Transcripts For CSPAN2 Yascha 20240705

Practice in International Affairs at the Johns Hopkins university. A contributing editor at the atlantic, a senior fellow at the council on foreign relations, the founder of persuade and the publisher, a publisher of the zeit. Hes the host of a podcast called the good fight and the author of books, including stranger in my own country jewish family in modern germany the age of responsibility, choice and the welfare state, the people versus democracy and the great experiment. Today, he will be talking about a book called the identity trap, which you will hear a lot about. He will be today in conversation with jane coaston, who is a New York Times contributor, also the former host of the podcast. The argument and his work featured in many venues, including abc news and the national review. I will ask you to welcome them here. Stage with us right now. Thank. The last thing ill say before i leave the floor to jane and yashar is that if you want more information about the Moynihan Center and its activities, you can check us out online. Have a wonderful new website at ww dot Moynihan Center, dot ccny dot c u ny dot edu. Again, thank very much and i look forward to our conversations by. Good afternoon everyone and thank you so much for having me and having yasha. Yasha, i promised i wouldnt talk about sports so i will not start this out by talking about travis, kelsey and taylor swift. What are your thoughts . You know, i think this is the first topic ive ever heard about, but i have opinion on, okay, thats thats fair. Thats fair. So i want to start out actually with what might might come across as a more challenging that i intended to be. But please remember im nice that sounds very ominous. So you wrote you wrote your in a context in which there have been actually a surplus of what i would call socalled antiwar books, whether thats from Christopher Caldwell or Christopher Rufo or someone else named christopher. So more so than why did you write this book, why now . So firstly, my my name is not christopher, so thats a good start. Great. Well, you know, to put this in the context of my broader work, ive been worrying for a long time about the state of democracy in the United States and around the world. And so my last two books were, in one way or another, about the rise of far right populism and, the difficulties of sustaining ethnically and religiously diverse. Now, at this point, i think theres been a ton of books about that, right . When i first wrote a book about populism. There really had been very, very public facing books about that subject. And we a severe lack of understanding about that topic at this point i couldnt face writing another book about trump or writing a book about populism. I think theres plenty of those at the same time, i do think that theres been a real transformation in many of the ideas that important spaces in the United States and beyond in the academy, in our broader public life, in important institutions from progressive activists, organizations to nonprofit vets, to think tanks to, corporations, and even some religious communities. And fauvist starting to be a few books about that topic. Most of them pretty polemical. I didnt think that there was a serious attempt to understand where these ideas actually come from, where what the intellectual history these ideas are, what makes attractive to so many people, what is that has allowed them to have this amount of pull over time and finally to assess them in a philosophical way. Now, my ultimate outcome is as skeptical and, critical. I do think that these ideas as the title, the book suggest, are a trap, that they werent allow. The people who have embraced to make the progress they hope for. But i take this ideology, ideology seriously. Im able to chronicle its origins in a way that other on this topic i dont think have. So well get the structure of the book a little bit. And you talk about the identity synthesis you talk about in the book that the identity synthesis you break down came from a time the 1960s and 1970s, in which leftists arguing in favor some sort of liberal universalism and started arguing on behalf of group pride activism. On behalf of group pride, why did that take place . Yeah. So you know in a sense the appeal of left wing movements, including appeal of universalist left wing movements, had always been to overcome forms. Discrimination. Right. My own grandparents were born in shtetls. What is today . Ukraine what was at the time the austrohungarian empire. And they were deeply shaped by the fact that the family had suffered from pogroms and that their in the society was marked by the group to which they belonged. The hope was communist ideals would be able to overcome that, to give importance to the common economic interests of poor people around the world. Went for particular groups. They were born into. Now communism didnt live up to those ideals. And my my parents, my grandparents ended up being thrown out of poland in the 1960s because of a kind of state sponsored, pogrom, organized effectively by the communist party of poland. But i think there had always been a recognition of importance of overcoming that on the. Now, at the same time, it is true that the left had often not taken discrimination seriously enough, not taken discrimination within its own ranks seriously enough. And so one of the things that to happen in the seventies and sixties and probably a little bit early in the fifties as was correct critiques of how these left wing movements were playing out of how sometimes they were paying lip service to universal ideals, but without actually living up them and therefore perpetuating forms of discrimination and within their own ranks. You know, foucault, who is one of the key figures, when i talk about in the book, joined the French Communist Party in 1950 communist party, that pretty blindly listening to moscow, but to great credit, he left the party in 1953 and that had a variety causes. But one of them was the experiences of he made as a homosexual within the party because the communist party was not very hospitable to gay people at, at, at the time. And so clearly part of the for this was a sense of an orderly left was not taking forms of discrimination seriously. It was actively perpetuating them suddenly the soviet union throughout its history was itself deeply homophobic, deeply antisemitic and deeply discriminatory. Certain other racial groups as well. How do you differentiate . You used the term identity politics and youve probably heard so many times that politics is identity. Politics. In the early 1990s, there was a constant battle about getting the votes of nascar dads or soccer moms that you could differentiate between groups and wield them one another. And we see this happening right now with the Parental Movement that is attempting to wield lgbt people against non lgbt over the issue of how children taught and what theyre taught. So how you separate identity politics, the book from identity politics, the way we do politics. Yeah. So first of all, i would, uh, i would contest the idea of it all. Politics is identity politics, a lot of politics maybe identity politics. But i think one of the things i worry about that when you only have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. And when you assume that every historical situation is mediated through identity of and that is the only thing you recognize in historical situations. So identity has played a role in a vast number of different historical context, very important ways. And thats something we have to take seriously. But i think theres all kinds political conflicts for ideological or religious, so on in nature. And i guess a sufficiently abstract level you can say that thats identity politics in the same way in which economists at a sufficiently abstract level can say that anything is rational. If, you know, you count as a rational choice of personal preference, as normative preferences. But i think it starts do violence to our actual understanding of our situations now obviously. And thats why i avoid the term identity politics myself. Theres a vast range of politics that you might call identity, and some of those forms politics. I agree with and approve of and other forms. Identity politics, i think are much less likely to lead to thriving societies, which people can live peacefully together across different identity. One of the key distinctions that i draw in, in book is between the kind of identity that one of the proudest political traditions in United States engaged in, which i would say runs from people like Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln to people like Martin Luther king junior and. In certain ways, barack obama, from the critique of movements that has actually inspired the ideology that i cover this book. So somebody like frederick famously, when he was invited, hold a speech, celebrate in the 4th of july, recognize the hypocrisy of what many of us compatriots were doing, recognized but it was hypocritical at the time to celebrate the idea that all man about equal at a time when a lot of americans were enslaved. But he didnt say therefore we should rip up the universal principles of the declaration of independence or our constitution. He said that those who meant the attachment to those ideals then had work to do had to actually fight for abolition, had to fight for making the country more just. Once you get to the founders of critical theory, which is an interesting, serious academic tradition, i read broadly and widely within it and i learned a lot from it. But i ultimately disagree with its tenets and they explicitly reject what derrick bell, perhaps a key figure in the tradition, calls the, quote, what defunct equality ideology of, the Civil Rights Movement. They say, no, these kind of universal values have not helped us