Welcome to episode two hundred and forty one of the J Bp podcast. I mc Killop petersen, currently backstage in indianapolis. Dad is killing. This show in this. Pursued dad and renowned linguist doktor john MC quarter, exchanged, ideas on music, linguists, Virtue signalling language acquisition, woke ism race in america and whether language changes are world view. John MC water is an associate professor of english and comparative literature at columbia. University the author of over a dozen books, including losing the race self sir the charge in black america and our magnificent bastard tongue The untold history of english, he's also a regular contributor to the new republic and the atlantic. If you're, too, tired of ads visit jordan peters and dot, super casta com and sign up for the ad free version of this podcast for ten dollars a month

one hundred hours a year. You get perks like the ability to take part in key nice premium shone out, and first access to press l codes for tickets to shows plus no ads for them. asked sign up at jordan, be petersen dot super cast dot com. I hope you enjoy this conference At the. Hello. Everyone I'm pleased today to have with me professor doktor, John MC warder, who teaches linguistics american studies and music history, columbia, university, is contributing editor of the atlantic magazine and hosts the language pod, cod, asked lexicon valley, he's the author of over twenty books, that's a lot of books, some one language and someone race, most recent

the best selling nine nasty words which was released in early twenty twenty one and because one look a year. Isn't enough he's coming with a new one called woke racism. How a new religion is betraying black america should cause a lot of trouble. That's out october, twenty sixth, he is produced five. This is on language for the great courses series and appears regularly with plenary in a pod cast about race issues. The Glen show I first encounter doktor mcwhirter at an aspirin ideas, festival gathering in two thousand and eighteen spring, interviewed with bare wise and afterward. She asked me a rather difficult question, I'm very these two have you come to agree to talk, me today, and I am very much looking forward to our conversation me to join. so I'm going to start by revealing my ignorance of what I dont know about linguistics could fill a lot more books than you ve written, even though you ve written many and so curious about. Why? Why? If you could provide the,

watchers and listeners with a description of the field and its relevance and also perhaps why you got interested in it, attracted by its nerve to devote your life to it. Linguistics is a cover term for an awful lot of perspectives, but it's not about translation and it's not about learning how to speak languages about analyzing language as a scientific object, and a lot of it is a lot like biology, and so we analyzed how language changes. What are the physiological processes? that allow us to produce languages and allow us to understand it. How is it that children learn languages certain magic that anybody can perceive in the way it has?

and with so little explicit to dillard's linguists study that and there are all sorts of other applications. There is linguistics and how to teach a computer to understand and even produce language. There is language and the social sphere, language as part of a cultures anthropology. What probably would surprise many people for very understandable reasons is that what I just mentioned is not my main focus I can talk. if those things on t v so to speak, because the general public is very interested in those things, but I'm actually a language change language contact center. What interests me is why a language is different now than it was five hundred years ago and what happens when languages come together and create new languages and how that process.

Operates. But when you do linguistics in the media is expected to be kind of chief cook and cooking bottled water and a lot of what is discussed in the media. Bilingual is what we call socio linguistics, which is great stuff there. People who really specialise in it, I'm just a popularize or of that particular sub, feel but that's a quick cooks tour. What linguistic susan. What in the world I'm doing it, and so what are your thoughts on that remark? the facility of children to learn languages. I read I think it was a russian psychologist, sk, I made a claim he had this hypothesis. We call the zone of peace. Example development which is I suppose the psychological place. You are when you're learning something new and our engrossed by something like the idea of flow and the gods. Ski said that adults. Naturally speak, their children attic

apprehension level that slightly exceeds their current grasp. They seem to do that automatically, even though that's an unbelievably complex thing to do in that drags children along no to further the development of their language, the seams, an instinctive instinctual and so, and what are your thoughts on propositions like chomsky that there's something like a a biological mechanism of specialised biological mechanism that underlies our ability to to learn lange. to produce it is. Is that also under your purview I wouldn't call it under my purview, but I find it very interesting to watch kind of like you, rubber neck at a car accident, the idea that there is a universal grammar that we're born with and that underlies all languages as utterly fascinating. Only a true genius such as chomsky could have come up with it. But the odd thing is that when you actually tried to find what these universal grammar specifications are, they could plausibly be encoded in our genes and be subject to natural selection. Frankly, since the nineteen sixties, I think.

Most people who practice that way of looking at things would be hard put to tell those who are in the club of what has been discussed. What we know now that we didn't know, then what would be useful for people in other fields to know I find it to be a sub feel of true genius is treading water and allow them would not want to hear that and they're going to say that I don't know enough about to say it, but you know frankly, I think I do because I pay a lot more than to do what they do than many people might think, and Wishing that war would come out of, it then does, and so I don't think it's that there is a grammar tree of some sort, even if encoded in some abstract way that people are born with the evidence of that wonderful notion simply hasn't been borne out. But it's obvious that there is some sort of genetic specifications for the acquisition of in the use of language, because if there weren't once we

wouldn't be the only species who do with their clearly something. But I hate to say whatever it is- is much less interesting than their being this very intricate and suspiciously computer science like universal grammar in our brains. Now we got nevyedovsky is always very interesting, and what he's getting at is that humans learn to talk when people around them are chattering, chattering away in such a way that, for example, in adult learner of the language, finds absolutely confounding. You just listen to the stream of things going by. Even if you ve been carefully instructed in the language that grand nexus of frustration- and so certainly acquisition is not teaching children word by war.

by were but acquisition is also not children, filling out some sort of sentence, parson grammar that they were born with it. So it's something it's much less precise than that. Nevertheless, what's amazing a universally it works, you know all out into the normal human beings learn to speak fluidly fluently idiomatic lee and without ever obviously that's programmed in some way. Well, you see one of the things that quite remarkable. If you look at people who are quite intellectually impaired to people who suffer from down syndrome, for example, they also pick up land extraordinarily well announced very remarkable. So let me It's really suddenly. There are artists. Kids have trouble with language in autism, especially in its more profound forms, is an extremely serious neurological condition, but it's really is, marketable- that something as cod lively, demanding as language and specialised two human beings, as it is, is, is so deep we embedded in us that that even intellectual impairment doesn't it

cases doesn't interfere with its acquisition. It's amazing is clearly localised in certain ways and chomsky ends of talk about a language organ and I don't think they necessarily mean that its in any one play is. But it is clear that there are certain parts of the brain where languages generated there. where language ends up, even if those parts of the brain didn't evolve for that purpose, and yet it can be doing their job, even if the person is quite an air carbon leakage shows that language is a thing in some way. The question is exactly what that thing is, I think, link was forgotten those are two that now than they ever have because will learn more. I wonder I have another besides if a question that I guess is essentially is one of this I suggest that I had the good fortune to know at harvard whose name I unfortunately forget what the social psychologist very interested in the idea of basic level categorization, which was concept I haven't, come across in one of these he told me he had worked on was the notion that

