Heather Mac Donald: The Black Lives Matter movement is a complete, utter fraud | Top Story

the black lives matter movement is a complete utter fraud it is a Shameless deception they do not give a damn about black lives President Biden does not give the damn about black lives the Democratic party does not give a damn about black lives the only people who seem to care about black lives are white conservatives and and conservative media hello I'm Jonathan Tobin editor-in-chief of the Jewish news Syndicate jns.org and you're listening to top story a weekly podcast where I analyze the most important stories happening in Jewish news around the world each week I'll break down politics foreign policy and culture to provide insights into what is going on behind the headlines hello and welcome to top story thanks for joining us we're very fortunate to have with us today one of the most important writers and thinkers about contemporary issues Heather McDonald author of the new book when race trumps Merit but before we start I want to encourage everyone to like this video and podcast subscribe to JNS and click on the bell for notifications I also want to remind you that you don't have to wait a full week for more top story analysis there is a daily top story podcast where I share more news and Analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today you can find The Daily Show under top story with Jonathan Tobin on the JMS channel on Apple Spotify Google play or wherever you get your podcasts and now to today's program though we live in an era when it is axiomatic that religious faith is on the decline in the United States nevertheless there is a new religion that is spreading its Doctrine throughout the country and largely overwhelming all opposition like some other faith during their Beginnings this one is highly aggressive and Evangelistic in its Outlook as well as intolerant of non-believers I refer of course and not to any particular belief in a higher being but to the new secular religion of anti-racism sometimes referred to as wokeness and rightly understood as a form of cultural Marxism it has all the characteristics of a religion in terms of its Reliance on assumptions about offering a unique path to Salvation it has its profits and theologians in this case that would refer to the faux Scholars an intellectual snake oil salespersons like Ibrahim X candy and Robin D'Angelo they serve as guardians of its inflexible doctrines from which it tolerates no deviations and it has sacred Martyrs like George Floyd whose death have become sacramental myths dedicated and detached from historical reality in order to put forward the lie that the police routinely hunt and kill black males even though the statistical evidence proves this isn't true but as with any religious belief the facts don't matter to woke true believers who far from being marginalized extremists Now command Academia popular culture and increasingly every other discipline as well as not to mention it's fast becoming the official doctrine of the Biden Administration at its core are toxic ideas like critical race Theory and intersectionality which like those of other faiths are based on assumptions about Humanity in this case it is the belief that America and the West are irredeemably racist and that all of the achievements of America and of Western Civilization its Creed is woke catechism of diversity equity and inclusion based on this idea of racism those high-minded sounding words Dei seem to offer a path to Enlightenment and virtue but the opposite is the case the goal of equity is equality of outcomes not opportunity which in practice means quotas and an accompanying belief that a colorblind Society is not only unattainable but undesired it locks us into a permanent race war from which There Is No Escape the impact of Dei is to worsen race relations just at a moment in history where the enormous progress America has made since the Triumph of the Civil Rights Movement 60 years ago had led to less racial president Prejudice than at any point in our history it also helps Empower anti-semites convinced that Jews and Israel are white oppressors to those non-believers who see the enormous damage the religion of woke anti-racism is doing this is well known but what isn't widely or properly understood is how the corrupt Dei faith is impacting a wide variety of other fields including medicine and science where satisfying the need to fulfill racial quotas is considered more important than the Merit of a doctor or scholar scientific research and skill in our brave new Dei world the meritocracy which produced unprecedented scientific advances is being sacrificed for the sake of racial virtuously equally shocking is the way Dei concerns are devastating the fine and the Performing Arts where excellence in a Devotion to the greatest achievements of Western civilization in music and art and theater have been discarded in favor of a commitment to racial equity in which mediocrity is praised and greatness rejected as the product of a racist past at the same time Dei is destroying law enforcement and unleashing a new era of Toleration for Crime rooted in the false belief that racism is the explanation for everything clearly that leaves us at a turning point for the country and the world with those determined to fight this toxic faith not really labeled as racist but derided as waging a culture War when in fact the people waging the war on our culture have been the world Dei commissars not their opponents one person who has devoted herself to the study of this strange religion is Heather McDonald she is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute a contributing editor at the City Journal widely published she is the author of a number of essential books the burden of bad ideas how intellectuals misshape our society the 2016 war on Cops how the new attack on Law and Order makes everyone less safe the 2018 diversity delusion how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture and the recently published when race trumps Merit how the pursuit of equity sacrifices Excellence destroys Beauty and threaten lives Heather McDonald welcome to top story it's an honor to be with you Jonathan thank you so much well thank you so much for taking the time to join us your latest book like its recent predecessors is both timely and terribly important but let's start by explaining why Equity the E and the woke Dei catechism is so dangerous when its proponents such as President Biden who's implemented it as a government policy presented as an Anodyne expression of racial Harmony inequality when in fact is just