Will The Push For Reparations Get Trump Reelected? with Sam Harris (Ep.1)

welcome to conversations with Coleman my guest today is Sam Harris neuroscientist author of the end of faith waking up the moral landscape freewill lying podcaster extraordinaire and one of my personal heroes thank you for being on the show Sam oh well thanks thanks for jumping into this it's great - you are one of my personal heroes now as well as you may know so yeah it's it's I'm happy to inaugurate your podcast know how many episodes you've done what how deep are you into the recording at this point you're my third uh-huh but I'm probably gonna release you first all right well happy to be here yeah so I was thinking we would start off by talking about reparations if that's okay with you right yeah I I don't this is a topic that I think is genuinely difficult about which I don't have a settled opinion so I mind is unusually open on this topic yeah at my mind is I think more open than you you would expect it to be you know I've evolved in my thinking on this issue even in the past two or three weeks just having had so much time to think about it having gotten so much feedback so you know obviously I think my fans will know that I testified before Congress a few weeks ago against reparations I was one of eight testifying you can see the video on YouTube and testifying for reparations for bill HR 40 was Tallahassee Coates Danny Glover and many others and and then it was myself and one other person testifying against and that went pretty viral I think that went more viral than anything that I've said or or written and a lot of the backlash was pretty ugly it was you know a public shaming of a degree that I I I haven't really experienced before and I want to talk about public shaming in general later because you're a veteran of that territory yes I haven't been shamed yeah I think we should talk about reparations first and you know I think you know you can go back and and look at what I said and what I've written about it and Colette but I think one mistake I made was I guess trying to think about reparations with the logical half of my brain more than the emotional half because I think you know I think you know slavery and Jim Crow for many people just feel like an open wound feels like just something as a nation we have not yet gotten closure about and we can talk about why that is but that that just is a fact I think at this moment and the goal that I completely share with people who want reparations is to feel like slavery and Jim Crow are somewhat closed wounds that the scar is healing nicely so to speak the question is how do we get there and you know I want your opinion on this do you do you see that as the goal and do you see reparations if so do you see reparations as a way to get there well again with the caveat that I haven't thought a lot about this and I really sorry I really have I do not have a settle opinion on it it seems to me that there's a fairly straightforward ethical case for it I mean there's this obvious injury that you can found historically in at least to a first approximation and you can you can link it up with a fairly obvious debt I mean you can you can make some argument about the the amount of wealth that was created and you we have you know that the history of wealth inequality that followed it's something it's not nearly as clean as a more contemporaneous injury like you know what you paying reparations for Holocaust survivors in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust say but it still is it's it's fairly easy to pinpoint the the moral problem I think it's very hard to make a a practical case for it and I think it's impossible at the moment to make a a compelling political case for it I mean just to take the immediate concern of the the next presidential election you know my my gut intuition is that pushing for reparations now for among Democrats is just a guaranteed way to get Trump elected for four more years I think it's a political non-starter that's not going to prevent certain Democrats from from attempting it but so even if I am even if the at the end of a long conversation I could say I'm for reparations I'm not for reparations in this election cycle just because I think it will will guarantee Trump so that's that's the I think those are separable pieces as far as yeah I mean it's just the ethical case is it's pretty clear it's just the the the issue you get into is that immediately bleeds into the practical case I mean who so who pays and who gets paid right is and and how what what are reparations in this case and what are we actually correcting for we are we correcting for the the ambient level of racism that still exists to the disadvantage of african-americans or are we correcting for identifiable theft of for people who are the the descendants of slaves you know and so there are many people who are black who probably inherit who certainly inherit whatever consequential racism still exists but they they aren't descended from slaves right they're immigrants or their you know their parents were immigrants so how you reconcile all of that and that's very difficult yeah so I like that you separate this into the ethical conversation and the practical conversation I think most supporters of reparations limit themselves to the ethical part of the conversation clearly because they have a better case there but there have been some like like The Economist sandy Dara tea who have pretty persuasively worked out the practical side as well he has a plan for how to determine who gets it and he sort of worked out many of the kinks in a way that you know at least make makes me feel as someone who still opposes most versions of reparations that I I can't win the argument on the practicalities alone but then there's a third part which is political about which I completely agree with you I mean I think there's something crazy about being blindsided by things over and over he so I was someone who was blindsided by Trump's victory absolutely blindsided and extremely distraught and I think we have to learn the lesson to not do things that are gonna get us blindsided again in 2020 I think reparations is clearly one of those things given how unpopular it is but I want to wind it back to the ethical conversation for a second the clearly if we're talking about reparations for slavery well let me wind it back a second reparations in general I think are owed to the specific victims of a crime or something that was not defined legally as a crime at the time but we look back on with horror so but it's it's less clear to me that reparations are owed to the grandchildren for example of of a Holocaust survivor even even if that Holocaust survivor weren't weren't paid at the time and should have been and you know given that the like what do you think of that I think the median african-american in America is is like 33 years old right born in in the 80s right do you do you observe that distinction or do you think because it wasn't paid to my grandfather that in principle I inherit what was not given to him well there just is this counterfactual case where had your grandfather had the average level of Economic Opportunity and wealth accrual of you know a white person in his January well then there would have been more inheritance that would have been something passed down presumably and if in your case it wasn't you can even draw a fairly straight line there and again you know this is there's the other side of the ledger always here there are white people there are there black people who are doing great there are white people who are doing terribly and it because the moment you start talking about reparations there's a there's a demand to focus on what what problem are you actually trying to solve in the present right you know it's like if you should a should middle class and wealthy African Americans get reparations when you have when you can point to millions of people of you know in other groups who are doing badly do certainly worse off than they are and if you if you simply looked long enough you would find disparities in in bad luck or you know historical contingencies that accounted for why they were doing badly and so where there's a there's a an obvious question about where this stops right because there's so many groups that have been treated badly again not the injury is not a salient as slavery and its aftermath but I mean the Native Americans obviously have a case you know what what reparations are they owed and you know that the history of colonialism will volunteer various cases right what look at we can look at all of our misadventures the world over and ask well you know what is owed to what is owed to Africa for you know the the the centuries of pillage there so there is a there is a concern about where it stops but you you sort of have that concern whenever you try to write any wrong right so that's not really a knockdown argument against doing this you know you can't have the the perfect be the enemy the good here but it's it's a hard case for me because I mean so the Pope the politics creeps in here too because the people who are who are arguing for reparations me someone like ton Aussie codes yeah most of them many of them certainly coats a view as as bad faith actors you know I mean I they're just not not honest brokers of the ethical principles here and you get the sense that either just imagine the world imagine the day after the the fullest payment of reparations that's conceivable right then what happens yeah coach certainly seems capable of saying you know if you think if you think you can buy us off with a with a cheque of that size of any size you know you've got another thing coming right like so the goalposts will move and then you're left with the question well what was what was any of this for right if they said if if the wound of slavery can't be healed with anything as crass as they you know whatever it would be a a six trillion dollar cheque yeah they saw what so yeah yet another concern yeah there's there's there's a lot there so I want to wind it back to you know you the counterfactual if not for slavery Jim Crow black people would have more wealth I think that's that's that's a very supportable statement I think on average it's clear that slavery Jim Crow especially policies like redlining had a long-term effect on the median black person's wealth even in 2019 the question is how much of the wealth gap would be closed if history had gone differently more fairly I tend to assume that you know I'm I've read a lot of Thomas o land and and been very persuaded that disparities indeed large disparities are the norm rather than the exception and often it's the case that the group that's discriminated against has more wealth than the group that discriminated against it and though with wealth the example I always give is that you know there's a study from the early 2000s that showed the median Jewish household to have seven times the wealth of the median conservative Protestant household and I think many people aren't sensitive to many people I think naively assumed that in the counterfactual everything would be the same but that aside I think it's it's clearly true that black people would have more wealth than they do now if history had gone differently the reason that I don't I don't think of this in terms of the counterfactual so much is because I think it's kind of beside the point I think so for instance if we're