0:06

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This

0:09

is Sam Harris. Just a

0:11

note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not

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So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please

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consider becoming one. Okay,

0:45

a little housekeeping here. How

0:48

shall I put this? Well,

0:52

for those of you who heard my

0:54

previous episode with Rory Stewart,

0:56

this might come as a bit of

0:59

a surprise. I thought that was a great conversation, as

1:02

did many of you. I said really

1:04

everyone, as far as I can tell. I'll

1:07

remind you, Rory is a

1:09

fascinating person who spent something

1:11

like 20 months walking across the

1:14

Middle East and

1:17

wrote a book about his travels in

1:19

Afghanistan in particular. He has wide

1:21

experience in the Muslim world, served

1:23

in Iraq for the

1:25

British civil service. And

1:28

we talked about many things in this podcast

1:30

and touched on my concerns

1:32

about jihadism fairly

1:35

briefly. We spoke for

1:37

about an hour and 20 minutes and maybe it

1:39

was 20 minutes of

1:41

that conversation that we focused

1:43

on jihadism. The

1:46

general focus was on just the failures of

1:48

nation building in Afghanistan

1:50

and Iraq and the

1:52

unraveling of the rules-based international

1:55

order, we spoke about Brexit

1:58

and how... partisan politics

2:01

have become, there were many other topics.

2:04

And what was notable is that we

2:07

basically agreed about

2:09

everything except we had a clear

2:11

difference of emphasis. I

2:14

tend to emphasize the ideological origins

2:17

of certain types of violence. I'm

2:19

very concerned about extreme religious beliefs

2:22

and how they're motivating. And

2:24

yet, of course, I acknowledge that there are other

2:26

sources of human conflict, tribalism,

2:29

nationalism, sociopathy,

2:32

etc. And in

2:34

the context of our conversation, Rory

2:36

was emphasizing the importance of nationalism,

2:38

which he thinks is a bigger variable, even

2:41

in the history of our conflicts in the Muslim

2:43

world. Now, that is certainly

2:45

debatable, but in our

2:47

conversation, he wasn't denying the

2:50

importance of religious ideology, and I

2:52

wasn't denying the importance of nationalism.

2:55

If we were disagreeing at all, it was

2:58

simply a matter of how much we weighted

3:00

each of those variables. So

3:02

anyway, I thought it was a great conversation. But

3:04

someone surfaced some remarks that

3:07

Rory made on his own podcast later

3:10

that week. Rory is

3:12

speaking here with Humsa Yousaf, who

3:15

is a Muslim Scottish

3:17

politician who served as

3:19

First Minister of Scotland and the leader of

3:21

the Scottish National Party. And

3:24

I'm otherwise unfamiliar with Humsa, but

3:26

you'll hear some of his remarks

3:28

for context. One

3:30

of the things that I've noticed recently,

3:32

particularly since October 7th, is

3:35

an increase in people making stereotypical

3:37

comments. I just had an

3:39

interview with an American

3:42

podcast guy called Sam Harris who was hammering

3:44

me for a million hours, saying, yes, but

3:46

surely, Rory, you have to admit there's a

3:48

connection between Muslims and suicide bombers, and

3:51

Muslims and terrorists. He just wouldn't let it go. And

3:54

I wondered, is that

3:56

something that you've experienced? And is it

3:58

something that's getting better, getting worse? us,

4:00

how does our society deal with it? I

4:03

think it's getting worse. Maybe it

4:05

comes in cycles. But I remember for me, 9-11 was

4:11

such a seminal moment for me. And that makes sense. A

4:14

bit selfish, thousands of miles

4:16

away unaffected and killed

4:18

so many thousands of Americans. But for me, it

4:20

was a day I'll always remember when 9-11 took

4:23

place on a Tuesday. I think coming back from school and

4:25

school bus home, radio was on,

4:27

you can hear what was going on and the driver was telling us

4:29

to shout because he was trying to listen to what

4:31

was going on. Went home and

4:33

saw the scenes. You guys would have seen

4:36

a terrible tragic and terrible time that took

4:38

place. And then the next

4:40

day I remember going to school and sitting in form

4:42

class and seeing two guys I used to sit beside

4:44

every single morning and we'd be talking about the things

4:46

that teenage boys talk about, mainly my case Celtic, a

4:48

football club I loved. And they

4:51

were bombarding me, not with any maliciousness. They

4:53

were bombarding me with questions I had no

4:55

idea the answer to. Why do Muslims hate America?

4:57

Do you know who was behind it? What

4:59

was it all about? I said, I don't have

5:02

a clue. And so for

5:04

me, and then of course all the

5:06

Islamophobia that followed post 9-11. But

5:08

I have to say my position as First

5:11

Minister and even perhaps before then, there

5:13

is definitely still a deep

5:16

rooted systemic and endemic

5:19

Islamophobia in this country. And

5:21

then Scotland is absolutely not immune to that. What

5:25

is really disappointing about

5:27

this is that there's really

5:29

no way around the fact that

5:33

Rory is painting me

5:35

as a bigot here,

5:38

or at least somebody whose

5:40

politics and ethics are compromised

5:42

by a lack

5:44

of understanding about what's really

5:47

going on in the Muslim world. I

5:50

don't think I'm being especially thin-skinned

5:52

to perceive this as defamatory

5:55

in some sense. One

5:58

of the reasons why I'm doing this up is that... I looked

6:00

on Reddit where this got surfaced, and

6:03

many people are now speculating that

6:05

our conversation must have gone

6:07

on for much longer than is

6:09

indicated by the audio that I aired. I must

6:11

have been badgering him for quite

6:13

some time and then presented an abbreviated

6:16

version of our conversation. That's

6:19

not what happened at all. So you listen

6:21

to our conversation, you are hearing every word

6:23

we spoke to one another, the

6:25

exception of possibly some sidebar

6:28

conversation about setting up

6:30

our microphones or something that will

6:32

cut from every interview. Anyway,

6:35

I've since reached out to Rory and

6:38

he was quite gracious

6:40

and I think embarrassed.