the opposite how and why has the left succeeded not just in promoting this dubious Faith but how they managed to install it as a governing ideology and just not just Academia where perhaps we would have expected it and where it began but also the business world the Arts and government um how did this happen well first of all let's define what Equity means and it means uh racially proportionate outcomes the lack of equity is allegedly visible when you have an institution that does not have above all 13 black representation if a cancer research lab does not have 13 percent oncologists that is said to be an inequitable lab and the only allowable explanation for any lack of racial proportionality in any institution is today racism uh you may not talk about other possible explanations for that lack of proportionality Above All In the case of meritocratic Institutions uh the academic skills Gap we can talk about the actual details of that later Jonathan the numbers are absolutely stunning but they make it impossible to achieve so-called diversity consistent with meritocracy you can have diversity or you can have meritocracy you cannot have both so Equity means uh that every group is proportionally represented it is dangerous because we are tearing down every single meritocratic standard in the case of Excellence achieving institutions in order to engineer diversity or equity in the case of law enforcement We are tearing down criminal law standards we are not Prosecuting a whole range of offenses because doing so has a disparate impact on black criminals and results in the over-representation of blacks in prison how did this happen how was the left so successful in in propelling this idea of ubiquitous racism out of the universities into the World At Large uh it's overwhelmingly in the United States at least because of white Americans understandable guilt about race uh we had an appalling history that was uh in in grotesque contradiction to our stated ideals that we would go around pronouncing about to the world that the you know what sets America apart was its regard for equal rights for human rights for political rights at all the while uh denying those to blacks and we are so guilty about that that we are not willing to look at our present reality where racism has been excised from the public sphere it is not the problem holding blacks back today the problem today for blacks is a pathological inner city culture we are not a white supremacist country I mean the the degree of self-flagellation for Phantom racism is not how a white supremacist country would behave Jonathan uh we turn our eyes away from the from the overt pathologies of black inner city culture and blame ourselves for a problem that no longer exists uh so so until we're willing to be honest about the causes of ongoing racial disparities today it is all coming down every institution of Western Civilization is coming down right um that's that's a very succinct and very uh definition there um before we get into some of the details of how this is all being implemented or when the specific damage that's being done I want to begin with sort of one question that I'm sometimes asked when I write about this topic and that is people say what is the ultimate goal of the Believers and Dei is it just about a misguided attitude towards race or is there something much deeper going on with respect to a a distaste for any war on Western Civilization itself is that what is driving it or is it just racial guilt well I think they're both I think the racial guilt leads to the war on Western Civilization it is not innocuous it is not do not take it at face value it is so painfully not about inclusion it is about exclusion and it is the we have given a forum and a Arena uh for hatred the mob is tearing down every institution that it can every historical figure every extraordinary accomplishment the enlightenment conquest of of uh Superstition in favor of the scientific method of the use of rationality to try to understand the world and and solve in a systematic empirical method uh the the problems of disease that had been plaguing human beings for all of their history uh the mob is not creative it cannot match those accomplishments but it can tear down and I think that the West is involved in this very strange and unprecedented self-cancellation we are canceling our civilization with unchecked low-skilled third world immigration illegal immigration from from cultures that are vastly different from ours and we believe that the West alone has no right to determine who comes into its own countries uh were involved in self-cancellation with regards to the whole uh transgender phenomenon which is as trying to chemically castrate as many young people as it can we seem to be on a on a path of self-annihilation and it is not anything that any other culture is engaged in every other culture is trying to promote Excellence promote strength promote uh accomplishment and is not tearing down excellence in the name of fighting a phantom plague of discrimination right now in your book the newest book when race Trump's Merit the first section deals with a topic that I think even many critics of Dei are not really fully informed about the way wokeness now dominates medicine and science I think a lot of people in this country were under the impression that the physical sciences were exempt from the anti-racism madness but not so can you explain how this happened and how is it the more people aren't up in arms but the potential impact of of a of a trend which is downgrading excellence in something which has to do with people's lives and their health well more people are not up in arms about the utter uh likely destruction of scientific excellence in the United States because they're cowards uh I say this with a certain degree of sympathy but I am sent on an almost daily basis the most outrageous emails and messages and and mandates from the federal government science funding agencies or from stem departments in in American universities regarding the mandated sacrifice of excellence in favor of selecting uh scientists on the basis of the trivialities of of melanin and gonads and sexual preference uh and and these are scientists these are oncologists doctors physicists that are sending me these things and my question to them is when are you going to stand up and defend your whole life's work we hear from the from the Biden Administration science agencies that medicine is a racist Enterprise that science is an inequity producing Enterprise these are absolutely lunatic propositions science does not give a damn about somebody's race