[MUSIC PLAYING] GLENN LOURY: All
right, we are underway. This is Glenn Loury of The
Glenn Show at BloggingHeads.tv. I'm a Professor of Economics and
of International Public Affairs at Brown University. The Watson Institute here at
Brown sponsors The Glenn Show. And I'm with John McWhorter. And John McWhorter
is a professor of the humanities at
Columbia University and a frequent conversation
partner of mine here at The Glenn Show. We are the black guys
at BloggingHeads.tv. And we got our work cut
out for us today, John. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. This is this thing that
we've been teasing everybody with over the past few weeks. But we're going to do it today. GLENN LOURY: So I don't know,
maybe it was two months ago I said that we had
this blockbuster topic, and you guys needed
to stay tuned. Whoever is still listening to
us out there in Blogging Heads land, you guys
need to stay tuned because we were going to
really set the world on fire with a conversation
about a topic that you just couldn't
believe it was so hot. And then come time to talk
about it, we weaseled out. We weaseled out under the excuse
that it was just unspeakable. It was something
that even to talk about what we
couldn't talk about would be to be talking
too much about it. And I use the metaphor or the
analogy of a UFO sighting. I said, suppose you and I had
been walking in Central Park or whatever, having a nice
intellectual conversation, and we saw a flying saucer
come down from the sky, land, little green men get out, walk
up to us, shake our hands, get back and fly away, would
we tell anybody about it? And, of course, on
the one hand, you want to tell because it's
exciting and interesting. On the other hand,
you don't want people to think you're
absolutely and totally nuts. You don't think they're going
to believe a word you say. And so you don't
say anything at all. And that was like
the cover story on why we weren't talking about
what we couldn't tell people that we weren't talking about. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. And so we've been holding
off and talking about it amongst ourselves and, I guess,
thinking that the facts weren't dependable enough for us to
talk about this constructively. But it's gone to the point
where the general media is getting a hold of this. GLENN LOURY: Do you want to tell
them what it is, or should I? JOHN MCWHORTER: We have reason
to think that unless you really read around, you might get
a distorted or rather edited picture of the truth of this. So I figure it's time
for us to talk about it. And Glenn, you agree. And so we've decided. So Glenn, well, now that
we've build it up so much, what is this? GLENN LOURY: So anybody with
access to the outside world will know that George
Zimmerman, the perpetrator of the shooting which resulted
in the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in
2012, George Zimmerman, the killer of Trayvon Martin,
has filed a $100 million lawsuit. Let's not put too much
weight on that $100 million. That's laughable. They'll never collect it
even if they win every case. JOHN MCWHORTER: He'll get $25. GLENN LOURY: It's meant
to be sensational. He's filed a lawsuit, or rather
I should say Larry Klayman, his lawyer, has filed
this lawsuit claiming, K-L-A-Y-M-A-N, he is a
founder of Judicial Watch. This is a right-wing legal
activism organization. I don't think Klayman is any
longer associated with it. But he, nevertheless, is one
of these conservative legal activist lawyers
who goes into court and tries to bring
provocative cases to push the law and the
public discussion in the direction of his
values, which are conservative. Larry Klayman is
bringing this suit on behalf of George
Zimmerman in court, in Florida, suing the
Trayvon Martin family. That would be Tracy
Martin, Trayvon's father, and Sybrina Fulton,
Trayvon's mother, suing Rachel "Gen'-trel,"
if I pronounce her name-- JOHN MCWHORTER: "Jen'-tel." GLENN LOURY: Jeantel,
Rachel Jeantel, or do they say "Gzau'-tel-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Probably
"Gzau'-tel," Haitian. GLENN LOURY: --who was a witness
in the Trayvon Martin case, and also, if I'm not mistaken,
suing the prosecutors who were bringing the case against George
Zimmerman in court in Florida-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Benjamin Crump. GLENN LOURY: --for definite--
and Benjamin Crump, very importantly, who had been the
lawyer representing the Martin family in their public
relations campaign oriented toward bringing
about charges against George Zimmerman, criminal charges. We should explain this more
fully, and I will in a moment. But Zimmerman is
bringing this lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that the
case brought against Zimmerman was built on a
hoax, was built on, was grounded on a
false witness, someone who was presented to the court
as having been on the telephone with Trayvon Martin-- JOHN MCWHORTER: At great length. GLENN LOURY: --moments
before he was shot. His girlfriend had a
long-term close relationship with Trayvon Martin. And she shared at
trial evidence which was materially
relevant to the case that the prosecution
was bringing against George Zimmerman. The issue at question
was whether or not Zimmerman had followed
Trayvon Martin and initiated the altercation
between themselves, which is what the prosecution alleged,
or whether Trayvon Martin had jumped Zimmerman and
sucker punched him, pinned him to the ground,
and was pummeling him, and then Zimmerman
discharged his weapon in defense of his life, killing
Trayvon Martin, which is-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Out
of desperation, right. GLENN LOURY: --out
of desperation, which is what the
defense was alleging. And therefore, someone who had
been on the phone with Trayvon Martin moments
before he was killed, who talked of what
Martin had had to say at that time, which was
this weird dude is following me, I don't know what
he wants, et cetera, was pertinent to the case
that was being brought. The allegation that this
lawsuit is now making-- and this is seven years plus
after the event in question, six years after the trial. The allegation is
that the person who was on the
phone with Trayvon Martin at that time,
his girlfriend, was not the woman who
