't think so?

00:39:11.640 | - No, I think there's a difference

00:39:12.760 | between nigger and nigga.

00:39:15.560 | I mean, people make a distinction between them.

00:39:18.880 | And I think that to the extent that lots of people

00:39:21.720 | make a distinction between them,

00:39:23.120 | I think, you know, just as a sociological fact,

00:39:26.280 | they are different.

00:39:29.240 | I think that people who get upset,

00:39:33.960 | if somebody, especially white people.

00:39:36.720 | So, you know, if a white person says nigga,

00:39:40.120 | and they're, you know, and they're, you know,

00:39:44.200 | sort of criticized about it and they say,

00:39:46.320 | "Well, I didn't say nigger.

00:39:47.680 | I said nigga."

00:39:48.840 | Believe me, I think most people who are mad at them

00:39:53.760 | are gonna stay mad at them.

00:39:55.440 | Now you raised the word, you know,

00:39:59.160 | so nigger and nigga, I would put

00:40:01.760 | in a very different category than negro.

00:40:07.640 | - Educate me here.

00:40:09.000 | - Well, yeah, sure.

00:40:10.480 | I'm happy to.

00:40:11.720 | Negro is a,

00:40:17.840 | also controversial.

00:40:20.960 | It's also controversial.

00:40:24.520 | But,

00:40:25.360 | negro has never been viewed

00:40:32.120 | by a substantial number of people

00:40:35.640 | as a derogatory term, at least in the,

00:40:41.080 | with the same amount of animus, the same amount of,

00:40:44.240 | it's a very different kind of word than nigger or nigga.

00:40:51.880 | I mean, after all, I mean, you know,

00:40:54.360 | negro, Martin Luther King Jr.,

00:40:57.680 | all of his great oratory, negro.

00:41:03.240 | You read the work of,

00:41:04.920 | the great W.E.B. Du Bois, negro.

00:41:10.080 | You read the work of my boss.

00:41:16.400 | For instance, I use the word negro.

00:41:19.720 | I use African American, black, Afro-American,

00:41:24.720 | but I also use the word negro.

00:41:26.920 | Now there are some people who get really mad at me

00:41:29.280 | because of, you know, when I use the word negro.

00:41:32.480 | And so for instance, there's students

00:41:34.600 | who've gotten really quite exercised.

00:41:38.000 | And they'll say, you know, I'll be giving a lecture

00:41:41.760 | and a hand will go up, I'll call on somebody

00:41:44.400 | and they'll say, listen, are you using the word negro

00:41:48.560 | in its purely because of the historical time period

00:41:52.880 | that you're using?

00:41:53.720 | So you, you know, is that why you're using it?

00:41:56.000 | Or are you using it in your own voice?

00:41:58.380 | And often I'll say, well, I'm using it in my own voice.

00:42:02.600 | And they'll say, well, I'm offended.

00:42:04.760 | We think that this is, you know, that's old timey.

00:42:08.280 | It's derogatory.

00:42:09.660 | When this first came up, I said, let's pause for a moment.

00:42:17.640 | And I'll take that under advisement.

00:42:20.360 | And let me look into this.

00:42:23.640 | And I ended up writing an essay about it,

00:42:25.640 | an essay about the history of the terms

00:42:29.480 | that black people have used to describe themselves.

00:42:34.060 | And it's a long list, you know, black, colored,

00:42:38.720 | Afro-American, African-American, negro, et cetera.

00:42:42.340 | So I go through all that and I said,

00:42:45.160 | now, let me just tell you,

00:42:46.880 | I know for certain when I started using the word negro

00:42:51.880 | often in writing.

00:42:57.000 | I can date it.

00:42:58.040 | 1983, the summer of 1983 is when I started using

00:43:03.640 | the word negro in my professional life as a lawyer.

00:43:08.640 | And I did it for a very specific reason.

00:43:15.160 | I did it because my boss demanded that I negro capital N.

00:43:20.160 | Now, who was my boss?

00:43:25.980 | My boss in the summer of 1983 was Associate Justice

00:43:31.880 | of the United States Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall,

00:43:37.300 | known as Mr. Civil Rights.

00:43:42.880 | Now, it seems to me you're telling me

00:43:46.840 | that this word is so out of bounds,

00:43:49.240 | that this word is derogatory,

00:43:51.600 | nobody should ever use this word.

00:43:53.340 | Does the fact that Thurgood Marshall demanded

00:43:57.280 | that I use this word,

00:43:58.560 | does that complicate things a little bit?

00:44:01.400 | And so I think that people, again, ought to know more.

00:44:06.340 | I mean, I've encountered students who don't know very much,

00:44:12.460 | but who want to lecture me on word usage

00:44:17.460 | because they know three sentences about current fashion

00:44:24.400 | and hold it, hold it.

00:44:29.560 | By the way, I push it further.

00:44:33.560 | I sometimes use the word colored.

00:44:35.880 | And then some people really don't like that.

00:44:39.520 | Colored, well, there's an organization

00:44:42.420 | still very much alive in American life and law,

00:44:47.420 | the National Association for the Advancement

00:44:50.460 | of Colored People, the NAACP.

00:44:54.420 | They haven't changed their name.

00:44:58.720 | And as far as I'm concerned, it's a wonderful organization.

00:45:01.960 | There are people who have used the word colored.

00:45:07.220 | That's what my grandmother used, colored.

00:45:10.880 | Perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned.

00:45:14.260 | So again, there are lots of different words

00:45:19.260 | that one can use.

00:45:20.940 | You can use different formulations.

00:45:23.380 | I understand that people have different preferences.

00:45:26.360 | Fine, I have my preferences.

00:45:29.880 | At least know where I'm coming from.

00:45:32.440 | - Still, words have power and they have power to hurt.

00:45:37.040 | And there's a lot of reasons that I could see

00:45:42.040 | to justify the use of the word in its full form,

00:45:45.660 | as you're saying, in this conversation as you're using it.

00:45:49.120 | One of them is perhaps fighting for the freedom

00:45:53.120 | to be able to use those kinds of words.

00:45:55.400 | So let me ask you about the freedom of speech

00:45:57.600 | and the censorship of the word.

00:46:02.840 | Should the use of the N word be censored,

00:46:04.920 | for example, on social networks?

00:46:07.720 | - So we can come up with different places.

00:46:10.920 | We can say university campuses, maybe in op-eds,

00:46:15.840 | or I don't know.

00:46:16.960 | But I think social networks currently

00:46:19.280 | is a very interesting place.

00:46:21.480 | There's a lot of conversations that are happening on them.

00:46:24.080 | There's the ability, the technical capability to sentence,

00:46:28.280 | to remove the ability of people to use the word.

00:46:31.600 | Do you think they should be allowed to use the word

00:46:33.480 | on Twitter, for example?

00:46:36.680 | - My response is it all depends on the way

00:46:41.120 | in which the word is being used.

00:46:43.680 | If the word is being used to intimidate,

00:46:47.000 | if the word is being used to terrorize, then no.

00:46:50.440 | Along with lots of other words, by the way.

00:46:59.680 | I mean, you can have, I could use the word,

00:47:02.100 | I suppose, gentleman.

00:47:04.920 | I mean, I'm sure that I could conjure up a way

00:47:07.320 | in which that word could be used in a intimidating way.

00:47:11.760 | So, would I be happy if there was a technology

00:47:16.760 | that always blanked this word, N-I-G-G-E-R?

00:47:25.840 | I would be against that.

00:47:28.040 | For one thing, it would erase the name of one of my books.

00:47:34.520 | And I think that the book actually has a lot

00:47:39.400 | of useful information, makes some useful points.

00:47:42.240 | And by the way, let's imagine a world

00:47:47.160 | in which there was a technology that blanked

00:47:51.840 | every time N-I-G-G-E-R appeared.

00:47:55.520 | You would have, what would that do to novels

00:48:00.900 | by James Baldwin, by Toni Morrison,

00:48:05.020 | by, what would that do to the speeches

00:48:09.900 | of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.?

00:48:13.100 | What would that do to the comedy albums

00:48:15.820 | of Richard Pryor, Cat Williams, Dave Chappelle?

00:48:19.520 | What would that, if one sort of plays that out,

00:48:27.140 | would one want to have all of those blanks

00:48:31.220 | in important literary and political performances?

00:48:37.380 | No, I don't want such blanks.

00:48:45.300 | What I want, I would want the word to be there

00:48:51.300 | and for people to understand how to deal with this word.

00:48:54.900 | And by the way, you've used the word hurt an awful lot.

00:48:58.180 | So let's talk about hurt.

00:48:59.600 | I think we need to be more careful

00:49:04.060 | with the way in which we deal with hurt

00:49:06.900 | because people can be justifiably hurt.

00:49:12.740 | You can have justifiably hurt feelings.

00:49:17.500 | And if somebody has justifiably hurt feelings,

00:49:21.580 | I then think that we should turn to the person

00:49:24.020 | who has hurt those feelings and say,

00:49:26.820 | you have acted wrongly because this person's feelings

00:49:31.820 | are justifiably hurt in relationship to what you've done.

00:49:36.980 | On the other hand, there are people who have hurt feelings

00:49:42.060 | and frankly, it's unjustified.

00:49:46.760 | So just imagine the following.

00:49:49.280 | Let's imagine that I give a talk

00:49:53.640 | about the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr.

00:49:57.780 | And then let's imagine that a Ku Klux Klansman

00:50:00.320 | comes up to me after my talk and says,

00:50:03.560 | oh, you have now hurt my feelings.

00:50:07.480 | What, am I supposed to apologize?

00:50:11.560 | Am I supposed to be regretful that my talk

00:50:15.600 | about the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr.

00:50:17.860 | has hurt the feelings of the Klansman?

00:50:20.480 | No, my response is gonna be,

00:50:22.600 | you need to reevaluate your feelings

00:50:26.200 | because actually your feeling of hurt is unjustified.

00:50:31.200 | And no, there's no apology coming from me.

00:50:36.520 | - But there's a kind of line, perhaps the gray area,

00:50:39.960 | and maybe the word hurt has been overused

00:50:42.440 | 'cause if you try to avoid hurting

00:50:46.140 | a small fraction of society that is mentally weak

00:50:50.880 | in a way where everything hurts them,

00:50:52.840 | that's the wrong way to build a society.

00:50:56.520 | But if we flip that upside down and say,

00:50:58.760 | trying to maximize the amount of love in the world,

00:51:01.320 | and think about decisions we make

00:51:04.560 | in terms of the language we use

00:51:05.680 | to try to maximize the amount of love,

00:51:07.800 | and not just short-term but long-term.

00:51:10.040 | And that's where freedom of speech is very powerful

00:51:11.920 | because it's a short-term painful thing often,

00:51:15.520 | but long-term beneficial thing, just having freedom.

00:51:19.620 | And so there's where the question of the N-word

00:51:22.860 | starts to come in.

00:51:24.040 | How much, how do we think about its use on the internet,

00:51:29.940 | on college campuses, in a way that maximizes

00:51:35.180 | the amount of love and compassion

00:51:37.020 | and camaraderie in the world?

00:51:38.340 | - I think that's good.

00:51:39.220 | And I would associate myself with your vision,

00:51:44.980 | how can we maximize love?

00:51:47.860 | No, I love that, I think that's great.

00:51:50.040 | So let's take that on.

00:51:51.780 | I doubt that the way of doing that

00:51:57.340 | is to

00:52:00.380 | erase the infamous N-word.

00:52:08.900 | I doubt that the way of doing that

00:52:12.700 | is to say to people,

00:52:16.940 | we understand that your feelings are really hurt

00:52:21.360 | and we're gonna do all that we can

00:52:24.100 | to avoid this symbolic action,

00:52:29.020 | maybe this word or maybe this symbol.

00:52:31.420 | We're gonna really, we're gonna do all that we can

00:52:33.700 | to suppress it so that we can have a more loving universe.

00:52:38.700 | I doubt that that's the way to do it.

00:52:40.740 | I think a better way to do it,

00:52:42.440 | I think a better way to do it

00:52:45.300 | would be to fully educate people,

00:52:49.820 | including educate people such that,

00:52:52.780 | you see that over there?

00:52:57.220 | That is the uniform of the Ku Klux Klan.

00:53:01.720 | I want you to be educated about the uniform

00:53:06.660 | of the Ku Klux Klan so that you can look at the uniform

00:53:09.060 | of the Ku Klux Klan and know what it's about.

00:53:12.020 | You're not terrorized by it.

00:53:14.440 | You're not immediately, you don't see it

00:53:17.740 | and sink to your knees and start wailing and crying.

00:53:21.760 | You don't see it and say, oh, I'm traumatized.

00:53:25.540 | No, you don't do any of that.

00:53:27.200 | You see it, you understand it.

00:53:29.760 | If somebody asks you about it,

00:53:31.000 | you're fully prepared to talk about it.

00:53:33.600 | It seems to me that that attitude, that poise,

00:53:37.280 | that strength, that knowledge would be a better way

00:53:42.280 | of equipping us to have a more loving world.

00:53:48.480 | And by the way, just so you know,

00:53:50.440 | I would say that about the swastika.

00:53:52.920 | I would say it about the infamous N-word.

00:53:55.600 | I would say it about all of the things

00:54:00.040 | that we're talking about.

00:54:01.120 | It would be better for people to be educated

00:54:04.840 | so that they are not traumatized.

00:54:08.520 | - So do you, you know, the N-word should not be removed

00:54:16.880 | from "Huck Finn," "Adventures of Huck Finn"

00:54:22.800 | or from the works of James Baldwin and Tori Morrison?

00:54:24.960 | - Not at all.

00:54:26.120 | In fact, it seems to me that the polarization

00:54:33.160 | of these great artists' literary work,

00:54:36.080 | as far as I'm concerned, highly objectionable.

00:54:40.040 | Highly objectionable.

00:54:41.520 | - When is it okay for a white man to say the N-word

00:54:45.720 | with a hard R?

00:54:46.800 | - Here we need to focus on the word say.

00:54:53.480 | Is it ever okay for anyone, you know,

00:54:57.440 | black, white, pink, yellow, I don't care, red, orange,

00:55:02.240 | is it okay for anyone to use this word in a way

00:55:06.960 | to put down people, to terrorize people,

00:55:11.760 | to intimidate people?

00:55:13.280 | Answer, no.

00:55:14.480 | And I'd say that black person.

00:55:18.360 | I've seen, I mean, by the way,

00:55:19.600 | I've seen black people use this word

00:55:22.040 | to try to intimidate, put down other black people.

00:55:25.480 | Bad.

00:55:26.400 | So I'm against it with a black person,

00:55:27.920 | white person, doesn't matter.

00:55:30.120 | On the other hand, on the other hand,

00:55:33.600 | imagine,

00:55:37.440 | imagine a white person

00:55:44.480 | who is

00:55:49.280 | giving a lecture

00:55:54.400 | on the history of American racism.

00:56:00.120 | A lecture on the history of American racism.

00:56:03.560 | And in giving that lecture,

00:56:07.760 | quotes

00:56:10.880 | the, you know,

00:56:14.200 | white racist politicians

00:56:20.280 | who until fairly recently in American life

00:56:23.880 | used the infamous N-word.

00:56:27.560 | So imagine a white history professor

00:56:31.280 | giving a lecture about the history of American racism

00:56:35.840 | and says, "In 1948,

00:56:39.000 | "this is what so-and-so

00:56:43.080 | "running for the presidency of the United States said."

00:56:47.120 | And then quotes a paragraph or two

00:56:53.240 | in which the infamous N-word is featured.

00:56:57.880 | Is that bad?

00:56:58.920 | No, that's not bad.

00:57:00.800 | No, that's not bad.

00:57:02.920 | Sounds like a perfectly good lecture.

00:57:06.040 | And I'm glad that you put the infamous N-word in there

00:57:10.000 | so that we can see that as recently as 1948,

00:57:14.240 | people who were running for the presidency

00:57:16.000 | of the United States openly used the word.

00:57:19.320 | That does not bother me.

00:57:21.320 | I'll say this too.

00:57:22.320 | Now, you know, somebody says,

00:57:23.320 | "Well, you know, nice job, Kennedy,

00:57:27.080 | "but you've limited it to over here.

00:57:32.080 | "You've put it in an academic setting.

00:57:34.920 | "What about other settings?"

00:57:37.840 | It does not bother me.

00:57:39.400 | Let's imagine somebody who's a comedian,

00:57:41.760 | a white comedian,

00:57:43.680 | who is satirizing

00:57:51.160 | word usage.

00:57:53.000 | Let's imagine a white comedian

00:57:55.200 | who is satirizing our current practice

00:58:01.320 | and wants to poke fun at the way in which,

00:58:08.040 | you know, let's imagine you have a black rapper

00:58:13.120 | who invites people on stage.

00:58:16.920 | And let's suppose they invite a black person on stage

00:58:20.040 | and they're perfectly happy when the black person

00:58:23.640 | full out with, you know, their lyrics.

00:58:27.280 | They invite a white person on stage.

00:58:30.160 | The white person is, you know, doesn't really,

00:58:32.240 | you know, sort of mystified,

00:58:33.800 | but it comes on stage and full out with what the rapper says,

00:58:38.320 | including the infamous N-word,

00:58:39.640 | and then the black rapper gets mad.

