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0:42

Hello everyone and welcome to Talk

0:44

Nerdy. Today is Monday, September

0:46

25th, 2023, and

0:49

I'm the host of the show, Cara Santa Maria. And

0:51

as I've been mentioning, I

0:53

have been traveling quite a bit and I'm

0:55

pre-recording some of these intros for these episodes

0:58

so that you all have access to brand

1:00

new content while I am away. And

1:03

we've got another great

1:05

one for you this week. I had the opportunity

1:08

to chat with Dr. Michelle Lamont.

1:11

She is a professor

1:12

of sociology and

1:14

African and African-American studies.

1:16

She's also the Robert I. Goldman

1:18

Professor of European Studies at Harvard

1:21

University. So, you know, her

1:23

sort of position is as a cultural

1:26

and comparative sociologist.

1:29

And she's written, I

1:30

think, a

1:32

dozen books as author or co-author

1:34

and edited a ton of volume. She's written over a

1:36

hundred articles. And she really

1:38

covers a lot of topics like culture, inequality,

1:41

racism, stigma, social

1:44

change, societies, and even

1:46

qualitative methods. And she

1:48

has a brand new book out. And I think the topic

1:51

is just so incredibly important. And

1:53

it was a fascinating chat to be able

1:55

to dive deep into this. So her book is called,

1:58

Seeing Others.

1:59

recognition works and how it can

2:02

heal a divided world. So

2:04

without any further ado, here

2:07

she is, Dr. Michelle

2:09

Lemmon.

2:11

Well, Michelle, thank you so much for joining me

2:13

today. Thank you for having me.

2:16

So your book is one that I

2:18

think is, gosh, very timely,

2:20

very important. And also, I don't know

2:22

if I would call it a departure from what we often

2:25

do on the show. I think it's only a departure

2:27

in so much as it is formalized

2:30

and codified. Like you are actually writing about

2:32

something that I think often the guests

2:34

on the show and I will sort

2:37

of fall into talking about, but it's

2:39

not often the actual topic of

2:41

our conversation. So before we get

2:44

into the

2:44

book, I wanna talk a little bit about

2:46

you. You are a sociologist,

2:48

yes? Yes. And

2:51

so what kind of sociology

2:53

do you study? Well,

2:55

I'm a cultural sociologist. Which

2:58

means that I study meaning making, how

3:01

people make sense of the world. But

3:03

I'm also an expert

3:05

on inequality and in comparative

3:08

sociology. So my first books

3:10

were about the

3:13

French and the American upper

3:15

middle class, professionals and managers.

3:18

And also about the working

3:21

class, low

3:23

status white collar workers and blue collar

3:25

workers living in France and the US. So

3:27

I was really interested in studying

3:29

how these various groups define a worthy

3:33

person and really highlighting

3:35

the contrast and how

3:37

these definitions have a direct impact

3:40

in how

3:40

inequality works in different

3:43

countries. Okay, so this idea

3:45

of

3:46

worthiness and how

3:48

that affects, it's basically,

3:51

I guess the humanism

3:53

of it all. Like how much do we see other

3:55

people as people or as

3:58

equal people and how much do we dehumanize? or

4:00

see

4:00

them as somehow less than. That's

4:03

exactly it. Now, what do

4:05

people think is shared

4:07

among all human beings? What

4:09

makes us equal? In which

4:11

ways can we be more equal? What are the

4:14

things that prevent us from being equal,

4:16

etc? And obviously,

4:18

these

4:20

questions are just so incredibly

4:22

relevant right now. They're just so...

4:25

I mean, I think they've probably always been relevant

4:27

throughout all of human history. And I'm

4:29

curious... I'm going to dive right

4:32

into getting political right away. But I'm just curious

4:34

what you think is different. I mean,

4:36

there's something palpably different. For anybody

4:38

who has been living in America, they can kind of point

4:41

to the last several years feeling different.

4:43

Is it that things have changed, or is

4:45

that people are saying the quiet part out loud now?

4:48

Well, if we compare the

4:50

current moment, especially

4:52

post-pandemic, or even since the

4:55

explosion around Black Lives Matter in 2020,

4:58

or the election of Trump, so many

5:00

of the public conversations

5:03

had to do with who was being

5:05

excluded. The MAGA

5:08

people, you know, emphasizing mostly

5:11

how blue-collar workers

5:13

have lost status, whereas

5:16

many minoritized groups or LGBTQ

5:19

emphasizing the ways in which they are excluded

5:21

and want to be in. So the

5:24

conversation is very explicitly

5:26

about who's in and who's out. Whereas if

5:28

you think of the, you

5:30

know, the post-World War II generation,

5:33

many people were embracing the dream

5:35

of upward mobility,

5:37

the American dream. And I

5:39

think while there were lots of people who were excluded,

5:42

certainly African Americans, women who were

5:44

lower on the totem pole, there was

5:46

less explicit contestation

5:48

about the criteria by which people are in

5:50

and out. Many immigrants wanted to become

5:53

assimilated, change

5:55

their names, losing their culture,

5:57

losing their, you know, eating

5:59

habits. et cetera. So it's become

6:01

a very explicit social

6:04

stake, if you will. Now, everyone has

6:06

to position themselves around that. And you can

6:08

see the governor of Florygott,

6:10

the census, making, you know, the rejection

6:13

of critical theory and the use of education

6:15

as a central part of its political

6:18

platform. So you can see how these discussions

6:20

about inclusion can really be

6:22

instrumentalized by politicians

6:25

to make, you know, advance,

6:29

to progress in

6:31

their ambition. So that, I

6:33

think, is somewhat different. And

6:36

I guess there's also this feeling

6:38

like there have been progress and some

6:40

of it's being stepped backwards. Like, it's

6:43

obviously not new, right, to

6:45

exclude African Americans and

6:47

women from a seat at the table in our country.

6:49

Like, clearly, this has been a systemic

6:52

nightmare

6:52

since before the founding

6:55

of our country. But it almost felt like we were

6:57

getting there. And then

6:59

there's like these steps backward that we're

7:01

taking. Exactly. And this process

7:04

of reaction, counter reaction, I

7:06

think is always central to

7:09

all social movements. But maybe because,

7:12

you know, Obama was fighting Martin

7:14

Luther King with the great

7:17

moral arc of history moving

7:19

in the right direction. But I think after Trump,

7:21

the election of Donald

7:24

Trump to the presidency of the country,

7:26

many people felt like, wait a minute, this

7:28

progress can, is really

7:31

the object of a tug of war now, which

7:34

leads people to address

7:36

the position, counter position

7:39

very explicitly. So, and

7:41

that's also what led me to write

7:43

the book, because after Trump's election,

7:46

many people

7:46

were very, very depressed and

7:49

wondering, where do we find hope?

7:51

And at the same time, Gen Z's,

7:55

we know the enormous epidemics

7:57

and mental health issues that are.

7:59

are now

8:01

found on campuses and among

8:04

non-college educated Gen Z's, so

8:07

I really felt an urgency in

8:09

tackling these questions of how do we

8:11

produce more hope? And that's how I came

8:14

to read the literature on this topic, which

8:16

is, emphasizes how

8:18

we give recognition to

8:20

each other, we can acknowledge

8:23

these others dignity and give

8:25

each other respect. And this is something that

8:27

only human beings can do for each

8:29

other, and we together produce

8:32

the definition of what's valuable. So

8:34

I came to think that in the

8:36

context of growing inequality, what

8:39

we see around us is that many people are

8:42

pushing recognition and inclusion as

8:44

new ways of aspiring to

8:46

a different kind of society that

8:49

can make more people happy if the

8:51

near, you know, pursuit of consumption

8:54

is not gonna do it anymore for so many

8:56

people for the millennials and the Gen Z's.

