Ethics of Black Identity | Glenn Loury, Robert Woodson, Shelby Steele, Kmele Foster & Reihan Salam

[Music] foreign Lowery this is the Glenn show the podcast coming to you from the Manhattan Institute in New York City which sponsors The Glenn show we have a special edition today uh we'll be discussing with a distinguished panel the ethics of racial identification and we have the honor of the president of the Manhattan Institute rihan Salam moderating the discussion so I'm going to turn things over to him thank you for tuning in thank you very much for that kind introduction Glenn I am joined today by of course our host Lynn Lowry the Burton Stoltz professor of the social sciences at Brown University and the John Paulson senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute also we have Camille Foster founder and partner at freethink media Bob Woodson founder and president of the Woodson Center and the Oster senior fellow at the Hoover institution at Stanford University Shelby Steele I want to start by asking all of you to reflect on black identity what it means why it matters why it has endured why it should or should not endure and Camille I wonder if you could get us started right out of the gate with the controversy um well first I'm grateful Glenn for you to suggest that we ought to convene this conversation I think this is uh critically important obviously we have a lot of conversations about race in the in the United States these days um but I suspect what we all have in common is that we have a lot of concern about the way that those conversations are proceeding I suspect where we also have some disagreement is around this question of racial identity and what I think is important to bear in mind and I should probably start by saying I'm an individualist like my own perspective of myself isn't rooted in my race it's rooted in my person I believe that all of us have a particular dignity that allows us to be entitled to the rights and privileges um afforded to ourselves and that dignity is rooted in our humanity and not in our race and for so much of this country's history um the race has been an obstacle to actually getting allowing people to enjoy all of the full rights and privileges of being an American and there's been this process over the course of many decades centuries in fact to allow the the various benefits of freedom to be given out to a broader and broader portion of the population but there are still these enduring problems in our polity these defects in terms of the amounts of wealth and prosperity that has been accrued these persistent uh patterns of kind of disadvantage and underperformance that kind of obsess us but they obsess us in a particular way and they tend to manifest themselves in these conversations that are largely framed by race and part of what I am very concerned about is the degree to which race obstructs our ability to have sophisticated conversations about important difficult topics the ways that we find to constantly reaffirm and re-enthrone race a concept that you know 20 odd years ago I had a particular set of views and ideas about race that I suspect were pretty compatible with most Americans these these basic Notions of kind of the content of your character being the thing that was important and I suspect most Americans bought into that but today it seems that there is a very determined effort to re-center race to make people think first and foremost about the role of race and society and in their lives to race themselves to to capitalize to be in Black uh and I think that that is an obvious move in the wrong direction and I think part of what's enabled that move in the wrong direction is embracing a kind of notion of color blindness Without Really and full-throatedly attacking the taxonomy of human races The Very notion that there are these differences that ought to be regarded or even going to formally or systematically or kind of casually ignored I think we need to go a step further and we need to really Embrace an ethic of regarding one another as individuals which doesn't mean that we have to sacrifice respect for history or an appreciation of culture but it does mean that we have to think very differently about an ideology that we've all been very steeped in for a very long time and perhaps engage with frequently without even thinking about Bob you've devoted Decades of your life to community uplift you've been a civil rights activist you've been someone who's worked in primarily black communities to help them Foster these ideals of mutual Aid and what have you it seems that black identity is awfully important to you and the idea of collective black uplift is very important to you when you hear Camille talk about the idea of moving beyond race thinking primarily in terms of individuals I'm curious to hear your reaction you know um I I grew up uh I was born in the depression in a segregated South Philadelphia small community where 95 percent of the households had a man and a woman raising children where elderly people could walk safely without fear of being assaulted by their grandchildren never heard a gunfired nor babies shot in their cribs and so I grew up with this strong sense of of of being in as a coup at the same time whenever I went to the movies and saw people having fun they were always White traveling places eating food and so there was this conflict between the reality of what I was living and what I saw and then when I was able to leave and get involved in in the Civil Rights Movement um I I ran into a conflict because many of the of the challenges that the Civil Rights Movement I got uh I departed because it really sought integration and not desegregation and and when they were seeking a force busting for integration I was against it and which made me a pariah because I believe the opposite of segregation is desegregation not integration and we the very fact that we pressed that it fail to distinguish the thing means that anything is all black is all bad and so I believe that uh racial indented is critical that's why I embrace the the black power movement that I know that shall be challenges it morphed into something um not helpful but we must also look at its contribution Civil Rights Movement never dealt with personal identity nor the distress uh upper mobility and so and and and um and Independence the Civil Rights move the Black Power movement assumed equality and sought the opportunity to pursue it and so I think that uh that it is important to be agents of your own uplift and we should instill in our people that you can be have uh be be intrically and involved with your own race at the same time we can be a part of a larger ethnic group too in other words saying that you're a pro-black doesn't mean you're anti-uh post-racialism I think the two can co-exist thank you very much Bob Shelby I wonder if you could share some thoughts uh you have spoken of the shock of Freedom you've written powerfully and movingly about the ways in which some of our racial boundaries are more psychological and internal in nature than they are societal or about legal institutions I wonder how you think about black identity and its role in our public life today uh well today I think that identity is often used as a I think racial identity always almost always has an element of corruption in it it almost always uh not almost as always seeks power and it's about power uh and did you know for the last since the 60s certainly and I remember the Black Power movement very uh very well you know none of us were really black enough you were always trying to be blacker and uh um just I love Richard Pryor's Joe Black was his poem one word [Laughter] and you kind of you know if you think about you kind of said this is I grew up in the same kind of neighborhood that Bob just described uh and there was family life and there were fathers in every house the the there was the schools were terrible but they even began to resist that and and uh there was a real fundamental human coherence that we shared with all other people and my I remember my father asking me in the 60s when I was in the black power well what is identity I haven't really answered them well yet um he was born in the South and third grade education uh if he would doesn't know what the black identity is I don't know what um I think we use it for particularly today we well we have we came to use it in the 60s as a kind of symbol of victimization so when you were black you were a victim was put into place this idea to be a a strong and a down brother and sister uh you had to be fighting and protesting uh racism and this this it implied a kind of political activism the black identity um and to some degree I think that made some sense there because identity is always defensive it's always defending against some larger force in the world and and so that's that's what it was