The Megyn Kelly Show - Coleman Hughes and Glenn Loury on Race in America, Patriotism, and College Campuses ｜ Ep. 25

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.080 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.480 We've got a great one for you today.

00:00:16.940 I think you're going to find this really smart, really interesting, provocative, and contrarian, as they say.

00:00:25.140 We've got Coleman Hughes and Professor Glenn Lowry, two guys who I really, really deeply admire.

00:00:31.640 And if you don't know who they are, you're going to deeply, deeply admire them very shortly.

00:00:36.080 More on them in just one second.

00:00:37.380 But first, I want to talk to you about Pure Talk.

00:00:40.020 Let's talk about talk.

00:00:41.520 Who's your wireless provider?

00:00:42.920 Is it AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile?

00:00:45.680 What if I told you you could be saving over $400 a year without having to sacrifice your service or coverage?

00:00:52.420 Pure Talk is on the exact same network as one of those big carriers.

00:00:57.040 We're not allowed to tell you which one, but it rhymes with Shmurizen.

00:01:01.080 No, just kidding.

00:01:01.740 I actually don't know.

00:01:03.300 I don't know which one it is, but it's a big one.

00:01:06.200 And they give you, Pure Talk does the same bars, the same service, for half the price.

00:01:11.500 I mean, it's just dumb not to go with them, right?

00:01:13.240 You're just costing yourself money unnecessarily.

00:01:15.340 They don't play the same games as the big carriers do.

00:01:17.640 I mean, they sell you your unlimited data and you don't need that much.

00:01:20.840 Pure Talk instead will give you unlimited talk, unlimited text, two gigs of data, all for just $20 a month.

00:01:27.080 That's it.

00:01:28.100 Their customer service is U.S.-based, second to none, and it's the number one rated wireless company according to Consumer Affairs.

00:01:34.940 And their CEO is a veteran, so there you go.

00:01:37.700 Make the switch.

00:01:38.480 It'll be the easiest decision you make all day.

00:01:40.560 Get unlimited talk, text, plus two gigs of data, all for just $20 a month.

00:01:45.000 From your cell phone dial, pound 250 and say, Megan Kelly, and you'll save another 50% off your first month.

00:01:52.060 Pound 250, say, Megan Kelly. 0.98

00:01:55.880 Pure Talk.

00:01:56.840 Simply, smarter, wireless.

00:01:59.580 And now just a quick word about the two guys we're going to be talking to.

00:02:02.620 Coleman Hughes is 24 years old, a Columbia University graduate, and has become, I think, one of the most promising intellectuals of our time.

00:02:13.780 He is, like Glenn, a contrarian.

00:02:18.000 He does not accept sort of these race narratives that have been shoved down our throats and has really been pushing back in a smart, forceful, respectful way on some of the narratives that we've been sold about our country and ourselves.

00:02:31.240 One more on Coleman before I get to Glenn.

00:02:33.700 I met Coleman Hughes shortly after I left NBC when I was still feeling bad and people were calling me names and I was down in the dumps.

00:02:40.680 And I went to the comedy cellar with Doug, my husband.

00:02:43.800 We had a lot of laughs.

00:02:44.580 It was fun.

00:02:45.840 And before I left the comedy cellar, he came over and introduced himself.

00:02:49.040 He was there.

00:02:49.860 He knows a lot of the comedians and he himself is not one, but he was there enjoying everything as well. 0.98

00:02:54.560 He introduced himself and we sat and he opened with, Megan, I just want to tell you that what was done to you at NBC and the accusations against you are bullshit. 0.95

00:03:04.680 And of course, I was in such a dark period and place that I was like, oh, my God. 0.98

00:03:11.640 Right.

00:03:12.060 It was like he was like an angel who came over to help me.

00:03:15.240 And we talked, I mean, over an hour, maybe two hours that night about everything.

00:03:20.060 Uh, and I left with such a better understanding of what had happened to me, where we were in the country, where we were about to go and felt so grateful to him.

00:03:29.700 And just one other thing on him, he had me on his podcast recently and we did a really in-depth conversation and he never asked me about the NBC exit or the blackface thing.

00:03:40.040 And I heard him later introduce the interview by saying, I'm not going to ask her about that because one of the downsides of cancel culture is the person who's been the victim of it keeps getting re-victimized by people who keep bringing it up like it's meant to be part of their story.

00:04:00.360 And that's what kind of a guy Coleman Hughes is.

00:04:03.880 He truly is a beautiful man in every sense of that word.

00:04:07.180 And so the reason for inviting him on is multifaceted.

00:04:12.000 Glenn, Glenn is somebody I listened to all summer long in the wake of the George Floyd protests.

00:04:17.280 And he is intellectually fierce and really fair to his critics on the other side.

00:04:24.580 He'll help you understand both arguments.

00:04:26.580 But I think he's an intellectual giant.

00:04:28.420 And when he talks, you're going to want to stand up and cheer.

00:04:32.480 He's just that kind of persuasive thinker.

00:04:35.920 So these two guys are friends.

00:04:37.760 They've done a lot of panels together.

00:04:39.480 They don't agree on everything like Trump.

00:04:41.660 But I think they agree on the big things like the damage that's being done to our country by woke culture crusaders who are more bullies than true activists.

00:04:53.800 Anyway, enjoy.

00:04:54.640 Anyway, Professor Glenn Lowry and Coleman Hughes.

00:05:00.080 Thank you guys both so much for being here.

00:05:02.240 Thank you.

00:05:02.500 My pleasure.

00:05:03.240 Thrilled to have you.

00:05:04.200 Thrilled.

00:05:04.840 I just want to tell the audience that the entire summer as we were going through the George Floyd protests and all the racial unrest we saw in the country.

00:05:13.460 You were who I read, Coleman, and you were who I watched, Glenn, on The Glenn Show, which I highly recommend to everybody.

00:05:20.920 I watched it on YouTube.

00:05:22.720 You and John McWhorter, who, you know, you come on.

00:05:24.860 He's a little bit more left than you are.

00:05:26.220 But it was these were all great debates where I learned.

00:05:28.760 And it's just so hard to find open debates where people can still teach you as opposed to just preach to you in a way that's not really that informative.

00:05:38.240 So anyway, thank you for that.

00:05:40.760 Let's just start because it's the most recent news of the day with Trump.

00:05:45.080 And I know, Coleman, you describe yourself as a liberal and Glenn, you've been a liberal, but you describe yourself now as a conservative.

00:05:52.580 So do you guys mind sharing how you voted and and why you voted that way?

00:05:57.560 I'll start with you, Coleman.

00:05:59.180 Yeah, I'm not really sure what I am anymore.

00:06:01.380 And I don't I don't get too hung up on these words, liberal and conservative.

00:06:06.840 But I voted for Biden.

00:06:09.660 And it's more accurate to say I voted against Trump.

00:06:14.640 I think a lot of the arguments in in favor of Trump that I that I hear are really arguments against left wing hypocrisy and media bias,

00:06:25.820 all of which I think are real and worrisome phenomena. 0.53

00:06:31.440 But when I see the way Trump conducts himself, the undignified way he holds the office, his boorish personality.

00:06:43.420 I think all of it is is such a turnoff that and Biden is is has been fairly good at rejecting woke excesses thus far.

00:06:57.180 On the left that I Biden seemed like the clear pick for me.

00:07:03.480 So so so that's why I voted Biden.

00:07:07.660 But I could see why someone would would vote Trump simply as a rejection of of left wing identity politics and, you know, the.

00:07:19.540 The. Apologizing for riots and so on and so forth, but ultimately, I think, you know, for Trump to be the face of the the fight against woke excesses is is is not good.

00:07:34.880 It's not good for for that that face to be someone so undignified.

00:07:40.140 That's an interesting point, because there has been a debate about whether the fight against wokeness and cancel culture.

00:07:46.820 Is it helped by having Trump in the office or is it hurt by having Trump in the office?

00:07:52.160 And that's well articulated an argument that if if you oppose that stuff, as I definitely do, you'll do better without him.

00:08:00.960 And you're right. Biden has not signaled that he's in favor of this stuff, although he does say he's going to bring back the critical race theory mandated sessions for the federal government and contractors dealing with the feds and a couple of other things.

00:08:15.240 Like he's he's unfortunately today, the news broke that he's going to try to bring back these incredibly unfair anti due process standards for accused men on college campuses that Obama had in place and Betsy DeVos under Trump tried to remove.

00:08:32.260 I mean, the long and the short of it is you can't cross examine your accuser if you're a college guy accused of sexual assault.

00:08:38.440 You have no right to an attorney in the room. You have no right to discovery.

00:08:41.620 So you can't see her texts or messages to friends. And once you get found guilty, which you are in virtually all cases, you have very limited rights of appeal.

00:08:50.700 You basically get labeled a sex offender. It's very hard to get into another college.

00:08:54.640 It's just been crazy slanted in one direction. And now he's saying he's going to bring those unfair standards back.

00:09:01.980 Glenn, let me ask you, you're I've heard you defend Trump on a lot of things.

00:09:07.580 And I know I don't know if you voted for him.

00:09:09.920 Megan, I want to defend Trump. I don't want to tell you how I voted.

00:09:12.940 What I say is I voted for Biden, but you shouldn't believe me.

00:09:16.000 And the joke is, if I had voted for Trump, I would never say it.

00:09:19.640 You can't ask me if I voted for Trump and expect me to say yes to that.

00:09:23.660 OK, so there's no information in my response to your question as to how I voted.

00:09:28.380 I voted for Biden, but you've learned nothing from me saying so. 0.92

00:09:31.340 But I want to make the case for Trump because I think this personification thing is ridiculous. 0.72

00:09:38.400 I mean, we're we're now dancing on the grave of Trump.

00:09:42.460 I mean, the the energy of the moment is, oh, hallelujah, our long, dark nightmare is over.

00:09:49.180 Whereas the difference between Trump and Biden is what is your policy about building pipelines and about fracking and about global warming and about America's positioning in the in the climate change debate?

00:10:01.840 The difference between Biden and Trump is what are you going to do at the border?

00:10:06.940 What is exactly the philosophy of your view about the integrity of the American nation state?

00:10:13.040 The difference between Biden and Trump is who is secretary of the Treasury?

00:10:17.760 The difference between Biden and Trump is a lot of things.

00:10:20.840 There's 70 plus million people voted for Trump, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:10:24.920 This is a fight about America.

00:10:26.960 Huge forces are at play here that the press, that the coastal elites, that the pointy heads in the university,

00:10:35.340 that the three and five gender people would drive the agenda of American politics is a horrifying prospect that the deep state, that the phony Russia hoax. 0.74

00:10:48.320 I know how it sounds.

00:10:49.040 I know my saying this will mark me because I'd bother to invoke the fact that the result of the 2016 election was never accepted.

00:10:59.520 I don't want these people.

00:11:02.200 And you know who I'm talking about.

00:11:03.660 I'm talking about the news anchors.

00:11:04.900 I'm talking about the people who put out 1619 projects.

00:11:07.520 I'm talking about the people who give national book awards.

00:11:10.380 I don't want these people telling me what this country is about.

00:11:12.960 That's a legitimate position to reduce that argument to the personality of Donald J.

00:11:18.200 Trump.

00:11:18.740 He is merely an avatar standing in for a whole lot of forces in the society.

00:11:23.560 I want regulations down.

00:11:25.680 I like the way the economy was going before the COVID thing came.

00:11:28.760 I want the economy to open up.

00:11:30.500 I don't want another shutdown.

00:11:32.140 Those are legitimate positions.

00:11:33.920 Glenn, just unleash the heat, Coleman.

00:11:38.800 I did, yeah.

00:11:40.780 I mean, I don't think you disagree with a lot of that.

00:11:43.200 But what points would you take issue with, if any?

00:11:46.240 So I think what I would take issue with is everything you said about left-wing media bias and hypocrisy, I'm on board with, including the Russia story being a hoax and just being filled with confirmation bias since the beginning.

00:12:06.560 And the media being out to get Trump and being terrified at the prospect of 1619 being imported into schools and becoming the new story that America tells about ourselves.

00:12:22.840 You know, my question is, what about the past four years of the Trump administration has shown us that Trump is an effective bulwark against that?

00:12:37.060 Like, there's a first question about how much power the executive has over a cultural war of ideas to begin with.

00:12:45.180 And then there's a secondary question of what Trump's net effect on left-wing craziness is.

00:12:54.700 Like, the logic of Trump derangement syndrome presupposes that Trump deranges people on the left to a degree that a Mitt Romney or, you know, someone I would feel comfortable voting for, like a Mitt Romney or a John McCain, wouldn't.

00:13:11.420 And so I think, you know, it's not clear to me, I'm not saying that without Trump suddenly the stuff is going to go away.

00:13:19.440 What I'm saying is, it's not clear to me what the net effect of Trump, the personality is.

00:13:27.420 Can I respond to that?

00:13:29.520 I want to give a concrete example, the race debate, the race debate, Colin Kaepernick taking a knee, the NFL, Trump picking a fight about that, the cops, are the cops racist?

00:13:39.900 Going to the bedside of Jacob Blake, talking to the daughter of George Floyd, I mean, mothers of the movement, martyrdom in the black community from cops, okay, versus love your country.

00:13:57.440 You should be fortunate to be playing in the NFL and being a millionaire.

00:14:01.280 What do you mean systemic racism?

00:14:02.820 The country's made tremendous strides.

00:14:06.000 The cops, are you kidding me?

00:14:07.800 It's one of the toughest jobs you could ever imagine.

00:14:10.060 Really?

00:14:10.560 You're going to take the side of the quote-unquote thug over and against the cops, the riots?

00:14:16.000 You're going to apologize for that?

00:14:18.460 Now, Trump is an imperfect tribune for a particular position in that discussion.

00:14:23.680 That position says, by and large, the cops are our friends.

00:14:26.960 After all, the murder rate in New York City went from over 2,000 to under 500 in a decade.

00:14:31.460 After all, most of these incidents involve people who are provoking whatever the altercation is that ultimately ends up in their end.

00:14:40.020 After all, really?

00:14:41.780 You're going to tell me that George Floyd is a hero?

00:14:44.660 That's a legitimate position.

00:14:49.260 And what embodies it?

00:14:51.780 So let's go with that.

00:14:53.180 Let me just finish this.

00:14:54.220 70 million people.

00:14:55.880 That is almost half the electorate.

00:14:57.700 You're going to roll that up until he's a racist and he's an imperfect representation of something?

00:15:03.900 It's not about him.

00:15:05.240 Go ahead.

00:15:07.980 I don't think he's a racist, I think.

00:15:12.360 And it's not just that he's imperfect, right?

00:15:15.720 If he's the embodiment of the I love America vote, and again, everything you say, these are things we pretty much see eye to eye on.

00:15:27.800 But if he's the embodiment of the I love America vote, what makes me angry as an American is when he doesn't respect the norms of democracy, such as conceding an election.

00:15:43.260 That seems to me, as the president that is the one to defend Thomas Jefferson statues, for example, which I'm completely on Trump's side of.

