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Glenn Loury: Race, Racism, Identity Politics, and Cancel Culture | Lex Fridman Podcast #285


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I hate affirmative action.
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I don't just disagree with it.
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I don't just think it's against the 14th Amendment.
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I hate it.
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The hatred comes from an understanding
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that it is a bandaid, that it is a substitute
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for the actual development of the capacities
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of our people to compete.
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They wanna tell African Americans to pat us on the head.
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We're gonna have a separate program for you.
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We're gonna give you a side door that you can come into.
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That doesn't make us any smarter.
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It doesn't make us any more creative
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and it doesn't make us any more fit
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for the actual competition that's unfolding before us.
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The following is a conversation with Glenn Loury,
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professor of economics and social sciences
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at Brown University.
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He is one of the great minds and communicators of our time,
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writing and speaking about race and inequality.
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I highly encourage you to listen to his show
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on YouTube and Substack, simply called The Glenn Show.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Glenn Loury.
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Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech
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I think is the greatest speech in American history.
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If I may, I'd like to read a few words of it.
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Sure.
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And ask you a question about this dream.
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I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up
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and live out the true meaning of its creed.
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We hold these truths to be self evident,
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that all men are created equal.
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I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia,
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the sons of former slaves and the sons of former
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slave owners will be able to sit down together
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at the table of brotherhood.
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I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi,
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a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,
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sweltering with the heat of oppression,
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will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
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I have a dream that my four little children
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will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged
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by the color of their skin,
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but by the content of their character.
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I have a dream today.
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First of all, damn.
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I mentioned to you offline I immigrated to America
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and this is why I love this country.
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This is one of the great speeches that represents
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what this country is about.
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So what is this ideal of equality
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that we should strive for as a nation,
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that all men are created equal?
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What does that mean to you, this equality?
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Well, if we put this in historical context,
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King is speaking in 1963 when he gives that speech.
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It's exactly 100 years after Abraham Lincoln signs
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the Emancipation Proclamation
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declaring the enslaved people to be free.
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They're not yet citizens in 1863,
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but the end of slavery has become the position
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of the federal government when Lincoln issues
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that Emancipation Proclamation.
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So putting it in context, enslaved people,
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four million or so African descended enslaved people,
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how do they become citizens?
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How do they become in this status of subjugation
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and domination and stigma and exclusion?
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How do they become citizens?
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It seems to me that that's the heart of it.
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The equality that King is talking about
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is an equality of status as members of the nation
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as free and equal citizens within the republic.
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Now, I think it's really important to understand
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that slavery was not merely a legal order,
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but it was also a social system
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that had the symbolism attached to it.
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They had a big journey to make
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from their subjugated status as serfs, as landless people,
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as uneducated, unfit for citizenship really
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in the minds of many.
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So I think that's what in 1963, 100 years later,
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that King is appealing to this idea
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that when Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence
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writes these words, all men are created equal
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and endowed by their creator
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with certain inalienable rights,
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Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, didn't have in mind
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when he wrote those words, the people who were slaves.
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But by the time you get to 1963,
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King is invoking this idea, all men,
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and of course he means all persons.
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He doesn't only mean men.
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He means men and women are created equal.
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He wants this idea to be embraced by the country
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in reference to the descendants of the African slaves.
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That's his dream.
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That's his idea.
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The legacy of slavery would be erased,
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that the position of African Americans would be equalized
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within the political community,
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which is the United States of America.
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That's my sense of it in any case.
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So on a very basic level, the worth of a human being
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is equal.
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It's just literally the worth of a human being.
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So I mentioned to you offline
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that I came from the Soviet Union.
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My grandfather fought in World War II,
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and for Hitler, the worth of a Slavic person
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as they were captured, there's different numbers,
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but it's in the hundreds to one German
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in terms of the value of the person to the great Germany.
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So he wanted Germany to expand
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and conquer a large part of the world.
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And within that future world, that Third Reich,
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the worth of a Russian or a Slavic person
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is one hundredth or one thousandth of a German person,
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of a pure German person.
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So that has to do with not some kind of public policy
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or politics or all that kind of stuff.
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It has to do with the basic worth of a human being.
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And that's what Dr. King is speaking to,
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that all people on some kind of deep level
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are worth the same.
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If you're somehow weighing the value of a person,
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we're equal in that basic fundamental worth.
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Yeah, I think that's correct.
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I think that's very well said.
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I don't know that he had in mind
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the position of Slavic people in Central Europe
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in the middle of the 20th century,
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or the first part of the 20th century, King.
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I don't know that he had that in mind.
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He might well have done.
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But certainly that's the idea.
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So you don't think he was really thinking
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about this particular civil rights struggle
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and the particular struggle
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against the backdrop of the history of slavery in America
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and thinking about African Americans.
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He wasn't thinking about the basic,
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he wasn't speaking to the basic worth of all human beings.
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No, I don't mean to say that.
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The speech in Washington.
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The dream.
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In 1963 at that march was within the context
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of the United States.
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And it was within the context of the civil rights movement.
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There was a movement that was going on.
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He was an actor in a political drama that was American
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that had to do with the fight over equal rights
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for voting, for housing, for employment,
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for citizenship of blacks in America.
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But King was informed, I think,
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by a much broader Christian ethic of the equality
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of all persons.
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I mean, he gets killed in 1968.
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The five years after that speech in Washington,
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he spends developing his worldview
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and the things that he had to say, for example,
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about the war in Southeast Asia that was going on
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at that time made appeals to universal principles
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of equality.
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He was a pacifist to some degree.
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He was against war.
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He was a socialist to some degree.
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He might not have worn that label publicly,
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but he believed in a decent society
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where the poor would not go untended,
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where healthcare would be available to people who needed it
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and this kind of thing.
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A humanitarian who saw that the value of a life
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was not dependent upon the color of the skin,
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upon the native mother tongue that might be spoken,
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upon whether male or female.
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All persons are created equal.
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This is very much the ethic of Martin Luther King,
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on my understanding.
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Broadly speaking, what do you learn about human nature
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by looking at the history of slavery in America?
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Oh my.
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So what does that tell you about people?
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Well, I think of two things right off the top of my head.
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One is about the capacity of people
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for looking the other way in the face of
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unethical and morally profoundly problematic practice.
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So, I mean, slavery was controversial.
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It was controversial going all the way back
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to the founding of the United States of America.
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The country was founded on a compromise
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where half of the country thought that slavery was abhorrent
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and would not have had it countenanced in the Constitution.
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The other half of the country were steeped
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in the dependence on the labor of these African captives
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and their descendants.
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The economy depended upon it.
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They owned them as property.
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That was their wealth.
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Their wealth was invested to some degree
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in the value of these human beings.
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And in order for the United States to come together
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as a confederation of the several colonies,
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there had to be a compromise made.
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And it was made where slavery was allowed to persist
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and the people who were against it
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or who thought it morally problematic
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were able to countenance the practice
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in the Southern states where slavery flourished.
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And that went on for 75 years
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after the founding of the country
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until the crisis of the late 1850s
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that led to the Civil War
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and ultimately to the emancipation.
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So one thing I think about human nature
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from the fact of slavery is that the ability of people
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to live with terrible, morally questionable practices
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and have that as a part of their institutions.
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It took a movement, a massive movement of abolitionists
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struggling against slavery for the better part of a century
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before that practice could be eradicated.
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But the other thing about human nature that I see
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is the ability of people to sustain their humanity
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under the most awful, oppressive conditions.
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The enslaved persons, the slaves and their children,
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I mean, they were chattel,
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they were bought and sold like horses or cattle.
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And yet their humanity was not destroyed by that.
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And they were able to sustain their dignity to some degree
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in such a manner that once emancipation finally did arrive,
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the freedmen and women, the persons who had been enslaved
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and who were set free were able to over the following decades
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build a foundation for the development of African Americans
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within the context of American society
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that eventually culminated in the civil rights movement
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of the middle of the 20th century
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and has led us into the present day.
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So, you know, human nature can countenance awful evil
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but human nature can also survive
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in the face of terrible evil.
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That's what I take from slavery.
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That survival, that flame can burn even when the world
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around it tries to put it out.
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There's still a little flame of human consciousness,
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of spirit, of culture, of whatever the hell that is
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that makes humans flourish and makes humans beautiful
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that lives on.
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That's very well said.
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Yeah, I think you put it very well.
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There's gotta be some poetic way of expressing that.
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Oh.
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Leave it to the poets.
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What about the people that look the other way?
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How many people do you think, just regular people,
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knew that something is, this is wrong?
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Or do people through generations convince themselves,
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most people, most regular people,
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convince themselves that there's nothing wrong?
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Yeah.
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I ask this question because I wonder
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what we're looking the other way on today also.
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Because you have to ask yourself these difficult questions
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of assuming we're the same people we were back then
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then we can be flawed in that same kind of way.
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We can look the other way just as others have in history.
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Yeah, you spoke of the European context
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and of the Nazis and certainly a lot of people
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had to be looking the other way when the massive crimes
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that were committed by that regime were being undertaken.
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I mean, railroad cars full of human beings
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being taken off to be slaughtered or to be worked to death
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in labor camps or to be gassed, et cetera.
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A lot of people had to know about what was going on
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and look the other way or enthusiastically supported
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the persecution of the Jews and the gypsies and so on.
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And I don't know, I wasn't around in 1840.
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My sense of the matter is that like many practices
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that are unjust, most people thought
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that's just the way it is.
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I mean, that's the world that they inherited.
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They were not moralists, they were not revolutionaries.
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They just wanted to go along.
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Some people might've been troubled by it
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but thought there's nothing that can be done.
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Some people might've thought, well,
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they're these black Africans, they're not really like us
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and they are lucky to be here.
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If they were in Africa, they'd be worse off still.
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Some people might've thought that.
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Some people might've been disturbed
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but not been able to see what it is
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that they could do about it.
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They might've thought, oh, this is disgusting.
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This is not something I would wanna have anything to do with
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but not knowing whether there's any practical way
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of opposing it, that's why you need a movement.
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You need for the people who are troubled by the practice
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to know that there are others like themselves
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equally troubled and as they gather together,
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collectively, they can exert their influence.
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I mean, debates about the wrongness of slavery,
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as I say, go all the way back to the founding of the country.
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There were abolitionists and there were people
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who opposed the compromise that led to the framing documents
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and institutions that created the United States of America,
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opposed the countenancing of slavery in that situation.
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But it took a while before that could come to a head
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and produce the crisis which ultimately led
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to the eradication of slavery.
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I would note that slavery is not unique to the United States.
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It's not unique to the Western Hemisphere.
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The enslavement of people, the trafficking in human chattel
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is something that one sees on a global basis,
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one sees it going all the way back to antiquity.
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So we might ask, how is it that people finally came
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to turn their backs and eradicate the practice?
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That might be the thing worth really trying to understand
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because the practice itself is,
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there's a wonderful book by the sociologist
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Orlando Patterson called Slavery and Social Death
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that was published in 1982, which is a comprehensive history
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and social analysis of the institution of slavery
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over 2,500 years, going back to the classical Greek
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and Roman civilizations, finding slavery in Africa
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amongst Africans, finding slavery in the Middle East,
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finding slavery in the Far East,
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finding slavery in South Asia, the enslavement of people,
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the practice of taking someone as a captive in war
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and then instead of killing them, which you could do,
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making them into your property was very, very widespread
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in human culture.
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So I mean, I'd like to make this point sometimes
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when people are talking about how wrong slavery was
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and I agree without any question
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that the practice was profoundly morally problematic,
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but I'd like to make the point that given how wrong it was,
link |
00:19:50.400
think about how impressive was the accomplishment
link |
00:19:55.400
of the eradication of slavery.
link |
00:19:58.080
Now, that was something, I mean, there were 600,000 dead
link |
00:20:01.520
in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865
link |
00:20:06.180
in a country of 30 million people.
link |
00:20:08.300
That's a lot of dead people who gave their lives
link |
00:20:13.920
not to eradicate slavery in every instance,
link |
00:20:16.760
probably most of them were just fighting for,
link |
00:20:21.360
they enlisted or were conscripted into the forces
link |
00:20:25.280
and they fought and they died,
link |
00:20:27.160
but the net effect of their having fought and died
link |
00:20:30.520
was to push along a process
link |
00:20:32.960
that led to the eradication of slavery.
link |
00:20:34.880
That's an amazing achievement.
link |
00:20:37.840
The slaves themselves were largely uneducated
link |
00:20:43.840
and backward in their,
link |
00:20:47.080
of course, what else could they have been?
link |
00:20:48.800
They were kept in captivity,
link |
00:20:50.780
they were prevented from developing their human potential
link |
00:20:55.040
and yet after the end of slavery,
link |
00:20:58.720
that population, that 4 million plus African descended people
link |
00:21:04.440
became the foundation for what a century later
link |
00:21:08.120
leads to Martin Luther King standing in the Washington Mall
link |
00:21:12.600
and giving that great speech
link |
00:21:14.440
and now here we are 150 years down the road
link |
00:21:18.280
and Barack Obama is president of the United States.
link |
00:21:21.600
Now, he did not descend from slaves,
link |
00:21:23.260
I think we must not lose track of that,
link |
00:21:25.640
but he identified as an African American
link |
00:21:29.280
and was a part of the population
link |
00:21:32.560
that consisted largely of people who descended from slaves
link |
00:21:36.880
and we are, we African Americans are
link |
00:21:40.880
for all practical purposes,
link |
00:21:42.960
fully equal citizens of this great republic.
link |
00:21:46.720
That has happened within a century and a half
link |
00:21:49.400
and I don't know that you can find any parallel
link |
00:21:52.200
to that kind of transformation in the status of people
link |
00:21:56.800
from human chattel to full citizens of the republic.
link |
00:22:01.800
Anywhere in human history,
link |
00:22:02.920
it's certainly worth celebrating the achievement
link |
00:22:07.240
of the eradication of slavery, I would say.
link |
00:22:10.160
And it probably started with a few people
link |
00:22:14.560
that inside their mind dared to rebel.
link |
00:22:18.880
You know, it's interesting to think about how it all started,
link |
00:22:23.320
how in the state of injustice,
link |
00:22:26.920
the revolution percolates, like where it starts.
link |
00:22:32.820
You said people that see something is wrong find each other.
link |
00:22:39.200
It's in the ideas of charismatic individuals
link |
00:22:43.000
that not only know that something is wrong,
link |
00:22:44.920
but are able to tell others about it and be convincing
link |
00:22:51.680
and then together gather and rise up.
link |
00:22:54.760
It's interesting to make this kind of incredible progress
link |
00:22:58.320
from slavery to where we are today
link |
00:23:00.440
to live out the ideal of this all men are created equal.
link |
00:23:06.160
Yeah.
link |
00:23:06.980
The power of individual,
link |
00:23:07.820
because I don't know what you think about it,
link |
00:23:10.020
but I tend to think that a few small individuals
link |
00:23:14.600
probably originated this.
link |
00:23:16.320
Like it's the power of the individual,
link |
00:23:18.280
because sometimes we think there's injustice in the world,
link |
00:23:20.320
what can I possibly do?
link |
00:23:22.160
But I tend to think one person can be the seed
link |
00:23:26.400
of starting to fix the injustice.
link |
00:23:29.200
Sure.
link |
00:23:31.080
One person here, one person there.
link |
00:23:34.360
Yeah.
link |
00:23:36.040
One thinks of course of Frederick Douglass,
link |
00:23:38.960
this massively significant figure who was born in slavery,
link |
00:23:46.200
who stole his freedom because he was property
link |
00:23:52.240
and he decided he was not gonna be property anymore
link |
00:23:54.720
and he took it unto himself to emancipate himself personally
link |
00:23:59.040
and who became an educated, a powerfully articulate,
link |
00:24:04.040
massively influential person in the United States
link |
00:24:09.400
and in England going around presenting himself
link |
00:24:14.880
as an embodiment of human dignity
link |
00:24:18.800
and commitment to ideals of equality.
link |
00:24:24.320
And I mean, he's just one person,
link |
00:24:27.680
but there were others like him.
link |
00:24:30.200
Just one person.
link |
00:24:31.960
All it takes is just one person.
link |
00:24:33.560
So here we are on this topic of equality
link |
00:24:39.600
in the 21st century.
link |
00:24:43.000
So what does equality mean today?
link |
00:24:45.400
If you start to think about this idea of equality of outcome
link |
00:24:53.480
or the injustice of inequality,
link |
00:24:56.720
at which point does equality of outcome is just,
link |
00:25:01.040
at which point is it unjust?
link |
00:25:03.640
Sort of looking at our world today
link |
00:25:05.640
and looking at inequality,
link |
00:25:08.840
how do we know that some inequality is a sign of injustice
link |
00:25:14.320
and some is the way of life?
link |
00:25:16.520
So what does equality mean when we look at the world today,
link |
00:25:19.640
different from Dr. King's speech of the basic humanity?
link |
00:25:23.320
I don't think King's speech, I have a dream
link |
00:25:27.800
that one day my four little children will be judged
link |
00:25:29.960
not by the color of their skin,
link |
00:25:31.400
but by the content of their character
link |
00:25:34.440
requires equality of outcome.
link |
00:25:40.200
He says his children will be judged
link |
00:25:42.080
by the content of their character.
link |
00:25:44.600
That's a conditional statement.
link |
00:25:46.560
That is the judgment will depend upon the content
link |
00:25:49.840
of their character, not the color of their skin,
link |
00:25:54.040
but it doesn't follow from that,
link |
00:25:56.800
that the outcomes, whatever outcomes we consider wealth
link |
00:26:01.560
and economic power,
link |
00:26:05.320
position within the society,
link |
00:26:06.920
representation in the various professions,
link |
00:26:10.240
the various measures of social achievement
link |
00:26:13.000
doesn't follow from judging by the content of character
link |
00:26:17.320
and not color of skin,
link |
00:26:19.080
that when we look at the end of the day
link |
00:26:21.400
at the social outcomes that they will be equal
link |
00:26:24.120
across the different groups.
link |
00:26:27.040
In fact, I think there's a contradiction in the idea
link |
00:26:29.680
that groups will be equal
link |
00:26:31.840
in all of the various social outcomes,
link |
00:26:34.040
that they will be equally successful in business,
link |
00:26:36.960
that they will be proportionately represented
link |
00:26:40.760
in the various professions,
link |
00:26:42.240
that they will have the same educational achievement,
link |
00:26:45.760
that the occupational profiles will look the same.
link |
00:26:49.760
If they are, in fact, distinct groups
link |
00:26:53.080
with their own cultural traditions and practices,
link |
00:26:58.160
with their own ideals and norms,
link |
00:27:01.840
various immigrant populations,
link |
00:27:04.240
people coming to the United States of America
link |
00:27:06.480
from all corners of the world,
link |
00:27:09.880
the descendants of the African slaves,
link |
00:27:13.000
the black Americans here today,
link |
00:27:15.600
who are ourselves various with different backgrounds,
link |
00:27:19.520
different origins and so on,
link |
00:27:21.960
the different religious practices and commitments
link |
00:27:25.320
that Jewish or Mormon or Christian or whatever,
link |
00:27:32.760
however we parcel up the total population
link |
00:27:37.600
into the various groups,
link |
00:27:38.760
these groups are themselves different from one another.
link |
00:27:42.800
They have different norms
link |
00:27:45.240
within their own cultural practice.
link |
00:27:48.520
How would we expect,
link |
00:27:49.760
if in fact we recognize
link |
00:27:51.480
that the groups are different from one another,
link |
00:27:54.400
that in a world that is fair,
link |
00:27:56.720
they would all come out equally represented
link |
00:28:00.040
in every undertaking.
link |
00:28:00.960
They're not equally represented,
link |
00:28:03.320
and that fact, I'm arguing,
link |
00:28:06.240
is in and of itself insufficient
link |
00:28:09.000
to justify the conclusion
link |
00:28:11.360
that they're not somehow being fairly treated.
link |
00:28:15.240
Fair treatment doesn't imply equal outcomes
link |
00:28:18.640
in a world in which the populations in question
link |
00:28:21.560
are themselves different
link |
00:28:23.320
with respect to their culture, their practices,
link |
00:28:25.440
their norms, their traditions,
link |
00:28:27.640
their beliefs, their ideals, and so on.
link |
00:28:31.360
The fact of those different norms, traditions, beliefs,
link |
00:28:35.200
cultural orientations, and ideals
link |
00:28:37.200
will have consequences
link |
00:28:40.000
in terms of their different social outcomes.
link |
00:28:44.000
So I just think it's a mistake
link |
00:28:46.160
that people are making
link |
00:28:47.800
when they think
link |
00:28:49.920
fairness of treatment
link |
00:28:53.520
implies equality of outcomes.
link |
00:28:56.000
It does not.
link |
00:28:57.480
Is the process by which we're speaking now
link |
00:29:02.600
in the midst of the National Basketball Association's
link |
00:29:06.320
playoffs,
link |
00:29:07.680
I confess to being a Boston Celtics fan.
link |
00:29:10.440
I mean, I'm just,
link |
00:29:12.560
it's a very good team, and I'm excited about my Celtics.
link |
00:29:16.040
We defeated
link |
00:29:18.240
the Brooklyn
link |
00:29:21.160
Nets.
link |
00:29:22.440
I mean, we defeated Kevin Durant
link |
00:29:25.480
and Kyrie Irving and company, okay,
link |
00:29:28.800
in a playoff series.
link |
00:29:31.240
We whipped them,
link |
00:29:32.720
and we're on our way to
link |
00:29:35.840
the Eastern Conference Finals,
link |
00:29:37.840
and we're on our way to the NBA Finals,
link |
00:29:39.800
and I'm, you know, if I were a betting man,
link |
00:29:42.520
I'd put down a few bucks
link |
00:29:44.560
that the Boston Celtics, underrated as we are,
link |
00:29:47.600
have a very good chance of winning the NBA Finals.
link |
00:29:50.680
Okay, so that's the NBA.
link |
00:29:51.840
That's the National Basketball Association.