in the 60s and uh I sort of certainly was involved in it to a degree but but quickly grew out of it um uh you you could begin to see that it really wasn't going anywhere the problem today I think the the problem we face as black Americans is not racism anymore there's no doubt some racism out there but that's just not that's way down the list of problems that we as black Americans face uh and to still worry about our identity in terms of our history of victimization and protesting and fighting for blackness uh that proved to be a kind of wasted effort it didn't lift us up it confused us it made us think race is really meaningful when there's really nothing to it uh it's it's an empty it's a void it's empty it's something people go to when they want to when they want to do something a little when they want to do something a little nefarious uh if I try to sell you that I'm black and and so forth and therefore Let's Make a Deal over here [Laughter] is the way it goes our black leadership today today is pretty much entirely devoted to precisely that use of identity as a wedge as leverage uh to gain power and money and to get organizations and karate and universities and so forth to give us things um well my sense is that our our great problem today uh is not victimization and racism but freedom and we've used identity because we're afraid of freedom freedom is of fearful awesome uh things you have to face up to particularly after you've been through four centuries of Oppression uh and have really very little experience with anything remotely like freedom but freedom is demanding and and and uh uh it's it it asks everything of you it makes you responsible for yourself in ways that are always going to be difficult when challenging and so if you don't do well you don't know how to proceed down that path and we as blacks didn't in the 60s how can you come out of centuries of Oppression and know precisely what to do it's taken us 70 80 years now to begin to really think about what what let's look at our real problems and stop uh uh you know thinking that somehow or other culture and identity is going to do anything for us we have to understand those things don't count in Freedom what counseling freedom is all that boring stuff really difficult demanding values hard work uh family life uh responsibility uh same things that work for for all human beings uh are the only things that are going to ever work for Black America and the idea that our Blackness is going to somehow help us or facilitate that is a delusion that that we need to move on away from at this point uh and be suspicious of uh understand this is this is one of History's little traps so it seduces you into thinking what was your identity if you're just black that'll do it no it won't it won't do it and and of course all the statistics that we are all aware of uh prove that we're behind in almost everything of meaning in in American Life um well that's identity because identity is not it's not a muscle it's not an action an active Force it's an avoidance of the challenges of Freedom anytime I see here anybody talking about identity today and it's avoidance and well Glenn go ahead oh no forgive me sorry for interrupting you know Glenn you've informed um how the world thinks about ethnicity and social capital one observation you've made about Black Americans and the Persistence of identities is a deceptively simple one it's that if there were no barriers to intermarriage if there were full integration you would not see the Persistence of a distinct identifiable group with its own form of vernacular English with its own cultural practices you know when you're looking at Black Americans and indeed many other groups as well there is a real persistence there that is a force that affects outcomes and social life affects the distribution of resources in society and much else one way that I think about this is that the force sustaining that distinctiveness could be status or it could be stigma you know both forms of it so think about Jewish Americans for example here is a group where um you know large numbers of Jewish Americans outmary but perhaps less than you'd expect if they were just another European ethnic group you know that could be because this is a group where there are valuable Goods there is a kind of community specific Social Capital that exists there there's an attractive pull to remaining part of the group but you could also say that in some contexts in some environments it's part of stigma that partly it's because of the Persistence of anti-Semitism and as Shelby was saying that desire for some kind of defensive mentality we are going to support and sustain our community that is under threat when you think about the Persistence of black identity I'm curious how you think about in the context of status and stigma how you think about in the context of the rewards offered by belonging to this group with the rich and distinct history and culture um you know versus the extent which that distinctiveness is driven by discrimination from the outside yeah I mean first let me say I have great respect for the positions to Camille and Shelby have given voice to and I certainly agree that you know the long-term end game here uh has to be one in which we envision if you will the abolition of race or the Transcendence of race um I don't want an America 100 years from now or even 75 years from now in which we're in these silos based upon something that's relatively superficial that doesn't really Define us on the other hand I think that you know if I say the black church that that's a meaningful thing to say not merely as a matter of well the whites won't let us sit in the pew but as a matter of there's a foundation here there there are uh generations of cultural and spiritual rootedness here there's a narrative in the black church there's music in the black church there's power in the black church it reaches people it's meaningful to people if I say the black family if I encourage people to adopt orphan children who are Black based in part upon a sense that the black family needs support that we need to pull together that's a way of mobilizing people on behalf of a social good it's an affirmation so whereas the race Hustlers and they are implantiful will strategically deploy just as Shelby has said brilliantly and more than once in his books they will deploy they will play the race card they will use race as a Dodge as a power grabbing move and we could give many examples whereas that's certainly true and it is something to be objected to strenuously it's bad it's bad for even black people seen as a collective but it's bad for our country and it's taking us in the wrong direction whereas that's certainly true the collective action problem how do you get people to pull together in the same direction on behalf of goals that none of them can achieve on their own require some kind of narrative I mean think about the role that nationalism plays in the construction of collective Goods in the welfare state or in on behalf of defending the country against external threat people are called based upon their sense of fealty and connection to the country we are Americans we're not citizens of the world although we are citizens of the world of course but we're not only that we're Americans and that has meaning to us in terms of our history our culture our narratives and our self-definition likewise we black Americans in the 21st century the descendants of those who had been enslaved and who labored to become fully equal citizens there's a story there I want my children to know that story among other stories I don't want that to be the final word I don't want that to be their defining if you will here's a suit of clothes adequate to the task at hand that we wear lightly not that we wear as a shroud that we wear with the ability to take it off and to stand outside but I I don't think yet even now in the year 2022 we're at the point where we can afford to give up The Leverage and the power that Robert Woodson in his work in terms of Grassroots organization has leveraged uh on more than one occasion of getting people together encouraging to do hard work on behalf of collective goals like raising our children maintaining order in our communities and doing honor to the sacrifices of our ancestors I just uh add to that I I agree with with Shelby but I think the the reason that this debate got going is because of our request of Shelby to sign the letter to supporting Clarence Thomas and he objected because we were all black signatures uh and I think it's because this was a tactic that we applied it wasn't a it wasn't a philosophical statement we were making that the the white elitist left as appropriated the wounds and suffering of Black America and weaponized it against the values of this nation and they're using it in the black uh civil