00:15:53.440 For him to then, you know, disrespect, you know, piss all over the founding fathers' graves by not respecting the transition of power is something that actually angers me in a patriotic sense.

00:16:09.120 And it makes, a blunder like that makes Trump's entire package more easily dismissible.

00:16:18.520 Like, he will always be remembered as the president to break that norm that is so fundamental.

00:16:25.580 And it makes the rest of it just, again, it besmirches everything he touches by association.

00:16:33.660 That's why the personality stuff is not irrelevant.

00:16:36.860 The way he conducts himself is not irrelevant.

00:16:40.340 Let me respond to that.

00:16:42.060 And I really hate having to play this role, but I have to play this role.

00:16:45.580 For the integrity of this conversation, I have to play the role.

00:16:47.780 The election is in dispute.

00:16:49.120 I actually have no position.

00:16:50.940 I have no position whatsoever about recounts.

00:16:53.720 I'm not a lawyer.

00:16:54.780 I have no position about the legal claims that have been made.

00:16:56.940 You may recall in 2000, there was also a disputed election.

00:17:00.440 And you may recall that lawyers got involved.

00:17:02.660 So there's a disputed election.

00:17:04.720 It does look like Biden won as far as I can see.

00:17:07.280 Okay?

00:17:08.040 I'm not disputing that.

00:17:10.340 But let me finish this.

00:17:11.640 Let me finish this.

00:17:12.360 What I'm trying to say is the judgment about who's president of the United States will be rendered under the Constitution when the Electoral College casts its votes.

00:17:25.300 The interpretation of the election situation, just like in 2000, is a subjectively constructed, in real-time thing.

00:17:38.020 We're deciding it right now.

00:17:39.780 But when a foreign leader decides to call and congratulate Biden, he's actually casting a ballot, so to speak, in this process by which we're constructing how we interpret the thing.

00:17:49.420 But the election is not over.

00:17:51.580 There are disputes in play.

00:17:53.340 They're going to play out.

00:17:54.560 But this is a genuine question.

00:17:59.040 I was four years old during Al Gore, George Bush.

00:18:03.160 Did either of them declare victory before the votes were even on 2 a.m. the day after the election?

00:18:12.960 I don't think so.

00:18:15.120 But you're saying Trump declared?

00:18:17.380 Look, I don't want to get into that, Coleman.

00:18:19.480 No, but that's my point.

00:18:21.160 Like, that's not something to dismiss. 1.00

00:18:23.120 That's banana republic shit. 1.00

00:18:27.060 It's embarrassing to have an American president. 1.00

00:18:30.260 Because I like to think of our nation as better than the nations that are routinely dealing with coups and people.

00:18:40.360 But it's embarrassing as an American to not be able to take that norm for granted.

00:18:46.620 Look, I agree with you.

00:18:47.480 He shouldn't have said it.

00:18:48.380 Mike Pence cleaned it up when he came up.

00:18:50.100 But the election is in dispute.

00:18:51.680 That's my point.

00:18:52.340 The election is not over.

00:18:56.300 All the votes should be counted.

00:18:57.820 Again, I'm going to echo talking points here because these talking points happen to actually be correct.

00:19:03.040 We should let the process play out.

00:19:06.600 Stacey Abrams never conceded that gubernatorial election.

00:19:10.460 I've been whinging about that for two years, Glenn.

00:19:12.820 I've been I feel like I've been the only one talking about how fundamentally corrupt that is.

00:19:19.500 So to be consistent, I say the same about Trump.

00:19:22.940 Do you not think that the voter suppression phenomenon, this is Eric Holder and Barack Obama, okay?

00:19:30.700 This is this creeping argument.

00:19:35.340 It doesn't know any bounds that if a legislature changes a state law in such a way that an accountant calculates it will disadvantage the black vote, then we presume that the motivation of that legislator was to suppress that vote.

00:19:49.100 And we thereby cast into doubt the electoral consequences of processes that are under the governance of those state legislatures because we presume that the motives of those Republican state legislatures, many more of which exist after Obama was president than before, was somehow racially unjust.

00:20:05.440 Do you not think that that undermines the integrity of our electoral process?

00:20:10.220 Absolutely, Glenn.

00:20:11.180 And I've been I've been talking about that for years, about the the how the the, you know, the moral panic about voter suppression.

00:20:22.380 It hits me in exactly that same, you know, that same patriotic place in my brain, where, you know, concerns about, you know, inflated concerns about voter fraud hits me, it's like you you're playing with our democracy, you're playing with the trust in our democracy, and you better have a damn good reason to play with it.

00:20:43.340 If you're going to.

00:20:45.100 Can I ask you a question on that?

00:20:46.560 Can I ask you a question on that?

00:20:48.640 Okay, sorry.

00:20:50.460 No, no, it's fine.

00:20:51.320 I'm loving this.

00:20:52.380 I understand that Trump is abnormal in many ways.

00:20:58.800 And it's, of course, also why he was elected in large part.

00:21:02.400 But I don't you think, Coleman, that he has some reason to distrust systems at this point, you know, given that so many of them are very clearly against him.

00:21:12.920 And given how the apparatus has worked for four years to ruin him, to tear him down, to actually boot him out of the presidency.

00:21:20.340 I if I'm Trump, I don't have a lot of reason to trust anyone, especially vote counters in Philadelphia or places that I know are controlled by Democrats who you have.

00:21:32.400 You know, you have more than a decent reason to believe might think the ends justify the means.

00:21:38.100 That's why I've been saying, go ahead and kick the tires, kick the tires all day long, do do better than Stacey Abrams did, who just ginned up controversy in the press, but never actually pursued a lawsuit.

00:21:47.960 The courts are fair.

00:21:50.520 I believe the courts are fair and they will have the final say and then we'll all feel better one way or the other.

00:21:55.660 We'll know a winner or a loser and we can lick our wounds one way or the other.

00:21:59.620 But I feel like don't don't you think he has a reason to have some healthy amount of distrust?

00:22:04.840 Oh, sure.

00:22:05.600 I mean, yeah.

00:22:06.880 And the media has been out to get him since day one.

00:22:09.800 I mean, it's it's it's obvious if you if you, you know, care enough to look at it.

00:22:16.600 But listen, I think people kind of implicitly have lowered their bar for for over the past four years.

00:22:24.520 It's like, yes, he from his position, the media has been out to get him, you know, the Russian investigation.

00:22:32.220 He has to be paranoid and thinking that any criticism of him is unfair.

00:22:40.620 But to begin, he's also, you know, can't we shouldn't we have a bit of a higher standard of our president, right?

00:22:50.040 Like even if you get unfairly criticized for four years.

00:22:54.240 Does that mean I just have to accept any level of paranoia and mistrust in the system that I shouldn't put the burden on you to try to distinguish a legitimate criticism from, you know, complete bias?

00:23:08.640 I can understand it, but this is the president, right?

00:23:12.620 This is the top job.

00:23:14.420 You just asked him to concede when he doesn't think that he lost the election and he wants to go through due process.

00:23:19.360 I asked him not to declare victory, at least.

00:23:21.500 Well, that was another thing that you said.

00:23:23.900 The quote declaration of victory, close quote, was an offhand comment that he made and a thing that he shouldn't have said.

00:23:29.960 And as I said.

00:23:30.540 So that's what I talk about.

00:23:31.660 We lowering the bar.

00:23:32.600 He said it twice in the span of like three minutes.

00:23:34.640 You just asked for him that you just asked for him to concede.

00:23:37.440 And then when he says, no, I'm actually going to fight because I think I've been wrong.

00:23:41.160 You call him a miscreant who has destroyed the integrity of American government.

00:23:47.220 I mean, he gets to have his day in court.

00:23:49.920 He gets to fight.

00:23:51.200 No, he does get to fight.

00:23:52.960 But listen, my.

00:23:53.980 So let him fight.

00:23:55.080 Yeah.

00:23:55.360 Well, the election night, he said, frankly, we won.

00:23:57.640 And then a minute later, he said, we won.

00:23:59.600 This is this is Trump.

00:24:01.080 This is Trump.

00:24:02.200 So that's what I'm saying.

00:24:03.140 We say this is Trump.

00:24:04.220 We excuse it.

00:24:05.000 We excuse it as if it doesn't matter.

00:24:07.300 We've changed the bar because we understand he's he's like a friend that we're used to

00:24:11.720 showing up drunk at our house.

00:24:13.140 And we just we price it into our judgment of him.

00:24:16.260 No, I'm sorry. 0.99

00:24:17.560 I'm not going to get down into the, you know, Trump is crazy. 0.99

00:24:21.280 Trump is this or Trump is that. 0.99

00:24:22.500 This is not about Trump.

00:24:23.740 Well, that's therein lies the whole part of the election.

00:24:26.860 If if Biden could make it about Trump, he was going to win.

00:24:30.100 And if Trump could make it about policy, he was more likely to to win.

00:24:35.700 And to me, what I when I see when I see Trump doing what he's doing and I I'm not in Trump's

00:24:41.480 head, I can't tell you whether he believes he's in fact the victor or whether he's trying

00:24:46.560 to create a soft PR exit for himself.

00:24:48.680 I don't know, but I'm reminded of do you guys remember this guy, Harry Markopoulos?

00:24:54.260 He was the guy he he showed up over and over at congressional hearings and elsewhere trying

00:24:59.460 to warn about Bernie Madoff.

00:25:01.180 And the guy was he was some sort of former securities executive and an investigator and

00:25:07.580 like a forensic fraud investigator.

00:25:09.220 And he had like a crappy suit.

00:25:11.460 It was always green.

00:25:12.960 His hair was messed up.

00:25:14.820 He just did not look like somebody we should listen to.

00:25:17.600 And on the other end of his accusations was Bernie Madoff.

00:25:21.380 You know, he'd run the SEC.

00:25:22.640 He was completely respected and lauded by all these white shoes firms on Wall Street. 0.57

00:25:28.980 And everybody's like, all right, Harry, bitter much.

00:25:32.800 That's how he sounded.

00:25:33.760 Just kind of like, no, poor Harry.

00:25:36.180 Well, little Harry was right.

00:25:38.460 He he was the one guy who saw it and was like setting himself on fire trying to say, this

00:25:45.260 guy's a fraud. 0.88

00:25:45.960 God, don't give him any more money. 0.99

00:25:47.740 He should be in jail.

00:25:49.020 And Harry was right.

00:25:49.840 And so I kind of look at Trump, not necessarily in this instance.

00:25:53.520 I don't know.

00:25:54.160 I'll listen to what the courts tell me because I've spent enough time litigating in them that

00:25:57.480 I do trust them.

00:25:58.300 Not implicitly.

00:25:59.060 They get things wrong, but they're going to get this one right one way or the other.

00:26:02.020 There's too many cases and there's too much data.

00:26:03.540 Um, I think Trump is sort of at this point, almost a Harry Markopoulos figure, as we've

00:26:09.220 seen on a couple of these accusations against him, you know, and he's jumped up and down and

00:26:13.680 said, I did not collude with the Russians and all the media and all the Democrats and

00:26:18.260 all polite society was saying you did.

00:26:20.700 Right.

00:26:21.100 And Harry was there like, and he won.

00:26:23.760 And Trump was coming in saying the media is the enemy.

00:26:26.940 They're the enemy. 0.92

00:26:27.600 And people are like, it's disgusting and it's deplorable. 0.95

00:26:30.060 He was. 0.56

00:26:30.400 And you know what?

00:26:31.300 He was proven right.

00:26:32.520 They're certainly his enemy and they are the enemy of his supporters.

00:26:35.940 I mean, you don't have to look far for evidence of that.

00:26:38.940 So I almost see this, whether he wins or loses as his final Harry Markopoulos moment.

00:26:42.980 We'll find out.

00:26:44.120 Can I ask you, um, now what you take away from the black vote?

00:26:48.700 Because the numbers have changed from election night to now.

00:26:52.040 It looks like he got 8% of the black vote overall.

00:26:55.580 That's up from 6% in 2016.

00:26:58.660 He did a little bit better with black men than he did with black women. 0.96

00:27:01.680 And that's, that's not a huge surprise given the gender split.

00:27:05.940 Overall.

00:27:07.140 Um, but you know, the Republicans are spinning.

00:27:08.940 This is like, he improved his margins with black voters.

00:27:12.220 Despite four years of being called a white supremacist.

00:27:15.160 And the Democrats are like, eh, 8%.

00:27:18.540 So what, what's your take on those numbers?

00:27:21.880 I'll start with you, Glenn.

00:27:23.240 Uh, I wouldn't put so much weight on the numbers.

00:27:25.580 I'm not a numbers person in terms of elections in any case, but.

00:27:29.020 I was going to say you're an economist.

00:27:30.320 You know, just, you know, think about six to eight is also 94 to 92.

00:27:34.640 I mean, we're still above 90, right?

00:27:36.440 So, so, but the nature of the conversation is definitely shifting.

00:27:41.540 I mean, you had African-American, uh, political candidates.

00:27:44.240 There was a challenger to Maxine Waters seat out in Los Angeles. 1.00

00:27:47.280 There was somebody in Texas who was running.

00:27:49.920 You, you had, uh, the Jones, uh, the, this guy in, uh, um, I'm sorry, I forget his name

00:27:55.360 in Michigan who ran for the Senate and, uh, uh, did a very, uh.

00:27:59.240 Yeah, John James.

00:28:00.720 John James.

00:28:01.580 Yeah.

00:28:02.300 Uh, you, you have Tim Scott, uh, has played a role, the Senatorial Campaign Committee and

00:28:08.180 stuff like that.

00:28:09.120 You have these rappers, uh, I mean, you know, it's froth on the top of the, uh, public culture,

00:28:15.560 but it's still, I think, indicative of something.

00:28:18.900 Trump is an opportunity.

00:28:19.940 I, I mean, I, I think if he had, uh, been, um, more of an effective populist, uh, he might

00:28:27.000 have been able to, to, to, uh, pry this, uh, kind of lock that Democrats have on, uh, African-American

00:28:32.900 political sensibility a little bit away.

00:28:35.080 Uh, certainly I think he had the potential to do so.

00:28:38.480 Um, so I, so I, I think we have opened up a conversation about, uh, the, uh, political

00:28:48.280 tenor of African-American, uh, leadership and such that, uh, I think in the years ahead

00:28:54.140 will, will be interesting to see what, what develops.

00:28:57.040 Do you see any sort of a trend happening here, Coleman?

00:29:00.860 Well, there, there is a trend.

00:29:02.500 Um, uh, apparently I was speaking with David Shore, who is Obama's in-house Nate Silver type.

00:29:10.700 And, um, he, he pointed out that ever since either 2000 or 2004, every four years,

00:29:18.280 the, the percentage of the black vote that goes red has increased.

00:29:22.680 And so this 2% increase could just be, it could have nothing to do with Trump per se,

00:29:29.960 and just be a continuation of that trend.

00:29:32.540 Um, and it's, of course, the trend is starting out with such small numbers that it's easy to

00:29:37.580 ignore.

00:29:39.040 But, uh, and frankly, I don't know exactly what is causing the trend, but there certainly is

00:29:47.720 a trend line in one direction.

