Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's really great to have Coleman Hughes on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Coleman is an undergraduate philosophy major at Columbia University and
Speaker 1: a columnist for a Collette magazine. His writing has been
Speaker 1: featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: City Journal, and The Spectator. Coleman, is so great to
Speaker 1: have you on the Psychology Podcast. Finally, great to be
Speaker 1: on Scott. I wanted to have you on for a while,
Speaker 1: and I've known you not only for your intellectual prowess
Speaker 1: but also as a human and I thought we could
Speaker 1: start there. Let's let's let our audience a lettle know
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Coleman. You were I don't
Speaker 1: know if you would accept the phrase polymath, but you
Speaker 1: are quite good at at multiple things. So you're one
Speaker 1: thing is you're a musician, right, Yeah, yep, musician, played trombone, piano,
Speaker 1: drums a little bit. Trombone is my best instrument, and
Speaker 1: that was my initial plan for life was to be
Speaker 1: a jazz trombonist out of high school. Really, so were
Speaker 1: you in like all state Like what were you like
Speaker 1: in high school? I did all those things. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did all the all state bands, and I did
Speaker 1: the national bands and all of that stuff. So why
Speaker 1: do you choose Columbia University philosophy? So it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a it's not really so long a story,
Speaker 1: but I guess the short version is I went to
Speaker 1: Juilliard out of high school, and then, you know, let's
Speaker 1: say six months into my Juilliard education, my mother passed
Speaker 1: away and I went home to be with my family
Speaker 1: with the intention of coming back. But while I was
Speaker 1: at home sort of grieving, I you know, discovered, not
Speaker 1: really for the first time, but intensified a love of
Speaker 1: reading and philosophical thinking that suggested to me that I
Speaker 1: should really pursue that seriously. And that was mixed with
Speaker 1: a disappointment at the feeling that I wasn't learning very
Speaker 1: much at Juilliard. There was a distance between how I
Speaker 1: felt I learned in a classroom where a music teacher
Speaker 1: was trying to impart knowledge that is not easily in
Speaker 1: part art in a classroom, which is to say, artistic knowledge,
Speaker 1: And there's a distance between that and how I felt
Speaker 1: I had learned music up until that point, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, just through experience and solitary learning and pursuing
Speaker 1: specific mentors. And I was dissatisfied with, you know, with
Speaker 1: my experience there. So I figured there was also just
Speaker 1: a sense that music was very much my escape as
Speaker 1: a teenager, and for it to become my my curriculum
Speaker 1: there was something upsetting about that as well. Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: I didn't even I didn't know that about your mother.
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry to hear that. And I'm wondering to
Speaker 1: what extent you kind of associated music with your mother
Speaker 1: as well, and maybe did you lose any motivation after
Speaker 1: she passed away. No, I think it's a bit the opposite,
Speaker 1: not quite. But my mother was never the one pushing
Speaker 1: me to do music. She was actually quite unmusical. She
Speaker 1: had a good sense of rhythm and could dance, especially salsa,
Speaker 1: but she was nearly tone deaf. So I sort of
Speaker 1: went to Juilliard despite her, not to spite her, but
Speaker 1: despite her. Sure she wanted me. She wanted me to
Speaker 1: go to the liberal arts college. So she'd be very
Speaker 1: proud of you right now. Yeah, I think she'd be
Speaker 1: very happy with my choice to go to Columbia rather
Speaker 1: than Juilliard. Yeah. So, yeah, even like your childhood, were
Speaker 1: you very intellectual in school? Were you in gifted education
Speaker 1: for instance? Yes? I was. I was. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: always very good at school from the beginning. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: by that, I mean I was good at math, always
Speaker 1: was my strongest. But I was strong across the board
Speaker 1: music as well, very very weak in visual arts, and
Speaker 1: above average but not stellar at athletics. But you played basketball,
Speaker 1: now I do. Yeah, we're gonna play basketball. We're gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna whoop your ass someday. Right, I don't know
Speaker 1: about that. We'll see, we'll see, that's right. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: film it. We'll film that for bonus for the psychology podcast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I really appreciate you talking so vulnerably about all this.
Speaker 1: I think it's important, you know, to kind of know
Speaker 1: a little bit more about who you are as a human.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, you kind of came out
Speaker 1: the gate here at Quillett and even like for some people,
Speaker 1: their first image of you was testifying against Congress, not
Speaker 1: against Congress, justifying for Congress against reparations. Although I felt
Speaker 1: that way, I'm sure that way that probably was a
Speaker 1: Freudian slip. And I think, you know, part of what
Speaker 1: I want to do today as well is kind of
Speaker 1: put a human face to you as well. And what
Speaker 1: I've gotten to know about you is you're incredibly thoughtful,
Speaker 1: incredibly a compassionate human being who tried to understand all
Speaker 1: different sides of a story. You don't just want to
Speaker 1: be told what to think. You like to think freely.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I hope you're okay with me kind of
Speaker 1: paying more of a human face for you today. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. That's great. So you got into college and
Speaker 1: then I feel like there was I read I think
Speaker 1: you wrote this one of your articles. There was kind
Speaker 1: of this turning point. You had thoughts about race and society,
Speaker 1: and then you had a roommate, is that right, who
Speaker 1: kind of altered your thinking a little bit along these regards.
Speaker 1: Did you have like a transformation in some way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like most transformations, it wasn't overnight. But I grew up
Speaker 1: in a very liberal left setting. I knew exactly one
Speaker 1: Republican that I can think of growing up my fifth
Speaker 1: grade teacher. So that's the water in which I swam.
Speaker 1: My mother was something close to a Marxist and used
Speaker 1: to talk to me often about Marx and Graham, she
Speaker 1: and Durkheim when I was as young as five years old,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I sort of grew up with
Speaker 1: a general a liberal orientation towards race, but not at
Speaker 1: all a race a highly race conscious orientation. What I
Speaker 1: mean by that is, if you had asked me at
Speaker 1: thirteen years old if I knew what white privilege was,
Speaker 1: or if I would have thought to you know, say,
Speaker 1: a black person's opinion on this is more valid than
Speaker 1: a white person's, that would have been an alien idea
Speaker 1: to me. I came very much from a more Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King school of thinking, where it was, you know,
Speaker 1: deeply opposed and aware of racism, but not at all
Speaker 1: inclined to judge people on the basis of their skin.
