UnHerd Club - Coleman Hughes: Defeating the race baiters

about to start our live stream hello everybody hello and welcome to the unheard club we are here relatively newly open this is one of our very first events um and we have a fantastic guest joining us today who I'm about to introduce um if you are watching on the live stream whether you're on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook welcome to you as well um we are going to organize this with a conversation between us there's going to be a couple of Clips um we're going to bring someone up we hope from the audience to join us towards the end then we're gonna have a short interval where people can go and get drinks or if you're watching online go and do something else for 10 minutes and then we will have the Q a and people are welcome to join in the discussion um this is the conclusion of a long-held ambition of ours which was really made more important and more pressing than ever during the pandemic era which is to bring people together IRL in real life in 3D in the same room talking about important things not isolated stuck in their homes staring at a screen all of the time it felt that period was very bad for the conversation it was bad for ideas and it has been incredibly exciting since we launched this place less than two months ago just before Christmas to see it full to see people really responding well to it and we have a full house tonight so thank you to all of you guys I should say that if you want to be invited this is not an exclusive Club if you want to be invited all you need to do is subscribe to unheard and so if you're watching online there is a link available on the unheard website slash register and you just sign up it's 95p a week which is an absolute bargain um joining us today uh ladies and gentlemen is Coleman Hughes um who I believe it's your first time in the UK it is my first time and you came yesterday so you're even still a bit jet lagged so this must be your first ever event in the UK well I yeah this is my first ever public event that's right welcome glad to be here [Applause] so as many of you will know all of you probably will know Coleman is a writer a podcaster an opinion columnist who basically shot to Superstar them over the past two or three years um as an even-handed evidence-based careful commentator on the vexed and controversial topic of race um his writing has been featured everywhere from The New York Times due to quilette he's appeared on all of the big big podcasts most significantly of course the unheard uh TV channel which we spoke and I'm actually going to begin our conversation with a clip from that um he is among his other many skills a near professional Jazz trombonist a graduate in public policy from Colombia and recently a rapper so welcome once again Coleman um I'd like to start by playing a clip if we could we did a YouTube interview in on the 1st of July 2020. which was really the kind of high point of a lot of these I guess June and July of that year was when this race question took over the Western World in a way and I asked a question which created a sort of Awkward Moment between us that really stuck with me and a lot of people in the comments were talking about it so I thought I'd kick off where we left off foreign the phrase black lives matter is obviously very well chosen because it's impossible to disagree with um you very quickly risk being cast as either a kind of annoying contrarian or Worse an actual racist if you start even kind of having the kind of conversation we're having um so so how do you think we should respond to these protests who is we well um so that um that was a great question then and a lot of people in the comments were speculating as to what exactly uh you meant and one interpretation must be am I talking about English people am I talking about media commentators am I talking about white people um and since then of course there's been a book called why I'm no longer talking to white people about race um well here you are you're talking to a white person about race yes um not just any white person don't sell it yourself short yeah why are you why do you think it's important um is it important to talk to white people about race you know I don't even view it as talking to white people or a white person about race I'm not sure exactly what I meant by who who are we um it was probably just a genuine question um but you know I'm of the radical opinion that you can talk to other human beings about important topics that affect us all um and that race is not you know if people routinely every day fall in love and get married and start families across racial lines then at minimum we can have a conversation about a social issue that affects all of us and those who insist on the opposite uh people like Rob and D'Angelo I often pick on her because she is the most famous example of this but in her smash best-selling book which was on the best sellers list for you know like something like a year in America it was almost unheard of she has these rules essentially for white people and the rules are if you're talking to a black person about race don't disagree don't argue back don't remain silent don't withdraw from the conversation by process of elimination the only option is to loudly agree with anything I say which I do expect you to do in this conversation uh but look this is not that's not how you create a conversation with with an equal right just in the course of your relationships in life what it means to to be in conversation with an equal is that I can disagree with something respectfully that you say You can disagree with something that I say and that we both acknowledge we might have something of value to contribute to the topic that's boilerplate prerequisite for us having a conversation between adults um what D'Angelo and and those who think like her want to create is a situation where essentially uh white people are like adults and black people are like children right where whatever I say I'm kind of like a petulant child that you have to appease um and rather than have a genuine conversation with that's not equality that's not any kind of equality worth wanting so uh in some the reason why I'm talking to a white person about race is the same reason I would talk to any other human being about any other topic that affects us all right well said uh I guess the the question also has a bit of a specific angle even if you take has read the idea that we're all human beings and we should be able to just communicate respectfully with each other there is this awkwardness I think and it isn't often talked about um which has sort of seeped into everything it seeps into the way the media covers it and who feels legitimate talking about this issue um and I think a lot of white people probably do feel awkward talking about it because they face the rejoinder you know what do you know awkward or afraid possibly based um and and I wonder whether there's a danger there that that can become anger um and you know if if people feel excluded from a whole topic like their voice doesn't matter it actually makes things worse do you think there's some truth in that I certainly feel that way personally as as a person that's grown up in the west where we have an expectation of being able to voice our opinions which is often simple it's often your last Refuge right you may have no power in society whatsoever you may have no wealth you may have no status what you do have is the freedom to at the very least say what you think in your life right it's one of the last freedoms that you hold on to um in in times of struggle and it's psychologically important for that reason I certainly feel a kind of anger began to Bubble Up When I feel that I I can't say something fairly reasonable um in situations and I have to imagine many people feel the same way and they often vote their anger um they take their anger to The Ballot Box sometimes in ways that are counterproductive when they feel that they cannot simply have a conversation uh um in in public so look I think some