Speaker 1: We live in a society where Race Trump's Merit.
Speaker 2: American companies are more interested in meeting diversity quotas than
Speaker 2: hiring the best and the most talented people. So how
Speaker 2: soon will it be until we have surgeons who don't
Speaker 2: know how to operate, pilots who can't fly, and what
Speaker 2: are the dangers of it all? New York Times best
Speaker 2: selling author Heather McDonald joins me to talk about our
Speaker 2: new book, When Race Trump's Merit. Here's Heether, Heather. I
Speaker 2: always love having you on the show. You're always willing
Speaker 2: to have conversations that everyone else is afraid of. But
Speaker 2: the conversations you're willing to have are the ones we
Speaker 2: need to have. So I appreciate what you do, and
Speaker 2: also I'm excited to talk to you about this new book,
Speaker 2: When Race Trump's Merit.
Speaker 3: Lisa, It's such a pleasure to be with you, and
Speaker 3: you're one of the great interviewers out there, So thank
Speaker 3: you for having me on.
Speaker 2: Well, that is very kind coming from you, so I
Speaker 2: really appreciate it. You know, so your book talks about
Speaker 2: disparate impact theory.
Speaker 1: You know, what is it? What should people know about it?
Speaker 3: Well, what they should know is that every major institution
Speaker 3: of American or Western civilization is now.
Speaker 4: In the crosshairs.
Speaker 3: It's all coming down unless we have a better explanation
Speaker 3: for racial disparities than racism. Right now, the left controls
Speaker 3: the discourse, and if there's any institution that has anything
Speaker 3: less than thirteen percent black representation in it, So if
Speaker 3: Google's engineering force is not thirteen percent black, or an
Speaker 3: elite law firm doesn't have thirteen percent black partners, the
Speaker 3: only allowable explanation at present is racism, and when that
Speaker 3: holds the left winds, it is all coming down. Disparate
Speaker 3: impact is the idea that any kind of meritocratic standard
Speaker 3: that has a negative effect on preferred favorite victim groups
Speaker 3: is by definition racist. So we saw disparate impact working
Speaker 3: decades ago. It began overwhelmingly in sort of blue collar jobs,
Speaker 3: where if a written exam to become a police officer
Speaker 3: or a firefighter, if blacks were not passing the exam
Speaker 3: at the same rate as whites, and this exam is
Speaker 3: completely color blind, Lisa, it's objective. It's not graded by
Speaker 3: some racist cop, it's graded by a computer. And these
Speaker 3: exams would be at a very low level of elementary
Speaker 3: school reading skills and math skills. But in order to test,
Speaker 3: can a potential policemen read the patrol guide or can
Speaker 3: a potential firemen understand the chemical instructions on using different
Speaker 3: chemist chemicals to fight fires.
Speaker 4: If Blacks were not passing that.
Speaker 3: Test at an equal rate, then the test has to
Speaker 3: throw out be thrown out. The idea is the test
Speaker 3: has a disparate impact, bad bad test.
Speaker 4: We're going to blame the test. And now we're doing
Speaker 4: the same thing. We're getting rid of SATs, we're getting.
Speaker 3: Rid of law school admissions tests. There's a big pressure
Speaker 3: on to get rid of the medical college admission test.
Speaker 4: We're getting rid of grading in medical.
Speaker 3: Licensing exams because Blacks don't do as well. So disparate
Speaker 3: impact is being used to take down every meritocratic standard.
Speaker 3: And it also explains if you're looking around your world
Speaker 3: for the last two three years since George Floyd, and
Speaker 3: you're saying, my god, what's going on with the criminal
Speaker 3: justice system. Why aren't these prosecutors prosecuting theft and shoplifting
Speaker 3: and resisting a rest and disorderly conduct and gun possession
Speaker 3: and drug possession. Why are they throwing out all these
Speaker 3: cases and just saying go free, disparate impact another that's
Speaker 3: the reason again, because it turns out that if you
Speaker 3: enforce the criminal law in a colorblind, neutral, constitutional manner,
Speaker 3: you will have a negative disparate effect on black criminals.
