Ben Shapiro talks about racism in America and how it s resurfaced in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. He also talks about NASCAR and the Confederate Flag, and explains why it s so hard to identify racism in the United States and how we should all be working together to fight racism. Today's show is sponsored by Express VPN. Protect your data from prying eyes at ExpressVPN.org/ProtectYourData from Prying Eyes at ExpressVpn. Protect your privacy by becoming a subscriber at ProtectYourData.org. Use the promo code: PGPodcasts to receive $5 and contribute $5 to OWLS Lacrosse Lacrosse you download the Lacrosse app. You get 10% off the first month with discount code "Podcasts" at checkout. Apply today to get a rate right now from Lightstream. Get a rate as low as 5.95 APR with auto-pay and excellent credit with a fixed rate of over 19% APR of over 595% with over 19%. The rate is fixed, so it will never go up over the life of the loan. Plus, you can even get your money in the bank account as soon as you apply the day you apply. The only way to get the discount is to go to lightstream. That is L-I-G-H-T-S-M-E-A-M dot com slash Shapiro that is 050% auto pay discount, and get that rate by far the best rate by the end of your list of the day! Plus there s no fees and the only way you can get the best interest rate discount by far, you get zero fees, plus a discount to get even more. That is the best deal on your credit card and you get 20% off of the best rates! You can get a discount on your first month of the entire service. . And apply today! Today s show is Sponsored by ExpressVPN, which includes 0.95% down to get $5,000 in the program, plus an additional 15% off your first year of the program. and a FREE 30% off for the second year, and a 20% discount when you sign up for the third year, plus you get $25,000 gets you an additional $100,000, and gets you get an ad-free version of the course that gets you a discount of $150,000.
00:00:37.000So we'll get to all of that plus all of the latest news on COVID-19 as there is a resurgence around the country.
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00:02:08.000So there's been a lot of talk about the continuation of racism in America and the idea that America is systemically racist, filled with racists.
00:02:18.000And I'm wondering exactly what the evidence is of this, that there is widespread American racism, particularly widespread white American racism against black Americans by polls.
00:02:27.000The United States is one of the least racist countries on planet Earth by polling data.
00:02:33.000By actual violent crime data, the United States has very, very little intraracial crime, white on black.
00:02:40.000The evidence that there's widespread American racism, that white Americans are looking to do bad things to black people on a regular basis, or that they are attempting to shift their institutions so as to harm black people, the evidence of that is incredibly, incredibly scanty.
00:02:52.000And when we see it, We call it out, right?
00:02:54.000When we see bad situations, we call it out.
00:02:56.000See, this is the thing that is so puzzling about our entire moment, is there seems to be a widespread perception that America is broadly speaking racist, its systems are broadly speaking racist, and yet people are having trouble identifying which systems are racist and which people are racist.
00:03:10.000And the reason people are having trouble identifying that is anytime there is a racist incident, there's an extraordinary outpouring of support for the person who was victimized by the alleged racist incident.
00:03:20.000So perfect example happened this week.
00:03:25.000So there's a driver, a black driver named Bubba Wallace, and Bubba Wallace had called for and ends the Confederate flag in NASCAR.
00:03:32.000And he wanted to put Black Lives Matter on his car.
00:03:34.000So he put Black Lives Matter on his car, is my understanding.
00:03:36.000And Ben Nascar went along with his request, right?
00:03:39.000There are a lot of people who fly the Confederate flag, not because they are racist, but because they believe that it represents Southern heritage.
00:03:44.000We've discussed the morphing meaning of the flag and the differential meanings of the flag for various different groups in American public life, all of which I think are completely legitimate.
00:03:53.000As I've said before, I think the black people look at the Confederate flag and they say, hey, that's the flag that flew for people who wanted to enslave my great-great-grandfather.
00:04:02.000I also know a lot of Southerners who fly the Confederate flag, not because they back racism or slavery, but because that was a flag that their grandfather flew in the Battle of the Bulge.
00:04:12.000And so they see it as a Southern pride thing.
00:04:14.000I see how two people could look at the same symbol.
00:04:16.000One could find it deeply offensive and be correct, and one could find it deeply non-offensive and also be correct from their perspective.
00:04:22.000There are differences of perspective here when it comes to the Confederate flag.
00:04:24.000It's sort of like Rashomon, and it really does depend on your subjective perspective on the issue.
00:04:29.000If you are a sports league like NASCAR, your private industry, and you want to take down the Confederate flag, totally within your rights to do so.
00:04:37.000And then, yesterday, or the day before, a story emerges from NASCAR that apparently a noose was found in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace's Richard Petty Motorsports team before the postponed cup race at Talladega Super Speedway a little bit earlier this week.
00:04:52.000So that was a huge story because black driver who has been instrumental in trying to push NASCAR to get rid of the confederate flag and then he finds a noose in his locker.
00:05:01.000Now we don't know all of the circumstances yet.
00:05:02.000We don't know who did this yet, right?
00:05:06.000I mean NASCAR's garages, I promise you there are cameras in there.
00:05:08.000The FBI is also investigating so we should find out sooner rather than later and whoever did that should obviously be punished and everyone agrees on this that that is a great example of a racist incident.
00:06:04.000I mean, the images that came out of Talladega yesterday are stunning.