actually appeared in court and testified to the effect that
she was Trayvon's girlfriend and was on the phone with
him, that they substituted a fake witness
because they could not get the real woman to testify
to the events in question in the way that they wanted. JOHN MCWHORTER: Rachel
Jeantel was apparently-- allegedly the half sister of the
actual girlfriend in question and who had-- GLENN LOURY: Whose name is
Diamond Eugene Reynolds-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Right. GLENN LOURY: --that's the actual
girlfriend and the woman who was on the phone
with Trayvon Martin, on the phone with him for
hundreds of minutes on the day that he was killed. JOHN MCWHORTER: And did a phone
interview with Benjamin Crump, which, if you followed
the case, you heard. And that voice was oddly
different from the voice of Rachel Jeantel who
was later on the stand. GLENN LOURY: Before a journalist
for one of the major news outlets, Benjamin Crump
had a conversation with the girlfriend
of Trayvon Martin who was allegedly on the
telephone with Trayvon before he was shot. And he taped it. And he played some of the tape
in front of a press conference. And this is before
Zimmerman had been charged. This was during the period when
the family and their advocate, Benjamin Crump, were advocating
to have charges brought, were accusing the authorities
in Florida of going easy on George Zimmerman and of,
in effect, covering up what had been a murder. Because upon initial
inquiry, the authorities had elected not to bring
charges against Zimmerman, had taken his account
of what had happened more or less at face value
as a self-defense act, with which I imagine
the evidence at hand for them was consistent. But advocates were
dissatisfied with this decision to not arrest Zimmerman, the
killer of Trayvon Martin. And a campaign was
undertaken to-- petitions were distributed. Many, many people, I think
millions of people, actually, signed on to affirm the demand
that the authorities arrest Zimmerman and bring
him to justice. So in fact, he was arrested,
brought to justice, tried, put in jeopardy
of loss of liberty. He was acquitted at
the end of the day. But he's alleging injury. Now it took me a long
time to say that. And I hope I got it
more or less right. I'm not absolutely an
expert on the facts. And they get a little
complicated with this case. But I think I've got the
picture broadly correct. Now, there is a-- where is the evidence that
this switcheroo took place? It comes from the investigative
reporting of a filmmaker called Joel Gilbert. Joel Gilbert is a
documentary filmmaker. You can look him up. He has a film now that
has been produced and is in distribution called
The Trayvon Hoax. He is the one who makes
the case that Rachel-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Glenn, if I
can interrupt very briefly. GLENN LOURY: Yes, of course. JOHN MCWHORTER: He makes
a very meticulous case. This is not some
pamphlet of 45 pages. He makes a very lawyerly and,
frankly, almost astonishingly diligent case about this. Anyway, go ahead, Glenn. GLENN LOURY: Well, no, that's
exactly where I'm headed. You're right to say that. I agree with that. He makes this case in this
film that Rachel Jeantel was, in fact, not Trayvon
Martin's girlfriend, that she was someone that the
prosecuting team put forward because they didn't
have the real witness to put before the court. JOHN MCWHORTER: Because
the real witness-- nobody's exactly sure why
Diamond Eugene did not testify. But it's reasonable to
guess that she did not want to go before the
court telling an untruth. Because what Rachel
Jeantel was coached to say is not consistent with
the actual evidence of what apparently went on
between Zimmerman and Martin. But she's never said so herself. She hasn't spoken. We can't know. Another reason, and
I hope this isn't it, but it might be that she
was actually also seeing another gentleman at the time. And she knew that if she
testified about this, that person would find out. We'll probably never know
why Diamond Eugene did not take the stand. But Rachel Jeantel
is her half sister. And her family apparently
arranged with Crump's knowledge to put her up there
and to recite a story. Anyway, go ahead. GLENN LOURY: Ah, no, you're
telling the tale, man. And Gilbert lays this out. That's where you got this
from in this documentary film. And as you point out, he
lays it out meticulously. In other words, he gets all
of the telephone records of Trayvon Martin, and
he goes through them, and all of the text messages,
and he goes through them. And there are thousands
upon thousands of them. He goes around and he
interviews everybody. He goes to the high
schools in Miami where Diamond Eugene
Reynolds and Trayvon Martin matriculated. And he interviewed-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Looks
in the yearbooks. GLENN LOURY: He goes
to the yearbooks, and he looks at the pictures. He does all this detective work. He hunts down this
hidden figure who is Diamond Eugene Reynolds,
the girlfriend of Trayvon Martin who refused to
cooperate with the prosecution and who was substituted
for by Rachel Jeantel. He hunts her down and finds her. She is a-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Selling
her own clothes. GLENN LOURY: Yeah,
she's a fashion designer who puts out her own swimsuits
and stuff like that online. And he spends thousands
of dollars on her wares. And because he's such a good
customer of her business, she agrees to meet him. And he has her on
camera, et cetera. JOHN MCWHORTER: And also,
Glenn, remember, remember, he gets a handwriting
sample from her and looks at handwriting
samples of all of these people to figure out
exactly who was who, such as who wrote the statement
about what happened that night in a certain kind
of handwriting. And then it's signed in
different handwriting. Rachel Jeantel claims that her
nickname was Diamond Eugene. This is something you could
have seen at the time. And you can't help but let
some weird details pass when you're taking something in. But why would somebody who's
name who is Rachel Jeantel tell have the nickname
"Diamond Eugene?" That doesn't make sense. Is it because Diamond Eugene
is a different person? And we should say
also, Glenn, that some of the methods that Gilbert
used to get this information were a little sleazy. Like, for example,
