Discussing Systemic Racism With Heather Mac Donald
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Summary
Heather McDonald is the author of When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. She joins us to discuss the current state of race hustlers and anti-racist activists.
Transcript
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And we're joined today by Heather McDonald. She's the author of the recent bestseller When Race
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Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty,
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and Threatens Lives. Heather, thanks for joining us. It's an honor, Matt.
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Yeah, thanks for being here. In fact, it's fortunate we're talking today because there
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are a couple issues that have recently come up that I wanted to ask you about.
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But first, you've been speaking out against the race hustlers and the anti-racist grifters for
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a long time, of course. Just from a general perspective, how do you assess the state of
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that movement, of that scam right now, today? I think it's still very strong, Matt, despite the
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Supreme Court ruling. Now, you and I are both innate pessimists. But I'm sorry, I do not see
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any cessation of it. Amazingly, the STEM fields, medicine, continues to pump out daily statements
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about medicine being racist. Somebody just sent me Case Western Reserve Medical School saying,
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we need to change the curriculum of our medical school because of the demographics of our student
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body. We need to be teaching humility. We know what that means. I'm quoting them verbatim. I'd never
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heard that one before. But one can guess that it means whites have to go around apologizing for
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the alleged racism that leads to disparate outcomes. Recently, the Oakland District Attorney
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in Alameda County gave a training to the victim services units about how to not be harmed by white
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victims. The idea is that if a white crime victim is seeking redress, that somehow that's going to
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threaten staff of color. So the war on Western civilization, simply because it is deemed too
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white and too male, the war on standards, simply because they have a disparate impact on blacks,
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I do not see it falling off at all. And I don't see conservatives willing to stand up to the race
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hustle and articulate what's really going on. So when you see or you mentioned the Supreme Court
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ruling, but even many of these corporations that it seems anyway from the outside have some of them
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have started to de-emphasize some of the DEI stuff. They're pushing pretty heavily for a couple of
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years. When you see that, you don't see progress. You see what's happening. Are they just kind of
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pivoting because they realize that certain methods aren't working or what? Well, they still have
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their narcissist young employee workforce that has been brainwashed by K-12 education and put a
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finishing touch in college that is on the lookout for phantom signs of racism and sexism. Those employees
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are not going to go away. And corporate wives are not going away, which pushed their husbands to
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be more woke. So maybe they're going to, you know, we have now Edward Blum, who brought the suit
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against Harvard and University of North Carolina doing lawsuits against various law firms that have
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blacks only fellowship programs. And he just brought suit against West Point for having racial
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preferences and admissions. If I were an optimist, I would say, yes, you know, bring it on. We'll sue people
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into submission. But that's piecemeal. And it also puts an undue faith in the judiciary. You know,
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one of the most disturbing moments for me in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings that that tried to,
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you know, run a a absolute superb jurist out of the country, basically, was when you had
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the students at the Harvard and Yale law schools protesting with signs that said, believe survivors,
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that ethic that a female who claims sexual assault is entitled to automatic belief is the antithesis of
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due process. Those graduates of Harvard and Yale are being pumped onto the federal judiciary
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at way disproportionate rates. If they don't change their thinking, and I have no reason to think they
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will, we can't assume redress from the courts in the future. So I just think it's going to take a
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hell of a lot more honesty than I'm willing to, than I've been able to hear from our leaders.
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What do you think? So culturally, we have, there's sort of race, and then there's also gender
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ideology. These two things are, there's a lot of overlap there. Of course, they're related. But what do you
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think is for the left, which is the more potent vehicle for, you know, cultural domination and for
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and for and for getting their ideology across and indoctrinating people into the ideology? Because
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gender or race, what do you think is the more kind of potent tool for them?
