The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes w/Dorollo Nixon & Jesan Sorrells

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 179.

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Now, traditionally, we would open up with a

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quote from our book or an excerpt from our book, but because

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our book that we are covering is so new, instead what

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I’m going to do is I’m going to summarize the

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introduction from this book, and then I’ll give you the

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author and the title along with some of my own

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thoughts before we welcome our guests to the

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show today. The book that I’m going— that we’re

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going to discuss, that we’re going to break down, begins with an introduction

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that begins with the title, Why Write About

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Race? And in this

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introduction, the author makes an assertion

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talking about his background, his racial background, his

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ethnic background, and how his ethnic and racial

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background guided him in particular to a conference

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when he was in his early teenage years, where an

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ideology was espoused that was absorbed by

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conference attendees And this ideology focused

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around the victimhood, in his opinion anyway, of

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race. He always thought

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that his race was a neutral fact,

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irrelevant to his deeper qualities as a human being.

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As a matter of fact, he frames, uh, race

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in general throughout the book as something that is not

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necessarily intrinsically interesting. But may

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present an ideological construct that other people

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can pour their ideas, their thoughts, and their particular

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unconstrained visions into. The

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author then proceeds to go through his introduction and talk

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about how he went to Columbia University. And at Columbia University,

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he was asked during orientation week to

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divide himself Well, the class was asked

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to divide itself by race and discuss

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how we either participated in or suffered from,

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quote unquote, systemic oppression.

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This huddling, this orientation act,

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led to more confusion. And ultimately, during the

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course of his work and the course of his studies as an undergrad at

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Columbia University, led to him beginning down the

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path that led him to rejecting

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ideologies that he has talked about in the book that we

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are covering today. And so

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we are going to talk about, just in time for Black

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History Month in America, today on the show,

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The End of Race Politics: Arguments

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for a Colorblind America. By

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Coleman Hughes.

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Now, when we think about race and when we think

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about ideologies around race, there is no

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area more ripe and more sharp for conflict and

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disagreement. Matter of fact, I’m going to bring up a conversation that DiRollo and I

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had a couple of years ago about Malcolm X, where

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I raised some points that I think Coleman Hughes I

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think Coleman Hughes’s arguments represent the, uh, the

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clearing at the end of the path on some of those arguments, and

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they represent a new way forward into the 21st century.

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Coleman offered up and opened up his introduction with this quote, and I love this.

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This is going to be the anchoring quote for our— I think for our show

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today. He said, I’ve always found race boring.

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As do I, Coleman. But myself and my guests

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today, we are also part of the tail end of a generation that

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benefited from the efforts of folks who came before

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us. And those acts, as

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beneficial as they were, can sometimes act as an

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anchor, at least in my life. I don’t know about my guest’s life, but

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can sometimes act as a psychological sociological,

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or even cultural anchor that prevent us from moving forward

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in all the ways that the author of our book today, Mr.

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Hughes, who is a generation younger than both of us,

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has decided to completely cut himself off from

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and reject. This

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vision that is put forth by those

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who insist that colorblindness is not a thing

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is one of a relentlessly unsafe, illegal, and immoral

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social order. And unfortunately, it allows people

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with all the resentment and venom of classical racists to

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chase clout in a way that would make David Duke himself

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blush. I don’t hate the

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players though, and neither does my guest today. I

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just want to know what the rules of the game are. And

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Coleman does an excellent job in laying out what those rules are from the

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perspective of somebody a generation younger. To

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quote from one of my favorite movies, Tommy Lee Jones in the

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opening of No Country for Old Men, I don’t want to push

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my ships forward and go out to meet something I don’t understand.

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A man would have to put his soul at hazard.

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He’d have to say, Okay, I’ll be

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a part of your world. Close

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quote. Today on the show, we’re going to

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explore the rules of the game. We’re going to talk about how the rules of

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the game were and what they were in the 20th century. And now

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that we are now 26 years into the 21st

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century, the rules of the game have to change,

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even though the players playing the game

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haven’t yet caught up to the fact that the rules have

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shifted. Leaders,

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the rules of the game, the rules of the racial ideological

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game are going to be different in the 21st century.

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And now back for this season and to explore ideas of colorblindness

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and its discontents, such as it were, is our co-host today,

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fresh off of a trip to federal court

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though not for the reasons that you would think. Good

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friend of the show and my continuing guest both this month

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and in July, Derulo Nixon

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Jr., Esquire. How you doing today, Derulo?

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How’s it going? Excellent. Doing very well today, Hasan.

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Thank you very much. All right. An analog man

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in a digital world. amen. Um. You got it.

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And there’s all those vinyl people who can relate.

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Axiomatically. The recording is better, it’s more faithful to

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the sound. We’re more faithful to ourselves with or

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without crazy tech. It has a

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higher level of audio fidelity, I believe, is the term

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for which you are looking. Um, but we are going to

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travel into the dulcet sounds, the dulcet

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commentary of Coleman Hughes. So before I jump into chapter

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1 of this dynamic book, The End of

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Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. Chapter

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1 is called Race, Antiracism, and Neoracism. So

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before I summarize that chapter, I kind of summarize the introduction, and I

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opened up with Coleman Hughes’s line, which opens up his

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chapter, opens up his introduction, I’m sorry, to his book. And

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I love this line. When I opened it up, I was like, oh, this is

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the first thing. I’ve always found race boring.

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What do you think of that? I kind of laid out some things that I

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think, but what do you think of this, D’Rolo?

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I think it’s a great line.

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Um, I don’t find race boring,

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I find race perplexing. And

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so it’s interesting because I wonder, okay, behind it, is

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there going to be ennui? Why are you all not past this

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thing? Why is this still a concern?

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Whereas my approach and the

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critique that my approach is based on just comes from a different direction.

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Once you recognize, and this is getting slightly ahead of myself, but in my

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opinion, once you recognize that biologically speaking, race

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is a construct, meaning it doesn’t exist biologically, it exists

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sociologically, not biologically. To me, that’s an important

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point of divergence. Because once I know that at the end of

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the day, like clothing, someone is putting it on you, and

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you can take them off. Okay, so

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race isn’t reality, then? No, it’s not biological reality.

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Sociological reality, sure. But sociological

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realities change. Sociologically—

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sociological realities are always in flux.

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Right. It’s like the population of, say,

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Detroit. Just track Detroit

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from its founding as a fort, if I’m not mistaken,

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by the French in the 17th century, if

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I’m not mistaken. Just track its population from that point forward.

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It’s not— well, in the same city. Yeah. Different people, different city, different dynamic. Maybe

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the same spirit. Don’t know. Certain things will remain. I know that

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better from New York City. Right. Where there’s a commercial spirit

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about New York City that comes from the Dutch and

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remains there and drives how that particular part of

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America works. But the

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makeup of the city obviously has changed over centuries. Right. And so

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what are the ties that bind, you know? But here in the context of dealing

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with one of the most pernicious

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ideas that exists. Right. And that Americans have to deal with.

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It’s interesting, his stance where it’s like, oh, this is— I find this boring. Oh,

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okay, right. Let’s see where this goes. Well, and he finds it

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boring specifically, as I sort of went through that introduction, um,

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because of the nature of how he was raised, um, the ways

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in which his parents positioned race for him or didn’t or

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chose not to, um, the way

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some would say, uh, and I’m sure I’m going to get comments on this when

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I clip this and put this, you know, on YouTube Shorts and everybody yells at

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me, um, for being naive, But, um, but, um, the

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ways in which he was educated through the

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modern term of privilege, quote unquote, um, and then

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having and being able to, uh, go be, be—

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they would say be economically shielded from the conditions of race.

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And I find all of those excuses, quite frankly, to be 20th century, uh,

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shibboleths that don’t really apply

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when we’re talking about Mr. Hughes, who’s a 29-year-old

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man, which means his formative years

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all occurred after 9/11.

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His formative education occurred in light

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of— and we’re going to talk about a lot of this today— the smartphone

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revolution, um, post-Cold War America,

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um, post, um

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post— what’s his name— post-LAPD

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rioting America. Go ahead, say it again.

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Rodney King. Yeah, post-Rodney King. Right, exactly. All of his

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formative experiences occurred after all of that. It’s a fundamentally different set

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of assumptions he approaches race with, which to your point, are

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sociological assumptions

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that track to or then inform his

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sociological understanding of race. What’s interesting me

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is that the people that he

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is writing his ideological,

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for lack of a better term, screed against, which is what this book

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is, these people will not hear him because it

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benefits them. And he’s going to talk about this in his first chapter, first 3

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chapters. It benefits them to basically shut their I ears. can.

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Understand. Maybe because

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I don’t think it’s boring. Or maybe,

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and it may be similar with him, I don’t know. I don’t know the conversations.

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I mean, I read that, you know, his mother died, and that he,

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there was disruption in his life because of when she died when he was a

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teenager. You know, I sympathize. And so I don’t, I

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don’t know what conversations he has with his father,

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with father and mother’s siblings, right, grandparents

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on these issues. I’ve had I have decades worth of experience

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arguing on these issues with, you know, older Black

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parentals, right? And parental types. And so I

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did air quotes for y’all who are listening, older Black, quote,

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parentals, close quote, you know, people like that, my folks’ generation,

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my— not so much with my grandparents.

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And I mean, I knew one set only, really, but

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knew them well, they knew me well. But

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suffice to say, I’ve had decades worth— decades plural— worth of

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conversations on, you know, these issues and how they affect things. And

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just, you know, but yeah, but it’s so— I find it

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interesting because I think at bottom you can dig through— so not

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our generation, the one before us— that you can dig through some of this. And

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I don’t think it’s merely either they’re

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burying their heads in the sand because they want to preserve their narrative

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without the interference of fact,

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okay, or truth.

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Um, nor is it merely, well, this has political utility,

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this is political capital, which it obviously is. Um,

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I’ll put it in the most blunt fashion I can,

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and, you know, somebody eventually will take me to

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task for it. But why does the Reverend Al Sharpton matter

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today? Right, because

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he can trade on this notion. Now, does he have

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a history of, you know, community advocacy going back decades? Yes, I recognize that.

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But the point I’m trying to make is that his relevance to me is

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not based on the effectiveness of his advocacy. It’s because he

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came from an era and in a movement where

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There was a reality that they were fighting, right? They

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fought successfully, right? The country moved on, but they

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didn’t. And

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as I think inevitably, they were confronted with

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truth. There’s an eye towards, yeah, but here’s my power base.

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Yeah, but I got to keep them engaged. And what better

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way than victimization to keep people

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engaged? It’s better than success,

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because success, everybody scatters. They go all over the place, like,

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engaged in whatever their pet projects are. When they believe

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themselves to be perpetual victims— dash— caste—

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dash— they can always be mobilized, always, to show

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up, protest, show up, riot, show

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up, whatever, right? And so, uh,

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yeah, I, I don’t find it boring. I find it, uh,

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frustrating and perplexing. Um, and yet,

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you know, that to me, there’s another— there’s another side, okay?

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There’s a biological side. I’ll probably get into it more later,

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but the biological side I find absolutely

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fascinating. And it’s just— it was never

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presented that way when I was growing up, right? Right.

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Ethnicity was never presented. Race was presented, period, you know,

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and not ethnicity. Right.

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Yeah. And there’s a— I’m glad you brought up that

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distinction with the difference between race and ethnicity.

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I think we forget that. I think I know we forget that in our

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overall cultural schema. But also, to

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your point, The individuals who cross

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that thin line from being, as you framed it for Mr.

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Sharpton, uh, community advocates,

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uh, and then they cross that thin line into what I

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have termed on this show in past episodes, and we’ve talked about

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Al Sharpton or even in private conversations we’ve had, and I’m going to go ahead

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and go public with this, um, you know, I look

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at someone like that as a grifter and a race hustler.

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I think that crossing that thin line—

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there’s a thin line, as Bubs would say on The Wire, between heaven and here,

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right? And it is—

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it’s that thin line. And it’s the crossing of that line, I think,

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that Coleman’s generation

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saw in multiple ways or was protected from,

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and now has no cultural It

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has no cultural glue on, on him. And by the way,

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Coleman’s 29. Oh, sorry, go ahead. He’s, you know, there’s

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no common frame of reference and there’s no experiential

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common frame of reference either. Right. And you and

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I, and you and I both have sons who are under the age of 10.

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I think that those sons are going to have even less of a common

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reference than even Coleman does. And that gets

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to something else that we’re going to talk about today, which is

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We brought up in the episode on Malcolm X, what are Americans going to—

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what about Americans? What do Black Americans do when they’ve actually

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won legally all of the things they asked for?

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The deeper question, of course, is what are you going to do when

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you’ve won, let’s say, 60 to 80%

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of all of these sociological and cultural things you’ve asked for?

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What do you do? This is the compelling question that my

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challenge to all those neo— the neo-racists and the anti-racists

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out there. Here’s my challenge to you, just like I would put the

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challenge to Malcolm X and the revolutionaries, uh,

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two generations back. What are you

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going to build with your win?

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And if you don’t have a vision constrained or

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otherwise, as Thomas Sowell might frame it,

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then I don’t know what to do with you.

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We can’t unite in common cause if you don’t have a

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vision. And that is where I

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have a problem. I have a problem with there being a

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lack of vision. And I think that Hughes’s book, what attracted me to

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Hughes’s book was ultimately the other day, in Chapter 6, which we’ll talk

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about this towards the end of our podcast today, he frames

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the beginning of a vision. And that’s

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amazing. That’s what we need today.

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So speaking of Hughes’s book, let’s jump right in. So in Chapter 1

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of The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind

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America, Hughes makes a few points here,

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and I want to summarize these. Again, we’re not reading directly from the book. I

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encourage you to go pick it up.. It is on Amazon. This book was

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published in 2024, so it

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is only a couple of years old. Actually, if you’re

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interested, you can go Google or go look on YouTube where

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all these things happen. Coleman Hughes’s discussion

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on the View of this book where Whoopi Goldberg, who’s 3

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generations— no, 2 generations older than him, 3 generations older than

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him, actually. No, I was right the first time. And Sunny Hostin, who

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is what some of us would call in the Black community—

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well, she’s not fully Black. Let’s just frame it that way

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if we’re going to frame it in terms of drops of

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Negro blood, which, by the way, he does get into this in the book.

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Both Sonny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg, I believe, in the clip when he went on

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The View upon the publication of this book, tried to jump on

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him about colorblindness. And he

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roundly trounced them because he’s a podcaster. And so he’s used

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to having arguments with people in real time, rather than

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having a studio audience and someone there to yell cut and

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reset. Anyway, go search that, go search that clip out if you,

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if you want. My man Coleman lit some

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people up. So Um,

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in Chapter 1 of this book, he talks about race, anti-racism, and neoracism. And,

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um, he talks about— to, to Derulo’s point, he begins with the conversation

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about his mother. Um, and he says, for most of my

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life, I saw my mother as neither Black nor white. Her

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Puerto Rican father was darker skinned than me, and her Puerto Rican mother was as

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light-skinned as any white American I knew. Nor did I view her as

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quote-unquote Hispanic, a word she hated due to its association with Spanish

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conquest, or even Latina, though she would have

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certainly checked that box on a census. This is where we

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start the opening with an acknowledgment of where he came from. Then

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we go into a conversation about what is race. And

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he defines the word race, including the concept of race, the

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arbitrariness of race, which is where we get into the one-drop

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rule. Why not one-eighth? Why not one-fourth? Why not

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one-half? Why not one-sixteenth? He

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also goes into the racial categories of other, to

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Darello’s point earlier, ethnos or ethnic groups in the United States,

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including Asians and Hispanics, for whom we do not

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nearly get as verklempt as we do for folks who have more

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melanin in their skin.

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And he positions an idea, and

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it is an idea in the introduction that drives the rest of his

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narrative. He positions this idea by saying

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that we often use race as a proxy for other things we

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care about. For example, when lawmakers discuss policies

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aimed at helping the disadvantaged, they’ll use race as a proxy for

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disadvantage. They use those expressions like Blacks and

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Hispanics and other disadvantaged groups to refer to people their

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policies are aimed at helping. But whether we are talking about current

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disadvantages, what is sometimes called— as I used the word

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previously, privilege— or historical disadvantages, racial identity

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is a bad proxy. And then he makes the argument that

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I’ve been making at least since 2004

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against all of this nonsense, that it’s really hard.

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I’m going to paraphrase his argument. It’s really hard to convince poor white people

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that they have privilege. That doesn’t work.

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And by the way, by the way,

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our good friend and former President Barack Obama

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knew that it didn’t work. And so in his reelection in

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2011, 2012, he told the entire Democratic

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Party, and I quote, you can go find this on the internet, we are

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going to abandon the white working class male

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vote. We don’t need it. And from

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2012 to now, And I anticipate the

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next couple of election cycles, the Democratic Party,

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which is the container of disadvantaged folks,

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uh, will continue to have trouble

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bringing its folks together.

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Finally, the end of the chapter, he talks about anti-racism

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and he talks about again, Martin Luther King’s I Have

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a Dream speech. He talks about the colorblind principle and

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defines what that is. And by the way, the colorblind

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00:24:43.420 –> 00:24:47.220
principle, he defines it. He says, um, we should treat

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people without regard to race, both in our

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public policy and in our private lives.

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That’s how Coleman Hughes defines colorblindness. No matter how

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00:24:58.300 –> 00:25:01.780
you may define colorblindness or how society may define

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colorblindness. He’s positioning colorblindness as a different

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way of engaging, a different rule in the game for the 21st

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century. He makes a couple of other points in the

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introduction, and then I’ll let DiRollo go. He makes a couple of other points in

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the introduction. He says that the ideas of the purported anti-racists in our culture

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don’t pass the quote-unquote smell test.

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They are clearly proxies for something else. He says the

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arbitrariness of race as a construct, biological, social,

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00:25:32.160 –> 00:25:35.880
economic, or otherwise, acts as a cover to smother in other

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ideas that are at the bottom. And this is what I believe,

401
00:25:39.520 –> 00:25:43.320
part of an unconstrained vision of society, the same kind

402
00:25:43.320 –> 00:25:47.160
of unconstrained vision that keeps returning to popularity from Rousseau

403
00:25:47.160 –> 00:25:50.480
to Marx to Pol Pot to even your friend and mine,

404
00:25:50.880 –> 00:25:54.160
uh, the Joker, Patrick Bateman, also known as Gavin Newsom.

405
00:25:55.610 –> 00:25:59.210
The last white man in the Democratic Party with any

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00:25:59.210 –> 00:26:01.850
power. And no, Tom Steyer, you don’t count.

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I don’t care if you’re a billionaire, it doesn’t matter. American society, of

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00:26:07.810 –> 00:26:11.410
course, is the only one on earth that has even

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come close to achieving the human task of erasing ethnic divisions.

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And it didn’t get close by expanding the franchise without

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demanding that each person to whom you’re— each group to

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whom the franchise is expanded accepts some constraints on

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reality. And colorblindness is one of those constraints

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that I think we are going to have to accept moving forward in the 21st

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00:26:33.540 –> 00:26:37.220
century. It is a simple request from Coleman

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Hughes, but I do not think it is easy.

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So to roll up, Hughes defines colorblindness, as I already

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00:26:44.580 –> 00:26:48.260
said, as the principle that we should treat people without regard to race, both in

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public policy and in our private lives. Here’s the core question,

420
00:26:52.100 –> 00:26:54.980
and I’ll let you go. Can we get there

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00:26:56.740 –> 00:27:00.460
from here? Let me— it’s not even a pivot or

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00:27:00.460 –> 00:27:03.940
a dodge, it’s a feint, right? And then I can counter,

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00:27:04.020 –> 00:27:06.420
should we get there? Okay, um,

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00:27:07.460 –> 00:27:11.140
publicly speaking, I have no problem with that.

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00:27:11.460 –> 00:27:14.820
I believe that’s what our laws have called for since the

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00:27:14.820 –> 00:27:18.570
19th century, since the 13th, 14th, and

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00:27:18.570 –> 00:27:22.090
15th Amendments, right? And so those have been on the

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00:27:22.090 –> 00:27:25.170
books for 150 years. Wonderful.

429
00:27:26.130 –> 00:27:29.610
So the country, meaning the government, is supposed to— and that’s a

430
00:27:29.610 –> 00:27:33.450
dangerous— I think it’s called a solipsism, so I apologize. The

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00:27:33.450 –> 00:27:36.890
government is supposed to do that already. The government is supposed to treat American citizens

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00:27:36.890 –> 00:27:39.330
without regard to race, ethnicity,

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00:27:40.530 –> 00:27:44.280
biological sex, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And

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00:27:44.600 –> 00:27:48.400
most of the time does, right? Did not most of the time

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00:27:48.400 –> 00:27:51.960
150 years ago, but most of the time does now. Great. That’s wonderful.