Diamond Eugene didn't know who this man was. She didn't know that he was-- GLENN LOURY: She thought he was
a customer buying her swimwear for his girlfriends. JOHN MCWHORTER: Right. And all these text messages, as
you can imagine, a lot of them display some of the seamier
sides of these people. And Gilbert, rather--
almost revels in it. I found actually
these people were some of the most articulate
texters I've ever seen. Some of the things make
me think, boy, I've said in a TED Talk that texting
is a different language. Boy, does all of this prove it. But the fact is there is a
certain issue of privacy. But nevertheless, the
fact is he has outlined what is almost certainly
a factual case, however you feel
about him tricking Diamond Eugene in that way. GLENN LOURY: Well, OK,
we're not proceeding in a particularly systematic
method/manner here, but that's quite OK. Here's what I was trying to
get our audience to understand. Gilbert contacted
you and I, and me, and made us aware of his film. And you viewed it,
and I viewed it. JOHN MCWHORTER: And
we both read the book. GLENN LOURY: And he
wrote a book, yeah. JOHN MCWHORTER: He
sent us the book. GLENN LOURY: I hope it's
OK if I show it to people. This is the book by Joel Gilbert
on the Trayvon Martin hoax in which he recounts in
prose the narrative that he develops in his film. Now, he contacted
us because he wanted us to be aware of
what he was doing and to help him publicize it. And you and I thought, OK,
who is this Joel Gilbert? And so we did a little research. JOHN MCWHORTER: Glenn
did the research. You did it. GLENN LOURY: OK, I
did a little research. I have to do the research
because the guy is saying that a narrative which has
been embraced by essentially everybody about what
happened in Sanford, Florida in February of 2012 to Trayvon
Martin, which was that he was gunned down by a white, racist,
racially-profiling vigilante who confronted him,
that he was desperate, just trying to get an iced
tea and a bag of Skittles to go back and watch the NBA
All-Star game while he was visiting at the home of
his father's girlfriend in Sanford, Florida, although
he lived mainly in Miami, and that he was confronted
by this neighborhood watch vigilante,
and hounded down and shot, shot in cold
blood, and murdered, unarmed, no threat to anybody, a
"child," quote, unquote. Zimmerman's narrative
was very, very different. Zimmerman's narrative was he was
doing his job as a neighborhood watch person. He saw somebody, Trayvon
Martin, who looked suspicious and attracted his attention. He was monitoring
this person and trying to stay in touch with
the non-emergency call line with the police
department in his town, and that Trayvon
Martin turned on him, sucker punched him, got
him down onto the ground, and was pounding him. His head was bouncing
off of the concrete. He felt he was getting
ready to lose consciousness. He remembered just
as he was getting ready to go under
that he had a weapon. He pulls the weapon, which
he claims Trayvon Martin was trying to get, and
then he discharges it, and Martin is killed. The police bought his story. But the public, after
due effort on behalf of the Martin family from
Benjamin Crump and a largely sympathetic press,
came in full time to have grave doubts
about his story. And the authorities
were, in effect, pressured into bringing
charges against Zimmerman, which were brought. But here was what I
was trying to say. We found the film persuasive. I don't know if
it's true or false. I have no independent evidence. I have no way of judging
the veracity of the claims that Gilbert makes. All I can tell you is that
when I watch the film, I thought at the end of the
day, damn, this could be right. This is really-- I
mean, for example, you get to know Trayvon
Martin when you read all of his text messages. JOHN MCWHORTER: We have
to be careful here. Keep going. GLENN LOURY: You get to
know him a little bit. JOHN MCWHORTER: What
everybody's going to say is, why did he have
to be a perfect victim? But go ahead. GLENN LOURY: No, that's
not what I was getting at. What I was getting at
was that he's a player. He's a very popular kid. He's a star socially. He has a lot of friends. He has a lot of girlfriends. We learned a lot
about Trayvon Martin. It becomes implausible
when you look at the film to think that the woman
who's on the stand who's been represented
as his girlfriend is actually his girlfriend. She simply doesn't
have the swagger. She doesn't have the cachet. She just don't look like
his girlfriend, man. JOHN MCWHORTER: Glenn, I
have to interject there. GLENN LOURY: OK, you've
got to interject. JOHN MCWHORTER:
There are some people who are going to say that it
isn't fair that we just assume that heavy, quiet
Rachel Jeantel could not have been involved with tall,
handsome, popular Trayvon. However, it is reasonable
to question whether she would be his choice. And there's something
else about it, too, which is that if any
of you followed the case, and I certainly
did, Jeantel seemed oddly disconnected and
uncomfortable on the stand. And I was the first person
to defend her speech. There were people who claim
that she sounded like she didn't quote "speaking English,"
when she was just speaking black English. I wrote pieces about that. And so it wasn't her speech. And, of course,
maybe this teenager would be a little
uncomfortable on the stand. But Jeantel seemed
really almost spaced out. And that was just a
little hair out of place that I certainly just
let go over the years. But it turns out
there's a reason that she seemed so utterly
uncomfortable and often clueless. And it's because
she wasn't there. She was reporting
about something that she had not
actually witnessed. To believe Gilbert and all
that he's reconstructed, including the cell
phone records, suddenly make sense of the fact
that that person on the stand never seemed like
she actually knew what she was talking about. Now we know it's because
she wasn't the girl. Anyway. GLENN LOURY: No, you're
right to chastise me a little bit for the body
shaming and all of that. It's the cumulative effect
of a lot of different things, including what you say,
including the fact that there was a letter introduced into
evidence in the trial that had been written
by Diamond Eugene to Sybrina Fulton,