8:58

So it's really a change of optics and

9:01

how to pursue happiness, I think that

9:03

is characterizing what's

9:06

happening now.

9:08

You know, I can't help but

9:09

sort of

9:11

identify the legislative

9:15

and political movement to remove

9:17

rights

9:21

for transgender

9:24

individuals in our country as

9:26

a perfect example of just like the erasure, the

9:28

lack of recognition of a people.

9:31

Like I think that, you know, sometimes it's

9:33

maybe harder for us to understand this

9:35

idea of recognition because

9:38

it's like, well, all people are people and whether they have

9:40

equal access or rights is a different question, but I

9:42

see an active attempt to

9:45

invalidate their existence as

9:47

people. Yes, exactly. Like that

9:49

they are not trans, like there is a real movement

9:52

of saying, these are just confused kids

9:54

or they don't know what they're talking about or

9:57

of course they need to use the bathroom of the... you

10:00

know, sex that was assigned at birth, because

10:02

trans isn't a real identity.

10:05

And that's, that must be so much, so

10:08

difficult to deal with. It's one thing to say, you

10:10

are who you are and you are less than, therefore, I

10:13

want to exclude you from the conversation.

10:15

It's another thing to say, you don't exist. Yes,

10:19

and it's really, I used earlier

10:21

the term tug of war. And

10:23

I think with the recent decision

10:26

of the Supreme Court, where

10:28

back to back, you know, after,

10:31

you know, terminating

10:33

Roe versus Wade abortion

10:35

policy, we had the end of

10:38

affirmative action in admission

10:40

and higher education. And then the fact

10:43

that LBGTQ, those people

10:45

don't have access to all the services

10:48

with the decision concerning

10:51

the website designer. And finally, the

10:54

decision that, you

10:56

know, college loans were

10:59

not going to be pardoned, those

11:01

decisions back to back were

11:04

all moving in the same direction of restricting

11:07

in symbolic ways, in the sense of, you

11:09

know, pushing for policies

11:11

that instead of trying to make

11:14

these

11:14

groups more of

11:16

a central part of American society,

11:18

were reaffirming their position

11:21

at the margin, low income people, LBGTQ,

11:24

people of color from under, you

11:27

know, minoritized groups. So the

11:29

fact that the Supreme Court takes

11:31

this position with sending such messages,

11:34

I think,

11:35

is so clear about

11:37

the, you know, the need for some

11:39

to reaffirm a traditional taking order

11:42

that puts white men and,

11:44

you know, people who are, you

11:48

know, citizens and

11:51

above everyone else.

11:54

Do you, you know, do you see

11:56

Trump, like the, not the existence

11:58

of the man, obviously,

11:59

exists because he exists. But do you see the

12:03

sort of power and influence and

12:05

political kind of clout that he developed

12:08

over the course of his most

12:10

recent career as a direct

12:12

sort of reaction to Obama's

12:15

presidency? Like, do you think that the dimension

12:17

is long because of Obama? Yeah,

12:20

I mean, there's a psychologist write about

12:22

something called the

12:24

Obama effect, which is that, you

12:27

know, the fact of seeing in

12:29

at the White House, this

12:32

middle class,

12:33

quote unquote, normal

12:35

black

12:35

family being featured

12:37

in some way, on the one hand, it told

12:39

many African American we see you

12:42

we're now acknowledging that

12:44

we cannot equate, you know, African

12:47

American with low income. So

12:49

on the one hand, it really had this as

12:51

an impact, but it created a lot of resentment

12:54

among lower class

12:56

and middle class whites.

12:58

And a lot of, you know, one of the papers

13:01

I wrote was a very detailed

13:03

analysis of 73 electoral

13:06

speeches that Trump as a candidate

13:10

delivered. And we show in this paper

13:12

that he very systematically tramp,

13:15

you know, provided recognition to workers by

13:18

telling them, yes, you're downwardly

13:20

mobile, but it's not your fault. It's the fault

13:22

of globalization. It's the fault of immigrants,

13:25

especially, you know, Latino

13:27

immigrants who come and take your job. So

13:30

really an effort of recentering

13:32

the picking order between the groups to lift

13:35

up their position. And

13:37

I think he has a kind of instinct

13:40

about pitting people against

13:43

one another, you know, in some ways, is a social

13:45

Darwinist, right? He, he's

13:47

constantly trying to to pander

13:49

to, to some groups

13:51

to like working class

13:54

men to make them, you

13:56

know, feel better about

13:56

their position at the same time

13:59

as he's proposing. policies that are

14:01

not at all advantageous to them, but

14:04

he really know there's a sociologist

14:06

named Ris Peck who studied

14:09

coverage of

14:11

in Fox News and he talks about

14:14

how Trump's sexism and sense

14:16

of humor is really, he really

14:19

uses his humor to appeal to

14:21

a kind of Darwinist

14:24

approach to the world that is really like ridiculing

14:27

women and ridiculing also

14:30

the upper middle class, the Yapese, you know, so

14:33

he's really been

14:34

a master at deepening

14:36

the social divides to us versus them

14:39

and that's partly

14:40

why we find ourselves in the

14:42

situation we are now. Not the

14:44

only condition at all, but I

14:47

think his rhetorical power in this sense

14:49

has been really powerful. You

14:51

know, obviously this isn't your area, but

14:54

I find

14:54

that he's been such an

14:56

enigma to me because as a human

14:58

being, I see the sort

15:01

of

15:02

ineptitude and the lack of like

15:04

deep thought and sort of the narcissistic

15:07

kind of reactionary mentality

15:09

that he has. And then I'm confused how he's able

15:11

to be so calculating and how he's

15:13

able to do basically

15:16

the work of a pretty skilled sort

15:19

of strong man

15:21

when it doesn't seem like he has the cognitive

15:24

capacity to do that. And

15:26

so I've always been very confused by this man. I'm

15:28

like, is it just an instinct that he

15:30

has to kind of do the con?

15:33

Yeah, well, that's, you know,

15:35

of course, I'm not a psychologist, but

15:37

I feel like it really has

15:40

the it's a little bit like a perverse,

15:42

yeah,

15:44

instinct about putting the

15:47

week against each other and

15:50

knowing, you know, what

15:52

are the buttons

15:54

to push to cultivate

15:57

opposition and also

15:59

that really. the other system because a lot

16:01

of what he does in his electoral speeches

16:04

and his thumb peaches is to get people

16:06

excited and make them laugh and it's like

16:08

a party because they all feel

16:10

that they share the same enemies and they

16:13

ridicule you know all the

16:15

nicknames that he sleepy

16:18

Joe and you know

16:20

the nicknames that he invents are frankly

16:23

sometimes hilarious but and

16:25

they are meant to create a shared

16:27

sense

16:28

of humor and validation

16:31

among those who are listening to him so

16:33

it's a very bizarre thing it's

16:35

a little bit like it may be an instinct that he cultivated

16:38

from being a teenager and he never

16:40

grew out of it. Right, yes

16:43

definitely fascinating but of course that's

16:45

not that's not the ultimate thesis here

16:47

what we're really talking about is this concept

16:50

of recognition and so I'm curious

16:53

if maybe you can help the listeners by

16:56

defining what we mean because obviously that's a that's

16:58

a normal term in our lexicon

17:01

so how are we using that word recognition?

