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April 12, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
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RACE AND CRIME Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep810
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Coming up, I want to talk about race and crime and how academics and the media have repeatedly distorted the data on race and crime to promote a false narrative that blacks are unjustly prosecuted by the justice system.
Debbie joins me for the Friday Roundup.
Actually, after a while, we're going to talk about the politics of abortion and the strange case of two parents who are found guilty of manslaughter because of a mass shooting perpetrated by their son.
Hey, if you're watching on Rumble or listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza show.
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You've probably heard, well, more than once, I've certainly heard many times that the U.S.
justice system, and particularly the criminal justice system, is systematically biased against minorities.
and specifically blacks.
And this is something that we hear constantly in the media, and it's also something that we hear from academics, from scholars.
And often when we read a media report, it purports to look at a study, and the study is showing some identifiable bias.
The bias could be in the number of blacks who are arrested, or the number of blacks who are Sentenced or the severity of the sentence or the likelihood of getting parole or the likelihood of being disciplined when you're in prison.
So various ways of trying to expose and document this supposed bias.
Now, Recently, two prominent scholars, Christopher Ferguson and Sven Smith, decided to do what is called a meta-analysis.
So meta-analysis is not a study, not a new study, but a consolidation, an attempt to look at a large number of studies on a topic that have already been done.
And what you're doing is you're comparing the results of these studies.
You're comparing and contrasting them to see what is the overall conclusion, not of just this study or that, but of these studies taken together.
So it's kind of a way of eliminating the eccentricity of this particular study or that one.
It could be that there are certain factors that you never anticipated or didn't know that caused a result over here, some other factors that cause a result over there.
So the advantage of looking at 10, 20, 50 studies is that presumably these other artificial elements can be removed, can be Can be controlled for, can be sorted out, removed from the picture so that you can see clean the thing that you're trying to see.
Now, what these two scholars, Ferguson and Smith, do is they look at 20 years of academic literature on the simple question of are minorities and specifically blacks mistreated by the criminal justice system?
They look at 50 different studies going all the way back to 2005, so two decades of studies, and the authors say they find two remarkable things.
First, this is probably their main conclusion, there is really no clear or identifiable bias against blacks in the criminal justice system.
Some studies show a slight difference, but some other studies show a slight difference the other way.
And the net effect of these studies is to show that there really doesn't seem to be any bias at all.
The second conclusion, which is perhaps the one that focuses your attention, is that scholars do studies and even when the studies themselves don't show bias, the scholar writes up the article that accompanies the study as if there is bias.
So in other words, the bias is with the scholar.
And what we're hearing from this meta-analysis is that it is quite normal for academics.
Obviously these are academics of an inferior type, the Claudine gaze of this world.
What they're doing apparently is massaging these studies, twisting them, finding small differences that are statistically insignificant and magnifying those.
It's very easy, by the way, to do this.
The way you do it is you violate the core principle of a study.
The core principle of a study is to state in advance what is the criteria by which you're going to determine that something is biased or not.
So, for example, let's say you say, I'm going to study whether or not there is injustice in sentencing in the criminal justice system, let's say between blacks and whites.
So you want to say, I'm looking for a difference that is larger than 20%, or I'm looking for a difference that's larger than 15%.
Because if there's a difference of 0.05%, there could be all kinds of factors that have caused this minuscule difference, and it's not a meaningful difference.
It's not a statistically significant difference.
So if the study doesn't say in advance what it's looking for, because by saying what it's looking for, it sets itself up Like, okay, if we're over 15%, then it's going to be biased, and I'm going to have to try to explain where that bias is coming from.
But if it's less than 15%, it's probably other factors.
And what these studies do routinely, according to Ferguson and according to his co-author Smith, is that these studies by typically left-wing scholars, they don't set forward their criteria in advance.
So what they do is they try to then twist the data to fit the systematic racism narrative.
And not only do they distort their own studies, they will sometimes notice a study that shows no bias and they will not even mention that the study exists.
So they won't say, hey, I found this, I found some systematic bias, but by the way, there are a number of other studies that show...