and sex the issue is the the core issue of science is the scientific method not scientists it's not about identity but these scientists are terrified that if they stand up and say you're forcing us if you're going to force us to create a racially proportionate neurology lab to try and cure Alzheimer's and Dementia and Parkinson's disease we are going to have to lower standards so greatly that it is going to vastly encumber our ability to do good research they won't say it uh and as far as people thinking this was not happening all I can say is you people were asleep at the wheel because it was obvious it was going to happen anybody who thought there'd be any kind of brightline distinction between in the one hand within universities uh the social science and Humanities and stem on the one hand on the one hand and stem on the other or between the universities on the one hand and the World At Large on the other was just incredibly naive because this ideology is borne by guilt hatred uh phony self-righteous virtue signaling and it has taken over I mean the medical schools are admitting students with their admitting Black and Hispanic students with with academic test scores and gpas that are so low they would be automatically disqualifying if presented by whites and Asian College seniors and they are changing standards of medical licensing exams because those exams have a disparate impact on Black and Hispanic medical students they are disbanding honor Societies or changing them away from uh from academic honors to take into account so-called uh advocacy work and the pressure goes on and on and on to the point that if you are coming into an emergency room after having been in a near fatal car crash you should be worried it is not irrational to worry if the doctor who comes through your door is in one of these favored victim groups he may be he may be the best doctor and he may have been the one who did uh succeed on the basis of his Merit alone but the odds are given the ubiquity of racial preferences that he is an affirmative action higher and not somebody who was hired on the merits yeah I think that's that's so true and it it also in a way it compels um those who are trying to fight against the instinct to be a coward because of course to to resist it is to risk your career and you speak of this in detail in your book but it's also on the one hand we're being asked to not notice the difference and on the other hand if we do then the answer is so what you're a racist right no it's it's amazing I mean this is the whole discourse around racial preferences is internally completely contradictory uh we're waiting now for the Supreme Court in the United States to decide whether to continue the patent fictions the nauseating inconsistencies uh that are required to maintain a a jurisprudence that allows racial preferences in college admissions a lot of people are predicting that with the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in the United States now we will finally reverse the long line of of Supreme Court precedent that began with U.S uh or Baki versus California Regents in 78 and continued through University of Michigan cases Greta and Gratz the allow colleges to have double standards of admission for the sake of so-called diversity uh but the universities of course and a whole lot of elite corporations and the military in the United States have been fighting tooth and nail to preserve racial preferences uh and they say that if the court says we cannot engage in racial preferences well will our schools will just be completely devoid of diversity defined of choruses as as uh overwhelmingly with regards to race that that racial preferences are essential to being able to engineer uh the word diversity we want and and that's true at the same time it's true up to a point and and this gets very complicated we we don't necessarily need to get into it but but there's a cascading effect of preferences that actually mean that in the middle tier of schools if you get rid of them the number of black students will all stay the same it's just don't be matched to their to their cohort to their to their student peers but so but on the one hand schools say we cannot survive without racial preferences and at the same time they exactly assert what you say Jonathan which is you're not allowed to notice that they exist so if you're in an academic environment and you say we have racial preferences here you will be stigmatized you're supposed to protect anyway that comes to mind yeah exactly Amy wax and Norman Wang uh at at the a electrocardiologist at the University of Pittsburgh medical school who wrote an article you know a very prominent doctor Rana in a very important fellowship program he published an article in a medical journal arguing against racial preferences in medical school admissions saying that uh we are admitting students who are not competitively qualified to succeed and uh it's just not it's not a good practice he was completely canceled he was he was he was forbidden from having contact with students he was vilified by his peers at the University of Pittsburgh and across the medical world his Fellowship was taken off the fellowship program uh so you're not allowed to talk about a reality that High School seniors see all the time you know when they when they get their admission slips to college they all compare them and they know that black students with much lower sats are getting admitted to schools for which Asian and white students with much higher sats are rejected and yet they go to college and they all have to pretend that that's not going on right um yeah I mean it's it's mind-boggling now the the bulk of your latest book is devoted to what has happened as a result of the Dei Takeover in the Arts now anyone who attends classical concerts or the Opera can see the results um But the irony here is that much like the obsession with race in other spheres which is predicated on the notion of a rising racism when the opposite is the case the Arts world was already obsessed with about promoting diversity before the moral Panic of the black lives matter summer of 2020 when the death of George Floyd turned the country upside down why did virtually every element of the Arts you know our theater Music World suddenly embraced the idea that they the the most prominent you know leftist to a man or and woman that they were all racist when it was obvious that they weren't it's just incredible I mean this is as horrifying and as tragic and nauseating as the Betrayal of the scientists that you have leaders of Arts institutions whether it's Symphonies opera