make progress. They have always been an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes. Weve actually led us away from a kind of society which we want and therefore even landmark rulings like brown versus board of education might in key ways have been a mistake. So those two different kinds of forms of identity politics, i think in some sense what Frederick Douglass engaged in was identity politics in a different kind of sense. What derrick engaged in was identity politics. A long standing debate. Which of those forms is preferable . Think Frederick Douglass gets the right of that debate. You write right wing populism and advocates the identity synthesis are a yin and yang. How so. I think theres key question about doubt whether the things that make what i call the identity synthesis. Will actually come to pass whether the aspiration is that people who feel the allure of this ideology feel will actually be realized. And i think theres a number of reasons to think but they wont. Thats why the book is called the identity trap. Now, when you think about that metaphor, what is what is a trap . A trap has a lure. The lure in this particular case is the promise to be, uh uh, you know, fighting against forms of, uh, racism and, and homophobia and other types of discrimination in the most radical way. And thats very attractive because theres real injustices but persists in our societies. But a lot of people myself included, are motivated to to try and remedy. But a trap means that it ultimately is going to prove counterproductive. That going to make it harder to, actually realize those kind of values. So perhaps i can give a couple of examples to show how that is the case. The first is that weve seen over the last years a lot of progressive that have adopted the norms of popularized form of this ideal just have huge amounts of internal strife and sometimes internal meltdowns, but have made it much harder for these organizations to function effectively and much harder to serve their missions, which many cases are important missions. Um, the second is that it has led to a lot of norms in educational, which i think over time will increase the likelihood of zero some conflict between groups rather than attenuate it. So a couple of schools that are close to here. For example elite private schools but educate are you know a lot of people who are the children influential americans who are likely to go on to be influential americans themselves have come in in the second or first grade and divide kids by their race saying black kids go over than latino kids go over there and Asian Americans could go over than white go over into the the the fourth corner. And this is not were not talking here about 16 or 17 year olds in high school who can make those choices and who join some kind of Cultural Club on a voluntary basis. You know, these are effectively, uh, mandatory even if it might sometimes be formally voluntary and i worry about how that as some of the most fashionable pedagogues in the country now say, to make children think of themselves as racial beings, to make them embrace racial identity, including making white children embrace their european identity is going to backfire because one thing i have learned from history and social science is how people identify has varied hugely across society. But once you tell somebody this, your group, this is the group that you belong to, they tend to treat the members of those groups much better with with, with, with great preference over those who are members of outgroups. So i worry about whats going to happen to those white kids, not because we might be uncomfortable. I think its fine to be uncomfortable in education sometimes good education will make you uncomfortable. Sometimes but because telling them that they should lean into the white identities is not going to set our society up for having more anti activists. Its going to create more, more racists. And then i could talk about examples of Public Policy because perhaps we can come to that later. Theres been some striking examples in the of the pandemic. For example, that have really encouraged that kind of zero sum conflict between different identity groups. But i think its ultimately also a political trap. So we have, for example, a recent analysis, the New York Times, that shows theres a new voting group in the republican party. About 10 of Republican Voters now who are disproportionately disproportionately young, a disproportionately pretty progressive on a lot of cultural issues, but who are really worried about the hold that a lot of these norms now have in society. And i think thats one of the explanations for why donald trump running neck to neck with joe biden in election polls 2024. So as somebody does worry about the threat of far right populism, that does make me think that one of these phenomena ends up being begin to be obvious young one of the reasons why somebody on the left have come to be so in progressive spaces after 2016 is that people where genuinely worried about donald trump and so any internal criticism came to be seen as being a traitor, as running interference. Trump. But one of the reasons why trump has a good chance of coming back and winning the white house in 2024 is that these norms have won so much influence over. Mainstream institutions pushing a crucial segment of voters into the arms, the far right. So i want to talk about the the people that are in this book and you begin your book by talking about fuko and i was interested because one of the things he talked about and wrote a lot about was the idea of a rejection of universal truths. And i think part of that, that he had been a committed marxist and yet after the fall, you know, after stalins death, i think that him and for a lot of stalinist maya i had one grandfather who was a stalinist because i dont know he loved groups the war a lot happened but you a sense of like how could this be possible this person who we had been told so long was so was so good and was so inherently good, did much evil. And you see fuko so rejecting that and also just kind of rejecting all centers of which to me i get it. But im interested in how thats about the perfectibility of the modern world, about the standards, whether thats what sexuality is or even what is, how did that come to impact . How you define the identity synthesis . Yeah, thats a thats a great question. The first thing to say is that the few attempts of the have been to explain the intellectual history of novel ideology about race and, gender and Sexual Orientation tend to call and perhaps youve heard this phrase cultural marxism. Right thats sort of the the the claim that a lot of people on the american right have coalesced around in trying to explain the origins and the nature of this ideology. Now, i extracted a promise from jane not to me talk about sports, but im going to use one sporting metaphor, which is that saying that you take economic categories like class out of marxism, substitute them with those identity categories like race or gender or Sexual Orientation is a little bit like saying youre going to take the bats of baseball, but its just not much left of your ideology once. You have done that. And so i dont think it makes sense. And in fact, when you go the thinkers who i think stand at the beginning of this ideology, michel foucault, you see that explicitly reject political liberalism and a lot of the sort of institutions that we share with the france of the postwar era, but also very explicitly marxism. And so to think of this as a form of cultural is just unhelpful and and historically and wrong and as a matter of understanding, the ideology is to really understand the themes our contemporary politics. You have follow a very different lineage. And so as youre saying, during the beginning of this is with deep skepticism, grand narratives in, postmodernist thinkers like foucault who rejects general ideas of objective truth, who reject the idea that his society had made progress in how we treat people like the mentally ill or like criminals, or like people have different sexual predilections. He even rejected a lot of basic identity categories in our terms. Michel foucault was was gay, homosexual. He was a man who had sex with but he didnt like that label thinking it constrained the variety, human Sexual Experiences too much people sound similar each other who are not and obscuring similarities others by adopting this artificial label. And he would be experience he would be alive at a time in which homosexuality was believed to be a mental and the mentally ill were one point institutionalized and eventually lobotomized. So you see from perspective, it does seem as if what is Mental Illness is sexuality is kind of being made up. Yeah. And i think he had very good criticisms certainly of the treatment of homosexuals at the time, but also of how a lot of mentally ill people were treated at a time. Right. He then took that to an extreme thinking. There really is no distinction between people have a Mental Illness and people who who dont. And being extremely skeptical of form of medical treatment, of people who are mentally ill in ways but i think did a lot of damage. And in france, actually, its a its a mixed legacy. But you can certainly see where that instinct from right now. The key thing about this is that you up of a philosophy that is in a certain kind of sense apolitical, right. Fusco says that way we think about power usually as something that travels from the top down. You know, law and bureaucrats and the police force down to citizens who have to obey. It is the wrong model of power. But the real way that we exercise power and discipline Society Comes more informal norms and discourses that the way that we have as a conversation today is an exercise of political power. And as a result, foucault was very skeptical about the perfect