00:29:48.840 And it's possible that 30 or 40 years from now, that, that, that might be a really significant

00:29:56.060 chunk of the vote.

00:29:57.660 I don't plan on waiting that long, Coleman.

00:30:00.540 I said, I said, I don't plan on waiting that long.

00:30:04.760 I don't have 30, I don't have 30 years.

00:30:08.180 Well, one thing I will say about it, one thing I will say about it, and this might, I'm shooting

00:30:12.580 from the hip completely here.

00:30:13.760 I have no idea whether this is true, but I have to imagine.

00:30:17.880 And, and the, the, the other point to realize is that this trend insofar as it exists, apparently

00:30:25.860 is mainly among younger black voters, 35 and below and more secular voters rather than Christian

00:30:36.060 black voters, to the extent that that's true, at least the, the youth part, what it, part

00:30:43.600 of it could be is that younger black Americans are growing up in, in a country that is less

00:30:52.140 racist than it's ever been in a condition where racism will never be completely gone.

00:30:57.660 But where, you know, I just talked to my father, I talked to my grandfather, they had more experiences

00:31:05.140 of frank, straight up racism than I have.

00:31:08.940 And most black people I know have that same dynamic with their parents and grandparents.

00:31:14.480 And so if you're met with a, a narrative that is a new narrative, that's telling you racism

00:31:21.520 is absolutely everywhere.

00:31:23.260 It's pervasive and you combine that with a generation that is on a day-to-day basis, experiencing

00:31:29.600 less of it than every black generation prior, it's possible that you will just get a slow 1.00

00:31:38.680 backlash of black people feeling this narrative doesn't really address the concerns that they

00:31:45.780 actually have in their life.

00:31:47.240 And it's increasingly fantastical and you may just get a backlash against that.

00:31:50.900 You get the, you get the backlash, remember Van Jones said there was a white lash, black

00:31:55.640 lash, more with the dream team in one second.

00:31:58.100 But first, have you ever been sitting in a room and you're enjoying yourself and then

00:32:01.480 you realize there's something wrong and it's that you feel like you're on the sun because

00:32:04.740 you haven't bothered to put blinds up on your window?

00:32:07.440 Call Blinds Galore. 0.75

00:32:09.280 Go to Blinds Galore.

00:32:10.440 That's what you need to do.com because they can help give any room an incredible makeover with

00:32:15.520 custom, custom window coverings.

00:32:17.240 It's a family owned and run company that's been doing this for over 20 years, led by

00:32:21.360 a mother-daughter duo.

00:32:23.080 And Blinds Galore.com was actually the very first place to buy custom window treatments

00:32:27.420 online.

00:32:28.100 In other words, they can give you blinds and shades and shutters and drapes, everything,

00:32:32.020 and you can do it all online.

00:32:33.280 You don't actually have to go into the store.

00:32:35.340 The experts at Blinds Galore have covered over 2 million windows.

00:32:38.400 They'll make it super easy to get custom coverage that you've always wanted at a great price.

00:32:43.220 And you could do it all from the comfort of your living room.

00:32:44.860 You take your measurements, you customize them online, and with BlindsGalore.com's new

00:32:49.940 Build a Blind tool, you'll even be able to see exactly how your blinds or your shades

00:32:53.820 will look on screen before you hit purchase.

00:32:57.100 You're going to save a ton compared to the big stores, and you'll get a custom-made product

00:33:00.820 designed just for your windows.

00:33:02.660 Now, also, you can connect it to your smart home or Amazon Alexa.

00:33:05.080 That's nice.

00:33:05.640 So it's easy to get custom blinds and shades that you've always wanted in your home at

00:33:09.320 Blinds Galore.

00:33:09.880 Get started with 15 free samples and take up to 45% off your order.

00:33:15.300 Visit BlindsGalore.com today and let them know that I sent you by choosing The Megyn Kelly

00:33:19.360 Show at checkout.

00:33:20.280 Beautiful custom window treatments are waiting for you at BlindsGalore.com.

00:33:25.060 That's BlindsGalore.com.

00:33:26.920 The wake of the George Floyd killing and the riots and just incendiary talk about race in

00:33:39.980 the country that took a direction, I found downright alarming, alarming.

00:33:45.680 And having been in the media, I had seen the media take random cases involving white police

00:33:51.900 officers and black suspects and blow them into a huge thing time and time again. 0.68

00:33:58.940 And it coincidentally always seems to happen in an election year.

00:34:02.840 And so many cases just get totally ignored when they're not in an election year.

00:34:06.700 And I do think they have an agenda.

00:34:08.020 But if you look at the actual statistics of police shootings of black men, they do not,

00:34:15.460 this is data, they do not support the narrative that police are hunting black men in the streets.

00:34:22.520 And yet that was said, that was said this summer by LeBron James and others and accepted.

00:34:30.800 And it's become a narrative that I think large factions of the Black Lives Matter supporters

00:34:36.580 believe.

00:34:37.940 What LeBron said, tweeted was,

00:34:40.000 We are literally hunted every day, every time we step foot outside the comfort of our homes.

00:34:47.660 And Coleman, I thought you had a very brave article.

00:34:51.300 You're at the Manhattan Institute now and writing for City Journal, among other places.

00:34:54.900 But you just said it flat out.

00:34:57.920 It's not true.

00:34:59.240 It isn't true.

00:35:00.580 And I wonder if you can put some meat on that and help us understand why people refuse to believe

00:35:07.680 that it's not true.

00:35:08.680 Well, first thing I want to point out is, I often think of the analogy to Islam as terror.

00:35:17.640 If you heard someone say, I fear being killed by a jihadi every time I walk out of my home

00:35:23.700 in Virginia, say, you would think to yourself, well, this person has imbibed a narrative so 0.85

00:35:33.620 crazy that they seem like they might be crazy.

00:35:36.760 And you would feel no compunction at all pushing back against them and saying, well, actually, 0.96

00:35:42.120 only 30 people died from Islam as terror last year.

00:35:45.940 And obviously, one is too many.

00:35:49.040 But let's not blow this out of proportion.

00:35:53.140 You would understand, at least people on the left would understand instinctively why it's

00:35:58.040 important to pour cold water on crazy exaggerations of a problem.

00:36:03.640 So, you know, when I say that around 50 unarmed Americans get shot dead by the cops every year.

00:36:14.440 To me, it feels like I'm pouring water on a cold, cold water on a narrative just in the same way that

00:36:20.300 you might want to do about jihadist terror.

00:36:23.060 But it's received completely differently on the left.

00:36:25.980 I would say probably most protesters don't know that the number is that low to begin with.

00:36:31.100 They don't know that the biggest, the race that, you know, takes up the majority of that number is

00:36:39.740 going to be white people in most years.

00:36:41.840 And the other thing that people people really don't know, if they don't, if they're not paying 0.82

00:36:45.700 attention closely, is that every time you see a video of a black person unarmed getting shot by a

00:36:52.100 cop, there is almost an identical video or situation that has happened to a white person, probably in

00:36:58.960 the same year that you don't know about, because they don't get elevated into your Instagram feed,

00:37:05.560 into your Facebook feed, into the areas that, into the medium, that media that people consume

00:37:12.440 nowadays. So in my piece, I, I took a random year, I took 2015, and just listed 10 or 12 different

00:37:19.480 white, unarmed white people that were shot and killed by cops. In most cases, the police did not

00:37:25.000 receive any kind of punishment. One of them was a six year old kid. Each of these is different and

00:37:30.220 should be analyzed on its own terms. Some of them are straight up murders. Others are completely

00:37:34.820 defensible. Um, and, and it happens to Americans of every race, every year.

00:37:44.140 To your point, community requests tend to determine police deployment. Someone inside an urban community

00:37:53.280 calls the police, they show up, and then there's an interaction with a suspect. And if you, if you

00:37:59.580 survey most black women inside of these communities where there are high crime rates, they want 1.00

00:38:04.760 more police, not less now in black men to more police, not less. They're worried about their

00:38:09.120 kids getting shot. They want, they say, they talk about feeling relieved when they see a cop in the

00:38:14.320 vestibule of their building and getting a little worried when he's not there. And that just to add

00:38:19.500 to the statistics, there are about 7,500 black homicides a year, a black homicide victims a year.

00:38:26.860 Uh, and in 2019, uh, there were, according to the Washington post, 14 of those were black unarmed

00:38:36.120 suspects dealing with police. So that is 0.2, 0.2% of the total of black homicide victims, 0.2%.

00:38:44.120 This in a country where we have an average of 27 deadly weapons attacks on cops a day,

00:38:49.340 a day, 27 deadly weapons attacks on cops a day. And, and, you know, when cops make between 10 and 11

00:38:56.040 million arrests a year. So, you know, Glenn, people don't like to talk about that.

00:39:02.340 And even I, when I talk to people about the stats, you, they'll look at you like,

00:39:08.300 I don't want to hear your stats. Your stats are contrary to my lived experience.

00:39:12.580 And that's racist. That's a racist's defense to what our own lion eyes are telling us, right? We can

00:39:21.220 see, and, and a lot of black men will say, I have had a lifetime of negative interactions with the

00:39:27.380 police. So don't tell me there isn't systemic racism in the cop, in the police department.

00:39:32.260 Uh, Megan, what we're dealing with here is a, uh, uh, kind of delusion on a grand scale and a kind

00:39:40.820 of denial of brutal and very disturbing facts. And those facts have to do with black crime. 0.98

00:39:51.060 Now I have to apologize in advance for even saying this. Okay. Because I don't take any pleasure in

00:39:56.080 saying this. Uh, I'm not some ideologue who's, who's on some crusade. I'm not a racist.

00:40:03.140 The reality of life in the communities where these encounters between police and, uh, black citizens 0.92

00:40:10.320 take place, these problematic encounters is basically driven by the violent behavior of

00:40:17.680 people. I mean, look at the homicide rate, look at the robbery and Berkeley rates, look at what's

00:40:21.860 actually going on on the ground. Uh, the reason that you have a disparity in the number of African

00:40:27.820 Americans who are killed by cops relative to population is because you have a disparity in

00:40:31.580 the encounters between African Americans and cops, which is based upon the behavior of African 1.00

00:40:36.880 Americans, not the behavior of cops. The reason that you have a prison disparity, a monumentally

00:40:43.140 humongous disparity in the incidents of incarceration is because you have a huge disparity in the

00:40:50.200 incidents of criminal offending, not because the system is so configured as to hunt down and

00:40:56.320 lock up black men. This is humiliating and shameful. If you're an African American, if you're a lifelong 1.00

00:41:03.360 liberal, uh, if you're somebody who believes in civil rights and racial justice, the failures reflected

00:41:09.520 in this disparity of uncivil behavior by race in the country are unbearable to accept. And therefore 0.97

00:41:17.420 fantasies get invented. Michael Brown had his hands up. Don't shoot. Mass incarceration is the result of, uh,

00:41:24.700 white supremacy. Who could believe it? White supremacy? Certainly if you're one of these police officers or he's

00:41:33.140 your uncle or your brother or your cousin, and you live in, I don't know, uh, Staten Island somewhere, one of

00:41:39.160 these enclaves of working class, uh, uh, white people around here, Providence, Rhode Island, Johnston, Rhode Island,

00:41:44.960 or something like that. You don't believe that for a minute. And you're worried about the future of your

00:41:49.280 country. That's what's at stake in this debate. The stats that I've seen say that 60% of the violent crime in our

00:41:55.560 major cities are committed by black defendants. And so necessarily their interactions with police will 0.97

00:42:01.820 go up, but you know, the response to that Glenn is, well, why is that? Why are more black people 1.00

00:42:08.500 offending in a criminal way? Why? That's, that's where racism comes in, that their system has kept them 0.99

00:42:15.720 in poor communities, uh, where they don't have any economic advantages, where their education system is

00:42:21.900 awful, leading to bad choices that the rest of society doesn't seem to give a damn about.

00:42:27.920 Okay. Um, we can have that conversation. I don't think I need to know the answer to the question why,

00:42:33.820 as I don't think anybody actually does know the answer to that question, to be able to decide about

00:42:38.400 order, law, and civility. I mean, I, I think I get to ask of citizens, don't hurt the other person.

00:42:46.140 I get to ask that of them, regardless of their socioeconomic experience. That's a bedrock of

00:42:51.300 civilization. Uh, I get to expect that people are going to actually conform in such a way that they

00:42:56.740 don't take the lives of six-year-olds sitting on their auntie's lap on the front porch. That's 0.99

00:43:00.780 barbarity. Uh, so, um, uh, yes, people are going to say the system should be so configured, but I think

00:43:10.580 it's time to take responsibility for what's actually happening in African-American communities. 0.60

00:43:15.940 Uh, and that's why I'm speaking in the, uh, tone of voice that I'm speaking right now.

00:43:21.480 What do you make of that piece of it, Coleman, when you get down to

00:43:24.380 the reason what the, that's, that's where the discussion goes with that. What is the reason

00:43:29.960 that the black crime rate is as high as it is? 0.98

00:43:32.240 Yeah, the, uh, again, I, I echo Glenn's frustration with the question itself and the,

00:43:40.920 the assumptions that are embedded in the question. Um, the assumptions that are embedded in the

00:43:46.640 question is that criminal behavior is, you know, completely unnatural. If someone has violent

00:43:53.040 impulses that, that couldn't possibly be, um, how some people are, uh, it has to be something

00:44:00.560 society injected into them. Um, I'm not sure that we know that. I mean, the, the history of our

00:44:08.960 species is, is, is the history of a lot of beautiful things, but a lot of ugly things and a lot of ugly

00:44:14.660 things that are done for no reason other than pure selfish nature, red in tooth and claw. And in many

00:44:23.940 ways you could make the argument as Steve, as Steven Pinker has that, um, the, the, the, really the

00:44:31.680 thing to explain is why, how populations have come to commit less crime, at least in the parts of the

00:44:39.180 West and the, the East that have incredibly low crime rates, that that's the phenomenon to be explained

00:44:45.340 beyond that. I would say, I, I have never heard a compelling explanation from the people that have

00:44:54.640 a theory about what the quote unquote root causes of crime are. Um, I've never heard of really a

00:45:01.720 compelling explanation of why crime spiked in the seventies, sixties, seventies, eighties, and early

00:45:07.640 nineties. And then suddenly came down in the nineties. Um, you know, and the, the truth is, as Glenn said,

00:45:18.560 you don't need the, the unified theory of what makes a person choose a criminal lifestyle over

00:45:28.660 a non-criminal lifestyle in order to get the ethical question, right. Which is that you have no right to

00:45:36.580 hurt your fellow citizens. And as a matter of keeping civilization in order, we have to prevent

00:45:44.140 you from doing that or punish you when you, when you, when you do it. So people have the, people have

00:45:49.780 this unthinking and naive, um, uh, I think belief that poverty causes crime. And therefore, if we

00:46:00.540 eliminate poverty, which said bar, how, how exactly does one do that?

00:46:06.580 Uh, fully, then the crime problem will just sort itself out. And I think that's incredibly naive.

