Full Comment - Black people can be racist, after all. (Antisemitic, too.)

00:00:00.000 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:03.760 I started wondering,

00:00:05.460 is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:00:08.520 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:00:11.240 Are those from Winners?

00:00:12.760 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.

00:00:15.220 Did she pay full price?

00:00:16.560 Or that leather tote?

00:00:17.580 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:18.480 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:20.280 That dress?

00:00:21.060 That jacket?

00:00:21.720 Those shoes?

00:00:22.760 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:00:25.740 Stop wondering.

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00:00:27.900 Winners.

00:00:28.480 Find fabulous for less.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to the latest edition of Full Comment.

00:00:38.940 I'm guest host, Jameel Javani.

00:00:41.580 An international conversation about anti-Semitism

00:00:44.560 has been caused by recent comments and actions

00:00:47.860 of rapper Kanye West and NBA player Kyrie Irving.

00:00:52.740 A unique aspect of the controversies surrounding West and Irving

00:00:56.500 is that they are two influential black men.

00:00:59.540 accused of anti-Semitism,

00:01:01.940 shining a light on historical and present-day dynamics

00:01:05.120 between black and Jewish communities.

00:01:08.180 Back in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. said

00:01:11.460 that anti-Semitism hurts black people and Jews.

00:01:15.780 He argued that anti-Semitism upholds 0.95

00:01:18.180 the doctrine of racism, 0.98

00:01:20.560 which blacks have the greatest stake in destroying. 1.00

00:01:23.840 Today, I'm joined by Dr. Wilfred Reilly to discuss whether Americans have drifted away 0.97

00:01:29.140 from the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr.

00:01:32.020 and what the controversies involving Kanye West and Kyrie Irving reveal

00:01:36.060 about the problem of anti-Semitism.

00:01:39.300 Dr. Reilly is an assistant professor of political science at Kentucky State University

00:01:44.080 and the author of Taboo,

00:01:46.580 10 Facts You Can't Talk About.

00:01:49.440 Dr. Reilly, welcome to Full Comment.

00:01:51.100 Yeah, great to be here.

00:01:52.420 Looking forward to the show.

00:01:54.820 Hopefully, I'm outside my house here in Kentucky,

00:01:58.080 so hopefully there won't be any noise in the background,

00:01:59.680 any animals or anything like that.

00:02:01.160 But yeah, glad to be on the show.

00:02:03.180 Well, certainly glad to have you.

00:02:04.480 It's an important and, frankly, I think a difficult conversation

00:02:07.960 for a lot of people to have with the right, I think, nuance and consideration.

00:02:12.920 So I think we're very lucky to welcome you.

00:02:14.940 I know you spent a lot of time thinking about race relations,

00:02:18.160 challenges around different racial communities,

00:02:20.760 understanding one another and their experiences in American society.

00:02:25.060 So I think you're an excellent person to kind of weigh in on this.

00:02:28.740 And I think maybe a good place to start with you, Dr. Reilly,

00:02:31.820 is just your initial reaction to what West and Irving sort of said on social media

00:02:37.840 and the blowback it received.

00:02:39.540 So for listeners who might not be keeping tabs on what's been going on,

00:02:44.480 West initially started a lot of this drama on Twitter,

00:02:48.120 tweeting he was going to go death con three on Jewish people after Mark Zuckerberg.

00:02:55.180 I mean, he accused Mark Zuckerberg in particular of banning him from Instagram.

00:02:59.300 And then Kyrie Irving's controversy began when he tweeted a link to what is widely considered

00:03:05.240 to be an anti-Semitic documentary.

00:03:08.580 Obviously, there's been a blowback on both.

00:03:11.240 You know, they've suffered professionally, their personal relationships.

00:03:14.740 People are commenting, their friends publicly.

00:03:17.800 What did you make of, I guess, the initial social media uproar?

00:03:21.480 And did the backlash against West and Irving surprise you at all?

00:03:24.940 Well, I think there are levels to this.

00:03:26.660 So first of all, I mean, I saw the comments, I'm a hip-hop guy, 1.00

00:03:29.340 and I thought they were pretty stupid. 0.99

00:03:31.080 I mean, Kanye West, obviously, he said, 1.00

00:03:33.200 I'm going to go death con three on Jewish people or them Jews or something like that. 1.00

00:03:37.660 And then the next day, he just went on with this. 0.98

00:03:39.860 I mean, at one point, he said that Adidas couldn't cancel him for being anti-Semitic.

00:03:44.400 He was too powerful.

00:03:46.420 You know, Adidas, obviously, is a German company, a lot of Jewish executives.

00:03:49.800 So, I mean, they're pretty sensitive there.

00:03:51.180 He did an interview with Piers Morgan, where at one point he got up from the chair and threatened to storm away.

00:03:57.140 I mean, so it was just sort of like, this is more of this foolishness from a celebrity, I guess, would be the initial reaction.

00:04:03.140 Kyrie, I'm not even really sure Kyrie Irving did anything per se. 0.72

00:04:08.720 He shared the documentary, Hebrews to Negroes, which is pretty racist, pretty anti-Semitic.

00:04:16.140 But, I mean, it's the sort of thing that you, it wouldn't be unusual to see a black man,

00:04:20.340 or for that matter, a religious white guy drop online, a la, what do you think about this? 0.99

00:04:24.960 But, so my first reaction was, well, this is dumb. 0.99

00:04:27.840 We'll see what happens. 0.95

00:04:28.840 The question really is not whether Kanye's remarks were highly intelligent,

00:04:36.640 or whether there's something to be said for Hebrews to Negroes.

00:04:40.160 I mean, there's, as we both know as black men, there's a bunch of, not even anti-Semitism,

00:04:45.100 but bizarre almost mythology in the black community.

00:04:48.080 I mean, we were the Egyptians, we were the first Jews, we discovered fire, this kind of thing.

00:04:56.060 So, I mean, the question isn't whether this sort of stuff is valid.

00:05:00.120 It's, it's sort of what the response to it was.

00:05:04.140 I mean, like, at one point, Kanye West said something like,

00:05:06.840 well, if you criticize certain groups in the USA, and I mean, he prominently included Jews in that, 0.90

00:05:11.040 there's going to be an enormous backlash, and you're going to get canceled.

00:05:13.480 And I don't, I don't really think what happened proved him wrong.

00:05:16.400 The question is, is that, is there any validity to that?

00:05:19.540 You raise a really interesting point that I want to dig into with you here

00:05:23.100 about sort of the cultural aspect of this within black communities,

00:05:28.700 how some of this stuff gets discussed.

00:05:31.500 I think for a lot of people, they're unaware of some of the history around,

00:05:35.800 you know, the black Hebrew Israelites group that you might see sort of in Harlem,

00:05:40.720 or in Canada, you might see them near the Eaton Center in Dundas Square in Toronto,

00:05:45.900 who, you know, say that black people are the quote, unquote, real Jews.

00:05:51.560 Certainly, Louis Farrakhan promoted this idea a lot through the Nation of Islam,

00:05:56.220 as leader over the last few decades.

00:05:58.940 And both Kanye West and Kyrie Irving sort of alluded to that same way of thinking

00:06:03.820 when asked about whether they're anti-Semitic. 0.61

00:06:07.160 Kanye said he could not be an anti-Semite because blacks are Jews.

00:06:11.360 Kyrie Irving said he could not be anti-Semitic if he knows who he really is.

00:06:15.960 So what do you make of that?