ability the social world. He said. Theres no great locus of social refusal. Theres no one place from which you can criticize and make things better. The moment you critique a discourse you might create this moment freedom. But then the discourse really opens. And your freedom is lost again. And the new discourse is unlikely to be better than the older one. So, jane, youre right. The asking what . So how you get the kind of politics from today . Its from a response to this among a set of postcolonial thinkers who come countries that had been colonized that in cases had just gained their freedom and independence, who fought hard about how these countries could rule themselves how they could overcome the of western countries and you for that were attracted to the sort of solvent of postmodernist philosophy to the ability to say we dont believe in liberalism. By the way marxism often had similar justifications of colonial rule. Karl marx and John Stuart Mill have, very similar justification of colonial rule in india. And so we dont quite trust that either. And so so so you want to be have a language, reject all of that, right . But then they have to do something, right . They have to rule these new countries and and actually have concrete political action. And thats hard to reconcile with foucault. And so they make two crucial moves that get more firmly into the modern world of identity synthesis. The first is edward street, who chronicles in orientalism the way in which the west conceptualized the east of the orient and how those conceptualizations had helped the west justify colonial rule. But he then said, look, its not enough to just uncover that we actually want to turn that into a useful political tool, right . We want to then empower people to use that kind of discourse to invert all the power hierarchies and change. And so street and in many cases has us develop what you might a politicized form of discourse critique where they really inaugurate a modern tradition where a lot of what it is to do politics is to critique cultural and other discourses in this kind of way. Part of a feminist is to fight for abortion rights, but part of it is to celebrate or critique or find problematic. The bobby movie, right . Thats a form of contempt of politics. But we find very recognizable that the other step here from an indian literary scholar called gayatri spivak and spivak is grappling with his rejection of identity in fuko. She says every philosopher to a level the critiques of essentialist concept versions of identity that we embrace is absolutely philosophically speaking. Its wrong to say that all women have something in common thats centralizing women. Its wrong. But also quite horrified when fuko and she dillers reject the idea that intellectuals should speak for the proletariat or should speak for more oppressed people. Right . Which says, well, look, perhaps the workers, the streets of paris can speak for themselves, what she calls the subaltern and the world cannot speak for themselves there. So they may not have had access to education. They have so little social standing. So somebody has speak for them and to speak for them, we need identity categories. And so spivak says, need these forms strategic essentialism . For strategic purposes, we have to act as fauvist essentialist accounts of were right because thats whats going to allow us to organize this resistance against oppression. And again you can see how that becomes hugely influential in our politics. When you go to many activist spaces people might Say Something like, of course, race is a social construct, something abroad. They agree with, but then go on to speak about race as the fundamental fact of of politics and the fact that will remain something that we should in ways take for granted in the way we act, speak. And when you go the us progressive educational pedagogical trends of trying to get people to think of themselves as racial beings, that is an applied form of kind of strategic essentialism that. Spivak argued for well, i want to challenge you a little bit on that point, because im interested. Im also interested because both spivak and sayeed kind of rejected eventually the idea that theyd come up with. But i think that the idea that race is a social construct, but social constructs are real, is something that everyone can grasp. So people aware that like i am not genetically very different you but my background means that my history is very different. I was actually just on a family group test text in which found out that the a in my last was added by my great grandfather there to separate us from the people had once enslaved us who sucked. To be clear. But that is a distinct racial history. And you have a distinct racial history of your own. This is not to say that race is real, but its that race is social real. How do you think that that can be better . Differentiate it or should it be well . So of all im just for now im just chronicling the evolution of it. So i do start with fuko i got illicitly people like said and and spivak say that are deeply influenced by fuko and other postmodern superstructures thinkers. And yet they end up in a very different place. Im just trying to understand sort of how they get that, right. Thats the first thing i do think. But there is a quest shown about how you deal with the fact you outline. But how do you deal the fact that. Race is a social but has historically been used to discriminate against people in extreme ways . And so thats something unreal about it. And yet it clearly structured our history and continues in some important ways to structure our present in important ways. And then there is a stark debate about that within, different traditions as people like. And barbara fields to African American scholars who say we should reject craft. But if we take seriously the recognition of how race has historically been, then we should try to minimize its use because it will always bewitch us. It will always end up, uh, luring us into the exact categories which have historically done so much damage, right . I mean, as other people on the other side who say, look, its just unrealistic ever get rid of it in any way. And so we shouldnt make any progress towards creating society in which it is less structured by race because in fact universal principles have only, as i said earlier, pull the wool over our eyes. So we have to explicitly make how we treat other and how the state treats all of us more dependent on the kind of group to which we belong. I end up falling somewhere in the middle. Im not a race abolitionist because i think that that ultimately is not quite realistic. Its a beautiful aspiration have but i dont think its one were going to realize anytime. But i do also think that barbara and fields have a point. But often we engage in this form of race craft without about it very much, and pipette hate those simplistic ideas, as you point out, that is something both street and spivack themselves came to think later in the lives piva came to say that she didnt want to use the term a strategic essentialism anymore because that concept had in many contact become what you called the union ticket for essentialism. You Pay Lip Service to the idea. But of course for us as a social construct. But once youve lip service to that, you can forget forget how important it inside that is and actually treat the world it would was a real category in an unproblematic way and she in part by observing what use a people like Narendra Modi in india and a Hindutva Movement made of that in india, also by observing the american context, came to worry that this ideology, this concept of thoughts are taking the life of taking on a life of her own was actually very damaging. Had a great quip about it as well in it in allusion to that t cells in the streets of india t wallahs who sell in the streets of india. She she complain about the homelessness. Were here at a college of identity wallace at american universities. I want to get back to the history. So thank you for that. Let me go on that diversion. You move on to talk a little bit about derrick bell and kimberly crenshaw. Kimberle crenshaw, who i had the chance to speak to a couple of years ago and, kind of a desire to interview you did. It was very exciting for me personally. And you talk kind of the a rejection sorts of the Civil Rights Movement im interested to what you mean by that. And then i want you to talk a little bit about, derrick bell and the idea of interest convergence. But i was i noted that i was doing a little bit reading in preparation for this and i that Martin Luther king in 1967 talked about how the doctrine of White Supremacy was embedded in every textbook, spearheaded and preached practically every pulpit, and that had become a structural part of the culture. And he came in 1965 to support race conscious outlays of funds and an interview with alex haley. So im interested in youre thinking about this is a rejection of the Civil Rights Movement i think some would argue that it is an ultimate continuation of the Civil Rights Movement to talk about consciousness, to talk about the need race, specific policies. Yeah. So lets lets start with telling the story of derrick bell, which is a very interesting story. I think. So. Um, uh, you know, bell had ambitions to be a civil rights lawyer. Judge hastie, the first African American federal judge, gives him a sort of short meeting and says, you know, im sorry my friend, but youre, you know, unfortunately too late. All of the important stuff is already derrick bell rightly not believe that is a little bit bitter about that meeting for the rest of his life. He keeps bringing up, but he goes on to be a civil rights lawyer. He goes on to work briefly for the department of justice and then for the naacp in the 1960s, doing heroic work for its Legal Defense fund, integrating schools and