Ibram X. Kendi: Inside you are two wolves. One of them is racist.
Ibram X. Kendi is a Professor of history, director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, and a research fellow at Harvard University. He is also the author of several best-selling and highly influential books on race in America.It seems like everybody has an opinion of Kendi, and when it comes to the online commentariat, those opinions can get pretty hostile. Even among activists and anti-racists, he seems to spark division, with some grouping Kendi together with other controversial writers like Robin Di Angelo. Kendi is often accused of peddling a pop 'anti-racism' which is at best devoid of substance and at worst toying with totalitalitarianism. With his infamous proposal for a 'Department of Antiracism' that would have power over all aspects of governance, and recent illustrated children's book titled 'Anti-racist Baby', these criticisms are perhaps understandable.But what about the man himself, who in his lectures and interviews, comes across as something of a calm and reasonable voice amongst the culture war maelstrom?In this episode, Matt and Chris, until now famed for being not racist (honestly), courageously hurl themselves onto the pyre of American racial politics. Will they reveal their total lack of understanding of critical race theory and are they racist or anti-racist according to Kendi? Listen and find out.LinksShort interview with Kendi from 'The One You Feed' PodcastInterview of Kendi by Ezra Klein for Vox ConversationsKendi's article advocating for an Anti-Racist constitutional amendment'A Response to (Eric Weinstein's) Geometric Unity' Paper
Listen to content from the greatest minds the online world has to offer and we try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Matt Brown and with me is Chris Kavanagh.
How are you doing today, Chris?
I'm alright.
I noticed you didn't use your title this time, Matt.
What's going on?
I like to mix it up a little bit, you know, keep people in suspense.
You're feeling more communist today?
What is this hierarchy of status?
Professors, doctors, it's all meaningless anyway.
Equity, Matt.
It's true, it's true, it's true.
I don't like to think of myself as a professor.
I think of myself as a professor.
I just abide.
I walk the earth and interact with other beings.
Yeah, it's good.
I want to welcome you, Matt, to our last episode of Decoding the Gurus before our cancellation.
So, yeah, it's been a good run.
It's been a good run, but this is it for us.
Yeah, this is the racism episode.
That's right, yeah.
It's been all building up to this.
All of the rest was just a deep cover to get to our various issues with...
Black academics, and we've got a list of them.
Oh, we've got a lot to get off our chest.
A lot to get off our chest.
So we've already, I think, got listeners out there who are eager to take us out after we show our true colours here.
There's one in particular, a purported philosopher of colour, Liam Bright.
The infamous.
Yeah, very infamous, and he's made threats to us online.
Yes.
So, Liam Bright, the arch-villain that he is, he made a terrible error recently of blocking me.
And now, the reasons for that we don't need to get into, but it may have something to do with my innate tendency to respond to comments with sarcasm.
The other thing was that he unblocked me just before this episode.
And I suspect that that decision was not motivated by realizing the huge error that he's made, but simply because he wants to gather the evidence from this episode and then take me down directly face to face,
you know, denounce me.
I think this is a sheep and wolf's clothing maneuver.
No, I'm sure that's not it.
I'm sure, look, he realized you'd learned your lesson, that your message had been received, and it was time to give you another chance.
That's not it, Matt.
And as I say, as another black academic, I feel we need to slam him, like just to keep up the motif of the episode.
Just anyone.
Just general principles.
Yeah.
I will say, and maybe this is another story that I shouldn't tell, but I'm going to put them all in this episode.
There was a separate occasion where my tendency towards sarcasm, including in racially charged issues, caused some misunderstanding of sorts.
So I think I've told you this before, but I haven't told it to thousands of people in public.
So when I was attending a Japanese class up in...
I was walking to the class with an American girl who was black and who was taking the class with me.
And she was remarking to me about her experiences in Japan with kind of low levels of racism.
And in particular, that at night, Japanese people would sometimes cross the road to avoid walking past her.
And, you know, she was talking about it and was kind of saying it's...
She doesn't feel that it's more to do with them being intimidated or not sure how to deal with the situation, was the feeling that she got.
But she was saying to me, but I'm not intimidated.
I mean, look at me.
So at this point, we were kind of walking quite close to the classroom.
And my response to that...
And I feel this is Northern Ireland's fault rather than my own personal feeling.
When somebody mentions something tragic and unfortunate that has happened to them, there's two options.
And one of the options that my Northern Ireland background has given me is to respond with dark sarcasm.
And so when she said that, I deadpan responded that...
Well, yeah, I mean, I get that because black people are incredibly intimidating and you in particular are quite frightening as a black woman.
And I would have assumed that it was clear that that was a joke.
And we were walking.
She seemed kind of taken aback by that comment.