436
00:27:52.440 –> 00:27:55.960
To me, that is akin to my assertion that the US government

437
00:27:56.280 –> 00:28:00.000
to the citizenry should only speak English. Okay. It

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00:28:00.000 –> 00:28:03.240
is meant in part to be unifying.

439
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It is a reflection also of our historic— the

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historic roots of the United States. In an

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00:28:10.960 –> 00:28:14.560
English colonial experience along the eastern seaboard and

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00:28:14.560 –> 00:28:18.400
not any of the other colonial experiences that were going on as a

443
00:28:18.400 –> 00:28:21.280
route. They went on. Yes. Do they have— are there

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00:28:21.360 –> 00:28:24.560
populations who are part of the United States today

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00:28:25.040 –> 00:28:28.800
that had their rebirth of freedom in the Western world

446
00:28:29.040 –> 00:28:32.800
from these others? No, had their rebirth, but it wasn’t in freedom

447
00:28:33.920 –> 00:28:37.400
because that wasn’t happening, which is one of the reasons why they’re part of the

448
00:28:37.400 –> 00:28:41.040
U.S. today and I believe and advocate are better in the U.S.

449
00:28:41.040 –> 00:28:43.300
today than they would have would have been if they were still part of— pick

450
00:28:43.300 –> 00:28:46.780
another country that either exists today or doesn’t exist

451
00:28:46.780 –> 00:28:50.580
anymore but was over there. So, um, to me,

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00:28:50.580 –> 00:28:54.060
they’re, they’re the same. Okay, you speak this language

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00:28:54.220 –> 00:28:57.899
and we don’t care what you look like. Here are the rights you have

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00:28:57.899 –> 00:29:01.580
and we will enforce them. Wonderful. It’s with regard to

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00:29:01.580 –> 00:29:05.420
private conduct where I have a sticking point,

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and I say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait

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00:29:08.800 –> 00:29:12.240
Remember, I can look through— so assume

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00:29:12.640 –> 00:29:13.920
race is, um,

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00:29:16.800 –> 00:29:19.520
the artificial food coloring you put in a glass of water.

460
00:29:20.880 –> 00:29:24.400
So when we’re colorblind, we’re looking through

461
00:29:24.960 –> 00:29:28.640
the water in the glass at something else, right? And to me, there’s something else,

462
00:29:29.680 –> 00:29:32.480
there’s something else that’s good, is ethnicity. And so,

463
00:29:33.930 –> 00:29:37.610
um, I revel in ethnic distinctions, just like I revel

464
00:29:37.610 –> 00:29:41.450
in linguistic distinctions, you know, and I

465
00:29:41.450 –> 00:29:44.250
enjoy just subtle nuances

466
00:29:45.290 –> 00:29:48.930
in terms of what otherwise

467
00:29:48.930 –> 00:29:51.290
might just be slight skin

468
00:29:53.130 –> 00:29:56.730
shade or hue differences, how wide your nose

469
00:29:56.730 –> 00:30:00.100
is, how this, whatever. But just

470
00:30:00.340 –> 00:30:03.940
is part of something bigger that is beautiful

471
00:30:04.100 –> 00:30:07.140
and that enriches life. And so, you know,

472
00:30:07.860 –> 00:30:11.660
I think it’s easier to understand with examples. So let’s start with today and

473
00:30:11.660 –> 00:30:15.420
work backwards. So today I went to one of my favorite coffee places in

474
00:30:15.420 –> 00:30:18.900
Arizona, okay? Press Coffee. They’re an amazing local

475
00:30:18.900 –> 00:30:22.660
roastery. They have, I think, 29 locations. No, they’re not paying

476
00:30:22.660 –> 00:30:26.300
me to say this. They don’t have plans to expand outside of

477
00:30:26.300 –> 00:30:29.250
Arizona, which I think is a shame because their product is wonderful. Okay, um,

478
00:30:30.690 –> 00:30:34.330
and I’m there and it’s the same baristas I

479
00:30:34.330 –> 00:30:37.810
see almost every day that I go, uh, and they’re wonderful.

480
00:30:39.010 –> 00:30:42.850
Um, and, uh, I’m waiting for my morning

481
00:30:42.930 –> 00:30:46.690
coffee drink that I get, and then there’s this man there and he’s

482
00:30:46.690 –> 00:30:50.490
in a conversation with two other people. Um, this man is

483
00:30:50.490 –> 00:30:53.970
white. One of the two other people is an East India Indian

484
00:30:53.970 –> 00:30:57.680
woman. Okay, I live in Arizona, so if you say an Indian woman, it

485
00:30:57.680 –> 00:31:01.160
actually here, unlike everywhere except Alaska and perhaps

486
00:31:01.160 –> 00:31:03.440
Hawaii, actually has— it has like real—

487
00:31:04.720 –> 00:31:08.160
the likelihood of you meeting an indigenous person is much higher. And so I’m

488
00:31:08.160 –> 00:31:12.000
stressing that, you know, she and certainly her— she

489
00:31:12.000 –> 00:31:15.200
maybe, but her folks 100% are from the subcontinent. Okay.

490
00:31:16.480 –> 00:31:20.160
Anyway, so we— and then I don’t even remember the third person. He was male.

491
00:31:20.160 –> 00:31:23.960
I can’t remember what he was. But what I’m trying to emphasize is this man

492
00:31:23.960 –> 00:31:27.360
is here and they’re having this conversation while getting their

493
00:31:27.360 –> 00:31:30.880
coffee. And I watched this man’s behavior with the coffee.

494
00:31:34.400 –> 00:31:38.040
Thank you. I’m going to go back and

495
00:31:38.040 –> 00:31:41.800
keep podcasting. So I watched this man’s behavior with the

496
00:31:41.800 –> 00:31:45.400
coffee, okay? And he was the only man in the

497
00:31:45.400 –> 00:31:49.130
joint who knew how to drink coffee. He got an espresso. He

498
00:31:49.130 –> 00:31:52.690
stood the whole time and drank it, set it back down in the saucer and

499
00:31:52.690 –> 00:31:56.370
walked out. I literally— I chased this man down and I thanked him for

500
00:31:56.370 –> 00:32:00.090
knowing how to drink coffee. And what did I do? I asked him where he

501
00:32:00.090 –> 00:32:03.290
was from. Lo and behold, where is this man from?

502
00:32:03.930 –> 00:32:07.130
Italia, where espresso was

503
00:32:07.210 –> 00:32:10.930
invented. So he knew how to drink it. That’s an ethnic

504
00:32:10.930 –> 00:32:14.770
distinction with meaning. It led to a certain

505
00:32:14.850 –> 00:32:18.290
behavior and even just as an observer

506
00:32:18.290 –> 00:32:21.730
enriched my life. Mm-hmm. Next example.

507
00:32:22.210 –> 00:32:25.810
I was in Houston, Texas over the last couple of days.

508
00:32:25.890 –> 00:32:29.410
Houston, which is a swamp, is one of the most

509
00:32:29.410 –> 00:32:33.250
diverse places I’ve ever been in my life. It didn’t

510
00:32:33.250 –> 00:32:36.930
matter where I went. It was diverse.

511
00:32:37.330 –> 00:32:41.170
What does diverse mean? Usually diverse means, oh, there’s actually Black people

512
00:32:41.170 –> 00:32:44.820
here. Then sometimes diverse means there’s actually

513
00:32:44.820 –> 00:32:47.740
Black people here who aren’t only in subservient roles. That’s another

514
00:32:48.540 –> 00:32:52.260
connotation of diverse. That’s not what I mean, okay? Let’s go

515
00:32:52.260 –> 00:32:54.420
back to my coffee line this morning because then I’m going to show you what

516
00:32:54.420 –> 00:32:58.100
diverse really means, okay? What I see there are two Latinos

517
00:32:58.100 –> 00:33:01.940
and everybody else is white. They’re male and female. Oh, is

518
00:33:01.940 –> 00:33:05.660
that diverse? No idea. Let me show you what it would, would have

519
00:33:05.660 –> 00:33:08.940
been like in Houston, okay? You have these Latinos

520
00:33:09.740 –> 00:33:13.340
Latinos, excuse me. Every third person is Black, okay?

521
00:33:13.340 –> 00:33:16.860
And there’s like 3 Asians, different types of Asians,

522
00:33:17.020 –> 00:33:20.300
okay? And then the remaining people are white. So you look at 10 people and

523
00:33:20.300 –> 00:33:23.980
you’re like, wow, um, there’s no

524
00:33:23.980 –> 00:33:27.660
way to categorize these people other than biological sex,

525
00:33:28.540 –> 00:33:32.380
and more than 4 of you can fall in one category. Literally like that.

526
00:33:32.380 –> 00:33:36.080
And it was stunning to see. Okay, and it was

527
00:33:36.080 –> 00:33:39.800
obviously very pleasant, stunning to see. Here’s the example I bring up. I’m flying

528
00:33:39.800 –> 00:33:43.640
back and the man next to me, um, in

529
00:33:43.640 –> 00:33:47.320
his athletic gear with his

530
00:33:47.320 –> 00:33:50.280
construction helmet, okay, uh, to me look

531
00:33:50.920 –> 00:33:54.600
white, not white as Wonder Bread, but white, okay, has a

532
00:33:54.600 –> 00:33:58.400
beard, okay, fine, large like he works construction, okay, fine. And

533
00:33:58.400 –> 00:34:01.930
so we start talking. You know that man used to

534
00:34:02.970 –> 00:34:06.690
coach basketball in the inner city. The inner city—

535
00:34:06.690 –> 00:34:10.130
what does that connotation mean? It means Black people, poor and

536
00:34:10.130 –> 00:34:13.930
dangerous. That’s what it means. That’s where this man used to coach.

537
00:34:14.010 –> 00:34:16.970
Oh, that’s where this man’s father still

538
00:34:17.209 –> 00:34:20.850
coaches championship teams. And he shows me a YouTube

539
00:34:20.850 –> 00:34:24.530
clip with the news thing about his dad, and they’re interviewing

540
00:34:24.530 –> 00:34:28.360
his 6-foot-8 dad talking about,

541
00:34:28.600 –> 00:34:32.280
you know, just stuff. Now, what does it have to do with race and ethnicity?

542
00:34:32.280 –> 00:34:36.040
Well, this guy is Cuban. Oh, okay. So we

543
00:34:36.040 –> 00:34:39.760
start talking. This guy, he’s a Cuban American. His father is a

544
00:34:39.760 –> 00:34:43.519
Cuban American. Now, his father, unlike the son, looks about as

545
00:34:43.519 –> 00:34:46.760
white as Wonder Bread and he’s 6’8″. Okay. Anyway,

546
00:34:47.160 –> 00:34:50.600
but Cuban American. So now we have— oh, there’s this—

547
00:34:52.040 –> 00:34:55.870
I’m going to resist a trope. That has to do with food. But

548
00:34:55.870 –> 00:34:59.670
basically, there is this positive cultural element that

549
00:34:59.670 –> 00:35:03.310
is unique to them that I now then get to engage

550
00:35:03.310 –> 00:35:07.030
with. And it was coming back the other way because we could talk

551
00:35:07.030 –> 00:35:10.509
about— and it talked about growing up, college, different experiences.

552
00:35:10.590 –> 00:35:13.550
We talked about racism. It was great. Okay.

553
00:35:14.350 –> 00:35:18.150
Very good convo. Okay. And remember, I’m flying out of the Deep South, right,

554
00:35:18.150 –> 00:35:21.950
on the way back to the arid mountains, southwest

555
00:35:21.950 –> 00:35:25.750
deserts where I live. Um, next example: I’m

556
00:35:25.750 –> 00:35:28.590
at a bar the night before,

557
00:35:29.230 –> 00:35:31.550
okay, in Houston, okay? Uh, El

558
00:35:34.350 –> 00:35:38.110
Tiempo Cantina, that’s what it’s called, okay? Uh, and don’t worry,

559
00:35:42.830 –> 00:35:45.710
I’m going to speak in English. There you go. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank

560
00:35:45.710 –> 00:35:49.350
you. I’m at the bar, okay? And

561
00:35:49.350 –> 00:35:53.150
there’s this Black woman on one side, and there’s this white man

562
00:35:53.150 –> 00:35:56.590
on the other. And I talked to both, and

563
00:35:56.750 –> 00:36:00.350
I had deep conversations with both, okay?

564
00:36:00.350 –> 00:36:03.710
And we could talk about different

565
00:36:04.190 –> 00:36:08.030
things, right? Well, obviously we could talk about the same experience.

566
00:36:08.030 –> 00:36:11.750
We could talk about different things also. And so, um, I

567
00:36:11.750 –> 00:36:15.430
happen to have— because it’s me, and I know you will relate— I

568
00:36:15.430 –> 00:36:18.590
brought a book to dinner. By myself on a business trip. I brought a book

569
00:36:18.590 –> 00:36:22.110
to dinner. The book is sitting on the bar. The book was about

570
00:36:22.110 –> 00:36:25.790
freedom colonies. I didn’t know what that was. A

571
00:36:25.790 –> 00:36:29.590
freedom colony was an unincorporated Black town

572
00:36:29.670 –> 00:36:32.870
based on agriculture in the Jim Crow South that was

573
00:36:32.870 –> 00:36:36.110
entirely self-supporting, like

574
00:36:36.110 –> 00:36:39.870
Amish. And I study them. And like Mormons. And I

575
00:36:39.870 –> 00:36:43.630
study them. Okay. They were independent Black communities who basically said,

576
00:36:43.630 –> 00:36:47.360
y’all are doing whatever. We’re just going to be here, own land,

577
00:36:48.160 –> 00:36:51.920
produce what we need, be independent from y’all, no government

578
00:36:51.920 –> 00:36:55.000
support, and we’re good. All 5 fingers, we’re good.

579
00:36:55.600 –> 00:36:59.320
Thumbs up. There were hundreds of

580
00:36:59.320 –> 00:37:02.680
them. This book was about them and specifically in the context of

581
00:37:02.680 –> 00:37:05.920
Texas. Fascinating book. Well, this white man sitting next to me,

582
00:37:07.120 –> 00:37:10.970
he named one of the colonies. He’s young, he’s not even 35. Names

583
00:37:10.970 –> 00:37:14.770
one of the colonies, and we start talking about this stuff. And

584
00:37:14.770 –> 00:37:17.850
it was fascinating because, I mean,

585
00:37:18.410 –> 00:37:21.690
if you had asked me before I talked to him, do you think this man

586
00:37:21.690 –> 00:37:25.370
is going to have any idea about this? Frankly, I would have said no.

587
00:37:25.610 –> 00:37:29.330
I mean, I didn’t know. My father happened to grow up

588
00:37:29.330 –> 00:37:32.810
in a community like that, kind of like that in North Carolina.

589
00:37:32.970 –> 00:37:36.330
So why would I expect this man to know?

590
00:37:36.490 –> 00:37:40.010
Well, Here’s one of the dangers that comes along with this

591
00:37:40.010 –> 00:37:43.370
whole notion of race and what it’s supposed to mean.

592
00:37:43.850 –> 00:37:47.650
We’re supposed to assume he’s white, therefore ignorant, therefore doesn’t

593
00:37:47.650 –> 00:37:51.210
know about any of this stuff. This is a man from the South.

594
00:37:51.770 –> 00:37:54.690
He knew what this was. He’s not even 35. He knew what this was. And

595
00:37:54.690 –> 00:37:57.770
we’re talking about it. Great combo. Talking about other things,

596
00:37:58.810 –> 00:38:01.530
talking about Southern culture, talking about

597
00:38:03.250 –> 00:38:06.850
How racism is experienced differently in the South,

598
00:38:07.810 –> 00:38:11.490
differently experienced differently by Blacks in the South versus by

599
00:38:11.490 –> 00:38:14.690
Blacks in the North. We talked about this at a bar at dinner two nights

600
00:38:14.690 –> 00:38:18.490
ago. It’s great. Okay, great. That’s my kind of combo like this. I love

601
00:38:18.490 –> 00:38:22.170
that kind of stuff. Okay. Meanwhile, woman sitting on my

602
00:38:22.170 –> 00:38:25.330
right to whom I spoke to twice as long and spoke to first.

603
00:38:25.570 –> 00:38:29.010
Okay. She runs a medical

604
00:38:29.010 –> 00:38:32.750
practice in like two hospitals that are there. Okay, we had a great

605
00:38:32.750 –> 00:38:36.510
convo talking about all the stuff, talking about family, talking

606
00:38:36.510 –> 00:38:40.150
about these little like cultural things. That was

607
00:38:40.150 –> 00:38:43.510
a shared experience of a shared ethnicity,

608
00:38:44.150 –> 00:38:47.750
and that was happening with she and I and not happening with this dude. Okay,

609
00:38:48.070 –> 00:38:51.750
um, and I, I found

610
00:38:51.750 –> 00:38:55.510
it, you know, very enriching, very meaningful. And so back to what

611
00:38:55.510 –> 00:38:59.210
Mr. Hughes said, The sticking point for me

612
00:38:59.210 –> 00:39:02.810
is in our personal lives, right? Because I

613
00:39:02.810 –> 00:39:06.330
don’t believe that a

614
00:39:06.330 –> 00:39:09.930
private citizen needs to approach his or her

615
00:39:09.930 –> 00:39:13.730
relationships with, as it were, glasses that

616
00:39:13.730 –> 00:39:16.410
render him or her colorblind. Okay?

617
00:39:17.930 –> 00:39:21.690
And certainly if it’s colorblind and values-neutral, like, no.

618
00:39:22.640 –> 00:39:26.480
Colorblindness itself is a value. That’s one thing. But to me, it’s still like water

619
00:39:26.480 –> 00:39:29.880
in a glass. It’s, it’s, it’s a

620
00:39:29.880 –> 00:39:33.560
transparency that allows you to see the content of the

621
00:39:33.560 –> 00:39:37.320
character because that should be the driver. Okay. If

622
00:39:37.320 –> 00:39:41.160
I want to hang out with you and is— this it’s weird because this is

623
00:39:41.160 –> 00:39:44.880
1A and 1B. If I want to hang out with you, here’s the character I

624
00:39:44.880 –> 00:39:48.320
want and I’m not connecting with you because

625
00:39:48.480 –> 00:39:52.310
of how you look. I do happen to be connecting with you in

626
00:39:52.310 –> 00:39:56.030
one of several languages I speak, and that’s relevant always. Okay, if I

627
00:39:56.030 –> 00:39:59.270
can’t talk to you, it’s really hard to hang out. But I can talk to

628
00:39:59.270 –> 00:40:03.030
you, the rest of the distinctions don’t really matter. Okay, at

629
00:40:03.030 –> 00:40:06.590
the same time, that’s 1A. And so at the same time,

630
00:40:06.590 –> 00:40:10.070
there’s 1B. There can be specific engagement with

631
00:40:10.070 –> 00:40:13.710
specific people because of these distinctives, and

632
00:40:13.710 –> 00:40:17.550
that in and of itself can be meaningful. Okay, I’m

633
00:40:17.550 –> 00:40:21.310
gonna tell a funny one. When we got here to Arizona, okay, so

634
00:40:21.310 –> 00:40:25.150
as Hasan knows, right, we used to live in the top end of Appalachia, right?

635
00:40:26.430 –> 00:40:30.110
Uh, you can use two words, sometimes inflammatory, to describe the

636
00:40:30.110 –> 00:40:32.750
culture surrounding us: redneck. Okay,

637
00:40:33.710 –> 00:40:36.910
now I love those guys. These guys are great. Women are great. Okay, um,

638
00:40:39.550 –> 00:40:41.470
we were able to

639
00:40:43.130 –> 00:40:46.610
engage with and enjoy and see some of the

640
00:40:46.610 –> 00:40:50.410
cultural patterns that happen among people

641
00:40:50.730 –> 00:40:54.490
who, um, certainly self-identify that way, uh,

642
00:40:54.890 –> 00:40:58.090
and, uh, other people would throw them in that box. But there’s a lot of

643
00:40:58.090 –> 00:41:01.810
self-identification with that label that works, that I find to be legitimate, you

644
00:41:01.810 –> 00:41:05.490
know. Anyway, so we come here and we meet this couple.

645
00:41:05.490 –> 00:41:09.290
Our kids go to preschool together, okay? They got a bunch of kids, we have

646
00:41:09.290 –> 00:41:12.480
a bunch of kids, okay, fine. Well, they invited us to a party for some

647
00:41:12.480 –> 00:41:16.280
of their kids, okay? This is during COVID but this is Arizona, so

648
00:41:16.280 –> 00:41:20.120
nobody’s masked. We’re there loving it, okay? Love being free.