00:46:13.940 It doesn't accord with the picture, certainly with my picture of human nature. Um, and that that's

00:46:22.380 how I would sum it up. Well, and does it, does it comport Glenn with what we've seen government try to

00:46:29.180 do historically to try to address poverty, like the welfare programs that came into place in,

00:46:35.320 in the great society, which were meant to help, you know, poor people, black people. And we saw a real 1.00

00:46:41.340 flip in the black marriage rate. And I guess some, some would dispute it, but in the, the number of

00:46:48.840 homes that don't have a father living in them in the black community, all of which have been cited as 0.54

00:46:54.340 possible reasons for black crime rates, black kids struggling in schools and so on. 0.97

00:46:59.460 Sure. I've, I've cited that myself to a certain degree, although it's very hard to draw any, 0.68

00:47:05.520 you know, ironclad quantitative, uh, you know, proof of, uh, the causal, causal links, uh, the link

00:47:14.700 between the welfare state and the decline or the unraveling of the black family. These are very 0.90

00:47:19.580 controversial things. People would go ballistic in the seminar rooms that I'm familiar with. If you were to

00:47:24.860 say these things out loud and, and I'm not going to take a stand of, of causality, but, but common

00:47:31.280 sense tells me that if you've got 70% of the kids born to black woman, born to a woman without a 0.98

00:47:39.200 husband, that this is a reflection of something not healthy in the social fiber of, of the community

00:47:45.360 for reasons that, you know, you could spend a lot of time talking about welfare state or, uh, bad

00:47:50.920 economy or whatever. Um, but, uh, I wanted to underscore the, the consequence of this racial 1.00

00:47:59.460 disparity and crime and criminal offending, which is that it makes it hard for us to stand against

00:48:04.440 crime and criminal offending because the society, this is really Shelby Steele's argument, but I think

00:48:09.160 he's right. I mean, the society as a whole is guilty about the fact of past racism. And we know we

00:48:14.340 have collectively speaking with regard to the treatment of black people, blood on our hands,

00:48:18.360 as America does. And so when you have this huge racial disparity in, um, in, uh, uh, crime and 0.56

00:48:27.200 criminal offending, incarceration and whatnot, uh, it, it makes it hard to stand up for law and order

00:48:32.660 that the very idea that you would invoke law and order would be thought to be racist. I mean, think

00:48:36.680 about that. Uh, there's something bizarre about that. It's racist to insist on law and order. Well,

00:48:42.440 only because the insistence on law and order would have you confronting, oh, I don't know,

00:48:46.860 mobs of people looting, uh, high-end boutiques on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago. And who are

00:48:51.900 those people? And so you find yourself with a rhetoric about the causality of, you know, their

00:48:57.080 sense of dissatisfaction with society. And you even find yourself blaming the president of the United

00:49:01.240 States who might take the position against them as inciting them to something. Uh, when in fact,

00:49:07.280 you know, they, they are, uh, you know, uh, an embarrassing reflection of, uh, of structural failures

00:49:14.740 that we don't exactly know how to, how to deal with. Well, is there, is there something else at

00:49:20.900 play here? You know, the, was it Condi Rice who said the soft bigotry of low expectations? Um,

00:49:28.040 as we look at it first, George, uh, W. Bush used to say it though. Yeah. I think you got it from Condi.

00:49:34.440 Um, it's, uh, you look at some of the black crime rates and you look at how black kids are struggling

00:49:41.140 in our education system and how some schools are dealing with it. And in too many schools,

00:49:47.340 it's just to lower the standards or just assume they can't do it or pass them anyway, even though

00:49:51.860 they're reading and their, their math is entirely too low for their grade level. And I think this is

00:49:57.360 done by a lot of people who are trying to be allies, right? They're trying to sort of excuse

00:50:03.440 the crime rate in the one instance as, you know, they're victims of circumstance and excuse poor

00:50:09.680 performance in school, you know, for, for different, but maybe related reasons, but both

00:50:15.240 have the same net effect, which is to not really help anyone. And I think, you know, if we can focus

00:50:19.940 on schools for a minute and Glenn, you're of academia and Coleman, you, you just graduated

00:50:24.120 from Col, from Columbia. So you're not too far out of it yourself. I, I would love to talk about

00:50:29.360 the achievement gap because we've had huge, huge federal spending on trying to fix it, but it keeps

00:50:35.160 going up and, and the government, you know, they've tried to prioritize poor children to try

00:50:41.080 to equalize spending between poor neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods, but still the test scores

00:50:45.360 and math and science of reading, they've remained flat for 40 years. And, um, the, the question is

00:50:52.980 why, right? Why just to give you a couple of stats. So the audience is up to speed. Uh, there was a,

00:50:58.280 I think there was a study in 2012 by the department of education, 79% of eighth graders in Chicago could

00:51:06.560 not read. Uh, and that was, it was split basically down the middle black and Hispanic in Detroit.

00:51:11.320 Only 7% of eighth graders were proficient in reading. Only 4% were proficient in math. And it was 0.63

00:51:21.520 something like in five out of seven categories, a majority of blacks were scoring at the lowest level

00:51:27.900 possible. So it's just, the stats are alarming and bad. And what we're hearing right now is that's

00:51:35.560 because of systemic racism. I'll give that one to you first Coleman. Yeah. So it strikes me that

00:51:43.780 when you talk about the bigotry of low expectations, the measure of how, of how much you respect a person

00:51:55.000 is what you would blame them for if they mess up. If, if I'm looking at the best chess player in the

00:52:05.260 world and he makes a blunder, I blame him. I say I'm disappointed in him. If, if on the other hand,

00:52:13.840 I'm looking at someone for whom it's true to say that nothing they could do would be so bad

00:52:19.460 that I would blame them and them only. What I'm saying about them is that I do not view them

00:52:26.360 as a full human being with agency and autonomy. You're saying about them, the opposite of what

00:52:35.920 you, you would say about the best chess player in the world, right? You're saying you view them in

00:52:41.800 precisely the opposite way as someone so low that nothing is beneath them. They cannot be blamed for

00:52:47.420 anything. They're like a child. Um, that's, that's the approach that is, is generally taken because

00:52:55.620 a lot of liberals feel that given the choice between quote unquote, victim blaming and, um,

00:53:07.540 and this kind of soft bigotry, they would prefer the soft bigotry because the victim blaming to them,

00:53:14.220 it, it, it, it seems like hard bigotry. And I think, um, a lot of, a lot of people look at these

00:53:22.260 stats and they feel dejected. They feel, I have no idea. I've, I don't really know how we could

00:53:28.900 make them much better. Um, because it's, it's a very tough thing, raising test scores. As you say,

00:53:40.060 we've been trying to do it for 50 years and, and it's not so easy at the same time, the, the charter

00:53:47.900 schools that occasionally have some success with it, for some reason, those are opposed by the left.

00:53:56.120 So it's, it's, it's, isn't it teachers unions? Isn't that the reason they're opposed?

00:54:00.880 That's fine. The contrast between the, uh, reception on the left of teachers unions and police unions to

00:54:05.720 be very, very interesting. Uh, teachers unions are unions and they're in the business of protecting

00:54:11.300 the interests of their members and the interests of their members are not perfectly aligned with

00:54:14.960 the interests of the kids. It's obvious given the statistics that you were talking about that

00:54:19.940 these institutions are not succeeding. Now there are home life issues and peer group issues and such

00:54:26.500 that, uh, have to be also taken into account, but the schools that are serving the kids in Baltimore

00:54:33.100 or in St. Louis or on the South side of Chicago or in South central Los Angeles or Oakland,

00:54:37.780 California, they're not succeeding. Uh, that system needs to be blown up. I, I, I mean, I know I'm

00:54:43.980 saying a very radical thing. Experimentation there should be welcome. Let a hundred thousand flowers

00:54:49.920 bloom. Charter schools, yeshiva schools in the equivalent of that in the Afrocentric world, whatever,

00:54:55.820 let a thousand flowers bloom. It's time for, uh, breaking up that system and getting these kids 1.00

00:55:00.660 better educational services. It wouldn't be a panacea. Uh, I wouldn't mind spending a little

00:55:05.440 bit more money if I thought it could be well spent. I'm not just going to shovel it into,

00:55:09.280 uh, this bureaucracy that is, uh, politically protecting itself. And that's not serving these

00:55:14.160 kids very well. It's like the teachers unions, all of us love our teachers. That's not the same

00:55:21.080 as loving your teachers union, which is really, they care about one thing, which is the union. I mean,

00:55:26.220 they didn't even put teachers first, that the union itself is what's most important in supporting

00:55:29.800 democratic causes. Uh, maybe teachers come up someplace after that, but students aren't even

00:55:35.040 on the list. Students are not their concern. Right. The other thing, I mean, so the teacher's

00:55:40.140 union explains why left-wing politicians, uh, are against charter schools. The argument I counter

00:55:48.100 from normal people are, you know, people who listen to podcasts and liberals who say, what are you

00:55:53.020 trying to say, Coleman? Uh, is that, uh, it takes money away from government and it's anti-public

00:56:01.860 school. And it occurs to me, this is kind of like, uh, there's a phrase market fundamentalism.

00:56:09.260 You know, if you're a libertarian, you think the market is always better than the government. In

00:56:12.680 every case you will be accused, I think justly of market fundamentalism and blind faith in markets,

00:56:18.100 but there's the opposite problem as well. Blind faith in government. Why should I have more of

00:56:23.360 an allegiance to the public education, public education system in itself? That's not an end.

00:56:29.500 The end is to educate kids by whatever means necessary.

00:56:34.340 What about, can I ask you, I read among the other works I was, I was into this summer was, uh,

00:56:39.580 Jason Riley's, please stop helping us. Right. Which is a great book. And he's writer for the wall

00:56:45.640 street journal. And he cites in there another, another problem, which is culture, culture. And

00:56:53.080 this is, I, I be honest with you, I feel uncomfortable even saying this as a, as a white

00:56:57.700 woman, but he, he talks about some study by a guy named John Ogbu of UC Berkeley and an anthropology

00:57:03.480 professor who went to Shaker Heights, Ohio in the late nineties. And, uh, try, and this is a,

00:57:09.740 an area that had black students. It was like one third of the, the residents were black. The school

00:57:14.660 district was pretty equally divided, but saying blacks trail significantly by GPA, by college

00:57:20.380 placement, by dropout rate. And, and a lot of these were affluent families and they were trying

00:57:25.700 to figure out what, why, why is that? And what, what Ogbu apparently concluded was that there is,

00:57:32.820 um, a culture at least at that school. And he extrapolated it where it wasn't cool. It was

00:57:40.780 considered quote white to get good grades, to take AP classes, to achieve honors, to talk properly.

00:57:49.720 That's the term used, um, in the book. And that there was peer pressure within the black student

00:57:57.220 community, not to work too hard. It wasn't prized or considered cool. Now, if that's a factor,

00:58:03.480 it's a problem. Like that's a, that's a, that's a big problem, but I don't know, as I say, it's a,

00:58:09.920 it's an uncomfortable thing to even raise. What are your thoughts, Glenn?

00:58:12.720 Megan, I would say it's actually an opportunity. Maybe it's both of those things, because if that's

00:58:17.160 the case, it can be changed. I mean, for example, if you make a genetic argument and you say the

00:58:21.740 blacks are, you know, just the IQ they've inherited and they don't have it. Well, there's not a lot can be 1.00

00:58:26.640 done about that. But if indeed, to the extent that it is the case that peer group norms and

00:58:32.780 social patterns and behavior, valorization, and what's thought hip, hip and cool is implicated,

00:58:40.040 well, you can have a campaign against that. You can, you can, uh, raise the consciousnesses of

00:58:44.300 people. You can, you know, redefine. I mean, I, I think this is an underestimated thing. Uh, African 1.00

00:58:49.900 Americans became black from being Negro sometime between, I don't know, 1950 and 1970, because,

00:58:57.360 uh, people started thinking it was okay for their hair to be natural and not have to be

00:59:01.580 straightened and that the light color of the skin was not necessarily a thing to affirm and things

00:59:06.120 like that. That's not nothing. That's something. So, so I would say that I think there's a lot of

00:59:10.920 evidence, not just Agbu. Agbu is dated the late, uh, great, uh, anthropologist, uh, that there,

00:59:17.220 you know, Friar even has some evidence on this. I could go into it, but it would take too much time

00:59:21.080 that there, that there is something to it. It's also, uh, verboten to say so in the enlightened,

00:59:27.500 uh, racial advocacy circles. It's like blaming, uh, blaming black people. But, uh, uh, yeah, I, I think, 0.91

00:59:35.560 uh, I, I think it's okay to, by the way, there's a flip side to this. Why are the Asian students 1.00

00:59:41.360 suing Harvard and Princeton or Yale, wherever they're suing, uh, insisting that they're being

00:59:46.460 discriminated against because these institutions should probably be 50% Asian student body if they

00:59:52.620 were admitting just based on academic merit instead of 20 or 25%. Um, is it, does it have

00:59:59.000 anything to do with culture, with how those communities organize, with what those peer groups

01:00:03.560 value, with how those families, uh, carry out their duties, with what expectations those, uh,

01:00:09.260 communities have for their people, with the institutions that they develop, the patterns

01:00:12.860 and practices and habits that they cultivate? I mean, so obviously culture, it seems to me

01:00:18.060 obvious that culture is, uh, a legitimate part of the account that you would give for disparity

01:00:25.700 in academic performance between groups. Yeah. I want to, yeah, go ahead. I just want to underscore

01:00:31.600 something. A couple of things Glenn said. One is one reason people don't like the culture argument

01:00:37.180 is because as Glenn said, they, they think it's not easily changed. They think it makes them

01:00:41.660 helpless. Oh, well, if it's culture, then I can't do anything about it. And, you know,

01:00:46.800 a thought occurred to me, which is that implicitly what that argument says is that if it's systemic

01:00:52.540 racism, then it's much easier to solve. And I'm not sure that that's true. So for example,

01:00:58.360 if you think about, let's say that prosecutors or real estate agents are, you know, have, have,

01:01:06.000 are, are, are racially biased, right? Like, like that, that documentary where they send identical,

01:01:13.780 otherwise identical white and black people to go apply for a mortgage and the real estate agents,

01:01:18.920 you know, treat them differently. Right. How that's very hard to root out too. I'm not sure that it's,

01:01:25.140 I'm not sure that it's easier to, to, you would have to have some kind of panopticon watching

01:01:30.380 every real estate agent in their private moments. And even then it would, you would have to like see

01:01:37.780 into their mind. And then, then once you know their races, how do you then change their behavior if

01:01:42.700 it's not in their self-interest to do so? My point is just that it's not so clear to me which one of

01:01:47.960 these is easier and which one of the, which one of which, which one is harder. As for the acting

01:01:53.820 white thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, you know, it's something Obama has talked about. It's something

01:02:00.340 Jay-Z has talked about. Um, it's something I've experienced. There's a great book by Stuart Buck

01:02:07.560 called Acting White, which is, uh, just a treasure trove or data dump of examples of people complaining

01:02:17.640 about this since roughly the sixties. And, um, apparently there were not so many examples,

01:02:26.040 uh, before that time. So it's, it's something that is relatively new in American history. And,

01:02:32.600 uh, I will say one time I remember mentioning this at a charter school in the South Bronx run by,

01:02:40.180 uh, our mutual friend, uh, Ian Rowe. And that was the, one of the few times I've gotten a,

01:02:47.360 uh, an ovation from, uh, uh, a crowd of entirely, you know, black and Hispanic parents is when I

01:02:56.480 mentioned this notion of acting white being pernicious. So clearly it resonated in some way 0.84

01:03:01.540 with people. Um, and I think it's more present in some places than other places. A lot of black 1.00

01:03:07.220 people I've mentioned really don't, didn't grow up with it, but it's pervasive enough that it ought to 0.98

01:03:13.040 be talked about, um, and opposed. Coming up in one second, we're going to talk more with Glennon

01:03:22.320 Coleman about the 1619 project, academia, and also patriotism and what's being sold in our schools

01:03:32.480 today instead of patriotism. How do you raise a patriot? They've got some thoughts I think you're

01:03:37.040 going to want to hear, but first I got a crash course in home title theft, and you better pray

01:03:42.180 this crime never happens to you because it can ruin you. It can ruin you financially. Here's how

01:03:47.140 easy it is. The legal titles to our homes are digitized and they're kept on government and

01:03:51.860 business servers and in the cloud of above where they can be hacked. A cyber thief finds your home's

01:03:58.240 title, forges your signature on a quick claim deed stating you sold your home to him. Not true,

01:04:04.480 but it's done. Then he takes out loans against your home and all your equity is suddenly gone,

01:04:09.500 leaving you in debt up to your eyeballs. You won't know it until the collection calls pour in.