link |
00:29:53.560
I'm a sports fan.
link |
00:29:54.400
I like basketball.
link |
00:29:55.240
Slightly biased prediction, but yes.
link |
00:29:57.640
Yeah, it is somewhat biased.
link |
00:29:59.640
All I'm saying is,
link |
00:30:01.280
if you take a look at who the star players are
link |
00:30:04.520
in the National Basketball Association,
link |
00:30:06.160
you're gonna find that there's some Eastern Europeans.
link |
00:30:09.480
You know, there's some really good basketball players
link |
00:30:11.840
coming out of Eastern Europe,
link |
00:30:15.160
and more power to them,
link |
00:30:17.080
and there are a lot of African Americans.
link |
00:30:19.760
We're overrepresented.
link |
00:30:22.120
There are not that many Jews, as far as I know.
link |
00:30:24.480
No offense intended there, Lex,
link |
00:30:26.480
but I mean,
link |
00:30:28.280
the NBA is not
link |
00:30:32.200
equally representative
link |
00:30:34.120
of all of the different populations in the United States.
link |
00:30:37.480
Now, we could go into the reasons why,
link |
00:30:39.120
but I'm just saying the process
link |
00:30:41.400
by which you get to be playing in the NBA is fair.
link |
00:30:44.600
If you can play, you can get on the court.
link |
00:30:48.560
All they're looking for is people who can play.
link |
00:30:51.240
I think something like that is true
link |
00:30:54.320
in many different venues.
link |
00:30:56.080
I expect, if you're a really good technical engineer,
link |
00:31:01.680
companies are gonna employ you,
link |
00:31:04.200
and if you can make money, they're gonna advance you,
link |
00:31:07.320
and you will be able to rise to the top of that profession.
link |
00:31:12.240
I expect that the people who are engaged
link |
00:31:15.400
in financial transactions,
link |
00:31:17.040
who are actually making bets on the market,
link |
00:31:20.120
by and large, are the people who are good at that activity,
link |
00:31:24.200
and if you're good at that activity in this world,
link |
00:31:26.200
in this modern world,
link |
00:31:27.960
you're gonna rise to the top.
link |
00:31:31.680
I'm not saying that there are no barriers of discrimination.
link |
00:31:37.680
Of course, there are of many different sorts,
link |
00:31:40.520
but I'm saying that to expect that there would be,
link |
00:31:43.560
okay, I mean, let's look at who's actually writing code.
link |
00:31:46.240
Let's look at who's actually trading bonds.
link |
00:31:48.440
Let's look at who's actually starting businesses and so on.
link |
00:31:53.960
To say that in a fair world,
link |
00:31:57.120
I would expect that if blacks are 10% of the population,
link |
00:31:59.960
they'd be 10% of every one of those things,
link |
00:32:02.360
is to ignore the reality that the differences
link |
00:32:06.640
in the culture and practices and norms
link |
00:32:09.840
of the various population groups
link |
00:32:11.600
will lead to differences in their representation
link |
00:32:14.840
amongst people who are outstanding performers
link |
00:32:17.080
in one or another activity.
link |
00:32:20.080
How do you know if the difference in culture
link |
00:32:24.040
accounts for the difference in outcomes,
link |
00:32:26.920
or it's the existence of barriers,
link |
00:32:30.120
especially barriers early on in life,
link |
00:32:32.960
of discrimination that are racially based?
link |
00:32:35.280
So if you think about affirmative action,
link |
00:32:41.040
in which ways is affirmative action empowering,
link |
00:32:44.840
in which way is it limiting
link |
00:32:47.480
for these early development of different groups,
link |
00:32:50.800
but let's just speak to African Americans.
link |
00:32:53.080
We should say that you went to some no name
link |
00:32:56.280
Northwestern University at first,
link |
00:32:57.720
but then you ended up with the great university of MIT.
link |
00:33:01.440
So that's your, not early, but middle development.
link |
00:33:06.960
So speaking of the development,
link |
00:33:09.040
the opportunities, the equality of opportunity,
link |
00:33:13.240
how do we know we got that equality right?
link |
00:33:17.000
Yeah, I'm glad you put it like that.
link |
00:33:19.360
We were talking about results,
link |
00:33:20.640
now we're talking about opportunity.
link |
00:33:22.120
I was taking the position that
link |
00:33:23.920
when King says, I have a dream and he envisions a world
link |
00:33:29.560
where his children will not be barred
link |
00:33:32.320
from the good things in life
link |
00:33:34.920
because of the color of their skin,
link |
00:33:37.040
we're talking about opportunity, not about results.
link |
00:33:42.560
But opportunity is not just something
link |
00:33:45.360
that depends upon what the law is
link |
00:33:48.680
and what public policies are.
link |
00:33:50.000
Opportunity also depends upon the social conditions
link |
00:33:54.760
in which people are raised,
link |
00:33:56.880
the social and economic conditions.
link |
00:33:58.360
So the child of a poor family that has no resources,
link |
00:34:04.680
it doesn't have the same opportunity
link |
00:34:06.440
as a child of a wealthy family
link |
00:34:08.680
to realize their full human potential.
link |
00:34:11.720
You asked me, how can we tell whether or not
link |
00:34:14.240
a difference in outcomes is a reflection
link |
00:34:19.080
of unequal opportunity,
link |
00:34:21.120
or it's a reflection of differences in culture
link |
00:34:23.520
and interest and practice?
link |
00:34:26.680
And I don't know that there's a single answer
link |
00:34:29.600
to that question,
link |
00:34:30.440
but I think one wants to look at the data,
link |
00:34:33.440
one wants to try to measure.
link |
00:34:37.840
As a social scientist, I would say what you wanna do
link |
00:34:40.560
is you wanna estimate the significance of various factors
link |
00:34:47.240
for determining the outcome.
link |
00:34:48.480
If the outcome is how much money does a person make
link |
00:34:51.840
when they work in the labor market?
link |
00:34:53.720
So you look at their wages and you think,
link |
00:34:56.640
well, that depends upon a number of things.
link |
00:34:58.640
It depends upon how educated they are,
link |
00:35:00.920
what kind of skills they have,
link |
00:35:02.920
what kind of work experience they have, and so on.
link |
00:35:06.960
And those things are all legitimate factors
link |
00:35:11.240
that might determine how much they end up making
link |
00:35:13.840
in the labor market.
link |
00:35:15.680
But you also wanna perhaps, controlling for those things,
link |
00:35:19.680
see whether or not the fact that they are black
link |
00:35:23.280
or they are Latino or whatever,
link |
00:35:25.720
fact that they are male or that they are female,
link |
00:35:29.320
the fact that they do or do not speak English
link |
00:35:31.880
as their native language, this kind of thing,
link |
00:35:34.440
whether those factors also are implicated
link |
00:35:38.680
in determining how successful they are in the labor market.
link |
00:35:42.320
And if you find that after you have controlled
link |
00:35:46.360
for the things that are legitimately determining success
link |
00:35:51.800
and failure in the labor market,
link |
00:35:52.920
like skills and education and experience,
link |
00:35:56.480
having controlled for those things,
link |
00:35:58.640
the fact that a person is black or is a woman
link |
00:36:01.640
or is an immigrant or is of Latino background
link |
00:36:09.440
also affects their earnings,
link |
00:36:11.680
then you might conclude that to that extent,
link |
00:36:14.440
they're not getting equal opportunity in the labor market,
link |
00:36:16.720
that kind of idea.
link |
00:36:18.960
But I wanna focus a little bit more here
link |
00:36:22.160
on what we mean by opportunity
link |
00:36:23.760
because it's not just whether employers treat the worker
link |
00:36:29.840
on a fair and even basis,
link |
00:36:33.160
irregardless of the worker's racial or ethnic background.
link |
00:36:36.760
That's one opportunity issue,
link |
00:36:39.560
but that's at the end of the development process.
link |
00:36:43.720
They are now presenting themselves to the market,
link |
00:36:46.800
trying to find work and being employed at this or that wage.
link |
00:36:50.880
That's the end of the line.
link |
00:36:52.760
What about the developmental opportunity,
link |
00:36:54.960
the opportunity to acquire skills in the first place?
link |
00:36:58.760
That goes all the way back,
link |
00:37:00.200
that goes all the way back to birth.
link |
00:37:01.560
It even goes back to before birth.
link |
00:37:03.480
Or the mother carrying the infant in the womb,
link |
00:37:10.520
she has certain nutritional practices
link |
00:37:15.320
as she might be smoking or drinking alcohol
link |
00:37:18.360
or something like that.
link |
00:37:19.200
I'm not saying she is, I'm not saying she isn't,
link |
00:37:20.840
I'm just saying whether she is or she isn't
link |
00:37:23.360
that will affect the development of the fetus.
link |
00:37:27.080
The newborn, now there's a question of environment.
link |
00:37:32.000
There's a question of the development
link |
00:37:33.680
of their neurological potential.
link |
00:37:37.800
Do they learn how to read?
link |
00:37:40.200
Are they stimulated verbally?
link |
00:37:42.360
How many words have they heard spoken?
link |
00:37:45.320
Are they being nurtured in a home environment
link |
00:37:49.680
so as to maximize the possibility
link |
00:37:52.760
of them achieving their human potential?
link |
00:37:55.160
What about the peer group influences?
link |
00:37:57.920
What about the values and norms of the surrounding
link |
00:38:03.600
human communities in which they're embedded?
link |
00:38:05.920
Do they encourage the young person
link |
00:38:08.560
to apply themselves in a systematic way
link |
00:38:13.320
to their studies and to their focus
link |
00:38:15.920
on their acquisition of language command
link |
00:38:18.880
and of their educational potential?
link |
00:38:22.520
So development is not only something
link |
00:38:25.560
that is controlled by the society's practices,
link |
00:38:29.760
it's also something that is influenced
link |
00:38:32.280
by the cultural background of the individual.
link |
00:38:37.000
And those things are not equal.
link |
00:38:40.280
Those things vary across groups in a very significant way.
link |
00:38:46.560
And that too will be a factor
link |
00:38:50.280
determining disparities of outcome.
link |
00:38:53.480
So when I see outcomes that are different,
link |
00:38:56.000
I see wealth holding that's different.
link |
00:38:58.720
I see educational achievement that's different.
link |
00:39:01.000
I see representation in the professional schools
link |
00:39:03.720
and law school and medical school
link |
00:39:05.040
that's different between groups.
link |
00:39:06.800
One question is are the institutions treating people fairly?
link |
00:39:11.000
But another question is do the background
link |
00:39:15.240
in social and cultural influences
link |
00:39:17.240
equip people in the same way?
link |
00:39:20.640
And we know that the answer to that,
link |
00:39:22.400
not in every instance do they equip people in the same way.
link |
00:39:25.840
And so it makes the judgment, the moral judgment
link |
00:39:28.320
that we make when we see inequality of outcome complicated.
link |
00:39:34.040
Inequality of outcome is a systemic factor to some degree,
link |
00:39:39.080
but it is also a cultural factor to some degree,
link |
00:39:43.880
I wanna say, and that's controversial, I know.
link |
00:39:47.920
A lot of people, they think of themselves
link |
00:39:50.200
as being progressive.
link |
00:39:51.360
They wanna point a finger at society
link |
00:39:55.200
whenever they see a disparity.
link |
00:39:58.320
But I think that that's a mistake.
link |
00:40:00.120
I think it misunderstands the difficulty of the problem.
link |
00:40:05.800
You think that if you get the right law,
link |
00:40:08.560
if you have the right public policy,
link |
00:40:11.040
if the right politicians are elected to office,
link |
00:40:13.480
suddenly those disparities will go away.
link |
00:40:16.040
And I'm here to tell you that that's a false hope.
link |
00:40:22.240
And moreover, it is probably the wrong goal.
link |
00:40:27.400
But I mean, we could go into that.
link |
00:40:28.880
You were talking about affirmative action,
link |
00:40:30.440
which is something else altogether.
link |
00:40:33.520
And you were talking about me and my education,
link |
00:40:35.800
which is also something that's a little bit different.
link |
00:40:39.280
And I'm happy to talk about those things.
link |
00:40:41.040
Northwestern University, by the way, was a great university.
link |
00:40:44.520
I'm just joking, it's one of the great universities
link |
00:40:47.080
of the world, yes.
link |
00:40:48.040
And I studied mathematics at Northwestern University,
link |
00:40:51.120
which is how I ended up at MIT in the first place.
link |
00:40:54.000
And I got a very good technical training in mathematics
link |
00:40:58.080
when I was at Northwestern, so.
link |
00:41:00.000
You love both mathematics and human nature.
link |
00:41:03.560
And so, which is why you ended up going into economics
link |
00:41:08.320
at one of the great economics programs in the world at MIT
link |
00:41:11.920
and getting your PhD there.
link |
00:41:13.040
So one of the many hats you wear is that of an economist,
link |
00:41:16.280
which allows you to think systematically and rigorously
link |
00:41:19.880
about the way the world and the way humans work at scale.
link |
00:41:24.840
Trying to remove the full mushy mess of humans,
link |
00:41:28.720
like a psychology perspective, economics allows you to do.
link |
00:41:33.560
Well, economics is one of the social sciences.
link |
00:41:35.800
I think there's value in psychology and in sociology.
link |
00:41:39.320
There's a lot to know that doesn't come up
link |
00:41:42.000
within the study of economics.
link |
00:41:44.080
We study markets and the dynamics of economic development
link |
00:41:49.280
and trade and so on.
link |
00:41:54.400
But yeah, speaking personally, as I was coming along,
link |
00:41:59.200
I was fascinated by mathematics.
link |
00:42:01.160
I was good at it and ended up at Northwestern
link |
00:42:04.600
and took a lot of courses there in functional analysis
link |
00:42:09.600
and logic and mathematics and dynamical systems
link |
00:42:14.480
and stuff that I ended up employing
link |
00:42:18.280
in my graduate studies in economics.
link |
00:42:20.920
But you're right, I was not satisfied simply
link |
00:42:25.680
to be proving theorems.
link |
00:42:27.560
I wanted to be addressing issues of social significance
link |
00:42:32.160
and economics.
link |
00:42:33.720
I discovered to my delight was a field of study
link |
00:42:37.960
that allowed me both to develop
link |
00:42:41.480
rigorous analytical frameworks,
link |
00:42:45.320
modeling and precision of logical deduction
link |
00:42:52.240
and inference on the one hand,
link |
00:42:56.080
satisfying my mathematical interests,
link |
00:43:00.440
but on the other hand,
link |
00:43:01.280
could address questions of social significance
link |
00:43:03.800
like why does racial inequality persist?
link |
00:43:07.600
Why are some countries prospering and growing
link |
00:43:10.360
and others less so?
link |
00:43:12.880
Why do the prices of raw materials fluctuate
link |
00:43:16.040
in the way that they do over time and so on and so forth?
link |
00:43:19.280
And I ended up falling in love with the application
link |
00:43:24.280
of mathematical analysis to the study of social issues.
link |
00:43:29.360
What do you use beautiful about mathematics,
link |
00:43:32.080
about mathematical puzzles, about logic,
link |
00:43:35.600
all those kinds of things?
link |
00:43:36.800
Because it's still there.
link |
00:43:39.400
The love for math is still there for you.
link |
00:43:41.160
So is there something you could speak to?
link |
00:43:43.280
What is the kernel, the flame of that love?
link |
00:43:48.000
It's like magic.
link |
00:43:50.120
I mean, you know, being able to prove something
link |
00:43:52.800
and I mean, you know, I think of offhand,
link |
00:43:56.120
you know, there's no largest prime number, okay?
link |
00:43:58.960
So how would somebody know that?
link |
00:44:02.520
Okay, what's a prime number?
link |
00:44:03.480
So a prime number is a number that has a whole number
link |
00:44:05.920
that has no divisor other than one.
link |
00:44:08.720
There are no divisors of the number
link |
00:44:11.040
that makes it a prime number, like 13 or 19 or 37,
link |
00:44:16.280
whatever, okay.
link |
00:44:17.520
So they're prime numbers.
link |
00:44:19.560
There's no largest prime number.
link |
00:44:20.760
There are infinite number of prime numbers.
link |
00:44:22.160
There's no largest prime number, okay?
link |
00:44:23.920
That's an idea.
link |
00:44:24.760
You can get your mind around it in an instant.
link |
00:44:26.720
It doesn't take a whole lot of depth to see the question.
link |
00:44:31.680
There's no largest prime number.
link |
00:44:33.240
I wonder if prime numbers show up in economics.
link |
00:44:35.440
I mean that.
link |
00:44:36.280
Oh, they don't show up in economics except cryptography.
link |
00:44:39.120
I understand that's important.
link |
00:44:40.320
Yes, yes.
link |
00:44:41.160
For code, you know, in coding stuff.
link |
00:44:44.480
And that shows up in economics.
link |
00:44:45.920
But in terms of models, probably not.
link |
00:44:49.560
That's, so prime numbers are little,
link |
00:44:55.080
you know, in abstract algebra,
link |
00:44:58.760
it's like they show up in all these places
link |
00:45:00.880
that are just like beautiful mathematical puzzles
link |
00:45:04.200
that don't immediately have an application,
link |
00:45:05.960
but somehow maybe challenge you,
link |
00:45:09.040
and as a result, push mathematics forward.
link |
00:45:11.440
Like Fermat's last theorem, you know,
link |
00:45:14.160
as far as I know, no obvious real world application,
link |
00:45:18.200
but it has challenged mathematicians
link |
00:45:19.960
throughout the centuries.
link |
00:45:21.080
Indeed.
link |
00:45:22.120
And somehow indirectly progressed the field, but.
link |
00:45:28.760
That the rational numbers are countable.
link |
00:45:31.640
They can be put in one to one relationship
link |
00:45:34.760
with the integers and, you know,
link |
00:45:37.000
but that the real numbers are not countable
link |
00:45:38.800
and there's a lot more real, quote unquote,
link |
00:45:41.080
more real numbers.
link |
00:45:41.920
These are orders of infinity.
link |
00:45:43.360
This is Cantor, Georg Cantor, and all that kind of stuff.
link |
00:45:48.880
Or Gödel's theorem, I studied this as an undergraduate,
link |
00:45:52.680
you know, the incompleteness theorem
link |
00:45:54.440
that there are propositions within any logical system
link |
00:45:58.040
that's rich enough to accommodate arithmetic.
link |
00:46:02.600
There are going to be propositions
link |
00:46:04.520
that you can formulate that are true,
link |
00:46:06.560
but that you cannot prove to be true.
link |
00:46:10.600
So the idea that you could systematically develop
link |
00:46:14.680
a logical framework for mathematical inquiry
link |
00:46:19.080
that could demonstrate the truth or falsity
link |
00:46:21.800
of any proposition is not a feasible goal.
link |
00:46:26.800
A feasible goal.
link |
00:46:27.640
This was Hilbert's project as I understand it
link |
00:46:30.600
and Gödel showed that there was no hope ever
link |
00:46:35.280
of being able to demonstrate the closure
link |
00:46:39.120
of logical systems that were rich enough
link |
00:46:41.480
to accommodate the real numbers.
link |
00:46:43.880
They gave an existential crisis to all mathematicians
link |
00:46:47.960
and scientists alike and humans
link |
00:46:50.760
because maybe you can't prove everything.
link |
00:46:52.480
I remember, you know, when I was a junior college,
link |
00:46:56.960
a community college student
link |
00:46:58.160
before I transferred to Northwestern
link |
00:47:00.080
and I took a calculus course and it was a lot of fun
link |
00:47:04.520
and it was differentiating algebraic expressions
link |
00:47:09.440
and integrating and using trigonometric substitutions
link |
00:47:12.760
and it was a lot of simple problem solving.
link |
00:47:16.080
I get to Northwestern,
link |
00:47:17.440
I take a course in differential equations.
link |
00:47:19.920
And again, it was a lot of formulaic applying
link |
00:47:23.040
if you get a differential equation of this structure
link |
00:47:25.360
like if it's linear, you got exponentials, et cetera,
link |
00:47:28.240
you can solve it.
link |
00:47:29.800
And then I took a course that showed me, you know,
link |
00:47:32.840
where the question was not how to solve
link |
00:47:35.600
any particular functional expression,
link |
00:47:38.560
but it was proving the existence of a solution
link |
00:47:41.760
to a differential equation where it was like X dot equals
link |
00:47:45.720
F of X and T and F is just some arbitrary function.
link |
00:47:49.240
What do I have to assume about the function F
link |
00:47:52.400
in order to know that there exists a solution
link |
00:47:54.680
to the differential equation,
link |
00:47:56.960
dx dt equals F of X and T.
link |
00:48:00.800
And it's basically, they called it a Lipschitz condition.
link |
00:48:03.880
It's a condition about the bounding of the slope
link |
00:48:08.200
of the function F as a function of X that it doesn't,
link |
00:48:13.600
that you can sort of uniformly bound the slope
link |
00:48:16.480
on that function and then you can use a iterative process
link |
00:48:20.240
to show that the sequence of, you know, partial solutions
link |
00:48:24.760
to the thing converges to something that's a solution
link |
00:48:26.640
to the real thing.
link |
00:48:27.480
Anyway, again, I'm not gonna bore you
link |
00:48:29.480
or pretend that I'm a mathematician, I'm not.
link |
00:48:32.960
But what I'm saying is the difference
link |
00:48:34.080
between a specific algebraic formula
link |
00:48:38.520
that you can manipulate and solve on the one hand
link |
00:48:42.480
and the abstract question of whether there exists
link |
00:48:45.320
a solution in the general case is like a huge,
link |
00:48:49.680
was like a huge step for me in my study of mathematics
link |
00:48:53.360
and the techniques that you have to employ
link |
00:48:56.400
to address these larger questions and so on.
link |
00:48:59.680
So I, you know, when I was an undergraduate,
link |
00:49:03.520
I took the first year PhD sequence in math analysis
link |
00:49:08.440
at Northwestern from a brilliant mathematician
link |
00:49:11.880
named Avner Friedman and learned about measure theory
link |
00:49:16.840
and learned about some early functional analysis ideas
link |
00:49:25.160
and when I saw that those ideas were being applied
link |
00:49:28.360
by advanced study in economics, I was delighted.