6:44

He's great to come back on the podcast and

6:47

do a post-mortem on this. I'm

6:50

pretty sure I know what happened here and

6:52

I'm reasonably confident we can have a conversation

6:54

that will be useful and

6:57

who knows, maybe even fun. So

7:00

you can look for that in the coming weeks. As

7:03

for other misunderstandings and

7:06

misrepresentations that seem very

7:09

unlikely to be rectified through

7:11

conversation, someone pointed out another

7:13

one of those to me this week. Apparently

7:17

my former friend Elon Musk is

7:19

bashing me again on the social

7:21

media platform that he owns, X,

7:25

and on the basis of yet another clip of

7:27

a podcast appearance of mine that has been produced by

7:29

yet another right-wing

7:32

troll. This is what

7:34

seems to happen every time now. I

7:36

go on someone else's podcast, people

7:38

look for clips that can be exported from that

7:40

appearance that are misleading as

7:42

to what I believe and what

7:45

I was saying in context. Sometimes

7:48

as in this case, it's pretty clear the

7:50

clip isn't even saying what they claim it

7:52

is but they have titled their

7:54

post something profoundly misleading. In any

7:57

case, there was a clip from

7:59

my appearance on the David Pakman

8:01

show, where I

8:03

seem to be talking about the crisis

8:05

at the southern border of the

8:07

US and worrying

8:09

that someone like Tucker

8:12

Carlson could exaggerate the gravity

8:14

of the problem and thereby undermine

8:16

Biden's chances of

8:18

being reelected. And the

8:20

whole thing got framed as me being

8:23

skeptical that there was even a problem at

8:25

the southern border. Of course, the

8:27

chaos there is now a major concern

8:29

of everyone right of center and many

8:31

of us left of center. So

8:35

Elon's response to this clip in

8:37

front of millions of people was

8:39

that Sam Harris's mind

8:41

has turned to goo. Now

8:44

the irony here is that I think Elon

8:46

and I have exactly the same view of the

8:49

southern border. I view it

8:51

as a political and social emergency

8:54

and a scandal and

8:57

I have long been concerned that this

8:59

is the issue that will deliver

9:01

us a second Trump

9:03

presidency. So I

9:07

am not at all inclined to

9:09

minimize the significance of the problem

9:12

there. However, in

9:14

this case, I'm actually grateful for

9:16

this instance of misrepresentation

9:18

because it has finally convinced

9:20

me that I can

9:23

no longer care about

9:25

this sort of thing. It's now

9:27

so clear that social media has

9:30

become a hallucination machine.

9:34

There's no way to prevent this. No

9:36

one has taken the time to find out

9:38

what was really said in context. This

9:41

is nothing to respond to here. So

9:44

I suppose this is

9:46

an epiphany I could have had and perhaps

9:48

should have had many years ago because

9:51

I've been complaining for 20 years about

9:54

people misrepresenting my

9:56

views even

9:58

before the advent of social media. media. It's

10:01

the thing that has driven me

10:04

most crazy, really. But

10:06

in this case, the misrepresentation

10:09

is so ridiculous, because again, Elon

10:12

and I actually agree about

10:14

what's happening at the southern border, that

10:17

something has snapped for me.

10:20

And I just simply can't care about

10:22

this anymore. It's quite

10:24

a relief. So my pledge

10:26

to you and to myself is

10:28

that I'm not going to complain about this anymore. I'm

10:31

not going to notice this sort of thing

10:33

anymore. And the truth is, I think

10:36

this epiphany should extend to

10:39

what just happened with Rory as well.

10:42

I mean, the reason for

10:44

me to do a podcast with Rory about

10:46

this is I think his

10:48

confusion here is so well subscribed. And

10:52

he is or should be so knowledgeable

10:55

about the terrain here. Right?

10:58

I mean, this is somebody who knows

11:00

much more about the Muslim world in many

11:02

respects than I do. There's no question about

11:04

that. So I just

11:07

didn't want to leave it untouched, because

11:09

if there's any possibility of someone revealing

11:11

my ignorance about anything

11:14

relevant here, surely it's somebody

11:16

like Rory who could do that. And

11:18

given how much I have focused on Islam in

11:21

the past, and given how

11:24

culpable I feel it is for

11:27

so many of the world's problems, it

11:29

would seem irresponsible for me not to revisit

11:31

this topic with Rory. But

11:34

in general, I think even

11:37

there, I should forget

11:39

about misrepresentations and

11:42

misunderstandings. We are now

11:44

just careening into a world

11:46

of deep fakes and

11:49

the most malignant distortions of

11:52

everyone's public persona. So

11:55

now I think I should just reconcile myself to the

11:57

idea that anyone who cares about Islam is a

11:59

human being. what I think will

12:01

listen to what I say in one

12:04

of my own channels at some appropriate

12:06

length. And beyond that,

12:08

there is nothing I can do. In

12:11

fact, another example just crossed my desk,

12:14

and this proves that there's basically nothing

12:16

I can do to successfully take other

12:18

people's feet out of my mouth. I

12:21

saw a clip of Konstantin

12:24

Kissen and Tom

12:26

Billier in conversation on

12:28

Tom's podcast about me. And

12:31

they were talking about my

12:34

cancellation effectively on the right, and

12:36

my views about Trump and COVID.

12:39

And the amazing thing is,

12:42

I've been on both of their podcasts, largely

12:46

for the purpose of clarifying

12:48

my views about Trump

12:50

and COVID. And

12:52

both of them are totally confused

12:54

about what I think on

12:56

both of those topics. I

12:59

mean, these are both very smart

13:01

guys who are

13:03

clearly well disposed of me.

13:06

I like them, and they like me, and they're

13:09

still completely confused

13:12

about what I think on these two

13:14

topics. And I have spent

13:17

hours on each of their podcasts clarifying

13:20

what I think. It

13:22

is fucking hopeless. I'm

13:24

embarrassed that it's taken me this long to realize

13:27

it, but this is now

13:29

my new religion. I simply cannot

13:32

care what other people

13:35

think, I think. I

13:37

just have to put my stuff out there and move

13:39

on. And that's what I will

13:41

be doing on this podcast. Okay.

