Cspan. Org coronavirus. Up next on booktv, we will show some other programs from our archives the focus on the issue of race in america. A couple of the authors you will see include cornel west and even candy but we begin with the Manhattan InstituteHeather Macdonald ritchie argues that identity politics is challenging diverse thinking at the collegiate level. This is from 2018. At Claremont Mckenna and southern california, the blockade that could enter prevented anyone from attending my talk, socalled students of color at nearby Pomona College and some would say its white supremacist war hawk, queer phobia classes in ignorance of interlocking systems of domination that produce the lethal conditions under which oppressed people are forced to live. [laughter] so to actually have an audience still in his seat and willing to listen is an unusual experience. It may take me a while to get accustomed to. Now weve been hearing a lot of late about the crisis of free speech on College Campuses but not much about the root cause. The narcissistic victim ologies that is rapidly spreading from academia to the rest of culture, in a word, the American University is in the grips of a mass hysteria. Students actually believe that they are victims of oppression at risks of their lives from the racism and sexism and the degree of model login is impossible to overstate. At brown, students of color occupy the president s office and complained about having to meet academic expectation while attending class when they were so focused on staying alive at brown. At el, minority students surrounded a highly respected sociologist and kirsten screamed at him for three hours because his wife sent an email suggesting that students could choose their own Halloween Costumes and among the childs of shut the f up, im censoring that, and you are disgusting that were directed at a mildmannered leftwing professor was a cry of we are dying from one of the ranchers referring to the allegedly endangered status of els minority students. But my favorite moment in this parade of narcissism came from princeton. In 2015 princetons black students chanted, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. This phrase was first used by fannie lou hammer, a Civil Rights Activist who was beaten in the 1950s for trying to vote. Fannie lou hammer had grounds aplenty for being sick and tired of being sick and tired. But any princeton student, i dont care if he green, purple or orange who thinks of themselves of a press is in a group of a terrible delusion that will encumber him for the rest of his life. Perhaps you are thinking at least the adults on campus are trying to give students a firmer grip on reality to the contrary, the adults actively encourage the hysteria, a massive diversity bureaucracy is devoted to cultivating students evermore species of selfinvolvement and evermore preposterous forms of selfpity. Do you want to know the reason for astronomical tuition, look no further in the bureaucratic bloat. Students regularly act out psychodrama and the vice prohodes of equity and diversity and inclusion who use the occasion to expand their dominion. They create biased Response Teams, models presumably on active shooter Response Teams on the assumption that discrimination is so rampant and lethal that a Rapid Defense force is needed. Freshman orientation and dorm sessions invariably feature seminars and toxic masculinity and white privilege. Students are taught that they are either the oppressed or the oppressors. If you are not female, black, hispanic, gay or any of the 116 and still metastasizing categories of gender, the only way that you can escape being an oppressor is by becoming an ally. Allies something usually associated with war, indeed the thinking is that female students and students of color are literally in a war zone on College Campuses and made allies from the Opposing Side to survive. Am i exaggerating . I am not. Uc berkeleys division of equity and inclusion hung banners throughout campus reminding students of the universitys paramount mission, assigning guilt and innocence in the ruthlessly competitive total pool of victimhood. One banner featured a female black student and a hispanic male student allegedly pleading, allow people other than yourself to exist, a message directed to berkeleys white students and faculty. This is not hyperbole, they mean it literally. College president s are the worst of offenders and encouraging the victim ologies. After the three hour expletive field tirade against the yield sociologist, yields president peter silvey actually thanked the thugs for making him proud of his student body. Yellow confirmed a justice praise unto the most aggressive participants. The dean of the Harvard Medical School recently removed the portraits of the greatest physician trying scientist from interest talk to this school. You can guess the reason. They were all male. And thus looking on them would make harvards medical students feel uncomfortable and unsafe. We can only wish these doctors lock in the operating room. Narcissistic identity politics has destroyed the serious pursuit of knowledge throughout the humanities and most of the social scientists. Students are being given a license for ignorance. All they need to be told about a book is the content and gonads of the author. To know whether they can dismiss its content as thoroughly repugnant and not worth reading. Shakespeare milton, plato and locke have all been variously disseminated by students who have not the slightest clue about pericles in athens, the renaissance or the enlightenment. A colombian graduate browsed about the curriculum, who is this mozart, this haydn, the superior white men, they uphold the premises of White Supremacy and racism. No professor has ever defended our intellectual patrimony against such shameful