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Wow. And, and, and I'd also like your response to where do you think things are improving? I cannot,
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I cannot put a hierarchy on those. On the one hand, the race hustle is, is, is giving an excuse to tear
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down meritocratic standards across both the STEM fields, across the arts, across theater, across
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classical music, certainly in the criminal justice system. If people don't understand that disparate
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impact is driving this perplexing behavior of prosecutors that are declaring entire areas of
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criminal behavior off limits to prosecution, they have to understand it's all driven by race. Because
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if they prosecute those crimes in a colorblind constitutional fashion, they will have a disparate
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impact on black criminals. And the left has decided it cares more about black criminals than black victims.
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So the, the race hustle is, is allowing us to very quickly self-cancel. It is the, the suicide of the
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West, but so is gender ideology. Gender ideology, what are we doing in a gay pride march, but celebrating
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non-procreative sex? We are celebrating people who are not in, in choosing their, their, their preferred sexual
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partners. They are not engaged in procreative sex. And, and we're, again, it's, it's part of the great
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replacement theory. We are making sure that the West simply self-cancels. So they both are operating
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at, at very profound levels. The one tearing down merit, meritocratic standards, the ability of students
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to be pushed to accomplish at their highest level. We're tearing down gifted and talented
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math education across the country. Somebody just sent me something from the Sequoia School District,
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which is around Palo Alto and Menlo Park, where they are getting rid of advanced placement courses or
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advanced accelerated courses in math, science, and English because of disparate impact. So we're tearing
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exprssvpn.com slash WalshYT. But let me turn it back to you. Are you optimistic? And which do you
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think is of greater power as a battering ram against civilization, the race hustle or the gender
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ideology? Well, I'm never optimistic. So that's an easy question for me to answer. But I basically agree
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with you. I do think that in certain areas, it's a little bit of a whack-a-mole thing. So there are
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certain areas where they've had to pivot. And the left's very good at this. They rename things.
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They realize that something is bad. The branding isn't good anymore. And so they have to kind of
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rebrand. The pushback against CRT was successful in a lot of ways. But it doesn't mean that that
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ideology is just going to disappear. And the powers that be in our country still realize that this is
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a very potent tool for profit for them and also for control. They're not just going to give it up.
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They certainly aren't. And between gender and race, I'm not exactly sure. I think it is basically
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impossible to rank the two. So maybe I was asking you an impossible question, which isn't exactly
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fair. Maybe I would say that long term, maybe the race hustle maybe has longer legs in the long term.
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Where right now, the gender seems to be maybe the more potent tool for them at this exact moment.
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So maybe that's if I had to balance the two, maybe that's the way that I would do it.
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I agree. I agree. And I would just I would qualify something you said, which is as a tool for profit
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and control. That's true. And it is certainly true that there are a lot of race hustlers who whose
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entire jobs depend on the idea that being black is an accomplishment or counterpart that being female
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is an accomplishment. I do. I know that being female is not an accomplishment. And I would also say
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that being gay is not an accomplishment and being black is not an accomplishment. None of those things
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should qualify anybody for a job. And yet they do again and again and again. And the idea that
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everything is caused by systemic racism has given birth to a vast consulting scam. But I think that
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conservatives move a little too quickly to sort of an economic explanation that, oh, this is all about
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profit or whatever. It is about control. And certainly we've seen that for the COVID hysteria.
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But it is also I think we have to understand these are true believers. I don't think that they are
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adopting a set of phony propositions that they agree as such. I think they actually are committed to the
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idea that the West is endemically racist and the source of the world's problems, whereas in fact,
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of course, the opposite is the case. No civilization has provided as much
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surcease from pain, suffering, premature death, squalor, you know, cold famine than the West. I mean,
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it's not even close. It is not even close. Everything. Just do a little inventory, leftists,
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of your apartment or home right now. Do an inventory of every material, every electrical appliance,
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every labor saving device, your smartphones, water. You've got clean water. You can flip on a switch
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and get light. You're not overcome with darkness, which was the fate of human beings for millennia.