Speaker 3: And we have decided as a society that we would
Speaker 3: rather not enforce the law and allow criminals back on
Speaker 3: the street to pray overwhelmingly on minority victims than to
Speaker 3: enforce the law in a legal manner and have a
Speaker 3: disparate impact and have a disproportionate number of blacks in prison.
Speaker 2: What drove this or when did you start saying it
Speaker 2: take hold of a versus society.
Speaker 3: Well, I've been watching the attack on merit and the
Speaker 3: idea that any kind of standard is racist for decades.
Speaker 3: But things really got insane. They got at a sort
Speaker 3: of psychotic breakdown, George Floyd, And that's when you had
Speaker 3: every single important institution in this country, whether it's the
Speaker 3: of science, of medicine, the arts, music, theater, basic functions
Speaker 3: of government, all standing up and saying we are by
Speaker 3: definition racist because we have too many whites in our organization.
Speaker 3: The history of art is racist because European art is
Speaker 3: predominantly white.
Speaker 4: Well, guess what.
Speaker 3: That's what the demographics were. There was not discrimination going
Speaker 3: on against black classical music composers in the eighteenth century because.
Speaker 4: There were none.
Speaker 3: But right now, all you need to do to take
Speaker 3: down an institution or an individual is to say it's
Speaker 3: too white.
Speaker 4: The New York.
Speaker 3: Times will routinely, if it wants to discredit a judge
Speaker 3: or a prosecutor or a police officer, it will say
Speaker 3: a white judge. Here's a rule of thumb. If the
Speaker 3: race of a criminal is not identified, it's a black criminal,
Speaker 3: because if it's a white criminal, the New York Times
Speaker 3: at CNN will tell you it's a white criminal.
Speaker 4: To be white today is to be at the bottom.
Speaker 3: To be a white male, a straight white male, is
Speaker 3: to be at the absolute bottom of the totem pole.
Speaker 3: The reality today is not white privilege.
Speaker 4: It's black privilege. If there's a privilege, it's family privilege.
Speaker 3: But if you want to get your child into a
Speaker 3: selective school, hope that he is a underrepresented minority, and
Speaker 3: if he's a white male, you can kind of forget
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, how hard would it be for a white
Speaker 2: male to get into college these days?
Speaker 4: It's very hard.
Speaker 3: I mean I got a friend sent me a notice
Speaker 3: he'd gotten from a friend. My friend teaches criminology at
Speaker 3: a military academy, about his daughter who has perfect SATs.
Speaker 4: You have sixteen hundred SATs.
Speaker 3: Perfect National Merit scholar, you know, a plus on every
Speaker 3: single AP course under the sun Honor Society's athlete. She's
Speaker 3: been waitlisted at every school she applied to because she's white.
Speaker 3: Being female doesn't even get her over the bar. And meanwhile,
Speaker 3: every school, every single selective college, employs vast racial preferences.
Speaker 3: It admits black and Hispanic students with SAT scores and
Speaker 3: GPAs that are so low that they would be automatically
Speaker 3: disqualifying if presented by whites and Asians.
Speaker 4: But they're brought in, and these.
Speaker 3: Racial preferences do their beneficiaries. Alleged beneficiary is no good whatsoever.
Speaker 4: You're putting students up.
Speaker 3: To fail, if you're catapulting them into a college for
Speaker 3: which they're not competitively prepared. Black students should go to
Speaker 3: college on the same terms as everybody else, which is
Speaker 3: with peers that share their academic qualifications.
Speaker 4: It's cruel to put somebody.
Speaker 3: If Mit admitted me with six hundreds on my math
Speaker 3: SATs and all my peers had eight hundred, in other words,
Speaker 3: a perfect score on the math SATs, and MIT said, oh,
Speaker 3: we have to have more females, We need more gender diversity.
Speaker 3: So it brings me in, what's going to happen to
Speaker 3: me my first year? I Am going to fail calculus
Speaker 3: because the teaching is pitched to my peers who had
Speaker 3: eight hundreds.
Speaker 4: They had perfect math scores.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what happens to black students that are admitted
Speaker 3: to selective colleges. They end up switching out of STEM majors,
Speaker 3: they end up at the bottom of their class. The
Speaker 3: law school data is utterly horrific. Black law students, you know,
Speaker 3: the vast majority end up at the bottom tenth of
Speaker 3: their classes. This is after neutral, color, blind, objective, non
Speaker 3: human graded tests. So we are watering down the caliber
Speaker 3: of our institutions. Medical schools are admitting students on the
Speaker 3: basis of race, not merit. They're promoting doctors on the
Speaker 3: basis of race not merit. Same as happening in engineering schools.