01:04:14.940 You're not protected by anything. Insurance, your bank, the common identity theft programs are like,

01:04:20.040 see ya, wouldn't want to be ya. Home title lock, however, will protect you. Home title lock will put 0.67

01:04:25.460 a barrier around your home's title and the instant they detect tampering, they will help shut it down

01:04:30.880 cold. Go to home title lock dot com and register your address to see if you're already a victim

01:04:36.260 and then use code radio for 30 free days of protection. That's code radio at home title lock

01:04:43.300 dot com. All right, back to Glenn and Coleman in one second. But first, we're going to bring you a

01:04:47.240 feature we call Asked and Answered. And this is where we bring in our executive producer, Steve

01:04:52.160 Krakauer, to do the Asked part of this feature. Steve? Hey, Megan. Yeah, lots of great questions

01:04:57.880 continue coming in. Send those to questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. This one comes from

01:05:04.420 Jennifer Bell. Sort of a general question that I thought is a good little look behind the scenes.

01:05:08.580 She says she's been enjoying the show, enjoys the middle of the road approach, and wants to know,

01:05:12.120 how do you select guests that come on your show? Well, it depends. I mean, some people I just love

01:05:18.760 and I want to talk to and I, you know, gave my team a list. And like the interview you're listening

01:05:23.080 to right now, I would fall in that category. Like I, there was zero chance of me doing the show

01:05:27.680 without talking to those two guys. And I want to have them back on over and over and over. And I

01:05:31.520 hope you feel the same way. I could have picked any one of those subjects and we could have done an

01:05:35.160 hour with those guys on, you know, racial preferences, on police, on Black Lives Matter.

01:05:39.800 They're just brilliant. There's just not enough time in the day. But then, you know, there's also just the

01:05:46.060 work of my team where we sit down and we ask ourselves, what are the issues in the news and

01:05:50.120 who would be the best guest for it? What are the books coming out and which ones have our interest?

01:05:56.140 I don't know who's sort of a provocateur out there who might be fun to talk to. Like when I saw Kim

01:06:00.560 Klasik on The View take on Joy and Sunny, I was like, I want to know her. So some of it is just

01:06:07.520 fulfilling my personal wish list based on what the team finds interesting too. I will tell you without

01:06:14.080 revealing the guests. All right. I'm not going to tell you who it is. But I said to my team,

01:06:19.900 there is one set of guests that if you could get them, it would be my dream come true. Like I could

01:06:26.320 retire. I don't, I don't have to interview anybody ever again after I speak with this set. And they

01:06:32.620 were like, okay. And we got them. And there, and, and my team, Steve, I'm talking about you. You just,

01:06:40.020 you sent me an email update about the guests. You were like, okay, so on the 10th,

01:06:43.160 we have this person. And on the 12th, we have that person. And on the 14th and I,

01:06:46.920 and you just threw them in there. Like it was a nothing. I was like, ah, I was on the couch with

01:06:53.340 my family and my kids were like, what, what, what happened? Like, oh my God. So, I mean,

01:06:58.920 this is a great tease for the interview. Everybody home is wondering who the hell it could be,

01:07:02.820 who could generate this most excitement. They're almost sure to be disappointed now. Anything I say

01:07:06.900 is going to be a disappointment, but it's a collective effort is the bottom line. And

01:07:12.100 sometimes it's really, it brings a lot of delight into my life and hopefully into yours. Do I think

01:07:17.720 I, did I sum it up? Okay. What do you think? Yeah. I don't think anyone will have any idea

01:07:21.320 what it, what it is, but they will, they will find out next month. That's a good tease.

01:07:26.340 Yeah. We don't, I don't think we're going to air it until right December. So

01:07:29.500 I haven't done the interview yet. Um, I don't know why I'm not telling you, but it's, it's fun

01:07:34.360 to keep the mystery alive a little bit, just a little bit to keep you guessing. Uh, I'm taking

01:07:38.440 your submissions. People who know me well might know who, who that would be for me. It's not

01:07:43.960 Judge Judy. I do love her, but I've interviewed her many times. These are people I've never,

01:07:47.480 ever spoken to, but have long, long, long loved from afar. Okay. I'm going to leave it at that. But,

01:07:52.580 uh, Hey, if you guys have guest suggestions, I'll take them. I actually do look, we, we have,

01:07:56.980 we monitor our Instagram page and, uh, Twitter and the reviews that people post at Apple.

01:08:04.260 And I've actually gotten a lot of great ideas from there. Uh, somebody was like,

01:08:07.180 have on Sam Harris. We're having on Sam Harris. So I appreciate that and keep them coming.

01:08:11.140 And now back to Glenn and Coleman.

01:08:18.440 Well, as you guys know, now we're at a place where things like self-reliance, determination,

01:08:24.540 belief in the American dream, according to the Smithsonian, at least those are all white terms

01:08:30.040 that are racist. If you encourage them in, in black people or students, you know, it's gotten 0.52

01:08:34.640 to the point now where ideals that we used to attach to academic achievement or striving to be

01:08:41.060 a professional success are now being dismissed as racist and not laudable. You know, and you've got

01:08:47.460 that example. You've got the example at Rutgers Glenn, where they decided to, to change the,

01:08:53.140 the grammar standards because they thought they were racist against black students as, you know,

01:08:57.540 as if they, they're not capable of, of something higher or better, you know, that, that it's racist

01:09:04.800 to expect that. And I, I do wonder where all of this goes. Like where, where does this wind up?

01:09:11.480 Oh, it's very troubling. Um, and I think the character of the country in some ways is being tested.

01:09:17.520 Um, I like to think about it in terms of, you know, the history of discrimination cannot have,

01:09:24.620 but had the consequence of hindering the full development of African-American potential.

01:09:30.020 So when we come through the era of the civil rights movement, where we are now, where

01:09:34.360 pretty much we have reckoned with, you know, uh, that legacy. I mean, we have equal rights laws all

01:09:41.660 across the board, there will still be disparity because there's a disparity of development.

01:09:46.140 Um, and that's going to manifest itself in a lot of, uh, in a lot of ways, including in the

01:09:50.700 performance of kids in these educational institutions, maintaining the standard and,

01:09:55.520 uh, addressing the developmental deficit. So as the raised kids to the standard is the way to

01:10:00.560 respond to that situation. But the temptation is to avoid the hard work of actually addressing the

01:10:07.540 residue of the historical oppression and to lower the standard in the interest of quote-unquote

01:10:12.780 equality. And the thing that I find most troubling about it, uh, not only the loss of human potential,

01:10:18.740 but the loss of integrity and, and dignity in, in, in the society, because everybody actually knows,

01:10:24.900 uh, the difference between, uh, fit, uh, healthy, uh, you know, uh, performance and, and, uh,

01:10:33.080 unfit and, and, and deficient performance. And you can't read, you can't read.

01:10:36.920 There's no way to hide that. Um, so the, um, inequality of history, which led to the

01:10:45.080 underdevelopment of the black population or some segments of it, when that development is under

01:10:50.560 development is papered over and not addressed, continues in a, in a, uh, in a, in a kind of

01:10:57.740 unexpressed way. It continues, uh, with people pretending that it doesn't exist. Uh, and, and I think

01:11:04.780 that's, uh, that's, uh, uh, a very bad place for us to be here. You know, this summer, all these

01:11:12.580 schools, including yours, Glenn Brown university, uh, rushed to send out self-flagellating letters

01:11:18.600 about how racist they are, how racist America is, how sorry they are. And then it wasn't enough to

01:11:24.140 say you're a racist. You had to say you're an anti-black racist anti, you know, like it lists 1.00

01:11:27.700 the things that you've done and said that are bad. We got, our kids are in a, we have a daughter. 0.99

01:11:32.980 She's at an all girl's school. We have two boys and an all boy's school. So both of the schools

01:11:36.780 sent almost identical letters, just we're terrible. The U S is terrible. So sorry. We're going to do

01:11:42.580 everything within our power to make it up to everybody. And I think a lot of us were looking

01:11:45.900 at this, like, what specifically did you do? What did, what'd you do? I mean, there really wasn't

01:11:50.640 anything specific. It was just an attempt to appease, uh, some of these student groups that were

01:11:57.600 popping up, you know, black at this school, black at that school recounting alleged incidents of

01:12:02.420 racism that had happened 30 years ago. Some deeply disturbing, some milk toast, you know,

01:12:07.280 like I, I sat alone at the lunch table for a year. Meanwhile, I was like, well, that that's

01:12:11.300 called middle school, white or black. Um, but I know that you spoke up at Brown when, cause

01:12:17.920 you were ticked off because it, it had sort of the air of, let me speak on behalf of the

01:12:25.440 university to tell you how awful we are and what we're going to do about it. And you people 0.77

01:12:30.600 will not be surprised now that they've gotten to know you on, on this, um, spoke up. It's

01:12:36.160 referred to as the Paxton letter Paxton, because it was written by Christina Paxton, Brown's

01:12:41.500 president. And it asserted that oppression as well as prejudice, outright bigotry and

01:12:46.120 hate directly and personally affect the lives of millions of people in this nation, every

01:12:49.220 minute and every hour committing the university to programming courses, research opportunities

01:12:53.180 to promote equity and justice, and went on and on from there to do some of the self

01:12:57.500 flagellating that I just discussed. Why did you have such a problem with it?

01:13:01.840 This was in the wake of the George Floyd killing. Uh, I had a problem with it because it was signed

01:13:06.420 by every top administrator in the university, the person who runs the university's portfolio,

01:13:10.860 the general counsel of the university, the provost of the university, dean of the faculty,

01:13:14.480 dean of the school of public health, and so forth. Uh, it was a manifesto. You read some of

01:13:20.040 the language. I mean, think about that language. Uh, I can imagine the professor at

01:13:24.500 African-American studies who, uh, sent the memo that ended up getting adapted into the letter

01:13:30.740 that had a sentence in it that every hour of every day and so forth and so on. It was

01:13:34.920 preachy. Um, it, it declared as if there were no argument that the killing of George Floyd

01:13:41.260 was a manifestation of white supremacy run amok among us and that all decent people must

01:13:46.620 stand on the right side. And I thought that, um, Christina Paxton could have had that opinion

01:13:52.260 as her personal opinion, but to have that sent to every student, every member of the faculty and

01:13:57.000 staff and every alumnus, we're talking about many, many tens of thousands of people

01:14:01.340 with the imprimatur of the entire university leadership, uh, that it was precluding the very

01:14:09.680 intellectual deliberation about these sensitive and complex matters that the university exists

01:14:16.700 to carry out in the first place. I thought it was the most horrific abuse of the responsibilities

01:14:22.540 of management of this precious institution, which is a university to put it on a bandwagon,

01:14:29.520 to have it join a parade of people marching down the street with a banner. It's as if the university

01:14:34.300 had taken a position in the presidential election, or if it had declared a position in the conflict

01:14:39.320 in the Middle East or something like that, the cops, the riots, the civil disturbances, Black Lives Matter,

01:14:45.560 these are not straightforward, unambiguous, monodimensional, uh, issues. These are very

01:14:52.680 profound things. We're there to think it through. The university exists to think matters through.

01:15:00.520 Um, this politicization is horrible. It is poisoning the well. We be careful that we don't be able to

01:15:09.240 get it back, that we can't get it back, okay? This is not good. Um, so, uh, the, the idea that

01:15:18.040 all right-thinking people in Brown's community agree that Derek Chauvin's killing of George Floyd, if indeed

01:15:24.440 he did do so, was a reflection of a, every hour of every day Black people live under the whatever, that is 0.99

01:15:31.480 clearly, uh, uh, a, uh, propagandistic, ideological, uh, uh, pose. Uh, it was horrible that the president

01:15:41.160 of a university took that position. Horrible. So can I tell you, this resonated with me for personal

01:15:47.960 reasons. Um, at our, I should say that we're, we've decided to move. New York City is, it's out of control

01:15:58.040 on so many levels. And, uh, after years of resisting it, we're, we're going to leave the

01:16:03.960 city. Um, and we, we pulled our boys from their school and our daughter's going to leave her soon, 0.98

01:16:09.640 too. Um, but the schools have already, they've always been far left, which doesn't align with my

01:16:15.320 own ideology, but I didn't really care. You know, it's just like I, most of my friends are liberals.

01:16:19.080 It's fine. I come from Democrats as a family. I did. I don't, I'm not offended at all by the ideology.

01:16:23.800 And I, I lean center left on some things, but they've gone around the bend. I mean,

01:16:29.000 they have gone off the deep end and I wanted to get your reaction to a letter that was circulated

01:16:35.400 at the school. We've now left my, my, my son's school, former school this summer in the wake

01:16:43.480 of George Floyd, they circulated amongst the diversity group, which includes white parents

01:16:48.120 like us, you know, just people who are want to be allies and stay attuned to what we can do.

01:16:54.360 Um, uh, an article and afterward they, they recirculated it and wanted every member of the

01:17:00.200 faculty to read it. It was written by a woman named Nalia Weber, who says she's the executive

01:17:06.680 director of the Orleans public education network. She works in education advocacy.