13:47

And now for today's podcast. Today

13:50

I'm speaking with Coleman Hughes. Coleman

13:52

is a writer and podcast

13:55

host and musician. He's

13:57

written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,

14:00

National Review, Quillette,

14:03

The Spectator, City Journal, and

14:06

elsewhere. He's currently a contributing writer

14:08

at the Free Press and an analyst

14:10

for CNN. He also

14:12

has a sub-stack newsletter titled Coleman's

14:14

Corner and a podcast,

14:16

Conversations with Coleman, and most

14:18

relevantly a new book, The End

14:20

of Race Politics, Arguments for a

14:23

Colorblind America. And

14:25

that is the topic of today's conversation. We

14:28

talk about race and racism. We

14:31

discuss the ideal of colorblindness

14:34

and what that means. Race

14:36

and crime, Coleman's experience

14:38

at TED, which you

14:40

heard me discuss previously with Chris Anderson.

14:43

The concept of Latinx, the

14:46

confusion of the elites, Ibram

14:48

X. Kendi, affirmative action, class

14:51

differences, poverty, single-parent

14:54

families, the death of

14:56

George Floyd and the trial of Derek Chauvin, Candace

14:59

Owens, Christopher Rufo, Guilt

15:01

by Association, John McWhorter,

15:04

Glenn Lowry, reparations

15:06

for slavery and Jim Crow, the

15:09

difference between various immigrant communities, evidence

15:12

of discrimination, the legacy

15:14

of Martin Luther King Jr., and

15:16

other topics. As

15:18

always, it was great to speak with Coleman, and

15:21

now I bring you Coleman Hughes. I

15:29

am here with Coleman Hughes. Coleman, thanks for

15:31

joining me again. Great to be on

15:33

again. So you have a new

15:35

book, The End of Race

15:38

Politics, Arguments for a Colorblind America.

15:40

And I must sheepishly confess

15:42

that I have not read your

15:44

book, though I appear to have

15:46

blurbed it just for the record

15:49

here. I had to declare blurb

15:51

bankruptcy some years ago, and so

15:53

I don't blur books anymore, but occasionally I

15:56

can blurb the writer of that book, which is what I

15:58

did in your case. Normally, I

16:00

would have read the book before we do

16:02

a podcast, but I didn't get a physical

16:05

copy. I blame no one for this,

16:07

but the universe. I know

16:09

you sent me a PDF, but I spend so

16:11

much time in front of screens. I just cannot

16:13

read a book as a PDF. The

16:15

advantage to this is that there is

16:17

a silver lining. We can really take it from

16:20

the top, and you can roll out your argument

16:22

for a naive listener, which I will

16:24

pretend to be, because you and I

16:26

have talked about these issues and obviously

16:28

we've thought a lot about them. But

16:31

every listener to this podcast knows that I am

16:33

a huge Coleman Hughes fan. I've

16:35

made no secret of that. I

16:37

think in my blurb for the book, I

16:39

say something about it's like you're a person

16:41

from the future. You're the person who's come

16:44

back from the future and born

16:46

witness to what a sane future

16:48

with respect to the variable

16:50

of race actually looks like. That's always how

16:52

you've themed to me. So let's

16:55

just jump in. What is your basic

16:58

argument in the book? Yeah, well,

17:00

first of all, thanks for breaking your

17:03

rule on blurbs for me. I'm honored.

17:06

In any event, a book is really just

17:08

an occasion to talk about the topic in

17:11

many ways. So yeah, my

17:13

basic argument in this book is

17:16

we have this idea of colorblindness with

17:19

respect to race, which I define

17:21

as treating people without

17:24

regard to race, really making

17:26

your best effort to treat the individuals

17:28

in your lives without regard to

17:30

their race when it matters and

17:33

to get race as a category

17:36

out of public policy, to

17:38

get rid of public policies that use race

17:40

as a factor in determining how

17:44

to distribute goods, services, aid,

17:47

and so forth. And the

17:50

second half of that is more controversial for

17:52

people than the first half. And

17:56

the reason this idea needs rescuing

17:58

at all, because we It was

18:00

once the consensus view of

18:02

American liberals, at least there was

18:05

a brief moment in the 60s

18:08

on the ringing rhetoric of Martin

18:10

Luther King and the spirit of the civil

18:12

rights movement where enough

18:15

people that mattered came together

18:17

and agreed that colorblindness was

18:20

the goal. So

18:22

many people agreed on it at that point that you

18:25

even had a book like Black Power, which

18:27

was the manifesto of the movement by the

18:29

same name in the late 60s, even

18:32

acknowledged as a caveat that

18:34

colorblindness was the ultimate goal

18:37

worth pursuing and just disagreed

18:39

on how we get there.

18:42

In the intervening years, you've seen more and

18:44

more people actually just abandon

18:47

colorblindness even as an ultimate goal

18:49

to the point where when I set out

18:52

to do research for this book just as

18:54

a test, I googled colorblindness race so

18:56

as to distinguish it from the visual condition

19:00

and nine out of 10 articles I

19:02

got were articles telling me why colorblindness

19:04

is wrong. In

19:07

the worst case, a Trojan horse for

19:09

white supremacy or in the best

19:11

case, naive and the 10th article

19:13

was a Wikipedia page. So

19:16

something has happened in 50 years

19:18

where the view that

19:21

colorblindness is wrong and evil, which used

19:23

to be confined to critical race theory,

19:26

has become sort of the norm on

19:28

the left. And to be

19:30

fair, I think proponents of

19:32

the idea of colorblindness have

19:34

made themselves an easy target with

19:37

the phrase, quote, I don't see

19:39

color, which is really

19:42

a common refrain and a common

19:45

point of mockery among the

19:47

critics of colorblindness because it's

19:49

obviously not true. We do

19:51

see color, we all see color. And

19:55

at a deeper level, we at

19:57

least adults, we all see color. There

20:00

are actually kids or people

20:02

from other cultures can

20:04

be something close to colorblind in the ways

20:07

that matter, but most American

20:09

adults are not colorblind. When

20:12

I walk into a room, you notice that I'm not

20:14

white. When you say I'm walking into

20:16

a room, people notice that you are. What's

20:19

more, we are all probably

20:21

capable of racial bias.