rights leadership and the black caucus allowing that that appropriation to occur and and so they're using it to say in the name of black people so since they uh attacked Clarence Thomas in the name of black people we think we thought that The Messengers pushing back against that should be should be black that's why we came together as blacks to write this letter and as a consequence it's got about 25 different organizations most of them black who published it and gave it it gave it a some publicity so the point and I agree with you Shelby but but what's happening is these these race Hustlers are using the conditions the the birth defect of this nature is slavery and as a bludgeoned against the country and so therefore we need to push back but it's but it's also doing is happening at the expense of those at the bottom anytime you generalize about a group you you cannot generalize about all black people all women whenever you then try to apply remedies as the right as the left does it always helps those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom when the metoo movements start talking about women uh and so who benefited from it the women who in the casting couch is in Hollywood women are to get on Boards of directors women are to be hired but what about the the the black women who are in prisons uh being systematically raped there was a two-hour special documentary on where they call it these women every one of the victims were black every one of the victimizers was black but it did not generate any outcry for support for justice for these women because it didn't fit the racial narrative and that's how in your understanding how race is being used to really uh uh disadvantage people who are poor and black and so I agree with you that we can't allow it to happen but our use of it we have to be strategic there are times as in the case with Clarence Thomas says we must come together to push back against the black left who have misusing race but we also should concentrate on we're doing this in the service of eliminating race so we can concentrate on the real crisis based in this country and that's the moral and spiritual freefall that is consuming low-income people and others please I mean I agree with 99 of what you said well maybe maybe 89. two strikes uh two cheers not three but my my feet after wrestling with this for a lifetime I I my feeling is very simple race is absolutely always with no exceptions whatsoever poison you you can't understand it if you don't understand poison and what you say there for example that you know that well a little bit of poison over here is okay and a little bit and you you start to make distinctions uh I want to see some white people support the media being fair to Clarence Thomas I want them I want them to to on a human level uh by using race to to attack Clarence Thomas that's the evil that's the poison and uh uh a a a group I certainly want them to treat Clarence Thomas in the right way uh but but not by using not by committing the same crime not by using using race all over again now in the name of the good rather than bad but but using it all over again it's it's too it's dangerous it's it's none of us are smart enough to find a good effective you know morally clean way to use race it's always a little dirty and that dirtiness over time envelops the whole institution whatever it may be uh so it's poison sometimes the Venom of the snake sometimes the Venom of the snake has to be used to develop the Anti-Venom sometimes sometimes it's not it's not obvious that that's necessary here I mean I I want to just say that I one I recognize all of the the Goodwill um in in the conversation and I recognize a lot of the you know extraordinarily hard work that's been done um you know Bob the the work that you've done with your organization is is laudable um and I don't take anything away from that by adopting the perspective that I have now with respect to race um I I would have to say that I stridently agree with Shelby though that there is a very real sense in which um I think it is impossible to divorce a concept a notion like Blackness for example from the toxic milieu that it was forged in and the purpose that it was forged for it was meant to divide it was meant to dehumanize and there's a very real sense in which a lot of that ideological baggage is always carried along with it however we deploy the concept and I I greatly appreciate as well Glenn your [Music] um rousing speech encouraging us to to support one another's families and to come together to find terms upon which we can come together and agree to work towards some common purpose but I think two things are also two related things are true that relate to that one is that it is entirely possible to forge those Bonds in other ways and in deeper more meaningful ways I think local communities are largely the ones that are actually bearing the burden of suffering through you know the the spikes in crime and not kind of black people corporately I think there's a lot of Senses in which especially I think the point I can't remember who made it a moment ago about all of the benefits that accrue to people kind of at the top of the pyramid when you have a racial Reckoning and a couple of people move up a couple of offices and they were already making several hundred thousand dollars a year now they're making half a million a year and it's great for all of them if you can launch your new Dei business or get some new government contracts but it does not help people at the lower end and thinking more specifically about the kinds of problems the more practically about the kinds of problems we're trying to address having a much higher resolution is going to require us to get beyond the confines of race the disparity that interests me isn't the disparity between white kids and black kids in elementary school it's not the disparity between white teenagers and black teenagers in attaining acceptance to Top Flight into universities it's the disparity between children who are succeeding children who are not it's the fact that we recognize the success the success sequence actually gives us the keys to what's necessary to succeed and there is no way to to unrace yourself and to take advantage of the benefits of rightness to kind of put things in the way that uh someone from the left might frame it and in much the same way to frame it in a way that might be a little bit more palatable to someone who would regard themselves as conservative I don't know that trying to build alliances of concern along racial lines isn't likely is actually likely to win out against the kind of dominant perspective when it comes to blackness in America I think we actually have have to have a more ambitious goal and strategy and to have a higher resolution approach to thinking about problems and talking about problems I want to underscore something here I'm struck by the fact that actually you know among the four of you there's actually a fair bit of agreement about what we see as an attractive moral outcome over the very long term I think that all of you agree that you know being seen as an individual has value but one thing I detected both in Glenn and Bob's remarks is this idea that there's certain kinds of sacrifices that are appropriate to make in the name of solidarity that is you know one version of your sensibility Camille and this will be ungenerous but I'm you know curious to hear your reaction but also Glenn's is that you know essentially what you're saying is that we live in a much Freer Society now we live as a society in which one can have more agency and freedom of action and that it is a moral imperative to claim that and to claim that individualism to de-race oneself but another view is that that poses a kind of collective action problem in which you have people who have the ability to capitalize on those opportunities uh through the kind of attenuation of those rigid racial ties and then what you see is the defection of people like you from this kind of larger Collective public good of acting on behalf of a racial group that has been stigmatized and excluded I wonder if that makes sense to you what your reaction to that is and I also want to hear from Glenn if that sounds roughly right to him that part of what we're saying is that yes it's a good and healthy aspiration to be free of those group obligations but those group obligations really bite right now and that there is a responsibility for those how do they bite well I'm I'm gonna just want to throw out the idea too I mean that's that's it seems to me a key point you you bite do you mean racism that people are still being victimized by racism I'm just trying to really get a well I'm trying to kind of Advance what I take to be part of Glenn's view so maybe he would be well the collective action problem just very straightforwardly you have goals toward