gonna start doing counterfactual thinking then we kind of have to do counterfactual thinking across the board and that then you you get led to very repugnant conclusions very quickly for example where would I be if not for slavery quote-unquote hypothetically right I would have been born in West Africa rather than in New Jersey right does that mean slavery was good for me no I mean that's just the wrong way to think about it in my view right because it's just besides being a kind of a key way of reasoning I'm not sure it's a very useful way of reasoning and I think usually what you wouldn't even exist right right it's not right it's yeah right I mean almost nobody could say that they would it would be everything would be the same except they would have been born in another country right right but you know turning to this point which is one I I really agree with and one that John McWhorter McWhorter made as well is the goalposts are constantly shifting on the way we tell the narrative of what America has done to try to make up for slavery when we instituted affirmative action which is still ongoing giving black people a leg up in college admissions diversity and inclusion programs in various sectors of the labor market if you're a minority business owner there are set-aside programs that will allocate government contracts specifically for people like you giving you truck all of this is in the spear of making up for the past even though it's sometimes you know we've sort of had to had to shift to the rationale to diversity because perhaps because people are uncomfortable with making the case for reparations but even Tana hasi has written in the Atlantic that the diversity rationale doesn't make that much sense to him for affirmative action really what makes sense is the the redress for history Roger now and the the you know the reason I you know I've kind of gotten away from the counterfactual way of thinking is I do view this as and also the reason why I tend to not think anymore in terms of comparisons to other examples of reparations is because I guess I'm less concerned with the principles involved and more more more concerned with getting to a place where this feels like a closed wound for people and I'm going to think of the analogy of a person who has experienced some terrible trauma sometimes often in childhood we all have you know I'm not one of these people but you know I I know people who experienced a terrible trauma in childhood and really reconciled with it to the point where they're not thinking about it all the time they've really gone through what it takes to get past it and then I know other people who experienced a trauma and as elderly people still talk about it almost every day interpret their entire lives through through the lens of this trauma that happened to them and clearly have gotten no closure about it whatsoever and my you know the difference between the first person and the second person it seems to me isn't so much about what the world did or did not give them but much more about the way they reframed their own history so I think that I you know I think that whatever reparations are what whatever you know reparations means and people are very quick to say it's not just a paycheck it's much more other people will say it is a paycheck so there's a way in which reparations is talked about kind of like I think of the analogy of the briefcase from pulp fiction where you never get to see what's right in it but it's amazing and it's the best thing but you know when when whatever that is happens is paid I do not think I think I think you're completely right that coats and others will say and not completely without reason how dare you put a dollar value on slavery and Jim Crow they'll be able to muster a consider a considerable amount of moral outrage I think just at the prospect of it and and I think and frankly I think it will be worse because I've heard from a lot of you know conservative fans of mine you know often white conservative fans of mine who actually do like the idea of reparations because they want to do it once and then they want to be able to say damn it you have been paid can you stop complaining about racism now can we please move on to another subject that's what I hear sometimes and your combination of that plus the heightened moral outrage at having slavery monetized in this way I think is is going to be a combination that makes racial relations worse rather than better right right well the the comparison between the two people real or hypothetical you know one of whom it seems totally resilient and you I mean even in the extreme case there are people who are clearly made stronger and more functional based on some early trauma right yeah and then there there are people who as you say whose lives are just diminished by it up until their dying day you can draw that an allergy to groups and to and to perhaps whole cultures right so there's we there are cultures you know not not all cultures are telling themselves stories that render them equally resilient or creative in the face of various crises right now this is just a kind of generic statement which virtually has to be true I mean it's practically a tautology if culture is doing anything of you know to help or harm people in terms of how they function and we have different cultures that are not you know run in precisely the same software well then you're gonna see differences in that respect and I think I think you know we're right to worry that there is a kind of religion of victimhood emerging on the left which you know of necessity has taken in you know more people of color or you know a disproportionate number of people of color but as you said at the beginning you know I believe you said this at the beginning maybe this is I mean this is a point that you and I are both familiar with that the most woke people the mother people who are most trumpeting you know this this victimology are are well educated white liberals at the moment but the their memes now that are enshrining victimhood in a way that seems quite unhelpful you know and you see people who you know just as you don't like to see people who are endlessly you know indelibly defined by the moments in their lives where they were victims you don't want to see whole cultures defining themselves in those terms so yeah I think the the argument for reparations would be if it if it held out a promise to actually reset this whole attitude with respect to the burden of the past I mean either we are effectively canceling the burden of the past or we're not and if it's if it's hopeless to even try well then let's not you know open the other wounds that would be opened or the create wounds that would be created by trying against the the will of surely some considerable number of people you know yeah it strikes me there's an analogy to apologies here which is something I've heard you talk about more and more recently what is an apology like if I'm talking if I if I say something to my girlfriend that was that really hurts her right and I apologize for it I expect it if it sincere it gets accepted and then I'm kind of brought back to zero right it's like there's no more you know there's there's no she's not gonna hold that against me tomorrow I mean that's the idea when it works well that's the idea it's like really I've really realized what I did wrong and then we get to a place where we're healthy about the situation we're both mentally healthy we have no resentments because we went through it we really did it but it seems that they're I mean one point I brought up I I think I did in my testimony is that the the Senate and the house have both did formally apologized for slavery and Jim Crow in 2008 and 2009 kind of sort of under the radar but you know at the time there was a black president you might think that this was the perfect moment in a sense to kind of close the door not closed the door on history in the sense of ignoring it but in the sense of our emotional relationship to it but it but it didn't happen in it it's not clear to me that that the people demanding an apology are playing by the rules of apologies if that makes sense yeah yeah well and also in this case who is apologizing so if you're talking about reparations if you're talking about money that has to come out of the pockets of every non African American American that is a you know that is a material demand that is being made on people who were not alive during slavery or Jew or even Jim Crow and many of whom don't feel at all personally culpable for what happened in the past and and the question is why should that right if you're talking about people who are it's it's hard like you either it's hard to know what it means to own the past as the past recedes right and if you can if you can insofar as there's an economic argument if you can say well listen you are a beneficiary of whatever the you know this this corporation is a corporation that used slave labor you know we can and now you know this core corporation is now worth billions of dollars and we can point to the people who lives have been made better on the basis of all this wealth that's a material debt that you know whether or not anyone alive today would have sanctioned the use of slave labor presumably not you still benefited from it and we and we there's a a transfer of wealth that makes moral sense here but the what someone like Coates seems to want is the the a vivid you know epiphany on the part of every living white American that they are culpable you know we are culpable for the this a persistent level of racism that is totally intolerable and that explains all of the inequality and it is of a piece with this this the the the darkest part of our history and then know on some level no gains have been made and to end to cite any specific obvious gains I mean to say something to be a white person and say well listen we had a two-term black president just had just what what do you what's gonna count as overcoming racism you know I voted for Obama twice I gave money to his campaign I was all in on you know the the prospect of having a first black president and then I wanted him reelected right so if so is that white guy really culpable for the the the primal sin of racism that that Coast wants to redress you know I it's a hard case to make but they but but the this is where all the bad faith comes in it gets it gets made because it's a hard case to make it gets made dishonestly yeah yeah there there's another part to the will get off this soon but the the last part that I hear often from advocates of reparations is the idea that we yet to acknowledge our history that part of what is meant if not most of what is meant by reparations is a serious interrogation of our past as a country the idea being that what what most white people think happened is we fought a civil war and ever since 1865 black people were roughly treated equally and what we need to do is really correct our history and knock over all of the resistance that white people allegedly feel - honestly acknowledging that slavery and Jim Crow happened and that many of the specific policies constituted like an extraction of wealth and when I when I heard that when I hear that argument what I think to myself is in the ten thousand years in the ten thousand year history of slavery you know slavery is as old as civilization has been practiced in nearly nearly every civilization on almost every continent on every inhabited