companies ballet companies that should know better not just about their legacy in recent Decades of massive Outreach massive Fellowship programs massive scholarship programs to try to encourage more blacks to go into their art form they should know better Jonathan about the Sublimity of the Traditions that they are curating that a Beethoven piano Concerto is not a racist work the anticipation that the The Listener feels in waiting for that piano to come in behind or in front of the vast orchestral Beast that moment of amazing suspense uh moving towards an incredible unfurling of thought of feeling of intellectual power is not a racist moment it is something that is utterly precious and to go around saying that the only reason that we care about Beethoven as as editors in the BBC magazine have said is because he's a white male is utter malpractice and yet you have not just heads of classical music organizations but the leading classical music critics in the United States whether it's Alex Ross of the New Yorker or Anthony tomassini of the New York Times uh apologizing for being part of a of a of a tradition that as Ross says is blindingly white well guess what it's a European tradition you know Europe was was Caucasian that is its demographic fact and right now the rule is is that any artistic tradition that is European is per se racist because the people that created that artistic creation were white and nobody applies that standard to any other tradition in the rest of the world whether it's in China in Africa in India those Traditions were just as racially or ethnically homogeneous the West does not criticize them for racism or ethnicity bias or you you name it it only criticizes itself yes you tell a number of important yet really terrible stories in your book about the impact of Dei and it's hard to choose just a couple to highlight but I I think the stories of the demise of the docents at The Institute of Art in Chicago and how the Metropolitan Museum of Art canceled a great 19th century anti-slavery sculpture as racist or particularly instructive as to what is happening can you can you just you know quickly explain um to our audience what happened in those cases well the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the great art museums of the world I recommend that everybody go visit its little Corridor of all Seattle regime pastel portraits by Shada Martin Quentin De La Tour they're absolutely gorgeous uh but it is run by an absolute fool James Rondo I have I I I beg your your listeners Jonathan to get the book and read my transcript of a speech he gave and Des Moines Iowa uh Contemporary Arts Center because it took me a long time to get down every last um and you know and like that this this idiot put forward um but they had a tradition of docent art Educators that stemmed from the 1950s at a time of particularly fertile time of philanthropy of volunteerism in America uh and the women there was a women's group that helped fundraise for the Art Institute of Chicago in the 50s when it was experiencing financial difficulties uh and they went on to say let's incorporate ourselves as the as the women's Board of the Art Institute of Chicago and let's start looking into art education particularly for children which at the time was understood why you should have professionals do that well they said no we're going to do this as a group of volunteers and they they created a program of training for these docents that was extremely rigorous it's basically the the counterpart of the Masters of Fine Arts you learn the collection you learn art history and they've given entree to the art institute's collections to thousands and thousands of public high school students in Chicago for decades well come George Floyd racial meltdown that the psychological hysteria Neurosis that you mentioned uh Jonathan when every institution was turned into a put on its hair shirt and started viciously flagellating itself for phony racism uh somebody looked at the docent and said my God they're all basically vastly disproportionately white females therefore they have to go we cannot have whites uh instructing black Inner City High School students about our art collection so the docent program was just canceled uh nearly a hundred free free workers giving the uh art institute endless hours of their time all gotten rid of given their pink slips even though they weren't employees per se and uh was announced that and of course the the woman who ran the art the women's board that was behind this was herself a black woman without any real arts background whatsoever but specializes in in anti-racism and they will be replaced by six part-time paid uh workers who will be chosen on the basis of their anti-racism credentials not on the basis of art so a completely self-destructive unnecessary move the Metropolitan Museum showed that you mentioned Jonathan when I was writing this piece I thought it does not get worse than that than this I I think this is the nadir and I've not seen anything match it yet uh it is the most revolting betrayal of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts connoissership obligation and an educational obligation and simple fealty to the truth they bought a bus in 2019 by a very extraordinarily accomplished 19th century French sculptor named Jean-Baptiste calpo who was a second only took that as a master sculptor in France and he created a bust of a enslaved African woman with a chain around her chest looking up behind her shoulder in a look of piercing uh incomprehension outrage sort of it it it's an it's an expression of complete Humanity that expresses her essential being and the and the outrageousness of of slavery and it was this bust was understood at the time and for a century afterwards as an abolitionist work but the the even when this was it was bought in 2019 by one of the new Lefty uh heads of the sculpture department at the Met and even in 2019 pre-george Floyd meltdown they were already signaling that they were going to use this bus to deconstruct uh Western Art and and as a corrective to a 2014 retrospective of jean-patist calpol that rightly celebrated corporate's accomplishments and and Sublimity and so they they mounted this show around the single bust whose propositions are patent fictions they argue that if a white artist portrays a uh a a work of abolitionist art that the actual thesis of that work of art is that blacks are inherent slaves it's completely contradictory but this is the reading they've imposed upon in this is that carpo and every other abolitionist Craftsmen like Josiah Wedgwood who did a very influential Cameo