Recently I had a rich, deep conversation with lawyer, Current Affairs contributing editor, and former Bernie Sanders National Press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray on her podcast Bad Faith. Briahna and I occupy very different ideological spaces, so I thought TGS viewers would be interested in watching the discussion. She has generously given me permission to share it here.
Ms. Gray’s assertion that Black parents care just as much about their children’s education as other races may be true. However, all things being equal, a single parent has less time to read, etc. to his/her child than a parent who has a co-parent living in the home. So, educational outcomes will be worse in a demographic with higher rates of single parenthood. This isn't complicated stuff. I wish you had made this point.
As for Ms. Gray, I wish she had a chance to live in the Soviet Union, or Cuba, or Venezuela, or any other socialist country. So unfortunate that she and so many others do not understand human nature, the value of incentives, and how amazing our country is and can be.
It was interesting. So so much discussion on "race" issues which I can't, in my wildest imagination, generate practical solutions. Why? Well, because if your neighbor gets help for the same issues you are having because they are a different race or ethnicity than you . . . you might have problems accepting that.
Okay Glenn, for this week's Q&A, on Briahna's YouTube page the comments suggested you were being nice to her. And I am sure you do not pack stats in your holster like Sowell. You did do a fantastic job of maintaining decorum though. Having reflected on the conversation, what are the important points you want to add?
Ms Gray could also have suggested that ALL communities alter their behavior to match African Americans: single motherhood, routine use of cannabis, absent fathers, drive-by shootings in every community just like Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo, etc. Wouldn't that also reduce the disparities?
People of color (male and female) are underrepresented in STEM fields. Is a degree in social work or education as valuable as a degree in engineering or chemistry?
Disheartening discussion in so many ways. To the criticisms cited by others here I would add that though she talks glibly about management by workers she is unaware that worker self-management was tried and implemented in Tito's Yugoslavia. It wasn't particularly successful. Also, union workers in Germany have a lot of input into how their firms operate. What does Briahna think of those?
What’s all this about black women being the most well-educated group in the US? She just asserted that with no evidence. Such a claim needs extensive scrutiny, which Glenn began doing, but I’d also question:
1) What is the percentage of black women who hold degrees?
2) Which degree subjects did they take?
3) What are their grades?’
If the vast majority hold critical theory or postmodernism-based degrees (as opposed to STEM, finance, economics or the like) then their education - far from equipping them with thinking skills for work, life and success - is actually training them to be complainers. Which in turn explains why pay & employment gaps remain.
I turned this off after about halfway through, since it was more a discussion about socialism than racism, and I've heard all Brianna's fashionable dorm room socialist arguments before, and it was clear Glenn wasn't really in the mood to fight her on them. He would probably have to in order for this discussion to truly be meaningful.
This was another interesting discussion between two intelligent and articulate people like the recent one with Lara Bazelon, a good example of "The Conversation" which some people say has to take place in this country. At some points, however, I wished Glenn could have made a stronger case for his positions. When he expressed his concerns about issue of books in the home, time spent by parents reading to their children, etc., Briahna challenged him for hard evidence to back up his claims, he had to admit he had none. And when she was singing the praises of state socialism and the virtues of the Soviet Union, he could have pointed her to the "Black Book of Communism" published in the 1990s which documents the nearly 100 million people who were killed "through executions, man-made hunger, famine, war, deportations, and forced labor".
My favorite part was when she referred to the election of Barack Obama as a "superficial gain." Talk about cynical! The same for black billionaires. Both Obama's election and insanely successful black Americans "ultimately serve the purpose of disguising exactly how insidious the gross racial and economic disparities that exist under capitalism really are."
She was a good conversationalist, though, in that she presented her case logically. (As someone else pointed out, black women are not actually the "most educated" group, so she did misspeak about that, whether intentional or not.) She gained points with me when she conceded the left plays up certain statistics over others for political gain. A simple and obvious acknowledgement, sure, but surprisingly few on the left or right admit even such obvious things. However, she then said the right uses statistics in a way as to "weaponize" them. I see it differently: The right is pummeled nonstop -- and it is truly nonstop -- with claims of "racist cops" and "white supremacy." So it seems to me pointing out the actual numbers to disprove the left's claims is self-defense, not weaponization!