17:03

Yeah well it's um you

17:05

know you can say

17:08

I recognize that this is an apple

17:10

I recognize that this is Jim on

17:12

the street but that's not the kind of not the

17:14

kind of recognition that

17:15

this book is about obviously I'm

17:18

interested in how we give value

17:20

to each other how we make each other

17:22

be visible which is why

17:24

the main title of the book is is

17:27

seeing

17:27

others so it's really about the

17:29

separation of rendering the other

17:31

one worthy

17:32

and visible and valued which

17:35

is something that only human being can do

17:37

to each other and the

17:39

title of the British version

17:41

of the book is slightly different and

17:43

it's more about the rendering words which

17:46

maybe is is more explicitly

17:49

about this I think it's not necessarily

17:52

obvious for people to understand what

17:54

recognition means since it's

17:56

not you know the general way

17:59

that how I define

18:01

it in the book is not the most common-sensical

18:04

way. But yes,

18:06

so a lot of what the book does

18:08

is to, you know, provide

18:11

the reader a lens through

18:13

which to approach the world through

18:15

recognition. So for instance, as

18:17

you and I were just doing, you can

18:19

talk about American politics

18:21

or any politics about really being

18:24

about redefining words, you

18:26

know, contest about who's worthy. And

18:30

the book is full of examples of how this

18:32

is operating. And some of the people who've read the

18:34

book told me after having read your book, I

18:37

now see recognition everywhere. You see

18:39

it as operating as an implicit

18:42

dimension of a lot of conversations

18:45

in the public sphere that are happening all the time.

18:47

And we all participate in it in,

18:49

for instance, you know, defending, I don't

18:52

know, our LGBTQ friends, but

18:54

we don't know what we don't see now

18:56

what I'm doing is recognition work. But

18:58

we all do it all the time. And it's useful

19:00

to talk about the phenomenon itself, because

19:03

I think it allows people to see it

19:06

happening and see themselves doing

19:08

it, which means that you can engage

19:11

in it with a little bit more reflexivity,

19:13

and maybe a little bit less hatred for others

19:16

and in a more dispassionate way. So

19:18

that's among the objectives that the

19:20

book, you know, aims to

19:23

achieve.

19:25

And you know, I can't help but see it as a positive

19:28

framing that sort of in, I don't

19:30

want to say like opposition to, but that is

19:33

sort of distinct from what

19:35

I would often think of as sort of like the the

19:39

dictatorial playbook or the genocidal

19:41

playbook, which is the dehumanization

19:43

of individuals, like

19:44

the lack, like, I guess

19:46

the lack of recognition is, is rhetoric

19:49

that allows people to think of other people

19:52

as not people. Exactly. And

19:54

the people who

19:57

study the human organizations

20:00

say exactly that. Part of the book chapter 8

20:03

is really focused on

20:05

how to broaden recognition

20:08

and this kind of thing that I'm talking about. I talk

20:11

about what I call ordinary

20:13

universalism,

20:13

which is to recognize

20:15

what we all share as human beings

20:18

and here I draw on interviews

20:20

I conducted with illiterate North

20:23

African immigrants in France in

20:25

the early

20:26

1990s where I asked them, you

20:28

know, what do we all have in common as human being?

20:31

And they would say things like we all have

20:33

to get up in the morning to buy our bread

20:35

and

20:35

we are all children of God or

20:37

we're all insignificant in

20:39

the cosmos or we all spend nine months

20:42

in our mother's womb.

20:43

So really pointing to very

20:45

basic things that we all have in common,

20:47

which is the opposite if you will from dehumanization.

20:51

And I also talk about the importance of using

20:53

criteria of evaluation that everyone

20:56

can meet. So to say that the most valued

20:58

people are people who have PhDs or

21:01

people who make over 150,000 a

21:03

year, you know, whatever the criteria that

21:05

are dominant in our contemporary

21:08

society immediately

21:11

leads the majority of the population to

21:15

feel unworthy. And I

21:17

think, you know, a lot of the mental

21:19

health crisis that is proliferating

21:22

right now has to do with

21:24

the absolute dominance of these

21:26

neoliberal criteria, which

21:29

has to do with social socioeconomic

21:31

success at the time when,

21:33

you know, so many people have experienced

21:35

block mobility for the last five

21:38

decades. So the

21:40

crisis has become so exacerbated.

21:42

And I feel when you see

21:45

when I go to I was this

21:47

weekend in Philadelphia or, you know,

21:49

in L.A., you have so many

21:50

homeless people everywhere.

21:52

And are we know about

21:54

how racism and, you

21:56

know, misery, the wear

21:58

and tear of everyday life?

22:01

medical researchers talk about the allostatic

22:03

load, which is the ways in which

22:06

experiencing racism

22:08

and inequality on a daily basis really

22:11

affects your subjective wellbeing

22:14

and your physical health as well. And that's

22:16

how you end up with so many people being

22:19

self-destructive and having so much problem

22:21

coping. The crisis with homelessness

22:25

is as much a crisis of mental health. And

22:29

you can see that American society is doing

22:32

so poorly on so many dimensions

22:34

when you look at life expectancy in

22:36

contrast to other countries. And we

22:38

really need to collectively think very seriously

22:41

about what our steep inequality

22:44

combined with very narrow definition

22:46

of criteria of words

22:49

are doing for our society. So

22:52

that's partly also

22:53

one of the things that the book aims to accomplish.

22:58

Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of brings up

23:00

a really important point, which is

23:02

that there are mental

23:05

states, obviously, there are ways that individual

23:07

beings who exist within a system,

23:10

who exist within a society, within a culture,

23:12

think. And the ways that they think

23:15

directly affect the way that they behave.

23:17

And that directly affects the laws

23:19

that are made, the systems that are perpetuated.

23:24

And so that connection between our

23:27

mentality and how that

23:29

mentality is manifest in

23:32

action, I think is a really

23:33

important one.

23:35

Because when we think in

23:38

a non-recognition

23:40

way, we

23:43

actually

23:44

make laws that prevent

23:46

individuals from basic

23:49

human dignity. And when we think in a

23:51

recognition way, I guess my

23:53

question for you is what are some

23:55

of the actual

23:57

real world outcomes?

23:59

of

24:00

recognizing others, of

24:02

having that fundamental humanness

24:06

identified and made

24:08

explicit?

24:10

Well, there are studies that show

24:12

that after same-sex marriage

24:14

became legal in 32 states, we

24:17

saw a very abrupt decline

24:19

in the number of LBGTQ

24:22

youth in high school attempting suicide.

24:25

So that is an example of how

24:27

passing a law that proclaims

24:29

our equality and

24:30

the access to this historically

24:33

excluded group to one of the most

24:36

sacred institutions of our society

24:39

as containing a message

24:40

of you belong. And

24:43

we really welcome you among us.

24:45

So one of the big issues,

24:47

I think, at the most concrete level is

24:50

that legislatures and social

24:54

policy experts are not trained to

24:56

systematically think about

24:59

the messaging that the laws

25:01

and the policies that are passed have

25:03

on how people represent themselves as members

25:06

of society or not. So take

25:08

about the end of Roe versus

25:11

Wade. Well, many

25:13

women experience this as infantilization,

25:16

subordination of

25:18

women to the Supreme

25:21

Court made of mostly men

25:23

and putting in the hands of the community

25:26

where men are often the most

25:28

powerful group, the

25:30

ability to determine the course of our lives.

25:32

So this

25:35

subordination

25:35

is extremely helpful.

25:40

And if you combine this with

25:43

the hurtful

25:43

effect of not being able to have

25:45

abortion on people's lives and the likelihood

25:48

of putting them

25:48

in poverty, you really have the

25:50

perfect recipe for a total

25:53

disaster.

25:54

And I could go on and on, like the whole food

25:57

stamp where low income

25:58

people had to stand in line and say,

25:59

stores to show their food

26:02

stamps, to be able to have access to food

26:04

where they would be very publicly stigmatized

26:08

as unworthy people who

26:09

are not able to demonstrate self-reliance.