anti-slavery Cameo that what they're really saying is that well blacks can only be slaves in order to be free they argue in this show at the Met it's called the fictions of emancipation which gives you sort of all you need to know in other words emancipation is always a fiction because whites are always going to figure out a way to suppress blacks uh and we'll keep blacks enslaved even when they've nominally liberated them it argues that it the use of a nude because one breast of this black slaved woman is revealed the use of a nude is racist well for the Metropolitan operators the Metro Museum to say the use of a nude is racist basically it faces 5 000 years of Western art history because the nude is Central to Western Art and it's always practically always a white nude so please explain if if portraying a nude is so racist what does it mean that we have portrayed the entirety of Western art history has been fascinated by the portrayal of the human body and above all the female body it argues this show the fictions of emancipation that if an artist doesn't name his model it's because he's a racist again this is a complete betrayal of Western art artists almost never name their models we don't know who they are but the net is ensuring that when the Middle School from from Harlem is brought into the Met to go see this show for ethnic identity and diversity purposes they will be taught to see this sculpture as a sign of white supremacy and they will be taught to hate the Western Art tradition even though it was a tradition that gave birth to an entire tradition of emancipationist art it is a complete travesty this show and and in this case the director of the Metropolitan Opera Max whole Lane uh who came in uh he's German the the blood is on his hands yes absolutely um you know one of the uh things within the Arts world is that you know every Arts organization certainly since 2020 you know have they woke commissary enforcing policy and hiring practices you know based on the Dei catechism now one of the third rail issues that you were not afraid of touching is how the obsession with race has led not just to the tearing down of the obviously great but to the also to the elevation of the medial mediocre because of race in particular you single out the inordinate praise given the recently discovered third Symphony by Florence price an African-American woman who were primarily in the pre-World War II era but who is now celebrated as an underappreciated genius because of her race and you also note the irony and and this is an irony that certainly is is made clear to certainly listeners people go to concerts of the fact that contemporary music critics praise her as much of the fact that her very traditional style of composition is something that they would despise in anyone who wasn't a person of color and therefore a victim to be you know hailed and you know I would add as someone who you know heard the third Symphony at a Philadelphia Orchestra subscription concert um and thought well this isn't so bad consider you know compared to you know the medicine that uh or audiences are forced to digest in virtually every concert where a work proceed whatever it precedes the the work that people came to hear um they were forced to listen to some contemporary work by a you know a composer who is from an approved minority class compared to that compared to most of that price isn't so bad but but you aren't afraid to say that it really isn't so good even other yeah well let me first respond to your opening comment about the the forced diversity commissars in every Arts organization you know this was during the kovitch pathetic ridiculous over uh exaggerated and enforced shutdowns when Arts organizations particularly Performing Arts organizations about were just absolutely decimated by the The Disappearance of audiences and not being able to charge tickets uh the the Metropolitan Opera in New York City was demanding huge uh pay cuts and wasn't paying any of its musicians and saying to its unions that if you don't give us give backs on pay benefits and whatnot we will go under we this is a lie for death matter we won't survive at the same time the Metro Metropolitan Opera led by Peter Gelb uh hired its first Chief diversity officer uh a a woman who had been the dean of students at Harvard Law School Marsha sells who has no music background much less an opera background and if she's a if she was the dean of students at Harvard Law School she was making a very very comfortable six-figure salary maybe even a half a million for all I know because Harvard is the most high-paying Law School in the country so she comes to the Metropolitan Opera they will have to meet her salary and probably give her a large staff and this was going on the the Philadelphia Orchestra the Cincinnati Orchestra they were all adding these diversity bureaucrats who were even less qualified than marja sells I mean some of them I think I don't remember it was Cincinnati or Philadelphia had like some kind of marketing degree that was it it was it's just pathetic uh wasting money that they claimed was not available at this point so it's really sickening as far as the mediocrities uh yeah I I think Florence press I've heard some interesting piano work by her uh that I do like I do think that the the third symphony is typical of of all of her work uh it it does not have forward momentum there's no development uh excessive overuse of symbols she she every practically all of her Works have a so-called Juba movement which is supposedly based on an African dance they're they're very uh repetitive I recently I just got back to California from New York City and attended a concert of the Pacific Corral and in Orange County Segerstrom Hall that I was very interested in because it had both the Hayden Nelson mass and a choral work by Florence price uh Lincoln Walks at Midnight based on uh a poem and I I'm really trying to keep an open mind I'm you know I'm going to as much of this as I can and this work was way worse than the third Symphony it's fine it had finally there was one and you could tell the program notes were they have to be very careful when writing uh there was a sort of a fugal movement at the end that was okay but it it again went nowhere I would say however price is is very accomplished compared to the real mediocrity which is Joseph bologna I haven't yet gone to see the movie made about him the Chevalier this was an 18th century uh composer core composer uh who's I recognize his works when they come on the radio after one note because they are so profoundly banal uh and yeah he's called you know the