Speaker 4: We are playing with fire.
Speaker 2: Lisa, Well, I'm awful at math, so you know, God
Speaker 2: helpt if they admitted me, and then and every and
Speaker 2: every teacher I would come across, so it would be
Speaker 2: it would be a headache for all involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but these days, you know, you cannot be sure
Speaker 3: that you're not going to be chosen to had some
Speaker 3: mathematics counsel because you're a female.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what's going on math. You know, the American.
Speaker 3: Association of Math Society is is always saying, oh, we're
Speaker 3: racist and we're sexist, and so I mean, I've been chosen.
Speaker 3: I was asked to be on some Fox Nation program
Speaker 3: on interest rates and I said, what, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I think about instruments. Am I a gender quota for
Speaker 3: you guys?
Speaker 4: And they basically said yes. So it happens constantly.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick commercial break more with Heather MacDonald
Speaker 2: about when race Trump's merit. I mean, of course there's
Speaker 2: an impact to tell all of this, right, I mean
Speaker 2: we're talking about a lot of jobs, like the medical
Speaker 2: profession or engineering. I mean, so if you look at
Speaker 2: these professions where competency is critical to preserving life, what
Speaker 2: impact does this have? If we're leading people to posicians
Speaker 2: who aren't qualified.
Speaker 3: It's going to eventually put lives at risk for sure.
Speaker 3: What's happening right now? Is it slowing down research? You
Speaker 3: have the federal science agencies that are telling labs you
Speaker 3: should hire if you're in Alzheimer's lab, you should not
Speaker 3: hire the most qualified scientists if they're white and Asian.
Speaker 3: You should hire on.
Speaker 4: The basis of diversity.
Speaker 3: Well, given the academic skills gaps. And you know, this
Speaker 3: is what I do here is actually give readers the
Speaker 3: data about why it is that diversity is at this
Speaker 3: point incompatible with meritocracy. You can have diversity or you
Speaker 3: can have meritocracy. You cannot have both. Here's the facts, Lisa.
Speaker 3: Sixty six percent of black twelfth graders do not even
Speaker 3: possess partial mastery of twelfth grade math skills. What's a
Speaker 3: twelfth grade math skill being able to do an arithmetical
Speaker 3: calculation or being able to recognize the linear function on
Speaker 3: a graph. Sixty six percent of black twelfth graders cannot
Speaker 3: even do partially arithmetical calculations.
Speaker 4: Only seven percent.
Speaker 3: Of black twelfth graders are competent in those skills. In
Speaker 3: other words, they can perform them, and the number who
Speaker 3: are advanced is so small to not even show up statistically.
Speaker 3: This is based on the National Association National Assessment of
Speaker 3: Education Progress. So it's got tens of thousands of students
Speaker 3: taking these exams. But we have decided, even though there
Speaker 3: we've got these massive academic skills gaps, that the only
Speaker 3: allowable explanation for the lack of thirteen percent black physicists
Speaker 3: at MIT or Harvard or cal Tech, or thirteen percent
Speaker 3: black cancer researchers at the University of Pennsylvania or Mass
Speaker 3: General is racism.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 3: The reason is the academic skills gap.
Speaker 4: But we have the federal.
Speaker 3: Agencies now, the National Institutes of Health, national Science Foundation,
Speaker 3: telling labs you must have proportional representation in your lab
Speaker 3: or you ain't getting any more federal money. So we
Speaker 3: have decided that diversity is more important than medical progress,
Speaker 3: curing cancer or curing Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 1: You talk in your book, you're right.
Speaker 2: The reality remains that a dysfunctional inner city culture is
Speaker 2: hindering black progress. You just talked about the skills gap
Speaker 2: that is happening. You had mentioned some of those scores
Speaker 2: where you know, unfortunately black students are being left behind.
Speaker 1: So what do we do about that?
