Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - February 19, 2023


SUNDAY SPECIAL: IS DIVERSITY OUR STRENGTH WITH HEATHER MAC DONALD


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

171.31464

Word Count

8,377

Sentence Count

1

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

25


Summary

Heather Mcdonald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal and a New York Times best-selling author, and she has a new book, When Race Trumps Merit: How Systemic Racism Collapses the Western System. She joins Human Events Director Jack Dorrance to discuss the collapse of complex systems and the role of systemic racism as a symptom of it.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 ladies and gentlemen welcome aboard today's edition of the sunday special here on human events
00:00:16.000 now we talk a lot about on the program the collapse of complex systems we've really seen
00:00:24.420 an acceleration of this in the last two to three years why is this why do complex systems collapse
00:00:32.400 how do complex systems collapse well as uh as the famous quote goes gradually and then suddenly
00:00:42.640 heather mcdonald is the thomas w smith fellow at the manhattan institute a contributing editor of
00:00:48.100 city journal and a new york times best-selling author and she has a new book when race trumps
00:00:54.360 merit in the wake of george floyd's death all of the major institutions of american society and
00:00:59.260 culture from corporations and universities to media and entertainment to the arts and sciences
00:01:03.460 have embraced the view that the only way to reckon with what of course exists is systemic racism and
00:01:09.500 that's to ensure equality equality of outcome we must put diversity and the needs of diversity ahead
00:01:15.720 of every single other expectation in our world no system no standard is more important of a metric
00:01:24.180 than to measure our civilization by that of diversity because diversity is our strength no matter the
00:01:31.940 consequences and so in response to this new what we've called here on the program uh sort of a civic
00:01:39.160 religion we take it as a matter of faith that this must be the new orientation of our entire society
00:01:45.480 i wanted to bring heather mcdonald on and we're excited to have her joining us today for the full
00:01:50.300 sunday special heather thank you so much for joining us here on human events it's wonderful to be with
00:01:54.900 you jack thank you so much so so just answer i'd love to get your your response to that is diversity
00:02:01.640 our greatest strength is diversity the greatest virtue of western civilization no it's not the greatest
00:02:08.700 virtue of western civilization is achievement accomplishment exploration the scientific method
00:02:14.940 constitutional government none of those things have any inherent relationship to diversity
00:02:20.240 uh if we want to be truly honest about the empirical data we would draw on robert putnam's work that
00:02:26.660 showed that in fact local communities become increasingly distrustful of each other uh there's less
00:02:35.580 philanthropy less charity the more diverse they are but even apart from that empirical work uh the fact of the
00:02:44.860 matter is is that the reason that we keep talking about diversity right now it's a code word uh if you if you really want to
00:02:53.120 understand what this discourse is all about diversity is a code word for racial preferences uh any institution
00:03:01.740 that is it is saying oh we're we're in the pursuit of diversity is telling you that it is taking aim at
00:03:08.260 meritocratic standards because sadly given the academic skills gap you can have diversity or you can have
00:03:16.220 meritocracy you cannot have both and so we've seen just this week just this very week one of the biggest
00:03:24.920 stories that's been out there at least online or in some corners of the information environment has been
00:03:32.640 this east palestine train derailment uh it had these these this this vinyl chlorine on it and uh there was a
00:03:39.060 controlled burn people are very worried about what the potential after effects of that be
00:03:42.860 aaron brokovich apparently is headed down there in terms of all this but a lot of people have said you know
00:03:48.420 a lot of these train derailments have gone up uh exponentially in recent years we're actually seeing a point
00:03:54.260 where i pulled the stat um just from status uh and i i didn't even believe that over 900 people were
00:04:02.620 killed in railway accidents just last year so in 2021 900 people were killed by this uh that's certainly
00:04:09.420 more than the systemic racism that we were told of of unarmed black men killed by police and yet for some
00:04:14.900 reason we don't hear about the year-on-year systemic you know issues with our railways and a lot of people
00:04:22.560 have said to me you know is this is this a cyber attack is this the chinese communist party is it
00:04:28.440 russia is it some other actor is it iran that's attacking us but unfortunately what i think we're
00:04:34.760 seeing from the data is this isn't an attack the call is coming from inside the house it's ourselves
00:04:40.720 and railways aren't the only system that is collapsing yet certainly it is one of the biggest ones that
00:04:48.180 we've seen and unfortunately of course our our media doesn't pay much attention to it because it's
00:04:52.420 a part of the country that uh what can we say just doesn't generate the clicks in appalachia the way
00:04:57.920 that uh if it were on the coasts or in one of the big cities but i i'd like if you could uh address
00:05:04.120 that question are we seeing these this systemic collapse as as a a symptom of this issue that you're
00:05:12.340 talking about well first of all i want to fill out with some numbers the uh comparison that you
00:05:19.300 rightly gave jack between the number of people killed in train derailments 900 last year to the
00:05:25.840 number of unarmed blacks which is the main focus of of much of the uh left-wing media and our left-wing
00:05:34.920 politicians at this point uh the the alleged wave of police brutality and racism last year there were
00:05:43.080 seven allegedly unarmed blacks killed by the police and i say allegedly unarmed because the washington
00:05:49.460 post that keeps these records defines unarmed extremely broadly to include somebody who may be