equivalent of Mozart yeah well there's a guy who's a playwright who has said oh we all call bologna the uh White Mozart in fact we should be calling Mozart the black Chevalier which is just I mean one doesn't even know where to begin yeah it's kind of nuts there are fantastic black composers uh Florence price is probably the chosen so you know ubiquitously because she's black female so she gets the intersectionality uh quota but I went several a month or so ago to a program at the New York Philharmonic called the march to Liberation again I'm going to all the black music I can this was an exclusively black program had a contemporary work uh that was fine and William Grant's still second Symphony which is that you can really feel the American Songbook and the American Musical tradition it too though lacks some forward development it becomes repetitious and then a great work um by uh uh escapes you right now but set to various um works speeches of once Martin Luther King Unfortunately they substituted an Obama subsequently um and and so there is good work out there why we're seizing on bologna uh and um and and and and price is kind of a mystery I would love to hear Scott Joplin's Opera tree Manisha it has been revived it should be done again uh still has an opera that has been performed I think it's called The Lost Islander troubled Island I'd love to hear that but but price is is is way way overplayed yeah I think that's true I think that's true and um you know I think it's someone who has gone to the Performing Arts especially Opera in concerts my whole adult life now that we have these woke commissaries clearly making policy you know we can we can see it for the first time I'm is you know Opera has always been basically colorblind black singers of Blade rolls that were obviously for whites um you know my entire lifetime but now for the first time I'm thinking about casting uh choices especially at the Met um sometimes where they're a little bizarre and thinking well was that because of race I never thought that my entire life um but now we're forced to think that and forced to sort of contemplate and certainly at the Metropolitan Opera which is sort of changing its whole Mo for you know 100 and you know 30 years that its purpose was the greatest works sung by the greatest singers now it's more dedicated to to new works um of often of dubious quality um and often you know for racial purposes as well so in the end it comes back to you know it's the title of your book where race trumps Merit in areas where we thought that Merit was the only thing that counted right and I if I just the composer I was thinking of in this previous New York Philharmonic concert called the marched Liberation was Adolphus hailstork who's also written some gorgeous gorgeous song um yeah I mean there you said they're changing the the their MO for obvious reasons one of those reasons is funders you will not get funded Now by whether it's the National Endowment for the Arts or private foundations God knows you will never get looked at by the Mellon foundation and Ford and Rockefeller got out of out of Arts a long time ago they've probably gone back in in order to do some racial victimology uh funding but but um you will not get any acent of money unless you can show a diverse staff diverse casting diverse programming so it's a complete Vise that these organizations find themselves in um and yeah the the Metropolitan Opera new works at dubious quality I I'd wanted to go to here the second Opera Now by um that the Met has has mounted by Terence Blanchard last they gave the premiere of fireship no I don't think it was the premier premiered in St Louis far shut up in my box yes and it's gone the autobiography of of the New York Times racial race Bader uh columnist Charles blow and this year they did Champion which was his first opera so they reversed the order I was planning to go to that in person I couldn't I had to go up to Boston for another podcast um but I listened to it on the radio this week at the Metro phone it was pretty again pretty insipid the best part was the jazz band that was brought in but otherwise it was fine it you know it wasn't assaultive like as you refer to you know a lot of the post tonal music that that gets programmed but it it just wasn't uh particularly noteworthy I wouldn't rush to go hear it again yeah well I reviewed it for the Washington examiner and I think as with uh as as I said you know a year earlier about fire shut up in my in in your bones um when I reviewed it for for the DC examiner as well it was sort of like well if if the Metropolitan Opera must have contemporary operas and must have African-American contemporary operas you know this isn't that bad certainly it's actually better than some of the other new operas but certainly it's not great it doesn't compare to the things that you know normally one would go to the Metropolitan operated C but which quite frankly you're not going to see that much of uh in the future yep well I think the Canon is way over performed so I I only go to Opera for new works that I don't know but I'm much more interested in hearing works from the 19th century new works from the 19th century that haven't been performed I mean every every canonical composer has a whole bunch of operas that we haven't heard you know whether it's Dvorak or or donat septi you know they're they're languishing and I don't want to die without having heard the full exposure of of uh the greatness of this of this tradition it just kills me that the Canon is so narrow and so played to death so I'm all for programming unfamiliar repertoire but the but the basis for doing so should not be uh the race and sex of the of the composers yeah I think that's very true about there are a lot of Hidden Treasures I mean there used to be groups that devoted were devoted to to bringing them to the floor but you can't get funding for that and I think I'll just one more note that you were very right to to note the the funding issue um you know the Metropolitan Opera you know and great orchestras you know like the Philadelphia Orchestra or the New York Philharmonic they'll get by they can they can get the money and they can twist themselves into pretzels it's small Arts organizations chamber music groups um around the country that are really being killed by this um I I want to turn just you know in the time away you know some of the time we have left to the last section of your book which is in a sense a a sequel to your previous book the war on Cops which focused on both the myth of Michael Brown and the Ferguson effect at the time that book was published