John and I often talk about how we feel about race in America, but we rarely delve into why we feel the way we feel. What factors in our own lives primed us for those emotional responses? While John and I often agree about where the politics of race have gone wrong, we just as often experience very different feelings about these matters.
In his book “Consolations…” The poet David Whyte says that if we look deeply enough at our anger we find its genesis is caring about something, even if it is caring about ourselves. You often reflect that you don’t know where your anger comes from, but using this approach I think you already have told us. You care about black people and their unfulfilled potential and you care about the future of this country. Pretty good reasons to be angry.
Agree in part with both of you, I'm white so say it this way, moment you went to uni you stopped being working class. Unis create academics and manager class just the way it is. Just had this conversation with my son, who said he'd just realized he wasn't working class just got job with Scottish gov. Stop being woring class the moment you enter uni just that if your parents are working class you enter limbo that's where I agree with McWhorter, really hard financially to go beyond honours degree and virtually impossible for PhD. Welfare system doesn't make people lazy makes it impossible to aim for anything above the lowest wrung. Doesn't matter whether that's uni or college. As a single mum I was told welfare would fund me going to college to do numeracy and literacy & they didn't care I had higher English & Maths or HNC in computer aided electrical engineering not the kind of jobs I would be applying for, the jobs poor single mums get to apply for necessitates a barely literate workforce.
Going into the pandemic, I was a knee-jerk liberal. Which is to say, I never got beyond what felt like "the right way to think", in which an the government was the oppressor (learned in the turn of the '60s to '70s at RISD, down the street from where Glenn works), where one entire group was held hostage by the one to which I belonged, and they had no say in their own future beyond one that my group would allow them to have (this last, couched in a false openness and brotherhood). I remember a conversation with a friend in 2019, in which we agreed that the universities were the PROPER place to invest students with post-modern, group identity thinking because it was a way to know the good guys from the bad. When, like most people, I found myself sitting in front of my desktop in the spring of 2020, I began to question the lack of nuance in my own mind. Over the last year, I have found worthy heroes, and The Black Guys stand with other realists at the top of my list. Most of my friends cannot make the leap, assuming that it is a leap into right-wing thinking, because they only recognize the polarities. Glenn's speech on Black Patriotism to a conservative audience hit home to this liberal mind. It did not make me conservative, it made me realize that the needle has moved. John's visit to The View was largely greeted with disdain by the noisiest viewers and tweeters, who judged him a Tom going into it and shut down their minds to any word he said (not helped by his linguistic background, which colored him "white-appeaser" just for standing on the shoulders of the giants of The Enlightenment). Those people may be unreachable. Their group think was not budged the width of a hair. But one hopes that one or two of them actually went away from it with a pinhole in the wall of self-satisfaction. On the Loury speech to the Conservatives, seldom has anyone spoken so lucidly about a way forward in helping poor neighborhoods take back agency from those who would prey upon their personal sense of victimization, be it the individual bad actors or the social program that takes away their energy. These gentlemen are great Americans, because they are helping us learn what is the "way to go" to realize the goal of making our country a place where identity does not control outcome, only character and scholarship do. Forza, Signori!
This somewhat off-topic, but there it is. When I saw "Deracialize the Police," I thought it'd be even better to deracialize RACE. Get blacks and whites talking TOGETHER. Think something like that was proposed on "Taking the Race Debate Seriously" comments.
Never thought this show was a money grab. You are both genuine, highly intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful men that seem extremely kind, caring and considerate. Willingly, you are taking on a highly volatile issue lined with tremendous complexity and nuance. Your views on race as academics that happen to be black are needed in this world. I wish more academics with your disposition of all races were speaking on the same topics as you do. In my opinion you are doing the best job at discussing the truth around the issue. I truly hope the University of Austin will become the place these types of discussions happen.
Look, race is real. We need to be honest about it. There is nothing to be ashamed of. It just "is". It's nature. If, for some reason we are all inherently at odds with one another in some form due to the differences in race as a result of our evolution... well then, by my estimation that is all perfect and beautiful in natures eye. Tribalism IS nature. We see it in all forms of the animal world. Rather than deny it, let's address it head on because despite our differences in race, our commonalities (or intersectionalities) are many. So lets evolve into acknowledging the truth about our differences and celebrating the fact we can all cooperate on an incredibly high level. Our cooperation has led to 8 billion people infesting this planet and for the most part we do get along pretty well.