which you would like to mobilize people to achieve those goals each one individually might not have the interest to make the sacrifices if they only thought of it in their own terms but if they see themselves as part of a collective and I gave the example of nationalism you have a country you have people asked to sacrifice to pay taxes to fight and die if it comes to that and underneath that is a sense of identity it's a sense of in this case americanness to which they feel a certain degree of obligation or responsibility it's just what do you do when racism is what I'm saying is the black church I give that as a concrete example is an institution it has a history it has a narrative it has a sense of self-understanding and it gives meaning to people's lives it's not only ever it'll never be the same Glenn we're in Freedom now the black church was formed when we were in naked oppression today we're in Freedom the racism is not there you can worship any way you want uh we're so free we don't know what to do with it uh we're in agreement about that we're in agreement about that Shelby I'm a jazz fan I love I love the music way too much uh because it's it's it's to me and it's a rare magnificent creation that does come out of black the black experience but that experience doesn't exist anymore racism is simply not not a problem it's not it doesn't deserve the whole a cultural response well different things but I I what what I find disturbing is that the left both uh the elite left and I are using race yes of poor people and they are dying as a consequence of their misuse of it but if you're not going to confront that reality with some idealized version of post-racism which I said well it's just it doesn't exist anymore so they'll we'll just act like it doesn't exist well I don't got to take action I think in those places to confront those who are misusing race and the way we do it is to gather groups who are suffering the problems like the mothers who lost children to homicide to stand up to the black left and say we are against defund the police and we uh and so it is it is it is important to have those suffering the problem why would you exclude waste from the letter of approach because it doesn't have the same power when black in other words you when when someone derives their moral Authority by saying they represent you when you stand up yourself and say they don't represent me that undermines the moral Authority but if I go in and say oh I have to have a white person on my arm to walk in to claim it no I mean it's a strategic move Shelby it's not it you're saying you have to have a black person only black people on your arms they don't speak for black people the message that we want to give is those blacks who have appropriated race on behalf of race car playing nonsense don't speak for black people exactly so so in order to say that there are two things you could do one of them is I'm black and they don't speak for me the other is Blackness is a fiction nobody speaks for black people we opted for the former move yeah and again well identity let me no it's it's perfectly fine I'm happy to defer to you no no please I appreciate that that's the that that's the decision that's being made I just think that it's it's impossible to to not well no it's not impossible it's imperative that we take a look at what the costs might be and to the extent we are refurbishing sustaining Notions of racial difference a notion of of there even being any Authority whatsoever or respectability and asserting that you are speaking on behalf of a particular group of people that there is a particular opinion that is held by all people that look a particular way and that is something that we ought to be wary of and I would go a step further and say it you're absolutely right Bob it is imperative that you are pushing back against you know dangerous currents in our culture and that you're confronting people who insist on and framing things with respect to race in order to derive some sort of culture or political power at this point we can't even talk about student loans without invoking race and talking about it because it's it's a powerful tool that said the best way to actually undermine that is to acknowledge that this tactic is being deployed and two not to give even the appearance that this is a respectable way to conduct business to focus I think very narrowly and specifically on the defects of the policies that are being proposed and to provide affirmative Solutions like better alternative approaches and I think you've mentioned a few times um Glenn this the the black church and other in a valuable institutions that exist that that have some sort of a racial context I'm I'm not interested in obliterating the black church I'm not interested in in telling people that they shouldn't think about their church as a black church but I do think a lot about the a young a young Pastor who's planting a church today a brand new church who insists on it being kind of affirmatively unapologetically black and a lot of things go along with that and that is something that happens today and most of those people are buying into a set of kind of ideological priors that are wildly inconsistent I think with progress and certainly wildly inconsistent with an individualist perspective of of how to think about Free People operating in a free Society there's a real sense in which our Embrace of this concept whatever the advantages we imagine we're deriving from it are an obstacle to some of the broader philosophical projects that we might want to engage in and I think at a minimum it's it's worth contemplating you know we had the March on Washington we had King give his I Have a Dream speech and it was it was and is beautiful and Powerful but at the same time it's imperative to note that no they're not white girls and black girls they're just girls and that is a that is a that's a step in a particular direction there's a particular line that's being drawn in the sand there and I think it's that it's worth a whitewashing of History look look I don't think I'm not asking us to change our perspective on what happened historically I'm talking about the way forward okay you know the reason the reason why the the left that we are Counter Culture now is because our our uh our inability to communicate important values and convince people that those values are important and that is uh what the left does and I think Ralph Nader is a perfect example of how you Market ideas and principles when he comes before the Congress to convince the Congress that we need to regulate automobiles he comes with a weeping parents of a 16 year old who was lost in a pinto a wrinkled Fender of a pinto with blood on it and then he says this is the consequence of that policy now let me tell you what changes have to be made by contrast conservatives will come with four white guys with blue suits with ties with charts with data who wins that fight and so I think it's important that you have to have the right symbols I choose to take the people suffering the problem who lost children and when they say that we must stop talking about white people for a year and address the Enemy Within that is that has much more power than if I were to come with some interracial group armed with uh uh some niceties of post-racialism I I just want to get a word in here because so much is flying by I think you guys are overreacting I think you're basically right and I think the long run that you envisioned and I Envision are very similar long runs uh it's just that I think that the Abolitionist move the principled rejection of the category race on behalf of an ideal is as Bob has said strategically surrendering too much and I also think it's a little bit a historical I I just wanted for a moment the African Methodist Episcopal Church I'm talking about Richard Allen Absalon Jones these guys at the end of the 18th century in Philadelphia where slavery was still running strong founded an institution that is now a global institution of black people striving to do exactly with their freedom when Shelby would have them do determine their own Fates take responsibility for their lives and for the raising of their children and so forth and so on nested within a certain area narrative a certain sense of our quote unquote our history now I have many ancestors and some of them are European uh uh 23 and me tells me some of my ancestors are European but the account I give from whence I have come is deeply nested within this African-American history and all I'm saying is it's not yet time to throw that over even as we understand the deeper philosophical truth of trans racial humanism as the goal to it which we should all be striving well you're fighting a strong man we we would never throw it over how could you why would you want to I would I've been studying black American culture