businesses and other institution ones throughout the American South. But as hes doing this work and that i think does start to bring out a real tension of the Civil Rights Movement. He comes to agree with, as he explicitly acknowledges in his first influential academic article, this sort of critique that segregation in a senators half of civil rights law, what they say is that civil rights lawyers pretend argue for their clients. But what theyre really doing is just to impose this idea ology of integration. On the American South isnt really even in the interests of their clients. And bell observes some real shortcomings of the way integration is playing out. The fact, for example, some of the clients on whose behalf argues want to go to an integrated high school and better resourced high school. But by the time that they win, that case, theyve graduated high school. So theyre not going to benefit from that. Perhaps about the the the younger siblings might or somebody else might be theyve themselves werent right. And that, of course, is real shortcoming of how long it often took, how much resistance for was these efforts at at at integration. But the conclusion that derrick bell draws from that is far more radical than that. He says that brown versus board was never in the interests of African Americans and there was never an attempt to reconcile american reality with the promises of the constitution, he said. It was just in the interests of whites. The only reason why brown versus happened was but it but that because of some geopolitical shifts and the desire to develop the sunbelt and things it came to be in the interest of americans. And thats really the only reason that it happened. And we should be very skeptical about its remedy, the epitaph, the the very start of his papers serving two masters was citing Young Black Community groups in boston who was saying, you know, we are really more interested in. An improvement of educational quality than we are in integration and his opposition to the civil rights was very explicit. He marked we shall overcome, one of the great songs of the Civil Rights Movement as being know, pious and silly. He said, as i earlier, that we should reject the racially quality ideology of the rights movement. So certainly in his perception, what he was doing was to challenge the positions of people like. Martin luther king jr. Now i think you can go and have it. Historical debate about mlk and im not that you know that is not my field of specialty but i think the truth lies somewhere in between here. I didnt think mlk was a kind of fully colorblind activist of a kind, but republicans sometimes to imagine today. But no so was he somebody who would have agreed with the key tenants of the of critical race theory. I think that was a middle position there. That is that is important indistinct. And thats certainly how somebody bell himself would have thought about it at the time. I want to talk a little bit kimberle crenshaw, the idea of intersection ality because i think that that actually leads to the part im really excited to talk to you about, which is tumblr and instagram um, and tik tok and thought catalog which does, i dont know if that catalog still exists, but lets, lets all pretend it doesnt because i think that when i spoke with kimberle, she talked, she told me about how youll hear someone else say, oh, intersectional and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And i have no idea what theyre talking. And she is the person who developed the idea. So can you tell us a little what is intersectionality . What was she talking about in 1989 . And then i want to into how social media plays a role in this conversation. Yeah. So the basic insight to which for which crenshaw invented atonement, automata sexuality is a pretty straightforward, if important one. It is to say that there is, as social scientists would have said, an into action between different forms of oppression that the kind disadvantage that a black woman might face is not just the arithmetic of a disadvantage faced by white women and black men, but rather in certain contexts that goes above and beyond that. And one of the striking examples that was an order factory think a General Motors factory in michigan that for a long time had not had only hired white men, but eventually it hired some white women, but eventually hired some black men. And then finally it hired black women. And then when bo was a recession of the 1970s, they applied the standard of first in, first out, and as a result of black women got fired because they were the last ones who had gotten hired and they tried to sue against that in accordance civil rights law. And the judge at that time said, well, have these protected characteristics, women are protected characteristics, but not all women were fired. And people who are africanamerican are part of a protected characteristic. But, um, but, but, but other black workers continued to be at this factory. So im sorry. I cant help you. Right. And and crenshaw rightly fought for that was a miscarriage of justice. That that was something that that was missing. But we sort of recognized the particular way in these workers had been discriminated against because of the intersection of being both female and black. But i think thats a relatively straightforward but important insight. But i certainly agree with what became of intersectionality and as popularized form goes beyond that. And theres two steps to that. The first is that it merges with a different tradition called standpoint, theory or standpoint or epistemology and basically into the claim that if i one intersection of identities you stand at the nub of intersection of identities, then im really not capable of understanding you in meaningful ways. And in particular, if you are of a group that is more oppressed, i should defer judgment to you. You should tell me what important. And rather than thinking this myself or evaluating in terms of my own values, i should defer to your judgment and then an basis those are second version of this idea that is to it, which is that because all forms of oppression are interrelated to. Be a good activist, you have to oppose all of them. But then of course, since people have more authority to, speak on different forms of oppression if you want to be a feminist activist, but you also have to agree the views of activists on, the environment or on israelpalestine conflict or on trans issues or on whatever other set of issues are important. The ecosystem. And so the entry ticket for belonging in the Progressive Movement starts getting higher and higher because you basically to agree with the sort of predominant opinions on each of these 17 different topics and just to step back a little bit, but im happy to talk about tumblr. Uh, why is this intellectual history useful . Because i do think gives us a lot of the themes of our contemporary politics a way, but alternative intellectual histories like cultural marxism cannot. So you have a skepticism about universal values, a neutral truth that comes from fusco. You have the embrace of this politicized of discourse, critique of discourse as a way of doing politics, but comes from sayeed. You have embrace of a form of strategic, essential ism and the kind of norms that inspire us that comes from a spivack. You have a deep skepticism about the ability of places like the United States to ever make meaningful progress on Something Like race and embrace of what today be called equity by people like bell and then you have this a popularized version of the idea of intersection put putting in doubt our ability to communicate with each other and uh creating an activist space where you sort of have to defer to each other and sign on board with all of these different positions that come from crenshaw and whether you think but most of these things are right or wrong, what do you think would be helpful for Progressive Movements or harmful for Progressive Movements . I think its quite clear that that explains a lot of the themes of our contemporary politics in the way that that that without doing the intellectual history or by the wrong idea of it as cultural marxism, you could not understand what these ideas today are and where they come from. So you say that tumblr which as a young ish millennial i spent lot of time on that it meme ified the identity synthesis. And i think that lot of you know, there are just a lot of phrases for instance my feminism will be intersectional or it will be. That was something that i saw on tumblr in like 2009, 2010 that then i did not know what intersectionality was, but i knew that sounded very catchy. And you, you talk about catalog, you actually talk about my former employer, vox, and i was interested how much of this story is about the way in which social media blows up ideas but also flattens ideas intersectionality goes from being a specific argument about. You know, the ways which black women are both and women but treated differently at that intersection. And it turns into an argument as to why everything is everything all the time. Can you talk a little bit how the role that social media and the role kind of the click economy has played in what . You see what my former colleague Matthew Iglesias called the great awakening has happened since about 2010. Yeah and the first thing i want to say is that sort of, you know, weve really talked so far about the first part of a book, but the book is four parts. First is where these ideas actually come from. Second, which were sort of moving to, talking about now, is how they became so influential and powerful. A paradoxical development. And the third is a critique of the main application of these ideas to areas free speech to Cultural Appropriation and to Public Policy. I mean, the fourth is a defense of a more humanist universalist liberalism that takes injustice as seriously