Speaker 1: Today. It's great to chat with John mcwater on the podcast.
Speaker 1: John teaches linguistics, philosophy, and music history at Columbia University
Speaker 1: and writes for various publications and language issues and race issues,
Speaker 1: such as Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, CNN,
Speaker 1: and The Atlantic. He's the author of a number of
Speaker 1: books on race and linguistics, including Losing the Race, Self,
Speaker 1: Sabotage in Black America, and Nine Nasty Words, English and
Speaker 1: the Gutter, Then, Now, and Forever. When John was five
Speaker 1: years old, he told his mother he wanted to be
Speaker 1: a quote book writer, and he is happy that it
Speaker 1: worked out. John, it's great to chat with you finally
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Lots to talk about.
Speaker 1: I'd like to start with your most recent work on profanity.
Speaker 1: So why the fuck did you write a book on profanity?
Speaker 1: You know, for a reason that's a little bit cynical,
Speaker 1: which is that it seemed to me that there are
Speaker 1: four topics about language that had a chance of being
Speaker 1: the topic of a book that would really kind of
Speaker 1: get around. I wanted to have one book that really
Speaker 1: got around. I've written more than I care to even mention,
Speaker 1: and you don't write them in order to have them
Speaker 1: become bestsellers. But I wanted one that was a hit,
Speaker 1: and I thought it could be about whether there's a
Speaker 1: universal grammar. Steve Pinker did that twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1: It was a hit. Then I could do one where
Speaker 1: I say that language usage is going to the dogs.
Speaker 1: No linguist believes that, and a non linguist wrote that book.
Speaker 1: It was Each Shoots and Leaves twenty years ago. She
Speaker 1: got rich on the basis of it. Then there is
Speaker 1: what is language? What does the Internet do to language?
Speaker 1: And Gretchen McCullough, my friend and colleague, did that book
Speaker 1: because Internet a couple of years ago, and so that's
Speaker 1: taken care of, and it's not really my subject. And
Speaker 1: I thought, there's really only one other subject, and it's cursing.
Speaker 1: It's profanity. That's what people really care about. And I
Speaker 1: thought I can get interested in profanity because I would
Speaker 1: like to share my take on language, and I can't
Speaker 1: do that writing about itite and creole languages and novoo.
Speaker 1: There's a point beyond which most readers aren't going to
Speaker 1: come with me on that. I thought stealth linguistic lessons
Speaker 1: might come through just talking about our twelve nine. It's
Speaker 1: really twelve twelve nine nastiest words. So that's why I
Speaker 1: did this book. That's a good enough reason. So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting question, you know, how and why words become profane.
Speaker 1: There are words that weren't profane that become profane, and
Speaker 1: then there were you know, there are words that weren't
Speaker 1: that we're perfene that that don't become Is that right.
Speaker 1: I'm actually trying to think of an example of That's
Speaker 1: why I'm stumbling, because wait, are there any words that
Speaker 1: we're profane that are no longer profane? That One's harder
Speaker 1: for me to couple examples, but there's definitely examples of
Speaker 1: the former. Yeah. Well, to tell you the truth, damn
Speaker 1: and hell are not what any anthropologist would think of
Speaker 1: as profane. A naive anthropologist analyzing the way we use
Speaker 1: those two words words would find that we classify them
Speaker 1: as profanity in the same way as we classify tomatoes
Speaker 1: as vegetables, even though we know they're all fruits. But
Speaker 1: damn and hell are now maybe a little bit salty.
Speaker 1: But I got my mouth washed out for saying hell
Speaker 1: in about nineteen seventy. I would never feel that way
Speaker 1: about one of my kids saying it now fifty plus
Speaker 1: years later, so that can certainly happen. And then, of
Speaker 1: course there are words that start out as either nothing
Speaker 1: at all or as just salty and snickery, and then
Speaker 1: they become profane. It's in taboo. And that's the history
Speaker 1: of most of the words in our little collection of
Speaker 1: nine or twelve words. Okay, well, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of these words. When you just you did talk about
Speaker 1: hell and dam maybe you could actually unpack a little
Speaker 1: more where what that was like like when those words
Speaker 1: first became profane, were they like really really profane? You
Speaker 1: didn't take the Lord's name in vain. You were not
Speaker 1: supposed to indulge in blasphemy. And so we call it
Speaker 1: swearing because the idea was if you were going to
Speaker 1: and it was assumed that you would, that you would
Speaker 1: swear in sincerity. If you swore to God, it would
Speaker 1: be about something that is worthy of God's attention or
Speaker 1: Jesus's attention. To swear because you stubbed your toe or
Speaker 1: something like that was considered a very bad thing to do.
Speaker 1: It was considered a desecration of the process of making
Speaker 1: an oath, and therefore it was blasphemous. That was how
Speaker 1: you cursed in early English by taking the lord's name
Speaker 1: in vain, and therefore damn and hell referred to in passing,
Speaker 1: which of course people always did to an extent, was
Speaker 1: considered a transgression. In the meantime, there was a period
Speaker 1: where oh my God, or talking about Jesus in that
Speaker 1: way was considered a terrible thing. But you could have
Speaker 1: a name like Henry Fuckbutter and it wasn't a joke.
Speaker 1: That was just something somebody could be named, and it
Speaker 1: was just kind of a weird name. Or you could
Speaker 1: have Grope cunt Lane, and that was considered a perfectly
Speaker 1: normal thing to call a street where certain things went on.
Speaker 1: Those words were salty, but they weren't profane. That only
Speaker 1: started happening in the fourteen fifteen hundreds. So these things
Speaker 1: develop based on what the society has hung up upon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I've I've heard the expression damn it to hell,
Speaker 1: which the incorporates both. That's that's like superup uber bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah say that. Yeah, And and then there's something about
Speaker 1: the word fuck. You know, I started off saying, why
Speaker 1: fuck you write the book and profanity? I don't know
Speaker 1: if you if you caught that. I don't. That's not
Speaker 1: like my normal thing. It's not like like I have
Speaker 1: a normally I have guests on and I'm like, hey, Bob,
Speaker 1: why the fuck did you write your You know I
Speaker 1: did that, So I want you to be clear, that's
Speaker 1: not how I normally talk. Yeah, yea, yea yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know. So why do we love the word
Speaker 1: fuck so much that? What is it about doing that
Speaker 1: or saying that word that makes me feel a bit
Speaker 1: like subversive m That's what profanity is. It's not that
Speaker 1: they're words that for some reason you're simply not allowed
Speaker 1: to use them. It's that there are words that it's
Speaker 1: assumed you are only going to use when you wish,
Speaker 1: as almost any human being will want to, usually to transgress.
Speaker 1: And so a word like fuck is so satisfying because
Speaker 1: we use it not only to transgress, but also to
Speaker 1: transgress boundaries, say of intimacy. It encourages intimacy. It expresses
Speaker 1: extremes of feeling, It expresses happiness, It can express the erotic.
Speaker 1: There are all sorts of things that that little word
Speaker 1: can do. It's one syllable, it has consonants on both
Speaker 1: ends of it. English prefers profanity to have that particular shape,
Speaker 1: and for that reason, fuck has made its way into
Speaker 1: the language in such a way that this naive anthropologist, again,
Speaker 1: if they had to learn actual colloquial American English, learning
Speaker 1: how to use that word would be difficult because of
Speaker 1: how subtle and rich it spread. Is. If they didn't
Speaker 1: know it was considered a bad word, they would have
Speaker 1: whole feces that they'd write about the subtle aspects of
Speaker 1: the dozens of uses of that word we use. It
Speaker 1: starts as this verb referring to sexual intercourse. Now it's
Speaker 1: a gesture rather than a word. It's a fascinating little thing.