649
00:41:20.360 –> 00:41:22.920
One of the reasons we moved during COVID out of

650
00:41:23.640 –> 00:41:26.840
oppressed New York State. Anyway, so we’re at this party,

651
00:41:27.960 –> 00:41:31.240
and dude, I’ve

652
00:41:31.640 –> 00:41:35.320
never seen some of these things, and I

653
00:41:35.320 –> 00:41:39.090
attributed to that culture in a good way,

654
00:41:39.330 –> 00:41:43.170
okay? I literally— we go and,

655
00:41:43.170 –> 00:41:46.730
you know, your normal party interaction, whatever, nothing

656
00:41:46.730 –> 00:41:50.050
untoward. And then they have this slingshot,

657
00:41:50.210 –> 00:41:53.370
okay? I’m not even making this up. I can see it right now. They had

658
00:41:53.370 –> 00:41:57.110
a slingshot, um, and the, the bucket part of the slingshot,

659
00:41:57.110 –> 00:42:00.690
uh, is large enough to fit a kid in, okay?

660
00:42:00.930 –> 00:42:04.430
They were launching kids. Oh

661
00:42:04.430 –> 00:42:08.110
well, yeah, we’re catching the kids and

662
00:42:08.110 –> 00:42:11.670
this was totally normal to them. And they were like— and I was just

663
00:42:11.670 –> 00:42:15.390
like, wow, this is amazing, you know. I was

664
00:42:15.630 –> 00:42:19.390
stoked that they were doing that, that they were comfortable doing that.

665
00:42:19.630 –> 00:42:23.470
Now I didn’t want to do that and my kids didn’t want to do that,

666
00:42:24.110 –> 00:42:27.750
you know. I asked Ro, he’s like, I ain’t doing that. Yep, that’s okay, they’re

667
00:42:27.750 –> 00:42:30.850
free to do that. I don’t want to get in their way. This is how

668
00:42:30.850 –> 00:42:34.570
they want to have fun. Awesome. It was a highly enjoyable party.

669
00:42:34.730 –> 00:42:38.370
Okay. But I remembered that. I remember saying that I love this.

670
00:42:38.370 –> 00:42:42.090
I love that they will do this, you know.

671
00:42:42.410 –> 00:42:46.050
And so I don’t want to

672
00:42:46.050 –> 00:42:49.810
cast a vision for an America where people in

673
00:42:49.810 –> 00:42:52.930
their personal lives are literally trying to avoid or

674
00:42:52.930 –> 00:42:56.570
downplay these distinctions that help make us who we are,

675
00:42:56.570 –> 00:43:00.410
these distinctions that help make our groups who our

676
00:43:00.410 –> 00:43:03.850
groups are, distinct from other groups.

677
00:43:05.210 –> 00:43:08.690
And I don’t believe it’s necessary with all those

678
00:43:08.690 –> 00:43:12.450
distinctives to— I still think even with all those

679
00:43:12.450 –> 00:43:16.010
distinctives, a unifying vision of what America is can still be cast.

680
00:43:16.890 –> 00:43:20.450
There’s some tension.

681
00:43:20.450 –> 00:43:23.890
It’s not oppositional. It’s not even

682
00:43:23.890 –> 00:43:27.380
friction. It’s just like a counterweight. Right?

683
00:43:28.740 –> 00:43:32.100
So there are those who would argue— and this is why I let you go

684
00:43:32.100 –> 00:43:34.540
on this for a little bit, because I wanted to get the whole thing out

685
00:43:34.540 –> 00:43:38.300
there. Um, thank you. What you’re talking— you’re welcome.

686
00:43:38.300 –> 00:43:41.900
What you’re talking about is freedom of association as

687
00:43:41.900 –> 00:43:44.660
guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution.

688
00:43:45.540 –> 00:43:48.980
And freedom of association at a, at a, at a

689
00:43:48.980 –> 00:43:52.100
legislative level, there are those who would push back on you

690
00:43:52.830 –> 00:43:56.670
has been abrogated by the presence of, to your

691
00:43:56.670 –> 00:44:00.270
point, um, the 14th Amendment, and then following on from that,

692
00:44:00.910 –> 00:44:04.750
um, the Civil Rights Acts, uh, both in the 1960s and the

693
00:44:04.750 –> 00:44:07.950
1970s. And freedom of association has been

694
00:44:08.110 –> 00:44:11.950
abrogated by the Common Law Act of Title IX.

695
00:44:12.830 –> 00:44:16.470
And then all of these acts— and even Hughes argues this in

696
00:44:16.470 –> 00:44:19.470
parts of his book— all of these acts

697
00:44:20.290 –> 00:44:23.810
these legislative acts erode

698
00:44:23.970 –> 00:44:24.690
the ability, uh.

699
00:44:27.730 –> 00:44:31.530
For. What you are describing to happen in

700
00:44:31.530 –> 00:44:34.930
a culture, particularly when corporations,

701
00:44:35.330 –> 00:44:39.170
particularly large corporations, get involved in—

702
00:44:39.490 –> 00:44:41.330
like they did post-BLM, post-2020—

703
00:44:43.410 –> 00:44:47.030
get involved in cultural shaming. And seeking to

704
00:44:47.030 –> 00:44:50.350
culturally norm people. Case in point,

705
00:44:51.710 –> 00:44:55.350
I’m maybe at a football party, right? Not the Super

706
00:44:55.350 –> 00:44:58.790
Bowl, let’s just say a football party, right? I’m at a football party with a

707
00:44:58.790 –> 00:45:01.630
variety of friends that I have freely associated with,

708
00:45:02.590 –> 00:45:05.790
and in the end zone of the product that I’m consuming

709
00:45:06.190 –> 00:45:08.590
is a sign that says, “End racism.”

710
00:45:09.950 –> 00:45:13.670
Who exactly is that targeted towards? Now, the

711
00:45:13.670 –> 00:45:16.830
answer to that question, we know. We know precisely

712
00:45:17.310 –> 00:45:20.830
who that is targeted towards. It is targeted to the aforementioned

713
00:45:20.830 –> 00:45:24.590
rednecks with the children in the bucket who were catching them at the birthday party

714
00:45:24.590 –> 00:45:28.390
that you went to. That’s who it’s targeted towards. The

715
00:45:28.390 –> 00:45:32.230
message is also targeted towards, to your point about victimhood in

716
00:45:32.230 –> 00:45:36.030
an earlier segment, it is targeted as a method of

717
00:45:36.670 –> 00:45:40.430
making me feel good that something is happening about racism from this massive corporation.

718
00:45:41.330 –> 00:45:44.930
And actually it’s a nonprofit, folks, known as the NFL, right?

719
00:45:45.730 –> 00:45:48.930
And while I think most people,

720
00:45:49.650 –> 00:45:52.770
to their credit, the people who make $30,000 to

721
00:45:52.770 –> 00:45:56.370
$50,000 a year in this country and are the vast majority of people,

722
00:45:56.770 –> 00:46:00.210
I think most people ignore

723
00:46:00.290 –> 00:46:03.890
all of that and they just go and live their lives. It, it glides

724
00:46:03.890 –> 00:46:07.730
right past them. But where it shows

725
00:46:07.730 –> 00:46:10.730
up, and I think this is where Coleman is getting to, and I think he’s

726
00:46:10.730 –> 00:46:14.510
got something here that we have to acknowledge. Where it

727
00:46:14.510 –> 00:46:18.270
impacts them in their private lives is

728
00:46:18.270 –> 00:46:21.710
when they go out in private association with these

729
00:46:21.710 –> 00:46:25.510
corporations via their money. And now these corporations aren’t

730
00:46:25.510 –> 00:46:28.870
holding up their end of the deal and are lecturing to them about what they

731
00:46:28.870 –> 00:46:31.950
need to think about or how they need to behave or who they need to

732
00:46:31.950 –> 00:46:35.590
associate with in their private lives. I don’t need a

733
00:46:35.590 –> 00:46:39.320
lecture from LeBron James about race. I need LeBron James

734
00:46:39.320 –> 00:46:43.080
to shut up and dribble, shoot the

735
00:46:43.080 –> 00:46:46.920
rock, work on that, LeBron. I don’t want to hear

736
00:46:46.920 –> 00:46:50.640
about what you can think about race until you can go to

737
00:46:50.640 –> 00:46:54.440
China and talk about race when you’re putting on an

738
00:46:54.440 –> 00:46:58.240
exhibition or talk about the communist government in China. And you would never

739
00:46:58.240 –> 00:47:01.880
dare to do that in China. If you were putting on an exhibition in Saudi

740
00:47:01.880 –> 00:47:05.080
Arabia, you would never dare to speak out against Islam.

741
00:47:05.760 –> 00:47:09.600
Because in those societies and cultures, they don’t have, yes,

742
00:47:09.680 –> 00:47:13.480
freedom of speech and you know it, but also there’s

743
00:47:13.480 –> 00:47:17.080
a venality of greed underneath this. We’re about where the

744
00:47:17.080 –> 00:47:20.760
funding for a lot of these places is coming from. And

745
00:47:20.760 –> 00:47:24.560
that venality combined with the corporate

746
00:47:24.560 –> 00:47:27.840
messaging is what I believe Coleman and his entire

747
00:47:27.840 –> 00:47:31.360
generation are perceiving. Because to your point about fragmentation earlier,

748
00:47:32.070 –> 00:47:35.190
they don’t see the differentiations

749
00:47:35.990 –> 00:47:39.750
in mass organizations and institutions. They just put

750
00:47:39.750 –> 00:47:42.950
the government and Walmart and the NBA and LeBron

751
00:47:44.310 –> 00:47:48.030
and you and me at a certain class level and education level all in one

752
00:47:48.030 –> 00:47:51.510
bucket. And they just say, this is the thing. Don’t lecture me.

753
00:47:52.230 –> 00:47:54.710
And I think that’s part of the new rules of the 21st century.

754
00:47:56.550 –> 00:48:00.350
And I think when people are talking about— when he’s talking about public policy and

755
00:48:00.350 –> 00:48:04.040
in our private lives, I also hooked on the private lives part for

756
00:48:04.040 –> 00:48:07.760
exactly the reasons you hooked onto it at first. And

757
00:48:07.760 –> 00:48:11.560
then I thought, I think he’s getting at something deeper here. I

758
00:48:11.560 –> 00:48:15.360
think he’s getting at the knock-on effects of the Civil Rights Act. I think

759
00:48:15.360 –> 00:48:19.200
he’s getting at the knock-on effects of, um, Title

760
00:48:19.200 –> 00:48:22.800
IX. I think he’s getting at the knock-on effects of the 14th Amendment

761
00:48:23.040 –> 00:48:26.760
around this area of free association. Because if we got rid of the

762
00:48:26.760 –> 00:48:29.490
Civil Rights Act, Tomorrow,

763
00:48:30.370 –> 00:48:33.810
it isn’t as if these corporations are going to go and somehow hire a bunch

764
00:48:33.810 –> 00:48:37.490
of white men. That’s not going to happen. They’re going to continue

765
00:48:37.570 –> 00:48:41.290
to claim in their policies that they

766
00:48:41.290 –> 00:48:45.050
do not discriminate against anyone. As a matter of fact, they’re

767
00:48:45.050 –> 00:48:48.770
going to double down on specifically

768
00:48:49.170 –> 00:48:51.890
picking diversity hires,

769
00:48:53.010 –> 00:48:56.850
and they are going to label those folks that they hire as diversity hires. And

770
00:48:56.850 –> 00:49:00.650
then they’re going to put them in the cubicle next to me. And that impacts

771
00:49:00.650 –> 00:49:04.450
my private association with that person because my private association at a certain—

772
00:49:04.450 –> 00:49:07.370
my association at a certain point stops being public

773
00:49:08.090 –> 00:49:11.730
when I have to do work that the private organization is paying

774
00:49:11.730 –> 00:49:15.170
me to do. So that’s the only pushback I would put there. And I think

775
00:49:15.170 –> 00:49:18.650
Coleman would agree with that. And I think most of the folks that are under

776
00:49:18.650 –> 00:49:22.090
the under 30s, hell, I’ll go into the under 35s,

777
00:49:22.410 –> 00:49:25.650
see this nuance, but I don’t know that they know how to describe it. They

778
00:49:25.650 –> 00:49:29.100
don’t know how to they don’t know how to articulate what they’re seeing. Yeah, it’s,

779
00:49:29.100 –> 00:49:31.180
it’s, it’s fascinating because

780
00:49:34.140 –> 00:49:37.340
the public-private distinction is a good

781
00:49:37.340 –> 00:49:39.740
benchmark for measuring

782
00:49:42.860 –> 00:49:46.700
just what we’re trying to achieve, right? And I just don’t think it— I

783
00:49:46.700 –> 00:49:50.540
don’t even think the goals are the same. Yeah. Nor

784
00:49:50.540 –> 00:49:52.790
that they need to be, you know, Like, right.

785
00:49:54.470 –> 00:49:58.270
I forget how. Yeah, people have

786
00:49:58.270 –> 00:50:01.950
said to me, and well-meaning people and people who meant what

787
00:50:01.950 –> 00:50:05.510
they said, and where I will attest to their integrity

788
00:50:05.670 –> 00:50:09.390
in trying to do or in doing what they said, I’m

789
00:50:09.390 –> 00:50:12.790
colorblind. I don’t— they say I’m colorblind. I don’t see race. Okay.

790
00:50:15.750 –> 00:50:19.200
Okay. Do you see ethnicity? Okay,

791
00:50:19.600 –> 00:50:23.440
do you see that this person is Chinese and this person is

792
00:50:23.440 –> 00:50:27.200
Indian, East India Indian? Or do

793
00:50:27.200 –> 00:50:31.040
you just see two people? I don’t see two people. I see people,

794
00:50:31.680 –> 00:50:35.520
see their origins. I mean, I’ll give you another example from Houston. I’m on

795
00:50:35.520 –> 00:50:38.640
the bus. I took the public bus in Houston

796
00:50:40.240 –> 00:50:43.200
and I only had to give— I only had to give $5. I only had

797
00:50:43.200 –> 00:50:46.960
to give $5. Okay. One person panicked.

798
00:50:46.960 –> 00:50:50.800
I only had to give $5. Okay, the bus driver

799
00:50:50.800 –> 00:50:54.200
is a brown-skinned man with a long beard,

800
00:50:54.200 –> 00:50:57.920
mostly white, some gray, a little bit of some darker color,

801
00:50:57.920 –> 00:51:01.720
but it’s basically dark gray, light gray, and white. Okay, no mustache,

802
00:51:02.040 –> 00:51:05.840
and his hair, I mean, it’s probably a few

803
00:51:05.840 –> 00:51:09.680
inches long. Okay, balding. And so I look at him and

804
00:51:09.680 –> 00:51:13.240
it’s like, okay, obviously he’s Muslim with the no mustache. All right,

805
00:51:13.320 –> 00:51:17.140
so he’s probably from Pakistan or Bangladesh. And And I looked at

806
00:51:17.140 –> 00:51:20.940
him and I said, okay, he’s a little light, so I guessed Pakistan. So I

807
00:51:20.940 –> 00:51:24.660
said to him, apropos of nothing, I looked at him and I said, hi sir,

808
00:51:24.820 –> 00:51:28.340
Rawalpindi? And he says, no, I’m from

809
00:51:28.340 –> 00:51:32.140
Bangladesh. And I’m like, that was my next guess, Dhaka. And he said,

810
00:51:32.140 –> 00:51:35.660
you know, it was the same country before 1971. In other words, when he was

811
00:51:35.660 –> 00:51:38.900
born, it was the same country, so I was right. Now

812
00:51:39.460 –> 00:51:43.060
I can see this man’s origins, you know, it’s, it’s like, it’s beautiful, it’s like

813
00:51:43.060 –> 00:51:46.800
a gift. But to me, that’s part of— there’s meaning in that, and

814
00:51:46.800 –> 00:51:50.040
there’s part of the exchange. And so this man now

815
00:51:50.040 –> 00:51:53.880
understands that I understand where he’s coming

816
00:51:53.880 –> 00:51:57.160
from, you know, and that means something. Our

817
00:51:57.160 –> 00:52:00.920
engagement is enriched by that, you know. And so, um,

818
00:52:03.560 –> 00:52:06.920
pardon me a second, text message telling.

819
00:52:09.330 –> 00:52:12.530
Me Zoom. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. Um.

820
00:52:15.650 –> 00:52:19.330
Okay, so, so we’re, we’re in this spot, right? And

821
00:52:19.970 –> 00:52:23.570
I agree, like, there’s, there’s some things we have to wrestle with in this

822
00:52:23.570 –> 00:52:26.530
idea, this term colorblindness. And Coleman

823
00:52:27.330 –> 00:52:30.930
describes in the second chapter of The End of Race Politics:

824
00:52:30.930 –> 00:52:34.250
Arguments for a Colorblind America, um, the real history of

825
00:52:34.250 –> 00:52:37.730
colorblindness. And so he does the deep dive into the 14th Amendment,

826
00:52:39.300 –> 00:52:43.140
He covers about— he covers Plessy v. Ferguson

827
00:52:43.140 –> 00:52:45.540
and how that led into the civil rights movement.

828
00:52:46.820 –> 00:52:50.540
He also talks about, particularly in Plessy v. Ferguson,

829
00:52:50.540 –> 00:52:54.220
he mentions the lone dissenting opinion being written by

830
00:52:54.220 –> 00:52:57.980
Justice John Marshall Harlan. It contains what is probably the most famous

831
00:52:57.980 –> 00:53:01.780
reference to colorblindness in American law. And DiRollo will know this as a

832
00:53:01.780 –> 00:53:05.200
lawyer. Quote, Our Constitution is

833
00:53:05.200 –> 00:53:08.746
colorblind. And by the way, this was in 1896.

834
00:53:09.054 –> 00:53:12.760
1896. Our Constitution is colorblind

835
00:53:12.760 –> 00:53:16.440
and neither knows nor tolerates classes among

836
00:53:16.520 –> 00:53:19.560
citizens. In respect of civil rights,

837
00:53:20.120 –> 00:53:23.480
all citizens are equal before the law. The

838
00:53:23.480 –> 00:53:27.080
humblest is the peer of the most powerful.

839
00:53:27.640 –> 00:53:31.040
Close quote. Now,

840
00:53:32.160 –> 00:53:35.960
the— he does talk about how Harlan’s arguments did not carry

841
00:53:35.960 –> 00:53:39.760
the day. We had separate but equal provisions, which of course then led to

842
00:53:40.240 –> 00:53:43.720
the civil rights movement. It led to the creation of the

843
00:53:43.720 –> 00:53:47.520
NAACP by W.E.B. Du Bois. By the way, we’ve talked about that on this

844
00:53:47.520 –> 00:53:51.240
podcast before. You should go back and listen to our episode on the

845
00:53:51.240 –> 00:53:54.320
Souls of Black Folk, as well as Up from

846
00:53:54.320 –> 00:53:57.120
Slavery, where I made the assertion that

847
00:53:58.120 –> 00:54:01.720
Black culture and Black people in America have long

848
00:54:01.720 –> 00:54:05.160
divided along two different tracks. The

849
00:54:05.160 –> 00:54:08.720
W.E.B. Du Bois track, of which Ibram X. Kendi and

850
00:54:08.720 –> 00:54:12.480
Ta-Nehisi Coates, and probably a little bit of Coleman Hughes,

851
00:54:12.480 –> 00:54:15.720
although I’m going to give him some more grace on this, are on one track.

852
00:54:16.280 –> 00:54:19.400
And the other track features Booker T. Washington,

853
00:54:20.360 –> 00:54:23.880
which was a track that was first laid by Frederick

854
00:54:23.880 –> 00:54:27.620
Douglass. And so from Frederick Douglass, you go into Booker T. Washington, and from

855
00:54:27.620 –> 00:54:31.100
Booker T. Washington, you get to guys

856
00:54:31.100 –> 00:54:34.900
like, well, like, quite frankly, like me and DeRolo, who have to

857
00:54:34.900 –> 00:54:38.140
work for a living. And that

858
00:54:38.140 –> 00:54:41.820
fundamental distinction of class, of having to work for a living

859
00:54:41.820 –> 00:54:45.420
rather than making money off of ideas, or off

860
00:54:45.420 –> 00:54:49.100
of grifting off of ideas, or hustling ideas,

861
00:54:49.820 –> 00:54:53.510
is something that creates a profound

862
00:54:54.230 –> 00:54:58.030
split in Black America, or did create a profound split in

863
00:54:58.030 –> 00:55:01.510
Black American culture in the 20th century.

