[MUSICAL FLOURISH] GLENN LOURY: Glenn Loury-- The Glenn Show,
BloggingHeads.tv-- I am here with John McWhorter. I am a professor of economics
and of International and Public Affairs at Brown
University, and John is at Columbia University--
where he teaches humanities and is a linguist. And we are the Black
guys at BloggingHeads.tv, and we're back. John, I'm sorry--
I undersold you. I should have added--
what is your latest book? What are you working on. You're a great man. I don't mean to-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Please. GLENN LOURY: --not give you
the appropriate credits. JOHN MCWHORTER: My latest
book is Nine Nasty Words, and that now has a cover and has
gone through the first edits. That comes out next spring. And yeah, we'll see
where it goes from there. Actually, I'm going
to throw this out-- GLENN LOURY: Oh, come on man. That's going to
be a blockbuster. It's going to be a blockbuster. Excuse me for interrupting,
but I have to tell you that. JOHN MCWHORTER: I hope so. You know, though,
something has happened-- before we get on with what
this session should be about. But I'm saying this first here-- Alison Roman is one of the food
writers at the New York Times. And she took some
swipes at Marie Kondo-- this person who's
interested in having you get rid of things
that don't cause you joy-- and Chrissy Teigen, who-- GLENN LOURY: Oh my God! I don't know who any
of these people are. Excuse me. JOHN MCWHORTER: Chrissy
Teigen is a very pretty model who was married to John Legend,
and she's also an entrepreneur. And she's biracial. I don't know much
about her, either. She's extremely beautiful--
that's how it started. GLENN LOURY: OK, there's a point
to all of this now, I'm sure. JOHN MCWHORTER: Anyway,
there's a point. Alison Roman has been
suspended from the Times for saying some slightly
dismissive things about Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen,
because it's supposedly racist that she said those
things about those women because they're not white. I find that so
unconscionable that it has pushed me over
the edge and made me decide that my book
after Nine Nasty Words is going to be a manifesto
about anti-racism as a religion. I decided this yesterday. I'm going to write that
book and have the world-- GLENN LOURY: Terrific, John. JOHN MCWHORTER:
--dump manure on me. I'm going to write it. GLENN LOURY: OK, audience
of The Glenn Show, you heard it here first-- this is not just the
next book; this is the book after the next book. And it's a throwing
down the gauntlet. You know, we've been
having this conversation. I'm just going to include
myself in it, John. I'm sorry. I'm going to be a
co-author on the book. No, I'm going to be thanked
in the acknowledgements. JOHN MCWHORTER:
Let's talk about it. GLENN LOURY: But we've been
having this conversation at The Glenn Show, where
John has been developing what is now more than a metaphor. It might actually
be a deep insight into the structure
of what's happening in our political and
intellectual lives around the race question. Anti-racism as a religion-- and all that that entails. Very exciting, John. I look forward to it. And apropos of that,
we should indeed introduce the topic
du jour, which is racial conflict in America-- the case in Georgia-- Ahmaud Arbery, shot dead
by the McMichael family-- the father and the son-- in an encounter-- I'm not even going to
try to summarize it-- called lynching by many
and occasioning a brouhaha. And now, in Minneapolis,
the killing of-- George Floyd is his name. A Houston native-- it turns out,
John, that my wife [INAUDIBLE] brother is a friend. You know, because the
kid grew up in Houston-- in the Third Ward in Houston. Pierre actually knows-- knew-- I should say knew-- George Floyd. JOHN MCWHORTER: Really? GLENN LOURY: And was bereft
at learning of his death-- but dying with the
police officer's knee pressing his head
into the ground and choking him
off at the trachea. I can't breathe-- he's
saying he can't breathe. He's not resisting in
any way, shape, or form, and now he's killed. And the aftermath
of that, John-- which is rioting in the
streets of Minneapolis. Across the street from the
precinct where these police officers reported is a Target
which was being looted, I'm reading in the
Minneapolis Star Tribune. People were walking out with
big screen TVs from the target. Shopkeepers, mostly immigrants,
up and down the avenue in the vicinity are
having to stand guard or to watch their
places being set ablaze! Set ablaze by rioting
in the streets. These are Black people. This is about race-- about race in America. This is our beat. Our beat is about race. Race is blowing up in
our face right now. And the question is, what
do we have to say about it? I'm so glad I'm talking to you. JOHN MCWHORTER: Me, too, Glenn. Because this is some stuff. And I've really been
thinking about it. Because you have to allow
that you might be wrong. And I don't mean to sound
all high and mighty, but if you really are
trying to get to the truth, you have to be able to take
a deep breath and think, have I got this wrong? Is all of this disproving
everything I've always thought? I don't think the other
side ever do that, and that is high
and mighty to say. I say that highly and mightily,
and I try not to be them. GLENN LOURY: So you're
starting to think that you may have been wrong? JOHN MCWHORTER: Oh, hell, no. But I considered it. Because I'm thinking--
this guy gets killed. He's running down the street,
and he ends up getting killed. And then here's this person--
the knee is on his neck, and he dies. And you see this other cop-- Asian, for the record-- but
this other cop standing there just watching this-- which
I find extremely curious. Why didn't one of
them say, come on? This is my question, Glenn,
about both of those things. And this is the sort of thing
Coleman Hughes would ask-- and he's right, and it seems too
clinical to many people but-- is the reason that Ahmaud
Arbery and George Floyd died because they're Black? And a certain of
person says, oh, well! Well! You know, eyes rolling. But no, no. The question is-- and here's
where they're responsible for really doing some mental
work and trying different things around-- if a white guy had
been seen on camera-- if I've got the facts right-- kind of poking around a
construction site over and over again, would the
owner of that site not have told those
brothers to go check out what looked like that white
person jogging down the street? Can we know? Because then, if the white
person tried to grab the gun, do we know that that
couldn't have happened that if the person was white? And even with George
Floyd-- what a tragedy. We look at it, and we say,
they did it because he's Black. How do we know they wouldn't
have done that to Nils Olsen-- I'm trying to create
some white Minnesota-- and he's kind of a miscreant. I mean, George Floyd
was a forger, they say. But let's say that
it's Nils Olsen, and he keeps on
trying to resist, would those cops not have
done exactly what they did because they would have
more sympathy for Nils? I don't know how we know that. What do you think? GLENN LOURY: OK. I think most people's
eyes are going to roll back in their head when
they hear you say that and say, of course it's because of race. Well, you mean this is America. And then they're going to
tout it off all the names-- remember the names-- Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, etc. Of course, it's America-- the cops are racists. There's a long legacy--
white supremacy, haven't you heard of it? So at some level, I'm not sure
there's anything constructive to be had in litigating
the question that you put, although as a theoretical
kind of exercise and abstract exercise,
I think it's not-- I'm a social scientist, right? So we deal in causality, right? So what does the evidence show? So can you prove-- this kind
of thing that Roland Fryer-- people like that, with the
statistics-- and they try to [? point to it. ?] At that level, no, we don't know
that it was because of race. And the thing about it is that
the hypothetical counterfactual "If he had been white" is never
going to be actually observed. There's no way you can
experimentally construct that. So there is a very
deep limitation as a matter of statistically
rational inference about what you can quote, unquote,
"know" about such things. But you know how Bill
Maher has this thing-- I don't know for a
fact that's it's true, but I just know it's true. I can't prove it for
a fact, but I just-- Bill Maher has this little
routine that he does sometimes on the show. And then he goes
with the comedy, and he'll have six or eight
different little ditties where he knows it's true. He knows, for example,
that Lindsey Graham's gay. I mean, this kind of
thing that Bill Maher-- It's a little bit like that. I can't prove it for a
statistical fact, but I know it's true that if you-- and you can't argue with that. That's part of your religion. There's no adjudicating that. That's what they're
always going to think. So at some level. But I mean, look,