00:06:08.000It is the image of everyone who works at Talladega pushing Bubba Watson's car, Bubba Wallace's car rather, to the front of the speedway.
00:06:17.000There was a march where all the drivers got out, like all of them, and all of their pit workers, and they pushed his car all the way to the front of the track.
00:06:26.000Right, to the post position on the front of the track, which is, I would think, an amazing display of hating racism.
00:06:33.000And I think that that signifies where virtually every American is when it comes to racism.
00:06:38.000Every American of good heart, and I would say that's 99% of Americans, 98% of Americans, despises racism and thinks racism is really bad.
00:06:47.000And you can see that in action right here.
00:06:49.000All of NASCAR's drivers have rallied around Bubba Wallace, the NASCAR Cup Series lone black driver, after what happened here yesterday afternoon.
00:07:02.000The drivers, led by reigning Cup Series champion Kyle Busch in green, and their crews, the entire garage area, has rallied around Bubba Wallace and the number 43 today.
00:07:16.000Okay, so can we stop pretending that this is like Selma, Alabama, you know, in Selma, Mississippi, in 1962?
00:07:25.000Can we stop pretending that that's what this is?
00:07:28.000I mean, you have literally an entire group of people and I mean like every American dedicated to wiping away the scourge of racism in Selma, Alabama rather.
00:07:39.000The idea here being that somehow America is deeply racist when you have every NASCAR driver walking Bubba Wallace to the front of the track here in support of him after a noose was found in his locker and after NASCAR the sport backed him and got rid of the confederate flag which again is important to many of the people who watch the sport.
00:07:57.000This doesn't seem like a very racist country to me.
00:08:09.000I would imagine that if you are a black person who lived through the Jim Crow South, the very sight of Bubba Wallace's car, In Talladega, being walked to the front of the track by a bunch of white drivers, right?
00:08:18.000Because he's the only black driver in NASCAR.
00:08:20.000And NASCAR, taking his advice and getting rid of the Confederate flag, that's pretty good evidence that there is a lot of support for the notion that racism is bad, right?
00:08:28.000These are unifying sentiments that racism is bad.
00:08:31.000And yet the idea is that we have to continue to maintain that black Americans are at constant threat of extinction, that America's an extinction-level event for black Americans.
00:08:42.000The overwhelming sentiment of Americans, and by the way, tolerance for extreme behavior by people who are protesting what they believe to be racism, is fairly good evidence that America is on board.
00:09:01.000Because it's not enough to do what they did over at Talladega.
00:09:04.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:09:06.000First, let's talk about the fact that social media companies are now deciding what content is suitable for you and for the sensitive snowflakes among us.
00:09:15.000They are targeting your data, they are monetizing your data, and they are controlling what data you can see.
00:09:19.000Well, there's one thing you can control.
00:09:21.000Their access to your data, and that is why I use ExpressVPN.
00:09:24.000See, the problem with big tech companies is that not only do they censor what you read, they will actually track what you do online.
00:09:29.000They track what you're searching for, the videos you watch, everything you click.
00:09:31.000They use that data to serve you ads, and then they can match your activity to your offline identity using your device's unique IP address.
00:09:38.000No, when I use ExpressVPN, these tech companies cannot see my IP address at all.
00:09:42.000My identity is masked and anonymized by a secure VPN server.
00:09:45.000Plus, ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your data to protect you from hackers and internet bad guys.
00:10:21.000As I say, it seems to me the evidence is pretty strong that Americans despise racism.
00:10:25.000And Americans of all stripes think racism is really, really bad.
00:10:30.000In fact, Americans hate racism so much that they are not willing to talk about instances of apparent racism where the races are not the ones that fit the narrative.
00:10:38.000So, for example, there was this attack that I talked about yesterday on the show.
00:10:42.000It was filmed and went viral online, in which a black man beat the living hell out of a white Macy's employee and then claimed that he used the N-word.
00:10:52.000And the only people who are talking about it are, of course, people on conservative radio, right?
00:10:56.000People in the conservative world are talking about this because they're making the point that, you know, it's quite fascinating the disparate attention that is paid to acts of racism in the United States.
00:11:05.000If this were a white guy walking into a Macy's and beating the hell out of a black employee, that would lead the news every night for weeks.
00:11:11.000And the reason for that is because, again, the media narrative is that racism only exists when it comes to white-on-black racism.
00:11:17.000There's no such thing as black-on-white racism.
00:11:19.000Also, there's this idea from the media that if you pay attention to attacks like this one, that it leads to bad narratives.
00:11:26.000It leads to bad narratives in which people might become racist about black people by seeing this sort of incident.
00:11:30.000Now, I think most people are smart enough to look at this sort of incident and not attribute this to black people at large.
00:11:35.000I think most people are smart enough to look at an incident like this and say, hey, that's a bad person who's doing a racist thing, it appears.
00:11:41.000But the same way that the left refuses to... Here's the thing.
00:11:46.000For the left, it's a lot of projection.
00:11:47.000The left sees a white person do a bad thing to a black person and immediately attributes that to American society writ large and white people writ large.
00:11:53.000And so they assume that if Americans were to see a black person do a bad thing to a white person, that all of America would then suggest that all black people are responsible for this.