Trayvon Martin's mother, conveying condolences. "I was on the phone with your
son just before he was killed. I know the loss must be terrible
to you," et cetera, et cetera. "I wanted to write
and reach out to you." Signed Diamond Eugene, which
Rachel Jeantel testified was her letter. But when she was
asked to actually read the letter in
court, she couldn't do so because the letter was
written in cursive handwriting. And she said she didn't
read cursive, which means she didn't write cursive. She supposedly
dictated the letter and signed it
Diamond Eugene, which she claimed to be a
nickname, which turns out that that was also the actual
name of the woman who Gilbert tracks down to have been the
actual girlfriend of Trayvon. And this all circumstantial. JOHN MCWHORTER: And why
would she dictate it? Why would you dictate
something so important? You would write it in
your own handwriting. GLENN LOURY: The
cumulative effect of the relative plausibility
of a lot of different pieces of evidence that Gilbert
Marshalls leaves, I think, an objective view. We're scratching his or her
head and thinking, darn, could this be right? It's not obviously wrong. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yes. GLENN LOURY: So I wanted
to get that on the record. I wonder, the
filmmaker, Joe Gilbert, is also the director of this. This-- I hope
everybody can see it-- this is the jacket
cover of a DVD of a film that Joe Gilbert has made. You read correctly, Dreams
From My Real Father. You see correctly Barack
Hussein Obama flanked by-- Junior-- flanked by Barack
Obama, Senior and, on one hand, his purported father,
according to Joel Gilbert, and by Frank Marshall Davis, and
a member of the Communist Party USA, an African-American friend
of the family of Stanley Eugene Dunham, Barack's mother. JOHN MCWHORTER: Mother. GLENN LOURY: Barack's mother's
father and Frank Marshall Davis were good friends. And the claim of
this documentary made by the same guy is
that, in fact, this fellow is the father of Barack Obama. But it would have
been inconvenient to an embarrassed family
of Stanley Ann Dunham when she became pregnant by this
guy and to the future biography of the man who became the first
black president in the United States that he was
the son out of wedlock of an American communist rogue. And so a narrative was invented. This is the claim of
this documentary film. JOHN MCWHORTER: And
you know, Glenn, we should say that in
evaluating all of this, part of the reason
that we hesitated is because Joel Gilbert is
someone who has a thesis that Barack Obama's biography
is that kind of a fraud. And he sincerely believes that. And Joel Gilbert's reasons
for writing this book-- it's not only a film. It's a book that gives you more
detail than a film possibly can-- about this Trayvon
Martin case is that he has a bee in
his bonnet about an idea that the Trayvon Martin case
symbolizes the state of race relations in this country. And that that case in
particular was the beginning of a whole new period. And the people have
exploited Trayvon Martin. So Andrew Gillum down in Florida
has exploited, supposedly, Trayvon Martin for his own ends. He is disgusted by
Barack Obama having said that if I had a son, he
would have looked like Trayvon. So this is not to impugn
Joel Gilbert's character but to say that this is
the side of the spectrum that he does come from. And Glenn and I are
very much aware of it. And nevertheless,
there's an equipoise that we find ourselves
having to muster in that, I don't know
about you, Glenn, but I would say that
just viscerally, I don't want anybody
trashing Barack Obama. I find Gilbert's analysis
of race relations as based on Democrats cynically
using the Trayvon Martin case to keep their power, I
find that oversimplified and unconvincing. Although the Martin case was
the beginning of something new. Nevertheless, the case
that he lays out-- I'm a linguist,
you're an economist. We're not trained lawyers. Neither of us are journalists. But I dare anybody
to watch that film or particularly to
read the book and not find themselves wondering. And not just thinking it makes
you think and then going on and thinking what
you thought before. Gilbert lays out a
really damning case that there really
was a Trayvon hoax. And I'm willing to
put myself on the line and say that even if it
turns out not to be true. And I get the feeling, Glenn,
you'd feel the same way, that something's up here. GLENN LOURY: Well,
the thing that is-- I agree with what you just
said, John, certainly not to endorse Joel Gilbert's
politics or his larger view about social dynamics
and racial dynamics in American society. Although I must say, I don't
disagree with everything that Joel Gilbert thinks. I do think the Trayvon Martin
affair played an outsized role in the dynamic that led to
Black Lives Matter and-- JOHN MCWHORTER: I agree. GLENN LOURY: --the
politicization of the issue of race and policing, even
though George Zimmerman was not a police officer
and so on But here's the thing that got me exercise. I get this film and book. I watched the film,
and I skimmed the book. I haven't read the book
perhaps as closely as you have. And I come to the end of
it, and I say, darn it, it might be true. It's worth taking seriously. Could this be true? It's worth actually
looking further. I say, how could it be true? I ask myself, how
could this be true? How could it be
true that someone who was not the person they
were represented as being was put forward by the
duly appointed authorities to prosecute people
for criminal offenses in an American courtroom,
and that that went by? I mean, where is the
journalistic investigate-- how come it takes a
Joel Gilbert digging through Trayvon Martin's phone
records to find this out? If this is true, it should
have been discovered long ago. What about the
defense attorneys? Were they not aware
of the fact that they were dealing with a witness
who was a et cetera, et cetera? I said, how can this be true? On the other hand, it seemed-- it seemed plausible. And yet the source of the
report is a right-wing-- a journal, an investigative
journalist filmmaker who makes birther-like
accusations about Barack Obama? His father is not who
he has been telling you that his father is. Maybe he doesn't know
who his father is, but I know who is