there obviously is something wrong in police
culture when you see behavior like that, regardless
of the color the guy. So we can start with that. There's something wrong
with police culture. JOHN MCWHORTER: Definitely. GLENN LOURY: Because when
the police officer who's standing by doesn't
intervene in the thing that you and I all saw and
doesn't do anything, well, that's telling me something
very deep about the way they're doing business on
a daily basis in that city. And that's obviously an issue. Now, is that a racial issue? Well, again, in terms
of causality, probably. Historically, it
probably has something to do with dealing with crime
and miscreants and danger and policing in the particular
city of Minneapolis. And I don't know
the history there, but I'm sure there is one. This is the Philando Castile
territory and whatnot. And there are many
incidents-- if I knew more, I could tick them off. So probably there
is something there that is very interesting as
a matter of social history that contributes to the culture
of policing that is colored or affected by race. So that's what type of
thing you could say. But the other thing-- and I
want to give you a chance-- the other thing is
how it gets narrated-- how it gets constructed. I mean, race might
have been a part of it, but it might have been 5% of it. But now it has become
the entire thing. It's become a statement about
the nature of race in America, and that's, I think, a highly
questionable, very problematic move. JOHN MCWHORTER: I think-- just a couple of things. We have to come back to
the point that I learned, talking to you-- which is that
nationwide, there are white-- usually, guys-- who are killed
by the cops in very similar circumstances to these. And it's a long list. And in terms of the
official numbers, Black people are killed
rather disproportionately. But actually, it's not nearly as
stark as people would suppose. White men are
killed by the police under indefensible circumstances
constantly in the United States. And we just don't talk
about them in the media. GLENN LOURY: More white men
than Black men, for example. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. GLENN LOURY: Absolutely more--
but not relatively more. JOHN MCWHORTER: Right. And so, for example,
Philando Castile-- I don't remember
the names as well as I did two or
three years ago-- but there was a white
version of Philando Castile. Not in Minneapolis--
but that sort of thing can happen to a
white person, too. It just doesn't make the news. I'm not aware of white
versions of Arbery and Floyd in terms of exactly
what happened to them. But then there's
the second thing, which is that we're not
supposed to ask something-- and it's just asking-- which is, is the reason
that Minneapolis cops kill more Black men than white--
and apparently they do. There's a figure
that has 13 in it-- I forget whether it's 13
times more or something. GLENN LOURY: Whatever. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. So it doesn't happen to
Nils Olsen remotely as much. Is it because Black
people in Minneapolis-- and wait for this, folks. I'm sorry, but we've
been trained not to ask. Is it because Black men in
Minneapolis commit more crime? And if they do, it's
not because there's something wrong with them. It's not to deny that slavery
and Jim Crow happened. Maybe it's because of poverty. GLENN LOURY: Well, naw,
how do you know that? You don't know that. JOHN MCWHORTER: Well, I'm
going to try to know it. GLENN LOURY: That's
another one of those things that you don't have a real
factual knowledge of it, but you know it must be true. We know that the crime has
to be caused by poverty. It can't be caused by depravity? It can't be caused
by bad values? By inhumanity? JOHN MCWHORTER: You're on
your own with that one. GLENN LOURY: By stupidity? JOHN MCWHORTER: Naw,
I'm not going there. GLENN LOURY: By cravenness? By greed? Wait a minute. JOHN MCWHORTER: Don't be stupid. GLENN LOURY: No, no, no. Could there not be
a moral failing-- JOHN MCWHORTER: [INAUDIBLE] GLENN LOURY: --in
their community? I'm asking a question. Can there not be evidence of
a moral failing in a community which has a high crime rate? Must it be, necessarily,
the consequences of poverty and privation? Come on! What kind of theory have
we got of human behavior where it's this
one-dimensional thing where economic circumstances
determine everything and there's no room
for character, values, and morality. JOHN MCWHORTER: Oh, of course. But what is a moral failing? Where would that come from? GLENN LOURY: A moral failing
is you have a wallet with money in it that I want,
and I'm willing to put a pistol against her head-- risking blowing your brains
out-- in order to take it. That's a moral failing. A moral failing is, because I
want the popularity of my gang fellows, I'm willing
to go up to a stranger and blow their brains
out just to demonstrate that I'm willing to do it. OK? That's a moral failing-- a lack of the human empathy
that would inhibit you from behaving in ways that
are absolutely destructive of the lives of others. But that's a tangent-- I forget what the
main point was. JOHN MCWHORTER: I was just going
to say that I would say that, yes, those are moral failings. I don't like that
kind of [INAUDIBLE].. GLENN LOURY: Oh, no, no, no. Your main point
was, might not there be a higher rate of cop
adverse action against citizens for Blacks because
there's more Black crime? GLENN LOURY: Yeah. JOHN MCWHORTER: And you say
that's the question that we're not supposed to ask and
we're not supposed to say. GLENN LOURY: We're just
supposed to assume. But Heater Mac Donald has
been asking that question and answering it in the
affirmative for a long time. She's a journalist,
not a social scientist. But she's a smart and
well-informed journalist. And she has a point! The nature and frequency
of the encounters between people and
the police surely is connected to the likelihood
that any one such encounter will escalate into violence. The frequency and the nature
of the encounters, OK? How many times are people
coming into contact police, OK? Now, one reason they might be
coming into contact with police is because the police
have it on their minds that they have to go
looking for Black people. That could be one
of the reasons. But another reason
might be because there are more Black people in
positions of lawbreaking which [INAUDIBLE] the
attention of the police! Now the statistics are
overwhelming to this effect. OK? And the nature of
the encounter-- the encounter is a dynamic
interaction between two people. Has the person who's
been apprehended got a chip on their shoulder? Do they resist the police? Surely these things
are irrelevant. Might there be a different
rate of that behavior relative to race
disfavorable to Black people? Certainly, that's possible. Now whose fault would that be? So sure, the disparity is
not ipso facto an evidence of some repressive regime. That's ridiculous. It seems to me to be
demonstrably wrong. JOHN MCWHORTER: I think
that where a lot of people would hear you
saying this and just be ready to throw up
a little is that-- I would add something,
which is that-- I'm being a little disingenuous. Yes, almost certainly. I don't know Minneapolis. But yeah, probably
Black men there commit crimes
disproportionately to white men. And we know that because
of all the figures that make that inescapably
clear in countless cities in the United States. But why? Why is it that these
kids are killing each other over sneakers? And I would say that it's
because starting in about 1960, there were two things. One is that the new Black
power mood encouraged a sense that the rules are different
for Black people because of past and present injustice. And that creates for
example that chip on the shoulder attitude
towards the cops, which you read about almost never
before the second half of the 20th century. And then also the
change-- and I know you think I exaggerate
the effect of this-- but the change in welfare laws
which meant that by the '70s you had these near fatherless
communities that certainly had something to do with
the boys behaving this way. And it's changed since, but
it imprinted a generation. And so you grow up watching
other boys behaving this way. And you have no other model--
you don't go anywhere else. And so that might
be the reason why you have these disproportions. It's not Black depravity,
and I would hesitate to call it a moral failing. Because the boy's never
seen anything else. Nevertheless, it can
create this effect where, yeah, the fact that the
Minneapolis police end up-- because they are inept, clearly. There's a problem with the cops. They're going to end up
killing more Black people, because more black
commit crimes. But if you and I say that, we
are read out of polite society by a certain segment. But I'm not sure we're
saying anything wrong here. GLENN LOURY: Well, we're
we saying something that's very inconvenient politically. We're saying
something that, placed in the hands of white
supremacists-- you know? I mean, we're saying
something that sounds like it's
