Are Americans Obsessed with Race and Gender? | Middle Ground

welcome back to middle ground thank you so much to our sponsors - lien for making this episode possible stick around after the episode for a special offer from - Lane but first here's middle-ground identity politics I think that feminism coupled with black lives matter have done so much more harm than good in our modern society I'm good not that good you want me to identify myself I put myself into a category immediately identity politics is playing team sports based on traits about yourself you cannot change a general way of categorizing yourself as part of a greater whole so that could be you know ethnically based religiously based or I think it actually could be politically based - my identity as an American being an American being a young woman who's a free thinker Judaism is pretty deeply ingrained in me I think my empathy are the questions did everybody do this human being I think not really think I know [Music] hi my name is Xavier Bryan I am 31 years old I teach yoga and I'm studying to get my holistic nutritionist license hey I'm Jesse I'm turning 32 next week and I'm a filmmaker hi everyone I'm Natalie I'm 20 years old and I'm a business student at USC howdy my name is domani Felder I'm from San Antonio Texas I am a salesman and a youtuber right now my name is Dan I'm 30 I'm a filmmaker and I'm from Kansas my name is from Nik Mathur I'm 31 I'm an entrepreneur real estate broker and author yeah I mean yeah I feel like the word of like 2019 is privileged I like to see it in terms of opportunity I would much rather the conversation be on socioeconomic status as a form of privilege rather than race and this is what I think was the intention behind affirmative action in college was to bring people from underprivileged communities into higher education and great higher education at that but what it's become now has become a tactic to get in to college I definitely agree with that some of that I definitely think that your socioeconomic status doesn't automatically absolve you from having experiences that come with being in a marginalized group I think privilege is real I think as a man there are certain things I get to do and it's hard for me to list all of them right now in a way that if you know a woman were to do those things they would be questioned more they would be doubted more or people would yeah people would question them I believe that there is one privilege that exists and I think that privilege is green privilege so when I think about these things weren't like to say oh well you are an asian-american wherever you have certain privileges or things that I don't have I think what that does it forces us to inherently say that because this person is privileged than I am by default automatically under privileged and it always allows you to say oh well this person you know he has a fancy car or whatever this person has a fancy vehicle or whatever I can't get that because that person is a white person and I'm a black person or that person is you know a high-ranking executive and it's a male versus a female look at Barack Obama a prime example you could argue oh well he was a person of color therefore he didn't have the same privileges or whatever make no mistake Barack Obama he had quite a bit of resources from which to draw sure I agree with that but I just got it I got it go there is can you imagine Barack Obama talking like the current president does and still getting accepted by the general public and I can agree that there are some ways the president tweets that I don't necessarily support in the United States you could argue okay maybe there is a white advantage right now or in this modern context you place that white person in the streets of India it's a completely different context okay this is a very we're in a bubble to say that there there is privilege and there isn't privileged rich people get overthrown in countries every day talking about off-the-books privilege isn't saying that it's that anything is impossible for a certain person more than everyone else is it easy or that ever right it's also true that some people have handicaps and we live in a country specifically talking about this particular goal because everyone has a different boat that was made by a bunch of white men that owned other people and women couldn't vote what we see now is from our politicians and people who want to remain in power or rise to power is they exploit those characteristics that make us different we put labels on everything so I think identity is intrinsic to who we are as beings even if there's turmoil or people who are butting heads I think from that friction we can spark some members that can really change a lot of things I don't believe that I'm going to just vote for someone because they're black or because they're male or because anything that they have in common with me I don't think that would be the only reason it would play a part in why I would vote for that person because of the experience or wisdom they would have behind certain social issues that I experienced as well to assume that by virtue of someone's skin color or nationality that they automatically must know what it feels like to be me no you don't like no one knows what it feels like to be me but me I agree with that also I think when you have certain struggles like say you grew up poor and hungry we would be fighting for that guy to win right because it's a sense of coming from the dirt and rising up that's the American dream really so when we're talking about someone who's brown or someone who's Pham you know female or someone who is black or whatever I think it's the compassion and the empathy that they have from coming from that struggle so that's really what I want for a leader all humans divide themselves up into groups naturally and it's up to us to be able to channel that responsibly there's a lot of problems in the discourse right now but I think we're having conversations now that need to be had needs to be reckoned did it create unity within the people that found solidarity in those movements absolutely does it create discord amongst the larger society perhaps definitely is that discord necessary probably I would say I think about the black lives matter all lives matter thing and as a white person black lives matter helped me understand a little bit more about what a black experience could look like in some situations