And then she was saying, no, but, you know, it's not a...
But I continued going down my sarcasm road.
And then as we reached the entrance to the classroom, my brain kind of clicked.
Oh, look at her face.
She doesn't understand that this is you.
You're not racist.
You're like making fun of racists.
And the problem was we only had a couple of seconds and I couldn't exactly, you know, say, hey, I'm not a racist.
I'm poking fun of racists.
I couldn't clarify.
So we kind of walked into the class and parted and I was like, you know, looking at myself like, oh, God.
I can't correct this.
Do I go up there after the class and be like, hey, when I was being racist earlier, that was me booked in fun at recess.
So this is not the first time this has happened, Chris, is what you're saying.
Maybe I should clarify.
It wasn't...
Sarcastic racism that got me in trouble with Liam.
No, no.
No, it was sarcasm.
Yes, yes.
It's not always sarcastic racism.
That would be a problem.
Chris, I'm going to take your side because I'm a loyal co-host and I'm going to say that the real problem here is with Americans who do not understand irony and sarcasm properly.
I agree.
I agree.
I mean, I was talking to someone about this and they were saying that there's a running theme.
On the podcast that I do normally mention at some point that somebody has misunderstood my sarcasm as a serious thing that's caused trouble.
So it isn't an entirely rare experience in general.
So yeah, maybe that should...
Maybe that should tell me something.
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm going to apportion blame equally here.
On one hand, yes, you do have a problem with your relationships and communications.
On the other hand, just a couple of days ago, I described myself as some combination of Gandalf and Jean-Luc Picard.
And I thought that was a clear setup for people to...
Make fun of me.
This was the joke.
But no.
Did you, Matt?
That sounds very much like you, you grandiose bastard.
Exactly, exactly.
But instead of tearing me down, my friends on Twitter went, hmm, yeah, yeah, you kind of are.
Which was very nice of them, but I felt very uncomfortable.
So welcome to Decoding the Self-Deprecators.
This is highlighting, you know, the beauty of Australian and Northern Irish culture.
Which is only fun if the other people play along.
Play along, you bastards.
Yeah, when the sarcasm or the self-deprecation goes past, or in your case, it's grandiosity, but intended as self-deprecation.
But if that doesn't land, you just come across as like a Weinstein.
I thought you were going to say wanker, but that's, you know, close enough.
Well, there's subtle differences in the terminology.
But speaking of Weinsteins, today is a monumental day because two academics, I should have their names.
Yeah, Timothy Nguyen and Theo Polya.
Probably butchered both their names, so I'm sorry for that.
But they have published a preprint called A Response to Geometric Unity, which is Eric's grand theory of everything.
And what they've done, there's a kind of remarkable effort, is they worked from his presentations and ramblings in various podcasts and things that he scrawled on the board or written on notepads that you can see in videos.
And they've extracted from that.
The mathematical formulas are their best guess at what his theory is proposing.
And they've tried to put it all down in a paper that Eric has never managed to do.
And then to take it seriously and see where the issues and flaws are.
And of course, there's massive gaping issues that it's not well specified and it's very vague.
But they also point out issues.
Kind of theoretical issues with the model, even if you're being charitable.
And it's a remarkable effort.
It seems like the kind of thing which, if you really were invested in your theory, this should be seen as good quality criticism.
But I've got a funny feeling that Eric is not going to respond with great enthusiasm to this effort.
I think you're being too pessimistic.
I'm sure he is going to respond to this by writing down his theory in his own article, provide all the mathematical details, make a rejoinder to those criticisms, and the march of science will go on.
I'm sure that's what will happen.
I mean, one of us is right.
I wonder who it will be.
Time will tell, Matt.
Time will tell.
Well, the final sentence from that preprint is, we hope our response is an encouragement to Weinstein to provide further clarity to his ideas, ideally as a technical paper.
So that's a good suggestion, I think.
Good suggestion.
Yeah.
I know we don't do our State of the Gurus thing, but we can do funny guru crap that's going on in the world.
That's the new name for a different set.
And our last guru, Nassim Tlaib, was on The Rampage recently, and I find it quite funny because he just launched a broadside against Joe Rogan.
And I'm going to read it.
So Joe Rogan was apologizing for Ted Cruz, who, for anybody listening, You know, in the future, Ted Cruz, the American Republican bastard slash politician, went out of the state of Texas to Cancun when they were having this crisis with the power shortage due to extreme weller conditions,
extreme cold.
Anyway, Joe Rogan was saying, why is that a problem?
He can't control the weller.
Good Joe.
He's got the issue there.
But Tali responded by saying the following on Twitter.
Joe Rogan is a despicable man.
Low and despicable.
It's like saying, why should a muller care about a sick child?
Is she a doctor?