objects in the world name mobile objects in the world pop out at us at a certain level of resolution. So, for example, a child will learn the very short work cat just a pointer to an individual animal rather than the more generic species level. What would you say perception? And I wonder if the grass or of language in some sense. Is that- Chomsky was searching for some sense secondary, Consequence of something more like a perceptual grammar, because you know one of the things they I researchers have been. Founded by since the early sixties, is the fact that the world is very, very difficult to perceive much more difficult to perceive than we thought, and yet it erase itself in front of us in all of these name, abul and graspable objects, and and and and and so maybe the grammar is, is in bed. The linguistic grammar is embedded in the act of perception in some

and then there's a linguistic scaffold. On top of that, I don't know that You know and absurd idea, but of course there is labeling for one thing: just the fact that, after a while, a child learns that cat is not just the cat in the house, but has this concept of tat to which you apply the label cat? That's something that human language does to an extent that unprecedented anywhere in the EU. I'm a kingdom is a quantum leap, but then what you're saying seems to be true. If my money were on it, I would say that one universal perceptual specification that there might actually be genetically set in our brains is a difference between roughly nouns verbs and quiet, it's what we call adjectives, and so there are some things that are more likely to be labeled by a language as nouns like a cat is not going to be a language that has a verb that has to be like a cat or you know, to pr, etc. It's going to be a cat, and there are certain things that are more likely to be encoded as actions, and there are certain things that are more likely be encoded as qualities such as colors

Those three things are the bedrock. Now, once you get to propositions and adverbs and prefixes versus affects us all of that is up for grabs. Those things tend to be at the phenomenal upon the very basic spit. Yes, a universal grammar probably does entail acting all linguistic there's, a difference between nouns in for some very few, Which seemed to contravene that the exceptions to prove the war and then there's also qualities and then beyond their there are many different schools of thought anything That's fundamentally a separation b b between something things and actions yeah. Yet that seems to be one of the very basic things right down to certain brain structures that seem to be sensitive to it. There is a difference between an action and a thing in the brain seems to be ready for that. That might have something to do with what we might call You are eugene universal ground, so now you I read, and it was on Wikipedia. So that's another indication, my ignorance, that you are also known, yellow,

fair enough, you know if you need to get informed about something, quick, quick, that's a great sorrow she has definitely and and and isn't that fantasy for all of us that you are also known as a critic of the superior wharf hypothesis, which is really not their hypothesis and all, but it has come to be known by their names down the lesson that hypothesis correct me. If I'm wrong is in its strong form, at least the notion that land which structures thought to such a degree that pits of different languages have qualitatively different thoughts in some sense, and that isn't something that sits particularly well for you, and I think there are also some political and practical implications of that that belief and

also, the criticism of it is, is any of that off base, or no that's quite on base. The idea that the language that you speak gives you a certain pair of glasses that you see the world through is very very attractive. I remember learning it when I was an undergraduate about the hopi native americans and it's something that you want to be true, but the evidence just doesn't support it. If you look at it in terms of lots of languages and what the implications of this would be- and so certainly language does influence thought in certain ways it's been shown, for example, in in russian it's hard for us to even imagine this unless we're russian. There is no word for blue. They have a word for dark blue. They have a word for

white blue. There is no word for just blue and it turns out that if you subject them to a highly artificial experiment, you can show that russians do have a glimmer, more sensitivity to the difference between dark and light blue than either you or I do, and the only reason for that. But after the the language is not something about russian culture and the color blue. There are many things like that that are fascinating in themselves, but the way it shared with the public makes it seem if you learn italian you're, seeing the world in an italian way because of the way the grammar works because of the way the vocabulary sutton, some chopped up the world and the problem

That is that there are many languages that are very, very busy that mark every little job until of existence, and they tend to be spoken by small indigenous groups. It's very easy to see those small indigenous groups and to say look at how sophisticated their languages there, picking up on every little sparkle of experience in a way that say English, which is a relatively telegraphic language compared to those doesn't. But the problem is, then you have to look at lang just like mandarin chinese, which is much more telegraphic than english in many ways. If you apply the grand old media morphine perspective to a language like mandarin chinese, the chinese end up looking kind of dim because the language marked so little. Nobody wanted to go that way. There was one unfortunate psychologist: do actually tried to.

In that way quite innocently and is still being burned in effigy today, and he wrote the article during the reagan administration, because the truth is that if your language doesn't have a whole lot in it, if your language as a whole, lot in it or somewhere in between the evidence, is that all human beings think in basically the same way, except for these tiny shades of difference that a psychology experiment can preez out. But that's not life itself And so I think that people end up using morphine ism as a way to be a westerner who shows that they understand that non westerners or cognitively sophisticated disgrace. But the problem is the same thing and of insulting half of the world's people. Ok, so you touched on the political ramifications of the hypothesis. Well, it seems in some sense a naive biologic. We need because mean we, we ve only

speaking evolutionary speaking for perhaps a couple of million years, which is a long time, but it's not that long. Given our sixty million year mammalian heritage let's say, and and all and everything. It came before that upon which our perceptual capabilities have been predicated, and so the idea that language could effect. Something is basic, let's say, as color perception seems to me to be on the face of it quite absurd. I mean I'm pretty convinced by Arguments, for example, that our capacity to distinguish between green and red is a consequence of our ancestors fruit eating prime It essentially an yes exactly and You can't mess around with something that deep by painting a surface of linguistic ability over the top of it, at least that's how it seems to me. I think, that's correct and we face in many ways, regardless of where we are the same sort of problems we have to get along with others. We have to eat. We have to quell territory, let's say, and so there

lot more that unites us perceptually incur end of lee than there is that divides us. There is, and if you really look at different languages, you see that you have to celebrate what unites us, rather than what divides us on the pain of being really anti scientific, their languages of new guinea, for example. Where it doesn't happen to be a difference between eating drinking and smoking in terms of the language, they have a word that we would translate roughly as ingest and they use all those thanks based on the wharf in analysis, They are not as sensitive to the difference between eating and drinking in smoking, something as we are, and so you end up implying that they're kind. Of course, whether they're kind of crude, and if you look at the group themselves, they are

interested in food and varieties of foods and ways of cooking as we are? You find that sort of thing over and over so I wrote the language hoax because it really started to stick in my craw that a lot of people end up believing this media kind of warfare morphine ism, as opposed to academic psychological warfare aneurysm, which is erect the bleak true- and I was I was bemused- I'm glad up got around more than I expected, and it seems that now be just contributing a con side to an argument. There used to be only pro ones for the general public support. see how it all pans out. So now, when you came, study linguistics. You are also extremely interested in something else. You teach american studies, you also teach music, but what what element of music I teach colombia has its core curriculum, where every student has to take certain courses in.