00:06:17.600 I mean, is that a big part of why someone as, you know,

00:06:20.960 with so much to lose, like Kanye West, with so much to lose,

00:06:24.800 like Kyrie Irving, would be so reckless,

00:06:26.960 is that they maybe are coming from a different cultural standpoint

00:06:30.240 where saying things like that aren't necessarily as controversial

00:06:34.220 as many people might assume?

00:06:36.180 Well, I think as a guy who, you know, plays basketball,

00:06:38.840 you know, sometimes goes to the barbershop,

00:06:40.360 if I want to do something other than have a baldy, so on.

00:06:42.880 And, I mean, I think that there's a lot of subtext in the black community, 0.97

00:06:47.660 just like I assume there is in southern quote-unquote redneck communities,

00:06:51.480 that's kind of working class, that's under the waterline, 0.99

00:06:55.020 that people sort of tolerate and don't pay a lot of attention to.

00:06:58.000 Um, these kind of conspiracy theories aren't all that wild.

00:07:04.200 I mean, arguing with kind of a right-wing white guy online,

00:07:08.420 people often drop phrases like,

00:07:10.280 we was Kangs,

00:07:11.380 and that refers to the tendency of a lot of black men

00:07:14.640 to say that virtually everything historically involved black people.

00:07:19.440 I mean, we just gave some examples,

00:07:21.360 ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, so on down the line.

00:07:23.440 But, I mean, Minister Farrakhan himself is a prime example

00:07:27.220 of these sort of conspiracy theories.

00:07:29.400 I mean, you know, as I understand the Nation of Islam's kind of creation myth, 0.94

00:07:35.840 they believe that all other races were bred out of black people 0.99

00:07:39.680 by a lunatic, big-headed scientist called Jakob 0.99

00:07:42.780 about 60,000 years ago.

00:07:45.040 I mean, he went to an island called Potmost 0.71

00:07:47.960 and bred the weakest, most deformed, most crippled black people together. 1.00

00:07:53.540 All people this time were black, by the way, according to him. 0.98

00:07:56.220 Um, for, what, 200 years, 0.87

00:07:58.360 and then he finally wound up with the brown race,

00:08:01.220 which would be East Indians or Hispanics. 0.99

00:08:03.060 And then he bred the most weak, crippled, bizarre, 0.99

00:08:06.160 perverse brown people together for 200 years, 0.98

00:08:08.880 and he got the red man, the Indian. 0.99

00:08:10.260 And, you know, the most perverse, weak, money-grubbing red people together 1.00

00:08:14.800 for 200 years until you got the East Asians. 0.98

00:08:17.300 And then, finally, after 200 years of breeding,

00:08:20.080 the weakest of all these racial groups that focus on Asians, 0.99

00:08:22.960 you got the devil, the ultimate monster, 1.00

00:08:25.760 you know, the thing from the snows, the white man. 0.99

00:08:28.940 And, I mean, the Nation of Islam has something like 60,000 dues-paying members.

00:08:33.120 I mean, they have an accredited university, Muhammad University,

00:08:36.760 you know, a full-time fighting force, the fruit of Islam. 1.00

00:08:40.260 So, when people talk about racism in the USA,

00:08:42.680 there tends to be a focus on, like,

00:08:45.000 five or six mildly socially maladjusted lawyers

00:08:48.500 that are watching the V-Dare website.

00:08:50.620 There's a lot of this stuff.

00:08:52.940 And, to some extent, it may be the natural residue

00:08:55.400 of being oppressed in the past or something.

00:08:58.240 But it's not infrequent that a celebrity will kind of dip into this

00:09:01.860 because it's just what they hear in the barbershop.

00:09:03.960 It's not really seen as evil.

00:09:06.020 A lot of times, the person doing it has a white partner.

00:09:08.080 But, I mean, we saw this with Nick Cannon 0.94

00:09:10.160 where he invited that old loony.

00:09:13.080 No offense to the brother.

00:09:14.600 I mean, he's a good guy in person.

00:09:15.780 But Professor Griff from Public Enemy on to, like, a primetime show.

00:09:20.860 And Professor Griff started talking about, like,

00:09:22.780 the mythological significance of the number nine

00:09:25.240 and how, again, black people were the first Jews and the first humans.

00:09:29.040 I mean, so there's a lot of this.

00:09:31.600 It's mostly working class.

00:09:33.040 It's mostly under the surface.

00:09:34.040 But, like, I know brothers that believe this.

00:09:36.760 Like, this is certainly more prevalent than any equivalent kind of racism

00:09:41.620 on the white side of the fence when it gets to almost this religious level.

00:09:46.060 So I think Kanye and Kyrie kind of thought of themselves as sharing hidden knowledge

00:09:50.740 and weren't quite aware of the backlash this would get from ordinary people

00:09:54.800 that identify as Christians or that oppose anti-Semitism and so on down the line.

00:09:58.840 It's interesting because, you know, there's certainly a part of this

00:10:04.260 that is just unearthing some of the modes of thinking,

00:10:09.040 some of the cultural narratives that, as you said, sort of exist under the surface.

00:10:14.460 And there are moments, you know, especially in hip-hop,

00:10:17.320 where you can see these things emerge.

00:10:19.140 You mentioned sort of Nick Cannon and his podcast, for example.

00:10:23.740 One of the most popular songs of the year, the DJ Khaled song God Did,

00:10:27.380 Jay-Z makes reference to Louis Farrakhan in his verse.

00:10:31.760 And so a lot of this stuff is out there.

00:10:34.700 It's sort of interesting when people gravitate to it and focus on it

00:10:39.160 because, for example, Jay-Z's not been criticized in any mainstream outlet

00:10:43.740 that I'm aware of for making reference to Louis Farrakhan,

00:10:47.420 despite the fact that he is certainly a lightning rod,

00:10:50.600 a firebrand type of personality, and I think for good reason.

00:10:53.940 Why do you think Kanye and Kyrie in particular, at this moment, received this attention?

00:11:00.820 Is it random or is there something going on right now?

00:11:03.920 Is there something about those two men in particular

00:11:05.800 that would sort of get this reaction from people in ways that maybe other moments

00:11:10.800 where some of these cultural narratives come up aren't getting the attention?

00:11:15.180 Well, I mean, I think to some extent we've seen the great races fighting for 10 or 12 years.

00:11:20.800 Not 10 or 12 years, that's an exaggeration, but four or five Black Lives Matter.

00:11:24.300 I mean, sometimes literally in the street, as in Kenosha, people are very sensitive about race.

00:11:28.080 I think that played a role.

00:11:29.160 Another thing, of course, is just the size of the platform.

00:11:32.620 I mean, like, they're all kind of throwaway lines in rap songs.

00:11:36.720 I mean, I think that it's a Jay-Z and R. Kelly song, I think, where one of them says,

00:11:41.260 and for my young girls, pee-pee, which might be a reference to some of the things

00:11:45.740 that were, you know, going on in the music business at that time

00:11:48.820 that the brother R got charged with.

00:11:51.020 I mean, you know, but it's just, you know, nobody knew exactly what they were talking about.

00:11:57.920 And, you know, I still don't know exactly what they're talking about.

00:12:00.080 It could theoretically mean something else.

00:12:01.620 And that just flew under the radar.

00:12:04.200 If you go on national television, or you go on these platforms that these people now have,

00:12:10.740 where Kanye West has, oh, I mean, a hundred million followers between Twitter and Instagram,

00:12:16.120 and you say the same kind of thing.

00:12:18.040 I mean, you're not talking about a throwaway line in the chorus of a rap song anymore

00:12:22.420 that no one can exactly trace the provenance of.