Speaker 1: It's utterly fascinating. And I'm and I also, from a
Speaker 1: psychological perspective, find of fascinating how different swear words actually
Speaker 1: light up or activate different areas of the brain more
Speaker 1: something regular language. Like if you did an fMRI scan
Speaker 1: when I asked, why the fuck do you write a
Speaker 1: book in profanity? You know what would you see? Well,
Speaker 1: what you would see is that why did you write
Speaker 1: a book on? Profanity? Is generated in the left brain
Speaker 1: in two areas kind of near the ears, and most
Speaker 1: people ordinary vanilla language is generated on the left side.
Speaker 1: But then things like taking in what the tone of
Speaker 1: a sentence is, what its intonation is, you take that
Speaker 1: in on the right and then it gets passed to
Speaker 1: the left. And so the right brain, the id brain,
Speaker 1: the dionition brain, that is where profanity is generated from.
Speaker 1: And so if you say something like why the fuck
Speaker 1: did you write that, the right brain is could tributing
Speaker 1: something to that sentence. And that's why that fuck makes
Speaker 1: no sense. You know what what part of speech is
Speaker 1: the fuck? If you wanted to explain to somebody why
Speaker 1: you put it in there, other than to say I
Speaker 1: was trying to strike a jocular, transgressive, friendly tone, you
Speaker 1: couldn't explain why you need that there, especially if it
Speaker 1: supposedly means to have sexual intercourse with. That's because it
Speaker 1: used to be a word, but now it's just a gesture.
Speaker 1: You can turn off somebody's left brain and all they
Speaker 1: can do is curse. You can turn off somebody's right
Speaker 1: brain and they can speak vanilla, but they have a
Speaker 1: hard time cursing. And that's because the curses are over
Speaker 1: on the other side of the corpus closm from the
Speaker 1: ordinary grammatical processing. Wow, is there like a deeper truth,
Speaker 1: like it's one hemisphere of the brain more subversive than
Speaker 1: the other in general. You know that you read some
Speaker 1: Sepolski or something too oversimplified. But yes, yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a cognitive scientist, so I can add. I can
Speaker 1: add all the caveats all day long. But there is
Speaker 1: a certain truth in the way that the brain is organized,
Speaker 1: that there is a tyranny of consciousness or a tyranny
Speaker 1: of language, and the kind of brain areas that are
Speaker 1: sociate of the language that actually can suppress creativity that
Speaker 1: I have studied. I've published papers on, you know, the
Speaker 1: neuroscience of creativity. So I just feel like there's something there,
Speaker 1: you know, where like you know, like sometimes are you know,
Speaker 1: like we think, oh, we should be politically correct, and
Speaker 1: even that thought, you know, and having those that inhibits
Speaker 1: what is actually wanting to just pop up right, what
Speaker 1: is natural? What wants to come and come into being? Yes,
Speaker 1: these I can imagine those would be tendencies, and in
Speaker 1: some cases that's quite a good thing. I should say
Speaker 1: that we have those tendencies. We don't want to, you know,
Speaker 1: as we have degeneration of the brain. You know, that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens is people to start,
Speaker 1: you know, start cursing like sailors, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: eighty year olds with like dementia, they'll just they just
Speaker 1: have no self control whatsoever. So so it is a
Speaker 1: good thing to let it all hang out right right
Speaker 1: in a society, is to not yes, exactly, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the N word a second. That's
Speaker 1: one word I won't say. So why do people transform
Speaker 1: slurs into terms of affection sometimes? You know, like you
Speaker 1: do you do see, you know, people in African American community,
Speaker 1: especially like you know, you listen to rap music, and
Speaker 1: the N word is considered in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: like you know, like term affection especially is like well
Speaker 1: my N word, you know, basically human I mean, you
Speaker 1: know this human intimacy involves leveling. The idea is that
Speaker 1: we're all on the same level. And one way that
Speaker 1: you indicate that you're all on the same level is
Speaker 1: you see, if you can all tolerate being called something
Speaker 1: that ordinarily would be aimed at you from the outside.
Speaker 1: And so that is a certain generation of white men
Speaker 1: calling each other son of a bitch all the time. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser back in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century used to get really drunk, and they
Speaker 1: were always calling each other how alias out of a
Speaker 1: that was also very hl menkn Nowadays that might be bastard,
Speaker 1: might be asshole, But that's something that people do. There's
Speaker 1: the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza runs in with these
Speaker 1: guys who are always calling each other bastard. What black
Speaker 1: men do with the N word is the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: So people are calling us this slur. Well, one way
Speaker 1: that we're intimate is imagine if we are being looked
Speaker 1: at that way from the outside, all of us can
Speaker 1: be and so that's one way that we're all equal.
Speaker 1: And so you have this actually very natural evolution of
Speaker 1: that word into one that means buddy, which happens not
Speaker 1: only with words white anglophone men used, but also all
Speaker 1: around the world. In Russian, mujik means peasant. That's also
Speaker 1: a word that some Russian men have been able to
Speaker 1: use to mean buddy, my friend. So in a way,
Speaker 1: if that hadn't happened to the N word, the question
Speaker 1: would have been why you knew that that was going
Speaker 1: to happen with either that or one of the other
Speaker 1: slurs that are aimed at black people. And then you
Speaker 1: get the complex aspect of it in that I know
Speaker 1: to many people that's complex. To me one is a linguist,
Speaker 1: two as a black person, that just feels like ABC.
Speaker 1: What is complex is that now you have a generation
Speaker 1: of non black, mostly men, who have grown up listening
Speaker 1: to hip hop. They don't think of it as that
Speaker 1: exotic black music as their fathers did. They think of
Speaker 1: it their fathers as in people my age. They think
Speaker 1: of it as just music. They grew up with Kanye West,
Speaker 1: not being weird conscious rap that just arose to them.
Speaker 1: That's just music they heard at weddings, and so there's
Speaker 1: a part of them that feels very connected to certain
Speaker 1: aspects of black culture. It includes that they've grown up
Speaker 1: listening to the N word as buddy in their ear
Speaker 1: daily since Earth practically, so they feel like they can
Speaker 1: use the word to mean buddy, and I can completely
Speaker 1: understand where they're coming from. But if anybody hears that
Speaker 1: from the outside, they're a polled. So the N word
Speaker 1: becomes one of the richer words in the English language
Speaker 1: because of all of its many meanings. You could say
Speaker 1: that it's two different words, but that's hard to get
Speaker 1: across given the history of the word and the shape
Speaker 1: of the word. It's a tough one. Yeah, two different
Speaker 1: and sense that one ends with A and one ends
Speaker 1: with the R, and they have two very different connotations.
Speaker 1: One is enunciated in the Black English. Yes, one of
Speaker 1: them is the standard. Now for many people, that's just
Speaker 1: putting too fine a point on it. For me, it isn't.
Speaker 1: And you know, to be honest, there are words in
Speaker 1: Scots that are the same but different from in English.
Speaker 1: And so in English English home is what we know.