mealy-mouthed apologia for the establishment-- for the
stretches of racial domination in the society. JOHN MCWHORTER:
That was well put. GLENN LOURY: And we, being
articulate Black spokespeople, are now putting a
face on something that deserves only unremitting
condemnation and resistance-- you know, whatever, whatever. I'm trying to stay in
touch with reality. That's all I'm
actually trying to do. This is a first
order problem, man. As I say, this is
going to happen again. I mean, we can
review the bidding. I mean, this goes back to
the Obama administration. This goes back to Michael Brown,
Trayvon Martin, and whatnot-- the origins of
Black Lives Matter. And of course, it
goes back further than that-- there are
other incidents. But this period that
we're in right now-- with the Twitter
and the cell phone and the kind of
instantaneous social mediated centering of the
national attention around it-- and then these things grow up. And they become
larger than life. And they become
emblematic-- emblematic of what's going on in the
country-- emblematic of what it means to our children to
think of themselves as Black. They think of
themselves as Black. You can't turn on
the television-- and I'm watching this
very interesting show with my wife, Queen Sugar. Queen Sugar-- this is
on the Oprah Network, and you can get it
at Amazon Prime. And it's a Ave DuVernay
executive producer kind of Black life and in
New Orleans and whatnot-- contemporary times. I could go into the
details, you know? But every kind of cultural
medium dealing with Black life is saturated with this narrative
about Blacks, the cops, crime, prison. You see how Joe Biden wants
to talk to Black people? He wants to talk
to us about crime-- about prisons. Because he thinks-- and
perhaps not inaccurately-- that much of our
political sensitivity is going to be driven
by this narrative about the [? thing. ?] So I don't know. I think it's
completely wrong, John. I think Black people in
poor cities need the cops. They need the cops! They need public safety. They need security. The main thread to the
quality of their life is not the being
preyed upon by cops. It's being victimized
by other Black people. That's just a fact. It's just a fact! OK? So if we're interested
in the quality of life-- among other things, of course,
to which we should attend is bad behaving cops
who are hurting people and not hurting Black people. Of course we should
not ignore that! But can we kind of keep
this thing in proportion? The tail wags the dog here. We need the cops! OK? Cultivating a sensibility in our
people of distrust and contempt for the cops-- it's self-destructive! It's wrongheaded. It's wrongheaded. And then it gets us into
these moral problems-- where I fear that you may
be in danger of following, my friend-- where we can't call something
that is barbaric and horrific what it is. You say you don't want
make any judgments. Man, if you are killing
people, that's evil! That's bad! That's not just a
social artifact. It's not just
something that we have to get used to because,
unfortunately, people don't have jobs. It's contemptible! And the rioting-- the
rioting is contemptible. It deserves unreserved
condemnation. When people pour
out of their houses into the streets with
the intent to assault and to destroy other
people's property, there's no warrant for that. There's no justification
for it whatsoever. JOHN MCWHORTER: Are you
sure there isn't, though? GLENN LOURY: Yeah! JOHN MCWHORTER: Are you sure? GLENN LOURY: That's my claim. Tell me why I'm wrong. Because the entire social
[? compact ?] depends upon me thinking that. We can't be making
exceptions except when somebody in your group gets
unjustly killed by the police. Other than that,
you don't set fire to the immigrant market
that's on the corner. You don't go into the
department store and steal. For what? What are you asserting? What are you showing? JOHN MCWHORTER: You're asserting
your sense of selfhood. I don't pardon it. GLENN LOURY: Is that what
you think they're doing? JOHN MCWHORTER: [INAUDIBLE] GLENN LOURY: Really? JOHN MCWHORTER:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. On one level, I
look at that, and I am as disgusted as you are. But on the other hand,
take this person-- he's a guy. And yeah, I'm going
to give him a name. Let's call him Omar. That's a little
old-fashioned now-- but Omar. Omar is about 26 years old. He grew up in the ghetto. He's only known other Omars. And the generation a little
older than him-- half of them have gone to prison. Their whole sense of
what masculinity is is based on a certain
street conception of it. And more to the point,
they have grown up in the 90s and afterward. Omar has grown up in
the '90s or afterward, and he has learned a
conception of Blackness where he and his people
are fundamentally oppressed by racism and
fundamentally oppressed by the cops. He doesn't know anything
about the white versions of Tamir Rice, et cetera. What he knows is that
the cops hate Black men. He's not going to learn anything
else, because frankly, he's not a reader. That's not where he
gets his information. Through no fault of his own,
he's a very parochial person. So what he hears about is
George Floyd basically being choked by a cop, and he figures
he's going to go get his. He's going to go steal
some TVs, because this is a society that's against him,
and the white man deserves it. And that's all he knows. That's the only language
he's ever grown up with. Is he really such
a moral reprobate? Or is he just deeply ignorant
through no fault of his own? I get it. I get Omar. I see it. I wouldn't have him
in my house, but I can see where that would come from. GLENN LOURY: No, I reject
what you're saying. He's a moral reprobate. JOHN MCWHORTER: No? GLENN LOURY: Through
no fault of his own? Are you kidding me? He has no agency over whether
or not he becomes a thief? No. And he's ignorant? Well, he well may be ignorant. Certainly one thing
is true-- he's ignorant of there being any
consequence to his behavior. Because the powers that
be and their intellectual handmaidens-- like you, John! I say with respect-- I love you. I love you. JOHN MCWHORTER: Back at you. GLENN LOURY: Are giving
him a ready-made excuse! What? He's seizing an opportunity. It's like-- I think
of Ed Banfield's book The Unheavenly City, where he
has a chapter called "Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit." Which is notorious--
the book is notorious. A notorious, neoconservative,
Moynihan-esque reading of the urban
malaise of the 1960s in a very pinched
and ungenerous way. That that's what I mean by
move by Banfield's book. But I don't believe this fellow
is expressing anything other than self-indulgence and greed
and maybe joining the party. Because we've been
given license. I'm thinking back to the
Obama administration. I'm thinking back
to the response to rioting in
Ferguson, Missouri, and to the response of
rioting in Baltimore and to the talk on editorial
pages about showing restraint and about people having
a right to protest, OK? When people are setting fire
to other people's shit, OK? When they're walking,
and they're stealing, and they're behaving in, as
I say, a contemptible way. Can you explain it? Is there a psychosocial
argument about how it is that a phenomenon such
as a riot might come to pass? Sure. If I want to think about it as
a sociological or sociopolitical phenomenon, I may be able to
look across societies over time and find some correlates with
this or that aspect of what's going on in a
society that tells me it's more or less likely
that an event like this will take place. Can I explain the small
scale psychodynamics of it? When I see one and
then another-- and then another person venturing
from their homes. And then everybody starts to
follow along with the crowd and do the whatever. Sure, you can give some
accounts like that. But I'm saying, what should be
our considered reaction to it? And I claim it
should be contempt. This should be sanctioned. These people should be punished. The ones who can be
identified on camera should be held
responsible for the crimes that they're committing. No newspaper editorial writer
should say, I understand this, because Black people
have suffered. That's complete bullshit. It is actually
profoundly disrespectful of African-Americans. It shows contempt for the
applications of citizenship. You don't get to go out and riot
because a injustice occurred to you. That's not-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Well--
well, let's try this. GLENN LOURY: And
believe me, there will be consequences of it. You don't think there's a
political reaction to this? You don't think
that most Americans watching this come
away from this less sympathetic to the people
who engage in this behavior? You don't think they're not
showing their asses when they behave like this? That they're behaving
like-- you know? JOHN MCWHORTER:
Well, let's try this. I still cannot hate Omar,
because I do a mental exercise of a man-- GLENN LOURY: I don't hate him. I don't hate him, John. JOHN MCWHORTER: I