Speaker 1: But that changed when I was sixteen or seventeen. This
Speaker 1: would probably be twenty twelve twenty thirteen, went to a
Speaker 1: conference called the People of Color Conference in Dallas as
Speaker 1: part of a small envoy from my school, and there
Speaker 1: were you know, hundreds, maybe over a thousand kids there
Speaker 1: from all across the country, and it was a conference
Speaker 1: where we learned about intersectionality and critical race theory. Very
Speaker 1: hot time. It was of today, yeah yeah, but unheard
Speaker 1: of to me and my friends at that point, our
Speaker 1: first exposure, and it was markedly different than anything I
Speaker 1: had heard in my life about the subject from my family,
Speaker 1: from my teachers, who was importantly different, more muscular in ideology,
Speaker 1: and it was appealing to me in many ways. It
Speaker 1: said to me, you know, it took little experiences I
Speaker 1: had of alienation as a result of my being black
Speaker 1: and planted them like seeds and grew this entire tree
Speaker 1: of ideology about how the country wasn't built for me,
Speaker 1: and all of my problems could be explained. Any alienation
Speaker 1: I feel as a person can be explained by the
Speaker 1: distance between the purpose for which my country was created
Speaker 1: and my place in it as a black person. You know.
Speaker 1: So that was I suppose the beginning of my social
Speaker 1: justice phase, you know, where I became comfortable calling people
Speaker 1: out white people first, saying things I didn't agree with
Speaker 1: or like or felt were offensive. And so that was
Speaker 1: the first transformation, really, and then the reverse transformation was
Speaker 1: a slow awareness that many of those ideas were maybe
Speaker 1: based on kernels of truth, but really misguided in fundamental ways,
Speaker 1: you know, meeting more people from around the country with
Speaker 1: different views and different life experiences, and reading, learning more
Speaker 1: about the world, and coming around to the point of
Speaker 1: view I have now, which is, you know, much more
Speaker 1: like what I learned as a child, much more in
Speaker 1: the vein of Martin Luther King that you know, the
Speaker 1: founding ideals of this country, we're really premised on the
Speaker 1: individual over the group. And as the country evolved and
Speaker 1: dealt with the question of slavery and Jim Crow, that
Speaker 1: evolved into a concern for the individual, regardless of their race,
Speaker 1: and the idea that the way to fight racism is
Speaker 1: not to throw it in reverse, but to insist that
Speaker 1: the color of a person's skin is is truly, upon reflection,
Speaker 1: an irrelevant characteristic of them. So that's been sort of
Speaker 1: the way that you know, and I can give more
Speaker 1: detail about how that transition came about if you want,
Speaker 1: but that something with our summary of it, thank you.
Speaker 1: There was something with a roommates. Yeah, so yeah, my
Speaker 1: friend from Arizona who I roomed with at Juilliard freshman year.
Speaker 1: This was you know, we were moving in together right
Speaker 1: as the Michael Brown Ferguson story, the Ferguson riots were happening,
Speaker 1: and Michael Brown had been killed, and coming from my context,
Speaker 1: it seemed obvious that that his killing was unjust, that
Speaker 1: this was an example of racism, that any ulterior that
Speaker 1: that it was a simple good versus evil story. It
Speaker 1: was about as complicated as Star Wars. And that was
Speaker 1: my picture of the national reaction to the Michael Brown story.
Speaker 1: And my roommate, who was sort of had been my
Speaker 1: best friend and was continuing to become my best friend,
Speaker 1: he didn't have the same reaction. The mere thought that
Speaker 1: he might have sympathy for the cops perspective was bizarre
Speaker 1: to me. But I think the fact of our friendship
Speaker 1: allowed me to take it seriously. And we were in
Speaker 1: I think we were in a class Humanity's class at
Speaker 1: Juilliard and we're discussing it. And because of discussing it
Speaker 1: with him, I realized that I should actually read the
Speaker 1: transcripts of the testimonies from Darren Wilson, the police officer,
Speaker 1: and I think Dorian Something, Michael Brown's friend who had
Speaker 1: opposing testimonies on the issue. And so I remember staying
Speaker 1: up till, you know, two or three am reading the
Speaker 1: entirety of the testimonies, coming away thinking that not only
Speaker 1: did I not know who was right, nobody opining on
Speaker 1: the issue probably knew who was right, and so the
Speaker 1: confidence of people that I had up to that point
Speaker 1: seen as being on the right side of the issue
Speaker 1: seemed unwarranted to me. And I remember that being an
Speaker 1: important I mean, that was an important moment for the country.
Speaker 1: It was also an important moment for me. Thank you
Speaker 1: for the We got to hear Coleman's origin story a bit,
Speaker 1: so thank you for talking about that. So you know,
Speaker 1: we can dive into some of these issues. These issues
Speaker 1: strike such an emotional chord when carg you're rightly so so,
Speaker 1: and you've put a lot of thought into the various
Speaker 1: different perspectives that are on the table. So I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, for each of these topics that I'm going
Speaker 1: to bring up, I thought we could explore your thoughts
Speaker 1: as well as maybe some trying to anticipate the critics
Speaker 1: thoughts as well. I love doing that, you know, So
Speaker 1: the idea of intersectionality, because you've read an article for
Speaker 1: quite about your sort of nuanced views on that. Can
Speaker 1: you how's your thinking evolved at all on that topic
Speaker 1: and what are you what is a current thinking? I
Speaker 1: wrote that article very recently, so I can't say my
Speaker 1: thinking has evolved. That's what basically doesn't have that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my argument there was intersectionality. This is born from Kimberly Crenshaw,
Speaker 1: the legal theorist law professor at Columbia as it happens right,
Speaker 1: Columbia Law School, that's right. She came up with the
Speaker 1: idea in the late eighties, and the basic you know,
Speaker 1: it was in response to specific legal cases where neither
Speaker 1: anti racist laws nor anti sexist laws covered the kind
Speaker 1: of discrimination that black women in particular were alleged to
Speaker 1: be facing. So there are just situations where black women
Speaker 1: as a class, you know, we're being plausibly discriminated against.