00:12:02.000The only people who talk in terms of collective responsibility for actions on a racial level are people on the left.
00:12:07.000And that is why they don't want to talk about incidents like that because with leftist logic, then collective action, collective responsibility starts to take hold.
00:12:15.000But for regular people, they look at incidents of racism, they say, okay, people who act racist in America are the bad apples and we should call them out no matter what their race.
00:12:23.000And it doesn't implicate the system more broadly.
00:12:25.000The problem for the left is if you're making an argument that systems of power are always implicated by individual events, then you can only show the public certain events.
00:12:34.000It's very important that the public only see certain events because if every incident is just the tip of the iceberg and the iceberg is really the problem, well then, we can only show you the incidents that back our narrative and the icebergs that we wish to talk about.
00:12:46.000So this incident at Macy's, of course, did not receive the sort of national news coverage that it would have received if the races were reversed.
00:12:51.000Neither did that incident in, what was it, Michigan?
00:12:53.000Where there was a video of a young black man beating up an elderly white person.
00:12:57.000Neither did that incident in New York, where there was that image of a young black man walking down the street.
00:13:01.000He apparently had a bunch of criminal violations before, pushing over a 92-year-old white woman who promptly banged her head on the sidewalk.
00:13:07.000None of that made the news in the same way that the beatings of Jews in Williamsburg, predominantly by young people of color, did not make the news.
00:13:14.000The reason it didn't make the news is not because it's not newsworthy.
00:13:17.000It's because the left automatically assumes that because they think of things in terms of race, everybody else We'll start to attribute individual actions to broader races, and then that will back a narrative that they don't like.
00:13:28.000And again, I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't attribute individual instances to broader narratives without any supporting evidence, but because the left does it routinely, they're afraid of sh- This is how you end up with censorship.
00:13:38.000The way you end up with censorship is because there are people on the left who believe that every individual incident is indicative of a broader system of power.
00:13:45.000And so we can only show you certain incidents that back our notions of which power ought to govern and which power ought not govern.
00:13:52.000But this is part of the broader point, which is that, and by the way, that is a status quo that is sort of accepted by most Americans.
00:13:57.000Most Americans are not clamoring to see more of this Macy's incident on TV.
00:14:01.000And the reason is because most Americans are uncomfortable with racist incidents and uncomfortable with racism more generally.
00:14:08.000Americans are trying to wipe racism away.
00:14:13.000And you're seeing that, it's pretty incredible, you're seeing this On a wide variety of levels, the attempt to bend over backwards to wipe away non-racism over and over.
00:14:23.000So 30 Rock is now pulling certain episodes from syndication because supposedly characters in the show appeared in blackface.
00:14:31.000And I don't actually remember those episodes.
00:14:38.000She said, as we strive to do the work and do better in regards to race in America, we believe that these episodes featuring actors in race-changing makeup are best taken out of circulation.
00:14:47.000I understand now that intent is not a free pass for white power, for white people to use these images.
00:14:51.000I apologize for the pain they have caused.
00:14:53.000Going forward, no comedy-loving kid needs to stumble on these tropes.
00:14:57.000I believe that the idea here was to parody blackface, if I recall this correctly.
00:14:59.000That the whole thing was to make fun of racism.
00:15:03.000One was episode two of season three and one was episode 10 of season five.
00:15:08.000Both of them featured Jane Krakowski's character Jenna in blackface.
00:15:11.000I believe that the idea here was to parody blackface, if I recall this correctly.
00:15:16.000The whole thing was to make fun of racism.
00:15:18.000I'm fairly certain that Tina Fey and the folks over at NBC were not like, oh, let's do let's do old fashioned blackface and make fun of black people.
00:15:25.000But even making fun of Blackface is no longer acceptable.
00:15:28.000By the way, we know that making fun of Blackface is no longer acceptable because the Washington Post ran a 3,000-word piece castigating one of its own former staffers, who is like an internet person, for having the temerity to mock Megyn Kelly by dressing up as Megyn Kelly in Blackface after that entire silly scandal a few years back.
00:15:47.000Okay, speaking of people who are now being targeted for not being woke enough, see, here's the thing.
00:15:51.000Once you buy into the narrative that America is, broadly speaking, racist, despite all proof to the contrary, there is no end to it.
00:15:58.000Once you buy into the idea that you don't have to spot individual instances of racism, all you have to identify is inequality of outcome, well then, there is no end to this routine.
00:16:08.000And the people who will find themselves on the chopping block first are the people who are most likely to cave.
00:16:12.000So this is why Bill Simmons finds himself on the chopping block today.
00:16:14.000So what did Bill Simmons do wrong, right?
00:17:07.000During the podcast, Russillo complimented Simmons on his hiring practices, praising his boss for, quote, the jobs and opportunities you've given a diverse group.
00:17:14.000Then, Simmons and Russillo were forced to apologize because it was set off a social media backlash and was described as preposterous in the New York Daily News.
00:17:23.000The Ringer Union, affiliated with the Writers Guild of America, represents about 65 employees.
00:17:27.000The outlet has no black editors or staff writers covering the NBA or NFL.
00:17:36.000It just means they're not in certain positions at the Ringer.
00:17:38.000But then, Simmons had to prostrate himself before the woke gods of the New York Times.