00:05:55.460 grabbing an officer's gun so uh and and you can have an even more startling comparison that's that seven
00:06:04.320 allegedly unarmed blacks killed by the police versus in 2020 which is the last year of our best data
00:06:11.320 10 000 blacks killed in criminal homicide virtually all killed by other blacks not by the police and
00:06:19.160 not by whites as far as whether the infrastructure breakdowns are the result of let's be honest what
00:06:27.660 we're talking about here is lowered standards racial preferences in the name of diversity i'm frankly
00:06:34.280 agnostic on that point it's it's too soon to tell i don't know if if railroad uh engineers
00:06:40.780 and conductors are being chosen on the basis of race if if bridges were built uh and and and you
00:06:48.800 know switching mechanisms were built with the goal not of excellence but of diversity but i can tell
00:06:55.480 you if they were uh that would absolutely be a recipe for catastrophe because again you can have
00:07:03.100 diversity you can have meritocracy you cannot have both the reason we're talking about diversity
00:07:08.260 is because left to purely meritocratic standards our our top institutions will not be racially
00:07:17.080 proportionate why not because there's racism in hiring standards racism on the part of managers or
00:07:24.620 gatekeepers but because of the academic skills gap 66 percent of black 12th graders do not possess even
00:07:34.740 partial mastery of 12th grade math skills being able to do a simple arithmetic calculation being able to
00:07:45.760 understand a linear relationship on a graph 66 percent of black 12th graders do not even possess partial
00:07:54.220 mastery of those skills and yet our our narrative our national narrative is to look around at various
00:08:02.100 elite institutions whether it's a alzheimer's research lab uh or a cancer research lab a medical school
00:08:09.820 an engineering school a physics uh phd program and say if there are not 13 percent uh black phds or
00:08:18.700 cancer or alzheimer's researchers in those labs or building our bridges or flying our planes it must be
00:08:26.060 because of racist gatekeepers and jack as long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for
00:08:34.420 ongoing racial disparities everything is coming down you speak about civilizations that collapse inwards
00:08:41.140 we are collapsing ours at an unprecedented rate it is all coming down and and the point of my book is to
00:08:49.900 provide an alternative explanation for those racial disparities and say that western civilization is not
00:08:57.360 the problem the problem right now is a culture that does not value academic achievement that's what must be
00:09:05.400 solved and not to tear down the scientific method and colorblind standards of achievement one of the phrases
00:09:13.220 that i've heard um just in in reading about this about that dynamic that you've discussed right there this idea that
00:09:21.180 the only explanation that we are allowed to uh that we are allowed to give or that we are allowed to hear for
00:09:27.920 any of these things of the of the disproportionate representation so and this is wokeness so wokeness is defined as
00:09:34.340 uh believing that disproportionate representation in institutions is the result of systemic racism i actually heard this
00:09:42.100 this is great because um from from an atheist commentator and he said well that's just racism that's just
00:09:47.100 uh an argument of racism of the gaps so you found a gap somewhere and so therefore you just defined it by
00:09:53.820 racism because you don't actually have an explanation for it therefore this is like when uh when uh you know
00:10:00.380 he's comparing it of course to when when believers would say this is the god of the gaps when they're talking
00:10:04.420 about evolution or intelligent design um and i thought it was interesting that of course from an atheist
00:10:09.740 commentator that you would he would compare the two because you're taking it as a matter of faith
00:10:14.200 you're taking it as a matter of belief that it must because of racism and you would ignore all sorts of
00:10:19.760 empirical data that could obviously explain something else uh to your point uh education standards testing
00:10:25.020 standards since no child left behind was passed in the early 2000s uh you go look at baltimore reading
00:10:30.860 rates um and then graduation rates it's it's it's it's it's deplorable it's absolutely deplorable
00:10:35.940 situation and yet the answer that we're always told is the racism of the gaps and i'd i'd you know in
00:10:41.320 racism one of the first um riots that i actually covered right when i was getting started all the
00:10:47.520 way back in 2015 was the freddie gray riots in baltimore uh i live in the dc area and that's something
00:10:52.440 that was nearby and i remember when freddie gray died this situation was all blamed on racism and i was
00:10:59.680 struggling to find where the racism could be stemming from with a a black mayor a black da a black chief of
00:11:07.080 police all black officers or uh or officers of color and i couldn't quite be sure where the racism
00:11:13.920 was stemming from in this situation we saw the same thing in in memphis just recently i'd like to get
00:11:18.280 into that later and and and set it up for after the break but it it seems to be this fallback position
00:11:23.980 and that if you question it you yourself will be described as a racist well america turns its eyes
00:11:31.540 away from the just very tragic and and horrific cultural breakdown in the inner city it's not just
00:11:39.080 no child left behind it's not just common core whatever the the conservative bugaboo was this is
00:11:45.860 something much more profound it's an oppositional culture uh the the the you know conceit about acting
00:11:53.260 white you're acting white if you're actually studying in school and doing your homework this is very
00:11:59.420 very bad stuff and it is resulting in it's not just baltimore reading the black students across the
00:12:06.740 country are are not prepared six only six percent of black 12th graders are prepared for college
00:12:16.280 according to the act six percent uh when you take into account science and math and reading
00:12:23.020 uh and yet we know that many more are going to college under double standards of achievement