all my life I love it is I've been worse stronger than identification uh it it is it has made me who I am and who I'm grateful for it and yet the the world works by evolution it evolves it it transforms we won our fight-long fight against racism for example in 1964 when the Civil Rights bill was passed what is that 60 70 years ago we won it wasn't manifested in reality yet entirely but increasingly we we have just become you know more and more and more and more free uh and at this point it seems to me we are we are bulking in the face of freedom we are intimidated by what it asks of us and it's some of that is that we're going to be sort of ripped away from that narrative that you you mentioned um and we and we're gonna we're gonna have to invent ourselves as free men and women and we're gonna have to change what it means to be black and I would I would it doesn't just mean it doesn't just mean responding to racism and hatred that's it did at one time but it today we black people our biggest problem is modernity the modern world we're unprepared to live in it to thrive in it that's our problem and maybe there's a little racism in there somewhere but the real problem is California last year uh black uh black kids who graduated from high school read at an eighth grade level that's the problem but Shelby you address yourself to black people you say we that has an antecedent the we that you're talking to First how but you see this is what I'm saying false math well strong because because I would generally I would generally not advise regarding them primarily in that way because there is I mean we could talk about California schools La schools in particular and the underperformance that we see and we know that blacks are overrepresented in those statistics that they're more likely to do poorly but there is a bunch of other kids who also do poorly in those school systems and the reasons that they do poorly generally speaking I have a lot of the same components they're not reading they aren't reading in their homes they're watching too much television um they they in many instances don't have two-parent households we can observe the same sorts of stuff when we talk about criminal justice issues incarceration for example we know that it's not that you know 90 of dates are black but close to what I think it's 80 odd percent of inmates are come from these fatherless homes they don't they don't have fathers in their homes um particularly young men who end up getting incarcerated that that is actually a far more meaningful Insight than talking about the kind of racial disparities there which doesn't suggest that there aren't community and cultural dynamics that are at work but you know we're here in Manhattan now at least you and IR Glenn and I've I've lived in New York for most of the last 15 years and I don't know that it serves anyone particularly well to talk about in a black outcomes in New York City and to include myself and my wife in those data points and also to be talking about the people who happen to live in bedside in fact I was a resident of Bed-Stuy but I was gentrifier I was paying an exorbitant amount of money to live in those communities hoping that they would change in a positive way I wasn't one of them so even the use of the the kind of us and the we in those contexts is a bit is a bit odd and I think that we looking for I'm not looking to close a door and to ignore history my goal always is opening doors I want more people to be able to imagine that that that uh Rich history at the AME Church is something that they can imagine themselves as a part of and I want young people who imagine themselves as black who are told you know during Black History Month these are your Heroes to know that no you're not limited to that those can be some Heroes that you adopt but there's a universe of other people who don't look anything like you who come from distinctly different backgrounds but with whom you might be able to find some sort of sense of solidarity there is a a kind of built-in limiter so your cultural inheritance is the inheritance of the world you know what you're saying is that you want to claim ownership and you want your experience to inform that a people regardless of you know their ethnic Origins their ascribe Grace that's certainly that's certainly part of it um and I could probably be more specific and talk about the classical liberal tradition that I'm most interested in the the progress that's been made in Western societies more broadly I mean I think there's there's a narrative about the progress of black people in America since the period of slavery overcoming civil rights and it is an extraordinary and important story that all Americans ought to take an interest in but there's also this broader Narrative of the the struggle for human Freedom the fact that most of our ancestors regardless of where we come from and what we look like were subjugated in some way shape or form we're deprived of the right to live the kinds of extraordinary lives that we do today and I think that there's something very rich about nesting that story of struggle for freedom in America by the descendants of slaves in that broader story of this this struggle for human Freedom writ large that this is always something that has had to happen that this is always something that we've done um together I think that it makes it actually more valuable and not less it enhances it you can do that without effacing your own ethnic identity and and I just wonder if with the moderators permission play a devil's advocate here because I can hear what a critique might sound like a critique of the position that Camille and Shelby have adopted might go as follows look at other ethnic groups look at the Jews look at the Irish Catholic I mean they have they have suffered discrimination whatever whatever you'd never tell them the solution to your problem is to forget about your identity and forget about your history you you tell them that there are two different things there's the Civic we're not doing that okay no then then you can answer the critic with that report but let me just finish making a statement um there's a Civic realm we are citizens of a republic we have duties and obligations as such they transcend our race then there's the communal realm marriage patterns are what they are residential communal patterns are what they are religious affiliation is what they are cultural orientations are what they are the two things are distinct we can insist on blindness to race in the Civic realm and nevertheless affirm the importance not of race as a physiology but uh physiognomy but but of uh race as an ethnicity we can affirm the thickness and the content of that inheritance uh at the same time we can do both of those things at the same time solo critic myself and it's only blacks just to finish this here's how the critic would go it's only black people that we see up there saying that we have to eschew our blackness in order to solve this problem everybody else you wouldn't tell Jews not to be Jewish if we apply the logic of this argument to the national identity and aspirations of the Jewish people we would get uh I think something that would be a historical absurdity so you know we're talking about as leveraging group identity leveraging a sense of pride in group identity and this Collective cultural inheritance uh for uplift and that's against the case for defecting so so there are some people who are in a position to defect who don't have to kind of contribute to that common store and what you're saying is no don't do that actually sustain that as a vehicle for uplift I'm saying that's one way to live I wouldn't judge The Defector they're free to make whatever choices they want but I want to affirm the dignity and the legitimacy of embracing the ethnic uh Heritage let me let me just say that I had some many years ago I debated Julius Chambers who was a Harvard lawyer black who headed the NAACP legal defense fund we've been doing this before the New York Bar Association and was over the issue of of desegregation versus integration and I Midway through the debate I said Julius we got two circumstances circumstance a where the school is all black where there's a presence of Excellence School B with it's it's integrated with as diminish Excellence where should we send our children he said School B I say that that's what you believe then then this debate is over that that and so that's that's that that's one element but uh to Glenn's point uh the Vietnamese came here after the war those who were sponsored by uh by by uh families didn't poorly but those who struggled and they and it is a section in Houston the Bel Air section where Vietnamese boat people came and congregated and they established an entrepreneurial Enclave today they're about 20 000 of them there they've got newspapers uh it's