00:17:44.000He said in an email to the New York Times that the Ringer fell short on diversity, and that he expects to make personnel announcements soon that will show that the company is making progress on the issue.
00:17:52.000And then, he held an all-hands meeting a few days after the podcast episode.
00:17:55.000Simmons told the staff he was going to make mistakes, but that he tried to learn from them.
00:17:58.000By the way, I believe that they have two separate podcast hosts who are black, at least, right?
00:18:01.000Jemele Hill, I believe, hosts a podcast with the Ringer, and so does Larry Wilmore, is my understanding, hosts a podcast with the Ringer.
00:18:07.000So the idea that this is like a black free company or something or that Bill Simmons is a vicious racist is plainly ridiculous.
00:18:26.000A fourth black writer was hired to cover the NFL starting in July.
00:18:30.000Between 2017 and 2019, at least five black editorial staff members left the company.
00:18:34.000So that means, presumably, that he had more black staffers and some of them left.
00:18:40.000But, the New York Times quoted these four former black employees, three of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of antagonizing Simmons, and they said they often felt uncomfortable at the ringer.
00:18:49.000A few of them- why were they uncomfortable?
00:18:51.000A few of them said they were sometimes heaped with racist abuse on social media and in online comments when they heard- when they covered topics that might not have fit the expectations of the typical ringer reader, including a post on Beyonce, and top editors didn't go on social media and defend them.
00:19:03.000So it's not that the ringer did something bad to their own employees.
00:19:06.000It's that they posted articles and people were mean to them online and gave them the sads, and their editors didn't come out of the woodwork to defend them from the cruelty of the comment section.
00:19:15.000First of all, if you work in the internet, first rule of working on the internet, guys, never read the comments.
00:19:21.000Just like every other woke company, The Ringer is now being basically held hostage in its staffing decisions by woke staffers who have decided that they are going to hold accountable the editorial structure that pays them for decisions that they don't actually get to make.
00:19:34.000The point here is a more general one, which is, it seems to me, there's a pretty widespread attempt happening right now to fight racism, no?
00:19:42.000It seems like Americans, broadly speaking, are pretty, like, they're saying, what do you want from us?
00:19:47.000What do you need, what do you, meaning the woke left, what do you want us to do?
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00:23:25.000Abraham Lincoln has been cancelled by people who have suggested that, you know, if you look at his early writings, he talks about taking black people and creating Liberia and moving them back to Africa, and he wasn't in favor of racial equality, he wasn't even in favor of getting rid of slavery at the outset of the Civil War.
00:23:39.000So Abraham Lincoln has been cancelled, and now Teddy Roosevelt is being cancelled.
00:23:42.000Here's Bill de Blasio, giant weirdo and groundhog murderer, talking about how Teddy Roosevelt is cancelled.
00:23:48.000Roosevelt himself is another one of these complex figures in American history.
00:23:54.000He did some extraordinarily progressive things that we feel to this day.
00:23:59.000And he did some things that I think are deeply troubling.
00:24:02.000But I think there's a separate question between him, the person, and the actual statue.
00:24:07.000The statue has representations that clearly do not represent today's values.
00:24:15.000Uh, the statue clearly, you know, presents a white man as superior to people of color.
00:24:22.000Okay, that is not really what the statue was dedicated to do.
00:24:25.000But in any case, Bill de Blasio and the rest of the of the new communist crew...
00:24:30.000have figured out exactly what it is that they want, and what they want is all of the things.
00:24:35.000And this does tie into a broader narrative, again, of American racism and American evil.
00:24:39.000Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas, he pointed out yesterday, when you rip down Washington and Grant, you're not doing that because you want to correct American history, you're doing that because you really don't like the country, and you think the country from inception is evil and bad.
00:24:51.000You're talking not just about ripping down monuments of Confederates who fought against the Union, you're talking about ripping down the Union itself.
00:24:57.000Witness the events of just this past weekend, where mobs tore down statues of George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant.
00:25:04.000When you tear down statues of Washington and Grant, it's not about the Civil War.
00:26:21.000Super versed on sort of ideological theories.
00:26:29.000It's not about stopping racism for a lot of the people who are involved in this.
00:26:32.000It is about stopping the system itself because the system itself is supposedly an outgrowth of racism and bigotry.
00:26:37.000By the way, this is one of the problems that a lot of people, people on the left, they don't understand.
00:26:40.000People on the right say, why won't you just say Black Lives Matter?
00:26:43.000Okay, I'm happy to say Black Lives Matter.
00:26:45.000Black lives do matter, because that's perfectly obvious.
00:26:47.000It's perfectly obvious that black lives matter.
00:26:49.000The reason people object to the phrase black lives matter is because there's an actual group called black lives matter.
00:26:54.000And when people say black lives matter, that is a term that suffers from, in linguistics they call it semantic overload.
00:26:59.000It is a term that means more than one thing.
00:27:01.000The group black lives matter is a Marxist group.
00:27:03.000Okay, the group itself, which is not the movement, right?
00:27:06.000It's just the group that created the movement.
00:27:08.000That group is really not a great group.
00:27:10.000Their website specifically says we call for an end to the systemic racism that allows this culture of corruption to go unchecked and our lives to be taken.
00:27:17.000We need to defund the police nationally.
