Transcripts For CSPAN3 Heather 20240704

Good evening everyone. Thanks for joining us to note the release of when race trumps merit how the pursuit of equity excellence destroys beauty and threatens lives. Im brian anderson, the editor of city journal. And its my honor to introduce the books heather mac donald. Thank you. Thank you for heather is the manhattan Thomas W Smith fellow, a contributing editor of city journal who has written for the magazine almost since its inception, and her byline appears regularly in the wall street journal and many other leading publications. Shes also the author of the best the war on cops and the delusion just for kicks. I asked chat gtp, who the most influential journal writers are, and heathers name headed the list. So i like that. I like that i a a i yes. Over the years heather scrupulous and groundbreaking has shed light on trends in american life. Her new book brings relentless reporting to perhaps the most dangerous one yet, which is the equity craze that is threatening our scientific, cultural and Public Institute shines in this new book when trumps merit, she details the rise of disparate impact ideology and its potential to do enormous harm to our society. Her book also represents a powerful defense of our civilizational inheritance, so well discuss all of that more tonight. So let me start so in the wake of george floyds. In may 2020, activists heightened their cries. Socalled Racial Equity and the proportional representation of races in american institutions, organizations, the press published countless stories about minorities, underrepresentation and various fields and firms, corporate nations began to fall over themselves. Their guilt in, perpetuating racial inequity. Now, driving this shift, the concept of impact, which is really at the center, your book. So what is the core of disparate impact . And can you trace briefly its origins and how its kind of metastasize in this post . Floyd period. Thank you, brian. And first of all, let me give a i to use the phrase, but a trigger warning. Im going to discuss things that are very uncomfortable to talk about. Im talking about group averages in in average skills, average behavioral cultural predilections. Im not making any judgments, any individual within any racial group. There are thousands of individuals in this racial group of that racial group that outperform everybody else. We cant make any about individuals based their membership in groups, but the discourse that is tearing down our civilization, that is tearing down meritocratic standards is. Couched in in grotesque generalities. And it has to be answered with certain observe asians about group performance. So just please steel yourself for some truths that are really taboo across our population. The idea of disparate impact is the idea that any. Meritocratic in of Academic Skills that has a negative impact on certain minority groups and above on blacks is by definition racist unless in the legal it can be justified at a very High Standard of business necessity. So for instance, if youve noticed for the last decade several decades theres been challenge, challenge to Police Entrance exams or firefighter exams. And the accusation always is these are racist exams for no other reason than blacks fail them at higher rates than whites. And so the assumption always is, well, the exam racist, the marriage cratic standard is racist throw out the test and lower standards until we get a standard that will not have a negative disparate impact. What is never allowed to be looked at and examined is what are the underlying average rates of Academic Skills. The the standard is not racist. But now we are going around any standard that has disparate impact on blacks per se racist and were throwing them out this initially in the context of employment hiring it was a way of expanding the civil rights laws beyond requirement that you needed to intentionally discriminate an employer needed to intentionally say, i dont want to hire qualified blacks. That is per say, illegal. Unconstitutional. Disparate impact arose because it was getting harder and harder. Find employers that were intentionally discriminating against competitively qualified minorities. And so the new rule was you could be completely colorblind as an employer, but if youre using employment criterion that that disqualifies blacks disproportionate finitely, youve got to get rid of it. And now that idea has leapt beyond the the judicial opinions and legal codes and is simply the lens through which we judge all of our mainstream institutions. So this this ideology is, as you document in the book, corrupting the sciences, this is the opening section of the book. Its very alarming and and its happening fast. So increasingly, diversity equity criteria are ruling everything from grants and scholarships to government scientific appointments to, even how medicine is being practiced. Right. Merit is no longer the leading criteria in many of these situations. So i wonder if you could give an overview of this development and what stand to lose with the deemphasis merit in the sciences. Well were putting both lives at risk. The insistence on pushing people ahead into medicine who are not competitively qualified. And were also putting Scientific Research at risk. But heres an example of how the disparate analysis works of College Seniors applying medical school take something called the mcat, the Medical College admission test. And those have a disparate on black students. Blacks mcat scores