Speaker 1: But because you could not look at racism and sexism simultaneously,
Speaker 1: you actually couldn't find employers guilty of that kind of discrimination, right,
Speaker 1: because they the employer could show that we're hiring white women,
Speaker 1: therefore we're not violating sexism, and we're hiring black men,
Speaker 1: therefore we're not guilty of racism. Therefore we couldn't possibly
Speaker 1: be discriminate donating against black women, which isn't logically true
Speaker 1: or legally true. And so it was a narrow effort
Speaker 1: to come up with a intell, actual framework that could
Speaker 1: deal with that question, which isn't super difficult intellectually, I
Speaker 1: would argue. So the basic idea was black women can
Speaker 1: face a kind of discrimination that is neither racism nor sexism,
Speaker 1: but some third thing that only applies to Black women,
Speaker 1: considered as a specific class independent of black men or
Speaker 1: white women. And since then it's blossomed into a kind
Speaker 1: of entire thought system that encompasses LGBTQ, encompasses disabilities and disability,
Speaker 1: the idea that oppression is more than the sum of
Speaker 1: its parts. If you're gay and black, you may experience
Speaker 1: something that neither a gay person nor a black straight
Speaker 1: person experiences, but something only gay black people experience. You
Speaker 1: suffer from an additional layer of discrimination. So more than
Speaker 1: the sum of its parts is the key concept to intersectionality.
Speaker 1: My my, my critique of what intersectionality has become, and
Speaker 1: I don't think Kimberly and Kimberly Crenshaw intended for it
Speaker 1: to become this all encompassing thought system. One of my
Speaker 1: critiques is just that it's an armchair philosophy, which is
Speaker 1: to say, it's not a philosophy that you people went
Speaker 1: out and studied the degree to which different people were
Speaker 1: oppressed in the world, gathered the data, and then plausibly
Speaker 1: constructed a theory to fit the world. It's just something
Speaker 1: that sounded good in people's heads. Right. It sounds good
Speaker 1: to say that black women experience an extra layer of
Speaker 1: discrimination relative to black men and are therefore worse off.
Speaker 1: They experienced three kinds of termination where black men only
Speaker 1: experience one racism. But if you actually think about it,
Speaker 1: it's not obvious that black women are worse off than
Speaker 1: black men. Yes, black women are far more vulnerable to rape,
Speaker 1: sexual violence, sexual assault, domestic violence, a few other issues
Speaker 1: I could I could think of. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know over ninety percent of black people in prison
Speaker 1: are men. Black men are more likely to be murdered,
Speaker 1: much more more likely to commit suicide. So the point
Speaker 1: is not that one group is worse off than the other.
Speaker 1: The point is that it's actually a very difficult and
Speaker 1: interesting question, and intersectionality dismisses that question before it's even
Speaker 1: been meaningfully asked, and says, this group, in this very
Speaker 1: simplistic mathematical way, suffers three layers of oppression. This other
Speaker 1: group only suffers one, and that erases most of what
Speaker 1: is actually going on in the real world. Well, as
Speaker 1: a scientist, I'm trying to think of how one would
Speaker 1: even precisely quantify such things. And also, there's kind of
Speaker 1: an assumption there about kind of a hierarchy of victimhood,
Speaker 1: that we can assign quantitatively different forms of oppression and
Speaker 1: suffering to different combinations of things, and that's hard to
Speaker 1: scientifically capture as well. And I'm sympathetic to arguments like
Speaker 1: I understand all else being equal, if I you know,
Speaker 1: it's better off being white they all else being I
Speaker 1: can I can understand scientifically even like you control for
Speaker 1: other variables. But so I really do get that. I'm
Speaker 1: sympathetic to that. I I think that it just it
Speaker 1: becomes really tricky once you start having like a hierarchy
Speaker 1: of victimhood. That's objective like you're claiming objective truth about Like, No,
Speaker 1: if you're this combination, you're definitely going to be suffer
Speaker 1: more than they're for this combination than if you're in
Speaker 1: this combination, then this combination I'm I guess I'm wondering
Speaker 1: to the extent to which comparing different people's combinations of
Speaker 1: sufferings is the best way forward for like universal peace.
Speaker 1: So like here, here's the thing is that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of patterns and regularities that are true about
Speaker 1: races that have exceptions. So like, the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: being a white person in America is correlated with being
Speaker 1: privileged is true. The idea that everything else held equal,
Speaker 1: having white skin rather than black skin in the average
Speaker 1: situation more often than not, with exceptions is uh, confers
Speaker 1: an advantage that could be true probably is true. The
Speaker 1: question is when are racial stereotypes admissible and when are
Speaker 1: they not? So, I mean, I can I could easily
Speaker 1: grant that everything else held equal more often than not,
Speaker 1: having white skin is an advantage, and I could come
Speaker 1: up with all kinds of counterexamples where having black skin
Speaker 1: is an advantage. But let's just say that there are
Speaker 1: fewer of those than there are of the rule. Those
Speaker 1: are exceptions to the rule. It's still the case that
Speaker 1: you're coarse graining a country of three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people, all of whom have different experiences. You're reducing
Speaker 1: race relations to a stereotype, namely that having white skin
Speaker 1: is an advantage. Right. And the truth is stereotypes can
Speaker 1: be true more often than not, But that doesn't suggest
Speaker 1: that we should deal in stereotypes. Right. Imagine if we're
Speaker 1: going to observe the racial patterns in crime commission or
Speaker 1: test scores, right and come up with concepts that are
Speaker 1: true with plenty of its exceptions about every race. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why we've developed a norm against racial stereotyping.
Speaker 1: And it's not because stereotyping stereotypes are always inaccurate. It's
Speaker 1: because they always missfire in enough cases, and that misfiring
Speaker 1: can be enormously insulting to the people on the receiving
Speaker 1: end of the stereotype that we we've just developed this
Speaker 1: norm of not stereotyping people, treating people as individuals. You know,
Speaker 1: like to take an example that is like close to home.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever get like Clary alerts, right,
Speaker 1: I do, yeah, Barnard right or Columbia. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: like in the area you and I live in, we
Speaker 1: we we get an alert if there's a crime that happens.
Speaker 1: By law, we have to. I think I think I
Speaker 1: noticed one white person in the last several months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but that that just proves the point, right, It's
Speaker 1: like I went months without seeing a single white face.
Speaker 1: And so so here's the point. The few times in
Speaker 1: my life that I've been stereotyped for being black, I
Speaker 1: can I can understand how that stereotype may have been
Speaker 1: born of some you know, pattern recognition, or maybe it
Speaker 1: was Hollywood tropes or whatever. But let's say it just is,
Speaker 1: for the sake of argument, born of like that pattern recognition.
Speaker 1: People are always seeing black faces in the Clary crime reports.