kind of great books, tradition as a music course for that everybody goes through one semester of the masterpieces of west music. So what it really is is good old school. What uncle great music clapping for credit. It teaches you out to appreciate complex music and the course, as you might imagine, is undergoing some changes in recent years, but it basically takes you from gregorian chance through roughly philip class and Many of us would add jazz at the end, so I have been doing that you are you in listed in the musical element of language, because it carries a lot of the emotional wait right, so This there's the just a linguist, and, if semantic and let's say- and you know perfectly well that structure, the same sentence with two different intonations and mean exactly the opposite. You do that when you're being ironic and so what was was love of music? Does that What would you say? Color you're, you're

linguistic theorizing in any sensors that a separate endeavour, no The music loving me is a different person to the extent that there is music as you're putting it in language. That has not happened to be my area. The best person on that is re, jack and off. Somebody who actually very good proposals against the chomsky, an idea to, but I talked to him. I know about him. I should talk to him a librarian withdraw can't you see that sculpture behind me this thing. Yes, I made that thirty years ago it's called the meaning of music and it was the consequence of about years meditation on what it was that music was doing to us and why we russo attracted some. That's a remarkable phenomena I have here. Thank you. It is a weird it's a very weird thing and just run my initial hypothesis is by you, and so I music is off regarded as non representation. Lard form a journalist up to my house this week, Rex murphy and he said to me this was a quote, and I dont remember where he derived from that all art.

aspires to the condition of music. I've heard she has a lovely phrase, and so what, when I started to think about music, I was thinking about it because it was essentially, it was engaging experience that was immune from rational criticism. Not really so it had this intrinsic meaning that could not be subverted by criticism, and so it struck me as something extraordinarily powerful ice to understand at that time that the world in really deep sense is made out of nested patterns and those patterns we perceive as objects and actions, but but what they are in space and time, and that music is the most represented in form of of art, because it rep since the harmonious interplay of patterns, and then we pattern yourself to the music and and find out, would you say, existential engaging in a very profound sense anyway? That's my music theory,

oh well without his help and the easy version of that is a good beat because no good be implies a primal sand a certain predictability and therefore a certain truth. I think you can see in a lot of people a sense that a good beat in the way you move your body to which equals a kind of true because of the consistent look, how it unites us. Yet it brings people a clear signal to using getting harder because longer line, and so lot of teaching people to appreciate classical music is to teach them how to hear it at some. other than just this endless desultory string of whatever this pattern in it too. When you don't really appreciate it, unless you just learn how to breathe and taken the longer yeah. So when you, when you listen to our great classical pc up a bach concerto or something like that, haha have to listen to it multiple times before you understand it definitely, so what I said in my role as you, Don't really know it until you ve heard about seven times that, if its challenging use against black right

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purchase you make the black rifle help support veteran an first responders causes, go to black rifle coffee, dot, com and use promo code, jordan for ten percent of coffee, coffee gear apparel, and when you sign up for a new coffee club subscription, that's black rifle coffee, dotcom with promo code. Jordan for ten percent off black rifle coffee, supporting veterans, america's coffee Ok, ok, so I did know if that was my. I'm sure there are some musical super genius. So don't need that length of exposure to get it, but I don't get it well, maybe two or three with some people, but to me I want to drink it in unites, it would add phones and that there are three the and that's becoming very old fashioned, but that's the only way that I can really do you yeah. It's amazing to asia. How you expose yourself to continually to two that pattern and then you need a certain degree of familiarity with it

so it still retained some novelty and then you really fall in love with it. And then, if you listen to its a tremendous number of times in some sense, you tend to exhausted, although the greater the piece of music and, in my experience, and maybe this is a marker for depth and quality and music, the greater the piece of music the longer it takes to exhausted yeah if it's a really great piece of music, it's never exhausted. My experience. But yes, that's true. If it's an ok piece of music on the level of say dog yielded twenty twenty one, and then you ve kind of gun ass. You look twenty years later and you realize, while that fell out of the rotation, and you sort of realise why, as apparent as opposed to the things that never fall out of the rotation, because it sensible, when you're always finding something different or whatever you initially bound. The feeling is such a kick it such a mine blow that you want it over and over becomes shirt.

There is almost a religious, yes at others yesterday. There is definitely that, and we could talk about that. More till one of the things I also find absolutely staggering about music is how It can have that long, lasting and gripping form in such an less variety of genres and how that greatness in depth can manifest itself in each of those genres regardless but the genre is and that something. That's very difficult to understand something as simple often say as country in western music, something like hank Williams, which is very straightforward in some ways. Still to me has that quality of inexhaustible lady and in it. So it yeah. What what amazes me- and if I, if I were more profound about these things, were more interested in bringing different parts of myself to get around studied its harmony because Melanie is one thing you have: melody is a lullaby, any human being is given that rhythm, especially consistent rhythm,

sure that we are genetically programmed by accident to appreciate that harmony is a funny thing and I think that people who for one and are another either training or temperament or both feet. Harmony and get harmony think that all human beings, your harmony, the way they do. No, it's a very odd kind of ear, and I find myself wondering what is it about me? jerk and minor, and then everything else and the fact that if your music listener you you associate, those things was certain feelings. You often find other people don't have the same feelings about the ones that you do but yeah it's a weird thing. This thing called music. You associate a certain combination of notes with nostalgia. For me, the flatheads sets me. It reminds me of the past why it very interesting things. Why would remind you of anything when it's something that didn't exist when homo sapiens emerged?

the naming stuff. I had a master student when I taught at harvard who did her thesis on the meaning of music from biological perspective in one of the things she came across, and I don't remember whose thoughts these words was, that deep base I reminders of large animals hi notes, reminders of small animals. This is obviously a partly a partial explanation, obviously ended me more me. Your tones are more maternal and comforting and minor tones or more discordant and reminiscent of emotional upset. Something show that feels exactly it's so that an idiot that ties in in part into the emotional aspect of life. Which itself and, and it all those things We pick up and but animals, and it means that the question is in a week what on call europeans. I know it's weird for me to say that, but I think people understand we hear major and minor.

Low and high. That way, I wonder if someone and indigenous person who had never heard music like that before, let's go to iran giants, not call that anymore, but the western have somebody from there. I wonder if they would hear that way, and I can I guess the low notes being associated with the elephant in the high knows being associated with a hummingbird. That's probably universal cause. That's true about language law are, is big, its small than that. However, the other parts. I wonder if all of that is just arbitrary european stuff that we pick up from starting from listening to mother, goose, songs and then going on This has been studied and I have not noticed into what those people were looking. Yes, Probably someone knows this and we're just ignorant about it, but seldom so that so so that's good. That's all fascinating american studies. Now you also were educated in american studies and you teach american study, so so the very wide range of teaching interest, and so,

tell me about american studies and what your teaching and how he got captivated by it. Oh you know, honestly. American studies to me was a backdoor thing that I became ass only interested in the eighties after I got my yea, because I thought of it as a way of studying in a systematic way, american popular culture of the late nineteenth through lake twentieth centuries, which obsesses me to this day. I'm a huge fan of the movies. The radio shows the comic strip the carpet. The music I knew I could get along living in nineteen- thirty six. Hopefully you know right but living making, six and knowing everything that was going on better than I think many people could just because I'm sure it's not that. I think nineteen thirty six was better. But I just like that stuff. And if you do american studies, you get to read books by historians and philosophers and film scholars about those things. I got a masters degree in it at an. Why you, at a time when the programme in american studies for most of the people in it.