up at the rock bottom and so various medical schools now are deciding that for black students theyll either waive the mcats completely thats a developing trend for decades. They have been having to separate standards for admission so blacks are admitted with mcat scores that would be automatically disqualifying if presented by a white or asian student. A black student with slightly below average mcats and gpa has a nine times greater chance of admission to a medical school than a white student or asian student. Again, these would be scores that would be disqualifying otherwise the medical School Licensing exam has gone past failed. Rather being graded because again, the the licensing exam has a disparate impact on black medical students. It is used to screen students for some of the most residencies during medical school. The schools have decided we would rather get rid of grades and the and the actual medical licensing body would rather get rid grades and dis and our ability to actually students than give a completely colorblind neutral test that has no racial bias. It. Its objective its computer. That has a disparate impact on blacks. The preferences never end the pressure is enormous on schools promote to higher based on race to promote doctors based on race to put them in the charge of medical research and the is also coming from National Funding agencies. The National Institutes of Health National Science Foundation are now making race a more important qualification for receiving medical than actual scientific. If you want to get a grant for your alzheimers lab or your neurology, a greater neurology lab, you have to show how your work affects and improves diversity and how your own lab is working to change the demographics of its of its research core. Now, frankly, i dont care who discovers the neurological pathways that are responsible for alzheimers. If that lab is all chinese, if its all female, if its all black, if its all white, i dont care. The only thing that matters is are these the most qualified scientists. But in the United States and uniquely in the United States, weve made decision that china doesnt Pay Attention to identity politics, and it is racing full speed ahead, trying to throw everything got at its most talented, mathematically inclined and scientifically students without. We have to pull down their capacity in order to make some make sure that all groups end up at the same rate at the of the line so thats science. The major part of the book is something very close to your heart which is culture and the arts. So you describe the distortion and vilification of western high culture by activists who see it now primarily as for a regime Racial Discrimination and domination. I think what most striking in reading your book this part of the book is complicity of leading artistic and institutions in this kind of ongoing attack on our western cultural inheritance. And this too, i think you would say, has accelerated since since george floyd killing. So maybe you document a little bit whats been happening there as you do in the book. Yeah, its just its stunning to me if you if youre running an Opera Company or an orchestra or youre max holland, head of the metropolitan museum of art, or james rondeau, the head of the Art Institute of chicago. You should be down your knees and gratitude every day at your privilege and existence to curate artistic traditions are among the most sublime in World History that the human being to escape his petty narrow but sad, ignorant self and and expand into forms of consciousness and understanding that are so much greater than any of us could ever hope to experience. Whether its the the oresteia sclass, one of the great tragic trilogies of the of the classical of athens. To to read sends chills down your spine. And with perception of the human thirst for vengeance and the the transcendence of finally reaching a rule of law and hope for justice, or whether its renaissance poetry, pastoral or the the and eros of late brahms piano music or chopin nocturnes or, the tragic cathar crisis that we get from the box. Saint matthew passion. These are works that none of us really deserve. And it turns out that the heads of our Classical Music organizations and our literature departments, our art museums really dont deserve them because they are going around telling public and what is most criminal is telling young people to hate these traditions on the pathetic that they are came out of europe and thus by definition and inevitably were created by caucasian people. That is the european tradition. Get over it. It is the past. We cannot change. Europe not 13 black. It probably still is not to expect that the canon of classical composers should be 13 black. And if its not its per se racist is preposterous. Now of course there are phantom stick black composers but they arose much later in our tradition. But now you have alex the one of the leading Classical Music in the country writing for the new yorker, apologizing for himself being white and a tradition that is hes, as he puts it, blindingly white, hes he apologizes for white audiences. He apologizes white donors. The other most important Classical Music critic in the country, Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times, has called for making an orchestral auditions. Color so that musicians can be hired. The basis of race currently. They often start for several levels behind a screen so that the auditioners do not know the identity of of the performer. And as with all things