Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 20, 2023


Ep 792 ｜ What's to Blame for the Chicago 'Teen Takeover'？ ｜ Guest： Heather Mac Donald


Episode Stats

Length

45 minutes

Words per Minute

155.10692

Word Count

7,104

Sentence Count

450

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

47


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The streets of Chicago were taken over by mobs of teens, perpetrating violence against
00:00:07.720 innocent victims.
00:00:09.840 Also, a tale of two shootings.
00:00:13.040 There was a young woman and a young man both shot for getting close to the wrong house
00:00:20.180 by mistake.
00:00:21.020 But how the media is talking about these stories based on the race of the victims tells us
00:00:27.620 a really sad story about race relations and journalism in America today.
00:00:33.040 We are talking to Heather McDonald.
00:00:35.680 She is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
00:00:38.360 She's a contributing editor for City Journal.
00:00:40.700 She's written lots of books.
00:00:41.820 She's a Yale graduate to Cambridge University and Stanford as well.
00:00:45.760 And she talks a lot about race and policing and disparities among whites and Asians and
00:00:52.500 black people.
00:00:53.240 She recently wrote a book called When Race Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity
00:00:57.300 Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.
00:01:01.340 So we will be talking about all of this today, including how racial quotas is damaging, not
00:01:07.520 just academia, but also the fields of medicine and science.
00:01:11.500 So it's kind of a scary conversation, but it's really important for us to know what's
00:01:15.820 going on.
00:01:16.620 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:01:18.800 Go to GoodRanchers.com.
00:01:20.020 Use code Allie at checkout.
00:01:21.100 That's GoodRanchers.com.
00:01:22.220 Code Allie.
00:01:27.300 All right, before we get into that conversation, I understand the reaction and response probably
00:01:37.480 that I'm going to get from some people about this.
00:01:40.300 And look, like, I'll just be honest with you.
00:01:42.420 This conversation about race and about disparities and why there are disparities when it comes
00:01:48.120 to academic outcomes, when it comes to delinquency, when it comes to incarceration, like this is
00:01:53.920 an uncomfortable conversation for me to have too, to hear some of the statistics, to look
00:02:00.420 at the data.
00:02:01.720 And Heather offers a very curt, a database, but a very curt, a very blunt analysis of why
00:02:09.820 these disparities exist.
00:02:11.380 So I just encourage you to see this conversation for what it is, looking at statistics and wanting
00:02:18.880 to find solutions to these disparities and these problems that actually benefit all communities,
00:02:25.900 including communities that are predominantly Black and brown.
00:02:30.520 I know it can be difficult to hear some of the harsh things that are said, but this is coming
00:02:35.100 from a place of wanting things to be better for everyone.
00:02:38.060 And the fact of the matter is the diversity, equity, and inclusion, the progressive policies,
00:02:43.060 affirmative action of the left has actually damaged the very communities that the left says that
00:02:51.140 they care about and are serving.
00:02:53.000 So that's what this is about.
00:02:54.940 Obviously, on this podcast, we believe that everyone is made in the image of God.
00:02:59.620 Everyone has the same innate worth.
00:03:02.040 Everyone has an equal place.
00:03:06.020 If you are apart from Christ, you are equally dead in sin.
00:03:08.880 If by grace through faith, you have been saved by Christ, then you are equally alive in him.
00:03:14.740 That is the worldview that we are operating from.
00:03:17.560 What we are talking about today is data.
00:03:19.960 What we are talking about today is media bias.
00:03:23.100 We are talking about statistical disparities and what is actually behind those things.
00:03:27.300 So know that that is where this is coming from.
00:03:31.420 This is an uncomfortable conversation, I think, for a lot of people, understandably so.
00:03:36.400 But we have to be willing to look at these facts to be able to ever solve any of the problems
00:03:42.300 that I know all of us, no matter what side that you are on, really want to solve.
00:03:47.160 So without further ado, here is our guest today, Heather McDonald.
00:03:55.140 All right, Heather, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
00:03:58.660 I've been wanting to talk to you for such a long time, have been a fan and admirer of your
00:04:02.380 work for a while.
00:04:03.260 Before we get into your book, When Race Trumps Merit, I want to talk to you about these
00:04:08.200 news stories that I haven't had the chance to break down myself on this show.
00:04:12.180 And the first one is a really horrifying story.
00:04:14.980 The footage that I've seen is horrifying.
00:04:16.940 And it's from what people are calling a Chicago teen takeover.
00:04:21.260 It's basically mobs of young people in Chicago running down the street, looting, assaulting
00:04:28.000 people, causing all kinds of chaos.
00:04:30.580 The new Chicago mayor, I'm sure you saw, he's trying to defund the police.
00:04:34.600 He also said, well, we shouldn't demonize these young people who are assaulting innocent
00:04:40.120 victims in the middle of the road.
00:04:41.840 I mean, what do you make of all of this?
00:04:43.680 How does this happen in an American city?
00:04:47.420 It happens because we've demonized the cops.
00:04:50.020 We've totally delegitimated police authority.
00:04:52.940 We've been doing that for decades.
00:04:54.500 But it got particularly bad after the George Floyd race riots.
00:04:58.600 And so the cops have backed off of proactive policing.
00:05:01.660 They're terrified to make arrests because they'll be accused of being racist.
00:05:05.380 And we've sent the message that lawless behavior is perfectly normal.