called Little Vietnam in Los Angeles there's Little Tokyo chinatowns where every other ethnic groups you can't know what it's like to have dual citizenships why can't blacks have dual citizenship why can't we affirm the fact that we are black and and and and and all but also we are a part of this country I mean why do you say that any time that there is a coalescence of blacks are coming together in solidarity that somehow that we shouldn't do that but other groups are are celebrated well it sounds so innocent doesn't it it's it's just sounds so innocent is it what's the you know you know use certain examples I'll skip but that's the way poison spreads it's just a little bit it's not a big come on what about the stignity because that won't work that won't get you anywhere identity is the result of human behavior it is not the creator of great things it doesn't create a damn thing it is the result and and I I am proud of of what black Americans have contributed to music there's nothing comparable in the in the on the whole globe I mean it it I mean it really does in this most simplistic emotional way make me feel proud that that that does not mean that the nation I live in has any any obligation to me and my race they don't and when they when they did you saw what what happened what that was about um we we one does not preclude the other that's my point you can you can celebrate you can be happy on St Patrick's Day a lot of people out there drinking who aren't that's very true right I suppose my perspective is probably a bit more not probably it is more strident than that um and I I don't I don't believe in unearned Pride um I I believe that pride is is something that you earn and it's something that you earn through action I also don't believe in in Collective uh achievement in that way I don't I don't really believe that black people any more than Jewish people or white people kind of have a a collective ownership of of music that they've kind of made or or well the the phrase that was used a moment ago was that black people have made these contributions to music that is is certainly true that there are these kind of cultures that can in some way shape or form contribute to music but the important delineation like making a real distinction between individual achievement and cultivating a sense of pride in oneself and the kind of counterfeit Pride that I've actually seen I've encountered it amongst younger people who talk about their Blackness and how their young kings or something along those lines there's there's something very empty and Hollow about that and again at a minimum one has to recognize that there is a very real possibility that people who will feel encouraged to to pursue that sort of rather cheap counterfeit sense of their own self-worth and dignity as opposed to really embracing the possibility of creating something Grand yourself I don't I don't think there's a need for there to be any kind of competition between kind of black cultural contributions or white cultural contributions there's this beautiful passage from zorniel Hurston and dust tracks in the road where she talks about uh this this notion of race pride and race car Consciousness and says explicitly that you know there is no uh that that Einstein is the one who who achieved particular results that Carver achieved particular results and they didn't do that on behalf of a race and that in a very real sense if we have this sense of collective achievement in this sense of race Pride then we should naturally have this sense of collective failure and race shame and that either both of those things are in a very real sense like wrong and disadvantageous and that there is a better way for us to cast ourselves into the world and again we we I think we were having lunch earlier right on and I said um that we I have this this perspective and perhaps it's a little idealistic I will acknowledge as much and we enter the world as we find it um but that said we can certainly articulate a certain philosophy embrace the philosophy of our own and I mean in my particular case I've decided that I I will not raise myself and it's not a matter of being ashamed of being black or having any sort of Hang-Ups about that at all it's a determination to live my life on my own terms to have my my dignity be rooted in my individual person and it doesn't rob anyone else of their choice to live in a particular way but I do think that there are real meaningful advantages to thinking about issues in a race neutral way or perhaps an abolitionist way maybe an eliminationist is a better word to use in that context I gotta say something because we started here with Bob's reference to the letter that he and I authored and that we gathered co-signatories for supporting Justice Clarence Thomas and denouncing those who would call Justice Thomas and Uncle Tom because they disagreed with his jurisprudence and I want to call to our attention the fact the historical fact that when the national museum of African-American history and culture was stood up there was no recognition of Justice Clarence Thomas the longest serving member of the high court highest court of this country as an African-American whose achievements deserve to be honored now some of us here like Shelby and me are black conservatives okay unabashed Unapologetic that's a meaningful category as is Justice Clarence Thomas I'm proud of him okay no not in some metaphysical he's black I'm black and therefore I achieved when he achieves but in the concrete historical narrative sense that he came up out of pinpoint George he thought for himself through Yale law school and all the rest and he achieved what he has achieved on behalf of this country and his people his people then why would you preclude white people I I don't recruit wife of being proud of him they can also be proud of him but I'm proud of him well I'm gonna let Bob answer that because you know you know because if white people had signed it it would have been dismissed and he would they would have just it may have finished it would have just uh contributed to this narrative that he's just a a shell for conservatives it would have been totally dismissed people would have expected a conservative to do have a multi-racial response but the power of it came from the fact that the left was saying they are legitimate spokesperson for black American and they are uh against harmless but a substantial number of blacks stood up and and and stood for him and pushed back against that and it had the impact that we were looking for just like when he went let me just finish when Tom put six months when he was nominated I spent non-stop in low-income black southern neighborhoods and getting black parents to go to those senatorial offices to Lobby to get him that's why the polls were 60 percent of low-income black supported Clarence Thomas's Ascension to the courts and they and and that's one of the reasons why it happened now should I have not done that and say well I want to get white people to come with me also uh no it that would have been strategically on we made an impact because 60 percent of black people poll low-income blacks supported this man's nomination and that's why strategically it worked now you might not have done it that way you were the first say no I can't just go him with all black folks I gotta have some white folks to show no shows racial no that that no I I you you keep assigning to me both sorry idealism some idealism you're right you read it the right way you read it the right way you got the wrong man I'm still back in 1964 black flower I'm not uh you know that's that's more my natural cast uh uh but that's that is my point why uh I I Clarence Thomas is a good friend of mine has been for 30 some years now um I I love to see him supported in every way I think he's the best mind on the court period and so forth and so on I don't need to write a letter that excludes white people in order to support that if I just wow we would have been ignored strategically it worked that's the point no but you're using race as a place no no you're saying right if I if I kick white people no I got it's not uh a little more black just to use a Venom of the snake and so white people of the snake to create the anti-venom guys I wonder if I can uh that's what you do that's what you that's what in a different direction anybody who's been bitten by a snake they tell you okay they would have died if you were in the position man okay we can't use a snake skin I'd like to raise a different set of issues so if you're looking at the Black American population it is markedly different today than it was 20 or 30 years ago you now have a rising proportion of the black population that is foreign born you have particularly in younger cohorts more and more intermarriage when you're looking at the Black Elite when you're looking at the most