and i think can provide a better model of how to fight against them. But i want you to start english between the conversation weve had so and my critique of his ideas, and that is to say, but i think all of these people who coincide eden spivak and belen crenshaw are those sophisticated thinkers. And i disagree with them about important things, but i enjoyed reading them and i learned a lot from reading them. I do think that the second part of the book, the story of how these ideas became popular and influential, is the story of how those subtle ideas became flattened into something, but i think is much more concerning and much more and you know, by the time you get to the apostles of the popularized version, these ideas, particularly Robin Dangelo and remix kendi, i think your operating with with a lower level of subtlety, lets put it this way now you go to 2010, 2011, and somebody like crenshaw is saying, you know, she writes a paper for the 20th anniversary of critical race. And she says, look, weve had great influence on and thats a wonderful but of course were never going to be influential in society as a whole. You know, obama was just elected is fundamentally at odds of quote of critical race theory. Were not going to have a chance in the public sphere. And ten years later, that turned out to be wrong and i think shes so self would be surprised perhaps most surprised in the combination of you by how influential his ideas had become. So how that happen. I do think that social media plays a key role here. If you think about what it is like to construct your identity in. A high school in the analog age, the key constrain is that to construct your identity, you have to have some other people who share in the construction about identity, right and so thats just a numbers game, right . If your high school has a thousand kids you know, you need 1020 people to get an identity the ground then only something that is believed in by or that that that that people feel you know about that people identify with like one or 2 of the student population, then you might be able to get a group going, right . Well suddenly, you have a platform like tumblr where people can have discovery like tagging, where they can self tag some new conception identity into existence through a viral meme, but then make somebody create a hashtag and people coalesce around that and suddenly you become you start kind of subculture, right . And so is this incredibly protean space where where a lot of people who are experimenting the identity in their view of themselves at a moment when that sort minimum size barrier had been blown by the size and the reach of the internet. But then you suddenly had all of these people identifying with very different kind of identity categories and labels, and you needed an ideology. Hold that together. How do these people with each other and thats where a lot of these ideas of intersectionality, the more popularized version came in. But if i offend you in any kind of way then im at ford even if it was if it wasnt my intention right. That you always have to defer to each other. But you dont understand me. So so you better go with with with what im telling you is that sort of issue area that i but i own. And then it starts to take the written form in areas, in websites like ford catalog, which allowed anybody to publish anything. So it had all kinds of but one of the important sub zones. It had was first written expression of that ideology. Then you started to get more professional like everyday feminism dot com that sort of you its sort of tumblr meets buzzfeed i suppose its like know five things to say to your yoga teacher who Cultural Appropriation is fun. You know, you think youre blessed man has three reasons why that is sexist. Like in those kinds of articles, right and when i do think of it as a fascinating story about the role distribution mechanisms come to play at places like xbox. I mean, voxs sort of an example i use rather than the core case, but im looking forward to, to, to see whether you agree with that part of the story. I think that one of the pieces here and you talk about this kind of the meme ification, i also think that those there was an i think of first person essays in the 20 tens and whether that was at refinery29 or xojane or Something Else, i think that that also an example of that standpoint theory of people telling their story and, being able to tell their story in, a way that someone else couldnt. So for the first time, i think for some people they were able to talk about how Cultural Appropriation was specifically harmful to them. Something i was i was in because you talk about Cultural Appropriation well get to in a minute. But was interested in how culturally appropriate asian to me is not so much am wearing the clothing of another culture. It is i am wearing the clothing of another and people of that culture treated poorly for doing or they get made fun of for doing so it is the way in which i remember being in school and having experiences of being told that, you know, my hair was in or nonprofessional and yet white kids would wear afro wigs for halloween. And i think that those are moments you talk about this using a specific party that i do not want to think about anymore a Cinco De Mayo party of sorts in book but i think that that person reliance which one its very cheap for many websites to do especially in the time in which how much people are getting for writing is starting to drop. But it. Also, for a lot of people was the first time they heard somebody else say, oh, this was this happened to me and heres my experience of it. And so i think that that actually kind of goes a little bit to your point about these first person experiences of something that sound, you know, it sounds ridiculous to be mad about Cultural Appropriation, but its also for a lot of people, it was the first time they were able to say, hey, this thing bothered me a lot and youll me to write about it. Mm yeah. So lets so i think we have one question here about what the role of the first person essays were and then perhaps a more substantive question about how should think about some of the Cultural Appropriation. So lets, lets, lets take them one at a time. So, so i agree that theres a good reason why so many of the stories super viral, because a lot of people did feel seen and recognized through them. I think the reason for why that became possible at the time connect with social media in an interesting so the main reason why i end up talking about vox is not that vox was sort of especially captive to to those developments for to change nature in an interesting way since its founding. Um but that some of its founders have talked about the monetary incentives that which is that when vox was founded in 2013 most of the use of vox articles came from the landing page of a website, right . So people go to vox. Com and see whats new and see what looks interesting, me, what i going to click on, right . And when they do that. Then theres an incentive for the editors to make sure, you know, over 50 of the articles going to see are going to be interesting to. The sort of median reader of vox right . But then around 2015, 2016, reddit already because twitter and facebook so much more important as distribution mechanisms. So most of the views started to be social media. And in social media we often connected to people who share identity categories. And so suddenly these first person stories. But i think were resonant for for good reasons, for meaningful reasons that jane outlined, were the ones that really went very, very well. And the fact that you might go to the vox website and say, well, nine out of ten of these articles dont interest me didnt matter of one of the ten articles really interested you and you came across it in social media. Shadid and social media within an identity network, right . And so thats a changed, the commercial incentives. What of content people and then i think some of that writing was generally good and writers to prominence through that but also you know the New York Times at that time really was in a deep economic crisis. They desperately needed clicks. And i mean to change the economic model. And so they ended up also hiring a lot of the people who came out of that kind of world. And so very quickly, these ideas came to have kind of mainstream purchase in a waiver would have felt difficult to imagine in 2012 2014. Yeah you talk about that short march through the institutions and the massive growth i mean you have a increase in the number of people who attend. I think too, when we talk about the story, we talk about the ivy league, but were actually talking about people who go to texas tech or here or, you know university of Central Florida, a fun fact that more people go to the university of Central Florida and texas tech than attend entire ivy league and you see that moment and then you see know i was of that generation i was at the university of michigan, then i was working at newspapers and then i did a lot that kind of online, first person writing because thats what people wanted and then eventually i got hired at vox and here you know im now with the times and so that was very much my experience of this was happening in campuses. It also was happening at organizations you talk about nonprofits . I was at the human rights that has had a lot these experiences. But i want to get to before we we cant focus too long on just how these ideas became prominent because i think its important to talk about what you view as the flaws in, the identity synthesis. And first you talk about the flaws and it seems obvious me that one of the flaws of standpoint theory that it argues that you cannot understand someones experiences. But can you talk a little bit more about breaking that down a little bit . Yeah. Why dont we start with Cultural Appropriation, since