awkwardness is warranted the history of race relations involves all kinds of Injustice slavery oppression and then just subtler dynamics of of social psychology that are are the stuff of great comedy the stuff of great you know sketches Key and Peele Dave Chappelle Show right there's all kinds of dynamics that are interesting and and awkward and that's okay I think awkwardness uh awkwardness you know you walk through the door of awkwardness and you sometimes find a lot of interesting stuff on the other side there's nothing wrong with awkward what what when it's a problem is when you you are afraid you are afraid to say anything critical for instance of BLM because you know if if word gets around that could mean your reputation and your job uh and your livelihood um that's when it really starts to provoke that so officially whether you're watching online or in person you are all welcome here um and we have no interest in what your color is let me follow up on what you just said which is BLM and what we should now make of it because when we were speaking there it's nearly three years ago um it was still a very New Movement um it had this huge amount of energy with the benefit of that time that's passed what do you think we should now make of BLM The Movement it is hard for me to think of um a significant good consequence just for black Americans that came from BLM now I can very easily give you the opposite I can very easily give you a harm which was and this is not only on BLM it's just the wider atmosphere of the riots and the apologism for them um which is in America you saw the the greatest single year-over-year increase in homicide and that was not born equally between racial groups it was it fell squarely disproportionately on black people and black men in particular so you saw the largest single percentage year increase in homicide of black men you saw um crime spike in locations you saw black owned businesses being looted and destroyed and therefore you know property values lowered places becoming basically uninhabitable um so I would challenge anyone to come up with a comparable benefit that was experienced by black people as a result of the 2020 BLM moment I mean you can say more black people got put on boards which is true um you know there's there's lots of boards of directors that are are more diverse now you know people that were already probably making you know millions of dollars are now making more and are on board seats I don't know what the hell that has to do with George Floyd or the problems of the black poor or poverty or the problems of of police abuse that seems like a quite a poor compensation for the largest um increase in homicide in in American history so um three years out I still I judge it as harshly as I did at the time I mean if you feel right that that is a extraordinary conclusion to reach isn't it after that time and the statistics you give are quite hard to argue with and surely there must be a lesson for us all to come out of this that a movement in the moment that grips so many of us and so many people we know and highly intelligent people people extremely well-meaning people um and it was a very uncanny and very powerful group moment and if your analysis is right it it did not make the world better you know what can we learn from that how should we respond differently next time one thing to learn is that it uh is you should pay more attention to people who have skin in the game if you were to only pull communities living in high crime neighborhoods during 2020 you would have gotten a pretty balanced picture where um you know maybe half of people would have said you know we want less police but fully half would have said the opposite um that was not the picture that was presented in the media because most of the people commenting on the issue had no skin in the game they had already by means of wealth you know lived in neighborhoods where it's not that the police doesn't matter but it's like you're you're not taking your life into your hands when you go walk out on the street kids are not being shot um you know every weekend in the summer caught by stray bullets so it's it can be easy to abstractly say I am on the side of the movement with the good slogan that everyone is getting behind that seems like it's well intentioned um that stands on the quote unquote right side of History without you or anyone you love being the one to pay the price of far higher crime rates so I think more attention we should be skeptical more than we perhaps were we should yes and and you know at the time any for instance the journalist Lee Fang great journalist works at the intercept and just broke uh part of the Twitter file story um he interviewed a a man that happens to be black that was totally against the riots and what was happening um and he essentially got canceled simply for filming this guy speak his truth right um and this is what was happening at the time anyone that that portrayed um what was the opinion of you know at least 20 of Black America um which was that they wanted more police and in fact 80 percent wanted more or the same level only 20 wanted less police presence anyone who portrayed that was essentially canceled or or said to be smuggling propaganda um and all this stuff so the next time this happens I hope there isn't a next time but there probably will be pay more attention to the voices of people who have skin in the game because they speak more sense than the the opinion of um you know Elites that don't live anywhere near the chaos that they are helping apologize for I'm gonna now bring a parable to us sure which you may or may not have heard being talked about and that is the parable of ngozi Fulani um I gave you a tiny bit of a briefing before we met um but I'm actually going to let her speak for herself we have a clip of um Fulani who can tell her story she she went to a reception at Buckingham Palace and there she met an 84 year old courtier a former lady and waiting to the late Queen um and she didn't like the conversation that took place let's play the clip if we can so then she began to ask me who am I where am I from so I said I'm from Sister space it's an organization that supports African and terrible inherited women and girls and then she said oh what part of Africa are you from and I said I don't know they didn't leave any records and that's that's my truth right I couldn't place which part then she says no but where are you from I said no sister's face are based in Hackney no but where are you from I'm not going to leave it right there because I feel like this week we cannot do without the cultural commentary of Prince Harry on this topic uh who is now who is now a great leader on these issues uh let's let's play Let's play that let's play that clip a very short clip of of Prince Harry's reaction to that story okay so I'm gonna first of all ask you Coleman have you been asked where you're from and do you ask other people where you're from and what kind of question is that I find after what's your name it's one of the best questions to ask um I'm often in Ubers in New York where I live where I'm from and I usually find the second or third question I will ask an Uber driver is where are you from and if he has an accent and it's always a he I often want to know where they were born and where they came from and when they came to America and I've never once got a complaint and in fact every time I've gotten a very interesting conversation where I learned something I recently spoke to Uber driver that because I asked a question where are you really from he ended up giving me his take on Afghanistan U.S involvement there as someone who grew up there and I for the first time in my life heard the take that you can be pro-us and pro Taliban and it kind of made sense so you learned something I did yeah I learned his perspective on the issue given his interest as a local and how it looked to him and it actually was coherent anyway the point is this is one of the basic human questions that one can ask to another and I I really despite this incident I