in our disparate, impact obsessed world today, we have now decided that mechanisms that are inherently colorblind are racist. And so this applies to the audition screen. It applies to red light cameras a red light camera does not know whose driving the car. But if red light cameras show us that in certain blacks are running red lights or speeding at higher rates, then the camera is racist and will be thrown out. That is going on across the country. So you have museums now erecting wall labels that teach their viewers to see the great baroque masterpiece of the dutch golden age, the still lifes of translucent and lemons and silver that is shining in light to see those still lives as colonialist because at the same time as they were being painted holland and the had colonial territories and and so you have this massive magical that is being promulgated filled by people whose only obligation in life is to share beauty and to tell young people come to my museum, listen to this music. If you die without hearing these works. You will have lived a poor life than you could otherwise have lived. But everything now is being through the completely lens of racial inequity. You began to talk about the question of law and order, which was also discussed in the book that gets into a Public Policy question. You describe and you have described and written about this in the past the disconnect between residents of minority neighborhoods have in the past said they in Law Enforcement and the the relentless policing rhetoric of many legislators and activists. And you found that blacks and other minorities have in the past anyway appreciated visible proactive policing. In fact theyve called police to take more stringent measures in their communities. I remember used to go to meetings in the bronx and, elsewhere where that would be. What was discussed. I wonder if that disconnect continues to hold in post george floyd era and you know, more broadly, what influence has the disparate Impact Analysis had on Public Safety . Well, disparate Impact Analysis, Public Safety has been disastrous. Absolutely disastrous. The narrative is, is that colored constitutional Law Enforcement that has a disparate impact on, black criminals is per se racist and. And you have the the re doubled false that black parents right to fear that their children will be killed by a cop or by a white person every they step outside the joe biden ran on this during the president his president ial campaign he said it before the before he was inaugurated. He said it is inaugural speech. He said it constantly. It is a constant theme that is a falsehood. Blacks have a tragically higher rate of death by gun homicide. Blacks between the ages ten and 24 die of gun homicide at 25 times the rate of whites between the ages of ten and 24. That is a civil Rights Problem that you would think that civil rights activists would care about. They will not talk about it because if they were to talk about it honestly and look the actual data, what we know from the victims of witnesses to shootings and nonfatal shootings and the witnesses to fatal shootings is that that black death by gun homicide rate is caused almost exclusively by black criminals. You could take out all Police Shootings of black men today. You could take it all white of black men today. It would have virtually no effect on the black death by gun homicide rate. And yet we blaming the cops. Were blaming the criminal Law Enforcement. Everything that you see that you may have been puzzling over in the post george floyd era. Why are these prosecutors not prosecuting trespass turnstile jumping resisting arrest which is the most thing not to prosecute because its basically saying to cops, you know, open season you guys and we dont as prosecutors we dont care were decriminalizing arrest. Why they not prosecuting gun possession drug possession and prostitution, Disorderly Conduct act loitering. It is all driven by disparate impact. Its all you need to know to understand our world today. The reason that tim fox in chicago that melvyn bragg in new york, the george gascon, the worst source prosecutor in the whole country, has decided to put entire categories of crime off limits to his district attorneys is because enforcing them have a disparate impact, not because that enforcement is racist, but because the black crime rate is so much higher. I have spent a lot time in high crime neighborhoods talking to the residents there. I go to Police Community meetings and i talk to the good law abiding people who deserve same freedom from fear as residents of park avenue. And what ive heard again and again, we want more police. I smell marijuana in my hallway. Why cant you do something about it . Theyre smoking weed on the at the club that i see outside the window. Why cant you arrest those people . Why are you allowing kids to hang out by the hundreds on the corner fighting . Whatever happened to truancy laws. People want proactive enforcement that are living with the effects of policing and the disparate impact crusade. They never get heard. It is a very bizarre thing. If you were a civil rights activist and were going to do of a rawlsian experiment of like imagine before we know actual reality of things you could imagine a civil rights activist taking the side of black victims rather black criminals. One even might have expected did that because black victims are the ones that are whose lives are being destroyed. But all our civil rights activists have taken the side of black criminals. They