was kind of a night school and the truth is, I sense where you might very understandably going, which is that I have the masters and american studies and and forms. Why I'm a media commentator about racist use these days but actually know the american studies degree. I wrote a masters thesis on scott joplin opera minister and then left behind and got into linguistics, which had no relationship to any of that at all. It was six I found was where I needed to live as opposed to american studies, where I got to read an awful lot of great books, and I don't regret it. I really enjoyed it, but it was really just a path. It says when I was in my my early twenties yeah. I did. I did wonder about that that relationship and thought that there might be some connection. What is it about the mid thirties that fascinates you so much it's er, it's looked good

it was it was a terrible classes, racist, sexist time, everybody smoking cigarettes is not that. I think that it was somehow better. But if you think about it, the nineteen thirties, the fashions the people looked good. Their hair looked good. The cars looked good, the music had a really sweet spot in terms of how a swing ban sound of evil. or that an early jazz band sounded, and then there is an awful lot of great love for less literature that thirty chest. He added If you had a great many great error, the forties like gonna lose it, but the thirties was just great feeling. I just want to walk around in it for seven days and then come back. So all right. Let me ask you some more questions. So, as you develop your career as an early professor, you stop being an assistant professor and you are Sorry, I it's just escaped my mind, you, where were you first corners a professor at cornell, and then you, you went to the manhattan institute, a conservative, think tank, and I did

Yeah, ok, so, ok! So obviously that require some explanation, and so why one of the things I kind of wonder about, maybe is maybe you could shed some light on his, what what a track you to conservatism, to the degree that you were attracted in what is conservatism now, if in trying to puzzle this out cycle, We are not thinking about it so much politically, because you know, I think, there's room for liberal thought and for conservative thought, and the dialogue between those two is absolutely necessary, but What was it about conservatism that attracted you, because it's not it's not an obvious choice. No, no! It was really a matter of an eccentricity about the way race has been discussed in this country in the mainstream. For a very long time, I was raised by a mother who was a teacher of social work in the nineteen seventies, who actually taught a course called racism. One oh won. My mother taught me what is today.

woke line on how race works in the things that she taught me were correct and I have to this day never voted republican. I'm a Democrat. I am alive. Well, I always say I am a black liberal of about nineteen sixty, but I found, as I came of age there as I analyze the socio political things happening around me. That concerned race, that I didn't agree with what was supposed to be the default kinds of assumptions, and I found it my assumptions, which I think would have you know endeared me farley to the end of a lazy and ninety six

were considered repulsive, inappropriate, naive or conservative and so the manhattan institute? I didn't choose it. A lot of people think that are much more self directed than I am a think tank taps. You I'd, barely able to think I was, but they were doing work on race in new york city and beyond that I agree with and what they were saying was not black people are off bugs and criminals and they need to shape up. They were working with, for example, corey booker, who was the mayor of newark them on prisoner re entry programmes. They were really trying to do good work for black people and I didn't see any other think tank. That was doing anything like that and they summoned make the men had instituted a conservative, think tank, but they ve always been hospitable to an extent to Democrats I was not the

one there. But understandably, while I was there- and I was therefore a good long time, a lot of people thought that meant that I was a conservative republican words. It's not that my views, if anybody were the anybody, were to bother to read the work that I've been doing for what I hate to say. It is twenty years now they see. I dont disagree with any of the things that you would consider to be the liberal orthodoxy, except when it comes to a certain plangent view of race relations, where the idea is that the proper black thing to do is to cry weakness rather than look for solutions. I dont get. And I know that my civil rights forebears wouldn't have gotten that either, but that's considered a conservative take only because, what's consider the mainstream take on racist moves so far to the radical left Select, let's unpack that a bit. So I want I'd like see. I kind of look at all of the things that you are. Discussing in some sense, as outsider, because these are fun.

Mentally american issues, although not entirely, and I'm a canadian and we have our problems, but that we don't exactly the same problems that you have in the united states, and so I look it's I'm looking out this from. Outside to some degree in trying to understand it. What do you want is this set of assumptions in more detail that that perturb view and whitey. Let's start with that this. What is the set of assumptions about the real about race relations? In the? U s that that perturb, you well as one main assumption, which is that it's the job of the shall we say, woke black person to focus on racist obstacles to black success and a proportion that racism, be it social or systemic, is a conclusive obstacle to general black

Success rather than an impediment that you can get around and then there's an extension from that that racism of both of those kinds is so oppressive that it is the defining experience of being a black person, and so it means that if you are a black person in your writing, be it fiction or nonfiction or opinion. Your focus is supposed to be always and forever racist oppression, if you're not doing that, you're not often take an ear, dissociated yourself from blackness in some way, and I find that as a as a martyr, sorry kid who has a lot of interest. I've always found that extremely confining. Since I get an adolescent, I realize, while I'm expected to be this way

citizen focused person, maintaining a wariness of white. Socially, that has not been necessary since about five years before I was born, and I think that it is a cloak that people put on, because human beings seek comfortable cloaks to put on it, becomes a cent. Of being part of a tribe, but it has a way of departing from what reality actually necessitates an I have just not been able to, gracefully allow that sort of thing to define my life or to pretend to believe in those things. And so when I was around them. How old am I, when I start to pop in my early thirties? I was at berkeley. First was cornell, then was berkeley, then was the manhattan institute and at u c berkeley, there was a disc n

racial preferences were discontinued. The idea was that there were no longer going to be different standards for allowing blackened latino students to be admitted. Then why an asian students and the way this was talked about was as if all black people are poor, as if the idea was that you don't change standards even for people who have grown up hard when actually most black students at berkeley by then were very middle class and the absolute Different- and I just couldn't remained silent. I remember the hardest thing for me. Was that. There would be a white professor who would come and lean in my doorway and star star. You know saying all of the usual pious sorts of things about race that I don't think truly cohere, such as implying that racism defines my entire existence, and I was expected to just sit there or not. They really thought that any black person thought that way, and I thought no you're missing me completely many many black people, we'll miss read by whites. While I was having a different version of it,

got weary of it, and so I very circuitous lee and not as deliberately as many people think I started writing about these things. I thought at first I was just going to put out one and a half yelps, so that people would know how I felt and then go on being a linguist only, but for various his reasons, that's not what happened- and here I am talking to you about when you have this new book, walk racism, Oh great well woke racism and how a new religion is betraying block america so gay. So that's, that's cool! the title, I mean it, I'm sure it was very carefully chosen and wikipedia and for me that you're, formerly atheistic and so which may or may not be relevant to our discussion, but its very interesting to me that you pick that as part of the title, why why Why do you believe that? Why why these emphasis on a new religion and and and what does that