continent in fact what I think to myself is I don't I don't I don't think there's a single example of slavery that has been more studied than American slavery between the 17th century and 19th century and what that suggests to me is that our our failure to get past race is which is a goal that not everyone shares and we can talk about that it's not going to be helped by further study of the past and as much as I like history personally and I find history to be fascinating this idea that we need to delve deeper into the past as a primary means of sort of reconciling ourselves as Americans it doesn't hold water for me yeah well it's there's no end in sight if you go down that path I I would I would agree with that it's again if you have a identifiable injury that is that is easily bounded right where you can say like well you know this is your your parents did this to my parents and here are the effects right like we you you dumped you toxins on our land and it's gonna cost a million dollars to clean it up right like that's so like those are our debts that people and even previous generations can incur to others and so I wouldn't want to close the door to reparations on the basis of past your grievances that were formed in the past just across the board but again what it's just with something this big and this complex and this old right it's it's hard to see how it could ever really make moral or your practical sense you and and then your then your soul that you'll be left with the present right you're left with persistent inequality of various types in the present which you know as you point out in your writing you know and I believe you mentioned here briefly there are all kinds of equality inequalities that we never think to try to remedy right if you go looking for group differences if you can look if you look at how Polish Americans compared to French Americans in their you know economic well-being or you're going to find a difference right I don't remember who's on top there but you know anyway any group that finds itself below a significant number of other groups could say listen there's got to be something fairly sinister that explains this because I wake up every day you know trying to gather as much wealth as possible and you know as a French American you know it galls me that I've got the the Indians and the Nigerians and the and the polish above me right no one would take that seriously right I mean probably I presume no one would take that seriously and we want to get to a place where it makes no more sense to say of any other group right so the question is how to get there yeah I think so one I was gonna bring this up later but let's do it now so I I think that I think I I coined this term I think in my mind at least racial gap ology which is is the study of racial gaps and on the Left this takes the form of studying wealth gaps between blacks and whites etc on the right this sometimes takes the form of studying IQ gaps between races for example and my sense is that all of that research the whole category of taking one group to another comparing some outcome is something we should become less interested in and yeah I think well the thing is the crucial thing and this is this is what was so frustrating when I touched this topic like there's no way it would be an absolute miracle if you could segment the human population based on identifiable groups you know that differ with respect to the the you know genealogy and therefore the you know the genetic character of their ancestors and you have you literally have human populations that lived apart significantly for thousands and thousands of years so they're going to differ differ genetically and then you have the differences of culture layered on top of that right so you have different groups take you know to be non-inflammatory take the Norwegians and the the Japanese right or the Norwegians and the the Italians right these are these are you can look at people and tell that they you know didn't come from Norway or didn't come from Japan right these people are different and they have different cultures they have different languages it would be an absolute miracle if everything we cared about were at the same mean level in those groups yeah right so we know we're going to find difference and and so to make to say that the mirror discovery of difference is a sign of ethical pathology or or they need be politically catastrophic or problematic I mean that's just that's just sets you up for an endless round of conflict I mean there's just there is we will never get beyond this and so the question is what what it is a status quo that is that is actually okay right and and how do we actually identify real problems in it yes so I feel like there I agree I agree with that completely and I've even seen data showing IQ differences between different white ethnic groups you know if you you they did test in the military and you found a huge gap sometimes between Irish and poles and whatnot and you know none of this stuff is intrinsically interesting to me I I don't think it is to you either I mean the whole that what was interesting about that whole debacle was I don't know that you've been mentioned IQ and raised for 15 years in your career right and then some people were painting you as quote-unquote obsessed with the topic and so I think they're I agree with you that these these data at the moment are very inflammatory at least some of them are and there are two approaches to that that you might want to take to that you might say well we have to persuade people to understand that these differences will exist so that if they see them they you know they won't have that though they won't have this aggressive emotional reaction I agree with that perspective but at the same time I think I think we should also persuade people and journalists and you know people who have platforms to talk less about racial differences and that it goes for IQ and it goes for wealth I'm talking about scholars on both side of the political spectrum here because as you noted there there's a 21 cent on on the dollar household income gap between white Americans of Russian descent and white Americans of French descent if that were if that were publicized in the New York Times if we talked about that constantly you you it could be possible that people that strongly identify with those ethnic roots the French might think well what the hell is going on here like now I feel I'm implicated I feel the Russians are implicated I'm going to try to find the source of this disparity and you have all of the social fabric the tears in the social fabric that are happening between blacks and whites now happening you know between French and Russians and you know it's that seems to me like only downside right so they're I think whether it's well no and no one's looking for quotas and I said so the the the context in which we're having this conversation is one where people are people on the left or imagining that unless you have equal representation of identifiable minority groups in every field you know in software engineering at Google in you know cardiology and medical schools unless you have you know 13% african-americans there and 50/50 you know male female and you know the pie that the pie chart has to look the same no matter where you don't no matter what sort of pie or you're baking you know that one that's a false expectation that just you there's there's no way that's that's going to be achieved we're not looking to do that with any of these other identifiable groups you know what is saying listen I think there's not enough French Americans at Google or I think four of the last five oscar-winning directors have been Mexican which is good like when I hear that fact I don't really have any emotional affect about it other than like oh that's that's interesting me you know there's there's something you know culturally that that that culture is producing a lot of great movie directors and you know if you're gonna look is so like you know I'm a musician if I look at who has had the huge impact on world music completely out of proportion you're gonna be talking about black people in America they're like I've met people from Eastern Europe who heard Tupac for the first time and it just touched them completely right like something about hip-hop and that visceral art form just completely transcended borders and is you know became popular in a way that many other music met many other genres of music just right so that's a disparity of a kind and you know there there there are infinitely many of these and I think that you know that the problem there is that if you were going to try to understand that that has some reason for being right I mean there's a good obviously black culture has made a disproportionate contribution to to music right in the US and and therefore worldwide so how do you explain that well I think the temptation on the left would be to just say that even to understand try to understand that is it's either on some level as a consequence of racism or you or you would have to be racist to be interested in why that would be the case right or it's it's synonymous with other opportunities having been closed to African Americans and there may be some truth to that and there may be some truth to that in with respect to any minority group that has a disproportionate level of success in one area but I think I'm struck by your comment that many people don't think we should want to get to a post-racial Society because that seems to me to be the only firm ground here the only on the only harbor we're gonna find ethically and politically is to eventually get to a place where the color of a person's skin is deeply uninteresting I mean no more interesting than the color of their hair right so like it's just no one's saying well listen I I don't I don't think they're enough blonde people at Google right or working in in STEM fields now it's just no one would think that to ask the question and if you and it just gave you actually could be true that if you if you if you compare the the proportion of blonde people or redheaded people it'd be easier to do in society with their representation in any specific field you'd find some anomaly it's fine so just find over an under-representation and presumably you could you could tell some victimhood around that or some something which would seem politically problematic we have to get just as no one would presume no one would be tempted to do that today right it would it would have to seem just as fatuous if we if we actually arrived at the future I think we we want to live in it will seem justice Matthew is to do that with respect to skin colour or the the the ancestry of one's parents or anything else yes so I want to come back to the post-racial point in a moment but very briefly I think people tell very convenient post hoc stories about why black people are so successful at music for example it's not that the music industry wasn't racist the music industry was absolutely racist the NBA was racist before black people got to it it was it was far more a story in my opinion of black people not being denied on the basis of undeniable skill if you're talking about musical achievement this is like the racism could not it could it was met with so much opposition in the form of talent that it became obvious to people you know as a matter of human capital rather I think people tell tell stories that are very convenient