still feel that 90 of people walking on the street if asked this question would not even think twice would not get any any level of offended I think this the the the kind of people that get offended by this are a very loud minority that are given attention um this it just to take it a little bit more seriously yeah sure in in one sense the question is kind of complicated often these days isn't it it's it there are multiple answers to the question where are you from I mean this particular lady ngozi Fulani actually changed her name she was born in Kilburn by the name of Marlene Headley and she was born to parents I'm getting this from Tommy olades column and I'm hoping you might come chat to us in a moment but she was born to parents of barbadan barbation Heritage and she is not African and yet she she's taken an African name she's very her African identity is very important to her and I wonder if You observe that kind of thing happening over in New York and in the US that identity is has now become a lot more complicated and people are wanting to change their Identity or to focus on parts of their identity that they that may or may not be true to gain some kind of improve this story well I've I've I have sympathy with people that want to reinvent themselves and get in touch with um their Roots however they perceive those that to be I don't think that there is anything inherently wrong with that I think that is kind of a it's a universal urge to kind of have roots that you can trace to and it's something people look to uh in you know a certain kind of person looks to or anyone might look to in kind of times of struggle in one's personal life I mean if you're going to do that though if you're going to adopt an African name you can't be surprised when people assume you're from Africa and you you ought not get offended but this is this is the world uh that um migration and globalism and diversity is creating is one where identities are going to get more complex and that's okay but it it also means that I think people should be a I mean people like this woman should be much more forgiving and not seek to to to cancel someone for what is clearly a well-intentioned comment right No One Believes that you know if she had answered oh I'm from Africa that this eight-year-old woman would say uh Africa right no she would have been she would have been curious she would have wanted to know more about the place how many signals do you need that the intentions are good before you you understand that you don't you don't have to rush to to Judgment of a person um over such a benign question the the concluding part of this little Parable was also very telling and very relevant to how this tends to go uh which is there is immediately a kind of shut down the institution in that case the royal family um put out a very apologetic statement and this 84 year old lady was ultimately brought in for an education session with Ms Fulani and I believe they made up and you know everyone's friends in the end could but it was couched in yeah I would say Terror there's this sense if if this if there is any accusations related to this that touches any organization this is now the Playbook run a mile apologize re-educate and hope it goes away how should organizations react if they come across this kind of controversy the temptation to do something is deep and profound this is true as true of politicians as it is of you know institutions sometimes the best thing to do is to let it blow over the news cycle is pretty fast and if you I mean I think there are cases where if you hold a line people will forget they will move on to the next issue uh they will they will betray the fact that sometimes they didn't really care so much about this to begin with right sometimes it's a kind of I don't want to say feigned but it's a kind of short-lived anger about these kinds of issues because most of the people getting mad in the back of their minds they know how normal a question where are you from is they know that many of them know that and so the institution could have just said that I mean that's the parallel universe is perhaps one where they just said this is ridiculous yeah of course not nothing bad I mean I I do think there is an incentive where if you if you apologize for things that are really not worth apologizing for you create more of this because the people again it's not a psychologically normal person in my view that creates a campaign around condemning a person who asked where are you from this is this is not normal behavior right whatever you want to whatever you want to call this this is not the norm um and I think such people thrive on the attention and validation that is given when an institution says here's an apology which is synonymous with saying your concern is valid right we are validating that you're not that that you're basically in the right to be offended and that actually creates more of this because people people see that and at a subconscious level often people that again have certain issues a subconscious level they become more like the kind of person that gets offended because they see the rewards that come with that offense right so actually we potentially make the world a better place there's a there's a moral virtue attached to a bit more of a robust response to these kind of things and less apology and more even if it sounds defensive or if it sounds you know PR consultant wouldn't advise it maybe maybe that's the path upwards from this I think so I think so let me ask you about I've got a really good clip of your music which I wanted to come on to um and this is one of the rap and sorry can I say one thing about Prince Harry too please um if you're watching so I I'm American so I I don't like most Americans I don't follow every jot and Tittle of the details around the story but I did I saw that interview I saw the Oprah interview and he's he's never made it clear how he knows that comment was made in a racist way like you know wondering what a baby is going to look like is not such a bad thing I think it's probably anyone who has had a baby has probably I I talked to my girlfriend about what our babies are gonna look like you know like it's like a it presumably he believes it was meant in a racist way like I hope the baby's not going to be too dark but to my knowledge he's never said that he just said someone wondered about what the baby was going to look like without naming that person which then allows the mind to speculate and go wild about oh who was it that said this and I I'm sure you all have much this is the point of which I did a big yeah we don't need to say it out loud we know what you're getting at yeah I mean to me to make it you ought to be really specific if you're going to make an accusation about something like that right like if you're going to acute like if he had said someone in the royal family is a bit of a pedophile okay well that example actually doesn't work because but imagine a world where Andrew wasn't said he casted a Vegas version well someone said uh you know something about a kid looking good wait a minute hold on really make the accusation or don't you know because if you're going to accuse someone of of of really not wanting the baby to be dark that's a very that's a that's a very deep accusation to make about someone and I think it should be made seriously like with a name or or not at all um and and the way he's kind of uh the way he's not uh pinning himself down to that it was even really a racist comment as opposed to a a kind of curiosity of A Sort that anyone might have um it seems fishy to me I promised that we would play a clip of Coleman's music and we are going to do that to play us out to the interval but first the next topic on my list that I really wanted to focus on which kind of comes out of this is the differences between Britain and America and this is something that people often a lot of young people here I genuinely don't think really know about this that we don't have the same history we don't have the same story as the US does um and we actually