00:12:30.120 that are completely pernicious uh the students that are admitted under racial preferences struggle to
00:12:36.160 compete and then the diversity bureaucracy tells them well if you're feeling distress if you're feeling
00:12:42.360 like you're you're you know not succeeding in your classes or or feel like you're not keeping up it's
00:12:48.320 because we're a racist institution even though the very reason you're here is because we want
00:12:53.300 black students so much um so this is something that must be solved from within and we have to stop
00:13:01.800 blaming our standards you know the issue is is is china uh undermining our our our infrastructure
00:13:09.920 well maybe so maybe not but but what it is doing is competing internally and and promoting its own
00:13:19.400 math and science talent full speed ahead it is not worried about what the the sex proportions there
00:13:27.720 are and it's gifted and talented math programs it is just finding its best students throwing everything
00:13:33.820 it's got at them to make sure that they are the most qualified nanotechnicians physicists mathematicians
00:13:41.260 computer engineers we on the other hand would rather make sure that our best talent is not allowed to
00:13:48.460 succeed we're tearing down gifted and talented programs across the country we're slowing down math
00:13:54.480 education we're deferring algebra because it has a disparate impact any meritocratic standard that has a
00:14:01.800 disparate impact on so-called underrepresented minorities which is blacks and hispanics is now
00:14:07.920 being torn down and and any institution that is deemed too white or too asian is in the crosshairs it will
00:14:15.680 be torn down until we have one fatal soup of mediocrity everywhere well i i can't wait you know until they tear
00:14:24.460 down the the mcats when it comes to surgeons i can't wait until they tear down standards for airline
00:14:31.240 pilots for commercial air flight um obviously we're seeing the results of this most most directly in
00:14:37.540 police forces um i think we're seeing that very quickly because police forces have been in very a very
00:14:42.500 early target of this a very front-loaded target of this uh but we're getting rid of standardized testing
00:14:47.620 across the board where certainly and for years have been have been using uh racial quotas in the ivy league
00:14:55.620 system and i think we've been doing that for almost 100 years now at first it was in one direction now
00:15:00.900 it's going now it's over correcting in the other direction but i'd really like to get into that a
00:15:05.080 little bit more we've got we're coming up on a break but i want to dig into the tragedy surrounding
00:15:09.740 the death of tyree nichols but also describe it in such a way that i don't think anyone else is
00:15:14.760 talking about coming right back here with heather mcdonald
00:15:16.920 okay we are back with heather mcdonald the author of the new book when race trumps merit
00:15:23.420 uh by the way heather is the book out yet or is it it's coming out it's available for pre-order you
00:15:29.000 can just go on amazon right now and order it it's coming out in april but uh okay that's right i
00:15:33.540 thought i saw that date yeah by all means order it now all right so make sure you go pre-order the
00:15:39.280 book this is a fantastic book it builds off obviously your your incredible body of work
00:15:43.060 but also digging into the latest that we've seen since the george floyd riots and i think we do have
00:15:49.020 to call them the george floyd riots because uh the media does everything they can to prevent you from
00:15:55.440 knowing that this thing happened and i'll actually say something i don't even think i've ever said this
00:16:00.040 publicly um so i was born in the 1980s and i can remember the oj simpson trial i can but i'll tell you
00:16:09.520 something else i didn't know about the la riots until i was in college i never heard about it i had
00:16:17.020 no idea that that had happened um and i think i was re i was reading some book that i had gotten at a
00:16:22.920 used bookstore and i said wait a minute there were riots across the entire city of los angeles in the
00:16:28.880 1990s when i was alive and i was a kid and i had no clue this had ever happened and then finally you can
00:16:35.580 start digging and reading more about it and you know obviously i'm showing my age there a little
00:16:40.520 bit but at the same time i'm seeing the same dynamic play out with the george floyd riots these
00:16:45.860 things happen they happen across the entire country and suddenly we're acting like they didn't actually
00:16:51.180 happen heather why what's going on how could i have been alive at such a time as that uh when this
00:16:56.600 was going on and yet have no knowledge of it whatsoever now of course you know you know that age i wasn't
00:17:02.300 exactly paying attention to the news but you'd think at some point in school i would have learned
00:17:07.120 about this why why did it take my own education and reading to find out about such a seminal event
00:17:13.340 in our in in our modern history it's incredible jack that's really an amazing story uh the victors
00:17:20.580 write the history i worry about this with covid you know if if the left states in power they're
00:17:25.520 going to write the history of covid and the lockdowns are all going to be seen as imminently
00:17:29.460 necessary and effective and masks and whatnot and uh that's going to be very scary but we certainly
00:17:35.360 are involved in massive historical revisionism with regards to the george floyd riots and i was not
00:17:41.740 aware that the same same disappear the facts uh technology and and and ideology had been applied to the la
00:17:49.060 riots but i'm not surprised because again america turns its eyes away from inner city dysfunction and when
00:17:56.360 they do so guess what happens more black lives are taken those millions of hard-working law-abiding
00:18:02.440 bourgeois blacks that want the same thing as everybody else and want safety for their children
00:18:08.240 opportunities to to get forward on their own on their own uh motivation and and self-discipline
00:18:15.440 are left at the what by the wayside by our policymakers it's we now you know it's very strange the black
00:18:23.660 lives matter movement has decided that it cares more about black criminals than black victims that's