864
00:55:01.990 –> 00:55:05.390
And I think that split is going to be resolved, or is in the process

865
00:55:05.390 –> 00:55:08.950
of being resolved, very quietly and underground in the

866
00:55:08.950 –> 00:55:12.550
21st century. And Coleman Hughes is, um, is

867
00:55:13.590 –> 00:55:17.350
on board with that. Then he finally talks about in the chapter

868
00:55:17.900 –> 00:55:19.500
closes out with this idea of

869
00:55:21.020 –> 00:55:24.860
reverse racism and how the advocates

870
00:55:24.860 –> 00:55:28.260
of this, of the idea that

871
00:55:28.260 –> 00:55:31.820
colorblindness was, quote, a cynical invention of white conservatives,

872
00:55:33.180 –> 00:55:36.940
close quote, or a Trojan horse for white supremacy,

873
00:55:37.180 –> 00:55:40.940
close quote. He makes the point, Hughes does, that

874
00:55:41.020 –> 00:55:44.820
they are using these efforts to tarnish colorblindness as

875
00:55:44.820 –> 00:55:47.500
invalid. And as a matter of fact, he says that

876
00:55:48.500 –> 00:55:52.340
appeals to common humanity that came through folks like

877
00:55:52.340 –> 00:55:56.180
civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and

878
00:55:56.660 –> 00:56:00.420
Bayard Rustin at the moment when

879
00:56:00.420 –> 00:56:03.700
civil rights were achieved were immediately abandoned

880
00:56:04.020 –> 00:56:07.780
by the same folks who had previously championed those

881
00:56:08.020 –> 00:56:11.380
ideas. By the way, he quotes

882
00:56:11.620 –> 00:56:15.340
from Dr. King several quotes. He closes out this

883
00:56:15.340 –> 00:56:18.640
chapter several things from Dr. Several quotes from Dr. King,

884
00:56:19.040 –> 00:56:22.760
including, um, in an effort to achieve freedom in

885
00:56:22.760 –> 00:56:26.480
America— in an effort to achieve freedom in America, Asia, and Africa,

886
00:56:26.480 –> 00:56:30.160
we must not try to leap from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage,

887
00:56:30.320 –> 00:56:34.000
thus subverting justice. We must seek democracy and not,

888
00:56:34.480 –> 00:56:38.200
not the substitution of one tyranny for another. Our aim must never be to defeat

889
00:56:38.200 –> 00:56:42.000
or humiliate the white man. We must not become victimized with a

890
00:56:42.000 –> 00:56:45.590
philosophy of Black supremacy. Or this

891
00:56:45.590 –> 00:56:48.470
quote, also from Dr. King, properly speaking,

892
00:56:49.430 –> 00:56:52.790
and I like this one for a whole series of reasons,

893
00:56:52.790 –> 00:56:56.550
properly speaking, races do not marry, individuals

894
00:56:56.630 –> 00:57:00.470
marry. And another quote from Dr. King,

895
00:57:00.950 –> 00:57:04.790
as I stand here out here and look upon the thousands of Negro faces and

896
00:57:04.790 –> 00:57:08.550
the thousands of white faces intermingled like the waters of a river, I

897
00:57:08.550 –> 00:57:11.560
see only one face. The Face of the Future.

898
00:57:12.840 –> 00:57:15.680
Hughes, of course, points out that the neo-racists

899
00:57:16.360 –> 00:57:20.200
would ride on the coattails of Dr. King and Malcolm X

900
00:57:20.200 –> 00:57:23.560
and Eldridge Cleaver without actually reading the quotes

901
00:57:23.720 –> 00:57:27.320
or pursuing the, uh, the dream that those

902
00:57:27.400 –> 00:57:30.600
quotes lay out. Now look,

903
00:57:31.560 –> 00:57:35.200
I think the reason we can’t have nice things in this country is because we

904
00:57:35.200 –> 00:57:38.880
can’t actually get our arms around colorblindness in the way— in the, in the

905
00:57:38.880 –> 00:57:42.660
nuanced way that DiRollo even described it in examples

906
00:57:43.060 –> 00:57:46.500
from his travels in Houston and from his

907
00:57:46.900 –> 00:57:50.620
going to the coffee shop in Phoenix and from even being on

908
00:57:50.620 –> 00:57:54.340
the bus, which, by the way, many of you don’t realize

909
00:57:54.340 –> 00:57:57.940
this, being on the bus is a sign that Mr. Nixon

910
00:57:58.260 –> 00:58:00.900
has decided to walk among the proletariat,

911
00:58:01.860 –> 00:58:05.540
at least for a moment. I got on this bus

912
00:58:05.620 –> 00:58:09.220
and, man, it’s, it’s weird. It’s just It’s like

913
00:58:09.220 –> 00:58:12.940
it, it, you have to know your city because you can get

914
00:58:12.940 –> 00:58:15.300
on buses in cities and it’s a normal

915
00:58:16.900 –> 00:58:20.380
transactional transportation experience. And then there’s the

916
00:58:20.380 –> 00:58:23.460
reality that is most of the country, which is if you were on a bus,

917
00:58:23.460 –> 00:58:27.180
you got a problem. And so there

918
00:58:27.180 –> 00:58:30.980
I was on the bus. Hey, you know, I could have Ubered, but

919
00:58:30.980 –> 00:58:34.780
it’s me. So I didn’t want to. I took that

920
00:58:34.780 –> 00:58:35.460
bus once.

921
00:58:38.890 –> 00:58:40.890
And I got back via Uber.

922
00:58:44.730 –> 00:58:48.370
Let not your class privilege show. So the

923
00:58:49.170 –> 00:58:52.770
question becomes, according to

924
00:58:52.770 –> 00:58:56.210
Hughes, and this is the tee-up question for going into our

925
00:58:56.690 –> 00:59:00.410
next session here, according to Hughes,

926
00:59:01.700 –> 00:59:05.460
Scholars of the civil rights movement have dismissed the idea of colorblindness

927
00:59:05.460 –> 00:59:09.140
as a quote-unquote “trojan horse for white supremacy.” Why

928
00:59:09.460 –> 00:59:13.300
would such people do this? Why? If you

929
00:59:13.300 –> 00:59:16.700
look at how they frame the notion, fear is

930
00:59:16.700 –> 00:59:19.940
pregnant in, in the expression. Okay. And so

931
00:59:20.260 –> 00:59:23.220
it seems to me a fear-based response. Right.

932
00:59:24.980 –> 00:59:28.720
And the fear, I think, operates in two directions. It’s

933
00:59:28.720 –> 00:59:32.360
a fear that this oppression that we were dealing with

934
00:59:32.600 –> 00:59:36.120
eons ago, or we were actually dealing with eons ago,

935
00:59:36.520 –> 00:59:39.880
would return unless the

936
00:59:40.360 –> 00:59:42.840
fusion of Blackhood and victimization

937
00:59:43.960 –> 00:59:47.240
stays together. And, you know,

938
00:59:47.800 –> 00:59:51.640
that itself is a contentious notion. And I believe that

939
00:59:51.640 –> 00:59:54.280
that itself is a lie. And so

940
00:59:55.240 –> 00:59:58.950
they don’t see it that way. They see it as reality, but it

941
00:59:58.950 –> 01:00:02.670
is fundamental to their reality. They must continue to have, um,

942
01:00:04.030 –> 01:00:07.870
not just a framework for Blacks being

943
01:00:07.870 –> 01:00:11.590
victims and white people being oppressors, but everybody else has to have that framework too.

944
01:00:11.590 –> 01:00:15.310
And so it’s a threat— fear— threat

945
01:00:15.950 –> 01:00:19.550
to their worldview, to their power structure, to their political

946
01:00:19.550 –> 01:00:23.120
base, to you name it. To their identity,

947
01:00:23.280 –> 01:00:26.800
right? This notion that, hey, now you are free.

948
01:00:27.360 –> 01:00:30.000
You know what’s really fascinating? Really

949
01:00:30.560 –> 01:00:34.120
fascinating and deep. Um, if you read the

950
01:00:34.120 –> 01:00:37.520
Torah, which I know you do, you can see

951
01:00:37.920 –> 01:00:41.560
that God built in time during

952
01:00:41.560 –> 01:00:44.240
the Exodus, meaning post-Egypt, post-Red Sea,

953
01:00:45.120 –> 01:00:47.850
he built in time for

954
01:00:49.370 –> 01:00:52.810
the people, the children of Israel, the sons of Israel, to learn to be free.

955
01:00:52.810 –> 01:00:56.330
He built in time for that, recognizing that

956
01:00:56.410 –> 01:00:59.890
you have social and personal and other patterns that are coming out of

957
01:00:59.890 –> 01:01:03.730
slavery, and you have to learn new ways of thinking and doing. And

958
01:01:03.730 –> 01:01:06.970
it’s necessary before you can enter into and conquer Canaan.

959
01:01:07.770 –> 01:01:10.090
It’s really fascinating because it’s just like,

960
01:01:11.690 –> 01:01:13.770
um, I don’t know if I would pick up on that if I weren’t African-American.

961
01:01:13.970 –> 01:01:16.680
I don’t know. You know, but I pick up on it. I’m like, oh, that’s

962
01:01:16.680 –> 01:01:20.320
interesting because I’m one of those people. I’m tired of hearing people talk

963
01:01:20.320 –> 01:01:23.920
about— I’m tired of hearing African Americans talk about slavery. I’m tired of hearing it.

964
01:01:25.360 –> 01:01:28.560
And I mean, I was last talking about slavery yesterday.

965
01:01:29.440 –> 01:01:33.280
Okay. I’m tired of hearing African American people talk about slavery. The conversations

966
01:01:33.280 –> 01:01:35.960
I had about slavery yesterday and the day before were fascinating. But most of the

967
01:01:35.960 –> 01:01:37.920
conversations that I

968
01:01:40.160 –> 01:01:42.720
overhear people engaging in are Um,

969
01:01:44.200 –> 01:01:47.800
what, what did Hugh say? Boring, misleading.

970
01:01:47.960 –> 01:01:51.720
Okay, rather than referencing

971
01:01:51.720 –> 01:01:54.760
a reality and then making a point today

972
01:01:55.720 –> 01:01:59.519
that has— where there’s a, a relevant tie,

973
01:01:59.519 –> 01:02:03.360
a relevant connection. Okay, because normally I just see

974
01:02:03.360 –> 01:02:06.960
it as something identitarian that I reject, where somebody is

975
01:02:06.960 –> 01:02:10.040
saying, oh, well, when— like the expression, well,

976
01:02:11.520 –> 01:02:15.120
quote, ‘When we were slaves,’ and it’s like, close

977
01:02:15.120 –> 01:02:18.920
quote, and it’s like, you were never a slave. You were never— your father

978
01:02:18.920 –> 01:02:22.400
wasn’t a. Slave, his father wasn’t a slave, his father wasn’t a slave. The next

979
01:02:22.400 –> 01:02:26.200
guy may have been, but none of all those other people were. Moreover, if that

980
01:02:26.200 –> 01:02:29.880
other guy, if he got freed, that means he didn’t end

981
01:02:29.880 –> 01:02:33.680
as a slave. No, right? And it’s

982
01:02:33.680 –> 01:02:37.440
just— well, there’s also this massive idea of

983
01:02:38.720 –> 01:02:42.300
generational trauma which I also push back on.

984
01:02:43.100 –> 01:02:45.660
Hughes kind of touches a little bit on— he

985
01:02:46.780 –> 01:02:50.140
glides along the edges of this, but he’s young.

986
01:02:51.820 –> 01:02:55.260
Yeah. And with other folks who are a little bit older, who, who are sort

987
01:02:55.260 –> 01:02:58.340
of more familiar with the science of

988
01:02:58.340 –> 01:03:02.180
epigenetics, you know, they’ll say, oh, well, there’s racial trauma, blah, blah, blah,

989
01:03:02.180 –> 01:03:04.300
blah, blah, there is the genetics. And.

990
01:03:06.710 –> 01:03:10.310
To your point about the Book of Exodus, how many, uh,

991
01:03:11.270 –> 01:03:14.630
generations had to die in the wilderness

992
01:03:15.110 –> 01:03:18.550
before the Jewish people could go into

993
01:03:18.710 –> 01:03:21.110
the Promised Land? How many generations had to go?

994
01:03:22.230 –> 01:03:25.990
One. The, the one that came out and then rejected,

995
01:03:26.310 –> 01:03:30.150
you know, God offering them the Promised Land on a

996
01:03:30.150 –> 01:03:33.660
platter, you know. And effectively, it wasn’t on a platter.

997
01:03:33.970 –> 01:03:36.770
But it was on a platter. It wasn’t on a platter because they had to

998
01:03:36.770 –> 01:03:39.690
fight all these people. It was on a platter because God was with them and

999
01:03:39.690 –> 01:03:43.370
he said, I’m going to give you victory. Okay, absolutely. You have to play

1000
01:03:43.370 –> 01:03:47.170
basketball against LeBron, but I’m going to give you victory. Okay, let’s play

1001
01:03:47.170 –> 01:03:50.770
right now. Let’s play right now. Let’s play right now. Let’s record it

1002
01:03:50.850 –> 01:03:54.610
because this is gonna be great. I haven’t dunked in how many

1003
01:03:54.610 –> 01:03:57.970
years? In like 15 years I haven’t dunked because now I’m old, my knees don’t

1004
01:03:57.970 –> 01:04:01.710
work. I’m gonna dunk on LeBron. This is gonna be great. And instead, no,

1005
01:04:01.710 –> 01:04:04.790
no, no, they’re going to step all over us. We’re like grasshoppers

1006
01:04:05.430 –> 01:04:08.630
in theirs. How do you know? Wait, wait, what?

1007
01:04:10.790 –> 01:04:14.030
So this is, so this is, so this is where, this is where I go.

1008
01:04:14.030 –> 01:04:16.550
And I wanted to ask you a question about genealogy because you kind of touched

1009
01:04:16.550 –> 01:04:19.670
on this a little bit earlier. And I don’t think most of us here know

1010
01:04:19.670 –> 01:04:23.470
about your deep love of genealogy and all of that. Love this stuff. You

1011
01:04:23.470 –> 01:04:26.030
have a— now I’m going to draw, I’m going to draw a line right between

1012
01:04:26.030 –> 01:04:29.570
myself and DiRollo here because there’s a line of differentiation on with us,

1013
01:04:29.570 –> 01:04:33.050
between us on this. DeRolo is absolutely

1014
01:04:33.370 –> 01:04:37.130
100% fascinated by genealogy. He’s

1015
01:04:37.130 –> 01:04:40.890
fascinated by tracing, you know, where his

1016
01:04:40.890 –> 01:04:44.610
folks come from and, and where his folks, all parts of his

1017
01:04:44.610 –> 01:04:47.410
family came from and where they do, what do they do and how do they

1018
01:04:47.410 –> 01:04:51.250
integrate. Matter of fact, I was just walking down the street today and I saw

1019
01:04:51.250 –> 01:04:53.850
a plaque on the side of a building in the town that I’m in

1020
01:04:54.810 –> 01:04:58.630
that said that where the, the person who put the put the building

1021
01:04:58.630 –> 01:05:02.070
up was a lawyer and the lawyer’s last name was Nixon.

1022
01:05:02.630 –> 01:05:05.990
And I thought, knowing that we were going to have this conversation today, was I

1023
01:05:05.990 –> 01:05:09.830
like, I wonder if DeRolo knows who that person is.

1024
01:05:09.830 –> 01:05:13.350
And I bet you DeRolo knows

1025
01:05:13.510 –> 01:05:15.990
somehow, could figure out if I gave the name, and I’m not going to do

1026
01:05:15.990 –> 01:05:19.390
that right now, but could trace the name because that’s how deep he is. And

1027
01:05:19.390 –> 01:05:23.070
he’s laughing now, but he’s true that this is how deeply, truly he’s into genealogy.

1028
01:05:23.070 –> 01:05:26.630
He is reaching out to people in other countries who have never met him before

1029
01:05:26.630 –> 01:05:30.370
saying, hey, you’re my 243rd cousin. What are you doing there? Okay, this is the

1030
01:05:30.370 –> 01:05:32.690
kind of guy that DeRolo is. I want to draw a very clear,

1031
01:05:34.130 –> 01:05:37.810
like, frame for folks here, right? Yep. But seventh—

1032
01:05:37.970 –> 01:05:41.810
but yes, seventh cousin. Yes, seventh cousin. Okay. All right. And by the way,

1033
01:05:41.810 –> 01:05:45.530
I’ve met, I’ve met a couple of, of DeRolo’s cousins. I’ve also met some other

1034
01:05:45.530 –> 01:05:48.210
folks in, in DeRolo’s family and his cousins. They were first cousins.

1035
01:05:49.170 –> 01:05:52.850
First cousins. And there’s, there’s a difference between a first cousin and seventh

1036
01:05:53.090 –> 01:05:56.770
cousin. Is there ever? Yes. Yep. But such is it. Work

1037
01:05:56.770 –> 01:05:59.130
anyway. Now that’s the role of full disclosure.

1038
01:06:02.650 –> 01:06:06.250
I fundamentally, at this point in my life,

1039
01:06:07.130 –> 01:06:10.650
lack an interest in genealogy because I got enough

1040
01:06:10.650 –> 01:06:14.050
problems right now. And none of those folks are helping me solve any of these

1041
01:06:14.050 –> 01:06:17.770
problems right now. Matter of fact, all of them are dead and they

1042
01:06:17.770 –> 01:06:21.290
can’t help me. They don’t speak into my current existence.

1043
01:06:21.370 –> 01:06:24.920
A, because they’re not here, but also B, I don’t engage in ancestor worship, and

1044
01:06:24.920 –> 01:06:27.440
C— and I’m not saying that DeRollo does either, I’m not framing that in that

1045
01:06:27.440 –> 01:06:30.760
kind of way, I want to be very clear on that, I’m not casting aspersions

1046
01:06:30.760 –> 01:06:34.400
on DeRollo’s love of genealogy. Um, but the third reason is

1047
01:06:35.200 –> 01:06:38.800
the people in my family who have explored genealogy

1048
01:06:39.120 –> 01:06:41.920
have done so because their identity

1049
01:06:43.360 –> 01:06:47.000
was not— and this is going to sound

1050
01:06:47.000 –> 01:06:50.620
proud, and I really I don’t want it to come off that way, but that’s

1051
01:06:50.620 –> 01:06:54.420
what this is going to sound like. Their identity was not as solid

1052
01:06:54.420 –> 01:06:57.740
as my identity is in where I place my

1053
01:06:57.740 –> 01:07:01.580
identity, which is in, by the way, the power and salvation of Jesus

1054
01:07:01.580 –> 01:07:04.220
Christ. If I put my identity there,

1055
01:07:05.180 –> 01:07:09.020
that’s the rock on which I build. That’s the cornerstone. That’s,

1056
01:07:09.020 –> 01:07:12.820
that’s the thing all the way down at the bottom. And so anyone

1057
01:07:12.820 –> 01:07:16.460
who comes along can never take away

1058
01:07:16.780 –> 01:07:19.740
that identity from me. But

1059
01:07:20.620 –> 01:07:24.140
increasingly, in a world of biological manipulation, class

1060
01:07:24.300 –> 01:07:26.860
struggle, algorithmic manipulation,

1061
01:07:28.220 –> 01:07:31.660
uh, economic strife, even the things I went through in COVID,

1062
01:07:32.620 –> 01:07:36.220
those other things can be taken away from me, up to and including

1063
01:07:37.100 –> 01:07:40.820
the markers of identity that this society claims

1064
01:07:40.820 –> 01:07:44.620
are important. And frames somewhat through this,

1065
01:07:44.940 –> 01:07:48.020
the study of genealogy. And I’m not saying, again, want I to be very clear,

1066
01:07:48.020 –> 01:07:51.740
DeRollo’s not doing this. This is what I see on my end. And so I

1067
01:07:51.740 –> 01:07:54.980
refuse to play the game. That’s my

1068
01:07:54.980 –> 01:07:57.340
conclusion. Now, in 20 years,

1069
01:07:58.460 –> 01:08:02.260
maybe I won’t refuse. Maybe in 20 years I’ll have a change of heart

1070
01:08:02.260 –> 01:08:05.260
and then I will go seek out DeRollo because I have a resource here and

1071
01:08:05.260 –> 01:08:07.780
he will tell me what to do and he will tell me how to go

1072
01:08:07.780 –> 01:08:10.140
do the deep dive and then I will go find the things.