Can she make him better?
Comedians should know when to keep their mouth shut in the presence of tragic events, as well as matters of a high moral dimension.
About 60 people died in Texas.
So it seems that he's genuinely annoyed.
And I like this because I think it's a good illustration of how Talib is different from some of the other people that we've looked at who wouldn't bite that hand, right?
They wouldn't launch such a searing critique against Joe Rogan, somebody who could give them a platform and who's generally favorable towards anybody who's offering, you know...
Heterodox or maybe right-leaning heterodox opinion.
So it is entertaining to see Taleb when he's on the warpath sometimes.
Yeah, you can really see the appeal, certainly.
Yeah, he's got that strong don't-give-an-f energy.
So yeah, you have to like that.
It's appealing.
Yeah, I think we had him right on the last episode.
The other thing, Matt, before we get into the man of the R, Ibram X Candy, which we didn't mention, I think, yet.
No, we just told people it was going to be racist.
Yeah, we're just a black academic and stuff.
Like, oh, God.
Anyway, the...
What was I talking about?
Oh, right, yeah, yeah.
So, Matt, we did a special episode relatively recently.
We're with Matthew Remsky from Conspirituality.
And one, I wanted to recommend that anybody that skips the special episodes, don't do it.
They're good.
There was a really good interview with the philosopher T. Nguyen, and now there's a really good interview with Matthew Remsky.
And you get to hear things like, you know, why I will be telling Matt at the end of this podcast to grovel at the feet of his muscle master.
You'll never get that reference if you don't listen.
But...
You know, we were giving shoutouts.
I think we forgot to do that for a couple of podcasts, but I wanted to give a shoutout on this episode to Conspirituality, which is a podcast focusing on the overlap between conspiracies and right-wing reactionary movements and the alternative spirituality and yoga and health and wellness sphere,
nicely embodied by the body.
Of GPCers.
So yeah, I think their podcast covers similar topics from us, but they've got really good insights to maybe a bit more serious than us.
And I really think it's a good companion and that people would be better off listening to them.
But don't all go.
You can listen to both.
I could listen to both podcasts.
That's right.
You've got room in your life for two long-form podcasts.
Just drop Joe Rogan.
They're definitely a fantastic podcast.
Imagine our podcast, but with a different scope and much better research.
Better people.
And better people who speak better and use better words.
Yeah, and they don't have obscurantist accents.
No.
Is that?
Or use words incorrectly.
You know, there's tons of things that they get better.
So yeah, that was what I wanted to do.
Now, Matt, is there anything that happened to you?
For our listeners' sake, I want to say that Matt is soldiering through this podcast as a sick little person.
So I was going to say soldier, but that repeats it twice.
And yeah, so if you hear him cough or vomit or whatever it is, Just that's the dedication he has.
So yes, thank you, Matt.
Yes, you're very welcome.
This is brightening up my week because it's been otherwise spent in bed, being bored, spending too much time on Twitter.
I wonder if being sleep-deprived, you know, if staying up late to have long conversations could make someone more susceptible to catching illnesses.
I don't know why I wonder that.
It's just a thought that crosses my mind.
Yeah, that could happen.
Are you saying I could bill some of my medical expenses to our Patreon?
Well, it's a thought.
Yeah, the sacrifices you make for the podcast are real.
They are bodily and they are here.
So Matt's takes today, even if they're super racist, just remember, it's just because he's got the cold and he's on medication.
That's what it's all about.
So, yeah.
Okay, shall we turn to the man of the hour?
Yes, Matt, we shall.
Let's just fucking do it.
Beautifully.
It works seamlessly.
Let's do it indeed.
Throw a cushion to the wind.
So who do we have today?
I usually Google them on Wikipedia, which helps.
We didn't actually talk about who's going to introduce them.
So it's Abram X. Kendi.
People kept asking us to do him repeatedly.
And he's a properly left-wing guru, I would say.
So this is us back in our both-siderism, centrist, bullshit sphere.
And who he is?
Is an American author, professor, activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America.
The director of the Center for Anti-Racist Research at Boston University.
And he's read a bunch of influential books.
He's a figure that draws a lot of ire in culture war circles.
And I think his most famous books are How to be an anti-racist, stamped racism, anti-racism and you, and the children's book, Anti-Racist Baby.
So that probably gives a general gist of the topic that he's covering, which is racism and anti-racism.
And I feel, Matt, we should acknowledge at this point that, as if we haven't flagged this up enough already, but there is a certain trepidation about discussing Ibram on this topic.
Yeah.
Did you think?
Well, we talked about this.
I don't really feel it at the moment anyway.
After listening to him in particular, I didn't know much about it before we decided to cover him.
Except for the general chatter on Twitter.