have in the audience someone who's written a book about it and that's Tommy I will add it so I thought maybe he could come and tell us what's give us a bit of a sneak preview come and join us on the cow yeah [Applause] does that let's see if that works does it work Ed at the very base oh there we go dispatcher let's try that there's that okay so your book is literally it's not called Britain isn't it's called This is not America yeah this comes out this summer in June yeah check it out um what's it about um the book is about um why Britain is not America but specifically in terms of race um so I look at the very important differences between the black British population and the Black American population um especially um in terms of demographics um so the majority of black Americans are descended from enslaved Africans um but that's not true of the majority of black British people um the majority of black British people are actually um either African immigrants or the children of African immigrants um up until about 25 years ago it was very different the majority of black people were black Caribbean um but over the past 25 years there's been a huge influx of immigration from Africa which has changed the um demographic composition of the black British population question um and also in terms of things like education as well there is a lot of diversity within the black British population which isn't um sufficient Highly Educated people yeah yeah exactly it's not sufficiently acknowledged in the race discourse so um black African um pupils for example uh many of them do better than white British students um especially black African students from West Africa um in terms of things like expulsion rates and also GCSE and a level attainment there is a big divide between black African pupils and black Caribbean pupils and I think if we genuinely do care about social inequality we need to be cognizant of these differences so the strange thing is that people don't seem to know much about that um you might not know this but during the BLM summer we literally had British people in Trafalgar Square chanting do not shoot at British policemen who are famously unarmed they have they hold truncheons and so kind of deep is the the cultural effect that we all live under I mean Coleman your home nation is now exporting a kind of idea of race that you know they were prejudiced in Germany all of these countries have very different stories do you have have you do you have any Reflections on that I'm not asking you to apologize for uh your the you know nor whatever nor should you know what how what should we make of that I think you're just mad because we won the war um which ones uh yeah American Britain are not the same I I think in in many ways America's situation is more challenging which is that Britain had an Empire and uh all kinds of injustices committed but once that Empire dissolved former slaves and former slave masters were not living next door to one another in America slavery happened within our own borders and we had the problem still the problem of I guess what what Thomas Jefferson um called 10 000 memories of Oppression he said that he predicted that black people and white people in America would never be able to get along because of the 10 000 memories of injustices um that black people Remembered at the hands of whites and uh that was too pessimistic I think but there's a grain of Truth in that to this day the fact of slavery has created and continues to create tension um and grievance and anger and um and also on the black side of the issue and on the white side of the issue a feeling of listen that was not me why are you holding me responsible right and this this holding holding pattern is uh very difficult and it's not something that is faced by Britain where uh black people have come here voluntarily and are an immigrant group right do you think there's any sort of sense in the idea that maybe I mean for the US where it is this huge defining wound in the in the National story it kind of needs to be talked about um and I just wonder Tom what do you think is there any argument to say it should be talked about less in places like the UK I mean um two of you on that do we need to talk less about race I I think we need to talk well about race if if it's sort of relevant to the discussion um and I think um just just to go back to what Coleman was saying I think another um important difference is the um black American population is just much larger than the black British population um so black Americans um constitute about 12 of the American population uh whereas black people black British people constitute about two percent of the British population um and also there are many cities and towns in America where black people are a majority of that particular area whereas in the in the UK um in London for example where most black people live black people constitute about 13 of the population um so in terms of that that Legacy of segregation it's it's much easier um if you're living in America to basic to be a black person and to only socialize with other black people than it is in in the UK um so the black British population as it is is just more integrated just by the very nature of its smaller population can I tell you my um clip of your one of your songs let's have it this is actually from um a song called Straight A's which talks about your story [Music] my mama raised in the planes of the South Bronx without a name and no food in the household me I was raised with a spoon in my mouth few cars in the yard cartoons not allowed though I see my mama in my dreams when I pencil I see you throwing shade in my Mansions [Music] offensive yeah I got straight A's in my prep school it's probably why I'm getting paid like the Mets do um so it was a bit quiet there in the room I hope you hope you heard it on the the stream we actually we had to bleep out there's there's an n-word in it we bleeped it out because if we don't YouTube will demonetize the channel and this is the world we live in we don't like to censor people's art but that is unfortunately the world we live in um I think my reaction is it's amazing it looks incredibly the the video is great I liked it so much I was also slightly maybe surprised by it because it it's it feels very kind of it the voice is different to the person who's sitting here um it's much more gangster rap-ish than I would have expected um you know it's the n-words you're talking about and stuff I'm like this this very um you know well spoken gentleman it is it is called Straight A's it's about doing well in school Freddie yeah which which as it turns out is how you get um I guess I wonder if they're like is that a was almost a point that you're making that and to sort of interpret it that actually I don't think is there a rapper who brags about doing well in school I don't think so but I think there should be well there is now yeah okay [Applause] um we are going to take a short break um if you're online please stick with us if you're in the room the bar is open you can get a drink or you can just sit and chill out for 10 minutes and then we are going to start the group discussion so stick around great thank you back uh to the unheard Club um that's the end of the interval we are into part two uh where we're going to get a bit more of a discussion going um so let's start and see if there are any questions or ideas that people want to share in the room um lots of hands going up before we start that can I just in the politest possible way uh say that when you do get the microphone please the question formulation and then please hand it back because now sometimes when you get it it's sort of like you don't want to want to keep it forever um flow is going to come around with the mic there's a couple on the front row I'm gonna I'm gonna start with our very own books editor Casey doors thank you Freddie um and Ray good to meet you both and talk to you and hear your views um Coleman I wanted to ask you one word reparations can you yeah that's the kind of length question we are very