00:18:29.260 it's not intuitively obvious to me what that should be so uh but they never talk about those
00:18:34.180 10 000 blacks who are killed in homicide by other blacks they only talk about the seven or so unarmed blacks
00:18:41.580 who may have been killed by a police officer uh and and when they demonize cops what happens is more
00:18:48.380 black lives are taken and so we're now pretending that i mean we we are forced today jack to live a
00:18:56.220 series of of falsehoods we're we're all engaged in this theater this theater of lies we're pretending that
00:19:04.860 anti-asian hate crimes are committed by whites you know that you have these these rallies against anti-asian
00:19:12.780 hate and these signs all make it very clear that they they think that white supremacy is the problem
00:19:18.380 we've all seen the videos we've seen the videos of 90 year old frail elderly asians in san francisco
00:19:25.180 being knocked unconscious by by black teens and and in in new york as well in los angeles blacks commit
00:19:35.020 hate crimes against asians against jews against trans at far far higher rates than whites and yet
00:19:42.220 we're supposed to pretend uh that that is the threat we're supposed to pretend that white
00:19:49.020 supremacists are on the verge of yet another riot against the the uh the knockout game of the early
00:19:57.820 2010s is actually back i don't even know if anyone's talking about this yet it's actually back it's all over
00:20:03.180 tick tock they don't always call it the knockout game anymore but it's the exact same thing and this
00:20:08.540 happened in new jersey in a a to a uh teenage freshman girl just recently 14 years old uh they
00:20:17.500 they do a knockout game on her they as someone is filming now that's the new additional element to it
00:20:22.940 so it's the knockout game plus the ability uh to achieve uh social clout and social status within your
00:20:30.620 community by performing one of these knockouts typically the targets are to your point um in in this
00:20:36.460 case uh young frail white 14 year old girl i think she was 98 years old she'd been frequently bullied
00:20:42.540 and she later committed suicide at home in her parents home uh in her closet and we were then
00:20:48.140 told that the father even came out and said i don't want to make this about race i don't mean well it may
00:20:52.860 not be about race to you but it certainly was to the people that were doing it and that's the reason that
00:20:56.620 she was targeted and i get that that's that's great that you don't want to make it about race and
00:21:00.540 and blame everyone but at the same time uh it can't be a one-way street and so we do actually
00:21:05.900 have to talk about these things that are going on to as well as to your point with the with the asian
00:21:10.620 situation that we can tell who is going there's a reason that asian lives matter doesn't take off
00:21:15.740 the same way because we can all see the videos and they immediately uh kind of did away with that
00:21:21.340 narrative because suddenly they the videos were coming out and didn't paint the picture that they
00:21:24.940 wanted to see but i wanted to get into as well this situation uh the war on police you know we
00:21:30.940 saw the ferguson effect in the 2010s now we're seeing what i call the george floyd effect because
00:21:35.820 as opposed to officers that are not only uh staying out of situations because of the the prevalence of
00:21:42.700 body cams these days we're also now seeing a just a general lowering of standards of for officers
00:21:48.700 across the board and you saw this clearly in memphis in a situation where we're seeing that with
00:21:54.700 tyree nichols this this uh beating may have been because uh apparently the da is investigating that
00:22:00.300 it may have been because of some personal relationship there were photos taken uh when
00:22:05.180 you demonize police officers but then you still decide to have a police force and you lower standards
00:22:10.380 at the same time we saw this in memphis where in the name of uh what's the phrase we have to make
00:22:15.820 the police force look like memphis we have to make it look like the community well now it does look like
00:22:20.380 the community but unfortunately uh the community has a homicide rate at a certain place and
00:22:24.620 now it seems like the police are trying to get to the same rate yeah let me just respond to your
00:22:29.180 previous point uh you know the new york times finally got around to covering the new jersey beating
00:22:35.260 oh good for them this morning yeah but of course they don't mention the race of the assailants had
00:22:39.660 those been three or five white black white girls attacking a black girl this would have been international
00:22:46.620 news uh but of course in the reverse it's never the case it is utter shameless asymmetry
00:22:53.980 to keep the narrative going that blacks are everywhere the victims of whites whereas in
00:22:59.980 fact the bureau of justice statistics shows through people's self-reports of who's who's doing the
00:23:06.860 victimizing in violent crime that when you look at the universe of all interracial crime between blacks
00:23:13.180 and whites and whites and blacks blacks commit 88 of those interracial incidents so this is not a
00:23:20.940 question of of being currently a white supremacist country it once was and the history of this
00:23:26.860 country is appalling it is grotesquely hypocritical we treated blacks with contempt and cruelty and and
00:23:35.020 and just sheer nasty humiliation for far too long but remarkably unpredictably things have radically
00:23:41.820 changed that is not our reality today the reality today is black privilege not white privilege as for policing
00:23:48.940 uh absolutely uh absolutely the more the police back off under this phony narrative that they are
00:23:54.780 racist to go where crime is happening uh there will be more black lives taken and we are and and people
00:24:02.940 the police are leaving the profession in droves that this did happen after the michael brown race riots in
00:24:09.420 2014 and 2015 uh but it is accelerated after the george floyd race riots and so you have i think policing is in
00:24:19.580 a death spiral right now unless we can turn around the racism narrative everything in our world today jack