00:27:19.000We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure black people not only survive but thrive.
00:27:24.000If you're with us, add your name to this petition.
00:27:25.000We disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure required In other words, it's a Marxist group.
00:27:36.000I mean, the BLM website also takes time out to rip on Israel because that's what they do.
00:28:29.000An older generation that is allowing the younger generation to run roughshod over them.
00:28:32.000The only difference is that back in the 1960s, at least you could make the claim that the older generation had not done enough about racism.
00:28:38.000Now, the older generation is being run roughshod over by its children who, by and large, have not suffered in a racist America.
00:28:44.000If you're 20 years old living in the United States, the chances that you suffered from deep, deep personal racism are a lot lower than they were back in the 1960s by every available metric.
00:28:54.000The idea that there are systems of power that are designed to keep you down is just not true in the United States in 2020.
00:29:00.000It hasn't been true for quite a while in the United States.
00:29:03.000It was made federally illegal in the 1960s.
00:29:06.000It doesn't mean that you haven't experienced any racism in your life.
00:29:09.000It means the system is not meant to keep you down.
00:29:11.000And your parents are not the bad guys.
00:29:13.000Your parents were not complicit in the system.
00:29:16.000Okay, but we have a generational war that is going on right now.
00:29:19.000We're going to get to that in just one second because there's an incredible article in the New York Times talking about this, and it does speak to the, I would say, dismal future of the country if young people get their way on this thing.
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00:30:38.000Okay, so there's a generational thing going on here.
00:30:41.000So as I've talked about on the show before, in the 1960s, and I keep quoting Shelby Steele here because I think that his insight here is really valuable.
00:30:47.000Shelby Steele talks about that in the 1960s, there was a younger generation and they looked at an older generation that had been complicit in an actual legalized system Of racial discrimination.
00:30:56.000And they said, you don't have any moral legitimacy anymore.
00:30:58.000And on the basis of that lever, they proceeded to tear down entire systems.
00:31:03.000Everything from traditional sexual mores to the destruction of the educational system.
00:31:12.000Because the idea was our parents have no moral legitimacy anymore.
00:31:16.000And there was at least truth to the idea that their parents' generation, that the boomers' parents, had been complicit in a system of racism.
00:31:24.000That was particularly true in the South, but it was true federally, right?
00:31:28.000Now fast forward to 2020, and the kids are now doing it to their parents.
00:31:32.000So you have millennials who are doing it to Gen Xers, and you have Gen Xers who are doing it to the boomers.
00:31:38.000And the basic idea here is that the same people who were ripping on their parents back in the 60s are now being ripped by their children for quote-unquote not doing enough.
00:31:45.000Now, there's only one problem with this, which is the evidence is pretty scanty there.
00:31:49.000The evidence is really, really scanty.
00:31:51.000It doesn't really exist that the Baby Boomers and the Millennials and the Gen Xers, that those people are deeply, viciously racist.
00:32:02.000And more importantly, one of the things that is happening is when you attribute to racism the effects of failures of personal responsibility, you actually end up removing autonomy from people.
00:32:13.000And when you suggest that the system is responsible for individual failings, what you end up doing is creating a discouraging situation for young people.
00:32:20.000You tell them that all the problems in your life are not your fault.
00:32:23.000They are the fault of your parents' generation.
00:32:31.000One of the worst things you can do to a child is tell them that they do not have the capacity to rise in the freest country in the history of the world.
00:32:38.000A country that is diverse and multicultural and allows opportunities and equal rights under law, right?
00:32:45.000That country is a problem and that your parents just don't get it.
00:32:48.000They don't get it because, you know, they may be thinking of the old framework where if you remove the obstacles, then you have opportunities.
00:32:53.000But they need to think of the new framework wherein anything short of utopia is evidence of discrimination.
00:33:00.000This is leading to a younger generation who have decided that their actual quest in life is to tear down the system that provides them opportunities because they don't wish to take advantage of the opportunities themselves.
00:33:09.000There's an incredible article in the Washington Post today.
00:33:11.000It's called, Young Asians and Latinos Push Their Parents to Acknowledge Racism Amid Protests.
00:33:17.000This is pretty incredible because, let's be frank about this, young Asians and Latinos are experiencing a lot less racism in the United States than their parents or grandparents did.
00:33:48.000Because their parents keep saying things like individual responsibility.
00:33:52.000Their parents keep saying things like meritocracy.
00:33:55.000Their parents keep teaching them things like work hard.
00:33:58.000And by doing that, they are complicit in the system.
00:34:00.000According to the Washington Post, the argument began as soon as Charlie Mai and his brother Henry announced their plans to attend a Black Lives Matter protest that evening in D.C.
00:34:09.000Glenn Mai, a retired FBI agent, had been raised in Dallas by Chinese immigrants who had taught him he would succeed if he just worked hard.
00:34:14.000Glenn, 54, said, quote, Chinese culture is very much about working within the system.
00:34:19.000During decades in law enforcement, he'd come to believe the system worked.
00:34:21.000His son Charlie, 24, took a different view.
00:34:24.000My father deeply believes that everyone has a fair chance, which is just basically untrue, said Charlie, an artist who fled New York for his family's home in northern Virginia because of the pandemic.