00:12:25.940 I mean, you just said that, like it's you. 0.97

00:12:28.400 You know, I mean, a death con on them Jews. 1.00

00:12:32.000 Like, it's very hard to get away from that. 0.96

00:12:34.960 So during a time of troubling racial tensions,

00:12:38.760 these people are taking to very high-profile platforms,

00:12:41.760 whether you're talking about national media,

00:12:43.300 or you're talking about the highest level of social media,

00:12:45.740 and they're saying this stuff.

00:12:46.880 So I think it just became a situation that couldn't be avoided.

00:12:50.200 I mean, I've talked to Jewish executives about this situation,

00:12:52.740 and I think a lot of them would have preferred,

00:12:54.520 not that there's a coordinated group of Jews in the country,

00:12:57.120 but a lot of people in a situation like that would have preferred to avoid it.

00:13:02.520 Like, I don't think Adidas wanted to eat the cost of every pair of Yeezys they had left on the shelf.

00:13:07.900 It's just sort of, once the guy keeps talking,

00:13:11.400 and once he starts saying things like,

00:13:14.220 you know, and by Jews, I mean the leadership of Adidas,

00:13:16.580 who can't fire me for anti-Semitism,

00:13:18.980 it's going to be very, very hard to keep that individual, you know, on the payroll.

00:13:23.380 So, that's what happened.

00:13:26.020 It was just the power of the platforms.

00:13:29.300 You know, and a lot of people don't understand.

00:13:31.920 I struggle with this myself sometimes,

00:13:33.680 because across platforms, I'm over 100,000 social media followers.

00:13:37.620 I mean, you're followed by, not just by your friends,

00:13:39.600 but by trolls, by people that dislike you, by political opponents.

00:13:43.580 The moment you say something, that's going to be screenshot,

00:13:46.300 that's going to be captured.

00:13:47.760 So, when Kanye West said,

00:13:49.280 I'm going to say all this stuff about the Jews, 1.00

00:13:51.760 and did, you know, post one and post two,

00:13:53.420 and then fell asleep,

00:13:54.840 I mean, that was probably a wrap.

00:13:56.620 I mean, at that point, a million people had seen those comments.

00:13:59.520 So, that, I think, is what happened.

00:14:02.040 Tense time, public platform.

00:14:03.980 So, I think there's another element to this that's very interesting,

00:14:08.200 which is, and I'm curious if you agree with me on this or not,

00:14:11.600 that over the last few years,

00:14:13.080 there's been this focus on race, as you mentioned,

00:14:16.620 but one of the underlying assumptions,

00:14:19.000 whether that's the influence of ideologies like critical race theory,

00:14:22.700 or just sort of the trendy race politics of Black Lives Matter,

00:14:26.920 there's been this underlying assumption that

00:14:29.280 racism only works in very specific ways,

00:14:33.520 and that you could go on TV and say,

00:14:36.220 Black people can't be racist,

00:14:37.660 and a lot of folks would hear that as a mainstream opinion,

00:14:41.260 that only some people and, you know,

00:14:43.840 assumed powerful groups could be racist,

00:14:46.940 and others are just expressing frustration

00:14:50.300 at a system that's unfair to them.

00:14:53.120 With the reaction to Kanye and Kyrie,

00:14:56.040 it seems as though there is now recognition 0.94

00:14:58.280 that Black people do have the capacity to be racist, 0.99

00:15:02.440 like all other people,

00:15:03.640 and that we're somehow going back to a more old-school definition of racism,

00:15:09.200 that it's this individual action,

00:15:12.320 this individual sin,

00:15:13.680 this individual transgression,

00:15:15.600 rather than being simply just systems and statistics and disparities

00:15:19.820 and all the ways in which it's become more political and theoretical,

00:15:23.880 I think, recently.

00:15:25.840 Do you agree with that observation?

00:15:27.640 Well, I hope so.

00:15:28.280 I mean, the whole Black people can't be racist thing 1.00

00:15:30.460 is just a stupid word game from the field of sociology. 1.00

00:15:34.100 I mean, like, if you're debating one of these guys, 0.99

00:15:36.380 the next thing they'll say is,

00:15:37.780 well, we can be prejudiced in positions of individual power.

00:15:40.880 It's just meaningless nonsense.

00:15:42.960 I mean, in the book Taboo,

00:15:45.000 I actually put together

00:15:46.440 what at the time were all the dictionary definitions of racism,

00:15:50.020 which essentially just broke down to

00:15:51.860 bias against an individual on the basis of race,

00:15:56.220 usually genetic.

00:15:57.020 And I pointed out that by this standard definition,

00:16:00.020 which all the professions agreed on for centuries,

00:16:03.520 racism is possible for anyone.

00:16:06.720 And I noted how in some of the classic papers on race,

00:16:09.620 Snyderman and Carmine's developing the first List experiment, for example,

00:16:13.820 racism was defined quite simply as a dislike of blacks or whites or whatever.

00:16:17.440 So the idea that racism is prejudice plus power is something,

00:16:22.480 it's not based on, like, new knowledge that we discovered.

00:16:25.200 You know, it's something that came out of the field of qualitative sociology

00:16:28.640 in the 70s and 80s,

00:16:31.200 in my opinion, as a social scientist,

00:16:34.360 you know, right down the hallway from those guys as an excuse.

00:16:37.440 Because people at that point were starting to look at the Panthers.

00:16:40.500 I mean, they were starting to look at kind of the post-Garveyist.

00:16:43.120 They were starting to look at SNCC and the student radicals.

00:16:45.960 And they were finding that blacks, on average, 0.99

00:16:47.780 were a lot more racist than whites. 0.96

00:16:49.620 That's starting to fade.

00:16:50.700 But, I mean, there had been centuries of ethnic conflict in the USA

00:16:54.140 with blacks getting the worst of it. 0.99

00:16:55.760 And a lot of black people were extreme bigots. 1.00

00:16:57.960 And this is kind of embarrassing if you're on the left, 0.99

00:17:00.320 if you're sort of the equivalent of a woke white girl

00:17:02.440 that wants to help these brothers.

00:17:04.660 So the strategy, as I understand it, was simply to say,

00:17:08.340 well, that's not real racism because those people don't have power.

00:17:12.080 Those are just powerless ghetto kids. 1.00

00:17:13.940 So even if they're robbers or rapists, they can't be actual bigots.

00:17:19.400 But as that example illustrates, this never made a lot of sense.

00:17:23.200 I don't want to sink deep into wonkery.

00:17:25.980 But almost all human interactions are individual.

00:17:29.960 So if you say, well, the average black person at the mean 0.83

00:17:34.740 has less power than the average white person.

00:17:37.120 Yeah, sure, that's probably true.

00:17:38.880 I mean, there's still some slight differences in income and so on.

00:17:41.160 But, I mean, if you do look at income, you'd find that 42 or 46

00:17:45.120 or whatever percent of black people have more money

00:17:47.320 and more power than the average white.

00:17:48.960 So there's no logical reason that the guy in that situation 0.94

00:17:52.980 couldn't discriminate against a poor white person.

00:17:55.800 I mean, I'm a tenured professor at a major state university.

00:17:58.640 Like, if I wanted to fire one of our janitors,

00:18:00.800 and, you know, obviously KSU community, I'm not threatening to do that,

00:18:03.540 but I don't think it'd be especially difficult.

00:18:06.020 You know, those are mostly white Kentucky guys.