20:24

Other psychologists can put us in experiments

20:26

and show us in

20:28

some cases to be racially biased and

20:31

in situations where race strongly correlates

20:33

with something that matters, I think

20:35

almost all of us are capable

20:37

of racial bias. That's

20:40

not what I mean when I say colorblindness

20:42

and I don't think it's what people should

20:44

mean when they say colorblindness. I

20:47

think we should abandon this misleading phrase

20:49

that's too easy of a target. We

20:51

don't see color and instead say

20:54

what we mean, which is I try

20:56

my best to treat people without regard to race

20:58

in my personal life and I

21:00

think race should be left out of public

21:02

policy. That's the basic thesis of

21:04

the book. Yeah, well maybe

21:06

we can cycle on that last

21:08

point again because I think it's

21:11

interesting psychologically and ethically

21:14

because I'm definitely guilty of

21:16

saying something close to I

21:18

don't see color or that I aspire to

21:20

not see color or something like that or

21:23

I think we shouldn't see color. But it's

21:25

not a matter of seeing so much as

21:27

it is caring about. The

21:30

analogy I keep using to the consternation of

21:32

many of my progressive critics is to hair

21:34

color or to eye color. Now of course

21:36

I see hair color and I see eye

21:39

color but they're not politically

21:41

or ethically salient

21:44

really ever. So I just simply

21:46

don't care how many blondes did

21:48

or didn't get into Harvard this year. I

21:51

don't think we as a society should care and

21:54

the only reason why we would care is

21:56

if we had a history of discrimination against blond

21:58

people and we were tracking that because it

22:00

was some historical injustice that we

22:02

felt we need to rectify it. And

22:04

of course, that is the case with

22:06

skin color. But when I imagine a

22:08

truly sane future, which again,

22:11

you appear to inhabit for me, I imagine

22:14

a future where skin

22:16

color has become like hair color or eye color,

22:18

which is to say that it's an obvious surface

22:21

feature around which people

22:23

differ, but those differences

22:26

simply don't matter. Even if we

22:28

celebrate them, they don't matter.

22:30

I mean, there are people who have especially

22:32

beautiful hair or eyes, and

22:35

the color is part of that. And

22:37

we might even talk about how amazing

22:41

their hair and eyes look. And

22:44

you can say the same thing for a

22:46

person's skin, right? I mean, people have

22:48

just astonishing skin, black or

22:51

white or other. And

22:53

it could be the actual

22:55

topic of conversation, but it

22:57

has no political or ethical weight.

23:00

And it would be insane

23:02

to think that it should. And so that's

23:04

the color blindness I

23:06

would advocate is something around

23:08

that by analogy to hair color

23:11

and eye color. Is there anything about that

23:13

that strikes you as wrong? So

23:15

you gave a caveat that

23:19

unless we had a history of discrimination against

23:21

a particular group of people, I think that

23:23

I have the same caveat in my book,

23:26

and we can talk about

23:28

sort of what my vision

23:30

for addressing that looks

23:32

like. So I would echo that caveat,

23:34

and I would add one more. Unlike

23:38

the case in eye color or hair

23:40

color, there are cultural

23:42

differences that track racial

23:45

groups. We live in a multicultural society,

23:47

a multicultural country, which

23:49

if anything means that there are

23:51

multiple cultures. So I

23:54

would consider black Americans, for

23:56

example, to be a subculture

23:59

of Americans. which are a

24:01

broader culture. And in

24:03

my effort and desire to be

24:05

colorblind, right, to support colorblindness both

24:07

at the level of public policy

24:10

and in my personal life, I

24:12

don't think that that requires me to

24:14

be cultureblind in the sense that, say

24:17

you are a black person that's

24:19

grown up your whole life very attached to black

24:21

culture. You love the

24:23

food that black people cook. You love

24:25

the movies that black people make. You

24:28

love the music that comes

24:31

culturally from black Americans. And

24:33

you have a special attachment to it that

24:35

you don't quite have to every other

24:38

culture, that you don't have to say, you

24:41

know, Serbian culture. Am

24:43

I telling you that you can't feel

24:45

that attachment or that you can't even

24:48

preferentially consume and be

24:50

among the culture that is familiar

24:52

to you? Absolutely not. And that's

24:55

not what I mean by colorblindness. What

24:57

I picture is kind of a firewall

24:59

between that kind of cultural

25:02

affinity and our

25:04

conversations about public policy

25:07

and ethics and right and wrong. When we're

25:09

talking about right and

25:11

wrong, improving human flourishing, crafting

25:13

public policy, one leaves

25:15

those things to the extent

25:17

you can at the door. And

25:19

I say that because it's a common

25:22

objection to the colorblindness

25:24

argument. Yeah, I

25:26

would echo that. I mean, I have

25:28

a special attachment to Indian culture, for

25:31

instance, I'm a huge fan of it,

25:33

notwithstanding all the insanity that one can

25:35

find in India. But it's

25:37

my favorite food, it's among my favorite

25:40

music, it's just, I've spent a

25:42

fair amount of time there. I love

25:45

so much about it. And I would

25:48

never assume anyone, much

25:50

less Indians, should give that up, right?

25:52

So it's that part of the diversity

25:54

assertion that diversity makes everything better, is

25:56

I fully agree with that. I want

25:59

great. Indian restaurants in every city in

26:18

shorthand with that phrase that can

26:21

fully embrace a kind of

26:23

xenophile relationship to cultural

26:26

diversity. I mean, it's a

26:28

little bit like that where

26:30

this tips over into identity

26:32

politics, I think, can be

26:34

understood by analogy to what

26:37

it is to be a sports fan. There

26:39

are a lot of people who really love sports. They

26:42

become huge fans of one

26:44

team or one athlete or another. And

26:48

all of that is incredibly fun

26:50

and amusing and improves

26:53

life until it tips over into

26:55

a kind of fanaticism that

26:58

is really toxic. So toxic

27:00

that you have soccer players

27:02

who, in the worst case,

27:04

commit an own goal in a big

27:06

match and they wind up getting murdered

27:08

by their fans back in Latin America

27:10

or somewhere that really cares too much

27:13

about that particular sport. It's

27:15

hard to specify with a bright line,

27:17

but there is clearly a line between

27:19

the fun of diversity

27:22

and the still caring about

27:24

difference that adds spice to

27:26

life and tipping over

27:28

into political factionalism

27:31

that is obviously

27:33

distorting our politics and making it

27:36

morally unworkable. So

27:38

I don't know if you like that analogy

27:41

or not, but that's another shortcut I have

27:43

in thinking about this issue. No, actually, in

27:46

my book, I think, rather in

27:48

my book, I talk a little bit

27:50

about sports too. There is a difference

27:52

between two close friends

27:55

even making racial jokes about one

27:57

another that both

27:59

find... funny but neither take seriously.