00:05:10.680 And, you know, we're terrified of enforcing the law because it has a disparate impact on
00:05:15.980 blacks.
00:05:16.360 That message gets gets across.
00:05:19.780 But I'm frankly a little surprised by the by the reaction to this, because we saw the
00:05:25.520 same thing last year.
00:05:26.740 These these flash mobs of teens from the south side and west side of Chicago on the Magnificent
00:05:33.720 Mile are a routine phenomenon.
00:05:35.760 Last year, there was a boy who was shot to death at Millennium Park.
00:05:40.620 And last year, Lori Lightfoot actually raised the drawbridges so that people couldn't be
00:05:46.860 able to come in to the downtown area.
00:05:50.600 So this is this phenomenon of the flash mobs of the knockout game of wilding has been going
00:05:57.740 on for decades.
00:05:58.720 And mainstream America turns its eyes away and pretend it's pretends it's not happening
00:06:04.740 and instead embraces this wildly fictional narrative that the real threat in interracial
00:06:12.560 violence is white on black, whereas the reality, Ali, is it's black on white.
00:06:19.040 Blacks commit 88 percent of all interracial violence between blacks and whites and whites
00:06:26.060 on blacks.
00:06:27.000 But the rest of the country is so worried about violating racial etiquette that we don't talk
00:06:32.880 about any of that.
00:06:33.780 So, yes, and actually, you just assume that it's actually the opposite, because in every
00:06:40.120 single crime that we see in which there happens to be a white suspect, a white perpetrator
00:06:44.880 and a black victim, we are made to believe that this is common.
00:06:48.080 This is actually emblematic of American culture.
00:06:50.580 We saw, of course, after George Floyd, people like LeBron James saying, well, I just want to
00:06:55.860 be able to go outside without being hunted, which, of course, I mean, it's not a laughing
00:07:00.400 matter considering the gravity of what we're talking about, but it's almost laughable.
00:07:03.780 To hear someone like LeBron James say something like that.
00:07:07.740 And of course, it causes all kind of strife.
00:07:09.820 It causes all kind of resentment.
00:07:11.180 But even worse than that, and this is what you talk about so much, it actually affects
00:07:14.680 policy, which then affects people's lives.
00:07:16.880 You're talking about a lack of policing, a lack of respect for law enforcement that has
00:07:21.000 been going on in Chicago for a very long time that has led to the enabling of these mobs
00:07:26.980 of young people who, of course, I mean, their parents should be really the first line of
00:07:31.020 defense here.
00:07:31.700 That's a whole other conversation.
00:07:33.440 But certainly they're the law is not being enforced.
00:07:36.320 And because of that, during this Chicago teen takeover, police say a six year old boy was
00:07:42.000 shot in the arm, a six year old boy and a 17 year old boy was shot in the leg.
00:07:46.580 And then I'm sure you saw a video of this woman.
00:07:52.960 She was getting assaulted.
00:07:54.820 Apparently there was there was a different story.
00:07:57.600 Her boyfriend was being attacked.
00:07:59.020 He was trying to protect her.
00:08:00.100 I don't know exactly what was going on.
00:08:03.700 But obviously, violence was being perpetrated.
00:08:07.600 And so, I mean, this costs lives, this costs people safety.
00:08:12.400 And yet it seems like no amount of bloodshed motivates the officials in Chicago to change
00:08:19.440 their tune or to change their policies in favor of trying to protect, you know, people
00:08:24.540 like this six year old boy who was shot.
00:08:26.340 Why?
00:08:27.100 Why not?
00:08:27.860 Like, what is behind their inability to see the danger that they are allowing?
00:08:32.400 Because if they enforce the law, they will have a disparate impact on black criminals.
00:08:39.380 Rahm Emanuel was the mayor of Chicago several years ago, and he and his police chief would
00:08:45.360 routinely go up to this Illinois legislature and ask for stricter gun laws for illegal use
00:08:53.640 of weapons.
00:08:54.600 And the black caucus in the Illinois legislature routinely said, no, we're not going to give
00:08:59.800 you those stricter laws because it will have a racially disparate impact.
00:09:04.480 The left loves to talk about gun control, meaning, you know, limiting legal gun sales.
00:09:12.480 That's not what is creating gun violence.
00:09:15.120 The gun violence in this country is an inner city problem.
00:09:18.200 It is drive by shootings used by illegal guns.
00:09:21.520 The solution, as you say, Ali, is primarily has to come from parents and families.
00:09:27.940 The culture has to heal itself.
00:09:30.660 But the criminal justice system can come in after the fact and penalize people for the
00:09:36.240 illegal use of guns.
00:09:37.720 But we don't do that because it will mean that we'll put more black criminals in prison.
00:09:43.320 And as a culture, we've decided we would rather not incarcerate criminals than do so if that
00:09:49.500 has a disparate impact on blacks.
00:09:51.640 And, you know, you'd mentioned a six year old boy shot.
00:09:55.120 That's the tip of the iceberg alley.
00:09:57.220 I mean, black kids are being fatally shot in their backyards, in their front yards, in
00:10:03.880 their parents' homes, in their cars, at birthday parties, trampolines.
00:10:09.680 I have a list in my book of the carnage on a daily basis for about four months in 2021.
00:10:17.320 It is utterly astounding.
00:10:19.420 And the country turns its eyes away from these young child black victims because it doesn't
00:10:26.740 want to talk about their perpetrators.