26:11

And self-reliance is one of the sacred cows

26:14

of American society, right? So

26:18

as policies are put in place, there was

26:21

systematic attention paid

26:23

to the message of the

26:26

rules that, you know, like the debate around

26:30

the toilets is not only,

26:33

you know, is very much about acknowledging

26:35

publicly that some groups don't

26:38

self-define in the binary

26:40

sexual way. Many increasingly

26:43

young

26:43

people view themselves as, you

26:45

know, queer. And we have

26:47

to acknowledge that to respect their position

26:49

in society, I think. It doesn't deprive

26:53

anyone, if anything, to acknowledge

26:55

that

26:56

some don't see themselves at

26:58

one or the other end of the spectrum.

27:01

You know, it's interesting to me because I think

27:03

about, and maybe I'm making a false dichotomy

27:06

here, but I think about legislation

27:08

that prevents access

27:11

and then the repealing of that legislation

27:13

or legislation that codifies access,

27:16

right, so that, you know, we think about marriage

27:19

equality. So this is legislation

27:21

that says, hey, this group

27:26

should have access to this thing that historically

27:28

they've been prevented from having access

27:30

to. But then I think almost

27:32

like on the flip side of that, of

27:34

some of the platforms

27:37

of individuals who are pushing for things like

27:40

universal healthcare, universal basic

27:42

income, universal educational access,

27:45

where there is sort of a codification

27:48

of a law that says no matter who you

27:51

are, no matter what you are, there's a basic standard

27:53

that we want to uphold. Because it's

27:55

almost like the way that we have legislated in our

27:58

country, at least,

27:58

is that

27:59

assumption of a basic standard and

28:01

then we had to go through and actually

28:04

bit

28:04

by bit start

28:06

to lay it down on paper. But that assumption

28:08

of a basic standard was only for white

28:10

dudes. Exactly. Yeah,

28:12

and the old critique of

28:15

an approach to equality, that's equality

28:17

of opportunity. Everyone

28:19

has a chance to go to college without

28:21

paying attention to

28:23

the inequality of condition. In

28:25

fact, if you have parents or college

28:26

educated or who

28:29

went to an Ivy League school, you are

28:31

really much better set to

28:32

go to a, to get

28:35

a very high quality education

28:37

than if you come from a

28:40

place where there's no good school. That's very common

28:42

sense, equal and evident. But when we

28:45

talk about equality in the US, people

28:47

are much more concerned and they mostly focus

28:49

on the quality of opportunity, not the quality

28:51

of conditions. So that's

28:53

a huge. I think this is really baked into

28:56

the whole, the social fabric,

28:58

right? I mean, is it

29:00

that there is just an assumption?

29:03

It's so hard for me to sometimes take

29:05

the frame of somebody

29:07

who's politically very different than I am. And

29:10

it's interesting that I say that because I was raised

29:13

to a Mormon Republican

29:15

father in Texas, right? Like, so

29:17

like, it's not like I'm not exposed to this

29:19

stuff. I grew up in Texas. My dad voted

29:22

for Trump. Like I know that this exists,

29:24

but when I, when I try to take the frame

29:26

of somebody who, who

29:28

thinks the way he thinks, it's, it's

29:31

hard for me to fathom a belief

29:33

system that says that everybody just

29:36

has a level playing

29:36

field. Yeah.

29:38

But, you know, at some

29:41

level I understand elements

29:43

of this conservative ideology, you

29:45

know, for instance, when for my book,

29:48

the Dignity of Working Man, I did

29:50

interviews with, you know,

29:53

workers in the

29:54

New York area.

29:55

And I remember one of the people

29:57

I interviewed telling me, I really cannot.

29:59

I work

30:02

hard, I pay my bills, I make sure my

30:04

kids don't get in trouble. And the kind

30:06

of people I hate most are the people

30:08

who are not able to pull their weight.

30:11

And they are sponging off me and

30:13

they're living off welfare while I get

30:15

up

30:15

every morning to work.

30:17

So I can understand, I don't in

30:20

any way sympathize with the argument, but

30:22

I can understand the amount of

30:24

effort that probably this guy

30:26

was putting in to keep his life in order and

30:29

try to continue to walk a straight

30:31

line despite the lack of resources. And

30:35

the aggravation at me, you

30:37

know, is thinking

30:41

that others who were not as

30:43

morally disciplined as he was would suck

30:45

up or benefit from his hard work. I

30:51

think it's not generous, but I understand where

30:53

he comes from, you know.

30:55

So the same way that I understand

30:58

white racists, where they come from, because

31:00

they really are downwardly mobile and

31:03

they, you know, some of them

31:05

live in communities that have been

31:07

absolutely destroyed. And if you're

31:09

hanging out to your reality, you

31:11

know, by your fingernails, and

31:14

every more bit that fall apart, you

31:16

know, is really an insult to your

31:18

sense of dignity, your neighborhood is being

31:20

destroyed.

31:21

I mean, just spend a weekend

31:23

in Philadelphia.

31:23

I mean, it's quite shocking to see how many

31:26

homeless people are everywhere. So

31:27

it's difficult to live in an environment like this

31:30

and not saying that the world is falling apart.

31:33

Whereas I must say in Boston where I live,

31:36

there's a very active policy

31:38

for to provide housing with two people, even

31:40

people who are drug addicts. And there's a large,

31:43

mostly Catholic, old elite

31:46

that is very committed to the city.

31:49

And that has been very, very

31:50

active. The owners of the RASAP,

31:52

for instance, is supporting large

31:55

homeless shelters such as Pine

31:57

Street and so comparatively,

31:58

and it's true, we're not.

31:59

the northeast so few homeless

32:02

people want to live here for sure

32:04

we don't have the beautiful

32:05

fun that LA has but you

32:08

know it's obvious that just experiencing

32:11

a society where everything

32:12

is falling apart and you see hungry

32:15

people on the street is really you

32:17

know difficult and a real

32:19

challenge for people who are trying hard

32:22

to keep the world in moral order you know.

32:24

You know I'm curious because I know

32:27

that you study because not

32:29

only are you a sociologist but you're a professor of African

32:31

and African American history and you study racism,

32:34

anti-racism and these different

32:36

kind of states

32:39

I guess you could say I don't think I want to call them

32:41

traits I want to call them states

32:45

and I wonder if this and this may be

32:47

an oversimplification but this sort of

32:49

thesis or this hypothesis that

32:51

I've often grappled

32:53

with some of my friends especially my friends who

32:58

are black and who see

33:02

the rhetoric

33:05

that is sort of dog

33:07

whistled and now it's not even that dog whistles

33:09

it's like people whistles

33:10

out there

33:13

that this idea

33:15

that historically you

33:17

could be white, you

33:19

could be a man and

33:21

you could be

33:23

middle or even lower SES

33:26

and so long as you worked hard no

33:29

matter if you had an education no matter what

33:32

your station was in life you would have like your

33:34

basic needs met historically

33:37

no matter what so

33:39

long as you kind of like put in your dues

33:42

there would be a minimum level that

33:44

this country would take care of you and it's never been

33:46

like that for women and it's never been like that

33:48

for people of color and now white

33:52

men are starting to feel what it

33:54

has felt like for women and people

33:56

of color since the beginning of

33:58

this country and they're like, this isn't fair.

34:02

Yeah, yeah. And their sense

34:04

of white privilege is just being

34:06

attacked because

34:09

they think it's owed to them. And

34:11

in our work we did on anti-racism,

34:14

a lot of what we did, I have

34:16

this book title, Getting Respect, which I

34:18

coauthored

34:19

with colleagues from Israel

34:22

and Brazil. And we show

34:24

that how blacks in the three countries,

34:27

it's African-American, black, Brazilians, and

34:29

in Israel we studied Ethiopian Jews, how

34:31

they experience stigma that is related

34:34

to race and how they deal with it. And

34:36

one of the things we found is that in the US,

34:39

African-Americans much more readily confront,

34:42

in part because there's been the civil rights movement

34:45

and a lot of other episodes that

34:47

have emphasized for black, if you're right,

34:49

you're entitled to confront racism.