28:02

And on the other hand, two

28:05

people coming

28:07

to blows in a conversation because people of

28:09

your race could never understand me. Those

28:12

are both instances of quote-unquote caring

28:14

about race in the

28:16

abstract but we know the difference between

28:18

them when we see them. One is

28:21

actually a healthy expression, a kind

28:23

of release valve

28:25

for the racial differences we

28:28

all notice and one as

28:31

your analogy says, it carries what

28:33

can be benign to an unhealthy extreme. Now,

28:36

my book, I talk about a

28:38

similar racial analogy when I

28:41

bring up this video that Morgan Freeman

28:44

famously participated in with

28:46

Mike Wallace. I'm sure that you've

28:48

seen it. I'm sure many people have seen it. Where

28:52

Morgan Freeman essentially says, look, this is

28:54

how we're going to get past race.

28:56

I'm going to stop calling you a white man and

28:58

I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a

29:00

black man. I'm going to call you Mike and you're

29:02

going to call me Morgan. And

29:05

it's a very powerful interview

29:08

if you haven't seen it. But

29:10

what it puts forth is kind of

29:12

a testable hypothesis in a way. If

29:15

we want fewer and fewer

29:17

racist thoughts and feelings and

29:21

toxic race-based thoughts and

29:23

feelings to abound in our society,

29:26

should we talk about race more and more

29:28

or should we talk about race less and

29:30

less? And by analogy, I imagine

29:34

that say for

29:36

whatever reason, we have a

29:38

goal of reducing the amount of

29:40

animosity between New York Yankee fans

29:42

and Boston Red Sox fans, which

29:45

is a very tall task. Let's

29:47

say for whatever reason, we want to accomplish

29:49

this. The thing to

29:51

do be to

29:54

raise people from age zero to

29:56

care about baseball as much as

29:59

possible. Let's say we

30:01

educate every child about the rules of

30:03

baseball in kindergarten. We

30:05

substitute every exercise in gym that

30:08

used to be, say, dodgeball or

30:10

kickball, and we make it baseball

30:12

every time. And we

30:14

just crank up to 12 the

30:17

amount that people know about

30:19

and care about baseball.

30:23

Would this have the effect of amplifying

30:25

the amount of animosity

30:28

between New York fans and

30:30

Boston fans, or would it tamp down on

30:32

it because everyone is so educated

30:34

about baseball? It's

30:36

at least not obvious to me, is

30:38

what I'm saying. It's not obvious to me that

30:41

the way towards better race relations

30:43

between races of people is

30:46

to raise the salience of racial identity

30:49

from as young an age as possible.

30:54

This has been the implicit

30:56

and at times explicit belief

30:58

of progressive race ideas.

31:00

I'm thinking of Robin DiAngelo,

31:03

her book White Fragility. I'm

31:05

thinking of just this past week, the

31:08

San Francisco Chronicle reported that a school

31:10

in San Francisco has been paying an

31:12

organization called Woke Kindergarten to come into

31:14

a school of mostly

31:17

Spanish-speaking kids and

31:19

teach them about white supremacy as their math

31:21

and reading scores have declined.

31:25

So it's not obvious to me

31:27

that Morgan Freeman is wrong in

31:29

that we should dial down our

31:31

somewhat obsessive

31:34

talk about racial identity and sort

31:36

of confine it to the real

31:38

racism. I have no problem and

31:40

am strongly in favor of

31:43

talking about real racism that

31:45

exists. I give examples in

31:47

my book, but I think a lot of

31:49

what we end up talking about when we

31:51

talk about race are either

31:54

fake examples of racism or

31:56

just kind of toxic

31:59

race-based. discussion that

32:02

sort of stereotypes whole

32:04

groups of people and does

32:06

not deal with actual examples of

32:08

racism. Yeah, I want

32:10

to get into some of

32:12

those issues and the difference between race and

32:14

class and how we should think about dealing

32:17

with inequality in our society even

32:19

even inequality that is highly correlated

32:22

with race still. What

32:24

about those cases just to close the loop on

32:27

colorblindness as a goal what

32:29

about the inconvenient cases where

32:32

one's awareness of racial difference

32:35

is made. All

32:37

too rational because of different

32:40

be a base rate effects

32:42

with respect to crime and

32:44

other variables right so there

32:46

are definitely situations where a

32:49

person's race. Is

32:51

a relevant piece

32:53

of information in judging

32:55

whether or not something

32:58

anomalous and potentially

33:00

dangerous is likely to happen

33:02

right in this is a. It

33:05

lands one way when you have a white guy

33:07

like me saying that it landed it landed differently

33:09

when jesse jackson i don't know when this was

33:11

this might have been in the nineties. I

33:14

think somewhere around the peak of crime in

33:16

america he said you know i

33:19

forget what context he was in but he said to

33:21

some audience. I'll tell you what i'm

33:23

sick of i'm sick of you know walking down the street

33:26

at night hearing footsteps behind me

33:28

turning and seeing that it's a

33:30

white guy and feeling relief.

33:33

What and that was an

33:36

all too honest confession of

33:38

a fairly. A

33:41

horrific disparity in the in the

33:43

rate of crime in the

33:45

black versus white community. And

33:48

if you can't get people are not in

33:50

touch with the statistics that still true although

33:52

in the nineties this was worse

33:55

and most of this crime

33:57

is the most crime is intro. racial.

34:00

I mean, most black people are victimized by

34:02

other black people, most white people are victimized

34:04

by the white people. There's some differences there

34:06

that are worth talking about, but still, it's

34:09

mostly a matter of, I mean, crime in

34:11

the black community is mostly black on black

34:13

crime, and it certainly was then. What

34:16

do you do with the inconvenient fact

34:18

that it is in fact true that

34:20

in certain situations, just to, you know,

34:22

you see black people in a place

34:24

where you know there are not that

34:26

many black people living, and you know that most

34:28

crime in that, you know, now I'm not

34:30

talking about violent crime so much as the other crime. You

34:33

know that most crime is in fact committed by

34:35

black people in that part of the city. It

34:38

suddenly becomes relevant that you're seeing four

34:40

black guys in a car driving on

34:42

a street they almost certainly don't live

34:44

on, and this is true in many

34:47

major cities in America, and it's

34:49

relevant for the police eye view of that

34:51

situation, right, and this is profiling by another

34:53

name. And conversely, it would

34:55

be relevant to see, you know, four

34:58

white guys with shaved

35:00

heads in a parking lot outside a

35:02

black church, right, like you would immediately

35:04

wonder, what are those guys

35:06

doing here, and you wouldn't

35:09

be insane to wonder that given

35:11

the pattern of criminality we know

35:13

exists in certain

35:15

contexts. So I just, I give you that

35:18

none too softball to deal with.