00:34:32.000It's very Asian to me, that view that if everyone just works hard, then everything will turn out all right for them.
00:34:36.000I'm definitely a little reactive to that because I think that's delusional.
00:34:41.000Charlie's an artist in New York, presumably being subsidized by his parents.
00:34:46.000His dad, who's 54, which means that he grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, his dad, who's 54, who's presumably in Dallas as a Chinese immigrant, that is not exactly a recipe, you would think, for never experiencing racial discrimination, says, work hard and you'll get ahead.
00:35:02.000And then he tells his son, you know what happened?
00:35:26.000That June morning, amid the yelling and the tears, Glenn threatened to walk out when it became clear that Charlie and Henry, 22, planned to defy the city's 7 p.m.
00:35:34.000In the end, however, he drove downtown to bring his son safely home.
00:35:37.000The argument over the protest's police brutality and systemic racism has since softened into an extended conversation.
00:35:42.000During the Civil Rights Movement, black parents and their children may have disagreed over speed and strategy, but their shared experience of discrimination united them on the cause.
00:35:49.000Non-black allies, many of them Jewish Americans, were a clear minority in the 1960s.
00:35:53.000By contrast, the youth-led protests unfolding now in response to the killing of a black man by a white Minneapolis police officer are much more diverse.
00:35:59.000There are a large number of African Americans who have supported the BLM movement since its 2014 founding, and many native-born black and white newcomers whose lives have often differed dramatically from their parents.
00:36:09.000But there's also an unprecedentedly large segment of protesters from other backgrounds.
00:36:14.000Some are descended from immigrants who moved to the United States generations ago, while many others come from families that have arrived in great waves since the civil rights movement spurred passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act in 1965.
00:36:26.000I think what you are seeing is a decades-long transformation.
00:36:28.000We have arrived at a real cultural shift, said Jose Antonio Vargas, founder of Define America, an immigration advocacy organization and former Washington Post reporter.
00:36:38.000In forming a new kind of majority with black and white protesters, Asian and Latino and other young allies are fighting, are uniting in fighting anti-black racism and in many cases are pushing their mothers and fathers to understand why change is necessary.
00:36:49.000So, basically, parents are being called out by their children.
00:36:53.000Why are they being called out by their children?
00:36:54.000Because they themselves are saying things like, you know what?
00:36:56.000I came to this country, I worked really hard, I got ahead.
00:36:58.000Can you please stop disparaging the country that gave me that opportunity?
00:37:01.000And their kids are like, you know what?
00:37:37.000They didn't understand the big picture of it, that the system is so messed up, nobody deserves to have a knee on the neck for eight minutes over a $20 counterfeit bill.
00:37:44.000Quintero says she grew up hearing her grandparents tell stories about how they were prohibited from drinking at whites-only fountains after long hot days of working in the fields.
00:37:51.000They just kind of suppressed those memories and tried to distinguish themselves by their hard work and achievement, Quintero said, and they're still not being accepted by the white community.
00:37:59.000So your grandparents were segregated at water fountains and working in the fields and then took the opportunities afforded to them and made an incredible life for themselves, and you're going to lecture them on their subsumed racism?
00:38:12.000You're going to lecture them on their integration of white supremacist ideals?
00:38:17.000What have you gone through, young person?
00:38:20.000You literally just said that your grandparents drank in segregated water fountains and worked in the fields.
00:38:25.000Your great act of heroism is that you went and stood in a parking lot after posting on Facebook?
00:38:31.000The point here is that many of the people who are currently protesting and are going after their parents, they've deemed themselves, as I mentioned yesterday, a new generation of better people.
00:38:40.000And here's the thing, this new generation of better people, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that they're a new generation of better people.
00:38:46.000I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that they're doing many worthwhile things that are making the country a better place.
00:38:52.000That doesn't mean that, again, for the 1000th time, marching against police brutality is a bad thing.
00:38:57.000It means that when you're calling out your parents and suggesting that your parents are part of the racist system, when they're the ones who actually went through racism and you haven't even seen it, I'm gonna go no on that.
00:39:05.000I'm gonna suggest that this is self-righteousness masquerading as righteousness on behalf of others.
00:39:11.000And that there is no actual end goal here.
00:39:14.000That the end goal here is the self-righteousness.
00:39:16.000That the end goal for many of the people who are claiming that America is a systemically racist system is making themselves feel good.
00:39:23.000I have more proof of this in just one second.
00:39:25.000There's a Washington Post piece called, Is This Time Different?
00:39:28.000Talking about how there's so many people who support the Black Lives Matter protests, but is this time different?
00:39:32.000There's not a single policy prescription in the entire article.
00:39:35.000Because in the end, it is all about what slogans you say to make yourself feel good for many people.
00:40:37.000Does anybody think that that's fighting racism?
00:40:39.000Or is it possible that this is a lot of people, many of these people, particularly the white woke liberals, who are making themselves feel really good on the back of no actual agenda because this is all about a primal cry of, I matter.
00:40:51.000Maybe I haven't accomplished anything, but I matter, and I know better than my parents, and my parents may have accomplished something, but you know what?
00:40:57.000I matter because I posted a square on Facebook.
00:41:02.000That is not making the world a better place, but I think that for many of the particularly white, woke folks, this is not about making the world a better place.
