0:40

Hi, welcome back to my podcast.

0:42

Today it is my great pleasure to welcome

0:44

Jason Riley. He's a senior fellow

0:47

at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist

0:49

at the Wall Street Journal, and a commentator

0:52

for Fox News. Jason is the author

0:54

of several books, including the book I

0:56

would like to talk with him about today called

0:58

False Black Power. He has a new book

1:00

coming out soon called Maverick about

1:03

one of the more brilliant minds of

1:05

the last 50 years Thomas Sowell. I

1:07

can't wait to read it, and I've already watched a documentary

1:10

about Sowell, which you can stream on Amazon.

1:12

It's great. Welcome, Jason.

1:15

Thank you.

1:17

So before we jump in , what is

1:20

the most important thing that people my

1:22

age or my generation should know

1:24

that we don't?

1:27

It's not

1:31

necessarily unique to your generation,

1:33

but , for young

1:35

people in general, and that

1:37

is , not to cut yourself off

1:39

from different perspectives or from other

1:42

perspectives. Try to understand where people

1:45

you disagree with are coming

1:47

from. And one reason

1:50

it might be a little more difficult for

1:52

your generation is because

1:55

of social media. And it makes it

1:57

easier to do that.

1:59

To have a Twitter feed

2:01

or Facebook stream, or something like that,

2:04

that really just reinforces what you already

2:06

believe about most things. And

2:08

it's easy to sort of cut off other points

2:11

of view. So , that was

2:13

a little harder before social media.

2:16

I guess the advent of

2:18

cable news made it a little easier,

2:20

but social media has

2:24

a lot of people in their own little silos, and

2:26

not really talking to one another and

2:28

instead talking past one another. So I think

2:31

that it's important to keep an

2:33

open mind and try and

2:36

understand where other people are coming from.

2:38

That's a really good point. I try to

2:41

keep that in mind. It's kind of difficult,

2:43

especially with social media and Instagram

2:45

and all of that, trying to kind of push

2:47

us into the world that

2:49

we like, the information we like and

2:51

what we believe in, but I

2:53

definitely will keep it in mind. So now

2:56

I want to jump into your book, False Black

2:58

Power. First, let me say it's

3:00

a great book. While it's small, it

3:03

presents a provocative argument about

3:05

how slavery is not the

3:08

cause for the stalling black advancement.

3:11

And it's rooted in history

3:13

and data about black families that are often

3:15

overlooked by civil rights activists

3:18

and many historians today. The

3:20

starting point of the book is your

3:23

disagreement with the Moynihan report

3:25

of 1965, which is called

3:30

"The Negro Family: The Case For National Action", which documents

3:33

the rise of black families

3:35

that are headed by single women in inner

3:37

cities. So can you tell us about

3:39

the report a little bit and what

3:41

your issue with it is?

3:43

Well , it

3:45

was a report , released during

3:48

the Lyndon

3:49

Johnson administration in the 1960s.

3:53

Patrick Moynihan later

3:55

went on to become a US Senator from New

3:58

York and at the time, worked in the Johnson administration

4:01

and had gone off and written this

4:03

report on the black

4:05

family. I

4:09

do disagree with parts of it, but

4:12

I do agree with his

4:14

assessment of where things

4:18

were headed among blacks

4:20

due to the demographic trends that he

4:22

pointed out. Namely the rise of these single

4:26

parent homes run by single

4:28

mothers primarily, and how that

4:31

was going to be a big

4:33

barrier to the social economic

4:36

advancement of blacks in general.

4:38

And at the time there was a lot of excitement

4:42

because of the civil rights act and

4:44

the Voting Rights Act. You had the culmination

4:47

of these landmark pieces of civil

4:49

rights legislation had either

4:52

just passed or about to be passed. And everyone

4:55

thought that was going to take care of everything.