35:20

Yeah, so take my feet out

35:22

of my mouth. Okay, so

35:25

look, I've lived in New York City

35:27

for nine years now,

35:30

and I've lived in many

35:34

different neighborhoods, some

35:36

less nice than others. I

35:39

check the NYPD statistics as

35:41

a matter of professional responsibility

35:43

and someone who thinks and talks

35:46

about these issues, and

35:48

I also take, I ride the

35:50

subway, I have eyes. Like

35:52

I said, a commitment to colorblindness

35:54

doesn't mean that I don't see race.

35:56

It doesn't mean I don't notice patterns.

36:00

And when there are patterns as

36:02

strong as some of the racial

36:04

crime patterns are in many American

36:06

cities, it is inevitable

36:09

that your brain is going

36:11

to recognize those patterns whether or not

36:13

you want it to. Now,

36:15

some people are more or less honest about this.

36:18

I think you've chosen the path of being

36:20

honest about this in line

36:23

with your overall position on lying.

36:25

Other people choose the path of denying

36:28

the facts, which is

36:31

understandable given how uncomfortable the facts

36:33

are. And then a third

36:35

group of people takes the

36:37

route of focusing monomaniacally

36:40

on those facts and

36:44

posting nothing but videos of black

36:46

people committing crime on Twitter.

36:50

That latter path, I think, is toxic

36:53

and needlessly divisive.

36:57

The path of simply not talking about it,

37:00

while it might be right at Thanksgiving dinner,

37:02

I don't think that it's right as

37:05

a general orientation for our public

37:07

conversation about race. I

37:09

think that journalists have to be able

37:11

to look at facts. So

37:13

in New York City, basically the entire

37:16

time that I've lived here, it

37:18

has been the case that over

37:20

90% of shootings are committed

37:23

by blacks and Hispanics. 95%

37:26

in some years. So

37:29

what is it like to be a New York

37:31

City cop that responds to these shootings? By the

37:33

way, the majority of such cops are themselves of

37:35

color. What that

37:37

experience is like is

37:40

if it isn't clear from the first month of

37:42

your being a New York City cop, it

37:45

is clear by the first three

37:48

or four months that almost every

37:50

time you get a call about

37:52

a shooting, a 911 call, you'll

37:54

make money all day betting that the

37:56

person was not white or not Asian.

38:00

That is an impossible fact not to

38:02

notice even for someone as committed to

38:04

the end goal of color

38:06

blindness as one could possibly be. Now

38:09

I don't view that as refuting the

38:11

goal of color blindness in

38:13

general. I view that as having two

38:16

implications. One is

38:18

it shows you how wrong things

38:20

have to go for

38:23

the general rule of thumb of

38:26

color blindness to be violated. You

38:29

really have to be in situations where

38:32

violence and life and death

38:35

and catching

38:37

felons where the stakes are

38:39

that high as opposed to say meeting a

38:41

friend of a friend for the first time

38:43

in a coffee shop, which is how most

38:46

of us, I think listening to this, are

38:49

lucky enough to live most of our lives

38:52

in lower stakes situations where there's

38:55

no need to violate the

38:57

principle of color blindness. And

38:59

then secondly, it impresses

39:02

upon me the urgency of

39:04

actually addressing crime and

39:07

getting crime under control, of

39:09

not letting crime spike. I

39:13

can tell you every single black person I know

39:15

that lived in New York City in the 80s

39:17

or 90s says that as a

39:19

black man in that time you couldn't

39:21

catch a cab. But nowadays it's

39:23

gotten better. The other

39:25

thing everyone who's lived in New York City

39:27

says is that crime was

39:30

terrible in the 90s, everyone got mugged

39:32

and carried mugger's money around,

39:34

and then Giuliani came and it just

39:36

all went away. My

39:38

strong suspicion is that those two things are

39:40

not correlated. In other words, if

39:43

we care about reducing racism

39:45

against black people, there

39:47

is almost no better way to

39:50

do that than to actually address

39:52

crime. Because when crime comes down,

39:55

the proverbial cab driver and cop and

39:57

so forth who are in those high

40:00

stakes situations where they can't

40:02

help but discriminate, there

40:04

will be less of an urge for them to

40:06

do that. So the

40:08

hard example here just impresses upon me

40:11

not the fact that colorblindness should

40:13

be jettisoned, but the fact that A,

40:15

we should really pay attention to crime

40:18

as a component of fighting racism and

40:21

impresses upon me how high the stakes have to

40:23

be in order for us to jettison

40:25

it in the first place. Well, finally,

40:27

on the topic of colorblindness, I

40:30

know you on your own podcast and elsewhere

40:32

have done a fairly full

40:34

post-mortem on your experience at

40:37

TED where you gave a

40:39

talk on the topic of colorblindness

40:42

and received a fair amount of pushback. And I

40:44

think you probably heard my conversation with Chris Anderson

40:46

about that. So I don't know how much you want

40:48

to be debriefed on your

40:51

experience here. You can touch it as

40:53

fully or as superficially as you want.

40:55

But I didn't go so

40:59

deep with Chris

41:02

apart from just exposing what

41:04

seemed to me to be the core of

41:06

the issue, which he more

41:08

or less admitted, which he said was

41:11

a fairly amazing disclosure. He didn't

41:13

seem to treat it with

41:16

the astonishment that I think it deserves, which

41:18

is when he admitted that you

41:20

could never have been invited to TED just a

41:22

few short years ago, right? Well, just tantamount to

41:25

saying that Martin Luther King Jr.