and it's not that other lives don't matter it's just that right now this particular issue needs a little bit more attention it's like saying oh well I'm here to fight for breast cancer and someone else is like no ill cancers let's do an all cancer pin it's like not only breast cancer but why can't we have like well I can't we have these little moments of focus on these specific things I'm gonna start off with a very bold statement I think that feminism coupled with black lives matter have done so much more harm than good in our modern society there is this deep-seated resentment that has been left unaddressed in a lot of the african-american community but what matters is the way you channel that and what you do with it there's been documented instances where they say hey white people who are here get to the back of the group like this is a black lives matter because like you said you wanted help but it seems like you were more preoccupied with being angry than finding a solution and I think you're talking right into the pitfall of identity of politics which is the common enemy identity politics where it's it's me against him it's us against them they're the problem right but there's another side of identity politics something more and the likes of MLK so you draw a larger picture around a group and then you bring in commonality where I agree with you is these movements are losing steam and lost steam because they didn't extrapolate from the grievances of the people if there are systemic issues like corrupt cops who's four corrupt cops everyone can get behind that it became the US versus us versus you it's us versus them I honestly believe the organization of the black lives matter movement was in in tional that it focused on black people separating the black experience from the other experiences is important because it is specific when you're being targeted like stop-and-frisk right it was specific so I could probably ask have you ever been touched aggressively by a police officer not once never in your life not once never in your life never okay and how many times have you been like aggressively searched by a police officer at one time it was pretty aggressive he said my license plate lights were out that's why he pulled me over and they weren't and he was just kind of slamming me like over and over and I was like okay bro you don't have to slam me I'm not resisting and then more cop cars came and then they had me on the ground and they handcuffed me and they took everything out of my car and then they uncuffed me and they said I was free to go but still that's a traumatic experience I didn't do anything wrong I wasn't speeding whatever you know I mean I'm in a white neighborhood no one's saying there isn't prejudice or racism in in any type of situation but that's a that's a cultural dynamic that we need to address as a society and community that isn't something you can regulate out like I can't regulate someone to respect me but that's why civil rights is important because you can't force you know people to say black people I like black people but you can't say they get to vote now it's about rallying people in order to change policy so I wanted to speak on the feminist movement really quickly I would call myself a feminist in the literal sense of the definition if we're talking about the political socio-economic and social equality of the sexes I think there's a lot of people I think the majority of Americans would agree with that definition but what feminism has done now is it's gone completely to the other side in which case pro-life feminists aren't invited to the conversation anymore women that support Trump and yes we do exist we're not invited to the conversations anymore because we're automatically seen as that at face value I struggle with these extremes right whether it's just good or just bad I think that the 24-hour news cycle and algorithms on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are damaging to the country because they help us and get into our trenches even deeper encouraging identity politics in a negative we have people who would rather talk about oh this is what your racism this is almost what your prescribed set of values this is what your thought process should look like and I think when we apply that lens to every situation that we abdicate the ability to critically think for ourselves when we are always self segregating ourselves based on those things that make us different just because you have a common trait doesn't mean you have a shared experience right you know and it might be true in one scenario right but what happens in the mainstream is we start conflating several different experiences with the same common trait and that's where the idea kind of implodes on itself I guess I agree with most of what everyone brought up it is reductive to reduce your thoughts and perspectives just to a group or a race and I would just like first of all like growing up in Kansas like an Asian identity was never really discussed amongst me or my friends or anyone I knew it wasn't until I became an adult moved somewhere like Los Angeles where people are interested in having a discussion that I started to see what that was like what that experience was like and not saying if a candidate is agent I automatically agree with them but there are certain things that people treat me as that people wouldn't treat you as wouldn't treat you as and it's helpful for me to realize those things without saying that I'm totally identified by that and furthermore I feel like we need more discussion because like look at things like the college admissions thing people are saying that there's too many Asians in college and they're actually pitting Asians against black people for a lot of these slots it materially affects people's lives to have these discussions so I think it's valuable so you can't say oh well we need to see X amount of this race in college because that's fair that isn't fair what's fair is anyone that wants to be here can try to be here but race has been used to exclude people from institutions as well and definitely agree that entering into college now that we've lifted those bands on who can go and enter into these institutions I definitely agree that there should be a framework where race isn't involved I think identity politics are like a lot of things it can be misused but we have to understand what the caveats are and the limitations