4:57

And that the breakdown

5:00

of the family, the nuclear family, that was

5:02

less of a big deal and he was being

5:04

sort of a spoil sport. And so

5:06

he got attacked quite

5:08

viciously at the

5:10

time. And what's

5:14

interesting is that attack

5:18

r esonated for decades. And

5:20

that is to say that among social scientists,

5:23

there was a hesitation to

5:26

talk about the black family

5:28

and the breakdown of the black family as

5:30

a cause for racial inequality

5:33

in America. For decades after

5:35

the Moynihan report, based on the reaction

5:38

to Moynihan, social s

5:40

cientists just didn't want to go there. They were afraid it

5:42

would hamper their careers,

5:44

that they would get

5:46

called names and that they wouldn't

5:48

be able to find jobs or get promotions

5:50

and so forth. And so sociologists

5:52

and psychologists and educators,

5:54

a lot of people just sort of steered clear of

5:57

talking about this huge elephant in the room,

5:59

which was the breakdown of the black family. And so

6:03

this didn't get a lot of attention for several decades.

6:05

So it was really a landmark study.

6:09

And in many respects where I

6:11

disagreed with it was

6:13

that Moynihan, and not

6:16

M oynihan alone- I mean, this was common knowledge

6:18

at the time based not

6:20

only on Moynihan who was white,

6:23

but also on the black s

6:26

ociologists that he turned to

6:28

to compile this report. People

6:31

like E Franklin Frazier, who was

6:33

a famous black s ociologist a t Howard University

6:37

advised Moynihan on this

6:39

record and he

6:44

used- I should,

6:47

I should back up here. I'm not sure if he actually

6:49

advised him. I'm trying

6:51

to think of when F razier passed away and w hen M

6:54

oynihan was putting this together, but

6:56

Moynihan relied on F

6:58

razier's research, which had been done in the

7:01

40's and 50's. And what

7:03

F razier had come up with have

7:05

become pretty much the basis

7:08

of the literature in this area. He was considered the

7:10

authority. And the Moynihan hand report very

7:13

much doubled down on what people like F

7:15

razier had found. So M oynihan wasn't alone

7:17

in this in what he found

7:19

here in terms of a cause.

7:21

And all of these guys

7:23

had assumed that

7:26

the reason the black family was

7:29

in the state that it was, was due

7:31

to slavery. And that the black

7:34

family had been destroyed during slavery.

7:37

And we were still seeing the ramifications

7:39

of that as late as the 1960s.

7:42

And that was the assumption that M

7:46

oynihan had. And that was the assumption of the

7:48

researchers that he based his report o ff. And

7:51

so that is where I quibbled with

7:54

Moynihan's report. And

7:56

that would be based on data that came out later

7:59

i n another book that I c ite in False

8:02

Black Power, called- a

8:08

book by Gutman is

8:10

the name of sociologist. And it's the

8:13

Black Family and Slavery and Freedom, I

8:15

believe is the title. But Guttman

8:17

went back

8:21

and looked at the makeup of the

8:23

black family from the end of slavery through

8:26

the first couple o f decades of the 20th

8:29

century and what he found, and this

8:32

is why I quibbled

8:34

with Moynihan's report, is that

8:36

the black family came out of slavery quite

8:38

strong. And that if you

8:40

look at marriage rates

8:42

among blacks in the late 1800's and

8:45

early into the early 1910s

8:48

and 20's and 30's and 40's, you

8:50

see black marriage rates higher than

8:53

white marriage rates

8:56

at that time. In fact, every census

8:58

taken between 1890 and

9:00

1940 shows blacks with a slightly

9:02

higher marriage rate than

9:05

the white marriage rate at the time. So G

9:07

utman said, "well, wait a minute. If that was

9:11

happening in

9:13

the late 1800's and early 1900's how

9:15

can what

9:19

we're seeing in the 1960s be blamed on

9:21

slavery? This is retrogression,

9:24

this can't be, this i sn't a legacy of slavery.

9:27

This must be a legacy of something that has happened

9:29

since slavery, b ecause if we

9:31

go back again to the 20's and 30's

9:33

and 40's, we don't see this

9:35

breakdown of the black family

9:38

that Moynihan had identified." So t

9:40

hat that's where I quibbled with

9:42

with Moynihan. Not that his findings

9:45

were inaccurate, but the cause

9:47

of what he found is where I took

9:50

issue.