00:58:41.840 | Imagine the white comedian who satirizes that,

00:58:45.960 | pokes fun at that.

00:58:48.520 | And in poking fun at that, says the infamous N-word.

00:58:53.120 | Am I angry?

00:58:54.080 | No, I'm not angry.

00:58:55.840 | Not angry at all.

00:58:57.760 | - What if in the process of satirizing,

00:58:59.640 | that comedian is not very funny?

00:59:01.000 | - You say, "Bad joke, you were not funny."

00:59:04.240 | - Okay.

00:59:05.400 | - I don't object to the use of the infamous N-word.

00:59:08.800 | I just say, you know, "You're not very funny."

00:59:11.880 | - But because there's a line, when the joke is not funny,

00:59:15.200 | it just seems like the comedy is used as a cover

00:59:19.080 | to actually say something hateful.

00:59:20.680 | It's an interesting thing about comedy.

00:59:23.000 | I feel like the funnier you are,

00:59:25.120 | the more you can get away with.

00:59:28.200 | - Probably.

00:59:29.040 | - And that's something to do with the thing we said earlier,

00:59:32.080 | which is when you use words that have power,

00:59:35.440 | you should do so with skill and competence,

00:59:38.080 | and the responsibility those words carry.

00:59:42.120 | - Again, the cases that I'm most familiar with

00:59:44.440 | are the cases involving teachers, professors, academic.

00:59:49.440 | And it is said sometimes, "Oh, why do I object?"

00:59:55.360 | I object, sometimes people say,

00:59:59.000 | because I suspect that this teacher

01:00:03.840 | just wanted to say the word,

01:00:06.000 | and that all of this is a cover, a pretext.

01:00:10.080 | Do I, in my sense, my sense of it is, no.

01:00:14.400 | I don't think it's a pretext.

01:00:16.040 | If it's pretextual, that's bad.

01:00:19.600 | But in my experience, I have not seen that.

01:00:22.480 | I don't believe that that's what's going on.

01:00:24.520 | - I agree with you on that,

01:00:25.600 | but sometimes I do see people

01:00:27.520 | that kind of have this flying towards the light,

01:00:32.160 | desire to say something controversial and edgy,

01:00:37.160 | and they don't realize that there's a responsibility there.

01:00:40.360 | There's a skill.

01:00:41.480 | You shouldn't just say,

01:00:42.800 | I mean, actually, when comedians first start out,

01:00:45.040 | they'll sometimes go into that territory.

01:00:46.800 | They'll say edgy stuff that's totally not funny,

01:00:50.320 | and then you realize this is not,

01:00:53.480 | like, the edgier the thing,

01:00:55.200 | the more skills required to really serve.

01:00:57.920 | Like, if you're cooking, as a chef, a poisonous fish,

01:01:02.920 | there's a responsibility on how to cook the damn thing

01:01:05.520 | so you don't poison the people eating it.

01:01:07.280 | - I would agree, but to get back to your question,

01:01:11.840 | let's imagine that somebody produces a new set

01:01:16.760 | of Lenny Bruce albums.

01:01:20.040 | So Lenny Bruce was white.

01:01:22.600 | Lenny Bruce used the term nigger in his sets.

01:01:27.120 | - Sure did.

01:01:27.960 | - Question, would I want Lenny Bruce's albums now

01:01:32.960 | to be purged of the infamous N-word?

01:01:40.000 | My response, absolutely not.

01:01:43.280 | - As another follow-on sort of question,

01:01:46.200 | what you think, I've seen interviews you've done

01:01:49.040 | about this particular book.

01:01:50.640 | The title of those interviews on YouTube and elsewhere

01:01:54.360 | would use the full word.

01:01:56.440 | What do you think about that?

01:02:00.200 | Should I use this word in the title?

01:02:02.980 | - In my view, the answer would be yes.

01:02:05.780 | Again, there are people.

01:02:08.600 | I've been on interviews.

01:02:10.040 | I've been on stage with people

01:02:12.960 | who had a different conclusion.

01:02:17.080 | I respect a different way.

01:02:21.480 | Again, there is a place for euphemism.

01:02:26.480 | Again, it all depends.

01:02:29.200 | I'm not offended.

01:02:30.840 | Let's imagine that you posted this

01:02:35.320 | and you had asterisks instead of spelling it out.

01:02:39.840 | Would I be offended?

01:02:41.600 | No, I wouldn't be offended.

01:02:42.900 | I would prefer the full spelling,

01:02:46.580 | but I would understand where you're coming from.

01:02:48.920 | Would it offend me?

01:02:49.760 | No, it wouldn't offend me.

01:02:50.600 | - Well, here's the weird calculation

01:02:51.960 | is which version of the word in the title,

01:02:56.320 | as silly as that is, brings more love to the world.

01:03:00.880 | It's hard, and basically your answer is

01:03:05.120 | I don't know.

01:03:05.960 | Your answer is you have to do it and find out.

01:03:11.100 | - I'm not sure.

01:03:13.920 | Again, there's certain questions in which,

01:03:17.360 | there's certain questions you're not gonna,

01:03:19.600 | we're not really going to know.

01:03:23.560 | There's no sociologist who's gonna be able to tell us that.

01:03:26.880 | So what do we do then?

01:03:29.040 | Then we go to secondary positions.

01:03:35.040 | And my secondary position is I don't know.

01:03:40.040 | One thing that I hold onto, however, very strongly

01:03:45.520 | is the virtue of openness,

01:03:49.960 | the virtue of transparency, the virtue of freedom.

01:03:54.960 | And I feel as though if I'm holding onto those things,

01:04:02.920 | if I'm trying to engage in a serious conversation

01:04:06.720 | in which I'm trying to make other people understand me

01:04:11.480 | and I'm listening carefully to other people,

01:04:13.840 | I feel at ease.

01:04:16.660 | I feel at ease.

01:04:18.320 | I feel this is going to eventuate in something positive.

01:04:23.320 | And I feel okay.

01:04:29.120 | - You are at Harvard.

01:04:32.080 | You're one of the most respected people

01:04:34.600 | in the history of Harvard.

01:04:35.900 | That said, you did write a book with the N-word in it,

01:04:39.520 | and you also have a lot of opinions

01:04:41.640 | that challenge the mainstream perspectives

01:04:44.600 | on race from all sides.

01:04:46.120 | I'll hopefully get to talk about some of them.

01:04:48.500 | But what's your view on Harvard

01:04:52.160 | and universities in general and speech?

01:04:55.840 | Did you feel pressure from any direction on,

01:05:01.520 | first of all, the title of this book,

01:05:03.040 | the content of the book,

01:05:04.520 | and in general, your views on race?

01:05:06.640 | - Yeah.

01:05:07.640 | I am very laudatory of Harvard University.

01:05:12.640 | I've been at Harvard since 1984.

01:05:18.680 | I think it is a wonderful place to work.

01:05:28.320 | I have, in the various positions I've taken,

01:05:33.320 | particularly with respect to this book

01:05:37.000 | or all my other books,

01:05:38.760 | what has Harvard University done?

01:05:40.440 | Harvard University has done nothing

01:05:43.920 | but provide support, sustenance, encouragement.

01:05:48.920 | I think that people get down on Harvard University.

01:05:57.520 | I would say to anybody, imagine the following.

01:06:00.320 | Imagine that the ethos of Harvard University

01:06:05.240 | became the governing ethos of the United States overnight.

01:06:10.240 | Tomorrow, we would wake up

01:06:13.640 | in a much better United States of America.

01:06:16.820 | I've been supported by Harvard University.

01:06:25.640 | I think well of Harvard University.

01:06:27.560 | That's not to say that I don't have criticisms of it,

01:06:30.700 | but by and large, Harvard University,

01:06:35.700 | more than by and large, overwhelmingly,

01:06:38.440 | it has provided me,

01:06:40.100 | and I think it overwhelmingly provides my colleagues

01:06:44.600 | with a work setting in which they can do their work

01:06:49.600 | without fear, and that's a good thing.

01:06:54.800 | Are there certain aspects of Harvard University

01:06:58.640 | about which I'm critical?

01:06:59.840 | Yeah, sure.

01:07:00.660 | - By the way, I think a few people,

01:07:03.800 | rightfully, wrongfully, would disagree with you

01:07:07.560 | that if the ethos of Harvard University

01:07:09.560 | took over the country, it'd be a better place,

01:07:12.120 | but there's a lot of interesting ways to break that down

01:07:14.120 | 'cause Harvard, there's not one ethos.

01:07:16.360 | There's a lot of things going on that are very interesting.

01:07:19.480 | But one of the things that's happening

01:07:21.480 | is the disproportionate and kind of aggressive growth

01:07:26.000 | of the administration versus faculty and students.

01:07:29.800 | I think the power of university

01:07:31.200 | should always be with the faculty and the students.

01:07:32.960 | That's where the beauty is.

01:07:33.880 | That's where the flourishing happens.

01:07:35.940 | And the more you have kind of rules and bureaucracy

01:07:38.840 | and all this kind of stuff,

01:07:39.800 | the less powerful the university is.

01:07:42.260 | - I think that at my university and at many universities,

01:07:48.720 | that's right, there's too much bureaucracy,

01:07:52.480 | too much regulation.

01:07:54.320 | And are there dangers to freedom of expression

01:08:00.600 | at my university and at other universities?

01:08:07.680 | Answer, yeah, there are.

01:08:10.080 | There are.

01:08:10.920 | And this has really hit home for me.

01:08:14.280 | There was a period of time in which I was getting off

01:08:17.880 | of, I had gotten off of all boards.

01:08:22.280 | I was just doing my work.

01:08:23.640 | Forget it, I'm just gonna do my work.

01:08:25.000 | I'm not gonna be associated with any organizations.

01:08:28.560 | In the last five years, that has changed quite dramatically.

01:08:31.880 | I have gotten on various, I've reassociated myself

01:08:36.880 | with various organizations,

01:08:40.800 | mainly organizations involving academic freedom

01:08:46.120 | because of what's going on on university campuses.

01:08:51.120 | Again, I have been, at least thus far, thus far,

01:08:58.520 | this hasn't pinched me where I live, but--

01:09:04.200 | - You mean in the space of ideas?

01:09:07.480 | - In the space of ideas, in the space of speech,

01:09:10.000 | in the face of teaching, I haven't been pinched.

01:09:16.000 | But I am concerned about things.

01:09:18.400 | So for instance, let's imagine that you're applying

01:09:21.360 | for a job, you wanna be an assistant professor.

01:09:24.920 | Or let's suppose that you're seeking a promotion.

01:09:27.360 | On many university campuses, you are asked to give

01:09:33.120 | a DEI statement in which you say,

01:09:37.320 | I plan to, one of the reasons why you should hire me

01:09:43.680 | or one of the reasons why you should promote me

01:09:46.520 | is because I'm going to advance the DEI ambitions.

01:09:51.520 | - Diversity, equity, and inclusion, for people who don't know,

01:09:57.480 | this is the general set of programs

01:10:01.600 | that most universities now have.

01:10:03.680 | - Yes, that's right.

01:10:06.560 | So you've got a sort of, basically,

01:10:12.160 | what you're being asked to do,

01:10:14.840 | whether they say it explicitly or not,

01:10:17.480 | they don't say this explicitly,

01:10:18.920 | but this is what is up.

01:10:21.880 | What you're being asked to do is to say,

01:10:24.440 | I'm down with the diversity, equity, and inclusion ethos,

01:10:29.440 | program, policy, campaign.

01:10:34.720 | And here's what I've done that shows

01:10:38.760 | that I'm down with this program.

01:10:41.200 | And therefore, I'm okay.

01:10:43.560 | Well, a lot of what I do would fit

01:10:47.400 | very comfortably within that.

01:10:49.760 | But let's suppose that I didn't,

01:10:51.520 | just suppose I didn't like this.

01:10:54.720 | And by the way, there's certain aspects of the DEI industry

01:10:59.320 | that I don't like.

01:11:01.160 | You mean to tell me that I'm being judged

01:11:05.880 | at an academic institution?

01:11:07.600 | Let's suppose I wanna be a chemist.

01:11:09.200 | Let's suppose I wanna be a physicist.

01:11:10.720 | Let's suppose I wanna be, I don't care,

01:11:12.640 | a critic of literature.

01:11:17.000 | I oppose this program.

01:11:20.640 | I don't think this is the way

01:11:24.160 | in which higher education should be going.

01:11:26.720 | Should I have to, on pain of relinquishing

01:11:33.120 | my ability to be hired,

01:11:35.200 | should I have to sign onto this?

01:11:39.240 | Just suppose, and let's change it around.

01:11:42.560 | Let's not make it a DEI campaign.

01:11:45.760 | Let's make it a Make America Great Again campaign.

01:11:50.640 | What would we think then?

01:11:53.680 | Let's suppose it was something that said,

01:11:55.720 | instead of it saying DEI,

01:11:57.960 | let's make it say,

01:12:00.320 | the advancement of American capitalism as we know it.

01:12:07.800 | We want you to be down with that.

01:12:09.840 | What have you done that shows us

01:12:12.960 | that you believe in the advancement

01:12:15.760 | of capitalism in America?

01:12:18.240 | Would I be happy about, no, I would say this is, no.

01:12:22.920 | Well, no with respect to these, as far as I'm concerned,

01:12:27.920 | with the DEI statements.

01:12:30.440 | Oh, here's another one.

01:12:31.600 | I just learned, and in fact,

01:12:34.480 | I mean, there's certain things that are happening,

01:12:37.800 | and I must say, I mean, I'm in academia,

01:12:40.160 | but it's news to me.

01:12:42.400 | I didn't know until relatively recently

01:12:45.120 | about positionality statements.

01:12:49.040 | So these are statements in which somebody writes an article.

01:12:52.880 | Let's suppose, I write an article,

01:12:54.720 | and it's not enough for me just to submit my article

01:13:03.200 | to some law review or to some other sort of journal.

01:13:07.920 | No, in addition to me submitting my article,

01:13:12.480 | I've got to give a positionality statement

01:13:16.080 | in which I say whether I am gay or straight

01:13:20.800 | or what have you, in which I say my race,

01:13:25.200 | in which I say my nationality,

01:13:27.880 | in which I say my stance

01:13:31.360 | toward this ideological position

01:13:33.280 | or that ideological position.

01:13:35.080 | Interesting.

01:13:36.800 | What?

01:13:38.600 | Is this becoming a kind of a standard?

01:13:42.840 | I don't know how widespread it is.

01:13:44.440 | I know there was a very good article

01:13:46.240 | in the New York Times a couple of days ago

01:13:49.960 | about these positionality statements,

01:13:51.720 | and in fact, that's what sort of tipped me off.

01:13:54.000 | Somebody had told me there's a law review

01:13:56.360 | at my home institution,

01:13:58.920 | and I had a friend who sort of mentioned this offhandedly

01:14:03.760 | and who said, "Well, I submitted an article to this journal,

01:14:08.760 | "and I was a little bit taken aback

01:14:10.920 | "in so far as they did have me fill out a questionnaire

01:14:15.920 | "in which I was required to state my race,

01:14:25.440 | "state this, state that, state the other."

01:14:28.360 | And as far as I'm concerned,

01:14:34.280 | well, what does that have to do

01:14:40.040 | with a proper assessment of somebody's work?

01:14:45.040 | This concerns me.

01:14:49.020 | I'm concerned about the fact,

01:14:53.720 | a little while ago, you mentioned,

01:14:56.500 | a little while ago, you mentioned the word Negro.

01:15:00.580 | I was talking with colleagues a couple months ago,

01:15:07.440 | and somebody mentioned that this word

01:15:11.480 | had come up in their class,

01:15:13.000 | because what happened was one student

01:15:16.840 | was reading from a Supreme Court decision,

01:15:22.320 | and the word Negro was part of what they read out,

01:15:26.640 | and another student held up his hand

01:15:30.680 | and said to the student who was reading,

01:15:32.700 | "Hey, you should be careful,

01:15:35.220 | "because I find the word Negro offensive,

01:15:40.220 | "and you need to be careful about even saying a word

01:15:45.680 | "that would be offensive to someone."

01:15:48.400 | And this person, and then the teacher was,

01:15:52.000 | "What should I say in those circumstances?

01:15:54.480 | "What should I have said?"

01:15:56.920 | And I volunteered, and I said,

01:16:00.040 | "Well, guys, that's really interesting,

01:16:01.440 | "'cause see, if that had come up in my class,

01:16:04.200 | "I would have said, well, frankly,

01:16:07.860 | "I don't even see what the big deal is,

01:16:11.500 | "'cause I use the word Negro."

01:16:14.160 | And Harvard University is not on some level

01:16:19.160 | that is apart from everything else

01:16:24.160 | that's happening in the world.

01:16:27.840 | If these things are happening in other places,

01:16:30.360 | if they're happening at Stanford,

01:16:31.840 | if they're happening at Yale,

01:16:32.880 | if they're happening at Columbia,

01:16:34.520 | they're gonna happen at Harvard.