I love it when you talk about an individuals personal responsibility within the group. Change starts with the individual. I think that is point #1. Once that message is constant and understood perhaps if we change the messaging to the group, individual change can be reinforced and made easier. I think you men are defining the ground rules and the necessary messaging to begin the mass vocalization of this process.
I never went to college and spent a large chunk of my life as a drug addict. I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I have always found the topics and guests on this show easy to understand, relatable to my life and necessary in todays climate.
In the end, the best part about your discussions are the simple fact more people are tuning in. More people are commenting. More people are supporting. The subjects discussed in the manner they are on this show resonate with people. Sure, it may provoke the radicals, but I think the vast majority of viewers are learning. I appreciate you try to change up the topics.
Dear Glenn--You have no greater share of shame than me (a white American) for Omar's lack of success. It was said of Edmund Hillary that, during the first complete ascent of Mount Everest, he would cut steps in the ice before breakfast, so that his team could have a relatively easy start on the arduous day. I don't know better than anyone else what it would take to help Omar take steps to make his life more constructive, but I do believe that it's our shared responsibility to look carefully for opportunities to create the right incentives for him. This is an American problem, and it deserves to have some of everyone's attention, it seems to me.
Please know that I consider both of you to be American heroes and true patriots. You are saving this country from an ideology that is incompatible with our core traditions of free speech and objectivity.
Please also know that you have helped me grow as an intellectual. I left my job at a woke corporation and got back into education. I now work at a secondary school, and one of the classes I teach is Probability & Statistics. I have recently begun a unit entitled "Statistics In Society" that draws heavily upon the themes that you and others have shared (other significant influencers are Sam Harris, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Roland Fryer, Shelby Steele, and Bari Weiss). It will culminate with an essay contest in advance of Reverend King's holiday. I am proud of the materials I have pulled together and would be happy to share them with you, if you are interested. I believe we need a positive, compelling narrative that offers an alternative to the woke ideology, and I believe my materials are a fine start. I would love your help in improving them.
Finally, let me say that you helped me survive in my final year at that woke corporation. All around me seemed insane, so insane that I began to wonder if I was the one who was insane. You helped me remember that I am not insane. For this, I am so grateful.
Please know that you are making a difference. Please don't quit. Please don't grow weary. The tide is turning. And the tide is turning because of courageous people like you.
I think that it's good that Glenn continues to talk about race, but he and John often go over territory that they have recently covered. Sometimes it seems that I am watching a rerun. I have a couple of suggestions on ways to cover new territory.
1. Glenn could support many of his points by providing numbers to back up those points. For example, a couple of weeks ago Glenn and John discussed racial wealth differences. I would like to see some numbers that go beyond what one sees with mean or median numbers. This is just one example. This approach would help with many issues.
2. Glenn's approach depends on Black people doing well in their academic and career activities, especially those related to STEM disciplines. It would be great if Glenn had guests who have been successful at mentoring people.
A great discussion! I especially liked Prof. Loury's remark: "There's only one kind of equality worth having, and that's the equality where you can pull your own weight, not where people are feeling sorry for you because your great-grandfather was a slave."
I appreciate this conversation. I understand your anger and sadness. I agree that leading voices these days like Jones, Coates and especially Kendi are bizarrely unable to hold anyone besides whites (or anything but racist history) accountable for his/her "contemptible behavior," as Mr. Loury puts it. While it may be that white intellectuals who adopt this kind of thinking are infantilizing and disempowering African-Americans under the guise of understanding and supporting them, I'll have to say it seems to me that the extravagantly unreal justifications for criminal and antisocial behavior originate in the Black community and that is where the onus lies. The underlying idea, that Black people (and this goes for Native Americans, too) should separate themselves from and reject American, i.e., white culture, because it is somehow fatally flawed and not "ours" is a reactionary attitude and will not improve anything. It strikes me as not being a whole different in basic impulse from the silly proposals put forth by the right for secession. All this talk makes things worse, because really there IS no other culture available. We're all here in America and there's no getting around it. Yes, it can be made better, but that is done by participating in it and bringing something to the table, not through some kind of self-righteous rejection and never-ending recriminations. Nowhere to go people. Discussions like this, and books like the recent one by Mr. McWhorter are good ways to counter these reactionary impulses and perhaps, I hope, a way to change the discussion to a more productive one. But as to HOW to change antisocial and criminal behavior-- well that's a whole lot harder and I don't have any brilliant solutions. Getting people, no matter their race or class to take responsibility for their actions, to be accountable, is what's needed and taking responsibility for anything these days in the US is not so popular. More practical measures like education reform, and maybe, reform of drug laws, could be helpful. I have trouble with the notion that decriminalizing drugs would really work to change the situation, although the current approach is obviously a failure. Gainful employment with adequate living wages seems to me one part of the solution.