can't condemn him. GLENN LOURY: OK, OK. JOHN MCWHORTER: I can't,
because it's all he ever knew. We have to imagine what a
small bubble Omar grew up in. But editorialists who come out
and pardon this sort of thing-- if that's the main
point they're making? Now here I am saying
this, but I'm saying it within a much larger point. But I blame-- and this is
going to sound like Heather Mac Donald with this idea
of Black leaders-- she always writes as if they're
these ministers like in 1930 who could kind of
wave a magic wand-- but it's the leaders
who are the issue. And these days it's
not the ministers. It's not some grand figure
like A Philip Randolph. Frankly, it's the people
who speak and write, and nowadays it's less
the writing and speaking. You can just see it on YouTube-- what people say on TV. A lot of the writers are
people we talk about. They end up creating something
that trickles into the larger community as a mood,
which is that it's OK to do things like that. But Glenn, I want you
to really imagine-- like, one time I was spending
some time in an inner city setting. And it was intimate time. And I'll just leave it there. But it was such that
I was able to really listen to very uneducated
people talking a lot-- one of them in particular. And this was about 30 years ago. GLENN LOURY: You've
got my attention, John. You ought to put
it in your memoir. You ought to put in your memoir. JOHN MCWHORTER: And she's
said, to general approbation-- they were talking
about South Africa. This is how long ago it was. And she was saying, down
there in South Africa, the Zulus and the [INAUDIBLE]----
and they have their societies. And then the white people
come in and take them over in 10 minutes. Some Black people must've
let those people in. And everybody's, oh yes! Snapping their fingers. That's not what happened in
South Africa 300 years ago. GLENN LOURY: [INAUDIBLE] JOHN MCWHORTER:
Nobody let them in. But they've got this Judas
notion-- this notion of what the Black conservative is. And this was long ago. I had no standing. They weren't performing for me. But somebody must
to let them in. No one here had any
kind of education. No one here read the newspaper. This is the sort of
thing they pass around. And they considered this-- and I have full
respect for them-- but they consider this to all
be a sophisticated discussion of what they were
calling current events. I'm sure they learned
that term in school-- current events. This was the insight. That's what we're talking about. And I'm not talking
down these people, but that's how much they know. So imagine Omar--
Omar comes from that. And so he figures, the
white man is on my neck. Anybody like you and me are the
people letting the white people in. So he's going to go take a TV. Yes, he deserves censure by
those who are more responsible and have broader horizons. Yes, definitely. But I can't frown when I see
that footage of people burning down the Target, et cetera. It's so condescending--
I'm sorry-- but they don't know any better. GLENN LOURY: Well,
we're just going to have to agree to
disagree about that, man. I can't agree with
that-- not at all. I mean, yeah. But I've said my piece, so
let me not repeat myself. JOHN MCWHORTER: So what
about, I don't know, the fact that I feel burned
on all of these things? And that Trayvon
Martin turned out to be completely different
from what it was. From what we were
told, Mike Brown turned out to be
completely different. What I've learned from
most of these things is that unless
it's really stark-- like Walter Scott
being shot in the back by a policeman when he's
running away from the car. Unless it's really
stark, the real story is always completely different
from what we're told. And so with Arbery, we
don't really know yet. Even with Floyd, we don't
know what went before. There's a lot of
footage we haven't seen that the cops took themselves. So we have these
conversations two minutes after it happened
that often end up being worthless
in terms of what's later revealed to be the case. And I wonder if
that's what's going on with Arbery and/or Floyd. I don't know, but
there are things that it would be
better if we knew before we pronounced upon them. GLENN LOURY: That's
certainly true. I can't agree more with that. Pronunciations come
way too quickly, and the facts often turn
out to be different. And we could parse them. I'm not really all that
enthused about doing so, but if you insist,
we can go over how the McMichaels came into
consultation with Ahmaud Arbery down there in Georgia, and
we could talk about what happened in Minneapolis. JOHN MCWHORTER:
Well, you and I don't want to do that, because
we both are thinking, we kind of went through that
with Kmele Foster last week. And we figure
everybody can listen to the details of
the Arbery case in particular when they
listen to the Kmele podcast where we all got together again. It's OK for me to
mention that here, right? GLENN LOURY: Oh, sure! Of course! Kmele Foster-- JOHN MCWHORTER: But I don't want
to through all that again, no. GLENN LOURY: What he call it? What does call it? JOHN MCWHORTER: The Fifth-- GLENN LOURY: The Fifth Column-- JOHN MCWHORTER:
Yeah, that's right. GLENN LOURY: The
Fifth Column podcast. We don't have to
rehash all of that. But no, what I was going
to say was that you just asserted something that
many, many, many people would dispute. Namely, that we didn't know what
happened in the Trayvon Martin incident-- and it came out--
this is with Joel Gilbert's film and whatnot-- that George
Zimmerman might not have been entirely as was portrayed. And Trayvon Martin's
behavior you might not have been
entirely as [INAUDIBLE].. I would say most people--
most people that I encounter-- most woke people-- don't know what you're talking
about when you say that. They say it's reprehensible
that you would even give any credence
to the conspiracy theorist Joel Gilbert
and his-- whatever. And I don't want to rehash the
thing about Trayvon Martin. This is the thing
that I want to say. These are socially
constructed phenomena. They're not just what happened. They're what we ultimately
make of whatever may have happened about
which we don't have 100% perfect information but
on which information-- whatever we do have-- we will
have constructed some very elaborate
ideational entities-- something that incorporates
all kinds of stuff. Sybrina Fulton-- this is
Trayvon Martin's mother-- is running for political
office in Dade County. She's a celebrity. I just saw an interview of
her at a Black web radio site in which she's coming out-- she's been asked, with
the Ahmaud Arbery case, which has some similarity
to the Trayvon Martin case-- both of these young men
shot dead by non-Black-- JOHN MCWHORTER:
Citizen's arrest, yeah. GLENN LOURY: --by non-Black
citizens who were not duly authorized police officers
but were nevertheless armed and in an encounter
that became violent-- killed these two Black
men-- young Black men. That's Trayvon Martin
and Ahmaud Arbery. And Sybrina Fulton
is being asked by the interviewer
about how she feels, and she's lamenting everything
that happened to her son. And she's basically assuming
that exactly this thing happened Ahmaud Arbery. Now, here's what I'm
telling you-- this-- who'd you call him, Omar? JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. GLENN LOURY: And his ilk-- that's all they're ever
going to know about what happened to Ahmaud Arbery. That's all they're
ever going to know. All they're ever
going to know is that it's the same
thing that happened to Trayvon Martin,
which they don't know what happened to him, either. You can't tell them anything. And one of the reasons that
you can't tell them anything is that the cultural
establishment of the country won't let you tell
them anything! JOHN MCWHORTER: No, it won't. GLENN LOURY: Once this
thing it's set in stone, you can't go back on it. Mothers of the Movement? This is at the Democratic
National Convention. This is 2016, but you're going
to see the same thing this time around. With the pandering Joe Biden-- we didn't even put that on
our agenda-- about Joe Biden and, you ain't black. Because, by the way,
John, you ain't black. JOHN MCWHORTER: I've heard that. GLENN LOURY: But what
I'm saying is the truth is hardly matters here. And one of the reasons that
it hardly matters is that extremely powerful cultural
forces and political forces have an interest in reinforcing
a certain kind of narrative-- a certain family of narratives
on behalf of the religion that you have laid bare-- that you have exposed. And that's what's going on. And it has real consequences. And I'm trying to remain
in touch with reality. I don't want to be so
mired in everybody else's fictitious constructions
about the nature of race in this country
that I tell my kid-- I don't have one
who's 18 years-- my kids are older now. But if I had one-- that
I'd be telling him-- growing up upper middle class-- one of the richest people of
African descent on the planet-- this would be my kid-- with every privilege. One of the most
powerful and empowered and privileged human