34:51

It's not normal that people be explicitly

34:55

racist or that the police

34:56

beat up young black

34:58

men and

34:59

murder them. In contrast

35:02

in Brazil, since when people experience

35:05

incidents, it's often difficult

35:07

for them to disentangle, is it due to

35:09

race or to the fact that people think I'm

35:11

poor because the boundaries toward the poor

35:14

are much deep, are very, very deep

35:16

in Brazil. And in the case

35:18

of Israel, black Ethiopian

35:21

that we Jews

35:22

that we interviewed, they

35:24

very much, one of their position

35:26

was to say, well, we're Jewish, we belong

35:29

here.

35:29

So yes, we suffer racism, but

35:31

at the same time we're part of the

35:34

in-crowd. So it's really

35:36

to try to document how these experiences

35:38

of assault on the self, like

35:41

being ignored, being overlooked, being

35:43

over underestimated, these

35:46

micro aggressions, if

35:48

you will, that are quite different than just

35:51

discrimination, not having access

35:52

to good school or good

35:54

neighborhoods. They're managed

35:57

very differently across contexts, in part

35:59

because of how. groups are

36:01

fitting differently in the society in

36:05

which they live. So I think there's a lot

36:07

of room to help people understand

36:09

even like the anti-racist practices,

36:12

what shape they take across

36:14

context and what you can do as responses,

36:19

what is enabled by the environment in which

36:21

you

36:21

are.

36:22

You know it raises an

36:24

important part of the conversation that we haven't

36:26

really, I feel like we've danced around it but we haven't

36:29

made it explicit, which is the complicating

36:32

factor of intersectionality.

36:34

You know the complicating factor of I have

36:37

multiple identities and some of those identities

36:39

might be more privileged within a society

36:42

and others might be more denigrated within

36:44

a society. But

36:46

you know so it's a part of me

36:48

feeling like I am

36:50

accepted and a part of me it's like the struggle

36:53

that you often see or I see with patients who are biracial

36:56

or multiracial and this idea like

36:58

well now all of a sudden I don't fit in anywhere. And

37:01

intersectionality really complicates things and

37:03

I think we too often like to put

37:05

things into very clean categories when the

37:07

categories don't exist.

37:09

Yeah absolutely and what you're talking about

37:11

for instance you know middle-class African

37:14

Americans I've seen often situations

37:17

where they would really you know embrace

37:20

if they take this as middle class and

37:22

you know not always be super

37:24

generous towards low-income blacks

37:26

but you know this is of course very much common

37:29

among white middle-class people as well.

37:32

But the issue of you know the solidarity

37:34

between middle class and low-income

37:37

blacks is extremely salient

37:39

in part because a lot of the stereotype

37:42

about African Americans is the ghetto black

37:44

stereotype from which they aim

37:47

to disentiate themselves and then of

37:49

course in the public setting marking

37:52

clearly the middle class status as imperatives

37:54

so Claude Steele a very influential

37:57

psychologist wrote this book titled Whistling

37:59

Vivalli

37:59

which is precisely about

38:02

how middle-class African-American

38:04

walking on the street can whistle

38:07

Vivaldi to signify

38:09

his class

38:10

or if you want his familiarity

38:12

with high culture, which is associated

38:15

with a per middle-class culture, you know. So

38:17

it's

38:17

a dilemma or it's

38:20

an aspect of reality that white people

38:22

simply don't experience this

38:24

need to constantly protect

38:26

yourself. Except of course if you're low-income

38:29

and you face the challenge of having to dress

38:31

nicely when you don't have the money to dress

38:33

nicely, where do you find the money,

38:35

you know. And how do you try to signal

38:38

that you're not low-income as you

38:40

go for job interviews, for instance. That's

38:43

also experienced but quite differently I

38:45

think than if you're

38:46

African-American, which is kind of unavoidable

38:49

in the American context.

38:51

Yeah, and I think you know that the sort of

38:54

the

38:54

plight or the experience of

38:57

women in this country is one that obviously

38:59

I'm very passionate about because I think

39:02

the fact that we are half and

39:04

the fact that the patriarchy

39:07

is so invisibly present

39:10

and sort of misogyny is so normalized,

39:13

we sometimes don't see it

39:15

happening.

39:17

It's just part of

39:19

the, it's the water, it's the fabric we're

39:21

in. Yeah, and you know I

39:23

think the issue of women learning

39:26

to become male pleasers

39:28

as a way to make their way up. I had

39:30

the graduate student who studied affinity

39:32

groups in the large organization

39:35

and he found that the women affinity

39:37

group, the way they succeeded was

39:39

to have the good grace of a man leader

39:41

who would, you know, make sure that they get

39:44

resources, etc. Whereas

39:46

African-American affinity

39:47

groups, they mostly use

39:49

these affinity groups for solidarity within

39:52

the group to protect themselves from, you know,

39:54

white employers, which is

39:57

a totally different dynamic I think,

39:59

so much.

39:59

as being put in this world

40:02

to push women to be enablers

40:04

of men and protect

40:07

themselves by being very

40:09

pleasing and

40:12

complementary

40:12

to men. And

40:15

if you don't do it, you're viewed

40:16

as a very difficult person

40:18

and your life is not easy. But

40:21

not many people connect that to the patriarchy

40:23

and for me it's so intertwined.

40:27

In all organizations I think there's a lot

40:29

of women who get vilified because

40:31

they're viewed as ball

40:33

breakers if you pardon my French.

40:36

No, and it's true and it's literally not because

40:38

they're ball breakers, it's because they're just not willing

40:40

to like anticipate and

40:44

kind of gently hold the egos of all

40:46

of the men around them. They're like, that is so much

40:49

more emotional labor than I signed up for.

40:51

I'm just going to do my job, how about that?

40:54

Exactly, and if you spend your life

40:56

doing this, you're not necessarily taking care of your

40:58

own needs either. Which

41:01

is what it means to be a woman in America,

41:03

that's for sure. Exactly, it's exhausting.

41:06

Yes. Yeah, I mean

41:09

it's such a complicated issue,

41:11

this idea of recognition

41:14

because of course women are recognized,

41:16

like we are seen as people

41:18

but I don't think we're seen as a different category

41:23

of people. I think it's very easy,

41:26

almost like we've done a lot of really good

41:28

work, we still have places to go but we've done

41:30

a lot of really good work in the sciences

41:32

to undo, undo is so

41:35

strong, I don't think that's an unfair classification,

41:39

but to fight back against the

41:41

effects

41:44

of scientific racism,

41:47

like using science

41:48

to prove inferiority of blacks, which

41:50

was very common

41:53

for actually

41:56

several generations, but

41:58

we're seeing a concern. effort

42:01

to sort of look at

42:03

how psychology has been used in

42:05

this way and to sort of to

42:08

heal some of those wounds. What I worry

42:10

about is that essentialism is still

42:12

used

42:13

as an argument for misogyny

42:14

and for patriarchy in

42:17

a way that like people

42:19

don't even see that they're being essentialist about it.

42:21

There are different sexes therefore.

42:23

Yeah and as you know since this

42:26

is

42:26

also your field you know the argument of Carol

42:28

Gilligan about woman being

42:30

caring or any argument about

42:32

you know an essentialized human nature

42:35

that would differentiate

42:36

the sexes. I'm always

42:38

very skeptical of any argument about

42:40

human nature or universal self

42:42

because we I think we don't know anything about human

42:45

nature. All

42:45

we have are very varying narratives

42:49

about what is characteristic all

42:51

human being. It's a little bit like I

42:54

think the field of archaeology any

42:56

claim they make are based on figment

42:58

of evidence that are extremely tenuous

43:02

and I think any field especially

43:04

frankly evolutionism

43:09

in the psychological

43:10

perspective is very much

43:12

also based on stereotypes. I think many people

43:15

who have written on this field have

43:18

talked about it as being very

43:21

based on very traditional sexist

43:24

stereotypes about the role of men and

43:26

women right in terms of women being

43:29

oriented toward being

43:32

selected for sexual reproduction which

43:34

you know. Yeah I mean it's

43:36

the same danger that you see of individuals who

43:38

are looking at let's say

43:42

evolution by way of natural

43:44

selection and who make that fallacy that where

43:47

we are now or where an organism is

43:50

now was some sort of intentionality

43:54

of it. The reason that it ended

43:56

here is because if we look back we can say well it was

43:58

always going to end here and it's like But it didn't, first of all,

44:01

nothing's ended. We're looking at a cross section

44:03

of time. And changes happen

44:05

because of forces. That's all they are.