Glenn -- I think your anger is commensurate with the stupidity, ubiquity, and harmfulness of the arguments from the other side. We're angry because a lot of people have been taken in by dangerous and deeply unpersuasive ideology. And as you've said repeatedly, the stakes are high.
Me? Pros and cons to Gov actually selling drugs (in State liquor stores, for example), and making distribution of drugs illegal. Take the profit away from gangs and the Narco-Cartels, right?
Agree with almost all the others. Impactful. Lot to think/feel about. Mebbe ponder and listen again before contemplating anything else. As always, but ESPECIALLY this time, TYTY to BOTH-a You.
This was a great discussion. Particularly the part about how to deal with "Omar". This is the real problem because without solutions the ghettos and the underclass will persist and grow.
Glenn's anger and frustration strike me as that of a father disappointed with a son's lackadaisical half-assed approach to life that he sees leading to self destruction and grief. He wants to take him by the neck and smack him upside the head a few times and tell him (as Bill Cosby said) "I brought you into this world and I can take you out". The problem with this approach is that it takes tens of thousands of fathers to do their jobs. But you have to start somewhere. We need a thousand Glenns.
John's approach, to end the war on drugs (maybe a good idea or maybe not) so that you decrease the interactions between Omar and the "cops" to reduce the hassle factor in Omar's life is pure liberal/progressive bullshit. The notion that this will cause Omar to "wake up and smell the roses", take advantage of enhanced educational opportunities and not get his girlfriend(s) pregnant is a pipe dream.
Glenn,
In his book “Consolations…” The poet David Whyte says that if we look deeply enough at our anger we find its genesis is caring about something, even if it is caring about ourselves. You often reflect that you don’t know where your anger comes from, but using this approach I think you already have told us. You care about black people and their unfulfilled potential and you care about the future of this country. Pretty good reasons to be angry.
Agree in part with both of you, I'm white so say it this way, moment you went to uni you stopped being working class. Unis create academics and manager class just the way it is. Just had this conversation with my son, who said he'd just realized he wasn't working class just got job with Scottish gov. Stop being woring class the moment you enter uni just that if your parents are working class you enter limbo that's where I agree with McWhorter, really hard financially to go beyond honours degree and virtually impossible for PhD. Welfare system doesn't make people lazy makes it impossible to aim for anything above the lowest wrung. Doesn't matter whether that's uni or college. As a single mum I was told welfare would fund me going to college to do numeracy and literacy & they didn't care I had higher English & Maths or HNC in computer aided electrical engineering not the kind of jobs I would be applying for, the jobs poor single mums get to apply for necessitates a barely literate workforce.
Going into the pandemic, I was a knee-jerk liberal. Which is to say, I never got beyond what felt like "the right way to think", in which an the government was the oppressor (learned in the turn of the '60s to '70s at RISD, down the street from where Glenn works), where one entire group was held hostage by the one to which I belonged, and they had no say in their own future beyond one that my group would allow them to have (this last, couched in a false openness and brotherhood). I remember a conversation with a friend in 2019, in which we agreed that the universities were the PROPER place to invest students with post-modern, group identity thinking because it was a way to know the good guys from the bad. When, like most people, I found myself sitting in front of my desktop in the spring of 2020, I began to question the lack of nuance in my own mind. Over the last year, I have found worthy heroes, and The Black Guys stand with other realists at the top of my list. Most of my friends cannot make the leap, assuming that it is a leap into right-wing thinking, because they only recognize the polarities. Glenn's speech on Black Patriotism to a conservative audience hit home to this liberal mind. It did not make me conservative, it made me realize that the needle has moved. John's visit to The View was largely greeted with disdain by the noisiest viewers and tweeters, who judged him a Tom going into it and shut down their minds to any word he said (not helped by his linguistic background, which colored him "white-appeaser" just for standing on the shoulders of the giants of The Enlightenment). Those people may be unreachable. Their group think was not budged the width of a hair. But one hopes that one or two of them actually went away from it with a pinhole in the wall of self-satisfaction. On the Loury speech to the Conservatives, seldom has anyone spoken so lucidly about a way forward in helping poor neighborhoods take back agency from those who would prey upon their personal sense of victimization, be it the individual bad actors or the social program that takes away their energy. These gentlemen are great Americans, because they are helping us learn what is the "way to go" to realize the goal of making our country a place where identity does not control outcome, only character and scholarship do. Forza, Signori!