highly educated affluent black Americans This is a group particularly when you're looking at younger cohorts that looks very different from the multi-generational community of black Americans who are the descendants of American slaves and I wonder Camille if you could offer some thoughts and I'd like to hear from all of you on this on what that might mean for this language of solidarity cultural persistence what we're talking about about the politics of black identity Camille what do you see happening as the black population is looking much more diverse and where there's much more integration into what you might call the multi-ethnic mainstream well it's funny I have this uncomfortable sense sometimes where I I'm like at a dinner party and there's a you know everything is set up really nicely and there's a tablecloth and I just rip the tablecloth off and then all the plates go sprawling as well I mean the reality is that I just I do not think about populations in that way I mean the diversifying of the the kind of black people in America is precisely what you would expect black people as uh James Baldwin said during his debate with William F Buckley just like everybody else like they want the same things as everybody else they are inherently diverse because they are individuals and this is the appropriate way I think to to think about them and to think about data like that the reality is that the the similarities between young college-educated pre-med black student and high school dropout black student living in a completely different part of the country are probably not all that great and they likely have far more similarities with people who are part of their cohort who who live near them who've sweeped the same sort of English they do like this this is the reality and there is a real sense in which much of our conversation about important issues like diversity for example have been completely hijacked by the way that we think about race and identity in this country we have a very narrow myopic kind of shade obsessed notion of diversity when in fact we have perhaps seated far too much to the people who talk about diversity equity and inclusion these days by allowing that definition of diversity to be the one that dominates the one that ought to dominate is one that recognizes that in any room even amongst the four of us as we've demonstrated very ably during through our conversation there is profound diversity amongst individuals regardless of what they happen to look like and if you apply for a job the notion that we have too many of those people here right now because we've got our quota of black people because it's sort of demographically in line with the population in the community like that can't be the way that we want um to to to sort of have Society work so this abolitionist sensibility that you bring to these debates about the ethics of black identity is it fair to say that in this world in which this drive for individualism individual distinction uh the call it the weakening of some of these Collective ties is it a view that your way of thinking is ultimately the wave of the future I I don't know if it's the wave of the future I certainly hope it is I do think that recognizing exceeding our sense of people's dignity in their individual person and not attaching it or attributing it to their race like I think a celebration for example like pride month for example there is a sense in which one can totally understand the desire to assert your pride on the basis of something that you've been discriminated against with respect to for a very long period of time but beyond some point this could become deleterious and I think that we probably surpassed that point with respect to gays in this country who have secured the right to marry one another for example um and perhaps we need to to rejigger the laws around that but I think in general like there has been a cultural shift there that is one that is worth celebrating um I think much the same thing is true about race in this country I I have the autonomy to be able to live my life on my own terms and to the extent that there are societal and social problems that need to be addressed even ones that disproportionately impact black people the remedies to those problems are almost certainly not resting in whether or not they regard themselves as black or discrimination and race active racism and discrimination that it has something to do with any number of different policies but it can be harder to get to those remedies and harder to identify those problems if the thing that most consumes us are the fact that these disparities exist at all Glenn I wonder if you have any thoughts yeah yeah excuse me first of all as I've said I think we in the long run are wanting the same thing the question is whether or not as a practical matter the Abolitionist move is a sensible move to undertake at the moment and I say no um I want to say with respect to Inner marriage and the diversity amongst the African descended population resident in the United States the future is assimilation a hundred years from now I think you're going to look at Blackness the way you look at irishness or italian-ness in terms of ethnic descent it'll be a coloration but it won't be a defining feature and there's all the action is at the boundaries you can have a man Barack Hussein Obama who has no African slave ancestors who's nevertheless a Tribune of quote unquote black people you can have that in the first part of the 21st century you're not going to have that in the latter part of the 21st century um I I agree with the the stipulation that as individual freely choosing autonomous beings we must not allow ourselves to be put into a box defined by our race I agree with that I agree that much of the political representation undertaken on behalf of Blackness is a category mistake because the real issues are classed and they're not race and they're elighted when you put it in those terms and I agree with Shelby that often that's a move a corrupt move done uh for the sake of power um so you know that that's kind of uh that's that's kind of where I'm coming from I'm saying let's make use of the cultural inheritance that we have here in the United States in terms of the narrative and the accounts that we give of who we are and where we're going I want those kids with or those orphan kids without parents to be adopted if white people would adopt them I'd be happy that would be fine by me we don't live in that world I want them to be adopted I want Pastor Corey Brooks of Chicago who's on the South Side fighting gang violence and trying to give hope to people through his project Hood uh helping others obtain Destiny I want him to get the money that he needs I want him to be able to build the community centers that he wants to build to serve those uh people and I want him to inspire those youths and if he can do it in a colorblind fashion that's fine but we're in the year 2022 and that's the south side of Chicago so could you could you say a word I was going to ask you if you would say a little more about where the culture is now I can't pick up the New York Times and read stories about race without seeing very aggressive affirmative nods towards racial identity I think the determined determined effort to make us think about those things and frame things in that way uh well I'm I'm with Shelby on that I mean but but you said a moment ago that you have an expectation the culture is headed in One Direction and the reality is up that's true but amongst Elites like even even within a marriage I've heard Halle Berry and Barack Obama talk about the way that they self-identify and they both invoke the Run drop rule and insist that they view themselves as black and and I suspect that the tendency is more in that direction especially amongst Elites that's the way that these issues are are often presented in these very binary white lowercase w white and I'm against that and I'm against that in Black lives matter is another in uh instantiation of the phenomenon that you're talking about and I'm against that but but I'm saying that that's where the culture actually seems to be headed and it and it does that not you mean towards sharpening racial distinctions that's where the talking heads are going that's where the elite Democratic party uh uh based uh advocacy Community is going I don't think that's where the people who are actually making decisions about whether or not to marry somebody who's in a different racial group than they're going to I think those numbers are going up inexorably they're going up so you know my long run forecast is that we won't be able to have this conversation in 15 75 years yeah I hope so that's true that's true I have a granted can you hear yes yes okay I have a grandson who is Mexican Jewish white black and black could actually granddaughter as well