father-- et cetera. So a guy who comes on the
Alex Jones Show, Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist,
the guy behind Pizzagate and all of this kind of thing-- anybody tainted by Alex Jones
is obviously a right-wing kook who you can't take seriously. So here I am. I care about race and racial
politics, and so do you. We talk about it all the time. I see the Trayvon Martin
thing come and go. And I note the huge
impact that it has on American public discourse. I come in the fullness of
time, after five years, into an experience that leads me
to think maybe everything I've thought about this wasn't true. And it was built on a
foundation that was false and manipulated and
intended to manipulate me and the rest of the public
into a particular cast of mind a false narrative about
something important that had happened. And I can't rely on ordinary
sources of information, mainstream media, investigative
reporting, or whatever, anything except this guy
on the right to tell me what's going on. And then I'm afraid
to talk about it. I'm afraid to tell anybody
that I think it might be true. I'm afraid even to
mention at my podcast that I've had these experiences
and these thoughts going through my mind. And that makes me think that the
climate that we have stumbled into here in the United
States for the discussion of important public issues is
contaminated by a certain kind of partisanship. On the one hand, you
have the President of the United States saying,
fake news, fake news, fake news any time something is
reported that he doesn't like. And you've got tens
of millions of people tuning into his rallies and
being convinced and persuaded by the president's denunciation
of those people back there, is the way he does
it at his rallies-- JOHN MCWHORTER: That's good. People should see what
Glenn just do it physically. It was a very deft,
Hirschfeld summation of what Trump does
with his finger. But anyway, go ahead. GLENN LOURY: And 30,
40 million people believe it and won't
believe anything that they see on MSNBC or
CNN or in The New York Times. On the other hand, you
have another 30, 40, or 50 million people who
if it came on Fox News, it can't possibly be true. If Sean Hannity credits
it, it must be wrong. If David Nunez thinks that it's
something worth investigating, well, it had to come
from the Russians, and it must be subversive of
American interest and whatnot. So my fear is-- and I'll stop-- we're kind of-- I felt myself personally
sucked into this thing of a absence of any sense
of the objective validity of factual claims
about political life and a kind of relativism. Whenever I hear a fact
reported and my first question is, well, who's
saying that, if I'm prepared to believe
that it's true, rather than what's
the evidence for that, feels to me like
we're in trouble. It becomes very ad hominem. All of our evaluation
of public discourse becomes rooted in
a prior assessment of where is the person
coming from who's telling me this
because I believe anything that's
said to me must be in the service of some agenda. If it's my agenda,
I'm listening. If it's the other agenda, I'm
tuning out, this kind of thing. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. This particular case really
does change me in many ways, and in ways that make
me very uncomfortable. And I should specify,
Trayvon Martin really was the beginning
of the teens when it comes to race relations in America. It was an iconic event because
of what social media did to iconicize the whole thing. That was the beginning-- GLENN LOURY: The
hoodie, the hoodie. I'm wearing the hoodie. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. Something new happened then. But I don't think that it's
about Democrats using it in order to keep as many
seats in Congress as possible. But, yes, it was
an iconic event. And what worries me is
that there were always things about that
case that didn't quite work if you thought
about them objectively, which I was inclined to let by. I should say that I was quite PC
about Trayvon back in the day. I wrote things such that-- when Joel Gilbert wrote
me, he wrote me as somebody who he thought
likely to resist him. He thought I was on race,
just one of the usual. And if you just read a couple
of pieces I wrote back then, that's what you'd think. But even then, somebody
happened to make a cell phone audiotape of the encounter
between Martin and Zimmerman. This tends to get lost. There was audio of what happened
between them on that grass. And somebody is screaming. Somebody is screaming for help. And Trayvon's mother
claims that that's his voice screaming for help. But the truth is,
George Zimmerman is a potbellied little
guy who's 5-something. Trayvon Martin, despite all
those cherubic pictures that we saw at the time, was 6 foot 3". Are we really-- even back
then, I was thinking, are we supposed to
imagine that somehow that little roly-poly
George Zimmerman got the best of this
6-foot-3 kid who is then yelling for his life
because this man is sitting on his belly? That never made any sense. And so anyway, now here we are. And it turns out,
I have all reason to believe that what happened
was that Zimmerman got out of the car. He did not follow
Trayvon Martin. He stopped when he was
basically told to by the cops, but was just trying
to get a bead on where Trayvon Martin was. Trayvon Martin didn't like
that he had been tailed at all, jumped George
Zimmerman in the dark, and beat him within
an inch of his life. And the things that Gilbert
reveals about Martin's past, it doesn't make him
a horrible person that he had been suspended
not just for a little weed but for being a
physically violent person, and that that comes
out in his texts, that he liked himself
some fighting. That is what Trayvon
Martin was like. That doesn't make him evil. But he was somebody
who could have bested George Zimmerman in that way. He was very experienced
with his fists. And so that turns
out to be what it is. And then Rachel
Jeantel was a plant. And it has to be important. The issue here is not
just some Hitchcock thing where Rachel Jeantel
wasn't the real person but said what Diamond
Eugene would have said. Rachel Jeantel told the
story of Trayvon Martin being jumped by
Zimmerman because she'd been coached to do it. So Rachel Jeantel
was not only a plant, but she said things