Speaker 1: Hame is home to a Scottish person with whatever they eat,
Speaker 1: and you know, not London, but hame. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a different word. But not if you ask a scott
Speaker 1: they say hame is the way we say home. Fine line,
Speaker 1: the whole thing with the N word is the exact
Speaker 1: thing thing and so it's never going to be an
Speaker 1: easy word for sure. What's interesting is also you think
Speaker 1: about how some cultures, religions, races, et cetera, don't decide
Speaker 1: not to ever adopt a word as a words of affection.
Speaker 1: I think the K word with with us Jews, you know,
Speaker 1: with you know. It's not like I ever say, hey, Mike,
Speaker 1: you know o K person you know like that doesn't
Speaker 1: know that's gone, do you know what I mean? So
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think how some turn and morph and
Speaker 1: still are in the vernacular and are used affectionately in
Speaker 1: some ways, and some are just kind of gone from
Speaker 1: the the whole lexicon entirely. You know. I've never thought
Speaker 1: about that in itself, in that I'm going to go
Speaker 1: out on a limb here. Jewish people don't do that.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why Italians have, Irish have what
Speaker 1: I when I say, the question would be why not?
Speaker 1: There's a question there. Why did not Jewish men ever
Speaker 1: say well, yeah, And I don't think there was any
Speaker 1: equivalent nobody used If I may heave that way, that
Speaker 1: did not happen. Somebody should do a study as to
Speaker 1: why that kind of affection, Like what did I'm going
Speaker 1: to take a stereotype, what did Tevia and Fiddler on
Speaker 1: the Roof call his friends? And it wasn't anything like that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, you know, And I'm not in the play,
Speaker 1: but in real life, what did that person call his friends?
Speaker 1: And I don't think there is a leveling term of
Speaker 1: that sort that started as a slur. That's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I'm glad you find it interesting too,
Speaker 1: because my nerdy brain goes off in all these directions.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I wanted to study. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: get it, you get it. What is the other F word? Well,
Speaker 1: that's the one that refers to gay men. That one
Speaker 1: has probably the most transformative history of any of the
Speaker 1: twelve words in the book because it starts out as
Speaker 1: a bundle of sticks, and then a bundle of sticks
Speaker 1: could be used as a substitute soldier. If people were
Speaker 1: trying to make your standing muster and you have the
Speaker 1: general coming to count how many people you've got, you
Speaker 1: can make it all look more populous if you've got
Speaker 1: some bundles of sticks standing in for the men, and
Speaker 1: that means that it's anthromorphized. Next thing, you know, you
Speaker 1: have people calling women bundles of sticks as to insult them.
Speaker 1: You're just a bag of sticks. And that also extended
Speaker 1: to children, and so you know, get out of here,
Speaker 1: I'm cooking dinner, your little fagots. That's something that was
Speaker 1: said apparently on the other side of the pond as
Speaker 1: recently as the mid twentieth century. And then if you're
Speaker 1: as worthless as a woman or a child, I say
Speaker 1: in irony, then it ends up being extended to gay men,
Speaker 1: the idea being you're as worthless as a as a
Speaker 1: woman or a child, you're diminished. And of course nobody
Speaker 1: thought about these steps, but it means that you start
Speaker 1: with kindling and it ends up being a slur aimed
Speaker 1: at a subgroup of male people. It's a fascinating evolution.
Speaker 1: It is fascinating, and I'm also just interested in the
Speaker 1: evolutionary origins of why curse words exist in the sense
Speaker 1: that every language has profanity. I mean, it ticks the
Speaker 1: boxes in terms of an evolutionary something is spandrel I
Speaker 1: will say, it's probably a spandal. It's not like an adaptation,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, but what is that? You know?
Speaker 1: What is the spandrel off of? What is the underlying
Speaker 1: human and drive or a human what? What does you know?
Speaker 1: It's you know, similar question is why does every language
Speaker 1: have or every culture have religion? Right? What function does
Speaker 1: that serve from an evolutionary survival or reproduction point of view? What? What? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know? What what about? Well? I think you think?
Speaker 1: I think in terms of the spandrel, what happens is
Speaker 1: that you use something that started as a word in
Speaker 1: order to be able to transgress or in order to
Speaker 1: be able to have certain things that are taboo, because
Speaker 1: that's part of what unite society a society together, what
Speaker 1: things you consider taboo and unite in that kind of
Speaker 1: odd respect of And so yeah, the spandrel analogy is
Speaker 1: very apt. And yeah, there is probably and I haven't
Speaker 1: checked all of them, probably no language where there aren't
Speaker 1: things you're not supposed to say that are nevertheless said.
Speaker 1: And the only question is what domain are those words
Speaker 1: going to cluster around? It depends on what interests or
Speaker 1: horrifies or concerns the society. So yeah, that's what part
Speaker 1: of what it is to be human. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: So I think that that puts a nice sort of
Speaker 1: completes that topic. And I think we can move into
Speaker 1: the race topic. Now what do you think I think
Speaker 1: we can? And I should tell you that six o'clock
Speaker 1: is my cocktail night, and that change. That does not change.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take a slip of mine. I love it.
Speaker 1: Please feel free, And I feel like I didn't adequately prepare.
Speaker 1: I should have liquored up for to discuss this topic
Speaker 1: with you right now. I did not adequately prepare in
Speaker 1: the way you did. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: what what is it there? You're drinking? This is bullet rye.
Speaker 1: It's delicious, and that is That's been one of my
Speaker 1: drinks lately. Six o'clock It's time, especially during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: is when I started getting very regular about it. So,
Speaker 1: no matter what's going on, cocktail time. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. So tell me about this new book
Speaker 1: you're working on, which I believe you are pretty much done.
Speaker 1: Is that right? And is the title still The elect
Speaker 1: The Threat to a progressive America from anti black, anti racist?
Speaker 1: Is that still the title? No, the book is going
Speaker 1: to be called Woke Racism, and to be honest, I
Speaker 1: forget the subtitle, but it will be coming out around Halloween.
Speaker 1: That is probably official news by the time this podcast
Speaker 1: is broadcast to everyone else, and so it will not
Speaker 1: be called the elect It will be called woke Racism.
Speaker 1: And so that means that this year I have two
Speaker 1: books coming out, which is something I'm never going to
Speaker 1: do to myself again. But yes, the book that's being
Speaker 1: put out on substack in pieces has been considerably jiggered
Speaker 1: and will come out as a different version of that
Speaker 1: as woke racism in very late October. I'm actually surprised
Speaker 1: do you call it woke racism? Because I know that
Speaker 1: you've been trying to stay away from the word woke
Speaker 1: and talk about the elect differently. So that's probably from
Speaker 1: a marketing perspective, which I do understand. But can you
Speaker 1: tell me what the elect, what you mean by the
Speaker 1: elect and why you think they're doing great harm to society? Well,
Speaker 1: the elect is not just woke people. I know many
Speaker 1: people would be surprised that I consider myself woke. It's
Speaker 1: woke people who are mean. It's a particular kind of
Speaker 1: woke person who feels that their view of things is
Speaker 1: the way humanity should be, that anybody who questions that
Speaker 1: is inherently a racist and therefore moral pervert and therefore dismissible,
Speaker 1: and that this particular imperative of theirs should be central
Speaker 1: to all moral, intellectual, and artistic endeavor. Their idea is,
Speaker 1: and most of them are not going to name this explicitly,
Speaker 1: but as a kind of woke person who feels that
Speaker 1: battling power differentials and within that, the main differential is
Speaker 1: white people's power over black people and other brown people.