mean exactly well. You know we're at a point where the kinds of police that I'm talking about about black people are no longer held as an opinion. It's at the point where a certain kind of person lives. These believes in a way that is so impervious to any kind of reasonable discuss that you start to notice that it really is a matter of religion in the and particularly of abrahamic religions, rather than opinion in there all sorts. What's the what's the difference between religious belief in oh and mere opinion? In your estimation, it is that many religions require that at a certain point, you suspend disbelief and stop relying on conventional ratiocination and logic. There's a point

at which you're supposed to have faith and believe in miracles of some sort and its at the point where, when it comes to race, there are things that one is supposed to insist on and believe, regardless of whether they correspond to reality or even any sense of justice. One in christianity is supposed to be dedicated to showing that you have faith in India just within the religion that I'm talking about. The cardinal point is that you show that you know that racism exists just that you know that it exists. Now what you gonna do about. It is irrelevant whether-

what you're showing actually is racism is irrelevant. The fact is that you knew you were supposed to be looking for and only that imperatives its ding dong, as it sounds, explains a lot of the things that we ve seen especially lately. There is real jump in the rails after summer. Twenty twenty would even before that, and it means that a lot of people look at what goes on with the re seen in the united states- and I know there's an they don't extent there is that in canada to you, whatever you see, these sorts of things have can you see brilliant people making arguments that don't make any sense and utterly despising those who disagree with them as if they were heretics, were chosen deliberately didn't, because what we're seeing, even though these are people who are usually very secular in theirself conception, it's a religion. This is exactly the kind,

person who sent galileo into exile a very very long time ago, and the people back then often didn't think of themselves as religious. It was just considered. Truth. Weren't means with that same kind of thought, even if that the word is applied, and it makes the reason I'm putting it. That way is not just to noise people by calling them religious, although I think it will annoy them and also annoying actual religious experts who will say that I'm stepping outside of my lane- which I most definitely am. But all of this stuff only makes sense. If you realise that these people are religious and they have to be treated as parishioners and not as people who are up for an argument I've had a number of people make the same case to me. Recently very profound in my estimation, so I wonder, a few ideas by in and see what you think. So I thought long time about the religious endeavour. Let's say from the psychological perspective trying to unpack.

And its related, in some sense to the idea of depth, and so, if you think Stories littered there stories. It's a great works of literature. For that matter and lesser works, we all have this intuition that some stories are shallow and they might be entertaining, but their shallow and some stories our deep and we have the same sense in music for that matter. But so we have this. Natural sense of depth and part of what that is. It too, is something like place in the axiomatic structure of propositional thinking. So something is, deep if a lot of other things, you think, depend on it and it shallow. If you can dispense with that- and it doesn't do much to your underline content of architecture so that don't seem reasonable so far, very much you, ok, ok and then then I would say that there is a set of experiences that are universally

even more or less that occur when our deeper beliefs are challenge and an that threatens the way that we construe the world and our ability to act in that threatens us with nihilism. Threatens us chaos? It's it's no trivial matter that happens. often when here too for supper, cultures come into contact with one another. Definitely so resold worlds can move, would not occurrence, okay, so and then I would say that the set of emotions that are associated with the movement of deep beliefs, are what we describe. Wouldn't we describe religious experience, and this is part of the reason. I've had a number of conversations with famous aid, its and very smart people, I mean hair harris for harris for ample, is extraordinarily smart person and I'm familiar with richard dawkins, where continual dense work. These people are are far from foolish, but they missed the point to me to some degree from

Making saw even scientifically speaking because they treat religion, as if it's a set of abstract proposition, spoke this material structure of the world and and that's usually how the argument with religious people is framed in their often foolish enough to accept that initial framing, but there's a lot of phenomena that fall into the religious domain that have nothing to do with propositional propositional truth, we have already had a conversation about music and music has often been used across many. cultures for sacred purpose: and part of the reason for that is the emotional state that is capable of invoking witches thing, like all the deepest level and also Stability to unite people in harmony, let's say and in dance and all of that, and so there's

escaping the reality of the religious instinct, and so here's the point I'm trying to make with all that to some degree. So imagine this think about this for a second, so there's a statement in the new testament that we should render. Unto god, what is god's and see unto Caesar what is Caesar's and you couldn't find and you'd be press to find a single statement ever uttered by any one that had a more remarkable effect, on the development of political systems, because in some non trivial manner the idea that State and church should be separated is justified by that but so its deadly statement. But I also think it might be true, psychologically and then We don't have an explicit territory marked out psychologically and socially for the sacred in so that would be for the deepest things. Then, what happens. Is that things that should know not be so deep start to take on exactly that aspect, it. Is this with one one observation,

I've been talking with someone I really admire. His name is Jonathan patio and he's one of the deepest thinkers I've ever encountered in the religious domain and his wealth in postmodern, you spell his last name, p, a g g. you got there french, canadian catholic turning He has turned russian orthodox icon carver, that's part of this backroom anyways. He made a very interesting comment in a talk I was watching on the weekend about tom, false gods, let's say He talked about the danger of the idea of inclusive eighty when its elevated to the highest place or or port in the deepest bracelets, and so, if the purpose of All organisations becomes radical, inclusive anti, so that's the uniting factor. Then this specific point of all those organizations, is instantly threat. And so Part of the problem here is that what should be lower in the higher

The values is put in the higher place inappropriately produces all sorts of social catastrophe, so you see TAT the the hard part here is that, it makes. You feel, like rousseau was correct, that we'd be better off at small groups of people, say about two hundred people living on the side of a river and there is some sort of religion- probably animist, but it isn't part of the war and worth of existence, because people have a sense of purpose. People have a sense of warmth. People have a sense of what you might call the sacred in that it's your group, and you know everybody and your brother and you're an uncle and you're a has and that's what you are, there's nothing extra central, that's gonna happen to anybody, and I hear from a couple of people who study hunter gatherer groups that that's true of hunter gatherer, There's no such thing as a feeling of anna me

you say living in the collar arch, but then, once The further you you start to have this need for something larger, which I fully understand, and there are many people who have said that this new woke religion I think it really is. One is something that comes as a replacement, for what would have been ordinary, even if just broke christianity among the same people in nineteen. Fifty. I and I myself. I have religion for me what people get out of religion I get out of, and this is going to be it's going to be taken wrong. So. to put it carefully. I get it musical theater and mean that I'm really into eliza monopoly. It's not grant. Old, ladys in dresses and things like that, it's actually the primal thing of life being set to music including its regularities and its harmonies and proper culminating in people all doing things together, partly in rhythm and singing in big harmony to me,

although I know that isn't real, it seems to give life a kind of a transcendental meaning and, to me bad, is that our tools like church, ok, so that so that all extremely interesting, but but what one of the things that most interesting to me about? What you just said is that you also felt com, two interjected, it isn't real now, obviously, musical theatre is not ok. Let's talk about that for sick. If I've got trouble with this sort of thing, when I've been in terror, aid. Let's say about my beliefs, many times in the past, so when you say, something like that. It begs the question: what mean by real right. It's not like what wait a second, and this is something I talked about with some harris. So here's appears a weird thing or dusty, skis novels despite the fact that their fictional more real than a purely objective account of someone's day or less real, because