But after listening to his content, I thought there were some sensible things to be said, both good and bad.
So, jokes aside, I don't think it'll be particularly exceptional.
Yes, I would say, though, it's a simple fact, undeniable if you see us, that we're two white, middle-aged guys, one of us more so than the other.
You're wider than me, Chris.
Well, that's true.
That is true.
I don't have your orange glow.
We also aren't from America.
And I feel like a lot of this area is like a quite American thing, right?
It's talking about the situation in America and the racial dynamics there.
So there's an element that it has to be flagged up that we are approaching this from...
The vantage point that we have, which is not American and as to right guys.
Yeah, but on the other hand, I think it can be kind of interesting to get an outsider's perspective.
So yeah, America does talk and think about these things differently, I've discovered, from Australia and I presume from Ireland.
So even though we're probably very naive in some ways, perhaps just an outside...
Naive point of view could be interesting.
Yeah, and the level of pitch you've reached highlights that.
But I also think that, and this is a thing I'll stand by, I don't really like the standpoint epistemology stuff.
Like, I don't know it that well for a start, but at least the popularized version of it where you shouldn't comment or have opinions about other people's experiences that you haven't lived.
Right. I don't think that's true because I can see the validity to the kind of the modern Bailey position of it.
This good version of that.
I think it's fair to say that somebody who didn't grow up there during the Troubles would have difficulty understanding the dynamics there in the way that somebody who grew up there would.
But I also think that people who read, about the troubles or do research on the troubles or have other experiences related to bigotry and segregation and civil conflicts that they could understand and that even people who have none of those experiences can read things and be touched by it and they might have insight that people who are inside the experience don't have.
I've seen people Who comment on Northern Ireland and they've done it with woeful ignorance.
And I've seen people that have commented on it and been very insightful, even though they didn't live through it.
So, yeah, I'm just agreeing with us that it's okay that we talk about this.
Okay, so I think with our podcast, what we're trying to do is not so much offer our unique insights into the topic or our...
Even though our opinions will naturally bleed into it, what I think we try to do is look at the arguments that are being made in a very academic, dispassionate, logical, analytic kind of manner.
Very much how we would review and edit a graduate student's work.
And, you know, that's just a particular way of dealing with stuff.
You know, it's not the only metric by which to assess things.
But, you know, that's what we'll be doing with all the gurus.
And what we've found is when you do do that a lot of the time, it has internal inconsistencies and logical gaps and large leaps and problems in reasoning that I think anybody who can think can understand.
Yeah, I am beamed for my objectivity and lack of critical passion.
Yeah, so I just endorse that, Matt.
Fully achieve the scientific goal of perfect objectivity.
It's got such a bad rep in the current zeitgeist.
When you say that you're being objective and dispassionate, people just go, no, you're not.
Rationalist, bro.
You rationalist, bro, moron.
But I think the point, unless I've accidentally wandered in the podcast with Sam Harris, is that you acknowledge that's the goal.
To strive for, right?
And that, of course, there's imperfections.
Of course, there's subjectivity that comes into analysis and all these kind of things.
And that's inevitable.
And nobody is claiming that we're doing a completely scientific breakdown of every little voice inflection that people have or that kind of thing.
But striving for a degree of objectivity and not simply...
Murray and Weinstein-style impressions and hot takes.
I feel it's okay.
That's a decent goal and there should be more emphasis on that.
I think we're being too cautious in representing this.
Surely, when you're an academic and you read a paper, an academic article about anything, the whole premise of the idea is that you can read what's being said.
And evaluate it and integrate it into your brain.
So you don't just read stuff and go, well, that's their opinion, so I can't really comment on it because I can't evaluate it at all.
Of course you can.
The whole premise of academia is built on that idea.
Yeah, I would say there's a whole bunch of internal contradictions with this, that academics who are advocating those things do not practice what they're preaching and they're feuding.
So yeah, everybody's screwed, and they all fall short, including us.
But yeah, you know, you and I don't have that many strong disagreements, so this is probably the best that people are going to get.
What we need is the issue that just really upsets both of us.
We're too laid back, so we can have like a, what is it?
Very bad wizards.
Sometimes they got annoyed with each other and started shouting at each other and it was kind of entertaining to listen to drama.
Yeah, let's try to have a proper debate.
Yeah, so stop thinking your objective, Matt, you subjective pig.
Okay, okay, you muddle-headed relativist.
Let's go for it.
But I think, in all seriousness, we should cut probably all of that out and actually show people what we do rather than...
Tell them.
You know what I mean?
I said we just get into it.
I said we just do it.
I said we just fucking do it.
Just fucking do it.
Look, we're famed for our ability to be concise, to not do this long-winded, take some things and waffle around the topic.