Speaker 1: Battling power differentials must be central to all endeavor systemic
Speaker 1: racism PERMEI society. That must be our main concern. And
Speaker 1: you know, that's a view that one can respect. But
Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of person who feels that that
Speaker 1: is such a self standing truth that people deserve to
Speaker 1: be browbeaten, expelled from their jobs, socially shamed in the
Speaker 1: name of it. And that is a kind of person
Speaker 1: who's existed for a long time. I've known people like
Speaker 1: that since the nineties when I was in grad school,
Speaker 1: but especially last summer, that kind of person acquired a
Speaker 1: certain purchase upon the national consciousness, and there at this
Speaker 1: point in a position to influence a great many institutions.
Speaker 1: And I think that they are well intentioned. I think
Speaker 1: they're sincere, but I think they're poisonous and I think
Speaker 1: they're wrong. And nevertheless, a great many people are inclined
Speaker 1: to do what they say because their modus operandi is
Speaker 1: to call you a racist on social media if you
Speaker 1: don't do what they do. Social media gets around to
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and many people aren't up for
Speaker 1: being called a terrible thing on social media on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, And so everybody knuckles under to these quote
Speaker 1: unquote anti racist imperatives. But it creates not only a
Speaker 1: lot of mendacity, but it creates an awful lot of
Speaker 1: obstacles for black people to truly succeed in this society.
Speaker 1: A great deal of the elect as I call it, ideology,
Speaker 1: is based on the idea that if black people are
Speaker 1: having some sort of problem doing something, they should just
Speaker 1: be exempt from doing it and we should change our
Speaker 1: sense of what standards are. That to me, is not
Speaker 1: how a society should be run in any post Enlightenment sense.
Speaker 1: And yet there are a lot of people, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them have PhDs, who sincerely believe that that's
Speaker 1: the way things should be. They used to be that cranky,
Speaker 1: peculiar person on one end of the faculty meeting table
Speaker 1: there was one of those people. Frustrated. Now that kind
Speaker 1: of person is standing up and calling the shots. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's the person who should do that. No
Speaker 1: one person should do that, but certainly not them. So
Speaker 1: I've been on a kind of a crusade, and woke
Speaker 1: racism is explaining that not only is critical race theory questionable,
Speaker 1: But nobody would want to read a book about that,
Speaker 1: and I don't think they should read a book about that.
Speaker 1: It's that this whole way of looking at things hurts
Speaker 1: black people. These people are supposedly battling racism, A lot
Speaker 1: of them are in a way some of the most
Speaker 1: racist people on earth. So that is what woke racism
Speaker 1: is about. Yeah, I think that it's really good to
Speaker 1: like really define our terms, define what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: because it seems to me you're talking about a particular argument,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of that Kendy and DiAngelo, there's
Speaker 1: their style of anti of quote anti racism. And what
Speaker 1: makes it particularly difficult about having this conversation if you
Speaker 1: are someone like me, who well, for a million reasons
Speaker 1: when I'm white, but two I was I wasn't even
Speaker 1: thinking the white thing till that popped in my head.
Speaker 1: But but the fact that I care deeply about social justice,
Speaker 1: you know, I care deeply about I think there does
Speaker 1: exist a lot of problems that legitially legitimate problems that
Speaker 1: need to be solved in uh that that do sometimes
Speaker 1: operate in the racial lines. You know that a lot
Speaker 1: of African Americans have a lot of inequalities that could
Speaker 1: be addressed. What makes that tricky is that I simultaneously
Speaker 1: can hold that in my head as well at the
Speaker 1: same time of saying, I'm not sure that this style
Speaker 1: of anti racism and the method is going to reach
Speaker 1: that aim. And so it's tough, right, and so what
Speaker 1: do you do? What do you say to someone who
Speaker 1: or how do you stop people from saying these things?
Speaker 1: Without denying existence of systemic racism? You have to definitely
Speaker 1: have a certain equivoids, which is to say that there
Speaker 1: are problems that need to be solved, that racism is
Speaker 1: not just calling people dirty names and burning crosses on
Speaker 1: people's lawns, but that the proper response to systemic racism
Speaker 1: is not to blow up our whole sense of what
Speaker 1: we consider it meant to be, what we consider justice
Speaker 1: to be, what kind of standards we hold people who
Speaker 1: are not white too. We have to realize that it's
Speaker 1: not incompatible with having a moral compass to question a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that we're being taught. And something
Speaker 1: that moves me particularly deeply and has for twenty five
Speaker 1: years now, is that when you put a certain kind
Speaker 1: of maniacally power differential focused orientation into society, you condition
Speaker 1: a certain kind of black person to exaggerate. And I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but I think all of us
Speaker 1: can see it that yes, racism exists in this post
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties atmosphere, but that there's a certain kind of
Speaker 1: black person, often joined by a certain white fellow traveler,
Speaker 1: who exaggerates. And I don't think that the people are
Speaker 1: doing it in order to curry power. I don't think
Speaker 1: that the people are doing it as a temper tantrum.
Speaker 1: I think that there is, as you have very nicely illuminated,
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about it. Actually, there's a
Speaker 1: victimization mindset that is human. It's not about black people.
Speaker 1: It's a human tendency among some individuals to exaggerate victimhood
Speaker 1: because of a certain psychological bomb that it gives them.
Speaker 1: Not only are black people not exempt from that, because
Speaker 1: we black people are human beings, but our current climate
Speaker 1: encourages enables that particular human facet to emerge and to
Speaker 1: be supported. And I think that one of our biggest
Speaker 1: problems is that as a society, we are at a
Speaker 1: point where we need to be able to say, like
Speaker 1: you're doing. On the one hand, there are systemic racism
Speaker 1: problems that need to be solved. But then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, they are people who are exaggerating, who are
Speaker 1: making demands that aren't based in reality, and that frankly
Speaker 1: aren't based in truth, and that those people need to
Speaker 1: be gently but firmly dismissed. The idea is to say,
Speaker 1: you are exhibiting a certain psychological syndrome universal to humans,
Speaker 1: but it is not connected with the reality that the
Speaker 1: rest of us are in. The reality that the rest
Speaker 1: of us are in is a moral reality concerned with
Speaker 1: systemic factors. However, what you're asking, such as we're going
Speaker 1: to turn over our whole department to we're going to
Speaker 1: turn our whole department into a kind of anti racist
Speaker 1: academy instead of doing what we were doing. What you're asking,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do despite the fact that we
Speaker 1: have what we consider the proper concerns, and if you
Speaker 1: don't like it, you're gonna have to find somewhere else
Speaker 1: to go. I wonder if we are a society where
Speaker 1: especially white administrators could tell black students or black faculty
Speaker 1: that and not feel like that makes them moral perverts.
Speaker 1: Because if we can't do that, I'm really frightened as
Speaker 1: to where we're going, which is why I want this literature,
Speaker 1: which you've helped call my attention to on the victimization mindset,
Speaker 1: to be made more mainstream. We need user friendly ways
Speaker 1: of discussing that because if someone like me says you're exaggerating,
Speaker 1: many people say George Floyd. If someone like me says
Speaker 1: it's victim allah, it sounds like I'm making up a
Speaker 1: cartoon term. We need you psychologists at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I and I actually feel like a sense of purpose
Speaker 1: over this. But the point is from my perspective is
Speaker 1: that I'm not actually singling out African Americans. It's not
Speaker 1: like I wrote this article and that was what it
Speaker 1: surrounded this victimhood mentality article. Because the thing is I
Speaker 1: treat African Americans as human. It's a human tendency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's this human tendency that The point I want
Speaker 1: to make is that this kind of victim mentality, which
Speaker 1: can operate regardless of whether or not you've been victimized
Speaker 1: or not. It's there's an interpersonal trait tendency regardless to
Speaker 1: see in any situation that I've been the victim, and
Speaker 1: and it tends to the point here is it's a trait,
Speaker 1: so anyone can have this trait, and it generalizes across situations.