1073
01:08:11.490 –> 01:08:15.290
I’m saying all that to frame this question for you. As

1074
01:08:15.290 –> 01:08:18.970
a purveyor of genealogy, I have now set you up as the expert on

1075
01:08:18.970 –> 01:08:22.690
this show of how to do this. As a, as a

1076
01:08:22.690 –> 01:08:23.970
purveyor of genealogy—

1077
01:08:27.250 –> 01:08:29.570
yeah, you and Henry Louis Gates Jr. Yeah,

1078
01:08:30.930 –> 01:08:33.690
yeah, exactly. And he’s going to come along, he’s going to open up like, you

1079
01:08:33.690 –> 01:08:36.570
know, an envelope for me. He’s gonna be like, do you know that your relatives

1080
01:08:36.570 –> 01:08:39.690
were like slaveholders of some other slaves? I mean, like, yeah, that doesn’t really surprise

1081
01:08:39.690 –> 01:08:43.210
me actually. Uh, we’re fetal capitalists. That would not shock me. This is

1082
01:08:43.210 –> 01:08:46.650
America. This is America, man. Yeah, it wasn’t a

1083
01:08:46.650 –> 01:08:50.450
monolith. It wasn’t a monolith. And most of the time it

1084
01:08:50.450 –> 01:08:54.010
was small, and most of the time it would have been intimate before it would

1085
01:08:54.010 –> 01:08:57.770
have been commercial, period. But nobody ever talks about that.

1086
01:08:58.170 –> 01:09:01.690
Nobody ever talks about that. They don’t want to have that conversation about

1087
01:09:01.690 –> 01:09:05.530
slavery. No, no. Well, that’s fascinating, right?

1088
01:09:06.020 –> 01:09:09.860
That’s a fascinating one. And genealogy to a certain degree allows

1089
01:09:09.860 –> 01:09:12.460
you in a sort of, to your point earlier about

1090
01:09:14.180 –> 01:09:17.980
Coleman Hughes’s assertion around color, around race, it’s

1091
01:09:17.980 –> 01:09:21.700
a faint genealogy. I see it as a faint that allows you to sort of

1092
01:09:21.779 –> 01:09:25.460
get in there and do other things. So my question is, my follow-up question

1093
01:09:25.460 –> 01:09:26.020
is this.

1094
01:09:31.140 –> 01:09:34.940
Not should. I don’t like shoulds and oughts on this show, although

1095
01:09:34.940 –> 01:09:37.080
I do use them a lot. I don’t really like them. I don’t like shoulds

1096
01:09:37.080 –> 01:09:40.860
and oughts. Um, ought— my point out

1097
01:09:40.860 –> 01:09:42.220
my Immanuel Kant here. Um.

1098
01:09:44.540 –> 01:09:48.300
Is it a good idea? Let’s frame that. Or, uh,

1099
01:09:49.500 –> 01:09:53.100
I’ll use myself as a proxy. For Black folks such as myself

1100
01:09:53.820 –> 01:09:57.140
who may approach genealogy with the perspective of, I am

1101
01:09:57.140 –> 01:10:00.760
disinterested in that, that doesn’t have any meaning right now, or, or, or,

1102
01:10:00.760 –> 01:10:04.480
or may approach genealogy from the perspective of it has all of the

1103
01:10:04.480 –> 01:10:07.760
meaning in the world for my identity and everything must be placed on that. To

1104
01:10:07.760 –> 01:10:11.400
your point about the phrase, when we were slaves,

1105
01:10:11.720 –> 01:10:15.560
come on, you missed 5 generations of people in your family. Maybe to your

1106
01:10:15.560 –> 01:10:19.240
point, maybe 7th, I’ll go back 5, I’ll grant you 5, maybe 5 generations

1107
01:10:19.240 –> 01:10:23.040
ago, maybe that was a thing. But your behind is in Starbucks

1108
01:10:23.040 –> 01:10:24.910
right now. So I don’t want to hear it. Okay.

1109
01:10:27.310 –> 01:10:28.750
Is there a benefit?

1110
01:10:31.150 –> 01:10:34.830
Is there something we need to be exploring in genealogy that might help us

1111
01:10:34.830 –> 01:10:38.590
get past these identitarian struggles

1112
01:10:38.750 –> 01:10:41.710
and help us as African Americans,

1113
01:10:42.270 –> 01:10:45.670
as Black Americans, come to more of a deeper

1114
01:10:45.670 –> 01:10:49.070
understanding of colorblindness? Is there something in genealogy that can help us? Um.

1115
01:10:54.680 –> 01:10:57.240
Yes, because at the end of the day,

1116
01:11:00.200 –> 01:11:03.880
um, well-founded genealogical research, okay, will yield the

1117
01:11:04.040 –> 01:11:07.400
documentary and now what is even more powerful,

1118
01:11:07.400 –> 01:11:10.920
biological evidence to show connections between certain

1119
01:11:10.920 –> 01:11:14.640
individuals. Okay, um, and because I

1120
01:11:14.640 –> 01:11:18.000
believe in data, and it’s funny saying that as somebody who’s

1121
01:11:18.000 –> 01:11:21.640
analog, it’s just you change the form of the data and it’s

1122
01:11:21.870 –> 01:11:24.590
easier for me to get behind it. But anyway, I digress.

1123
01:11:26.110 –> 01:11:29.910
Because I believe in data and data and

1124
01:11:29.910 –> 01:11:33.430
the ability to use data to shine a light on something

1125
01:11:33.430 –> 01:11:36.990
we’ve missed, to change a perspective, and then we’re now looking along

1126
01:11:37.070 –> 01:11:40.550
something instead of at it, and then we have more insights because I believe in

1127
01:11:40.550 –> 01:11:43.070
all those things. I would say the answer is yes. It—

1128
01:11:44.590 –> 01:11:48.350
what it reminds me of, and I will use the journey

1129
01:11:48.350 –> 01:11:51.910
as a really— as I can use the journey as a metaphor for several things.

1130
01:11:51.910 –> 01:11:55.580
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz,

1131
01:11:56.220 –> 01:11:59.980
right? Otherwise known as Malcolm X. Uh, actually technically at

1132
01:11:59.980 –> 01:12:03.740
that point formally known as Malcolm X, right? Um, because he had this set of

1133
01:12:03.740 –> 01:12:07.500
Arabic, melodic Arabic names, right? And titles.

1134
01:12:07.660 –> 01:12:11.180
He did the Hajj, so he’s El-Hajj, right? But anyway,

1135
01:12:12.460 –> 01:12:15.820
um, when he traveled to Africa and then to

1136
01:12:16.700 –> 01:12:20.440
go to Mecca in, uh, in Arabia, right, in Saudi Arabia,

1137
01:12:21.790 –> 01:12:25.430
Um, it was paradigm-shattering for him because he came out

1138
01:12:25.430 –> 01:12:28.190
of a biracial,

1139
01:12:28.270 –> 01:12:31.790
monocultural, bi-religious context, right,

1140
01:12:32.030 –> 01:12:35.590
uh, that was racist. And he left it and

1141
01:12:35.590 –> 01:12:39.430
encountered people and had experiences that showed him that his racism

1142
01:12:39.430 –> 01:12:43.110
was wrong. From a data perspective, it showed him that the data

1143
01:12:43.110 –> 01:12:46.710
inputs he had been getting were faulty, that it did not

1144
01:12:46.710 –> 01:12:50.480
compute that he was hanging out Muslims who were white

1145
01:12:50.480 –> 01:12:54.080
as Wonder Bread and Black as coal, and they were

1146
01:12:54.080 –> 01:12:57.880
all brothers. And if you know anyone

1147
01:12:57.880 –> 01:13:01.720
like, I believe his name is DuMonte

1148
01:13:01.720 –> 01:13:05.480
Washington, the Reverend DuMonte Washington, he’s a big

1149
01:13:05.480 –> 01:13:08.720
Black Israel partisan type. I like him a lot.

1150
01:13:09.760 –> 01:13:13.280
And he talks about, he would critique that and would

1151
01:13:13.280 –> 01:13:16.520
show, well, this is what was going on underneath. Here’s the

1152
01:13:16.520 –> 01:13:20.310
unspoken class structure within Islam and all this. And he’s correct. Like that

1153
01:13:20.310 –> 01:13:24.110
stuff is there. I’m not trying to, to discount that. It’s just

1154
01:13:24.110 –> 01:13:26.870
for al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, it was

1155
01:13:27.670 –> 01:13:31.390
paradigm-shattering to encounter people who

1156
01:13:31.390 –> 01:13:34.990
didn’t look like him who treated him like a brother. Okay, now this is something

1157
01:13:34.990 –> 01:13:38.230
that happens to us, you and I, every day. Happens to our kids every

1158
01:13:38.470 –> 01:13:42.250
day. But that did not happen to him every day in 1964,

1159
01:13:42.250 –> 01:13:45.750
uh, certainly not where he was, okay, doing what he was doing.

1160
01:13:46.940 –> 01:13:50.660
So then he goes to Africa, goes to, you know, Mecca, and then

1161
01:13:50.660 –> 01:13:54.420
he has these experiences and it’s like, wow, you know, changes paradigm. And

1162
01:13:54.420 –> 01:13:57.420
so he returned a different person. Okay, now, um,

1163
01:13:58.780 –> 01:14:02.540
do I think that his experiencing this, um,

1164
01:14:04.380 –> 01:14:07.580
unity of brotherhood of people who don’t look alike

1165
01:14:08.300 –> 01:14:11.500
helped him then return to America and not make

1166
01:14:12.830 –> 01:14:16.190
meaningful distinctions in his behavior towards others? Yes,

1167
01:14:16.990 –> 01:14:20.670
I do. Um, but I also believe that similarly, if

1168
01:14:20.670 –> 01:14:24.470
he had stopped, say, in Nigeria on the way back, or,

1169
01:14:24.470 –> 01:14:27.710
uh, Kogo, Togo, or Benin—

1170
01:14:28.110 –> 01:14:31.750
well, let’s leave it to English-speaking places because he— I don’t think he spoke anything

1171
01:14:31.750 –> 01:14:33.390
but English. So Nigeria,

1172
01:14:36.030 –> 01:14:39.520
um, Ghana— Ghana at the time was already independent. Okay, if he’d gone to Ghana

1173
01:14:39.910 –> 01:14:43.630
Okay. Do I think that he then could have learned

1174
01:14:43.630 –> 01:14:46.990
about some cultural roots that he has that would have furthered that

1175
01:14:46.990 –> 01:14:50.750
engagement? Yes. I don’t think learning more about your culture will make

1176
01:14:50.750 –> 01:14:54.190
you withdraw from learning about other cultures or withdraw from

1177
01:14:54.190 –> 01:14:57.470
cultural engagement with other types of people. You know, I just think

1178
01:14:57.830 –> 01:15:01.190
it adds levels of richness that

1179
01:15:01.430 –> 01:15:04.710
bring more to the table. I went to— so

1180
01:15:05.840 –> 01:15:09.440
How many nights ago? Last night, night before, night before. So 3

1181
01:15:09.440 –> 01:15:13.200
nights ago now, was it a different place? Okay, having

1182
01:15:13.200 –> 01:15:17.040
dinner, Super Bowl’s on, um, client call. So

1183
01:15:17.040 –> 01:15:19.640
I mean, I got to upcharge, which was good because I had to do work

1184
01:15:19.640 –> 01:15:22.560
during the Super Bowl. But anyway,

1185
01:15:24.400 –> 01:15:27.880
um, woman next to me, we’re talking, you know, and the first thing we could

1186
01:15:27.880 –> 01:15:31.480
bond over were kids. Uh, 4, she has 6. Super

1187
01:15:31.480 –> 01:15:34.360
excited, you know, and funny because she says she has 6 and she goes like

1188
01:15:34.360 –> 01:15:38.110
this, like high five, like give me a high I was 1,000% on board

1189
01:15:38.110 –> 01:15:41.790
with that. It’s totally like same spirit. I’m on board. Okay.

1190
01:15:42.430 –> 01:15:46.230
If you had asked me what this woman’s ethnicity was and we were

1191
01:15:46.230 –> 01:15:50.030
in Chicago, I wouldn’t have known what I would have answered.

1192
01:15:50.350 –> 01:15:53.310
We are in Philadelphia. I don’t know what I would have answered. We were in

1193
01:15:53.310 –> 01:15:57.070
New York. I might have given the same answer generally as an ethnic

1194
01:15:57.070 –> 01:16:00.830
group, Hispanic. Okay. But because we’re in the Southwest and even though Houston

1195
01:16:00.830 –> 01:16:03.280
is almost South by Southwest, right? Um,

1196
01:16:05.040 –> 01:16:08.520
I still might have gotten that right, okay? But, uh, turns out

1197
01:16:08.520 –> 01:16:12.200
woman’s husband is Nigerian, okay? So then we’re talking

1198
01:16:12.200 –> 01:16:16.040
about that and talking about food she makes because she’s— he’s

1199
01:16:16.040 –> 01:16:19.760
Nigerian, she’s female, she’s doing the cooking, okay?

1200
01:16:20.560 –> 01:16:24.120
Cultural reality, people. Then she’s— but so she’s making all these

1201
01:16:24.120 –> 01:16:27.800
foods, literally foods from her husband’s culture, just all this food.

1202
01:16:27.800 –> 01:16:31.420
And we’re showing each other photos, all that stuff, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, she

1203
01:16:31.420 –> 01:16:34.860
recommended one restaurant, and then the following day

1204
01:16:35.180 –> 01:16:38.220
I went with my client to that restaurant for lunch.

1205
01:16:38.460 –> 01:16:42.220
Okay, why do I bring this up? It’s called Chop and Block. Okay,

1206
01:16:42.860 –> 01:16:46.340
amazing food. I had some stuff called buka. It’s Nigerian. It was awesome.

1207
01:16:46.340 –> 01:16:48.620
Okay, it was— oh, it was amazing. Anyway, um,

1208
01:16:49.820 –> 01:16:53.340
here’s what’s weird, okay? My

1209
01:16:53.340 –> 01:16:57.180
mother— that my favorite dish my mother made

1210
01:16:58.540 –> 01:17:01.420
Growing up for me is a form of that. Hmm.

1211
01:17:03.020 –> 01:17:06.820
Largest block of my mother’s DNA from that same country. Is that an

1212
01:17:06.820 –> 01:17:10.580
accident? I don’t know, but I find that profoundly

1213
01:17:10.580 –> 01:17:13.940
fascinating. Okay. And I didn’t think about that till right now. I thought about, oh,

1214
01:17:13.940 –> 01:17:17.460
it’s the same. But now it’s like, think about it with that

1215
01:17:17.460 –> 01:17:21.260
added layer of the, the, the, the,

1216
01:17:21.820 –> 01:17:25.620
the DNA input. It’s like, oh, Okay, got it.

1217
01:17:25.940 –> 01:17:29.660
Anyway, um, in that restaurant there were all these

1218
01:17:29.660 –> 01:17:32.820
different types of people, all these different types of people.

1219
01:17:33.300 –> 01:17:36.580
So you find out more of who you are, bring yourself to the table. It’s

1220
01:17:36.580 –> 01:17:40.380
easier to be colorblind. It’s easier, I think, to be colorblind at the same

1221
01:17:40.380 –> 01:17:43.860
time enjoy the cultural richness that’s around you. Okay,

1222
01:17:43.940 –> 01:17:47.140
like, ah, it’s just,

1223
01:17:48.020 –> 01:17:51.300
it doesn’t have to be like this. It doesn’t have to be

1224
01:17:52.400 –> 01:17:56.080
When I think about I’m going into a fight and I look and

1225
01:17:56.080 –> 01:17:59.520
here’s my buddy who’s a Viking descendant,

1226
01:17:59.600 –> 01:18:03.080
okay, yeah, I want him in the fight. That doesn’t have to be in

1227
01:18:03.080 –> 01:18:06.880
tension with— I look over here and here’s this brother from South Africa and

1228
01:18:06.880 –> 01:18:08.160
it’s like he’s Zulu.

1229
01:18:10.800 –> 01:18:14.600
You can talk to the British about fighting Zulus. Right, right, right. Yeah.

1230
01:18:14.600 –> 01:18:18.450
Yeah. Like, you talk to the British about fighting Ashanti. And just like you can

1231
01:18:18.450 –> 01:18:21.370
talk to Italians about having to fight, uh, Abyssinians,

1232
01:18:21.850 –> 01:18:25.690
beating them, right? Right. It’s

1233
01:18:25.690 –> 01:18:28.570
just they don’t have to be in tension. I don’t have to choose one over

1234
01:18:28.570 –> 01:18:32.090
the other. I can have both. But if I don’t know about those last three,

1235
01:18:32.890 –> 01:18:36.250
I can’t have both. Then all I have is the Viking, right? There’s nothing wrong

1236
01:18:36.250 –> 01:18:39.850
with the Viking. I mean, horrible, marauding, raping, okay, but

1237
01:18:40.650 –> 01:18:44.270
in terms of like an image of a warrior perfectly fine.

1238
01:18:44.350 –> 01:18:47.430
There’s other— and they, they all come together. And it’s like, what about, you know,

1239
01:18:47.430 –> 01:18:51.150
the Terracotta Warrior? You know, what about the horseback, you know,

1240
01:18:51.150 –> 01:18:54.630
Mongol that they tried to keep out of— Tatar, a Mongol they tried to keep

1241
01:18:54.630 –> 01:18:58.190
out of, you know, out of the Qin, right, out of China,

1242
01:18:58.270 –> 01:19:01.630
right, who then built the biggest land empire like ever. Come on.

1243
01:19:02.190 –> 01:19:05.390
Well, and you— and we run into this kind of dynamic on the show when

1244
01:19:05.390 –> 01:19:08.750
we talk with our, our regular— our more regular guest host Tom Libby,

1245
01:19:09.550 –> 01:19:13.310
um, who also has, um, Native American in his

1246
01:19:13.310 –> 01:19:16.670
background, right? And so when we talk about

1247
01:19:17.150 –> 01:19:20.750
Native American experience, one of the

1248
01:19:21.430 –> 01:19:25.110
pieces that he brings to the table is a deep understanding of, to your

1249
01:19:25.110 –> 01:19:28.510
point, warrior cultures. So actually last year we were talking about

1250
01:19:28.510 –> 01:19:32.310
warfare and war-making. We talked a lot

1251
01:19:32.310 –> 01:19:35.070
about it, and we’ll be doing the same thing this year. We’re gonna cover the

1252
01:19:35.070 –> 01:19:38.280
book Empire of the Summer Moon by, I believe it’s S.C.

1253
01:19:38.360 –> 01:19:42.000
Gwynn. Gwynn, I believe I’m saying that correctly. And yeah, he’s great.

1254
01:19:42.000 –> 01:19:44.680
He’s a Texan. He’s great. Yeah. Great.

1255
01:19:46.040 –> 01:19:49.720
And, and the level of understanding that the settlers

1256
01:19:49.720 –> 01:19:53.399
here coming from, from the East, right, and of course, coming from the,

1257
01:19:53.399 –> 01:19:57.120
from the, the American South post-Civil War, the level of

1258
01:19:57.120 –> 01:20:00.840
understanding they had about what they were dealing with, with the Comanche.

1259
01:20:02.120 –> 01:20:05.860
And just how of powerful those warriors. Were, uh.

1260
01:20:08.180 –> 01:20:09.940
Deeply impacts how, um,

1261
01:20:12.580 –> 01:20:15.940
Native American tribal peoples

1262
01:20:16.580 –> 01:20:19.220
think of their relationship, uh, to, uh, to

1263
01:20:20.500 –> 01:20:23.700
quite frankly what they’d be— and they view all of us as usurpers

1264
01:20:24.340 –> 01:20:28.180
regardless of how we divide ourselves up, uh, they view all of us as

1265
01:20:28.180 –> 01:20:31.960
usurpers. So there’s some interesting dynamics here. And

1266
01:20:31.960 –> 01:20:35.280
we covered this a little bit with also the book that I got. This is

1267
01:20:35.280 –> 01:20:37.680
many years ago, you might want to go check out that episode. I think it

1268
01:20:37.680 –> 01:20:40.520
was episode number 15. It was one of the first ones that I explored with

1269
01:20:40.520 –> 01:20:44.320
Carola, where we— yeah, where we talked about the Black

1270
01:20:44.320 –> 01:20:47.480
Indian slave narratives. Yeah.

1271
01:20:47.800 –> 01:20:51.400
So, you know, look, the genealogy is interesting.

1272
01:20:51.800 –> 01:20:55.480
And not interesting. It’s fascinating. Not fascinating.