Speaker 2: You know, talk a little bit about this dysfunctional inner
Speaker 2: city culture and what we can do to help You
Speaker 2: know where zip code, for instance, does it determine a
Speaker 2: child's future.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm going to be really really stark
Speaker 4: and bleak here. There's what we can do is less.
Speaker 4: The culture has to heal itself.
Speaker 3: There has to be an This is on academic achievement.
Speaker 3: You have this pervasive view that to study hard, to
Speaker 3: care about your studies and exams is acting white. So
Speaker 3: black students who do take their homework home and do
Speaker 3: it and are not truant, they're criticized for acting white.
Speaker 3: There's nothing that anybody else can do to fix that.
Speaker 3: The students have to study. You can't come from the
Speaker 3: outside and put that knowledge into students' heads. Parents have
Speaker 3: to take responsibility for their children. If every black family
Speaker 3: acted like an Asian family with regards to academic achievements
Speaker 3: and effort, and after ten or fifteen years we still
Speaker 3: saw racial disparities, then I'm going to contemplate that it
Speaker 3: may be systemic racism. But right now, when the behavioral
Speaker 3: disparities are so great, when the behavior that you see
Speaker 3: in inner city classrooms is so talentter productive, the reason
Speaker 3: that black kids are disciplined more. It's not teacher racism,
Speaker 3: as Barack Obama claimed, and as Joe Biden claims, it's because.
Speaker 4: They are acting out.
Speaker 3: More Black teenagers males between the ages of fourteen and
Speaker 3: seventeen commit gun homicide at least at ten times the
Speaker 3: rate of white and Hispanic male teens in those ages combined,
Speaker 3: at least.
Speaker 4: And then we think that, well, if.
Speaker 3: Those same teens that are gangbanging, we expect that they're
Speaker 3: being docile and obedient in classroom. And the only reason
Speaker 3: that explains the higher discipline rate is teacher racism. It's preposterous. No,
Speaker 3: I've seen these classrooms.
Speaker 4: They are chaotic, and then the.
Speaker 3: Teachers are told, you can't impose discipline because that has
Speaker 3: a desperate impact. Another key disparate impact theme. You can't
Speaker 3: impose those expulsions or suspensions because it has a disparate
Speaker 3: impact on unruly black students. So the first thing that
Speaker 3: has to happen is a cultural change. Yes, there's things
Speaker 3: that the rest of society have been trying for years,
Speaker 3: whether it's the conservative recipes of vouchers and charter schools.
Speaker 3: I would say schools should be relentlessly insistent on complete
Speaker 3: self control, no excuses for bad behavior, no excuses for
Speaker 3: you just ignoring exams for being truant.
Speaker 4: The left would say we need more spending.
Speaker 3: That's quite questionable given that many inner city schools on
Speaker 3: a per capita basis are funded at much higher rates
Speaker 3: than any other schools. The money is not the problem.
Speaker 3: The problem is the lack of a culture of academic achievements.
Speaker 2: So do you think any sort of bring you just
Speaker 2: laying out the break down that's happening in schools, So
Speaker 2: do you think you know, obviously many of those of
Speaker 2: those a's and the right, you know, support school choice,
Speaker 2: So do.
Speaker 1: You think that would have an impact?
Speaker 2: I mean, I agree with you that parents are the
Speaker 2: most important thing in a child's life.
Speaker 1: But you know, would school choice help well, I.
Speaker 4: Think the data is kind of mixed.
Speaker 3: Uh, I'm betraying my conservative policy want colleagues here. But
Speaker 3: certainly every parent that does want a stricter environment for.
Speaker 4: His child should have that option. But it's not always clear.
Speaker 3: You know that that inner city voters are voting for
Speaker 3: politicians that are promising these I mean, I think we've
Speaker 3: got a little bit.
Speaker 4: Of a whitewash going on. We saw this as well
Speaker 4: with crime, with.
Speaker 3: The Chicago neighborhoods that had the highest crime rates were
Speaker 3: the also ones that voted most for the anti police
Speaker 3: mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson in the recent Chicago mayoral election runoff,
Speaker 3: putting a somebody who believes that the police are racists
Speaker 3: in the mayoralty.
Speaker 4: This is a total disaster.