link |
00:49:32.080
I found an intellectual home.
link |
00:49:34.320
So one of the fascinating challenges in mathematics
link |
00:49:38.800
is to think how can you, which echoes
link |
00:49:43.160
the challenge of economics, what are the properties
link |
00:49:47.200
of an equation that allow you to say something profound
link |
00:49:52.120
and say it simply?
link |
00:49:53.720
And so the question of economics is how do you
link |
00:49:56.400
construct a model where you can generalize nicely
link |
00:50:00.200
and say something profound and say it simply?
link |
00:50:03.480
So one of the questions, one of the challenges
link |
00:50:06.360
of economics is macro versus microeconomics is,
link |
00:50:13.520
you know, the world is made up of individuals.
link |
00:50:16.280
So there's a connection to this, our discussion
link |
00:50:18.640
of race and discrimination and outcomes
link |
00:50:21.960
and all those kinds of things.
link |
00:50:24.240
The world is made up of individuals,
link |
00:50:26.560
but in order to say something general,
link |
00:50:29.800
we have to construct groups in order to analyze the data.
link |
00:50:34.800
We have to aggregate that data somehow.
link |
00:50:37.920
We have to make an average over some set of people.
link |
00:50:41.480
So what are the pros and cons of looking at things
link |
00:50:46.080
like equality of opportunity and equality of outcome
link |
00:50:50.120
based on groups versus based on individuals
link |
00:50:53.600
and what are the groups, if there's any pros
link |
00:50:58.800
to looking at groups that we should be looking at?
link |
00:51:01.560
Okay, well, those are big questions.
link |
00:51:04.360
I mean, in economics, you're right.
link |
00:51:06.920
I mean, micro, you have an account of how individuals
link |
00:51:10.440
make decisions about spending their money
link |
00:51:13.200
on this consumption side and about how enterprises
link |
00:51:16.080
make decisions about what to produce, how much of it,
link |
00:51:20.600
what inputs to use, what techniques of production
link |
00:51:23.200
and so on, individual firms, individual consumers,
link |
00:51:27.960
and then you want to aggregate.
link |
00:51:29.160
So there's a so called theory of general equilibrium
link |
00:51:32.120
where you think supply and demand in a bunch of markets,
link |
00:51:38.200
you think prices that move to equilibrate,
link |
00:51:40.960
but you recognize that the price in one market
link |
00:51:43.040
affects people's behavior in another,
link |
00:51:44.880
the markets are interacting with each other.
link |
00:51:47.040
You realize that the behavior of one individual
link |
00:51:49.160
affects the supplies and available resources
link |
00:51:53.880
and for other individuals, so they're knitted together
link |
00:51:56.840
in some kind of systematic way.
link |
00:52:00.000
And you want to try to demonstrate the fact
link |
00:52:04.640
that notwithstanding all these interdependencies,
link |
00:52:07.480
there exists a solution to the system of equations
link |
00:52:12.160
that equates demand and supply
link |
00:52:14.000
across all the different markets.
link |
00:52:15.360
This is the existence of general equilibrium.
link |
00:52:19.120
Then you want to try to say something about the properties
link |
00:52:22.440
of an equilibrium, if it exists, is it efficient?
link |
00:52:25.520
What do you mean by efficiency?
link |
00:52:27.600
Well, the idea of so called Pareto efficient outcomes,
link |
00:52:32.000
these are outcomes that cannot be uniformly improved upon,
link |
00:52:35.320
everybody can't be made better off
link |
00:52:36.880
by an alternative outcome.
link |
00:52:39.160
You want to demonstrate the efficiency
link |
00:52:41.240
of competitive equilibrium.
link |
00:52:43.880
What do you mean by competition?
link |
00:52:45.240
You mean that people take their actions
link |
00:52:46.920
to do the best for themselves that they can.
link |
00:52:51.760
Profits of firms, well being of consumers,
link |
00:52:54.400
they try to do the best for themselves that they can,
link |
00:52:59.080
but they do so in reference to a set of prices
link |
00:53:02.000
that they believe they cannot control.
link |
00:53:03.600
That's the criterion of competitive market circumstance.
link |
00:53:08.320
So does a competitive equilibrium exist?
link |
00:53:11.280
Do there exist a set of prices
link |
00:53:12.760
which if everybody recognizes them as given
link |
00:53:15.840
and responds to those prices on behalf of their own interest,
link |
00:53:20.800
the outcome will be supply equaling demand
link |
00:53:24.360
in all the markets where people are interacting
link |
00:53:26.360
with one another, and that requires the use
link |
00:53:30.080
of some concepts and topology, fixed point theorems
link |
00:53:33.760
and whatnot that are familiar to mathematics,
link |
00:53:36.040
not very deep mathematical results,
link |
00:53:38.280
but important to economics.
link |
00:53:40.520
That's all about general equilibrium and whatnot.
link |
00:53:43.160
But you ask about groups.
link |
00:53:45.080
By the way, amazing whirlwind summary of all of economics,
link |
00:53:49.240
but yes, go ahead, that was great.
link |
00:53:53.600
Markets of competition of operator efficiency anyway,
link |
00:53:58.160
but yes, groups.
link |
00:53:59.040
And prices. And prices.
link |
00:54:01.840
And by the way, there are some very beautiful
link |
00:54:07.480
formalizations of everything that I'm saying here.
link |
00:54:10.280
You end up in vector spaces,
link |
00:54:11.720
you end up with sets of bundles of consumption
link |
00:54:15.800
and production, you end up with convexity,
link |
00:54:17.840
you end up with hyperplanes,
link |
00:54:19.840
which are in this finite dimensional vector space,
link |
00:54:23.800
which are all of the bundles that have the same value
link |
00:54:29.840
at a certain price.
link |
00:54:30.680
You end up with inner products.
link |
00:54:35.120
It's very pretty.
link |
00:54:36.280
Yeah, but you almost forget that it's just a bunch
link |
00:54:38.760
of humans transacting with each other.
link |
00:54:43.720
That markets are made up of individuals.
link |
00:54:47.080
Markets are made up of individuals.
link |
00:54:49.000
And in order to carry out this formalization,
link |
00:54:51.480
you have to make assumptions about the individuals.
link |
00:54:54.560
And the end result is true in a formal sense,
link |
00:54:58.960
but may not be true as a representation of the reality,
link |
00:55:03.120
because it depends upon assumptions
link |
00:55:04.600
that themselves may not hold.
link |
00:55:07.920
But at least you know what it is that has to be true
link |
00:55:10.960
in order for your formal framework to be relevant,
link |
00:55:15.880
which is already a step in the right direction, I think.
link |
00:55:18.840
I mean, the formalization is better than the intuition.
link |
00:55:22.520
There aren't your intuition where we sit back
link |
00:55:24.720
and we don't really know exactly what we're talking about
link |
00:55:28.440
because we haven't pinned it down in a precise way.
link |
00:55:33.000
I'm in favor of the formalization.
link |
00:55:34.960
People, they think, what is mathematics
link |
00:55:37.720
and the social sciences?
link |
00:55:39.160
After all, we're dealing with people.
link |
00:55:40.480
People are not automata.
link |
00:55:42.160
I agree with that.
link |
00:55:43.600
But the analysis of the interaction of people,
link |
00:55:48.240
I think, to be rigorous, requires us to be specific
link |
00:55:53.240
about what we're talking about, about markets,
link |
00:55:55.120
about consumers, about firms, about profits,
link |
00:55:57.920
about technology, about preferences.
link |
00:56:00.800
And that's the language of economics.
link |
00:56:06.360
But people's behavior depends upon what they seek in life,
link |
00:56:11.360
depends upon their goals and their objectives.
link |
00:56:14.880
Those things are at play.
link |
00:56:17.320
They can be pushed this way or that.
link |
00:56:20.200
So, I mean, nationalism,
link |
00:56:23.640
fighting and dying for your country,
link |
00:56:27.240
religion, sacrificing on behalf of some abstract ideal
link |
00:56:31.520
of the good or of what is the human situation
link |
00:56:35.440
and what is the meaning of life.
link |
00:56:37.840
Economists have to assume that these things
link |
00:56:40.280
are some particular thing
link |
00:56:41.760
before they can turn the crank on their machine
link |
00:56:44.880
to analyze the outcomes of human interaction.
link |
00:56:48.520
And yet these things, belief in my identity,
link |
00:56:53.920
but the things that I'm willing to sacrifice and die
link |
00:56:56.400
for purposes of life that I affirm
link |
00:56:59.320
and pass on to my children are important preconditions
link |
00:57:03.920
for actually carrying out any economic analysis.
link |
00:57:06.840
And they are subject to manipulation and to change over time.
link |
00:57:11.000
And that's not something that economics
link |
00:57:13.360
has a whole lot to say about.
link |
00:57:15.280
Well, is there some general things
link |
00:57:17.760
that are really powerful in terms of,
link |
00:57:19.800
you said nation, religion, those are groups.
link |
00:57:24.240
Can you group people nicely
link |
00:57:26.640
in helping you understand human nature?
link |
00:57:29.200
So group them into nations based on their citizenry.
link |
00:57:33.880
That's geography, right?
link |
00:57:35.280
The geographic location of your birth
link |
00:57:39.320
or your long term residence, or maybe religious belief,
link |
00:57:44.520
what religion you believe over time.
link |
00:57:48.480
Is there groups like that?
link |
00:57:49.680
And then race, is that useful?
link |
00:57:56.000
What are the pros and cons of looking at outcomes
link |
00:57:59.520
based on these kinds of groups, race in particular?
link |
00:58:07.200
I think they're pros and I think they're cons.
link |
00:58:09.040
I mean, I am myself, Glenn Loury sits before you right now,
link |
00:58:14.440
a black American, an African American.
link |
00:58:16.680
I quote unquote, I identify as,
link |
00:58:19.160
that's the way they talk about it nowadays.
link |
00:58:21.240
I identify as a black American.
link |
00:58:22.840
My skin is brown, my hair is coarse, my nose is broad,
link |
00:58:27.840
relative to the way other people's noses look.
link |
00:58:31.000
My lips are thicker.
link |
00:58:32.680
That's a consequence of my ancestral descent
link |
00:58:37.760
from the human population resident in the African continent
link |
00:58:43.080
in millennia past, my race.
link |
00:58:49.560
Here in the United States,
link |
00:58:50.760
we have various quote unquote races defined crudely
link |
00:58:55.760
in the way that I just tried to define myself.
link |
00:58:59.840
You could say, and I think there is a very powerful argument
link |
00:59:03.480
that these are superficial differences.
link |
00:59:07.480
I mean, really?
link |
00:59:09.200
Why should it matter that your eye color
link |
00:59:11.960
or your hair color or the shape of the bones in your face
link |
00:59:17.120
or the color, the tone of your skin,
link |
00:59:19.220
the amount of melanin,
link |
00:59:20.200
how it is that you react to ultraviolet radiation
link |
00:59:23.120
in terms of your skin, what is that the basis of anything?
link |
00:59:30.720
I mean, that's arbitrary, that's not meaningful.
link |
00:59:33.320
Could there really be meaning
link |
00:59:34.680
in these superficial differences among human beings?
link |
00:59:38.000
Isn't that a archaic or barbaric way
link |
00:59:40.960
of thinking about ourselves,
link |
00:59:42.160
to look at each other's skin color or hair texture
link |
00:59:46.000
and then to decide, oh, that's a black or that's a white
link |
00:59:49.480
or that's a Latin or that's an Asian or that's a whatever.
link |
00:59:53.040
That's something that we should outgrow, a person might say.
link |
00:59:59.360
That's a relic of a kind of tribal society
link |
01:00:03.360
of a kind of pre modern society
link |
01:00:06.900
where we built real structure
link |
01:00:11.360
on the basis of such superficial difference.
link |
01:00:14.880
A person could say that.
link |
01:00:17.160
On the other hand, I am a black American.
link |
01:00:20.640
I mean, that's part of my identity,
link |
01:00:22.960
that's part of my heritage,
link |
01:00:25.580
it's part of the stories that I tell myself
link |
01:00:29.460
about who my people are.
link |
01:00:33.000
Why do I need a people?
link |
01:00:34.320
Why do I need a narrative of descent
link |
01:00:37.400
in which I affiliate with a racially defined people?
link |
01:00:44.240
Do I really need that?
link |
01:00:45.760
I mean, I think that's an important question.
link |
01:00:48.120
In fact, this is a confession, think of myself as black.
link |
01:00:52.440
I could think of myself as simply human.
link |
01:00:55.080
I could not identify specifically as black.
link |
01:00:59.000
I could say, my eyes are brown too, so what?
link |
01:01:03.200
I'm a brown eye?
link |
01:01:04.480
I mean, I'm gonna invent a group based on my eye color.
link |
01:01:08.280
I weigh 290 pounds.
link |
01:01:10.400
I'm gonna have a body size group.
link |
01:01:12.520
I'm a plus 200 and that's quote, who I am, close quote.
link |
01:01:17.440
I don't do that.
link |
01:01:18.840
I came from Chicago.
link |
01:01:20.040
Yes, I do have a certain sense of affinity with my hometown.
link |
01:01:23.760
I'm a Chicago born person,
link |
01:01:26.320
but frankly, I haven't lived in Chicago since 1979.
link |
01:01:30.720
That's a long time.
link |
01:01:33.240
I wear my Chicago origins very, very lightly.
link |
01:01:37.640
I would not go to war with someone from Cleveland
link |
01:01:40.160
or St. Louis and fight to the death
link |
01:01:43.000
with that St. Louis person or that Cleveland person
link |
01:01:46.860
based upon the fact that we come from different cities.
link |
01:01:49.720
And you have even abandoned in your heart
link |
01:01:52.120
the Chicago Bulls.
link |
01:01:53.600
There's some Chicago that's still in me, I suppose,
link |
01:01:56.000
but it's not very deep.
link |
01:01:57.600
It's not quote, who I am anymore.
link |
01:02:00.400
And I'm wondering, here I'm trying to pose the question,
link |
01:02:02.880
why is it that being a descendant of African slaves
link |
01:02:06.080
should be who I am?
link |
01:02:06.920
So there's some answers.
link |
01:02:09.040
One answer is people will look at me
link |
01:02:12.880
and deal with me differently based upon what they see.
link |
01:02:17.000
I don't have control over that.
link |
01:02:19.120
I'm going to be perceived as a member of a group,
link |
01:02:22.400
whether or not I elect to affiliate myself
link |
01:02:24.960
with that group or not.
link |
01:02:27.840
Therefore, I need to be mindful of the fact
link |
01:02:31.620
that regardless of what my internal orientation is,
link |
01:02:37.200
the world will perceive me in a particular way
link |
01:02:40.400
and will perceive me differently
link |
01:02:42.480
based upon the color of my skin.
link |
01:02:44.120
So a police officer who stops me at two o clock
link |
01:02:46.960
in the morning because my tail light is out
link |
01:02:50.440
and ask me for my automobile registration
link |
01:02:54.120
and I reach quickly to the glove compartment
link |
01:02:57.040
to get my registration.
link |
01:02:59.120
And the police officer says, show me your hands.
link |
01:03:01.760
And I don't quite hear what he says
link |
01:03:03.880
or I ignore what he says as I'm getting my document
link |
01:03:07.640
out of my glove compartment.
link |
01:03:08.760
But the police officer thinks because I have not responded
link |
01:03:11.880
to his demand to show my hands
link |
01:03:13.440
that I might be reaching for a weapon.
link |
01:03:15.600
And the police officer sees that I'm black
link |
01:03:18.400
and fears that the likelihood that I might have a weapon
link |
01:03:22.040
is higher because in that town at that time,
link |
01:03:25.020
a lot of the people who get stopped with weapons in their car
link |
01:03:28.320
happen to be black and male and so on.
link |
01:03:32.700
And he pulls his weapon and he discharges it
link |
01:03:34.960
and I'm bleeding out there and I'm dead now.
link |
01:03:37.560
And all of that is a possibility that's very real
link |
01:03:40.200
and it's based upon the color of my skin.
link |
01:03:42.440
And therefore, when he stops me,
link |
01:03:44.960
I keep my hands on the steering wheel
link |
01:03:46.920
and I don't go to the glove compartment.
link |
01:03:49.000
And I'm fearful of the fact that he might mistake me
link |
01:03:52.640
for a criminal, et cetera.
link |
01:03:54.800
Or I walk into a high end store, clothing store.
link |
01:03:58.200
I see you're nicely dressed there, Lex.
link |
01:04:00.520
I'm not, but that's okay.
link |
01:04:02.960
I do have some good clothes at home.
link |
01:04:04.920
I just didn't wear them here today.
link |
01:04:07.060
But you know what I mean.
link |
01:04:07.900
And the salesman in the clothing store
link |
01:04:11.560
either treats me like an old friend
link |
01:04:15.920
and is warm and welcoming.
link |
01:04:17.880
And what can I do for you, sir?
link |
01:04:19.480
And let me show you this and that.
link |
01:04:20.960
And what are you looking for?
link |
01:04:22.320
Because he thinks I'm gonna spend $1,000 there that day
link |
01:04:24.640
and he's gonna get a 5% commission or whatever it is.
link |
01:04:27.480
And he either does that or he ignores me
link |
01:04:31.200
and looks at me with suspicion
link |
01:04:32.520
and thinks I might be trying to shoplift something
link |
01:04:34.480
or thinks I'm only gonna spend $50 and not $500
link |
01:04:38.360
and therefore I'm not worth his time.
link |
01:04:40.440
And I'm aware of the fact
link |
01:04:42.240
that when I go into the clothing store,
link |
01:04:44.680
especially the high end places where I can buy a good suit
link |
01:04:47.960
or buy some really good dress shirts or slacks
link |
01:04:51.760
that fit me well and so on,
link |
01:04:54.200
I'm aware of the fact that I may not be taken seriously
link |
01:04:57.460
by the salesman based upon the fact
link |
01:05:00.200
that he's looking at me and he sees a black person.
link |
01:05:03.120
And therefore I dress up
link |
01:05:06.080
before I go out to buy clothes to get,
link |
01:05:09.200
cause I wanna present myself
link |
01:05:10.520
as not someone who just walked in off the street,
link |
01:05:13.200
but as one of those black people
link |
01:05:14.580
who is really prepared to spend some money in the store
link |
01:05:17.380
so that I can be treated with respect.
link |
01:05:18.880
And I have to carry the burden such as it is
link |
01:05:23.780
of knowing that I need to earn the being taken seriously
link |
01:05:28.780
being taken seriously by overcoming the suppositions
link |
01:05:33.000
that people may have about me
link |
01:05:34.720
based upon the color of my skin, something like that.
link |
01:05:39.400
Or I ask myself, what am I gonna teach my children
link |
01:05:43.800
about who they are and where they come from?
link |
01:05:46.440
What stories am I gonna tell them about their ancestors?
link |
01:05:50.520
Who are their ancestors?
link |
01:05:52.360
Every African American has European ancestors.
link |
01:05:55.900
Every black person in the United States of America,
link |
01:05:59.520
I think that I can say that almost without exception.
link |
01:06:02.660
We could go to 23andMe and look at the DNA.
link |
01:06:05.920
They have European ancestors, they're not purely African.
link |
01:06:10.080
That's a fact and that's a consequence
link |
01:06:12.280
of the experience of African descended people
link |
01:06:16.160
because it's a mixed population.
link |
01:06:18.800
My name is Lowry, spelled L O U R Y
link |
01:06:21.880
but pronounced as if it were L O W E R Y.
link |
01:06:25.320
And I gather if you trace the history of that name
link |
01:06:29.000
that it's Scottish.
link |
01:06:32.560
So somewhere back then.
link |
01:06:33.400
So you could identify as a Scot.
link |
01:06:35.880
Well, or I could claim some Scottish descent, but I don't.
link |
01:06:40.400
I don't know who those ancestors are.
link |
01:06:42.160
And frankly, I don't know who my enslaved ancestors are.
link |
01:06:47.080
I can't trace my family history back very far
link |
01:06:51.080
into the 19th century.
link |
01:06:53.160
So what stories do I tell my children about who we are,
link |
01:06:57.960
about who their ancestors are?
link |
01:06:59.360
I mean, I wanna tell my children some story
link |
01:07:01.920
and that story is gonna be colored, quote unquote,
link |
01:07:05.320
by my race.
link |
01:07:08.120
So even though it is superficial
link |
01:07:11.800
and in an ideal world, you might think,
link |
01:07:14.280
why would human beings, I mean, I read science fiction.
link |
01:07:17.980
So there's this Chinese writer, Chixin Liu is his name.
link |
01:07:21.480
I might not pronounce it exactly right, C I X I N L I U.
link |
01:07:26.320
Chixin Liu, he has a trilogy of The Three Body Problem,
link |
01:07:31.600
The Dark Forest, and Death's End.
link |
01:07:35.840
Those are the three books of Chixin Liu's trilogy
link |
01:07:38.800
about how Trisolaris, which is another star system
link |
01:07:42.920
within a few light years of the solar system,
link |
01:07:46.560
and Earth get into a conflict.
link |
01:07:49.500
And when the Trisolaris come down to dominate Earth,
link |
01:07:55.480
suddenly all of these differences between the Chinese
link |
01:07:59.420
and the North Americans and the Europeans
link |
01:08:02.440
and the Africans and the South Asians
link |
01:08:05.720
become kind of insignificant because after all,
link |
01:08:08.160
the Trisolaris with their advanced civilization
link |
01:08:11.320
whose star system is dying,
link |
01:08:14.120
have their eyes on the solar system,
link |
01:08:15.940
which has a planet, the third rock from the sun
link |
01:08:18.040
that is pretty habitable and the difference between us
link |
01:08:21.560
become pretty insignificant.