00:41:09.000It's about relieving the feelings of inferiority they have about their own lives, and then trying to suggest that their parents are the bad guys in this particular scenario.
00:41:20.000Let me get to more of this in just one second.
00:41:22.000First, let us talk about the fact that now is a terrible time to go to the auto parts store.
00:41:26.000I mean, frankly, it's never a great time to go to the auto parts store.
00:41:28.000There's a good shot you're going to be overcharged.
00:41:30.000There's a very good shot they don't have the right part, that they have the generic part, or that they have to order it in.
00:41:34.000Why not just go to rockauto.com and use the interwebs to find the exact part that you need?
00:41:38.000Rockauto.com always offers the lowest prices possible rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear like airlines do.
00:41:43.000Why spend up to twice as much for the same exact parts?
00:41:46.000RockAuto.com is a family business, serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
00:41:50.000Head on over to RockAuto.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
00:41:54.000Best of all, prices at RockAuto.com are always reliably low and the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.
00:41:59.000Why spend up to twice as much for the same parts?
00:42:01.000The RockAuto.com catalog is unique, remarkably easy to navigate.
00:42:04.000Quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle and choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.
00:42:09.000We've got amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need.
00:42:33.000Make sure that you write Shapiro so they know that we sent you.
00:42:35.000Alrighty, we're gonna get into more of this, more of the virtue signaling at the expense of your parents who actually went through stuff and were involved in actual change.
00:42:43.000Like, the lack of respect for elders here is truly astonishing.
00:42:47.000And the broadening of the agenda out from, you know, police brutality is bad, to everything, to tear down stained glass windows of white Jesus, and tear down every statue you can find, and this is all justified because it's year zero?
00:42:59.000That smacks of nothing so much as a bored population assuming that the sort of natural state of things is stasis and peace.
00:43:07.000And as we're about to find out, that is absolutely not the natural state of things.
00:43:11.000First, if you're not already a Daily Wire member, you should consider getting a reader's pass to dailywire.com.
00:43:15.000It is a great value for only three bucks a month.
00:43:17.000And when you sign up, you get that first month for only 99 cents.
00:43:19.000You also get access to our mobile app, articles ad free, access to exclusive editorials, like the one that we put up yesterday, six heroic members of law enforcement that deserve praise and recognition.
00:43:28.000Remember, there are good members of law enforcement, remember that?
00:43:30.000So, if you haven't checked out the Reader's Pass already, go to dailywire.com, sign up for just a buck.
00:43:44.000All I'm saying is that this book, which was written back in December and January, it literally could not be more relevant.
00:43:49.000The basic premise of the book is that there's a group of people, I call them the disintegrationists in America, who are seeking to destroy American history.
00:43:56.000The 1619 Project comes in for some criticism.
00:43:59.000They're seeking to destroy American history.
00:44:01.000They're seeking to destroy American philosophy, the idea of equal rights before the law.
00:44:04.000And they're seeking to destroy our culture of rights, suggesting that rights like free speech are a threat to people of color, are a threat to minorities in the United States.
00:44:20.000It's a very, very useful tool for you in not only discerning what exactly is going on, but in fighting back against the insanity that we are currently seeing.
00:44:28.000Again, it's called How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
00:45:33.000The only end goal is the perpetual attempt to get people to atone of sins they did not commit, and to blame the country and their parents for all of the problems that they experience in their lives.
00:45:44.000You know, the only successful societies ever built, and the only successful people who have ever lived, are people who believe they have their own agency.
00:45:50.000People who believe they have agency in their own lives and have the capacity to act within their own lives successfully.
00:45:54.000We are forthwith building a society that is pushing the notion extraordinarily hard that you have no agency.
00:46:01.000That all the things in your life are built upon systems, and those systems deprive you of agency.
00:46:05.000So you are never responsible for your own decisions.
00:46:08.000Case in point, article in the New York Times.
00:46:10.000White Americans say they are waking up to racism.
00:46:14.000One recent afternoon while washing his car, Greg Reese, a white stay-at-home dad in Campton, Kentucky, peeled off a Confederate flag magnet he'd placed on its trunk six years earlier.
00:46:23.000It was a small act for which he expected no accolades.
00:46:25.000It should not have taken the police killing of George Floyd, Mr. Reese knew, to face what he had long known to be true, that the flag he had grown up thinking of as a beautiful trophy was a symbol of hate, and it's obviously wrong, to glorify it.
00:46:37.000It says it was a small act for which he expected no accolades.
00:46:40.000Why is it leading a piece in the New York Times?
00:46:42.000How did that end up in the New York Times?
00:46:44.000You expect no accolades for it, but you're talking to the New York Times about it?
00:46:46.000Seems kind of like you expect a few accolades.
00:46:48.000The sustained outcry over Mr. Floyd's death has compelled many white Americans to acknowledge the anti-black racism that is prevalent in the United States, and to perhaps even examine their own culpability for it.
00:46:58.000It is as though the ability of white people to collectively ignore the everyday experience of black people has been short-circuited, at least for now.
00:47:05.000By the way, this is a news article, this is not an opinion article.
00:47:09.000As though the ability of white people to collectively ignore the everyday experience of black people has been short-circuited, at least for now.