41:27

could not have given a TED talk a

41:29

few years ago given the level of

41:32

ideological capture of the organization along

41:34

the lines of that we're

41:36

talking about. Feel free to say

41:39

anything you want about your experience or my conversation

41:41

with Chris. You

41:43

were talking to a very

41:45

high status audience about the

41:48

virtues of maintaining colorblindness

41:50

as the goal of our

41:52

racial politics, and it provoked

41:55

a fairly hysterical response,

41:57

which was I

42:00

really it might be pathological on its

42:02

face, not really the... It doesn't testify

42:04

to a mere difference

42:07

of opinion on these issues. It testifies

42:09

to a kind of

42:11

brokenness of certain people and

42:14

certain cultural attitude, which

42:16

is... I think

42:18

I told Chris, you gave one of

42:21

the most anodyne talks imaginable,

42:23

not anodyne as in boring,

42:26

but just anodyne as in

42:28

non-threatening, and it's your

42:30

thesis, and yet people perceived

42:33

it to have really precipitated a

42:36

kind of moral emergency in the room

42:38

when you gave it. Yeah.

42:41

Yeah. So if people want the detailed version,

42:43

they can read my account of it at

42:45

the Free Press. I'll just make

42:48

a few comments. One, yeah, I

42:51

agree with you. It was

42:54

anodyne and it was non-threatening

42:56

and I was non-threatening and

42:58

I was friendly to people the whole week and I was... I

43:01

actually literally had a

43:04

conversation and hugged it out with one of the

43:06

people that was upset with the

43:08

TED Talk afterward because I just,

43:11

for whatever reason, I have a lot of

43:14

patience for people that are

43:17

emotionally upset by what I say.

43:19

And so I was

43:21

willing to go every extra mile to

43:23

get people to understand that I

43:26

wasn't, quote-unquote, attacking their

43:29

existence, but there

43:31

were some people at TED, a very

43:33

small minority, it should be said, that

43:36

have the philosophy of safetyism wherein

43:39

what I was saying wasn't just something

43:41

they strongly disagreed with, it

43:44

made them feel, quote-unquote, unsafe. And

43:47

once something makes you feel unsafe,

43:50

then I have to

43:53

be removed, essentially, right? It's a very

43:56

powerful bargaining tactic

43:58

if you're an employee because... then

44:01

there's like implications for hostile

44:03

workplace environment and things like

44:05

that when really all I did was gently

44:08

give my perspective

44:10

that 98% of the people in the room went

44:12

down pretty smooth with them.

44:17

People of all colors by the way,

44:19

people were coming up to me afterwards

44:21

not just white people as the stereotype

44:23

might you might think

44:25

but black people, Hispanic people, and

44:28

so forth. But just to remind people

44:31

the context here, it is

44:33

pretty amazing for Chris

44:35

to have told me that you

44:38

could not have been invited a couple

44:40

of years prior. His perception of the

44:42

organization and perhaps his misperception of his

44:45

audience suggested to him that you

44:48

were an edgy speaker and

44:50

really all you were arguing for was, as

44:53

you said at the top here,

44:55

what was the consensus, the

44:57

moral consensus view during the Civil Rights

44:59

Movement? Yes, that's true. I

45:02

mean right down to Martin Luther King's

45:04

recommendation in his book, Why We Can't

45:06

Wait, for a broad

45:09

class-based anti-poverty program that would benefit

45:11

the black and white poor alike.

45:14

So I was really just giving a

45:16

pretty straightforward Martin Luther

45:18

King updated for the

45:21

21st century. It was nothing new,

45:23

nothing original, just something I

45:25

feel passionate about and I think people have

45:28

forgotten. And when I agree

45:30

with him, I actually take it for

45:32

granted as almost obvious that I couldn't

45:34

have given that talk two years ago for

45:36

instance because the so-called

45:39

racial reckoning around the summer of 2020 and

45:42

its aftermath was still

45:44

reverberating too strongly through elite

45:46

institutions. I would have

45:49

been received as just even further

45:51

outside the realm of acceptable opinion.

45:53

But I think this

45:56

underscores the huge difference between the elite

45:58

and the non-elite in general. I

46:01

think most non-elites that

46:04

listen to that TED talk, I

46:06

appreciate you saying it's not boring but I

46:08

think many would have found it boring because

46:11

it's common sense. It's common sense, that's

46:13

right. And it's only not

46:15

common sense to the kinds of

46:17

people that think Latinx is what

46:19

Hispanic people want to be called.

46:22

And I use that example, I should flesh

46:24

it out a little bit more because it

46:26

encapsulates the divide between the elite

46:28

and the non-elite better than any

46:31

other single issue, I think. I'm

46:33

half Puerto Rican and grew up spending a lot of

46:35

time with the Puerto Rican

46:37

half of my family, many of whom didn't

46:39

speak English in the older generation. And

46:41

so when around 2014 and

46:44

2015, I got to college

46:47

and people, I started seeing this

46:49

term Latinx. It was very

46:51

bizarre because I'd never heard it before and

46:53

I figured having grown up constantly

46:55

around my Puerto Rican family members, I'd have heard

46:58

of it if it were in use. And

47:01

then secondly, it just seemed like

47:03

a bizarre Anglicization because Spanish

47:05

doesn't actually operate in a way that makes

47:08

a word like Latinx even make sense theoretically.

47:11

So when people started using it at

47:13

Columbia, most of

47:16

whom had no Hispanic family, this

47:18

struck me as very odd intuitively because

47:20

in that particular case, I was fairly

47:23

in touch with how a working class

47:25

Hispanic person would speak. Now

47:28

when Pew finally did research on

47:30

this and found that some 96%, 95% or 6% if

47:32

memory serves

47:36

of Hispanic people either had never heard

47:39

of the word or didn't like it,

47:41

that struck me as intuitively obvious. Now

47:44

Latinx is an issue because I happen to

47:46

have that background, I happen to have intuitions

47:48

that were more in line with reality. But

47:51

in most other ways, I could be

47:53

as clueless and elite as anyone. I grew

47:55

up upper middle class, I

47:57

went from a very nice.