9:51

So somehow the data presented

9:54

by Gutman was ignored, but

9:56

then the Moynihan explanation survived.

9:59

Why do you think that Gutman's

10:01

data was ignored at the time? Why do you think

10:04

that today we continue to ignore that and follow

10:07

a similar reasoning

10:09

to Moynihan's, and continue to assume

10:13

that the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow

10:15

are the main reasons for the

10:17

social breakdowns that we've observed?

10:20

Sure. Well the

10:23

focus of the civil rights movement changed

10:25

in the post 60's era. What

10:29

happened- what was

10:32

going on , prior

10:34

to the 60's is

10:37

a focus on building black

10:39

human capital. Attitudes,

10:41

behaviors, education , skills,

10:47

that is what the black community

10:49

was based on foremost. Obviously

10:52

there was a push for civil rights. Obviously

10:55

there was a push for integrating political

10:57

institutions , but

11:00

it wasn't the primary focus

11:02

of the civil rights movement of that era.

11:05

It was about blacks building that

11:08

human capital that other groups, frankly,

11:10

had built in order to get ahead in America.

11:12

Increasing the years of schooling and so forth , starting

11:14

businesses. Economic

11:17

advancement took priority , not

11:19

so much getting black people elected. And

11:23

in the 1960s, that changed. What

11:25

happened was the Voting

11:28

Rights Act passed, and the

11:31

thinking was that if blacks

11:33

can get their own ,meaning other

11:36

blacks, elected into office, the

11:38

rest will take care of itself. If we just have

11:40

more black political clout , all

11:42

the socioeconomic problems will just

11:45

take care of themselves. And so the

11:47

emphasis was put on

11:50

electing more black people, electing black

11:53

officials. And this was

11:56

tremendously successful on its own terms.

11:59

I mean, just to give you a sense of how

12:02

successful the Voting Rights Act has

12:04

been; in 1964,

12:06

the year before it passed only about

12:08

7% of blacks in the state

12:10

of Mississippi were registered to vote. It

12:13

was the lowest percentage of anywhere in the South. But

12:16

by 1966, just one

12:18

year after the Voting Rights Act passed,

12:21

the black voter registration rate Mississippi

12:23

had climbed to 60%. The

12:26

highest in the South. And

12:28

Mississippi wasn't alone in Georgia went

12:30

from 19% to 51% over

12:33

the same period. In fact, in every Southern

12:35

state, the gains were tremendous.

12:37

They were striking. Today, the black voter registration

12:40

rate in the South, or where most blacks still

12:42

live by the way, is higher than in other

12:45

parts of the country. In 2012, the black

12:50

voter turnout rate exceeded the

12:53

white voter turnout rate for the first

12:55

time in our history. So

12:57

the Voting Rights Act on its own terms

13:00

has been tremendously successful. I think between

13:03

1970 and 2010 the number

13:09

of black elected officials went from fewer

13:12

than 1500 to more than

13:14

10,000 nationwide,

13:16

including of course, a black president.

13:18

You had blacks in Congress, you had black governors

13:20

and senators and then at the

13:23

state and local level , black city

13:27

councilmen , you had

13:30

black police chiefs

13:32

and fire chiefs and school superintendents.

13:35

So, on those

13:39

terms, it worked,

13:41

but what didn't happen is

13:43

what we were told will come in and wake. The

13:47

socio-economic gains did not follow

13:51

from those political gains.

13:53

And so if you look at Marion

13:56

Barry's Washington DC in the 1980s,

13:59

or Sharp James' Newark New

14:01

Jersey in the 1990s, or Coleman

14:04

Young's Detroit, Michigan in the

14:06

1960s, you had these black

14:08

elected officials , who

14:10

had built these tremendous political

14:12

machines to get themselves reelected

14:15

over and over again. Yet the black

14:17

poor fell further

14:20

behind on their watch, despite

14:22

the fact that you had these black

14:24

men running the cities. And not just

14:27

running the cities in terms of being mayor, but

14:29

again, city councilmen , congressmen

14:31

, school superintendents,

14:33

and all down the line, really running city government.