to preserve the narrative that to have to have to have their cake and eat it too to celebrate black people where black people have achieved far more than almost any other ethnicity and preserve the narrative that racism is is you know ever-present and somehow racism is still the cause of both success and failure I think that's I don't read history in that way but I want to come back to this point of a post-racial or colorblind because these two words it seems to me right now are they're under attack they've been under attack for four decades they they really need a kind of PR campaign it seems to me because they have a terrible image right now like you know Bernie Sanders a few months ago said something like at this point we should be looking at politicians policies and you know skills rather than their skin color which to me if you if you disagree with that statement I mean I almost don't even know what to think of there are no like but but you know fifty years ago he would have been lauded as progressive because he was essentially quoting Martin Luther King right what happened in 2019 is that he was mocked the next night by Stephen Colbert right hardly like a pink hair or SJ type right like he was mocked for being an old white guy expressing this colorblind colorblind ethic and I think that the fact that that's the point we've come to that to say something like I try to treat people you know not on the basis of skin but on the content of character immediately marks you as naive it's like you don't get it that that is crazy to me because most of the arguments against colorblindness are either complete caricatures or straw man or just non sequitur so like there's the notion that if you are you know if colorblindness is a way of ignoring racial injustice for example this is something that gets said something like I am black I will be treated as if I'm black I will be treated in a different way therefore you can't ask me to be colorblind you can't ask me to view my race as a trivial part of my identity because other people won't the thing is that that that just is a non sequitur like we know there are so many ways in which you are treated differently based on your appearance right like you won't you will treat tall people as more competent than short people that's actually a great example it never occurs to me to say this but you know being short is is a serious disadvantage and especially if you're a man right so like what if you're oh I don't know what where the line is great at it's great on an airplane in code but on a date I mean if you actually just pull women on their bias that you know the variables that concern them I mean people have done these experiments where it's just like how much more money you need to earn to compensate for each inch below whatever it is you know five six it's crazy you know and yeah so that but it doesn't follow it doesn't follow that you should or that I should as a short person view my shortness as an important part of my identity it just doesn't follow no no no I mean you just they and there's no there's no group of people telling you every day that this has to be core to how you view every moment of dissatisfaction in your life right so everything that goes wrong between you and another person is very likely the result of their bias against your height right in the future you can you could definitely there's no question you could tune that that framework up so that it would always be there you know and I'm sure there are some people in the in cell community probably that that do that yeah but there's no or you know or or being being ugly right like it's you know it's just if you have you know radically asymmetrical you know facial features right there is no culture there's no society there's no group of people who think that's an ideal of beauty right I mean it's just not right it's like it's like it's a so you're you're unlucky I mean being beautiful is is an advantage there's just no question and right it is a transcultural advantage and it just doesn't follow from how people see you that you have to see yourself that way that's just but yet that is one of the most common attacks on on colorblindness and and there's no and there's also and there's no group that is militating that you need to to frame everything but with respect to this variable right so and there could be you could easily imagine people getting together saying listen this is this has been intolerable as it's been this I've been a victim of this my whole life this and there are millions of people like me and we need you know we need to deal with this right so there's just there's enough human difference that that you can't compensate for that is consequential and the truth is any any given individual is just whoever they are right they have you have whatever luck you have right and it's true that that certain things sets you up to succeed more or less effortlessly and certain and other things will require you to work with it what is you know arguably a disadvantage given the society you're in and you can spend all your time and yeah it's not to say that there aren't norms in a society that we should want to change I mean clearly their norms we want we want to change or explore or or you know attitudes that that we want to push back against but the reality is is that even if we complete just scrubbed our politics and our institutions and our social norms of anything that looked like a kind of indefensible bias you would still have bias right you would still have people based on their evolved preferences and their cultural preferences that you can't help but form who are more attracted to some people than other people right and so then the clip then so that that's already an inequality that's just you know you could you could complain about you would still have a range you'll have a bell curve of talents over any conceivable talent right whether you can quantify it or not you're just going to recognize that some people are better at at certain things than others again I was speaking about individuals and you as an individual don't the fact that you might be part of some identifiable group that has a mean you know a mean sense of humor on the sense of humor scale at you know at seven right and some other group gets a mean of four right if you have some you know if you have one group that has a mean sense of humor on some sense of humor scale we could come up with seven and you have another group that has a mean sense of humor of four and you happen to be in the group that that gets a mean of seven that doesn't mean that you are funny right I mean you are as funny as you are right and and you knit you don't you never derive a real group benefit or disadvantage it's provided your we live in a society where you know there's enough equality of opportunity where you can you can move to your strengths and you can you can try to you know correct your weaknesses you know so we so obviously we want the the opportunities for education and medical care and every good thing that's supportive of people from the moment they leave the womb we want this spread around as much as as we can and we want to correct for for any inequalities there but the idea that a a sane politics depends on us getting some it was hard to imagine what an equality of outcome would even mean yeah there's just too many variables to consider but getting to some equality of outcome everywhere everywhere you look it just could never happen right yeah I agree with that and yeah I want to come back to colorblindness though you know and look at some of the other arguments that are leveled against it I think one is just a straw man which is you know when someone says quote I don't see color right usually if they're in psychologically normal person they don't literally mean that they're colorblind as in they can't distinguish but what they mean is I aspire to be the type of person who treats people equally regardless of how they look right and yet I think it I think was Howard Schultz who said I don't see color and was ridiculed for this perhaps rightly because that is a bizarre way of phrasing it taken literally you know it can't be true but you know shouldn't we give him the the benefit of the doubt in the sense that he you know he's a CEO of Starbucks he probably knows that he probably doesn't mean he does not literally see but really any expression that gestures in that direction now budget just yeah it just what you want to get to and and many people can honestly confess is is a an experience where it has it's not salient in any in any ethically or politically interesting way right and it's like you don't again I mean hair color is is a great example like I see hair color right obviously I you know it's like if you ask me what what color someone's hair is I can tell you but I'm never going through life thinking oh well she's blonde she's brooding she's she's brunette that's gotta sort of I gotta take that into account you know in the way I feel about this person has zero charge ever right and wouldn't that be the world we want to live it right I can't just K I don't understand someone who thinks we wouldn't want to live in that world what they say is they never say straight up I wouldn't want to live in that world what they say is that is naive that is a way of ignoring racial injustice don't you realize that to extend the analogy the hair color you're born with determines your place in society you will be treated as a blonde or brunette therefore it does matter that's what they say right which again it just strikes me as a non sequitur right the racism is precisely a failure of colorblindness it is a lack of colorblindness right it is not colorblindness is the antidote to racism and as a matter of intellectual history the people who promoted the colorblind ideas we are talking a philip Randolph you know the the original leader of the march march on Washington movement the 1940s Byard Rustin person who organized the the march on the famous march on Washington in 63 Martin Luther King right the notion of reverse racism which is you know if I were to say something against you as a white guy you know Sam's a white guy he just doesn't get it he's a straight white male whatever right the notion that I am being racist to you is actually ridiculed on the Left right now because at least certainly in academic circles it's seen as prejudiced plus power and you have power as a white guy therefore I and I don't have power so I can't really be racist towards you and people who cry reverse racism are you know basically elicits an eye-roll these are just conservative trolls they don't really get it they don't care about racism they're trolling essentially if you go back and read a philip randolph the the founder of the original march on washington movement he literally used the phrase racism in Reverse as something to warn against black people participating it right this is not an idea that came out of like 4chan that's kind of how it's portrayed right now but it's just not true as a matter of intellectual history and I think that people try to retell history in a way or or conveniently ignore certain things so as to make their case seem more plausible today yeah yeah and you know I think this is another example where history is not helpful and the the etymology of a phrase or the history of its usage shouldn't constrain us in the present right I mean so like you take take the the the Shibboleth on the