01:17:10.920 And just give me one minute to tell you some highlights of what she writes that my school

01:17:17.880 wanted circulated to all the faculty. She says, um, there is a killer cop sitting in every school

01:17:26.920 where white children learn. They gleefully soak in their whitewashed history that downplays the 0.97

01:17:33.440 Holocaust of indigenous native peoples and Africans in the Americas. They happily believe they're all white 1.00

01:17:39.340 spaces exist as a matter of personal effort and willingly use violence against black bodies to 0.99

01:17:44.060 keep those spaces white as black bodies drop like flies around us from violence at white hands. 0.99

01:17:50.620 How can we, in any of our minds conclude that whites are all right. 1.00

01:17:56.780 White children are left unchecked and unbothered in their schools, 0.77

01:18:00.060 homes and communities to join, advance and protect systems that take away black life. 0.99

01:18:03.900 I am tired of white people reveling in their state sanctioned depravity, 0.99

01:18:10.300 snuffing out black life with no consequences. Where is the urgency for school reform for white kids 1.00

01:18:17.420 being indoctrinated in black death and protected from the consequences? Where are the government 0.97

01:18:23.860 sponsored reports looking into how white mothers are raising culturally deprived children who think 0.94

01:18:30.220 black death is okay? Where are the national conferences, white papers, and policy positions 1.00

01:18:36.060 on the pathology of whiteness in schools? And here's the last part. This time, if you really want to make a 0.62

01:18:44.140 difference in black lives and not have to protest this shit again, go reform white kids because that's 1.00

01:18:51.660 where the problem is with white children being raised from infancy to violate black bodies with no remorse 1.00

01:18:58.940 or accountability. 1.00

01:19:02.620 Gosh.

01:19:05.580 Gosh, that's shocking. I mean, it's racist.

01:19:12.220 That's straightforwardly racist.

01:19:16.940 You can't be racist against white people, Glenn. You know that.

01:19:21.020 Come on, we know that's false.

01:19:23.740 I want to point out one thing. I think I hold out a little bit of hope.

01:19:28.940 Because the problem right now is that woke is cool.

01:19:36.460 Being a woke anti-racist, you know, if you're at the age where you very much care about being

01:19:44.540 seen as cool by your friends, obviously not if you live in a red part of the country, but if you live

01:19:49.660 in a city, if you live in a liberal suburb, it's cool to be woke. It feels anti-establishment in

01:19:57.980 some ways, even though I think I could make a case that it's not, given that, you know, Walmart and

01:20:03.740 Target are saying black lives matter at this point. Nevertheless, for many people, it feels like

01:20:10.460 they didn't necessarily get woke from their kindergarten and sixth grade teachers. So they

01:20:14.700 still feel you can tap into that sense of edgy, identity-seeking adolescents by being woke.

01:20:20.940 That can't go on forever and for much longer.

01:20:25.580 As this stuff pervades the school systems, and as people start hearing woke ideas from

01:20:31.980 their kindergarten teachers, there's nothing that will make it less cool more quickly. And

01:20:37.420 I hold out hope that that will happen as a result. Maybe that's optimistic.

01:20:43.180 You mentioned the term, they're poisoning the well. And that's, that's how I felt when I read that

01:20:48.780 letter. Which, which boy in my kids' school is the future killer cop? Is it my boy? Which boy is it?

01:20:57.740 Because I don't happen to believe they're in there.

01:21:01.020 It's based on your whiteness. I mean, do you really, if you're a person interested in the 0.94

01:21:06.620 well-being of Black people, want to invite a close scrutiny of the race of people who hurt other

01:21:14.460 people in this country? Because if you do, you'll find that Blacks attacks on whites are outnumbered. 0.98

01:21:21.740 I'm sorry, whites attacks on blacks are outnumbered probably by an order of magnitude by Blacks attacks 0.99

01:21:27.180 on whites. I don't have statistics in front of me, but I'm very fairly confident that that's true. 1.00

01:21:32.940 True. So, so why are we racializing this thing? Why is it the essentialization of race? A person in

01:21:40.460 that situation should be asked at the letter that you read to defend the position that the race of

01:21:47.340 the person is the thing that's relevant. I don't see that killer cops are white. White kids are at 0.98

01:21:54.060 risk of it. Think of flipping the script on that. Suppose you imputed anything of that sort 0.85

01:21:59.180 to Black people based upon our race. That would be horrific. It is indeed racist. 0.58

01:22:05.740 Mm-hmm. I feel like pieces like that, and listen, she was sort of a floating academic before 0.82

01:22:13.660 our school circulated it, you know, within the parent body and the faculty. That's, that's a different

01:22:19.500 level. But I feel like they are, they're trying to create racism where none existed. You know,

01:22:25.900 I mean, honestly, think of how the, most of the white parents felt in response to that.

01:22:31.260 You know, some, because they're far left liberals here in New York are like, yes, yes. Self-flagellation,

01:22:36.300 more of it. Right. That's just what we need. But I will tell you, I was like, listen, lady,

01:22:41.980 my, my sons are not future killer cops. Neither are his little classmates. And you're out of line.

01:22:47.640 You're out of line. And it makes you upset, right? It's like, I think all of these messages from

01:22:53.820 people like Robin DiAngelo that, you know, my main goal in life is to work on being less white 0.92

01:22:58.980 is not doing much good for, for our race relations. They're injecting so much tension

01:23:06.540 where it didn't exist before. And I understand the, the, the argument from some of these sort of

01:23:12.460 activists will be, that's your white privilege talking. That's your way. It's, it's been an

01:23:16.940 active matter for every black person. You're just too privileged to understand. And now we're just

01:23:20.740 bringing you into our world. So you can understand how hard it's been. And I don't really give a damn

01:23:23.880 if it's making you feel uncomfortable or pissed off. So what, what do we do with that?

01:23:29.760 It's not just Robin DiAngelo. It's Ibram Kendi. It's not just Ibram Kendi. It's Ta-Nehisi

01:23:34.140 Coates. It's not just Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's Nicole Hannah-Jones. It's not just Nicole Hannah-Jones.

01:23:38.080 It's Ava DuVernay. Uh, the, the drift of this, uh, white supremacist domination, 1.00

01:23:46.020 black bodies, uh, rhetoric is what, uh, is what accounts for this. I cannot tell you, Megan, 1.00

01:23:51.420 you're going to have to tell me why it is that white people are so susceptible to allowing themselves

01:23:57.060 to be, uh, uh, flagellated, uh, with this stuff because it's, uh, you know, it's not exactly

01:24:04.320 compelling. Cause we're scared. We're scared. We don't want to be called racist. You know, I mean,

01:24:09.560 the only reason I, I feel capable of discussing these issues as openly as I do is because I've been

01:24:14.600 called that word so many times it's lost all its meaning. And I figured out at this point in my

01:24:18.740 career, it's, it's a tactic. They don't actually think I'm a racist or maybe they do, but the reason

01:24:23.860 they're calling me that is to shut me up. You know, that that's why they're saying it. And, but I think

01:24:29.860 for most people to be called a racist is probably the worst thing they could be called. And they just

01:24:34.640 rather not say a damn word. They'd rather not touch it. Yeah. I mean, think of Kamala and Joe Biden, 0.98

01:24:41.180 you know, I'm not the first person to point this out, but you know, the whole subtext of her attack

01:24:45.920 on him, uh, over busing and, uh, uh, you know, making deals with segregationist senators back in

01:24:53.340 the day was you're a racist. And then all of a sudden when it's in her self-interest, that's

01:24:57.400 forgotten. And frankly, most people seem not to care. Most people who liked the Biden Kamala ticket

01:25:04.180 didn't, you know, they, they, many liked the attack of the activists. At least they liked the

01:25:10.440 attack on Joe Biden for racism, but suddenly when she paired up with him, it's totally fine to be in 0.99

01:25:15.220 bed with a racist. Not to, not to mention Anita Hill, not to mention, uh, Tara Reid. Yeah. I think 0.67

01:25:23.320 part of the, I think Shelby Steele has a very good line about this, uh, in his recent documentary and

01:25:29.160 in his writing, which is that white guilt is misnamed. It's not really guilt. It is a terror

01:25:33.600 at the thought of, uh, being accused of racism or the terror at the thought that one might actually

01:25:39.860 be a racist. Um, and I think there are many white people that haven't felt that. And so can't

01:25:49.440 understand why white people who have felt that terror act so insane and self-flagellating and

01:25:57.340 masochistic, but for those that do feel that guilt or that terror, um, it's incredibly attractive to 0.50

01:26:04.860 have this ideology that, you know, Robin DiAngelo, for example, what she says is yes, white people, 0.95

01:26:11.240 you're all racist, but it's not your fault. Society created you racist. So in the same way that one, 0.99

01:26:19.380 one can walk into a church and feel forgiven by Jesus, Jesus sees all my sins. He sees

01:26:26.600 my, my, my ugliness and still forgives me. Nonetheless, that feeling of release is what

01:26:32.460 white people are looking for and what attracts them to this absolutely otherwise unintelligible 0.95

01:26:37.760 ideology. Well, you know what I've realized in my, in my travails is most of the people who are

01:26:45.280 loudest in their insults toward me, at least when it comes to that charge are white liberals. I honestly,

01:26:52.540 and if somebody, if I ever meet a black person who has an issue like that, they tend to be very 1.00

01:26:56.400 progressive. I have yet to meet a conservative black person who has any problem with me whatsoever.

01:27:02.520 And so over time you realize this isn't a skin color issue. This is a politics issue. And once you

01:27:09.220 realize that it helps you reframe the whole thing, it helps you regain your willingness to talk openly

01:27:14.480 and honestly, but it's hard, man. It's hard. And I don't know a lot of white people who have,

01:27:19.920 even if they understand that, who would talk about it publicly? Well, you know,

01:27:23.060 I'll have a dinner where somebody will say, you know, tell me what you've learned. What do you

01:27:26.300 think about this? But they would never have that conversation in the public square at their

01:27:30.420 office place, especially now. Well, all of all that's happened over the summer has only

01:27:35.500 shamed people more into the closet from discussing racial issues. What do you think?

01:27:39.500 I think that must be true. It must be true. And it's so interesting,

01:27:42.980 the disparity between what it is you can say publicly and what it is that you might think

01:27:47.240 and how people negotiate with each other. I wonder what these dinner parties are like, where

01:27:51.420 quote unquote, white people are sitting around, all of them are getting the same stimulus of

01:27:56.220 the same news feed, the same public conversation about what's going on. And they know their

01:28:03.300 correct positions. How do they reveal to each other the fact that they might have doubts,

01:28:08.160 the fact that they might not really, really buy into the narrative that they're all racist?

01:28:12.520 How do they, you know, work around that? I mean, that's got to be some very interesting,

01:28:18.260 very interesting material for a novelist to, you know, if we had a Tom Wolfe, a kind of,

01:28:23.680 you know, satirist who could take us behind the scenes of, you know, white people letting their

01:28:28.000 hair down. I mean, that could be a comic routine or something like that.

01:28:32.620 Well, I've been open about this stuff for years, right? And it's like, I've been trying to discuss

01:28:37.500 race issues. I think you need more white people who are willing to take risks. Otherwise, 0.93

01:28:41.320 even, I said this to Coleman when I went on his podcast, even if you falter, even if you don't

01:28:45.840 do it perfectly, I can speak to that. So what? You got to try. How are we going to get past this?

01:28:51.060 If, if it's like white liberals in a silo, self-flagellating, and then guys like you who

01:28:57.440 are willing to have really open, honest discussions about it, but ne'er the twain shall meet. You know,

01:29:02.140 there's not going to be any debate. Even Coleman's been trying to get Ibram X. Kendi to debate him

01:29:06.160 forever. And Ibram's like, who? Huh? What? No, he won't do it. He won't defend the premise of his book.

01:29:11.320 To someone like Coleman Hughes, I think, cause he knows he's going to be outmatched. Anyway, so

01:29:15.980 I, I, I'll be at a party where I'll say, Hey, did you see this? You see this Coleman Hughes,

01:29:20.920 Hughes, please, peace or whatever. I'll try to race something. And I'm telling you, it's like, 1.00

01:29:25.060 and these are with people from all, all parts of the ideological spectrum. Cause as I say, I'm,

01:29:29.840 I was at Fox news for 13 years, but I live in the upper West side. So it's all,

01:29:33.360 it's all liberals. All my friends are liberals. And it's like crickets. No one will say

01:29:38.460 anything in response. They just don't want to touch race because it's become now a third rail.

01:29:45.580 And if you're white, the only proper response is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 1.00

01:29:50.840 I don't know. It's annoying too. I find I've, I've, I'm, I would much prefer personally,

01:29:55.340 I would prefer to be friends with a white person that is unfiltered and sometimes goes too far 0.97

01:30:03.360 and says something that even rubs me the wrong way than someone who is just made themselves more 0.91

01:30:12.460 boring by giving into white guilt. What do you guys think people should do? You know,

01:30:18.280 I've been thinking about this. We've been talking about it openly. Now we're in an age where your

01:30:21.960 company says you got to go to anti-racist training and it really is. You, you, you have to,

01:30:29.160 this is being done at our schools, not our new school, but it's, you have to sit there and

01:30:35.480 for like three days at some of these seminars that you have to, you wind up having to put a placard

01:30:40.820 around your neck with your degree of racism, one through 10. So you get to wear your, your scarlet

01:30:48.000 letter. And then the black participants get to tell you about their experiences and, you know,

01:30:54.960 racism and so on, how it's affected their lives. The white people are not supposed to speak at all. 0.51

01:30:59.160 And then on the last day of the seminar, they're allowed to say like a couple of things, but they

01:31:02.520 need to be supportive. And most of the time you are told to quote, sit in the quiet of your own

01:31:07.100 white racism. I, so many people want to know, how do I not do that? I, I have no wish to do it. I've

01:31:15.580 no wish to put my kid through it at, again, at one of the schools we're leaving. It's now, there's a push

01:31:20.680 to make it mandatory for, for, for students to have to sit through that again, dividing boys who are

01:31:27.500 loving and friends, you know, a couple of months ago, now being told one of you is the oppressor

01:31:31.460 and one of you is the oppressed. So what do you guys think? What, what is the answer to that?

01:31:35.900 Megan, have you heard about Jody Shaw, the case of Jody Shaw? She's, I love her. Smith.

01:31:41.800 Oh, you know her. Okay. Yes, indeed. She's putting out these videos.

01:31:43.940 I don't know her, but I love her. And I watched her video.

01:31:46.980 Yeah. I've watched her videos as well. She's, she's a member of the staff of Smith college.

01:31:53.200 And she's complaining in the series of videos about how she's been treated inside of these

01:31:58.420 diversity training sessions. I won't try to recapitulate what she says, but it seems to me

01:32:02.760 she's got to be the tip of the iceberg. 0.85

01:32:04.320 Yeah. Well, that's the thing. What I love about Jody Shaw is she's kind of, you know,

01:32:10.140 meek. I would say she doesn't, she doesn't project very strong. And yet she's, she's doing

01:32:17.180 it, man. I mean, she's brave. She's like, this is baloney. I don't want to be shamed for the color

01:32:23.000 of my skin. And we should be able to have discussions without getting shamed by the university. Oh, and by

01:32:28.700 the way, everything I'm saying is protected by the law. So don't fire me.