00:10:29.360 So until that changes, the only thing that's really going to change it is if white kids start
00:10:34.780 getting gunned down in these insane barbaric drive-by shootings.
00:10:38.000 By and large, they're not.
00:10:39.140 For all of the hoopla over school shootings, those are disproportionately gang-related.
00:10:47.180 We only go nuts when it's white kids who were shot.
00:10:50.060 And ideally, we want a white shooter.
00:10:52.320 But those are a pittance of the gun violence in this country, which is overwhelmingly gang-related,
00:10:59.740 inner-city-related, blacks die of gun homicide at 25 times the rate between the ages of 10
00:11:07.820 and 24 compared to whites, 25 times the rate of getting killed by guns.
00:11:15.180 And their killers are other blacks, not other whites.
00:11:18.740 And that's why we don't talk about it, because whites are terrified to talk about black-on-black
00:11:24.560 crime.
00:11:25.080 You know, when the horrific Nashville shooting happened, there was this New York Times, could
00:11:31.960 have been the Washington Post.
00:11:33.120 I was trying to find it.
00:11:34.340 But they mentioned two school shootings that had just happened recently that I had not heard
00:11:39.780 about.
00:11:40.180 It was one outside of Denver, and then I believe one outside of Arlington, Texas.
00:11:43.780 And I was like, wait, these didn't become huge stories, because usually these school shootings
00:11:48.800 are big stories, especially when there's an AR-15 involved.
00:11:52.860 But the perpetrators were both black.
00:11:55.600 And I hadn't heard of that.
00:11:57.240 You really only hear about these mass shooters when you have, which is equally horrific, when
00:12:02.880 you've got a white guy or whatever walking in with an AR-15.
00:12:06.440 And then I'll get a bunch of messages from people, even people who say that they're conservative,
00:12:11.900 saying, well, why aren't you at least talking about gun control when it comes to AR-15s?
00:12:17.020 Guns are the number one killer of people under the age of 18.
00:12:20.280 But then they have nothing to say when I say, well, look, if you care about gun violence,
00:12:24.940 which of course we all do, we don't want more murder victims.
00:12:28.420 But let's talk about the 99% of crimes or the 99% of these cases that are actually committed
00:12:35.520 by people who are using handguns.
00:12:37.580 The reason why that number is so high, why so many minors are killed by guns, is actually
00:12:42.100 because of the gang violence that we're talking about.
00:12:44.360 Let's look at the policies that should be actually enacted and put into place to prevent
00:12:47.920 that kind of violence, then we might be able to see the numbers going down.
00:12:52.260 Banning AR-15s is not even going to put a dent in those statistics.
00:12:55.960 But as soon as you start talking about a certain demographic that inconveniently is taking up
00:13:00.460 a large portion of these deaths, they don't want to talk about any policy that would restrict
00:13:05.940 the usage of those guns anymore.
00:13:07.660 Banning AR-15s is not going to be able to talk about any policy that we're talking about.
00:13:12.000 They may go after the legal possession, but these kids that are shooting each other are
00:13:17.340 not going and getting gun permits and background checks.
00:13:20.920 This is an illegal trade.
00:13:23.760 I'm an agnostic on gun control.
00:13:26.600 You know, I'm not going to weigh in one way or another.
00:13:29.000 I will say that Bernie Sanders was right when he allegedly said years ago, everybody in Vermont
00:13:35.620 has a gun and they have virtually no gun homicide.
00:13:38.220 The issue really is the social breakdown that leads people, these young people, to feel no
00:13:45.220 hesitation about going out and blasting bullets across a sidewalk in the hope of hitting a
00:13:52.460 gang enemy.
00:13:53.640 And if they take out a young child, they don't care.
00:13:56.860 That's the problem.
00:13:58.260 They're growing up in communities without parental control.
00:14:02.240 The blackout of wedlock birth rate is 71%.
00:14:05.760 It's a culture without marriage, without fathers.
00:14:10.080 And young boys are not getting any kind of impulse control from their home environments.
00:14:16.120 That's the problem.
00:14:18.360 Yes, we do have much higher gun violence, much higher number of guns in this country.
00:14:24.060 But that is a social problem.
00:14:26.500 It's not primarily a gun problem.
00:14:41.060 And if anyone is questioning, which it's hard to believe that anyone could at this point,
00:14:45.520 but maybe, you know, maybe you just consume mainstream media and you don't see the duplicitous
00:14:50.960 nature of how the media reports on these kinds of stories when it's either black on black
00:14:56.640 crime or when it's black on white crime or even when it's white on white crime versus
00:15:01.400 white on black crime.
00:15:03.740 Really, that's the only time that you see the media highlighting race as a central part of
00:15:08.560 the story.
00:15:09.520 And the motive is already and automatically immediately assumed.
00:15:14.320 We have a motive.
00:15:15.060 Um, so, so they say, but when it comes to, for example, the shooter in the, in the Nashville
00:15:21.100 scenario, even though we have a manifesto, they pretend to like the motivation is completely
00:15:25.640 up in the air.
00:15:26.420 We don't know, but when you've got a race that is white of the suspect and black of the
00:15:31.580 victim, then we all, we always know that it's white supremacy.
00:15:35.360 So there's two stories, two tragic stories, equally tragic stories that occurred over the
00:15:40.220 past week.