left and in african-american circles that like that the most clueless thing you can say in response to a charge of racism is wait a minute some of my best friends are black right like like a little bit like that is that's not only not exculpatory that is just you are you have doubly condemned yourself I think that's total [ __ ] now there may be a historical reason why this came to be I'm not actually up on the history it could have been that the first usage of some of my best friends are black could have been you know literally out of the mouth of an obvious racist who was just you know making a joke or you know I don't actually know where the phrase was first spoken perhaps you do but in the present when you actually look at what it would what is entailed in overcoming racism and you admit that you're in the presence of someone for whom is true to say the some of his best friends are black if that doesn't mark a stage of progress and probably final progress you know on the path out of having a racist problem I mean it's not to say that there couldn't be some residue of racial bias or charge to race in general given that the level at the level of this expression in our society but the idea that you I mean this even happens with people who are you know having interracial marriages right they still like even even that is insufficient to to get out from under the shadow I don't know what world do you think we're gonna get to if if that's not the important increment of progress the thing is it's not even sufficient sometimes within the relationships themselves cuz I mean I I know two or three examples of kids friends of mine who go to Colombia or Barnard and are themselves a part of a black-white interracial couple that have been dating for years and right you know I think it's a testament to the power of ideas that multiply have multiple different stories which I won't tell in too much detail of the black half of that partnership accusing the white half of racism right right the same person that they sleep in the same bed as every night knows everything about their history is their is their closest partner in life but also just just being black at Columbia and Barnard in this environment you are and not inevitably as I am proof of but the the tug of social justice thinking is so strong that you can the conflict even within relationships where like you know you're having a fight with your partner that is about a completely non racial issue just a typical relationship fight and then because you're black and it's 2019 and you exist in this very niche subculture in which this sort of move is allowed you accuse your partner of being clueless as a white person not just being clueless as your partner right I've seen it happen over and over again and it you know this stuff is invisible unless you're you're friends with the people but it's a testament to the the the the power of ideas that are academic to trickle down into you know social relationships and whatnot but I I there's also the experience that that I've had with people who for whom the color of their skin is really not is not very salient where you you you actually can become colorblind to a degree that that you know does you know does prop up Howard Schultz a little bit like I I mean I bought I was always struck in want to hang out with ayaan Hirsi Ali right she's like you know she is she is black but she's Somali but she's did not have any of the african-american experience right I mean she just came from Somalia to Europe and now she's in America but you know it's just like she's from another planet when you're talking about these issues and it is just it is you know man this is a conversation I haven't had with her I'm sure she has some of the the black experience whatever that is even though it's completely unsupported on her own side you know just as she moves through life but I mean it is very easy to forget the color of her skin around her because she seems to have forgotten the color of her skin I mean that there's a post-racial experience you have with her which which represents a fairly bright line to me of just what what is possible yep you know and and why that couldn't be possible by the millions you know I don't know I've seen that attitude replicated with many black immigrant friends of mine I have - pretty close friends from Jamaica very very dark side and one of them Camille foster has a great podcast called the fifth column yeah ice cream and he actually does not identify as black and it's so interesting translating must get some pain it's a lot of pain I mean he articulates he defends that position as well as it could possibly be defended and he is one of the say missed people that I know so you know people you know coming from an American text like a you know descended from slavery context the context I learned about the African Americans experience was more reminiscent of the way black Americans tend to rather than black immigrants the first time I heard that I thought oh god he just he just doesn't get it he doesn't get what it is here what race is here and then I have another Jamaican friend Desiree Campbell who does great YouTube videos who essentially had the same exact perspective and I'm thinking there is something in the in the water here the culture how we talk about race that is pathological and we don't even realize how pathological it is until we see what's possible from an outside perspective and you know even the analogous experience with Judaism right it's a slightly different thing but the because it's not quite as visible although I'm always amazed that I can be this visibly picked out as Jewish like I have I've had this experience several times where occasionally Orthodox Jews will show up in a Starbucks whatever to just you know fine to convert and I mean literally they'll pick me out of a crowd of you know that's like you're thirty white people the guys would make a beeline to my table right so so it is visible in some sense but you know I feel totally unemployed in in anti-semitism is a thing right it's clearly a problem of some order I have been the target of it at least online I've noticed you know people are attacking me as a Jew it's completely meaningless to me right like so but there's no question that I could make it meaningful like if I if I was identified as a Jew right and it's not that I'm aloof to the the history of anti-semitism you know I've spent a lot time studying the Holocaust and I you know I'm totally aware that you know this could become a significant problem again and you know is a problem in Europe to a significant degree even now but it's just personally the difference between feeling this is a feeling personally implicated in this and not is enormous and you know it's just and I'm in a very privileged position where I don't have to you know it's like I'm not being denied jobs because I'm Jewish I mean I'm not there's no it's not that level of a problem but it's a yeah on some level it's an accident of culture that I'm not more you know folk I'm not seeing more things through that lens and you know so what we want are we want to engineer some happy accidents of culture that that serve to break the spell and the one thing I don't see in fact the one thing I'm fairly certain can't be true is there's just there's just no way that caring more and more about race and racial difference making it more and more salient in the way that that someone like Tallahassee coats does there's no way that is the optimal strategy to actually getting past it right it just it seems it seems like absolutely the wrong algorithm to be running yeah I think you and I are similar in that you know I've experienced racism I've you know people I have stories so to speak not the worst stories by any stretch of the imagination but I don't see my identity as deeply implicated in what you know when I think of anti black racism and I try to view it as objectively I try to what I'm trying to assess the amount of racism in America I try to think as an objective person not quote-unquote as a black man despite the fact that I have I have some stories I could I could tell it's interesting I think you'll appreciate this but briefly how much time do you have you have a I'm good okay so you and I both meditate and we go I think you you I found out through your blog actually about the Insight Meditation Society where I've been on three retreats and I highly recommend it I you know mindfulness has been a huge tool for me in my life especially in the context of being publicly shamed which perhaps we can touch on briefly yeah but I went on a retreat yeah I think I went on a retreat maybe two years ago and I think I sent you an email talking about the way in which social justice politics was beginning to infiltrate there on the retreat so they have this Welcome Packet and right at the beginning of the Welcome Packet before the information about where the defibrillator was was a list of all the ways in which white people are privileged right and I just saw this and blows my mind I'm thinking like I'm about to not speak for a week for the first time in my life and be kind of completely already guilty of white privilege exactly not only do I have the immense privilege of doing this but it is the least of my concerns that I'm going to experience racism here at a Buddhist meditation retreat right I also get given the explicit goal of meditation is to overcome concepts of all kinds and especially self identity and the very notion of the self right right the idea that you're going to ramify this superficial level of difference in the information packet yes just it was but it's a hit Joseph's pretty hard once I received that email I he got he got an earful I'm afraid I'm afraid you're gonna have a reason to hit him a little bit harder because it's gotten worse after you oh yeah I went on a retreat in March and it was great I you know I I just want to be very clear here I love Insight Meditation Society is one of the most best place to pray yeah absolutely now they have wait for it people of color sits one sit a day that is exclusively for people of color oh my god so also on a retreat white people are told they shouldn't come to that sitting so yeah so we have there's one sit in the evening where if I want to as a black man I can go to a separate room that is reserved for people of color no white people allowed and rather than do the group sit with everyone in the meditation hall just do it with like me one Chinese woman and an Indian guy and the idea being because there's no white people that I will because I'll have a better practice right there's so many layers of layers of irony today like one is what do I really have in common with this one Chinese woman do I have more in common with her based on being a quote POC this kind of weird umbrella category and secondly we're all in here studying a philosophy invented by an Indian guy and you know if we can't if we can't achieve the colorblind ideal here this like extremely hippie open-minded like we have completely lost that is the feeling I came away with and I actually did not go to go to the sit because I felt I would be going in bad faith and I was in such a an ironic non right early space I was trying to you know so basically it offered many many opportunities for observing my own frustration and letting it pass through me but yeah so I I recall they would they were having people of color retreats right which I sort of understand the