say that they would not put more criminals prison where they cannot continue preying on elderly, black ladies who are terrified to go into their building lobby to pick up their mail when when kids are there, trespass icing, smoking weed and selling. They would rather allow those honest, law abiding people to just have to figure things out themselves, then make arrests and increase any Racial Disparities that we have in prison. And that, to me, is a very perverse decision. Its sort of looks to me at this point like the only people who care about black lives are the police, white conservatives, because the only people who are talking about crime before 2022 elections were basically concerned news outlets. But they were accused for four for doing racist whistles. If you talk about black victims, you a racist . Its a very curious thing. I can tell you if black and white conservatives stop paying attention to crime, nobodys going to Pay Attention. The New York Times sure as hell doesnt give a about black victims. The only victims they ever care about are those are killed by cops. And those are very small. In 2021, there were six unarmed blacks killed, Police Officers fatally shot by Police Officers. A Police Officer was 400 times more likely to be killed by a black male than unarmed. Black was to be killed by a police. But those are the data that are not allowed into the public discourse. Racial preference is in hiring and academic admissions. Now, the theme of your book clearly diminish opportunities for just favor of the run favorite groups. So policies designed to boost the prospects of black and to some extent hispanic applicants often disadvantage whites and and asians with who have higher scores or often better credentials who are vying for the same positions. You know, disparate impact adherents dismiss this of racial rebalancing act as necessary to advance the life chances of underprepared minorities. But you would have to say this is wildly unfair to the newly we could call them and a sure way to perpetuate and increase racial tensions over time. So. That would be one question. You know what what is the reaction going to be to the perpetuation of these . And and then looking at the policies themselves . How do racial preference policies have an impact on their intended beneficial . Its not always a positive right of asians are getting radicalized this because they are screwed the most is the the standards for getting in if youre asian into selective schools higher and higher because the numbers are of the theyre allowed to be admitted in order to set aside spots for the for the racial preference beneficiaries get smaller smaller so they have to you know the the schools that purport to say, well, the states are racist. If they havent if they have banned cities completely, they calculating asians scores out to the. 01 percent decimal isnt it. Where you have to be play not just its no longer probably enough to play violin and the piano and leg. You probably better add the bassoon, you probably also better be really good at baseball and you know, get the math olympiad. So theres starting to be a reaction. See this especially at the high school where various exam teams, schools that are trying to create environments for people that are the most academic of motivate did like stuyvesant city and private school in new york city that a colorblind objective computer graded exam to get in its i think percent asian and theres decades of pressure to say get rid of the exam start admitting by race. It hasnt yet theres been sort of tweaking but other places have gotten rid of their exams local high school in San Francisco was also predominantly asian and they went to a lottery system instead of the. Not surprisingly the first year after the lottery was instituted and the rates of ds and fs went up 300 . Thomas Jefferson High School in virginia also has gotten rid of its neutral, colorblind, completely objective admissions test because they want to engineer greater racial proportionality. Asians are starting to get radicalized on this. The the equity argument against racial preferences has has been the favor one for conservatives for years that this is reverse discrimination and its not fair to people who have done nothing. Asians not responsible for slavery and frankly, none of us today are either unless do believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics and we all somehow are bearing the genes of of and responsibility of slave holders and me also put in an aside here our racial history is appalling. It is sickening. We were with white supremacist country. We were an apartheid country. Whites treated blacks excruciating contempt, gratuitous nastiness very recently. We are not that country today. We not as incredible as it would have been to expect that, even by the 1960s. There is not a Single Institution today that is not twisting itself into knots to hire and promote as many black applicants as possible. If you are a i would like to know any black student applying to a college today whos going to put down his race as white because he thinks thats going to help him get in in. To the contrary, if youre white. Male son can get away with putting his race down as black. Hed be better off doing. So the argument has traditionally been couched against racial preferences that its unfair to whites and asians and i get that but as far as im concerned and thats what equal protection jurisprudence and the case before the supreme that is challenging harvards preferences and the