00:18:07.980 So the argument that, first of all, it's a bit racist to argue 0.67

00:18:12.040 that black people don't have power. 1.00

00:18:13.380 But the argument that there's not individual power 0.99

00:18:16.060 in the black community is nonsensical. 0.93

00:18:18.680 And the argument that if you're talking about the gunman 0.98

00:18:20.640 or the rapist or whatever, racism takes individual conventional power.

00:18:25.740 I mean, both of those are just wrong. 0.98

00:18:27.220 They were made up as excuses for heightened levels of black racism. 0.97

00:18:32.760 And again, obviously most black people aren't rapists or robbers or whatever, 0.99

00:18:35.100 but the point is just what it is. 0.99

00:18:37.960 Like, if you are an Irish mugger, 1.00

00:18:40.520 you have the power of life and death over a Chinese-American, let's say, victim. 1.00

00:18:45.720 So there was never much to this.

00:18:48.280 I think after Black Lives Matter, 0.99

00:18:50.280 a lot of people are starting to reject

00:18:52.340 kind of the whole liberal sociological position overall.

00:18:56.920 I mean, when you see where this leads,

00:19:00.160 like when people like Dr. Ibram Kendi are asked,

00:19:03.740 well, what is anti-racism to you?

00:19:05.980 And they say, well, it's an affirmative action program

00:19:09.040 that gives black people a massive advantage 1.00

00:19:11.440 in applications for jobs

00:19:14.240 until exact equity has been reached.

00:19:18.060 You know, the solution to discrimination in the past

00:19:20.440 is racist discrimination today.

00:19:22.880 And that's a pretty direct quote.

00:19:24.500 I'm not trying to misrepresent the guy's ideas.

00:19:26.760 But I think that a lot of people are going to look at that and say,

00:19:28.940 no, that's not anti-racism.

00:19:30.300 That's just racism.

00:19:31.760 So people are getting a little sick and tired of this.

00:19:33.980 And when someone steps forward and says, 0.60

00:19:37.360 I don't like a small group of white people 1.00

00:19:40.640 that has suffered intensely,

00:19:42.360 I do think we're back to the point where people are going to say,

00:19:44.540 OK, stop being a bigot. 1.00

00:19:45.960 You sound like a bigoted jackass. 1.00

00:19:47.720 We're not, there's no tolerance for that. 0.99

00:19:50.020 A final point that I will make, though,

00:19:52.060 also is that to some extent they picked the wrong group.

00:19:56.620 I mean, there are groups that are,

00:19:58.520 and this isn't unique to the Jews,

00:19:59.960 but that are very sensitive to prejudice in society

00:20:03.460 because they've suffered in the past

00:20:04.860 and that have all these institutions designed to repel it.

00:20:09.180 Jewish Americans, if you look at the ADL,

00:20:11.060 so on, frankly, are one of these groups.

00:20:13.180 Like, you're going to get criticized if you talk about Jews. 0.90

00:20:16.840 Black Americans are another one. 1.00

00:20:18.320 I'm not singling out the Jews here,

00:20:20.080 but if you were, if Eminem were to step forward and say, 0.98

00:20:23.280 frankly, a lot of black mothers don't take good care of their kids 1.00

00:20:25.720 or something like that, 0.98

00:20:26.960 you know, Marshall Mathers would be fighting off cancellation.

00:20:29.860 He might win or he might lose, but within a day.

00:20:32.540 So if Kanye West had said,

00:20:35.160 I'm going DEFCON 5 on white people, 1.00

00:20:37.460 just like ordinary Anglos, 1.00

00:20:39.540 nothing would have happened.

00:20:41.600 Mexicans, Mexican Americans, 0.93

00:20:43.220 nothing would have happened.

00:20:44.560 So there are groups that have kind of these protective antibodies,

00:20:47.640 and there are groups that don't.

00:20:50.140 But I also think that across the board,

00:20:52.420 so you've got what you'd call an interaction term,

00:20:55.060 across the board,

00:20:56.080 people are also just sick and tired of racist stuff.

00:20:58.640 So it was a bad time for those comments for a lot of reasons.

00:21:02.280 We'll be back with more full comment in just a moment.

00:21:08.400 I opened up the podcast quoting Martin Luther King from 1967,

00:21:13.060 where he identified a common struggle that Jews and blacks in America

00:21:19.200 needed to work together toward.

00:21:22.080 And certainly there's a lot of history of black and Jewish communities

00:21:26.160 working together to improve life for everybody in the United States.

00:21:30.080 I'm thinking of the NAACP,

00:21:32.620 a school desegregation,

00:21:34.540 the civil rights movement,

00:21:36.280 an action for equal voting rights,

00:21:39.280 tons of examples from the 20th century.

00:21:41.980 And I'm wondering,

00:21:43.200 Dr. Riley,

00:21:44.200 do you think that part of what's happening

00:21:46.660 with some of these tensions today,

00:21:49.580 with the comments that Kanye West and Kyrie Irving are making today,

00:21:53.780 and the reaction to that,

00:21:55.320 is partially the product of American society failing to acknowledge progress,

00:22:01.420 that if American society really celebrated all the gains that have been made,

00:22:07.560 I think it would be very hard to see Jews and blacks 1.00

00:22:10.980 as not having a similar struggle and a shared interest.

00:22:16.340 And yet it seems like there's been a move away from that perspective,

00:22:20.040 maybe because of some of modern race politics

00:22:22.880 wanting to separate people on the basis of skin color a bit more,

00:22:27.020 I would say,

00:22:27.640 than Martin Luther King certainly wanted to.

00:22:30.540 What do you make of that?

00:22:32.080 Yeah.

00:22:32.600 So I think that what you're saying,

00:22:35.800 very, very intelligently phrased,

00:22:37.460 brother and all this,

00:22:38.160 but is something that when you go again to the basketball court

00:22:41.580 or the golf course or the barbershop,

00:22:43.160 that is just intuitively obvious to most people.

00:22:46.160 I would go so far as to say that modern American society

00:22:50.080 is almost entirely non-oppressive.

00:22:54.580 I mean, you might,

00:22:55.340 there's some secondary bias that can be measured in a laboratory.

00:22:59.000 I read an interesting paper recently about whether my home,

00:23:02.520 because I'm in an interracial couple and I'm in the South,

00:23:04.920 it wasn't just being black,

00:23:06.200 but whether my appraisal level each year might change a little more slowly

00:23:10.040 than the traditional Anglo white guys.

00:23:12.800 You can have these very fringe conversations,

00:23:15.820 but I mean,

00:23:16.300 the simple reality is that,

00:23:18.220 you know,

00:23:19.240 de jure segregation was outlawed even in the South in 1954.

00:23:23.840 I mean,

00:23:24.160 most of the North and integrated in the 1910s, 1920s.

00:23:27.540 The Civil Rights Act,

00:23:29.080 which makes racial discrimination civilly and often criminally illegal,

00:23:34.140 was passed in 1964.

00:23:36.600 We've had pro-minority affirmative action since 1967.

00:23:40.660 I mean,

00:23:41.580 you have about a 200 point SAT boost applying to a top college. 0.82

00:23:45.000 If you're a black man, 0.97

00:23:45.680 we both know that and have discussed it. 0.86

00:23:47.800 So I think right now there's,

00:23:51.080 there's no doubt that the USA is a society that's not only made progress,

00:23:55.620 but that's reasonably fair.

00:23:57.140 And there are ways to test this.