definitely not they never happened, but it is a fact. It never happened, doesn't make them not real, and so then we haven't annulling channel. Because they're channeling something underlying about the human spirit and experience or you may well, let's, while low. Let's look at it this way, so let's say I I took for remarkable people, and I I do still down their biography and then I made a matter biography about one great person that incorporated and united. All those biographies would be closer to the reality of greatness. Obviously, we have to decide what reality What about that? That's the thing I hope you're, not my writing. Is it so interesting what you said because on one hand, on the one hand you are deeply gripped by this art? Artistic and theatrical representation and you, poor jeddak about that

and- and you also think of it as something at least personally- that's deep and profound and meaningful enough to describe it in at least cause. I religious terms and then the critical mind comes up and says yeah, but that's not real, and I think well, that's like the guy in the movie cabin. The kid on the shoulder whose watching, pinocchio and saying well, you know these are drawings- and none of this is real. It's like him. Well That's not so obvious that none of it is real because to some degree it depends on what you mean by real. and why are you so sure that the child being grip That isn't more aware of reality than your rationality as in it might be part of reality to expand science and consider- and even on a certain level believe in these idealisations. These were fractions of what actually happens in real life. Death That is something that deserves, place within our cognitive than well, because marines people dirt something is gripping you

obviously, because you love music and then any you and you related this story, and so on stage is being portrayed various modes of being in some compelling way and music companies that to fill in the context, in some sense, that's lacking when the frictional? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and so I am not so sure that it's to me that There is more reality in literature. In a very profound sense, then there is in the fraction in view of much of the scientific enterprise and infirm. Four buncher reasons me It isn't obvious to me at all that science can truly guide our actions, because we have to make values months. But when you watch a great theatrical performance gripping, theatrical performance, you're being formed as to how to perceive and act, which is a thing to be informed about, and you doing it collectively you do to music, and then we

I've watched many rational content of sex. Suggests essentially especially penta, dismay the whole creative enter payment enterprise, which also gripped you with regard to. thirties, as sort of epic cognitive. Phenomenon and yes and its that's not right. That's not only wrong. That's really deeply backwards, It's way way more important than we think it is and its more real than how couldn't united if it isn't real well. What do you mean? I real? You know he and I were extended to the rock concert. Rejecting probably younger people could relate to and I I'd stand up. if that is the music form. Doesnt grab me as much but its clear that people are feeling the same thing that I'm talking about. That seems to be almost human universal to the point that, to the extent that their human groups were music,

place very little role, and I hear that there some and they don't have anything that you'll call theatre. It's just some, it's not the human norm. Most human beings have some then, along these lines out, they have store, is agreed on a half day all lorries, and once you have enough people, you have something that we would call performance, even if in small groups. Everybody participates in the performance, but that's even more of the same thing that we're talking about the idea that europe ass of audience is something that happens, particularly in the west, rather late in the game that you sit and clap. Eugene usually people are more involve everybody is, but that is even more of what you're talking about yet I would say that Those things are real and in it sense and I'm not just trying to get back to work racism to push the book. But I'm really thinking about this. My book is about people Actually, I'm known for saying things black people don't like a lot of people aren't gonna like woke racism, but woke racism is gonna, be aided by a lot of white people to the woke person. Thinking about in that book is a white guy and the white

in that case is not somebody who I can ate, because I see that there is a benefit that a person gets to this village and even when it doesn't necessarily make if we may pardon the term since the person can't help it. I see where they're coming from an they frustrate me often, but it worries me that, because religion is, let's go, let's call it for our purposes, you're different kind of reality. It can conflict with what an oppressed group needs in order to be most comfortable and happy in a complex society, you ok. So let's talk about that for a firm in one of the things you too me earlier on was that I think I dont, want to put words in your mouth. Absolutely. So if I've got this wrong, please correct me. It seems to me that you were Plying, if not outright, stating that the collectivist ethos of much of that discourse was

your fearing with your self regard as an individual. But even more importantly, your ability to like manifest yourself appear as and be treated as an individual, and so we're lookin, we're looking here, at least to some degree, for what might constitute a reasonable uniting principle and one of the reasons that I've been opposing the collectivist thought that's character, Stick of the insistence that group identity is the primary phenomenon, say socially and coordinate morally, more importantly, is that it's the wrong uniting principle. The right uniting principle is divinity of the individual to speak in religious terms, and we can to strip that of its religious significance and say well Part of it is that the proper level of analysis for political discourse is the sanctity is predicated on the sanctity of the individual, and so

We need to get serious as a culture, but whether we actually believe this an end and what the relationship between that belief and reality actually is so a turn. because, as you know, you're far ahead of this and far ahead of me on this, it's hard to be an individual, it's not natural. It's not! I don't think it's what we're wired for it's a rather new concept and many people spontaneously will say they want to be an individual. I think, to an extent, though that's fashion and have to most people group identity is what gives them a sense of purpose. and yes, the way human beings have always been, and it's hard to really make a person realise being an individual means that it's really just you, for example, many there smart black people, I think, are under the impact being an individual means that you have the bravery to stick your fist up in battle racist attitudes. But the problem is that is now a group activity that something that law,

and lots of other people are doing. It only may seem a little bit unusual to a very naive white person looking on or subject to it, and so the question is: how do you really feel about these things? If you want a battle racism, how would you like to do it as if those adopting certain man prison battle, presbyter Montrose in back likewise are what we human beings. Do we do it together? That's harden! That's it! That's a tough thing, because individual is a might not be the way that humanity needs to go. I personally would prefer, that's my mindset and that's your sense. I think, but I think a very coherent case could be made that that particular conception of marching to the beat of your own drummer is an accent recipe that certain solitary minded people. I came to cherish amidst industrialization over certain two or three hundred years. I don't know if I could refute that. Okay, so that's ok, so I think that to an extremely astute objection, let's say especially the observation

out that- and you you touched on this earlier- that that requirement for group identification is dead plea embedded in human can commit the substructure of humankind. So let's say, while we want to have france. We want to have a family, we want to have a town or or something like that, a community issue hundred embedded in a town. I think the question or the issue isn't so much the fact that it, the idea that the end europe is the uniting principle should supplant that. It's that that should be organised, underneath out in some, because it isn't It isn't an issue of the absence of the necessity for group identity, because without that we could do anything together and wouldn't that be a catastrophe run right right, and so that has to be reckoned. and I do think to give the woke types and even if it's a religious man, the station there do if that does produce a sense of cohesive group entity. Then you can stand the longing for that in a fraction needed