44:08

There's no

44:09

intentionality there. Exactly. And

44:12

I would say even that, you know, the whole

44:16

trend now, which came to

44:18

us from psychology, I think, the argument

44:20

about we are wired to, you know,

44:22

I feel increasingly this expression

44:25

is used randomly to mean absolutely

44:27

nothing, you know, and there's no evidence. It

44:29

is, it has the cachet of scientificity,

44:32

but people throw it in to

44:35

give more, you know, a feeling

44:37

of certainty to what they're

44:38

seeing. And it goes on and on with, I

44:41

think, arguments about tribalism or,

44:43

you know, so many of these arguments are based

44:45

on the static conception

44:47

of human nature, which is not demonstrated

44:50

in any convincing terms.

44:53

There is a power in you just waiting to

44:55

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44:58

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45:00

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45:02

of New Haven is ready to flip that switch.

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45:55

I fully agree, and it's why, and I'm curious what your take

45:57

is on this, right? I'm somebody who reads a lot of existentialism. literature,

46:01

I sort of approach psychotherapy

46:03

in an existential, humanistic way. And

46:06

one of the sort of fundamental,

46:10

I guess axioms, maybe that's not quite

46:12

the right word that I really subscribe

46:14

to, that really speaks to me, is the

46:17

idea that

46:19

existence precedes essence.

46:22

I don't see it the other way around. And maybe

46:24

it's because at my core, I really

46:26

am atheistic in my thinking. But

46:28

to me,

46:29

people just are, they're thrown into

46:32

existence by obviously no consultation.

46:34

I did not choose to be born.

46:37

My parents made a decision that I was

46:39

sadly left out of. And then I had

46:41

to make meaning and make sense in

46:44

a culture, in a society that constrains

46:46

me. And there is no way

46:48

that I would have been. I just am the

46:51

way I am because of all of these pressures.

46:54

I existed first, and

46:56

then my essence was developed, as

46:58

opposed to the other way around. Yeah,

47:01

yeah. And you know, in sociology, we use

47:03

slightly different terms. You

47:05

know, existentialism is not, but we

47:07

talk a lot about pragmatism, which

47:10

is very much of the experience

47:12

based understanding of the world, you know,

47:14

and how we make our way to the

47:16

world, you know, moment

47:18

by moment, if you will,

47:20

based on trial

47:22

and error. And I think it's very much

47:24

driven by the same kind of agnostic

47:27

position about, you know, the history

47:29

of where we come here, all of that can

47:32

only be speculation for someone

47:34

who's an empiricist, I think,

47:36

you know. Right. Yeah.

47:39

It's fascinating how often, how

47:41

difficult it is. I mean, this is something that I've grappled

47:44

with, and I'm curious of your take on this. I just

47:46

finished my dissertation, which I approached

47:49

from lots of big

47:51

words, but an existential, phenomenological,

47:53

hermeneutic. So

47:55

the qualitative dissertation where I

47:58

attempted to say,

48:00

this is how I think about this topic.

48:03

And I want to make all of my presuppositions

48:06

that at least I'm aware of all of these biases

48:09

explicit. And then I'm going to engage

48:11

with these individuals who are having an experience.

48:14

And I'm going to check that against

48:16

my biases and iterate and iterate

48:18

and iterate. I want to be reflexive in this practice.

48:21

And it's not easy, but I think it really

48:24

slaps you in the face

48:26

how, how biased

48:27

we all are and how we, like

48:29

we are constructivist.

48:30

We see things through a lens.

48:33

Yeah, exactly. And I would say in my

48:35

discipline, that's very much the

48:37

dominant perspective. I think people

48:39

have really, you know, embraced

48:41

almost universally a constructivist

48:43

perspective. In previous decades, it

48:45

was maybe more focused on norms and

48:48

a model of human beings as people are

48:50

rule followers and rule pleasers,

48:53

you know, trying to please the rulers, as

48:55

opposed to trying to make sense of reality

48:57

in a kind of interactive way. And

49:00

I think that's really now the dominant way

49:02

that people think about it, you know, how

49:04

we construct meaning together through our interaction

49:07

with others, but also increasingly also

49:10

through our interaction with, you

49:12

know, the media and these para

49:15

social relationships, you know,

49:17

the people were not directly in contact with,

49:19

but for young people,

49:20

for instance, with us on the verge, you know,

49:23

people who are heroes that

49:25

contribute to giving meaning to their lives.

49:27

So,

49:28

so, you know, the fact that we are as

49:30

individuals viewing the world through

49:33

our own independent lenses that are, you

49:35

know, influenced, but

49:37

ultimately are our own, they are constructed.

49:40

I mean, what is the relationship between our constructed

49:43

selves and our constructed truth and

49:45

how we see other people

49:47

and how we can maybe get out of that

49:49

or at least move forward through

49:52

it? Yeah, well, it's difficult

49:54

because, you know, I think the, you

49:57

know, as human beings, I think

50:00

subjectivity is everywhere in the sense

50:02

that we don't

50:03

understand the world by ourselves, really.

50:06

And

50:08

even, you know, in a, like, for

50:10

instance, I write a lot about

50:12

how the upper middle class is defining

50:15

ways of being in the world. That's our very

50:19

negative for people who don't have the same resources

50:21

and advantages. Yet I am

50:23

a per middle class and I live in an upper middle

50:26

class environment with a lot of upper middle class

50:28

friends. So how is it that

50:30

I have this need or that I'm motivated

50:32

maybe by a need for social justice to

50:35

write about this, you know, what allows me

50:38

to take

50:38

distance? For sure, the fact that I'm

50:40

an immigrant is crucial, you know.

50:42

So I'm thinking like we probably

50:44

have, and in your case, I don't know, you mentioned earlier,

50:46

you grew up in Texas in the conservative

50:50

family and the Mormon family, like

50:52

you certainly have experience going

50:54

from an insider to being an outsider.

50:56

So, you know, we talk about

50:59

experiences where your habit

51:02

is, you're perceiving the world. There's a kind

51:04

of break

51:05

that forces

51:06

you to develop different optics.

51:09

So these moments in

51:11

a trajectory where your naturalization,

51:14

like I remember anecdotally,

51:17

the first time that I read the female

51:21

unit by Chairman Greer, which was

51:23

a great classic of the second

51:25

wave feminism, and I saw

51:28

the word stereotype. And I didn't

51:30

know that stereotype existed. And when

51:32

I suddenly understood what the stereotype

51:35

was, it was like the light bulb

51:36

was turned on, you know, I thought, oh, we

51:39

think of women like this, but in fact,

51:41

this is just a way of telling us who

51:43

we should be, you know. So being

51:45

able to engage in a

51:47

reality where we realize

51:50

that we perceive the world through lenses

51:52

that are fabricated, but

51:54

that are also in some ways arbitrary

51:56

because they're contested lenses,

51:59

right? lenses hide

52:01

things and make the other things visible

52:04

and these are connected to

52:06

power relationships. So that I think

52:08

becoming aware of this is

52:10

a very important

52:13

moment for me and I think the

52:15

social sciences do this for many people

52:17

you know

52:19

to allow them to denaturalize

52:21

the perception of the world that we grew

52:24

up in. Yeah I mean I think about

52:26

psychotherapy and I think about the way that we

52:28

help individuals who are struggling with

52:30

mental illness but also just adjustment

52:33

to difficult life circumstances

52:35

and you know one of the little cliches that we

52:37

often use is like first comes insight then

52:39

comes action. Obviously we can't

52:41

affect change if we don't even see

52:44

what's going on but there is another

52:47

piece to that which is that the action

52:50

doesn't just follow like we have

52:52

to actually do the action and

52:54

that's where I think the question

52:56

really lies is like once we open

52:59

our eyes to this these

53:01

divisions to the fact that individuals

53:04

are being stereotyped, dehumanized,

53:08

unseen, just seeing

53:10

them is that enough? Just recognizing

53:13

does that does that change things enough?