00:23:58.840 I mean,

00:23:59.060 if you take a first year English speaking immigrant from a good Ghanaian university

00:24:04.340 and a first year English speaking immigrant from a good Irish university and drop them off in Brooklyn,

00:24:09.180 are they going to have pretty similar life outcomes?

00:24:11.560 I mean,

00:24:11.800 all research to date,

00:24:13.220 like every bit indicates yes.

00:24:16.180 So,

00:24:16.440 I mean,

00:24:16.560 if you look at the top 10 highest income earning groups in the United States,

00:24:20.680 and even I was surprised by this when I wrote my book Taboo,

00:24:23.900 but I mean,

00:24:24.500 they're,

00:24:24.700 they're generally non-white.

00:24:26.100 I mean,

00:24:26.280 number one is Indian Americans,

00:24:28.240 $126,000 a year,

00:24:30.040 make about twice the national norm.

00:24:32.360 Number two is,

00:24:34.380 I believe,

00:24:34.720 Taiwanese Americans,

00:24:36.840 a little to the east of China there,

00:24:39.620 same genetic population,

00:24:41.600 if that matters to you.

00:24:42.540 I mean,

00:24:42.740 there are over a hundred thousand Filipino Americans.

00:24:45.520 You almost always have some black or partially black groups like South Africans or Nigerians that crack that list.

00:24:51.340 So,

00:24:51.580 I mean,

00:24:53.040 the,

00:24:53.380 the essential reality that we've made a lot of progress and today are barely prejudiced at all beyond the individual level.

00:24:59.160 I mean,

00:24:59.460 I think it's pretty clear.

00:25:01.160 Why don't more people know that?

00:25:03.540 I think that there's a concerted effort to teach people the opposite to some extent.

00:25:10.200 I mean,

00:25:10.540 something I've often said is that the most dangerous time for an activist movement or the most challenging time is after it wins.

00:25:17.500 So,

00:25:17.980 once you got to affirmative action,

00:25:20.120 not just non-discrimination,

00:25:21.520 but pro-minority discrimination,

00:25:23.720 what is there for,

00:25:24.940 say,

00:25:25.080 the NAACP,

00:25:26.280 which I've been a member of before.

00:25:27.440 They do some good work locally.

00:25:28.280 But what is there for them to do?

00:25:31.100 And I mean,

00:25:31.500 a lot of people,

00:25:32.140 I believe William Julius Wilson said this,

00:25:34.280 have speculated that one thing they could have done is sort of keep a skeleton crew in place,

00:25:39.060 be ready, 0.64

00:25:39.640 be damned ready to fight any attempts to roll back progress, 0.84

00:25:42.940 go to the Supreme Court, 0.97

00:25:43.820 have some lawyers on staff.

00:25:45.020 But other than that,

00:25:45.620 there's not that much for you to do because you won.

00:25:49.120 Even by the 70s,

00:25:50.220 the majority of people aren't bigots,

00:25:51.660 interracial marriage is common,

00:25:53.220 you have an advantage in the law.

00:25:55.300 So why keep this fight up?

00:25:57.200 But what we've seen is that this infrastructure that was put in place,

00:26:00.720 I mean,

00:26:01.080 I mentioned one of the groups,

00:26:02.280 there's the SPLC,

00:26:03.260 which has a well-invested endowment of a little over $400 million.

00:26:06.920 You know,

00:26:07.360 there's whatever Al Sharpton is,

00:26:08.540 the National Action Network.

00:26:10.160 I mean,

00:26:10.480 you have all the young lions,

00:26:11.780 the hundreds of BLM chapters coming up.

00:26:13.760 There's a vested interest for these guys,

00:26:16.120 academic and financial,

00:26:17.420 in arguing that not much has changed.

00:26:19.460 So you get this weird situation where you have all these fields,

00:26:23.680 the left side of sociology,

00:26:25.400 black studies,

00:26:26.360 peace studies,

00:26:27.200 ethnic studies,

00:26:28.000 queer studies,

00:26:29.100 combined about 10% of the campus, 0.97

00:26:31.520 talking constantly about how the USA is a racist hellhole. 0.57

00:26:35.580 And as you can probably tell, 0.95

00:26:36.500 this is a bugaboo of mine,

00:26:37.840 it's something I find really irritating,

00:26:39.360 could rant about it.

00:26:40.600 But I mean,

00:26:41.240 it really does have consequences.

00:26:43.020 And what you've seen is something you referenced earlier,

00:26:47.120 which is the redefinition of racism.

00:26:51.400 So racism,

00:26:52.720 again,

00:26:53.220 per,

00:26:53.520 you know,

00:26:53.760 pages 81 to 83 of taboo,

00:26:56.160 like all the definitions,

00:26:57.540 is just genetically based dislike of another person.

00:27:00.120 It's one of the simplest,

00:27:01.620 oldest forms of human bias.

00:27:04.280 Before racism,

00:27:05.220 it was tribal bias.

00:27:06.100 We called it outgroup bias.

00:27:07.540 But I mean,

00:27:07.940 people now are trying to define it in sort of a myriad of ways.

00:27:12.000 So when I mentioned Dr. Kendi,

00:27:13.940 his argument would be that any system that produces disparate outcomes across racial groups is racist.

00:27:20.840 And this allows the activists to claim forever that the country is racist.

00:27:26.680 Because that's every system.

00:27:29.040 I mean,

00:27:29.340 there are systems that advantage minorities,

00:27:31.060 like the NBA draft.

00:27:32.900 There are systems that advantage whites, 0.92

00:27:35.020 the SAT.

00:27:36.520 Asians are now in the mix.

00:27:38.260 So if your definition of racism is not everyone performing absolutely,

00:27:42.240 equally,

00:27:42.600 and you sort of ignore all cultural,

00:27:46.480 regional,

00:27:47.880 historical,

00:27:49.560 kind of systematic,

00:27:50.760 like welfare policy,

00:27:52.640 stochastic,

00:27:53.420 just meaning lucky,

00:27:54.280 like what's the median age of these groups.

00:27:55.700 If you ignore all those variables,

00:27:57.120 and just say the only options are racism,

00:27:59.080 or genetic inferiority,

00:28:00.720 you're going to be able to quote unquote,

00:28:02.280 call out racism forever.

00:28:04.840 But the problem is that what you're calling out 90% of the time isn't racism.

00:28:08.480 It's just kind of the flow of normal life.

00:28:11.220 So that's where we are right now,

00:28:12.500 where with microaggression,

00:28:13.980 so on down the line,

00:28:14.740 almost anything can be labeled racist,

00:28:17.220 but virtually none of it would be racist in the historical sense.

00:28:21.640 I mean,

00:28:22.180 racism to me,

00:28:23.220 and I suspect you,

00:28:24.400 and to anyone you talk to outside of media and academia,

00:28:28.540 means disliking people because of race.

00:28:30.640 And yes,

00:28:31.300 that's at an all time low.

00:28:32.560 And there's a weird barrier to acknowledging that progress,

00:28:35.500 which coincidentally is probably resulting in more racism.

00:28:38.660 I mean,

00:28:38.780 I know a lot of white guys that are frankly getting sick of this,

00:28:41.320 where as absolute anti-racist with Puerto Rican girlfriends,

00:28:45.300 they're constantly told they're bigots for things like asking people,

00:28:49.120 Hey,

00:28:49.480 where are you from?

00:28:50.300 So that's where we are right now.

00:28:51.960 And I do think we need to,

00:28:53.120 we need to smack a lot of this down,

00:28:54.720 but Kanye and Kyrie found themselves in this whole firestorm.