Speaker 1: It just so happens that the demographics of crime in
Speaker 1: this area are very racially disproportionate. That doesn't actually make
Speaker 1: it hurt less when I get stereotyped. It doesn't, because
Speaker 1: there's something about what's so hurtful about stereotypes is like
Speaker 1: we operate with this presumption of innocence sort of, and
Speaker 1: you're presuming me guilty of something that turns out not
Speaker 1: to be true, and maybe six times out of ten
Speaker 1: it would have been true or whatever, But still that
Speaker 1: doesn't make it less hurtful. So if I put myself
Speaker 1: in the shoes of a white person who really has
Speaker 1: not seen white privilege work out in their lives, Let's
Speaker 1: say they were passed over for a job and the
Speaker 1: boss told them, I, actually you were more qualified, but
Speaker 1: we have to get more diversity. Right, that's a person
Speaker 1: who is not feeling white privilege. And let's say that
Speaker 1: person is the exception to the rule. Still, most people
Speaker 1: are feeling it. When they hear the term white privilege,
Speaker 1: they're going to be extremely mad, and their right to
Speaker 1: be mad, because it's a stereotype. And what group around
Speaker 1: the world, what racial group has ever reacted well to
Speaker 1: being stereotyped. But if you're in what is perceived as
Speaker 1: the dominant group or the position of power, you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to call out instances that you perceive as racism
Speaker 1: against you. So some people would would make that argument
Speaker 1: in the social justice movement. Have you crime across that argument? Yeah? Sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: see do you see a problem with that argument? Yeah? Well, so, one,
Speaker 1: there's a problem of moral logic to it. If you
Speaker 1: were to ask the question wise racism bad and come
Speaker 1: up with a philosophically rigorous answer, that answer has to
Speaker 1: appeal to some principle about race being an arbitrary fact,
Speaker 1: about someone being not sufficient reason to treat them differently.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to not see how that doesn't how
Speaker 1: that shouldn't also apply to the quote unquote dominant group.
Speaker 1: The second thing I would say is the word group
Speaker 1: and the language of group. Really it is an abstraction.
Speaker 1: You know, there is no such thing as the white
Speaker 1: community or the black community. All of us, know, I mean,
Speaker 1: the most popular among us, know, like have like a
Speaker 1: few hundred friends. Maybe most people have fewer friends than that.
Speaker 1: So the group is just an idea in our heads.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not really a reality on the ground.
Speaker 1: And it's useful to think and talk in terms of
Speaker 1: groups often, but it's often not. And so when I
Speaker 1: you know, when I call my friend who's you know,
Speaker 1: parents committed suicide, who grew up you know with like
Speaker 1: methadics as parents part of the quote dominant group? What
Speaker 1: what am I actually saying there that's meaningful? In what sense?
Speaker 1: Is he part of the dominant group. And in what
Speaker 1: sense is Malia Obama or myself part of the oppressed class.
Speaker 1: So that that's another consideration, is just that the concept
Speaker 1: of groups is inappropriate and insufficient to the task of it.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a bad it's a bad constraint on
Speaker 1: the concept of racism because groups are so diverse. Within groups,
Speaker 1: it's probably more diversity than even between groups. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I mean, and then the final thing I
Speaker 1: would say about that is it really just is a
Speaker 1: rejection of what the civil rights movement stood for. People
Speaker 1: resist this point. They quote Martin Luther King in half
Speaker 1: his moods and ignore most of the other things he said.
Speaker 1: If you look back, people who have used the term
Speaker 1: reverse racism without the quotation marks, which is to say,
Speaker 1: have actually worried about racism against white people in that
Speaker 1: group is not only cranky white male conservatives or whatever
Speaker 1: the stereotype is. It's also a Philip Randolph, who originated
Speaker 1: the March on Washington movement and forced FDR to integrate
Speaker 1: defense industries and the military. He used that phrase seriously.
Speaker 1: It's you know, Bayered Rustin, the organizer of the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three March on Washington, it's Nelson Mandela in the
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, it's many other people who's who
Speaker 1: hardly had a naive idea of what it meant to
Speaker 1: suffer racism, and so it's a it's I think it's
Speaker 1: unwise to throw away the principles that such people stood
Speaker 1: for because they knew that their fight against racism depended
Speaker 1: depended upon preserving the principle that all racism is evil,
Speaker 1: all discrimination is ultimately evil because race is ultimately arbitrary. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, the thing that we share in common, and
Speaker 1: I don't think about race issues to the extent that
Speaker 1: you do this, but something that we both share is
Speaker 1: this drive for having more of a transcendent, transcendent values
Speaker 1: in society kind of values. Maybe you haven't kind of phrased,
Speaker 1: you haven't phrased in this way, but this is what
Speaker 1: I see as a commonality between us. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a humanistic psychologist. I'm really interested in how can we
Speaker 1: promote more of appreciation of kind of the uniqueness of
Speaker 1: each individual that we see, regardless of maybe superficial characteristics
Speaker 1: of that individual, kind of transcend kind of have universal
Speaker 1: moral principles that apply equally to everyone you know in
Speaker 1: a society. So I think that we kind of share this,
Speaker 1: you know, humanity, humanistic perspective on things, and it's really
Speaker 1: interesting for me and quite fascinating for me to watch
Speaker 1: you kind of apply a lot of this within this
Speaker 1: domain that is so important and relevant to the lives
Speaker 1: of so many people, you know, within the race domain.