53:16

That's a very good question. Well

53:19

I think implicit in my book is

53:21

the idea that seeing is

53:24

also giving dignity if you will

53:27

you know like it's

53:30

also humanizing it's you

53:33

know basically implicitly seeing

53:36

people through a lens that

53:38

recognizes their ability to define

53:40

themselves autonomously. There's

53:42

a lot of ways of seeing that are not that

53:45

what I could not

53:45

capture that in my title but implicitly

53:48

that's exactly what the book is about that

53:51

in the literature on recognition

53:53

which is mostly a philosophical

53:55

literature you know Hegel the

53:57

German philosopher was the first one to talk

53:59

to

53:59

about it and the

54:02

relationship between the slave and the

54:04

master. It's

54:07

really about the capacity to define

54:09

someone and to subjectively and what

54:12

our vision of the other one makes the other

54:14

person feel like, whether you feel

54:16

like a valued person or a worthless

54:20

person, comes in part through the

54:22

gaze of the other. To

54:25

help people become aware of this, I think

54:27

it is really, really important. That

54:30

it's accomplished collectively, if you will. Yeah,

54:33

I would agree with that. I recently had Brian

54:36

Lowry on the show, who's a psychologist at

54:38

Stanford. And I think he's a psychologist,

54:40

actually. Now I'm questioning myself. I think

54:43

he's a psychologist. And we talked quite a lot about

54:45

the idea of self and how

54:48

we come to a sense

54:51

of self, a sense of identity that

54:53

is often persistent, that

54:56

it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It cannot

54:58

happen except through the relationships

55:00

that we have with others. We are who

55:03

we are because of those mirrors

55:05

and reflections and that intersubjectivity. And

55:07

I think that's such an important, like it's almost

55:10

not quite intuitive.

55:15

But the more you think about it, the more you're like, well, of course, that's the

55:17

only way it could be. But we

55:19

don't realize that all the time. We don't think about it that way. We are so

55:21

individuated that we sometimes

55:24

forget that we have to exist

55:26

in a city. Yeah, and the others

55:28

operate a little bit like a mirror. The

55:30

early social psychologists like

55:33

George Herbert Mead and others talked

55:35

about the image

55:37

that others have of us reflect

55:40

to us who we are. So

55:42

it has to be a kind of, otherwise

55:45

we would all be Asperger's. Defining

55:48

ourselves without feedback is in some

55:50

ways what would define the

55:53

person who's unable to

55:55

relate to other human beings, right? Or

55:57

the narcissist, or

55:59

narcissist. this needs being in. You'd

56:01

need to feedback all the time. Yeah,

56:04

true. Yeah, it's interesting that even when we think

56:06

about individuals who are sort of neurodivergent

56:10

that there's still this component. It's

56:12

a metaphor, but of course,

56:15

not a perfect metaphor, it wouldn't be a metaphor.

56:17

But it almost doesn't

56:19

completely track because ultimately there is

56:21

no example of a human who

56:24

is

56:25

operating

56:26

in a non-intersubjective way. That

56:28

would be like the children experiments

56:31

that we've seen, you know, those really sad

56:33

abuse stories where individuals were sort of

56:35

locked up in basements and never were exposed

56:37

to other people. And sadly, the

56:40

psychopathology that we see there is like off

56:42

the charts. It's not even in our textbooks because

56:44

it's

56:45

such a rare and horrifying

56:48

experience for individuals. Exactly.

56:51

And how do you learn about the world

56:53

if you're by yourself? Yeah. Fascinating.

57:00

And so seeing others, you

57:02

know, it sort of brings us full circle

57:04

to the sort of takeaway here

57:06

that there is an effort

57:09

to be made to see

57:11

others through, I guess we could say,

57:13

the

57:14

lens of personhood. Exactly.

57:18

While being also aware that

57:20

this is part of politics, you know,

57:22

the book concludes more or less on

57:24

the macro-education of

57:26

this. We can think of it as operating

57:29

at the face-to-face level, but these

57:31

micro-interaction really shape and

57:33

is also enabled by the institution

57:36

we live in, you know. Just

57:38

to give you an example, the fact that in the

57:40

US, at least in Massachusetts, it's not the case

57:43

in all the states, but our school

57:45

budgets are set by

57:47

the local taxpayers. And

57:50

in New Jersey, there's

57:52

a policy where the richer

57:53

school districts contribute

57:55

to the poorer school districts.

57:57

Well, what we have at

57:59

the end institutional level as a way

58:01

of funding schools in Boston means that 10 minutes

58:04

from my house, there's one of the poorest

58:06

neighborhoods in Boston where the schools are

58:09

total disaster so the

58:11

in the fact that Americans are increasingly

58:14

living without any contact with people

58:16

from other classes is really

58:20

made possible because of how we pay

58:22

for our schools and the upper middle class

58:25

ends up all living together in these fancy

58:27

school districts

58:28

where the houses are

58:30

Expensive and where people pay a lot of

58:32

taxes. So I'm

58:35

mentioning this to say that you know

58:37

We talk about the Meso level the level of institutions

58:40

and also

58:40

the cultural resources

58:41

That surround us that are

58:44

also at our disposal to help us make

58:46

sense of the world So

58:48

shows like white lotus, you know

58:50

We've had over the last two years

58:52

a lot of shows that were Offer

58:55

offering us eye candy where we could contemplate

58:57

the life of the rich or succession,

59:00

you know Where everyone is wicked bears basically

59:02

there's no one that you want to identify

59:05

with but at the same time What's presented

59:07

to you as a viewer is

59:10

the life of the extra rich and increasingly

59:12

the life of normal? Middle-class working-class

59:15

people is absent from entertainment

59:18

television So I'm just throwing

59:20

all this to say yes, it's

59:22

interaction of its face to face,

59:24

but we're constantly exposed

59:26

to scripts about what our lives are supposed

59:29

to be that operate at the Not

59:32

at the micro level but that are really feeding

59:34

how people think about their lives and

59:36

what is possible and what's desirable

59:38

and the fact that the the

59:40

entertainment continues to be so focused

59:43

on consumption and on

59:45

the life of the rich as

59:46

Desirable I think

59:49

is continuing

59:49

to feed this mental health crisis

59:51

that so many people are Experiencing

59:54

because they cannot see how an happy

59:56

life is within their reach. So

59:59

I think we need to think about this at the

1:00:02

micro

1:00:02

level but also at the institutional

1:00:06

level and the social cycle level.

1:00:09

Yeah,

1:00:09

and I think that the point that you just

1:00:12

made, I can't help but see the

1:00:14

connection between the,

1:00:16

I guess, the understanding, the,

1:00:20

what's the word I'm looking

1:00:22

for, the

1:00:23

realization that

1:00:26

these

1:00:27

inequities, these systemic

1:00:30

problems, whether we're talking

1:00:32

about the growing risk between the rich

1:00:34

and the poor and, you know, just

1:00:36

like the just absurd level of

1:00:38

income inequality and the lack of social mobility,

1:00:41

or we're talking about the disenfranchisement

1:00:44

people of color

1:00:45

or women

1:00:47

or LGBTQ

1:00:49

plus individuals, that these aren't

1:00:51

things that just naturally occur.