Speaker 3: So yes, it would help, but I think that the
Speaker 3: real problem again is culture, and you've got to have
Speaker 3: black leaders getting up there and saying, don't use the
Speaker 3: excuse of racism. You have efficacy, you have power, you
Speaker 3: have agency. And I am a supporter of what used
Speaker 3: to be called the no excuses charter schools, and you know.
Speaker 4: They've gone left as well.
Speaker 3: The insanity of this, you know, race trumping merit idea
Speaker 3: has has even poisoned some of the best charter schools
Speaker 3: and networks like KIP. This is an acronym k i
Speaker 3: PP that was founded by these two white civil rights
Speaker 3: activists and it had It was one of these no
Speaker 3: excuse of schools that every every everything a child did
Speaker 3: basically during the day was scripted.
Speaker 4: They had to the students have.
Speaker 3: To walk in line, the teachers have a very strictly
Speaker 3: regulated way of teaching, and they're basically trying to inculcate
Speaker 3: the self control and deferred gratification that these kids are
Speaker 3: not getting at home in these chaotic inner city homes,
Speaker 3: and to give them the ability to have the virtues,
Speaker 3: the bourgeois virtues of self control that will allow them
Speaker 3: to hold a job. So KIP was a good leader
Speaker 3: in this well.
Speaker 4: After George Floyd.
Speaker 3: They decided to retire their motto, which was work hard,
Speaker 3: be nice, because they thought that embodied white supremacist values.
Speaker 3: So another example of an institution that would rather flagellate
Speaker 3: itself for phantom racism. KIP was not a racist institution.
Speaker 3: It was founded on the hope of racial equality. And
Speaker 3: yet all of white America melted down and decided that
Speaker 3: it was the problem and that it would not have
Speaker 3: any expectations of good law abiding, you know, self disciplined
Speaker 3: behavior on the part of blacks.
Speaker 2: That's concerning to hear, you know, And it's always interesting
Speaker 2: to get different perspectives on the issue because that's how
Speaker 2: you learn, you know, getting different opinions, and you know,
Speaker 2: kind of just having those conversations you had mentioned Obama
Speaker 2: and Biden, you know, two people who are really intentionally
Speaker 2: trying to drive racial divisions in the country. You know
Speaker 2: what do they get from that? You know, what do
Speaker 2: they get from from driving this this equity stuff.
Speaker 3: Self respect, self love? You know, they view themselves as
Speaker 3: superior to these yahoo maga hat wearing red state Americans,
Speaker 3: and so it's just an incredible infusion of virtue they feel.
Speaker 3: You know, the biggest virtue in America today is to
Speaker 3: be anti racist. Uh, nothing else really matters.
Speaker 4: You know, being a good parent.
Speaker 3: Raising law abiding children, staying married, accomplishing you know what,
Speaker 3: learning to the up most of your capacity.
Speaker 4: That doesn't really get rewarded, but being anti racist does.
Speaker 3: So they get acclaim and plaudits from the mainstream media
Speaker 3: and from academia. But it is they are parasites on
Speaker 3: a civilization that did value excellence and that believe that
Speaker 3: human beings should not be limited by by the trivialities
Speaker 3: of identity. Now, I am not going to pay over
Speaker 3: America's horrible history.
Speaker 4: It's just sickening.
Speaker 3: Hypocrisy that the centuries of gratuitous cruelty towards blacks. I mean,
Speaker 3: one wonders you know, who were these Southerners? They were
Speaker 3: absolutely insane in their hatreds and nastiness, and a lot
Speaker 3: of the North was for very long as well. So
Speaker 3: that is a reality, and it undercuts any facile conservative
Speaker 3: narrative about America being founded on equality. It was not.
Speaker 4: We were a white supremacist state.
Speaker 3: I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that, and it breaks
Speaker 3: my heart for our treatment of blacks for so long.
Speaker 3: But I can also say that that is not our
Speaker 3: reality today.
Speaker 4: It is not.