14:36

So it was clear that

14:38

this strategy- that we could

14:41

just put all of our eggs in this

14:43

political clout basket and the rest will take

14:45

care of itself, didn't

14:48

pan out. And so one of

14:52

the reasons I wrote False Black Power is becauseI

14:55

thought the Obama election was sort

14:57

of the culmination of the strategy.

15:00

To get a black president elected.

15:02

And so I wanted to look back after he had

15:04

been elected and say "So what? What

15:07

do we have to show for it in terms

15:09

of, of racial inequality in

15:11

this country has, has pursuit

15:13

of this goal led to the advancements

15:15

that, that the civil rights movement promised?"

15:18

And I find that they had

15:20

not, and then I delve

15:22

into why. A nd as to why

15:24

t he strategy continues to

15:26

be used today, and why the findings

15:29

of the Moynihan report- or

15:32

the findings of G uttman have been ignored.

15:35

It's because I think that civil rights movement

15:39

from the 1960s has

15:41

turned into an industry today, i

15:43

f not a racket. It's a very lucrative

15:46

industry to say

15:48

that the b lack problems that

15:51

we see today, inequality, in terms

15:53

of education or employment, o r income,

15:59

h ome o wnership, or all the rest are

16:01

due to the legacy of slavery, is

16:04

a very lucrative, lucrative business. It

16:07

keeps groups like the NAACP

16:10

and the past relevant today.

16:12

It keeps groups like Black Lives Matter relevant.

16:15

It helps them raise money. And so

16:18

this is the narrative they push, regardless

16:20

of the reality. I

16:23

think it's a matter of incentives. Black

16:25

politicians continue to push it because

16:27

it helps them get elected. It helps

16:30

scare people to the polls. They

16:33

have an incentive to keep

16:35

this narrative out there, that all

16:37

that we see that is wrong in the black community today i s legacy

16:41

of slavery and Jim Crow.

16:43

When in fact, the facts t

16:46

ell quite a different story.

16:49

Why do you think that this

16:51

strategy of gaining political

16:53

clout doesn't work

16:57

well?

16:58

It's not

17:00

that it doesn't work.

17:02

It's that it's less efficient

17:05

than other means

17:08

of advancing a racial

17:11

or ethnic minority group from poverty

17:13

to prosperity. And it has

17:19

not only failed blacks. Other

17:23

groups have also taken this political

17:26

route to prosperity.

17:28

The Irish come to mind. They

17:31

were tremendously successful politically.

17:34

After arriving here, you had

17:36

Irish political machines, running places

17:39

like Boston and Philadelphia , and

17:43

New York in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Yet

17:47

, among the European

17:51

immigrant groups who came , the

17:54

Irish were the slowest to rise

17:56

economically, despite all of this

17:59

political clout that they had. There

18:02

was no real Irish middle-class to

18:05

speak of at the time. And in fact, it wasn't

18:07

until the decline of those

18:09

Irish political machines that we saw

18:12

the rise of the Irish middle-class to

18:14

the point where today Irish

18:16

incomes and levels of homeownership

18:19

and educational achievement,

18:22

and incomes, and all the rest far

18:24

out exceed the national average.

18:27

So , blacks have

18:30

taken the sort of Irish route and

18:34

gotten the same results thus far.

18:36

It's been a very slow go of

18:38

things. And you can compare

18:40

the advancement since

18:43

the 1960s socioeconomically,

18:46

to what was going on

18:48

in the black community prior to the

18:50

1960s, and prior to

18:52

the shift in emphasis toward attaining

18:55

political clout. So if you go back to

18:57

the 1940s

19:00

and 50's, for instance, you see black

19:03

incomes rising at a faster rate than

19:05

white , and you see black educational

19:07

achievement outpacing white

19:10

educational achievement. Both the

19:14

rate at which blacks were gaining educationally

19:16

both in absolute terms and relative to

19:19

whites. You see blacks entering

19:22

the skilled professions. So

19:25

we're talking about teachers and social workers

19:28

and architects and doctors and lawyers.