a few years ago your thesis about the Ferguson effect and the police standing down because of false accusations of racism was widely denounced in the liberal media but as events have Vindicated the truth of your conclusion the belief in myths about Ferguson and police shootings of blacks has actually not just increased but becoming an almost unchallengeable Article of Faith I mean at the time of the George Floyd killing you you had a great piece in the Wall Street Journal exposing the the lie about the the belief that blacks were being hunted and killed by police I've linked to it many times uh since then but it continues to be ignored by you know most of the media most of the public discourse why have the world gotten away with this big lie even as the catastrophic impact of their policies on Public Safety have now become unavoidable it's it's astounding it is I mean we are supposed to pretend that existing while black as the Kansas city mayor put it uh recently is a terrible burden because of white supremacists that wide service the blacks are being killed on a daily basis as as President Joe Biden is fond of saying that every time uh black parents allow their children to step outside they have to worry that those children will be killed by a police officer or by a white supremacist uh that we we put up with this racial bathos all the time that it is so exhausting to be black because we're hunted down by these whites it's absurd yes existing while black is much more dangerous in the United States than existing while white the reason is because blacks are killing each other off at astronomical rates it is not whites who are killing them in the first 18 months of this of the pandemic as the left-wing researchers labeled this this demarcation what that really is is the first 18 months after the George Floyd race riots black juveniles were shot at a rate a hundred times that of white juveniles a hundred times if those black juveniles had been shot by whites we would have heard about every one of those shootings in fact we heard about virtually none of them because they were all shot by blacks we we turn our eyes away from the daily Carnage every single day dozens of blacks are killed in homicide that's more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined even though blacks are 13 of the nation's population and we do not look at those black victims because they do not fit our narrative the black lives matter movement is a complete utter fraud it is a Shameless deception they do not give a damn about black lives President Biden does not give a damn about black lives the Democratic party does not give a damn about black lives the New York Times doesn't give a damn about black lives The Washington Post doesn't give a damn about black lives the only people who seem to care about black lives are white conservatives and and conservative media they're the only ones that have raised an alarm about the massive increase in crime following the George Floyd Mass psychosis uh they talk about it all the time and they're called racist for doing so but the dozens of black children toddlers one-year-old three-year-olds seven-year-olds who have been gunned down in their bedrooms in their front yards in their on their porches in their parents cars playing on trampolines at Barbecues in public parks the dozens of black children who have been fatally gunned down or rendered brain dead for Life paralyzed for life because of these insanely brutal and and Savage drive-by shootings none of them we never say their names we never know their names because they're killed by other blacks it is an amazing amazing thing the police are not killing them blacks are killing each other and the reason we don't talk about it is because we're terrified of black dysfunction we're worried that it is not going to go away and we would rather blame the country for phony racism than say this culture has to improve um so true now one of the issues you discuss in your book is how those who become the focus of unfair attacks or organizations about supposed racial bias invariably bend their knees to the Dei faith and engage in Chinese Cultural Revolution style challenge you know struggle sessions in which they admit guilt and not everyone does and when they resist as often as not they survive cancellations that would seem to be the path to fight back against this woke Faith but at a time when Dei has conquered just about every sector of American life except old Knights and various conservative enclaves it's not hard to understand why so few resist isn't it yes and and it is a real problem Jonathan because the threat of losing your job is real and I I do not claim any credit for speaking the truth or what I believe is the truth obviously the left says it's not the truth um because I'm in a relatively protected position and I don't know if I were in a university whether I would be as uh bold as I am now I would hope so uh but I do believe that we have to stop being terrified by being called a racist it we it just you have to say sorry I'm not a racist the facts facts are not racist let me tell you the facts let me tell you let me just get on the record for you Jonathan the real facts that explain the lack of racial proportionality in our meritocratic institutions whether it's Law Firm Partners uh Medical School faculty it's nano engineers at at Big tech companies here's the facts that explain that lack of racial proportionality 66 of all black 12th graders do not possess even partial Mastery of basic 12th grade math skills defined as being able to do arithmetic or read a graph eight percent are are proficient in in those skills defined as being able to do uh calculate using ratios and the number of black 12th graders who are advanced in math on a national basis is so small that it doesn't even show up statistically given those skills gaps and the the situation is not much better in Reading 50 percent of black 12th graders do not possess even partial Mastery of basic 12th grade reading skills you cannot again it is absurd to expect racial proportionality and meritocratic institutions absent racism as I said before you can have meritocracy or you can have diversity you cannot have both in line of those skills gaps so we have to start telling the facts and not being cowed by the phony charge of racism uh and and I think that a lot of times the people will stand up and say sorry you don't scare me you know six and tones can break my bones but words can never kill me it will make a difference yeah um you know the it's you know the facts are as you say you know irrefutable um even though we're told