much empty thank you Katie so I got into trouble a few years ago by testifying against reparations at and U.S Congress and my position on it hasn't hasn't changed since then I've always been in favor of paying reparations to living people that uh people like my grandparents who lived under the Jim Crow system if that's a system we all decide that we we are ashamed of it makes perfect sense to pay the people who actually live through it that's it's quite a different thing to say that I am owed money because my sixth greats grandfather uh was a slave um there's a certain point at which enough Generations have passed where there's a kind of statute of limitations on on these issues um and so that's that's the first point to make second point to make is that all of the problems that reparations would allegedly solve they would not in fact solve I can I can almost you know we could talk about the wealth Gap we could talk about um all kinds of inequality of outcome there are far better ways to address the root causes of those than to uh you know hand out a check with slavery in the memo line and and and beyond that the notion that reparations would this is sort of tanahasi coates's idea that it would lead to a spiritual awakening that it would heal the American psyche um I think is a total misunderstanding I I can almost guarantee if reparations happened it wouldn't be it would be less than 24 hours between every before every New York Times op-ed said don't you go thinking that anything important just happened in other words the same thing that happened after Obama was elected same thing that happened after Juneteenth became a Federal holiday which is before it happens everyone says well this will never happen because we're too racist and then after it happens handily they don't update their their Viewpoint right the the the second after it happens so actually it didn't mean so much we still have a long way to go so and this is something John McWhorter said as well which is if if I knew that it really would mean something it would it would create a sense of closure where we have closed the book not on studying slavery but on using it to Gin up tensions in the present between living descendants if it really would close that then maybe I'd reassess and I I'd be for it but I know that it won't okay let's get another um thought um there's someone at the back there I can't see I think yes hand up yeah great math questions in modern discourses Empire and slavery nobody ever seems to refer to the Arab slave trade and get this excited or the African slave trade Barbara slave trade or the Ottoman Empire slave trade did you tell the same with Empires nobody goes on about the Arabian Empire the Ottoman Empire there's a big level of historical literacy both sides of the Atlantic about what's got actually happened with slavery with the absolute obsession with the European slave trade totally out of context to any of the other slave trades there was just a movie that came out you probably noticed called the woman King um not terrible as an action movie but as a piece of History absolutely atrocious it it followed uh the the homie Kingdom which in point of fact was one of the largest African tribes which participated actively in the slave trade which enslaved other African tribes made war against tribes specifically to get slaves and then uh profited by trading them to the to the Europeans they were already slaves before they were sold to the Europeans this is one thing an astonishing number of Americans and people in general are unaware of which is that um slaves were purchased by and large purchased as slaves from other African tribes they were not captured by and large like Kunta Kinte and Roots right that's not that's actually not what happened um and as you point out the Arab slave trade goes back to you know the eighth Century right something like 15 million 14 15 million Africans were enslaved by Arabs between the roughly this the 7th century and um you know the 18th 19th century that's a fact very few people know people know about the 12 million that were sent to the West uh but not the 14 million or so that were sent to the East and um to this day the the the were the colloquial word for a black person in much of the Arab world is the word Abid which is the same word as the word for slave um and that should give you a little bit of a sense of how guilty modern Arabs feel which is to say not at all and that that's to say nothing of what West Africans West African descendants of um slave Traders feel I I have um I I have some Ghanaian friends and Nigerian friends as well and I once asked them we were talking about this subject and they said yeah and in school we learned that you know our ancestors enslaved other tribes and sold them right and I asked them did you feel or were you taught to feel any level of guilt about your ancestors participation in profiteering and active participation in the slave trade and they said they looked at me like I was crazy it was a guilt why would I feel those ages ago I had nothing to do with it that is the the way most people react to the injustices committed hundreds of years ago by by their ancestors it really only is white people who feel almost any level of guilt about the sins of the of of the past um why do you think there is I mean that's that is a good question um well well why is it that the the white Western group as this thing from the others is so focused on the sins in the past well I see at least two reasons one is that um Enlightenment values at some level Champion the underdog and we uh Western societies are suffused with at some level the attitude of the Enlightenment um and that can very easily bleed into uh a kind of over-the-top romanticization of victimhood and uh and so forth another reason may be to do with Christianity and uh the the Christian feeling of of guilt and original sin which is a very deep there there may just be an original sin-shaped hole in in the western soul and um you know maybe when Christianity is not there it gets filled by something else those are my theories uh but it is it is a phenomenon to to be explained it's it's a departure from the norm in the rest of the world let's take another question and there's a lady here on the front row and another lady here also on the front row I'm gonna promise I'm gonna go further back next time hello I'm um Russian Jewish of Russian Jewish descent living here already in Britain nearly 30 years um Germany as I believe when Germany has invited lots of Russian Jews to leave to immigrate from Soviet Union giving them back to life which it definitely did pedestrian juice always complained and our dream was to go to America so uh question with thank you we naturally think that uh forgive me the family to abrasive but we naturally think that haven't um black people in America already had their reparation done by the fact that they live in one of the most desired to come to one of the most desired country of destinations for all the foreigners for example we um lots of my Russian friends would give the right hand to get the green card so we have to apply for so we from our point of view here just just the point of view I'm not insisting of course that preparation happened just because they happened to live there okay great um a clear question there I will come to you in a moment the reparations also been paid in some way that's it's it's certainly a controversial idea I would say no to you know I I don't think um me being in one of the best countries on Earth would count as reparations you know for instance you know would that count as reparations to the Japanese intern during World War II the fact that they're in America you know it's it's something to be grateful for for sure and it's something I'm very grateful for but it's not it wouldn't actually count as reparations uh in my view let me say this though um the the U.S Senate apologized formally for slavery and Jim Crow in 2008 the House of Representatives apologized formally in in the same year the Senate formally apologized for lynching