00:24:25.260 if you're sort of puzzling over these weird things that are happening uh and i'm not referring to chinese
00:24:31.260 these balloons but rather the the lowering of standards why are police not arresting for theft for for
00:24:38.860 shoplifting why are prosecutors refusing to prosecute for turnstile jumping or resisting arrest or some some
00:24:46.700 sorts of gun crime it's all explained by disparate impact and that's that's in my book disparate impact
00:24:53.020 explains why we are unwinding our criminal justice system because any type of colorblind constitutional
00:25:00.860 imminently fair form of law enforcement whether it's policing prosecution or sentencing will have
00:25:08.460 a disparate impact on blacks not because the criminal justice system is racist but because the crime rate
00:25:15.340 is so much higher uh in in new york city blacks commit about three quarters of all shootings even though
00:25:22.620 they're about 22 percent of the population if you add hispanic shootings to black shootings you account for
00:25:28.380 virtually a hundred percent of all of these crazy barbaric drive-by shootings in new york city and so that means
00:25:35.740 that the police cannot go where people are being shot by these kids that have no impulse control that have
00:25:43.260 no regard for human life without being in black neighborhoods and stopping people in black neighborhoods
00:25:50.700 that are black not because they're racist this was the what you're saying is the exact um i forget what
00:25:59.420 they called it the leaked audio of michael bloomberg the the hot mic audio where he's basically i think it was
00:26:05.180 at a private event and he's describing exactly what you're saying and his point was that we've deployed
00:26:11.100 more police officers to these neighborhoods because we're protecting the people of those neighborhoods
00:26:17.100 because they are at the greatest risk for crime not because of some uh mythical racism of the gaps
00:26:24.060 and yet that was used to destroy him in the democratic primary in 2020 but when that all came out i i do
00:26:32.940 remember and i i'll actually give him credit for this because he knew that it wouldn't do well for him
00:26:37.580 in uh in the primaries but at the end on on that side of the aisle at least but but at the same time he
00:26:43.180 defended it because he pointed out look these policies uh the deployment strategies as well as
00:26:47.340 stop and frisk took new york homicides down from something like two thousand a year to just a couple
00:26:53.020 hundred a year well he actually was even more uh iconoclastic and breaking taboos than that he said that
00:27:00.940 if you look at crime rates whites are actually over stopped and blacks are under stopped contrary to
00:27:06.140 what al sharpton and every oh wow elite law firm in the city that had sued new york for stop question
00:27:11.900 frisk because again blacks make up 22 percent of all uh the new yorkers they are about 53 to 55 percent
00:27:20.620 of all stops that the police make so the left gets its hands on that he says okay you see that's police
00:27:25.740 racism and racial profiling but population benchmark is always the wrong benchmark what you want to know
00:27:31.660 is what is the crime rate so again blacks are 22 percent of the population they commit about 75
00:27:37.100 percent of all shootings that's that's the relevant the 75 percent is the relevant benchmark to look at
00:27:43.740 the 52 to 55 percent stop rate and whites who are about 34 percent of the population commit about one
00:27:51.980 percent of all shootings and yet they are nine percent of all stops so bloomberg was absolutely right to
00:27:58.140 say uh you know this is the opposite of what we think so again uh we are tearing down the criminal law
00:28:06.380 in order to avoid disparate impact on blacks but what has a disparate impact on blacks is crime and when
00:28:12.780 you when you demoralize the cops when you tell them not to police when you when you have prosecutors
00:28:19.820 that say well even if you bring me an arrest i'm not going to to bring a case because that would have
00:28:24.940 a disparate impact on black criminals and we want to avoid mass incarceration which is a whole nother other
00:28:29.980 phony narrative that we can get into or not um you know that that when you stop doing this necessary
00:28:37.420 law enforcement it is black victims who are the butt of the increased crime and the activists don't
00:28:45.500 care well here's here's a question and and and you you're the expert on this you've been studying this
00:28:50.220 for so long you've been writing on this for so long and i'd love to ask you have you ever all at all in
00:28:55.500 your in your travels in your journeys have you ever encountered a single leftist who has ever once
00:29:01.660 made this argument about anything other than race for example i've never heard a single leftist or
00:29:09.100 activist or police reformer say the following well this the police are are conducting a disparate impact
00:29:17.020 on men there are too many men that are pulled over there are too many men in prisons there are too many
00:29:22.540 men getting arrested there are too many men targeted by police for violent crimes uh why is it that the
00:29:27.660 police have an an anti-man agenda because they are so focused on this and of course someone will
00:29:33.500 immediately respond to you well that's because men commit more violent crimes and immediately and then
00:29:37.500 because of course you haven't had the prop the years of social conditioning and propaganda to give
00:29:41.580 a response to that question and so i've always found that one useful to say well if you'll say that for
00:29:47.740 gender why wouldn't you apply the same standard towards ethnicity my guess is they would say we
00:29:54.460 have not been a uh a female centric culture we have yes yes so we can trust what the police do with
00:30:06.300 regards to males but we can't trust what they do with blacks because we've been white supremacists so
00:30:11.740 they figure out a way around it you you absolutely have the number that's precisely what that would say
00:30:16.860 all right heather mcdonnell officially the first person to get me to crack up on the sunday special
00:30:21.500 here we will be right back with you after this break all right heather i know i promised the