and in in that framework I think identity of politics is very useful there was someone in my groom's party and I was like my wife and I didn't know how to handle it and I asked whether he would want to be like how I would introduce him to the rest of my grooms party and I'm embarrassed thinking back on that now because that put them in a difficult situation but thank goodness there their heart was big enough and they were kind enough and understanding enough to be able to say just introduced me as a guy that's what I am that's my gender identity I'm trans it's good for people to understand gender it now they're creating the language around it being a social construct which is in itself definitely very true we don't have a framework set up right now where that can be fluidly expressed because we will box people in based off of how they look but identifying is important so we can free up that truth and people can really just feel much more autonomous with their identity brilliantly said now what we're learning as science is that gender is a spectrum okay so how feminine you are or how alpha male you are is a spectrum and on that spectrum we fall so how many how many of these pronouns do we need are there a billion variations that we can genetically identify like what I'm trying to get at is I think we're too closely tying our gender and eye to our to who we are just going off of the prompt is is it reasonable for people to learn new gender per the question is how many because today I'm not sure how if I look at Facebook I think there's like there's a multitude of different gender identities and at some point we have to ask ourselves okay well where do we draw a line for what is reasonable how many names do you think it's appropriate to get someone to learn here's my honest opinion male/female like I feel like that's enough to get the gist of what you're experiencing you cisgender right you you are agreeing with the gender you were given at Birth yes honestly you're not really going to be able to feel into an experience of someone who doesn't identify with either who identifies with both who identifies with one opposite of the other I don't think it's reasonable to force someone else to call you by whatever you identify as now I know I already know people in the comments or get y'all had fun do your thing I don't care but here's the thing for a group for a group that claims to champion tolerance and shoe diversity what I have seen overwhelmingly is a lack of willingness to accept what other people think peoples and yet amis are highly emotional it's a demo it's an emotional point every time you tell somebody your ethnicity or your racial breakdown it is going to spark some sort of feeling whether that's negative or positive and I think identity politics preys on the negative feelings we feel about ourselves and how we're viewed in the world [Music] this is a tricky one because like do I think it's possible anytime in the near future that were anywhere close to it right now probably not but is it something that I would like to live into and that I think we could all move towards yeah well I would say it's possible because they're only going to remain fixtures of debate as long as we allow them to if we can actually find a way to stop making that the cornerstone of every ideological dispute I think we can get there but we divide ourselves into groups whether it's how we look whether it's our gender whether it's how much money we make I feel like if as long as we're human we're always gonna do that and so I always feel like it's going to be a factor what kind of factor that is whether there's a hierarchy to things and those hierarchies interact in complicated ways so it's not always clear-cut I think that's something we can fix and make better but I think we're always gonna have differences it's just a fact well yeah - you're part of the humans innately we always have to have to have to have this a superiority complex on those so I get your point on that I do I do I think it'll always be a factor but how we act with each other how we respond to each other is a completely different story and it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive ideas there's this contradiction between diversity and inclusion that keeps coming up like what's wrong if we're different it's okay what's wrong if we're the same it's okay I like that I honestly think as human beings we're going to be able to unravel our biases and as we do that then we won't create policies that disenfranchise certain groups once we get rid of that unraveling that bias will just all be able to see each other as human beings because that's really what it's about it was really great to see Dan that episode absolutely and it's cool because we have these conversations during lunch so it's cool to see them outside the office and on the screen in this episode we dealt identity in terms of race and gender but in today's day and age it's also important to keep in mind your digital identity specifically keeping it safe thank you to our sponsors - Layne for making this episode of middle-ground possible - Layne generates and securely stores all of your passwords for any website across all three devices so you never have to click forgot password again passport info credit card banking info Wi-Fi passwords all of it autofill so you can always have everything on hand on any device which is especially great for when you travel there's also a VPN so you won't be tracked and can access any content when you're browsing the Internet and other countries and for your good humans out there if you want to try - Layne what a - Lang comm Jubilee get your first device for free and when you're ready to upgrade to premium use promo code jubilee for 10% off so again a big thank you to - Layne thank you we heard they loved middle ground and we love that you guys love it we'll see you guys next time

Channel: Jubilee

Views: 2,078,120

Rating: 4.9298024 out of 5

Keywords: jubilee, jubilee media, jubilee project, live deeper, blind devotion, love language, middle ground, spectrum, identity politics, are americans obsessed with race and gender?, what is identity politics?, american politics, 2020 election, how to choose your presidential candidate, who should i vote for, black lives matter, feminism, feminist movement, gender identity, gender pronouns

Id: yYqlI__PniY

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 13 2019