1273
01:20:55.480 –> 01:20:59.320
It is a there’s a dynamic— there we go— that occurs at an intellectual

1274
01:20:59.320 –> 01:21:02.880
level for me, um, when I think about how, uh,

1275
01:21:07.600 –> 01:21:10.800
how, how in America the,

1276
01:21:11.200 –> 01:21:14.480
the thing that it elides for a lot of us is,

1277
01:21:15.920 –> 01:21:19.680
is this thing of class. And so Hughes does bring this up

1278
01:21:19.680 –> 01:21:22.800
in the book and talks about this in chapter 3. So let me sort of

1279
01:21:22.800 –> 01:21:25.760
push on. Through because we want to— that’s pretty early. How many chapters is in

1280
01:21:25.760 –> 01:21:29.400
the book? This is a 6-chapter book. It’s a short book. So it’s the

1281
01:21:30.040 –> 01:21:33.320
middle of the book. Okay. Middle of the book. Yeah. And we’re gonna skip over

1282
01:21:33.320 –> 01:21:36.080
4 and 5. We’re gonna go right to chapter 6, where he starts talking about

1283
01:21:36.080 –> 01:21:39.840
solutions, because we are solution-oriented. And leaders who are listening

1284
01:21:39.840 –> 01:21:42.440
to this show have to be going, what is the point of this? Where are

1285
01:21:42.440 –> 01:21:45.680
you going? Well, let me take you somewhere. Or they’re just fascinated. They could just

1286
01:21:45.680 –> 01:21:49.240
be fascinated on the journey. There’s no point, no

1287
01:21:49.240 –> 01:21:53.000
direction. But hey, you know, it’s like a big summer party. What the heck is

1288
01:21:53.000 –> 01:21:56.580
the That’s the point, right? Just go and enjoy yourself. No, you’re not supposed to

1289
01:21:56.580 –> 01:22:00.020
accomplish anything except have fun. Great. Or county fair,

1290
01:22:00.100 –> 01:22:00.580
whatever.

1291
01:22:03.700 –> 01:22:07.020
Hughes talks about in chapter 3, elite neo-racist

1292
01:22:07.020 –> 01:22:10.580
institutions, and he opens up with this idea. He says

1293
01:22:10.580 –> 01:22:14.420
the neo-racist in-group, which he identifies neo-racist

1294
01:22:14.820 –> 01:22:18.220
as the people who are promoting anti-racism as a

1295
01:22:18.220 –> 01:22:21.950
function of how America should view or should be opposed

1296
01:22:22.030 –> 01:22:25.510
to the white supremacy of colorblindness. He says the neo-racist

1297
01:22:25.510 –> 01:22:29.310
in-group comprises many people in elite American institutions,

1298
01:22:29.630 –> 01:22:32.670
such as colleges and universities, the mainstream media, and government.

1299
01:22:33.310 –> 01:22:37.070
They’ve used the cultural power of these institutions to

1300
01:22:37.070 –> 01:22:40.750
disseminate neo-racist ideology. And then he

1301
01:22:40.750 –> 01:22:44.470
has— and then he proved— he shows, as the Gen Zers might say, he

1302
01:22:44.470 –> 01:22:47.960
shows the receipts. From tweets

1303
01:22:48.120 –> 01:22:51.240
that people have tweeted. Yeah, I do know some things about

1304
01:22:52.280 –> 01:22:56.120
Gen Z, um, from the tweets that folks have, have tweeted all the way

1305
01:22:56.120 –> 01:22:59.880
to New York Times articles and headlines that have been written over the last 10

1306
01:22:59.880 –> 01:23:03.400
years, um, to the ways in which the government has, um,

1307
01:23:04.360 –> 01:23:08.120
passed stimulus packages. As a matter of fact, he brings up

1308
01:23:08.120 –> 01:23:11.560
in a damning paragraph at the beginning of Chapter 3

1309
01:23:11.960 –> 01:23:15.760
this idea here In March 2021, Congress passed

1310
01:23:15.760 –> 01:23:19.120
a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan.

1311
01:23:19.680 –> 01:23:23.440
Section 1005 of the plan included $4 billion of aid

1312
01:23:23.440 –> 01:23:27.280
for farmers with debt, but not just any farmers, only

1313
01:23:27.280 –> 01:23:30.920
non-white farmers. Farmers with debt were to

1314
01:23:30.920 –> 01:23:34.680
receive $0 of aid. Some of these white farmers faced

1315
01:23:34.680 –> 01:23:38.320
foreclosure during the pandemic recession. They reasonably expected

1316
01:23:38.320 –> 01:23:41.240
that if their government was going to distribute aid to farmers, it would do so

1317
01:23:41.240 –> 01:23:44.620
according to who needed it most. They were understandably

1318
01:23:44.620 –> 01:23:48.420
angry to learn that the government was distributing it instead according to skin

1319
01:23:48.420 –> 01:23:51.940
color. Some of them sued the government, and the court

1320
01:23:51.940 –> 01:23:55.780
ruled in their favor— or a court ruled in their favor. Distributing aid

1321
01:23:55.780 –> 01:23:59.540
according to race, it said, was unconstitutional. However, the New

1322
01:23:59.540 –> 01:24:01.980
York Times coverage— the New York Times

1323
01:24:03.100 –> 01:24:06.940
coverage of this episode didn’t blame Congress or the Biden administration for passing a

1324
01:24:06.940 –> 01:24:10.080
bill that was both racist and unconstitutional. Instead,

1325
01:24:11.040 –> 01:24:14.640
it spun the story in a way that blamed the indebted white farmers,

1326
01:24:14.880 –> 01:24:18.400
portraying them as angry conservatives who have ruined a noble government

1327
01:24:18.480 –> 01:24:21.840
program and left Black farmers in the lurch.

1328
01:24:22.880 –> 01:24:26.680
Close quote. By the way,

1329
01:24:26.680 –> 01:24:30.160
he shows more receipts in the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, in the—

1330
01:24:32.640 –> 01:24:36.400
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the COVID vaccine

1331
01:24:36.400 –> 01:24:39.710
and to whom it was to be given. And to whom it was to be

1332
01:24:39.710 –> 01:24:42.870
held back from. Neoracism in education

1333
01:24:43.430 –> 01:24:47.190
from Yale University’s Child Study Center, and of course,

1334
01:24:47.910 –> 01:24:51.550
university administrators that have

1335
01:24:51.550 –> 01:24:55.350
allowed talks to be delivered with the titles such as

1336
01:24:55.430 –> 01:24:58.310
The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.

1337
01:24:59.350 –> 01:25:03.030
Racial segregation on campus, in particular,

1338
01:25:04.110 –> 01:25:07.710
um, the presence of segregated dorms, study

1339
01:25:07.710 –> 01:25:10.510
programs, clubs, and even graduation ceremonies.

1340
01:25:12.030 –> 01:25:15.030
Uh, can you imagine the riot, man, if there was the

1341
01:25:15.030 –> 01:25:18.790
psychopathic problem of the ghetto Black male? Can you

1342
01:25:18.790 –> 01:25:22.550
imagine? The country would burn

1343
01:25:22.550 –> 01:25:26.390
down. He shows the receipts. He

1344
01:25:26.390 –> 01:25:30.140
delivers it in page after page in chapter 3. And his,

1345
01:25:31.100 –> 01:25:34.060
his point is from K through 12 education

1346
01:25:34.860 –> 01:25:38.620
all the way to who gets shot by, who gets shot by

1347
01:25:38.620 –> 01:25:42.220
cops. You would think that if you pay attention to the mainstream

1348
01:25:42.780 –> 01:25:46.500
purveyors of culture that only Black men such as myself and

1349
01:25:46.500 –> 01:25:50.260
DeRolo are ever in danger of being shot by cops in a, in a, in

1350
01:25:50.260 –> 01:25:53.900
a pullover. However, he lists in a random

1351
01:25:53.900 –> 01:25:57.330
year he picked, 2015, at least 9

1352
01:25:57.810 –> 01:26:01.650
situations across the country where Black men— I’m not sure, not Black

1353
01:26:01.650 –> 01:26:04.850
men, where white men were shot either crossing the street, uh,

1354
01:26:05.970 –> 01:26:09.290
fumbling with, um, their pockets, later found to be

1355
01:26:09.290 –> 01:26:12.770
unarmed, robbing some places and then being shot,

1356
01:26:13.010 –> 01:26:16.810
or where, where cops served warrants

1357
01:26:16.810 –> 01:26:20.570
on doors they weren’t supposed to go to, which happened to have white men

1358
01:26:20.570 –> 01:26:23.200
behind them, and those white men were

1359
01:26:23.920 –> 01:26:27.480
shot. In 2015, he

1360
01:26:27.480 –> 01:26:31.080
pulls at least 9 examples of these from publicly

1361
01:26:31.080 –> 01:26:34.920
available records. And then he closes, of course, with the

1362
01:26:34.920 –> 01:26:38.720
infamous 1619 Project and, as he puts

1363
01:26:38.720 –> 01:26:42.080
it, woke washing in Hollywood

1364
01:26:42.240 –> 01:26:46.040
films. And his last paragraph in

1365
01:26:46.040 –> 01:26:49.700
Chapter 3 is this— you’ll like this— neoracism was once fringe

1366
01:26:49.700 –> 01:26:53.020
ideology believed by a few radical academics and

1367
01:26:53.020 –> 01:26:56.740
activists, a belief system without any real currency in

1368
01:26:56.740 –> 01:27:00.460
wider society. I hope the previous chapter has convinced you

1369
01:27:00.460 –> 01:27:04.300
that this is no longer the case. Neoracism now infects most of our major

1370
01:27:04.300 –> 01:27:08.140
institutions, government, education, media, and more. The

1371
01:27:08.140 –> 01:27:11.500
question remains, and we’re going to talk about this a little bit later, how did

1372
01:27:11.500 –> 01:27:15.220
neoracism go from a fringe belief system into the

1373
01:27:15.220 –> 01:27:18.940
mainstream. That’s

1374
01:27:18.940 –> 01:27:22.260
chapter 3 of The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a

1375
01:27:22.260 –> 01:27:23.540
Colorblind America.

1376
01:27:25.940 –> 01:27:29.100
We are approaching— and by the way, full

1377
01:27:29.100 –> 01:27:32.860
disclosure, DiRollo graduated

1378
01:27:32.860 –> 01:27:36.500
from Cornell University. I don’t think you would mind me telling that. Just like

1379
01:27:36.500 –> 01:27:40.140
Mr. Hughes graduated— publicly available information. Just like

1380
01:27:40.140 –> 01:27:43.900
Mr. Hughes graduated from Columbia University, both of

1381
01:27:43.900 –> 01:27:47.160
which are identified by folks like myself who graduated from state-level

1382
01:27:47.400 –> 01:27:50.880
institutions as elite institutions.

1383
01:27:52.240 –> 01:27:56.000
I did not get into Cornell, but I also

1384
01:27:56.000 –> 01:27:58.880
did not apply to try. I was like, you may not have tried.

1385
01:28:00.320 –> 01:28:04.160
Cornell, right, right, right. And I did

1386
01:28:04.160 –> 01:28:08.000
fine at my state-level institution. I am not complaining, nor am I resentful.

1387
01:28:09.200 –> 01:28:11.880
I’m not quite sure I would have done better with a Cornell degree or even

1388
01:28:11.880 –> 01:28:14.740
a Columbia one. And by the way, I’ve worked with people on the backend of

1389
01:28:14.740 –> 01:28:18.060
Columbia. They’re great people, but there’s some challenges in

1390
01:28:18.620 –> 01:28:22.300
the institution of Columbia University. Oh yeah. Such as

1391
01:28:22.860 –> 01:28:24.740
it works. Without a doubt.

1392
01:28:27.620 –> 01:28:29.220
Such as loving terrorists.

1393
01:28:31.940 –> 01:28:35.780
Let’s not bring that one up. Well, I mean,

1394
01:28:35.780 –> 01:28:38.750
queering the Intifada, right? I mean, I don’t even know what that means.

1395
01:28:39.300 –> 01:28:42.860
I’ve mentioned that before on this show. If you get to the point where you’re

1396
01:28:42.860 –> 01:28:46.660
saying that as a student, you have clearly overpaid for

1397
01:28:46.660 –> 01:28:50.260
something that you clearly do not understand. You’ve

1398
01:28:50.260 –> 01:28:53.460
overpaid. You do not press go.

1399
01:28:53.860 –> 01:28:57.460
Do not collect more than— don’t collect anything. Don’t collect a dollar.

1400
01:28:57.940 –> 01:29:01.460
Go back to the beginning and start again. You’ve clearly

1401
01:29:01.460 –> 01:29:05.110
missed something. Anyway, question. After

1402
01:29:05.110 –> 01:29:08.830
laying out those receipts to Rolo, what do we do

1403
01:29:11.230 –> 01:29:14.830
as we approach our 250th birthday in America this

1404
01:29:14.830 –> 01:29:18.510
July? What do we do about these elite institutions? How do.

1405
01:29:21.510 –> 01:29:25.230
We excise, to paraphrase from Elon Musk, the woke mind

1406
01:29:25.230 –> 01:29:28.990
virus that seems to be infecting these elite institutions? Because

1407
01:29:29.550 –> 01:29:33.350
this is that split, more representative of that split

1408
01:29:33.350 –> 01:29:36.890
that I was talking about, the W.E.B. Du Bois versus Booker T. Washington. I

1409
01:29:36.890 –> 01:29:40.490
don’t know average either white or Black or Native

1410
01:29:40.490 –> 01:29:43.770
American or Asian or whoever you want to pick group

1411
01:29:44.250 –> 01:29:48.090
of people on average who are talking about

1412
01:29:48.090 –> 01:29:51.450
these issues as consistently as we see elites in our media,

1413
01:29:51.690 –> 01:29:55.450
in our academies, in our governmental institutions, and quite

1414
01:29:55.450 –> 01:29:59.130
frankly, um, in our K through 12 and

1415
01:29:59.130 –> 01:30:02.250
college education systems talking about them and trying to

1416
01:30:02.640 –> 01:30:05.360
redress grievances. The regular people

1417
01:30:06.080 –> 01:30:07.680
living regular lives,

1418
01:30:09.600 –> 01:30:13.120
doing regular jobs in places outside of those four

1419
01:30:13.120 –> 01:30:16.400
pillars, they’re not consumed with this trash.

1420
01:30:16.880 –> 01:30:20.560
Why, for the life of me, I’m going to deliver it to you.

1421
01:30:20.560 –> 01:30:24.200
Why are the elites consumed with this garbage? And you have

1422
01:30:24.200 –> 01:30:27.680
direct— you, and I’m asking because you have direct, you’ve had direct contact. You’ve gone

1423
01:30:27.680 –> 01:30:31.170
to school with these people. You’ve seen them up close.— maybe in some cases you’ve

1424
01:30:31.170 –> 01:30:34.930
worked with them— why are they captured by these, by these what Rob Henderson would

1425
01:30:34.930 –> 01:30:38.690
call luxury beliefs fundamentally? Because they live in an

1426
01:30:38.690 –> 01:30:42.410
ivory tower, right? Because they’re comfortable and

1427
01:30:42.410 –> 01:30:46.010
cushy in a world of their own making that reinforces

1428
01:30:46.010 –> 01:30:49.490
their genius, where their genius is honored, and

1429
01:30:50.050 –> 01:30:53.810
where the invalidity and inefficacy of what they

1430
01:30:53.810 –> 01:30:57.380
are evoking um, in whatever form of— and in

1431
01:30:57.380 –> 01:31:01.180
whatever medium, okay, is not apparent. Whereas if you just

1432
01:31:01.180 –> 01:31:04.540
start on the ground, okay, this is gonna— I’m gonna make a really weird comment

1433
01:31:04.540 –> 01:31:08.260
in about 15 seconds, so get ready. Uh, when you start on

1434
01:31:08.260 –> 01:31:11.940
the ground, you won’t even get

1435
01:31:11.940 –> 01:31:15.700
up to them because it’s entirely impractical. Here’s a really

1436
01:31:15.700 –> 01:31:18.780
weird experience. Want to hear something good about Marxists?

1437
01:31:21.990 –> 01:31:25.750
Uh, sure. Yeah, you’re like, no, I don’t— like, that doesn’t

1438
01:31:25.750 –> 01:31:29.350
exist. No. Um, sure, I dump on them all the time,

1439
01:31:29.430 –> 01:31:32.910
so let’s, let’s go ahead. Level— and certainly the two original

1440
01:31:32.910 –> 01:31:36.630
philosophers, okay, Marx and Engels, um, on some

1441
01:31:36.709 –> 01:31:39.910
level they were confronting a practical

1442
01:31:40.150 –> 01:31:43.590
reality. So for me,

1443
01:31:44.230 –> 01:31:48.030
right, okay, we can move forward by

1444
01:31:48.030 –> 01:31:50.870
confronting the practical reality

1445
01:31:51.720 –> 01:31:55.400
and engaging in— within building new

1446
01:31:55.400 –> 01:31:59.240
institutions and engaging in justice,

1447
01:31:59.240 –> 01:32:03.000
not social justice, actual justice, so that the

1448
01:32:03.000 –> 01:32:06.280
practical reality of people in America

1449
01:32:06.280 –> 01:32:09.960
changes in the direction we want. If we do that,

1450
01:32:10.440 –> 01:32:14.200
all of this talking that these people are doing, it can start to

1451
01:32:14.480 –> 01:32:17.640
get quieter because people can move away from that.

1452
01:32:17.800 –> 01:32:20.840
Okay. Um, it’s just like,

1453
01:32:21.560 –> 01:32:25.080
I feel like one of the quips in response is just to act like

1454
01:32:25.320 –> 01:32:28.400
you’re at a protest, there’s a protester, and it doesn’t matter if you’re the counter-protester

1455
01:32:28.880 –> 01:32:32.600
or the protester, that which side you’re on and what the issues are

1456
01:32:32.600 –> 01:32:36.400
aren’t relevant. But somebody is yelling something, and one of the first questions for

1457
01:32:36.400 –> 01:32:39.480
me is, great, it’s the middle of the day, why aren’t you at work? Oh,

1458
01:32:39.480 –> 01:32:42.960
you don’t have a job? Oh, okay. That’s failing to

1459
01:32:42.960 –> 01:32:46.540
confront a practical reality right in front of the person.

1460
01:32:47.100 –> 01:32:50.380
Okay, get that guy a job, his life starts to change.

1461
01:32:50.940 –> 01:32:54.780
Teach him while on his job about other things that

1462
01:32:54.780 –> 01:32:58.460
matter, and all of a sudden this man can begin to grow, can

1463
01:32:58.460 –> 01:33:02.060
begin to shift. And then all of a sudden, at some point, he’s going to

1464
01:33:02.060 –> 01:33:05.740
hear or see something that says, wait a minute, that’s not true. I

1465
01:33:05.740 –> 01:33:09.540
was there, you’re lying. Like, I used to live and

1466
01:33:09.540 –> 01:33:13.260
work in the Middle East, and I remember an incident my clients were involved in,

1467
01:33:13.260 –> 01:33:16.740
in a country the US was at war in. I read about it in The

1468
01:33:16.740 –> 01:33:20.100
New York Times like a year after it happened, and I could pick out the

1469
01:33:20.100 –> 01:33:23.420
factual errors in the actual article

1470
01:33:23.740 –> 01:33:27.460
and not merely with information I had because it came from my clients. There was

1471
01:33:27.460 –> 01:33:30.860
an article published in the local paper that, that happened like the next day.

1472
01:33:30.939 –> 01:33:34.700
Okay, that was better reporting than The New York Times reporting. Okay. It was full

1473
01:33:34.700 –> 01:33:38.420
of holes. It was terrible. And so I was there, as it

1474
01:33:38.420 –> 01:33:42.270
were. So I remember What I heard, heard what

1475
01:33:42.270 –> 01:33:44.750
I heard from my clients, what I read in the New York Times, that was

1476
01:33:44.750 –> 01:33:48.390
garbage. Okay. And so

1477
01:33:49.670 –> 01:33:53.510
that, in other words, dealing with the practical realities

1478
01:33:53.750 –> 01:33:57.550
that we’re all experiencing, that people are experiencing, that’s how you, that’s how

1479
01:33:57.550 –> 01:34:01.350
you make meaningful change happen. That’s how you

1480
01:34:01.350 –> 01:34:04.390
make the reality of being colorblind happen.

1481
01:34:05.110 –> 01:34:08.830
And one individual can do it. And as long as each

1482
01:34:08.830 –> 01:34:11.750
individual listening makes that commitment and then

1483
01:34:12.150 –> 01:34:15.910
identifies certain objective actions, it will

1484
01:34:15.910 –> 01:34:19.550
happen. Okay? And it may not look the

1485
01:34:19.550 –> 01:34:22.870
same for each individual. Okay?

1486
01:34:23.349 –> 01:34:26.950
It may even involve some choices that seem to conflict

1487
01:34:26.950 –> 01:34:30.750
with the notion of colorblindness. Okay? It may. I

1488
01:34:30.750 –> 01:34:34.230
recognize that. But at the end of the day, if the vision you’re pursuing

1489
01:34:34.230 –> 01:34:37.740
is we’re a society where we look like all different backgrounds, types of people.