university of north carolinas preferences. I will probably use the same tired equal protection of strict scrutiny and its all its got so many frictions in it. It makes me want to throw up. I and this is very unlikely that they actually overturn turn racial preferences on a pragmatic ground which is something known as mismatch which is that preferences do not do beneficiaries any favor and let me take it out of the race context and put into the sex context. If amity admitted with six hundreds on my mouth cities and im not going to tell you what they actually were and im not sure i remember them, but i sort of do and i had 601 mouth as it is on an 800 point scale and all of my peers that were not the socalled of preferences had eight hundreds on their mouth as a tease. I am going to flunk my freshman calculus class and im going to struggle, if i even stick with a stem field throughout. My class and of course at mit is diversity will tell me well youre victim of misogyny. Youre a antifemale environment. Whereas the reality is no, im in an environment from which im not competitively qualified. There is no shame in going to a second tier school. Boston college and Boston University provide perfectly good, serviceable educations. If, if id been admitted instead of propelled propelled above my capacity at time to a school for which i was competitively qualified more shared my peers qualifications, i would do perfectly well. The same happens with blacks. They are not by putting they are the bearing the almost unique of having to compete in environments for which theyre not competitively. And the results for themselves. Law schools employ vast racial preferences. Heres what happens at the end of the first year of law school. First year law grades are all colorblind. They are in anonymous. Teachers dont know writing the blue books, 51 of black law students at the end of their first year in law school end up at the bottom 10 of their class. Two thirds of black law students at the end of their first year of law school end up at the bottom 20 of their class. The gaps never close. This is not something that is a good way. Reducing racial stereotypes, but it is also not a good way to increase the number of black lawyers because the number of blacks who fail the bar. Six times in a row and never pass it six times higher than whites because they black students have been put at disadvantage of being law schools where they are not competitive be qualified. Of course, blacks should become and go to law school. They go under the same conditions as, everybody else and not this burden of the preference catapult that makes it harder to compete. So i that somebody is put in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court and Clarence Thomas or john roberts will say this is the thing that i the public to understand about this preference regime that weve been living with since berkeley in 1978 that has not just destroyed meritocratic standards but has been an actual disability for the people who purport to benefit from it, those who speak honestly and stand up to this this disparate impact regime, they risk losing their livelihood and social standing, at least in some cases. And so your book includes interviews with several employees of prestigious scientia, vc and cultural institutions. They vehement utterly opposed racial preference. They see what youve described going on, but theyre unwilling to express their sentiments publicly. And you can understand that because the fear of consequences. So wonder, you know, does opposition within these institutions to defend merit does someone who do the does this become a martyr is that their only choice or are there other ways to fight back against this . Yeah, i asked as. I was finishing this book. I asked an oncologist who had been directed by the head of the natural cancer institutes that give something out called the outstanding investigator awards. These are awards that the federal government gives to the most cutting edge cancer researchers that are doing high risk science. In other words, it has a high risk of total failure. It may be based on a theory that is so off the wall that its not ever going to produce any results. But if it does results, wow. This is this has a possibility to be absolutely shattering and. These investigator awards are very lucrative. They exempt out of uncle researchers from you you can basically take six years off from teaching in order to just focus exclusively on this fight. And i talked to an oncologist who lives to cure cancer. Thats all he wants in his life. And he hed been noted by the head or the Deputy Director of the National Cancer institutes say the outstanding investigator awards have not been going so well recently. Theyre not diverse enough. Please broaden the criteria for nominations. Send us more diverse candidates so that we can award more diverse awards. Not a word. Meritocracy. This was not about the scientific qualifications that youve been sending us are inadequate. We, a higher tier of scientists . No, that was not what the game was about. It was about lower your standard so that we can show diverse faces when we have our class of awards. And i said when you guys going to stand up against this . This is sickening. And he said, we need our jobs we want our jobs. If we stand up, we will be those who have done so are now complete pariahs. The whole system going to take 50 years. Its going to have to collapse completely and be rebuilt from the ground. And i, i feel for him. I would say people in