Show the opposite.
They will pretend like those studies don't exist, and they will act like systematic bias has been consistently found across the board, even though the studies themselves don't show it at all.
So the take-home here from these scholars is that we have been getting False information, misinformation for two decades about crime and race.
Again, this is a function of having ideologically motivated scholars.
Who's the typical scholar who says, you know what?
I'm going to investigate whether our criminal justice system is biased against blacks.
Usually it's someone who's very sure it is.
And they're like, okay, I'm going to prove that it is.
And then you look at the data and maybe privately you're like, oh man, this data doesn't really show much bias.
But guess what? If I look harder or if I look at some smaller numbers and make a bigger deal of them than people normally would, then maybe I can show that, you know, here it is.
Here's the bias that we've been looking for.
And maybe there's more of it if we look hard enough.
So this is a game in which the conclusion comes first.
And then you look for data, and then if the data is, quote, disappointing, you start fiddling with the data.
In some cases, manipulating it and just outright changing it, and that's just academic fraud.
But even if you don't engage in fraud, you can often claim that the data says something that it doesn't really say.
Why? Because the ordinary person never checks.
Let's say you read an article in Bloomberg or you read an article in the Washington Post.
There's a study that shows that there is a significant bias against blacks in criminal justice.
Do you say, oh, guess what?
I'm reading this article.
I'm now going to ask for the original study.
And not only the study, I'm not just going to read the conclusion of the scholar because that conclusion could have been massaged.
I'm going to look at the tables of underlying data to see if the scholar's summary of that data is accurate.
Almost nobody does this.
And let's say that there are scholars who do it who are of the same mindset as the other scholar.
So you have a left-winger who looks at the table and goes, oh man, I don't really see this supported in the data.
But on the other hand, this is a fellow left-winger.
They're ultimately supporting our systematic racism narrative.
I'm not really going to call out a colleague or somebody who's on my side of the aisle and say, you have been massaging and misrepresenting the data.
So I guess what I'm saying here is that clearly there is a Endemic or entrenched academic corruption going on.
An academic corruption that is in league with or aided and abetted by media corruption.
And it takes a couple of intrepid scholars to go back and say, all right, let's put all the studies together and take another look.
Almost like looking at this data in the form of a cold case.
And then suddenly you realize, wait a minute, all the stuff that we've been hearing for two decades...
About race and crime and about how the criminal justice system is systematically biased is not borne out in the very studies that are done by the left-wing scholars who are trying to prove the bias.
Even using their studies and their data, we do not arrive at their conclusion.
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Guys, after not doing our Friday roundup for, what, several weeks now, Debbie is back and back in the saddle.
And honey, you've been through quite a bit in the past three weeks, I guess.
Probably the last... I would say the last month because, well, three weeks ago, Wednesday of this week, we put mom in hospice care.
And I was really...
I was torn.
I went through just...
I actually started the grieving process before anything happened.
I mean, I was just so, so upset about mom, you know, about the thought of mom not being here anymore that...
It really, it was overwhelming.
I mean, you just didn't feel able to come on.
Because there were some times when you were here, because you've also been quite a bit visiting your mom in the Rio Grande Valley.
Yeah, I've been going back and forth every week.
But yes, but I couldn't do it.
I just said, I told you, I said, if I sit there and talk about mom, I'm going to start crying.
So I can't do it. But I have to say, this woman, she is very...
Let's just say she's a strong woman.
Well, you know what? Tell people, though, about how when she was born, this is kind of an amazing...
Episode, when your mom was...
Well, first of all, your mom is one of many children.
Yeah, she's one of nine children.
Yeah. And seven surviving children.
Two passed away when they were children.
But my mom was born premature.
And I have to preface that with saying that my grandparents were all very tall people.
And all of my aunts and uncles are very, very tall people.
My mom is itty-bitty.
I'm itty-bitty too, but she was very small.
But everyone always said it was because she was a preemie.
I don't know if that's true or not.