47:59

public school to a very nice

48:01

private school to Juilliard and

48:04

then Columbia University. I'm

48:06

as elite virtually as anyone could be

48:08

on most issues. And

48:11

to sit back and reflect on how

48:13

thick the bubble of eliteness can be,

48:15

it's like you can pierce it 20

48:17

times and it can still have an

48:19

effect in terms of just

48:21

the difference between the norms and culture

48:23

of elites and the norms and culture

48:25

of everyone else. And the

48:27

Ted example is just another example of

48:29

that. What I said is only controversial

48:31

to a group of people who have

48:34

really, I think, forgotten or don't work

48:36

hard enough to understand how

48:38

unique and elite

48:41

their set of values are. Well,

48:43

I mean, I should just say, if it wasn't

48:45

obvious, and it was certainly obvious in my conversation

48:48

with Chris, but I should make it obvious here,

48:50

I really greatly admire Chris,

48:53

but I've always viewed him as

48:55

a kind of canary in the coal mine for these

48:57

kinds of issues. I mean, I think I told him,

49:00

I viewed him as someone who was a bit of

49:02

a hostage of his organization and suffering

49:04

from, by turns, Stockholm

49:07

syndrome or some other condition

49:10

where he can't quite recognize

49:12

how aberrant the

49:15

elites have become on certain

49:18

issues. And I say this as

49:20

someone who considers himself embedded very

49:23

much in that same bubble with you

49:25

and Chris and the very people

49:27

who were reacting badly to your talk. And

49:31

I've run into this issue with Chris

49:33

around radical Islam and the

49:36

allegations of Islamophobia, et

49:41

cetera. And so we've gone around that track

49:43

a bunch. And I just think we have to be

49:45

honest about what's really happening

49:47

in the world and honest about

49:50

how clear the ethical

49:52

and political goals are

49:54

or should be. And I think, here's

49:57

a landmark we really shouldn't lose sight of. and

50:00

yet certain people are working to guide

50:03

us in a very different direction.

50:05

The landmark is as MLK

50:08

had it and as you have dusted

50:10

it off, getting to a

50:13

world where superficial differences simply don't

50:15

matter and we care about

50:17

the content of a person's character, not

50:19

the color of their skin, to use MLK's line,

50:21

that just seems so obviously good.

50:25

And yet many people are arguing,

50:27

explicitly arguing that that's a false goal.

50:29

It's not just that there's a different

50:31

way to reach that goal. I do

50:34

take it as prima facie absurd to

50:37

think that we're going to care more and more

50:39

about race as a way of caring less and

50:41

less about it, as you pointed out. But

50:45

we have a few characters who

50:49

are quite celebrated in elitist

50:51

circles at places like Ted

50:53

or at the Aspen

50:55

Ideas Festival. And

50:57

I think none has been as

51:00

damaging to the conversation from my point of view

51:02

as Ibram X. Kendi.

51:05

I know you have offered to debate

51:07

him. Has he ever responded to those

51:09

offers to debate? No,

51:11

he hasn't. He said in a few of

51:13

his lectures that

51:16

I've misrepresented his views and

51:19

that's...so a debate between us would be

51:23

him constantly correcting

51:25

my straw men. But to

51:27

my knowledge, he's never given an example

51:29

of me misrepresenting his views.

51:33

And I would hope a debate would be a great

51:36

forum for him to make clear what

51:39

my misrepresentation alleged.

51:43

But I think I just want to pick up a little

51:45

bit on what you said about Chris too. And

51:47

I want to make that clear too, because I

51:49

like Chris. I continue to like Chris. I

51:52

think he is in a tough position,

51:54

it seems, maybe straddling

51:56

between values he seems to share

51:59

with me. and the

52:01

reality of his employees feelings.

52:04

Not sure how I would navigate that, and I'm

52:06

not in charge of a

52:08

big organization like that. Frankly, I

52:10

think that my TED debacle

52:13

unleashed a wave of

52:16

repressed anger at TED among

52:19

people that used to love TED,

52:21

but for one or another reason, because

52:24

of some aspect of

52:26

woke capture, either

52:28

don't go to TED anymore, or just

52:30

don't like it anymore, and I think

52:33

my debacle became released a

52:35

pent up anger of years.

52:39

And I think that

52:42

was quite unpleasant, but it

52:44

can also be an opportunity for

52:46

him to course correct, and I know he's invited

52:48

Barry Weiss and Bill Ackman, and

52:51

other people that might upset the same kinds of people that

52:53

were upset with me. I

52:55

think that a bunch of TED fellows

52:58

have resigned because of those invitations. Which

53:00

might be a good thing, but again,

53:03

it's worth reiterating. Literally like

53:05

high 90 percentile of the audience appear

53:07

to be totally fine. Whether or not

53:09

they agreed with everything I

53:12

said, they were not

53:14

triggered, right? Like TED's audience is

53:17

actually way more open to

53:19

I think all of these ideas than

53:22

they might be stereotyped by

53:25

people unfamiliar. It's really the

53:27

heckler's veto. It's

53:29

a very small percentage of people that punch above

53:31

their weight, and

53:34

ought to be ignored. So

53:37

where does DEI come into this?

53:40

I'm not sure anyone listening to this podcast thinks

53:43

the ideological capture of our institutions has

53:45

been exaggerated anymore. We're now having this

53:47

conversation in the aftermath of those

53:50

disastrous hearings before Congress

53:52

where you had the presidents of

53:55

Harvard and MIT and Penn unable to

53:57

spell out what was wrong with... advocating

54:00

for genocide against the Jews while

54:02

having just, you know, merely, you

54:05

know, weeks and months prior defenestrated

54:08

people for not admiring

54:11

DEI policies or or

54:14

admitting that there are only two biological

54:16

sexes, etc. So we know that

54:18

there's a fair amount of moral confusion

54:20

in our universities and that DEI has something

54:22

to do with it but it was

54:24

up until that moment it

54:27

was still very common to hear that all

54:30

this concern about wokeism

54:32

or Identitarian moral

54:34

confusion or DEI overreach all of

54:36

this just it's just pure Republican

54:40

hyperbole, right? It's just it's just not

54:42

a problem. It's just it's exaggerated and

54:45

it's I'm not detecting

54:47

that anymore, so I mean perhaps

54:49

you have a better sense of if

54:52

there any shades of skepticism on

54:54

that point still remaining What's your

54:56

sense of what DEI has done?

54:58

And do you think the

55:00

pendulum is in the process of swinging back?

55:03

across all of our institutions and now

55:06

I'm thinking of you know major corporations

55:08

and universities and

55:10

media properties and Where

55:13

do you think it should swing back to? Yes,

55:17

so the original idea and

55:19

the benign idea of diversity

55:21

equity and inclusion The

55:24

idea that Say

55:26

someone like my dad a black

55:28

man in corporate America would have

55:31

meant by DEI and say the 90s is

55:33

like Say

55:35

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55:39

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