my who are not in counseling institutions and thank you the Manhattan Institute for not me yet. I will say when the twitter starts coming faults you know coming in and what cspan has to say about this. I dont know. But those of us who are more insulated have an absolute obligation than to give the the facts that explain disparate impact. I am not going to be cowed into its too late. Its too late. Its coming down people us have to speak up. I the book you know im ill you an honest description here of what like writers and speakers are under youre supposed to always a positive solution even though im a pessimist and i dont necessarily feel very but but audience does want to believe theres hope and theres they can all rally behind so scratching my head and what can i do with a solution because it frankly looks to me a very tough nut to crack. So i came up with an idea of an institution that would be apart from any particular institution like somebodys medical school or somebody tech startup that would be ready to snap into action whenever there is a amazingly surprisingly courageous like norman wang and electro physiologist at the university of pittsburgh who ran a lab had had at all sorts of students that he was advising top in his field. He dared write an article in a scientific journal saying racial preferences in medicine are not working out. Weve tried them. Theyre not working. Were lowering our standards. Were not helping advance medicine. Were not the students he was canceled. He was taken off his post. He was stripped of research capacity. Hes not to have any contact with students. This is what happens. People are destroyed by telling the truth and so i thought maybe if we could have an organization that would have at their fingertips data on the Academic Skills gap, put them out there, put them out there on the crime gap so that when the police are being vilified and and we have now a total recruiting and retention, there is hardly a Big City Police department that is close to the number of officers it needs in order fight crime even if the prosecutor were willing to actually bring a case against a shoplifter or a thief. But they dont the officers to make those arrests because theres been such a post george floyd flight from the profession so if we could have an organization that would give the data to support this thats one hope otherwise all i can say is is courage refused to apologize refused to down because at this point i believe there is a good argument to be made for racial and as i say, these are uncomfortable things to talk about nobody wants to hear about it but the time for racial is over because as long as racism remains the only allowable explanation for Racial Disparities in a medical school, in an alzheimers lab, in a Classical Music orchestra, in a bank in your corporation, in a newspaper, as long as Racial Disparities remain the only allowable, its all coming down. And we have to be able to fight back with the actual explanation, which are these tragic disparities that we can all agree need to be fixed. And we all have different explanations or solution for fixing them, but they need to be solved at the core spot, at the family, at the at the earliest ages of childhood, to children, to get rid of the anti acting white, which penalizes black students who are doing their homework, who are taking textbooks home, who believe that they can meet standards, who want to learn and if they are criticized by their peers for acting white. Thats something that is very hard to overcome. That has to change but but 22 years down the line saying well the solution for this is to get rid of standards of medical competence or engineering or chemistry and have double standards of admission that is not how we solve it. And we have to start explaining why our institutions are not at racially proportionate. We can that they will be with a more honest the only way they be is with a more honest discourse. And it is paternalism stick. It is condescending to lower standards rather than saying we know that everybody can those standards thank you i think we would like to open it up to the floor and please wait for the microphone left about 15 minutes for questions so well well start up front here the gentleman at the end here just wait for the microphone, please. Mark gastineau, professor at rutgers university. And before i what is trumps name have to show up there when his wife trumps name have to show up oh oh im sorry about that. Its of come from i think we thought about that but whats probably the only brown person in the audience but i want to Say Something about merit trumps race. Im an indian and my country was for 200 years by the white band from across the seas. In 1947 we got independence as a people and as nation. We refused to look back but decided to forge ahead. Today, we have my countrymen who went to same university that i went to run. The three of the largest countries in the world, microsoft, google and ibm. Yep. Another two indians became. Governors of two Southern States in this country and another indian is now Prime Minister of britain. The quickest now, my advice to Harvard University and the New York Times stop narrative about race. Okay. It doesnt help the people who are trying to help take the message from the indians who made it or met it not on race. I guess thats. Yeah, they a they have a hard problem with the White Privilege can see when asians are whipping you know so but of course we we know all of the rhetorical twists and turns about that of