01:32:31.780 But I do think unless people, unless we get more Jody's, um, or people just willing to say,

01:32:39.240 I'm just, as Douglas Murray keeps saying, you have to say, I refuse to let you re racialize 1.00

01:32:44.740 my company, my country and myself, but man, easier said than done.

01:32:51.480 And it, it occurs to me, I would like someone who defends this kind of diversity workshop where

01:32:58.740 white people are told to remain silent, to come up with a single example from human history, 0.53

01:33:05.360 where you have improved the relationship between two groups of people that see themselves to some

01:33:11.860 extent as groups, having some kind of group consciousness by, by ritual dominance, right?

01:33:20.500 Like, what is more, what is a more direct signal of social dominance than you cannot speak?

01:33:30.040 You must listen and not reply. That's, that's what a parent does to punish their child.

01:33:37.800 How, how, again, come up with one example in which that improved rather than created resentment

01:33:43.480 in the population that has to submit to the ritual dominance. I would never as a black person

01:33:49.860 submit to such humiliation. And I would never ask anyone else to.

01:33:55.200 It's a, it's so ironic because it's really based upon white power. I mean, the reason that they get 0.98

01:34:00.340 away with saying you can't speak is the presumption that in your whiteness, you are, you're this dominant

01:34:06.240 force that has oppressed. And so you have now to cede the ground to the, to the weak and whatnot.

01:34:13.020 And that's their power. Their power is pointing to white power in a way. I mean, it, it, it, it proceeds 0.98

01:34:21.540 at the sufferance of the oppressor. You declare the white to be the oppressor and you, you impose upon 0.85

01:34:28.580 him or her in this way. And you expect them to forbear and to allow you to impose because they accept

01:34:34.900 the fact that they are the oppressor. Uh, you give them all the power.

01:34:38.820 Right. I mean, I was saying after Robin D'Angelo's book, if I behaved the way this woman wants me to 0.95

01:34:44.580 behave, my black friends would laugh in my face. If I walked, can you imagine, let's see, I see you 1.00

01:34:51.080 next time at the comedy salary Coleman. And I walk in and I say, I just want to begin with, I apologize

01:34:56.160 on behalf of myself, on behalf of my race. And I promise to spend the rest of my life trying to make

01:35:01.740 a man's, I mean, it's, you'd be insufferable. You can't actually develop intimacy, whether as a

01:35:09.840 friend or more with somebody, if, if, if you presuppose that they trump you on, on whole domains

01:35:19.820 of, of reality, like race relations, right? Like your thoughts don't matter. Um, you have to remain

01:35:26.500 silent. You have to submit to them. It's just, it's, it's not, uh, you know, it's not a relationship

01:35:31.920 that I would want with any of my white friends. Like I said, I would rather have someone who's 0.99

01:35:36.860 unfiltered and wrong sometimes than someone who is so filtered that I have no idea who they actually 1.00

01:35:43.520 are, what they actually think, or if they even know what they actually think, you know, cause you

01:35:48.140 can get to a point where you don't allow yourself to think because you're so afraid of what you might

01:35:53.060 actually think if you, if indeed you really thought. That's exactly right. That is perfect.

01:36:02.460 I, you know, it's, I have to say as growing up as a Democrat, you know, a Democrat house and

01:36:07.980 going through academia, which tends to make you lean left anyway, I never really spent a lot of

01:36:12.660 time thinking about a lot of these issues. And one of them was affirmative action, but I was like,

01:36:16.820 I'm, I guess I'm pro affirmative action. Cause I'm, I'm pro equality. And that seems to be

01:36:21.820 something that my side when I was growing up was for. So that sounds good. And then, and the more

01:36:27.420 I've read about that, the more I've really had reason to second guess myself. And you know, I,

01:36:34.120 I read Heather McDonald's book and I, and I've been reading a lot of Shelby Thomas soul, you guys.

01:36:40.600 And I know there really are questions about how well that works out, right? Like when it comes to

01:36:47.060 student education, that's what I'm talking about in particular, like racial preferences in university

01:36:52.640 admissions, um, which, you know, they just tried to re-legalize in California. They had, they had

01:36:58.780 outlawed them and, and they tried to re-legalize them and the voters rejected that. But it does seem

01:37:05.800 like that may be part of the Jason Riley, please stop helping us, right? Cause it doesn't help at all

01:37:13.300 in the long run, because what, what the studies seem to show is that it creates a division for the

01:37:19.320 black student who gets into a university that he might not have otherwise have been admitted to.

01:37:22.940 Cause you know, people, uh, may hold it against him. They may assume he's there for reasons other

01:37:29.320 than he deserves to be. And that he may in fact not be able to handle the work or she may, you know,

01:37:34.740 if I, if I were admitted to Harvard, because somebody wanted to do affirmative action or, you know,

01:37:38.720 preferences for people who are Irish, it would have been a miserable experience for me. I can tell you 1.00

01:37:42.940 right now, I could not have handled that course load and Glenn used to work there. So, you know,

01:37:45.900 this, um, but I went to Syracuse and you know what? I was a star. It was great. Worked out great for me.

01:37:52.660 So it doesn't always work out to, to lift somebody up to a place that they're actually,

01:37:56.780 their raw academic merits couldn't have justified. What do you think, Glenn?

01:38:02.760 Yeah, well, I think it's a, we've been at this forever. Uh, affirmative action is going all the 0.71

01:38:07.420 way back to the 1970s. This is a half century. Um, it should have been, uh, and should be conceived of

01:38:13.960 as, uh, a transitional response to the underrepresentation of African-Americans that

01:38:20.400 is a part of a dynamic developmentally focused program that has as its end state, a institution

01:38:29.040 of equal standards of performance. Instead, it's become a crutch. Uh, it's, it's not a hand up,

01:38:35.980 it's a handout. Uh, it's not dealing with the fact that there were no blacks at places like Harvard

01:38:41.440 or Princeton or Yale in 1950. Uh, and that's not acceptable for our democracy to dealing with the

01:38:47.140 fact that, uh, what you said is true about, uh, primary and secondary education in so many

01:38:52.440 communities in this country that are not serving well, these African-American students. Um, I mean, 1.00

01:38:58.120 I think, uh, there's huge controversy about the empirical effects of affirmative action. I think you

01:39:05.740 can probably justify as Bowen and Bach, presidents of, uh, uh, Princeton and Harvard in the 1990s,

01:39:13.500 William Bowen and Derek Bach in their book, The Shape of the River, they try to justify what they're

01:39:19.140 doing. They said, no, we're not using the same standards, but by and large, our kids do okay.

01:39:22.900 They get through, they get their degrees, they become important people in their communities and

01:39:26.480 their professions, and they contribute to American society. And we need to integrate the elites of

01:39:31.240 American society. You can't have lily white elites. They're saying that, but that's a, that should be 1.00

01:39:36.600 a transitional thing. The institutionalization of it is horrible. It's, it's so corrupt. It, uh,

01:39:44.380 tarnishes the, uh, achievements. Uh, it, uh, uh, uh, creates doubt. It creates mediocrity. Uh, people are in

01:39:54.780 over their heads in so many venues and so many situations and the response rather than recognizing

01:40:00.640 that. And by the way, it's a statistical necessity. If you're the lead institution and you're selecting

01:40:05.860 from the very right tail of the performance of the kids, and you have different standards

01:40:10.400 by race, you're going to get different performance by race after the fact. The standards are correlated

01:40:16.380 with how kids do after they get in. If you're using different standards, you're going to get on

01:40:20.160 average different performance. And that creates a situation where, uh, in order to avoid acknowledging

01:40:26.240 the different performance, you end up watering down. You end up with great inflation. Uh, you end

01:40:30.420 up with African-American studies. I'm sorry, people get very angry with me for saying this, but you end

01:40:34.900 up with mediocrity. No, all African-American studies is not mediocre, but people switch out of the STEM 0.91

01:40:40.560 disciplines and they go into the soft disciplines in order to avoid the rigorous quantitative work that

01:40:45.780 things get, things get watered down. Um, and, and this is not equality.

01:40:52.700 So in other words, if you're at Harvard and you wouldn't have otherwise gotten in,

01:40:56.300 you, you maybe, if you had gone, you know, to Syracuse, you, you could have been an engineer.

01:41:02.200 You could have handled the workflow there to become an engineer.

01:41:03.760 This is a so-called mismatch hypothesis. This is the idea that the kids could match with the wrong

01:41:07.500 schools and that it's, there's a fair amount of evidence, uh, to support that, uh, as well.

01:41:12.360 I knew I was right not to even try to go to Harvard. I knew it. I feel totally validated.

01:41:19.020 I'm sure I, you know, probably could have gotten in. You know, you would have gotten by at Harvard.

01:41:25.720 Oh, contraire, sir. But it was fine. It worked out fine in the end. I always tell people who are

01:41:29.900 so obsessed about colleges and I know you guys have these esteemed, beautiful academic pedigrees,

01:41:34.820 but it can be fine if you don't go to Harvard, you know, Syracuse is definitely, it was,

01:41:38.860 it's the Harvard of Syracuse. Um, and then I went to Albany law school, which is at best,

01:41:44.120 you know, uh, I'll be charitable and say second tier. Uh, but it's fine. If you do well, you work

01:41:48.920 hard, you're a gunner, you figure out what you're good at. You can achieve great success in your life,

01:41:53.700 no matter the academic pedigree. I would say that the number one thing in my view, you get it,

01:41:58.060 these good schools. And my husband went to Duke and then Georgetown is connections. You don't

01:42:02.600 necessarily get connections to future powerful people at these other schools.

01:42:08.940 Well, I'm sticking with Brown. So there. 0.96

01:42:11.360 Good man. And, and I don't know, Colman, do you think you'll go back into academia at all?

01:42:16.440 I don't plan to at this moment.

01:42:18.340 Good. I mean, we need you, but, but good.

01:42:21.380 Cause we also need you.

01:42:22.800 It's a hard environment. I mean, I admire you, Glenn, but you know, even as an undergrad,

01:42:29.040 it, it, uh, takes a toll to be the only person in the class, you know, kind of coming into every

01:42:37.060 class with a chip on my shoulder. If, if at all these issues are going to be discussed,

01:42:43.620 feeling that I can't lie, but perhaps being the only one willing to speak up

01:42:48.160 and developing a reputation where, you know, people, your reputation precedes you. And,

01:42:55.920 and in many ways it's, it's negative. It's, it's not like given the choice, I'm not sure

01:43:02.380 it makes sense for me, you know, psychologically to go back unless there was some, something that

01:43:09.060 was, you know, was such a benefit that I felt I, I needed to.

01:43:14.920 What do you make of that, Glenn?

01:43:16.060 I say that we, uh, institutions of higher education will have failed in our mission. If,

01:43:21.660 uh, qualities of mind, such as Coleman Hughes manifest, feel they have no place in our ranks.

01:43:28.700 I say, I'm almost motivated to start a program at Brown university, uh, with the, uh, intention

01:43:34.660 of having a dozen Coleman Hughes types decide that they're going to write a dissertation and

01:43:40.020 something really important. It's been two or three years. Just think of it as investing in this book.

01:43:44.500 That's going to make you a gazillion dollars when it finally comes out. And you're going to have a

01:43:47.920 PhD after your name afterwards, exploring in depth, some of the most important questions of

01:43:53.100 our time. I think the Academy is a place to go to reflect. It's to go to be challenged by the very

01:43:59.300 best that's been thought and written, uh, about the most difficult matters of human existence,

01:44:04.260 uh, and to be, uh, challenged and to be questioned and to, uh, learn from and, and to stimulate and be

01:44:11.000 stimulated by, uh, I would say it doesn't have to be your whole life. Uh, but I think there's still

01:44:16.340 something that we have to offer, uh, to a Coleman Hughes. And it's shame on us, uh, if we are so

01:44:22.000 configured that he doesn't, that he doesn't feel comfortable in our midst.

01:44:25.660 That's never a never ending cycle. People like Coleman don't want to go there and teach because

01:44:29.540 he feels unwelcome. And then more conservative students either hide the fact that they're

01:44:33.880 conservative or don't want to go there because they don't feel represented at all in the faculty

01:44:37.720 body or, or student body. And they go underground, they say nothing. And so they arrive at school and

01:44:43.960 they get the tour from, you know, a person who aligns with some gender defined by the astrological

01:44:50.200 spectrum and who's, you know, going to walk them through all of the prerequisites to being accepted

01:44:57.240 on campus, i.e. your progressive bona fides. And they're thinking, I'm just going to keep my mouth

01:45:02.260 shut for four years until I get out of here. Or, or they genuinely get turned and they emerge ready

01:45:08.900 to push the progressive agenda to call out their parents as racist and transphobes. And that's,

01:45:14.360 I think how we wind up with an, with a media, a media that's that thinks 71 million people are 0.91

01:45:20.160 racist and sexist and transphobic and xenophobic and awful. And, you know, need to be condemned at

01:45:26.360 every turn. Um, I want to mention Carol Swain because she's somebody who I think has gone through

01:45:32.260 it, right? She's like, she's somebody who was in the academic system and a professor who

01:45:36.660 got more conservative in her viewpoint and started writing books that were more conservative and she

01:45:43.100 got more faithful and she was basically pushed out. It's, it's, and she's, she's a woman of color.

01:45:49.740 She's a black woman. So you'd think if, if, if you can't keep Carol, like you'd think you'd be dying 0.99

01:45:56.480 to have somebody like Carol stay, but nope.

01:45:59.700 Carol's an old friend and she's a brilliant woman and, uh, she is a woman of faith and, uh,

01:46:05.800 yeah, she's a contrarian. And, uh, she was at what Vanderbilt and there was a lot of brouhaha

01:46:12.300 down there about some comments that she made and so forth. People called her names and, and she was 0.61

01:46:17.300 blackballed. Um, but she, she certainly didn't deserve it. 1.00

01:46:21.960 Do you get called names? Do you get called like the uncle Tom kind of thing? Glenn, I mean,

01:46:25.720 you're more conservative. I hope, I hope not, but do you?

01:46:30.080 Probably. Maybe I'm just unaware. Maybe I'm oblivious to the corner of Twitter where they're

01:46:34.140 calling me all sorts of names. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm past that. Uh, I used to get called names when

01:46:40.440 I was a Reagan Republican back in the eighties, pathetic black mascot of the right is what one 1.00

01:46:47.040 of my colleagues at Harvard, uh, dubbed me. But, um, you know, I'm past that by now. 0.96

01:46:52.600 You don't care. Can we just talk about the 1619 project before I let you guys go? The 1619 project

01:46:58.600 has been debated a lot over the past couple of years. And I'm stunned by what this whole

01:47:03.920 thing has said about where we are as a country and where the media is. The New York times love

01:47:09.300 them or hate them. And their subscribers are, I think the latest stats were something like almost

01:47:13.200 90% liberal. Um, it used to at least be someplace that while biased did care about facts and fact

01:47:21.140 checking. So there'd be a slant, but they wouldn't necessarily be egregious errors that went

01:47:25.660 uncorrected all the time. Wow. Not so with respect to this piece. So Nicole, Hannah Jones

01:47:32.820 wrote originally that, you know, the country was founded in order to preserve slavery. There were

01:47:38.940 all sorts of challenges to that. Now we know before it was published, the New York times rejected them,

01:47:43.520 ignored them. It comes out, she gets the Pulitzer prize. All these historians come out and say,

01:47:49.860 this is totally factually wrong. Black scholars too. It's not just a bunch of white scholars

01:47:54.260 saying this is completely erroneous. It's just not true. The country was not founded to preserve

01:47:58.900 slavery. And the times was pretty silent about it. And then what happened recently was they quietly

01:48:05.280 and without calling any attention to it, started erasing those passages from the sort of preamble,

01:48:12.540 the introduction to her piece and not, not being open about it. And now you Glenn and some other

01:48:18.680 very esteemed professors have issued a call to have that Pulitzer prize revoked. First of all,

01:48:26.420 has, have, has anyone responded to that? And second of all, why do you think that's important?