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It's all thanks to white, overwhelmingly male scientists and tinkerers that starting in the
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early 18th century, some back in the 17th century with the British society, were fascinated to
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understand the world, develop the scientific method, and gave us this incredible tapestry of
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excellence and comfort and beauty that we live with. Well said. I think actually you might have
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just tapped into potentially one of the critical differences between going back to the race and
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gender question, because I think you're right that the race hustlers, certainly on the lower levels,
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are true believers for the most part, and leftists in general. Everything they say about race,
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I mean, I think they do basically believe it. They're confused enough to believe it. Now,
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on the other end, the people that are pushing a lot of this trans stuff and the idea that men can
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be women and women can be men, I think a lot of them don't really believe it because you can't
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believe it because it's so incoherent. There's no way that you really believe it, especially if you're
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an educated person in science, you know that this is not true. So maybe that's one of the differences,
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that the gender stuff is being pushed by people who really are entirely cynical and they don't
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believe it. The race stuff is being pushed by true believers maybe. Well, I get asked this all the
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time and I'm sure you do too, which is, well, tell us what the inner state, the psychology or the
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epistemology of these people are. Do they believe it? And again, my instinct is to say that they do,
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because I can't imagine being that cynical throughout your life, that you are deliberately,
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like there's a sequence and maybe it's simply instantaneous, which is, well, I know this is all,
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as you've said many times, this is an idea that represents like a nano of a millisecond of a
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like cilia within the millennia of human history. And all of a sudden it becomes the new default
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that men can menstruate and females can procreate through penises. This is just astounding.
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But they would say that I know it's fake and yet I'm going to now go and destroy childhood innocence
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through the premature exposure of children to sexuality. I don't even care if it's heterosexual
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or trans or LGBTQ sexuality. Children should be in that zone of innocence. And I know, again, I am just
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repeating one of the most crucial themes that you have been educating your listeners about, which is
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that you as parents have a duty to preserve your children's innocence and their capacity for
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imagination as long as possible, because it will provide them a haven from despair and ugliness as
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adults. But I can't imagine that people would be that cynical to say, I don't believe it, but I'm
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going to pursue these policies anyway. Let me ask you, I think it's very important to equip people
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with arguments. And that's what I try to do. Of course, you do a great job of that in all of your
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books. Anyone listening right now, we've talked about systemic racism, and that's a big part of
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the whole race hustle. I think many normal people, when they hear about systemic racism,
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intuitively, they don't believe it because they can look around at society and see that,
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where is this systemic racism? But what you'll hear from the other side is that, well, it's ingrained
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in the system. There's the vestiges of racism in the past. The system was set up originally by racist
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people. And so it's still, and you have the disparate impact, as you mentioned. So I know it's
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a broad question, but how would you suggest people deal with that and respond to that argument?
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Well, I would first start out, and you're right, systemic racism, but you know, there used to be
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the scientific theory of phlogiston, which was this kind of colorless substance that was just assumed to
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be existing. And it was used as the catch-all explanation for any physical process you couldn't
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understand. And it had no existence. It was just, it was a placeholder for ignorance. And you had the
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miasma theory of infection, all these things that were discredited. Systemic racism works the same way.
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When you don't want to acknowledge the actual causes of disparate outcomes, which is the academic
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skills gap, you invoke systemic racism, but you can never actually prove it per se. You can't find it,
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you can't see it, but it's the fallback explanation. What I would first say is, okay, this idea that we are
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remaining a discriminant, a racist society, show me any institution that is not twisting itself into knots
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to hire and promote as many Blacks as possible. How can it be that we're told that universities say,
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you must allow us to continue with racial preferences, because if we don't have them, we will not be able to get
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our desired critical mass of Blacks. And so they are willing to lower their academic standards to an
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extraordinary degree to admit Black students. And then the pressure is ubiquitous and constant
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in every academic hiring search to find the few Blacks who have graduated with PhDs in electrical
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engineering, which ends up being in the STEM fields, about 1% at most of PhDs in STEM fields are granted to
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Blacks. And in many fields, there's none. But the pressure is on to hire those few that are out there,
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and they get enormous bidding wars in salaries. Of course, the pressure is also on to hire females in
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STEM, and females get hired ahead of males at rates like at some places three to one. How can it be that
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these are racist institutions? It's literally a logical contradiction that they are so determined to have
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Blacks in them that they are bending their standards. And yet, at the same time, they're discriminating
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against Blacks? It does not compute. And anybody that is vaguely aware of his workplace, if he's in a law
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firm, say, an elite law firm, knows that the name of the game is how do Black associates are hired out of
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law school at rates disproportionate to whites. They're hired with lower class ranking. And the
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pressure is constant from both the American Bar Association and internally from firms to promote
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those into Blacks into firm partners. Now, of course, there are thousands of Blacks who are out
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out-competing whites and Asians, thousands. They are getting by on their hard work, on their self-discipline.