00:15:41.440 There was a boy by the name of, uh, Ralph Yarrell.
00:15:45.060 He's a 16 year old black teenager.
00:15:47.420 So it was reported arriving and this is how it's being reported.
00:15:51.120 So at the wrong house in Kansas city, apparently going to pick up his siblings from a friend's
00:15:55.860 home.
00:15:56.640 And he, um, he rang on this doorbell.
00:15:59.900 Some media reports, time magazine said he entered the home.
00:16:02.820 Most media reports are saying that he just rang the doorbell and a man by the name of Andrew
00:16:07.940 Laster, 84 years old, uh, opened fire.
00:16:11.240 I guess he thought the teen was trying to break in.
00:16:13.420 Thankfully the boy lived he's in the hospital, or I think he was released from the hospital.
00:16:17.960 He was shot twice, once in the head.
00:16:20.060 Um, and then you've got also this woman named Caitlin Gillis.
00:16:23.940 She's a 20 year old.
00:16:25.220 She turned into the wrong driveway.
00:16:27.140 A man came out of his house.
00:16:28.780 This is in upstate New York, shot her, murdered her.
00:16:32.880 Well, the difference is obviously in what's being reported related to the races of the
00:16:37.840 perpetrator and victim.
00:16:39.040 The race isn't being reported at all when it comes to the young woman, because they're
00:16:42.140 both white, but also you see president Biden and vice president Kamala Harris, president
00:16:47.140 Biden, uh, calling the family of Ralph Yarrow and inviting them to the white house.
00:16:52.400 After he gets better, they've raised on GoFundMe $2.8 million at this point.
00:16:57.580 And you have the media with an outpouring of sympathy for this young man who is just assumed
00:17:02.860 to be a victim of white supremacy and virtually no outrage and sadness for this young woman.
00:17:08.320 I'm guessing because she's white and was killed by another white person.
00:17:12.300 So this is just how it goes.
00:17:14.440 If people can't see that at this point, I don't even know how to help them.
00:17:17.280 Well, you're absolutely right.
00:17:21.280 Here's the rule of thumb.
00:17:22.720 If you're reading a crime story and the race of the perpetrator is not disclosed, it's black.
00:17:28.920 That's just a hundred percent guaranteed.
00:17:32.220 Because if the race of the perpetrator was white, the press story would have said that.
00:17:36.840 Um, and so that means, and, you know, we saw this happening in the nineties when newspaper
00:17:42.420 after newspaper decided that they would no longer report a race of criminal suspects because
00:17:48.060 they were almost always black.
00:17:49.760 And so they decided that it was, they would violate their obligation to maintain public safety
00:17:58.540 and help society preserve itself, uh, by withholding relevant information.
00:18:04.700 If you're trying to find somebody and get witness identification on a criminal who's still out
00:18:11.180 on the lam, uh, but they will, they would withhold relevant vital information rather than contribute
00:18:18.780 to a factual truth, which is that violent street crime is way overwhelmingly in some cities,
00:18:27.820 a hundred percent committed by so-called people of color.
00:18:31.220 Uh, so, so, so this has been going on for decades.
00:18:35.700 It's, it's quite extraordinary.
00:18:37.720 And you mentioned earlier the LeBron James fatuity of, of, uh, well, they just want to hunt
00:18:44.960 us down or something.
00:18:46.240 The worst is from president Biden.
00:18:49.320 He ran while he was a candidate, uh, in 2020 on the idea that black parents were right to fear
00:18:59.840 for their children every time they step outside, that they will be killed by the police or killed
00:19:04.980 by whites.
00:19:05.780 He brought that up again after the Ralph Yarl shooting.
00:19:09.660 It is a complete falsehood.
00:19:12.240 It has nothing to do with reality.
00:19:15.060 Again, the reason that blacks die of homicide at 25 times the rate of gun homicide as whites
00:19:21.380 is because blacks are killing them, not whites.
00:19:24.080 You could remove all police shootings of blacks.
00:19:27.180 You could remove all white shootings of blacks, and it would have no impact on the black death
00:19:33.780 by homicide rate.
00:19:35.480 Yes.
00:19:35.860 And just to reiterate something that you said earlier, I mean, most crime, most homicide
00:19:40.480 is intraracial.
00:19:42.720 So it's mostly if a white person is murdered, it's usually by a white person, Hispanic person
00:19:46.780 by a Hispanic person.
00:19:47.880 The only demographic that that's not actually true for is Asians.
00:19:51.520 An Asian person, if they are murdered, they are actually most likely to be murdered by
00:19:55.860 a black person.
00:19:57.280 You can look that up in the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
00:19:59.680 But also, even though it is much more likely for a white person to kill a white person,
00:20:03.840 black person to kill a black person, as you're saying, you also mentioned that it is much
00:20:07.780 more likely for a white person to be killed by a black person than vice versa.
00:20:13.480 And Ben Shapiro actually tweeted this out yesterday because of this whole narrative that the media
00:20:17.980 is trying to spin, and this has been true as long as we have data.
00:20:21.780 This is from U.S. News and World Report just emphasizing what you're saying, that it is
00:20:28.440 much more likely to be the other way around, and yet we are constantly told the opposite
00:20:34.020 narrative.
00:20:34.920 And it really affects how people view reality.
00:20:38.980 And it's, I mean, it causes so much undue bitterness and resentment.