in 2004 uh at least eight or nine different U.S states and as you probably know slavery was a state issue so individual states nine have officially apologized for slavery and uh one or two years ago I read an article in a major uh Outlet saying the America has never formally apologized for slavery so not only that but affirmative action which is a euphemism for racial preferences that allegedly you know benefit black and and other minorities originally it was called compensatory Justice in the late 60s when it was rolled out and the idea wasn't just let's create diversity everywhere because that's good that came later the original idea was let's compensate black people for the injustices they faced that was the original motive behind affirmative action um so you can argue in those ways we have had many national apologies and state level apologies we've had programs for black Americans that are either explicitly or implicitly Justified on the basis of paying black Americans back so much has been done in the spirit of reparations I can definitely grant you that I wouldn't say however that simply being in the country counts as reparations thank you for that um the lady here had a question and then I'm gonna I'm gonna go over there thank you um Coleman you you talked about several times now without behaviors normal and you've all we've all used the word ought quite a few times all the ways in which I completely agree with but it does suggest to me that there's something about the culture or the moral going on here um it is not normal it's not normal for an institution like the monarchy to roll over in the way it has it is not normal for a major example in Britain to openly say we're taking a Nobel winning casual Chicora off the set text and replacing him with a with a author who's on there solely because of her sex and her ethnicity and yet these these it does seem to me that I wonder just what you think this is a question a bit do do you think that this is part not necessarily the conspiratorial way it could be a spontaneous way ideology emerges and forms part of the way a fairly systematic dethroning of existing sources of legitimacy particularly in the sphere of intellectual cultural and moral life is it so is it what is it part of some bigger cultural revolution well there's a philosophy going back many decades that which says more or less meritocracy is not actually neutral or just and in fact not possible people are by Nature so racist and ethnocentric that we should not even pretend it's possible to create neutral systems by which to judge it's cynical philosophy um that's basically says there are no objective facts there's no objective right and wrong there's only me linking together with people of my group and and getting the most that we can in competition with you linking together with your group that's all there is um and and and there is a concerted effort by intellectuals and academics to replace the Norms of Enlightenment Society with new Norms in other words to create a new normal and it's already happened in certain institutions um but it has not overtaken all of society yet and I think um the values that they're trying to replace are better values they are actually better values there's such a thing as uh one set of values being better than another and what they've tried to to do is equate the values of meritocracy and the Enlightenment with whiteness right even though um uh a quick glance at society and at the World shows that these are values that are shared by people of every race around the world that there's no color to meritocracy there's no color to valuing objective truth there's no color to value and reason um no color to valuing moral progress so uh I think we we simply have to resist the people that want to create new Norms out of values that will lead to a a uh a far darker and um less just less just Society let me just abuse my chair position once again and ask the same follow-up question which is why because we talk so much about this that there is there are forces out there or there are parts of a society that want to overthrow Enlightenment values and install this much more zero-sum World which by any kind of logical analysis seems inferior why do these people want to do that do you think are they are they well-meaning but deluded or is this is there an ulterior motive what's your analysis I assume it's well-meaning but deluded until proven otherwise I tend to uh look people believe all kinds of things right um religion is just one everyone has a different religion people have different gods people have different holy books and all most such beliefs are sincerely held however misguided they may be so I always assume beliefs are sincerely held and until proven otherwise and you know if the history of Communism is any indication the road to hell is paved with good intentions and to say something is is well intentioned is not to say you shouldn't fight it with every fiber of your being it's often the well-intentioned ideas that cause the most harm what what ideas killed the most people in the 20th century actually by numbers communism easily easily destroys fascism right and and I have no trouble believing that many there were many millions of people that were sincere sincere in their belief and in their reading of Karl Marx and in their following of Trotsky and Lenin and so forth it was sincerely held but it still was horrible and I think that's what we're facing um let's take another question there's um Eric Kaufman who is a contributor to unheard thanks Coleman um great to see you again of course after a few years but um this question has to do with critical race Theory and the battle against it in the U.S in particular uh it's in you know most U.S schools now what's your view on the approach that Chris Ruffo is now taking and that DeSantis is taking the legislative approach do you do you think that's a good idea do you think it'll work and if it if you don't think it'll work what what ultimately will be the solution yeah that's a great question so to people that don't know about that that's literally legislating against it this is Banning certain phrases and approaches to be in schools whatsoever yes so in in America we have this problem where you know the public schools that we all pay for with our our hard-earned money are to a remarkable degree captured by uh the left and which is to say you send your kid to a school and some 85 90 of the teachers are voting for one party whereas only 50 of the country is right and it's not necessarily the moderates that are the issue but it's that they're populated with extreme ideologues that want to indoctrinate your kids on your dime and um it's it's a huge problem because kids come home from school saying things to their parents about race that they didn't get from home yeah I have a friend who is uh he is a white Jewish and his um his wife is Indian and Hispanic their kids are mixed race daughter comes home one day from school nine years old or something and she goes Daddy are you white so first of all recognize you know it is really true kids often don't sometimes they literally don't really see color but even if they see it they don't naturally care about it right she goes Daddy are you white he goes yes she goes does that mean you treat people badly I was like so where did you get this idea from right she gets this idea from some lesson that was taught in a particular way at school about race which imputed the general belief that white people generally treat minorities badly right of course this is a very subtle thing how do you how do you make that illegal right there's a movement now to make that to fight that the problem is people don't feel they can fight it by going to their school board and saying what the hell are we doing can we just get back to teaching you know objective well-established history and stop indoctrinating my kids stop yelling at the kids for having quote unquote White Privilege this is not your job to teach them values it's your job to educate them the values will come from me as a parent