1490
01:34:37.980 –> 01:34:40.060
There are not bars, there are not

1491
01:34:41.740 –> 01:34:44.940
congenital disabling conditions in terms of

1492
01:34:45.100 –> 01:34:48.860
people’s rights. They’re not inherited privileges. Okay, inherited money,

1493
01:34:48.860 –> 01:34:52.500
yes. Inherited privileges, no. You know, inherited

1494
01:34:52.500 –> 01:34:56.060
money is fine. Inherited privileges aren’t. Not for anyone who’s a

1495
01:34:56.060 –> 01:34:59.340
Democrat with a small d, right? And so,

1496
01:35:00.460 –> 01:35:04.060
meaning someone who finds morally objectionable

1497
01:35:04.060 –> 01:35:07.770
and legitimately challengeable a political structure that

1498
01:35:07.770 –> 01:35:11.090
says you can inherit the right to tell me what to do. That’s what I

1499
01:35:11.090 –> 01:35:14.730
mean by Democrat. Okay. That’s what any Democrat, small

1500
01:35:14.730 –> 01:35:17.170
d, is going to object. That’s what I mean.

1501
01:35:19.810 –> 01:35:23.650
Where does power derive from and how can it be obtained without

1502
01:35:23.650 –> 01:35:27.490
violence? Well, right. Either you can vote or

1503
01:35:27.490 –> 01:35:30.050
you could be born in the right family. Okay.

1504
01:35:31.010 –> 01:35:34.590
Nope. Anyway, Um, so I

1505
01:35:34.590 –> 01:35:37.150
think focusing on the practical

1506
01:35:37.710 –> 01:35:41.550
reality that are, you know, that is confronting Gen Z, Gen

1507
01:35:41.550 –> 01:35:44.830
Alpha, freaking Gen Gamma, whatever, um,

1508
01:35:46.830 –> 01:35:49.950
will help make the colorblind vision a reality.

1509
01:35:50.350 –> 01:35:54.110
Okay, Hollywood is great. Hollywood is— and,

1510
01:35:54.110 –> 01:35:57.790
and Hollywood is great. Hollywood is not good.

1511
01:35:59.970 –> 01:36:03.410
Hollywood is great. Hollywood is not good, okay?

1512
01:36:03.650 –> 01:36:07.410
And so Hollywood is a great broadcaster of

1513
01:36:07.410 –> 01:36:11.170
ideas, lots of which are pernicious, okay? But

1514
01:36:11.170 –> 01:36:14.089
a great broadcaster, okay? But at the end of the day, it’s still

1515
01:36:14.089 –> 01:36:17.850
broadcasting. And eventually you stop scrolling, you turn

1516
01:36:17.850 –> 01:36:21.250
off the streaming, and you have to go to work

1517
01:36:21.410 –> 01:36:24.360
if you’re most of us between 18 and 65.

1518
01:36:25.390 –> 01:36:29.110
So that space, that’s where you can have

1519
01:36:29.110 –> 01:36:32.270
an impact. That’s where you can engage with people.

1520
01:36:32.670 –> 01:36:36.030
And as you put it, us Booker T types, right?

1521
01:36:36.430 –> 01:36:40.269
Watch me end up eating that comment later. Us Booker T types are dealing with

1522
01:36:40.269 –> 01:36:43.070
the practical reality of what tools are in your hand and what are you going

1523
01:36:43.070 –> 01:36:46.070
to do. I mean, I met a brother who owns a successful business here in

1524
01:36:46.070 –> 01:36:49.710
Phoenix. We met, oh, within the first 12 months. And

1525
01:36:49.710 –> 01:36:53.100
literally, like, he started with like a bucket and a mop and grew it into

1526
01:36:53.100 –> 01:36:56.700
this whole business through his own initiative. There’s a guy I follow, a

1527
01:36:56.700 –> 01:37:00.220
Muslim guy I follow on— I think he’s on he’s Insta, on Insta or Facebook—

1528
01:37:00.700 –> 01:37:04.380
and literally came out of prison, so no one’s gonna hire him. So he started

1529
01:37:04.380 –> 01:37:08.220
with one— he, he got money and

1530
01:37:08.220 –> 01:37:11.900
like bought a grill and then went and bought

1531
01:37:11.900 –> 01:37:15.580
the license or whatever from like Walmart to grill the hot dogs. That’s how he

1532
01:37:15.580 –> 01:37:19.160
started. And then he branched out and they got a truck and doing trucking, and

1533
01:37:19.160 –> 01:37:22.720
I write children’s books. This man travels to other continents with talking about his

1534
01:37:22.720 –> 01:37:25.480
children’s books, and people are inviting him. It’s amazing.

1535
01:37:25.880 –> 01:37:28.440
America works. Capitalism works.

1536
01:37:30.440 –> 01:37:33.480
And when— and colorblindness works.

1537
01:37:34.360 –> 01:37:37.880
And so when colorblindness works, we will see that colorblindness

1538
01:37:37.960 –> 01:37:40.840
works. If in contrast, okay,

1539
01:37:42.920 –> 01:37:46.610
we decline to and shy away

1540
01:37:46.610 –> 01:37:50.130
from and avoid and overlook

1541
01:37:50.530 –> 01:37:53.010
the practical reality that, um,

1542
01:37:54.690 –> 01:37:57.570
what I’m going to call the formerly proletariat, okay,

1543
01:37:59.090 –> 01:38:02.770
uh, the plebeus, uh, no, the plebs urbana, okay,

1544
01:38:03.650 –> 01:38:06.850
so the propertyless, skillless urban masses,

1545
01:38:07.010 –> 01:38:10.130
okay. Now if you look at the world

1546
01:38:11.050 –> 01:38:14.410
We’ve now crossed the threshold where most humans are living in an urban space.

1547
01:38:14.810 –> 01:38:18.010
So it’s highly relevant when you have propertyless,

1548
01:38:18.330 –> 01:38:21.770
skill-less masses of people living

1549
01:38:22.010 –> 01:38:25.730
concentrated. Okay. They are the building blocks

1550
01:38:25.730 –> 01:38:29.050
of revolutions. They are the building blocks of armies.

1551
01:38:29.370 –> 01:38:32.410
They are the building blocks of change. And so

1552
01:38:32.970 –> 01:38:36.810
you want hope and change? Show those people that America works.

1553
01:38:37.280 –> 01:38:40.920
America moves in a much better direction. If in contrast,

1554
01:38:40.920 –> 01:38:44.520
you just keep telling them that not only are they victims,

1555
01:38:44.520 –> 01:38:48.360
but they’re victims connected to this other conflict in the Middle

1556
01:38:48.360 –> 01:38:52.200
East with— And then

1557
01:38:52.200 –> 01:38:55.800
all of a sudden, life is one big protest and it’s

1558
01:38:55.800 –> 01:38:59.440
great. But for me, I still can’t but notice it’s great

1559
01:38:59.440 –> 01:39:03.200
and y’all ain’t working. Except the paid protesters, they’re working,

1560
01:39:03.200 –> 01:39:07.010
they’re getting paid. Yeah, but they’re going home to an apartment they don’t

1561
01:39:07.010 –> 01:39:10.730
own. None of those people have to pay a mortgage. End of story. Right,

1562
01:39:11.450 –> 01:39:14.970
right. And it’s either they’re cushy so they don’t have to pay a

1563
01:39:14.970 –> 01:39:18.410
mortgage and they really believe in this stuff. That’s not— that’s, you know,

1564
01:39:18.410 –> 01:39:21.930
2%, 9, or at best 98% or

1565
01:39:21.930 –> 01:39:25.770
more. No, that’s not the reality they’re dealing with. Okay. Plebs,

1566
01:39:25.770 –> 01:39:29.210
Urbana. That’s what— that’s what we’re dealing with.

1567
01:39:29.530 –> 01:39:33.180
And whoever gets Whoever gets a hold of them, whoever

1568
01:39:33.180 –> 01:39:37.020
gets a hold of those people’s hearts, that’s who’s going to steer

1569
01:39:37.020 –> 01:39:39.100
the ship. Okay. So,

1570
01:39:40.540 –> 01:39:44.340
Zohra Mamdami, I’m looking at you. I’m looking you dead in the face right

1571
01:39:44.340 –> 01:39:48.180
now. And, and, and whoever it

1572
01:39:48.180 –> 01:39:51.940
is that the Democratic Party puts

1573
01:39:51.940 –> 01:39:55.780
forward as president or candidate running as a candidate for president of the United

1574
01:39:55.780 –> 01:39:59.460
States, I’m looking at you dead in the face. I’m also looking at every single

1575
01:39:59.460 –> 01:40:02.610
person in a Democratic district

1576
01:40:03.090 –> 01:40:06.290
running in the midterms in 2026. I’m looking you dead in the face.

1577
01:40:08.130 –> 01:40:11.930
Because here’s the reality that the other part of the reality that DeRollo has

1578
01:40:11.930 –> 01:40:15.730
not yet touched on, but I’ll touch on it. The, the,

1579
01:40:15.730 –> 01:40:19.170
the, the replacement for a job is not political

1580
01:40:19.250 –> 01:40:22.930
power. The replacement for a job is not

1581
01:40:23.010 –> 01:40:26.770
the cultural power that you think the TikTok algorithm

1582
01:40:26.770 –> 01:40:30.110
is giving to you because you have you know, 50,000 followers,

1583
01:40:30.590 –> 01:40:34.390
and every single time you, you put something out there, uh, you get

1584
01:40:34.390 –> 01:40:37.950
claps or likes or whatever the hell it is they, they do on that platform,

1585
01:40:37.950 –> 01:40:41.550
right? Uh, that’s not a

1586
01:40:42.270 –> 01:40:45.950
sign that you are doing something that

1587
01:40:45.950 –> 01:40:49.310
is meaningful in the hierarchy of

1588
01:40:49.310 –> 01:40:53.150
society as work is. And so this gets me to my

1589
01:40:53.150 –> 01:40:54.830
follow-up question, which is this:

1590
01:40:58.630 –> 01:41:02.110
The protesters around illegal immigration right now, the vast

1591
01:41:02.110 –> 01:41:05.470
majority of them around illegal immigration deportation

1592
01:41:05.470 –> 01:41:09.110
practices, are affluent white liberal women.

1593
01:41:09.910 –> 01:41:13.110
The acronym for them is AWFLs in some parts of

1594
01:41:13.430 –> 01:41:17.150
the internet. That’s an awful acronym. That’s

1595
01:41:17.150 –> 01:41:20.910
terrible. I did not, I did not come up with it. It,

1596
01:41:21.220 –> 01:41:23.460
but it is there. Um, and, and my, my—

1597
01:41:27.620 –> 01:41:31.300
I wonder if

1598
01:41:31.300 –> 01:41:35.140
the solution for most of this is to just eliminate

1599
01:41:35.140 –> 01:41:38.980
tenure and have professors go get, to your

1600
01:41:38.980 –> 01:41:41.580
point, regular part-time

1601
01:41:42.500 –> 01:41:46.060
jobs. You can still teach the neoracism

1602
01:41:46.620 –> 01:41:49.820
of 20th century white poets like T.S. Eliot in The

1603
01:41:49.820 –> 01:41:53.540
Wastelands Or you can still teach

1604
01:41:54.100 –> 01:41:57.940
the unfair lottery of healthcare and

1605
01:41:57.940 –> 01:42:00.900
how it impacts racial disparities that you spent

1606
01:42:01.460 –> 01:42:04.020
7.5 years writing a PhD

1607
01:42:05.140 –> 01:42:08.980
paper on that no one read and cannot be replicated

1608
01:42:08.980 –> 01:42:12.700
either in the social sciences or the humanities and increasingly the

1609
01:42:12.700 –> 01:42:16.060
hard sciences, but we’ll leave that aside for just a second. The replication crisis is

1610
01:42:16.060 –> 01:42:19.750
unbelievable. Um, you can still be a

1611
01:42:19.750 –> 01:42:23.110
professor based off of that. You can still appeal to the

1612
01:42:23.110 –> 01:42:26.870
PhD board, but we will not at these elite

1613
01:42:26.870 –> 01:42:30.710
institutions give you tenure. Instead, we will allow you to

1614
01:42:30.710 –> 01:42:34.470
work part-time. You will have full healthcare, by the way, because that’s really

1615
01:42:34.470 –> 01:42:37.390
what you all want. So you’ll have full healthcare, you’ll work part-time,

1616
01:42:38.430 –> 01:42:41.870
and you are required to go get a part-time job

1617
01:42:42.270 –> 01:42:45.960
at And I’m going to say the name of the most horrible institution out

1618
01:42:45.960 –> 01:42:49.480
loud so we know what we’re talking about. Most horribly capitalistic

1619
01:42:49.480 –> 01:42:53.280
institution that anybody could imagine who’s listening to this, Walmart.

1620
01:42:54.080 –> 01:42:57.400
You must go work as a stocker at

1621
01:42:57.400 –> 01:43:01.160
Walmart because what, and this is my proposal, this

1622
01:43:01.160 –> 01:43:04.600
is my simple proposal, my simple solutions. Eliminate

1623
01:43:04.600 –> 01:43:08.080
tenure, have every professor go and work

1624
01:43:08.160 –> 01:43:11.880
part-time stocker at Walmart, part-time stocker at the fruit stand,

1625
01:43:11.880 –> 01:43:15.100
part-time stocker at the bodega. Part-time Uber driver, part-time

1626
01:43:15.260 –> 01:43:18.820
DoorDash driver. That way you interact with

1627
01:43:18.820 –> 01:43:22.500
real people who don’t

1628
01:43:22.580 –> 01:43:26.020
care that you’re exploring racial disparities in

1629
01:43:26.020 –> 01:43:29.819
nursing. They only want you to hammer a nail so the 2×4

1630
01:43:30.180 –> 01:43:33.980
that’s holding up their house doesn’t fall down. They only want

1631
01:43:33.980 –> 01:43:37.620
you to make sure that you stock the cans on the shelf

1632
01:43:37.780 –> 01:43:40.420
so the labels are facing out. They want you

1633
01:43:41.480 –> 01:43:45.280
to, like I did yesterday, I had a project at my house. I

1634
01:43:45.280 –> 01:43:48.760
went and rented a skid steer and my

1635
01:43:48.760 –> 01:43:52.400
neighbor with a tractor came over and helped me out. And between the

1636
01:43:52.400 –> 01:43:55.880
tractor and the skid steer and me practically shoveling for half the day,

1637
01:43:55.960 –> 01:43:59.560
I moved about a ton and a half of

1638
01:43:59.560 –> 01:44:02.920
dirt around my property from a recent project that just got

1639
01:44:02.920 –> 01:44:06.600
finished. And by the way, I’ve got a master’s degree.

1640
01:44:07.710 –> 01:44:10.910
And you can tell from the way I’m talking that I’m fairly intelligent.

1641
01:44:12.350 –> 01:44:16.030
This, I think, is what we have to return to. We have to return

1642
01:44:16.110 –> 01:44:19.750
to the merging of— we have to move away from what happened in the

1643
01:44:19.750 –> 01:44:23.470
20th century, which was the specialization at scale

1644
01:44:23.870 –> 01:44:26.430
of professorial and academic

1645
01:44:27.390 –> 01:44:30.590
status, and move toward at scale

1646
01:44:32.190 –> 01:44:35.420
the deconstruction of that. So that those

1647
01:44:35.420 –> 01:44:39.260
professors can, much like Bill Withers or Hunter S. Thompson

1648
01:44:39.340 –> 01:44:43.060
or any artist that’s worth their salt, actually Charles

1649
01:44:43.060 –> 01:44:46.140
Portis who wrote True Grit, who actually, you know,

1650
01:44:47.180 –> 01:44:50.700
like did real stuff with real human beings,

1651
01:44:51.660 –> 01:44:55.180
can move closer to having those kinds of interactions. That’s what I would propose.

1652
01:44:55.180 –> 01:44:59.020
That’s the proposal I would put forth. You got to go work a real

1653
01:44:59.020 –> 01:45:01.440
job. You got to go work a real job, even if it’s a part-time job.

1654
01:45:01.670 –> 01:45:04.470
You were just part-time. I don’t care. Go work a real job where you’re touching

1655
01:45:04.470 –> 01:45:08.230
on real people who will never attend your elite college. They can’t get in the

1656
01:45:08.230 –> 01:45:11.790
door. They make $30,000 to $50,000 a year and they have to, to Rolo’s

1657
01:45:11.950 –> 01:45:13.990
point, practical considerations like,

1658
01:45:16.790 –> 01:45:20.470
uh, you know, I got to make rent. So I appreciate

1659
01:45:20.470 –> 01:45:21.950
the fact that you wrote this non-replicable

1660
01:45:24.790 –> 01:45:28.630
research on this social science paper that does not matter. I appreciate

1661
01:45:28.630 –> 01:45:32.430
that you did that. Please make sure the cans are turned with the

1662
01:45:32.430 –> 01:45:35.710
labels facing out. And please do that.

1663
01:45:35.950 –> 01:45:39.750
Practical. That’s helpful. Yep. Yep. You know,

1664
01:45:39.750 –> 01:45:42.230
and I know that sounds harsh. It sounds harsh because a lot of those people

1665
01:45:42.230 –> 01:45:45.070
would push back on me. Those PhD level people would push back on me and

1666
01:45:45.070 –> 01:45:47.590
they would say, well, we were doing all that stuff in graduate school and the

1667
01:45:47.590 –> 01:45:51.310
PhD tenure is the reward. But the challenge is those

1668
01:45:51.310 –> 01:45:54.990
tenure track positions have dried up because

1669
01:45:54.990 –> 01:45:58.730
guess what? What the society is demanding

1670
01:45:58.730 –> 01:46:02.530
from elite institutions is not more elite navel-gazing. They’re

1671
01:46:02.530 –> 01:46:06.370
demanding practicality. And

1672
01:46:06.370 –> 01:46:10.090
how is that practicality going to come unless you actually have

1673
01:46:10.090 –> 01:46:13.890
people who know how to deliver on it? Which is why community college professors, by

1674
01:46:13.890 –> 01:46:16.650
the way, are much better than elite college professors.

1675
01:46:18.890 –> 01:46:21.050
Yeah, I think my solution would be harsher.

1676
01:46:22.740 –> 01:46:25.820
Um, I, I would just get the federal government out of it. I would just

1677
01:46:25.820 –> 01:46:29.220
get the federal government out of higher ed, and then the market will decide. Um,

1678
01:46:30.500 –> 01:46:34.300
Harvard can decide however many tenured professors it wants, or what

1679
01:46:34.300 –> 01:46:37.700
have you, and what it wants to spend based on its endowment, you know,

1680
01:46:38.260 –> 01:46:40.740
and donations, and that’s it.

1681
01:46:42.020 –> 01:46:45.300
And if they manage it well, which obviously they have over

1682
01:46:45.860 –> 01:46:49.680
so many centuries, then they’ll be fine. And if they don’t,

1683
01:46:49.680 –> 01:46:52.120
they’ll be out of business, period.

1684
01:46:53.240 –> 01:46:56.760
And so I think it’s a greater challenge for

1685
01:46:56.760 –> 01:47:00.600
state institutions, but to me, that’s where it’s more fun. Harvard can take care of

1686
01:47:00.600 –> 01:47:02.120
itself. That’s why it’s there.

1687
01:47:04.360 –> 01:47:08.080
And it’s like, oh, they get money from the US government for this because they’re

1688
01:47:08.080 –> 01:47:11.920
smart. That’s why. It’s the

1689
01:47:11.920 –> 01:47:15.430
government who’s being dumb. Harvard is being smart, right? And so,

1690
01:47:15.590 –> 01:47:19.070
and we’re being dumber even than the government because we voted in. The people who

1691
01:47:19.070 –> 01:47:22.590
are doing— we voted, right, right, exactly. And so when we vote in different

1692
01:47:22.590 –> 01:47:26.270
people and then they say no more, the federal government is

1693
01:47:26.270 –> 01:47:28.710
getting out of higher ed, all of a sudden

1694
01:47:30.470 –> 01:47:34.030
there’s going to be— there will be, there will be a

1695
01:47:34.030 –> 01:47:37.830
crash, right? People will say,

1696
01:47:37.830 –> 01:47:40.550
oh, I can’t afford to go to college. And all of a sudden you have

1697
01:47:40.550 –> 01:47:43.770
tons of practically minded people who will be interested in business and because doing business

1698
01:47:43.770 –> 01:47:47.090
things because they have bills to pay. And

1699
01:47:47.250 –> 01:47:50.690
they won’t see— because the media won’t tell them— but they won’t see, hey, wait

1700
01:47:50.690 –> 01:47:54.370
a minute, I just saved you $200,000 in debt

1701
01:47:54.450 –> 01:47:56.690
that is not tied to real estate.