00:20:45.980 And as we've already talked about, it affects policy, not just crime policy, not just so-called
00:20:51.620 criminal justice, also education policy.
00:20:54.140 I mean, this affects everything.
00:20:56.040 And then it ends up, ironically, disproportionately negatively affecting black people.
00:21:02.780 Well, let me just correct one thing.
00:21:04.620 The data that I just gave, which is that 88% of all interracial violence is committed by
00:21:10.880 blacks and whites, that refers to non-lethal violence because this comes from the National
00:21:17.140 Crime Victim Survey.
00:21:18.300 So it's self-reporting.
00:21:19.380 So if you're a victim of homicide, you're not going to report.
00:21:21.880 But the homicide disparities are comparable.
00:21:26.320 So you're absolutely right.
00:21:27.380 And you're absolutely right, Ellie, as well, to talk about the bitterness that this creates.
00:21:32.560 Inevitably, after this Ralph Yall shooting, we have op-eds in the Atlantic, Monthly, other
00:21:38.540 magazines, with the usual, frankly, bathos-filled conceit that, oh, I'm just so exhausted by
00:21:48.480 being black because all these whites are going to kill me.
00:21:51.960 That's just insane.
00:21:53.660 And after any of these incidents, you have people saying, I'm terrified to go outside because
00:21:59.300 I'm going to be killed by a white person.
00:22:00.560 That is to live in a fantasy world, but it does increase racial hostility and it does
00:22:08.900 lead to trying to emasculate and decommission policing on the phony idea that we're living
00:22:19.820 through an epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black men.
00:22:23.560 That is another complete falsehood put out by the police.
00:22:27.200 The fact of the matter is, Ellie, this country had a deplorable history.
00:22:31.720 It was an utter contradiction to its founding ideals.
00:22:35.480 White Americans treated blacks with just horrific, heartbreaking, gratuitous cruelty and nastiness.
00:22:44.420 It breaks my heart to read it.
00:22:46.400 But that is not our country today.
00:22:48.500 It was our country in the past.
00:22:50.220 We were white supremacists.
00:22:51.600 We were an apartheid country and we violated our ideals on a regular basis.
00:22:56.940 But today, that is not the reality.
00:23:01.100 There is not a single mainstream institution that is not bending itself over backwards to
00:23:08.580 try and admit and hire as many blacks as possible.
00:23:13.040 Our reality is what is black privilege, not white privilege.
00:23:16.300 And to go around pretending the opposite means that we're tearing down standards of criminal
00:23:22.500 behavior.
00:23:23.320 We're tearing down meritocratic standards in medicine and science, in academic achievement,
00:23:29.300 in engineering, all based on the lie that racism is our problem today.
00:23:35.860 It is not.
00:23:36.540 Standards are not racist.
00:23:37.760 The problem is there's underlying skills gaps and behavior gaps.
00:23:40.640 That's a perfect segue into the book that you've written, When Race Trumps Merit.
00:23:58.160 It goes against this narrative that, you know, people like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams
00:24:03.700 also really argued against this idea that really all of the disparities that we see today, whether
00:24:09.400 it's fatherlessness, incarceration, economic, graduation rates, that all of that, that that
00:24:16.860 is a consequence of the legacy of slavery.
00:24:21.040 They'll say slavery and Jim Crow weren't all that long ago.
00:24:24.620 It's a generational effect.
00:24:26.440 And that's why we see the disparities.
00:24:28.300 Even if what you say is true, that we're not necessarily an institutionally white supremacist
00:24:33.880 country today, still the legacy of that past oppression is still what is pushing down Black
00:24:39.600 Americans today.
00:24:40.780 Obviously, you disagree with that.
00:24:43.980 You would say, actually, America is trying very hard and has for a long time to replace
00:24:50.360 racial quotas with merit-based standards, right?
00:24:56.080 We're replacing merit standards with racial quotas.
00:25:00.560 Yes, that's what I meant to say.
00:25:02.300 And as far as what's creating these gaps, there's many different explanations.
00:25:11.780 And the sole explanation, I think his main argument is that let's not blame racism.
00:25:19.740 There comes a point when, whether or not these disparities are generation after generation after
00:25:29.720 generation from slavery, there comes a point when the culture has to heal itself.
00:25:36.080 It is not impossible to actually do your homework.
00:25:41.220 You can say, well, slavery created some sort of anti-academic achievement ethos.
00:25:47.100 But that really came about in the 60s.
00:25:50.560 I can do my homework.
00:25:52.240 That is within my control.
00:25:53.560 And in fact, the only person who can make sure that I know how to read or do arithmetic
00:26:01.540 is me.
00:26:02.820 I have to do the studying.
00:26:04.800 So one can bracket the discussion about what are the causes of this.
00:26:10.540 And the left will always say that to the extent that they ever acknowledge the academic
00:26:15.840 skills gap, which is huge, for instance, 66 percent of black 12th graders do not possess
00:26:23.080 even partial mastery of the most basic 12th grade math skills, such as arithmetic or understanding
00:26:30.180 a linear relationship on a graph.
00:26:32.600 And the number of black 12th graders who are advanced in 12th grade math is too small to show up statistically.
00:26:43.840 Given those disparities, it is absurd to expect that absent racism, Google would have 13 percent
00:26:52.540 black engineers or black computer scientists or an Alzheimer's research lab would have 13 percent
00:26:59.300 black neurologists.