justification for but yet the idea that you would have a special sitting within a retreat that's open to the general public I mean they're like women's retreats to write what you which I can I can also understand the rationale for it but yeah and you know teenager retreats but the idea that you would need a room where you know you know white people are not allowed in order to make everyone else feel comfortable enough in their practice that is we had Joseph will hear from me on that topic how many black demanded this as well yeah I don't know he doesn't have the power to change this yeah it's not it's not North Korea over there he's he's dealing with a board right right that is I'm sure a very woke yeah so yeah but I will I will complain nonetheless yeah thank you before I let you go as a side of my white privilige that's the worst thing I've heard all day believe me it does not make you as mad as it made me on retreat I was I was fuming but I was in the perfect position to deal with my anger constructively by breathing focusing on the breath before I let you go I want to talk briefly about public shaming this is a topic that had that I've kind of been forced to think a lot about by being part of a public shaming youyou've I think weathered many public shaming is I feel you're kind of a veteran of the territory and you've also thought a lot about it in addition to having experienced it firsthand and I guess I want to ask what have you learned firsthand from dealing with the public shaming from a psychological point of view and from a societal point of view what do you think we can do to push back against the just the constant cycle of public shaming that are leaving just careers destroyed families destroyed you know we rarely see what happens on the underbelly of a public shaming but just you know very briefly like I'm having to have conversations with with my sisters and father about security right like that is something that I was I literally I broke into tears the other day just thinking about that because you know these are decisions I've made that are now implicating my family members because people with platforms have named them and you know that that is and I'm frankly one of the milder cases of public shaming right there are there are people who who've gotten it far worse so so I put that to you yeah well there there are many pieces to it I mean what so the security piece is separable because it's not necessarily the result of public shaming although that could be you know part of it and just as you're as you become more visible you'll attract all kinds of unwanted attention and that just that comes with the territory and they're intelligent moves you can make to mitigate that but you know I mean some of the more troubling attention you could get is just might not be ideological at all just might be you know from crazy people right someone who's infatuated with you or somebody who thinks you are sending the messages or whatever it said and that's just that just you know every person who has a significant public profile has some level of that going on and that's you know that's just a it can be a problem but it's definitely separable from the kind of mob like you know scapegoating and and shaming we're saying especially on social media you know I I've stepped I've stepped back from I never I never used Facebook or really any other platform apart from just kind of as a marketing tool you know I just I post if I released an episode of my podcast today we posted it I assume we posted on Facebook but you know I never see what's happening on Facebook but I actually used Twitter and I and I used to kind of get into the weeds with you know what was coming back at me and I would certainly notice when somebody with a blue checkmark would you know dishonestly you know circulate something that was designed to smear me or and I've pulled back like 98 percent from Twitter at this point I mean occasionally I'm using it more and more the way I've always used Facebook I'm it's just I push something out there occasionally I look at my feed I look at the people who I'm following just to see you know what articles they're recommending and you know it does kind of curate my my news diet to some degree but I am I see much less of what's coming back at me I mean so you know like you know I've really cut it by a factor of properly almost a hundred so you know on some level I could be getting publicly shamed and not even know about it at this and I have you know very consciously built my platform now where I'm as I'm as immune as a person can be I think to the consequences of anything getting any significant momentum out there so you know if I had a job at CNN or if I had a job at a university if I was a you know research scientist at a university and I was you know we just had this conversation about race and I you know just went on record saying that you know the defense some of my my best friends are black that should that should be a good defense right who knows what's gonna happen with that right someone's gonna say someone will read at this podcast to make it even sound worse right I mean they do that with my podcast I'm actually you know for the most part I mean I you know I don't you know who knows how bad I could get I mean we're now getting into the area of deep fakes where you know you're gonna have a video of you saying things you absolutely never said and you know a million people could believe it but I'm at a point now where I basically feel beyond caring about any of that stuff and so I would recommend you doing whatever you need to do to get to that place because psychologically it's a much happier place to be now there is a there's a spot on the on this map of immunity to this kind of thing that I think you don't want to occupy which is a kind of it's possible to build your own echo chamber such that you're only hearing from your fans and you'reyou're getting captured by your fans right so you're you you become I mean they're people who I see this happen to I mean these are like someone like Candace Owens right I don't I don't know Candace you know I you know she can say you know for significant stretches of time she can see him totally reasonable then you catch her on some other topic like global warming and she can seem you know quite deranged and no doubt she you know there's there's a lot she said that I'm unaware of but there's no feedback that's going to be going to prove enough so that she's gonna course correct on the basis of it right and her audience almost like a it's a fairly trumpian exercise where it's like like once you've liked once you you there's a certain subset of fans that you care about and it's and that those are the only ones you care about you're never going to hear when you're actually doing things that are are you know in a larger context obviously idiotic or wrong or unethical or you know and so I'm very conscious in how I relate to my own audience I mean I was speaking specifically about like my podcast audience of having trained my audience to care about my being coherent and ethical and honest and my being disposed to reconcile apparent contradictions and things I've said or done if that ever happens so I I thought I feel like I have an audience that is not that is actually very quick to push back against me I like I'd really don't have an echo chamber of an audience you know and I and I consciously go against my audience when I feel like there's any significant subset of them that is wrong on a topic like when I discovered that I felt I discovered that some percentage of my audience supported Trump you know that didn't cause me to shut up about Trump that caused me to you know go harder against against him and so I was so I so I think that the thing you don't want to do is is is decide all right I'm just gonna listen to feedback I like right you can't get into that spot and it's it's it's easy it's easy to do that in this kind of forum because you'll just select for especially if you become and the other thing I certainly wouldn't want to see happen to you is you know you shouldn't be someone who just focuses on you know this particular culture war issue I mean you have you such a wide range of interests and and such an obvious skillset that you know like there's going to any this matters you're gonna get to a place where you've said everything you have to say about race and you know you're just not gonna it's just there's other things to talk about right so it's gonna it's gonna come up not once a week or once an episode it's gonna come up once a year right or once every five years it's sort of like sort of what's happened to me on the topic of really atheism you know just look at the conflict between religion and science I mean you know a certain point that was my thing and then it was kind of a side you know lie it on you know focusing uniquely on Islam right and I still have those things to say for the most part my opinions haven't changed the world hasn't fundamentally changed but I have said more or less everything I can think to say on those topics and they're not intrinsically interesting to me and so I've just moved on and it's not that I won't say you know if you know if there's a terrorist attack and in you know a major capital and it's and it's jihadists and nobody's making sense and I have a platform I might you know revisit the issue but again that'll be just a specific moment of me just saying the thing I've said a thousand times and then moving on and and you know I would I would assume that's gonna happen for you you know maybe sooner than you think on this topic and and then I think you just want to yeah you so much of what comes back at you is so obviously in bad faith that even to interact with it is demeaning right I mean like you just you essentially have to I mean this is this is a lesson I've been very slow to learn I mean in the beginning I felt like I had to push back on this stuff especially if it's coming from some prominent person but if it's in sufficiently bad faith there's just no you know I mean that the in my world you know the grit the glenn greenwald's and the Reza Aslan to the world you just can't to push back is to have yeah there's there's something intrinsically demeaning about it and there's just no there is no there's no real outcome there I mean the people you'll begin to find is the people who followed your in the first place or with you and they see you as at minimum boring them by by like feeling like you need to put out this fire or getting your hands dirty unnecessarily and then the people who are incapable of following your argument or so wedded to their their ideology that they simply won't you're not gonna win them over right yeah I feel like I've in the in the wake of my testimony before Congress I've had something of a transformation in how I'm approaching this so I don't know I think I have a similar disposition to you in the sense that I'm very concerned with the feedback I get because I'm afraid I got something wrong and I get things wrong sometimes and sometimes you know there's an excellent correction to one of my views that shows up in my Twitter notifications so I felt that I have to look at it just in order to keep myself honest and a lot of my fans are I think similar to your fans even even if they generally agree with me will be quick to point out if I get something wrong and I really value that so I felt that I have to look at my notifications and then the