to do that in some senses got two psychologically large so as to be contented with, but do really you see, because I view d, culture wars in the university. I really believe they're babbling out something extraordinary deep. It's not it! This isn't a surface issue, part of the debate, and this emerged out of france, the french intellectual traditions. de mentally as far as I'm concerned is the question of what level of conception should be primary and the assault on the patriarchy and on her more to it than that, part of an assault on the idea of. of individuality and and the truth in it. Vigils hold in their language, it's an assault on all about its deep, deep criticism, and I think it's incredibly dangerous, but I understand why why it arose and sold. Definitely

ended. I was curious about you because you said at the beginning that, even though your mother had taught you the in some sense, these woke precepts with something in you that rebelled against it. Yet in other words, that yeah it's, I I don't a bell against the idea that, for example, there is in two final races, and I don't think it should be called that inequities in society between say black and white, that our dude, racist attitudes, usually in the past and racist. biases and racist looking passed. All those things are definitely true. There are all sorts of things in black history that have helped to set us back. That one should certainly No about one should know about the red lining of neighbour it's where in many cities, most black people lived in neighborhoods, where banks would not give you alone, these things are very real. I never felt like. I rebelled against that,

what I rebelled against was the idea that you base your whole sense of identity. Upon those things such that you live a life, that's abbreviated. Because you're exaggerating how bad it still is, and your storing, what's necessary to create dignified lives for black people and my feelings. I bet you probably have about eighty years. You know you're lucky. If you ve got eighty years and if you spend your whole life, containing in my time period the same battle both in the eightys and ninetys that people needed in the fifties and Sixtys and after a while, you ve spent your life play thing and then you die, and the world goes on. What I rejected was the exaggeration and so, for example,

I remember what really there was one moment where I realized there was something wrong with me: it was the in the wake of the rodney king trial in nineteen ninety one and a lot of lot of black people. I liked very much were united in saying what happened to rodney king shows that a black man can't get justice in this country, and I remember thinking no, no, that that statement would have made sense in about making sixty five and in many american citys nineteen seventy five and there islands of it even in ninety ninety one, but the idea that as a twenty, something black per And you were living in a country where you just couldn't get justice. It struck me as beyond rhetoric, especially given the gene I attitude they had towards what being black meant. Then, as we

standing around at Stanford university, a campus were all of us have been evaluated according to adjusted standards out of the idea that we were really wanted on that camp as etc, that we are supposed to still be speaking that language that the black panthers had spoken. It struck me as a, and there was a part of me that was deeply disturbed by the article. The reality of it and that you are actually expected to live it it. Why? Why the art of ok, so you again he very specific worked oppose artificial as to what like what on what they like? You pairing it to something it. It sounds. It sounds like you're comparing it and then you just regarded as an exaggeration to your criticism has gone far than that. In the past mean you you, also directly stated that conceptualisation of the problem in this form is actually interfering with the solutions that we still need to generate. So it's not just to do. It's not

just an exaggeration, it's a problem in and of itself and not to deeper criticism. So so so, the artificiality as far as you are concerned and compared to what What you're going to live apparently, but what are you? What is that exactly the question? is how much of an obstacle is racism after formal segregation as Ben battled after racial attitudes changed profoundly in the nineteen seventies, and I'm just old enough to have watched that happened. Just it gives to the point where ok, racism does exist, both social and institutional, but how much of an obstacle is it doing pragmatic things that will make or black people less poor and all black people happier so quick example would be that these days you can look at the fact that black kids tend not to do as well on standardized

yes as it gets it's there now, you can look at that and you can say well if black kids don't do as well on the tests. That is because of racism, and so we need to eliminate the test, because the test is is racist. Now, in what way the test racist forty years ago. Maybe those tests asked you what wine goes with chicken that hasn't been true for generations. Now, it's not about asking people things that they have no reason to know. How was it how's it racist and their people today, who even will imply that black thought is somehow incompatible with tests like that, which is very close to saying that black people are incapable of decent body abstract thought and many white probably may probably identical without clear its very unfortunate movement, especially given that the people who are saying it know very well the history of that being said about black people, and so you look at

test- and you say that, because, while I kids don't do well on them, they are examples of systemic racism. When you have to get rid of racism, so you have to get rid of the tests, which means that you tell america, the black kids can have their abstract reasoning. Measurable, being racist and then when you get somebody saying well then black is just must not be as quick on the uptake you call them This is done in the meantime, its ignored that you consider helping black kids get better at the test. Helping black its parents realise what freed at spread programmes. There are in those neighbours the tests just take a little bit of practice, but you're not supposed to talk about it because, since the tests quorum quote are racist, that's a it's. An abuse of language, and its abuse of the very conception of what racism is. That's not what my mother raised me. That's not your grandmother's racism that something that comes from a way of thinking. Was marginal in nineteen. Fifty five became sexy.

In about linking sixty six and here in twenty twenty one is being treated as impregnable wisdom so one black has to speak out against that. So that's what I mean by the exaggeration and the artificial and the outright arm? The comes from these sorts of things? Why did and with regard to it being oppose So is it is it is it oppose of? So I could say what deposed of unearned virtue. I mean was not easy to earn true virtue. You have establish, let's say, will seat. We see we regard this. Maybe you have to doubtless relationship with beauty and beauty real. You have establish a relationship with truth and truth is real. and so to earn virtue is difficult, because beauty and truth are imposing and and formidable if you have any sense at all, you see that, and so

a daunting task to establish genuine virtue and terrifying task and is the pose the the the willingness to adopt seat, because when I The eighty along types- and maybe that happened most famously with an interview I had with I was just thinking about it. Maybe you may Michael Eric dyson right, yeah, oh No, I wasn't thinking about dyson. I was thinking about g q interviewer and that the interviews been watched like forty million times now. It's this idiots nickel pose is. It is the aping, a virtue. As far as I can tell about, I mean that it's a sort of a technical sense is that you master this language and it contains the expressions of true virtue, but you know what the kind of problems that you, talking about- and I say this on the environmentalist side of things too. Well, how do you get black to do better in elementary school. Let's say: well, that's

more manageable problem. It's a problem that would take a little bit more humility to conceptualize and its also are really really hard problem and solidarity virtuous in europe to solve that would require it probably require the dedication of your entire life really too, to take it. Crack at that problem right cause? That's a tough problem man. And so maybe you don't want to do that, cause it's and then enticed and your enticed by your educators into this alternative. Possibility we're. All you really have to do is master a set of propositions and you're on the winning side, and then gives you some convenient enemies, and maybe it fulfils to some degree, the religious instinct and and pause me to see the universities complicit in this endeavour I've come to see that and I think part of that falseness and artificiality that you describe. I think the fact that that exists is part of the like.