Speaker 1: But you can you can start building up these principles
Speaker 1: and applying it to anything in life. You can apply
Speaker 1: it to gender discrimination in the workplace. I wrote an
Speaker 1: article recently arguing why no one cares that there's under
Speaker 1: representation of men in female dominated fields, you know, it
Speaker 1: seems to be so one sided, and then arguing trying
Speaker 1: to make the case for why it helps society to
Speaker 1: increase representation. So I think, and correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but it seems like there is this common drive for
Speaker 1: a very humanitarian perspective, where like, what will rise the
Speaker 1: tide for humanity, not just what will rise the tide
Speaker 1: for one in group? Is that a fair thing to say? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think as a matter of moral philosophy,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to justify any point of view that
Speaker 1: does not rate individuals equally in terms of our desire
Speaker 1: to uplift them and help them flourish. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to It would be impossible to write a really
Speaker 1: coherent and persuasive argument, and I would argue this has
Speaker 1: been true for a few hundred years now, that the
Speaker 1: flourishing of some human beings is at bottom more important
Speaker 1: than others period. You know, that's just very very difficult
Speaker 1: intuition to pump, a very difficult proposition to defend. And
Speaker 1: we can forget that because like in the day to day,
Speaker 1: you know, in the political sphere, it's very easy to
Speaker 1: lose principles, to lose sight of important principles. M Well,
Speaker 1: I agree. I agree with that. So wokeness, let's talk
Speaker 1: about wokeness right now. What is wokeness? And do you
Speaker 1: have any criticisms whatsoever about sort of people who call
Speaker 1: themselves woke, the kind of their ideologies. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what wokeness is, but it's I guess
Speaker 1: my at first approximation, it's less a set of particular
Speaker 1: beliefs than a style of politics, like a sensibility or
Speaker 1: an instinct around how to view politics. It very much
Speaker 1: goes back to what I said earlier about viewing politics
Speaker 1: as a simple good versus evil as having all the
Speaker 1: complexity of a Star Wars movie, although Star Wars can
Speaker 1: get a little bit complex because you know, Anakin becomes
Speaker 1: starth Vader and at the end when he dies, you
Speaker 1: kind of feel bad for him. So like something even
Speaker 1: much more simplistic. I think it's true sometimes is that simple,
Speaker 1: But the vast majority of cases it's not. And the
Speaker 1: woke mindset encourages you to view things through such a
Speaker 1: simple lens. There is just the right side of history
Speaker 1: and the wrong side of history, and it's as simple
Speaker 1: as shaming the bad people into agreeing with me. The
Speaker 1: answer is obvious. That's a key part of wokeness. The
Speaker 1: moral answer is obvious. It doesn't require deep thought, and
Speaker 1: what it requires is an active pursuit of power. The
Speaker 1: people we're talking to, the people on the other side,
Speaker 1: cannot be persuaded. That's also, I think a key feature
Speaker 1: of wokeness, and I you know, one should know. All
Speaker 1: of these features can be found on the political right
Speaker 1: as well. So wokeness is the politically left version of
Speaker 1: that Manichean mindset that doesn't roll off the tongue, as
Speaker 1: well as wokeness. We need a label for the right
Speaker 1: version of it that's not menic. You know, I hear
Speaker 1: your your argument now is there? Let's let's try to
Speaker 1: be fair. Second to people who say they're woke. What
Speaker 1: what what points good points are they making about? You know,
Speaker 1: about people who are unwoke? You know, like, isn't it
Speaker 1: possible they are making some good points in the sense that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of us can be really ignorant
Speaker 1: of the suffering of those who have a different skin
Speaker 1: color from us, who have fundamentally different experiences because of
Speaker 1: their skin color or their disadvantage in some way that
Speaker 1: we're just not privy to. So that for you know,
Speaker 1: aren't there unwoke people? What does that even mean? I'm
Speaker 1: really trying to think. I want to think this through
Speaker 1: and is there any anything to be salvaged from this
Speaker 1: concept at all? Do you see anything? Let me make
Speaker 1: a distinction here. People who are woke, like everyone else,
Speaker 1: are complex people. So in the moments where they're being woke,
Speaker 1: as I've like defined it in the past few minutes,
Speaker 1: there is very little redeeming about that style of approaching politics. However,
Speaker 1: those same people often have important insights when they are
Speaker 1: trying to persuade rather than bully, they can make as
Speaker 1: important and crucial points as anyone can. And they are very,
Speaker 1: very people who have nothing at all of value to say.
Speaker 1: And so the point that there are forms of suffering
Speaker 1: that you're not likely to see if you're a white
Speaker 1: person compared to if you're a black person. Say you're
Speaker 1: a black man living in Brooklyn at the height of
Speaker 1: stop and frisk. Let's say you're a white person who's
Speaker 1: never felt the burden of being racially profiled. You understand
Speaker 1: what the word means in the abstract, but it's never
Speaker 1: hit you, and so you assume, maybe it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a nuisance. But what are these people complaining so
Speaker 1: much about. You don't understand the deep insult that it
Speaker 1: is to be to feel presumed guilty when you know
Speaker 1: you're innocent by someone who has the backing of the state.
Speaker 1: That's a perfectly valid point, and it's a point that
Speaker 1: the woke have been much quicker to recognize than the
Speaker 1: rest of society. It's also a point that does not
Speaker 1: need to be bullied into people. It's a point. It's
Speaker 1: a point that, like any other, can can be made
Speaker 1: through persuasion. And it's a point that is not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not aided by viewing politics in terms of just
Speaker 1: good and evil, right, I mean, I think there are
Speaker 1: many points like this. So like, if you were to
Speaker 1: talk to a police officer and do the rather unpopular
Speaker 1: thing nowadays of looking at things from their point of view,
Speaker 1: you might find that there are similar insights to be had.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's like to be in charge
Speaker 1: of keeping order, to be the type of to be
Speaker 1: the person that all of society relegates the duty of,
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with the worst people in society. There
Speaker 1: are some psychopaths out there, there's some. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I live in New York, you know, living in New York,
Speaker 1: taking this subway every day, it does it impresses upon
Speaker 1: one the reality that human nature is not just a
Speaker 1: list of good qualities. There are just some crazy people
Speaker 1: out there. And what the police do is there we
Speaker 1: just relegate the job to them of dealing with it
Speaker 1: so we don't have to. That's not an easy job.
Speaker 1: What does that do to a person? I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting conversation to be had. What does it
Speaker 1: do to know that, you know, roughly every day a
Speaker 1: cop gets shot somewhere in the country. That certainly does
Speaker 1: something to the consciousness of other cops who know that
Speaker 1: even though that's probably rather unlikely to happen to them,
Speaker 1: it's still affects you in the same way that a
Speaker 1: black man seeing an unarmed black person gets shot by
Speaker 1: the cops. It can very much affect you, even if
Speaker 1: you know statistically it's very unlikely to happen to you.
Speaker 1: So there are all of these kinds of insights that
Speaker 1: can be learned about people in a different social setting
Speaker 1: than you, and they ought to be learned through persuasion
Speaker 1: and storytelling and journalism and documentaries and conversation. But you
Speaker 1: can't get very far if you think of politics in
Speaker 1: terms of good and evil. And that is what I
Speaker 1: see wokeness as I mean the very term applies that
Speaker 1: it's religious in the sense that it's like I've seen
Speaker 1: the truth. It's not all that complicated. It's all right
Speaker 1: here in this book. And all I have to do
Speaker 1: is get you to believe the truth has a religious
Speaker 1: quality to it. Yeah, that's not a helpful stance to
Speaker 1: take to politics. It assumes that you have nothing to
Speaker 1: learn yourself from the person that you're educating, right, which
Speaker 1: how could that be true? I don't know anyone who
Speaker 1: knows everything, so I don't, in general do exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: most of the interesting things I've learned in life are
Speaker 1: things that I didn't believe prior to reading or talking
Speaker 1: to someone. Yeah. Right, that's how you expand your horizon.