But anyway, back, she was born in 36, and my grandmother thought she was dead.
So they put her in a little shoebox, and they covered her up with a little blanket.
And they had her at home. Yeah, she had all her children at home.
And anyway, they covered her up with a little blanket.
And my grandmother's sister, my mom's aunt...
Elena, who my mom is named after Elena, saw that my mom was breathing.
She looked at the little blanket and it was moving.
And she was like, wait a minute, she's alive!
So she grabbed her and I think she spanked her and she gave her a little breath and all of that.
All that to say is my mom was surely alive.
And anyway, back to this hospice business.
Well, you know, before you go back to hospice...
I was thinking, and we were commenting on it.
Just think about it. If, for whatever reason, your mom had not been revived, right?
Yes. In that fateful moment, you would not exist.
I would not. So, if you think about it in that light, that was a fortuitous event, not just for her life, but But for yours.
For mine and my children.
And not to mention, yeah, exactly.
Justin and Julianna. Right.
Yeah. So anyway, very, very interesting and beautiful and miraculous and all of that.
But all I have to say is, you know, when you went down to Harlingen with me, I mean, a fascinating document in its own right.
Yes, yes. Detaching from the world, which apparently the person knows.
And so they begin this process of withdrawing from the world.
Then they inhabit two worlds.
So it's almost like they're undertaking a psychological and spiritual journey.
It's really quite amazing.
But anyway, all that to say is that mom, instead of getting worse, mom is getting better.
Yeah. She is actually getting better.
And in fact, isn't she kind of quizzically, well, why am I in hospice?
She wants to know why she's in hospice.
She wants to know when she can fly on an airplane.
And there is actually, in that booklet, they talk about how sometimes loved ones will regain their strength and they will eat a great meal and they will talk to everybody.
But that usually is only one day, not two weeks.
Oh, right. In fact, I think the reason that they put it in the booklet is they want to not give relatives false hope.
False hope, correct. So they kind of say, listen, if there appears to be a recovery, if the dying person wants to eat a full breakfast, you know, give it to them.
Yes. But don't be lulled into the idea that they're making a comeback.
Yes. It's in fact a stage of the deterioration itself.
But in this case, your mom has been consistently eating a baked potato.
Oh yeah, she's been eating.
They were having to crush all the pills that she had to take, her antibiotics, all that.
They had to crush them.
They no longer have to crush them.
She can swallow the pills whole now.
When I talk to her on the phone, in fact, I'm going again to see her.
When we talk on the phone, I can hear her.
She was whispering for a long time.
I couldn't hear her at all.
She wasn't making a whole lot of sense.
Now she's kind of back to her old self again.
And she loves company.
So if anyone knows my mom, go visit her because she absolutely loves company.
And gets upset if people don't go see her.
So... I thought it was quite comical.
Your uncle descended on her and then finally decides that he's going to go home and rejoin his wife and your mom's like, why is he leaving?
Why is he leaving? She can't understand it.
Anyway, my mom is so funny.
And she wants to know why I can't do the podcast from...
Exactly. She's like, well, why do you have to go back?
And I said, because we have to do the podcast.
Why? Well, why do you have to do it from there?
Can't you do it from here? Right.
So anyway, but...
So everything's great.
I'm very happy.
I will take however long we have left with her and just really cherish everything.
Well, I do think just watching you in the process and...
It's been interesting for me because, as you know, with both my parents, my dad, my mom, they were far away while these things were happening.
So my dad died in 2000, my mom in 2019, but I wasn't present.
But you are very much present and on the scene and watching you go through kind of the...
the agony of it, the grieving of it, but also you came to a point of a certain peace about life and death, which is I think very good.
Well, you have to know that it is very different from the death, my father's death, because his was a sudden death.
He was...
He was 47. And he died of a heart attack.
I mean, he was here one day, gone the next.
So I will take this over that any day because that is like a shock to the system that you just cannot recover from.
It is extremely difficult.
It took me probably 10 years, really, to recover from that.
The grieving of that.
So I will take this any day compared to that.