1702
01:47:59.330 –> 01:48:02.370
You can’t afford to go to college, great. So in other words, you’re going to

1703
01:48:02.370 –> 01:48:06.210
get a job and have no debt, right? That sounds like you’re ahead.

1704
01:48:06.610 –> 01:48:10.330
Sounds like you’re ahead to me, you know. Um, but

1705
01:48:10.330 –> 01:48:14.050
But after that happens, right, then

1706
01:48:14.050 –> 01:48:17.890
there’s going to be an oversupply problem. Too many colleges and too

1707
01:48:17.890 –> 01:48:21.650
many positions and nothing is happening and not enough students. And

1708
01:48:21.650 –> 01:48:25.410
all of a sudden they’ll just start shuttering all over the country. Basically, I think

1709
01:48:25.410 –> 01:48:28.570
that that vision that they are still trying to operate on

1710
01:48:28.970 –> 01:48:32.810
hit its maximum capacity about 1970. That’s what I think. Yeah.

1711
01:48:32.970 –> 01:48:36.290
Yeah. No, I agree. And they need, they needed retrenchment since then. And I know

1712
01:48:36.290 –> 01:48:40.110
it’s true in New New York, where I was born. Um, it’s— they

1713
01:48:40.110 –> 01:48:43.750
needed retrenchment since 1970. Um, there were— when I

1714
01:48:43.750 –> 01:48:47.590
left in 2020, there were 64

1715
01:48:47.590 –> 01:48:51.390
public colleges, uh, and universities in New York

1716
01:48:51.390 –> 01:48:54.870
system, and there are 66 counties. It’s either 66 and

1717
01:48:54.870 –> 01:48:58.310
64 or 62, um, institutions for

1718
01:48:58.310 –> 01:49:01.710
66 counties. Okay, it’s crazy. Okay, it’s way oversupply.

1719
01:49:02.470 –> 01:49:06.280
They need to reduce it to about 7 and

1720
01:49:06.280 –> 01:49:09.520
take their best people and put them in the 7

1721
01:49:09.920 –> 01:49:13.400
and then cluster the graduate stuff. So in 7

1722
01:49:13.400 –> 01:49:17.200
locations in New York, you have undergrad, but you also have the engineering

1723
01:49:17.200 –> 01:49:20.919
school, the med school, the dental school, the law school, whatever

1724
01:49:20.919 –> 01:49:24.600
other school you need. That’s, you know, I’m forgetting one. At least if

1725
01:49:24.600 –> 01:49:28.360
you had 7 of those, that would

1726
01:49:28.360 –> 01:49:32.060
be awesome, and it would cost less money. It will

1727
01:49:32.060 –> 01:49:35.500
cost less money. You don’t need all this institutional

1728
01:49:35.500 –> 01:49:39.300
infrastructure, which really means paying people in the middle who aren’t doing anything,

1729
01:49:39.460 –> 01:49:42.780
right? Right, right. I mean, all those administrators, all those

1730
01:49:42.780 –> 01:49:46.620
administrators that are like doing nothing. Yeah. And getting, you

1731
01:49:46.620 –> 01:49:50.340
know, amazing pensions, benefits, but they’re doing nothing and they’re driving up the cost.

1732
01:49:50.500 –> 01:49:54.300
Right, right. And again, if the federal government’s not in it, you can’t

1733
01:49:54.300 –> 01:49:57.580
do that anymore. The cost is going to come down because who can afford to

1734
01:49:57.580 –> 01:50:01.130
pay that extra? Nobody. The only way it’s affordable, just like

1735
01:50:01.130 –> 01:50:04.570
similar— it’s similar with modern real estate prices. The only way it’s affordable

1736
01:50:04.730 –> 01:50:08.570
is because you’re really shifting the cost down the road

1737
01:50:08.730 –> 01:50:12.570
and over 30 years because somebody else is footing the bill

1738
01:50:12.570 –> 01:50:16.330
now on paper. That’s all right now. That’s all, you know. Yeah. And I happen

1739
01:50:16.330 –> 01:50:20.130
to think that’s a good thing in real estate because again, it’s

1740
01:50:20.130 –> 01:50:23.450
actually attached to something that is going to appreciate.

1741
01:50:23.770 –> 01:50:27.020
And so— and that is going to be around if

1742
01:50:27.820 –> 01:50:31.420
guy over here defaults, right? And so that’s a more solid

1743
01:50:31.500 –> 01:50:35.340
base than investing in someone’s education. That’s

1744
01:50:35.340 –> 01:50:38.980
only solid when you have a reasonable assumption that the person

1745
01:50:38.980 –> 01:50:42.579
is going to be able to get a job that earns him or her enough

1746
01:50:42.579 –> 01:50:45.980
money so that they can pay you back on time. And when those—

1747
01:50:46.140 –> 01:50:49.980
any of those factors fails categorically or

1748
01:50:49.980 –> 01:50:53.730
systematically, you got a problem. And so there’s your U.S.

1749
01:50:53.730 –> 01:50:57.570
student loan debt crisis right there. Right

1750
01:50:57.570 –> 01:51:01.330
there. Yep. Yeah. All right, one

1751
01:51:01.330 –> 01:51:04.330
of those three problems, you know. But yeah, so

1752
01:51:04.970 –> 01:51:08.730
colorblindness works. So if colorblindness

1753
01:51:08.730 –> 01:51:12.450
works— we’re coming up on, uh, yeah, we’re coming

1754
01:51:12.450 –> 01:51:15.930
up on the end of our time together here with Rollo. uh, We’ve, we’ve, uh,

1755
01:51:16.650 –> 01:51:20.200
we’ve had a good conversation here. Get the book, The End of Race

1756
01:51:20.200 –> 01:51:23.760
Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. He does propose a

1757
01:51:23.760 –> 01:51:26.440
solution. I want to be very clear. I want to give credit where credit is

1758
01:51:26.440 –> 01:51:30.120
due. He proposes a solution at the end of his book in Chapter 6, which

1759
01:51:30.120 –> 01:51:33.720
we’re not going to get to today. It’s called Solving the Problem of

1760
01:51:33.720 –> 01:51:37.240
Racism in America. And in

1761
01:51:37.240 –> 01:51:40.800
Chapter 6, he lays out an ambitious plan

1762
01:51:41.680 –> 01:51:45.450
which sort of walks the line between, um,

1763
01:51:46.010 –> 01:51:49.610
what DiRollo is talking about and what I’m talking about here, sort of takes a

1764
01:51:49.610 –> 01:51:53.210
middle ground. Um, he addresses the limits of the potential for

1765
01:51:53.210 –> 01:51:57.010
equity and how to fight racial discrimination against minorities

1766
01:51:57.010 –> 01:52:00.330
and even within minority groups. He talks about the

1767
01:52:00.330 –> 01:52:04.090
uncomfortable truth of affirmative action and what that

1768
01:52:04.090 –> 01:52:07.650
actually means, particularly in university admissions, which is what DiRollo

1769
01:52:07.930 –> 01:52:11.330
and I were talking about. And he talks about some anti-racist

1770
01:52:11.810 –> 01:52:15.490
alternatives to affirmative action and the limits of

1771
01:52:15.490 –> 01:52:19.050
race-based policies. He also says, in

1772
01:52:19.050 –> 01:52:22.530
essence, kind of like that meme that you see online sometimes that says, which way,

1773
01:52:22.530 –> 01:52:25.890
Western man? And there’s a person having to go either left or right.

1774
01:52:26.210 –> 01:52:29.890
He talks about which way, American man, in here

1775
01:52:30.290 –> 01:52:33.330
by talking about how we have an option

1776
01:52:34.130 –> 01:52:37.910
to go down one of two roads, either anti-racism or

1777
01:52:37.910 –> 01:52:41.590
neo-racism or something else totally different.

1778
01:52:43.830 –> 01:52:47.590
I would conclude— we gotta wrap up here— I would

1779
01:52:47.590 –> 01:52:51.310
conclude that in the 21st century, part of the

1780
01:52:51.310 –> 01:52:54.710
restoration project that we’re going to be going on, I think at least for the

1781
01:52:54.710 –> 01:52:58.550
next 25 years, if I’m so blessed to see all of this and live so

1782
01:52:58.550 –> 01:53:02.350
long, I think the thing, the path that we’re going to go

1783
01:53:02.350 –> 01:53:06.000
down over the next 25 years is going to be part of our collective?

1784
01:53:07.440 –> 01:53:11.200
I think of the old boxer back in the day, our collective Roberto Duran,

1785
01:53:11.200 –> 01:53:12.400
No Mas moment.

1786
01:53:16.880 –> 01:53:20.640
You know, I, I, this will be short, I promise.

1787
01:53:20.800 –> 01:53:24.400
So when I was in George Bush International

1788
01:53:24.480 –> 01:53:28.320
Airport in Houston yesterday, the woman waiting on me,

1789
01:53:28.720 –> 01:53:32.050
her name tag said Camacho. And of course,

1790
01:53:32.930 –> 01:53:36.610
I’m, you know, almost 50. So when I hear— and I’m not Hispanic, so when

1791
01:53:36.610 –> 01:53:40.130
I hear Camacho, I of Hector Macho think Camacho. Yep.

1792
01:53:40.370 –> 01:53:44.050
She didn’t know who that was. She didn’t

1793
01:53:44.050 –> 01:53:47.410
know who Macho Camacho was. And I’m like,

1794
01:53:47.410 –> 01:53:50.770
wow. I said, okay, I guess I’m old, you know. And she’s like, oh, I

1795
01:53:50.770 –> 01:53:54.450
gotta look it up. And I’m just like, I know President Nixon

1796
01:53:54.450 –> 01:53:57.930
was— like, my name is Nixon. I know, I know the

1797
01:53:57.930 –> 01:53:59.980
famous Nixon. Like, there’s a famous Camacho.

1798
01:54:02.370 –> 01:54:05.330
One, you know. Yeah, one.

1799
01:54:07.090 –> 01:54:10.690
Just like there’s a— there’s only one— there’s only one Roberto Duran. There’s

1800
01:54:10.690 –> 01:54:12.450
Duran Duran, which is not the same thing. Um,

1801
01:54:14.530 –> 01:54:18.250
Roberto. One Roberto. Being a

1802
01:54:18.250 –> 01:54:21.250
rock star used to be something, man. There you go. Um,

1803
01:54:22.530 –> 01:54:25.290
I think one of the things, one of the parts with that no más moment

1804
01:54:25.290 –> 01:54:29.090
is that we are going to realize the limits of equity.

1805
01:54:29.250 –> 01:54:31.970
I think the hangover from the 20th century is

1806
01:54:32.450 –> 01:54:35.650
painfully being worked out right now.

1807
01:54:36.130 –> 01:54:39.650
And part of the hangover of the 20th century destruction of—

1808
01:54:41.330 –> 01:54:45.010
or the 21st century destruction of 20th century institutions that we thought

1809
01:54:45.010 –> 01:54:48.610
were all solid, part of that hangover is

1810
01:54:48.610 –> 01:54:52.180
understanding and recognizing and returning back to a more constrained

1811
01:54:52.180 –> 01:54:55.740
vision. I’m going to mention Thomas Sowell yet again on this

1812
01:54:55.740 –> 01:54:59.060
show for the second time. Shout out to Thomas Sowell. Um,

1813
01:54:59.860 –> 01:55:03.420
a more constrained vision of trade-offs. The

1814
01:55:03.420 –> 01:55:06.540
world is tragic and brutal, and there are only trade-offs.

1815
01:55:07.100 –> 01:55:09.540
There are no utopian solutions.

1816
01:55:10.980 –> 01:55:14.220
Words, of course, mean things. And DiRollo and I are both

1817
01:55:14.220 –> 01:55:17.940
wordsmiths. We use words, we write books, we make arguments with words.

1818
01:55:18.350 –> 01:55:22.030
We are, we are, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins, drunk on

1819
01:55:22.030 –> 01:55:25.750
ideas sometimes. But these ideas are focused around words

1820
01:55:25.750 –> 01:55:29.390
and words mean things. And currently, and this is what was refreshing about

1821
01:55:29.390 –> 01:55:33.110
Coleman Hughes’s book, we have lived through an era,

1822
01:55:33.110 –> 01:55:36.350
both DiRollo and I, I approach 50, he’s almost 50 himself.

1823
01:55:36.750 –> 01:55:40.190
Our language for the last 25 years has been

1824
01:55:40.190 –> 01:55:43.790
unserious and imprecise. I think George

1825
01:55:43.790 –> 01:55:46.990
Orwell would probably turn inside out if he were around

1826
01:55:47.310 –> 01:55:50.990
right now. And with our words and our language being

1827
01:55:50.990 –> 01:55:54.590
unserious and imprecise, that reflects or is a reflection upon our

1828
01:55:54.590 –> 01:55:58.110
general incompetence with the concepts and the ideas that lay

1829
01:55:58.110 –> 01:56:01.030
atop realities we cannot negotiate away from,

1830
01:56:01.430 –> 01:56:05.190
regardless of our class, our status, or even our

1831
01:56:05.190 –> 01:56:08.950
immutable, unchangeable characteristics with which we were

1832
01:56:08.950 –> 01:56:12.470
born. By the way, that sentence right there is the sentence of a

1833
01:56:12.470 –> 01:56:15.680
serious person. Who’s actually thinking about this

1834
01:56:16.000 –> 01:56:19.640
seriously. Here’s the other thing. I think

1835
01:56:19.640 –> 01:56:23.400
corporate shaming, government fiat, uh, and

1836
01:56:23.400 –> 01:56:26.880
educational indoctrination cannot overcome the results of

1837
01:56:26.880 –> 01:56:30.560
incompetence and ignorance and the inbreeding of ideas among

1838
01:56:30.560 –> 01:56:34.360
those class structures and those class elites who want to protect

1839
01:56:34.360 –> 01:56:37.440
their own gains at the expense of everybody else. And

1840
01:56:37.680 –> 01:56:41.440
DEI and systemic racism and all these other

1841
01:56:41.440 –> 01:56:45.130
things are mere cover to protect what they really want, which

1842
01:56:45.130 –> 01:56:46.650
is status and power.

1843
01:56:49.450 –> 01:56:52.690
The last thing I think we will go through over the next 25 years is

1844
01:56:52.690 –> 01:56:55.930
this, and I think it is the most important, and is most important for leaders.

1845
01:56:55.930 –> 01:56:58.650
If you’ve made it to the end of this show so far,

1846
01:56:59.690 –> 01:57:03.450
here’s the most important thing. African Americans

1847
01:57:03.530 –> 01:57:06.730
have decisively, legally, culturally, and even socially

1848
01:57:07.210 –> 01:57:10.660
won in air quotes, the argument with

1849
01:57:10.900 –> 01:57:14.700
America. And by the way, you know how we

1850
01:57:14.700 –> 01:57:18.500
know we’ve won? Because people who have our exact same level of melanin and yet

1851
01:57:18.500 –> 01:57:21.860
come from places like Ghana and Nigeria and Jamaica

1852
01:57:22.900 –> 01:57:25.140
and Kenya and Somalia

1853
01:57:26.980 –> 01:57:30.180
and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

1854
01:57:30.580 –> 01:57:34.420
come to America and they do better than those of us who

1855
01:57:34.420 –> 01:57:37.930
have quote from Jesse Jackson during

1856
01:57:38.010 –> 01:57:41.210
Barack Obama’s campaign, slave blood, a.

1857
01:57:43.690 –> 01:57:47.130
Hell of a line. They do better. That was a hell of a line.

1858
01:57:47.130 –> 01:57:50.730
Caught me by surprise when Jesse Jackson said that. That’s a hellish

1859
01:57:50.809 –> 01:57:53.850
line. Wow. And so

1860
01:57:54.570 –> 01:57:57.530
if the folks who have the same level of melanin

1861
01:57:58.330 –> 01:58:01.700
come to America and do better,

1862
01:58:01.940 –> 01:58:05.780
or at least as well, as those who were born in

1863
01:58:05.780 –> 01:58:09.500
America, the penultimate question for

1864
01:58:09.500 –> 01:58:13.100
African Americans in the 21st century will

1865
01:58:13.100 –> 01:58:16.260
be, now that you have won,

1866
01:58:17.540 –> 01:58:21.220
what exactly are you going to do

1867
01:58:21.540 –> 01:58:25.380
with your win? How exactly are you

1868
01:58:25.380 –> 01:58:29.200
going to proceed forward from here with

1869
01:58:29.200 –> 01:58:32.800
your win? And how are you going to

1870
01:58:32.800 –> 01:58:36.480
deal with the situation when it comes about? And it will in the next

1871
01:58:36.480 –> 01:58:39.880
25 years. And I already think we’re seeing a little bit of a preview of

1872
01:58:39.880 –> 01:58:43.480
coming attractions of this dynamic with

1873
01:58:43.480 –> 01:58:46.560
how little we see Black Americans

1874
01:58:47.760 –> 01:58:51.440
protesting around the illegal immigrant activities of ICE.

1875
01:58:52.330 –> 01:58:56.170
How little we see. What are you going to do

1876
01:58:56.170 –> 01:58:59.930
when you’re just at the end of it, at the bottom of it

1877
01:58:59.930 –> 01:59:03.610
all, at the end of all the struggle and the strife, you’re just another

1878
01:59:03.610 –> 01:59:07.130
American? And if leaders

1879
01:59:07.210 –> 01:59:10.850
can’t help, if leaders can’t

1880
01:59:10.850 –> 01:59:14.370
rise— and I think if Coleman Hughes is any

1881
01:59:14.370 –> 01:59:17.610
indicator, I think leaders will rise from the younger generation.

1882
01:59:18.310 –> 01:59:21.350
Who will view themselves as just Americans.

1883
01:59:22.870 –> 01:59:25.270
I think we will get an answer to that question. I think it’s going to

1884
01:59:25.270 –> 01:59:29.070
surprise all of us old guys. Mm-hmm. But

1885
01:59:29.070 –> 01:59:31.990
I don’t know what the answer will be, but I do know that’s the question.

1886
01:59:33.270 –> 01:59:36.710
What will you do with your win? Yep.

1887
01:59:37.350 –> 01:59:40.470
What will you do when you’re just another American?

1888
01:59:43.920 –> 01:59:47.400
Mm-hmm. Final thoughts, DiRollo, on this contentious

1889
01:59:47.400 –> 01:59:51.200
topic, but one that we have

1890
01:59:51.200 –> 01:59:54.400
to talk about. We have to talk about because if we don’t,

1891
01:59:54.880 –> 01:59:58.160
we are behaving as if we are, well,

1892
01:59:58.400 –> 02:00:01.920
childlike in our colorblindness, or maybe

1893
02:00:01.920 –> 02:00:05.320
childish. Maybe that’s a better way of framing childish because childlike is a little bit

1894
02:00:05.320 –> 02:00:08.320
different. Childish in our conception of colorblindness.

1895
02:00:09.040 –> 02:00:12.830
Final thoughts on Coleman Hughes, on the end of race politics. Or even

1896
02:00:12.830 –> 02:00:16.230
on the arguments for colorblind America. Final thoughts, Guy, you have the last word.

1897
02:00:16.470 –> 02:00:18.550
No, I think it’s great. Thank you. No,

1898
02:00:20.870 –> 02:00:24.630
it’s well-timed. It’s an exciting convo. Thank you, all

1899
02:00:24.630 –> 02:00:28.390
you listeners and viewers who stayed with us this whole time.

1900
02:00:29.270 –> 02:00:32.270
Yeah, no, it excites me. I’m excited

1901
02:00:33.270 –> 02:00:36.990
about where America can go. I’m excited. I’m not

1902
02:00:36.990 –> 02:00:40.720
one of those who who withdraws and

1903
02:00:41.280 –> 02:00:44.480
refrains, for example, from having children

1904
02:00:44.880 –> 02:00:48.160
because they’re, you know, worried about what’s coming.

1905
02:00:48.480 –> 02:00:52.280
I’m not. I’m excited. You know, it’s a big year, the

1906
02:00:52.280 –> 02:00:55.680
250th anniversary of our nation’s founding.

1907
02:00:56.720 –> 02:01:00.400
And I think that there’s a lot there in that

1908
02:01:00.720 –> 02:01:04.420
that needs to be explored. There’s still more polemics that need to happen, more

1909
02:01:04.650 –> 02:01:07.890
scandals that need to happen. But, you know, this, this is, this is life in

1910
02:01:07.890 –> 02:01:11.690
America, and it’s, you know, this free brawling republic

1911
02:01:11.690 –> 02:01:15.370
is just like that. And so, you know, I’m excited.

1912
02:01:15.370 –> 02:01:17.930
I’m excited for this guy’s future. So yeah.

1913
02:01:23.530 –> 02:01:25.610
And with that, well,

1914
02:01:27.690 –> 02:01:28.250
we’re out.