01:16:38.260 | But thus far, and I am most especially experienced

01:16:47.340 | in life at Harvard Law School,

01:16:50.040 | Harvard Law School is an open environment

01:16:55.820 | in which ideas are tested, and they are tested fully.

01:17:00.820 | And it's because of that that I say

01:17:09.360 | I have been fully supported at Harvard Law School,

01:17:14.000 | feel that it is an excellent place in which to do work.

01:17:18.380 | I'm a fan, I am a fan, and I'm not embarrassed to say it.

01:17:22.260 | I am a fan of my workplace, Harvard Law School.

01:17:27.260 | I'm very happy to be associated with Harvard Law School.

01:17:32.960 | - Zooming out, in general in education,

01:17:36.700 | there's something called critical race theory.

01:17:39.540 | Can you comment on what are your thoughts

01:17:42.140 | about this kind of perspective on race and race in America

01:17:47.140 | to the degree that it's becoming a part

01:17:51.700 | of the education program?

01:17:53.740 | - Okay, so the first thing I wanna say--

01:17:55.460 | - What is it?

01:17:56.580 | - Well, the first thing I wanna say

01:17:58.620 | about critical race theory is that critical race theory

01:18:02.380 | has become a term, so I'm gonna put quotation marks

01:18:06.820 | around the term critical race theory.

01:18:10.700 | In a minute, I'll talk about critical race theory

01:18:13.060 | without quotation marks, but to begin with,

01:18:16.180 | I wanna talk about critical race theory

01:18:17.900 | because the reason why people are talking

01:18:19.740 | about critical race theory so much now

01:18:22.300 | is because politicians, mainly Republican

01:18:26.740 | right-wing politicians, have created a boogeyman

01:18:37.360 | critical race theory with quotation marks around it.

01:18:40.760 | They have created a boogeyman, and they have tried

01:18:44.960 | to make it seem as though this boogeyman

01:18:49.160 | believes all sorts of ideas that Americans should loathe

01:18:54.160 | and that Americans should fear.

01:18:58.600 | And they've created this boogeyman,

01:19:00.520 | and they've created it, and they've done a very good job

01:19:03.200 | of creating the boogeyman, and they have mobilized

01:19:07.000 | sufficient public support such that there are a number

01:19:12.000 | of states that have passed laws prohibiting the teaching

01:19:17.400 | of so-called critical race theory.

01:19:22.600 | Now, the first thing I wanna say about this

01:19:25.300 | is that this campaign, these laws, these various policies,

01:19:30.300 | telling teachers don't teach this and don't teach that,

01:19:34.880 | and you can't use this book, you can't use that book.

01:19:38.960 | This is a frightening encroachment on freedom,

01:19:43.960 | freedom of speech, freedom to learn, freedom to listen,

01:19:50.360 | freedom to read.

01:19:51.560 | That's terrible, and it's one of the most frightening things

01:19:56.360 | that has happened in American life in recent memory.

01:19:59.600 | So that's the first thing I wanna say

01:20:01.240 | about so-called critical race theory.

01:20:04.520 | Now, now I'll say something.

01:20:06.760 | I'm gonna take the quotation marks off

01:20:09.480 | of the term critical race theory.

01:20:11.880 | Critical race theory is a sort of a,

01:20:16.180 | you could have a nice conversation

01:20:18.220 | about actually what it is.

01:20:21.140 | One way of viewing it is to say that,

01:20:25.400 | well, critical race theory is a community of ideas

01:20:31.360 | that comes from a community of people.

01:20:34.420 | The community of people would be people in legal academia

01:20:40.360 | in the period, 1908 starting,

01:20:47.240 | and probably the middle of the 1980s.

01:20:52.420 | It would be associated with people like Derrick Bell.

01:20:57.240 | It would be associated with people like Kimberly Crenshaw,

01:21:01.200 | people like Charles Lawrence, people like Richard Delgado,

01:21:04.920 | people like Mary Matsuda,

01:21:07.480 | and these are folks who held,

01:21:11.220 | embraced a couple of,

01:21:15.120 | they articulated a couple of propositions.

01:21:17.280 | One of their propositions was that

01:21:19.600 | liberal race policy was insufficient.

01:21:30.600 | They would say that the racial policies

01:21:35.600 | of a person like my old boss, Thurgood Marshall,

01:21:40.680 | the liberal racial policies were insufficient

01:21:45.800 | to grapple fully with the pervasiveness

01:21:50.820 | and the depth and intensity of American racism.

01:21:54.500 | Their basic claim,

01:21:56.120 | and I think by the way, it was a good claim.

01:21:57.560 | Their basic claim was that American racism is more central,

01:22:02.560 | more deeply embedded in American life

01:22:07.200 | than most people perceived, including liberals.

01:22:12.200 | And I think there was a lot of strength to that proposition.

01:22:15.880 | But then they also took on some other propositions

01:22:22.260 | with which I was in very strong disagreement.

01:22:25.880 | So I think it's perfectly fine to say

01:22:29.440 | that racism is a force in American life

01:22:33.200 | that is deeper, more pervasive, more stubborn,

01:22:38.200 | more resilient than I think people often understand,

01:22:43.600 | often perceive.

01:22:46.360 | But then some of the folks in critical race theory

01:22:55.120 | push further.

01:22:56.400 | One of the propositions that some of the people

01:23:00.320 | in critical race theory took was the proposition

01:23:03.080 | that America was doomed to always be a country

01:23:08.080 | that would be governed according to the dictates

01:23:16.680 | of white supremacy.

01:23:18.160 | Derrick Bell, who was a colleague of mine

01:23:21.640 | and a friend of mine, took that position.

01:23:24.260 | He talked about the permanence of racism in American life.

01:23:29.260 | And he took the position that the various changes

01:23:33.040 | that had been wrought in American life

01:23:36.000 | were really mainly cosmetic.

01:23:39.840 | They didn't amount to a whole lot.

01:23:42.640 | I mean, Derrick Bell took the position,

01:23:44.640 | the second Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement.

01:23:47.920 | Well, yeah, it made changes, but at the end of the day,

01:23:52.160 | black people were still, after the second Reconstruction,

01:23:57.160 | were still in a position of almost, I don't know,

01:24:03.260 | some of them would even say neo-slavery.

01:24:08.120 | Well, I think that's ridiculous.

01:24:09.720 | The second Reconstruction changed a lot.

01:24:13.780 | And as for neo-slavery, neo-slavery,

01:24:17.160 | what are you talking about?

01:24:19.440 | A black American was president of the United States

01:24:22.720 | between the years 2008 and 2016.

01:24:26.740 | I mean, what are we talking about here?

01:24:30.240 | There's been a tremendous change,

01:24:34.600 | and I think people ought to understand that.

01:24:37.560 | Now, am I saying that everything is peachy keen

01:24:41.600 | and all right?

01:24:42.440 | No, the United States is still,

01:24:47.380 | to a very large extent, still a pigmentocracy,

01:24:51.340 | but that doesn't mean that a lot hasn't changed.

01:24:54.140 | A lot has.

01:24:55.740 | So I disagree with certain tenets of critical race theory

01:25:00.400 | and have been very outspoken in my disagreement.

01:25:02.980 | There's another one, by the way, I need to mention,

01:25:05.420 | because we've talked so much in our discussion

01:25:08.020 | about freedom of speech, freedom to teach,

01:25:10.460 | freedom of listening.

01:25:11.640 | Another big problem that I've had

01:25:16.060 | with some of the people who talk of themselves

01:25:20.300 | as critical race theory people

01:25:23.260 | has to do with their attitude towards freedom,

01:25:27.420 | freedom of speech.

01:25:29.340 | Some critical race theory people

01:25:31.940 | think that the American legal system

01:25:35.900 | is wrong in the latitude

01:25:40.660 | that it gives to what they call hate speech

01:25:43.880 | or the latitude that it gives

01:25:46.340 | to what they would view as racist beliefs.

01:25:49.940 | Some of the people who associate themselves

01:25:53.340 | with critical race theory think that racist beliefs

01:25:57.260 | ought to be expunged with the aid of state power,

01:26:01.900 | if need be.

01:26:03.700 | Well, I'm against that.

01:26:05.660 | And I think we are at a moment,

01:26:10.620 | an ironic moment, in which actually it's the right wing

01:26:15.620 | that has embraced some of the ideas

01:26:20.760 | that were championed by some of the people

01:26:23.600 | who call themselves critical race theorists.

01:26:26.600 | They say, "Oh, we ought to expunge hate speech."

01:26:31.600 | Well, the right wing is saying,

01:26:33.480 | "This critical race theory, that's hate speech,

01:26:35.880 | "so let's expunge it."

01:26:38.000 | And so I, again, I've been very outspoken

01:26:43.000 | in my criticism of some of the illiberal dimensions

01:26:48.020 | of critical race theory.

01:26:54.940 | So I've been a critic of certain features

01:26:57.980 | of critical race theory.

01:26:59.560 | I have applauded certain features of critical race theory.

01:27:06.600 | Critical race theory, there's some aspects of it

01:27:09.300 | that I think have been useful.

01:27:10.400 | There's some aspects of it that I think have been

01:27:12.380 | profoundly wrong-headed.

01:27:14.040 | So that's where I am.

01:27:17.280 | And I certainly, and above all,

01:27:21.120 | I certainly am against any efforts to remove it

01:27:26.120 | from the intellectual universe.

01:27:31.680 | It is a part of our intellectual universe.

01:27:33.940 | People ought to know about it.

01:27:35.940 | And people ought to debate it.

01:27:38.720 | And people ought to be free to make up their minds

01:27:41.840 | to conclude what they will about the strengths

01:27:46.340 | and weaknesses of critical race theory.

01:27:48.760 | - And we'll talk about the pessimistic

01:27:53.760 | and the optimistic perspective on race

01:27:56.520 | in the history of the 20th century in America.

01:27:59.320 | I think you have very interesting perspectives there.

01:28:01.040 | But before that, I'd love to look at the current moment

01:28:05.720 | and you had a conversation with Glenn Lowry

01:28:08.640 | and John McWhorter.

01:28:09.880 | And from there, it became clear to me,

01:28:14.880 | I think John made clear how important

01:28:18.920 | the conversation about race is policing in today's society.

01:28:25.920 | That that's where a lot of African-Americans feel

01:28:29.640 | is sort of the pinnacle of racism sits,

01:28:32.680 | the people that believe there's still racism in America.

01:28:35.880 | There's still a lot of racism in America.

01:28:37.480 | That's where it is.

01:28:38.820 | So to what degree do you think

01:28:43.820 | there's widespread institutional racism in policing?

01:28:46.920 | - Yeah, well, my first book was a book

01:28:51.920 | called Race, Crime, and the Law.

01:28:54.360 | - 1997.

01:28:58.120 | - 1997, wow.

01:28:59.780 | - Time flies.

01:29:02.280 | - Time flies.

01:29:03.220 | Unfortunately, unfortunately,

01:29:10.320 | the impetus behind that book stands.

01:29:20.280 | That book was propelled by a sense that with respect

01:29:30.240 | to the administration of criminal justice,

01:29:34.520 | African-Americans feel deeply aggrieved

01:29:39.800 | and they feel deeply aggrieved with good reason.

01:29:50.540 | And they feel deeply aggrieved with good reason

01:29:54.800 | in at least two dimensions.

01:29:58.040 | On the one hand, African-Americans suffer

01:30:03.040 | from under protection.

01:30:09.320 | And in fact, in that book, the central theme of that book

01:30:14.080 | was that black Americans suffer from under protection.

01:30:18.560 | If you take a look at the broad,

01:30:21.800 | sort of the broad trajectory of American history,

01:30:27.660 | and ask yourself, in what way have black Americans

01:30:32.660 | been most oppressed?

01:30:38.960 | Well, take a look at the antebellum period,

01:30:45.340 | period before the abolition of slavery.

01:30:50.420 | Before the abolition of slavery,

01:30:55.220 | in the locales where most black people resided,

01:30:58.980 | namely the slave states.

01:31:00.820 | In a lot of those areas, question,

01:31:05.060 | was there a crime called the murder of a black person?

01:31:10.060 | Answer, for a long period, the answer was no.

01:31:15.960 | There might've been a tort, you know,

01:31:18.620 | of a white person killed the slave, killed a slave.

01:31:24.820 | That person could be sued because they had injured

01:31:29.820 | the property of another and would have to pay money

01:31:36.180 | for that, but had they committed a crime?

01:31:41.020 | Answer, no.

01:31:42.220 | In the antebellum period, were black women protected

01:31:51.620 | against the crime of rape?

01:31:54.860 | In most states, the answer was no.

01:31:59.860 | There was no such crime.

01:32:02.160 | Let's go to after, you know, slavery is abolished.

01:32:08.900 | Thank God, slavery is abolished.

01:32:12.300 | Then let's see, you know, what happens?

01:32:15.020 | So we hear lynching, lynching.

01:32:21.060 | From 1890 until, let's say, 1930.

01:32:26.060 | Well, you know, in 1890, there was probably,

01:32:32.300 | you know, I would say there was probably, on average,

01:32:34.620 | a lynching every day in the United States,

01:32:37.140 | you know, well over 300 lynchings.

01:32:39.420 | It goes down, that was the case in the 1890s,

01:32:44.300 | probably the first decade of the 20th century,

01:32:47.140 | and then it starts going down.

01:32:50.460 | What was lynching about?

01:32:53.140 | Lynching was about black people being executed

01:32:58.140 | outside the law.

01:33:01.660 | Did the legal system do anything about that?

01:33:06.820 | Answer, no.

01:33:07.780 | You know, show me, show me cases

01:33:13.140 | in which people were prosecuted criminally

01:33:17.140 | for engaging in lynching.

01:33:20.900 | You come up, in most places, with a null set.

01:33:24.740 | Black people suffered the underprotection of the law.

01:33:30.660 | Do black people still suffer the underprotection of the law?

01:33:33.660 | The answer is yes.

01:33:35.020 | And people talk about the Kerner Commission Report, 1968.

01:33:39.300 | Black people were asked, you know,

01:33:43.580 | with respect to the police, what's your main complaint?

01:33:49.700 | In many places, the main complaint was,

01:33:51.980 | we don't have police protection.

01:33:54.100 | You know, when things happen to us,

01:33:58.700 | when our houses are burgled,

01:34:02.900 | when our businesses are encroached upon by robbers,

01:34:09.180 | when our businesses are robbed,

01:34:13.220 | when we're assaulted, you know, nothing happens.

01:34:19.380 | The police protect white people, they don't protect us.

01:34:22.260 | Underprotection.

01:34:25.900 | Our society right now, if you take a look at the statistics,

01:34:31.660 | who is most liable to be raped, robbed,

01:34:37.740 | the victim of assault, what have you?

01:34:43.380 | Black people.

01:34:46.900 | I mean, and it's not even close.

01:34:49.300 | Underprotection.

01:34:51.900 | So that's one way in which the administration

01:34:56.180 | of criminal justice harms black people

01:34:59.900 | by not doing what government is supposed to do,

01:35:04.220 | which is protect us.

01:35:06.500 | 14th Amendment, you know, equal protection,

01:35:13.100 | I underline protection of the law.

01:35:16.940 | So that was a big theme of race, crime, and the law.

01:35:19.860 | Now, second thing, second,

01:35:22.300 | and this is the thing that gets most attention,

01:35:24.900 | and it's important.

01:35:27.100 | I think that the underprotection story

01:35:29.140 | does not get enough attention,

01:35:31.180 | but then there's a second story.

01:35:32.420 | The second story is that black people have historically,

01:35:37.420 | and still today, black people are subjects

01:35:42.420 | of invidious racial discrimination

01:35:44.780 | when it comes to police action.

01:35:49.780 | So, you know, walking down the street,

01:35:54.860 | walking down the street,

01:36:02.060 | you have a black person who's, let's say, 20 years old,

01:36:09.500 | you have a white person who's 20 years old,

01:36:13.420 | and let's make them men,

01:36:15.020 | both just walking down the street.

01:36:16.900 | And the question,

01:36:19.500 | attitude of the police towards these two.

01:36:24.220 | And attitude, you know, is a complicated thing.

01:36:27.580 | It can show itself in various ways.

01:36:29.500 | It can show itself in a look.

01:36:31.020 | It can show itself in who gets the look.

01:36:36.420 | You know, black persons, you know,

01:36:40.420 | walking down the street or running down the street.

01:36:43.780 | White persons walking down the street

01:36:45.260 | or running down the street.

01:36:46.620 | What happens with respect to the police?

01:36:51.500 | Let's suppose that, you know, who gets the second look?

01:36:58.180 | Who is followed?

01:37:01.420 | Who is detained for a moment?

01:37:06.100 | - Well, some of it, just on a small tangent,

01:37:11.100 | I apologize to interrupt,

01:37:12.220 | but attitude is an interesting one

01:37:14.140 | because a lot of it, a lot of the interaction

01:37:18.820 | doesn't show up in the data.

01:37:20.220 | So detained, for example, starts showing up in the data.

01:37:23.540 | But before then, the second look, the third look,

01:37:25.700 | the first look, this is where the gray area

01:37:29.100 | of conversation happens because--

01:37:31.220 | - Very much so.