00:47:14.000So the assumptions that are baked into this cake, which is that all black people experience the same racism in the United States, that all black people are ground under the boot heel of America's systemic evils, That is the premise of the article.
00:47:25.000Large numbers of white Americans have attended racial justice demonstrations, purchased books about racial inequality, and registered for webinars on how to raise children who are anti-racist.
00:47:33.000Some have asked themselves pointed questions, like how much professional advantage they have garnered from being white, and whether they would willingly cede it if they could.
00:47:40.000Others are going to tattoo parlors to cover up images of Confederate flags, swastikas, and Ku Klux Klan symbols on their bodies.
00:47:56.000The New York Times says, it's hard to know how deep or wide these responses run, and whether they are the result of pressure from peers to appear tolerant, or if meaningful action will follow.
00:48:05.000Anti-racism activists have specified concerns that are not only about symbols or slurs, but entire governing systems about how Americans live.
00:48:12.000Okay, and then it doesn't suggest anything that Americans can actually do to fix these systems.
00:48:51.000She was the one who suggested that it was basically an outdoor street fair, and that she was just gonna allow it to happen.
00:48:55.000It was all good times over there until a couple people got shot a couple nights ago and the cops couldn't get in because protesters were blocking the cops from getting in.
00:49:02.000Well now, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said that the Seattle Police Department will be returning to its abandoned East Precinct building peacefully and in the near future.
00:49:10.000Following a weekend in which three people were shot at the edges of the protest area that has emerged around the building.
00:49:15.000Durkin said the city would attempt to phase down nighttime activity in the Capitol Hill organized protest area, known as CHOP or earlier as CHAZ, but would not be using police to clear the zone.
00:49:24.000Rather, said Durkin, they'd be asking people to leave the area voluntarily at night, offering resources for homeless people and working with community groups to try to cajole people to leave the area, where dozens of tents have sprouted up in recent weeks, along with couches, guerrilla gardens, and graffiti.
00:49:43.000Durkin said, it's time for people to go home.
00:49:45.000It's time for us to restore Cal Anderson and Capitol Hill so it can be a vibrant part of our community.
00:49:49.000But I thought it was a vibrant part of the community.
00:49:50.000I was informed that this autonomous republic, this autonomous zone, was a full flowering of American democracy.
00:49:56.000Jay Inslee literally said that Trump hates democracy for saying that he didn't like CHAZ and that it was a separatist organization inside a major American city.
00:50:02.000Zirkin said the impacts on the businesses and residents in the community are now too much.
00:50:07.000Now, she just expects that she's going to be able to send over a few people to be like, you know, guys, if you could clear this, that'd be really great.
00:50:14.000So I'm really looking forward to seeing how exactly the CHAZ chop comes to an end.
00:50:20.000See, one of the great lies about where we are in American history is this belief that this is the norm.
00:50:26.000That the great peace and prosperity we've experienced as a people over the last several decades, that that is the norm in human life.
00:50:31.000And that you can rip down all of the systems and maintain the norm.
00:50:34.000You can rip down equal rights before law and maintain the norm.
00:50:37.000That you can change the definition of racism from actual racism to the systems of oppression are preventing people from expressing themselves fully and all failures of personal responsibility are attributable to the system.
00:50:48.000You can redefine racism as that and that that won't have any impact on the systems in which we live.
00:50:52.000You can tear down the systems and keep all the good stuff, in other words.
00:50:55.000You can just tear away the roots of a building and then expect that the building is going to stand on air.
00:52:02.000By the way, question, is the mayor, Mayor Bowser over in DC, is she a racist now?
00:52:08.000Because she's shutting down the Black House Autonomous Zone.
00:52:11.000I've been reliably informed that if you're a member of a system of power and you do not allow these sorts of flowerings of democracy to occur, that you are part of the racist problem in America today.
00:52:21.000As the agenda gets vaguer and vaguer, the actual agenda gets clearer and clearer.
00:52:25.000As it turns out that there is no policy agenda, that in reality, what we are watching more and more is a movement dedicated to the destruction of American principles more wholly.
00:52:37.000Not just fighting racist incidents, and not just fighting police brutality, but something broader.
00:52:44.000Something completely disconnected from any policy.
00:52:46.000What we're watching is actually just a cultural revolution, not an actual legislative attempt.
00:52:51.000It becomes obvious that that's not something that America can go along with and be okay with.
00:52:56.000If you're trying to tear down America from the root and expect the structure to stand, then you are sadly mistaken.
00:53:19.000He has a book called The Souls of Yellow Folk, obviously named after the book The Souls of Black Folk.
00:53:25.000And the book of essays is really interesting.
00:53:27.000It's about Asian Americans in the United States and how they have dealt with discrimination in the United States.
00:53:33.000He has a couple of incredible essays near the end of the book about the changing phraseology, the change of phraseology from white supremacy to whiteness being the problem, the change of phraseology from racism to systems of oppression.
00:53:46.000He has a couple of essays in this book that are really worth reading.
00:54:08.000So go enjoy that over at dailywire.com.
00:54:09.000You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:54:15.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas, executive producer Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, assistant director Pavel Lydowsky, technical producer Austin Stevens, playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan, associate producer Katie Swinnerton, edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
00:54:35.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:54:40.000Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:54:43.000You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
00:54:49.000But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.