19:30

They were entering the skilled professions at far

19:33

faster rates in the 1940s

19:35

and 50's and 60's than

19:38

they were after the implementation

19:40

of say affirmative action in the 1970s.

19:43

So you can look at both

19:45

, compare

19:48

the pre 60's era and

19:51

the post civil rights era and the

19:53

achievements are stark. The advancement is quite

19:57

stark. And there

20:00

was more of it going on prior to

20:02

the shift in emphasis towards gaining political

20:05

clout. And other groups

20:08

have done it in the reverse. They've you

20:11

know- you look at what the Germans did or what

20:13

Jews did or today

20:15

what Asians have done. You know, Asians

20:17

are an interesting case because they're

20:21

the ones hitting it out of the park these days

20:23

in terms of not only educational achievement,

20:27

but also household incomes

20:30

, representation and

20:32

school professions. And

20:36

how much political clout do Asians have? Certainly

20:40

not as much as blacks do. So

20:42

the idea that

20:46

political clout is some sort of prerequisite for

20:49

advancing a group economically

20:51

is undermined

20:53

by the history

20:56

of other groups. And the groups that have

20:58

pursued politics first have

21:00

tended to rise more slowly. So again,

21:02

it's not that it doesn't work. We're

21:04

talking about what has worked best historically.

21:09

Another point you make in your book is

21:11

about how the breakdown

21:13

of the nuclear family wasn't caused

21:16

by the legacy of slavery or Jim

21:18

Crow laws, but instead by

21:20

the implementation of well-intentioned

21:22

welfare programs, especially in the 1960s,

21:25

like post civil rights era, can

21:27

you kind of walk us through this point and what you mean

21:30

in that?

21:32

I think

21:35

what you basically find

21:40

is is that the government

21:43

doesn't do a good job of raising children.

21:45

A nuclear

21:50

family does a better job and, and

21:52

the attempts of the government to

21:54

essentially replace a father in the home

21:57

have been disastrous however well intentioned

22:00

they've been. First of

22:03

all, they put in place incentives. Perverse incentives.

22:07

Telling someone, "If you have more children

22:10

, we'll

22:12

get more money from the government. If

22:15

you have more children that you can't take care of. And,

22:17

and if the father

22:21

does come around, and we find him around

22:24

, we're going

22:26

to stop sending you the checks."

22:29

So , to the

22:32

extent that you're not married, you have a

22:34

child and you try to make the father

22:36

part of the child's life and the government's going to

22:38

punish it . Another

22:41

perverse incentive. We

22:46

got to a point in the late

22:49

1980s and early 1990s -right before

22:51

we did welfare reform in 1996- we

22:53

got to a point where the

22:56

government was providing more

22:58

benefits for single

23:00

mothers than

23:04

they would ever be able to earn in

23:06

the labor force if they went out and got a job.

23:08

So why even go out and try to

23:11

get a job? And that's

23:16

what I meant. That these are well-intentioned policies

23:18

that have been put in place to help,

23:22

but in practice have harmed. Welfare

23:24

benefits are just one of many examples.

23:27

Another example I use is affirmative action

23:30

policies that are

23:33

a legacy of the 1960s.

23:39

This is a program that was put in place

23:42

to help increase the ranks of the black middle

23:44

class, to increase the number of black doctors

23:47

and lawyers and engineers and so forth. And

23:50

yet, after the University

23:52

of California system ended

23:56

racial preferences in college

23:58

admissions , black

24:01

graduation rates went up and

24:03

not by a little bit. They went up by

24:06

more than 50%, including

24:08

some of the more difficult disciplines like math and

24:11

science and engineering, again, by more

24:13

than 50%. So a program that

24:15

had been put in place to

24:18

increase the number of black professionals had

24:21

in practice produced

24:26

a situation where we had fewer black

24:28

professionals than we would have had in the absence

24:30

of the policy. And

24:34

why was that? It has to do with

24:37

something that goes by the name of mismatch. Which is what

24:40

schools h ave been doing with racial preferences. Its

24:44

allowing kids to attend schools

24:46

where they did not meet the

24:50

average grades or test

24:52

scores of the

24:54

average student at that school.