we tend just brought it up and then well go to stamp it for you if you dont mind. So, um, you know, you brought up the fact of how Cultural Appropriation can bother people for good reason, right . And i think one of the terms that one of the reasons why the term of Cultural Appropriation has had such a rap bid and dizzying rise is that it often refers to cases that really are offensive. It seems to attach label to things that really are wrong. So you mentioned this what i think. At Baylor University called a sink to drink or party and you know it had students come into that Party Wearing some of them wearing sombreros or ponchos others wearing construction vests or maids outfits. And i think we all share the intuition that theres something very wrong about that. And cultural seems to give a name to what is wrong about that. Now, my concern with the concept of cultural is two fold, which firstly it doesnt actually help explain what is wrong about both situations. And secondly, it doesnt point the way towards a more just future. So when you look a little bit closely at this example, the concept Cultural Appropriation can perhaps explain to us whats wrong about somebody coming to this party in a poncho or sombrero. But it seems to suggest that theres wrong with people coming to that party with a maids outfit or construction vest because a mans outfit is not a part of latino. If anything, its a part of french culture or whatever western culture, right. But i have a strong intuition that. Those students were doing something about having even worse, it was more offensive. Right. And he i think thats just much more straightforward way of explaining what was offensive about it. That doesnt use the term of Cultural Appropriation. Its just they were mocking the fellow students but were suggesting all latinos are good for is to be maids or construction workers. There shouldnt really be students of the university. We shouldnt be professionals. Thats the message that were sending. Thats what was offensive about it, it wasnt an appropriate culture. It was the mocking spirit, the pointed insult, the way they tried denigrate their fellow students. And i just think that the term of Cultural Appropriation helps us express that point. And the second point is that Cultural Appropriation often doesnt point to whether lies i mean very struck since coming to this country with bizarre american obsession with hair that is clearly rooted in american histories of, you know, europeans dont have nearly the same notion that curly hair is somehow unprofessional in the way americans do. And thats clearly intricately connected to the history of we can talk about macdonalds after this its fine yeah no now the question is whats the solution to that right and. I think the solution to that is that a curly hair should be thought of unprofessional. Right. Its to make people very worried about kind of hairstyles they might wear this is much clearer when you go back to one of the canonical examples of Cultural Appropriation, which is black musicians, their music stolen in the 1950s and 1960s by white musicians when when they couldnt have big careers because of discrimination, jim crow and all of those things. Right. What is the solution here . Is it to make sure that white musicians are super, super careful about how they might be influenced by the music of black musicians . Or is it to fight against that form of discrimination to make sure that black musicians can have the same careers, that that white musicians can, but they can be successful and actually profit from their own efforts. And so i think that this is second problem with the concept of Cultural Appropriation. It often doesnt point us in the direction of what a more just society would be. I get the anger behind the recognition that, hey, im being treated unfairly mean. You know for you its a cool halloween costume. I get that completely. But i think solution is a world where people suffer the injustices that make them. Angry and upset at these practices in the first place. So did want to mention a talking a little bit about standpoint, theory and some of the flaws with the identity synthesis and im sorry that were not getting to more this i will i also i want to get to some of the questions that weve gotten because they are actual super bangers. Thank you so much for this. Absolutely fantastic. But first, i to break down your your critique week of standpoint theory. Yeah. So again is something where theres a sophisticated version, a theory that i think has a lot of of plausibility and, then a popularized version of his theory that has very influential, that i think just doesnt have a grounding in in the serious intellectual tradition and ends up being very damaging. Um, so of course i recognize i as a white guy, dont actually know what it feels like for women to worry being sexually harassed in the subway, to worry about whether they can get on a subway at 10 30 p. M. In case they baby they may be harassed. I dont recognize i dont certainly naturally what it feels like to walk down the streets in new york and worry about how a cop might treat me or how they might respond to me. Um, and so i think its incumbent on all of us as citizens of a diverse society, to listen with great care and an open mind to our fellow citizens when theyre telling us, im experiencing bad injustice might have the instinct to say, oh, im sure you exaggerate because i have never experienced that and we should not do that. We should and make sure that we actually take seriously experiences the the way that stomp and fury has to, you know, for goes beyond. And it says that, first of all, members of oppressed groups share these key experiences. Second only that they have superior insight into various forms oppression. Thirdly, they cannot communicate the core political insights they derive from those experiences of oppression. And then fourthly, therefore, we should ground forms of political solidarity in deferring to each other rather than trying to have a common conception of what we are fighting for. And i think that each of these claims turns out to be wrong. The first claim the is simply very difficult to sustain in any particular context you might say that as the founders of this tradition did, that what we defines women is their caregiving nature. But that might women a lot of women might think that, but not by their caregiving nature and might also exclude men are single dads who also have experiences of caregiving and the challenges, but that imposes on them in important ways. Um, secondly, certainly being at the receiving end of unjust treatment is something that gives you insight into the operation of oppression especially where the forms oppression are very extreme. Being a member of a dominant group also gives you certain kinds of insights because unlike the oppressed, have access rooms where some of those forms of oppression are perpetuated and defend it. Friedrich engels, a key collaborator of karl marx and a factory owner in the north of england, had certain kinds of insights into the condition of a working class in england precisely by nature of effect. But he was privileged rather than oppressed so. We need both sets of insights to actually make of the world. Thirdly i think we have to make a crucial distinction between what philosophers call experience, knowledge, and what they call propositional knowledge. So you might never be able fully inhabit somebody elses experiential knowledge, though fully what it feels like to have those experiences discrimination. But i think a lot of the propositional knowledge that derives from those of discrimination you can communicate. Rachel fraser, a great feminist philosopher, gives the example two former sex workers who have a of whats called the nordic model of prostitute, which criminalizes people who purchase sex work as opposed the people who engage in it and is a very popular solution it seems very attractive they say actually index it makes sex workers less safe because it means that clients want to meet in secluded spaces, which makes it dangerous that theres less demand which means men have was bargaining position so to these critiques of it. Right now what fraser says is i dont know whats true about the subject matter is a complicated question, but fraser says its yes, perhaps the people who came up with his insights had to be sex workers in order to understand this. But we can communicate that insight to each other without having been sex workers. You can understand the argument youre making, but something thats communicable. I mean, finally, theres a political dimension of this. How are we actually realistically going to build a form of political solidarity . But its going to allow us to fight against things like discrimination and injustice. One version is to say, you go and defer to others, but that assumes as people like the great gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin put it, that theres such a thing as a unified group right. And he pointed out that the idea of a unified black community is the invention of mostly white people and a few sort of black organizations, leaders who have an interest in sustaining that. Ive often joked that i dont remember there being any meetings for the black community. We get invited to zooms and still never been invited to the jewish world conspiracy. The meeting was very upsetting. So. So i think clearly. Right, theres something troubling about the idea as Ayanna Pressley representative from massachusetts, that that, you know, i want any black politicians without a black voice. I dont want any queer politicians are not a queer as well who is a black voice. What is it Ayanna Pressley . Is it jim clyburn . Is it barack obama or i . American black politicians have very different. Right. And so what actually is that . People who claim to defund kind of way because most