link |
01:08:24.600
So we shouldn't need for an invasion
link |
01:08:29.140
by extraterrestrial beings to have to happen
link |
01:08:34.580
before we would recognize the common humanity
link |
01:08:38.160
that we all share that is profound and is deep.
link |
01:08:43.120
We all descend in effect from the same ancestral population
link |
01:08:47.360
of Homo sapiens who walked out of East Africa eons ago
link |
01:08:52.200
and have survived amongst all of the different possible
link |
01:08:56.880
variations of species and whatnot,
link |
01:08:58.960
of humanoid population, the Homo sapiens have flourished,
link |
01:09:02.680
the others have died out and here we are
link |
01:09:05.720
and we can just look at the genetic endowments
link |
01:09:09.160
that characterize our biological essence
link |
01:09:12.580
and we can see that we are quote unquote
link |
01:09:15.600
the same beneath the skin
link |
01:09:16.800
and yet we end up freighting so much weight
link |
01:09:21.680
onto these superficial differences.
link |
01:09:23.560
So I can see both sides of the issue is what I'm saying.
link |
01:09:27.660
I can see the argument race is an irrelevancy
link |
01:09:31.440
because at the end of the day, deep down it is.
link |
01:09:35.560
But I can also see the argument
link |
01:09:37.440
that I hold on to racial identity because A,
link |
01:09:41.580
my racial presentation colors how other people deal with me
link |
01:09:46.460
but B, because everybody needs a story.
link |
01:09:51.560
Everybody needs an account.
link |
01:09:52.600
You tell me you're Jewish.
link |
01:09:53.640
I mean, I don't know how deep that is.
link |
01:09:55.440
I don't know how genetically profound that is.
link |
01:09:57.800
I do know that it's a culturally profound identity
link |
01:10:03.600
for a lot of people based upon maybe some of the same
link |
01:10:08.160
kind of forces that I'm talking about.
link |
01:10:09.700
A, they won't let you not be Jewish.
link |
01:10:12.880
You could say you're not Jewish
link |
01:10:14.320
but when Hitler is rounding people up,
link |
01:10:16.840
what you say doesn't have a whole lot to do
link |
01:10:18.680
with what the Gestapo was about.
link |
01:10:22.120
And B, you need to tell your children a story.
link |
01:10:25.760
That's the fascinating thing about this tribalism
link |
01:10:28.360
that you spoke about that we form tribes as humans
link |
01:10:35.600
throughout human history, form tribes
link |
01:10:37.520
and have directed hate toward other tribes
link |
01:10:41.480
and sometimes violence and destruction.
link |
01:10:43.960
And yet tribalism allows you to tell a story
link |
01:10:47.920
to your children, allows you to grow a culture.
link |
01:10:51.400
There's something about defining yourself
link |
01:10:53.080
within a particular tribe that allows you
link |
01:10:55.680
to have a tradition.
link |
01:10:59.080
You have an article that you wrote
link |
01:11:02.240
called The Case for Black Patriotism.
link |
01:11:05.440
Oh yeah.
link |
01:11:08.060
So I should also say it's so interesting
link |
01:11:10.780
because for me personally, I feel, identify as,
link |
01:11:18.640
believe I am an American.
link |
01:11:21.000
And yet within the American umbrella,
link |
01:11:24.160
it feels that there's a longing for other tribes.
link |
01:11:27.120
You mentioned Jewish but what I honestly feel is,
link |
01:11:31.560
I mean a lot of it is humor and culture and so on
link |
01:11:34.440
is Russian and Ukrainian because that's where I come from.
link |
01:11:38.960
That's where my family is from.
link |
01:11:40.600
You know, there's like stereotypical things
link |
01:11:43.280
that are funny, humorous type of thing about Russians
link |
01:11:48.360
that's showing no emotion, good at chess and math,
link |
01:11:53.720
into wrestling, drinking vodka.
link |
01:11:57.040
I mean, there's literally every single stereotype.
link |
01:11:59.640
I'm in the embodiment of that.
link |
01:12:01.400
So there's a, you celebrate that in certain kinds of ways.
link |
01:12:04.200
There's a tradition there within the American umbrella
link |
01:12:07.240
and some of it is humor, some of it is little quirks
link |
01:12:12.560
of culture but now with the war in Russia and Ukraine,
link |
01:12:15.120
interestingly enough, even that little thing,
link |
01:12:18.560
it becomes also a source of negative tribalism.
link |
01:12:22.960
But anyway, that context aside, what is black patriotism
link |
01:12:29.760
and why do you feel?
link |
01:12:31.760
I mean, I'm speaking in an article called
link |
01:12:35.120
The Case for Black Patriotism in a Particular Context
link |
01:12:40.940
and what I'm saying basically is very simple.
link |
01:12:45.440
I'm saying we are African Americans
link |
01:12:49.240
and the emphasis should be on the American.
link |
01:12:54.080
I actually don't even much care
link |
01:12:56.280
for the framing African American
link |
01:13:00.560
but I'm not gonna fight with people about it.
link |
01:13:02.900
It's, I don't think it's worth fighting about.
link |
01:13:05.880
That's not how, I would just say we're Americans
link |
01:13:08.440
or if you want, we're black Americans.
link |
01:13:11.080
We're certainly not African.
link |
01:13:13.720
That is the African American population
link |
01:13:16.400
is a population of people who come into existence
link |
01:13:20.700
here in North America through the cauldron of slavery.
link |
01:13:26.040
There are also immigrants, immigrants from East Africa,
link |
01:13:28.880
immigrants from West Africa, immigrants from Southern Africa,
link |
01:13:33.040
immigrants from the Caribbean who descend
link |
01:13:35.760
from an ancestral population which is African.
link |
01:13:40.800
The history of the world since 1500 is a history
link |
01:13:43.760
in which people of African descent are scattered
link |
01:13:48.040
because of slavery throughout the Western hemisphere.
link |
01:13:53.360
And so here we are.
link |
01:13:55.400
But the institution of slavery ended in 1863
link |
01:14:02.880
in the United States.
link |
01:14:06.460
The struggle that we started out talking about
link |
01:14:10.360
which gave rise to Martin Luther King giving that speech
link |
01:14:14.420
that you say is the greatest speech in American history
link |
01:14:16.880
and I'm not gonna argue with you about that,
link |
01:14:19.520
happened right here in the United States.
link |
01:14:21.520
We are, what is the United States?
link |
01:14:24.440
The United States is a nation of immigrants.
link |
01:14:27.480
The population of the North American continent
link |
01:14:30.080
was sparsely populated by an indigenous population
link |
01:14:32.840
which was destroyed in conquest by a European population
link |
01:14:40.120
that settled here in North America and appropriated the land
link |
01:14:45.120
and have built a civilization here
link |
01:14:47.560
which has been peopled by a large influx of immigrants
link |
01:14:51.440
of individuals from Europe, Irish and Italian
link |
01:14:56.520
and Greek and Slavic and Jewish, Russian Jews
link |
01:15:02.040
coming in large numbers and so on
link |
01:15:04.240
and wave after wave after wave of immigration,
link |
01:15:07.560
Asian, Latin American population of people
link |
01:15:11.000
who have come to reside here in the United States
link |
01:15:13.840
and we black Americans who descend from slaves.
link |
01:15:17.400
We African Americans who descend from slaves.
link |
01:15:20.040
So here we are.
link |
01:15:21.560
This is a great nation.
link |
01:15:23.460
I mean, this is a monumentally significant political force
link |
01:15:30.360
which is the United States of America founded in 1776, 1787
link |
01:15:37.640
fought a war of independence from the British,
link |
01:15:41.020
established a republic which is a confederation
link |
01:15:46.760
of these independent colonies
link |
01:15:48.360
which has grown into now the 50 states
link |
01:15:50.680
of the United States of America, continental nation.
link |
01:15:54.040
The richest and most powerful nation on the planet
link |
01:15:59.680
with massive influence throughout the world
link |
01:16:02.520
for good and for ill.
link |
01:16:04.880
That's who we are, I wanna say to black people.
link |
01:16:08.840
There is no other home for us.
link |
01:16:11.680
This fantasy of we being a people apart
link |
01:16:15.440
back in the day when I was coming along in the 1960s,
link |
01:16:20.080
there was something called
link |
01:16:20.920
the Republic of New Africa Movement
link |
01:16:23.800
and they wanted some states in the South
link |
01:16:26.320
given over to black people
link |
01:16:27.520
and we were gonna have our own country.
link |
01:16:31.240
And that's a joke, it's a fantasy.
link |
01:16:33.400
It's a mythic, unbalanced,
link |
01:16:37.360
the unrealistic fanciful politics.
link |
01:16:46.840
It's not a serious politics.
link |
01:16:48.200
We're Americans, we're not going anywhere here.
link |
01:16:51.880
The idea that, and I wanna say this
link |
01:16:54.560
in a number of different registers,
link |
01:16:56.860
I wanna say first of all,
link |
01:16:58.800
we need to make peace with the fact
link |
01:17:00.560
that that's who we are and that's where we are.
link |
01:17:03.300
So nobody is coming, the world court
link |
01:17:07.760
is not gonna litigate our disputes.
link |
01:17:10.160
The United Nations is not gonna set up a desk
link |
01:17:13.120
for people of African descent who reside in North America.
link |
01:17:17.300
We have to work out whatever our concerns are
link |
01:17:20.240
with our fellow Americans right here
link |
01:17:22.260
within the context of American politics.
link |
01:17:25.280
That means compromise.
link |
01:17:27.380
That means looking for a framework for political expression
link |
01:17:32.380
which is broader than our racial identity, et cetera.
link |
01:17:36.420
So I wanna say that.
link |
01:17:38.260
But I also wanna say there's no reason
link |
01:17:39.660
to apologize for this.
link |
01:17:40.860
There's something positive to affirm.
link |
01:17:42.980
I take on this question about slavery in brief,
link |
01:17:47.500
because in fact, slavery was awful and it was wrong
link |
01:17:50.620
and it was on the backs of the enslaved Africans
link |
01:17:53.900
and it had consequences that have endured
link |
01:17:58.140
long after the termination of the thing.
link |
01:18:00.060
But I also wanna say, look at what has happened
link |
01:18:03.020
in the last 150 years for African Americans.
link |
01:18:07.040
And I wanna say, look at the vitality
link |
01:18:10.660
of the institutions here in the United States of America,
link |
01:18:13.900
of the Democratic Republic of the United States of America.
link |
01:18:18.740
Again, not perfect, which are malleable enough,
link |
01:18:22.580
these institutions to allow for the transformation
link |
01:18:26.860
of the status of African Americans
link |
01:18:28.420
such as has occurred since the end of slavery.
link |
01:18:33.140
And I wanna say there's a lot to celebrate in that.
link |
01:18:35.980
So this is our country.
link |
01:18:39.180
We are full members of the polity.
link |
01:18:44.340
We have burdens and responsibilities
link |
01:18:48.460
as well as privileges that are associated
link |
01:18:50.780
with our membership in this Republic.
link |
01:18:52.880
That does not mean that we should not fight
link |
01:18:55.860
for what we believe to be right,
link |
01:18:57.480
although we are not one voice here, we black Americans.
link |
01:19:01.740
It does not mean that we should not protest things
link |
01:19:04.340
that we think are deserving of protest.
link |
01:19:07.260
But I wanna say, it does mean that we should not reject
link |
01:19:11.500
the framework that we're operating in
link |
01:19:14.620
because we basically don't have any alternative.
link |
01:19:17.340
And because when viewed in full context,
link |
01:19:20.720
a noble and profoundly significant achievement,
link |
01:19:25.060
the United States of America and a beacon
link |
01:19:28.300
to the rest of the world, I don't wanna go off
link |
01:19:30.740
in some starry eyed kind of jingoistic celebration
link |
01:19:34.700
of America as the greatest civilization, et cetera, et cetera.
link |
01:19:38.180
But this great nation is our nation.
link |
01:19:44.900
And I think we do best by beginning,
link |
01:19:47.740
we black Americans do best by beginning,
link |
01:19:49.780
this is my argument in the piece,
link |
01:19:51.520
by beginning from a framework which accepts that fact
link |
01:19:56.900
and then builds on it.
link |
01:20:00.260
So black patriotism is, if not exactly the same,
link |
01:20:07.300
rhymes, echoes American patriotism.
link |
01:20:12.180
So a black American is first and foremost an American.
link |
01:20:16.020
Yeah, a black American is first and foremost an American
link |
01:20:20.180
and it's a good thing too.
link |
01:20:24.500
Let me return to the question of Dr. King
link |
01:20:30.180
and another powerful, impactful individual, Malcolm X,
link |
01:20:35.820
to ask you the question.
link |
01:20:37.820
Well, first, people often perhaps inaccurately portray them
link |
01:20:43.540
as representing two different ideals, approaches
link |
01:20:48.540
to the fight for civil rights.
link |
01:20:52.020
So Martin Luther King for the nonviolent approach,
link |
01:20:56.320
the peacemaker, and Malcolm X is the by any means necessary.
link |
01:21:03.480
What do you think about this distinction?
link |
01:21:05.300
And broadly speaking, in black patriotism,
link |
01:21:08.420
in the future of black Americans in the 21st century,
link |
01:21:12.560
what is the role of anger?
link |
01:21:15.060
What is the role of protest?
link |
01:21:18.260
Even violence encompasses a lot of things,
link |
01:21:22.140
but just aggression and the fuck the man,
link |
01:21:26.740
we're going to have to make change, force change.
link |
01:21:31.720
Okay, I think you put your finger on something
link |
01:21:33.880
really important in the context of,
link |
01:21:35.740
we were just discussing my black patriotism essay.
link |
01:21:41.380
It's not the only story.
link |
01:21:44.720
There is another story and Malcolm X is someone
link |
01:21:47.940
you identify and his memory lives on
link |
01:21:52.580
and is powerfully influential.
link |
01:21:55.620
And I think you see it in Black Lives Matter,
link |
01:21:58.460
and I think you see it in the protest and rioting
link |
01:22:01.960
and so forth that has broken out periodically
link |
01:22:04.900
going all the way back to the 1960s and before,
link |
01:22:07.020
but especially since the 1960s.
link |
01:22:11.860
You saw it in Los Angeles in 1992,
link |
01:22:14.600
the Rodney King civil disturbances
link |
01:22:16.580
that broke out there and the balled up fist,
link |
01:22:21.400
the radical afrocentric rejection
link |
01:22:27.660
of the American story that Martin Luther King,
link |
01:22:31.700
he believed in.
link |
01:22:32.540
He believed in a magnificent promissory note.
link |
01:22:35.300
And a lot of people are rolling their eyes
link |
01:22:37.900
and saying, as you say,
link |
01:22:39.620
fuck the man, magnificent promissory note.
link |
01:22:43.180
I mean, just get your knee off my neck.
link |
01:22:46.100
That's what you can do for me.
link |
01:22:47.220
Don't ask me to believe in your BS
link |
01:22:49.260
about some magnificent promissory note,
link |
01:22:51.220
some founding fathers who were all slave owners anyway.
link |
01:22:54.660
I mean, just get your knee off my neck.
link |
01:22:57.780
Now, I can relate to that.
link |
01:23:00.700
As I mentioned, I grew up in Chicago in the 1950s
link |
01:23:05.060
and the 1960s.
link |
01:23:06.220
I remember Malcolm X, I mean, literally in real time.
link |
01:23:10.160
I remember when he was murdered in 1965
link |
01:23:14.300
in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem,
link |
01:23:18.100
in Manhattan, in New York City.
link |
01:23:23.220
I remember my uncle, I was raised in a house
link |
01:23:26.300
where my aunt and uncle were the master of the house.
link |
01:23:29.820
And my mother and my sister and I lived
link |
01:23:31.660
in a small apartment upstairs in the back
link |
01:23:35.240
of this big house that my successful aunt and uncle owned.
link |
01:23:40.960
And my uncle was a small businessman,
link |
01:23:42.660
a barber and a tradesman.
link |
01:23:46.020
He was a hustler.
link |
01:23:47.580
I mean, legally, he did what he had to do to make money.
link |
01:23:50.500
He was a very enterprising, not especially well educated,
link |
01:23:53.840
but a very intelligent and disciplined
link |
01:23:58.540
and resourceful provider for his family,
link |
01:24:01.640
which included myself, my sister,
link |
01:24:04.500
and my mother in their household.
link |
01:24:07.060
And we called him Uncle Mooney
link |
01:24:08.500
because he had moon shaped eyes
link |
01:24:10.940
that protruded and were round.
link |
01:24:12.380
Uncle Mooney, James Ellis was his name.
link |
01:24:16.980
Uncle Mooney, James Ellis Lee was my Uncle Mooney.
link |
01:24:21.720
But I'm saying all that to say this.
link |
01:24:24.380
He admired the nation of Islam.
link |
01:24:27.060
I mean, King and Malcolm X,
link |
01:24:29.900
Martin King and Malcolm X differed
link |
01:24:31.660
along a number of different dimensions.
link |
01:24:33.040
Malcolm X was a Muslim.
link |
01:24:35.380
And Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister.
link |
01:24:39.340
My Uncle Mooney didn't have any time
link |
01:24:41.940
for these Christian ministers.
link |
01:24:44.140
He thought that was the white man's religion.
link |
01:24:47.780
And back in that day, you'd go into a black church
link |
01:24:50.700
and you'd see a portrait of Jesus
link |
01:24:53.340
and he'd be blonde hair, blue eyed.
link |
01:24:57.300
He didn't even look like a Mediterranean.
link |
01:25:00.620
I mean, he didn't look like somebody who came from Palestine.
link |
01:25:03.620
I mean, he looked like somebody who came
link |
01:25:05.660
from Northern Europe or something like that,
link |
01:25:07.180
the picture of Jesus.
link |
01:25:08.020
And my Uncle Mooney rejected that whole thing.
link |
01:25:11.020
He would be damned if he was gonna bend his knee
link |
01:25:13.980
to some white Jesus.
link |
01:25:17.700
But he was not a Muslim either.
link |
01:25:19.640
But he respected the Muslims.
link |
01:25:22.060
He brought home their newspaper.
link |
01:25:24.060
It was called Muhammad Speaks.
link |
01:25:25.500
This is the nation of Islam,
link |
01:25:28.100
which is the black Muslim movement
link |
01:25:30.720
founded in American cities in Detroit and then Chicago,
link |
01:25:36.320
going back to the early middle 20th century
link |
01:25:40.380
and growing into a very significant movement
link |
01:25:43.800
that had a lot of influence,
link |
01:25:44.980
Louis Farrakhan and controversial figure
link |
01:25:48.700
descends from this movement.
link |
01:25:50.020
It has fractured now
link |
01:25:53.180
and has the major part of the legacy of the black Muslims
link |
01:25:59.940
has assimilated itself into Islam proper.
link |
01:26:04.220
Malcolm X made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina
link |
01:26:08.780
and came back with a very different vision
link |
01:26:11.220
about what it meant to be a Muslim
link |
01:26:12.880
and understood himself to be a part of the large tradition
link |
01:26:16.700
and religious culture of Islam that has a global reach.
link |
01:26:20.600
And he had a different vision when he came back from that.
link |
01:26:23.940
Some people say that's why he was killed and so on.
link |
01:26:27.300
I don't know.
link |
01:26:28.500
I certainly find that to be plausible
link |
01:26:30.340
that he became the constituted threat to the sect,
link |
01:26:34.220
which was the black Muslims
link |
01:26:36.740
and had to be dealt with.
link |
01:26:40.420
I don't know if we'll ever know the full story on that.
link |
01:26:43.300
But anyway, what I'm trying to say is
link |
01:26:45.620
the black Muslims were there, Malcolm X was there.
link |
01:26:47.780
And in my experience,
link |
01:26:51.140
they constituted a counterpoint to the position of king,
link |
01:26:55.780
which depended on a kind of respect
link |
01:26:59.660
for the best of the tradition of American democracy,
link |
01:27:04.660
appealing to the better nature of our oppressors,
link |
01:27:09.100
live up to the full meaning of our creed.
link |
01:27:12.420
I mean, these are words that he would use.
link |
01:27:14.660
A magnificent promissory note is what he would think of
link |
01:27:18.220
as the declaration of independence
link |
01:27:20.020
and the legacy of Abraham Lincoln,
link |
01:27:23.220
a unfulfilled ideal.
link |
01:27:25.660
And the black Muslims were like, fuck that.
link |
01:27:30.660
We're gonna take care of our own.
link |
01:27:32.460
We're gonna build our own schools.
link |
01:27:35.780
We're gonna build our own businesses.
link |
01:27:37.860
We're not waiting for the white man to do anything.
link |
01:27:41.140
Get your knee off my neck and get out of my way
link |
01:27:43.140
and let me take care of my own.
link |
01:27:44.980
And my uncle respected that.
link |
01:27:46.300
He respected the straight back,
link |
01:27:48.740
the stand up straight with your shoulders back.
link |
01:27:51.220
That's a Jordan Peterson.
link |
01:27:52.060
But I mean, that was way before Jordan Peterson,
link |
01:27:54.820
but that was his philosophy.
link |
01:27:56.140
Stand up straight, but just raise your children.
link |
01:27:58.980
Don't be depending upon welfare.
link |
01:28:01.060
You're taking welfare from the white man.
link |
01:28:03.740
You need to get busy.
link |
01:28:04.740
You need to educate yourself.
link |
01:28:06.380
You need to clean up your act.
link |
01:28:07.500
Put down the fried chicken because it's gonna kill you.
link |
01:28:11.180
My uncle Mooney loved this book that Elijah Muhammad,
link |
01:28:16.180
they called him the honorable Elijah Muhammad,
link |
01:28:19.100
who was the founder and the leader of the nation of Islam.
link |
01:28:22.220
He had a book and all the book said was,
link |
01:28:25.660
be smart, eat green vegetables, don't eat fried food.
link |
01:28:29.620
Don't eat pork.
link |
01:28:32.620
They're Muslims.