right parents are afraid to do that because if someone turns on an iPhone and you go viral on Twitter as the parent that was against critical race theory that could change your life in really bad ways so parents are understandably afraid to do that so they reach for a legislative option they say we're going to make a state law that says you can't say this teacher can't say this here's a problem with that in my view I know we I talked to Eric about this before he may disagree but it it's not possible to write a law that is Broad enough to actually deal with this issue but also narrow enough to not ban all kinds of other speech and we've already seen lawsuits because of these laws where books that really aren't bad get thrown in right it says most of these laws have a clause where anything that promotes the idea that a kid should feel guilty because of their race is illegal right very vague language right very vague and half of what lawyers do all day is parsing speech that has multiple interpretations in my view law is too blunt an instrument to deal with this and what we need is really to empower people to feel that they can go to their local school board and give them give people a language and a way of expressing these ideas strongly um but in a in a proportionate way so that people feel they have the vocabulary and the tools to to speak up in their local communities and encourage people to have a little bit of Courage because if if your values really matter they are worth fighting for and they're worth sacrificing for let's take a question there's a lady at the back I think just behind you Coleman yeah I wonder whether you have an alternative approach to just seeing critical social justice defeated because I'm very aware that narrative and I'm not a fan of critical social justice just to say that but um narrative and listening to people is incredibly important and I'm very aware of this from my white friends who want to listen and um I don't really want to go back to just a purely rational enlightenment Paradigm I'm wondering whether you have any thoughts about a middle ground that can bridge this Gap that's a good question um I was speaking to Canon Malik earlier today he has a good new book out about the history of race and he said a phrase that kind of stuck with me he said there's a difference between identity and identity politics everyone has an identity a particular identity not a universal objective rational identity you come from a particular place with a particular language a particular culture particular food and particular values and what is unique about them is precisely that they are different from others um not only is that fine that is that is part of what makes life rich and beautiful is to have particular attachments where where it becomes dangerous is when that that particular partial view enters the realm of politics and morality when you insist on the specialness and the priority of your group over others um however that manifests um so to me I I feel like you I don't want to live in a colorless rational hyper rational you know a world with no art and no poetry and no music and no right brain material um that would not be a world worth living in but I think there should be a kind of firewall between our discussions of politics and ethics and and and and the rest and everything else is where the beauty of identity in particular culture should flourish in art and everywhere else but when we come to to discuss and legislate and form rules the rules that we all have to live by we do have to be in a mindset where um we have we have to think as if uh from the the rosian original position from behind the veil where what I'm arguing for is it would not matter if I was born you or born me to the rules that we create for society it has to make sense regardless of where I was born in society so even though your new book is going to be called colorblind um that's not the title but that is oh the I don't know what the title is yet I'm sorry but it will be defending color blindness yeah so the the idea then is not that we are fully colorblind and live in a kind of entirely post-racial Society it's just that we can celebrate difference and dwell on it all we like it's a defense of the law and the kind of the structures of political the sphere of political and politics and ethics I think is special and it should be treated um it should be treated differently than literature and music and Cuisine and all of the again I'm not minimizing those other spheres that those are frankly my favorite parts of being a human being um but I do think they should be treated differently great that's good and the very back um hey Coleman uh it's looking like affirmative action might be repealed by the Supreme Court in the U.S in this upcoming year do you think that's likely to happen and if it does happen do you think that that will be net positive or net benefit for that negative for race relations in the US I think it is likely to happen the Supreme Court has shown it's willing to take controversial stands with Roe v Wade and it's a conservative Court most conservative we've had in a long time and affirmative action um on a plain reading of the Civil Rights Act is is unconstitutional so uh you know famously or not as famously as it should the lead sponsor of the Civil Rights Act um said on the floor if any jot and Tittle or tittle of this act requires or or allows you know racial preferences I'll eat the entire thing on the senate floor so nowhere in that act does it say that affirmative action is allowed it's probably prohibited on a plain reading so it will probably be outlawed as to what it will do I don't think the question needs to be posed hypothetically because it's already been banned in certain States California banned affirmative action in 1996. and the results were not any kind of disaster for for black students um Or Hispanic students basically what happened is black enrollment stayed the same just as many black kids and Hispanic kids went to college but they went to different colleges some of them went to different colleges if you would have gotten into a top tier College you get into right under a top tier college and that's that's unfortunate but here's here's the upside is that instead of Black and Hispanic kids being at the bottom of the class at top tier colleges having the bottom entering credentials um struggling to stay afloat switching Majors from hard Sciences to soft Sciences you see black kids as likely as white kids to be in the center of their entering class and that's a that's a benefit that's a trade-off that I think is good on balance so you are net you are out supporter of getting rid of affirmative action oh yeah all together race-based affirmative action yes whether you could do something based on income or class is something I'm very open to um but yeah I've always been an opponent of race-based affirmative action I think it's a it's it's a bad policy now its effect on race relations as a whole I don't know I mean the the media may be so successful in portraying it as a catastrophe um that it actually does have an effect uh a negative effect on race relations in the short run but um in the long run I think that's what we have to be aiming for we have to we can't be aiming for a society where in in the back rooms of universities they're categorizing people by race and saying no we've got enough of these actually we need more of these right this is what happens this is the Ugly Truth and it's a truth I mean we paper over this Truth by the very language of affirmative action that is an orwellian euphemism right if you didn't know what affirmative action was the words would give you no indication it's it's affirmative action is to racial discrimination what enhanced interrogation was to torture during the war in Iraq and could you also mention the age well yeah yeah and Asian Americans are there's no justification of the policy which makes sense of why Asian Americans are getting discriminated against more than anyone um I mean that just is racial discrimination we