that weren't true. And she probably knew it. That's a whole other issue. But the fact is we were
given the wrong facts. And what bothers me is
that this means something. Trayvon Martin,
apparently the first story is nothing like what
actually happened. Mike Brown, we got a story. And it turns out that
that's not what happened. Jussie Smollett pulls what
he pulled earlier this year. And it turns out that
he is telling a story. And there are many
cases like this. And Glenn, this is-- I'm almost done. This is where it's gone. GLENN LOURY: No, these
cases are all different. I just want to interject. They're not-- he's
saying that these cases are the same or similar. You're saying, however,
that in each of these cases, we were told a narrative that
proved upon consideration not to be true. JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. There's a pattern here. And, of course, there are cases
like this where it absolutely is what it was. Nevertheless, it's interesting
that these most prominent cases often are the ones
where it turns out we're being lied to the point
that I have now, as of 2019, opened up to a skepticism that
I used to tamp down on myself. There's a case
that I don't think is ever going to make
national news that happens to come to my attention
because of aspects of my life and where I've been going. And I'm not going to
mention what it was because the facts aren't in. And frankly, I can tell
where this is going. But a couple of months
ago, I heard about a case like this where you think,
boy, this naked racism in 2019, can you imagine? For the first time, I heard
about this in, what, June. For the first time,
I found myself allowing myself to think, I'll
bet that's not what happened. And with Trayvon Martin,
I tamped that down. When I first heard about
Ferguson, I tamped it down. With Smollett, I
heard about him, and I thought, boy, that sounds
like something out of a 1970s Made-For-TV movie, but I'm
going to assume that the man is telling the truth. This time, I just
thought, you know what, I don't think
that's what happened. And I'll give it
a couple months. And you know what, it's
been a couple months, and we found out that the person
made most of this stuff up. It's a pattern. And so the question becomes,
why are people making up this victimization? What is it that drives
so many people today to create these stories when
life is hard enough as it is? But it's at the point now,
as of the Trayvon hoax, I am now skeptical of
any claims like this. And I'm open to it turning
out to be exactly what it was, like Eric Garner. That's not a--
that's not a hoax. That really happened. But it's at the point now
where my antennas are up because we've been
fooled so many times. And I'm trying to
wrap my head around, what is it about the people
who watched what happened with Mike Brown in Ferguson? They have a sense that
they don't want to snitch. I understand that there's this
resentment of the cops that goes way, way back. I understand that. But then with the Trayvon Martin
case, what's going on here is somewhat different because
George Zimmerman wasn't a cop. And so there's this resentment
against racism in general. And the whole country
comes behind it. With Jussie Smollett,
it seems that we've been more honest about it. And maybe that's a
crack in the plaster. But I'm frustrated because
civil rights is not supposed to be about lying. GLENN LOURY: Oh, OK. That was-- JOHN MCWHORTER: Oh, sorry. That was my-- that was my point. Too many of these
cases are lies. GLENN LOURY: --like
a poster heading. You ask, why do we-- why do we see these cases? And I have to presume
the reason people are doing this is because they
anticipate that they're going to be believed. That is to say, there's
a kind of demand creating its own supply. There are demand for instances
of racial victimization for the purposes of furthering
a political narrative. And that induces people
to supply instances of racial victimization
more so than they would happen without any
extraordinary effort. But if you are prepared in
light of these various hoaxes and semi-hoaxes to
discount reports of racial victimization,
what do you think middle America is going to do? JOHN MCWHORTER: Mm-hmm. And I think that it's at the
point where, frankly, there has always been this certain
kind of bone-deep skepticism among many people, quote,
unquote, "like that." And I've always been
inclined to resist it and to explain that we have to
give these cases as much air as we possibly can. But it's at the point
where a person like that who isn't inclined to be
nice about these things is going to say, look
at Trayvon Martin. This is what's going
to push it over. It's going to be
as this gets out. Look at Trayvon Martin. Look at Mike Brown. Look at Jussie Smollett. All three of those cases,
relatively recently, are ones where
we've been lied to. And a certain kind of person
tells us that as moral people, we're supposed to
allow the legend to be printed rather than the
truth, that we're supposed to go all John Ford on it. And it just doesn't-- it just doesn't hold up. If Trayvon Martin
attacked-- go ahead. GLENN LOURY: Wilfred Riley-- this is a political science guy
at Kentucky State University. I've had him on The Glenn Show-- has a whole book in which he
catalogs these racial hoaxes. There are hundreds of them. He scours all the newspapers
around the country and keeps track of various
cases and determines that in many, many instances
of allegations of racial victimization
and proven not to be true upon examination. JOHN MCWHORTER: It's too often. And I think it's one of those
things, maybe it's something that's inevitable after
things really do change. Maybe there's a
pendulum swing where it used-- you had nobody would
have pulled this in 1935, or it would have
been much rarer. People are swinging
from trees, and you're going to pretend that
somebody attacked you? That would have been
utterly inhuman. I'm sure it was extremely rare. It was white people who
lied about black people attacking them. But these days I
imagine after things get better, maybe a human
weakness, not black weakness, but human weakness will be
that a certain kind of person, in order to get attention
or to distract attention from something they did, such as
Tawana Brawley having problems with their parents