This somewhat off-topic, but there it is. When I saw "Deracialize the Police," I thought it'd be even better to deracialize RACE. Get blacks and whites talking TOGETHER. Think something like that was proposed on "Taking the Race Debate Seriously" comments.
Anyhoo, there's actually a philosophy behind this. Who knew? https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/theory-of-racelessness-a-case-for
TY for transcript.
Never thought this show was a money grab. You are both genuine, highly intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful men that seem extremely kind, caring and considerate. Willingly, you are taking on a highly volatile issue lined with tremendous complexity and nuance. Your views on race as academics that happen to be black are needed in this world. I wish more academics with your disposition of all races were speaking on the same topics as you do. In my opinion you are doing the best job at discussing the truth around the issue. I truly hope the University of Austin will become the place these types of discussions happen.
Look, race is real. We need to be honest about it. There is nothing to be ashamed of. It just "is". It's nature. If, for some reason we are all inherently at odds with one another in some form due to the differences in race as a result of our evolution... well then, by my estimation that is all perfect and beautiful in natures eye. Tribalism IS nature. We see it in all forms of the animal world. Rather than deny it, let's address it head on because despite our differences in race, our commonalities (or intersectionalities) are many. So lets evolve into acknowledging the truth about our differences and celebrating the fact we can all cooperate on an incredibly high level. Our cooperation has led to 8 billion people infesting this planet and for the most part we do get along pretty well.
I love it when you talk about an individuals personal responsibility within the group. Change starts with the individual. I think that is point #1. Once that message is constant and understood perhaps if we change the messaging to the group, individual change can be reinforced and made easier. I think you men are defining the ground rules and the necessary messaging to begin the mass vocalization of this process.
I never went to college and spent a large chunk of my life as a drug addict. I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I have always found the topics and guests on this show easy to understand, relatable to my life and necessary in todays climate.
In the end, the best part about your discussions are the simple fact more people are tuning in. More people are commenting. More people are supporting. The subjects discussed in the manner they are on this show resonate with people. Sure, it may provoke the radicals, but I think the vast majority of viewers are learning. I appreciate you try to change up the topics.
Dear Glenn--You have no greater share of shame than me (a white American) for Omar's lack of success. It was said of Edmund Hillary that, during the first complete ascent of Mount Everest, he would cut steps in the ice before breakfast, so that his team could have a relatively easy start on the arduous day. I don't know better than anyone else what it would take to help Omar take steps to make his life more constructive, but I do believe that it's our shared responsibility to look carefully for opportunities to create the right incentives for him. This is an American problem, and it deserves to have some of everyone's attention, it seems to me.
Glenn & John-
Please know that I consider both of you to be American heroes and true patriots. You are saving this country from an ideology that is incompatible with our core traditions of free speech and objectivity.
Please also know that you have helped me grow as an intellectual. I left my job at a woke corporation and got back into education. I now work at a secondary school, and one of the classes I teach is Probability & Statistics. I have recently begun a unit entitled "Statistics In Society" that draws heavily upon the themes that you and others have shared (other significant influencers are Sam Harris, Coleman Hughes, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Roland Fryer, Shelby Steele, and Bari Weiss). It will culminate with an essay contest in advance of Reverend King's holiday. I am proud of the materials I have pulled together and would be happy to share them with you, if you are interested. I believe we need a positive, compelling narrative that offers an alternative to the woke ideology, and I believe my materials are a fine start. I would love your help in improving them.
Finally, let me say that you helped me survive in my final year at that woke corporation. All around me seemed insane, so insane that I began to wonder if I was the one who was insane. You helped me remember that I am not insane. For this, I am so grateful.
Please know that you are making a difference. Please don't quit. Please don't grow weary. The tide is turning. And the tide is turning because of courageous people like you.
-Bobby Nichols
I think that it's good that Glenn continues to talk about race, but he and John often go over territory that they have recently covered. Sometimes it seems that I am watching a rerun. I have a couple of suggestions on ways to cover new territory.