00:27:00.480 They're simply not available in the competitively qualified academic pipeline.
00:27:07.460 So my focus is on the disparities today, not what their causes are.
00:27:14.040 And I would say we have spent decades and trillions of dollars trying to close those disparities
00:27:20.740 through redistributing, through redistributing wealth, through way, way high funding for inner city schools.
00:27:27.940 The gaps have not closed.
00:27:30.280 We have to stop blaming ourselves for racism.
00:27:33.320 We have to start tearing, stop tearing down standards of achievement.
00:27:38.020 And the culture has to heal itself and say, we're going to put in the effort it takes
00:27:44.160 to meet the standards rather than demanding that the standards be lowered to meet us.
00:27:49.420 Right. And some people will say when it comes to education that, well, you know, it's a it's a result
00:27:56.980 of redlining. It's a result of a lack of funding. But actually, if you look, I just saw this stunning
00:28:01.880 chart from Chicago schools, how much the principals are getting paid and the vice principals are getting
00:28:07.980 paid. The administration is getting paid versus how many students can actually read at a competent
00:28:14.320 level. I mean, it's completely disproportionate.
00:28:16.840 The it's obviously not a lack of funding.
00:28:19.520 There is something much deeper, as you're saying, that is going on there that's not being
00:28:24.180 addressed and is not only not being addressed, but this kind of this kind of incompetence from
00:28:30.560 the administrative level is certainly being rewarded at the expense of these kids.
00:28:35.680 And this is how you say it in your book to kind of summarize what you just said.
00:28:39.300 If blacks are underrepresented in science research labs or overrepresented among arrested felons,
00:28:44.980 the only allowable explanation is racism. The possibility that such racial disparities reflect
00:28:49.480 the actual distribution of skills or differences in behavior is taboo. You're absolutely right about
00:28:54.180 that. It is taboo. As a remedy for this alleged racism, we create double standards of accomplishment
00:28:58.840 and behavior. But double standards help no one. They are condescending and they are lethal.
00:29:03.460 So they're lethal. They're deadly. Talk about talk about that. How are they deadly?
00:29:08.060 Well, we see this most obviously in the criminal justice system where we believe that the colorblind
00:29:17.980 constitutional application of the criminal law is per se racist if it has a disparate impact on
00:29:23.500 black criminals. It will have a disparate impact on black criminals because blacks commit the
00:29:28.380 overwhelming portion of violent street crime. Sorry, that's the case. In New York City, for example,
00:29:33.760 blacks are 23% of the population, but they commit about 75% of all shootings. And that's according
00:29:42.440 to the victims of and witnesses to those shootings who are themselves overwhelmingly minority.
00:29:47.720 Whites are about 34% of the New York City population. They commit about one to 2%, if that,
00:29:54.440 of shootings. So it's vastly disproportionate. But when we say that the problem is the criminal justice
00:30:00.900 standards or prosecuting the law because it has a disparate impact on blacks, we've stopped
00:30:07.180 prosecuting the law. The result was after the George Floyd race riots, the largest one-year increase in
00:30:13.340 homicide in this nation's history, 29% in one year, which is massive for any kind of field to have a
00:30:21.140 one-year 29% shift in anything is just stunning. And the victims were overwhelmingly black. So we've got
00:30:28.620 the criminal side of the criminal side of this, but you also have the side now where we are tearing
00:30:33.460 down meritocratic standards in science and in medicine, and that will have an impact. You know,
00:30:40.380 medical schools are waiving, some medical schools are waiving the medical college admissions tests,
00:30:46.040 the MCATs for black students. This is the objective standardized medical school tests like the SATs
00:30:55.400 because those have a disparate impact on black students. Why not? Because the tests are racist.
00:31:02.140 The tests are not racist. They're colorblind, and they ask for basic academic skills. But because
00:31:08.660 on average, blacks don't have those skills at the same rate. Again, there's many individuals who are
00:31:16.260 whooping everybody's ass within these groups, but we're talking about averages here. Medical schools are
00:31:21.800 deciding they're going to lower their standards for blacks. They're lowering their standards in the
00:31:26.780 medical licensing exam. They're going pass fail to one important test rather than grading the students
00:31:34.600 because blacks were doing very poorly when graded. So now we're not going to know who's getting D's and
00:31:40.980 F's and who's getting A's and B's. And at some point, we're compromising medical technology and
00:31:48.800 medical skill. We are also slowing down medical progress in research. The federal science labs
00:31:54.680 and funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation
00:32:00.720 are now doling out research money based on the race of researchers, not their scientific
00:32:06.340 accomplishments. And that will mean that we are slowing down the progress in curing cancer and Alzheimer's.
00:32:18.800 You give some more examples of this in your book. In 2021, the average score for white applicants on
00:32:30.340 the medical college admission test was in the 71st percentile, meaning that it was equal to or better
00:32:35.480 than the 71 percent of all average scores. The average score for black applicants was in the 37th
00:32:40.340 percentile, a full standard deviation below the average white score. The MCATs have already been
00:32:45.540 redesigned to try to reduce this gap. A quarter of the questions now focus on social issues and
00:32:51.180 psychology. I mean, that in and of itself is troubling to me when I'm thinking about being put
00:32:55.440 in these life and death situations. I'm totally, you know, I have to fully submit to the expertise
00:33:02.100 and hopefully the skilled hands of whatever surgeon is, you know, at my table. Medical schools regarded
00:33:09.280 those below average scores as all but disqualifying except when prevented by blacks and Hispanics.