well their way to adjacent and know theyre not theyre not you know they it is it academic effort it family culture if you you cannot learn if youre not in school the black truancy rate is very high. Nobody can actually at this the learning read the student has to do it himself and racialize. This does not help the effort has to come from within and it and if effort is made we are an open society. We are waiting with welcome open arms. All right, lets move to the back of the room. So ill go to the left way in the back there. I can just see your hand. I have there enjoyed talk generally agree with your thesis. It sounded like you were assuming that there is necessarily a problem with our institutions not being racially proportionate and thats not at all obvious to me. It to me that its inevitable that there will be Racial Disparities even significant ones in some institutions, not in others. And that could just simply be a reflection of different cultural norms and preferences of different ethnic and cultural groups in our society. Yeah, thats true. I, im having to focus on the charge Racial Disparities in institutions is per se a, a sign of racism somewhere. You know its very hard. This is that point. Systemic racism is like phlogiston. Its like this vaporous thing that we just have to believe is out there and nobody really point to where it is exactly. But i guess rather than just saying, well, we will have disparities, get over it. Im i feel like i my engagement at this point is to explain disparities and and then its a slightly different argument. In one sense, were making the same argument, which in light of the Academic Skills gaps and the behavior gaps in crime. Yes, of course were going to have lack of racial proportionality. So the assumption that there would be equal outcomes seems is valid. If if cultures at this point different. But i can tell you the asian culture, the tiger mom culture puts Everything Else to shame. If you juxtapose that to the city culture, the behavioral are so great it astounds that a apparently my good friends, the left actually believe that the best explanation for the lack of is racism and not what is quite empirically provable about how the whole cultures differ. Woman in the yes, yes. Thank you. Just wait for the mic please. Thank you. Thank you. I agree and everybody agrees that election of these woke guys and mayors affect minority communities greater than White Communities in major. But how do you explain . Johnson in chicago when you know theres no they were both that both candidates were one was law and order one was criminal cowardly. How do you explain that . Yeah its and in fact he got the biggest vote in the highest precincts areas. I think. I mean, im really presuming here and i do this with great trepidation. But youve asked me. But it is it is at some point it is not for me to pronounce on black voting behavior, but it would seem that there is a conflict. You know, i ive made it a mission to give voice to the people that the New York Times refuses to listen to that really are desperate for more police protection. I think both i think your for the better part, i i think that there i dont again this is it is presumptuous of me to hypothesize but i will offer hypothesis that there is a conflict within blacks. Theres a tradition and as you say, theyre both democrats. But there is something perhaps about the racism narrative that. A lot of voters not willing to give up yet. And Brandon Johnson was peddling the argument the police are racist its also maybe attractive that, oh, more service is are the solution. Im skeptical of that maybe that appealed to people but it is it i would say that the conservative safe harbor argument which i may be of perpetuating myself which to to to starkly say well the polls do show you know if you do quinnipiac polls routinely show if you ask blacks do you want more broken quality of life enforcement. They say yes at higher rates than whites. And yet they will vote for the anticop, whether its interracial component in that he was a black i think thats the elephant. Thats true too. These are all very difficult things and its hard for white people to talk about it. There are some great black leaders out there and i hope that they get more attention and get more followers because the race hustle is is seductive. Its a narcotic. It has been working, but its got to stop now. And frankly, im to racialize this again. Excuse me for violating racial etiquette. I know these are extremely raw matters, but i im fed up. Ive seen too happening to the things i love. We cant ourselves to be browbeaten by the race hustle longer we have to believe in equal opportunity in standards. We cannot continue maligning colorblind, meritocratic standards. This gentleman here at the time i just wait for the microphone, please. Lets come in. Many of my thank you for a great talk. Thank you. Before ask my question, im a retired professor of medicine and oncology. Know what you spoke about hit me during the covid epidemic, the initial data was that its occurring more in africanamericans and in caucasians. Anyone whos ever done any clinical research. What automatic look at subgroup analysis you would look compare absolute whites to affluent blacks and poor to poor blacks. You would have quickly picked up that due to affluence, poor people are huddled together in their apartments and we probably would have a lot of lives doing the subgroup, which for some reason was done. I actually wrote a letter to the wall street journal, even