01:37:33.220 | - Culture and society happens in the stuff

01:37:35.900 | that doesn't often show up in the data.

01:37:37.620 | - Yep, yep.

01:37:39.660 | So I tell ya, this really came home to me

01:37:43.500 | several years ago.

01:37:46.300 | I was in New York City, and it was at a time

01:37:50.220 | when there was a lot of discussion over the--

01:37:55.220 | - Stop and frisk.

01:37:56.620 | - Stop and frisk, basically, you know,

01:37:58.500 | racial profiling on the street.

01:38:00.380 | I was walking, I was in Harlem,

01:38:02.980 | I'm walking down the street,

01:38:07.340 | and frankly, the police weren't bothering me.

01:38:12.340 | I'm just walking, no, no, no,

01:38:14.020 | police weren't bothering me, but you know,

01:38:15.620 | I'm of a certain age.

01:38:16.940 | I did notice, though, I was looking at the police

01:38:23.060 | and the way that the police attitude,

01:38:29.100 | you know, had to do with body posture,

01:38:32.740 | it had to do with, that's right, who got a second look.

01:38:36.060 | It had to, I noticed, I'm walking in the street,

01:38:39.620 | I'm walking in Harlem,

01:38:41.140 | there are white people in the street,

01:38:44.140 | you know, most of the people, though, were black,

01:38:47.100 | some Hispanic.

01:38:48.620 | The level of contempt, the level of animus,

01:38:55.900 | the level of unfriendliness that was pouring off,

01:39:04.020 | the cop, the police, they didn't say anything.

01:39:06.940 | Nope, they didn't detain, they didn't say anything.

01:39:10.220 | It was palpable.

01:39:11.420 | I could feel the attitude that was being directed

01:39:16.420 | at the young black men.

01:39:21.220 | And the thing is, see, the thing is,

01:39:23.420 | it's not as if this doesn't matter.

01:39:27.020 | It matters because the way I saw it,

01:39:30.620 | these young black men knew.

01:39:33.460 | They felt the contempt that the police were shedding,

01:39:38.460 | and this was gonna have a consequence.

01:39:40.460 | The consequence it was gonna have is,

01:39:42.340 | let's imagine that the police did say, excuse me,

01:39:46.900 | you know, what are you up to?

01:39:51.060 | Now, if you have been feeling this contempt,

01:39:55.180 | if you feel like the officer who was asking this question

01:40:00.340 | doesn't like you, doesn't know anything about you,

01:40:03.340 | but just doesn't like you on sight,

01:40:05.460 | you might answer in a certain sort of way.

01:40:10.820 | You're not going to give the cop the benefit of the doubt

01:40:14.140 | and basically think, well, you know,

01:40:16.380 | policeman's just asking me this,

01:40:18.700 | probably just trying to make the neighborhood safe.

01:40:22.740 | Well, if that's your feeling,

01:40:25.020 | policeman's just asking me this,

01:40:26.220 | trying to make the neighborhood safe,

01:40:27.860 | well, officer, the reason why I'm here is such and such.

01:40:31.300 | And, you know, thanks for your service.

01:40:35.340 | That's one response.

01:40:36.900 | Another response is,

01:40:39.900 | I'm not gonna tell you anything.

01:40:44.980 | You know, I'm not gonna tell you anything.

01:40:48.540 | I know that you don't mean me any,

01:40:49.860 | I know that you don't mean me any good.

01:40:52.700 | I'm not gonna tell you anything.

01:40:54.180 | Am I free to leave?

01:40:55.460 | And then the cop, having heard that,

01:41:00.260 | then says something bad.

01:41:01.620 | You know, after five minutes, what do you have?

01:41:05.100 | You have an altercation on your hand.

01:41:07.420 | And I felt that, and that is part,

01:41:13.060 | and you're absolutely right, that's not written down.

01:41:17.260 | It doesn't get to court.

01:41:18.940 | It's there, but it's an important part of street life.

01:41:25.580 | It's an informal part of street life.

01:41:29.420 | And it has ripple effects because that young black man

01:41:33.860 | will probably talk shit about that cop later that day,

01:41:37.580 | so the narrative persists,

01:41:38.980 | and then the cop will also talk shit,

01:41:42.460 | and then there's these narratives.

01:41:44.540 | And I think the contempt is such a powerful thing.

01:41:49.260 | - It's so hard to disentangle,

01:41:51.820 | because you're absolutely right.

01:41:53.620 | The young man, let's suppose that the story ends,

01:41:57.420 | quote, well.

01:41:59.020 | He's gonna go, and he's gonna be talking with his friends,

01:42:03.940 | and he's gonna say,

01:42:04.780 | "Let me tell you what just happened to me."

01:42:06.820 | And his friends are gonna say,

01:42:09.500 | "Oh yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

01:42:11.300 | "Let me tell you what happened to me."

01:42:13.860 | And for two hours, this goes on.

01:42:16.620 | The anger, the feeling of humiliation,

01:42:19.380 | the feeling of aggrievement grows.

01:42:25.220 | It's disseminated, and that's part of what we have.

01:42:30.220 | But that's not all of, that's a important part

01:42:34.180 | of what we have, but we have, it's even worse than that,

01:42:36.620 | because then you ask the question,

01:42:38.660 | what about things we do know?

01:42:44.500 | I know this from my teaching.

01:42:49.820 | This was brought up.

01:42:54.220 | There was a lawsuit in New York City.

01:42:56.700 | And notice I didn't say Birmingham, Alabama.

01:43:01.620 | I didn't say Atlanta, Georgia.

01:43:03.260 | I didn't say Tallahassee, Florida.

01:43:05.460 | I didn't say the Deep South.

01:43:08.100 | I didn't say Montana.

01:43:09.300 | I didn't say Idaho.

01:43:10.740 | New York City, cosmopolitan place, metropolis.

01:43:15.740 | In New York City, the police were challenged

01:43:22.540 | with respect to their policies.

01:43:25.980 | A judge wrote a very lengthy opinion,

01:43:30.100 | and the facts were rolled out,

01:43:31.620 | and the facts were really quite horrifying.

01:43:34.180 | People, there were black men who had been stopped

01:43:39.860 | many, many times, it wasn't just once,

01:43:42.920 | over and over and over again,

01:43:47.260 | under circumstances in which

01:43:50.260 | they ought not have been stopped.

01:43:52.580 | And this has real consequences.

01:43:56.500 | It doesn't just show up here, though, of course.

01:43:58.580 | It also shows up in other places

01:44:01.100 | with respect to the administration of justice.

01:44:04.340 | And we still have a big problem.

01:44:08.540 | Now, you mentioned the police.

01:44:10.900 | If you ask yourself, who are the state agents

01:44:18.820 | that are most consequential?

01:44:23.820 | The police.

01:44:28.180 | I mean, you walking down the street,

01:44:29.920 | what other agents have guns on them?

01:44:34.920 | What other agents are authorized by the law

01:44:39.780 | to shoot you under certain circumstances?

01:44:43.300 | It's the police.

01:44:44.180 | The police are the most consequential agents of the state

01:44:49.180 | that most people interact with.

01:44:51.620 | - I mean, to push back a little bit,

01:44:54.220 | of consequential in a physical sense,

01:44:58.000 | but if we return to the power

01:44:59.380 | of the psychological sense of contempt,

01:45:01.980 | I would say store clerks and stuff like that

01:45:04.380 | can also be a source of contempt.

01:45:05.380 | - They're not agents of the state.

01:45:06.900 | - Right, but if we look at the landscape of contempt,

01:45:10.580 | which throughout the 20th century,

01:45:13.860 | or the bus, right,

01:45:15.420 | you can experience the same kind of contempt

01:45:21.300 | in other aspects of society.

01:45:23.180 | But yes, the cops have consequences.

01:45:25.700 | - I would still put the police.

01:45:27.140 | The policeman or the police person

01:45:30.820 | is a person walking down the street with a gun.

01:45:36.180 | - Gun, yeah.

01:45:37.520 | - And if you think about the way in which the law,

01:45:42.500 | the extent to which the police are authorized

01:45:47.500 | to use their force,

01:45:52.340 | the police have extraordinary authority.

01:45:55.700 | You know, you're driving your car and you're speeding.

01:46:04.540 | The police could arrest you right then and there

01:46:09.580 | and take you to jail.

01:46:11.780 | That's an extraordinary power.

01:46:13.580 | - But they also have, because of that,

01:46:15.660 | the leverage, just one human to another,

01:46:18.300 | they have more leverage to be an asshole

01:46:20.100 | and to show contempt to you.

01:46:21.540 | - They certainly do.

01:46:22.380 | - To be the lesser,

01:46:24.940 | to lean into the lesser aspects of their nature

01:46:28.020 | as all humans can,

01:46:29.340 | just to be an asshole, to show contempt.

01:46:31.100 | You had a bad day, they have more freedom to do that.

01:46:34.940 | - Yes, and that's why,

01:46:36.660 | that's why police officers

01:46:40.580 | are very important.

01:46:42.420 | I recognize, I mean, I know police officers.

01:46:45.860 | They have a very difficult job,

01:46:47.500 | a very important job, very important.

01:46:52.340 | Again, remember what I talked about under protection.

01:46:55.180 | I want the police to protect me.

01:46:57.460 | I want the police to protect me from the rapist, the robber.

01:47:01.980 | So I, you know, the police, I'm with the police.

01:47:06.500 | We need good policing.

01:47:10.260 | We, but we need good policing.

01:47:13.700 | And for good policing, we need accountability.

01:47:16.860 | And one of the scandals,

01:47:18.700 | one of the just absolute scandals of American law

01:47:23.220 | is the extent to which the police are not held accountable.

01:47:28.220 | It's absolutely remarkable the degree to which

01:47:32.820 | American law fails to properly hold police accountable.

01:47:39.820 | They have an important job, a difficult job.

01:47:42.500 | I want them to be very well paid.

01:47:44.660 | As far as I'm concerned, you know, we should be,

01:47:47.980 | police should make more money.

01:47:49.540 | They should be, given the importance of what they do,

01:47:55.580 | they should have more respect, more prestige, more money.

01:48:00.580 | With all of that, they should be held accountable.

01:48:04.860 | And the way things are now, they're not held accountable.

01:48:09.460 | And every day we see the consequences in our newspapers

01:48:14.460 | or just, you know, talking with people.

01:48:17.300 | - So what do you make of the different perspective on this

01:48:20.220 | from, to bring up a person that I'll probably speak with,

01:48:24.740 | Heather McDonald, who wrote a book called "War on Cops,"

01:48:29.740 | and will often bring up the stuff

01:48:34.540 | that does show up in the data,

01:48:36.420 | to show the disproportionate amount of homicides

01:48:38.740 | committed by African Americans.

01:48:40.700 | And will also justify racial profiling on that basis

01:48:46.460 | in stop and frisk programs.

01:48:48.340 | And will also bring up things like the Ferguson effect,

01:48:51.900 | saying that because of this pushback

01:48:55.540 | and all the stuff we've been saying about police,

01:49:01.100 | in those areas, the police will step back

01:49:04.820 | and crime will increase.

01:49:07.020 | I was in one debate with her.

01:49:09.060 | And one of the things that I said is,

01:49:12.060 | it was a debate that was sponsored

01:49:15.220 | by the Federalist Society, conservative legal group.

01:49:18.940 | You know, these were conservative law students

01:49:22.860 | at Harvard Law School.

01:49:24.940 | She made a presentation and they asked me to respond.

01:49:28.780 | And one of the things that I said was,

01:49:31.020 | when we're talking about the police,

01:49:34.940 | I'm disappointed with the reaction

01:49:39.940 | of some of my conservative colleagues.

01:49:49.140 | And I would consider her

01:49:50.140 | to be one of my conservative colleagues.

01:49:52.580 | Because what are the sort of the,

01:49:56.820 | what are some of the important precepts

01:50:02.420 | of conservatives?

01:50:06.980 | One very important precept of conservatives,

01:50:09.740 | limited government, limited government.

01:50:13.780 | You know, conservatives talk about the tendency

01:50:17.860 | of government to overreach itself

01:50:20.580 | and governmental agents to overreach themselves.

01:50:25.580 | And I say, you're right.

01:50:28.980 | You're right, right on.

01:50:31.900 | Why is it that you somehow forget that

01:50:35.980 | when you're talking about the police?

01:50:37.980 | When you're talking about the police,

01:50:40.740 | you seem to be unaware of this tendency

01:50:45.740 | that is so much in your consciousness and other places.

01:50:50.700 | But now when you're talking about the police,

01:50:54.060 | you make it seem as though I'm,

01:50:55.820 | you know, other people are being paranoid.

01:50:59.120 | When they talk about the danger of overreach,

01:51:02.560 | we need to be very careful about the danger of overreach.

01:51:06.840 | Another thing with respect to the police,

01:51:08.760 | what do conservatives, transparency in government.

01:51:13.240 | You're right.

01:51:16.280 | You're absolutely right.

01:51:18.000 | We need transparency in government.

01:51:20.400 | So why is it that so often

01:51:23.880 | when we're talking about policing,

01:51:27.560 | why is it that conservatives actually embrace police unions

01:51:32.560 | and are the enemies of transparency?

01:51:39.120 | Why is it that you want to prevent the citizenry

01:51:44.120 | from knowing that officer so-and-so has,

01:51:48.640 | you know, there've been 10 incidents in the last year

01:51:53.920 | in which citizens have complained about officer so-and-so.

01:51:57.440 | Don't you think that the citizenry ought to know that?

01:52:00.240 | Why is it that you want to keep that under wraps?

01:52:04.080 | So overreach, transparency, the tendency,

01:52:09.080 | or the problem of governmental agent corruption.

01:52:14.220 | Why is it that those sorts of things

01:52:20.440 | are forgotten about when some conservatives,

01:52:27.240 | by the way, not all conservatives, not all conservatives.

01:52:30.560 | There's some conservatives who have stuck

01:52:34.920 | and appropriately so to their guns and have said,

01:52:39.600 | A, we need to make sure that the police stay in their lane.

01:52:44.600 | We need to make sure that the police

01:52:48.440 | do not overstep constitutional bounds.

01:52:53.280 | We need to be, we need to insist on transparency.

01:52:56.720 | There are some conservatives who have taken that line

01:53:00.280 | and I salute them, but there are a lot of conservatives,

01:53:03.280 | and I would say Heather MacDonald was one of them,

01:53:05.960 | who all of a sudden become just, you know,

01:53:09.960 | totally uncritical status

01:53:13.400 | when they're talking about the police.

01:53:14.800 | - So the overstepping, overreach, the lack of transparency.

01:53:18.180 | Of course, we see this kind of stuff

01:53:21.120 | in foreign policy as well,

01:53:23.880 | which is starting military conflicts

01:53:26.000 | and a lot of the supporters, at least with Iraq

01:53:29.880 | and Afghanistan wars, were conservatives

01:53:32.560 | and hawks and so on.

01:53:34.400 | So there's a lot of hypocrisy

01:53:35.680 | in terms of principles and so on.

01:53:37.340 | But maybe one question is,

01:53:41.960 | in this discussion about racism and policing,

01:53:46.000 | there was a lot of cops that might listen to this

01:53:50.740 | and feel like they're not being,

01:53:54.360 | their profession's not being respected,

01:53:56.680 | they're not being heard,

01:53:57.880 | not being respected to the difficulty

01:54:01.960 | of the problem they're facing.

01:54:03.640 | - Can I just interrupt, Jack?

01:54:06.160 | Remember a few moments ago,

01:54:08.040 | I mean, if I were in charge of things,

01:54:12.400 | if I were in charge of things,

01:54:13.880 | I'd pay police more, in fact, much more

01:54:18.640 | than they receive.

01:54:22.520 | I do, police have a very difficult job,

01:54:25.360 | extraordinarily difficult job.

01:54:27.040 | I mean, for one thing, sort of maintaining the law.

01:54:31.360 | The law, that's a very complicated thing, the law.

01:54:35.200 | That's not an easy thing.

01:54:37.440 | I mean, I teach law.

01:54:39.000 | I spend a lot of hours with very smart people

01:54:44.320 | trying to understand the law, very difficult.

01:54:48.480 | So here we expect people to understand the law

01:54:52.760 | at the same time that they are grappling with people,

01:54:57.760 | some of whom are violent.

01:55:00.200 | It's very difficult.

01:55:01.600 | I respect police officers,

01:55:04.480 | and I said, we need police officers.

01:55:07.680 | You did not hear me say, by the way,

01:55:09.880 | so let's get down to brass tacks.

01:55:13.400 | You did not hear me say, defund the police, did you?

01:55:18.040 | In fact, to the contrary, I said, defund,

01:55:21.840 | actually, I want more funds for the police.

01:55:26.840 | I wanna hold them accountable.

01:55:30.560 | I understand the difficulty of their job.

01:55:34.280 | I respect the police.

01:55:36.600 | I want people to respect the police.

01:55:39.640 | I also want the police to respect civilians

01:55:44.640 | and demand that they do.

01:55:47.720 | I am not a police abolitionist, far from it, far from it.

01:55:52.720 | Again, we need good policing.

01:55:57.600 | For good policing, we need good people.