Speaker 3: There is not a single mainstream institution that is not
Speaker 3: twisting itself into to hire and promote as many blacks
Speaker 3: as possible. They are not facing discrimination from a single
Speaker 3: mainstream institution. And to continue making that as the predominant
Speaker 3: explanation means that we will continue tearing down our civilizational
Speaker 3: meritocratic standards for disparate impact, when the problem is not
Speaker 3: the standards. We have to stop tearing down the standards, because,
Speaker 3: as you say, Lisa, it's going to put it's going
Speaker 3: to put lives at risk when we are qualifying incompetent doctors,
Speaker 3: when we're putting incompetent pilots and cockpits, when we're having
Speaker 3: bridges built by people who were preference beneficiaries, and we
Speaker 3: are also destroying the greatest works of art. We are
Speaker 3: teaching young people to see the traditions of music and
Speaker 3: art and theater through the trivializing lens of rape and
Speaker 3: sex oppression, a lens that in almost all cases is
Speaker 3: completely irrelevant.
Speaker 2: Quick commercial break more with Heather on her new book
Speaker 2: When Race Trump's Merit. You know what, it also scares
Speaker 2: me because you look at some of these airlines too,
Speaker 2: who are saying that you know, they're going to focus on,
Speaker 2: you know, diversity in the hiring. You know, we're going
Speaker 2: to meet this fifty percent quote of the five thousand
Speaker 2: pilots it trains or the company trains in the next
Speaker 2: decade or whatever to be women or color or when
Speaker 2: I think most people are like, I just want.
Speaker 1: To get home safely.
Speaker 2: You know, I fly a lot, and so that's a
Speaker 2: concern of mine as well, of these airlines hiring people
Speaker 2: on the basis of meeting quotas as opposed to just
Speaker 2: hiring people who can get me safely.
Speaker 1: To point A to point B.
Speaker 2: You know, the left has moved from a quality to equity,
Speaker 2: you know, talk about that transition.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been a long time since we've had any
Speaker 3: sort of common sense.
Speaker 4: Idea of equality.
Speaker 3: I think certainly the great civil rights heroes of the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties nineteen forties, they were thinking in terms of.
Speaker 4: Equality and wanted to remove.
Speaker 3: The horrific strictures that blacks were facing in both the
Speaker 3: South and the North. But even in the sixties, with
Speaker 3: the Civil Rights Acts, there were already little glimmers that
Speaker 3: this was going to move more very quickly into quotas
Speaker 3: and looking at equality of outcomes. And the problem with
Speaker 3: that is if the only reason anybody talks about this
Speaker 3: is because of the racial skills gaps and the crime gaps.
Speaker 3: If those gaps didn't exist, we wouldn't have this problem.
Speaker 4: And yet we've got.
Speaker 3: These solutions that mean that we can't even look at
Speaker 3: those gaps.
Speaker 4: So the only reason.
Speaker 3: And we have all these colleges talking about diversity is
Speaker 3: because if they admitted students on a color blind basis,
Speaker 3: on the basis of academic preparation, they wouldn't be in
Speaker 3: certain instances. But it gets complicated because you'd have a
Speaker 3: cascading effect. Eventually you'd have the same you would have
Speaker 3: the same number of blacks going to college black should
Speaker 3: go to college that you shouldn't go to colleges that
Speaker 3: they're not prepared for.
Speaker 4: They should go to.
Speaker 3: Like if you're a white male and you're admitted to
Speaker 3: Boston College, you're going to be prepared for Boston College,
Speaker 3: you know, if they even dained to let you in.
Speaker 3: If you have those same qualifications and you're black male,
Speaker 3: you'll be admitted to Harvard. But you're not prepared for Harvard,
Speaker 3: but you are prepared for Boston College.
Speaker 4: So go to Boston College. It's not the end of
Speaker 4: the world, you know. The elitism in this discourse.
Speaker 3: So anyway, it became very quickly not about equality. It
Speaker 3: became about outcomes and lowering standards, double standards everywhere.
Speaker 4: And as I say, we are.
Speaker 3: Playing with fire, and we need to have an alternative explanation.
Speaker 3: As I say, the only explanation now, all the New
Speaker 3: York Times needs to do is look at this law
Speaker 3: firm or that bank, or this cancer lab or that
Speaker 3: engineering department or architectural firm, and do the counting and
Speaker 3: the being counting.
Speaker 4: And if it's not.
Speaker 3: Racially proportionate racist left, no, it is impossible to be
Speaker 3: proportionally diverse and meritocratic at the same time, you can't
Speaker 3: have both because of the skills gaps.