other 90% of what I get is you know a lot of it is ad hominem and I think for a long time I sort of tried to pretend that none of it got to me but I think the truth is all of it kind of gets to me and here you know one I just read this book so you've been publicly shamed by John Robinson yeah that's great and one of his observations after looking at many different case studies is that oftentimes is the the subject or object of a public shaming becomes numb to all these emotions right like you choose or you switch into a mode where you're just not feeling anything and that really resonated with me because as I left Congress I don't know if anyone got this on video but it was me my sister my girlfriend my friend and there there were just a crowd of people yelling the word shame at point-blank range at the top of their voices and my sister was yelling back and people asked me was that video everywhere is that video anywhere is it because I only saw what you were getting as you were testifying and even that was fairly colorful yeah is the rest somebody took this somebody did take this video and it was so deep in my Twitter mentions during when I was getting kind of shamed that I didn't I didn't I didn't think to like bookmark this to watch later right it's somewhere deep in the internet but people ask me what did you feel at that moment and the truth is I felt nothing I felt era I was incomplete kind of Zen warrior mode like get out of this building and leave I didn't feel their fear or shame or it was just nothing and I think a lot of my reaction to the public the public shaming has been of that character and it's been you know at the same time as I've sort of started to allow myself to feel normal human emotions about being the object of a public shaming campaign I've liked in the past ten days been off of Twitter almost completely and right you know I and I don't it seems well I go on once a day for maybe three minutes just to see if the algorithm has pushed out any great articles and then I'm that's it right and yeah that's kind of like me yeah well I understand you know that there's definitely a time to pay attention to what's coming back at you just on the on the off chance that some you know errors being found and and like I actually this happened to me recently I probably followed the the and II know you know an tyfa drama where he was he was attacked by an tyfa and I said something on my podcast about it and in the housekeeping and I mentioned you know I mentioned this old man this other video of an old man getting hit with a crowbar and I had just seen video of just an old man getting hit with a crowbar by Antipa but it turns out there was video of him previously you know with a telescopic baton you know him fighting an T fuh and then you know finally you know he gets overwhelmed by a crowbar wielding thugs and so some what I just happened to look at you know I I push this out I just happened to look at my ad mentions and someone said you might want to revise this this bit about the old man because he's not as innocent as you may doubt it's gonna change your argument so that was like I was not I wouldn't have found that for myself right I just I'm not scouring the internet for other videos of this incident that I already thought I saw right so that's very useful and perhaps inevitable but you don't want to live in your in your Twitter feed yeah at all because it is I mean the other thing is you can clean it up by you can decide to only hear from people who are following you and have a confirmed email address and it would you know don't have a Twitter egg bio photo em you can you can check viewless boxes and that cleans it up immensely you know but it is just it's toxic to be thinking about what other people think of you all the time right so it's like and so if you can just live your life so as to not be continually reminded of this you know chatter about you that's got to be better unless you you know unless there there really is an opportunity to course-correct because you've you've taken a position that was ill-considered or or that's the other thing with about you know you've been publicly shamed if you haven't done something even remotely shameful in fact if your actual impulses are ethical and borne of you are concerned for you know you know real problems in this world it's like there's no place for it to land you know it's like it's like well is for me in my you know criticism of Islam and you know my the me spelling out the linkage between specific doctrines and and you know jihadism and me worrying about this in the aftermath of a terrorist attack right when I have someone on Twitter of even if they have you know two million followers call me a racist because I've said something about you know negative about you know Islam in this context it's I mean one is a non sequitur so it doesn't land for that reason because Islam is not a race but two you know I know internally that my concern about Islam has absolutely nothing to do with race right I mean it's because it has you know I'm in total solidarity with the reformed Muslims and that and the X Muslims who share the same racial characteristics that that you know most Muslims do the world over if if you're going to generalize in that way but it's it's just races orthogonal to the problem right so you you have what you what you're often met with with that you know in any bad faith criticism you're you're met with a very energetic you know kind of laser beam intensity animus directed at you that is not actually directed at you right it's like it's not you it's not that's not it it's it's not it's not based on your the actual content of your ideas your actual motives that the real way you feel about people the things you care about so it's like they have some fictional version of you that they hate right and that they're that they're determined to keep in play right there's no with these people there's no amount of clarification that will get them to recognize oh actually yeah you this was miss targeted right that's not actually what you're about or what you were thinking or why you were doing it know that it's a that never happened so it does it's not it's a it's a very different experience than actually doing something wrong you know that you that you internally feel is wrong or for the wrong reasons and then having that spot same spot light shined on it and that's be honestly that's an experience I've I haven't had you know so like I've had I guess we should this is the first time I've even thought about this but we should we should probably differentiate you know public shaming that is you has no place to land because you know the the Shamy recognizes that it's totally unwarranted and then public shaming that really does you know you did something wrong you you did something that's either you know actually is humiliating or embarrassing or for which you feel like the need to apologize and you know you know people hate you for it and they're not accepting your apology that's a very different world to be in I want to go back briefly to to a point you made about the andino affair in Portland recently I think you you said something along the lines of this is the kind of thing that probably could not have happened if not for Twitter right like the whole like people would everything around yet people would not have known necessarily who and Ino was they wouldn't you know the whole the whole thing and you know that one of the things that I'm also rethinking is my relationship to not just consuming Twitter but to consuming daily news in general and there was there was this recent study that will that yasha monk wrote about in the Atlantic which showed that basically any level of news consumption correlates with your being too alarmed about the opposing party like if you watch more news you're more likely to think that Republicans are far more radical than they are and vice versa and I read that and then I also you know yesterday I saw Aziz Ansari's stand up his new Netflix special I don't know if you've seen it no I haven't seen it but he does one social experiment in the in the in the special where he essentially makes up a fake culture war controversy right he makes up a story about a pizza that had pepperoni in the shape of a swastika on it and half of people who saw the pizza thought it was a swastika the other half of people thought it just looked like a normal pizza pie and he asked people in the audience do you guys remember this story it was in the New York Times in Washington Post clap if you think it looked like a swastika some people clap clap if you think it looked like a normal pizza other people clapped he even said oh you just clap you don't think it looked like a swastika sir and he said yeah no I remember that you know I don't think I think it's just you know a bunch of PC garbage you know and he he just and then he reveals that he completely made the story up and it it made me really it shocked me because you know I'm someone who consumes a lot of news not because I love it intrinsically but because I feel I should be informed and I'm questioning the degree to which my being informed I'm crest I'm questioning the consequences of news consumption essentially what do you what do you think about that yeah yeah yeah I'm going through a similar revaluation on my side too because I mean if one that's just there's so much to keep up with and if you're reading a lot of news every day it's just it's in zero-sum contest with everything else you want to be reading right just know you're no longer reading books I was noticing that it was getting harder to read books same yeah because I've just read was reading so many articles and you know I felt kind of a personal and professional commitment to just at least surveying all the news that day like I would I would turn every page in The New York Times just to make sure I least seen all the headlines I'm not doing that so much anymore because it's a little bit like we've sort of lost the weekly magazine as a as a framework through which to get news but in the way you know if you were used to be that you could read you know Time magazine magazine once a week and be fairly sure that if a story was was significant it would survive a weekly news cycle right and I'm some agree I'm kind of resetting with that you know like it's like if this if this thing is gonna it's actually big it's gonna be around in a few days people are still gonna be talking about in a few days unfortunately it's not quite true it with Trump because he's you know there's like there's like no atrocity large enough to survive a 48 hour news cycle because he's gonna do something else but yeahit's I could see at me that that's a surprising result that that Yasha tweeted about but it doesn't really surprise me but yeah there's a linear relationship between your units being informed journalistically we are you reading the news and being and misconceiving the level of radicalization of the other party you know it's it's depressing but you know it doesn't surprise me yeah well on that depressing note I'm gonna let you go thank you so much Sam for being my guest here at conversations with Coleman and I hope to have a pleasure and yeah well I'll come back we'll talk about the philosophy of mind or something that oh yeah truly beyond identity excellent yeah all right cool well good luck with the Coleman thanks Sam [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Coleman Hughes