Regarding the use of statistics, the contrast between Briahna Joy Gray and Roland Fryer (whom I listened to last night) was stark. I prefer Dr. Fryer's "let the cards fall where they may" attitude.
I don't think she "misspoke" regarding black women most educated. It's a kind of meme that catches the minds of many credulous or confused people. Google that phrase and you will find articles claiming it on black-focused or feminist publications (The Root, Essence, Independent.UK) - it's based it a really obvious misunderstanding that a relative gender gap within black people is not the same as an absolute level of education.
Another obvious confusion on Briahna' part (does anyone know what she was getting at?) came in the discussion about black/wed Out Of Wedlock (OOW) birth rates and the wealth/income gaps. Glenn speculated or claimed that OOW births are a detriment to wealth creation and savings, which has contributed to the racial gap. Briahna "countered" with the fact that the white gap has also risen. But since she mentioned both OOW rates had risen in parallel and were still separated by a space roughly equal to 50 years ago, why did she think this was evidence against Glenn's point? It was incoherent, she just had an allergic reaction to the thought that Glenn might have been correct.
As to Briahna conceding that "the left" plays up certain stats and ignores inconvenient other ones - that struck me a particularly true and close to home, since the first time I'd come across her was in a discussion with Coleman Hughes were she spent way too much time fighting him and being in denial about the leading cause of death for young black men being homicide (mostly from other black young men).
Coleman definitely said "young." She couldn't bring herself to accept it. She also displayed the same "if stats disrupt my narrative then they are hateful and dangerous and should be suppressed" mindset.
I'm left wondering if her "black women are the most educated" meme is something she truly believes or if she is intentionally misrepresenting. You would think someone in her inner circle would have disabused her by now.
"someone in her inner circle" has the same biases and blindnesses as she does. I would bet a lot of money that Briahna and those close to her believe this ludicrous claim.
Wow. When she said America cannot take credit for beating the Nazis because we only lost 300,000 people compared to 25 million Soviets lost was the most telling moment of the podcast. We lost so few because we value life. Stalin used the front line to send all of his political enemies to their deaths. Just amazing.
I always find that kind of morality=deaths calculus to be flawed as well. I see it in the Israel vs Palestine conflicts too - where it is just assumed as a given that the "side" which saw fewer casualties was acting immorally.
If a military becomes less competent, or more hasty, does that make them more moral?
Brianna is obviously an intelligent and caring person but this interview leaves me with little hope.
She has obviously grown up in a very protected and privileged environment. Kudos to her parents for providing that. Unfortunately such a privileged upbringing only leads to destruction... whether it's Rome or Russia the children of the privileged hate their society and wish to tear it down. In its place the hybristic Young build hell... her defending of the USSR makes me want to cry... This willful ignorance of the world perpetrated by the University system is a shame on the west.
Is anyone aware of any studies (even just subjective self-proclaimed levels of "prioritization" or "value" that find black americans place more valueor emphasis on education than other racial groups?
This claim was made by Briahna, quasi challenged by Glenn, but I have looked and been unable to find any such polls or surveys.
(and I think measures of things like hours in front of TV vs Hours of homework, or hours spent reading to children, or consumption of luxury goods vs consumption of education/cultural goods would be more accurate measures... but I don't think Briahan has even ever seen the surveys which she cites.)
@ 24min Briahna makes the absurd claim that Black women are the most educated demographic group in the USA. This isn't even close to true, and I knew it immeditely upon hearing it. It seems like something only believable by someone completely out of touch with the reality in America, or totally blinded by biases into believing what he/she wants to be true.
There is, however, a larger education gap betwn male/female black americans than there is a gender gap in education for other racial groups.
Postmodern, Neo-Marxist thinkers like Brianna reject scientific truth, including statistical facts. Rejecting the enlightenment, the scientific method, and rationality is the whole point for her and her comrades. I'm not surprised I'm left feeling that she, and others like her, are a lost cause. Brianna, just because you "googled it" doesn't make it true, ok?