00:30:28.140 audience this i've got to ask you about the tyree nichols situation because to me it seems like a
00:30:33.180 microcosm of everything that you've talked about from viral video to the lowering of standards to the
00:30:41.020 effect that this has had on policing it seems like this is a singular moment and the media has completely
00:30:46.220 stopped talking about it by the way and i think there's a reason for that because they don't
00:30:50.460 want people asking the very questions that you're answering right now well the new york times at least
00:30:57.580 is still talking about it and of course they've managed very quickly to slot it into the the racism
00:31:02.860 narrative not completely speciously as far as i'm concerned i mean it is conceivable you could imagine
00:31:08.940 a police culture that is so anti-black that even black officers absorb it so i don't think that's
00:31:15.740 what at all what's going on here but but it's it's a little too easy for the for conservatives to say
00:31:21.820 well how can this be racist if we have black officers i'm particularly reluctant to use that
00:31:27.420 uh response jack because i don't want it to be any more plausible that it's racist if there's white
00:31:34.620 officers that are engaged in a contested use of force so i want evidence either way in any case
00:31:41.820 this was one of the most it is the most appalling instances of abuse of power that i've ever seen
00:31:48.220 it is heartbreaking it's like watching the scourging of christ i've never seen anything like it of one
00:31:55.500 gratuitous assault blow sadistic effort to to destroy this man after another and it's a complete
00:32:05.420 reversal of everything the police should be doing their tactics are abysmal the police are the ones
00:32:11.660 that are supposed to be de-escalating situations it's mr nichols who's pathetically heartbreakingly
00:32:17.660 trying to de-escalate and saying man you know i'm complying there's not what what can he do they're
00:32:22.140 giving him contradictory commands i usually say you can avoid every virtually every police shooting
00:32:28.460 in this country if the suspect merely complies with an officer's commands if you don't resist arrest you
00:32:34.620 won't be shot uh in this case i for once do not blame mr nichols for taking off after the first
00:32:41.100 encounter with these maniac cops and running i would have too these people were clearly lunatic what is
00:32:47.660 going on here though is not what the left tells us which is the ubiquity of of white supremacy it's not
00:32:55.500 what our political class tells us from from the white house on down which is the ubiquity of white supremacy
00:33:02.300 it is a complete failure of training and of hiring standards i don't know at this point whether the memphis
00:33:10.700 police training is completely defective or whether these cops were so unfit to be hired in the first
00:33:20.060 place that they were unable to absorb adequate training uh you know the left will say well is this
00:33:30.060 to make their case that this was definitely an instance of systemic racism on the part of these
00:33:35.660 officers and of memphis they say could you imagine this beating happening to a white man my response
00:33:42.860 to that is in these these these thought experiments are all rorschach tests of of one's own uh world
00:33:49.020 view i say yes certainly their tactics were so bad they were so incapable of subduing a minimally
00:33:58.460 resisting suspect that i see no reason why they would not have done the same thing i the one i always go
00:34:04.620 back to is is daniel shaver right right and and tony timpa right absolutely another one yeah you can
00:34:11.020 you can think of examples right off the top of your head that for some reason well we know the reason
00:34:15.980 that they're they're just never ever brought up but but in this case i don't know if you saw there
00:34:20.860 was a a media report on a new hiring push that the memphis police put out just a couple of years ago right
00:34:29.820 in the wake of this sort of defund the police george floyd riot uh year where it it was dubbed
00:34:37.180 in the media as more diversity less brutality and on using that same exact framework as as we said
00:34:43.980 before that we're going to make the police force look more like memphis and in in order to do that
00:34:49.740 we're going to lower standards we are going to potentially even in the new york post reported this
00:34:54.620 bring on officers that may even themselves have a criminal record and we are going to give them
00:34:59.820 waivers for those convictions to bring them on and i'm not uh directly saying and i don't know yet i'm
00:35:05.260 sure it'll come out the trial if any of these officers were were individuals that had a criminal
00:35:09.900 record prior but it does seem to be to your point this sort of soup of mediocrity that has led to
00:35:16.060 situations like this well like two of the of the five officers were were brought onto the force
00:35:22.220 post george floyd two of them started their their actual career post academy training in 21 um but
00:35:31.340 so we don't know and and there's two parallel movements going on there's a generalized
00:35:37.980 cops are fleeing the profession we need to do everything we can to recruit at the same time
00:35:43.900 that's like a double helix you know the strands interweave there is at the same time a push for
00:35:49.740 more more black cops uh and we know historically that every time there's been federal consent
00:35:57.740 decrees demanding diversity hiring at the expense of meritocratic standards whether it's regards to
00:36:04.460 cognitive skills tests or criminal backgrounds the result is corruption scandals uh and abuse scandals
00:36:12.060 whether in miami in philadelphia philadelphia they they've they're they don't even have a hiring exam
00:36:17.740 now they've gotten rid of any kind of civil service exam that's uh that's i don't know if i you know
00:36:22.700 but that's that's actually my background is i'm from the philadelphia area born and raised um just a
00:36:27.180 couple of miles outside the city went to school at temple university in north philadelphia and uh at
00:36:33.180 this point in my life i have um i have two little boys and i've never once brought them back to my uh
00:36:37.820 the neighborhood where i grew up or my alma mater and i have no plans to do so
