These debates and you can catch audio of these on the podcast you will find in the store. I would like to thank the foundation for making this yearf he is possible. Im the economics books editor and the director and the moderator. For more information to buyor tickets to the future debate, go to the website at the support forum. Org. The audience initially votes for, against or undecided on the resolution and then again after the debate is over. It is as follows. Americas colleges in the environment that makes them aa hostile space for africanamerican students. Defending the resolution to my right we have Lawrence Ross thes author of black bold blackandwhite politics and race on americas campuses. It. With any questions you want to put to him after the debate. We have Camille Foster in telecommunications entrepreneurt and host and cohost of the libertarian podcast the fifth column. [applause] so now we will close the voting can begin. Colleges foster the racist environment that the them aahosl hostile space fortake i africanamerican students. How many of you have heard that song before . The chapter at the university of oklahoma from about five or six different members in the midwest and everyone was shocked when they saw the video and it went viral and even fox news thought this might be a little bit racist. Me because we like to think that racism is some sort of an expera merrily along series of unfortunate events that are isolated, this isnt the first time. No one ever connected the dots. It was reminiscent of the memoir and they said you better play it cool or sunday school. They were talking about the Baptist Church in birmingham alabama. Is this a coincidence . This is the tip of an iceberg for the type that you see on College Campuses. I was doing research between 350 to 500 on the College Campuses that are reported. What are we talking about . Do you want them blac dressed un blackface it seems every year you want people trying to mimic, quote on quote, africanamericans it happens all the time. Eating watermelon and fried chicken. This happens every single year. It happens on a regular basis. It happened twice in one year at the American University and it happened a couple weeks ago. They decided to put a guerrilla map on his face and then hand am out to students wear black lives matter. Times its sometimes it is part off organized chapter events in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Its in the newspapers and, archives and every place you can pretty much find it. Its only in the south because the university of alabama that does have its racist issues, but now it happens in the survey, columbia, berkeley, ucla, every place, whether Small College or private college it happens in every particular place but heres the problem. Im pretty sure some of you in the audience would say thats 105 so that is a game i am not going to play. What are they trying to do wheno they come onto those campuses,ts they are coming onto the campuses specifically to get anr education and what is happening is these university itself andsi when we talk about the universities it is creating ach hostile environment. I want to reread the resolution. They foster a racist environment that makes them hostile spaces. The issue is when we talk about the environment it is an adjective for the gnome environment as though it is natural and doesnt contain racism of its people from outside of the great. Im going to argue for the affirmative but i still dontenp believe that. Its part of america as any other place so therefore we shouldnt make the assumptionth that it is not racist. This goes back to one of the earliest studies done by the sociologist. What is the Racial Climate on the campuses in the summit was restricted because they were not allowed on the campuses and there was no survey but others said we treat them exactly like the white students and others were never bringing them to campus because we couldnt deal with their safety but it is eas. For us when we talk about the College Campuses to think of them as educational disneyland. It is a utopian space. An nobody remembers it and we even talk of it as an ivory tower. As a practicality of the world not separate from the real world or the american society. The universities are composed on a numbeofa number of elements. The administration, yes, the buildings, the campus. It is warm and inviting and it doesnt happen like that. Its not like that. You have to remember the hostility isnt just a th quantifiable fact that we have all of these incidences. How do students feel when they get on campus, do they feel welcome when they get on campus and that isnt something that other people can tell them. T one of the things we want to talk about without getting specifically to the root of it which of course is of White Supremacy. I should have given you a warning i was going to say White Supremacy and make it the same space for all of you. Even if you dont believe that, look at what the students havean to deal with. In its field that they have to slaveholdintheslaveholding famid burned alive 100 africans in order to put down a slave rebellion. I do love these people, located on the Johnston County plantation that is one of the leading advocates which is also advocated for the lynchingf thats 500,000 from the Strom Thurmond building. Then two weeks ago they did havt the flyers on the multiplee campuses around the country and that is the history that you have in terms of how they see themselves on the campuses. A lot of times it isnt historical relics. This is reality in the fact no a one would ask them to look like they are fully human but why specifically, ive studied it, it doesnt happen on a highh school or elementary campuses but the one reason why i think in particular the architect is because colleges are economical sociological, transformational and whether or not you are going to uphold White Supremacy oror transform it in society, the students on the campuses are a direct threat so that means people then decide to attack th threat. Africanamerican students do not go to the same schools or live in the same neighborhoods. 