24:57

They were being admitted with lower grades

24:59

a nd lower test scores than the average student. And therefore,

25:02

many of these black kids were dropping

25:05

out or switching to easier majors and so forth.

25:07

Once schools could no longer take race

25:09

into account, more

25:12

kids were attending schools where

25:14

they actually met the requirements of the average

25:17

student at that school. And as a result,

25:19

more of them are graduating. And so again, a

25:23

well-intentioned policy producing

25:26

perverse results. And

25:28

so you can go down any number of great

25:31

society programs and see this

25:34

effect. And that's what I tried

25:36

to do to some

25:38

extent in False Black Power and in an earlier

25:41

book called Please Stop Helping Us

25:43

where I also get into

25:45

these policies.

25:47

The statistics on that sort of thing are amazing

25:50

just to see how it

25:52

has the opposite effect that it's intended

25:54

to.

25:56

There was

26:00

a study done some years ago , of

26:03

students at MIT, black students at MIT,

26:04

and black students

26:08

at MIT had scored in the

26:11

top 10% of all

26:13

kids nationwide on

26:15

the math section of the SAT. So

26:19

talking about some very smart kids, but

26:22

they were in the bottom 10% among

26:25

their peers at MIT. So

26:28

kids who would have been hitting it out of the park on the

26:30

Dean's list at a less

26:31

selective of school were

26:33

struggling at MIT and

26:36

therefore more of them were dropping

26:38

out or switching to easier majors. And so

26:42

you turn kids into artificial failures.

26:46

I see no benefit. And

26:49

flunking out of MIT versus

26:52

graduating from the university of Richmond , flunking

26:55

out of Berkeley versus graduating

26:57

from UC Santa Cruz. I mean,

27:00

what is the goal here? To make

27:02

the freshmen class look like America?

27:05

Or regardless of whether anybody

27:07

graduates or to actually

27:10

have kids succeed in school and gone to do something

27:13

in the field of their choice. And

27:16

perverse incentives, aren't linked- they're

27:19

not associated only with race. Anytime

27:22

you lower the standard of a student

27:25

trying to enter a school where

27:27

that student is going to be surrounded by other kids

27:29

who have met higher standards on average,

27:32

you're setting up that kid to fail. So

27:35

studies have been done, for instance, of legacy

27:38

kids (Students who are

27:41

children of alumni) when they are

27:43

admitted to the

27:45

schools. And they are

27:48

admitted with lower test

27:50

scores, class ranks , and so forth.

27:53

They too flunk out at higher rates.

27:56

They to switch to easier majors

27:58

at higher rates. When athletes are admitted

28:00

to these schools of any color, with

28:03

a lower test scores and so forth, same

28:05

thing. So it's not a necessarily

28:07

a racial thing. It's just what happens

28:10

when you send kids

28:12

to school where they're over-matched academically,

28:16

instead of sending them someplace where they

28:18

can handle the work.

28:20

That is a good point. Okay. Really fast.

28:23

Do you happen to have like five

28:26

to 10 extra minutes? Because

28:28

I have a few more questions.

28:30

If you don't, it's completely fine.

28:33

I've got a couple more minutes.

28:35

Go ahead.

28:36

Okay. So you

28:38

have some pretty harsh words in your book against

28:41

the over-incarceration argument

28:43

made to show that

28:45

discrimination in America is still holding

28:47

black people back. You write

28:49

that "foes of mass incarceration

28:52

of black men seem much more

28:54

concerned with the plight of criminals than

28:56

the plight of the most likely crime victims."

28:59

But while I was reading, I was kind of wondering

29:02

the following, which is, could it be

29:04

that both sides have it right in

29:06

a way, and that there's a lot of blame to go

29:08

around? Is it possible that on one hand,

29:11

the black community has been held back by

29:13

the welfare state and other government rules,

29:16

which has led to serious breakdowns of

29:18

family and other things, but

29:20

that also the state of affairs

29:22

in inner cities because of the welfare

29:25

state has caused blacks to be more

29:27

likely to choose employment in

29:29

illegal markets like drug markets, rather

29:31

than lower paying jobs that are legal?