beings ever to have walked on the planet who
happens to have brown skin-- and I haven't going around
thinking that that determines his whole fucking life! I'm not going to do that
to my kid, you know? But that's what's happening. That's exactly what's going
on right now, as we speak. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. It's funny, because what
you're talking about is-- there's a certain
kind of Black parent who teaches their child-- or the child also learns
it from the media-- that the way to feel
special as a Black person is to have that fashioned
sense as a victim. I'm supposed to think that if
I decided to jog through even my Jackson Heights
neighborhood-- and I don't jog, but-- GLENN LOURY: You're
jogging while Black. JOHN MCWHORTER: I could yeah. But that I'm supposed to be a
little worried- that somebody's going to see me running
and think that I've got a TV under my shirt or
a gun or something because of my brown skin. And that frankly isn't true. That's not to say that
what happened to Arbery was not a hideous
tragedy, but we're supposed to be afraid to
do anything while Black because of all these incidents. And we had our conversation
two summers ago about Starbucks and the swimming pool. And Starbucks and
the swimming pool-- that was not about murder. But still I think
it bears mentioning as we go into summer-- where even despite
the virus, we're going to start seeing
more things like this-- that those things do happen. I don't mean the
murders but just things like what happened to
that guy in Central Park-- for example, where a woman pulls
the race card on him and says, I'm going to tell the cops that
a Black man is bothering me when he was a mild-mannered,
bespectacled birder. GLENN LOURY: A Harvard BA
birdwatching guy out there with his binoculars at 6
o'clock in the morning. JOHN MCWHORTER: 56
years old-- yeah. And so she's going to pull that. Those things do not
define Black existence. And I don't mean that we must
not let those things define us. I mean, they don't. The media makes it seem like
and me go through something like that every two weeks. That is not the case. Those things are
gathered in the media-- they should be discussed,
but that is not what it's like to be a Black person. And bad things
happen to everybody. GLENN LOURY: OK, so
somebody's going to say-- and I should say it here--
that in the case that you have in hand-- this is the Coopers. I don't remember
their first name, but it happens that both
their names are Cooper. A Black guy out
birdwatching early in the morning, a white woman
out walking her Cocker Spaniel dog-- and they encounter each other. And the dog is off the leash,
and he asked her to put it on the leash-- which is
required in the Ramble in there in Central Park-- which is the area. And that's the rule-- that the
dog has to be on the leash. And they get into a dispute. And how does it go, John? He's taping her, and
she's saying don't do it? Or she gets a
phone [INAUDIBLE]---- JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah, yeah. GLENN LOURY: --stop
recording the encounter. He's got his phone out
recording the encounter, where it ultimately goes viral. She gets fired from
her job for this, John! JOHN MCWHORTER:
And loses the dog. GLENN LOURY: Or she
took the dog back-- I'm not sure what
the circumstances were under which that happened. JOHN MCWHORTER: Right. GLENN LOURY: But anyway,
your point is, this is not emblematic
or characteristic of African-American male life. JOHN MCWHORTER: And
even he has said that he's not sure that her
life should have been ruined. GLENN LOURY: Yeah,
he thinks that it was racism, but the
firing and having her become this emblem of
racism is unfair to her. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. GLENN LOURY: An overreaction. JOHN MCWHORTER:
Yeah, and I mean, those things are unpardonable. She's a disgusting little
person to have pulled that. She frankly seems a little
neurotic-- a little odd. But yeah, there's
something wrong with her, I get the feeling. But not clinically--
she's just-- she's an asshole. And she pulled that. GLENN LOURY: Well, no. JOHN MCWHORTER:
And [INAUDIBLE]---- but still. GLENN LOURY: What I
wanted to say was-- is that she invokes
or evokes this type-- which is the damsel in
distress white woman being assaulted by a Black man
and plays into a trope so that by bringing the
police to the scene, she would be enacting
out the kind of thing that Ta-Nehisi Coates would
put in one of his books, right? JOHN MCWHORTER: Exactly. GLENN LOURY: I mean,
one of these instances of racial domination
and white power being enforced
against the person of an African-American
who's just trying to catch an early birdwatch. So that's the thing-- the idea that the stereotype
of the threatening Black male would have been believed
by the police officers brought to the scene--
that she could confidently know that the cops
would be on her side-- that she could anticipate
that he would be intimidated by her invocation of the
possibility of calling police. All of this. And this is a real part
of race in the country, and it has to do with history. And it also has to do
with the fact that there are people robbing people and
in Central Park who are Black. Sorry, sorry! JOHN MCWHORTER:
And she is small. She's small enough. And she's small enough--
yeah, and especially after the recent case. We don't to talk about
the Central Park Seven. GLENN LOURY: So if you
are going to discuss the racial dimensions
of it, you should discuss all of the racial
dimensions of the encounter and all of the things that
are being brought into focus in this anecdotal incident. Not just the anti-racist
racism religion ones. JOHN MCWHORTER: Definitely. But I think it's important
to say about the Cooper case that all of that is
true, and the columns are already being written. And yes, there's a narrative. Our friend Charles Blow has
written the perfect piece about all of those dynamics,
and those dynamics are real. You know, Black boys killed
a white student at my school about 10 minutes ago. And this woman
actually has the nerve to play upon those tropes
based upon this little issue of her little
doggie off a leash. GLENN LOURY: Did they catch
the killers of that girl? JOHN MCWHORTER: Yes,
they finally did. And so yeah, she's disgusting. But what we're supposed
to take from it-- you talk about the
Ta-Nehisi Coates anecdote-- is that's what Mr
Cooper's life is. That it's not just something
that happened to him one day when he was 56 right and
then some other thing that maybe happened to
him when he was 36-- some occasional thing
in a very blessed life. We're supposed to
think that that's what happens to us all the time. And the thing is he ran into
a really shitty little person. That happened. He won, frankly-- because
he taped it, for one thing. And he's going to go on, and
he's going to live a life. Bad things happen, occasionally,
to almost everybody. And when it comes
to a Black person, well, sometimes the
bad thing is going to involve residual racism. That does not mean that we
haven't progressed since 1925. GLENN LOURY: That would
be Coleman Hughes' point, and it's your point, too. And it's absolutely correct. Rather than looking
at the anecdote, which is not emblematic of
the day to day life, look at how things have
changed over some longer period of time. But what I was going to add
to what you were saying was it's not only that we
might overemphasize, in terms of characterizing
what our lives are like, incidents of that kind. It's that we might
persuade ourselves to live in anticipation of
and in fear of such incidents. To live on a hair trigger--
to live ready to be affronted. You know? To become addicted to the
outrage of being victimized in this way so that it happening
once when I'm 35 and once when I'm 60 is just
not often enough. I'm almost longing for it to
happen to confirm this thing, because I'm walking around
tightly balled up and angry every time I encounter
a white person. But here's the other thing
that I want to say, John. One day, perhaps
not long from now, you're going to see
groups of white people-- when white persons are
victimized by Black criminals-- publicly massing to demand the
punishment of the criminal. That's a prediction. That's where we're headed. If you can go--
and in Minneapolis, they went to the cop's
house-- the cop who put his knee on George Floyd. They went to his house. They threw buckets of
red paint on his driveway and wrote murderer. OK? And he's cowering with his
family inside or whatever-- I have no idea what he's doing. And OK, I get that. I mean, I understand that. He is a murderer. I'm not disputing that. I saw the tape just
like everybody else. It was outrageous. I've already spoken to that. But just be careful
what you do here. OK? You're racializing this thing. And believe me, there
is a lot of tinder. There's a lot of
stuff that can catch on fire that's just laying
around dry and ready for a match to be struck to it. One day we're going to see white
people publicly demonstrating. We're going to
see pieces written and quasi-respectable