00:28:58.480 The black guys saying this,

00:28:59.540 the white guys saying this race, 0.97

00:29:01.060 a constant focus. 1.00

00:29:02.360 And that wasn't helped by the fact that it'd say some stupid things. 1.00

00:29:06.360 Yeah. 0.98

00:29:06.860 I want to ask you about a sort of practical consequence of what you're

00:29:11.620 observing in terms of the redefinition of racism and the way we sort of

00:29:15.920 assume racism functions in society these days.

00:29:19.960 So there has been over the last few years increases in,

00:29:24.400 you know,

00:29:25.260 hate crimes towards Hasidic Jews in New York city.

00:29:28.120 Um,

00:29:29.060 back in 2019,

00:29:30.900 Armin Risen in tablet magazine wrote about this.

00:29:34.900 And he suggested that one of the reasons why the government of New York city is

00:29:39.500 not taking these,

00:29:40.660 uh,

00:29:41.120 the spike in hate crimes as seriously as they ought to is because the majority of 1.00

00:29:46.380 perpetrators are black or Hispanic. 0.98

00:29:48.420 And the narrative around hate crimes doesn't really include the possibility of a Jew being 0.98

00:29:55.760 victimized by a black or Hispanic person. 0.53

00:29:58.380 Typically the hate crime narrative is the kind of right wing white male, 0.67

00:30:03.180 uh,

00:30:04.040 attacking a minority.

00:30:05.260 So he wrote a quote, 0.97

00:30:07.780 the overwhelming majority of the alleged perpetrators in New York are either black or Hispanic and

00:30:13.440 casting antisemitism as an issue, 0.73

00:30:15.640 pitting Jews against various other minority groups threatens to re agitate problems that

00:30:22.360 many in the Jewish and surrounding communities hope no longer exist.

00:30:26.420 And the article gives mention to the crown Heights riot in 1991.

00:30:31.400 Also the 1984 Jesse Jackson fiasco,

00:30:35.620 where he refers to New York city as high me town.

00:30:38.280 Um,

00:30:39.040 what do you make of that?

00:30:40.620 Do you think we've gotten to a point where it's harder to talk about what's happening in real life

00:30:45.900 because of how we think about racism?

00:30:48.300 I don't think it's harder to,

00:30:50.360 I mean the conservative pundit Ann Coulter,

00:30:52.940 and obviously,

00:30:53.500 I mean pretty far to the right.

00:30:55.240 So you've got to take that into account when you read the book,

00:30:57.060 but wrote an entire book called mugged where she talked about all these amazing racial stories.

00:31:03.520 I mean,

00:31:03.700 on one occasion,

00:31:04.580 a group of NYPD detectives, 0.64

00:31:06.780 decorated men was almost beaten to death inside a black Muslim mosque.

00:31:11.380 And the story was essentially hushed up outside of the New York press and it vanished.

00:31:16.280 So all of these amazing racial stories,

00:31:19.480 narratives,

00:31:20.060 hate hoaxes that you would expect to be regionally,

00:31:24.440 if not internationally famous,

00:31:25.920 that essentially never became stories nationally because they don't fit the prevalent racial narrative in the USA,

00:31:33.780 which yeah,

00:31:34.460 very much is white guy and black guy clashing with white guy getting the better of it.

00:31:39.220 So this is,

00:31:39.800 this is something that's been going on for a long time.

00:31:42.400 I mean,

00:31:42.760 in taboo,

00:31:43.300 I look at interracial crime because at the time, 0.95

00:31:46.280 the time I wrote that book,

00:31:47.260 there was a constant national focus on interracial acts of violence.

00:31:51.440 I mean,

00:31:51.560 if you remember the terrible Dylan roof shooting,

00:31:53.680 so on,

00:31:54.460 but beyond that,

00:31:55.240 I mean,

00:31:55.420 like barbecue,

00:31:56.260 Becky and pool patrol,

00:31:57.880 Paula and coupon Carl and all that BS.

00:32:01.440 And I was curious,

00:32:02.480 I mean,

00:32:02.920 I'm not primarily a criminologist,

00:32:04.560 so I was interested in what the actual breakdowns of crime along racial lines are.

00:32:09.100 And what I found out first is that the entire focus on this is just the media getting clicks.

00:32:14.340 The huge majority of crime is intraracial. 0.99

00:32:18.000 Blacks make up 13% of the American population made up either 12 or 14%.

00:32:24.380 I don't want to misstate of the people that violently attacked whites.

00:32:27.760 There was,

00:32:28.040 there was no epidemic of interracial crime in the first place.

00:32:30.720 Person most likely to kill you is,

00:32:33.200 I believe your current husband or your ex-wife. 0.97

00:32:36.640 And it's one of those funny dark statistics.

00:32:39.280 But if you want to talk about interracial crime, 0.93

00:32:42.200 like in the year that I looked at,

00:32:43.940 among the interracial crimes,

00:32:46.180 more than 80% were black on white.

00:32:48.860 So for a very long time,

00:32:50.480 we've actually seen the trend being angry young members of this minority group that suffered in the past,

00:32:57.140 beating or brutalizing whites.

00:32:58.880 It absolutely does not go in the other way. 0.99

00:33:01.520 When it does,

00:33:02.280 it's often some white nutcase that's read the crime stats and that snaps and thinks he's Roland Martel 0.98

00:33:08.240 and goes and shoots up a mosque or a black church or something like that. 0.97

00:33:12.520 So this isn't an issue in the first place.

00:33:15.520 It's not a national problem in the first place,

00:33:17.180 but it does cut heavily minority against white.

00:33:20.740 And there's,

00:33:21.380 there's no reason to deny that.

00:33:22.680 There's no way to deny that.

00:33:23.780 But what we see is the media presenting the story very,

00:33:28.040 very differently.

00:33:29.600 And because I'm a long talker to kind of get to the point,

00:33:31.600 do I think that happened with the violence against Jews?

00:33:34.200 Absolutely.

00:33:35.660 And we've seen that more recently with Stop Asian Hate,

00:33:38.740 right?

00:33:39.420 So we were supposed to have an entire year kind of dedicated to absolutely preventing these criminal attacks

00:33:45.960 against Asian Americans. 0.62

00:33:47.840 I mean,

00:33:48.080 and there's no doubt these were spiking.

00:33:49.840 I don't like to take internet videos too seriously,

00:33:52.740 but like every couple of days there was something just crazy.

00:33:55.220 And there aren't that many Asians, 0.99

00:33:56.960 you know,

00:33:57.160 so it was like an old lady,

00:33:58.280 an Asian elder being tossed in front of a trade,

00:34:00.820 beaten, 0.98

00:34:01.460 raped. 0.54

00:34:01.960 People were getting run up on, 0.98

00:34:03.180 hitting the head with bricks.

00:34:04.080 I saw that video.

00:34:05.560 And so people started getting together.

00:34:07.080 You started seeing these multicolored marches around stopping Asian hate.

00:34:10.600 But then when things got to the policy level,

00:34:13.080 when it got to the level of tight,

00:34:14.820 maybe an addition to the hate crime laws,

00:34:16.640 maybe tightening things up legally,

00:34:18.320 nothing happened.

00:34:18.960 And the reason for that,

00:34:20.240 I wrote a piece about this for commentary,

00:34:22.520 seems to be,

00:34:23.860 I'm not the governor of California,

00:34:25.520 but that again,

00:34:26.540 the majority of these attackers were people of color.

00:34:30.100 They were absolutely outside narrative.