74 of the students live or go74 to a segregated school but 38 go to a k12 school before they get to college and its about t 80 or so for white students coming to college. But despite all that, the study says in terms of how they didna try hard enough despite how hard it was to get to campus. You would find a at lsu saying they had a mail to investigate. At colgate a young woman was talking about the fact she walked around with a white womat with a metals word and talked about the fact that the year before, no one stopped her and a young africanamerican students walked around with a glue gun for his art project and the police shut down the whole campus because of how theywn thought of one detainee student and one not. So they are all raging white supremacists, of course not. Im i am not saying that i will say that white students and administrators and faculty are coming to campuses with various aspects. Deconstruct racism on this campus. And miami who are racist i cant wait to get here because this aspace for me to be racist. Most peek are not any of that. Most people in the world and most white students and administration and faculty typically are nonracist. Something i believe in egalitarian society, i voted for obama so how can i be racist . They put a more or less justification between racism versus saying i can do something. As long as its over through dont have to do something. Its somebody emss issue. Inside Higher Education did a study with 700 White College president s and they asked them, what is the Racial Climate . Most of them said its good or he can lend. Excellent. They did it again in 2017 and you think it would go down abuse obviously things are not really good it went up. 90 of the College President s who said excellent, went up. So, what happens is theres a kind of not just with the College President s. Its also the students. A woman decided to paint her face black, throw up a bang signed and said it feel goods to be pa nigga. They asked her why . She said im the least racist person i know. If ask myself if youre the least racist person, who is the most racist person you know . 30 second. He doesnt like racism, nine anybody else. No one likes. Like saying i love cancer. But they have myths. Individualized, minimize, and trivialize and dispense the concerns. All the individual instance depend, look at the interest in terms of minimizing, black students are hypersensitive and then triflize it by pick trivialize it by picking out an incident but that makes africanamerican students mad because theyre dismissed. One student said i didnt come to the university of oklahoma, going back to ase for i dime be an engineer but she used what James Baldwin saidment when the paradox of education when you begin to develop a conscious you must find yourself a war with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person. Thank you. [applause] camille, 15 minutes to speak against the resolution. Take it away camille. Great. Only need three of those since lawrence explained the tack tim ago i going to use. Except he is wrong. First, thanks so much to eugene and naomi and john and the rest of the and thanks to all of you for being here, and lawrence, thank you for coming and taking on what is a very difficult and challenging task, trying to prove this really assertive claim about universities being hostile environments. My suspicion is that most of the people in this room who take an interesting in like this are probably university educated. Imagine that wasnt their experience, and im not imagining that because im just going to why not contrive something. Im going to consult a study, except its not one that is well over 100 years old. Its one from bat year ago. In fact ill consult two of them. Both studies we saw the students overwhelmingly save they thought the racial Race Relations on their campus were good or excellent. Not only im sorry about that. This is the other i am at a severe disadvantage i do not like monologues the notion for talking for 15 minute is not committing for me but ill try to keep it going for you guys. Also, lawrence has been studying this stuff longer than i have, but im going to try to make am empirical case, and when i say empirical, its not just a matter over citing numbers its a matter of making claims. If what would we expect to see . I certainly dont think we expect to see 75 of students on campus saying theyre pleased to be the. Theyre happy, they think the Race Relationships on their campus are fine and good. In fact even black students say that. But it is certainly true that black students say that to a lesser degree. What is even more interesting from my standpoint is that these hostile racist environments, when i decided to take a look at this a little more closely, i went and took a look at the top ten and the top 25 universities, both Top Ten Private universities, u. S. Nuss news and world regard, top 25 universities and every single one of the campuses they have a chancellor of diversity. And often Time Thursday multiple people who hold that title. The small fiefdoms that rule over the entire campus, adjudicating various wrongs and making students feel, one hopes, safer, and every single one of those campuses has an Africanamerican Studies Program where you can get a degree, spend your entire time studying that. Many of the campuses have diversetive credit outside earn for taking these classes. That didnt exits when i was in school. But suffice to say there are significant investments being made in pursuit of this goal, and its no surprise, then, this goal of creating diversity on campus and no prize that since i believe the late 1970s, up until about 2015, the rate of not the rate the share of 18 to 25yearolds, africanamericans, in