outbreaks of ecstatic know nothing if his without qualification of respecting diversity. Academic identity politics are now rapidly spreading throughout the culture at large, every nonacademic institution no matter how craddick is vulnerable. Above all the stem filled. Exhibit a in our cultures dissent into identity driven mediocrity and thought control is the firing of computer engineer james do more from google in august 2017. The more he had written the carefully fact memo suggesting the career preferences of males and females may explain why there is not a 5050 gender parity at google and other tech firms. The language that google ceo used in firing mr. Tomorrow was a direct import from academic victim ologies. Googles employees were hurting because he had dared to challenge the feminist orthodoxy. What followed his firing was even scarier. A Regional Branch of the National LaborRelations Board upheld googles action on the same victim grounds. Mr. Tomorrow is memo had made googles employees felt unsafe at work. According to the nlrb associate general counsel. The memo constituted discrimination and sexual harassment. Consider for a moment what the nlrb ruling means for science. Any evolutionary biologist, psychologist or economist who studies the different risk preferences and appetite for Competition Among males and females is now at risk for his job. These branches of science can shut down completely no matter that their findings are true. The thinking that got him fired is the dominant characteristic of time. In the proportional representation of racial ethnic and sexual groups in any institution by definition a result of discrimination. There are different capacities, cultures, so bills and behaviors that explain the personal representation is not just to boot, and a get you fired. That was author Heather Macdonald from 2018, next as we continue the look about books of race in americas journalism professor pamela in her presentation she examines whether diversity programs are working in the areas of entertainment, academia and corporate america. What im not optimistic about is White Americas ability to see past the fiction of africanamericans in linux people, the centuries old the meaning images of people and how the house is much to do with the lack of diversity and how education systems, what is on museum walls, what is in our literature, were in a toxic culture, where people are color are concerned in a lot of ways this is putting lipstick on a pig. You are trained to address something it is a bandaid upon a gunshot wound on cancer that we have not even begun to do with because i know ive been on the faculty at nyu for going on 26 years, i have not seen curricular changes the way that one would expect in the 1960s. Thats where all the college protester about, the faculty of color, the curricular that addressed the history of race in this country that presented a more realistic take of america so White America can understand its complicity in the continuing inequality in the continuing racial injustice, i am optimistic that it can be done unless the will to do it. And the other amazing part of this book that is a little bit separate from the industry is about the three fields, academia, journalism and what came across to me so strongly, so strongly that i emailed her at 11 00 oclock a few nights ago, it is like these are the fields that are representing the world. And i thought about the me too movement where what we saw in the last couple of years, the men who were being accused some of the men, a lot of them were in journalism, they were political journalists, they were telling the story of Hillary Clinton in 2016, charlotte b rosa matt lauer, Harvey Weinstein actually gave money to Hillary Clinton so it doesnt follow, these men are telling us our stories and the same is true in much worse for people of color because academia and entertainment has pushed this narrative. Much of my work, you know because you know me, is concerned with portrayals because i think portrayals, you can draw a Straight Line from these demeaning portrayals to Trayvon Martin who the Police Pulling over someone and they end up dead, just innocent people, last week someone in their home, people in their homes, people think of it as just a show, just a movie, just a book, it is like no, has reallife consequences for a whole race of people. So all of my work somehow kind of confronts the implications of media portrayals, portrayals of literature because they have reallife devastating consequences for people of col color. Right in there laughed at. We paid attention the last few years, but i think we should pay more attention to how the slave trade built major universities especially the ivy league but not just ivy league, theres starting to be more attention and that is great but when you think about it i dont mean to sound like a naive person but that is part of what is going on and you also have all these academics going back into the 19th an early 20th, not just early, charles murray, almost to the present but these people embedded in academia who were just about the peddling of White Supremacy. They will look at a book like this where the look at scholars of color who want to look at that past and connect the dots to where we are, it is like moveon. What does that have to do with anything, are you kidding me, has everything to do with it. When have we disrupted, even the narrative, when have University President s gone before their student faculty body and said we have been complicit for centuries. The way we have told the story of america, the way we have told the story of africanamericans, the way we have told the story of native americans, who is doing that. Almost no one. It has to start, Everyone Wants a simple solution to this problem, there is no quick fix, its what they say they