00:34:32.000 If you look at the Beru of Justice Statistics report for 2019,

00:34:35.680 like the hardest data out there,

00:34:37.360 I remember this almost line by line,

00:34:39.360 but only 24.5% of the attackers of Asians were white.

00:34:44.840 27.5% were black.

00:34:47.180 And those numbers might seem proportionate until you realize that even in big cities, 0.73

00:34:51.020 there are twice as many whites as blacks.

00:34:53.540 You know,

00:34:53.720 another 21% were Hispanic and native.

00:34:57.280 And amazingly,

00:34:58.240 only about 25% were Asian.

00:35:00.040 Like the group least likely to attack Asians, 0.90

00:35:02.100 with maybe one exception,

00:35:03.060 was Asians.

00:35:04.080 So,

00:35:04.680 it was hard to spin this as something.

00:35:08.680 And they try hard.

00:35:10.000 I mean,

00:35:10.280 if you watch Law & Order or any of these police detective shows,

00:35:13.540 it's just amazing to see how many white defendants they can make up in the Bronx.

00:35:17.760 I mean,

00:35:18.140 it's like every attacker is sort of,

00:35:20.720 he's a member of a Proud Boys-like group that drove down here specifically for the purpose of,

00:35:25.680 you know,

00:35:26.060 the reality is that anyone attacking a young Lebanese female storekeeper in the Bronx 0.99

00:35:32.540 is going to be black or Puerto Rican. 0.99

00:35:36.080 That's an ugly reality. 1.00

00:35:37.260 And yeah,

00:35:37.920 people shy away from it.

00:35:39.540 So,

00:35:39.980 with these attacks on Jews,

00:35:41.320 I mean,

00:35:41.520 there were crazy things.

00:35:42.880 Like a guy with a machete broke into an in-home shul,

00:35:45.900 where a group of Jews were holding a worship service and I think killed several people.

00:35:50.180 At any rate,

00:35:50.840 it was medieval stuff.

00:35:52.460 He like laid about him with a sword.

00:35:55.040 Again,

00:35:55.540 it was a one-day local story.

00:35:57.880 So,

00:35:58.260 I think all this ties together.

00:35:59.860 I mean,

00:36:00.640 there's an extreme reluctance to discuss actual patterns of crime in the USA and in Canada.

00:36:05.800 Because the perception is,

00:36:07.260 and there's nothing too crazy here.

00:36:08.400 I mean, 0.96

00:36:08.540 the black crime rate in the USA is about twice the white crime rate. 0.98

00:36:11.360 Violent crime. 0.97

00:36:11.880 2.3 times.

00:36:13.060 But there's a feeling that just discussing this will bring up like old school historic white racism.

00:36:20.020 So,

00:36:20.320 it's not done.

00:36:21.060 And this also ties into the entire enterprise,

00:36:25.240 you know,

00:36:25.380 SPLC,

00:36:26.220 ADL,

00:36:27.580 you know,

00:36:28.020 National Action Network,

00:36:29.280 so on down the line,

00:36:29.880 whatever Jesse Jackson is,

00:36:31.020 Rainbow Coalition.

00:36:31.920 this also ties into the network of people that are focused on prosecuting,

00:36:37.840 or following up on at least,

00:36:39.600 this older form of racism.

00:36:41.460 So,

00:36:41.800 a lot of actual bias as it actually exists falls into the gaps.

00:36:46.260 There's not an organization designed to protect,

00:36:50.120 say,

00:36:50.300 white women who get mugged by people of color. 0.99

00:36:52.400 And that's, 0.99

00:36:53.380 that's the gap the Jews fell into,

00:36:55.200 and then later the Asians fell into,

00:36:56.720 in my opinion.

00:36:57.640 It seems to me that the ideal place that we sort of collectively,

00:37:02.840 as human beings would get to,

00:37:04.820 is one where all people are held accountable for their beliefs and their actions,

00:37:10.960 regardless of what they look like or where they come from.

00:37:13.680 But also that people who are willing to make amends and take responsibility for their mistakes are given a pathway to repentance and sort of redemption.

00:37:24.580 That's what I think an ideal society looks like.

00:37:28.460 I think we're going to see something like that with Kyrie Irving's situation where he has apologized.

00:37:35.120 I think he will,

00:37:36.120 his suspension will end at some point.

00:37:38.020 He'll be back to playing basketball in Brooklyn.

00:37:40.040 I don't know if Kanye West is going to be given the chance for redemption or if frankly he's going to seek it out.

00:37:46.900 But in both situations,

00:37:48.120 I do think we've seen an example of accountability to some degree.

00:37:52.500 Do you think that there is some sort of positive outcome that can come from the blowback against West and Irving?

00:37:59.660 Or where do you see this going next?

00:38:01.280 I think exactly what you said,

00:38:03.240 which I think is what pretty much every sane person,

00:38:05.720 certainly any sane person raised in the Christian or Muslim tradition would think. 0.99

00:38:09.320 Like if you sin,

00:38:11.040 you know,

00:38:11.200 if you screw up,

00:38:11.880 if you do something like make a racist slur against countrymen,

00:38:16.600 yeah,

00:38:16.860 it's expected that you apologize and you're going to,

00:38:19.680 you're going to do penance. 0.83

00:38:20.800 You're going to be out of the public square for a couple of months,

00:38:22.660 but yeah,

00:38:23.160 then you,

00:38:23.520 then you get a chance to come back.

00:38:24.760 I mean,

00:38:24.860 you're not talking about actual neo-Nazis here or something like that.

00:38:27.680 And,

00:38:28.140 you know,

00:38:28.400 given grace,

00:38:29.440 given that they,

00:38:30.120 they change their views,

00:38:31.020 I'd extend the same,

00:38:32.620 same freedom to them.

00:38:33.840 Um,

00:38:35.200 so this,

00:38:35.920 this gets into,

00:38:37.300 wokeness was once described,

00:38:38.780 not by me,

00:38:39.340 I think it might be,

00:38:40.000 might've been by John McWhorter,

00:38:41.300 but as a religion that has no idea of mercy or redemption.

00:38:45.340 So,

00:38:46.000 you have these same concepts of some things just can't be done,

00:38:49.700 even like you can't say certain words,

00:38:51.860 like the N word,

00:38:53.960 you know,

00:38:54.260 the C word for women are their anatomy, 1.00

00:38:56.840 and the major insults for Asian Americans, 0.80

00:38:58.640 so on down the line.

00:38:59.100 So they're,

00:38:59.920 they're the same sort of taboos,

00:39:01.720 these same sort of strictures,

00:39:02.980 but if you violate them very often,

00:39:04.720 there's no way to change that fact.

00:39:08.020 And you frequently see these stories about like hip hop,

00:39:10.980 white girls and interracial relationships,

00:39:12.860 singing along with rap songs on a team bus and being like cut from the team

00:39:17.360 and kicked out of school,

00:39:18.700 you know,

00:39:19.580 so do I favor redemption in those situations?

00:39:24.560 Yes.

00:39:25.080 And I think for a variety of reasons,

00:39:26.640 including the fact that they're black and they're rich,

00:39:29.100 Irving certainly and West maybe will be kind of extended that olive branch

00:39:35.000 at some point,

00:39:37.620 you know,

00:39:38.020 and yeah,

00:39:38.500 I absolutely support that.

00:39:39.780 One thing that I will say here,

00:39:41.700 it's hard for me to be kind of,

00:39:43.440 the way I write this on Twitter is,

00:39:45.100 shh,

00:39:45.420 shh,

00:39:45.700 shh,

00:39:45.940 shh,

00:39:46.000 shocked by,

00:39:47.780 by things that go on in kind of this,

00:39:50.360 this space of public discussion.