secondary post secondary education has increased by 100 by almost 100 . Twice the rate of white students. Why are they rushing to go to these hostile, racist environments in and why at a time when theyre supposed to be awash in all of these anecdotal cases of racial outrage directed towards them . Is the fbi reporting theyre actually seeing far less reports of hate crimes on the campuses. Im not exactly sure but it may have something to do with the fact that many of these students, who in the same survey had said they believed their College Environment is a lot is producing the sort of Race Relations that one would expect, excellent, good, probably consistent with your own experience at school. Many of them were deeply concerned about the state of black america. They were concerned about black people in general. They were also concerned about the state of Race Relations on other campuses. What is that . Interestingly, i think that there is the very strong possibility that some of the programs that have been put into place to try and ameliorate imagined wrongs to try to create a campus environment that is more equitable and more equal and more fair and that celebrate this traditions of all of the students on campus, rather than bringing the students together, may in fact be creating some divisions. It may in fact be highlights the things about one another that make them different rather than highlighting the thing about one another that make them the thing. What sort of stuff would that be . Perhaps really charged language like White Supremacy, like privilege. What on earth or those things . We were just told chat White Supremacy is something that is not necessarily what is practiced by the klan but some sort of force that is behind almost everything that you do and everything that is around you and everything that surrounds you. Theres an unbroken continuum from the founding of the country, from chatle slavery, through jim crow, on up into your campus where there is a young white girl at the university of maryland, my alma mater, who was photographed in front of a cake and the cake said the words suck i dont suck a nigga dick. That is a very strange phrase. What does it come from . Lil wayne. The lyrics to a rap song. This is one of the myriad anecdotes brought to bear in support of the case that these campuses are awash in racism. I dont think it would make a hell of a lot of sense for me to cherrypick the various incidents of supposed racism and i say supposed not because im denigrating it but because what is racism . What is the trigger . These are subjective assess. Inside many cases. Certainly once you get from a situation where the state is making determinations. Who can attend school at this particular place, if i say to you, you are a detroit a credit to your race, have i in fact insultedow . If someone sends me a message on my ipad and says, good luck at your debate, kill em, die take phones . Die presume that this is in fact a reference to the fact that the fact that black people are overrepresented in Crime Statistics . Is he suggesting that i am in fact a violent person as a consequence of it . I dont know. I cant know that. But one can presume, and unfortunately i read lawrences book. In there are portions i agree with but not many. Oh, man. Im sorry. But not many. And the one thing i do conceit, however, is that it there are number of black people that share the sentiment being expressed. The sentiment that if you walk into a store and someone speaks to you, that this person may in fact be trying to affirmatively get in your way and make certain that youre not stealing anything. But simultaneously the same person might also feel that if they walk in and no one speaks to them, that suddenly its because, well, they must think i aint got no money into spend. What sort of cognitive load are you carrying if youre imagining that in every single circumstance, both the existence of programs to amale youre rate discrimination and the nonexistence of the programs are evidence of the contempt that the world must have towards you. Return somewhere close to 80 . 80 higher for the students with average grades who are applying to the same medical school. Universities are doing everything they can to try to create environments that are identical in terms of the demographic representation of the students on their campuses to the world of the living. There may in fact be the consequences to a program like that if a student that goes to a university that they may or may not be prepared for because the university has a different set of standards for them going to be better off if they take two years of school, accumulate debt and they will finish. Im not sure about that. Is this too and going to be better off if they were to go to a black college or university it might not be as good as another school they could have gotten into. Are they better off going to a school on the basis of their racial identity so that they can be in a monolithic environment that looks nothing like the world they would inhabit . I suppose you might be better off if you are someone that decide you are in affirmatively black person. But for whatever reason, we are in the era when there are people like Richard Spencer posting events and getting far more attention than they deserve what warrant, but there is something good that Richard Spencer does. Every now and again he will talk about white pride and his heritage and how much he loves and appreciates his whiteness. There would be a Student Union on their campus so for whatever reason when we encounter tribalism like basic gross tribalism on the College Campuses in the form of white pride and recognize it for the instinct that it is, something we should be trying to strive to rise above that we make all of the exceptions in our society. When barack obama shows up at Howard University to give a commencement speech, he encouraged a