Speaker 4: And you've got to know this data, and we have
Speaker 4: to be prepared to start.
Speaker 3: Fighting back against the left's discourse because we are losing
Speaker 3: things very fast, Lisa, well, and.
Speaker 2: We're losing the country, you know, I mean equity of course,
Speaker 2: as a race to the bottom, and all those different
Speaker 2: institutions you had mentioned, and you know, these professions that
Speaker 2: you had mentioned, they're going to decrease in their ability
Speaker 2: to function, and as a society, we're going to decrease
Speaker 2: our ability to function on just a basic level. I
Speaker 2: think we're really already staying it really over these past
Speaker 2: couple of years of how quickly things can take a
Speaker 2: downward turn, you know, and a lot of this conversation,
Speaker 2: you would think that, okay, it's common sense, let's just
Speaker 2: hire the best people, let's hire you know, people on meritocracy.
Speaker 2: But somehow we don't function anymore on what makes sense
Speaker 2: as a society. So I guess when did we lose
Speaker 2: our ability to reason? Why did we lose it? Is
Speaker 2: is it social media? Or what has led us to
Speaker 2: this point today where we no longer we no longer
Speaker 2: rely on you know, common sense and reason in making determinations.
Speaker 3: Well, I think a lot in our world today it's
Speaker 3: all about race, and whites are very guilty. I mean,
Speaker 3: Shelby Steele was writing about this long ago of this dysfunctional,
Speaker 3: codependent relationship between white guilt and black victimhood, and nobody
Speaker 3: wants to They're terrified that the racial skills gaps are
Speaker 3: not going to close, and they don't want so. The
Speaker 3: only allowable explanation for that white sort of preemptively say, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's got to be racism. Got to be racism. And
Speaker 3: so that's our problem is we turn our eyes away
Speaker 3: from something that is very ugly.
Speaker 4: Which is this inner city culture.
Speaker 3: You know, right now, black juveniles are dying of gun
Speaker 3: homicide at one hundred times the rate of whites. That's
Speaker 3: a civil rights problem. It's not one that the activists
Speaker 3: want to talk about, because the reason that black juvenile
Speaker 3: are getting killed in gun homicide at one hundred times
Speaker 3: the rate is because they're committing gun homicide and as
Speaker 3: juveniles at that rate. This is post George Floyd. I
Speaker 3: gave you before the ten time number. Post George Floyd,
Speaker 3: things have gotten even worse. These drive by shootings are
Speaker 3: absolutely barbaric.
Speaker 4: You have these teens sprang.
Speaker 3: Bullets across sidewalks, not caring whom they hit.
Speaker 4: If this was.
Speaker 3: Happening to white kids, there'd be a revolution. But because
Speaker 3: it's blacks that are being mowed down, nobody wants to
Speaker 3: talk about it. Because it's blacks who were mowing them down.
Speaker 3: Dozens of blacks are killed every day in homicide. That's
Speaker 3: more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined. Nobody
Speaker 3: hears about them. So we're scared about that, And so
Speaker 3: meanwhile we're saying, oh, we've got to get rid of
Speaker 3: our gifted and talented programs. You know, if you have
Speaker 3: a child who is a absolute gifted in math, and
Speaker 3: you want to put him in a program that will
Speaker 3: allow him to maximize his talent and be the greatest
Speaker 3: mathematician or nuclear physicist he could possibly be, you're going
Speaker 3: to have very few options now because we're closing down
Speaker 3: gifted and talented programs because they have what's the answer,
Speaker 3: disparate impact. Any kind of exam that tests academic skills
Speaker 3: has a disparate impact on blacks.
Speaker 4: So we've decided.
Speaker 3: We're just going to get rid of the program. We're
Speaker 3: going to get rid of the standard. We blame the standards,
Speaker 3: We don't blame the skills gaps. Meanwhile, China is taking
Speaker 3: its most mathematically competent talent and throwing everything it's got
Speaker 3: at them. It's accelerating them, it's giving them intense mathematics
Speaker 3: education because.
Speaker 4: It knows that this is war.