00:39:52.680 I mean,

00:39:53.140 I don't think of myself at all as a tough guy,

00:39:54.860 but I grew up in a hood neighborhood.

00:39:56.360 I've had people shoot,

00:39:57.220 you know,

00:39:57.380 at me or very near me with guns.

00:40:00.020 You know,

00:40:00.560 I have multiple friends that have been wounded

00:40:03.280 or killed in the wars fought by the USA.

00:40:06.820 And again,

00:40:07.240 I wasn't gangbanger or anything.

00:40:08.280 People just had weapons around.

00:40:09.800 But I mean,

00:40:11.240 you know,

00:40:11.840 and other tragedies have gone on in life.

00:40:13.580 You know,

00:40:13.700 my mother died not long ago.

00:40:16.100 I mean,

00:40:16.360 now,

00:40:16.540 now years past,

00:40:17.540 of course,

00:40:18.880 you know,

00:40:19.100 I've been in vehicular reps where I could have been killed.

00:40:21.920 I'm not trying to present myself as having had a fascinatingly adventurous life.

00:40:24.920 I've traveled in the third world is another,

00:40:26.640 another element of this.

00:40:28.500 But I mean,

00:40:30.060 so,

00:40:30.740 when people say offensive things on social media,

00:40:35.460 my reaction is,

00:40:37.420 oh,

00:40:37.840 that thing that guy said on Twitter was mildly offensive.

00:40:41.980 I tend to think that this sort of feigned,

00:40:46.260 horrified reaction that people do is just BS.

00:40:50.840 I don't really think anyone means it.

00:40:54.040 So with Kanye West,

00:40:55.500 for example,

00:40:56.660 one of the things that I noted was that he didn't,

00:41:00.680 like the DEFCON reference,

00:41:02.540 he was trying to say DEFCON,

00:41:04.640 meaning like my debating opponents better get ready

00:41:07.500 because tomorrow I'm coming out shooting.

00:41:09.580 He wasn't actually threatening the lives of Jewish people.

00:41:13.560 But I mean,

00:41:13.900 people immediately took what he said,

00:41:15.500 ran with it,

00:41:16.160 and there was very little prospect of kind of a redemptive process.

00:41:19.640 So yeah,

00:41:20.040 I think both those brothers should be given a chance to,

00:41:22.460 you know,

00:41:23.000 do a quick apology,

00:41:24.080 rehab,

00:41:24.520 move on with their lives.

00:41:25.520 And that's the case for almost all of this stuff.

00:41:28.980 I mean,

00:41:29.240 excuse the word, 0.98

00:41:29.920 but if some college girl says my nigga to her best friend, 1.00

00:41:33.620 you suspend her for a week and then you go on with life.

00:41:37.620 There's not necessarily some traumatic lesson to be learned from these stories.

00:41:43.800 Kyrie Irving posted a mildly racist documentary that you can buy in barbershops around the hood everywhere in the country,

00:41:51.920 probably in Canada too,

00:41:53.420 and that's it.

00:41:54.140 He should apologize.

00:41:55.520 What,

00:41:55.640 they bench him for five games and then that's it.

00:41:58.160 I don't,

00:41:58.580 I don't think most of these stories are stories.

00:42:01.600 And last point,

00:42:02.840 I also think there's an element of sociopathic status seeking to this.

00:42:07.120 Like when you look at a lot of the professions where this is very common,

00:42:10.560 where you get the pack feeding mobs like journalism,

00:42:13.520 there are fields where it's very,

00:42:15.080 very difficult to make your way up the ladder.

00:42:17.780 And where there's normally a lot of entrenched dead weight on that ladder in front of you.

00:42:22.560 And a lot of these allegations that somebody did X and needs to be canceled strike me as just ways to remove those obstacles.

00:42:30.640 So,

00:42:30.880 I mean,

00:42:32.020 like,

00:42:32.360 I don't know if you remember this thing with,

00:42:34.020 I think it was the Washington Post,

00:42:36.140 Felicia Sonmez.

00:42:39.300 One of her colleagues made a joke that was like,

00:42:42.140 in my experience, 0.79

00:42:43.000 all women are either bisexual or bipolar. 1.00

00:42:45.800 Just a dumb, 1.00

00:42:46.760 actually kind of funny joke. 0.99

00:42:47.820 It was Dave Weigel,

00:42:48.700 their politics guy.

00:42:49.540 So,

00:42:50.200 Felicia Sonmez retweets the joke and says,

00:42:53.720 this is the kind of workplace that I'm forced to exist in.

00:42:56.820 Can you even imagine it as a woman? 0.98

00:42:59.360 These are all independent tweets.

00:43:00.740 And this goes on for days.

00:43:03.560 She starts calling out everyone who liked the joke.

00:43:06.280 Like,

00:43:06.440 can you believe that so-and-so clicked like on this?

00:43:10.520 Someone said,

00:43:11.420 maybe you two should just go to lunch and make up.

00:43:13.340 Can you believe I'm being asked to go on a date with my abuser?

00:43:17.200 This,

00:43:17.560 this went on for weeks.

00:43:19.540 Until finally the Post,

00:43:20.940 I believe,

00:43:21.280 fired both of them.

00:43:22.920 And now,

00:43:23.260 so Sonmez miscalculated there.

00:43:24.720 She went a little too far at the end.

00:43:26.220 But the,

00:43:26.760 the point of that is not that some post-college woman is offended by the idea that she might be bisexual.

00:43:33.600 It's that you're,

00:43:36.080 you're clearing the way.

00:43:37.800 You're,

00:43:38.280 you're setting a new standard for what's forbidden that will advantage your group over your rivals.

00:43:43.240 So I,

00:43:44.240 I have very little sympathy for this stuff.

00:43:46.100 I don't think anyone that's ever been shot at in the military,

00:43:49.360 you know,

00:43:49.940 neck tackled,

00:43:50.860 playing varsity sports,

00:43:53.020 anyone who's ever had a blue collar job,

00:43:54.760 black topping,

00:43:55.560 a parking lot,

00:43:56.600 the majority of people,

00:43:57.840 certainly the majority of men,

00:43:58.980 I don't think are actually horrified by this stuff. 0.99

00:44:01.180 I think we're caught up in the middle of a social game right now where people seek advantage by doing this crap.

00:44:07.440 And to the extent that people have the power position where they can at least ask to be allowed to apologize. 0.90

00:44:13.040 Yeah,

00:44:13.340 let them.

00:44:13.920 I could care less what Kyrie Irving thinks about the historical origins of black people.

00:44:20.200 I'm interested in why he can't seem to get along with his teammates.

00:44:22.800 You know,

00:44:23.060 it doesn't really matter in a lot of cases.

00:44:25.980 So sure,

00:44:26.480 let them apologize.

00:44:27.300 Give them some sensitivity training.

00:44:28.620 Move on.

00:44:28.840 Well,

00:44:30.040 thanks very much for joining us.

00:44:31.240 Dr.

00:44:31.620 Riley.

00:44:32.080 Again,

00:44:32.560 he is the author of taboo 10 facts.

00:44:35.080 You can't talk about available in bookstores everywhere.

00:44:38.920 Full comment is a post media podcast.

00:44:41.360 I'm guest host,

00:44:42.520 Jamil Giovanni.

00:44:43.400 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:44:48.700 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

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Full Comment - November 21, 2022

Black people can be racist, after all. (Antisemitic, too.)

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