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So I don't want to say that this is a problem that has no exceptions. But given the reality of mismatch,
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when you bring people into an institution that have lower academic skills than their peers,
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they're going to struggle. And that happens both in academic environments and it happens in places
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like law firms. So those Black associates who were hired on the basis of race end up leaving
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the law firm because they're not keeping up. But nevertheless, you can look at the law firms and say,
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all they care about is racial proportionality. And we're both supposed to believe they're racist.
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Please explain that. And here is what the explanation is that people need to hear.
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And Matt, I mean, I realize that this entire conversation is very difficult for people to
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observe, to witness, to participate in because we have very strong race etiquette in this country.
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Another way of disproving the white supremacy argument. You know, it is not, as you've said before,
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it is not the behavior of white supremacists to turn their eyes away from Black-on-white violence
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and to pretend that the problem in this country is white-on-black violence when 87 percent of all
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interracial violence between Blacks and whites and whites and Blacks is committed by Blacks,
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when Blacks are 35 times more likely to commit a violent assault against a white than a white is
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against a Black. It's not the behavior of white supremacists to not look at that. But here,
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I'm sorry, these are uncomfortable facts, but here's the explanation for ongoing racial disparities
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in meritocratic fields like STEM or law or corporate high-tech finance, you know, Silicon Valley engineers.
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Here's the data. If you look at Black 12th graders, 66 percent of all Black 12th graders do not possess even
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partial mastery of basic 12th grade math skills defined as being able to do arithmetic or read a graph.
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7 percent of Black 12th grade students are proficient in math. And the number who are advanced
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is too small in a national sample to even show up statistically. That makes the expectation of equal
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outcomes absent racism simply impossible. It cannot be done. The fact of the matter is,
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you can have diversity or you can have meritocracy. You cannot have both in light of current academic
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skills gaps. And any institution that loudly proclaims that it is behind diversity and diversity, equity,
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inclusion, and belonging are its prime values, is telling you so de voce that it is lowering standards
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On meritocracy, the last question I want to ask you on that topic, because you talk about merit,
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the need to assess people based on merit. The equity pushers will say that we can't assess everybody.
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We can't assess everyone equally based on merit because we're not all starting from the
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same place. This is Kamala Harris's line. And she didn't come up with it, obviously. But
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the difference between equality and equity is, you know, equality is the assumption that
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we're all starting from the same place. And so you just treat everyone the same and give them,
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you know, let people be free. And that's equality. But the problem was that we can't do that because
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some people are starting the race farther up the track. And so equity is to put everyone at the same
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starting point, which means boosting some people ahead of time so that then we can have from there
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an equal race. How do you how do you respond to that absurd claim?
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Well, if the if the disparities diminished over time and you gave people preference,
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you know, you admitted black students to selective colleges with 200 point difference in SATs,
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a standard deviation. And by the end of the four years or six years they had caught up,
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you know, that maybe that would be something that we should definitely consider because it would show
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that, well, you can close the disparities this late in life. But it doesn't happen. In fact,
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the opposite is the case. You are putting a handicap on students. It is the racial preferences are
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incredibly cruel and sadistic. They are the most cruel policy of these damn college presidents and
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administrators because they are putting a unique burden on black students to be catapulted in
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academic environments for which they are not qualified and in which they will predictably
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struggle and fall behind. This is not about race. It's simply about academic mismatch.