link |
01:28:33.780
Don't eat pork and take responsibility for your diet
link |
01:28:38.380
and be healthy.
link |
01:28:39.820
And don't be putting a whole lot of pills into your body.
link |
01:28:43.420
You don't need to do that
link |
01:28:44.300
if you just get control of your diet
link |
01:28:45.940
and you eat properly.
link |
01:28:47.820
My uncle loves this idea of responsibility for self
link |
01:28:53.660
and a determination to build.
link |
01:28:56.500
He respected that in the Muslims,
link |
01:29:00.060
even if he didn't buy the religious part of it.
link |
01:29:03.740
And so, and by the way, when my uncle died in 1983,
link |
01:29:13.220
he left me a bequest.
link |
01:29:16.180
It wasn't money, unfortunately.
link |
01:29:18.940
It was his complete collection
link |
01:29:21.700
of the recorded speeches of Malcolm X.
link |
01:29:26.700
And I have these albums.
link |
01:29:28.220
These are 33 and a third LPs.
link |
01:29:30.180
There's six of them.
link |
01:29:32.580
And I have a complete collection,
link |
01:29:34.700
as best as my uncle could assemble,
link |
01:29:36.140
of the recorded speeches of Malcolm X.
link |
01:29:37.580
Now, why did he do that?
link |
01:29:39.220
He did that because he did not want me to forget.
link |
01:29:42.300
Don't be dependent upon the white man.
link |
01:29:43.940
Build your own.
link |
01:29:45.580
Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
link |
01:29:48.060
Proud black man, take care of your business.
link |
01:29:51.540
Take care of your children.
link |
01:29:53.540
Pick up the trash in front of your house.
link |
01:29:56.380
Get busy.
link |
01:29:58.860
This was this philosophy.
link |
01:30:02.260
So violence now, that's another story.
link |
01:30:05.620
I mean, Malcolm X would say,
link |
01:30:08.500
we're gonna defend ourselves.
link |
01:30:09.820
You're gonna mess with us,
link |
01:30:11.380
you racist Ku Klux Klan or whatever.
link |
01:30:14.300
We're gonna arm ourselves and we're gonna fight you back.
link |
01:30:17.500
You racist police who are oppressing
link |
01:30:22.020
and persecuting and abusing our people,
link |
01:30:24.620
well, you better be ready
link |
01:30:27.060
because we're gonna fight you back.
link |
01:30:29.820
And that too was the spirit that my uncle,
link |
01:30:33.380
that was a kind of attitude, a kind of posture.
link |
01:30:36.140
My uncle was not a radical.
link |
01:30:37.300
He was a businessman, but he respected this idea.
link |
01:30:41.820
You take your life in your own hands when you mess with us
link |
01:30:45.940
because we're prepared to defend ourselves.
link |
01:30:48.500
So that blood runs in you too.
link |
01:30:50.300
That thread is, when you write about black patriotism,
link |
01:30:53.500
that thread is there too.
link |
01:30:55.420
It's like you embody both the ideal that we're all American,
link |
01:31:00.900
but also that there is this oppressive history.
link |
01:31:05.420
There is the powerful that are manipulating you,
link |
01:31:10.420
that are oppressing you, and you can't just wait around
link |
01:31:16.300
for things to fix themselves.
link |
01:31:18.420
You have to take action.
link |
01:31:20.940
You have to take things into your own hands.
link |
01:31:22.820
And sometimes that means being angry.
link |
01:31:24.660
Sometimes that means being violent.
link |
01:31:26.820
That's there too.
link |
01:31:28.940
Yeah, it's there, but here, and the but is,
link |
01:31:34.260
I don't, me today, Glenn Loury in 2022,
link |
01:31:37.580
think that that is the answer.
link |
01:31:40.460
I don't think that violent rebellion gets us anywhere
link |
01:31:45.260
at the end of the day.
link |
01:31:46.700
I think we're past that.
link |
01:31:49.900
There aren't Knight Rider, Ku Klux Klan,
link |
01:31:52.860
people breaking down your door and dragging you away.
link |
01:31:55.740
There are not nooses thrown over a tree limb
link |
01:32:01.980
where you hang somebody from the tree
link |
01:32:03.580
because they whistled at a white woman
link |
01:32:05.420
or they got too much property in your community
link |
01:32:07.980
and you became, they were uppity Negroes
link |
01:32:10.260
and whatnot like that.
link |
01:32:11.100
That is a thing of the past in America
link |
01:32:14.860
that the situation is no longer the one
link |
01:32:19.380
that requires that kind of violent reaction
link |
01:32:23.140
and that there is, if we look at the net effect
link |
01:32:27.660
of the so called rebellions in American cities,
link |
01:32:33.220
they're negative.
link |
01:32:34.860
The George Floyd protests, which became violent
link |
01:32:40.620
and arsonists in the aftermath of civil disturbance
link |
01:32:44.180
and whatnot in the summer of 2020,
link |
01:32:47.100
I think set back the program for African Americans.
link |
01:32:50.940
I don't think it advanced it.
link |
01:32:53.700
I think there are things to be concerned about,
link |
01:32:56.980
schools that are not working,
link |
01:32:59.180
police that are not respecting citizens and so forth.
link |
01:33:02.620
But I think that those are things
link |
01:33:04.980
that affect white Americans as well
link |
01:33:07.660
and that the way to ultimately correct those things
link |
01:33:13.700
is to make alliance and associate oneself
link |
01:33:19.860
with Americans who are concerned to change these things.
link |
01:33:23.300
And I don't think it's properly framed
link |
01:33:25.820
as a racial problem.
link |
01:33:29.020
I certainly don't think that violent rebellion
link |
01:33:36.780
gets us anywhere.
link |
01:33:39.260
I get the historical salience of that posture
link |
01:33:45.060
and it made a lot of sense
link |
01:33:47.180
in the early and the mid 20th century.
link |
01:33:49.980
I don't think it makes very much sense at all
link |
01:33:51.780
in the early 21st century.
link |
01:33:55.100
Well, thank you for allowing me for a brief moment
link |
01:33:57.620
to try to channel your Uncle Mooney
link |
01:33:59.860
and maybe Malcolm X in this conversation
link |
01:34:02.300
as we look forward to the 21st century.
link |
01:34:05.300
You mentioned that in part,
link |
01:34:09.380
you're troubled by the term African American.
link |
01:34:13.020
So words are funny things until they're not.
link |
01:34:18.020
So let me ask you about what I think
link |
01:34:20.860
is one of the most powerful and controversial words
link |
01:34:22.900
in the English language, the N word.
link |
01:34:25.580
So this is a word that I can't say
link |
01:34:31.780
that only certain people have the right to say.
link |
01:34:34.860
I have a friend, Joe Rogan, who has,
link |
01:34:40.900
what would you say, there was mass pushback
link |
01:34:43.980
or highlighting of the fact that he didn't just say N word
link |
01:34:48.180
but said the full word many times
link |
01:34:51.980
throughout his conversations
link |
01:34:53.740
when referring to, in a meta way,
link |
01:34:58.340
about the power of words,
link |
01:35:00.540
especially when related to certain comedians
link |
01:35:03.460
using those words.
link |
01:35:06.420
Yeah.
link |
01:35:07.260
What do you think about this word?
link |
01:35:10.380
Is it empowering?
link |
01:35:12.700
Is it destructive?
link |
01:35:16.660
What is it?
link |
01:35:17.580
What does it mean for race in America?
link |
01:35:20.700
What does it mean that people like Joe Rogan
link |
01:35:24.500
were essentially, there's an attack to cancel him
link |
01:35:29.740
for using the word?
link |
01:35:31.180
Just as a scholar of human nature,
link |
01:35:33.820
what do you think about this whole thing?
link |
01:35:36.140
This is a phenomenon that interests me.
link |
01:35:39.140
Okay.
link |
01:35:40.580
The N word, nigger, I can say it because I'm black.
link |
01:35:44.860
But I mean, I can also say it because I like hip hop.
link |
01:35:48.060
And when I listen to hip hop, I hear the word all the time.
link |
01:35:50.540
These niggas ain't, you know,
link |
01:35:52.420
you better watch out for these, et cetera.
link |
01:35:55.620
I heard the word constantly as I was growing up
link |
01:35:59.020
as a boy and a young man in Chicago.
link |
01:36:01.700
Niggas ain't shit.
link |
01:36:03.340
That was said.
link |
01:36:04.780
That was, you know,
link |
01:36:06.420
and that could be a reflection of some kind of pathology
link |
01:36:10.380
within the African American community of self hatred
link |
01:36:13.060
and so forth.
link |
01:36:14.140
It could be, or it could just be a colloquial linguistic way.
link |
01:36:18.340
I mean, I assume other groups also have their various,
link |
01:36:23.220
I don't know how the Irish talk about their Irish brothers
link |
01:36:26.500
and, you know, whatever.
link |
01:36:27.740
And I don't know how the Jews talk about
link |
01:36:30.660
the Jewish brothers and whatever.
link |
01:36:33.260
But black people, when talking about other black people
link |
01:36:35.820
use the N word all the time.
link |
01:36:40.420
My nigger, N I G G A, you know, my nigger.
link |
01:36:45.220
That is a term of endearment.
link |
01:36:49.220
My friend, Randall Kennedy,
link |
01:36:52.740
the law professor at Harvard University
link |
01:36:55.220
has a book called Nigger.
link |
01:36:57.460
And he uses the word in the title of the book,
link |
01:37:00.260
the history of a strange history of a provocative word.
link |
01:37:04.860
At some point there's a subtitle,
link |
01:37:06.060
but the title of the book is N I G G E R colon.
link |
01:37:11.060
And then he has a subtitle.
link |
01:37:15.460
I think, of course, the use of the word as a slur
link |
01:37:20.380
and an insult, which is a part of the history
link |
01:37:26.100
of black people in the United States,
link |
01:37:27.860
the use of the word by the Southern racist segregationist,
link |
01:37:31.820
we don't want no niggers up in here.
link |
01:37:33.340
Yall, you know, niggers have no place in my restaurant,
link |
01:37:36.100
in my store, et cetera.
link |
01:37:37.940
That's meant to be an insult.
link |
01:37:40.140
It's an insult to people.
link |
01:37:41.260
It's a fighting word.
link |
01:37:42.180
It's a way that you say that to somebody.
link |
01:37:44.940
It's a invitation for conflict.
link |
01:37:49.020
That said, what is it that about this particular word
link |
01:37:52.820
and also the asymmetry of it,
link |
01:37:55.180
that do you think it's empowering
link |
01:37:57.500
to the black community to own a word?
link |
01:38:04.060
My honest answer to you is I don't know.
link |
01:38:06.020
I don't fully understand it.
link |
01:38:08.180
It has become symbolic in a way.
link |
01:38:10.860
And the policing of the use of the word,
link |
01:38:13.300
I can say it, but white people can't say it.
link |
01:38:15.380
I can say it.
link |
01:38:16.220
I'm not a racist.
link |
01:38:17.060
I'm not a self hating black.
link |
01:38:19.020
I'm just speaking the language of colloquial English
link |
01:38:24.300
that has emerged amongst African Americans
link |
01:38:26.660
in which that word plays a big role.
link |
01:38:29.140
But the prohibition on its use by others.
link |
01:38:32.060
And of course, in the Joe Rogan case,
link |
01:38:34.660
it wasn't as if he was calling anybody an N word.
link |
01:38:38.620
He was simply pointing out that people had said stuff
link |
01:38:42.100
in which the N word was a part of what they said.
link |
01:38:44.860
Now, he did make the statement about,
link |
01:38:47.820
how did he put it?
link |
01:38:48.660
The planet of the apes,
link |
01:38:49.500
that one of the offensive things that he said,
link |
01:38:52.980
he walked into a room,
link |
01:38:53.820
there's a bunch of black guys standing around.
link |
01:38:55.220
He says, like planet of the apes.
link |
01:38:57.100
He said it's like Africa, planet of the apes.
link |
01:38:59.580
Yeah, he should have been a little bit more careful.
link |
01:39:03.060
That was an insult.
link |
01:39:05.260
That was something that if you say that
link |
01:39:11.260
and people are offended,
link |
01:39:12.100
they have a right to be offended.
link |
01:39:13.180
And if you didn't mean to offend them,
link |
01:39:14.580
you can apologize.
link |
01:39:15.420
And he did apologize.
link |
01:39:16.380
I accept his apology.
link |
01:39:17.940
Joe's okay with me as far as that goes.
link |
01:39:21.500
In fact, John McWhorter and I at the podcast that I do,
link |
01:39:25.380
The Glenn Show, had a conversation,
link |
01:39:26.940
part of which touched on the Joe Rogan phenomenon.
link |
01:39:29.300
And we concluded he didn't really do anything wrong.
link |
01:39:31.580
I mean, you can like or you can hate him or whatever,
link |
01:39:34.740
but the idea that he's a racist is kind of ridiculous.
link |
01:39:37.980
So frankly, I mean, if that's your test
link |
01:39:43.140
of what constitutes a racist, the utterance of the word,
link |
01:39:47.780
then it's kind of silly as far as I'm concerned.
link |
01:39:53.180
What do you think about the rigorous testing of people
link |
01:39:58.340
to the degree they're racist or not?
link |
01:40:00.900
The accusation of racism being a way to attack,
link |
01:40:06.500
to bully, to divide.
link |
01:40:10.740
So what are the pros and cons of that once again?
link |
01:40:13.180
Because it does reveal the assholes and the racists,
link |
01:40:16.060
but it can hurt people who are not.
link |
01:40:20.420
Well, I think we have a history here in the United States
link |
01:40:26.020
of blatant racism that goes back a long way.
link |
01:40:30.660
And that has present day echoes.
link |
01:40:33.980
So there are racists.
link |
01:40:35.860
I mean, there are people who will look and see,
link |
01:40:38.340
oh, those are black people.
link |
01:40:39.540
They're patronizing this business.
link |
01:40:40.820
I don't wanna patronize this business anymore.
link |
01:40:42.860
Who if their daughter or their son is dating somebody
link |
01:40:45.700
that is black, they will say,
link |
01:40:47.660
I really wish you wouldn't do that.
link |
01:40:48.980
I mean, why are you hanging out with those people?
link |
01:40:50.620
Don't you know who they are?
link |
01:40:52.460
There are people, there are racists, okay?
link |
01:40:54.780
There are black racists.
link |
01:40:56.420
That is black people who see somebody who's white
link |
01:40:59.580
and who then invoke a whole lot of stereotypes or whatever,
link |
01:41:03.260
or have a visceral dislike based upon nothing
link |
01:41:09.420
other than the color of the person's skin.
link |
01:41:11.060
Such people exist.
link |
01:41:12.180
Racism is a real thing, et cetera.
link |
01:41:15.020
On the other hand, I think this,
link |
01:41:18.780
throwing around the accusation of racism,
link |
01:41:22.820
a college professor is teaching a course.
link |
01:41:25.740
He says in the context of teaching the course
link |
01:41:29.060
that the underrepresentation of blacks
link |
01:41:33.860
in physics program at this university
link |
01:41:38.060
is because they score lower on the test than other groups
link |
01:41:41.900
and they're not qualified.
link |
01:41:44.340
So say the professor gives a lecture and he says,
link |
01:41:48.740
we don't have more blacks in the physics department
link |
01:41:50.660
at this university because there are not enough
link |
01:41:52.340
qualified blacks.
link |
01:41:54.180
Somebody in the classroom who hears that,
link |
01:41:57.140
a black student, objects.
link |
01:41:59.300
He's a racist, okay?
link |
01:42:03.100
That's a power move.
link |
01:42:05.460
It's a move to try to control the conversation.
link |
01:42:10.020
It's not an argument, it's an epithet.
link |
01:42:13.740
You've said that a person who has a particular idea
link |
01:42:16.540
that you don't like, maybe that idea is,
link |
01:42:18.460
I'm against affirmative action, I think it's unfair.
link |
01:42:21.220
I was just with Dorian Abbott.
link |
01:42:24.620
Dorian Abbott is a scientist at the University of Chicago
link |
01:42:30.060
who published a piece in Newsweek magazine
link |
01:42:33.860
in which he said that he thought affirmative action
link |
01:42:36.620
and racial balancing was unethical.
link |
01:42:42.540
He was invited to give a lecture at MIT,
link |
01:42:44.660
a very distinguished lecture in his field
link |
01:42:46.420
based on planetary science.
link |
01:42:49.180
I don't know exactly what it is.
link |
01:42:51.340
I'm not a scientist.
link |
01:42:53.580
But in any case, because he had said
link |
01:42:58.220
that he didn't like affirmative action
link |
01:42:59.820
and he thought affirmative action was racist,
link |
01:43:01.620
that's basically what he said.
link |
01:43:02.740
Why are we looking at people based upon their race
link |
01:43:05.140
and decide we should just do it on the merit?
link |
01:43:07.260
That was his position.
link |
01:43:08.980
Now, people protesting at the university
link |
01:43:12.220
where he was invited, MIT, saying that he's a racist
link |
01:43:15.940
because he had that opinion.
link |
01:43:17.500
He gets disinvited.
link |
01:43:19.020
Charles Murray is a popular social science writer
link |
01:43:24.980
who is famous for his book about IQ, The Bell Curve,
link |
01:43:29.700
one chapter of which chronicles the racial differences
link |
01:43:34.380
between black and white in performance
link |
01:43:37.180
on mental ability tests and speculates about the extent
link |
01:43:41.500
to which such differences may be connected
link |
01:43:43.900
with the genetic inheritance of these racially diverse people.
link |
01:43:48.180
Now, he could be wrong about everything that he's saying.
link |
01:43:52.420
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls him a white supremacist
link |
01:43:57.060
because he observes that there are racial differences
link |
01:44:02.060
in measured intellectual ability amongst Americans
link |
01:44:07.060
of different racial descent.
link |
01:44:10.660
He could be wrong.
link |
01:44:12.060
Let me stipulate that he is wrong.
link |
01:44:13.500
I mean, I don't wanna argue about whether he's right
link |
01:44:15.980
or wrong.
link |
01:44:16.820
I don't wanna argue about whether he's right
link |
01:44:18.540
or about whether he's wrong.
link |
01:44:20.460
He's addressing himself to a factual issue.
link |
01:44:24.660
And now the issue becomes instead of grappling
link |
01:44:27.780
with the factual questions at hand
link |
01:44:29.900
and demonstrating his rightness or wrongness
link |
01:44:32.140
about those questions, the issue becomes his character.
link |
01:44:35.740
He's a racist.
link |
01:44:39.260
That's, in my mind, a lot like calling him a witch.
link |
01:44:43.140
And the use of that word now, I think,
link |
01:44:48.140
has parallels to accusing people of witchcraft
link |
01:44:53.940
because they have views about substantive questions
link |
01:44:56.980
that bear on racial inequality or racial difference
link |
01:45:01.220
that a person finds unacceptable
link |
01:45:04.180
or that a person disagrees with.
link |
01:45:05.500
And you think you can shut somebody up.
link |
01:45:07.620
Crime in the cities of Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore,
link |
01:45:14.540
Philadelphia, Washington, DC is out of control,
link |
01:45:18.300
some person might say.
link |
01:45:20.020
Murder rate is high.
link |
01:45:21.620
Who's committing those crimes?
link |
01:45:22.980
They're mostly black young men who are doing the carjackings
link |
01:45:27.300
and who are doing the shootings.
link |
01:45:28.460
They're killing each other.
link |
01:45:29.740
They're making our city unlivable.
link |
01:45:32.260
Now, that's a hypothetical statement that I offer.
link |
01:45:35.940
It might be correct, it might be incorrect.
link |
01:45:39.260
It might be appropriate, it might be inappropriate.
link |
01:45:42.060
It may be true, but something that we would be better off
link |
01:45:45.540
if people didn't focus on, I don't know.
link |
01:45:49.420
Responding to someone making that statement,
link |
01:45:52.060
have you seen what has happened to my city?
link |
01:45:55.060
It used to be that you could go to North Michigan Avenue
link |
01:45:57.860
and you could find one after another
link |
01:45:59.700
after another high end shop.
link |
01:46:01.100
This is in Chicago, my hometown.
link |
01:46:03.420
And tourists would come and they'd go to the theater
link |
01:46:07.140
and there were restaurants and they'd go out.
link |
01:46:08.940
They don't do it anymore.
link |
01:46:10.180
You know what?
link |
01:46:11.020
Half of those stores are boarded up now.
link |
01:46:12.180
You know why?
link |
01:46:13.380
Because when George Floyd was killed,
link |
01:46:15.540
black people mobbed in the city and they burnt
link |
01:46:19.540
and they rioted and they looted
link |
01:46:21.180
and it hasn't been the same ever since.
link |
01:46:22.980
And I'm moving to the suburbs.
link |
01:46:24.820
I'll be damned if I'm gonna send my children
link |
01:46:26.860
to those schools.
link |
01:46:27.700
A person could say that.
link |
01:46:29.300
They might be right, they might be wrong to say it.
link |
01:46:31.380
They might be right, they might be wrong to say it.
link |
01:46:33.420
Calling them a racist is exactly not
link |
01:46:37.020
a rebuttal of what they said.
link |
01:46:38.940
It's a move.
link |
01:46:39.860
It's a move to try to take control of the conversation
link |
01:46:43.460
by accusing someone of having bad character
link |
01:46:45.700
because they said something that made you uncomfortable,
link |
01:46:48.180
which you can't deal with.
link |
01:46:49.540
So you think you can shut them up by calling them a racist.
link |
01:46:52.740
You might as well be calling them a witch.
link |
01:46:55.020
You might as well be calling for their head on a platter
link |
01:46:57.060
because they believe that Satan is Lord
link |
01:47:00.100
because that's the kind of quote argument, close quote,
link |
01:47:04.420
which is precisely not an argument
link |
01:47:07.380
that people who invoke that term are using.
link |
01:47:09.780
And here's what I have to say about that.
link |
01:47:12.140
It's a fool's errand to try to refute somebody
link |
01:47:17.140
by calling them a witch.