00:36:41.100 well there was the 39th district police scandal in philadelphia in the early 90s and a report brought
00:36:47.660 in by the city found that the the main reason was a federal consent decree that it said you've got to
00:36:55.740 lower you know you've got to bring in blacks and the way they did so was to uh suspend basically suspend
00:37:02.860 the hiring exam so whites would be hired from the very top of the pool and blacks were simply admitted
00:37:09.180 based on the ratios with which they took the exam not not on the basis of their actual results
00:37:14.380 and they were going to devise a new test and they never did so now there is no test
00:37:18.780 the obama administration did a voluntary review of the philadelphia police department
00:37:24.540 and found that black and hispanic cops were more likely than white cops to shoot a black suspect under
00:37:31.180 what's known as threat misperception that is mistaking somebody's cell phone for a gun uh you know that
00:37:38.060 could well be a result of these lowering higher hiring standards as well but that's why i say that
00:37:43.100 policing is in a death spiral right now because as long as racism uh remains the dominant narrative
00:37:49.660 to explain tyree nichols it means that we're not going to solve the actual problems which is
00:37:57.820 the demoralization of cops by calling them all racist by the lowering of hiring standards by
00:38:03.660 depolicing that led to memphis having such a high crime rate and reckless driving was a problem you
00:38:10.060 know the the five cops have said that nichols was driving the wrong way the the city administration
00:38:16.060 says oh we found no evidence of that i'm still waiting i'm agnostic on that i'm also agnostic on
00:38:21.500 drug use on possibly you know trying to grab the officer's gun but reckless driving is one of the other
00:38:27.900 lesser acknowledged results of the george floyd race riots and depolicing where now we've had highway
00:38:35.740 deaths or car crash deaths jump astronomically because we are also demonizing car stops and the the
00:38:44.300 the rate of of car crash deaths have gone up the highest in inner city neighborhoods we actually
00:38:50.300 we we actually have um some pretty close family friends who were in a similar accident to what you're
00:38:57.820 describing who um fortunately it was a it was a father a mother their young daughter were in the car
00:39:03.580 and uh they were on the highway it was it was outside baltimore and someone crashed into them at night
00:39:10.380 driving the wrong way on the highway and other was and fortunately they all survived but uh the mother
00:39:18.620 was uh permanently disabled for life um she'll never walk again um she is she's in a wheelchair for the
00:39:24.620 rest of her life so when we go to you know kids birthday parties etc she is she's in the chair and
00:39:30.620 and and she's she's wonderful she's a lovely person and uh you know one you know one of our best friends
00:39:36.380 but at the same time we always just think about that how could someone have been driving the wrong way
00:39:40.860 down a highway backwards well because after dante right in in uh minnesota i believe the or wisconsin
00:39:50.220 the the response was oh this is all because they made a car stop no it's because dante right had an
00:39:56.140 outstanding uh warrant they stopped him for perfectly cause but now we've said the car stops are racist
00:40:02.460 and you know i know a criminologist in cincinnati who has done work ride-alongs in the inner city area
00:40:08.620 of cincinnati over the rhine and he said the car the driving behavior you see is beyond belief uh you
00:40:15.020 know running red lights racing past schools there was a video made by a high school principal in north
00:40:21.740 minneapolis after the george floyd race riots and one of her students had been recently killed in a
00:40:27.580 drive-by shooting as usual but her complaint was the driving uh she said it's it's absolute chaos out here
00:40:36.060 but the cops have backed off on making car stops because we hear from james foreman at the yale law
00:40:42.220 school that that's racist and we hear from you know the center for policing equity that that's racist
00:40:47.660 no it's not it's a way to save lives and again the problem is it does have a disparate impact on on black
00:40:55.180 drivers who are speeding and running red lights we're getting rid of red light cameras because cameras
00:41:00.700 blind technology somehow turns out to be racist amazing it has a disparate impact on black drivers
00:41:07.340 and so we've decided that somehow the cameras or the algorithms are racist you know there's a
00:41:12.060 man we have to get chat gpt running the uh running the cameras so it can the proper the proper filters
00:41:17.820 for disparate impact yeah right write me a poem about about black traffic exactly right i'm afraid i'm
00:41:24.140 afraid i can't do that heather uh heather let me we have one break coming up but when we come back
00:41:28.860 i want to see how we can turn this around i want to give people a little bit of hope light at the
00:41:34.140 end of the tunnel what can we do about this coming back up final segment heather mcdonald
00:41:40.540 we're here with our final segment heather mcdonald i'd like to read for you a a comment from so so
00:41:46.300 south africa we all know that south africa has uh has largely run their country for quite some time
00:41:52.060 based on these principles that that we've been discussing here today that we must have diversity we
00:41:56.380 must have diverse institutions uh this is written by william gumid it is in the university of
00:42:03.820 watazara in johannesburg south africa's entire infrastructure is on the verge of total collapse
00:42:09.420 south africa now does not have functioning integrated public logistics infrastructure
00:42:13.500 anymore with roads rail and ports all in disarray um the lack of infrastructure maintenance corruption in
00:42:20.700 which dodgy black economic empowerment companies have been gifted tenders and often build flimsy
00:42:25.900 infrastructure and cadres deployed without the necessary technical skills who've been poorly
00:42:31.660 looked at public assets have now been snowballed into the breakdown of the entire public infrastructure
00:42:37.020 causing system failure uh the damage lives lost infrastructure collapse and repair costs from