Speaker 1: Thank you for engaging me so nuanced about woke culture. Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: just wanted to take a quick break and talk about
Speaker 1: my new book that's coming out April seventh. It's called
Speaker 1: Transcend The New Science of Self Actualization. Really excited to
Speaker 1: present this book to you all. It represents the culmination
Speaker 1: of many, many years of hard work and synthesis. What
Speaker 1: I've been what I've done in this book is I've
Speaker 1: taken Maslow's classic Hierarchy of Needs and I've revised it
Speaker 1: for the twenty first century, trying to bring back humanistic psychology.
Speaker 1: I think that the field of humanistic psychology in the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties really got a lot right about humanity
Speaker 1: and the creative possibilities of humans, as well as the
Speaker 1: humanitarian and spiritual possibilities. Really hoping this book can present
Speaker 1: a vision of humanity that transcends us all and helps
Speaker 1: us connect deeper with each other, but also help us
Speaker 1: reach our greatest potential individually and collectively. So if you
Speaker 1: want to check out this book, you can actually pre
Speaker 1: order it right now in Amazon as well as other
Speaker 1: there's independent bookstores I think you can pre order it
Speaker 1: from and then on April seventh. Starting April seventh, that
Speaker 1: should be in bookstores. A lot of people in wondering
Speaker 1: throughout the years how they can support me and the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast, and here's the time. You know, you're always
Speaker 1: welcome to contribute money to the podcast, help support it.
Speaker 1: If you're a longtime listener or even short time listener,
Speaker 1: you want to not only support the podcast, but dive
Speaker 1: deeper into a lot of the concepts and ideas we
Speaker 1: talk about constantly on this show. This is a great
Speaker 1: way to do that by buying this book. So please
Speaker 1: check the book out and let me know what you think. So,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a topic that I know
Speaker 1: something about, to science of intelligence and gift education and
Speaker 1: discuss we and discuss real debated, hotly debated and poorly
Speaker 1: misunderstood still from a scientific perspective, in terms of the
Speaker 1: causal factors why African Americans on average are so strikingly
Speaker 1: underrepresented in gifted education programs it is, and are so
Speaker 1: overrepresented in special education programs. This is a real important
Speaker 1: topic in my field, and we've been trying to look
Speaker 1: at it from all different kinds of perspectives, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to get sort of your perspective on it
Speaker 1: and link it to the term you coined racial gapology,
Speaker 1: which suggests maybe we shouldn't be so focused on these gaps.
Speaker 1: So would you mind giving me some of your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this as all these other topics today, I'm just
Speaker 1: here to kind of sit back and listen to your perspective.
Speaker 1: I'm genuinely curious to hear some of your thoughts about
Speaker 1: this well, if you don't mind me turning it back
Speaker 1: to you. I'm curious, since you pay attention to this
Speaker 1: issue closely and empirically, I want to know what you
Speaker 1: think about out the racial gap and gifted education and
Speaker 1: special at as well. So first I want to you
Speaker 1: know acknowledge I do think it's a problem. You know this,
Speaker 1: this particular disparity I do see as a problem. This
Speaker 1: difference disparity is so striking and it is something that
Speaker 1: is such an important leverage to further education. You know,
Speaker 1: having gift education resources does give you acceleration, gives you enhancement,
Speaker 1: it gives you a leg up and getting into good colleges.
Speaker 1: It's important. And so to have like you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking like overwhelming you know, differences in this disparity. There's
Speaker 1: clearly a lot more that we should be doing. So
Speaker 1: the interesting question is what in the world, what are
Speaker 1: these factors that are going on. So there's low hanging
Speaker 1: fruit and then there's much more complicated fruit, so to speak.
Speaker 1: The low hanging fruit is it is true that on average,
Speaker 1: African Americans don't get access to as good early childhood
Speaker 1: education programs. So from a developmental perspective on the development
Speaker 1: of intelligence, it is true and is the case that
Speaker 1: there are disparities that start very young. And as Keith
Speaker 1: Statavich has noted, the rich do get rich or the
Speaker 1: poor do get poor. These things do accumulate. IQ is
Speaker 1: not something that just you pop out, you know, with
Speaker 1: the IQ kind of branded on your forehead, and that
Speaker 1: it doesn't change throughout your entire life. Like there is
Speaker 1: a from a within person perspective, IQ can be developed.
Speaker 1: So I think there's will hanging fruit in terms of
Speaker 1: giving everyone access to the same quality early childhood education, healthcare.
Speaker 1: There are there are certainly economic and environmental disparities that
Speaker 1: play some role in this, but I think people have
Speaker 1: a prior that kind of need to be working with
Speaker 1: a different prior here. So it is true that if
Speaker 1: you just look at the average differences in IQ between
Speaker 1: African Americans and Caucasians on average, it's still is sizable,
Speaker 1: and if you look at the tails of the distribution,
Speaker 1: you could you could expect there to be a huge
Speaker 1: disparity in gifted education based on IQ differences alone, and
Speaker 1: even if you don't look at any other factors. So
Speaker 1: I think that is true to a certain degree. And
Speaker 1: that's but then that that moves the buck and that
Speaker 1: you have to explain, well, what is the difference? Uh,
Speaker 1: what is explaining the i Q disparity? And that is
Speaker 1: a very interesting important question, but I think that's what
Speaker 1: needs explaining. I think that's what we really need to
Speaker 1: zoom in on, as opposed to the prior of, well,
Speaker 1: there's a disparity in gift talent education, it's because of racism.