can't we can't simultaneously say it was horrible to limit the number of Jews at Harvard in 1940 but it's totally fine to limit the number of amount of Asians to today it's it's a contradiction and it's a contradiction that survives because we have these euphemisms and we don't talk about it really honestly and we don't actually have to see it if next year every kid got an honest reading of why they were rejected from a school that said actually we liked you but we have enough of your race I think affirmative action would be gone in a second so what does it mean when apology when a policy only survives because of secrecy and lack of transparency it means people actually aren't comfortable with the reality if they were forced to see it this is why Wars have declined in the era where we can see war on the television right it's the same thing um I have absolutely promised we will stop at half past which is in six minutes so what I'm going to do is take um three questions if we could and then we can do a bit more of a kind of General summing up and take some themes from those questions so there's a question over here um if we can get the mic over to this guy on the yellow great thank you for all your eloquent and uh logical comments um three quick questions about unconscious bias um firstly um three well just very quick just very quick um so the first is um is it different from racism was it a different form of racism second how much of a problem is it and third is there any effective way of reducing it plus I'm not going to make three into more than three so you're going to have to use that huge mental faculty to hold all of those and Flo we've got one from someone online I said would take a question from the online audience so we do so our online question comes from Catherine Fuller and um they ask what is she asked I think about the black men who were murdered off the rise of BLM what do we know about the perpetrators so she asks that yeah so okay I'm Gonna Let You you speak now okay so answer that one the perpetrators were also black um almost all crime is intra-racial in in America um because in poor communities where crime happens it's you know it's very segregated so uh the point about that was simply the pulling back and reducing and totally defanging of the police hurt black people more than anyone that's the point there ask for unconscious bias um I do think it's a real thing I think it's it's not simply on the topic of race but on all kinds of topics I think clever social scientists can find ways of proving that your subconscious is not perfectly rational which should surprise nobody really um because our conscious Minds aren't even rational perfectly so um as for whether we know how to address it or even measure it we don't we have tools that really should be called I think pseudoscience at this point there was a lot of understandable excitement about the implicit association test created by Missouri banaji totally understand and you tell people we have this way of measuring your subconscious obviously it's a super sexy finding that people you know TED talks about it I mean but by now the literature has just like many things in in the psychology literature turned out to be a fad without much substance um very not your test on it is not replicable or reliable from test to test and um turns out we we have not figured out how to measure the subconscious much less influence it and certainly um a person at your corporation standing in front of you with a PowerPoint about how uh you know whiteness equals oppression is not influencing uh unconscious bias in a in a positive direction in my view so I do think it is real and it does matter and you know these are the it's it's the kind of thing that can influence a cop's decision whether or not to pull the trigger in the moment is not something to be minimized but we don't actually understand it um and it's used as a as an excuse for basically fake experts to to lecture you um you know presenting solutions that are not actually real solutions so I think we should be humble about our understanding about it continue studying it and um and have a more scientific attitude towards it we have one final question there's a guy um by the pillar but just while he takes the microphone I have two little pieces of news first of all Catherine has confirmed that she is indeed a woman we can relax about that um but also I think it has to be shared that hot off the press Coleman's excellent podcast um has just won the signal prize which is a very prestigious prize in the podcasting world and which category were you nominated for and successful in diversity equity and inclusion there we go [Applause] um so let's have your final question uh hello common um I just wanted to um ask you if this was a thing with you as well um and I'll just noticed uh regarding police brutality in America on police um whenever there's a uh how can I put it I would I would say that police brutality is pretty much spread amongst everybody um but why does it seem that every time it happens to someone who is Black it makes national news that is an excellent question um George Floyd murdered in 2020 everyone knows his name around the world Tony Tempa may be a name some of you are familiar with um but broadly is not known was murdered in almost The Identical way a few years earlier on video almost no one knows his name uh during 2020 to to make this point I picked a random year I picked 2015 and picked out 10 or 15 stories of white Americans unarmed killed by the cops one was a six-year-old kid uh it happens every year and it stays local news every article that I cited was you know the Detroit Gazette the you know never makes a New York Times CNN Etc because it does not it doesn't tap into the tribal um tensions which get the media clicks right the media gets the most clicks based on stories that tap into the biggest psychological motivators for people which is race and tribe right so if uh and historical grievances as well so the white cop kills kills uh you know a kid like Daniel shaver who had his hands up and shoots him dead doesn't really tap into what what gets clicks and so people get the false impression that this only happens to black people yeah and and and that in turn creates the conditions for rioting because if it were simply viewed as an issue of police uh overreach and police abuse I don't think there would be riots in the streets I think there would be legislation passed there would be conversations constructive conversations there wouldn't be burning down mom and pop shops but because the media creates this perception that it's a race verse it's a white versus black issue uh which it's not in my point of view at least not mainly that creates the conditions for riots I'm going to have to uh draw it to a conclusion there um and my final question was going to be whether there's any signs that this is getting better whether there is any sense that the conversation is becoming more sane but I don't even need to ask it because I think Coleman's presence here and his contribution to the debate more generally is bringing a Clarity and calmness to these facts questions which can only make it better thank you so much also to tomiwa who we totally landed in a last minute notice thanks for being a good sport there and thank you all for coming and for tuning in um the conversation will continue at the bar and the restaurant downstairs is open this was unheard thank you

Channel: UnHerd

Views: 27,113

Keywords: UnHerd, Freddie Sayers, coleman hughes, race baiting, racism, coleman hughes joe rogan, coleman hughes rap song, coleman hughes triggernometry, coleman hughes reparations debate, coleman hughes debate, coleman hughes music, coleman hughes charles murray, coleman hughes rap, race, cnn, politics, fox news, quillette, reparations, systemic racism, joe rogan, ibram x kendi, ibram x kendi antiracist baby, ibram x kendi ted talk, robin diangelo, robin diangelo debates, Ngozi Fulani

Id: V9P9yLXP1Hk

Length: 92min 14sec (5534 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023