So, okay, yeah, maybe let's now start looking at clips with candy.
But, like, that is not philosophy of decoding the gurus stuff.
That stuff matters.
We need to hash this out in the open, Matt, for the listeners.
Don't laugh, I'm serious.
No, no, okay.
Fine, fine.
Well, okay, I'm going to let Kendi...
I've got a clip.
I think it's a good start to his world view and the connections that he's going to put in.
A good overview just to get the ball rolling.
And so then that was the racist idea.
So you had the self-interest, the power, leading to the racist policies.
Then out of the racist policies and the need to justify them, project them, campaign for them, were racist ideas.
And then you had everyday Americans who were believing these ideas, who went on to believe, yes, you know, these black and brown people are voting fraudulently and they're ruining this country.
And then some of them were obviously ignorant about who was actually corrupting the voting process.
And then some of them were even hateful.
And so then you had the racist policies leading to the
Okay.
So any thoughts?
Yeah. So again, let's debate this.
But my take on that is a positive one.
I like the idea that the somewhat delusional ideas about superiority and prejudice
Based on racial categories are ultimately based in some kind of pragmatic self-interest, at least historically.
And I think that's true if you shifted the question to, say, sex discrimination, where, you know, those women are inferior and they're places in the home and the most qualified person to make all the decisions is the man.
Like, those sorts of sexist ideas, I think it's pretty...
Plausible to say that they ultimately stem from the self-interest of the guys, right?
So I think that's what Kendi is explaining there.
Yeah, so I think that clip is giving a broad overview of a bunch of things that we need to go into in more detail.
But I think it shows the logical flow that he sees how things connect.
So he starts with the...
The issue of power, which is a familiar thing as a critique that lefty people focused too much on Foucauldian notions of power.
But he starts from power, who has it, and then the next point to when power is challenged, that racist policies...
Emerge in order to protect the power from changing hands to more equitable situations.
And then those policies in turn lead people into differential outcomes which reinforce racist thought, right?
That this group is doing worse than this group and that's because of a failure of that group.
Now, the one thing I would say there is like, I think he's a little bit too dogmatic in a certain sense about The flow, and I don't think he is when he's being more nuanced, but the notion that racist policy precedes racist thought,
that's not always the case, right?
There are people who are legitimately motivated by racial animus in designing policies which are racist, so it isn't just that the policy creates racist thoughts.
There are people who are just genuinely racist who think that other races are inferior and design policies with that in mind.
And granted, they might not be the majority in modern society, but I think it's good to point out...
That there can be situations where that relationship exists.
But I just feel it's a little bit too strict to say that that's...
One dimensional?
Yeah, that the flow is always like that.
I would imagine you back channels and in some circumstances, things coming downstream with policy being, you know, near the last.
Let me put it like this.
What I hear him saying is that, like, first of all, he's talking at a societal level, right?
I wouldn't disagree with you that, look...
Random people have random opinions about everything.
So you can have someone who's just inexplicably racist against or hates Jewish people, for instance, and there's really no good reason for it in terms of it being instrumental or useful or pragmatic for them or society or whatever.
But I guess he's focused at that societal level.
Big scale.
Where do these things come from?
And I guess I'm just accepting his framing there.
And if I think of examples like India's caste system, for instance, I mean, it involves a lot of prejudice and discrimination.
That doesn't come from nowhere, right?
It's obviously something that arose because it serves the interest of the uppercastes.
Yeah?
Yeah.
But you end up with a chicken and egg situation, right?
Like, of course, some group has power, but it's drawn from religious texts, for example.
And yes, somebody composed them.
But, you know, I feel that you end up with this situation where you're drawing the line between power and policies and structural forces.
There's a lot of back and forth arrows there.
And is the discrimination...
Coming, in some sense, in the holy doctrines that they're specifying systems that entail distinctions between castes.
And in that case, are there not people who are drawing from those scriptural justifications?
But, you know, Kennedy could say, well, but that's ultimately about who had the power to make those scriptures.
So I think it's a complex topic.
I'm not dismissing the way that he...
Is framing it as wrong?
I'm just saying for me, it feels like it's a partial picture, but one that should be emphasized that you don't need to focus on racist sentiments being necessary for racist systems to exist.
Like that's clearly the case, although it's a little counterintuitive.
And maybe I'll play another clip continuing on your point.
Let's start with his definition of racist, because I think this is crucial to a whole bunch of stuff.
Yeah, so most people think of a racist or even a not racist, or even they would presume that an anti-racist are nouns, when really they're descriptive terms, they're more verbs.
And so I think that first and foremost, I define a racist as someone who is expressing a racist idea or supporting a racist policy with their action or inaction.
So I think the important point there is that you can be racist without actually being intentionally motivated by your hatred of other racists.