outlets that catalog the number of Black
awful and unspeakable crimes against white people. OK? Because they're happening. And I dread that day. I just want to be clear-- I dread the day. The reason I'm
making this statement is because I hope to ward
it off by encouraging a more balanced and
de-racialized discussion of these issues. Race is only one and usually
not the most significant thing that's going on. JOHN MCWHORTER: You
know, I want to get a little story on record-- just for the record-- that illustrates how
this sort of thing can play out-- this sort
of over-sensitivity. I live in a co-op building,
and it surrounds a garden. That's how Jackson
Heights works. There are about 10 of these. And each building has
about 12 families. And there are
about 10 buildings, and so it's a little community. Now, I am the only Black
man in these buildings. And the reason traces
to rather overt residential racism in
this neighborhood back in the '50s and '60s. And I've even looked this
up to see what it was. There was an outcry against
the possibility of a housing project being built
in this neighborhood, so they put it somewhere else. And the neighborhood does
change vastly exactly where they put the housing project. And so that there was
this fight about that. And so there was no
Black housing project. And that means that
in these buildings, there doesn't happen
to be a Black person. You used to not be allowed
to be Jewish either. Well, that's changed. But there are very few
Black American people in Jackson Heights. I can count about 10
that I recognize by face. Now, what you're supposed to
say today is that that's because of racism in Jackson
Heights, whereas the Jackson Heights that I live in is full
of New York Times reading, NPR listening, kind of pesto
and Chardonnay white people-- the kind who are not
racist in any real way. I don't think you would
even get this Cooper lady in this neighborhood. These are America's least racist
white people I [INAUDIBLE] GLENN LOURY: Except the subtle
racism of their condescension and their soft bigotry
of low expectations. JOHN MCWHORTER: Honestly,
there would be some of that. But this the-- I'm talking to-- here's the episode. It's a beautiful
garden, and there are rules about
people tromping around in the flowers and things
now that it's spring. My two daughters--
one is high yellow, the other one is
about my color-- they were running
around a little bit in one of the gardens because
they were interested in one of the flowers. And so a complaint came to me
the other day where somebody-- and I'll never know who it was-- said that they think
it was my kids who-- and I'm sure they guessed based
on the fact that I'm the one brown face-- they think it's my kids who were
tromping around in the garden. And that's got to stop. GLENN LOURY: Oh, wow. JOHN MCWHORTER: Now, I thought
to myself, I know how I feel-- which is that there's
a whole business in this complex and
all over Jackson Heights about whether kids
are allowed to tromp around in the gardens in these co-ops. It's been going on for decades. So I thought, whoops,
Dolly and Vanessa didn't know they're not supposed
to run around in that patch. I'll tell them. Then I thought to myself, if
I were a good Black person, I would be thinking that
it's possibly racism-- that if it was two little
white girls running around in that garden, this person
wouldn't have said anything. I'd say bullshit. Frankly, I'm pretty sure
what segment of person it was who said
that-- they would have called white kids on it, too. They called on my daughters,
because they don't want anybody tromping around in the garden. It wasn't racial. But I'm supposed to think that
that was racism raising its ugly head in my little complex,
when frankly, it wasn't. But if I were a different
kind of Black person, I would be brushing
myself off and thinking, it's never truly gone. I don't believe it. I just can't see it
that way, but I guess that makes me a Pollyanna. GLENN LOURY: Well, what
you're balancing, I guess, is like type I and type II error
in statistics or something. I mean, you're balancing-- if you're a Black person and
you have things happen to you, and you don't know whether or
not it's because of your race-- you're balancing the cost
of going around all the time on this hair trigger-- because you're always looking
for the front of the racist-- against the retroactive
regret of being treated in a way because of your race
and not having steeled yourself for that. If you let down your guard-- if you decide that you're
going to go without the shield and just live--
just be a person-- and then there will
be racist out there who'll be treating
you in racist ways-- but because you're
not primed for it, you don't react to it-- you
don't hate it-- you just take it. It just happens to
you because it's one of the things
that happens in life. A person might decide
to do that just to be unburdened from
this horrible thing, which is to have to constantly wonder
whether or not they did it to me because I was Black. For example, we're trying
to sell a house here-- A, everybody out here 92 Keen-- K-double E-N Street, Providence,
Rhode Island-- look us up. JOHN MCWHORTER: You're moving? GLENN LOURY: We're
on the market, man! And unfortunately,
we had a buyer-- I'm telling you a
story just like you told me a story-- and the
buyer, because of the COVID-19 lockdown, exercised
their option to back out of the transaction
in the 10 day period. And we lost our buyer. So now we're sitting
here-- we bought a house. We bought the new house, and we
still got the old house, man. Believe me, that's not good. Now, so the question arises-- we
have some people come through, and nobody has
yet made an offer. Our house is recognizably the
house of an African-American. It's got photographs in it. It's got artwork on the walls. I'm not saying it's like
an Afrocentric museum. It's not. But if you spent
time in our house, you would guess if asked
who lived there were Black. Now my lovely wife
wonders whether or not we're not getting an
offer because people don't want to buy a
house from Black people. JOHN MCWHORTER: It's
been said that's a thing. Yeah. GLENN LOURY: It could be! This is my point. I'm giving you an
example precisely because of this point. Now that could be true. How much time am I going to
spend thinking about that or taking down family
photos from the walls to try to guard against it? I'm not going to do that. JOHN MCWHORTER: I
was told to do that by realtors when I moved here. Yeah. GLENN LOURY: You
depersonalize it, yes, I know. I mean, and you could say
that regardless of race. You could say depersonalize
it in general, because people
can see themselves in it more readily if you don't
have your face staring back at them. But we're living here. But the other side is
I might be gullible. I might be ignoring this
thing when this thing is a very real threat to
my financial well-being, of which I am not taking
sufficient cognizance. So you have to worry about that. JOHN MCWHORTER: And the way I
end up seeing it is that with the cases where you
really can't know-- and I think in both
of our cases here-- in your case, you
can't know; in my case, I would be paranoid
to assume that it was. I think yours is
tougher than mine. But to obsess over it the
way a lot of people do is an evidence of insecurity. And it's funny, because
they often think that we don't like ourselves. But if you've got a life, and
if your life is a life like everybody else's where whatever
is going on with little lady Cooper is about 1,000th
of a percent of it, why would you be that
interested in it? Because every now and then,
when I encounter something like that woman or
something where it's obvious that my color got me misread
in some way-- including sometimes when I have a
slight conflict with somebody white where I can tell that
they're waiting for me to get upset in a certain way
because I'm Black-- they're worried that I'm
going to play the race card. Sometimes you can smell that. I mean, don't smell it,
but it's probably there. I just figure I'm
not going to think about that 10 minutes later,
because I've got a book to read. I'm not going to think
about that 10 minutes later, because I'm going to make
some of my own pesto tonight. I'm not going to think
about that, because 10 minutes from now, I'm going
to be sitting and watching the new Looney Tunes
show with my daughters. I'm just living a life! Why would I sit around
thinking about residual racism at that time? And I guess I'm
supposed to, because I'm supposed to think that
that residual racism is why Omar is in the ghetto. But I don't see the connection
the way other people do. GLENN LOURY: OK,
well, I'm going to-- JOHN MCWHORTER:
[INAUDIBLE] finished. But on Twitter right now-- I'm not going to
identify who it was-- but a very prominent
Black mover/shaker/pro fessor/talker/thinker-- was saying yesterday, I'm
sitting here in tears. That was their tweet-- I'm sitting here in tears. And I didn't even have
to wonder about what. GLENN LOURY: Why the anonymity? I don't understand this. JOHN MCWHORTER: It