and pretending to have been left in the
woods in a bag with feces spread all over her. That's the first one
of these cases that got a lot of attention, maybe
this is the sort of thing that we're going to have to
expect because black people are human beings just like all
people are human beings. And people do shit. But what worries me is that
these cases get so heavily publicized and fellow
travelers with black people insist on not subjecting
cases like this to the proper scrutiny, such
as the Trayvon case, where there were so many things that
clearly didn't make sense. And yet, what everybody
wanted to do was wear hoodies, and carry Skittles, and talk
about how racist America still is. That's the problem, that
these things, especially with social media, can
get so much attention and shape people's view of
what the whole country is like. Tawana Brawley couldn't
do that because there was no social media yet. Nevertheless, it didn't
make us look very good. GLENN LOURY: No, I think
that's the beginning of wisdom to start analyzing what the
structural foundations are in terms of interpersonal
communication and public representation. What are the foundations
of this kind of phenomenon? And I agree that the
ability of people to network and communicate
quickly over large distances and to respond to each other,
that the phenomenon of things going viral and becoming
events simply because people are talking about them, and
the talking is the event, and the disconnect between the
talking and objective reality becomes possible, I think
this is all a part of the mix. I just want to say
a couple of things. This is terrible to the extent
that this kind of phenomenon proliferates because, A,
it's a terrible indictment of journalism. JOHN MCWHORTER: It is. GLENN LOURY: All of these,
quote, "hoaxes," close quote, could be and should
have been exposed from the get go by a
sober, objective press instead of there being
a cheerleading frenzy to pile on to a narrative
that is evidence of either a virtue signaling that
I'm woke to what's going on in America now or just a
kind of crass, partisan, our side versus their side,
and we're going to win. So think about
these entrepreneurs. Think about the Al
Sharptons of the world. I'm talking about
people who take the raw material of a
tragedy and massage it into a platform of
national publicity and personal aggrandizement. Think about Benjamin Crump. He's got a book out there now
called Open Season-- titled Open Season on black
people where it's the phenomenon in America
now is that they're murdering black people at will. And there's no
accountability for it. And then he can tick off the
cases of which Trayvon Martin is a leading example. And I'm sorry for
the way this sounds. I really am because I mean no
ill will toward Benjamin Crump or, for that matter, you won't
believe it, toward Al Sharpton, but I feel offended
when I feel manipulated by the machinations of these
actors who know full well what they're doing. You're feeding
the press in a way to try to induce a certain
kind of public reaction. You're trying to
control the narrative. This is very clear in the
case of Trayvon Martin. There was a strategy. There was a media
communications strategy. The ear witness was a
part of that strategy. The representation of Skittles
and an iced tea, a boy, he's just a boy. He's standing 6-feet-3, and
he's taken mixed martial arts training, but he's just a boy. He's a kid. Michael Brown is a gentle giant. He's on his way to college. And moreover,
moreover, anyone who speaks against the narrative
once this ball gets rolling places themselves
in personal jeopardy of having their
reputations besmirched, of being thought ill of. Why would you-- and people
are going to say this about us right now-- even bother to discuss it? People will say, whatever,
whatever, whatever. Suppose the facts are exactly
what you say they are. Why would you even take
the time to discuss this? What are you trying
to accomplish? Whose side are you on? You're giving aid and
comfort to enemies. Only a self-hating black person
would doubt the narrative about Trayvon Martin. The narrative is not playing a
role independent of the truth or falsity of its claims. It's playing in a standing
role representing the larger phenomenon of racial
domination and brutality, and stand your ground
stuff, and whatnot. I'm still talking, so I don't
know if John is with this. Wait, John may come back. JOHN MCWHORTER: I'm
coming right back. GLENN LOURY: He's back. JOHN MCWHORTER: Keep going. GLENN LOURY: So
there's a lot at stake. And I just want to
finish this, man. The President of
the United States, as Barack Hussein Obama, said
in 2012, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." He said, "I'm mainly
concerned about the parents." He's thinking about
Sybrina Fulton, and he's thinking
about Tracy Martin, the parents of Trayvon Martin. And he says reaching out
to them, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." That's the President
of the United States. This is long before any
facts are actually known. This is in the same wake
of narrative manipulation that the advocates, in
this case, Benjamin Crump and company were fostering. And that's the President
of the United States. The awesome influence of that
office led to a narrative. We have to understand
black people are pissed, their poor
relations with the police. One of the reasons for that is
that black people are profiled. Was Trayvon Martin
actually profiled? Dare I even raise the question? JOHN MCWHORTER: Mm-hmm. GLENN LOURY: If I tell you
that I learned something about Trayvon Martin's
associates and about the fact that he was going online looking
to try to purchase a weapon-- I learned this
from Joel Gilbert-- now I'm calling him a thug. Now I'm getting in bed with
Dinesh D'Souza and company, you know what I mean,
in terms of creating this kind of white
supremacist, racist backlash. So the capacity to keep
in touch with reality slips slowly from our fingers. We become the subjects
of this puppet show where people are moving
these things back and forth. And I can't quite
see the strings, and I don't know what's
going on behind it, but I'm in the sway
of this drama that's being played out before me. And I'm a lemming. I'm [INAUDIBLE]. And I can't live like that. So I think-- I think it's very, very bad. And just finally, you're right,