I think it's partly because at 17, you're still dependent on your parents, right?
You're off to college.
You need your parental support.
And second, this was an untimely death in the case of your dad.
Your mom's 88.
And your mom has lived a really, not only a full, but a fulfilling.
And she's not done yet.
And she's not done yet.
Exactly. I'm just waiting for her to say, well, I'm ready to play piano at the church.
I know, yeah. She might do that.
That could be around the bend.
But anyway, we've laid this out a little more than I had intended.
We want to talk about the pro-life issue, which is not unconnected with all this.
But why don't we take a pause and let's do it in the next segment.
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I want to ask Debbie about her take on the abortion issue, because Trump has been hailed as the champion of the pro-life movement.
Reagan was pro-life, but Reagan wasn't able to do a whole lot for pro-life.
Of course, Roe vs. Wade was the law of the land, and there was no way to get around it.
With Trump, you got three new justices.
You got the overturning of Roe vs.
Wade, so the Dobbs decision.
So, the pro-life movement, looking at Trump, this guy has delivered more than any other president.
And it's not even close.
And yet, some of the pro-life leaders, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Lila Rose, they seem to be unnerved by Trump's recent statement.
I'm going to let abortion be decided at the state level.
I'm not going to push for a federal law.
We had a goal.
And the goal was let people in the states decide what they want to do about this issue.
I've achieved that goal.
And so what is your take about this?
Because there clearly is a...
clash between principle on the one hand, which is abortion is always wrong. And, and the legal strictures that are placed on abortion, which the American people seem to be seem to believe that it might be okay to restrict abortion under certain circumstances. But I don't think that there are that many states
where a complete ban on abortion would be what the people would go for. Right.
Right. It will never change.
Because as long as people think that abortion is a woman's right to choose, or that, you know, a fetus isn't really a baby, it's not really viable, so, you know, yeah, you could end it.
As long as people think that, then we will never win this debate, ever.
So we have to win the debate.
And again, does anyone now, present day, think that slavery is, it's okay.
It's okay for the South, maybe not for the North, but you know what?
If the South wants it, they can have it.
Does anyone truly believe that today?
So I believe that it is very similar to the slave issue back then, right?
You can't go full abolitionists.
Because you're never going to win it.
You're not going to win that debate.
And Lincoln understood that. He understood it, and I think Trump understands the abortion debate as well, in very similar terms.
Yeah, I think that's right. Trump, I think, thinks that the Democrats are hoping that the secret bullet of abortion will solve all their problems on the border with illegals, with a horrible economy, with foreign policy disasters, one on top of the other.
Biden thinks all of that can be put to the side by getting people riled up on this one issue.
And so Trump's view is, listen, I've delivered on this issue.
It's not like I've done nothing and I'm asking the pro-life movement to just bear with me through the election.
No, Trump is saying the thing that you wanted and that you have wanted for four decades...
I have delivered. You have it.
So now you have a task ahead of you.
And I think this is really where I think the pro-life movement should not drop the ball.
And that is, there is a lot of work to be done, particularly in the red states.
Places like Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio.
If you're losing referendums in those states, then there's a problem.
Then you have not made the case like you said.
Because if people are ambiguous about this, like, I don't know when life begins, then they're going to say, well, let the woman decide.
I mean, look at this Arizona issue by the Arizona Supreme Court, right?
Everybody's freaking out about it.
Everyone, even the conservatives who run on abortion are like, yeah, that's going a little too far.
Well, it really isn't going too far.
However, convincing the people that that is the right thing to do right now, today, it's just not going to happen.
And it hasn't been done. And it has not been done.
The case has not been proven yet.
Now, why do you think that is?
Because it seems to me like in 1973, it was a little harder to do.
In fact, if I go back to that debate, and I'm familiar with the debate from the late 70s, they would produce prominent physicians.
Here's a French doctor.
He's going to tell you about the various stages of this conception, and then this is when the heart develops.
And so, you had to resort to a certain medical terminology.
But now, with the ultrasound...