01:56:01.480 | - To what degree, almost philosophically,

01:56:07.120 | maybe practically, do you think police

01:56:09.920 | should be doing racial profiling?

01:56:12.200 | Profiling in general.

01:56:14.200 | - Okay.

01:56:15.040 | - It's a very difficult philosophical,

01:56:18.360 | moral, human question.

01:56:20.960 | - Yeah.

01:56:21.840 | So, first thing we need to do,

01:56:24.520 | and here we get back to the early part of our conversation

01:56:28.120 | because we focused so much on, first part, a word.

01:56:32.880 | Here we have another word, profiling.

01:56:35.800 | Question, what is racial profiling?

01:56:39.640 | Now, here we have, in the weeds,

01:56:45.200 | we have people talking past one another.

01:56:49.960 | I've been in conversations with police officers in debates

01:56:53.840 | and we talk past one another

01:56:58.280 | because we are defining racial profiling very differently.

01:57:02.160 | If you ask, I've been in conversations

01:57:04.520 | with police officers and they say,

01:57:06.000 | "Oh, I'm totally against racial profiling."

01:57:09.600 | And then I say, "Well, sir, what do you mean

01:57:11.560 | by racial profiling?"

01:57:12.720 | And here's what they say.

01:57:14.400 | Racial profiling is when police officers act

01:57:18.600 | against somebody wholly on the basis of race.

01:57:22.280 | That gets rid of the issue

01:57:26.520 | because most police officers don't act

01:57:32.400 | against anyone wholly on the basis of race.

01:57:37.640 | You could have the most racist police officer

01:57:40.920 | and that police officer is not going to act adversely

01:57:45.920 | against the 90-year-old black woman

01:57:50.320 | walking down the street with a cane.

01:57:52.400 | If you define racial profiling that way,

01:57:59.520 | you're getting rid of the issue.

01:58:02.040 | The issue is, the proper issue is this.

01:58:06.440 | Should the police be able to act against someone

01:58:11.440 | taking race into account as a factor?

01:58:18.800 | So let's imagine that a black person who's 25 years old

01:58:23.160 | is walking down the street right next to a white person

01:58:25.840 | who's 25 years old.

01:58:27.280 | Some people would say, "You know what?

01:58:31.600 | Under those circumstances,

01:58:33.800 | it's okay for the police officer

01:58:37.120 | to give two looks at the black person

01:58:40.360 | and only one look at the white person."

01:58:42.680 | Why?

01:58:43.680 | Because the statistics tell us that the black 25-year-old,

01:58:48.680 | there's much more risk of that person acting

01:58:52.440 | in an unlawful way.

01:58:53.720 | If you take a look at crime statistics

01:58:57.520 | and ask the question

01:59:02.000 | with respect to homicide, with respect to robbery,

01:59:05.840 | with respect to various crimes,

01:59:09.040 | is there a difference between the white 25-year-old

01:59:16.920 | and the black 25-year-old?

01:59:18.680 | With respect to certain crimes,

01:59:20.560 | in certain places, the answer is,

01:59:21.880 | yeah, there is a difference.

01:59:23.560 | And there is a greater risk

01:59:26.760 | that the black 25-year-old has engaged

01:59:30.480 | in various forms of criminality.

01:59:33.400 | I'm not, you know, that, okay.

01:59:35.840 | Under those circumstances, what do I say?

01:59:39.280 | Should the police officer therefore

01:59:42.160 | be allowed to take action vis-a-vis the black person

01:59:46.640 | as opposed, you know, as against the white person?

01:59:48.600 | My answer is no.

01:59:49.880 | I'm fully willing to concede.

01:59:53.320 | Let's concede for the point of, you know,

01:59:55.680 | for the point of discussion that there is more risk.

01:59:59.760 | There might be.

02:00:01.400 | There might be.

02:00:02.280 | But for reasons of constructing the sort of society I want,

02:00:08.360 | we should not empower agents of the state

02:00:17.720 | to act towards certain people

02:00:21.200 | in a way that's, you know, adverse to them.

02:00:28.840 | Let me try to break this down in a little different way.

02:00:31.440 | Let's go back to,

02:00:35.480 | let's talk about what happens

02:00:38.640 | when you wanna get on an airplane.

02:00:40.400 | You know, it wasn't so long,

02:00:42.680 | you know, 9/11 wasn't all that long ago.

02:00:44.960 | It was a while ago, but it wasn't all that long ago.

02:00:47.280 | And this very issue came up

02:00:49.040 | with respect to the profiling of Muslims.

02:00:53.440 | And there were some people who said,

02:00:54.560 | well, geez, you know, in the aftermath of 9/11,

02:00:57.480 | profiling of Muslims makes sense.

02:01:00.360 | You know, no hard feelings,

02:01:01.880 | but, you know, the 11 people who, you know,

02:01:05.000 | were on those planes were all Muslims.

02:01:07.120 | Now, there is a rationale, you could just simply say.

02:01:12.360 | It's not prejudice, it's not animus, it's not invidious.

02:01:16.920 | It's just, you know, the facts take us this way.

02:01:21.080 | Well, the facts never take us this way.

02:01:23.080 | There are facts, and then there is our choice

02:01:26.880 | of how we want to respond to those facts.

02:01:29.760 | Now, you could respond by saying,

02:01:35.160 | well, we perceive Muslims to be more likely

02:01:40.160 | to, you know, do bad things on an airliner.

02:01:46.320 | You could respond in that way.

02:01:48.380 | On the other hand, you could say, no.

02:01:52.720 | We want a society in which people do not have to grapple

02:01:57.720 | with prejudice on the basis of their religion

02:02:04.440 | or on the basis of their race.

02:02:07.000 | And to deal with that, we are gonna demand,

02:02:10.000 | we're gonna demand that agents of the state

02:02:12.840 | act towards people in the same way.

02:02:18.560 | And so if that means that everybody getting on the airplane

02:02:23.560 | before they get on the airplane has to, you know,

02:02:30.080 | open up their luggage and it slows things down,

02:02:35.080 | but everybody has to open up their luggage,

02:02:42.240 | I would prefer that over a system in which we are

02:02:47.240 | a system in which we focus on people who are Muslim.

02:02:52.240 | And one of the reasons, and I'm gonna bring this back

02:02:55.480 | to the racial thing, one of the reasons why I wanna insist

02:02:59.880 | upon that is because if, you know,

02:03:03.400 | if we all have to open up our luggage,

02:03:07.380 | what that means is we're all paying a tax for more security.

02:03:14.840 | And we're all likely to ask ourselves,

02:03:17.840 | hmm, do we wanna pay this tax?

02:03:20.160 | Whereas if we focus simply on the Muslims

02:03:22.560 | and allow the Muslims to be the only ones

02:03:24.920 | who are sort of paying the tax, we'll force that on them.

02:03:29.920 | Same in the, you know, black person, white person,

02:03:33.720 | 25 years old, walking down the street.

02:03:36.000 | Do we want to impose a racial tax on people

02:03:42.240 | who are black, 25 years old?

02:03:44.240 | Do we want to impose a racial tax on the black 25 year old?

02:03:49.240 | Some people would say yes.

02:03:52.280 | I say that's a mistake.

02:03:54.120 | Black people aren't stupid.

02:03:55.360 | They know that they're paying this tax.

02:03:57.720 | It is a violation of, it seems to me,

02:04:02.720 | the rules that we ought to want to have

02:04:05.760 | to govern our society.

02:04:08.400 | Please deal with everybody the same

02:04:12.680 | and don't allow a situation to develop

02:04:19.920 | in which a group of people can accurately say,

02:04:24.920 | we are paying more of a cost

02:04:29.560 | than these other people over here.

02:04:31.720 | - So it's a better avoiding profile is,

02:04:37.720 | while it may have costs on security in the short term,

02:04:42.720 | in the long term, it's the embodiment of the principles

02:04:47.480 | that all men are created equal.

02:04:49.320 | So it has a much bigger benefit

02:04:51.640 | in representing the fairness that is at the core

02:04:55.160 | of the ideals of this country.

02:04:56.920 | Let me ask a big philosophical question.

02:05:01.880 | Why do you think there is racism in the world?

02:05:05.000 | - Oh, now you've, okay, fine.

02:05:06.720 | Now you've asked me a question which I throw up my hands

02:05:10.520 | and I don't know.

02:05:12.520 | - Will there always be?

02:05:14.240 | Why is there tribalism?

02:05:16.280 | Are humans always finding this way to divide ourselves?

02:05:21.280 | And how bad of a problem is that?

02:05:25.960 | - It's a huge problem.

02:05:27.120 | I'm not gonna pretend that I know enough

02:05:33.360 | to grapple in a satisfactory way with such a question.

02:05:38.120 | I mean, to really grapple with that question,

02:05:41.400 | one really has to have a very broad knowledge base

02:05:46.400 | in which they can make comparisons.

02:05:52.200 | I mean, the world's a big place.

02:05:53.960 | Now, from the little bit I know about the world,

02:05:56.680 | I read, I read as much as I can.

02:06:00.360 | I've been, I'm a very privileged character.

02:06:02.800 | I mean, I live in a university,

02:06:04.840 | so I'm reading constantly and listening constantly.

02:06:08.240 | From what I gather, the problem of divided societies

02:06:12.640 | is a problem that is worldwide.

02:06:14.960 | There's, and it seems as though human ingenuity

02:06:20.840 | is such that humans will find something to divide over.

02:06:30.880 | It might be texture of hair.

02:06:34.040 | It might be complexion of skin.

02:06:39.040 | - Political ideology.

02:06:42.360 | - Political ideology.

02:06:43.480 | If the texture of skin is the same,

02:06:48.480 | it'll then be, well, you wear these sorts of clothes.

02:06:58.520 | You speak in this sort of way.

02:07:00.920 | You believe this, whereas I believe that.

02:07:07.480 | I mean, it seems like a human ingenuity is such

02:07:10.480 | they will, humans will find some way

02:07:14.200 | of distinguishing themselves,

02:07:17.680 | and then they seem to want to embellish the distinction.

02:07:22.680 | It's not just a distinction.

02:07:25.280 | It's not just you believe this and I believe this.

02:07:28.480 | Okay, that makes the world interesting.

02:07:30.600 | Let's talk about what you believe and what I believe.

02:07:33.400 | No, it's usually associated with you believe this,

02:07:38.400 | I believe this.

02:07:40.400 | Of course, my belief is superior to your belief,

02:07:44.260 | and I want to put you down,

02:07:48.800 | and now we're headed towards war.

02:07:52.600 | - The interesting thing is,

02:07:53.760 | if I were to step outside of this whole thing,

02:07:56.000 | from an alien perspective visiting Earth,

02:07:58.040 | I think America is one of the greatest,

02:08:02.320 | if not the greatest countries

02:08:03.600 | in the history of human civilization,

02:08:05.800 | and I think that the line between white and black,

02:08:10.800 | the racial struggle, is the thing that,

02:08:13.320 | in part, made it a great nation.

02:08:16.980 | There's something about the division

02:08:19.760 | and the way you alleviate that division

02:08:21.680 | through the struggle for human rights

02:08:24.320 | that makes for a great nation,

02:08:26.320 | and so it's interesting that the division

02:08:29.320 | is almost the fuel for the greatness,

02:08:32.800 | for our discovery of what it means to be human,

02:08:35.320 | what it means to be, or what justice means,

02:08:38.220 | and it's interesting that it seems like

02:08:41.880 | there's this struggle that you're elucidating now,

02:08:45.380 | but that struggle itself is our search,

02:08:49.560 | a man's search for meaning and justice and freedom.

02:08:53.320 | - I think there's something to that.

02:08:54.640 | As you were speaking, I was immediately thinking of

02:08:57.640 | the person who most jumped to mind

02:08:59.800 | was the great Frederick Douglass.

02:09:02.160 | So, I mean, here you have a person who, in my view,

02:09:04.820 | is one of the great people in the history of the world,

02:09:08.480 | and one of the things that ironically enabled him

02:09:13.480 | to become one of the great people of the world,

02:09:15.360 | he was born into slavery.

02:09:18.000 | His overcoming was the very thing

02:09:22.920 | that, in a sense, made him this larger-than-life figure,

02:09:27.920 | and I think there's something to it.

02:09:30.200 | I will say this, because a minute ago,

02:09:31.880 | you mentioned optimism and pessimism,

02:09:34.760 | and I'd say in the last few years,

02:09:41.200 | my feeling about the United States has changed,

02:09:46.200 | and it's changed in a somber way.

02:09:52.000 | For most of my life, I've been in the optimistic camp

02:09:57.000 | with respect to my view of American race relations.

02:10:03.440 | I've been in the optimistic camp

02:10:05.920 | with respect to my view of American race relations.

02:10:08.720 | You know, the optimistic camp, that was the camp,

02:10:11.960 | that's the camp that believes we shall overcome.

02:10:14.800 | That's Martin Luther King's camp.

02:10:18.400 | I mean, Martin Luther King, you know, Martin Luther King,

02:10:20.680 | you know, hours before he's killed,

02:10:22.840 | I've been to the mountaintop.

02:10:24.480 | I might not get there with you,

02:10:26.680 | but I've glimpsed the promised land.

02:10:29.880 | Optimism.

02:10:30.800 | Frederick Douglass would be in that tradition.

02:10:36.480 | There would be other people, wonderful, good people,

02:10:41.480 | who would be in that tradition.

02:10:43.720 | - Would you, sorry to interrupt,

02:10:45.120 | put in the pessimist camp, would you put Malcolm X in it?

02:10:47.240 | - Oh, in the pessimistic camp,

02:10:48.560 | the pessimistic camp is the more interesting camp.

02:10:51.160 | (Luke laughs)

02:10:52.000 | I mean, ideologically, I mean, it is,

02:10:53.160 | it's the more interesting camp,

02:10:54.440 | because in the pessimistic camp, you have,

02:10:57.600 | I mean, if I was gonna list some of my pessimists,

02:11:00.800 | pessimist number one, Thomas Jefferson.

02:11:03.840 | Thomas Jefferson, the author, you know,

02:11:07.240 | principal author, Declaration of Independence,

02:11:09.240 | he was also the author of "Notes on the State of Virginia."

02:11:14.240 | And he said in "Notes on the State of Virginia,"

02:11:18.160 | basically, we shall not overcome.

02:11:20.400 | He talked, he said, you know,

02:11:23.760 | "The black people will always know

02:11:31.240 | "that their forebears were enslaved,

02:11:36.240 | "and they will always be resentful of that,

02:11:40.160 | "always be aggrieved by that."

02:11:42.400 | Jefferson did not think that we would ever have,

02:11:46.840 | in the United States, a multiracial democracy.

02:11:50.440 | He was very critical of slavery.

02:11:52.080 | Now, he was a hypocrite.

02:11:53.080 | He had slaves, he sold slaves.

02:11:55.360 | He was terrible in that way,

02:11:57.800 | but he did understand that slavery was horrible.

02:12:01.500 | But he did not want,

02:12:06.020 | but he did not wanna free the slaves

02:12:09.620 | for a variety of reasons,

02:12:11.020 | but in one reason was because he thought

02:12:12.900 | that it would be impossible to have a society

02:12:17.500 | in which blacks and whites were equal neighbors.

02:12:22.500 | He was thoroughly pessimistic.

02:12:25.500 | Another pessimist, Alexis de Tocqueville,

02:12:28.620 | thoroughly pessimistic.

02:12:30.860 | So who were some of the other pessimists?

02:12:32.940 | Abraham Lincoln, pessimistic.

02:12:36.020 | That's why he was so interested in colonization.

02:12:38.340 | He basically said, you know, "I don't like slavery,

02:12:41.340 | "but blacks and whites are not gonna be able

02:12:43.500 | "to share the United States.

02:12:44.780 | "Maybe the best we can do is just, you know,

02:12:46.740 | "put blacks, ship blacks someplace else."

02:12:50.100 | - Can you elaborate on that?

02:12:51.260 | I think people would be surprised to hear

02:12:53.700 | that you will put Abraham Lincoln in the pessimist camp.

02:12:56.140 | - Oh, Abraham Lincoln's thoroughly pessimistic.

02:12:57.940 | He believed, he was anti-slavery,

02:13:02.700 | but he did not believe that blacks and whites

02:13:06.260 | would be able to share the United States together,

02:13:09.980 | and he was always very interested,

02:13:12.140 | therefore, in colonization.

02:13:13.900 | Even during the Civil War, he was interested in,

02:13:19.740 | maybe all black people,

02:13:24.460 | would all black people be interested

02:13:26.180 | in maybe going to Panama?

02:13:28.180 | Would they be interested in going someplace else?

02:13:30.860 | Because, you know, Lincoln was aware

02:13:33.260 | of how racist white people were, including himself,

02:13:37.180 | and he did not think that black people and white people

02:13:39.340 | would be able to share the United States.

02:13:42.780 | Now, there's a black nationalist tradition.

02:13:44.900 | You mentioned Malcolm X.

02:13:45.940 | Well, before Malcolm X, you know, Marcus Garvey.

02:13:48.500 | My father, my father was a thoroughgoing pessimist.

02:13:56.260 | His view was, A, the United States

02:14:00.220 | was born as a white man's country.