link |
01:47:18.540
Likewise, it's a fool's errand to try to rebut
link |
01:47:23.140
the contrary forces in American politics
link |
01:47:26.220
that are a reaction often to real things
link |
01:47:29.340
that are going on on the ground in black communities
link |
01:47:31.500
in the cities across this country
link |
01:47:33.420
by calling people a racist.
link |
01:47:35.380
You may shut them up, but you won't change their minds.
link |
01:47:39.180
And you know what?
link |
01:47:40.020
At the end of the day, they're gonna go to the ballot box
link |
01:47:41.740
and they're gonna vote.
link |
01:47:43.060
They're gonna pick up their store
link |
01:47:45.420
and they're gonna move it to the other side of town
link |
01:47:47.580
or to another town altogether.
link |
01:47:49.700
They're gonna keep their children away
link |
01:47:51.940
from places where they think the influences
link |
01:47:53.820
are harmful to those children.
link |
01:47:55.940
They may not even talk about it in public.
link |
01:47:58.580
You can believe that in private
link |
01:48:00.100
that they're talking about it with each other.
link |
01:48:02.460
You had better find a more effective way
link |
01:48:05.340
of dealing with the conflicts in this country
link |
01:48:07.540
that fall along racial fault lines
link |
01:48:09.780
than calling people witches,
link |
01:48:11.620
which is what this, you know, anti racist,
link |
01:48:15.940
you're a racist because you think
link |
01:48:17.340
that the out of wedlock birth rate amongst black Americans
link |
01:48:20.220
is seven babies out of 10 are born
link |
01:48:21.900
to a woman without a husband.
link |
01:48:23.620
Their families are falling apart.
link |
01:48:25.180
Now, no one says that in public
link |
01:48:26.380
because they'd be called a racist
link |
01:48:27.740
if they said it in public.
link |
01:48:29.020
But as a matter of fact, the families are falling apart.
link |
01:48:32.380
You didn't change that in the least
link |
01:48:33.820
by telling people to shut up about it.
link |
01:48:35.900
Daniel Patrick Moynihan is called a racist
link |
01:48:38.220
in the 1960s, the late Senator,
link |
01:48:40.660
the New York Senator who was a federal employee
link |
01:48:43.900
and an intellectual writing reports
link |
01:48:45.580
and he writes a report about the Negro family,
link |
01:48:47.500
he called it in those years.
link |
01:48:48.980
If I use the word Negro,
link |
01:48:50.100
now they're gonna call me a racist if I'm a white person.
link |
01:48:52.220
I can't even use the word Negro,
link |
01:48:54.180
which is a historically legitimate reference
link |
01:48:57.580
to the descendants of the enslaved people,
link |
01:49:01.740
which we were as black Americans proud to use until yesterday.
link |
01:49:06.580
So all of this linguistic policing is a sign of weakness.
link |
01:49:12.060
It's false black power.
link |
01:49:15.500
People will seed you the ground.
link |
01:49:17.140
Okay, you don't want me to use that word?
link |
01:49:18.380
I won't use that word anymore.
link |
01:49:19.380
Okay, you don't want me to talk about that in public?
link |
01:49:21.260
All right, I won't talk about it in public anymore.
link |
01:49:23.580
I don't wanna be called a racist, okay?
link |
01:49:25.020
So I won't express my opinion.
link |
01:49:26.780
You haven't changed anybody's mind.
link |
01:49:31.100
And you've also mentioned that for that,
link |
01:49:34.460
you haven't changed anybody's mind,
link |
01:49:35.940
but also for things like in universities and institutions,
link |
01:49:40.180
there's a diversity inclusion
link |
01:49:42.900
and equity kind of meetings and education and so on.
link |
01:49:46.660
And I believe I read somewhere,
link |
01:49:48.460
I've been, like I mentioned to you offline,
link |
01:49:50.940
big fan of your Glenn show, people should listen to it.
link |
01:49:55.020
It's amazing.
link |
01:49:56.820
There's also just interviews of you that I've listened to.
link |
01:49:59.620
I believe you mentioned somewhere
link |
01:50:00.660
that even those kinds of meetings,
link |
01:50:02.580
people might sit through and nod along,
link |
01:50:05.780
but that doesn't necessarily mean that's making progress,
link |
01:50:09.620
that they may actually be bottling up a frustration.
link |
01:50:15.460
The fear is that that's going to result
link |
01:50:17.540
in a pendulum sort of push back towards this idea
link |
01:50:22.540
of forced appreciations, like forced anti racism kind of thing.
link |
01:50:31.020
I talk about this often in my podcast,
link |
01:50:32.780
that's the Glenn show, you can find the Glenn show
link |
01:50:36.100
on my YouTube channel and also at Substack.
link |
01:50:39.860
Yeah, you have a great Substack.
link |
01:50:41.540
You and your friend do Q and As
link |
01:50:43.660
and all that kind of stuff on Patreon.
link |
01:50:45.700
Yeah.
link |
01:50:46.540
So yeah, so people should definitely follow you.
link |
01:50:48.300
It's a brilliant conversation.
link |
01:50:49.540
Check us out.
link |
01:50:50.380
But yeah, I mean, one concern is that the policing,
link |
01:50:56.780
the superficial policing,
link |
01:50:58.340
this is a part of political correctness,
link |
01:51:00.140
the insistence that you only use certain words,
link |
01:51:02.260
that you only talk in a certain way,
link |
01:51:03.940
is a phony kind of power
link |
01:51:06.460
because it doesn't actually persuade people
link |
01:51:08.220
about the issues that are at hand.
link |
01:51:10.300
Instead, it forces them underground
link |
01:51:12.900
in their talk about these issues,
link |
01:51:15.020
and that's problematic.
link |
01:51:18.740
Much better that we have overt and explicit
link |
01:51:22.980
and honest disagreement
link |
01:51:25.420
to the extent that there are disagreement
link |
01:51:27.820
about things that are going on
link |
01:51:29.700
than that we have a superficial kind of conversation
link |
01:51:37.900
that is purged of any real biting,
link |
01:51:44.660
discomforting confrontation with the realities
link |
01:51:48.220
of the situation at hand.
link |
01:51:49.500
And for black Americans,
link |
01:51:50.540
I think one big part of the reality
link |
01:51:52.340
of the situation at hand is violent crime, violent crime.
link |
01:51:57.980
A police officer is afraid when he stops the car
link |
01:52:00.780
because it's an 18 year old driver in the vehicle.
link |
01:52:03.780
He's got dreadlocks.
link |
01:52:05.100
He's a black person.
link |
01:52:06.380
The car doesn't have the right license plate.
link |
01:52:08.900
He's afraid to deal with that person.
link |
01:52:11.900
And one of the reasons he's afraid to deal with them
link |
01:52:13.500
is because a few who look like him are behaving violently.
link |
01:52:17.860
Their violence is usually perpetrated
link |
01:52:20.020
against others who look like themselves, but not always.
link |
01:52:23.540
And that reality doesn't get changed
link |
01:52:27.460
by telling a newspaper writer who writes about it
link |
01:52:32.540
that they are racist or enforcing within a newsroom.
link |
01:52:36.340
You can't cover that story in that way
link |
01:52:38.380
because to do so would be racist.
link |
01:52:41.460
I think it's a monumental mistake
link |
01:52:45.820
to enforce a closure on public discussion
link |
01:52:52.060
based upon a calculation that if we allow people,
link |
01:52:55.940
if Twitter allows this kind of post,
link |
01:52:58.780
if the Washington Post runs this kind of story, et cetera,
link |
01:53:03.740
you end up with a superficial politeness,
link |
01:53:08.740
a superficial politeness,
link |
01:53:12.700
but a subterranean seething resentment
link |
01:53:17.420
that only makes matters worse.
link |
01:53:21.220
If I can get your comment, maybe you have ideas
link |
01:53:24.500
because it does seem that this kind of attack works
link |
01:53:28.500
of being called a racist, being called, maybe not sexist,
link |
01:53:38.980
but somebody, like we're going through a Johnny Depp trial
link |
01:53:42.860
now, right?
link |
01:53:44.260
It's a defamation trial, and the reason it's a defamation
link |
01:53:47.420
trial is because all it took is a single accusation
link |
01:53:50.740
of Johnny Depp being somebody who sexually
link |
01:53:54.340
and physically abused Amber Heard.
link |
01:53:56.660
And all it took is just a single article.
link |
01:53:59.500
No proof was given except the accusation itself,
link |
01:54:04.780
and the world believed it.
link |
01:54:06.780
So it's effective.
link |
01:54:09.580
So how do you fight back if it's so damn effective
link |
01:54:13.180
that you can just call anybody racist?
link |
01:54:15.380
And it works.
link |
01:54:16.980
It's hard to wash off.
link |
01:54:18.300
It's, you're not proven in the court of law
link |
01:54:27.660
or anything like that, but we get those articles,
link |
01:54:32.060
we get that label, and then the world moves on
link |
01:54:35.020
and just assumes that person is racist.
link |
01:54:37.340
So how do you, do you have any ideas how to fight back?
link |
01:54:41.060
No, I don't, frankly.
link |
01:54:43.820
Just highlighting the fact.
link |
01:54:44.660
Listen, Roseanne Barr, who made this statement
link |
01:54:46.780
about Valerie Jarrett, she made some kind of ape
link |
01:54:49.500
like reference to the whatever, and her show
link |
01:54:51.660
got canceled, and she's a racist.
link |
01:54:54.780
So first of all, pointing it out, I suppose,
link |
01:54:56.940
is one of the most powerful things that this,
link |
01:54:59.460
the hypocrisy of it, the.
link |
01:55:04.220
You say it works, I guess you're right.
link |
01:55:06.780
It used to be that calling someone a communist worked.
link |
01:55:09.980
I mean, going back to the late 40s, early 50s,
link |
01:55:13.900
Red Scare, McCarthyism, and whatnot,
link |
01:55:18.060
and the person might've belonged to a club
link |
01:55:21.900
that was pro Soviet Union in the 1930s
link |
01:55:24.780
when they were in college.
link |
01:55:25.940
They might've voted for the socialist candidate,
link |
01:55:28.180
Henry Wallace, in the presidential election of 1948.
link |
01:55:31.980
They might belong to the Communist Party.
link |
01:55:33.940
They might think Karl Marx was right about a whole lot
link |
01:55:37.300
of stuff about capitalism and whatnot,
link |
01:55:39.580
and they got called a communist or a Marxist,
link |
01:55:42.380
and it could've ruined their career,
link |
01:55:43.940
could've ruined their lives.
link |
01:55:47.580
And a lot of people shut up about it,
link |
01:55:49.620
and it took, and it went on for a long time.
link |
01:55:53.220
And in a way, it kind of still is going on.
link |
01:55:56.900
I mean, you call somebody a Marxist,
link |
01:55:58.700
if you can make that stick, they're certainly not gonna
link |
01:56:01.340
get elected president of the United States.
link |
01:56:04.900
But I don't know about this.
link |
01:56:07.180
I think, you know, I once read this book
link |
01:56:10.700
by a German political scientist
link |
01:56:13.780
called Elisabeth Neula Neumann.
link |
01:56:16.780
That was the writer's name, Elisabeth Neula Neumann.
link |
01:56:21.940
The book was called The Spiral of Silence.
link |
01:56:25.900
And the argument was there can be some views,
link |
01:56:30.020
some issues in society that get defined
link |
01:56:34.100
in such a way that it's inappropriate to hold those views.
link |
01:56:37.300
And as a result, people who don't want to be shamed,
link |
01:56:39.900
who don't want to be ostracized don't express those views.
link |
01:56:45.100
And when they don't express them,
link |
01:56:46.460
anybody holding the view because they don't hear it
link |
01:56:48.980
said by others think that they're the only one
link |
01:56:50.860
and one of the few who hold the view,
link |
01:56:53.220
and so they don't want to be the only one
link |
01:56:55.300
out there saying something, so they keep it to themselves.
link |
01:56:58.140
So now this view, this attitude in society
link |
01:57:02.780
could be held by a large number of people,
link |
01:57:05.540
but because of the fear that if they were to express it,
link |
01:57:12.420
they'd be ostracized, no one says it.
link |
01:57:15.020
And since no one is saying it,
link |
01:57:16.820
the others who hold the view don't know
link |
01:57:18.980
that they're not alone,
link |
01:57:21.140
that they are not the only ones who hold the view.
link |
01:57:24.420
And hence they keep silent.
link |
01:57:25.700
That could be an equilibrium.
link |
01:57:26.740
It could be a relatively stable situation
link |
01:57:29.540
in which the emperor has no clothes.
link |
01:57:32.020
Everybody can see that this dude is naked, okay?
link |
01:57:36.660
But everybody thinks that, you know,
link |
01:57:39.220
I don't want to be the only one to say it.
link |
01:57:41.100
And so we all kind of collaborate in this charade
link |
01:57:45.620
of keeping the view to ourselves.
link |
01:57:48.580
Then along comes an event that somebody decides
link |
01:57:54.700
to defy the consensus and to speak out.
link |
01:57:59.700
It could be a little kid who in the story
link |
01:58:01.980
about the emperor has no clothes,
link |
01:58:03.180
doesn't realize that he's not supposed to say
link |
01:58:05.860
that the emperor is naked.
link |
01:58:07.860
The thing about the kid in the story
link |
01:58:09.900
who says that the emperor is naked,
link |
01:58:11.220
it's not that he's saying it.
link |
01:58:14.180
It's not even that other people hear him saying it.
link |
01:58:17.420
It's that everybody knows
link |
01:58:19.100
that everybody else heard him say it, okay?
link |
01:58:22.940
The kid who speaks out and says the emperor has no clothes
link |
01:58:27.020
creates a circumstance in which it's common knowledge
link |
01:58:30.020
that the emperor has no clothes.
link |
01:58:31.260
Now common knowledge does not just mean knowledge.
link |
01:58:33.940
It does not even mean widespread knowledge.
link |
01:58:36.420
It means comprehensive knowledge
link |
01:58:38.420
of other person's knowledge of the thing, okay?
link |
01:58:42.460
So the spiral of silence is a equilibrium
link |
01:58:45.940
that is susceptible to being undermined
link |
01:58:49.740
by a process of a kind of cumulative process,
link |
01:58:53.740
a snowballing process of revelation
link |
01:58:56.220
that you're not the only one who thinks this way, okay?
link |
01:59:00.220
It's fascinating to think that there's an ocean
link |
01:59:02.220
of common knowledge that we're waiting for the little kid
link |
01:59:05.540
to wake us up to, different little parts of it.
link |
01:59:08.940
That's correct.
link |
01:59:09.780
And the little kid, by the way,
link |
01:59:10.700
could be somebody like Donald Trump,
link |
01:59:12.540
only more effective than Donald Trump,
link |
01:59:15.180
somebody who is smarter than Donald Trump,
link |
01:59:17.260
somebody who is shrewder than Donald Trump,
link |
01:59:20.900
somebody who figures out that when Colin Kaepernick
link |
01:59:25.620
takes a knee at a football game and says,
link |
01:59:29.100
I'm not gonna stand for this president allegiance,
link |
01:59:31.340
that a vast number of people are very unhappy about that.
link |
01:59:38.820
Somebody who understands
link |
01:59:39.780
that when a Black Lives Matter activist
link |
01:59:43.180
stands up with his ball of fists and says,
link |
01:59:44.980
burn this bitch down about a city
link |
01:59:47.380
in the United States of America,
link |
01:59:49.660
that a lot of people are upset about that, a lot of them.
link |
01:59:52.540
A person, a shrewd politician,
link |
01:59:54.820
a shrewd manager of a public image
link |
01:59:59.740
could build on and create a circumstance
link |
02:00:02.860
in which more and more people will feel safe
link |
02:00:06.940
to express that view.
link |
02:00:07.900
And the more who express it,
link |
02:00:09.060
the safer those who have yet to express it but who hold it
link |
02:00:12.420
will feel in expressing it.
link |
02:00:13.940
And to the extent that the view is very widespread
link |
02:00:17.060
but is kept under wraps, an explosion could happen.
link |
02:00:21.020
And you can look up tomorrow and have a very different
link |
02:00:23.060
country than you had today
link |
02:00:25.460
because the conspiracy of silence, the spiral of silence
link |
02:00:30.740
ends up getting unraveled by somebody who steps out
link |
02:00:34.860
away from the consensus,
link |
02:00:36.100
dares to take the slings and arrows
link |
02:00:38.340
of exposing themselves as a naysayer
link |
02:00:40.900
but taps into a sentiment that's very widespread.
link |
02:00:44.980
And I fear that with respect to many racial issues,
link |
02:00:49.700
this is the situation that we actually confront,
link |
02:00:53.940
that it could unravel in a very ugly way.
link |
02:00:57.220
But it could also unravel in a beautiful way.
link |
02:01:00.100
So it's depending.
link |
02:01:02.260
There is a spiral of silence, you're saying,
link |
02:01:04.300
and it could be, speaking of children,
link |
02:01:07.820
charismatic children, there's a guy named Elon Musk
link |
02:01:11.940
who might be a candidate for such an unraveling, right?
link |
02:01:16.860
You mentioned the person that speaks out
link |
02:01:20.060
could be a Donald Trump.
link |
02:01:21.140
But in this current situation that we live in,
link |
02:01:23.900
like as this week, Elon has purchased Twitter.
link |
02:01:28.260
That's what I hear.
link |
02:01:29.420
And is pushing for, in all kinds of ways,
link |
02:01:34.300
the increase of free speech on Twitter.
link |
02:01:37.460
And speaking about some of the issues
link |
02:01:40.460
that we've been speaking about here with you,
link |
02:01:44.500
but maybe in broader strokes about just the fact
link |
02:01:47.940
that you have to, it's okay to point out
link |
02:01:50.660
that the emperor wears no clothes,
link |
02:01:52.900
and to do so from all sides in a way
link |
02:01:55.940
that everybody's a little bit pissed off,
link |
02:01:57.740
but not too much.
link |
02:01:59.820
What do you think about this whole effort
link |
02:02:01.540
of free speech in these public platforms?
link |
02:02:06.020
Elon in particular, Twitter, your avid Twitter user.
link |
02:02:11.580
But just public platforms for discourse,
link |
02:02:14.340
for us as a civilization to figure stuff out.
link |
02:02:18.860
Yeah, well, the people on the left
link |
02:02:21.780
are very upset about the possibility
link |
02:02:23.620
that Elon Musk and Twitter will be open to,
link |
02:02:28.140
more open to provocative public speech
link |
02:02:33.180
that has heretofore been banned or suppressed.
link |
02:02:37.340
And I think they might be right to be concerned
link |
02:02:41.520
that that could happen.
link |
02:02:43.000
I don't know enough about the technology
link |
02:02:45.300
and about the market to really,
link |
02:02:47.740
I mean, social media and whatnot,
link |
02:02:50.460
it seems like it's a complicated system
link |
02:02:53.720
of interactions between people and who the users are
link |
02:02:56.380
and so forth and so on.
link |
02:02:58.620
I do know that that New York Post story
link |
02:03:02.500
about Hunter Biden's laptop was real news
link |
02:03:06.340
and could have affected the outcome of the election,
link |
02:03:08.940
and it was suppressed,
link |
02:03:10.540
and that Twitter had a role in suppressing it.
link |
02:03:14.380
I do know that the question of where the COVID 19 virus
link |
02:03:18.560
originated and the role that a lab leak account
link |
02:03:22.300
could have played in the public processing of that event
link |
02:03:26.280
was real news, and that it was suppressed
link |
02:03:29.360
by people who were trying to control misinformation,
link |
02:03:32.500
disinformation, Russian disinformation campaigns
link |
02:03:36.140
and whatnot.
link |
02:03:36.980
So Twitter has users, I'm one of them,
link |
02:03:40.780
and it has a lot of users.
link |
02:03:42.120
It's not as big as Facebook, I gather.
link |
02:03:43.820
It's not, but it's important,
link |
02:03:46.780
the ability to construct counter platforms,
link |
02:03:51.940
people moving around and whatnot.
link |
02:03:54.900
It's a kind of network dynamic
link |
02:03:56.460
that maybe I should understand it better than I do
link |
02:03:58.500
being a social scientist, but.
link |
02:04:00.260
I don't think anyone understands it,
link |
02:04:01.860
even people inside Twitter, which is fascinating.
link |
02:04:05.460
It's a monster because of just the bandwidth of messaging,
link |
02:04:09.420
and you don't know who is a bot and who is a human.
link |
02:04:12.660
That's a fascinating dynamic,
link |
02:04:15.580
and the viral nature of negativity.
link |
02:04:20.940
All of those dynamics, of course,
link |
02:04:22.780
you are probably the right person to understand it
link |
02:04:25.700
from a social scientist perspective,
link |
02:04:28.100
from an economics perspective,
link |
02:04:29.980
but nobody really understands,
link |
02:04:31.860
and it's fascinating within that domain,
link |
02:04:34.780
how do you allow for free speech,
link |
02:04:38.900
not allow for free speech, encourage free speech,
link |
02:04:41.520
defend free speech, and at the same time,
link |
02:04:45.300
manage millions of ongoing conversations
link |
02:04:49.260
from just becoming insanely chaotic.
link |
02:04:56.340
Sort of from Twitter perspective,
link |
02:04:58.680
they want people to be happy, to grow,
link |
02:05:02.020
to actually have difficult, critical conversations,
link |
02:05:05.380
and the problem with humans is they think
link |
02:05:08.240
they know what that is, and they think
link |
02:05:12.260
they can label things as misinformation,
link |
02:05:14.300
as counterproductive or healthy conversations, in quotes,
link |
02:05:18.780
and the problem is, as we are learning,
link |
02:05:22.100
humans are not able to do that effectively.
link |
02:05:25.280
First of all, power corrupts.
link |
02:05:27.780
There's something delicious about having the power
link |
02:05:30.900
to label something as misinformation.
link |
02:05:33.180
You do that once for something
link |
02:05:35.800
that might be obviously misinformation,
link |
02:05:37.940
and then you start getting greedy.