people just wont. Right. And then the few people who do will pick the spokesperson they agree with anyway. So the great virtue is claim to defer actually is just an argument by authority. And we just have to flood my judgment too, by picking the person who already agrees with me. I dont think that that is productive. So my vision of political solidarity is more ambitious, its more demanding. What should we do . Should listen to each other. We should listen to each other and mind. We should take each other seriously. When people have experiences of discrimination injustice, we shouldnt write that off. I havent experienced it. We should actually take that seriously and hopefully we will come to some amount of common vision for how to remedy. I may not know what it feels like to be sexually harassed in the subway, but i you know, its unfair when. Women who i know feel afraid of using the subway and i dont, i can understand, but for my own reason and think i want to live in a society where thats not the case. And if a lot of African Americans have to fear ill treatment by the police, i exactly experienced what that feels like. But i know that thats unfair, but we should build a society in which thats not the case and that i think, is a much more realistic and ambitious. Its rare, but realism and ambition go together, but realistic and ambitious conception of what political solidarity would actually look. So weve got a lot of really good questions. Im going to start lizbeth diaz, who is monahan undergrad fellow. How universalism address that certain. Identity groups have starkly been disadvantaged compared to groups that have benefited from and often been the cause of this disadvantage. Yeah, so, you know, universalism is a broad term. Theres many different subtle forms of it and so on, right . But one straightforward way in which that the case is twofold. First of all, how are we going sustain the kind welfare institutions that a country like the United States needs to abolish Child Poverty to make sure that everybody has access to health care and so on . I think that the kind of universal welfare institutions that countries are, for example, in norway or france or many other parts of europe and also in japan and other countries around world have been able to maintain an institute, do that very effectively by saying that, anybody who is in need in kind of circumstances is going to be helped served. That has the advantage, first of all, of helping all who are in need in that kind of way, because we want to abolish Child Poverty for children of any race in the United States, including for white children. Right. Secondly, i think it is and theres plenty of Political Science evidence on this, much more politically sustainable. Its just much easier to actually win the majorities. Its still hard, much easier to win the political majorities, for example, for generous Child Poverty payments when that is a universal policy that all children, rather than being race targeted policy. And finally, when you think about the actual feature of this, a policy that helps all disadvantaged on equal terms, will this propose to help members of historically oppressed groups when those historically oppressed groups are more likely to themselves in those positions of disadvantage. Right. So a to help all children who are in poverty or need will actually disprove. Help a latino kids or black kids in the United States because and black its the United States a disproportionate likely to be in positions of need because of historical injustice assistance. So i could say a lot more about the topic of universalism but just to say that the certainly are many universalist economic policies that i think both in terms how to think about how to build a fairer world and in terms their political sustainability have huge advantages over more race targeted ones. I wanted to ask a question myself because. I was struck by this later in the book. You talk a little bit. You also challenge the racial separatism that you mentioned, the equity versus equality debate. And you talk about free speech and you mentioned how there have been a number of, i think, people who would see themselves on the political left who have argued that see free speech as somewhat of a. And i was interested because one of the examples you use, i believe, the former ceo of reddit, who you know from your quote that, you know, the people who are young about free just want to say slurs. But the challengers on reddit, those people did just want to say slurs. And i think that we see so often that and im sure that that might be challenging for many people here, which is that you want to fight for the universal good of free speech. Youre hoping that youre going to hear something that will challenge you. But then often the people who are demanding to be heard dont want you to be heard and are using their free speech to call your free speech rights and most of their to be restricted. So how do you make a good faith effort on behalf of free speech when they arent . By quoting douglass to start. I mean, you know, it. Reddit can certainly be a pseudo of of terrible things, believe me. There were terrible things being printed and. Newspapers throughout the American South and the american north in the day of product. And yet he that free speech is the dread of tyrants that it was the most important tool in the toolbox of abolitionists because it allowed slaves to say things. It also allowed the opponents of slavery to make their case at a time when that was very unpopular. And so more broadly, i think that the way in which people for free speech often suffers from uh, a which is to focus on the great things that come from free speech. And i believe that great things do come from free speech. So when you read John Stuart Mills on liberty chapter two, its a beautiful account of the advantages of free speech or the fact that so many times in Human History in Human History of a majority opinion was badly wrong, including in america. In the first half of the 19th century and would not be naive idea of a marketplace of ideas which mill never advocated, but that having free speech is what allows the true opinion to prevail from one generation to the next. Its what gives a fighting chance. The idea that we want to hold our beliefs as living, not as that dogmas and, that if nobody disagreed with us, wed have to a devils advocate. So we actually understand our own arguments and can defend these ideas when later down the line. Censorship seizes and were being challenged. I think these are all good arguments, but theyre not. I think the most effective arguments in charged political context. And so me, the most important things about free speech are not the good things that come from free speech. Its the terrible things that come from not having free speech. And the most important that is the question about who are going to be the census. Right. Because a lot of this debate has started on university campuses. I think theres always been this underlying assumption that the people are going to be in charge, are to be on the side of not saying slurs are going to be on the side of a progressive are going to be side on the good and the right and bonobo and that might be true in some of those contexts. But look at whos been in power sometimes. I mean, how did states. Right. You cant simultaneously as many people on Progressive Left think say think that you know, america has a terrible White Supremacy racist place and, that somehow all the people making decisions are going to be on the side of justice. How you believe those two things at the same time doesnt make sense. And so the best reason free speech is that by definition, the people who are going to be putting the limits on free. And as we defended the census at the imaginary federal census or the quite real speech facilitator committees in silicon valley, theyre all going to be the most marginalized. Theyre going to be people who are powerful definition of making those decisions. So why should we trust them to make the right cause . Relatedly, theres a second argument here about the stakes of politics. The most fundamental element of our democracy is that we have elections determine who gets to govern, and that if you lose elections, you go home. And as we all know, that is a contested principle right now. But what are the things that helps to sustain that principle . A ford. But if i lose, i can go and i can keep arguing my case and i can keep saying what i want. Im going to have a chance to win election again in four years time. If you tell people your ideas are so dangerous that we a right to shut you up. They have no reason leave office because theyre going to start fearing that they cant go and make that case. So you actually undermining most fundamental elements of democratic institutions. So, you know, i think often the way that the case for free speech is made, it sounds a little airy fairy and a little bit, you know, in like difficult political times, which doesnt make sense. Free speech is precise, solely a principle for difficult political, as Frederick Douglass recognized that think we should recognize today as well. We have a question from. A kid who is on one hand, undergrad fellow, how do you avoid the identity trap without becoming a reenact a reactionary. So i have a i have a whole piece about that and janes publication of the New York Times to argue against me identity trap without becoming a reactionary. Well, the first and most important is that you need to ground yourself in substantial principles. One of the really worrying forms of our politics at the moment is what the great writer emily yoffe, has named one atom that you look what your opponent says. Many say the opposite of what . Whatever that is, it is what they say. And i think some of the people who criticize, be identity synthesis, who have become