There are 2 actual stats, neither one means black women are the most educated:
1 - The gender gap for education attained purely within black america is bigger than for other racial groups. This is basically a story about how poorly black males are doing. Of all the 4yr degrees awarded to black people, 64% go to females. This is of course totally orthagonal to the absolute level of education achieved. If only 100 black americans had ever achieved a 4yr degree, and if 64 individuals were black women, this stat would still be exactly the same. Yet confused or dumb people read this stat and interpret it to mean that 64% of all black women have 4yr college degrees (it's ~16%)
2. There's another stat that says something like 9.7% of black females are currently enrolled in higher education. That's higher (by a very small amount) than for asian males, or asian females. However, this doesn't say who actually completes a degree, and doesn't control for population pyramids/dynamics where a higher % of black americans are in prime college age (between 15-30yrs old) than the percent of whites or asians between 15-30yrs old. Racial group "X" could also earn more degrees, per capita, than racial group "Y", but a higher % of "Y" could be enrolled at any given moment, if they average a lower class load and take 50% longer to earn their degrees.
Black women have lower average levels of education than Jewish men and women, white men and women, East Indian men and women, and Asian men and women.
Yet BJG at some point absorbed and then just accepted that black women are the most highly educated group. It's just so so so far off from true that it shows how narrow and sheltered her world experiences are (Harvard education and the Bernie campaign) and/or how poorly her brain works when it comes to evaluating race/gender claims that on some level sound appealing.
The irony is that most progressives and social justice advocates should HATE to see a minority group falsely given presented as have more power and achieved more progress than they actually have.
Cuba. They always come back to Cuba. My working class father had to leave in 1960 to get out from under that nightmare. I wouldn't waste my time talking to people like this. They arise every few decades and are blind to history, human nature and reality. God forbid they ever come to power. It's ideology vs. people. Very telling what she said about the pitting our beloved partners vs. our opinions. She came close to saying that ideology is more important. That's been my experience in 58 years when it comes to ideologues. They will throw you under the bus whenever it suits them.
Can I ask you, are there any Hispanic podcasters that would be in the same vein as Glenn, John, Coleman Hughes, etc.? In English? Should John & Glenn have them on?
Ms. Gray’s assertion that Black parents care just as much about their children’s education as other races may be true. However, all things being equal, a single parent has less time to read, etc. to his/her child than a parent who has a co-parent living in the home. So, educational outcomes will be worse in a demographic with higher rates of single parenthood. This isn't complicated stuff. I wish you had made this point.
As for Ms. Gray, I wish she had a chance to live in the Soviet Union, or Cuba, or Venezuela, or any other socialist country. So unfortunate that she and so many others do not understand human nature, the value of incentives, and how amazing our country is and can be.
It was interesting. So so much discussion on "race" issues which I can't, in my wildest imagination, generate practical solutions. Why? Well, because if your neighbor gets help for the same issues you are having because they are a different race or ethnicity than you . . . you might have problems accepting that.
Okay Glenn, for this week's Q&A, on Briahna's YouTube page the comments suggested you were being nice to her. And I am sure you do not pack stats in your holster like Sowell. You did do a fantastic job of maintaining decorum though. Having reflected on the conversation, what are the important points you want to add?
Ms Gray could also have suggested that ALL communities alter their behavior to match African Americans: single motherhood, routine use of cannabis, absent fathers, drive-by shootings in every community just like Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo, etc. Wouldn't that also reduce the disparities?
People of color (male and female) are underrepresented in STEM fields. Is a degree in social work or education as valuable as a degree in engineering or chemistry?
Disheartening discussion in so many ways. To the criticisms cited by others here I would add that though she talks glibly about management by workers she is unaware that worker self-management was tried and implemented in Tito's Yugoslavia. It wasn't particularly successful. Also, union workers in Germany have a lot of input into how their firms operate. What does Briahna think of those?
What’s all this about black women being the most well-educated group in the US? She just asserted that with no evidence. Such a claim needs extensive scrutiny, which Glenn began doing, but I’d also question:
1) What is the percentage of black women who hold degrees?
2) Which degree subjects did they take?
3) What are their grades?’
If the vast majority hold critical theory or postmodernism-based degrees (as opposed to STEM, finance, economics or the like) then their education - far from equipping them with thinking skills for work, life and success - is actually training them to be complainers. Which in turn explains why pay & employment gaps remain.
This is not separated by sex, but has the racial breakdowns.
"Asians" and "whites" (whatever that means) are highest.