link |
02:05:39.780
You start getting excited.
link |
02:05:40.940
It feels good.
link |
02:05:41.860
It feels good to label something
link |
02:05:43.980
as misinformation or disinformation
link |
02:05:46.660
that you just don't like, and over time,
link |
02:05:49.940
especially if there's a culture inside of a company
link |
02:05:52.460
that leans a certain political direction
link |
02:05:55.140
or leans, in all the groups that we talked about,
link |
02:05:57.540
leans a certain way, they'll start
link |
02:05:59.800
to label as misinformation things they just don't like,
link |
02:06:03.580
and that power is delicious, and it corrupts.
link |
02:06:07.540
You have to construct mechanisms,
link |
02:06:08.980
like the Founding Fathers did,
link |
02:06:10.580
for somehow preventing you from allowing
link |
02:06:14.300
that power to get too delicious.
link |
02:06:17.860
At least that's my perspective on what's going on.
link |
02:06:19.660
Well, I'll just tell you personally,
link |
02:06:21.260
I'm excited about the prospect.
link |
02:06:23.340
I'm glad to see Musk making the move that he's making,
link |
02:06:25.860
and we'll see what happens at Twitter and so forth.
link |
02:06:29.100
You're looking forward for the, what did he say?
link |
02:06:33.180
Let's make Twitter more fun.
link |
02:06:35.140
I'm looking forward to the fun.
link |
02:06:39.180
You've talked about you are at a prestigious university.
link |
02:06:43.220
Brown University.
link |
02:06:44.220
Brown University, and you've mentioned
link |
02:06:48.060
that universities might be in trouble.
link |
02:06:50.220
I think it's with Jordan, but everywhere else,
link |
02:06:52.420
that barbarians are at the gate.
link |
02:06:54.940
Who are the barbarians at the gate of the university?
link |
02:06:59.700
So first of all, what is to you beautiful
link |
02:07:03.500
about the ideal of the university in America, of academia?
link |
02:07:09.260
And what is a threat?
link |
02:07:12.100
Well, you know, a university is dedicated
link |
02:07:15.260
to the pursuit of truth, and to the education
link |
02:07:21.540
and nurturing of young people as they enter
link |
02:07:24.460
into the pursuit of truth, to doing research and to teaching
link |
02:07:29.700
in a environment of free inquiry and civil discourse.
link |
02:07:37.020
So free inquiry means you go wherever the evidence
link |
02:07:40.860
and your imagination may lead you.
link |
02:07:43.540
And civil discourse means that you exchange arguments
link |
02:07:46.500
with people when you don't agree with them
link |
02:07:48.140
on behalf of trying to get to the bottom of things.
link |
02:07:50.740
I think the university is a magnificent institution.
link |
02:07:55.220
It is a relatively modern institution.
link |
02:07:59.220
I mean, last 500 years or so.
link |
02:08:01.580
I mean, there are universities that are older than that,
link |
02:08:03.500
but the great research universities of the world,
link |
02:08:07.260
not only here in the United States,
link |
02:08:09.820
are places where human ingenuity is nurtured,
link |
02:08:14.340
where new lot knowledge is created,
link |
02:08:16.780
and where young people are equipped to answer questions
link |
02:08:21.780
that are open questions about our existence
link |
02:08:25.260
in the world that we live in.
link |
02:08:26.940
You can trace to the university much,
link |
02:08:30.020
if not most, of the advances in technology
link |
02:08:33.940
and resourcefulness and our understanding
link |
02:08:35.780
of the origins of the species, of the nature of the universe,
link |
02:08:38.740
cosmology, et cetera, science,
link |
02:08:41.540
the pursuit of humanistic understanding,
link |
02:08:44.740
the nurturing of traditions of inquiry,
link |
02:08:47.460
so forth, so that's the university.
link |
02:08:49.740
Barbarians are at the gates.
link |
02:08:52.260
The people who are trying to shut down open inquiry
link |
02:08:55.420
at the university on behalf of their particular view
link |
02:08:58.460
about things are a threat to what the university stands for,
link |
02:09:03.780
and they should be resisted.
link |
02:09:05.740
So if I'm inquiring about the nature of human intelligence,
link |
02:09:10.740
and I wanna study differences between human populations
link |
02:09:13.740
and their acquisition of,
link |
02:09:15.580
or their expression of cognitive ability,
link |
02:09:19.540
that's fair game, it's an open question.
link |
02:09:22.180
If I wanna know something about the nature
link |
02:09:24.780
of gender affiliation and identity
link |
02:09:28.780
and gender dysphoria and whatnot,
link |
02:09:32.180
that's fair game to study in a university.
link |
02:09:34.100
You can't shut that down, you shouldn't be able to,
link |
02:09:37.580
by saying, I have a particular position here,
link |
02:09:41.740
I'm a member of a particular identity group,
link |
02:09:43.540
suppose I wanna study the history of colonialism,
link |
02:09:47.580
and there's a narrative on the progressive side,
link |
02:09:51.140
which is colonialism is about Europeans dominating
link |
02:09:54.220
and stealing or whatever, whatever,
link |
02:09:55.620
and I happen to think, well, there's another aspect
link |
02:09:58.140
to the story about colonialism too,
link |
02:09:59.660
which is that it's a mechanism for the diffusion
link |
02:10:02.740
of the best in human civilization to populations
link |
02:10:05.340
that were significantly lagging behind with respect to that.
link |
02:10:08.860
It brought literacy to the Southern hemispheric populations
link |
02:10:12.980
that were dominated in the process of the colonizing thing.
link |
02:10:16.780
It's complicated.
link |
02:10:17.940
I'm not taking that position, by the way.
link |
02:10:19.980
I'm just saying somebody at a university
link |
02:10:22.460
should be able to take it up and pursue it
link |
02:10:26.180
and engage in argument with people about it.
link |
02:10:28.020
I'm talking about race and ethnicity,
link |
02:10:29.540
but this extends to a wide range of things.
link |
02:10:32.340
Suppose we're talking about race,
link |
02:10:33.660
a wide range of things, suppose we're talking about climate,
link |
02:10:36.700
and one person says the earth is endangered
link |
02:10:38.780
because carbon in global warming, et cetera, et cetera,
link |
02:10:42.580
and another person says, no, wait, no, wait,
link |
02:10:45.940
look at where we stand in the 21st century.
link |
02:10:48.180
We're vastly richer than our ancestors just 250 years ago.
link |
02:10:51.460
We have much more knowledge about that
link |
02:10:53.260
and so forth and so on.
link |
02:10:54.100
250 years from now, human ingenuity will have devised
link |
02:10:59.300
in ways that we can not even begin to anticipate.
link |
02:11:02.820
All manner of technological means for managing the problem.
link |
02:11:09.060
There's no reason that we should shut down
link |
02:11:11.420
industrial civilization today
link |
02:11:14.340
because we fear the consequences of it
link |
02:11:16.940
when in fact we are vastly richer than our ancestors
link |
02:11:20.500
and those who come two centuries after us
link |
02:11:22.340
will be vastly more effective
link |
02:11:24.820
at dealing with problems than we are now.
link |
02:11:27.260
Let's, et cetera.
link |
02:11:28.620
I'm not actually making that argument.
link |
02:11:30.820
I'm just saying the tendency to try to say, oh, no,
link |
02:11:35.340
that person is a climate denier.
link |
02:11:36.940
They can't pursue that area of inquiry
link |
02:11:40.260
is against the spirit of the university.
link |
02:11:44.420
I think the barbarians at the gates
link |
02:11:47.100
has to do with the people who think they know
link |
02:11:50.460
what the right side of history is
link |
02:11:52.100
and try to make the university stand
link |
02:11:54.180
on the right side of history.
link |
02:11:56.540
My position is you don't know
link |
02:11:58.660
what the right side of history is.
link |
02:12:01.180
And the purpose of a university is to equip you
link |
02:12:03.740
to be able to think about what is the right side of history.
link |
02:12:07.740
What is the solution to the dilemmas that confront us
link |
02:12:11.940
as human beings living on this planet
link |
02:12:14.500
with the billions that we are in the condition that we are.
link |
02:12:18.820
So the identitarians,
link |
02:12:22.500
the ones who wanna make the university kowtow
link |
02:12:25.820
to their particular understandings about their own identity.
link |
02:12:31.500
We now have at Brown University and various other places,
link |
02:12:36.180
we don't do Columbus Day anymore.
link |
02:12:38.380
We do Indigenous Peoples Day.
link |
02:12:40.660
When that day comes up in October,
link |
02:12:42.980
we don't talk about Columbus.
link |
02:12:44.380
They're taking down statues of Columbus
link |
02:12:46.020
all across the country and so forth and so on.
link |
02:12:48.700
I'm not arguing anything here other than
link |
02:12:50.980
that the latter day position
link |
02:12:59.220
BIPOCs, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color,
link |
02:13:03.540
the latter day position that the university
link |
02:13:05.820
has to reflect a particular sensibility
link |
02:13:09.460
about these identity questions.
link |
02:13:11.980
I think it's a threat to the integrity of the enterprise.
link |
02:13:14.860
I don't think you're overstating it.
link |
02:13:16.580
I tend to be, just from my limited knowledge of MIT,
link |
02:13:22.540
but perhaps it applies broadly,
link |
02:13:25.380
I think the beauty of the university, broadly speaking,
link |
02:13:29.940
is the faculty and the students.
link |
02:13:33.540
And the problem arises from the overreach
link |
02:13:40.420
of a overgrowing administration
link |
02:13:43.980
that gives, again, thinks that it knows enough
link |
02:13:51.100
to make rules and conclusions based on a set of beliefs,
link |
02:13:56.340
and then based on that, empowers a certain small selection
link |
02:14:00.180
of students to be the sort of voices of activism,
link |
02:14:04.860
of a particular idea.
link |
02:14:07.100
And not, I think activism is beautiful,
link |
02:14:10.100
but not just activism, but anybody that disagrees
link |
02:14:12.820
is shut down, and that, I think,
link |
02:14:17.300
the blame lies with the administration.
link |
02:14:20.460
So I think the solution is in lessening,
link |
02:14:23.220
just like the solution with too big of a government,
link |
02:14:25.660
too big of a bureaucracy, is there needs to be
link |
02:14:30.100
redistribution of power to what makes universities beautiful,
link |
02:14:34.660
which is the old students and the young students,
link |
02:14:38.820
old students being professors.
link |
02:14:42.220
So the scholars, the curious minds,
link |
02:14:45.900
the people that are in this whole thing
link |
02:14:48.140
to explore the world, to be curious about it,
link |
02:14:51.180
on a salary that's probably way too low
link |
02:14:53.340
for the thing they're doing.
link |
02:14:54.700
That's the whole point.
link |
02:14:57.020
And then the administration just gets in the way,
link |
02:15:01.100
and is the source of this kind of,
link |
02:15:05.780
I would say that, in your beautiful phrasing,
link |
02:15:08.980
I would say the administration
link |
02:15:10.460
is the barbarians at the gate.
link |
02:15:12.180
So the solution is smaller bureaucracy,
link |
02:15:15.420
smaller administrations.
link |
02:15:16.860
I have to, on this point, you had this conversation,
link |
02:15:18.920
you put on your self stack with Jordan Peterson
link |
02:15:23.160
about cognitive inequality.
link |
02:15:25.380
I think it's titled Wrestling with Cognitive Inequality.
link |
02:15:29.540
This particular topic of just IQ differences
link |
02:15:33.340
between groups, why is this,
link |
02:15:37.180
why is it so dangerous to talk about?
link |
02:15:39.240
Why this particular topic?
link |
02:15:42.880
Well, it's like you're calling black people inferior.
link |
02:15:45.080
It's like you're saying they're genetically inferior.
link |
02:15:46.920
That's what people are saying.
link |
02:15:48.560
It's like you're rationalizing the disparity of outcomes
link |
02:15:51.840
by reference to the intrinsic inferiority of black people.
link |
02:15:55.960
If you say cognitive ability matters for social outcomes,
link |
02:16:01.000
if you say cognitive ability exists,
link |
02:16:03.660
people really are different
link |
02:16:04.680
in terms of their intellectual functioning.
link |
02:16:07.240
And if you say cognitive ability differences
link |
02:16:09.920
are substantial between racially defined populations,
link |
02:16:15.080
the sum of that, there is cognitive ability,
link |
02:16:17.200
it matters, and the difference by race
link |
02:16:19.260
is the conclusion that outcome differences by race
link |
02:16:22.720
are in part due to natural differences
link |
02:16:26.240
between the populations.
link |
02:16:28.000
People find that to be completely offensive
link |
02:16:30.800
and unacceptable.
link |
02:16:32.200
So that's what I think is going on.
link |
02:16:34.040
Can you steel me on that case
link |
02:16:37.240
that we should be careful doing that kind of research?
link |
02:16:41.480
So this has to do with research.
link |
02:16:46.500
It's like the Nazis used Nietzsche in their propaganda.
link |
02:16:54.120
You can use, white supremacists could use conclusions,
link |
02:16:58.500
cherry pick conclusions of studies to push their agenda.
link |
02:17:04.900
Can you steel me on the case that we should be careful?
link |
02:17:07.060
Yeah, I could do it at three levels.
link |
02:17:08.540
One is what do we mean by cognitive ability?
link |
02:17:11.500
So there's many different kinds of intelligence
link |
02:17:13.660
a person might say.
link |
02:17:15.380
How good are IQ tests at measuring
link |
02:17:18.260
other kinds of human capacities
link |
02:17:20.760
that are pertinent to success in life,
link |
02:17:24.220
like temperament, like emotional intelligence, and so on.
link |
02:17:27.680
So intelligence is not a one dimensional thing
link |
02:17:31.020
measured by G.
link |
02:17:32.700
The cognitive psychologists talk about G,
link |
02:17:36.060
the general intelligence factor,
link |
02:17:38.500
which is a statistical construction.
link |
02:17:41.460
It's a factor analytic resolution
link |
02:17:44.620
of the correlation across individuals
link |
02:17:48.340
in their performance on a battery,
link |
02:17:49.780
a different kind of test.
link |
02:17:50.780
And they use that to define a general factor of intelligence
link |
02:17:55.780
that a person could say that is a very narrow view
link |
02:17:59.900
of what human mental capacities actually are.
link |
02:18:04.780
And that it's much better to think about
link |
02:18:07.900
multi dimensional measures of human mental functioning
link |
02:18:12.540
rather than a single cognitive ability measure,
link |
02:18:15.340
so called IQ, which is a narrow construction
link |
02:18:20.340
that doesn't capture all of the subtle nuance
link |
02:18:26.340
of human difference in functioning.
link |
02:18:28.280
Functioning is not just the ability
link |
02:18:30.560
to recite backwards a sequence of numbers.
link |
02:18:34.800
I say eight, seven, nine, five, three, two.
link |
02:18:37.040
You say two, three, five, seven, eight, nine.
link |
02:18:40.040
It's not just that.
link |
02:18:40.960
Intelligence is a complex management
link |
02:18:47.360
of many different dimensions of human performance,
link |
02:18:49.600
including things like being able to stick with a task
link |
02:18:54.760
and not give up, things like being able to discipline
link |
02:18:58.840
and control your impulses so as to remain focused
link |
02:19:02.080
and so forth.
link |
02:19:03.560
That could be one dimension.
link |
02:19:04.620
I could start by questioning the very foundation
link |
02:19:07.560
of the argument for racial differences in cognitive ability
link |
02:19:13.220
by saying that your measure of cognitive ability is flawed.
link |
02:19:18.220
I could go to a higher level.
link |
02:19:19.700
I could say what we're really interested in
link |
02:19:23.740
is social outcomes and the question of what factors
link |
02:19:28.900
influence social outcomes extends well beyond mental ability
link |
02:19:32.420
to many other things.
link |
02:19:33.860
So here's an example.
link |
02:19:37.940
Visual acuity, how well do you see?
link |
02:19:41.900
You're not wearing glasses, I am.
link |
02:19:43.820
Visual acuity varies between human beings.
link |
02:19:48.940
Some people see better than other people do.
link |
02:19:52.180
Visual acuity can be measured.
link |
02:19:54.660
I can put you at the chart and you can,
link |
02:19:57.020
can you identify and read that bottom line
link |
02:19:58.780
in small print or not?
link |
02:20:00.260
So we can measure visual acuity
link |
02:20:02.060
and it varies between human beings.
link |
02:20:04.020
Visual acuity is partly genetic.
link |
02:20:07.500
I think that's undoubtedly true.
link |
02:20:09.860
We inherit genes that influence whether or not
link |
02:20:12.220
we are nearsighted or farsighted or astigmatic or whatever.
link |
02:20:15.900
So visual acuity differs between people
link |
02:20:19.660
and can be measured and is under genetic control.
link |
02:20:23.740
On the other hand, corrective lenses allow for us
link |
02:20:28.060
to level the playing field between people
link |
02:20:29.740
who are differently endowed in terms of visual acuity.
link |
02:20:34.140
Likewise, social outcomes are what we're really interested in
link |
02:20:37.500
employment, earnings, whether or not they're law abiding,
link |
02:20:41.620
how do they conduct themselves and their families
link |
02:20:43.580
and so forth amongst individuals.
link |
02:20:45.700
Yes, social outcomes are influenced
link |
02:20:47.940
by so called cognitive ability,
link |
02:20:49.620
but they're influenced by many other things as well.
link |
02:20:52.340
If there are interventions that can be undertaken in society
link |
02:20:56.660
that level the playing field between people
link |
02:20:58.900
who have different natural endowments of cognitive ability,
link |
02:21:02.020
the fact that people or groups differ in cognitive ability
link |
02:21:05.860
becomes less significant.
link |
02:21:07.540
Just like it's less significant that people differ
link |
02:21:10.140
with respect to how well they see
link |
02:21:12.180
when corrective lenses allow
link |
02:21:14.420
for the leveling of that playing field.
link |
02:21:16.940
There are in fact interventions, educational interventions,
link |
02:21:20.740
early childhood interventions that have been shown
link |
02:21:23.740
to level the playing field
link |
02:21:25.260
to create better life outcomes for people
link |
02:21:27.220
even if they happen to be endowed with low intelligence.
link |
02:21:30.980
So a second level of arguing against this whole program
link |
02:21:35.340
of research on human differences and intelligence
link |
02:21:38.220
is to observe that yes, human beings
link |
02:21:40.340
and perhaps racially defined groups
link |
02:21:42.700
may differ on the average in intellectual endowment,
link |
02:21:46.580
but there well may be social interventions
link |
02:21:49.100
that level the playing field,
link |
02:21:50.620
whether it's in education
link |
02:21:51.980
or in other kinds of programmatic interventions,
link |
02:21:55.180
especially for the poor.
link |
02:21:57.300
A final level of argument is the one that you alluded to,
link |
02:21:59.900
which is that if you talk like this,
link |
02:22:02.100
you're gonna encourage a kind of politics
link |
02:22:04.260
which is very ugly.
link |
02:22:05.940
And it's best to frame the discussion
link |
02:22:09.740
in ways that don't put emphasis
link |
02:22:11.700
on racially defined natural differences between populations.
link |
02:22:17.580
That's an argument that I am myself personally
link |
02:22:22.700
conflicted about.
link |
02:22:24.420
On the one hand, I think, you know,
link |
02:22:27.260
those people are just stupid.
link |
02:22:29.380
It is racist, okay?
link |
02:22:32.940
On the other hand, I think the calculation,
link |
02:22:36.500
we shouldn't do this kind of research.
link |
02:22:38.180
Suppose I'm at the National Science Foundation,
link |
02:22:40.060
a research team submits a proposal.
link |
02:22:42.340
The proposal proposes to undertake a study.
link |
02:22:44.780
The study would explore the extent to which people
link |
02:22:48.540
and racial groups differ with respect
link |
02:22:50.500
to their intellectual performance
link |
02:22:52.500
and how that's influenced by their genetic
link |
02:22:55.020
and environmental interaction.
link |
02:22:56.860
And I decide not to fund the study
link |
02:22:59.140
based on a political calculation
link |
02:23:01.820
that the subject is too sensitive.
link |
02:23:04.580
And if you explore that subject,
link |
02:23:06.580
you might get the wrong answer.
link |
02:23:08.260
And if you get the wrong answer,
link |
02:23:09.900
the white supremacist will be encouraged.
link |
02:23:12.460
Well, that is presuming before the research is done
link |
02:23:17.740
that I know the outcome of the research
link |
02:23:19.780
and that I can calculate what the political consequence
link |
02:23:23.060
of the research outcome is gonna be.
link |
02:23:25.260
That's assuming the thing before you even know
link |
02:23:27.660
what the thing actually is.
link |
02:23:28.940
It's a kind of omniscience.
link |
02:23:30.380
It presumes that you as the master of the universe
link |
02:23:35.620
can tell people what it is
link |
02:23:37.180
that people are being treated like children,
link |
02:23:39.380
what it is that they're capable of knowing
link |
02:23:41.540
and what it is that they're not capable of knowing.
link |
02:23:44.060
It would be like someone saying to Einstein,
link |
02:23:47.460
I don't know about that special relativity theory.
link |
02:23:49.740
You know, it could well lead
link |
02:23:50.940
to the development of technologies
link |
02:23:53.140
that would allow nuclear weapons.
link |
02:23:54.420
Or someone saying to Oppenheimer,
link |
02:23:55.780
who is a physicist overseeing the Manhattan Project
link |
02:23:58.860
where the US developed a nuclear weapons capacity,
link |
02:24:02.180
don't carry out that project
link |
02:24:04.180
because the results of acquiring that knowledge
link |
02:24:08.300
may be more than we can deal with.
link |
02:24:10.420
Or someone saying to someone doing biomedical research
link |
02:24:13.700
who's interested in exploring the nature of the human genome,
link |
02:24:19.260
don't carry out that experiment,
link |
02:24:20.900
that cloning, undertaking, whatever,
link |
02:24:22.740
because the consequences could be deleterious.