Speaker 3: They are in a technological war with the US, and
Speaker 3: they are already beating us in many nanotechnologies. As we're
Speaker 3: sitting there dithering about whether mathematics is white supremacist, ablest,
Speaker 3: you know, misogynist, the Chinese are just saying, give it
Speaker 3: to me, you know, let me master this, and we're
Speaker 3: saying mastery is itself a form of white supremacy.
Speaker 2: Well, I almost wonder, you know, if some of this
Speaker 2: is being driven by China when you look at things
Speaker 2: like TikTok and the fact that you know it is
Speaker 2: a Chinese company, which I think TikTok's done an incredible
Speaker 2: amount of damage to young people and sort of a
Speaker 2: brainwashing effect.
Speaker 1: You know, did anything surprise you?
Speaker 2: Obviously, you do a ton of research and writing these books,
Speaker 2: and New York Times bestselling author in writing this and
Speaker 2: in doing research, is there anything that surprised you in
Speaker 2: the process.
Speaker 3: What surprised me was the willingness of the leaders of
Speaker 3: great traditions to completely cancel their own traditions.
Speaker 4: I would that somebody.
Speaker 3: That runs a classical music organization, an orchestra, or an
Speaker 3: opera company, or a great art museum like the Metropolitan
Speaker 3: Museum of Art or the Art Institute of Chicago, would
Speaker 3: feel so privileged to be in the position to curate
Speaker 3: this legacy, the civilizational legacy, and would say to young people,
Speaker 3: come and listen to my art, see my art. This
Speaker 3: is a form of sublimity. It will take you out
Speaker 3: of your narrow, petty self. And instead what I have seen, especially.
Speaker 4: Post George Floyd, is leaders.
Speaker 3: Of arts organizations, of medical schools, of physics, of art museum.
Speaker 3: They are all turning on their own tradition and blaming
Speaker 3: it for phantom racism. I cannot begin to understand that
Speaker 3: these are people who, in many cases have given their
Speaker 3: lives to sting or tradition, whether it's in physics or music,
Speaker 3: and they would rather throw completely fictional, lying accusations of
Speaker 3: racism at their own tradition than stand up and defend
Speaker 3: it before we go.
Speaker 2: What do you hope people take away from this book
Speaker 2: when race strump's merit.
Speaker 3: The courage not to apologize, the courage not to back down,
Speaker 3: the courage to have our alternative explanations for lack of
Speaker 3: racial proportionality, The understanding that Western civilization has nothing to
Speaker 3: apologize for. There is no civilization that was less equal
Speaker 3: than ours or more excuse me, more equal than ours,
Speaker 3: that cared more about equal rights and ours. The concepts
Speaker 3: that the left uses against the West, our Western concepts colonialism, slavery, predation,
Speaker 3: marginalization of the other. Every other civilization has done those
Speaker 3: things that the West blames itself forth in much greater degree. Yes,
Speaker 3: we did engage in slavery when the rest of the
Speaker 3: world was engaging in slavery, when Africa was engaging in.
Speaker 4: Slavery of its own peoples. We have we have hurt people,
Speaker 4: We have extremity people. Yes, we have, so is everybody else.
Speaker 3: But we have also given the world science, medicine, prosperity,
Speaker 3: freedom from hunger, equality, representative government. These are all Western concepts.
Speaker 3: We have to stop apologizing.
Speaker 2: Heather, I always learned so much from you. I really
Speaker 2: appreciate you taking the time. Everybody go check out when
Speaker 2: Race Trump's Mara an important conversation to have the Thank
Speaker 2: you for bringing this conversation to the forefront, and thank
Speaker 2: you for being so fearless and what you do well.
Speaker 3: Thank you for giving me a voice with yours, Lisa,
Speaker 3: I greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Those Heather MacDonald. I appreciate her joining the show. She's
Speaker 2: so smart, she does so much research. I always learn
Speaker 2: so much from her when I have her on the show,
Speaker 2: so I appreciate her time. I want to thank you
Speaker 2: guys at home for listening to the show every Monday
Speaker 2: and Thursday, but of course you can listen to it
Speaker 2: whenever you want. Please leave us a review, give us
Speaker 2: a rating on Apple Podcast. I want to thank John
Speaker 2: Cassio and my producer for putting the show together.
Speaker 1: Until next time,