Over bearing insistence that the view not be lifted, and that no one question is because what is underneath? It is so damn ugly yeah, yeah yeah. What are you actually you are. You have nailed something. I would be loath to go so near that word virtue, because the last thing I want to do is implied it. But he isn't virtuous. Nevertheless, you're getting it in that it's an honor and virtue which people are settling for, not because they are so callow as to me to be virtuous without earning their strikes, but because religion is attractive. And so, if you are surrounded by people who are brandishing this message, that everything that you dont like is racist and you can get beyond that which saw the your lazy is not that you're trying to get strikes that you didn't earned. But its call for the ball, because part of being in that religion is that there is an us for

it's them conception, which is very comforting, you're part of a mission of uplift, which is very comforting and in a university that religion is there. It's as if they're know, people from a church who were behind tables out in the plaza, were waiting to recruit people. That's there as soon as you had campus and so there, Why so many people, and now it's not just blockades? It's also white kids fall for this way of looking at things where what is is you become virtue without having done the sorts of things that ideally one might have. You can A virtue signalling it is unfair and virtue, but it's because you wish to have a cloak your seeking a comfort zone. I can. If anybody for that, but it does mean an awful lot of mendacity. That's the problem, so I wasn't trying to imply to that. All objections to that process are enough themselves virtuous, and I also not trying to imply that I'm somehow, especially virtuous, I'm actually quite terrified

the proposition that virtue virtue. something, real and something necessary? falling short of. It is cataclysmic in some sense of substantially, and so anyone who doesn't tremble Such a thought haven't thought about it very deeply, and I want to have as much these possible, especially for young people who are entitled to this ideological identification, because you can look. I was a committed socialist when I was sixteen you know and end on intellectual grounds, amene talented, distributed equally amongst the human population, yet there are inequities in society. So how can that be anything but unfair? Well, fahrenheit It's the answer to that is extremely complicated, but the problem announces itself and you can certainly see. how someone with a somewhat compassionate bent and and even with an intellectual bent of sorts, would be deeply attracted by the the extra

really well honed arguments that have been put forward in favour of all those propositions, so audits, or can be even more primitive than that, I think that's tribal come in and of itself is deeply attractive and that this is something that can happen regardless. intelligence level. I remember in college I wasn't a socialist, but I definitely hated republicans until I met some, and you know I couldn't have told you during most of the time when I was in college, what the difference between a republican them. And even was I was busy doing other things and it was easier not to know there was no internet, but I knew that those republicans who were usually guys is usually a few guys with their own when a room down the hall you didn't like them because they were

publicans and ronald Reagan was bad because he was white and he dyed his hair or something like that. That was enough. Even for the smarter kids who were smoking cigarettes out in front of the dorm. That would do I met republicans as time went on. I realized that wait a minute, I'm not one of them, but I can't see them as insane. But before that had happened, I was very happily against. A whole but people who I knew nothing about. I don't think I was unique in a knot not at all that now. Ok, so maybe, if you don't mind, maybe we could close with this, because I'm starting to get tired and I'm not gonna, make much sense soon. It so so, if assuming I have so far so I've been considering this proposition that emerged from the woke end of the day of the of the political spectrum and say that all white people are racist and I think ok, we are all white people racist. What's the answer to that, an answer is yes and no, and How dare you framed the question like that? None of the three

So yes, let's look at yes. First well, all people, racist, probably improbable, probably like. We have really really intense in failure of tendencies and yet worse, we're supposed to suppose that maybe especially north american white people can learn to not be racist, unlike all other people in the world. That's it approaches as well. All of us, it's very difficult for all of us to overcome our in group biases and we and we never even want to do it completely, because we want to love our family specially and we also only have a limited amount of time and attention. So we have to love some people specially or do nothing at all for any one. So so is a huge problem, so by stating it that way that all white p or racist? You make racism sub category of white, and you actually underplay the terrible catastrophe and significance of the problem, and that's all a dangerous, because we all have to contend with this in groups

and our proclivity to demonize anyone we put in the out group nl, that's good it's horrible tendency year and that particular that question is one: where I depart from, what I wish were. My comrades that are all white people racist. You know what, probably to some extent the white person who couldn't have been out. of racism identified in them even with sophisticated spike, illogical testing is probably vanishingly rare church and my sense of it is when it's gone to the point that it has who cares, and I have often said to audiences and I've watched some people in audiences. Having not heard this understand what I mean, if you re We do have a basic self love than the fact that the whites do you have various degrees of racism really judge shouldn't matter, because life consists of about a thousand. things other than whatever that residual racism is in. That white person across the room always married to

at the person and does all the sorts of things that these supposedly racist but hyper woke white people do it's just. Why does it matter so much now. It's one thing for somebody in nineteen twenty five to talk about white racism, nineteen, fifty five sixty five, but today my feeling about it- is with most of the white people that a black person who talks about that sort of thing most knows. The answer is ass most of the white people. You know our probably very slightly basis, but not in any way that remotely mad are in your life, even including being friends with them and sometimes close friends. Why are we set with that and I think that's a very gentlemen watched in life is about so much more than obsessing over something like that. Accept it. When you obsessive, or something like that, you're part of a group. It's us versus dam and you have a sense of purpose and a sense of virtue, because you're the person whose being re but I find that rather feeble way of going about an existence with

workers, you I need my words are much too. It might also indicate interference with the process of come it turns with your own in group, preference and tendency to dera great whatever our group you happen to be surrounded by mean. I do see. This is a terribly deep, but probably you know, I presume that in I didn't seventies that Jane Goodall found it chimps, go on rating parties right and that that was a major league discovery. It shows how that that proclivity to do nice. The out group is at least six million years old right. Let's do, then it's in us and you and we all have to contend with it and so to make now we could have an intelligent conversation, none the less about the manner in which the predominant of one ethnic group in a given society might exacerbate those tendencies, of course, but that's it. That's that

something that certainly independent of the notion that all white people are racist. And then you can also see that you know it's easy to believe that progress doesn't happen, then to admit that it happens slowly. The degree to which most white americans are racist and twenty twenty one, not to mention white canadians from what I've seen is much much smaller than anybody would have expected about thirty years ago. So the question is also just extent, and yet virtue is excellence in my mind, if we're talking about Aristotle, virtue, is not more all moral. standing as its excellence. You can't be excellent. You can't live an excellent life if your hobbled in distorted views of what racism is and how it matters these particular things will not allow you to be the best you can be unless you think of the better, you can be as somebody who is hyper, articulate about discussing bias against other

and what a narrow topic there's so much to do, and so I just shape against it. I think that an excellent place. To close, if you don't mind I really enjoyed our conversation. It flew by. As far as I was concerned- and I I hope you have for having me- I have hope you have the success that you deserve with your new book woke racism, how a new religion is betraying black america and I I wish you well in the future and hope, perhaps that we we meet again and at least we're able to talk again anything else, I think we hit it all. I think I liked ending on the virtue and book will be coming out and will see how it does. But I'm glad that we had a chance to talk. I think that you- and I are best known if we talked about in the same sentence- is based on that exchange at aspen, and I would venture to say that

although that's really gotten around it, meant more to the audience of people who ve been watching it. Then it meant either one of us and so I'm happy of actual had a one on one? Would you? Yes, I am very glad that that was superseded by this. Definitely thank you much for talking with me today precisely ten. Thank you for having major and, as I said, best of luck with your book and and the general many thanks. The.