00:33:17.180 Over 56 percent of black college seniors with below average undergraduate GPAs and below average MCATs
00:33:24.300 were admitted, as were 31 percent of Hispanic students with those scores. Not true for Asian students,
00:33:32.060 less than six percent of Asian college seniors that had, you know, under the typically acceptable
00:33:38.860 standard when it comes to those scores were accepted. Of course, that's true for white students
00:33:43.400 too. You give an example of University of Pennsylvania Medical School that guarantees
00:33:47.820 admission to black undergraduates who score 1,300 on the SAT. That's on a 1,600 point scale. That's a
00:33:55.740 fine score. It's fine. Maintain an even more modest 3.6 GPA in college and complete two summers of
00:34:02.540 internship at the school. I feel like this has changed really fast. I graduated from college in 2014,
00:34:07.860 not all that long ago. But if I remember correctly, my friends who were applying to medical school,
00:34:14.240 I mean, there were really, really high standards for that. Some of the smartest people I know
00:34:19.540 weren't getting into medical school right away. And so it seems like these standards have lowered,
00:34:25.980 but I guess just for some different demographics, especially in the past few years.
00:34:30.900 Well, yes. I don't think you were paying attention, Allie. The racial preferences have existed.
00:34:37.780 It's probably true. I wasn't.
00:34:38.320 Yeah. The very founding racial preference Supreme Court case,
00:34:44.440 Bakke versus the University of California was from 1976 or 78, I think.
00:34:50.440 And this was challenging. The University of California at Davis had a massive set-aside
00:34:56.560 program for Black students. Alan Bakke had very, he was a white guy, had very high MCAT scores. He had
00:35:03.780 very high GPA. He had fabulous recommendations. And he was rejected several times from the Davis Law
00:35:10.360 School at the same time that Blacks with much, much lower MCAT scores and GPAs than him were admitted.
00:35:18.440 And he challenged this. And the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the use of racial preferences
00:35:26.280 in medical school and every place else on this ridiculous diversity rationale. So this has been
00:35:32.760 going on for a long time. And I would say what has changed is that just if you're Asian these days,
00:35:40.080 you have to be even better. I mean, the bar gets higher and higher for Asians, the discrimination
00:35:45.200 against them gets worse and worse. And so it just, it widens the gap in academic classes, whether it's
00:35:55.740 at the college level or at professional schools. So you've got Asians who have had to meet the standards
00:36:02.880 at like the absolute stratosphere, their standardized test scores calculated out to 0.00001% of the top.
00:36:14.600 And then in this push for ever more diversity, and we've got to do even more to have racially
00:36:22.180 proportionate schools, medical schools, law schools, engineering schools, they're lowering their standards
00:36:28.180 even further to admit blacks. And so the mismatch effect gets greater and greater.
00:36:35.080 Yeah, man, it seems like this problem is almost too big and too embedded to take on. Obviously,
00:36:43.480 I think it's great that governors like Ron DeSantis are pushing back against DEI diversity, equity and
00:36:51.040 inclusion policies and trying to ensure that institutions are using merit-based standards.
00:36:58.960 But of course, that's just one section of the country. We're talking about like the federal
00:37:03.140 government here. We're talking about even global institutions that are pushing this kind of thing.
00:37:08.900 And then there's also the aspect that you talk about so much that's really underneath a lot of this
00:37:12.720 is the social fabric. If it's 71% of black children are born into fatherlessness homes or fatherless homes,
00:37:21.600 and we know that is a driving factor behind delinquency and all kinds of problems for young
00:37:28.020 people, I don't even know where to begin to solve that problem. I mean, what do you suggest? How do we as
00:37:36.580 just regular people try to rectify what is such a horrific issue?
00:37:44.180 Do no harm. The first thing we have to do is stop tearing down our standards on the phony charge of
00:37:50.580 racism. We have to stop being cowed by the race hustle. I am not going to be silenced by being called
00:37:58.340 a racist for telling the facts about academic achievement, about criminal offending. They're the
00:38:04.780 facts. I'm sorry, you can't take me down. And so we have to defend meritocratic standards. We have
00:38:13.100 to defend criminal law standards with facts and saying, if we're not going to allow our civilization
00:38:20.060 to be canceled, you're absolutely right that the elites are very hard to reach. However, DeSantis,
00:38:26.560 it's a very, very good start. And as far as what we can do, I mean, I guess we can start not being
00:38:37.040 paternalistic towards blacks and not lowering standards on their behalf, but say, no, we expect
00:38:42.960 you to meet standards. You have the capacity to do that. We're stripping blacks of any agency and they're
00:38:49.800 stripping themselves of agency. And I'm, again, let me just say, I'm speaking of averages here
00:38:55.480 and there are individuals within any group that are at the absolute top end of the absolute bottom
00:39:03.320 line. There are thousands of blacks who are outperforming whites and Asians. The difficulty
00:39:09.480 with racial preferences is it tars the entire group as needing lowered standards. And that makes the
00:39:17.080 beneficiaries of racial preferences live under this cloud of suspicion that is a perfectly logical,
00:39:22.600 rational cloud. But by and large, to be honest, Allie, you know, white Americans have very good
00:39:30.760 will and I want everybody to succeed, but there's only so much that the so-called we can do. The problem
00:39:40.040 of the black breakdown of the family is really tough because relations between males and females
00:39:47.320 in the black community are very toxic. There's a lot of suspicion. But again, that's not something
00:39:54.120 that people from the outside can solve. And the acting white syndrome, the anti-acting white syndrome,
00:40:00.520 that has to change. There has to be the same emphasis on academic achievement that you see in
00:40:07.160 Asian families, and they can do it. You can take your textbook home. You can't learn if you're not in the
00:40:12.920 classroom. Parents have to make sure that their kids are not truant. You can't study for the text
00:40:20.680 if you haven't taken your textbook home. And you can't study for the text if you're running the streets
00:40:29.240 at night. There's not a lot that people outside can do about that.