For his definition of racist, that isn't necessary.
It's simply action which supports racist policies.
And that as a result of that, it means that individuals Should not be considered wholly racist because in a moment they can be racist and in the next minute they can be anti-racist.
In the moments that we are expressing a racist idea that something is wrong with Latinx immigrants or Black people or Asian Americans, the times in which we're expressing Those ideas,
we're being racist.
And if in the very next moment we are making the case that there is nothing wrong with any racial group of people in that very next moment, we're being anti-racist.
It's like it's situational rather than dispositional in psychological terms.
Isn't that right?
I guess that seems a pretty, you know, in as far as it goes, a pretty plausible way to describe or define.
I mean, I guess in everyday language when people talk about racists, it's a little bit different.
Well, I think we should spend some time on the racist and racism definitions that he uses.
But before we get there, so you mentioned about the policies, right?
racist policies and how they can be enacted in the world and lead to racist thought or outcomes.
So I think he gives a pretty good example of this talking about voter suppression.
You also have a growing percentage of people of colour.
And since, because they probably were looking at those trends, particularly during the first term of the Obama administration, and seeing that those trends were not amicable.
You know, to their political prospects.
And so what happens is some of these folks weren't like, well, we're in a democracy, so there's nearly not much I can do.
You know, majority sort of wins in rules.
No, they said, well, when you don't have enough votes, you start figuring out a way to suppress votes.
And so then, out of political self-interest, they started or continued to advocate for Voter suppression policies like voter ID laws.
And, you know, those policies have been found to target African-American voters with, quote, surgical precision.
That touches on a topic that has interested me, the way that the various United States states manage their voting system, which...
To an Australian just seems absolutely nuts.
We've got some history of gerrymandering and stuff over here, but it's since been mostly taken care of via independent processes.
And we also have a compulsory voting system, which I think is a good idea.
And voting is, from what I can tell, in many places in the US, and I realise that the news can be a bit distorting here.
But it seems kind of crazy to me, the restrictions and the difficulties.
At least some people have in some places in voting.
So on voting day, which is always on a weekend, no one has to work on a voting day, then there's a place to vote.
I've lived in many different places and it's never taken more than a few minutes.
And you don't have to provide an ID or anything like that.
You just say, this is my name.
You let them know your address, they look you up in the role, they tick you off, it's done.
Yeah, so this is one of the examples, I think, where people that focus on him as a culture war figure, they maybe are overlooking this kind of stuff, where he's documenting...
A very, very real phenomenon in America that the Republican Party, it's not even debatable.
It's empirical fact that they pursue policies which suppress the votes of specific minority groups that would likely vote against them.
And he's making the case that in some sense, this is entirely understandable because they're acting out of their political self-interest because they're noticing the changing demographics.
And so you would expect them or expect people At least people making policies to favor policies that would allow them to maintain power even as the demographics change.
And there's another clip where he's explicit about how they justify doing this, like engaging in voter suppression.
And I think it's another good point.
So I will play it if you don't mind, Matt.
But then they had to justify those policies.
They had to explain to their voters and other Americans why they were instituting voter ID policies, why they were purging so many voters from voter rolls, why they were cutting early voting programs.
And the case that they made was voter fraud.
So, in other words, they created this idea that all these people were voting fraudulently, which the data proved to Yeah,
era that Ku Klux Klansmen and other neo-Confederates used to undermine these interracial Southern government.
That's it.
Yeah.
I don't know about the history anywhere near as much as I should, but even just thinking about the present day there, Chris, I think it's indisputable that Republicans are quite keen on restrictive conditions for voting because it does benefit them at the polls.
It's a very pragmatic, if not a particularly ethical, approach to take.
My take is a little bit different perhaps from Kennedy's, but it sort of fits with his overall worldview in a weird way, which is that I think that their intent...
Is purely self-interested.
They just want to win the elections, right?
The outcome is to disenfranchise disproportionately non-white voters.
So I'm pretty comfortable with calling those methods racist because the impact is racist, right?
But their intent was not necessarily, you know.
Yeah, he doesn't think the intent matters, though, at all.
Yes, that's kind of my point.
I agree with him that, like, in this example, it doesn't matter, does it?
I mean, why should it matter if the outcome is to take away votes from African Americans?
Yeah, I agree.
So, like, I think this is an example where he clearly does know the history.
I think this is a very reasonable point to make.
Academically informed, well stated, and something that it's useful for people to think about.
So I wouldn't immediately see from this kind of clip why he would engender so much controversy because his tone is quite academic.
And yes, he's talking about racism, but it comes across pretty well there, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you know, both you and I have been in the...
The online discourse and the whole world and a lot of the criticisms of people like Kendi is that they're super woke and that they have these very complicated, abstract, nebulous concepts that don't really relate to the real world.