02:14:04.220 | It's gonna remain a white man's country,

02:14:07.140 | and that's the way it is.

02:14:10.020 | He was thoroughly pessimistic.

02:14:12.460 | - You mentioned, just a brief aside about your dad,

02:14:15.220 | that when you moved from South Carolina to Washington, D.C.,

02:14:19.420 | and you asked him why, his response to you was,

02:14:23.620 | because either a white man was going to kill me,

02:14:25.980 | or I was going to kill a white man.

02:14:27.660 | - Yes.

02:14:28.820 | - So he saw race as an important line

02:14:32.380 | that divided people in the United States.

02:14:34.260 | - He certainly did, and he thought that the line,

02:14:36.980 | my father did not, my father had passed away

02:14:43.060 | before Obama was elected.

02:14:46.380 | I would have loved to have talked with my dad.

02:14:49.780 | - What do you think he would have said?

02:14:52.300 | And you've written, you wrote a book

02:14:55.380 | about the Obama presidency.

02:14:56.460 | - I did, I did, and I didn't, I never,

02:15:00.380 | what would my father have said?

02:15:01.980 | My father would have been delighted.

02:15:03.340 | My father would have been happy about his election.

02:15:05.940 | I do think, though, I do think that my father

02:15:12.100 | would have said, I'm happy that Barack Obama

02:15:16.980 | has been elected, hold on to your seats,

02:15:21.980 | let's see how the white people respond.

02:15:26.620 | - So he would have predicted Donald Trump.

02:15:27.860 | - I think that my father, I think that in 2016,

02:15:31.620 | I think that in 2016--

02:15:33.140 | - He would have said, I told you.

02:15:34.100 | - Yes, yes, I think that in 2016, my father would have said,

02:15:39.100 | all of you people who are talking about,

02:15:44.180 | I don't know what's happened to America,

02:15:46.340 | and how could this have happened, and you know, no.

02:15:51.340 | I think my father would have said,

02:15:53.100 | this is America being America, and what has happened

02:15:58.100 | is that America has been put off kilter

02:16:03.260 | by a black family being in the White House.

02:16:07.380 | It has deranged millions of white people,

02:16:11.580 | and now this is coming home to roost.

02:16:14.180 | So I think my father would have absolutely said in 2016,

02:16:17.300 | I told you so.

02:16:18.340 | - In 2016, as you're saying, is the reason

02:16:21.660 | that you have at least dipped your toe

02:16:26.060 | outside of the optimist camp into the pessimist camp.

02:16:29.340 | - Yeah, I wanna be careful here, and I don't wanna--

02:16:34.780 | - Don't give up on the optimist camp.

02:16:37.980 | - I don't, you're right, I don't wanna give up

02:16:41.900 | on the optimist camp, I don't.

02:16:43.820 | I have been, my optimism has definitely been dampened,

02:16:48.820 | has definitely been tested.

02:16:55.060 | I am certainly, no, I am not as triumphalist as I once was.

02:17:00.060 | I am not as indignant as I once was

02:17:11.380 | in my criticism of pessimists,

02:17:14.020 | but at this moment as we speak,

02:17:18.100 | am I more in the optimist camp

02:17:22.380 | than I'm in the pessimist camp?

02:17:23.780 | I'm still probably more in the optimist camp,

02:17:25.700 | but my optimism has been dampened.

02:17:28.900 | But as I speak, I have to say the following things,

02:17:32.780 | and I'd say the following things if my father,

02:17:34.820 | but again, whom I revere, great man,

02:17:39.660 | but if my father was sitting here with us,

02:17:42.660 | I would say, "Listen, Pop, it's absolutely true

02:17:47.660 | "that the country is more racist than I had thought.

02:17:53.180 | "That is true.

02:17:54.220 | "It's also true, Pop, that the Vice President

02:17:59.420 | "of the United States as we speak is a black woman.

02:18:02.900 | "As we speak, it's true that the Secretary of Defense

02:18:10.100 | "is a black man.

02:18:11.900 | "The Secretary of Defense is the head of the Pentagon.

02:18:16.900 | "The Secretary of Defense knows where the button is, okay?

02:18:21.900 | "This is not a small out of the way thing.

02:18:27.100 | "This is the Secretary of Defense is a black man.

02:18:35.980 | "There are a slew of black generals.

02:18:39.660 | "There have been black secretaries of state.

02:18:45.260 | "There are black people who are the heads of police forces.

02:18:51.260 | "There are black mayors.

02:18:54.500 | "There are black people who are the heads

02:18:57.260 | "of some of our foremost foundations.

02:19:03.500 | "The President-Elect of Harvard University

02:19:08.500 | "is a black woman."

02:19:12.140 | And we could go on and on and on and on.

02:19:14.300 | When I was growing up, when I was growing up,

02:19:18.620 | when I was, let's say, 10 years old,

02:19:21.100 | we got a magazine, Ebony Magazine, every month.

02:19:25.260 | And in Ebony Magazine, you could turn

02:19:27.740 | to the middle of Ebony, and they would have Black Firsts.

02:19:32.100 | The first black person to do this,

02:19:33.620 | the first black person to do this.

02:19:35.820 | You could read Ebony, and frankly,

02:19:37.700 | I could tell you all of those.

02:19:40.100 | I knew their names.

02:19:41.580 | Now, I read stuff,

02:19:47.500 | the leading cadet, the chief cadet

02:19:54.980 | at the United States Naval Academy.

02:19:57.760 | I'm reading, I'm reading, then I see a picture.

02:20:01.700 | Black woman, I didn't know that.

02:20:06.100 | Back in the day, I would have known that.

02:20:08.260 | Now, has the United States changed?

02:20:13.260 | Yes.

02:20:16.580 | Is there racism?

02:20:19.060 | Yes.

02:20:20.020 | Is it a substantial force in American life?

02:20:24.700 | Regrettably, tragically, yes.

02:20:27.660 | Has the United States changed?

02:20:30.620 | Yes, and again, if we wanna go international,

02:20:34.320 | United States is not the only country

02:20:38.020 | that is a country that has wrestled with deep division.

02:20:43.020 | You think about, I don't know, think about India.

02:20:48.140 | Think about the United Kingdom.

02:20:50.780 | Think about practically any large nation state.

02:20:55.520 | They've all grappled with divisions.

02:20:59.780 | If one asks about the United States and the race question,

02:21:04.720 | and one puts on the table that in 1865,

02:21:10.620 | now, when I talk with students, I say 1865,

02:21:17.980 | they think, oh my God, isn't that when dinosaurs roamed?

02:21:22.980 | No, it wasn't when dinosaurs roamed.

02:21:24.780 | 1865, frankly, is not all that long ago.

02:21:28.500 | In 1865, the great mass of black people

02:21:33.300 | in the United States had recently been released

02:21:37.180 | from chattel slavery.

02:21:39.660 | The great mass of black people in the United States

02:21:42.380 | in 1865 were illiterate.

02:21:45.420 | Now, I mean, it's absolutely,

02:21:53.980 | it's an absolutely extraordinary story.

02:21:57.900 | And so one of the difficulties I have at this moment

02:22:02.620 | is wrapping my head around two stories

02:22:07.620 | that are in such tension with one another.

02:22:10.340 | One is the continuing story of racism,

02:22:14.000 | which is an awful story.

02:22:15.580 | But the other story is a story that is encapsulated

02:22:21.600 | in the title of a great book of history

02:22:26.140 | by John Hope Franklin, "From Slavery to Freedom."

02:22:31.140 | And those are two stories in American life,

02:22:38.940 | and it takes an awful lot to put your mind

02:22:42.780 | around both stories, and I'm trying to.

02:22:46.660 | - Well, as an optimist, I think you put more value

02:22:49.420 | to the overcoming side of the story,

02:22:52.220 | the overcoming of hardship,

02:22:53.660 | the overcoming of slavery, of discrimination.

02:22:56.520 | Well, since you mentioned illiteracy from,

02:23:00.620 | what is it, 150 years ago,

02:23:03.740 | let me ask you about affirmative action.

02:23:06.140 | You wrote a book on the topic,

02:23:08.060 | titled "For Discrimination, Race, Affirmative Action,

02:23:10.580 | and the Law."

02:23:11.500 | First, what is affirmative action?

02:23:14.780 | And maybe we could talk about what your view is on it today.

02:23:20.760 | - Sure.

02:23:21.640 | Well, affirmative action refers to,

02:23:25.560 | racial affirmative action,

02:23:30.060 | 'cause there's various sorts of affirmative action.

02:23:32.460 | You can have affirmative action for veterans.

02:23:35.120 | You can have affirmative action for in-state residents.

02:23:40.120 | Let's suppose you have a school,

02:23:42.460 | the University of blah, blah, blah,

02:23:46.020 | and we're gonna give a,

02:23:51.800 | reach out a hand to boost, help,

02:23:56.040 | people who live within the state.

02:23:58.000 | We're gonna have a boost for veterans.

02:24:00.560 | We're gonna have a boost for women.

02:24:04.220 | We're gonna have a boost for men in certain circumstances.

02:24:09.840 | Well, the most,

02:24:13.480 | the type of affirmative action that gets most attention,

02:24:17.920 | and that's worth noting as well,

02:24:21.400 | there's lots of different sorts of affirmative action,

02:24:23.800 | but when you say affirmative action,

02:24:25.800 | the type of affirmative action

02:24:27.280 | that immediately people are thinking about

02:24:30.940 | is racial affirmative.

02:24:32.280 | - Seems like race is at the core of this American experiment

02:24:34.920 | that we're part of, in every part of its culture.

02:24:37.880 | - Bingo, bingo.

02:24:38.840 | Why is it that we, again, there's various ways

02:24:43.840 | in which institutions reach out

02:24:47.360 | to help various sectors of our population.

02:24:51.020 | Why is it that this is the one

02:24:54.540 | that generates all of the pulling out of hair

02:24:58.740 | and gnashing of teeth?

02:25:00.340 | We can put that to the side for a moment.

02:25:02.860 | Racial affirmative action refers to efforts

02:25:06.740 | in which institutions

02:25:12.540 | reach out to provide assistance to racial minorities.

02:25:17.540 | Now, the reaching out can happen in different ways.

02:25:24.880 | A light form of affirmative action

02:25:28.000 | might be reaching out in terms of recruiting,

02:25:32.560 | making a special effort to make sure that young people,

02:25:37.560 | let's say, in racial minority neighborhoods

02:25:41.600 | know about your college.

02:25:43.360 | That's recruitment.

02:25:45.760 | On the other hand, racial affirmative action

02:25:50.680 | might take a stronger form.

02:25:54.280 | It might take the form of saying,

02:25:55.880 | okay, we have a competition,

02:25:58.160 | and we think that there will be too few

02:26:03.160 | racial minority kids who do well enough in this competition

02:26:09.700 | to be admitted to our school.

02:26:11.700 | So what we're gonna do is we are going to,

02:26:16.500 | in various ways, give a boost to the minority kids.

02:26:22.380 | If it comes down to you have two kids,

02:26:27.960 | they both, I don't know, have 99 on the test.

02:26:33.780 | There's one place left.

02:26:37.060 | We only have one spot left, two kids.

02:26:39.960 | One's a black kid, one's a white kid.

02:26:42.980 | They both got 99.

02:26:44.220 | We're gonna give it to the black kid.

02:26:46.060 | Why?

02:26:48.020 | Well, black kid.

02:26:49.600 | All there is to it.

02:26:51.780 | Black kid, we wanna, maybe, and then our theory,

02:26:55.900 | maybe our theory is that black people

02:26:58.060 | have been done wrong in the United States,

02:27:00.060 | and we want our institution to contribute to making amends.

02:27:04.560 | That might be a theory.

02:27:05.740 | Another theory might be,

02:27:07.480 | we think that we'll have a more interesting student body.

02:27:17.620 | We'll have a better student body,

02:27:19.340 | a better discussion if there are more black kids on campus.

02:27:24.340 | And unless we make a special effort

02:27:26.580 | to bring more black kids on campus,

02:27:28.620 | our student body will be overwhelmingly monoracial.

02:27:35.260 | We'll just have white kids, a few Asian kids,

02:27:39.700 | a few Latino kids, if there are no black kids here.

02:27:42.440 | It'll be lacking an important aspect of American life.

02:27:48.300 | So that's some sort of, the so-called diversity story.

02:27:52.600 | So anyway, there are various theories.

02:27:54.980 | Some are grounded, like I said, in reparative justice.

02:28:00.980 | Some might be grounded in distributive justice.

02:28:03.420 | So for instance, when people say nowadays,

02:28:05.860 | we want a cabinet, we want a team,

02:28:11.060 | we want a student body that looks like America.

02:28:15.100 | That might be a distributive justice theory

02:28:18.180 | for why you want affirmative action.

02:28:19.700 | Unless we reach out and give a boost to certain groups,

02:28:24.700 | they won't be here.

02:28:30.060 | And we want a campus that looks like America.

02:28:33.940 | And we won't have a campus that looks like America

02:28:36.100 | unless we give a special boost to, I don't know,

02:28:39.000 | the Latino kids, or unless we give a special boost

02:28:41.380 | to black applicants.

02:28:43.720 | So reparative justice, distributive justice,

02:28:47.420 | or third, diversity, we just wanna have

02:28:51.700 | an interesting student body.

02:28:53.020 | And to have an interesting student body,

02:28:54.460 | we want kids from a wide array of places.

02:28:59.400 | We think that that'll make for a better campus,

02:29:01.860 | more interesting campus.

02:29:03.420 | Those are three justifications, all of which, however,

02:29:07.820 | are justifications for, in a competition,

02:29:12.820 | giving a special boost to some people based on their race.

02:29:18.040 | - What's your sense?

02:29:19.820 | Can you make the case for affirmative action,

02:29:22.100 | and can you make the case against it?

02:29:23.820 | - Yeah, I can make the case for,

02:29:25.660 | and I can make the case against.

02:29:27.100 | The case for, I won't spend much time on this.

02:29:30.900 | Like I said, there are three main justifications.

02:29:35.900 | Your audience should know that, one,

02:29:44.520 | the justification that actually led to affirmative action

02:29:49.820 | is a justification that you don't hear about in the courts,

02:29:53.500 | because the courts have said that

02:29:55.260 | that justification is insufficient.

02:29:58.700 | So the real justification behind affirmative action

02:30:02.060 | was in the late 1960s,

02:30:05.940 | in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Revolution,

02:30:08.500 | in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement,

02:30:11.060 | there was a feeling that, well, okay, fine,

02:30:13.260 | we're not discriminating against black people anymore,

02:30:16.540 | but black people have been disadvantaged

02:30:20.700 | by the discrimination that has been put upon them,

02:30:24.120 | and this discrimination that was put upon them

02:30:28.820 | has disabled them.

02:30:30.220 | And so they go into competitions, and it's unfair.

02:30:36.300 | Yeah, they score less well on the standardized test,

02:30:40.140 | but surprise, surprise, what the heck?

02:30:43.860 | They went to schools

02:30:47.060 | in which they got the leavings of the white folks.

02:30:51.180 | The white folks gave the black folks the old textbooks.

02:30:56.180 | That's what the black kids read.

02:30:59.240 | The white kids read the newest textbooks,

02:31:01.940 | on and on and on.

02:31:02.900 | So reparative justice,

02:31:05.980 | we're gonna try to repair the scars

02:31:10.660 | left by past racial injustice.

02:31:15.100 | And so it's sort of an effort to overcome

02:31:19.700 | the vestiges of past misdeeds.

02:31:22.780 | That was one justification for affirmative action.

02:31:25.140 | And frankly, I think that's the justification

02:31:27.980 | that has always been the predominant justification,

02:31:31.640 | whether people owned up to it or not.

02:31:33.940 | But that's one justification.

02:31:36.020 | The distributive justice justification is there.

02:31:39.380 | Like I say, people, we want an integrated America.

02:31:43.120 | We want an America that looks like America.

02:31:45.760 | In that justification,

02:31:50.860 | legitimacy is sometimes mentioned.

02:31:54.180 | So for instance, people will say things like,

02:31:59.180 | well, if we're gonna, in the armed forces,

02:32:03.180 | you can't have an armed forces

02:32:05.540 | in which the people on the ground

02:32:12.340 | are, you have a lot of people on the ground

02:32:15.200 | who are people of color,

02:32:16.900 | but none of the people calling the shots,

02:32:19.140 | none of the generals, none of the main colonels

02:32:24.060 | are people of color.

02:32:25.180 | No, and then, you know,

02:32:26.660 | the people on the ground are not gonna stand for that.

02:32:31.440 | So for purposes of legitimation,

02:32:34.620 | we need to, for purposes of buy-in,

02:32:39.220 | we need to have a situation in which people get the sense

02:32:43.860 | that even if they're sort of low down,

02:32:47.780 | they're still part of the story, they're part of the team.

02:32:52.220 | So that's part of the sort of, you know,

02:32:56.260 | I don't know, distributive justice notion.

02:33:00.300 | - Do you think there's power to that?

02:33:01.420 | I mean, do you think there's value,

02:33:02.740 | there's correctness to that kind of idea?

02:33:04.500 | - I think there's some.