to ignore them but also it's a matter of you know it's a refusal to actually address these issues because our education system is obsessed with race and diversity and not in advancing skills in the traditional manner um even you know treating you know Excellence is somehow a white or racist Endeavor um and that just perpetuates this problem you know and indeed that's in line with the whole point of Dei which is to treat race as a permanent as a permanent thing a you know an indelible permanent race war to which we are forever doomed well you know you're right the facts are irrefutable and I think what's going on is we will not get the facts much longer I think that's the reason why places like the University of California have not just said that the s.a.t submission is optional but it is actually prohibited and the reason that they're banning it because it doesn't make sense otherwise because the university can race Norm it can get the facts on the s.a.t scores and then just choose to admit students based on wildly different standards of admission but it it it you're always better with more information than less why not know where that black student stands in in relationship to other black students so that you can choose the best blacks same with them Asians and whites are Hispanics why then are they prohibiting themselves from getting this information why because they want to put the College Board out of existence by having no customers to take the s.a.t so that we will no longer get objective tests of where people stand on academic skills and the same is happening I'm sure with crime data uh it's there's a few police departments that still publish crime on the race of victims and suspects that will end so that you cannot have any objective explanation for why there is over representation of blacks in prison and the reason is because the crime rates are so high so those facts will eventually uh be disappeared but yes Jonathan here's what we have to stop doing if if a standard has a disparate impact on blacks the solution is not to tear down the standard the solution is to meet the standard but what we're doing now is any any test any standard that has a negative disparate impact on blacks we are throwing out the standards that is civilizational suicide we have to stop throwing out the standards defend them they are colorblind they are not racist and China meanwhile is throwing everything it's got at its most comp qualified gifted math students it is not destroyed We are tearing down gifted and talented school programs because they don't have proportional representation of blacks the explanation is the skills gaps it's not racism China is meanwhile throwing everything it's got at its most gifted Talent uh in in math and stem Sciences uh and and it is not saying we are going to aim for mediocrity and it will continue pulling ahead in in the stem arms race that's a very sobering thought you know I think many if not most conservatives are sort of natural pessimists you know we all have this inner Spangler uh about the decline of the West and we're always ready to think the West is doomed but I have to admit that looking around at the way the Dei has taken hold of the country optimism is sometimes hard to maintain and I would say anybody who reads your books would be excused for feeling depressed about the future given how many Grim stories you tell but are you optimistic about the survival of the West in this great war against the woke is is there anything that gives you hope the only thing that gives me hope Jonathan is is the governing Revolution that Ron DeSantis began in Florida I I'm I'm very chagrined that I didn't come up with these very simple Solutions which is just simply say we're not funding your damn diversity bureaucracy in the universe in public universities any longer sorry you know get rid of it or you're we're not going to give you money uh you know you can do that certainly in K through 12 as well um you're not going to use racial preferences now we've tried that you know in with various um vote a referenda like in California and Michigan and of course the schools did everything they can to ignore the law but but the pushback that's coming and also in the in the premature sadistic cruel over sexually sexualizing of children by forcing them to confront gender ideology is another aspect of the suicide in the west but there are places like Florida Governor DeSantis and other Governors that are following suit and and they're not being brow beaten into backing down so that does give me hope and and if more people become aware of what's going on uh that's the only solution otherwise if we continue to be willing and it's I think partly the willingness to sacrifice Western Civilization is because people are so damn ignorant about what it took and what it was and the amazing Millennial long record of invention of Discovery we take everything for granted we're a bunch of ingrates we have no idea how vastly different it doesn't even it's like we're in two different universes the way we live now with our security our fresh water our electricity at a snap of a finger it's all amazing and we take it all for granted and so we're willing to tear down the ideas of excellence and of Science and of achievement that gave us this cersei's from privation from fear from from horrible disfiguring diseases uh and famine so we need to understand more about what the West has created in order to have the courage to defend it that's a very important thought and um you know glad we ended on a little at least a little hope um Heather uh thanks so much for joining us today I want to recommend your latest book as well as all the earlier ones who are audience it's a vital contribution to our public discourse and on target about what is the preeminent threat to the future of this country and indeed Western Civilization it's must reading we also want to thank our audience please remember to tune in every day for top story daily vision and whether you're listening to us on Apple Google play Spotify or any of the other podcast platforms or watching us live on Facebook or Twitter or on the JNS YouTube Channel please like and or subscribe to top story click on the bell for notifications and give us good reviews please write to us at editor jns.org let us know where you listen or watch the show and what you think about it and remember keep reading and thinking for yourself and we'll see you again next week

Channel: JNS TV

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Id: OnodzebHv0U

Length: 65min 41sec (3941 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023