link |
02:24:26.020
Well, the consequences could be deleterious.
link |
02:24:27.820
The consequences could also be the cure of cancer.
link |
02:24:30.220
The consequences could also be
link |
02:24:32.140
being able to generate electric power
link |
02:24:33.740
without producing carbon effluent.
link |
02:24:36.780
So who are you to tell me,
link |
02:24:38.940
you being the person in the political position
link |
02:24:42.140
to control the research,
link |
02:24:44.180
what the consequence of doing the research is?
link |
02:24:46.140
I think I don't want to cede that kind of power
link |
02:24:50.860
to politicians over the course of human inquiry.
link |
02:24:55.860
So yes, I would want there to be regulations
link |
02:24:59.700
governing the use of biologically sensitive
link |
02:25:03.860
and potentially dangerous pathogens
link |
02:25:06.580
in a lab in Wuhan or any place else.
link |
02:25:10.060
I would not want to simply leave that to laissez faire.
link |
02:25:13.260
On the other hand, I think that the tendency
link |
02:25:16.660
to try to shut down inquiry
link |
02:25:19.700
on behalf of supposed adverse political consequences
link |
02:25:24.220
is the road to ignorance and impoverishment
link |
02:25:27.620
at the end of the day for humankind,
link |
02:25:29.460
denying ourselves the potential benefits
link |
02:25:31.580
of that kind of inquiry.
link |
02:25:33.060
I think we need to take our chances with inquiry
link |
02:25:35.660
rather than to try to control it.
link |
02:25:37.060
And I feel that way about the exploration
link |
02:25:39.380
of human intelligence as much as anything else.
link |
02:25:42.780
So you've asked me to steel man the case
link |
02:25:44.660
against research on IQ of the sort
link |
02:25:47.540
that Charles Murray is famous for popularizing.
link |
02:25:51.180
And I've said A, your measure of intelligence
link |
02:25:54.780
is single dimensional and it ought to be multi dimensional.
link |
02:25:58.340
I've said B, the consequences of people's differing
link |
02:26:02.020
in intelligence depends not only
link |
02:26:03.980
on the natural endowments of the people
link |
02:26:05.860
but also on the environment
link |
02:26:08.740
and the potential for intervening in that environment
link |
02:26:12.300
through one or another kind of instrument
link |
02:26:14.340
as the metaphorical example of the use of corrective lenses
link |
02:26:18.340
to level the playing field between people
link |
02:26:20.620
with different visual acuity indicates.
link |
02:26:25.020
But finally, I've said, yes,
link |
02:26:28.020
research on racial differences in IQ can foster
link |
02:26:33.060
political beliefs that we would regard to be noxious.
link |
02:26:38.300
On the other hand, to presume that what we don't know yet
link |
02:26:41.660
and might find out from the research is gonna be harmful
link |
02:26:44.900
is to assume a kind of presumption
link |
02:26:48.260
or of knowing what the outcome of unknown processes might be
link |
02:26:52.820
which we ought to be very slow to embrace
link |
02:26:55.740
because if we had done so in the past,
link |
02:26:57.820
we wouldn't have nuclear power.
link |
02:26:59.980
There's a lot of things that we wouldn't know.
link |
02:27:01.180
I mean, what were people saying about Darwin
link |
02:27:03.340
and exploration of the evolution
link |
02:27:06.220
and origin of the species?
link |
02:27:07.940
They were afraid that it was gonna, in effect,
link |
02:27:10.380
disprove the religious based accounts
link |
02:27:13.380
of what were they saying about Copernicus
link |
02:27:16.300
and et cetera, et cetera.
link |
02:27:17.780
So, you know.
link |
02:27:19.780
That was a masterful layering of, quote,
link |
02:27:24.780
wrestling with cognitive inequality.
link |
02:27:26.860
You dragged in nuclear research,
link |
02:27:29.700
Copernicus, Darwin, biomedical research with genetics,
link |
02:27:32.820
even COVID and the lab leak.
link |
02:27:37.180
I mean, that was just fun to listen to.
link |
02:27:39.940
Okay. Okay.
link |
02:27:42.980
Let me ask you about your politics.
link |
02:27:44.900
So you've recently said that you're a conservative leaning.
link |
02:27:48.420
I mean, maybe that's a day to day thing.
link |
02:27:51.060
Maybe you can push back.
link |
02:27:52.100
But so you have somebody like your friend, John McWhorter,
link |
02:27:56.820
who we could say is on your left, to the left of you.
link |
02:28:01.740
And then you have somebody like Thomas Sowell
link |
02:28:05.660
who maybe is on to the right of you.
link |
02:28:09.460
Yeah, probably.
link |
02:28:10.780
And yet there's a lot of overlap between the three of you.
link |
02:28:14.060
So to what degree does politics affect your view on race
link |
02:28:19.700
in America?
link |
02:28:21.020
And maybe to what degree does your view on race
link |
02:28:25.380
affect your politics?
link |
02:28:28.580
Okay.
link |
02:28:29.420
And that, for people who don't know, has shifted over time.
link |
02:28:33.860
You've been on quite a roller coaster,
link |
02:28:36.300
as anybody who thinks about the world should be.
link |
02:28:38.820
Well, let's begin with the fact that I was trained
link |
02:28:43.060
as an economist in a tradition of what many people
link |
02:28:48.060
would call neoliberalism.
link |
02:28:50.980
I was trained at MIT, which was not a right wing place
link |
02:28:56.220
by any means, but it was a place where you learned
link |
02:29:01.220
about markets and about the benefits of capitalism
link |
02:29:06.220
as a way of organizing society,
link |
02:29:10.740
the virtues of free enterprise,
link |
02:29:13.660
the fact that the pursuit of profit
link |
02:29:15.460
was not necessarily a bad thing,
link |
02:29:17.220
but it well might be the road to prosperity
link |
02:29:20.140
and to economic growth.
link |
02:29:21.780
The idea that private property and individuals seeking
link |
02:29:25.060
to acquire and succeeding in acquiring wealth
link |
02:29:28.900
did create inequality, but it also created opportunity.
link |
02:29:32.420
And it also expanded the ability to do things
link |
02:29:36.060
and expanded our knowledge and our control
link |
02:29:38.540
over the physical environment in which we're embedded
link |
02:29:41.100
and et cetera.
link |
02:29:44.580
So we were not Marxists at MIT, although we did read Marx.
link |
02:29:48.660
I mean, those of us who were intellectually curious,
link |
02:29:50.580
you read Marx.
link |
02:29:51.420
Marx was an important figure in the history of the West.
link |
02:29:54.380
And I think Marx should be read in capital three volumes,
link |
02:29:57.940
et cetera, alienation of labor and whatnot.
link |
02:30:02.220
The implications of modernization,
link |
02:30:04.820
the advent of industrial capitalism, et cetera.
link |
02:30:08.940
That kind of dynamic deserves to be studied
link |
02:30:12.500
and to come at it in a critical way,
link |
02:30:16.380
informed by the intellectual inheritance of Marx and Marxism.
link |
02:30:21.580
I think that's a part of a full education
link |
02:30:23.860
in social philosophy and economic analysis
link |
02:30:28.340
that an open minded person ought to acquaint themselves with.
link |
02:30:32.340
But at the end of the day,
link |
02:30:33.180
I think that the free marketeers have the better of it.
link |
02:30:41.260
I think the story of the 20th century
link |
02:30:43.220
as far as economic development is concerned reflects that.
link |
02:30:47.900
I think that the experiments where centralized control
link |
02:30:52.100
over economic decisions was the order of the day failed.
link |
02:30:57.740
I think that the fact of the 21st century rise of China
link |
02:31:01.900
as a force has a lot to do with the spread of,
link |
02:31:05.660
in effect, capitalist oriented modes
link |
02:31:08.780
of entering economic exchange,
link |
02:31:11.500
freeing up prices, markets, property, and so forth.
link |
02:31:15.540
Although obviously it's a complicated
link |
02:31:18.060
political economic system, we're talking about China.
link |
02:31:21.380
But I think that the story of the 20th century
link |
02:31:26.100
and the hope for the 21st century
link |
02:31:28.300
is that prosperity is enhanced through the free exchange
link |
02:31:34.900
of goods and the pursuit and acquisition of property
link |
02:31:40.140
by people in a more or less capitalist oriented system.
link |
02:31:46.740
That's the view that I hold.
link |
02:31:49.860
I guess that makes me a conservative, I don't know.
link |
02:31:52.340
I wanna say that's not to the exclusion
link |
02:31:56.580
of a social safety net.
link |
02:31:58.420
I'm not saying that old people in an ideal social system
link |
02:32:02.820
would be left to their own devices
link |
02:32:04.460
regardless of whether or not
link |
02:32:05.420
they had saved for their retirement.
link |
02:32:07.340
I'm not saying that the ideal of extending decent access
link |
02:32:13.900
to healthcare to all people regardless
link |
02:32:15.860
of whether or not they can afford it,
link |
02:32:18.020
decent access to education to people
link |
02:32:20.820
regardless of whether or not they can afford it
link |
02:32:22.940
is standing in the way of prosperity.
link |
02:32:25.700
I don't believe that.
link |
02:32:26.980
I think the mixed economies that we see in Northern Europe
link |
02:32:29.580
and in North America are a balancing
link |
02:32:35.020
of the virtues of free enterprise property
link |
02:32:37.900
and the pursuit of wealth on the one hand
link |
02:32:40.500
against the needs to have a decent society
link |
02:32:44.220
in which people who fall between the cracks nevertheless
link |
02:32:47.700
are bolstered through a sense of social solidarity
link |
02:32:51.620
that is accommodated by our common membership
link |
02:32:54.540
within a single nation state,
link |
02:32:56.900
which is why I think nationalism is important.
link |
02:32:59.300
And it's why I think borders are important
link |
02:33:02.140
because without a coherent polity
link |
02:33:06.500
who can see themselves as in a common situation
link |
02:33:12.100
and agree through their politics
link |
02:33:15.100
to support each other to some extent,
link |
02:33:17.540
you can't sustain a safety net.
link |
02:33:18.980
You cannot have a social safety net for a global population.
link |
02:33:23.100
You can only have a social safety net
link |
02:33:24.660
for a bounded population who have a sense
link |
02:33:28.220
of common membership in an ongoing political enterprise
link |
02:33:33.060
which they pay their dues through their taxes
link |
02:33:35.660
in order to sustain it.
link |
02:33:36.980
There's a balancing that has to go on.
link |
02:33:38.900
So that's the first thing that I would say about my politics.
link |
02:33:42.180
I'm a neoliberal economist.
link |
02:33:44.020
I believe in markets.
link |
02:33:45.100
I believe in prices.
link |
02:33:46.180
I believe in profit.
link |
02:33:47.780
Corporations are not an incarnation of evil.
link |
02:33:51.060
Corporations are a legal nexus
link |
02:33:53.500
through which production gets organized
link |
02:33:56.620
in which you solicit the cooperation of workers,
link |
02:34:00.500
of people who provide capital,
link |
02:34:02.380
of people who provide raw materials
link |
02:34:04.060
and input of customers and so on.
link |
02:34:06.740
And that functionality allows for the production of goods
link |
02:34:12.820
and their distribution and their earning of income
link |
02:34:16.620
and its distribution,
link |
02:34:18.820
which at the end of the day is the foundation
link |
02:34:21.340
of our prosperity.
link |
02:34:22.180
Corporations are people too.
link |
02:34:23.460
Mitt Romney got in trouble for saying that in 2012.
link |
02:34:26.660
But corporations are nothing but a legal fiction.
link |
02:34:28.740
The corporation is not a person as such,
link |
02:34:32.140
but the nexus of contracts and relationships
link |
02:34:35.100
amongst the stakeholders who intersect
link |
02:34:38.060
in the context of the corporation
link |
02:34:41.340
is the way in which we organize
link |
02:34:43.220
the massively complex set of activities
link |
02:34:46.380
that are necessary in order to produce economic benefits,
link |
02:34:50.980
in order to feed people,
link |
02:34:52.060
in order to have everybody with a cell phone in their pocket,
link |
02:34:55.020
in order to be able to travel from one side of a continent
link |
02:34:57.900
to another on a device that is with almost absolute certainty
link |
02:35:01.700
gonna safely take off and land
link |
02:35:04.020
and in order to be able to build cities and et cetera.
link |
02:35:07.540
But do the markets, the ideal of the market
link |
02:35:10.620
collide with the ideal of all men are created equal?
link |
02:35:14.980
The identity, the struggle that we've been talking about
link |
02:35:17.780
of what it means to sort of empower humans
link |
02:35:21.380
that make up this great country.
link |
02:35:23.340
Do they collide and where do they collide?
link |
02:35:26.340
Well, markets are gonna produce inequality
link |
02:35:29.380
and all men being equal is a statement
link |
02:35:32.260
about the intrinsic worth of people,
link |
02:35:34.460
not about the situation that will come about
link |
02:35:36.980
when people interact with each other through markets
link |
02:35:39.340
because people are actually different
link |
02:35:41.860
and because there are factors
link |
02:35:43.140
that are beyond anybody's control called luck and chance
link |
02:35:46.260
that you and I both invest.
link |
02:35:49.300
It looked a priori like your investment and my investment
link |
02:35:51.580
were equally likely to succeed.
link |
02:35:53.660
But as a matter of fact, ex post facto,
link |
02:35:55.660
your investment succeeds, my investment doesn't succeed.
link |
02:35:58.900
I don't have wealth and you have wealth.
link |
02:36:01.060
That is an inevitable consequence of a environment
link |
02:36:04.300
in which both of us are free to make our investment choices
link |
02:36:07.660
and where the consequences of investment
link |
02:36:09.860
depend in part upon random circumstances
link |
02:36:12.660
of which no one has control.
link |
02:36:14.820
But you asked me about my politics
link |
02:36:16.420
and I was just trying to lay down a foundation
link |
02:36:18.460
by saying I begin as an economist
link |
02:36:22.500
in the tradition of liberalism, Adam Smith and so forth,
link |
02:36:27.020
John Maynard Keynes for that matter and so forth,
link |
02:36:30.380
that Milton Friedman and so forth,
link |
02:36:34.460
that Paul Samuelson, Bob Solla, James Tobin and so forth,
link |
02:36:39.460
Thomas Sowell, yes, that appreciates property,
link |
02:36:44.660
the virtues of free enterprise,
link |
02:36:46.740
the set of institutions that allow for security of contract,
link |
02:36:53.220
a rule of law, things of this kind.
link |
02:36:56.180
So that's one thing to say about my politics.
link |
02:36:59.140
Another thing to say about my politics and you're right,
link |
02:37:01.140
I've moved around, is that I began south side of Chicago,
link |
02:37:06.140
black kid, I was a liberal Democrat.
link |
02:37:09.460
I encountered the economics curriculum at the MIT
link |
02:37:14.620
and I became trained in economics
link |
02:37:16.660
in the tradition that I've just described.
link |
02:37:19.980
And I encountered also the Reagan Revolution.
link |
02:37:24.300
This is the late 70s and early 80s.
link |
02:37:27.260
These are big debates about economic policy and so on.
link |
02:37:31.260
And I found a lot to admire in the supply side errors,
link |
02:37:37.900
the people were saying,
link |
02:37:39.060
let's get the government out of the way,
link |
02:37:41.020
the people who were worried about national debt,
link |
02:37:43.060
which is a lot more now than it was then,
link |
02:37:46.300
the people who were worried
link |
02:37:47.140
that the welfare state could be too big,
link |
02:37:48.940
that the incentives of transfer programs
link |
02:37:51.060
could be counterproductive, that you had a war on poverty
link |
02:37:54.100
and we did have a war on poverty and poverty won.
link |
02:37:56.700
And that's what I found.
link |
02:37:58.420
And we did have a war on poverty and poverty won.
link |
02:38:01.420
And there's a lot of evidence that the war on poverty
link |
02:38:04.460
was lost by the people who were trying to, quote unquote,
link |
02:38:07.300
eradicate poverty in our time.
link |
02:38:10.780
That incentives really do matter
link |
02:38:13.580
and that the state, which is driven by politics,
link |
02:38:17.500
is often unresponsive to the dictates of incentives.
link |
02:38:20.700
Whereas markets eliminate people who are inefficient
link |
02:38:24.380
and who are not cognizant of the consequences of incentives
link |
02:38:27.180
because they can't cover their bottom line
link |
02:38:29.540
and they won't persist for very long.
link |
02:38:31.420
If they can't cover their bottom line,
link |
02:38:32.700
they're forced to respond to the realities of differences
link |
02:38:35.900
and costs and benefits and so forth
link |
02:38:37.580
in a way that governments can cover
link |
02:38:39.620
because they have their hand in our pocket.
link |
02:38:42.100
They can cover their losses
link |
02:38:43.940
and they can make accounts balanced,
link |
02:38:46.260
not withstanding their mistakes
link |
02:38:47.460
because they can take my property by fiat,
link |
02:38:51.140
by the power of the state, the tax collector comes,
link |
02:38:53.420
if I don't pay, he seizes my holdings.
link |
02:38:56.180
And they can carry on in that way.
link |
02:38:59.100
They need the corrective influence of markets
link |
02:39:02.820
in order to be responsive to the realities of life.
link |
02:39:05.580
I mean, I may not like it that prices are telling me
link |
02:39:10.580
that something that I wanna do is infeasible.
link |
02:39:12.900
I may not like it, but what the prices are telling me
link |
02:39:15.740
is that the costs of doing it exceed the benefits
link |
02:39:20.340
to be derived from doing it.
link |
02:39:22.060
And if I persist in doing it not withstanding that,
link |
02:39:24.220
I'm gonna run losses.
link |
02:39:25.500
And those losses will accumulate.
link |
02:39:26.980
And the net effect of that over an entire society
link |
02:39:30.900
is stagnation and ultimate attenuation
link |
02:39:34.580
of the economic benefits
link |
02:39:36.060
that might be available to people.
link |
02:39:37.260
Again, I think if you look at the developing world
link |
02:39:40.620
in the postcolonial period,
link |
02:39:42.100
the second half of the 20th century,
link |
02:39:44.020
that's exactly what you see.
link |
02:39:46.060
Planning doesn't work.
link |
02:39:48.060
Centralized control over resource allocation doesn't work.
link |
02:39:50.740
Okay, so I became more conservative in that respect,
link |
02:39:54.860
but I also, and this has to do with race,
link |
02:39:59.380
lost the faith in the posture
link |
02:40:05.820
that what became of the civil rights movement.
link |
02:40:08.820
I mean, the civil rights movement, you quote King 1963,
link |
02:40:11.740
the civil rights movement starts out as
link |
02:40:15.300
we want equal membership in the polity,
link |
02:40:17.940
but it becomes a systematized cover I'm going to argue
link |
02:40:29.540
for deficiencies that are discernible
link |
02:40:35.300
within black American society, which only we could correct.
link |
02:40:38.940
That's a very controversial statement.
link |
02:40:40.780
I make it with trepidation.
link |
02:40:43.540
I don't take any pleasure in saying it,
link |
02:40:47.340
but here's what I'm talking about.
link |
02:40:50.540
So I'm talking about the family.
link |
02:40:53.260
So the family is a matter internal to the community
link |
02:41:00.020
about how men and women relate to each other
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02:41:03.260
and engage in social reproduction, childbearing,
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02:41:07.420
the standing up of households,
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02:41:09.780
the context within which children are developed,
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02:41:12.340
are maturing and so forth and so on.
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02:41:14.660
So the African American family is in trouble.
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02:41:17.700
I think I can demonstrate that
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02:41:20.300
by reference to high rates of marital dissolution,
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02:41:25.580
by high rates of birth to out of wedlock and so forth.
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02:41:31.100
You can't even say that
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02:41:32.020
the African American family is in trouble.
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02:41:34.700
Violence, homicide is an order of magnitude more prevalent
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02:41:39.340
amongst African Americans than it is
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02:41:40.900
in the society as a whole.
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02:41:43.020
This is behavior, it's behavior of our people.
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02:41:46.460
I speak of black people.
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02:41:47.580
Of course, we're not the only people in society
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02:41:49.740
for whom violence is an issue.
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02:41:51.620
It's an order of magnitude more prevalent in our communities.
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02:41:56.820
I'm talking about schooling and school failure.
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02:42:00.180
So we have affirmative action as a cover.
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02:42:02.780
It's a bandaid on differences in the development
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02:42:06.020
of intellectual performance,
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02:42:07.980
which is only partly a consequence
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02:42:10.260
of the natural intelligence of people
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02:42:12.780
and largely a consequence of how people spend their time,
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02:42:16.700
what they value, how they discipline themselves,
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02:42:20.140
what they do with their opportunities,
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02:42:23.740
how parents raise their children,
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02:42:25.860
what peer groups value and things of this kind.
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02:42:28.500
The Asian students who are scoring off the charts
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02:42:30.940
on these exams are doing it
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02:42:33.220
not because they're intrinsically more intelligent
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02:42:35.420
to other people, but because they work harder,
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02:42:38.220
because their parents are more insistent
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02:42:39.820
on focusing on their intellectual performance
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02:42:43.220
because they're disciplined,
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02:42:45.100
because of the way that they devote their time
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02:42:46.900
and their resources to equipping their children
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02:42:50.420
to function in the 21st century.
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02:42:52.540
This is what I believe.
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02:42:53.460
I think it's demonstrably the case.
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02:42:56.420
And it is a factor in racial disparity.
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02:43:00.140
The way that the civil rights movement has evolved
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02:43:03.020
under the wing of the Democratic Party
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02:43:05.940
into an organized apologia for the failures
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02:43:11.660
of African Americans to seize the opportunities
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02:43:14.180
that exist for us now in the 21st century,
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02:43:17.500
but did not exist in the first half of the 20th century,
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02:43:21.140
the way in which the civil rights movement
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02:43:22.740
has become an avoidance mechanism
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02:43:27.300
for us not taking we African Americans responsible.
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02:43:29.940