00:42:43.260 floods and other issues have have led to hundreds if not thousands of deaths and tens of billions of
00:42:49.900 dollars heather i don't want that to be a preview of the united states i want to see it's it's you know
00:42:57.660 when an addict uh hits rock bottom they say that's the way for them to to find the road to recovery so
00:43:03.500 i do think that i i this this theology of disparate impact this theology of wokeism whatever the correct
00:43:09.660 word we're using for it is it's become an addiction for the united states and certainly become an addiction
00:43:14.860 for media for entertainment and for policy leaders so and and you've got the book out now you're doing
00:43:19.660 your fight to turn the tide on this when race trumps merit and i think there is a huge part of our
00:43:26.540 discussion that's being left out should we simply talk about merit and excellence again is that the way
00:43:32.380 out of this well i want to also allude to something you said earlier jack which is what happens when the
00:43:38.220 mcats start getting thrown out these are the medical school admissions tests to train doctors they're
00:43:43.260 already being thrown out and we're already changing standards for medical licensing exam we're going
00:43:49.020 to pass fail rather than graded exam because again the medical step one of the medical licensing exam has
00:43:55.580 has a disparate impact on blacks so it's coming to an emergency room near you you know when you
00:44:00.940 when you're hit in that one of that horrible car crash and you're brought in you will not know
00:44:06.780 if somebody goes walks through your door a doctor walks through your door who's a so-called
00:44:11.340 underrepresented minority if he's there because of his medical knowledge or because of his skin
00:44:15.260 color so this is happening what needs to happen to fight back jack so people have to stop being
00:44:20.540 scared of being called a racist and yes we have to obviously get back to meritocratic colorblind
00:44:26.620 standards and say the problem is not the standards the problem is the skills gaps that lead to that
00:44:32.940 lack of racial proportionality but what also needs to be happen is people need to swallow hard and tell
00:44:40.300 the truth about the extent of the crime gap that leads to disparities in incarceration and the
00:44:46.620 extent of the skills gap that means that a a cancer lab that is trying to you find its most qualified
00:44:54.540 students and and researchers is not at this point in time going to be able to do so in a racially
00:45:01.340 proportionate manner if it cares most about scientific expertise we have to get a president in there
00:45:07.260 that will ream out the federal science agencies who are now committed to the proposition that science
00:45:12.700 is racist the office of science and technology policy in the white house recently came out with a
00:45:17.980 statement basically saying that science is an inequity producing institution that is it it increases
00:45:25.340 inequities this is complete ignorance uh people need to look hard at the gaps and not flinch from speaking
00:45:34.220 honestly about how wide they are put those stem faculty to the test and say how do you why are you accusing
00:45:43.340 yourselves of being racist you know damn well as somebody recently told me a a astronomer uh at a university
00:45:51.900 of california system at ucla said black scientists now are gold dust any any faculty department that can get
00:46:03.180 its hand on a black scientist's nose it is now going to be a federal grant magnet it is going to have
00:46:10.460 millions of federal dollars showered upon it and and and they will try to hold on to that gold dust as
00:46:17.260 long as possible while other science faculties you know harvard or or or or uc berkeley will compete
00:46:24.700 and and make the gold dust even more valuable so we have to stop apologizing for phantom racism
00:46:32.060 it's not just the ivy leagues you said the ivy leagues practice racial preferences it is any
00:46:36.940 minimally selective college get back to to colorblind standards and i hope that asian americans become
00:46:44.460 even more mobilized because they're the ones that are screwed the most at this point by the evisceration
00:46:50.620 of meritocratic standards they are having to to be five ten times as good as any other standard
00:46:57.660 student to be admitted to a medical school of their choice to a law school of their choice
00:47:02.700 and for them to be told that well if you're succeeding it's because you're racist or white
00:47:07.100 supremacist is absurd it's equally absurd to be telling white students that but the asians could
00:47:13.660 be a sleeping giant that will help us beat this thing back no i couldn't agree more heather tell people
00:47:19.340 where they can follow you and how to pre-order the book and i'm going to make sure that we pre-order
00:47:24.460 that book immediately as soon as done the interview here thank you jack well the book you just go on
00:47:29.020 amazon you can pre-order it when race trumps merit i have a twitter feed that i actually don't really
00:47:33.820 run it's it's mostly to put my writing up there and i don't even know what my handle is but if you
00:47:39.420 if you google me at heather mcdonald and twitter that will give you uh sort of a chronological in
00:47:44.940 reverse order all of my media appearances and all of my writing so that's probably the easiest way
00:47:49.740 heather mcdonald a true pleasure true honor thank you for coming on here thank you for giving people
00:47:56.060 the tools to be able not just to debate this but actually have the conversations that are going on
00:48:02.140 in our country because thanks to uh social media for as much as we do complain about it for as much
00:48:07.900 as our lives seem to be ruled by viral videos now this also has given us the ability to connect to run
00:48:14.220 shows like this and to get information out there that is otherwise completely suppressed by the
00:48:20.780 mainstream which of course as we all know why they are constantly trying to shut down social media
00:48:25.900 heather mcdonald the book is once again when race trumps merit is diversity our strength or is our
00:48:34.060 strength the traditional values on which western civilization has been built ladies and gentlemen as
00:48:39.900 always you have my permission to lay ashore