1. Glenn could support many of his points by providing numbers to back up those points. For example, a couple of weeks ago Glenn and John discussed racial wealth differences. I would like to see some numbers that go beyond what one sees with mean or median numbers. This is just one example. This approach would help with many issues.
2. Glenn's approach depends on Black people doing well in their academic and career activities, especially those related to STEM disciplines. It would be great if Glenn had guests who have been successful at mentoring people.
The 3 reasons given by Glenn for continuing to focus on race are compelling:
1. To stay in touch with reality.
2. Because you care about the soul of our country and the ongoing efforts to destroy it.
3. Because you care about the ongoing infantilization and marginalization of your People.
Keep up the good work. This is why I hang out here.
A great discussion! I especially liked Prof. Loury's remark: "There's only one kind of equality worth having, and that's the equality where you can pull your own weight, not where people are feeling sorry for you because your great-grandfather was a slave."
If you are going to do economics, get Michael Hudson or Steve Keen or do something on Minsky and Sraffa.
I appreciate this conversation. I understand your anger and sadness. I agree that leading voices these days like Jones, Coates and especially Kendi are bizarrely unable to hold anyone besides whites (or anything but racist history) accountable for his/her "contemptible behavior," as Mr. Loury puts it. While it may be that white intellectuals who adopt this kind of thinking are infantilizing and disempowering African-Americans under the guise of understanding and supporting them, I'll have to say it seems to me that the extravagantly unreal justifications for criminal and antisocial behavior originate in the Black community and that is where the onus lies. The underlying idea, that Black people (and this goes for Native Americans, too) should separate themselves from and reject American, i.e., white culture, because it is somehow fatally flawed and not "ours" is a reactionary attitude and will not improve anything. It strikes me as not being a whole different in basic impulse from the silly proposals put forth by the right for secession. All this talk makes things worse, because really there IS no other culture available. We're all here in America and there's no getting around it. Yes, it can be made better, but that is done by participating in it and bringing something to the table, not through some kind of self-righteous rejection and never-ending recriminations. Nowhere to go people. Discussions like this, and books like the recent one by Mr. McWhorter are good ways to counter these reactionary impulses and perhaps, I hope, a way to change the discussion to a more productive one. But as to HOW to change antisocial and criminal behavior-- well that's a whole lot harder and I don't have any brilliant solutions. Getting people, no matter their race or class to take responsibility for their actions, to be accountable, is what's needed and taking responsibility for anything these days in the US is not so popular. More practical measures like education reform, and maybe, reform of drug laws, could be helpful. I have trouble with the notion that decriminalizing drugs would really work to change the situation, although the current approach is obviously a failure. Gainful employment with adequate living wages seems to me one part of the solution.
Glenn -- I think your anger is commensurate with the stupidity, ubiquity, and harmfulness of the arguments from the other side. We're angry because a lot of people have been taken in by dangerous and deeply unpersuasive ideology. And as you've said repeatedly, the stakes are high.
To Professor McWHorter (Professor Loury also, I guess),
You may already know. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-york-city-opens-nations-first-government-sanctioned-drug-injection-sites/
Me? Pros and cons to Gov actually selling drugs (in State liquor stores, for example), and making distribution of drugs illegal. Take the profit away from gangs and the Narco-Cartels, right?
Agree with almost all the others. Impactful. Lot to think/feel about. Mebbe ponder and listen again before contemplating anything else. As always, but ESPECIALLY this time, TYTY to BOTH-a You.
This was a great discussion. Particularly the part about how to deal with "Omar". This is the real problem because without solutions the ghettos and the underclass will persist and grow.
Glenn's anger and frustration strike me as that of a father disappointed with a son's lackadaisical half-assed approach to life that he sees leading to self destruction and grief. He wants to take him by the neck and smack him upside the head a few times and tell him (as Bill Cosby said) "I brought you into this world and I can take you out". The problem with this approach is that it takes tens of thousands of fathers to do their jobs. But you have to start somewhere. We need a thousand Glenns.
John's approach, to end the war on drugs (maybe a good idea or maybe not) so that you decrease the interactions between Omar and the "cops" to reduce the hassle factor in Omar's life is pure liberal/progressive bullshit. The notion that this will cause Omar to "wake up and smell the roses", take advantage of enhanced educational opportunities and not get his girlfriend(s) pregnant is a pipe dream.