But I just want to underline your point, really, that when Kendi's talking about things like this, it's pretty straightforward.
It's very concrete and it's something very specific that doesn't seem...
Like it should be controversial.
Yeah.
So let's skip now to like his definitions of what's racist and what's racism.
I think it's important because it comes up in all of the other parts that we'll look at.
So we've already touched on his definition of racist, that it's about the action and in particular...
In some sense, he's an ultimate consequentialist when it comes to it.
But part of the reason he causes controversy is in his definitions of what's racist and what's racism.
And let's hear him explain these, the distinctions between them a little bit.
When we talk about racism with an M, so R-A-C-I-S-M, did I spell it right?
Racism.
When we think about racism, racism is essentially structural.
It's essentially systematic.
It is essentially institutional.
And I think it's critical for us to distinguish between racism with an M with racist with a T. So racist is individual.
Racist is an individual person or an idea or a policy.
Okay.
I think this is a case which is very familiar to me as an academic where somebody starts as their premise.
Here is a very specific way that I'm defining terms, which I think is better and which I will apply.
So in this case, his argument is that racism with an M is always structural and systemic.
Arises from policy.
Yeah, and it shouldn't be considered at an individual level.
So if you're saying racism is a problem, you shouldn't be talking about individual racists.
You should be talking at the level of society and or government.
And racist, on the other hand, is focused at the individual, but it also shouldn't be describing an individual's character.
It should be describing their action.
And the first thing for me here is that, like, I get what his argument is, but I also think...
Using bespoke definitions of common terms invites confusion because what you are referring to with racism and racist will not overlap with what other people understand it to be.
And so where you're writing an academic paper or giving a talk or this kind of thing, I feel that you can do that.
You set out your definitions and you apply them.
But when you start talking to broad audiences and making policy recommendations or having your books on bestseller lists, I feel that you start to run the issue that you're bumping into common usage.
And if you say, when you talk about racism, we can't talk or we shouldn't talk about individuals who harbor racial animus.
Well, then we need a word for that because that exists.
And that is...
Also what people are talking about when they use those words.
Look, I might play devil's advocate here, Chris.
Well, maybe not.
So like you, I quite like that he's carefully defined his terms.
And I don't really mind how they're defined.
As long as they make sense and they're neatly described, then I'm happy with them.
So I'm quite happy with the definition of racism as a systemic thing, a policy thing.
It talks about racists as racist behavior.
Not racist though, right?
That's the thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's what I'm going to get to.
Yeah, so that's, I mean, it's a problem with that particular word because it is so emotionally charged, isn't it?
It just carries such strong violence in everyday usage that I could see potential for people using those words in a less careful way.
One could, say, flip between definitions and maybe cause some confusion.
Yes, and I think also there's an issue that racist is not commonly understood as just like an action.
It is also a noun for a type of person.
And Kendi would agree that there are people who not just in the moment act racist, but have like a racist ideology.
Which entails discrimination.
And in that case, it feels like you need a term for people like Richard Spencer or David Duke, right?
You still need a word that refers to them.
And the normal word is racist.
Yeah.
But so there's quite a lot of bits where he talks about this.
And it's interesting to me because he's like a very strong individualist.
I think the criticism of him is that he is applying categories to these massive groups of people willy-nilly and extending the usage of terms.
But I'll play a couple of clips and you'll hear that he's got a really individualistic position on how we should look at these situations.
And in some sense, it's quite humanistic.
So, okay, let's hear this.
And I don't think Americans and other people around the world realize that when they use the term racist and even not racist as identities, when they think of racist as an attack word, as a pejorative term,
almost like the R word, they are trafficking in really white nationalist ideology.
White nationalists have long advocated that racist.
Is a term wielded at white people to hurt them and to attack them.
And I don't think people realize that they hold so much white nationalist thought.
Okay, Matt.
Before...
Okay.
No, go ahead.
Go ahead.
I was just going to ask for clarification.
Is he saying that we absolutely shouldn't use the word racist as a pejorative and that people who do do that are in a way supporting white nationalism?
Yeah, I think so.
And his argument for that seems to be that white nationalists use that people are called racist and that it carries a pejorative stain and is used as an attack on reputation.
They use this as a rallying call that, look, they call us racist, but we're not.
And I know that white nationalists do that, but I don't think...
That acknowledging that there are racists in the world motivated by racist views and thoughts is playing into white nationalist thought.
You know what I mean?
Like using racist in a disparaging term, like you say, he links that to agreeing with the white nationalists.
And I think that's a weird logical leap.
Well, okay, so I guess I'm struggling because...
On one hand, if I just focus on what he's saying, I think it sounds like a good idea to avoid categorising and labelling people as being racist or anti-racist and whatever, right?