Views: 312,388

Keywords: social justice, racism, race, culture, america, sam harris, science

Id: wo_ronKePfs

Length: 94min 48sec (5688 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/caldazar24]

Before I take the time to watch this, is Coleman using “reparations” very broadly to encompass all social justice issues? Or does he really mean the specific policy of reparations for slavery?

I have been following the primary quite closely and zero of the major (ie polling >1%) candidates support reparations. Many of them have said nice things about a proposed bill that proposes creating a commission to study the issue, but that is Senator-ese for “we don’t want to do anything about this but we’d like the activists to leave us alone please”, and anyone who thinks that means the candidates support actually doing reparations or thinks it will be a 2020 issue at all is frankly not worth listening to.

[u/AltCommentAccount]

Submission Statement: I didn't know Coleman Hughes started a podcast a few days ago, this is the first one he's released featuring Sam Harris. I thought this was worth a share, he could use more subs. Here's the description of the conversation:

"In this episode, Coleman talks to best-selling author, neuroscientist, and philosopher, Sam Harris about the reality of reparations, post-racialism, social justice thinking and more."

[u/[deleted]]

My ancestors who lost everything to the Viking raids, not to mention what the English did to us, well, the Scandinavians can keep that stolen capital, and the English too for that matter, and I'll keep my dignity, and do the hard work of learning a skill, do good work, get along with people, and humbly make the best that I can of life. I'll take a hand out here and there, when the best I can do is still not good enough to pay the bills, etc, here and there but not by and large.

[u/scoogsy]

Damn can’t find it on iTunes

Edit: found it!