Speaker 1: The problem with that is that it impedes growth. You know,
Speaker 1: plain and simple, there's no there there. And my question
Speaker 1: is if you want to specifically apply some of this
Speaker 1: psychological research to the race to mean, which we can
Speaker 1: do since I know you're interested in that. But even
Speaker 1: though that wasn't my original intention is that I would
Speaker 1: ask you this question, in what ways is having a
Speaker 1: and I think this operates at a group level too.
Speaker 1: It's called collective you know, victimhood. In what ways is
Speaker 1: that impeding them from reaching the very goals that they
Speaker 1: want to reach? But what even are the goals? Is
Speaker 1: the goal to stay in the victimhood mentality forever? Or
Speaker 1: is the goal to transcend it? To grow? You know,
Speaker 1: just like I would say to an individual client who
Speaker 1: has that mentality, is your goal to be in that
Speaker 1: mentality and be rewarded for the mentality your whole life?
Speaker 1: Or is the goal for you to have self actualization,
Speaker 1: to be have great healthy pride for who you are
Speaker 1: and to not have not focus so much on outgroup
Speaker 1: hate but focus on in group love. You know, These
Speaker 1: are the sort of psychological questions I would ask, does
Speaker 1: that make sense? It does make sense. I think that
Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of Black person who actually has
Speaker 1: a sense of pride from this victimhood. It is what
Speaker 1: they seek. It gives them a sense of purpose, and
Speaker 1: as far as in group love goes, they feel that
Speaker 1: they're exerting in group love by supporting one another in
Speaker 1: these claims of victimhood, and there's a sense of bonding
Speaker 1: in it. And so the problem is that, I think
Speaker 1: with many one way of handling this, I think might
Speaker 1: be to say, are we looking to better Black America
Speaker 1: and to solve real problems as opposed to are we
Speaker 1: looking to massage this sense of victimhood? Do you understand
Speaker 1: that massaging this sense of victimhood doesn't put more food
Speaker 1: in anybody's mouths, It doesn't train anybody for jobs, it
Speaker 1: doesn't change the police. That's something that might get through.
Speaker 1: But for many people, I think that the nurturing of
Speaker 1: that victimhood to them feels like a kind of healing.
Speaker 1: It gives them a sense of wholeness and purpose. I
Speaker 1: imagine that would be true among all people who have
Speaker 1: the victims. Would complex that you have to teach them
Speaker 1: that that's not wholeness somehow, that you can do better
Speaker 1: than that. But there would have to be a race
Speaker 1: neutral language to get that across to people that you
Speaker 1: fashioning yourself as a victim is not a healthy form
Speaker 1: of spiritual completeness. Yeah. I mean there's a whole field
Speaker 1: that I'm very passionate about in positive psychology called post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth, and I think it's very much correlated with this,
Speaker 1: or with what I'm trying to say, which is that
Speaker 1: I would my intention and my wish for everyone, regardless
Speaker 1: of your skin color, is that you, even if you've
Speaker 1: had traumas in your past or and there are legit
Speaker 1: there are legit victims of course, that you would be
Speaker 1: able to find some meaning in it that can help
Speaker 1: you heal yourself and help others, you know, exactly. And
Speaker 1: I mean that's the point there is, you know, can
Speaker 1: you grow from the trauma as opposed to letting the
Speaker 1: trauma define you your whole life as the only thing
Speaker 1: about you, as the only thing that you are or
Speaker 1: could be or it could be. Yeah. You know. The
Speaker 1: funny thing is, though that Glenn Lowry and I were
Speaker 1: to this person too much but he really is useful.
Speaker 1: I think that someone like Ibram Kendy, who wrote How
Speaker 1: to Be an Anti Racist and is now the current
Speaker 1: star on the black race circuit, I think he would
Speaker 1: say that it is growth. Learning about the various ways
Speaker 1: that racism has manifested itself is growth, is learning, is thriving.
Speaker 1: For him, that's an endeavor that's worthy. And I mentioned
Speaker 1: him because everybody knows who he is, but he's a
Speaker 1: type that's a kind of person that you meet quite
Speaker 1: often in the media and in academia and in college
Speaker 1: towns and in cafes. And I wonder if there's a
Speaker 1: way to address not him personally, but people of that kind,
Speaker 1: because for many people of that kind, learning about the
Speaker 1: facets of racism is what it is to be an intellectual.
Speaker 1: And you feel validated, enriched by learning the ways in
Speaker 1: which the world has hurt your people, because if you
Speaker 1: know these things, then it means you know there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with you. For people like this, it's like that
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with me. It's all about racism. But of
Speaker 1: course there's a lot more to engage in the world,
Speaker 1: and theatrically hating upon an abstract conception of some oppressive
Speaker 1: group is a limiting way to be a person. Hard though,
Speaker 1: to get that across to somebody who's never been anything else.
Speaker 1: These are and I'm not saying all these things just
Speaker 1: to talk smack about a certain kind of person. I
Speaker 1: consider this a real challenge to getting past the blockages
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with today. That's one thing, and I
Speaker 1: can I can add on other bockages, and it's it's
Speaker 1: very tricky because you know I have I said earlier,
Speaker 1: I care deeply about social justice. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends who you know, you would probably call the
Speaker 1: elect you know, they're close friends who who recognize real
Speaker 1: problems such as real, well documented disparities and sentencing for
Speaker 1: the same crime that exists even for defendants with similar histories,
Speaker 1: as well as there is a research on police contact
Speaker 1: such as traffic stops, where it's documented that police are
Speaker 1: more like the hassle black people the way I mean
Speaker 1: I looked into the science and I mean I was
Speaker 1: actually thinking of writing an article and like the science
Speaker 1: of play and shorting out the fact from fiction. So
Speaker 1: there are real, you know, uh issues that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are are And I don't want to say
Speaker 1: complain about I think that really denigrates it that they're rightly,
Speaker 1: rightly what's the word, what's a better word? Real problems?
Speaker 1: What's are better word than complaining? Uh that they're noting,
Speaker 1: they're pointing out, they're pointing out object they're objecting, they
Speaker 1: are you know, they're speaking out against and one should
Speaker 1: definitely yes. So this is what is so tricky about
Speaker 1: this is is is holding that, keeping that and helping
Speaker 1: that while standing up against just nonsense, you know, nonsense
Speaker 1: in terms of uh, you know, some of these things
Speaker 1: I've seen, like we'll have school children say, well, if
Speaker 1: you're a white, step back, If you're black, step forward.
Speaker 1: If you're queer and black, take two steps forward. If
Speaker 1: your queer black and a woman take three steps forward.
Speaker 1: And then and then I mean they actually have these
Speaker 1: exercises in schools, and so they say, now everyone look
Speaker 1: at each other, or do you you know uh you
Speaker 1: know uh? Or actually I did it reverse. Actually if
Speaker 1: you're back, I did it completely reverse. The white persons.
Speaker 1: The white person is going to be all the way
Speaker 1: up the front, and it'd be like, look, do you
Speaker 1: see how many advantages you've had because of your white privilege?