29:35

Like a double oppression type

29:37

of thing.

29:39

Well , you have to look at order

29:41

in which things

29:44

happen. The order matters. So, for

29:47

instance, you said "is

29:50

incarceration breaking up families?"

29:54

Isn't mass incarceration a cause of the family

29:56

breakdown that we see? Well, let's go

29:58

back to where we started with Moynihan

30:00

. Moynihan was

30:02

pointing this out in the 1960s,

30:06

the mass incarceration period didn't

30:08

start until the 1980s. So

30:11

the breakdown of the black family predates

30:15

the mass incarceration era. So

30:18

"A" can't cause "B" if "B" happened first.

30:20

The other

30:24

problem with associating poverty

30:34

and things like that with higher levels

30:36

of criminality today

30:39

is that there was

30:42

less crime in black communities

30:45

when blacks were much poorer than

30:47

they are today. So just

30:50

to give you a few statistics on this. In 1960 black

30:56

men were murdered at a rate of 45

30:58

per 100,000 people

31:00

in the population. In

31:03

1990, the

31:06

murder rate was 140

31:10

per 100,000. From

31:12

45 to 140.

31:16

Would anyone

31:18

argue that in 1990

31:20

there was more racism then there was 1960,? Again,

31:26

the order of these things matter.

31:29

And so a lot of the

31:32

social pathologies that we

31:34

see today did

31:36

not occur. We did

31:39

not see to the extent that we see

31:41

them today, 50 and 60

31:43

years ago. The

31:47

other problem is we

31:51

talk a lot about mass incarceration,

31:53

but we don't want to talk about crime.

31:57

In other words, we want to break down the prison population

32:00

by race, but we don't want to

32:02

break down who commits

32:04

crime by race. We

32:08

want to break down police shootings

32:10

by race, but not again, who's

32:13

committing crimes by race.

32:15

And you can't really do one without

32:17

the other if you want to present a

32:20

complete picture. And

32:24

so that's one of the reasons I take

32:26

issue with that.

32:29

Blacks are about

32:32

13% of the US population,

32:35

but commit an absolute majority

32:38

of all murders in America.

32:40

More than 50% every

32:42

year. black violent

32:46

crime rates are seven to 10 times

32:48

higher than white violent

32:50

crime rates. And the

32:53

reason I get upset about how

32:57

this is presented in the media is

33:00

because , as

33:02

we know, most crime

33:05

is intra-racial. In

33:07

other words, most of the

33:11

blacks who are murdered

33:13

every year, and there are more than 7,000

33:16

of those , 90% of

33:20

them are killed by other black people.

33:24

So if you really care- and they're killed and

33:27

their victims tend to be poor

33:29

black people, low income black

33:31

people. So if you care about

33:34

upward mobility among the blacks, if

33:36

you care about the plight of the black poor

33:38

, I

33:45

think focusing on police

33:47

shootings is a little wide of the

33:49

mark. I mean, in

33:52

2019, there were

33:55

492 homicides

33:58

in Chicago, almost

34:00

all of them, black and Hispanic. Only

34:04

three of them involve

34:06

police. 3

34:08

out of 492, according

34:11

to the Chicago Sun-Times. So,

34:18

we can have a discussion about police. There

34:20

are crooked cops out there, there are bad police,

34:22

there are racist cops out there. Racism still

34:24

exists. It has not been vanquished from

34:26

America. No one's denying

34:29

that, but if

34:31

your goal is to address

34:34

the violence in these communities, the homicides

34:37

in these communities, and you look at the data and it

34:39

tells you 3

34:42

of the homicides involve police

34:45

and 489

34:50

did not. Where

34:53

are you going to direct most of your attention,

34:55

most of your resources? It

34:59

seems to me, you have a lot of activists who want to talk

35:01

about policing. I want to talk

35:03

about the non-police

35:07

involved killings that are going on out

35:10

there. And so that's where a lot

35:12

of the frustration rises. This

35:14

is not to deny that police brutality exists-

35:18

it's that I think it's been overemphasized to the detriment

35:25

of the people you're trying to help.