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And let me put it in the context of sex. Let's say MIT wants more females in its undergraduate class.
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And that's not a hypothesis. Of course, it does. Every school that's a tech school is obsessed with
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gender. And so it has gender sex preferences. And it admits me with SATs on my math score of 600
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on an 800-point scale, whereas my peers are all admitted basically with 800s, my male peers, because
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they've been admitted based on merit and I've been admitted based on my sex. Well, what's going to
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happen in my freshman year? I'm going to struggle because the teaching is understandably and legitimately
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pitched at the average skill of my classmates, which is very high. And I'm likely to say I can't keep up
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I'm dropping out of the STEM field. I'm going to I'm going to major in MIT's Gender Studies
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Department. And of course, the diversity bureaucrats will be ready at hand to tell me that I'm the victim
00:25:00.980
of misogyny and rape culture. And that's why I'm not keeping up. The same thing happens with black
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students. They are catapulted with much greater academic skills gaps into schools for which they're not
00:25:14.820
competitively qualified. If they had been admitted to schools with the same skills as their peers,
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let's say instead of getting into MIT, they went to Boston College or Boston University,
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or instead of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill went to a university,
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a North Carolina State School that was less prestigious, they would do just fine. And
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that's what everybody else does. You know, it's not the end of the world to not go to an elite Ivy
00:25:45.940
League school. Believe it or not, college presidents, you bunch of elitist snarling curs,
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it is possible to get a decent education and to become a leader at a second and third tier school. So
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the idea that because maybe we don't start ahead, we have to at the end of the at the end of the
00:26:07.540
process, lower our standards, A, it doesn't work. And B, here's what's happening when we lower standards.
00:26:16.340
We are now lowering standards for the medical school licensing exam, part one, because blacks don't do
00:26:23.940
well enough on it. So we've gone from a graded, it's called step one of the US medical licensing exam,
00:26:33.540
it used to be graded as of 2021 January, it went to pass fail basis. So we would cover up the ongoing
00:26:41.540
skills gap. Black medical students were doing the worst in their classes, they were not landing their
00:26:47.620
preferred residencies. So we've decided we'll just get rid of those standards. The pressure is on
00:26:53.060
throughout medical school, to change standards for medical licensing, the curriculum is being changed,
00:27:00.740
the honor society credentials are being changed. There's less and less time being devoted to clinical
00:27:10.660
practice and understanding how to save a body that's been crushed in a car accident, and more time
00:27:17.220
students are spending learning about systemic racism in medical school. So if you care about
00:27:25.460
whether you're going to get the best qualified doctor walking through that ER, or whether you've
00:27:31.060
got the best qualified oncologist trying to finally solve the mystery of cancer, or the best qualified
00:27:37.540
neurologist trying to save human beings from the scourge of Alzheimer's disease, it ain't happening.
00:27:44.740
The federal government is giving grants for science research based on race, not based on skill. We are
00:27:54.260
slowing down our progress. Meanwhile, China is barreling ahead at at mock speed with its math education, with
00:28:05.540
its science education, it is finding its most talented students throwing everything it's got at them and
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saying, go whoop America's ass, and it is happening.
00:28:17.700
Yeah. And I would also note that you said, really, you don't have to go to Ivy League school at all,
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you can survive. Actually, you can go to no school, you can go to no college at all and still survive,
00:28:26.900
as I've discovered. Well, there's a lot more we can say about this, of course, and you say a lot more in
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your book, When Race Trumps Merit, and that can be picked up anywhere you get books, including Amazon.
00:28:36.580
Heather MacDonald, thanks again. Really appreciate it. I appreciate it, mate. Thank you so much.