we should mention Thomas Chatterton Williams here everybody should read his book portraits in black and white isn't that what he calls that book he's an African-American of mixed racial Heritage who is married to a woman who is not black and he thinks about his own children in terms that he says these categories make no sense whatsoever for my kids and it's time that we think Beyond them and yes it is time that we think Beyond them but I'm still you know I'm got my story and I'm sticking to it well that's that that is the your story and and uh that is your identity you know and uh yeah and you have every right to stick to it but um there are people who are whoever different they have different Rivers Running in them and understood I wonder if uh because the what the bottom line here is that within the group itself when I was growing up I go out to play in the morning and they'd say you think you white don't you and then and then on the way home from school they would say you're a like the rest of us those are black people talking to you like that black people I grew up in an entirely black world I wonder if everyone would be willing to offer some concluding thoughts and Bob I'll turn to you first just some concluding thoughts that's a the question then that is um I think that what the left has done effectively as really hijacked the rich Legacy of this Civil Rights Movement I think blacks have warned the thorn warned the thorn of crown uh um Crown of Thorns of slavery and discrimination but others are appropriating that I saw a cartoon many years ago of a black man with an afro-holding a black power siren and and you had gays and women and all that saying what is he doing in our movement [Music] but uh again my political philosophy is radical pragmatism I'm a cardiac Christian my my desire is to work within my community I did a uh the Dr Phil show that'll air the first week in November and on it I said we need to have a one-year moratorium in whining about white folks and we need to use that time to address the Enemy Within and I'm using it to to reduce gang violence as we have in the past uh by leaving white folks out the room for a whole year when we can adjust the Enemy Within we have a moral and spiritual free fall that everybody's in that is consuming white kids and and in Silicon Valley that's the suicide rate is six times the national average the highest uh death rate in Appalachians prescription drugs and this homicide in the inner city we are not going to address that crisis if we have to look at each other through a racial prism so I think there's we have a larger crisis to face and that's why I'm trying to deracialize race thank you Bob Shelby well I I be brief with it my feeling is the biggest problem that we have in Black America is and what keeps us down and distinguishes us in a negative way is that the one thing we don't have for centuries of experience with is freedom and and that that it just simply is not a part of the that's that is what oppression is is the denial of freedom when you are not free to agent your own future you adapt to whatever is um one of the problems of black American culture in history is that we adapted probably way way too much um we we and it's a it's a kind of negative in our in our cultural history that we didn't fight to the death that we didn't Patrick Henry that we found a way to adapt to A system that completely oppressed Us in every conceivable way we carry that I think uh and and it's it's uh it's a source of bad faith within the group uh it's it's a source of uh uh you know I can't I can't swear in this dignified form right uh uh impersonate you know what is something I also grew up with in the black community as though don't tell me um I'm like everybody else there's a so it says no I'm you know I'm on the lowdown um we have a lot of we have a lot of work to do there uh and we but the main problem I mean that's great we history denied us weakened us so that we are not able to join the modern world uh in an easy way and we keep putting the emphasis on racism and Collective action whether you're race and all this sort of thing when the problem is we are we are not competitive we're under educated we're culturally backward we have some some values that are self-destructive uh we have a lot of work to do before we get we we actually have the dignity win for ourselves the dignity uh that makes us on par with with other groups with other with other elements of society that's entirely on us and uh we we need to get busy with that uh at this point in time but I want to say more but time is passive so turn it over to Camille and then we'll have Glenn conclude Camille yeah it's it's so interesting to to be in this conversation because there's so much being said by everyone that I find myself in deep agreement with but then there are aspects of it that I want to critique without being too forceful because again there's this deep this deep agreement but I think that there is there's a very real sense in which and Barbara Fields I think her and her sister Karen's book racecraft is is a essential reading especially chapter four for most people um because it's a book that forces us to wrestle with the way that race operates as an ideology the way that it infects our thinking the way that we reinforce it in various ways and even of the the things that I just heard you saying shall be about us and the the difficult things that need to be exercised and addressed those those aren't my challenges they are challenges that need to be addressed undoubtedly but those are challenges that we can perhaps address corporately in some sense but only a particular individual taking particular actions in their own life can actually Rectify these these problems and to the extent we're concerned about the children at Appalachia and the children in in Baltimore City the reality is that the problems they're confronting oftentimes are very much the same um and the the deprivations that they're experiencing are very much the same and it isn't Amplified or diminished by the fact that you know more white people are actually economically well off in this country relative to the number of black people that doesn't do anything for that kid in Appalachia um I think there's a there's a challenge perhaps that I'd like to issue which is just for us to all be more cognizant of the ways in which we engage with race and we talk about race and we even race ourselves how that can have a meaningful impact on the kind of policy prescriptions that are com that we come up with and the ways that we approach um particular problems and talk about the issues that are of most importance I don't like the the phrase black on black crime I don't think the crime is being perpetrated because people are black it's being perpetrated in particular areas all crime is is not all crime but much much violent crime is intra-racial but there there's something about acknowledging that fact that I think can be very powerful and can undermine a lot of the potential shortcomings of of having people obsess over kind of what is in many respects of kind of cosmic cosmetic attribute of a problem that we're all deeply concerned about Glenn okay guys first of all what a wonderful conversation thank you I'm very proud here at the Glen show to be hosting this uh this convocation secondly I want to see the big point about we individual human beings are not our race to Camille and Shelby you're right about that I mean Ellison and I know you know this Shelby what's the past you say skin and blood don't think something like that I mean I'm not my race I think of James Joyce and portrait of the Artist as a Young Man uh there's a patchage there he says you know what happens to when a soul of a man is born in this country there are nets thrown at it to hold it back I'll try to turn these nets into wings and fly by them do you know what Ireland is this is Joyce Ireland is the old sow that eats her pharaoh and yes hyper race Consciousness is something that can consume and extirpate the individual Spirit I'll just stand by this if you want to do something not about black on black crime about the god-awful level of violence on the ground in cities around this country you want to change that you want to actually get them to put down that gun and to stop killing each other you want to reach them you want to move them teach them who they are where they've come from and what they owe to their God into their country into their people I would use race in that catechism even as I'm affirming the long run ideal of issuing race altogether we're not there yet foreign thank you very much everyone all right Spin The Glenn show thanks for listening

Channel: The Glenn Show

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Id: 3hfm4D64Xt4

Length: 82min 44sec (4964 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022