35:27

Because a focus on policing

35:33

as we know from other data can

35:35

cause police to pull back

35:38

to be less proactive, less likely

35:40

to get out of their cars and engage

35:43

with civilians, all of which

35:45

gives an advantage to the criminal

35:47

element in these communities. And

35:50

so we've seen this after a lot of these high

35:52

profile shootings, whether it's in Baltimore

35:55

or Chicago or

35:59

Ferguson, Missouri. Police

36:01

tend to pull back when they get scapegoated.

36:04

And what happens is crime goes up,

36:07

and again, most of the

36:10

victims of that spike in crime

36:12

turn out to be low-income blacks.

36:14

Are you worried about what's happening

36:17

today? And do

36:19

you think that the implications

36:21

of everything that's happening today

36:23

will be more difficult to

36:25

get- I don't know if get over is

36:27

the right way to put it- but just to move

36:30

forward?

36:33

I am worried to some extent today about

36:38

the trend lines. Particularly

36:42

what's going on with the critical race

36:44

theory discussion. That's something

36:48

that's been around for decades, but was mostly

36:52

confined to academic seminars

36:55

on college campuses and writings

36:58

among intellectuals who were writing for one

37:00

another. Now we see it seeping into

37:03

school curriculum from kindergarten

37:08

on up. We see it in the

37:12

workplace and diversity training programs.

37:15

We see it in the everyday vernacular,

37:17

people use. Unconscious bias,

37:20

systemic racism, anti-racist things

37:25

like that. And that

37:27

I find worrisome , because

37:35

it's a theory that I think doesn't hold

37:40

up very well to scrutiny, first of

37:43

all , but also , it

37:47

blames all of the

37:50

problems of blacks on white people and

37:52

says it is the responsibility of white people

37:55

to solve the problems of

37:57

black people. And I dont know how you help

38:00

a group advance who walks out

38:02

the door every day with that attitude. That none

38:07

of the problems they have

38:10

are their fault, and they have no responsibility

38:14

to take care of themselves. They're all

38:16

the fault of someone else. And I just don't

38:19

think that's a recipe for

38:21

helping a group advance. And to

38:23

the extent that that sort of thinking has gained

38:25

currency in popular culture does disturb me.

38:31

That mindset does worry me too. To

38:33

wrap up quickly answer

38:35

this last question. What

38:38

is one thing you believed at one time in your life

38:40

that you later changed your position on and why?

38:46

One thing I believe- well,

38:48

this is something that doesn't have anything to do

38:50

with my journalism

38:53

or my writing, its not something

38:56

I've ever written

38:57

about or covered, but

39:00

on a personal level, it might be organized

39:03

religion. I

39:06

grew up in a very religious household and

39:08

then turned

39:14

away from organized religion in my late

39:16

teens and became sort of very bitter

39:18

towards it in my

39:21

twenties and

39:23

for most of my thirties. I later

39:28

came to the realization

39:31

that, although I didn't have

39:34

any use for organized religion,

39:36

I understood better or came

39:38

to better appreciate the purpose

39:42

that it serves, and why

39:45

other people are

39:47

religious, and to

39:51

better appreciate sort

39:52

of how it

39:56

helps them, how it helps

39:58

society, where

40:01

it comes from that tradition. So

40:08

again, while it's something that I

40:12

haven't gone back to embracing as

40:14

I had as a child, it's something

40:16

I've come to appreciate why other people do. That's

40:24

one area.

40:26

Thank you so much for sharing. I really

40:28

liked that response. Thank you so

40:30

much for your time. I

40:32

know your time is precious, so

40:34

thank you so much, and I'm

40:37

really excited to read Maverick

40:40

when it comes out. Thank

40:44

you for your time and thank you for being on

40:46

my podcast.

40:47

Okay. Take Care.

40:48

Well, that's all we have time for today. I'd

40:50

like to thank my guest once more

40:52

for his time and insight. I would also

40:55

like to thank everyone who listens, subscribes

40:57

and shares The Great Antidote Podcast.

40:59

If you'd like to be on the podcast or have a guest

41:02

in mind, please feel free to reach out to

41:04

me at [email protected].

41:07

Bye