01:48:33.460 No one has responded so far as I know. I did sign onto this letter that Peter Wood, the National

01:48:39.860 Association of Scholars circulated and a number of other people did as well in virtue of the egregious

01:48:47.660 behavior that you just described in terms of running with and, and, and putting so much of institutional

01:48:57.240 support behind a narrative that had problems. I mean, yes, she did assert that because a few of the,

01:49:07.620 of the founding generation of Americans feared the British potentiality of interfering with the

01:49:18.640 slave traffic. And for that reason, were motivated to fight in the revolution that therefore that was

01:49:24.380 the basic driving force behind the entire movement, which was false. She'd also claimed that 1619 and not

01:49:33.860 1776 was a better metaphor for understanding the large scale narrative of the country. And then

01:49:40.800 backed away from that saying, no, she didn't mean to replace 1776 with 1669. She just meant to somehow

01:49:47.160 recenter the narrative and elevate the role that African-American exclusion and then aspiration

01:49:55.200 for inclusion should play in the American narrative. The Pulitzer prize, I think they made a mistake,

01:50:00.560 but they're not going to, uh, they're not going to take it back. I think that's pretty clear.

01:50:06.800 And so what does that say to you about where we are as a country?

01:50:11.640 Um, I'm into talking about narratives these days. Uh, I talk about the development narrative and the

01:50:17.160 bias narrative when we're talking about race and the narrative about the American story, the, the

01:50:22.700 American project is fundamentally important. Is this a good country? Or is this a country that's

01:50:29.920 founded on genocide and, and slavery? The, uh, impact of Western settlement in the Western

01:50:37.620 hemisphere, the European settlement in the Western hemisphere on the native population was

01:50:40.780 devastating. There's not any doubt about that. And the commerce and chattel, which was a transatlantic

01:50:46.600 slavery was of a huge scale, mostly going to, uh, uh, Caribbean and, uh, South America, but of a huge scale.

01:50:54.220 It was monumental in world history. It was monumental in the foundation of the, uh, uh, events that led to

01:51:00.880 the American nation state. There's not any doubt about that, but the, uh, founding of the country,

01:51:06.500 uh, 1776, 1787, the, the creation of the United States of America was a world historic event

01:51:14.620 in which the enlightenment ideals got instantiated in government institutions. And as a matter of fact,

01:51:20.920 within a century, slavery was gone. And you know what? The people who had been African chattel 1.00

01:51:25.720 became citizens of the United States of America, not equal citizens, not at first, it took another

01:51:31.060 century, but they became in the fullness of time, equal citizens of the United States of America.

01:51:36.760 The United States of America fought fascism in the Pacific and fought fascism in Europe and saved the

01:51:45.400 world. American democracy became a beacon to quote unquote, the free world. We stood down under threat

01:51:52.480 of nuclear annihilation, the horror, which was the union of Soviet socialist republics. We have had the 0.92

01:52:00.500 greatest transformation in the social status of a serfdom people, which was the, uh, what have,

01:52:05.880 what the emancipation affected in the creation of the Negro of the African American, probably that

01:52:11.680 you could find anywhere in world history, 40 million strong, the richest people of African descent

01:52:17.980 on the planet by far. This is a question of narrative. Are you going to look through the

01:52:24.140 lens of the United States as a racist, uh, genocidal white supremacist illegitimate force? Are you going 0.95

01:52:32.220 to see it for what it is, uh, which in the last 300 years is the greatest force for human liberty on the

01:52:39.380 planet? That's worth fighting about that. These people at the New York times lay down to a latter day

01:52:48.000 woke ideology and debase their country is despicable.

01:52:54.860 I am going to write that down and post it on my Instagram, on my Twitter, on my Facebook and send it 0.88

01:53:04.440 in to every school that tells me and my children, America is systemically racist. It's always been

01:53:11.960 racist. We need to apologize for our racism at every turn and is fundamentally an awful place. I love

01:53:20.240 everything you just said, Coleman. Why aren't the kids talking like that? Why isn't patriotism

01:53:26.720 taught anymore? Why? By the way, our new school makes the boys say the pledge, which I like, you

01:53:31.620 know, like when I was a kid, it was okay to celebrate Columbus day. It was okay to celebrate

01:53:36.060 the 4th of July. It was okay to say you loved America and its military and its foundational ideals.

01:53:41.780 And now I think thanks to guys like Colin Kaepernick, just saluting the flag or standing for the

01:53:48.360 anthem. Now you've got people explaining why they're standing. Not people explaining why they

01:53:53.980 knelt, but explaining why they're standing to respect our flag and everything that's been

01:53:58.680 sacrificed for it. Well, I don't think you have to teach patriotism. I think all you have to teach

01:54:04.040 is balanced world history. And a rational person will come to the conclusion that there is something

01:54:11.620 special about America. America is not your average country.

01:54:15.260 Um, there is a reason why it's the number one destination for black and brown migrants, 1.00

01:54:20.960 migrants in general, black and brown migrants in particular across the world. There's a reason why 1.00

01:54:26.200 I could win money betting all day that the average migrant from West Africa or East Africa or India, 0.68

01:54:31.960 if they have one destination in mind, it's here. That is not a coincidence. It's because there is

01:54:38.540 something about America that is especially open, um, liberal in the classical sense, and that those

01:54:45.880 values have had good consequences for the ability of diverse peoples from all across the world to ascend

01:54:54.040 from, uh, third world poverty to first world poverty to president of the United States. That is why

01:55:02.860 there are there, why there's nothing, why, why, when you hear rags to riches stories in America,

01:55:08.380 you don't even bat an eye. You take it for granted because it happens so often. Um, when we talk about

01:55:16.180 history, you don't have to, you don't necessarily have to teach patriotic history per se. What you have

01:55:22.500 to teach is global history, balanced history. Uh, a lot of people have no idea about the worldwide

01:55:27.940 institution of slavery, slavery in the Middle East and China going back thousands of years, uh, the

01:55:34.060 Aztecs, you know, so people conceive of it as somehow uniquely American sin, and they have no concept

01:55:40.880 of how, how commonplace cruelty and human bondage has been on across every corner of the earth since

01:55:50.640 antiquity. Um, and so the fundamental question is whether you compare America to

01:55:57.440 the ideal nation you can have in your mind based on your 2020 morality or whether you compare it to

01:56:07.020 other nations at this moment. I mean, right now, China is lecturing us about systemic racism

01:56:13.740 while committing something bordering on ethnic cleansing with, with the Uyghur Muslims. It's, 0.82

01:56:20.720 it's absolutely laughable. Um, and you know, just, there, there's a contradiction at the center of

01:56:28.160 it too. It's like, what other country can you, can you picture China or India or Turkey or Russia

01:56:34.820 having a 1619 project, even reflecting on their own history in any negative way whatsoever?

01:56:43.960 Can you picture them having a, uh, a book like, um, the, the, the Howard Zinn book people's history

01:56:51.000 of the United States, which was a bestseller in like the eighties or something. Can you, can you

01:56:56.020 picture a Chinese version of that, a Turkish version of that? No, it's because, and that in a sense speaks

01:57:05.040 to our commitment to self-criticism, to freedom of speech, which is a novel idea, uh, in the, in the,

01:57:14.840 in the long view of history. Um, and so, and so I think ultimately it is, it is an ignorance of

01:57:23.620 the, uh, the rest of the world that leads people to be unreflectively anti-America. And I think

01:57:31.520 I have a much easier time talking to immigrants about this kind of thing, uh, than I do people 1.00

01:57:39.520 who, who've been raised here for so long that they don't know that other places exist.

01:57:46.020 I love that. You don't have to teach patriotism. You just have to teach history, world history,

01:57:50.680 and people will get it. I've got to ask you one last thing that I've, I've, I've been struggling

01:57:56.120 to answer myself. And I don't, I'm really curious to hear what your answers are going to be on this.

01:58:00.780 This is like one of the main things I wanted to ask you. So I think it's pretty clear that I'm not

01:58:04.840 a wokester and that I don't buy into all this, you know, racial division BS. Um, but I, like most

01:58:12.600 Americans also see that there is still racism in the United States and take it on a case by case basis

01:58:18.760 to make up my own mind overall, in general, as a human in this country, and certainly as a white human

01:58:26.580 here, what can I do? And what can the listeners do if, if they want to, without buying into all that

01:58:34.680 other stuff, be an ally, how, how can we be good brothers and sisters to people of color and be

01:58:43.720 helpful and be open-minded and, and take into consideration that there is a history that we

01:58:50.480 all are dealing with in a way that's helpful and helps bring us together and forward?

01:58:57.600 Oh gosh, I don't know what to say, Megan. I, I would, I, the first thought my mind was be honest,

01:59:02.440 please don't, don't, uh, hold back, tell people what you really think. Uh, you want to be an ally.

01:59:08.940 Um, and, uh, that means be, be, have the courage to criticize, have the courage of your convictions

01:59:16.440 and such like that. But, uh, and I also want to say, let's make it a decent society for everybody.

01:59:24.220 And then a lot of these racial disparity questions would take care of themselves.

01:59:28.080 And we don't have to get disparities down to zero in order to avoid the, you know, food insecurity,

01:59:33.740 people who don't have a decent place to live, schools that don't work,

01:59:37.140 unsafe neighborhoods and things like that. Let's make it a better society for everybody.

01:59:40.800 But that's not really what you asked. You want, you want, you want advice about how to have your

01:59:44.400 integrity intact and not succumb to this nonsense. And yet at the same time, feel that you're on the

01:59:49.240 right side of history with respect to the racial questions. And I'm very interested to know what

01:59:53.480 Coleman is going to have to say about that. No pressure. Well, thank you, Glenn.

01:59:59.520 Commit yourself to reason. Always be skeptical of yourself and your own tendency to confirm preexisting

02:00:09.820 beliefs. That's always good advice for everybody. Um, try to remain open-minded. And that doesn't just

02:00:18.800 some people, people interpret that as be open-minded to liberal activist ideas. Sometimes seriously be

02:00:25.580 open-minded to everything. Um, but don't, but, but have standards for what you believe.

02:00:33.080 Um, listen, it's a, it's a very tough thing to negotiate and, you know, everyone has to negotiate

02:00:41.580 it in a, in a different way, depending on their individual circumstances. So I don't have,

02:00:47.640 I don't really have the one size fits all platitude that is going to, you know, superficially help

02:00:57.220 people, uh, with this issue, but ultimately, you know, everything that is good advice for a human

02:01:07.460 being pursuing a happy life and a pro-social existence on this planet is also good advice

02:01:13.500 with respect to the issue of race and race relations. This is not personal advice, but this

02:01:19.220 may be advice for the society. Perhaps we should be working toward unlearning race. And by that, I do 1.00

02:01:24.300 mean, uh, you know, intermarriage, uh, by that, I mean, uh, the adoption, uh, by, by that, I mean,

02:01:33.020 mixing and getting out of this, uh, constructed, uh, uh, socially reproduced fiction that we're really

02:01:46.020 different. We're not. Um, so I think that's really the only answer in the long run that we have to

02:01:58.800 lower the amount of importance that we give to the superficial features of our physical

02:02:04.540 presentation. Um, we should have friends, we should have neighborhoods, we should have schools,

02:02:09.700 we should have families that are integrated across racial lines to the point that in the fullness

02:02:15.600 of time, we would give no significance whatsoever. Now people will go ballistic in me talk. They'll call

02:02:22.520 me an assimilationist. They will, you know, but I think I'm not saying this from the point of view of 0.96

02:02:27.780 being a black person. I'm saying this from the point of view of being a human being. You two are a

02:02:31.860 national treasure. I'm so, so glad we had this conversation and I really hope we can continue it.

02:02:39.480 And I just, I do want to say everyone should really check out conversations with Coleman.

02:02:43.420 Coleman, I subscribed and I paid more than was necessary because I support and love you.

02:02:48.520 And it's an option on there. And, and Glenn show the Glenn show you can get, I, you can get it

02:02:53.140 on podcast or YouTube, but I usually watch them on YouTube. Well, we got patreon.com forward slash

02:02:57.760 Glenn show. We, we now have a crowdsourcing site. If people want to go and give me some support,

02:03:02.740 I will give you more than you want to sign up because there's going to be extra, I'm following

02:03:07.240 in Coleman's footsteps. It's about time. Well, that is a nice way of just telling someone you love them.

02:03:15.420 You love what they're doing and you're behind them. You can't, you know, too often we hear what

02:03:19.260 Twitter has to say about us and maybe looking at the Patreon revenues is a better way of gauging it.

02:03:25.080 You guys, thank you again. So much love to you both.

02:03:27.900 Thank you, Megan. Likewise, Megan.

02:03:29.280 That was amazing. Wasn't that amazing? Aren't you going to run right down that Glenn Lowry

02:03:36.200 answer and just think about it? That's how I felt when Dennis Prager said the other day,

02:03:39.560 and I said that, you know, the left has got the media and they control, uh, the big tech

02:03:44.060 and they control Hollywood and they control sports. What do conservatives control? And he

02:03:48.520 said, ourselves. So good. That's how I felt when Glenn spoke and Coleman with the patriotism,

02:03:55.400 right? You don't teach it. You just teach history. Yes. Hello. Love that. I'm learning

02:04:00.900 and being inspired. And I hope you feel the same. Um, before we go, I want to tell you that today's

02:04:05.240 episode was brought to you in part by pure talk USA, get unlimited talks text plus two gigs of data

02:04:11.360 for just 20 bucks a month, dial pound two 50 and say Megan Kelly for an additional 50% off your first

02:04:19.500 month. That is good. Thank you for listening to the program. Please go and subscribe. If you haven't

02:04:24.440 already, we'd love to have the direct relationship with you. Subscribe, download five-star rating.

02:04:29.640 If you're feeling really kind and generous and, uh, a review too, with possibly guest ideas,

02:04:35.360 thoughts on Coleman and Glenn and, uh, anything else you want to share. Loving the experience you guys

02:04:41.180 talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

02:04:49.400 The Megan Kelly show is a devil may care media production in collaboration with red seat ventures. 0.56

02:04:54.640 I'll see you soon.

02:05:11.540 I'll see you soon.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 16, 2020

Coleman Hughes and Glenn Loury on Race in America, Patriotism, and College Campuses ｜ Ep. 25

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript