Abram we begin with Manhattan Institute heather mcdonald. She argues identity politics challenging diverse inking at the collegiate level. This is from 2018. This is a different experience, ive been speaking on College Campus recently. [laughter] do you know what that means. I received a lockout, storms the stage strategy and at Claremont Mckenna in socal about the black aid that prevented anyone from actually attending my talk. Socalled students of color at nearby Pomona College announced that i was a fascist white supremacist trans folk where pope and excellent of interlocking systems of domination that produced the conditions under which oppressed people are forced to live. [laughter] actually have an audience still it seats and apparently willing to listen is an unusual experience that may take me a while to get accustomed to. Weve been hearing a lot of late about the crisis free speech on College Campuses but not much about its root cause. The narcissistic technology thats rapidly spreading from academia to the rest of culture. In a word, the American University is in the grips of mass hysteria. Students actually believe that they are victims of oppression and risk their lives to circumvent racism and sexism. The degree of model is impossible to overstate. At brown, students of color occupied the president s office and complained about having to meet such academic expectations is attending class when they were so focused on staying alive at brown. [laughter] at yale, a mop of minority students surrounded a highly respected sociologist and cursed and screamed at him for three hours because his wife sent an email suggesting students could choose their own halloween costumes, the diversity bureaucracy. Among the shouts of shut the f up, and im censoring that. And you are disgusting, we are directed at this mild mannered leftwing professor was a cry of, we are dying from one of the renters, referring to the endangered status of heels minority students, my favorite moment in this parade of narcissism came from princeton. In 2015 from a princetons black students chanted, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. This phrase was first used by hammer, a civil rights activist who was beaten in the 1950s for trying to vote. Zooming through hammerhead crowds of plenty for being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Any princeton student, i dont care if hes green, purple or orange who thinks of himself as oppressed is in the grip of a terrible delusion that will encumber him for the rest of his life. Or 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 and students evermore arcane species of selfinvolvement and evermore preposterous forms of selfpity. You want to know if the reason astronomical tuition . Look no further than this bureaucratic book. Students regularly act out psychodramas of oppression before an appreciative audience of diversity, Equity Diversity and inclusion who use the occasion to expand their dominion. Many campuses have created bias Response Teams. Models on active shooter Response Teams on the assumption that discrimination is so rampant and lethal that Rapid Defense force is needed. Freshman orientation and storm sessions and variable features toxics masculinity and white privilege. Students are taught that they are either the oppressed or the oppressors. If youre not female, black, hispanic, gate or any of the 116 and still metastasizing categories of gender, the only way you can escape being an oppressor is by becoming a quote ally. Allies are something usually associated with war. 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. In my exaggerating . I am not. Uc berkeleys division of equity and a conclusion on banners throughout campus, reminding students of the universitys paramount mission. Assigning guilt and innocence in the competitive term pole of victimhood. One banner featured a female black student in the stroke will 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 and encouraging this delusional victim knowledge of. After the three hour expletive field tirade against the yellow sociologist, yells president , peter actually thanked them for making him proud of his student body. Yellow subsequently conferred Racial Justice prize on two of the most aggressive participants. The dean of the Harvard Medical School removed the portraits recently of its greatest position scientist from the Entrance Hall of the school. You can guess the reason. They are male. Looking on thin look medical students feel uncomfortable and unsafe. We can only wish these budding doctors walk in the operating room. [laughter] narcissistic identity politics destroyed the serious pursuit of knowledge throughout the humanities and most of the social sciences. Students are being given a license for ignorance. All they need to be told about a book is the melanin content and gonads of its author. To know whether they can dismiss its contents as poorly repugnant its not worth reading. Shakespeare, plato, and clark have often variously descendents traded by students who have not the slightest clue about peregrine athens, the renaissance or the enlightenment. A columbia undergraduate restaurant columbias core curriculum. Who is this mozart . These superior white men, she said upholds the premises of White Supremacy and racism. No professor has ever descended our intellectual patrimony against such shameful outbreaks of ecstatic know nothing is him, without having fueling conversations about respecting diversity. Academic identity politics are now rapidly spreading throughout the culture at large. Every non Academic Institution no matter how previously bureaucratic is now vulnerable. That means above all, the stem fields. Exhibit a in our cultures decide to identity driven mediocrity and thought control is the firing of computer engineer, james from google in august 2017. He had written a carefully recent factbased memo suggesting the average career preferences of males and females may explain why theres not a 5050 gender parity at google and other tech firms. The language google ceo used in firing him was of direct import from academic technology. Who was employees were quote hurting, he said because he dared to challenge the feminist orthodoxy. He followed his firing was even scarier. The National Relations board upheld googles action in the same victim grounds. His mama had made googles employees feel unsafe at work. According to the nlrb associate general counsel. The memo does constitute it discrimination sexual harassment. Consider, for a moment, but this 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 not at risk of his job. These branches of science but shut down completely, no matter if the findings are true. The thinking that got him fired is not the dominant characteristic of our time. It holds the absence of proportional representation of various racial, ethnic and sexual groups and any institution, its by definition a result of discrimination. To suggest different groups have different capacities, cultures, skills and behaviors that explain the lack of representation is not just taboo, it will get you fired. House author heather from 2018. Next, we continue our look on books about race in america. 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, this centuries old demeaning images of people and how that has as much to do with the lack of diversity. Our education system, whats on museum walls, puts in our literature. We are in a toxic culture were people of color are concerned. In a lot of ways, these diversity initiatives is like putting lipstick on a pig. Youre trying to address something without really addressing the cancer of the culture. Were putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound, a cancer that we have not even begun to really deal with because, i know, ive been on the faculty at nyu for going on 26 years. Ive not seen curricular chang changes, the way walmart expect in the 1960s, all of the protests. The lack of curricula that addressed the history of race in this country that prisoners and a more realistic american select White America could understand complicity and continuing inequality continuing Racial Injustice. Until that happened, im optimistic that it can be done. Im less optimistic about whether we have the will to do it. The other amazing part of this book thats a little separate from the industry is really about these three fields. Academia, journalism and entertainment. What came across to me so strongly that i emailed her like 11 00 a few nights ago, its like these are the fields that are representing the world. I thought about the me too movement where we saw in the last couple of years was that meant being accused, some of the men from what they were political journalists, telling the story of the brooklyn in 2016 and matt lauer and mount from Harvey Weinstein gave money to Heather Clinton so doesnt follow but these men are telling us our stories. The same is true much worse for people of color because academ academia, journalism and entertainment has just pushed this narrative. Rights. Bunch of my work, you know because you know me, its concerned with portrayals portrayals you can draw a Straight Line from these demeaning portrayals to trave on martin killed two Police Pulling over someone and they end up dead. Innocent people, last week someone in their home these people think of it as is just a show, just a movie, just a book, its like no. It has reallife consequences for a whole race of people. So all of my work somehow kind of confronts the implications of media portrayals, portrayal literature because they have reallife devastating consequences for people of col color. 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 ip leak but not just the ivy league. Theyre starting to be more attention paid thats great but when you think about it, i dont mean to sound like a naive white person but the more i think about it, its like thats part of whats going on and you also have all these academics going back into the 19th and 20th, early 20th not just early, charles murray, almost to the present but these people embedded in academia were just about the paddling of White Supremacy. But then they will look at a book like this where they look at scholars of color who want to look at the past and connect the dots to where we are. Its like move on. What does that have to do with anything . Are you kidding me . When have we disrupted even the narrative . University president s from before their student faculty body and say 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. Whos doing that . Almost no one. It has to start, Everyone Wants this simple solution to this problem, theres no quick fix. They want something really quick. I did one on bloomberg and its maybe five minutes. Its not that simple. American experience is multilayered, complicated and people want to look at someone like me and say you made a, whats your problem parks. Right. My problem is that i know many other people look like we dont get the opportunity. People much brighter, people, better fighters, better scholars who didnt get to have the kind of opportunity ive had. It hasnt ended. People thought their post slave. We would just post race like two and a half years ago. Cbs news, cnn, we were post race. Now its like more and more fame. No we are not. We never worry about. So for every achievement, we want to celebrate and stick the flag of the ground and say victory, we went. We want the Civil Rights Movement. We elected barack obama, its over. Its like, no. We had reconstruction. We have the Civil Rights Movement and dragon and all the backlash to that. We been in these cycles forever. To step forward, one step back. How much do you feel like electing barack obama brought Us Donald Trump . I feel very strongly that we are living in a backlash to barack obama just as we did the backlash to reconstruction. Thats where you have the epidemic of mentionings and black. For now, we are living through something similar to that again and its america. You are watching tv on cspan2 with a look at books about race in america. Now heres wall street journal columnist, jason riley from our monthly Author Interview program indepth. I think theres a tendency to view black history at large, particularly in america. As a history of white whites have done to blocks. There are various reasons why fairy scripts want to pop keep that narrative alive but in the end, black history is about more than that. Yes, racism still exists. I dont know any reasonable person who argues otherwise and nor do i expect to see america vanquished of racism in our lifetime. But i do think of black history is more than that. For me, the question, the more relevant question is, what can be done in the face of whatever racism still exists . What was done in the past in the face of racism . I think thats the relevant story to tell today and thats the message to get to young people today. My fear is that by perpetuating this notion, its all about victimization. Its all about racism, youre sending the wrong message to the next generations. Employers are racist. He sent a kid out the door, i dont think your helping the child. Have you felt the sting of racism . Absolutely. I experience racism, ive been called names, happen all around department stores, ive been pulled over by police for no reason that i could understand. You write that in detail. In washington d. C. , what happened, where were you . I was doing an internship in the early 90s in washington d. C. I was interning and think with a relative in the area. As on the sports desk so we had to we didnt leave work until the baseball games on the west coast were over so usually quite late at night. I was driving to and from and usa today headquarters and i have my car which had new york plates because i was from new york although our striving duty and i was driving home one evening after work, sometime after midnight and i hear sirens blaring and police pull me over and order me out of the car at gunpoint and pushed me to the ground. The say that the description of someone that went after. Were you thinking . I was terrified. I got into the car after i left, they were gone as quickly as they came after they realized i wasnt the right person and sitting in my car, i remember i had a standard and i couldnt get it out of here my hand was shaking so vigorously but it was terrifying. Making national headlines, three black men, 15 years old at the time. Thirtysix years ago convicted of a murder that cannot commit, they were just released from jail. What does that tell you about americas mental Justice System . Its not perfect. I think you will find, youd be hardpressed to find a black person of my age who hasnt experienced the things that ive experienced. I think the criminal Justice System is certainly an improvement over what it used to be, my father or grandfather experienced this country but its still not perfect. I would caution against taking these examples and think they are typical. Or saying the reason so many blocks are involved with the criminal Justice System is because it racist system. I dont see a lot of evidence for that and i think often times we have discussions about the racial makeup of prisons and jails but we dont talk about the racial makeup of people who perpetrate crimes and people cant just 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 something over representative and that system and others underrepresented. The titles of three of her books, the first one, please stop helping us. Whats the message . That was really a look back at the Great Society program put in place under Lyndon Johnson expended under nixon and others. I wanted to say what is the track record . These are programs put in place to help the black, or in particular. Welfare programs, housing programs, expansions of minimum wage laws and so forth and i wanted to look back and say what has worked, what hasnt worked and why . Thats what i was attempting to do with that book. Your other book, black power . That was about i have a little bit in police stop helping us. Its essentially about the track record of using political power to advance a group economically which is essentially the strategy of civil rights payments since the time of cane. The issue there was if we can integrate political institutions, the economic, Everything Else will take care of itself. Reducing our own people in place. The Civil Rights Movement had success in doing that. If you look back by the e