though they published letters of mine, they didnt publish. So with this sort of silliness, we look, i think we lost lives during covid. My question to you, however, is what do we do about it . You know, these people like professor wang in pittsburgh when theyre fired, there should be a fund to, get good lawyers for them to sue the. And once these get hurt and not with fines, they may back, wolf, when you get their pocketbook, they may start listening until. They get hurt. Theyre not going to listen to anyone. And thats probably the cheapest way of it. Getting them good legal represent patients to find out why they were fired. And no one, to my knowledge, has done that so. Can you answer that . Is anyone done that or thinking of it . Yes. Some lawsuits going. Timothy jackson at the university of north texas has been run the job because he ran. He headed a music journal of musicology, built around a austro music theorist named schenker that has been very influential in United States. Theres a musicologist at Hunter College here in new york city, part of the cuny system that has the most absolute lutely insane theory that because schenker talks about hierarchies in total value and is making sort of hierarchical analysis of music that. This is about race that that that so all Classical Music is racist any or anything that has any kind of hierarchy if its like fields of of physical forces thats racist. The this this you will absent mad men. But if the blood of it in the musicology profession of course they all. Alex ross loved him from the new yorker. So jackson published a symposium in the journal of schenker in studies that had critical actually being sort of cautious like critical of philip sewells bizarre of hierarchy these in musical analysis being racist and he was they canceled his program they canceled his journal they took him out of police hes hes suing so there are suits going on theres a guy in florida thats suing so yes. Thats a very good idea. I would i would i would actually though complicate your observation about covid. I would say that one of the worst consequences of the racial hysteria in medicine is to say that Racial Disparities in Health Outcomes themselves. Also the result of racism. And again, you are not allowed to talk behavior. So you may have noticed that its not allowed any longer to say that obesity is bad for ones health. Were all supposed to be fat, positive and celebrate obesity like this is really good. And that is has a racial angle and so the Scientific American has published whole you have all these journals that are devoting entire issues to the issue the idea of racism in medicine and they published a study saying that to talk about that we should try and lower black obesity rates that thats racist. And so the the only allowable explanation Racial Disparities in Health Outcomes is that doctors are racist. What youre not to talk about is exercise better medication compliance. Maybe people need help if youre in a poor neighborhood, get help getting to your medical point. But i can you you can talk to inner city doctors that work in Big University medical centers and they will tell you about differences in people showing up for postnatal visits and care there are race differences there but youre not allowed to talk about that. Its only doctor racism. And that means that we are not going to be saving black lives because were not allowed to talk about the behavior components of race disparities. And i would say that covered the is probably the greater reason for the black white disparities that we saw in covid mortality rates. Right. All ask the final question here as. Were out of time. And this is a personal one. Whether, you know, in this book and throughout your career at city journal and elsewhere youve youve written about some pretty upsetting trends. American life. So i you mentioned youre a pessimist. I what motivates you to keep going. Sorrow and rage. My is broken on a daily basis. See the things i love torn down with such ignorance ignorance. And and theres not just the things i love, but so many people love. And i cant take it longer. And im. Im furious was at the ignorance that is allowed to dominate our culture and our civilization. Ive im the most privileged person in the world to have had a liberal Arts Education the humanities to be able to read english literature. Before i was in before anybody thought to instruct that i should feel oppressed reading dead white males, it never occurred to me or to my peers to reject reading john milton or alexander, pope or William Wordsworth or Edmund Spenser or chaucer because they were white males. I knew was that i could understand miltons syntax paradise lost and that that was what felled me, not his his dead white maleness. So i had to work very hard at that but im glad that i did. And miltons vision of paradise. In paradise lost is one of the most sensually charged acts of of of linguistic beauty and accomplishment of of richness, of of fecundity. The world that he describes. I am very privileged that i got read those books and it it breaks my heart that generations that have after me have been given excuses for their own ignorance and all they care about is pursuing these fictions of their victimhood and their fragility. Its not nauseating. I cant stand and we all have to stop. Browbeaten into silence by whether its the fiction of fragility and safety, the fiction of, racial oppression we have, start fighting back and fight for our civilization. Well, on that note, i want to thank you,