Speaker 1: And then and kind of but making that the focus
Speaker 1: in as early and possible in school. You know, I
Speaker 1: look at that and and and I see from a
Speaker 1: psychological perspective that that can be pretty pretty damaging for
Speaker 1: people to h for especially young uh uh, labile minds,
Speaker 1: to developing minds, to cement into their brain that that's
Speaker 1: the only way they should look at their fellow humans.
Speaker 1: But how can I make that critique while at the
Speaker 1: same time fight for social justice. It feels like these
Speaker 1: are these are being treated as contradictory or or they
Speaker 1: can never be connected. I think that there needs to
Speaker 1: be a sharper between a program for Black America that
Speaker 1: can really work, and that frankly is part of my
Speaker 1: book Will Racism. Things that need to be looked at,
Speaker 1: such as the cops, and then all of this ideology
Speaker 1: that puts people into little boxes that strom Thurman would
Speaker 1: have loved. We have to realize that we can criticize
Speaker 1: that while being interested in the other things. And that's
Speaker 1: why the other things we need to be very clear
Speaker 1: on what needs to be done. And the problem is that,
Speaker 1: for example, the cops are nastier to black people. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt, however, the cops from all of the data.
Speaker 1: No matter how you look at it, the cops don't
Speaker 1: kill black people more easily, and so on the one hand, yeah,
Speaker 1: the sun goes down and fewer black people get stopped
Speaker 1: in carves. Yeah, that's true. Then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: there was a white version of George Floyd four years
Speaker 1: ago that nobody ever heard about. There's a white version
Speaker 1: of every black guy that gets killed under unjustified circumstances.
Speaker 1: That is not the idea that a black person needs
Speaker 1: to be especially afraid of being iced by the cops.
Speaker 1: The data simply doesn't support it. We need to be
Speaker 1: able to keep both of those things in mind. But
Speaker 1: the problem with the current ideology is that a person
Speaker 1: hears me say that and resists it. They assume that
Speaker 1: my numbers must be wrong, that I'm missing something, that
Speaker 1: I'm not on the right side of things, when really
Speaker 1: what I'm interested in is addressing what really is a
Speaker 1: problem for black people, which is this bias in terms
Speaker 1: of killing. We have a cop problem. We have a
Speaker 1: problem with the cops. The idea that we can't talk
Speaker 1: about that unless we talk about cops being people who
Speaker 1: murder black people. That temptation is more theater I think
Speaker 1: or many people just sincerely under the misimpression because of
Speaker 1: what the media portrays than constructive. Because if we're going
Speaker 1: to think of the cops as these people who murder
Speaker 1: black people with impunity because they can get away with
Speaker 1: it and they don't think of black people as as important,
Speaker 1: we're going after the wrong thing because I think all
Speaker 1: evidence is that that's not what cops are like. So
Speaker 1: we have real problems and we're encouraged to oversimplify everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so tricky in finding out, well, what is the
Speaker 1: real truth, because sometimes I see people in the anti
Speaker 1: racism camp and I hate the I hate these different
Speaker 1: don't ever label me, by the way, John, Please don't
Speaker 1: ever don't ever put me in a camp. But but people,
Speaker 1: you know that they've now put you like people they've
Speaker 1: put you, they put like Coleman Hughes, they put Glenn
Speaker 1: that you're all the anti you're the the anti woke camp, now,
Speaker 1: you know. But I do see some motivated reasoning or
Speaker 1: or bias even in that camp, right, And I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's intentional bias, but but I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that you know a lot of them are aren't scientists,
Speaker 1: you know, I've looked into the scientists I would even
Speaker 1: I would I would have little quibbles with some of
Speaker 1: the stuff you're in, like with the Friar for instance,
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. I read that, and actually
Speaker 1: I think that's been really well debunked, those Friar studies,
Speaker 1: because you can't condition on encounters in that analysis and
Speaker 1: get meaningful results given that encounters are known to be biased.
Speaker 1: And there is some really really valuable literature on research
Speaker 1: on killing unarmed people and race differences in that. This
Speaker 1: is why I was thinking maybe it would be worthy
Speaker 1: for me to actually write a art and totally my
Speaker 1: attempt to be unbiased. You know, I have no no
Speaker 1: card in this race. I don't know what. I'm just
Speaker 1: a nerd. I'm just a nerd to really get because
Speaker 1: when you actually look at the you know, the little
Speaker 1: the things. So I think we have to be careful,
Speaker 1: you know, even someone like you has to be careful
Speaker 1: of making sure that you don't underplay things as well.
Speaker 1: So uh and and I think you know you you
Speaker 1: do a pretty good job overall. And I just I
Speaker 1: do have, you know, just some quibbles and it seems
Speaker 1: like you're you're you're so open, you're so open to
Speaker 1: even listening to that, which I really appreciate. The thing is,
Speaker 1: if you're in my position, inevitably you're going to make
Speaker 1: some mistakes because life goes by very quickly, and I'm
Speaker 1: not that kind of scientist, and so I'm going to
Speaker 1: miss stuff definitely, and I figure to an extent it's
Speaker 1: inevitable that someone like me is going to slip up.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I try my best to assess the evidence as
Speaker 1: clearly as closely as I can. So, for example, Roland
Speaker 1: Fryar has his answers to some of these things. I'm
Speaker 1: not in a position to assess whether or not his
Speaker 1: answers are complete shutdowns to the criticisms. You actually, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk. We should talk more, John, we should talk more.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, these things, but yeah, these things are hard.
Speaker 1: And I know what you mean in that it's easy
Speaker 1: to be on one side and to not want to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the other people might have some points here
Speaker 1: in there, which which is why I say the cops
Speaker 1: are meaner, that there's no doubt about that. There's a
Speaker 1: reason why black people kind of cower at the cops. However,
Speaker 1: to me, it's almost inconveniently solid. You don't need to
Speaker 1: cower that they're gonna shoot you. That's not what goes on.
Speaker 1: It's just that they are menacing. But yeah, this stuff,
Speaker 1: this stuff is tough and dueling studies. I know because
Speaker 1: I am an academic and linguistics I know how elusive
Speaker 1: the truth can be. That's certainly going to be true
Speaker 1: with every field. And if you're trying to wear a
Speaker 1: lot of hats, yeah, gonna slip up, but yes, I
Speaker 1: do try my best. Well, I think that's the point.
Speaker 1: Is like you admit that you're not perfect and that
Speaker 1: and I'm just I'm really impressed even just in your
Speaker 1: response there. Feel like you're the type of person that
Speaker 1: if I wolded you up on articles after this call,
Speaker 1: I was like, Hey, John, I just would love you
Speaker 1: to read some of these papers and maybe rethink some
Speaker 1: even like this paragraph you wrote in this newsletter. I
Speaker 1: would want to know because I am really interested in
Speaker 1: the truth and the truth is hard. But yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: it has to be the real facts, including being open
Speaker 1: to being wrong. And you know, I'm human. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna let myself be wrong too much. But if you
Speaker 1: don't let yourself be wrong, at all. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: you're dealing with truth. You don't want to be a partisan,
Speaker 1: so you have to hit It's a fine line. It's
Speaker 1: such a fine line, and man, I just wish that
Speaker 1: it just wasn't so these camps weren't so far apart.
Speaker 1: So there's such a wide goal right now. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a for instance. I was talking to someone earlier
Speaker 1: today who you would probably put in the elect camp
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, I said, have you, by
Speaker 1: a chance come across the rings of John Kwoter? You know,
Speaker 1: I think he says a lot of sensible things. And
Speaker 1: this individual said, oh, are you talking about that black conservative?