was Eddie Glaude. GLENN LOURY: Oh my God! JOHN MCWHORTER: And he
just comes in, he goes-- and I'm just thinking, think
about how he's seeing all this. GLENN LOURY: About George Floyd? JOHN MCWHORTER: Oh, he's
thinking Floyd, Central Park, Arbery-- all at the same time. GLENN LOURY: OK, he's in tears. He's in tears, OK. JOHN MCWHORTER: And Eddie
Glaude is not an idiot. GLENN LOURY: No,
he's not an idiot. JOHN MCWHORTER: You can't
say, oh, he's crazy. GLENN LOURY: He's
not an idiot, Eddie. JOHN MCWHORTER: But his
way of thinking of all this is so different from
ours, and I find myself trying to plumb
that kind of brain to see what is it that has
you sitting there crying. GLENN LOURY: Well, why
doesn't your religion-- and this is what I was
going to say, and forgive me for interrupting-- why doesn't
your religion account explain this? Why isn't this the equivalent
of being a witness to God moving in our midst? I mean, if your worldview
is that unrelenting white supremacy
manifesting itself even in 21st century
blighting the lives of so many African-Americans--
of all African-Americans-- of a country that's
dripping in racism, et cetera-- and ad nauseam. If that's your view,
then why not cry? Why wouldn't you be
swept up by emotion? Why wouldn't this be a
confirmation of everything that you thought? Why wouldn't this be like
the second coming of Christ? I mean, this is proof that
the scripture and what the scripture foretells
shall indeed come to pass. This is a confirmation
of everything that they want to believe in. It's awful-- it's horrible. It's horrible--
Black Lives Matter. Don't they know that? Kind of thing like that. When in fact, as
I say, you know-- the main-- JOHN MCWHORTER: I
wish I could fully-- you know what? I have worked out an
understanding of it. GLENN LOURY: But he's
in tears, really? And you don't think
that's a performance? You don't think he's
writing that because that's what a person in his
position is supposed to say? That's not dramatic. He's not going to
go on Morning Joe-- because he goes on
Morning Joe regularly-- and enact this elaborate
ritual of lament and regret and resignation and all of that. JOHN MCWHORTER: All
right, we can't win here. He either considers
us beneath contempt and has no idea
what you're saying. GLENN LOURY: He doesn't give
a damn what we say about him. He doesn't need to. Nobody cares what we're
saying here, John-- of his ilk. JOHN MCWHORTER: Or if it gets
to back to him, we're risking-- GLENN LOURY: The people who book
guest at the Morning Joe show don't care what we say here. JOHN MCWHORTER: We're risking
him writing us in indignation. But is it a performance? A little. Yes, it is. But it's a performance
that-- and he's going to say, how dare you say
that I'm performing! It's a performance
that he's doing for what he thinks of as
a genuinely urgent reason. GLENN LOURY: I don't
doubt that for a moment, and neither do I doubt that
Charles Blow is genuinely committed to what
he believes in. But he's also performing. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yes, I
don't want to admit it. That's what my book
is going to be about. What is that performance? It's a religious performance. And there's a reason
for it in their minds, but it doesn't help as
much as they think it does. That's the thing. Yeah. And it's funny. I was going to be on Morning
Joe a couple weeks ago, and he was going to be
one of the panelists. We were going to
talk about 1619. Instead they used Clarence Page. I was supposed to do that. And I pulled out
about 48 hours before, because I didn't see the point. Once I realized it's going to
be me against three people, I figured I'm going to
get to say two things. And the other three-- GLENN LOURY: That
was a mistake John. That was a mistake. JOHN MCWHORTER:
No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. What would I have
contributed except to have looked like a jerk? Unless they're going to
have to be two people. GLENN LOURY: Well,
we can go into it. But finish your thought. JOHN MCWHORTER: You
would have gone on? GLENN LOURY: It's called the
courage of your convictions. JOHN MCWHORTER: I don't think
anybody would have heard me. But yeah, I know what
goes on on Morning Joe. GLENN LOURY: You
would have heard you. JOHN MCWHORTER: And
it is a performance-- all of us are
performers, to an extent. But yeah, it is a performance. But it's not insincere. He puts it on a
little bit, because he thinks that he's leading his
people to a better place. That's the thing. But yeah, It's not shooting
straight from the hip about the nature of the issues. And I think that
people like him feel that that's necessary given
the urgency of the situation. I politely disagree. GLENN LOURY:
[INAUDIBLE] OK, well, I want to reiterate
my analysis-- which, when we discussed the 1619
Project a few weeks ago, I first set out-- which is
that I think all this has to do with the terrible
conditions of the lower class of
African-American society in terms of human development--
which is manifested across a wide
variety of indicators of social behavior-- including
violent crime as one of them. But school failure and
family structure things. We are well into
the 21st century, and we've got this
situation in these cities all around the country and
all these controversies and conflicts. And the framework of sort
of progressive reform from the late 20th
century is exhausted. And the political vehicles
for it are impotent. This is Joe Biden-- I mean, again, Joe
Biden says, if you have trouble figuring
out whether it's me or Donald Trump you want to
vote for, it ain't Black. And everybody gets
upset about it. But to me, the most disturbing
part of Joe Biden's interview with Charlemagne the God
at The Breakfast Club-- which has been much
discussed-- was the pandering and the supposition that
Black people could be, basically, moved around
like chips on a chessboard. That I've been with you--
the NAACP endorsed me-- I got all these votes
in South Carolina. Like it's this Black thing-- that Blackness-- into
which Joe Biden just happens to be tapping, because
he was Barack's vice president. And he just happens
to be tapping into this font or this
well of Blackness. That was the thing
that so troubled me. And there all these issues-- I mean, you can just go down
a list of all of these issues. The overrepresentation of
Blacks in the mortality of the COVID pandemic. The exam score
debate and how you get your kid into a really good
public school in New York City. The crime bill. Decriminalizing marijuana,
or legalizing marijuana, is now a Black issue somehow. Voter suppression--
we're supposed to be back in the day
of Jim Crow and whatnot. Yeah, et cetera, et cetera. And Biden just seemed to be,
I will appoint a Black woman to the US Supreme Court. Why is that meaningful? Why does that move the needle
on any political indicator? Things have become
so divorced from-- in my view, the
substance of what's actually happening--
so performative. So virtue signaling driven-- so [? hurtish ?] into behavior
that's presumed about people. So drenching and race
and racial essentialism. If I were a leftist,
like Adolph Reed, I'd have a full-throated
critique here. Because there's actually
a structural class dynamic which is the driving
engine of history. If I were leftist,
that's what I'd point to. And these people, with their
superficial romance with this fiction of this-- of
this-- as being anything-- as meaning something
deep about human beings-- have missed the actual show. I'm not a leftist, but I think
they're missing the show. I think they're
definitely missing what's actually going on. And the violence
issue is, to my mind, a quintessential
illustration of this. There are threats to the
integrity of the Black body. There really are. They are monumental in
their quantitative scale, and they are
completely unaddressed in this mobilization. Nobody's even
talking about them. JOHN MCWHORTER:
You know, this is where this all comes down to--
is that you're saying all that. And the kind of person
we're thinking about just thinks, Ahmaud
Arbery and George Floyd. And what you and
I are thinking is that the cops are
hideously undertrained, and the United States has
a gun problem and that-- at least I'm thinking this-- GLENN LOURY: Very relevant
in the Georgia case. JOHN MCWHORTER: That
has more than 50% to do with both of
those cases, I think. It's a problem with the cops-- and not racism-- and
it's a problem with guns. But for the other people,
that just won't do. It has to be about skin
color, and therefore it's important to have
Stacey Abrams-- who I think is great--
but Stacey Abrams as a vice president. Because she can represent
the Black viewpoint, because Black people get
knees on their necks. You know, that's the sentiment. There has to be a Black Supreme
Court justice who's a woman-- because one, women's
issues-- but also that person, unlike
Clarence Thomas, will understand that the
essence of being Black is being looked down upon. Somebody calling the
cops on you in the park and calling the cops
on you because you're wearing black socks and