want driveby diversity. They want something really quick, i didnt interview earlier today on bloomberg, maybe five minutes and its like quick tell us. How do we do it. Just write it down. It is not that simple. The American Experience is multilayered, complicated and people want to look at someone like me and say you made it, what is your problem. My problem is that i know that many other people who look like me do not get the opportunity, people much brighter, People Better writers, better scholars, who did not get to have the kind of opportunity that i have and so we would just post race. Two and half years ago. [laughter] cbs news, cnn, we would post race. Now its like, were not posted not anymore. But we never were. Every achievement and stick the flag in the ground and say we won. We elected barack obama its like no, we had reconstruction with the Civil Rights Movement and we have been in these cycles forever, is it to step forward one step back or one step forward two steps back. I go back and forth. On my bad days its one step. How much do you feel like electing barack obama broadus donald trump. I feel very strongly that were living in a backlash to the backlash of reconstruction, seeing the black governors and senators and congressmen, people were not having that and thats where you have an epidemic so now were living through something similar to that again and its america. You are watching book tv on cspan2 with a look of books of race in america. Now here is wall street journal columnist jason reilly from the monthly Interview Program and depth, and december 2019 with his views on the subject. I think there is a tendency to view black history at large typically in america of a history of whites have done to blacks. And there are various reasons for various groups i want to keep that narrative alive but in the end i think las black histos about more not. Yes racism still exist, i dont know any reasonable person who would argue otherwise in nor do i expect to see america vanquished of racism in my lifetime. But i do think that black history is more than that, for me, the more relevant question is what can be done in the face of whatever racism still exists. What was done in the past by blacks in the face of racism. I think that is a relevant story to tell today and that is the message to give to the young people today and my fear is that by perpetuating the notion that its all about victimization and all about racism, you are sending the wrong message to the next generation. The police are out to get you, employers or races, you send a kid out the door and thats a message and i dont think youre helping that child. Have you felt the sting of racism . Certainly. Ive experienced racism, ive been called names, have been followed around department stores, i been pulled over by police for no reason that i could understand. Tell me about that in detail in washington, d. C. , what happened where were you. I was doing internship back in the early 90s in washington, d. C. , i was interning at usaid today and stay with a relative in the area knows on the sports desk so we didnt leave work until the baseball games on the west coast were over, it was quite late at night i then. And i was driving to and from my uncles house where i was staying in the usa today headquarters and i had my car which had new york plates because i was from new york although i was driving in d. C. I was driving home one evening after work, probably early the next morning sometime after midnight and i hear the sirens blaring and the police pull me over and ordered me out of the car at gunpoint and push me to the ground, face away from the car and all the rest, i got to the description of someone they were after. What were you thinking . I was terrified. I remember getting back into the car after i left because they seem to be gone as quickly as they came after they realized i was not the right person. And just sitting in my car shaking, i remember i had a standard and i could not get out of gear, my hand was shaking so vigorously. But it was terrifying. Historian washington, d. C. Three black man, 16 years old at the time, 36 years ago convicted of a murder they did not commit, they were just released from jail, what does that tell you about americas criminal Justice System. It is not perfect. I think you will find and be hardpressed to find a black person of my age who has not experienced the things that ive experienced, i think the criminal Justice System is an improvement over what used to be and my father and grandfather experienced in this country but it is still not perfect. I would caution against taking these examples and saying they are typical. Versus exceptions or operations. Or saying that the reason the criminal Justice System is a racist system per se. I dont see a lot of evidence for that and i think often times we have discussions about racial makeup of prisons in jail but we dont talk about the racial makeup of people who perpetrate crimes in this country and i dont think you can have one discussion without the other. As imperfect as the criminal Justice System is, has been and continues to be, i still think there are behavioral differences among groups that lead to some been over representative in that system and others been under representative. The titles of three of your books, the first one, please stop helping us, what is the message. That was a look back at the Great Society program put in place under Lyndon Johnson expanded under nixon and others and i want to say what is the track record, these are programs that were put in place to help the black poor in particular. Welfare programs, housing programs, expansions of minimum wage laws and so forth, i wanted to look back and say what is worked, what has not worked and why, i was attempting to do that with the book. Your other b