reactionaries, who have fallen that trap, are guilty of that one at the moment. Anything anybody calls anything woke up like im going to be against that rather than thinking about what is it workers that mean is it good or is it bad rather than evaluating it right. So i think the first thing that you need to do is to ground yourself in a substantial and a substantial political tradition for me, that is a form of humanist universalist, philosophical liberalism that in the american incarnation i think claims for roots of the people ive been invoking today for others but might be the conservatism or marxs more or Christian Faith or judaism, buddhism or islam right. It might be. Whatever your political religious tradition is. But i think to think seriously about why from within that tradition do i worry about this way of thinking about the world is the first step. And the second step is just in the way to argue it, to try to claim a moral high ground. I find that people fall one of two mistakes. One is to be overly apologetic, to be so nervous about against these ideas. Of course. I mean, i dont mean you are over time, but you actually make your point. You sound guilty and people smell that something wrong of you because you seem to think that wrong with you, right . I think you know, for myself, i have deep convictions about how we can build a better world. I might be wrong. You might disagree with, but im arguing on the basis of what i think is going to create a better world. So i shouldnt be nervous about it and i shouldnt feel guilty about it. The other mistake that people make is to become a jerk right is to say, well, youre going to hate what im going to say anyway, so im just going to provoke you and throw out bob. Its a little bit like a kid whos afraid of failing a test in school, so theyre like, dont even try on the test, right . Because if i dont do well, if i tried my Say Something about them, right . No claim of moral high ground. Say that you are earnestly trying to create a better world is as you see it and we all might be wrong. Thats whats motivating you, i think. Often you want to argue the the the reasonable majority than the loud extremes. I think most americans on many of these issues actually have subtle and and and thoughtful and rather than shouting with whoevers loudest on social, you should talk to those people. Talk to your friends and family members who are generally torn on this topic rather than going to battle on reddit or on twitter or on tumblr or anywhere else. So this is some of the some of the some of the advice id have if i could add on to something. Ive actually thats a really excellent question. I think its also worth remembering that this is not your job. Your job is not to live this. I think we see too often and you wrote about it in your piece that there are people who they experienced some degree of backlash or cancel culture or whatever you might want to call it, and they made their to that moment their entire identity. They are just like, i am this person who got yelled at on the internet this one time. And that is life and my job. Dont that to yourself. You have so much more than that. And i think that so many people make that moment or, that identity or that anti identity that 180 ism their entire personality and you dont have to be like that you could read a book go outside do Something Else yeah i agree completely i mean you know i think its important have a genuine understanding of why was ideology so. Alluring to a lot of people. I think its also to understand why the experience of being cast out of a friend group or losing a job or told that youre a terrible person for expressing what you think are decent opinions, is deeply traumatizing to people. Why . A lot of people end up falling into into that kind of trap. But, jane, just just a but it is, you know, important not to overstate that. So my book is not a book about culture. I worry about the ways in which space for debate is too limited, some american institutions. But thats not fundamentally what this book is about. In part because i think you can actually argue against these ideas. You get unlucky, but you cant argue against ideas without being canceled. If youre arguing in good faith, and if youre arguing in a in a subtle way, and i certainly agree with not making it your lifes work, but as a great quote about a that, a polish historian gave he was asked, you know, he he he had many colleagues who had lived through marxism and the communist regime. And in a second half of the 20th century. And he was asked, what do you think was the greatest floor of the best polish historians of that generation of these people who had opposed marxism, who had opposed of the shortcomings of a communist regime in poland, often at great danger to themselves and the answer that Norman Davies was a stalin gave us was that the greatest flaw was marxism said, what do you mean the world anti marxist . But there was so consumed with fighting marxism that the vision of what was interesting and important in polish history had become limited right now. As for myself as my book, ive written four books about completely different topics i think was an important topic. I think it is important to read and think about it. Very proud of this book. My next five books are going to be about completely different topics. We have question from alex amoroso from ccny. Weve seen politicians, corporations, business, etc. Involve themselves in the dialog around identity politics. Do you think that they truly believe that they can affect change . Is that a mechanism to avoid criticism around corporate practices or of a politicians true, usually terrible ideologies . So these are people who who have sort of, you know, were talking about like fortune 500 ceos. I think were kind of talking about like the performative identity, the people who did the black box thing on instagram. I think that was no im i think its two things. I think with some people for whom thats straightforwardly strategic. You know, one interesting thing, however everybody this room might feel about this is the adoption of the term latinxs. Right . A lot of, according to polls, at least 98 of hispanics in this country prefer be referred to as hispanic or latino rather than latinx. But if you are the leader of an organization, it makes a lot sense for you to say latina x and the reason for is that if you dont say it. So if you do say it, some people might draw eyes, but nobody is going to come for you. But if you dont, it, and theres going to be a small number of people are like, this is offensive. How did you do this . And so your life is easy if you embrace it. And certainly i think some of whats going on is those kind of tactical choices where say, look, ill just say the thing with my department has told me to say and i kind of dont believe, but you i have so many battles to fight as a ceo or whatever. This is not the hell i want to die on right . The other thing that i will say is that ive been struck struck by how little very influential people in america have reflected on some these issues, i think. But there people who are true believers in the most naive of as now, a postracial society. After obama was elected and those same people, true believers in godlike status of Robin Dangelo. 2020. And i didnt even realize if it changed the mind and so i think sometimes it is people who just swim in a milieu where that suddenly what everybodys saying and they have other things to think and worry about and so thats what i was saying and thinking as well. And its not like that know, its not like the ideologues about its not like a true believers in like a deep sense, but it has no cognitive dissonance. They generally it as theyre saying it. And so id say its a little bit of perhaps half of one sixth of one half a dozen of another. So i think our last question was particularly interesting to me, because its about the you about the response youve gotten to the book itself. Whats the most enlightening, enlightening, enlightening . Do i know how to speak in lightning or stimulating piece of critical feedback youve received so far . Well, all of the questions. But jane, tonight, of course. I mean, i think a lot of this came not in the week as were recording this since book was published, but in the process of writing it and so on, which is, you know, to move from a little bit of impatience with the. Manifestations of this social media and in the institutions, im a of and in some Public Policy to a deeper understanding of what attracts people to ideas in the first place. Right and so as i was researching this book and reading intellectual history, you know, and coming up with this matter for the identity trap, really making sure that i, i, i critique what i ultimately do think is counterproductive, but i also portray fairly and accurately and compellingly the lower part of the equation, right . Why it is that so many people are attracted it. I mean thats, you know, a question we should always ask when a lot of people believe in some ideology. Its got to be some reason for that. It could be something ideology that makes it compelling. And so i think taking that really seriously and trying to explain are both what attracted people to it and why ultimately its understandable that they were attracted to it is not going to help all of us build the kind of society in which i think we aspire to live, you know is the goal of a book. Well, joshua, thank you so the book is called the identity trap. And thank you all for joining us. Thank you. One of the cool things about this job is you get to introduce people, you know, and in doing that, youve got to review their bios and you realize exactly how impressive the people you get to hang out with are at. Dana is cnns chief political correspondent, anchor of inside politics with dana bash. Weekdays at 12 noon and coanchor state of the