putting their knee on your neck and shooting you
while you're jogging. That's how you
and I differ here. And I think it's a pretty clear
case that we're not crazy. We're not crazy. We can't be heard by those other
people, but we're not insane. But I'm walking around with
Arbery and Central Park and George Floyd
thinking, what do we have to say in our defense? Because that sort of thing is
what creates this 1619 mindset. This is mana from
the heavens for them. I'm sure that if you
did an EKG on them, you would see their
happiness centers lighting up as well as their crying centers. They need this as proof. They really see this as
the way America works. I just want us to make sure
that we have our defense ready. I think we've kind
of put it out. But we can't just say
nothing, and no offense, but we can't just say it's
a moral abomination how people are behaving-- GLENN LOURY: I'm not
offended by that. And OK. But I'm not saying
to only say that. At no point did I just say that. JOHN MCWHORTER: No, you didn't. GLENN LOURY: But I do
think that should be said. But I want to say something
about Stacey Abrams, because I think the
differences between us are as interesting as the
things that we agree about-- against the world. We agree about a lot of
stuff against the world, but there's some stuff
that we disagree about. And Stacey Abrams
would be one of them-- I'm not an admirer of hers. Her claim to fame is that
she lost an election. She never conceded that
election in Georgia. She lost an election
because of something called voter suppression. So she's supposed to be the
real governor of Georgia right now, when, in fact, if
she hadn't been so liberal in her political program-- if, for example, she
had been pro-life. I'm not saying she should
be, but if she had been-- if she'd been a Republican-- she'd probably be governor
of Georgia right now. This is, again,
this issue of, what has race got to do with it? I mean, race is one of
the things that determines the outcome of elections. But it's not the only
thing that determines the outcome of election. Why would I reduce
all of politics to the pigmentation
of the politician? That's a very silly thing,
it seems to me, to do. The theory of representation
that legitimates that reduction is a demonstrably
wrong, in my view, theory of what Democratic
representation should be. We're not representing
races here. We're representing interests. Interest are many, and
they're not only racial. So yes, I know Brian Kemp-- is he that guy that
won that election? And he was Secretary of State. And some polling
places were close. And some people
disagreed about this or that aspect of the
organization of the election. I'm not an expert
on it, so there well may be more than a
little bit to discuss. And I'm aware of the fact
that the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the
Supreme Court's decision that allowed some of the
administrative changes and running of
elections in Georgia to be done free of the
supervision of the US Department of Justice
in the federal district court of Washington,
DC, and that that's relevant in a discussion here. And I'm not trying to dismiss
that discussion about voter ID and whatnot. There's much to
be said about it. The point I'm making
is simply this-- Stacey Abrams' refusal to
concede that election based upon some claim about
voter suppression is reprehensible, in my view. It's reprehensible. You have elections. When you lose, you
concede the election. You're basically inviting
the delegitimization of the entire structure of
democratic representation when you do that. Based upon a theoretical
claim about race? Like I said, if she
had altered her program in its specific
content about what she wanted to do for
the people of Georgia just a little bit to the
center, she would probably won the election. JOHN MCWHORTER: Well, we
shouldn't get onto her, because we're coming
close [INAUDIBLE].. GLENN LOURY: OK, because
we don't have enough time to do [INAUDIBLE] justice. JOHN MCWHORTER: I
just-- very quickly-- I think that the voter
suppression is real. And I think that-- we talked about this
back in the day. There's a difference between
not wanting Black people to vote because you think
that they're animals and not wanting Black people
to vote based on a revoltingly Machiavellian pragmatism about
trying to reduce the Democrat vote so that
Republicans will win. It's a disgusting
practice, but to pretend that it's the same as how
Senator Vardaman felt in 1903 is melodramatic. She hasn't done that. That's not her point. I say that the stand
that she took-- I want this voter
suppression to stop-- one, because it's morally wrong. And two-- I guess
it gets to the point where you're trying to
cover up gopher holes, and something else
is going to come up. But that voter suppression
is something else that keeps the theater going. Because a lot of
people pretend that what that is the
same thing as what was going on during
the time of lynching. It isn't. GLENN LOURY: Asking people were
to present an ID before they cast a ballot is the same thing
as suppressing their right to vote? It is not! JOHN MCWHORTER:
Well, a lot of people pretend that that's true. And I don't mean Stacey Abrams-- I've never heard her say that. GLENN LOURY: Well, why
wouldn't the reaction to people presenting an ID
being a necessity to vote be get people IDs? They need IDs for a lot of
things, not just for voting. A person without an ID is
disadvantaged in society. Why isn't there a
movement to make sure that everybody has an ID? Why isn't universal
ID the battling cry? JOHN MCWHORTER: Well, I
asked Al Sharpton that once, and he said that
there are two parts. One is getting everybody
an ID, but the other is decrying the
voter suppression. And this was late Al Sharpton--
the one where we argue, where I say that now he's OK. But he said we can talk about
both things at the same time. GLENN LOURY: Let me
put it differently. Is there no legitimacy
in having there be skin in the game for people
who want to cast a ballot? For example, if I say you
should show up in person-- I'm not saying that this
is my position-- it's not my position. And I know that Trump doesn't
want people to mail in ballots. And I know that it's a
very touchy situation. But I'm just saying-- in principle, the idea that I
would ask something of a person before they cast a ballot-- I would not simply make it as
easy as it could possibly be. I'd want there to be
something-- why is that wrong? Why is that racist? Why is that anti-democratic? It's not anti-democratic to
ask people to be citizens. To ask them to actually
take on some responsibility in casting a ballot. I'm not saying that
that's my position. I want to reiterate that. JOHN MCWHORTER: Sure. GLENN LOURY: I want to say
that it's an arguable question. And on the other
side of it, you would have to say, well,
no that would be too much of a burden on people. And then we'd start
talking about the burdens of citizenship. JOHN MCWHORTER: And
the thing is, though, why are they suddenly
being so picky about it? And I think the
reason is obvious. GLENN LOURY: Oh,
well, yeah, you're saying Republicans are doing
it strategically to keep people away from the polls. And you know, OK. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. But that's another topic. GLENN LOURY: It is. JOHN MCWHORTER: But I
think we have made a case. And so I just wanted to be
clear for anybody [INAUDIBLE].. GLENN LOURY: What's the case? You want to summarize? JOHN MCWHORTER: Arbery
and the Central Park case with the birder and
the murder of George Floyd do not deep-six the
thought of, quote, unquote, "contrarians," like you and me. There are other ways of looking
at the terrible things that happened to all three
of those people-- particularly Arbery and Floyd. And I don't want to
speak for you, Glenn. But this is not me
working against what I see as obvious disproof. I've really thought about this. I've really thought,
look at this-- where is it that the mainstream
take on this is going wrong? And I honestly believe
that thinking of it as being about race, as you do-- you agree with me on this-- is reflexive. It's just not as clear
as we're being told. And to insist that
it must be about race is like somebody
saying, on a video blog, that they just know that Brett
Kavanaugh did what he did. GLENN LOURY: Oh, you're
reading the comments, John! You're reading the comments! JOHN MCWHORTER: I
did for that one. No! You can't just know. [INAUDIBLE] GLENN LOURY: It's very much
it's very much like that. I'm so glad you
recalled that thing. It's the same mistake. That's the thing that
you don't have proof for, but you just know it's true. JOHN MCWHORTER: You
can't just know. GLENN LOURY: That's mischievous. John McWhorter, Columbia
University-- my partner here at BloggingHeads.tv. We're the Black
guys, and we have put in another conversation. Thanks so much, John. People are going to
be upset with you about what you've had to say. Not me-- everything I said
is [INAUDIBLE] endorsed. Well, signing off for now--
let's talk again soon. JOHN MCWHORTER: We will.