00:40:41.880 And that's just the harsh reality of it. And I know people will hear this. I'll get people who
00:40:51.240 are conservatives who listen to this episode and will say, that was so racist. That was such a racist
00:40:56.200 conversation. You're not talking about the innate capacity of these people or the innate capabilities
00:41:02.680 or innate nature of anyone. You are talking about the facts. You're talking about statistics.
00:41:07.480 You're talking about reality. At some point, we have to face reality, and we have to have an
00:41:11.800 honest conversation about what is causing the disparities? What is causing this reality,
00:41:16.440 which everyone, by the way, is uncomfortable with? No one wants these disparities. No one wants
00:41:21.160 the fatherlessness. No one wants the underperformance. We all want people to succeed and achieve.
00:41:28.600 But so many people are unable, unwilling to look at that reality because they don't want to be called
00:41:33.480 a bigot. I think that's the biggest impediment to making any real progress.
00:41:38.200 You're right. You're absolutely right. And again, it's not racist to talk about the facts.
00:41:43.160 And the disparities that I'm talking about are when you apply a neutral colorblind standard
00:41:47.960 and that produces disparities. But listen, Ali, I understand the racial etiquette and whites are
00:41:58.200 absolutely terrified to look head on at inner city dysfunction. And there's an argument to be made that
00:42:04.520 that in a multicultural society, no group should speak honestly about any other group and we should
00:42:10.200 all turn our eyes away. That argument for racial etiquette is no longer applicable as far as I'm
00:42:17.000 concerned, because we have every institution of Western civilization, whether it's classical music,
00:42:24.360 art, medicine, science, they're all being accused of being racist because they do not have proportional
00:42:31.480 numbers of blacks either in their history when Europe was the source of these and Europe was not
00:42:36.840 13 percent black for most of its history. It was demographically white or we're accusing medicine
00:42:43.640 today of being racist because there's not 13 percent black principal investigators on NIH grants.
00:42:51.720 when that is the dominant discourse and they're accusing everything else of being racist.
00:42:59.400 I'm not going to follow the racial etiquette that says I can't talk about the underlying disparities
00:43:05.560 in academic achievement that lead to these lack of proportional representation.
00:43:11.560 You know, it's it's a right now that the accusations go in one direction.
00:43:17.240 Exactly. And it's it's too late. It's too late.
00:43:20.360 You know, the time for racial etiquette is over because the left is winning and they're tearing everything
00:43:27.320 down under this phony charge of racism. And as long as racism is the only allowable explanation
00:43:33.000 for racial disparities, the left wins. And we have to be able to provide an alternative explanation
00:43:38.280 for why Google doesn't have 13 percent black engineers.
00:43:42.120 Yeah, it really is. It's honestly the most loving and compassionate thing you can do to
00:43:47.640 advocate for a merit based system and to say, I actually believe that everyone is innately capable
00:43:53.400 of reading of reaching these high standards. Yes, there needs to be changes in the social fabric
00:43:57.720 and the family structure and things like that to enable these people. But everyone has the innate
00:44:02.520 capacity to do it. As Thomas Sowell says, when the left says equality, they always mean equality
00:44:07.240 downward. They always mean bringing everyone to the lowest common denominator. And that is
00:44:12.040 certainly what's happening, especially in these communities. And it makes them worse off.
00:44:17.720 So if you really care about black people, if you have a heart for these communities that you feel
00:44:24.680 whatever words you want to use are underserved or on the outskirts of society, whatever you want
00:44:29.080 to say, well, then let's look at the actual policies that would benefit them rather than enable and
00:44:34.440 exacerbate the despair and the violence that we see characterizing these cities.
00:44:38.760 That means you're not going to be on the progressive side of this issue if you truly
00:44:42.120 have compassion for these people. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Where
00:44:46.920 can people buy not just this book when race trumps merit, but all of your books that you've written
00:44:53.000 on this because you cite all of the statistics, by the way, that you're talking about? You're
00:44:56.920 certainly not just making them up. So where can people learn more about this?
00:45:00.840 Oh, thank you, Ali. Just wherever people like to buy books, you know, it's every place. I hate to
00:45:07.080 say Amazon, but it is on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, any place you can just Google me and I think you'll
00:45:15.960 find it. I've got a Twitter account. I don't even know what it is. I don't run it, but it gives a lot of
00:45:21.480 my information and stuff. Yep. When race trumps merit, how the pursuit of equity sacrifices
00:45:29.400 excellence destroys beauty and threatens lives. Heather, thank you so much for coming on. I really
00:45:34.040 appreciate it. Thank you for such a great interview and for reading my book, Ali. I'm very grateful to
00:45:39.480 you. Thank you.