1:00:54

That these, it's not like if we left things alone,

1:00:57

it doesn't matter. This would just keep happening over

1:00:59

and over. No, these are intentional,

1:01:02

engineered,

1:01:04

architecturally sound occurrences.

1:01:07

And just because you're not part

1:01:10

of a system where

1:01:12

you're flowing along with that system doesn't

1:01:15

mean there aren't specific individuals

1:01:17

who are pushing these agendas and

1:01:20

ensuring that these types

1:01:23

of institutions either stay

1:01:25

the way they are or are pushed even farther in

1:01:27

that direction. And I think we are too comfortable

1:01:30

with the narrative that this is not

1:01:32

engineered.

1:01:34

Yeah, but once

1:01:36

you realize it's engineered, it also means that

1:01:38

it can be changed, right? Which is why

1:01:41

since the book includes

1:01:42

a lot of interviews with the entertainment

1:01:44

professionals and stand

1:01:47

up comics and a lot of their

1:01:49

work is oriented toward changing

1:01:51

the

1:01:52

representation we have of

1:01:54

minoritized groups or LGBTQ. So,

1:01:57

for instance, I've interviewed Joyce

1:01:59

Sulloway, who

1:01:59

created the show transparent. And

1:02:02

when I interviewed them, all

1:02:05

that was emphasized had to do

1:02:07

with their desire to transform how

1:02:09

queer people are perceived. So there's

1:02:12

a growing industry and

1:02:14

growing sectors of people whose work are

1:02:17

explicitly oriented toward reframing

1:02:19

groups that have been historically stigmatized.

1:02:22

Yeah. Yeah, I

1:02:24

believe that gives me hope because it means

1:02:26

that more change is possible. Yeah,

1:02:30

once you recognize that things are,

1:02:32

it's kind of like with climate change, right?

1:02:35

Think about where we are with climate change. This

1:02:37

is not a natural occurrence. There are things we did

1:02:39

and continue to do that are causing

1:02:42

this. And once you fully realize

1:02:44

and accept that, it's both

1:02:46

devastating but also somewhat

1:02:49

illuminating and inspiring because it's

1:02:51

like, well, we could just undo it.

1:02:54

We could just make change. I

1:02:56

know we have the solutions right in front of us. We're

1:02:58

lacking the will. Yeah, but it's

1:03:00

exactly this. You know, that

1:03:04

the goal is really to try to promote a

1:03:06

very proactive approach to

1:03:09

transforming the world. Because for

1:03:10

instance, you know, groups have become

1:03:12

these stigmatized. We now have same-sex

1:03:15

marriage, which no one was anticipating.

1:03:18

And once you have that, you realize other

1:03:20

groups can become, you

1:03:22

know, destigmatized too. It's achievable

1:03:25

if we understand how previous groups have been

1:03:27

able to be stigmatized. So the

1:03:30

message of the book is very much, this is

1:03:32

in our hands. And we have to be proactive

1:03:34

in pushing

1:03:35

for it. Yeah.

1:03:36

I love it. Well, gosh,

1:03:38

I think that that is a great kind of note to

1:03:41

end our conversation on. Obviously, there's so

1:03:43

much more here. There's so much more we could

1:03:45

dive into. But what do you think? Is

1:03:47

that sort of a good entree into

1:03:50

the? Oh,

1:03:52

absolutely. Absolutely. And I like the

1:03:55

fact that your psychological background

1:03:57

moved us in a direction of really.

1:03:59

talking about the more phenomenological

1:04:02

aspects of the book and

1:04:04

you know I think we covered a lot

1:04:06

of terrain

1:04:07

so that's really interesting for me because

1:04:09

I'd not yet discussed

1:04:10

the book with someone who has your

1:04:12

background. Oh, interesting.

1:04:14

Yeah I can imagine that for

1:04:17

many people obviously who are experiencing these social

1:04:19

systems a lot of it is going to feel very like

1:04:21

I guess action oriented sort of like

1:04:23

what does this mean how do we affect change

1:04:25

what should we do and obviously we got

1:04:28

there too and I think that's a deeply important but

1:04:30

yes I'm always really curious about the

1:04:32

human condition and the human experience. Yeah

1:04:35

and your questions are really terrific so

1:04:37

when I see you are so well prepared it's

1:04:39

nice I hope a

1:04:41

lot of the conversation I'll have around the

1:04:44

book so people will be as well

1:04:46

prepared as you are it's really nice because

1:04:48

I feel like you really engage with

1:04:50

the book. Oh absolutely I mean

1:04:52

this speaks to me at like such a deep and personal

1:04:54

level. Yeah I can see why you

1:04:56

like to do and

1:04:59

of course it's new everyone please please

1:05:02

please I implore you this is such important

1:05:05

important

1:05:05

fodder it's so important to grapple with these with

1:05:08

these issues

1:05:08

and to really have a personal relationship with them

1:05:10

so the book is seeing others

1:05:13

how recognition works and how it

1:05:15

can heal a divided world and of

1:05:17

course as you mentioned before that is the American

1:05:19

title if there is if you're in the UK

1:05:21

what is the subheading on the UK version? It's

1:05:24

a recognizing words I will I

1:05:26

would have to with me. I know I'm like trying

1:05:28

to open it on your website but it's so small. Yeah

1:05:31

my website you have both covers I keep

1:05:33

forgetting what the other one is about and

1:05:36

to tell you the truth it's written so small

1:05:38

that I can't really

1:05:39

see it. I love it I

1:05:41

love it that's so funny. I'll

1:05:43

find it. I found it I found it. How

1:05:45

to redefine worth in a divided

1:05:47

world. Yeah so I feel it's

1:05:50

roles better

1:05:52

than the American title you know with the American

1:05:54

title I think for many people

1:05:57

they don't know what recognition is so that's

1:05:59

a little country. choosing. But that's why

1:06:01

I opened with that. Yeah, it

1:06:03

will not get in the way of the book being.

1:06:06

I don't think that will be open. We'll see.

1:06:09

And I love I love always

1:06:10

like talking to authors about there are

1:06:12

different titles in different

1:06:14

cultures and different languages. Oh, yeah.

1:06:17

It was challenging. You know, we

1:06:20

for a while I wanted the title to be Who

1:06:22

Matters

1:06:22

but the publisher

1:06:25

felt very strongly that seeing others was

1:06:27

better. And I kind of went with it because

1:06:30

I felt like they have much more experience

1:06:32

than I do in choosing. They know how to

1:06:34

sell books. That's true. We'll give them that. So

1:06:40

I was a baby. I was a good person. Well,

1:06:44

once again, for everyone, the at least the American title

1:06:46

is Seeing Others, How Recognition Works and How

1:06:48

It Can Heal a Divided World by

1:06:50

Dr. Michelle Lamont. Thank you so much

1:06:53

for joining us today. Well, I thank

1:06:55

you for your interest and your wonderful

1:06:57

question. I really enjoyed talking with you. As

1:07:00

did I. And thanks to everyone who

1:07:02

comes back week after week. I'm really

1:07:04

looking forward to the next time we all get together.

1:07:11

There is a power in you

1:07:13

just waiting to be tapped.

1:07:15

Voice to be able to

1:07:17

vision to unlock.

1:07:20

And the University of New Haven is ready

1:07:22

to flip that switch. We

1:07:24

are nine thousand makers, instigators

1:07:27

and viewers here to make

1:07:29

tomorrow happen with market ready

1:07:32

programs to change your future

1:07:34

and a community of change makers to take

1:07:36

on the world. You

1:07:39

New Haven power on.