Speaker 1: And the thing is, I don't even know what your
Speaker 1: politics are. I mean, you could be a conservative, but
Speaker 1: I never got the sense of you were conservative. And
Speaker 1: I think, what is There's there's something going on here
Speaker 1: where people in this elect group, as you would describe
Speaker 1: a certain a certain style or a certain idea of
Speaker 1: the methods that they would propose our use, they are
Speaker 1: they immediately dismiss critiques as conservative. And if you're black,
Speaker 1: you're a black conservative or even at at worse. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever been called an uncle Tom
Speaker 1: has that been something you've heard? Of course? So how
Speaker 1: can I like, can I get you and Kendy on
Speaker 1: this podcast like talking to each other? Like is is it?
Speaker 1: Do we really live in a world where that that's
Speaker 1: like impossible? Well, you know it's with your elect friend.
Speaker 1: The truth is, we all only have so much time.
Speaker 1: We can't pay attention to everybody, and as intelligent people,
Speaker 1: we're going to draw patterns. And so if you're going
Speaker 1: to decide who you're going to read and listen to,
Speaker 1: if you know that a person is quote unquote a
Speaker 1: black conservative because of a certain list that he appears on,
Speaker 1: well maybe you're just going to dismiss him because you've
Speaker 1: got better things to do. I completely understand that. The
Speaker 1: only way I can cut through that is to make
Speaker 1: it known that no, I'm a black liberal who has
Speaker 1: never voted for a Republican and yet I feel these ways.
Speaker 1: But if he never happens to catch that that is
Speaker 1: the truth about me or she, then I completely understand.
Speaker 1: But no, there are certain conversations that can't be had.
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, with Kendy, Kendy shows in things
Speaker 1: that he says on social media and beyond, Kendy doesn't
Speaker 1: know what a debate is. Kendy genuinely doesn't know what
Speaker 1: the nature of academic or intellectual debate is. He thinks
Speaker 1: that he has found facts. I think he thinks that
Speaker 1: what a scholar is is somebody who reads secondary sources
Speaker 1: and takes in the facts. And honestly, I think that's
Speaker 1: as far as he goes. I'm sorry to say it,
Speaker 1: but it's painfully clear that it's true. And so he
Speaker 1: thinks that a debate, for example, with Coleman Hughes wouldn't
Speaker 1: be worth it because the two of them would spend
Speaker 1: time clarifying what their positions were rather than having a debate. Now,
Speaker 1: in other words, he doesn't know what a debate even is.
Speaker 1: So what would the point be of getting into a
Speaker 1: room with Kendy. A lot of people say on Twitter
Speaker 1: all the time that Kendy and I need to have
Speaker 1: a debate, But he doesn't know what it would be
Speaker 1: to have conflicting ideas. He doesn't understand that anybody could
Speaker 1: have a morally legitimate idea other than his. So no
Speaker 1: with someone like him in particular, and people who think
Speaker 1: like him, No, But I do think there are other
Speaker 1: people if you kind of cast it carefully where they
Speaker 1: would understand that you don't agree with them, but you're
Speaker 1: not evil, and you could have it happen and it
Speaker 1: could be illuminating, but it's tough. Like they were trying
Speaker 1: to get me do, get me to do one of
Speaker 1: the Monk debates about a month ago, and they were
Speaker 1: trying to pair me with somebody and with one person
Speaker 1: after another. It was clear that the people who were
Speaker 1: proposed only wanted to have debates with me where the
Speaker 1: question that we would argue was one that they could
Speaker 1: easily win, where the job was that they were going
Speaker 1: to demonstrate that racism exists. And they seem to assume
Speaker 1: that I was going to argue that racism doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: They just couldn't see beyond that. And a lot of
Speaker 1: these people are very prominent, very intelligent, and very credential.
Speaker 1: That's all they know. It should be better than that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it can be difficult to get faster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And another reason why it could be difficult is you've
Speaker 1: rightly pointed out I subscribed to your newsletter, and I
Speaker 1: think you say a lot of really, even though I
Speaker 1: said I have some quibbles, I mean, you know something
Speaker 1: else I want to point out, which is something that
Speaker 1: I want to point out that I think you're quite
Speaker 1: right about, is a sort of anti science thing that's
Speaker 1: cropping up on the left. And one of these examples
Speaker 1: you point out is the idea that all unequal outcomes
Speaker 1: must necessarily be due to unequal opportunity or racism. You know,
Speaker 1: that we can't have multidetermined problems, And that's a very
Speaker 1: anti science stance, and I don't know what to do
Speaker 1: with that as a scientist who I believe that And
Speaker 1: if we're going to make changes in society, it has
Speaker 1: to be built on a foundation of reality of truth
Speaker 1: as much as possible. That's always been the spirit I've
Speaker 1: had when I've wanted to make change, is well, let's
Speaker 1: see what actually needs to be changed, first of all.
Speaker 1: But if we can't even have that discussion, like if
Speaker 1: we can't even talk about the truth part of it,
Speaker 1: then how in the world are we going to make progress.
Speaker 1: Linear reasoning is white, is what a lot of these
Speaker 1: people say, and many of them are white. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: Linear reasoning is white, then there's just no discussion to
Speaker 1: be had. Yeah, why is that linear reasoning as opposed
Speaker 1: to multi varied interactive, simultaneous system thinking like why can't
Speaker 1: we do that? That's what I'm into. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: never mind that that's the holistic thing that I think
Speaker 1: we're supposed to think black people have. But if you
Speaker 1: put it that way, it's white because the words are
Speaker 1: too latinate, it's complicated and it takes effort to master,
Speaker 1: and so no, black people just want to dance. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's shows that where we're getting. Yeah, I mean, but
Speaker 1: that's so patronizing to black people, isn't it? Like I have,
Speaker 1: I feel like I hold people on higher esteeme than that,
Speaker 1: not this Robin Di Angelo kind of person, and I
Speaker 1: mean kind of person that there's a demographic tilt. It's
Speaker 1: often people like her. And yeah, they think that they're
Speaker 1: doing black people a favor by I think essentially they
Speaker 1: think of us as motown singers, and they think that
Speaker 1: because they like those songs and they like that flavor,
Speaker 1: and well, there's other things I could say that I won't.
Speaker 1: I think they think that they're paying black people a
Speaker 1: compliment by portraying us as a rank attacks. But I
Speaker 1: hope a critical mass of black people can understand the
Speaker 1: insult in that and resist it and I think that
Speaker 1: a critical mass of white people can see it, but
Speaker 1: they're afraid of being called a racist on Twitter. We
Speaker 1: have got to get people past this fear of being
Speaker 1: called a racist on Twitter by people like Robin di Angelo,
Speaker 1: because frankly, the world keeps spinning and justice is going
Speaker 1: to require that we get used to being called racists
Speaker 1: on Twitter and white supremacists on Twitter and seeing gifts
Speaker 1: that roll their eyes. You're going to see Stanley from
Speaker 1: the office going like this. I don't know how often
Speaker 1: I've gotten that one. You're going to see it, and
Speaker 1: other people are going to see you getting the Stanley
Speaker 1: rolled eyes. But I think that if we're going to
Speaker 1: pursue justice, we have to let Stanley roll his eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's let's let's leave on that note and
Speaker 1: then go into the Q and A. If you're down
Speaker 1: for a little bit of the Twitter Q and A,
Speaker 1: I can do it. I can do Q and A
Speaker 1: for exactly seven minutes. So let's do it. Great, great
Speaker 1: sou Briy Guy says, what are some good points that
Speaker 1: anti racists have made? I really like that question. You're
Speaker 1: thinking hard about this. The general idea that racism is
Speaker 1: not just calling people names is very important once you
Speaker 1: go from there. If you're talking about anti racism in
Speaker 1: the way that we been acquainted with it over about
Speaker 1: the past five years, I don't have much more good
Speaker 1: to say than that. And that's not me being a partisan.