02:33:05.860 | - 'Cause for the application process

02:33:07.400 | for different universities,

02:33:08.340 | I think that's probably a driving narrative,

02:33:11.100 | justification for, well, affirmative action,

02:33:16.100 | I don't know where we put DEI efforts,

02:33:19.500 | because they overlap, but they're not perfectly overlapping.

02:33:23.280 | - The reason that the school, so yeah, as you know,

02:33:26.900 | there is a case, we'll know about it,

02:33:29.700 | it'll be announced sometime in the next month,

02:33:32.140 | well, month, month and a half.

02:33:37.540 | It's a case of the Supreme Court of the United States

02:33:41.180 | in which the affirmative action program at Harvard

02:33:44.500 | and the affirmative action program

02:33:45.960 | at the University of North Carolina are being challenged.

02:33:49.100 | Most people think, including me,

02:33:51.460 | that the Supreme Court of the United States

02:33:54.000 | is going to limit, if not totally seek,

02:33:59.000 | to abolish affirmative action.

02:34:03.500 | So this is a very burning issue.

02:34:06.540 | As things currently stand,

02:34:09.060 | my university and other universities

02:34:15.220 | embrace affirmative action on the third ground,

02:34:18.740 | the diversity ground.

02:34:20.140 | And what they say is we need affirmative action

02:34:25.140 | because affirmative action is good for pedagogical reasons.

02:34:32.060 | Now, frankly, do I think there's something to that?

02:34:35.700 | I think there's a little something to that

02:34:37.460 | with respect to some subjects.

02:34:39.540 | I don't think that's what's really going on

02:34:43.540 | for the most part.

02:34:44.540 | I mean, if that's what's really going on,

02:34:46.500 | why don't we have more foreign students?

02:34:49.500 | Why isn't there a greater effort

02:34:52.340 | to bring in more foreign students?

02:34:53.740 | Why isn't there a greater effort to bring in more,

02:34:56.740 | I don't know, religious fundamentalists?

02:35:00.540 | Why isn't there a greater effort to bring in,

02:35:02.580 | and you could just name various groups

02:35:05.620 | that are, you hardly ever see them on campus.

02:35:08.260 | - So you don't think this kind of effort

02:35:10.860 | of driving towards diversity is rigorous enough?

02:35:15.580 | - I think it's often pretextual.

02:35:17.260 | I think, frankly, the real reason has to do with the belief,

02:35:22.260 | and I think it's a good belief.

02:35:24.940 | I associate myself with the belief.

02:35:26.740 | It's just that because of the legal rules,

02:35:30.320 | the authorities can't say this belief out loud,

02:35:34.940 | but it's still the case that a lot of institutions

02:35:37.620 | want to help American society overcome its racial past.

02:35:42.620 | That's the real animating force.

02:35:46.220 | Now, this thing about, you know,

02:35:48.540 | we'll have better classroom discussions,

02:35:50.940 | you know, some discussions, I mean, you know,

02:35:53.140 | with some subjects, yeah, listen,

02:35:56.660 | I'm an ignoramus when it comes to physics.

02:36:00.400 | My sense of it is, however,

02:36:02.240 | that if you're talking about physics,

02:36:05.640 | you're talking about physics,

02:36:07.000 | and frankly, it doesn't much matter

02:36:09.120 | in terms of mastering physics

02:36:11.960 | what the demographics of that classroom are.

02:36:15.080 | You either know physics or you don't.

02:36:16.960 | - The interesting thing I've noticed

02:36:18.160 | since doing this podcast is one way it does matter,

02:36:22.160 | it's really lonely when you do a thing

02:36:26.660 | and you don't see somebody that looks like you

02:36:28.860 | doing that thing.

02:36:30.020 | And it's such a seemingly stupid thing.

02:36:32.860 | Why does it matter if there's another person

02:36:35.100 | that looks like you in this very shallow sense?

02:36:38.740 | But it seems to matter to people.

02:36:40.740 | And when I talk to, for example, women on this podcast,

02:36:43.620 | a lot of women reach out saying how inspiring that is.

02:36:46.980 | That's interesting, right?

02:36:48.020 | Like, I think we're still human

02:36:50.340 | and we see people that look like us,

02:36:52.860 | and this kind of narrow, shallow definition

02:36:55.940 | of diversity still matters.

02:36:57.460 | - Okay, well, you know, I think you've made a good point,

02:37:02.380 | and maybe so.

02:37:05.780 | So let's go back to the physics.

02:37:07.140 | I mean, let's suppose that under one scenario,

02:37:10.680 | there's a classroom and a kid sticks his head,

02:37:14.180 | a black kid sticks his head in the classroom

02:37:16.740 | and doesn't see anybody else black there

02:37:19.340 | and has to make a quick decision and says,

02:37:21.500 | "Yeah, you know, nah, this ain't for me."

02:37:23.660 | Versus they stick their head in the classroom,

02:37:28.140 | they see a smattering of other black people in the classroom,

02:37:30.660 | they say, "Oh, let me try this."

02:37:32.500 | And then they try it and it turns out,

02:37:34.300 | damn it, they're Albert Einstein.

02:37:36.580 | So to that extent, I can see under that scenario,

02:37:42.460 | maybe it does matter.

02:37:43.900 | So I'll have to recalibrate.

02:37:46.260 | Still, those are the three leading justifications

02:37:51.260 | for affirmative action.

02:37:52.660 | You asked me where do I stand

02:37:54.180 | with respect to affirmative action?

02:37:55.580 | Oh, no, before we get to that, are there criticisms?

02:37:59.460 | The answer is yes, there are criticisms

02:38:01.980 | of affirmative action.

02:38:02.940 | Affirmative action is a policy like, you know, any policy.

02:38:07.860 | Any policy is gonna have some downsides to it.

02:38:10.940 | And affirmative action is no different.

02:38:12.420 | Does affirmative action have some downsides?

02:38:14.020 | Yes, it does have some downsides.

02:38:15.580 | What are they?

02:38:16.420 | Well, let me mention a couple.

02:38:18.660 | One, stigma, stigma.

02:38:23.660 | So if you have an institution that says

02:38:30.260 | that it reaches out to give a boost to certain people

02:38:35.260 | on a racial basis,

02:38:41.620 | there are gonna be people who observe that

02:38:45.460 | and who are gonna be thinking to themselves,

02:38:48.740 | hmm, if so-and-so is here

02:38:52.380 | and they were given a special boost,

02:38:54.700 | doesn't that mean that they were not as proficient

02:39:01.140 | as the other people who are here

02:39:03.340 | and who did not have that boost?

02:39:06.180 | So if they are not as proficient,

02:39:08.220 | that means that they might not be as good.

02:39:11.460 | They might not be as up to snuff.

02:39:13.380 | Is that part of our affirmative action world?

02:39:19.180 | Yes, it's part of our affirmative action world, yes.

02:39:23.260 | I'm a professor at Harvard Law School.

02:39:26.860 | One of the subjects I teach is contracts.

02:39:29.220 | Actually, that's probably the subject I most enjoy teaching.

02:39:34.460 | I think I most enjoy writing about racial conflict

02:39:39.780 | and the legal system, but as far as teaching,

02:39:43.060 | I most enjoy teaching contracts.

02:39:45.500 | Well, on that very first day, on the very first day,

02:39:49.820 | when I, you know, 80 students come,

02:39:52.860 | especially the first-year students, they're nervous,

02:39:55.820 | I show up.

02:39:59.220 | I'm quite sure that there's some students there

02:40:03.900 | who are thinking, okay, well,

02:40:09.300 | is this guy as good as my other teachers?

02:40:14.180 | Because, you know, I know that, you know,

02:40:17.020 | institutions like Harvard have made a special effort

02:40:19.900 | to bring in people like this guy, Kennedy.

02:40:23.140 | Is he as good?

02:40:25.580 | Well, I mean, I'm sorry.

02:40:28.740 | If you have an affirmative action regime,

02:40:33.540 | people are gonna think that.

02:40:35.260 | And are they crazy to think that?

02:40:36.860 | No, they're not crazy to think that.

02:40:38.900 | No, that's a perfectly logical thing

02:40:43.460 | for somebody to think.

02:40:45.540 | Does it have an effect on me as the teacher?

02:40:50.020 | Yeah, actually, it does have an effect on me, sure.

02:40:52.740 | I'm aware that some people are thinking that.

02:40:56.260 | It doesn't, I'm not, you know,

02:40:59.140 | it doesn't, you know, make me shake in my boots.

02:41:04.140 | Am I aware of it?

02:41:05.580 | Yeah, I'm aware of it.

02:41:06.740 | Does it have an effect?

02:41:07.940 | Yeah, it probably does have an effect.

02:41:09.660 | It probably does.

02:41:10.500 | It probably, it probably makes me,

02:41:15.500 | it probably makes me redouble my efforts

02:41:24.700 | because I don't want anybody to think justifiably

02:41:30.620 | that I'm less able than my colleagues.

02:41:35.860 | So, you know, it's funny.

02:41:39.180 | When I was growing up, my father used to tell me

02:41:41.340 | over and over again, "Randy, tie, tie, you lose, okay,

02:41:45.700 | brother, let me just tell you that."

02:41:47.500 | And he was telling me that because when he was, you know,

02:41:50.420 | in an earlier time, tie, tie, you lose,

02:41:53.340 | it was, you know, if it's even

02:41:57.300 | and there's a choice to be made,

02:41:59.220 | the white person is gonna get the benefit of the doubt.

02:42:02.340 | Now, under affirmative action,

02:42:04.980 | there's been a switcheroo.

02:42:07.060 | Oftentimes it's the black person

02:42:08.820 | who gets the benefit of the doubt,

02:42:10.740 | but I'm still in a situation which-

02:42:13.620 | Don't have to work hard.

02:42:14.460 | Yes, to avoid the stigmatization

02:42:18.940 | that is imposed by affirmative action.

02:42:21.380 | But is that stigma there?

02:42:22.580 | Yes, it's there.

02:42:23.980 | It is there.

02:42:24.820 | I'll tell you another way in which it comes up

02:42:27.500 | from a student's point of view.

02:42:28.580 | I'll never forget this.

02:42:29.860 | It was in my second year of law school.

02:42:33.900 | It was in tax class.

02:42:35.620 | We had a very famous tax teacher, wonderful tax teacher.

02:42:39.660 | On the very first day of class,

02:42:41.620 | Professor Bittker, wonderful man, wonderful teacher,

02:42:49.340 | Boris Bittker called on,

02:42:53.020 | the very first person he called on was a black student.

02:42:55.900 | I remember this as if it were yesterday,

02:42:58.580 | called on a black student and it was a black woman student.

02:43:03.380 | And I remember when he called on her,

02:43:05.340 | I remember just, I felt,

02:43:09.980 | I felt as if the room got quieter.

02:43:16.700 | Really, I felt as if the room got quieter

02:43:19.260 | and I know there was a real tenseness within me.

02:43:22.820 | He didn't call on me 'cause he was calling on somebody else,

02:43:24.700 | was a black woman student.

02:43:26.100 | And I felt different.

02:43:30.780 | I felt as if I was,

02:43:35.780 | I felt as if I was somehow at issue.

02:43:44.540 | I felt as if my place, I felt as if my status

02:43:53.540 | was to some small degree at issue.

02:44:00.700 | - In the positive direction or the negative?

02:44:02.380 | - Just at issue. - At issue.

02:44:04.180 | - And so, all of this is happening really quickly.

02:44:06.620 | He calls on the student.

02:44:08.500 | This is happening in seconds.

02:44:10.980 | And she responded and she responded really strongly.

02:44:15.420 | It was clear he asked her a question,

02:44:18.620 | she answered the question, she answered the question,

02:44:21.300 | beautiful, I mean, very strong,

02:44:24.140 | comprehensive, wonderful response.

02:44:27.980 | Now you might say, okay, well, smart student, okay, fine.

02:44:31.540 | Next, after class, after class, I went up to her

02:44:36.540 | and I clearly remember this.

02:44:40.740 | I said, that was great, thank you.

02:44:45.380 | Why?

02:44:47.380 | Because I'm a black student,

02:44:50.780 | predominantly white institution, Yale Law School.

02:44:54.500 | And I felt some of the, again, affirmative action,

02:44:59.500 | I felt some of the burden

02:45:10.540 | of this affirmative action stigma.

02:45:15.260 | - So it was almost like a thank you

02:45:18.260 | for showing that we belong here.

02:45:20.500 | - Yes, perfect, boom.

02:45:23.060 | Yes, that's exactly what the situation,

02:45:25.740 | and by the way, I wasn't the only one.

02:45:28.220 | I wasn't being idiosyncratic.

02:45:30.620 | I wasn't the only one.

02:45:31.780 | There weren't many black people in that class,

02:45:33.980 | but all of us.

02:45:37.700 | And we laughed about it later.

02:45:39.260 | We laughed about it, but that was there.

02:45:41.660 | So there's the stigma issue,

02:45:44.500 | and some people have made a lot of this.

02:45:46.460 | Some people have really made a lot of the stigma issue.

02:45:49.780 | My attitude towards the stigma issue, yeah, it's there.

02:45:53.100 | It's, again, it's part of the situation,

02:45:58.100 | but I think that the benefits outweigh the burdens.

02:46:00.980 | But is that a burden?

02:46:01.820 | Yeah, that's a burden.

02:46:02.740 | What are some others?

02:46:03.780 | Resentment, resentment in society.

02:46:08.700 | And that's, so in the fancy schools,

02:46:12.980 | and by the way, remember when we're talking

02:46:15.260 | about affirmative action,

02:46:18.060 | most colleges and universities in the United States,

02:46:20.740 | there is no affirmative action issue

02:46:23.500 | because they're not selective.

02:46:24.780 | Hell, they'll take anybody who,

02:46:26.340 | if you can pay, come on in.

02:46:28.780 | It's only a fairly small set of schools that are selective,

02:46:33.380 | but of course, those are the most elite schools.

02:46:35.980 | Those are the schools that people most want to get into,

02:46:39.420 | and that's one of the reasons why we have all this

02:46:41.300 | fighting over those schools.

02:46:42.620 | Now,

02:46:47.260 | there's a whole, how many millions of people

02:46:51.060 | are there in America who have applied to various places?

02:46:56.060 | They didn't get in, and what do they say?

02:46:59.660 | The white person who applied to Harvard,

02:47:02.740 | applied to Yale, applied to Columbia,

02:47:05.260 | applied to Georgetown, applied to NYU,

02:47:11.940 | didn't get in.

02:47:14.580 | What do they say?

02:47:16.780 | I would have gotten in

02:47:17.700 | if it hadn't been for that racial affirmative action.

02:47:20.660 | They're resentful.

02:47:22.220 | Well, should they be resentful?

02:47:24.580 | No, they shouldn't be resentful, but they are resentful.

02:47:27.100 | Does that have a consequence?

02:47:28.140 | Yeah, it has a consequence.

02:47:29.780 | It has a consequence on how they act towards other people.

02:47:32.260 | It has a consequence on how they vote.

02:47:34.260 | It has a consequence, and that's something.

02:47:39.260 | Are there other things?

02:47:44.620 | Yeah, and in my book, I go through various,

02:47:49.620 | I think that there is a certain sort of denialism

02:47:58.140 | that has accompanied the affirmative action debate.

02:48:07.940 | So because black people like myself,

02:48:14.100 | want to avoid the stigmatizing burden of affirmative action,

02:48:19.100 | there's some people who to deal with that have said,

02:48:30.060 | oh, actually, there is no difference between

02:48:35.060 | the beneficiaries of affirmative action and the other kids.

02:48:42.740 | There is no difference.

02:48:44.620 | If the affirmative action kids got, let's say, a 500,

02:48:48.940 | and the other kids got a 750,

02:48:51.620 | that doesn't make any difference.

02:48:54.020 | That's just BS.

02:48:55.980 | The only reason the kid who,

02:48:58.540 | the 550 kid didn't get 750 is because the test asks

02:49:02.980 | all sorts of culturally biased things,

02:49:07.460 | like what is a yacht?

02:49:11.140 | Well, sorry.

02:49:13.900 | Yes, there is a difference.

02:49:18.660 | There's a 200 point difference.

02:49:21.020 | Does the difference matter?

02:49:22.140 | Yes, the difference matters.

02:49:23.820 | And by the way, if you don't know what a yacht is,

02:49:27.060 | you can know what a yacht is without owning a yacht, okay?

02:49:30.020 | And there's this denialism that I think has really seeped

02:49:37.020 | into various conversations.

02:49:42.020 | - That can have a slippery slope effect

02:49:43.860 | that's beyond just this.

02:49:45.220 | - Yes, and we see it in various ways.

02:49:47.940 | So this attack on testing,

02:49:51.220 | it's not like I'm holding,

02:49:53.740 | some tests are not good tests.

02:49:56.340 | I think we should be skeptical of everything,

02:49:58.700 | but there are a lot of tests that,

02:50:00.460 | yeah, they tell us something, all right.

02:50:02.380 | They tell us who knows what.

02:50:04.540 | And there's some people who are really

02:50:08.060 | dead set against testing because they're dead set

02:50:10.300 | against anything that might show a gap.