No category for Jewish, no separation among asians for Indians vs Japanese vs Korean, etc.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rfa.asp
I turned this off after about halfway through, since it was more a discussion about socialism than racism, and I've heard all Brianna's fashionable dorm room socialist arguments before, and it was clear Glenn wasn't really in the mood to fight her on them. He would probably have to in order for this discussion to truly be meaningful.
Agreed.
This was another interesting discussion between two intelligent and articulate people like the recent one with Lara Bazelon, a good example of "The Conversation" which some people say has to take place in this country. At some points, however, I wished Glenn could have made a stronger case for his positions. When he expressed his concerns about issue of books in the home, time spent by parents reading to their children, etc., Briahna challenged him for hard evidence to back up his claims, he had to admit he had none. And when she was singing the praises of state socialism and the virtues of the Soviet Union, he could have pointed her to the "Black Book of Communism" published in the 1990s which documents the nearly 100 million people who were killed "through executions, man-made hunger, famine, war, deportations, and forced labor".
This made me appreciate how few commercials Bloggingheads.tv inject into their programs, wow.
My favorite part was when she referred to the election of Barack Obama as a "superficial gain." Talk about cynical! The same for black billionaires. Both Obama's election and insanely successful black Americans "ultimately serve the purpose of disguising exactly how insidious the gross racial and economic disparities that exist under capitalism really are."
She was a good conversationalist, though, in that she presented her case logically. (As someone else pointed out, black women are not actually the "most educated" group, so she did misspeak about that, whether intentional or not.) She gained points with me when she conceded the left plays up certain statistics over others for political gain. A simple and obvious acknowledgement, sure, but surprisingly few on the left or right admit even such obvious things. However, she then said the right uses statistics in a way as to "weaponize" them. I see it differently: The right is pummeled nonstop -- and it is truly nonstop -- with claims of "racist cops" and "white supremacy." So it seems to me pointing out the actual numbers to disprove the left's claims is self-defense, not weaponization!
Regarding the use of statistics, the contrast between Briahna Joy Gray and Roland Fryer (whom I listened to last night) was stark. I prefer Dr. Fryer's "let the cards fall where they may" attitude.
I don't think she "misspoke" regarding black women most educated. It's a kind of meme that catches the minds of many credulous or confused people. Google that phrase and you will find articles claiming it on black-focused or feminist publications (The Root, Essence, Independent.UK) - it's based it a really obvious misunderstanding that a relative gender gap within black people is not the same as an absolute level of education.
Another obvious confusion on Briahna' part (does anyone know what she was getting at?) came in the discussion about black/wed Out Of Wedlock (OOW) birth rates and the wealth/income gaps. Glenn speculated or claimed that OOW births are a detriment to wealth creation and savings, which has contributed to the racial gap. Briahna "countered" with the fact that the white gap has also risen. But since she mentioned both OOW rates had risen in parallel and were still separated by a space roughly equal to 50 years ago, why did she think this was evidence against Glenn's point? It was incoherent, she just had an allergic reaction to the thought that Glenn might have been correct.
As to Briahna conceding that "the left" plays up certain stats and ignores inconvenient other ones - that struck me a particularly true and close to home, since the first time I'd come across her was in a discussion with Coleman Hughes were she spent way too much time fighting him and being in denial about the leading cause of death for young black men being homicide (mostly from other black young men).
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/extremely-offline/id1452377534?i=1000429653985
Coleman definitely said "young." She couldn't bring herself to accept it. She also displayed the same "if stats disrupt my narrative then they are hateful and dangerous and should be suppressed" mindset.
I'm left wondering if her "black women are the most educated" meme is something she truly believes or if she is intentionally misrepresenting. You would think someone in her inner circle would have disabused her by now.
"someone in her inner circle" has the same biases and blindnesses as she does. I would bet a lot of money that Briahna and those close to her believe this ludicrous claim.
Wow. When she said America cannot take credit for beating the Nazis because we only lost 300,000 people compared to 25 million Soviets lost was the most telling moment of the podcast. We lost so few because we value life. Stalin used the front line to send all of his political enemies to their deaths. Just amazing.
I always find that kind of morality=deaths calculus to be flawed as well. I see it in the Israel vs Palestine conflicts too - where it is just assumed as a given that the "side" which saw fewer casualties was acting immorally.