Speaker 1: It's that that stuff has really gone down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: But to teach people, there's a certain kind of person
Speaker 1: who says, I'm not racist. I haven't got a racist
Speaker 1: bone in my body. And what they mean is they've
Speaker 1: never called anybody the N word. No, that won't do.
Speaker 1: You do need to go further than that, that works
Speaker 1: Beyond that. What we're getting is black people are chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: And I just know I can't. I don't have anything
Speaker 1: good to say about the literature that we're talking about
Speaker 1: these days. I'm looking now at one of those books
Speaker 1: and it's not Kenny's, and it's not Dangelo's's a couple
Speaker 1: of other people's, and I'm thinking I actually read it. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't find a valuable insight in the whole two
Speaker 1: hundred and ten pages. And that's not rhetoric. That's unfortunately
Speaker 1: my actual opinion. I'm sorry about that. It's really unfortunate.
Speaker 1: You know, because I feel like you would you would
Speaker 1: if you if you saw something. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like you I have it. You're not like how to
Speaker 1: get anyone. I don't get this. I'm really not. I
Speaker 1: try something, mister C says, how do I convince my
Speaker 1: wife that wolkeness is a major problem, is infiltrating institutions,
Speaker 1: and is a general threat to the tenets of a
Speaker 1: free society? So far, I've convinced her only that I'm
Speaker 1: a tinfoil hat wearing lunatic. You know. The answer to
Speaker 1: that is self promoting. Reading an article that I wrote
Speaker 1: in The Atlantic about all the missives that I was
Speaker 1: getting now a year ago from what I call in
Speaker 1: my email file aggrieved academics, about how this way of
Speaker 1: thinking is penetrating the entire nation. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are genuinely under the impression that one thing they read
Speaker 1: about in the Times is it, and then maybe there's
Speaker 1: one other thing because they have other interests. I understand
Speaker 1: that it's everywhere, and I am in a unique position
Speaker 1: to know this because Glenn Lowry and I have become
Speaker 1: unofficial clearing houses of this sort of thing. Read how
Speaker 1: universal it was a year ago and back then I
Speaker 1: was referring to what was I think one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten emails. Now it's well over seven hundred. It's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Read the Atlantic article called it was called something like
Speaker 1: academics are really scared. I forget what they called it,
Speaker 1: but read that and then say that this is not
Speaker 1: a real problem. Okay. Erin Anderson says, if you were
Speaker 1: going to debate any one of the elect who would
Speaker 1: you prefer, and why Kendy? It would There'd be no
Speaker 1: point DiAngelo. It wouldn't make sense because I'd look mean
Speaker 1: because for various reasons. Yeah, you know, Tim Wise is
Speaker 1: an elect and he and I debated a good twelve
Speaker 1: years ago, and his side wand the debate, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: they should have we did an intelligence squared. But he's
Speaker 1: really good and I completely disagree with his perspective, and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind debating him. Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't contrary to what people seem to think, I
Speaker 1: don't walk around thinking I want to get out and
Speaker 1: fight somebody. But yeah, he would be interesting to debate also,
Speaker 1: And you know what, this will be the last question today.
Speaker 1: You've been really patient with your and generous with your time.
Speaker 1: If I Crumb Daala crumb Cave, that's their name, that's
Speaker 1: the Twitter handle to ask if I wanted to get
Speaker 1: more into musicals, what's the best place to start. The
Speaker 1: way you start is see as I get older that
Speaker 1: that gets hard. The debt center of American musical theater
Speaker 1: is Stephen Sondheim. What you start with is not Sweeney Todd,
Speaker 1: which is weird of him. You start with Company Follies
Speaker 1: and a little night Music. You start there. Those shows
Speaker 1: are now fifty years old. They're not current. But Sondheim
Speaker 1: was referring to the musical theater of past, and he
Speaker 1: was also hearkening to what musical theater would be after that.
Speaker 1: You need a friend like me to give you the
Speaker 1: twenty five shows you listen to before him, and the
Speaker 1: twenty five shows you listen to after, And you know,
Speaker 1: how do you pick? But you've got to listen to Showboat,
Speaker 1: and you've got to listen to Guys and Dolls, and
Speaker 1: you've got to listen to Kiss Me, Kate, My Fair Lady,
Speaker 1: and Fiddler on the Roof. That's on one side. On
Speaker 1: the other side, you need to listen to nine. You
Speaker 1: don't need to listen to Hamilton because as wonderful as
Speaker 1: it is, you know how wrap sounds not that, but
Speaker 1: you need nine. You need to engage hair spray. Many
Speaker 1: people are going to say why that, But I have
Speaker 1: my reasons. You need to engage. As you move on
Speaker 1: the other side, the really excellent things. You need to
Speaker 1: listen to a chorus line. One should hear that, one
Speaker 1: should listen to It gets so multifarious. As you come
Speaker 1: on to this side, you should listen to Legally Blonde.
Speaker 1: And finally you should listen to Gray Gardens. They miss
Speaker 1: the miss no actually because only because it's everywhere, Like
Speaker 1: this person probably saw the movie. This person has heard
Speaker 1: three or four big songs like if you're gonna educate yourself,
Speaker 1: if you've never heard lame Is yet, you've got to
Speaker 1: jump that in there. But I'm assuming that she knows
Speaker 1: lams or he knows lams. Well, how okay, I'll clarify.
Speaker 1: They should listen to Stars from Lays the one song,
Speaker 1: just one. So that was my dream role. By the way, John,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you knew this that I was
Speaker 1: a professional opera singer. Uh before before I became a psychologist.
Speaker 1: I was My dream was to be Javert on Broadway.
Speaker 1: I had this dream to actually be a professor at
Speaker 1: n YU and cognitive science and to be on Broadway.
Speaker 1: And the lame is being Javert. And while I didn't,
Speaker 1: yeh look at that sing I'm I'm a bass baritone,
Speaker 1: but yeah, me too. But it's stars often that is
Speaker 1: a that song elates people, and I definitely understand John Migwater.
Speaker 1: Would you would you accompany me someday to that song?
Speaker 1: It would be that would be hugely fun. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying. That's my Yeah, No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean that was what I wanted to do for
Speaker 1: a long time. Oh. Also, this person needs to listen
Speaker 1: to Porgy and Best, which is an opera, but still
Speaker 1: listen to the whole thing from beginning to end, because
Speaker 1: that's just very important music. It's musical theater plus. But
Speaker 1: that's what you do after you listen to these other
Speaker 1: What did I give this person like thirteen shows? So yeah,
Speaker 1: thirteen and a half. Well great, that's it more than
Speaker 1: enough for them to get it, get us start. Hey, John,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for your time today, and I wish
Speaker 1: you all the best with your two books this year.
Speaker 1: We will see thank you Scott, we will keep it
Speaker 1: going and yeah, you know where to find me. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also,
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