the civil rights movement can't be built on lies. If you want to make a
real moral argument that has a political effect
in this country, you can't base it upon
hoaxes, and lies, and ruses. It's got to be rooted
in objective validity. Otherwise, you're going to end
up with your 30% on your side, but you won't be able to
persuade anybody of anything. JOHN MCWHORTER: And
what worries me also is that I'm not sure that people
understand the condescension involved in this. And this is a big theme of
mine because it's important. Another case we're
forgetting about is the Duke lacrosse case
where a woman unjustly accused these lacrosse
players of hideous deeds. And a group of professors
wrote this noble document in condemnation,
including Houston Baker, who's no fan of
either one of us, and never was taken to account
for that document and all of the hasty conclusions
that it came to. But it comes down to
something like this. Rachel Jeantel says that her
nickname is Diamond Eugene. Now imagine if the issue was
the great blue wall of silence, and there's a white
cop who's accused of doing something horrible
to a black man or woman. And a note is involved. And the cop's name
is Darren Wilson. And there's a note that
he claims to have written, except that the note is signed
something like Harold Jones. And someone says, "Well,
why the sign Harold Jones?" And Darren Wilson says, "Well,
my nickname is Harold Jones." MSNBC, the nation
would jump right on it. There would be no question. They'd shake it
like a rabid dog. But if Rachel Jeantel says that
her nickname is Diamond Eugene, well, what are they thinking,
that that's a black thing to have nicknames
that have nothing to do with your original name? Nobody wanted to actually think
about any of this that hard. And what that means is
that there is a tacit idea that when it comes
to the truth, when it comes to maybe
exactness, with black people somehow it's different. When it comes to
moral responsibility, you can write any
old thing about these white lacrosse players. You can make them sound
like the devil's spawn. And when it turns out it was all
a lie, nothing is said to you. Of course, you keep your job,
but nothing's even said to you. Nobody rubs anything
in your face. It's just as if
it never happened. That's dehumanizing
to black people. And I'm not sure
if people really think about what that means,
the idea that we're not supposed to think about what really
happened in Ferguson, but we're supposed to just
think about the larger symbolic as if everything is a
novel by Toni Morrison. That is extremely,
extremely condescending. And I think that it's time
that we were held to account. And maybe the fact that
the Jussie Smollett thing was allowed to mean
what it meant was something. I don't know how many
people are thinking Jussie Smollett
needs to be listened to because of the larger story. But still, the fact is
that at this point whenever one of those particularly
colorful, especially depressing, barbaric stories
about racial abuse comes up, it's at the point where
we are justified in being skeptical rather than
just immediately thinking, that's horrible. In other words, someone might
say, believe black people. And to be honest,
with these things, I think any halfway
intelligent person can't help but think, no, no. Frankly, really we hold
back and halfway believe these sorts of claims
until more facts coming in. I now-- I'm more
cynical about that than I ever thought I would be. And you and I have had our
disagreements about the cops. For me, whenever
it's about the cops, I think, all right, I'm
on the, quote, unquote, "the proper side" now. But it's at the
point where I now have been deceived too often. And that's not the way-- GLENN LOURY: I frankly
don't see the difference between the claim believe
women and the claim believe black people. The value at stake is,
in the case of women, in the abhorrence of
sexual violence and abuse. And the value at stake in the
case of blacks is anti-racism. And the claim is the
veracity of a report should depend upon the fact
that it does or does not further our campaign against, in
one case, sexual violence, in the other case, anti-racism. And I think it's
wrong in both cases. The belief claim, the epistemic
claim, what do I think is true, ought not to depend upon
the normative position, I'm against the exploitation
of women, I hate racism. The belief claim ought to depend
upon an epistemic structure that assesses facts as best
one can that uses logic, and deduction, and inference. That's where what I know or
don't know should come from. What I know or don't
know should never come from what I
feel or don't feel or from what I
want or don't want. That's just a category mistake. And it's just as big a
mistake in the case of women as it is in the case of
blacks, in my humble opinion. There, I said it. But I think there's
something else that has to be said, John, because-- JOHN MCWHORTER: And
Glenn, this will have to be the end because
I have to proctor an exam. GLENN LOURY: No problem. The thing that has
to be said here because we're going to
get flak is Sybrina Fulton is Trayvon Martin's mother. Tracy Martin is Trayvon
Martin's father. In February of
2012, they learned that their son is dead, their
beloved son, whatever his flaws or faults. There is a trial. His killer gets off. Years go by, now they are
the subject of a financially ruinous lawsuit? First, their son dies, then
the killer of their son walks, and now somebody's trying to
take everything they've got. A lot of people
are going to feel, regardless of the
colors involved, that that's a deeply unjust
evolution of circumstance. And I think we need
to acknowledge that. JOHN MCWHORTER: We do. Glenn, we need to do
part two of this one. GLENN LOURY: Let's do
part two, no problem. JOHN MCWHORTER: Let's
do part two very soon. I've got to run
and do this exam. I wish I could just come
back and start again. But I have to go to a talk. But let's keep this going
because we're not done. There's more to be
said about this. GLENN LOURY: Can you get a
better device than your iPhone the next time? JOHN MCWHORTER: Yes. We'll do it on my iPad
next time, yes, yes. GLENN LOURY: All right my
friend, signing off for now. JOHN MCWHORTER: This was fun.