You can actually see for yourself that what is in the womb is a living, breathing, genetically distinct, having its own organs and features human beings.
So the pro-life movement has been given through technology a visual demonstration.
A gift, really. A gift. Yeah.
And so why you can't make the case is a mystery, right?
Well, it's not really a mystery, honey.
It's not. Because think about it.
When academia, Hollywood, and the media all side with the abortionists...
That is pop culture.
That is the norm.
That is what people think of as the norm.
And as long as they continue to say that it's woman's health care and that it's woman's right and this and that, of course, they don't care about women when it comes to trans, but in this instance, they do, right?
I think that it's very hard to counter that narrative.
They win the narrative because they have all of those people backing it.
I mean, you raised an interesting counterfactual, which was, what if the media and academia and Hollywood were on the other side?
What if they were drumming home into the minds of all Americans?
This is a horror that is going on in our society.
There is a systematic killing of infants.
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Because it would be something that even the TikTokers would be talking about.
Like, you can't kill a baby.
And it would be like, I don't want to say propaganda, but if they did that, it would change everyone's mind on it.
And I mean everyone. Everyone.
Everyone's mind would be changed because of it.
You know, my mind was changed when I had a miscarriage.
That was when I realized, you know what, this is a baby.
And it's not that I wasn't pro-life before, because I always said I would never have one.
However, I always said, but I'm not going to tell so-and-so what to do.
And I'm not going to go and stand by Planned Parenthood and block the entrance.
I'm not doing that. That's because I really didn't understand what we're debating.
I didn't really understand life and when it began.
But now that I do, I see the point of doing that.
However, that being said, if you want to convince the voters of your state, even if it's a red state, that this is wrong and it should be stopped at all levels except the life of the mother...
Then you have to change everyone's mind as to what it is.
You know the case we were talking about several days ago about the woman who left her kid while she went to Puerto Rico.
Yes.
And the child died, right?
Now that was a very young child, completely neglected, neglected unto death.
And the woman got life in prison.
And in fact, there was sort of no issue there.
Obviously, someone who takes an act who is so negligent, almost deliberately negligent, because obviously an infant can't care for itself, so the child was essentially left to die.
Yeah, it's very sad. Very, very sad.
But your point is, if people thought of the unborn fetus that way, debate over.
There would be outrage. There would be outrage because 98% or maybe even more than that of abortions are done because it's inconvenient.
I don't want to have a baby.
I can't afford a baby.
Not the right time.
I've already got two.
I don't want three. So they make it about themselves and they don't make it about that unborn baby.
Which was basically this woman's motive.
She wanted to go to Puerto Rico.
She had probably no way to take the kid.
So she goes, guess what? I'll just leave the kid.
I'll just go because all I'm thinking about is myself.
Yes. You're saying it's the same mentality.
It is the same mentality.
And as long as people still believe that, we are never, and I mean never, going to win the debate.
Let me ask you about something else, and we can discuss this more briefly, and that is the very interesting case of the parents.
Now, I'm talking about the kid, the young guy who did the mass shooting in Michigan.
His parents were convicted of manslaughter, and Now, I'm not sure I'm okay with this because although, of course, we all raise our children to be in our image and do the things that we want them to do, it doesn't always work, right? Children are their own person.
They become adults. They go their own way.
So it doesn't make any sense to me that when you have children Grown kids who have committed crimes that you somehow can hold the parents liable.
Do you feel the same? Yeah, because I think, as I told you before, I think it's a Pandora's box that you open.
And just because the judge thinks that this parent was negligent in raising his kid...
Okay, well, you know, where does it stop?
Like, okay, well, this serial killer, okay, his parents were really bad.
So they're going to be responsible for all of the killings that he did.
And okay, his cousin actually showed him a video of how to do it.
So his cousin's going to jail.
I mean, it's not going to stop.
So I think this is a very slippery slope that this judge has done.
I mean, I wonder if there was just such a feeling of out.
Now, look, I suppose one could conjure up in the mind an extreme circumstance in which the parents have somehow actively abetted the depravity of the son.