If a military becomes less competent, or more hasty, does that make them more moral?
That was painful and depressing.
Brianna is obviously an intelligent and caring person but this interview leaves me with little hope.
She has obviously grown up in a very protected and privileged environment. Kudos to her parents for providing that. Unfortunately such a privileged upbringing only leads to destruction... whether it's Rome or Russia the children of the privileged hate their society and wish to tear it down. In its place the hybristic Young build hell... her defending of the USSR makes me want to cry... This willful ignorance of the world perpetrated by the University system is a shame on the west.
I agree!
Is anyone aware of any studies (even just subjective self-proclaimed levels of "prioritization" or "value" that find black americans place more valueor emphasis on education than other racial groups?
This claim was made by Briahna, quasi challenged by Glenn, but I have looked and been unable to find any such polls or surveys.
(and I think measures of things like hours in front of TV vs Hours of homework, or hours spent reading to children, or consumption of luxury goods vs consumption of education/cultural goods would be more accurate measures... but I don't think Briahan has even ever seen the surveys which she cites.)
@ 24min Briahna makes the absurd claim that Black women are the most educated demographic group in the USA. This isn't even close to true, and I knew it immeditely upon hearing it. It seems like something only believable by someone completely out of touch with the reality in America, or totally blinded by biases into believing what he/she wants to be true.
There is, however, a larger education gap betwn male/female black americans than there is a gender gap in education for other racial groups.
https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/no-black-women-are-not-the-most-educated-group-in-the-us/
Postmodern, Neo-Marxist thinkers like Brianna reject scientific truth, including statistical facts. Rejecting the enlightenment, the scientific method, and rationality is the whole point for her and her comrades. I'm not surprised I'm left feeling that she, and others like her, are a lost cause. Brianna, just because you "googled it" doesn't make it true, ok?
I'm glad someone else caught this, this definitely made me sit up and wrinkle my brow as well.
Agreed. Anyone who uncritically parrots this kind of "statistic" immediately loses all credibility with me.
There are 2 actual stats, neither one means black women are the most educated:
1 - The gender gap for education attained purely within black america is bigger than for other racial groups. This is basically a story about how poorly black males are doing. Of all the 4yr degrees awarded to black people, 64% go to females. This is of course totally orthagonal to the absolute level of education achieved. If only 100 black americans had ever achieved a 4yr degree, and if 64 individuals were black women, this stat would still be exactly the same. Yet confused or dumb people read this stat and interpret it to mean that 64% of all black women have 4yr college degrees (it's ~16%)
2. There's another stat that says something like 9.7% of black females are currently enrolled in higher education. That's higher (by a very small amount) than for asian males, or asian females. However, this doesn't say who actually completes a degree, and doesn't control for population pyramids/dynamics where a higher % of black americans are in prime college age (between 15-30yrs old) than the percent of whites or asians between 15-30yrs old. Racial group "X" could also earn more degrees, per capita, than racial group "Y", but a higher % of "Y" could be enrolled at any given moment, if they average a lower class load and take 50% longer to earn their degrees.
Black women have lower average levels of education than Jewish men and women, white men and women, East Indian men and women, and Asian men and women.
Yet BJG at some point absorbed and then just accepted that black women are the most highly educated group. It's just so so so far off from true that it shows how narrow and sheltered her world experiences are (Harvard education and the Bernie campaign) and/or how poorly her brain works when it comes to evaluating race/gender claims that on some level sound appealing.
The irony is that most progressives and social justice advocates should HATE to see a minority group falsely given presented as have more power and achieved more progress than they actually have.
Cuba. They always come back to Cuba. My working class father had to leave in 1960 to get out from under that nightmare. I wouldn't waste my time talking to people like this. They arise every few decades and are blind to history, human nature and reality. God forbid they ever come to power. It's ideology vs. people. Very telling what she said about the pitting our beloved partners vs. our opinions. She came close to saying that ideology is more important. That's been my experience in 58 years when it comes to ideologues. They will throw you under the bus whenever it suits them.
Can I ask you, are there any Hispanic podcasters that would be in the same vein as Glenn, John, Coleman Hughes, etc.? In English? Should John & Glenn have them on?