02:50:12.660 | Well, I think by the way, are there gaps?

02:50:16.180 | Yeah, there are gaps.

02:50:18.140 | And what we need to do is be cognizant of those gaps

02:50:22.220 | and do things to make it so that if there's a gap,

02:50:26.500 | if you're deficient, no shame in being deficient.

02:50:31.140 | Heck, I'm deficient about a lot of things.

02:50:34.180 | Let's learn so that I catch up.

02:50:39.180 | But I think sometimes there have been people

02:50:43.020 | who've been afraid of even acknowledging the gaps.

02:50:48.020 | - Of course, there's, I guess a colleague of yours,

02:50:54.420 | Michael Sandel, with Tyranny and Merit.

02:50:57.580 | There's interesting, rigorous ways

02:50:59.980 | to kind of challenge ways.

02:51:01.700 | On the flip side of that,

02:51:03.100 | where obsessing with merit can go wrong also.

02:51:05.460 | - Yes, you mentioned Michael Sandel.

02:51:07.700 | He's a wonderful colleague and he's a wonderful friend.

02:51:11.540 | I've known him a long time.

02:51:13.660 | I think he makes very important arguments

02:51:17.260 | about meritocracy.

02:51:20.380 | I disagree with some of the points

02:51:25.220 | that he makes about meritocracy.

02:51:26.060 | - You do, so you lean towards the importance of meritocracy.

02:51:28.860 | - I think that, yes, I think that there are values

02:51:33.020 | in meritocracy extremely important.

02:51:35.300 | That in fact, the movement from feudalism,

02:51:40.300 | the movement from status, the idea of,

02:51:46.580 | I don't care who your father or mother was.

02:51:51.660 | I don't care from what part of town you come from.

02:51:53.900 | I don't care what your last name is.

02:51:55.860 | I don't care what color of your skin is.

02:51:58.420 | Show me what you can do.

02:52:01.660 | And then somebody sits down,

02:52:02.980 | okay, I'll show you what I can do.

02:52:05.300 | And they show it, you're in.

02:52:07.300 | I think there's a lot to that.

02:52:11.060 | And the impulse, the sentiments behind that,

02:52:15.180 | I resonate with that.

02:52:19.140 | I think that there's a lot there.

02:52:20.580 | What I wanna do is I wanna get rid

02:52:25.020 | of those features in society that deprive people

02:52:30.940 | of what you need to develop yourself.

02:52:35.940 | Sometimes those are psychological.

02:52:41.860 | Sometimes it's, you're not around people who've done things

02:52:46.860 | that give you the idea that you can do things.

02:52:48.940 | I wanna get rid of that.

02:52:51.220 | But the idea of people,

02:52:57.900 | the idea, by the way, of distinguishing.

02:53:02.900 | This is excellent.

02:53:06.740 | And the people who are excellent, they're here.

02:53:11.740 | And then there are people who are good.

02:53:16.660 | Are they excellent?

02:53:18.380 | No, they're not excellent.

02:53:19.860 | They're good.

02:53:20.900 | I'm not gonna close my eyes to that distinction.

02:53:27.820 | - And highlight that distinction,

02:53:31.780 | and yet at the same time, maintain a sense

02:53:34.860 | that their basic worth as a human being is equal.

02:53:38.420 | - Yes, so, was it Run-DMC, one of the rap groups?

02:53:43.420 | We're all written down on the same list.

02:53:51.780 | We're all written down on the same list.

02:53:54.620 | Yes, so I wanna recognize our fundamental humanity.

02:53:59.620 | I don't think that that,

02:54:04.380 | I think that one can recognize our fundamental humanity,

02:54:07.180 | and one can also recognize, as far as I'm concerned,

02:54:10.940 | that we all collectively should make sure

02:54:15.940 | that we do all that we can to prevent people

02:54:20.060 | from sinking below a certain level and being in misery.

02:54:24.300 | I'm all for that.

02:54:27.060 | But I wanna be careful about some of the attacks

02:54:32.900 | that I hear on meritocracy.

02:54:37.300 | So some of the people, including, again,

02:54:39.740 | I have all the respect in the world for Michael Sandel.

02:54:44.740 | He talks about the arrogance of the winners.

02:54:48.140 | Okay, I wanna be, I don't want the winners to be arrogant.

02:54:54.180 | That's right, luck has a lot to do with things.

02:54:56.860 | You didn't have any control over the circumstances

02:55:01.860 | in which you were born into.

02:55:03.380 | You were lucky that you were born healthy

02:55:07.780 | and that you were born with a well-working mind.

02:55:12.060 | You didn't have anything to do with that.

02:55:13.300 | That was pure luck.

02:55:14.380 | There's some people who don't have that luck.

02:55:16.420 | So don't be Mr. Big Stuff, okay?

02:55:23.940 | So I'm against that sort of arrogance.

02:55:27.340 | I'm entitled as if I taught myself how to read.

02:55:32.340 | No, you didn't teach yourself how to read.

02:55:35.060 | There was people who did all sorts of things for you

02:55:37.820 | and you don't even know it.

02:55:39.180 | Okay, so I wanna get rid of the arrogance,

02:55:44.660 | have decent humility.

02:55:48.820 | I'm all for that.

02:55:50.180 | At the same time,

02:55:52.740 | I wanna be careful about the problem of envy.

02:55:57.740 | I wanna be careful about the problem of resentment.

02:56:04.340 | I wanna be careful about,

02:56:07.500 | so let's not have, let's not give a trophy

02:56:18.020 | to the person who wins the race

02:56:21.740 | because to give a trophy to the person who wins the race

02:56:25.860 | will make the person who they defeated feel bad.

02:56:29.340 | No, no, no, no, I don't want that.

02:56:33.060 | I wanna give a trophy to the person who wins the race

02:56:36.580 | because I think it's a good thing to valorize the best.

02:56:45.420 | - Yeah, it's a kind of celebration

02:56:49.700 | of this whole human project that we're on.

02:56:53.220 | - Yes. - It's celebrating the best.

02:56:55.060 | You mentioned your father several times.

02:56:58.780 | So let me just linger on that.

02:57:00.180 | What have you learned from,

02:57:02.000 | what have you learned about life from your father?

02:57:05.660 | - I've been just such a lucky person.

02:57:13.260 | I mean, I feel like I've just lived

02:57:16.140 | an absolutely charmed life.

02:57:20.860 | And I live, I mean,

02:57:25.560 | the work that I do is what I love doing.

02:57:31.700 | I would pay to do what I am paid to do.

02:57:38.660 | (Chuck laughs)

02:57:39.500 | - Yeah. - I mean, it's great.

02:57:42.820 | And I've been fortunate in so many ways.

02:57:47.820 | And one way in which I've been fortunate is my parents.

02:57:53.540 | My parents, Rachel Spann Kennedy, Henry Harold Kennedy,

02:57:58.740 | my mother born in Columbia, South Carolina,

02:58:02.420 | my father from New Orleans, Louisiana.

02:58:07.420 | They were refugees from the Jim Crow South.

02:58:12.420 | They were people who put their all into their children.

02:58:17.420 | I have an older brother, I have a younger sister.

02:58:23.140 | All three of us know beyond any controversy

02:58:28.140 | that we were loved and dearly loved by our parents.

02:58:35.300 | And they were great people.

02:58:39.780 | My father, very interesting man, very independent-minded.

02:58:44.780 | He was perfectly willing to go his own way.

02:58:50.280 | And I learned much from him, including,

02:58:55.460 | I learned things from him

02:58:56.900 | even when I ultimately disagreed with him.

02:58:58.660 | So for instance, again, to go back to his pessimism,

02:59:01.940 | yeah, he was pessimistic, thoroughly pessimistic.

02:59:08.180 | But he was also willing to change in certain ways.

02:59:13.180 | In fact, both my parents.

02:59:16.900 | I mean, one of the most important things

02:59:18.340 | that happened to my parents was that I'd say

02:59:22.540 | when I was, let's say 10 years old, I was born in 1954.

02:59:29.680 | So in 1964, in 1964, I think my parents

02:59:35.300 | would have taken the position that you definitely never,

02:59:40.300 | under any circumstances, trust a white person.

02:59:44.140 | If a black person trusts a white person,

02:59:46.580 | that person is a fool.

02:59:48.220 | Do not trust white people, all right?

02:59:51.240 | They are not to be trusted.

02:59:53.340 | And it's the highly, highly, highly unusual one

02:59:58.340 | who is not prejudiced, okay?

03:00:02.400 | So white people are not to be trusted.

03:00:04.300 | And by and large, they're gonna be your enemy, all right?

03:00:08.300 | So let's just face that.

03:00:09.340 | That was their point of view.

03:00:12.000 | I'd say that 10 years later,

03:00:19.460 | that point of view had been leavened somewhat.

03:00:26.100 | I think, and you say, well, what happened in those 10 years?

03:00:31.620 | Well, certainly in my life,

03:00:35.780 | one of the things that happened in those 10 years is

03:00:40.020 | I was a student in various schools,

03:00:47.740 | and I had a series of teachers.

03:00:53.340 | I've had wonderful black teachers.

03:00:55.360 | I've also had wonderful white teachers.

03:01:00.180 | And my parents paid attention to who my teachers were

03:01:04.140 | and how my teachers treated me.

03:01:05.920 | And I think that they were affected by the way

03:01:12.060 | in which there were white people who really helped me

03:01:17.940 | and were on my side and were thoroughly on my side.

03:01:27.940 | And I think that that experience

03:01:32.380 | changed my parents in their general view.

03:01:39.580 | They, you know, skeptical, yeah, but they were,

03:01:42.600 | the possibility, the possibility of a white person

03:01:49.380 | genuinely being the friend of a black person

03:01:58.020 | that became alive to them.

03:02:02.260 | And I give them a lot of credit

03:02:03.860 | 'cause they were adults.

03:02:05.620 | And for an adult to change, that's a big deal.

03:02:10.020 | But my parents did change.

03:02:11.740 | - In that transformation that was inspiring to you,

03:02:15.060 | was formative to you in terms of joining the Optimist camp?

03:02:18.500 | - Hugely.

03:02:19.540 | And the school, I mean, again, I said a moment ago

03:02:26.220 | how lucky I've been.

03:02:27.460 | Heck, I teach at Harvard Law School.

03:02:32.340 | I attended Balliol College, Oxford.

03:02:38.340 | I got my law degree from Yale Law School.

03:02:43.460 | I got my undergraduate degree at Princeton University.

03:02:48.540 | Those are some pretty good schools.

03:02:50.340 | They all were, they all were.

03:02:52.860 | The most important school, however, that I attended,

03:02:56.780 | the school that made the most difference in my education

03:03:00.500 | was my high school, St. Albans School,

03:03:03.180 | St. Albans School for Boys.

03:03:05.380 | And at St. Albans, I encountered a cadre of teachers.

03:03:10.380 | And by the way, at St. Albans, when I went to St. Albans,

03:03:17.440 | all these teachers were white, all of these teachers.

03:03:21.300 | There was one, the head of athletics,

03:03:26.300 | very important man, very impressive man, Brooks Johnson,

03:03:30.580 | was black, otherwise, white teachers.

03:03:35.580 | And these teachers made a huge difference in my life.

03:03:40.720 | And I can call their names, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

03:03:46.420 | The greatest of them all was a man

03:03:49.780 | by the name of Jack McCune.

03:03:54.780 | Yeah, we called him Gentleman Jack,

03:03:59.220 | Gentleman Jack McCune.

03:04:00.840 | And-- - What subject did he teach?

03:04:04.180 | - He taught me history.

03:04:07.140 | He was my advanced placement history teacher.

03:04:10.500 | But John F. McCune, and we shared a birthday,

03:04:17.820 | John F. McCune was a fabulously good teacher.

03:04:22.820 | And we developed a deep lifetime friendship.

03:04:30.860 | I was with Mr. McCune the day before he died.

03:04:42.060 | And he was a white man.

03:04:47.060 | And I've had other teachers,

03:04:55.380 | some of whom have become colleagues of mine.

03:04:57.940 | Sanford Levinson, Sanford Levinson was a teacher of mine

03:05:04.020 | at Princeton, he's become a colleague of mine.

03:05:10.700 | I mean, it would be, frankly,

03:05:12.500 | it would be impossible for me to,

03:05:15.360 | I can't make some sort of blanket condemnation

03:05:23.460 | of white people with Sandy Levinson in my life.

03:05:32.680 | I mean, seriously, with John F. McCune in my life,

03:05:36.220 | with Eric Foner in my life,

03:05:39.060 | with my colleague Martha Minow in my life,

03:05:42.340 | my colleague Cass Sunstein in my life, impossible!

03:05:46.740 | - You know, that speaks to the power

03:05:47.900 | of teachers and mentors.

03:05:49.900 | - Oh yeah.

03:05:50.740 | - And you're that to a lot of people.

03:05:53.700 | - Well, I've taken that to, I hope, I hope,

03:05:57.160 | listen, I would be, listen, I would be absolutely overjoyed

03:06:02.160 | if there was a student who thought of me

03:06:08.740 | in the way that I think of gentleman Jack McCune.

03:06:13.180 | If that's the case, just one, just one,

03:06:18.180 | if that's the case, I'm overjoyed.

03:06:22.140 | - That's a life well lived.

03:06:24.820 | What do you think of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream"?

03:06:29.820 | Do you still share that dream?

03:06:31.980 | - I think that Martin Luther King Jr.'s

03:06:34.260 | "I Have a Dream" speech is one of the great speeches

03:06:37.580 | not only in American history,

03:06:39.020 | but in the history of the world.

03:06:41.060 | You know, there's a tendency now for people

03:06:44.100 | to sort of poo-poo that speech.

03:06:46.440 | I think, unfortunately, the speech, you know,

03:06:50.700 | has been embraced by, you know, advertisers

03:06:55.700 | in corporate America.

03:06:56.820 | It's been so, you know, it's been heard so many times

03:07:01.380 | that it sort of has been made to suffer

03:07:04.300 | from what some people might view as overexposure.

03:07:07.780 | - It's so unfortunate, I mean--

03:07:09.220 | - It's too bad.

03:07:10.220 | - Especially when Hollywood rolls in.

03:07:12.860 | They did that with John Lennon's "Imagine" recently,

03:07:16.540 | which I think is one of the greatest songs ever,

03:07:18.900 | and the actors and actresses ruined it

03:07:21.460 | by trying to like sing along

03:07:22.760 | and do this kind of cliche Hollywood thing.

03:07:25.100 | - It has, but people have tried to make it into a cliche.

03:07:28.120 | The fact of the matter is it's the sentiment,

03:07:33.340 | the sentiment behind "I Have a Dream,"

03:07:36.940 | yeah, I'll associate myself with that.

03:07:39.740 | And anybody wants to see some great oratory, go watch.

03:07:44.740 | And, you know, Martin Luther King Jr.,

03:07:51.140 | I mean, he gave, you know, several great speeches.

03:07:56.140 | You know, his first speech, the first speech that he gave

03:08:01.880 | as a civil rights leader,

03:08:06.140 | the Holt Street Baptist Church, 1955,

03:08:11.560 | at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott,

03:08:15.020 | which was virtually an extemporaneous speech,

03:08:18.180 | was one of his greatest.

03:08:20.020 | And he was, I think, 26 years old, great.

03:08:24.180 | His last speech, you know,

03:08:26.380 | his mountaintop speech, great speech,

03:08:28.180 | but "I Have a Dream," I love it.

03:08:31.760 | I will associate myself with those sentiments

03:08:34.680 | any day of the week, absolutely.

03:08:36.760 | - So you still have hope for a deep kind of multiracial,

03:08:41.760 | a deep unity in the 21st century?

03:08:44.880 | - I have that hope, and I think that the sentiments

03:08:48.820 | that Martin Luther King Jr. expressed in August 1963,

03:08:53.820 | that represents the best of American life.

03:09:00.680 | And I think it's a, you know,

03:09:05.520 | do I want to see that come to pass?

03:09:08.620 | Yeah, I want to see that come to pass,

03:09:10.500 | and we'll work to, you know, push that project along

03:09:15.380 | as far as it'll go.

03:09:17.180 | - Well, thank you for carrying his spirit

03:09:20.060 | of optimism forward, the spirit of your mother and father.

03:09:23.700 | Thank you for all the amazing work you've done,

03:09:25.300 | and thank you for just, this conversation's a huge honor.

03:09:28.020 | This is awesome. - Thank you.

03:09:28.860 | - Really appreciate it. - Thank you.

03:09:30.260 | Thank you, Randall.

03:09:32.020 | Thanks for listening to this conversation

03:09:33.500 | with Randall Kennedy.

03:09:34.820 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors

03:09:37.300 | in the description.

03:09:38.660 | And now, let me leave you with some words

03:09:40.540 | from Martin Luther King Jr.

03:09:42.860 | Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

03:09:45.060 | Only light can do that.

03:09:47.220 | Hate cannot drive out hate.

03:09:49.880 | Only love can do that.

03:09:51.780 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

03:09:55.420 | (upbeat music)

03:09:58.000 | (upbeat music)

03:10:00.580 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Randall Kennedy: The N-Word - History of Race, Law, Politics, and Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #379

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