So let's say, for example, the son is psycho, you know, and the parents know this guy could easily kill somebody.
But guess what? Birthday present, it's a gun!
Right. Then you're actively enabling the act, as opposed to, this is a kid that doesn't live with you, doesn't care what you think, they're on their own, you have no control over them.
Regrettably, that's the plight of many parents.
Yeah. And again, you need to be involved in your kid's life.
You need to know what they're doing at all times.
You need to, especially when they're teenagers, really, because they can get into all sorts of trouble and they can mix with the wrong crowd and all those things.
So, yes, you should be...
But that stops short of saying, yes, but these people need to go to jail for 15 years each.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
So... We haven't followed in detail the facts of the case, but I think what we're trying to do is blow the whistle on the fact that...
A criminal justice system is about the accountability of the guy who did it.
Right. And not the parental failure of the parents who should have prevented it.
I mean, think of all the parents that should be in jail now if that was the case.
I mean, think about it. Would you or I lock up Jeffrey Dahmer's parents?
Well, that's what I mean. They may not have been the best parents.
That's what I mean. What, Ted Bundy's parents?
I mean, we could go on and on and on, right?
Yeah, exactly. You know, even...
So it's a decision which...
May or may not be right on its own, but it opens up...
What about all the Al-Qaeda terrorist parents?
Might be worth going and finding them.
I don't know where that came from.
For Abraham Lincoln, as I mentioned last time, the Declaration of Independence is absolutely central and Lincoln appeals to the Declaration of Independence to confirm, to point to, not to establish, but to indicate the full humanity of the black man.
Obviously, the black man in those days called the Negro, and today that kind of phraseology is completely out, but it is the phraseology that comes down to us through history, and so it's not entirely avoidable.
Here's Lincoln. He says that the Democrats in the South want to be able to take their Negroes, to take their slaves into Nebraska, just as they take their hogs into Nebraska.
And then says Lincoln, he says, now I admit this is perfectly logical, if there is no difference between hogs and Negroes.
So here's Lincoln making the point about natural right in a very clear way.
That is, human beings are equal to each other, Equal in being human.
They're not equal to other animals.
And there is a kind of natural hierarchy between humans and other animals.
It is not a violation of rights for a man to ride a horse.
But it is a violation of rights for a man, metaphorically speaking, to ride over another man.
Or to ride another man in the sense of controlling that person and manipulating them and stealing their labor.
Lincoln gives a very telling example.
He says that the Congress that was present at the founding outlawed the African slave trade and attached very severe penalties to people who continued to traffic in human beings from Africa.
So the African importation of slaves was stopped, stopped after a certain date.
Now, says Lincoln, why would the founders attach all these harsh penalties?
To slave trading with Africa if basically slaves were like animals and could be traded.
Why would you say, for example, oh no, you cannot engage in the cattle trade and in fact not only are there severe penalties, we will put you to death if you engage in trading cattle.
Lincoln goes, that makes absolutely no sense because trading in cattle is not wrong.
But trading in human beings is wrong.
And so Lincoln uses this example, an example from the era of the founding itself, to show the founders knew that blacks were human beings.
The founders knew that there was something morally wrong with slavery.
And now, Lincoln is constantly confronted with people who attack him on the grounds that blacks are in a continent that is undeveloped.
Blacks are living in a country where...
There is not a whole lot of inventions, not a whole lot of progress.
A standard of living is very backward.
And this leads to the idea that maybe blacks don't know how to run their own country.
Blacks are not ready for self-government.
Blacks are not as intelligent as whites.
Blacks are lacking in all kinds of civilized qualities that whites supposedly have.
Lincoln was, by the way, very skeptical that all of this was true in a sort of absolute sense.
In other words, it's true in a conditional sense.
You can be in a country that's backward and there could be all kinds of reasons that the country is backward.
So Lincoln doesn't deny that some countries are more backward than others.
But I don't think Lincoln ever seriously thought that blacks were intellectually inferior to, for example, whites.