Speaker 1: So this on which part of it. What are what
Speaker 1: are the causes of such a disparity in i qah,
Speaker 1: so the factors that we use to accept people into
Speaker 1: gifted programs. It is a fact that African Americans on
Speaker 1: average don't do as well in those metrics, so they're
Speaker 1: not getting into the programs. I don't think that racism
Speaker 1: is one hundred percent the explanation of the disparity. The
Speaker 1: prior is really understanding, well, what are all the development
Speaker 1: I mentioned someonell hanging fruit. You know that the early
Speaker 1: child access to early childhood education does affect development of intelligence,
Speaker 1: like pre k right, yeah, pre k, yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: And I think you know, I don't pay super close attention,
Speaker 1: but we seem to be learning more and more about
Speaker 1: the ill effects of air pollution even at low levels,
Speaker 1: and environmental environmental factors on cognitive development and virtually anyway
Speaker 1: you slice this, the typical that you know, the media
Speaker 1: and black kid is getting a different dose of environmental
Speaker 1: particulates in the air, and a worse dose than the
Speaker 1: media and white kid. And by the way, lead in particular,
Speaker 1: that's one example. Lead is les shown to Alan Kaufman
Speaker 1: has shown that to have a pretty sizeable effect. I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't explain all of it obviously. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think people vastly underrate the effect of rising blood lead
Speaker 1: levels on the crime wave in the seventies eighties and
Speaker 1: on the crime decline in the nineties. There's a great
Speaker 1: book called The Lucifer Curves by the economist Rick Nevin
Speaker 1: that was really persuasive on that point. But once one
Speaker 1: has dealt with all of those things, I think realistically
Speaker 1: the disparities are going to persist. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we shouldn't deal with those things. I mean, the way
Speaker 1: I want to approach this is by de emphasizing the
Speaker 1: racial disparity and emphasizing the moral imperative of making of
Speaker 1: enhancing cognitive development for the people at the bottom of society.
Speaker 1: I mean, so like, if we were to just focus
Speaker 1: on quote unquote white people and divide them by ancestry,
Speaker 1: so that we're talking about white Americans of Irish descent
Speaker 1: versus Polish descent, versus Italian descent versus Norwegian descent, we
Speaker 1: would no doubt find disparities in high school graduation rates,
Speaker 1: SAT scores, college admissions rates GPAs you know, all the
Speaker 1: research I've seen, whether it's income, wealth, you know, incarceration
Speaker 1: rates from one hundred years ago, back when they used
Speaker 1: to you know, gather such fine grained data showed often
Speaker 1: massive disparities, including an IQ. You know, we could make
Speaker 1: much of those, but it's not clear that we would
Speaker 1: be doing a good thing, right, why not just you know,
Speaker 1: you know, if universal pre K is a good idea,
Speaker 1: for example, why not just do it? And you know,
Speaker 1: disparity be damned. If it's a good idea, if it's
Speaker 1: helping the people at the bottom, then we don't need
Speaker 1: to focus on the distance between them and some other
Speaker 1: arbitrarily defined group. You know, given you know, we're slicing
Speaker 1: in the in the grand scheme of history, the way
Speaker 1: we're slicing up humans in America black versus white. These
Speaker 1: categories are I mean, they are social constructs that could
Speaker 1: be constructed differently. Could we could just compare Jamaicans to
Speaker 1: black Americans to Nigerians and there would be something equally
Speaker 1: valid about that. And when we do that for income,
Speaker 1: we find big disparities that nobody cares about. The point
Speaker 1: is the categories mislead us. We treat them as like
Speaker 1: pre pre philosophical givens that just like essences that exist
Speaker 1: out there in the world, and we anchor our concerns
Speaker 1: about education to those categories, you know, failing to realize
Speaker 1: how arbitrary they are, and how very recently they were
Speaker 1: different and no doubt in the future they'll be different.
Speaker 1: When we could just be focusing on those kids, whatever
Speaker 1: they look like, who are not getting adequate pre K education,
Speaker 1: who are exposed to, you know, negative environmental factors, and
Speaker 1: just institute the policies that help them, and then not
Speaker 1: focus on the gaps. That would be my it, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you don't necessarily have to deal with the
Speaker 1: very thorny questions of race and IQ and you know,
Speaker 1: genes versus culture. I mean, that seems like that seems
Speaker 1: like a pretty sound answer in my view, but it
Speaker 1: would require getting rid of the obsession with racial gaps
Speaker 1: and outcome, which is too much for many people, too
Speaker 1: much for many people. What do you think of that? Well,
Speaker 1: I had Flynn of the Flynn effect theme, I remember
Speaker 1: that on my podcast, and he is really adamant that
Speaker 1: a lot of it has to do with black culture
Speaker 1: and black culture. So it seems like which is an
Speaker 1: environmental variable. But I've heard you kind of talking about
Speaker 1: this in other places that maybe that my payroll. Now,
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to understand is, I mean, are you
Speaker 1: being hypocritical all yourself? Like you do talk about this
Speaker 1: topic on like every podcast I listened, and you are
Speaker 1: interested in the effect of maybe some race relevant variables
Speaker 1: on gaps. So it is your ideal world a one
Speaker 1: where then you wouldn't be talking about this topic anymore.
Speaker 1: Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, yea, yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: I do. I mean I haven't talked about that actually
Speaker 1: in a pretty long while. I haven't wrote about it
Speaker 1: in a while either, And yeah, I do think my
Speaker 1: views have evolved in the sense that I'm happy to
Speaker 1: talk about the source of the sources of disparities in general. So,
Speaker 1: like you know the fact that you know, basically every
Speaker 1: survey that asks black kids, white kids, Asian kids, how
Speaker 1: many nights, how many hours per night do you study?