But this is not ground that Lincoln wanted to fight on.
Lincoln didn't want to be arguing about who's more intelligent, blacks or whites.
To Lincoln, that was really not the issue.
And Lincoln, in a beautiful way, would sidestep those kinds of issues.
People would say to Lincoln, do you support intermarriage between the races?
And Lincoln would say, no, the fact that I don't want a black woman to be a slave doesn't mean I want her to be my wife.
So Lincoln here appears to be yielding to a certain type of public prejudice, and I would argue he is.
In a democratic society, leaders cannot ignore the prejudices even of their followers.
You have to take them into account.
Here is Lincoln.
This is from the Springfield speech of July 17, 1858.
I'm quoting Lincoln."'Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color.' Perhaps not in many other respects.
Still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black.
In pointing out that more has been given to you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little which has been given to him.
In Lincoln's own poignant phrase, if God hath given him little, that little let him enjoy.
Now, let's notice very carefully what Lincoln is doing here.
I'm going to go through this word by word.
Certainly, the Negro is not our equal.
Now, here Lincoln appears to be giving in to the prejudice of the crowd.
By the way, most people in the North, most Republicans, thought that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites.
This was a widespread sentiment in the country, Republican and Democrat, North and South.
Lincoln knows this.
He appears to be agreeing with it, but the key word here is appears.
Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color.
Now that's a very, almost comical phrase.
like me saying, well certainly you're not my equal in height.
Well, height doesn't really matter.
If I'm 5'9 and you're 5'6 or you're 5'11, you're not my equal in height.
But that's not an important category.
So, certainly the Negro is not our equal in color.
And then comes this phrase, perhaps not in many other respects.
So Lincoln is willing to concede, but only as a possibility that maybe the Negro, maybe the black man is not equal in other ways too.
Maybe he's less intelligent, but the key word is maybe.
Lincoln is not saying he is, and he's not saying he isn't.
He goes, well maybe, perhaps.
But then comes his punchline, whether he is or not, the guy has a right to keep what he's earned.
So if what he's earned is less, he has the right to keep that less.
Now, let's come back to the Declaration of Independence.
Because in Lincoln's view, the founders recognized the full humanity of blacks.
And the founders also realized that it would be right to give them the right to keep the fruits of their own labor.
In other words, slavery is wrong.
But the founders also realized we have it.
We've had it for 150 years.
We don't know how to get rid of it overnight.
We certainly cannot have a union without it.
So we're going to keep it.
But we're going to put it, as we think, on a path to dissolution or extinction.
So... To put it somewhat differently, the founder said, we believe that all men are created equal and have certain rights, but we are not in a position now to give all men those rights.
In fact, we are only in a position now to give some men, or perhaps more accurately, most men their rights, but we're not in a position to give all men their rights.
And so... What we are going to do is take the something that we can get instead of the nothing that we will get if we try to get everything.
That's the key to understanding the founding.
To quote Jaffa, if the government had attempted to secure in their fullness the natural rights of all Americans, not to mention all men everywhere in the world, the experiment of such a government would have met disaster before it had been fairly attempted.
But the inability of the founders then and there to secure the rights of all men, whom they believed possessed unalienable rights, did not in the least mean that they believed that the only people possessed of such rights were those to whom the rights were to be immediately secured.
We're going to give rights to some people.
To most people. But not to all people.
But that's not because we believe that only these people deserve the rights and those people over there don't.
They actually deserve them too.
We are simply not in a position of power to be able to give them those rights.
If we try to do that, our whole experiment is going to collapse.
And now I'm going to read a sentence which I'm going to come back to next time.
I think the authors of that noble instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects.
They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity.
It goes on to say...
They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all men were enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were able to confer it immediately upon them.
In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon.
They meant simply to declare the right so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.
So when I come back the beginning of next week, I'm going to examine closely this passage I think one of the most important passages in the entire Lincoln corpus because it so beautifully summarizes Lincoln's full understanding of the Declaration of Independence and of the great divide in America that ultimately led to the Civil War.
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