Speaker 1: What it finds is that black kids study fewer hours
Speaker 1: than white kids on average, who study fewer hours than
Speaker 1: Asian kids, which comports perfectly with my own experience having
Speaker 1: grown up in a very diverse community observing differences in
Speaker 1: home life. So that's a very strong reality it's also
Speaker 1: something that is not likely to be changed by me
Speaker 1: talking about it podcasting. That's something so that the problem
Speaker 1: with culture is that it's only really changed I think
Speaker 1: by local, face to face kind of circumstances, Like if
Speaker 1: you're a church, you have a much better chance of
Speaker 1: changing attitudes towards homework in your town than I do
Speaker 1: by talking about it on a podcast. I think in
Speaker 1: that sense, people tend to underrate the importance of local policies,
Speaker 1: not even policies, local voluntary network organizations, and overrate the
Speaker 1: like like what the federal or state government can do
Speaker 1: to quote solve a problem. A lot of problems are actually, imprinciple,
Speaker 1: not in principle, but in practice, only solvable at the
Speaker 1: community level because they require that they're the kinds of
Speaker 1: problems that can only be influenced on a face to
Speaker 1: face level by people who know the particular circumstances of
Speaker 1: a particular community. And I think culture doesn't completely but
Speaker 1: often falls into that category, which is why when I
Speaker 1: when I think, when I'm thinking about policy, I do
Speaker 1: think the focus should not be on looking at racial disparities,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. Well, I think that there's great
Speaker 1: value in looking at policies that will rise the tide
Speaker 1: for everyone. And you said particularly those of the Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess the define what is the bottom? How
Speaker 1: do you define that? You know, are we talking about
Speaker 1: just sees? Are we talking about in terms? You know?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? But so I think there's great
Speaker 1: value in that. What I'm trying too logically think through
Speaker 1: here is like, well, what if there are certain variables
Speaker 1: that are race specific though, that do create certain inequalities
Speaker 1: for particular groups. You know, are you saying we should
Speaker 1: we should ignore that? So I mean, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about if we're talking about culture, culture, Yeah, culture is
Speaker 1: not the same as race. It's often correlated with raceh So,
Speaker 1: for example, the culture, the average household culture of the
Speaker 1: typical Nigerian immigrant to America is vastly different than the
Speaker 1: average household culture of the typical black American descended from
Speaker 1: American slavery. They are of the same race, but very
Speaker 1: different cultures in basically every way you could think of,
Speaker 1: including attitudes towards toward education. Well, and that's primary, But
Speaker 1: I just want to clarify that's primary what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about when I talk about like I even used phrases
Speaker 1: like black culture, and people could argue, what the heck
Speaker 1: does that even mean? But I'm arguing about attitudes towards
Speaker 1: education and the kind of stigmatization that people within a
Speaker 1: certain culture might experience for expressing aspirations, particular aspirations. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be quote I was referring to. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm zooming in on, right, So you know
Speaker 1: that need not necessarily be talked about as a racial phenomenon,
Speaker 1: because it's not, strictly speaking, right, it's a phenomenon that
Speaker 1: is very disproportionate in that far more. But you know,
Speaker 1: I've never met a single Asian American kid who got
Speaker 1: teased for being a sort of traitor to his race,
Speaker 1: for liking school, or for walking around with a book,
Speaker 1: or for trying hard in class. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: never happened. I'm saying it's very atypical, right, because part
Speaker 1: of that's right, whereas many black kids would get the
Speaker 1: sense or be teased for acting white if they go
Speaker 1: to a particular kind of school and if they try
Speaker 1: very hard in school. Right, I'm trying to think what
Speaker 1: are the effects of that, like, right, Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the effects of that are are only bad, right,
Speaker 1: So you know, how does one So I mean that
Speaker 1: that is the kind of problem though that I think
Speaker 1: is more liable to local intervention, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: certainly a good thing to be able to talk about
Speaker 1: it on a podcast, but probably what is more responsive
Speaker 1: to you know, you know, anywhere that I'm that I'm
Speaker 1: writing or talking, the audience is like implicitly the nation
Speaker 1: and even like parts of Europe, like the implicitly like
Speaker 1: the English speaking world. That would be different if I,
Speaker 1: you know, like if I give a talk at the
Speaker 1: local charter school, I'm much more comfortable talking about that
Speaker 1: kind of thing because it actually, like it has more
Speaker 1: of a chance of landing as as a an important
Speaker 1: causal very for positive change, because of the nature of
Speaker 1: how like culture operates. So when the audience is like
Speaker 1: implicitly the nation, it's not that I don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about those things. It's just that I think there's
Speaker 1: a more important message, which is that racial dispair. Focusing
Speaker 1: on racial disparities as if racial disparities are a proxy
Speaker 1: for human well being is a mistake, a very important
Speaker 1: intellectual error. I'd love to see you like develop that
Speaker 1: argument even further as the years go on. I am
Speaker 1: so curious to see where your career goes. And it's
Speaker 1: it's been a delight for me to even to see
Speaker 1: in in the what have I known you just a
Speaker 1: year maybe a little more than that, a little more
Speaker 1: than that, how your own thinking has evolved, and even
Speaker 1: your thinking on reparations has has evolved, and or at
Speaker 1: least you know has has has shifted in various ways.
Speaker 1: And can can you kind of leave right now kind
Speaker 1: of a vision you have for the good society? What
Speaker 1: I mean, what does your Martin Luther's speech look like
Speaker 1: right now? On? You know, we were the clash to say,
Speaker 1: the Coleman Hugh speech February eighth, twenty twenty. Where's it
Speaker 1: looking right now? Well? So, we're human beings with a
Speaker 1: human nature that is part good and part bad. That's complex.
Speaker 1: Part of that complexity is an inherent urge to form tribes,
Speaker 1: to delineate my group of people, separate it from yours,
Speaker 1: to feel more empathy for mine less for yours. That
Speaker 1: will never go away, whether that is defined by race,
Speaker 1: by interests, by religion, by politics, but that that's an
Speaker 1: instinctual and first order urge that humans have. Their Humans
Speaker 1: also have the capacity to reflect on their first order
Speaker 1: urges and emotions, and you know, rationally developed principles that
Speaker 1: make sense upon reflection, that make moral sense upon reflection.
Speaker 1: And one of those principles is the color blind ideal. Right,
Speaker 1: And at a first order level, everyone sees race and
Speaker 1: can't help but see it, and it matters. But upon reflection,
Speaker 1: most people can come to realize, or be made to realize,
Speaker 1: or be persuaded, that race actually does not matter. It
Speaker 1: really is, upon reflection, just your skin color. And so
Speaker 1: my vision is for more and more people to reflect,
Speaker 1: to go past the first order urge that says this
Speaker 1: is my group, that's yours, that first order urge that
Speaker 1: will always be there, and to reach the second order level,
Speaker 1: where the idea of color blindness as a moral principle
Speaker 1: guides our policymaking, guides how we seek to treat other
Speaker 1: people and demand to be treated ourselves, and guides our
Speaker 1: sense of how much we can expand the circle of
Speaker 1: concern and empathy as one human family. Well, brother, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you felt as
Speaker 1: though your views were fairly represented and had a chance
Speaker 1: for airing because I really just wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: just sit back and kind of listen to you today. Awesome, Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I wish you well you too,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. Also, please add a reading and review of
Speaker 1: the podcast on iTunes and subscribe to the Psychology podcas
Speaker 1: guinst YouTube channel, as we're really trying to increase our
Speaker 1: viewership on YouTube. In fact, many of these episodes are
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Speaker 1: check out that channel. Thanks for being such a great
Speaker 1: supporter of the podcast and today next time for more
Speaker 1: on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.