Because that sort of categorisation leads to problems, like where do you draw the line?
And anyone who's even touched upon the culture wars knows that a big complaint on the other side is that...
Oh, you committed a microaggression and you've been labelled a racist and that's bad.
So I like what he's saying, but at the same time in my head, I can't help but think about how those words, the people who would definitely be strongly aligned with Kendi, how it plays out in the discourse, because it doesn't play out anything like what,
as how he's describing.
People do use those words as pejoratives.
They do use it as a stigmatized category and that's pretty natural, I guess, is what you're saying.
We forgot to mention at the start of this, the actual content that we're taking this from, by the way.
We have two interviews that I clipped from.
One is the feed to the right wolf or something.
I forget which one you feed.
That's the name of the podcast.
And it's a short 30-minute interview.
And the other one was...
Ezra Klein's extended to our interview with him where he expands on some things.
And I think it would be good to play some of the clips from Ezra Klein because he gets into some of the issues that we're touching on.
But before that, just dwelling a bit on this position that racist and anti-racist is situational.
It's not about character.
So he explains this in quite a lot of detail.
And I think it's really important because it gets to the...
One of the reasons why I ended up using the term racist idea, as opposed to writing a history of racists with an S, is because I found so many people in American history who...
would simultaneously express notions of racial hierarchy and notions of racial equality in the same speech, in the same book, in the same chapter of the same book.
And so in that type of case, how would I identify them if we're identifying people as this sort of fixed category?
We can't.
Because they're constantly...
In their speeches, in their writings, in their sayings, based on the policies they support, people are deeply contradictory and complex.
And I think by defining racist as a descriptive, using it, understanding it as a descriptive term, and it describes what a person does that moment.
In other words, when you said in that moment that Black people are lazy, in that moment you were being a racist.
Now in the next moment, if you said, you know what?
I now realize black people are not lazy.
And in that moment, you're being an anti-racist.
Well, I have to point out that he has written a book called Anti-Racist Baby.
So I'm wondering, he does seem to have used it as a noun, as a descriptor of the baby.
Maybe he means just a baby that behaves in an anti-racist way.
Quite often.
At specific moments.
Yeah, but I think you're hitting on a very important point because there are points in the interview, I don't know if we'll come across them, but I noticed them where the usage slipped to the normal usage or at least there was an implication of that.
And that's totally understandable because the word is so commonly used and has such a well understood meaning that...
It would be odd if you didn't slip into the original use of language at times, but that's confusing then because you've specified that that doesn't happen.
So the anti-vacist baby is a great example, although we should probably read the book before we judge that.
So Ezra Klein, there's this series of clips, and I think it gets to a point that we are touching on, but Ezra does it quite nicely.
So here's the first one talking about these kind of problems that we are highlighting.
But I think there has to also be some recognition that people are picking up on something real when they say that this is a dangerous thing to be called, that if you are called it and people disagree on what is meant when you are called it, they disagree that it is like a value-neutral term describing support for ideas that will widen racial difference as opposed to the term people mean when they say you hate people of another race,
that there's a danger there and a condemnation involved.
Like, the competing definitions are so far apart that it's hard to have clarity in the conversation.
I agree.
And I wouldn't say that a person is not being condemned when they're being called racist.
What I'm saying is that it's not saying that you are fundamentally and essentially a racist and you will always be a racist and you are fundamentally an evil, bad person.
And like all of those types of ideas.
And I do agree that as much as the left and the right and the center debates on what a racist is, they agree on this fundamental idea that a racist is a bad,
is a horrible person, and it is essential to who a person is.
And that's one of the things that I'm pushing back against with my work.
To me, this was a little bit surprising, right?
Because the way he was characterized online is that he's labeling everyone a racist in a disparaging sense.
But his definition here, I mean, I know that if someone calls you a racist, it's not a good thing.
And I think he doesn't actually grapple that well with the fact that labeling someone as a racist has, you know, potential employment, social consequences for them.
It isn't taken as, oh, you just did a bit of racism, but you can be anti-racist in the next.
And people don't act like that in general, but in his formulation, it is humanistic, right?
He's saying, I don't judge people as fundamentally bad, but just because we're
Yeah, exactly.
It's quite different from the stereotypes that his opponents...
It reminds me of that Christian idea of loving the sinner and hating the sin.
You're making that super strong distinction.
But yeah, I think the trouble that he's got or anyone has got in trying to apply that formulation is that even if you say that, okay, one is not essentially...
I think it's still a fact that if someone is racist in an egregious way in the moment, then they will suffer quite strong consequences.
Yeah, I also think there is a little bit on his online interactions, the slipping between that, because I don't know, maybe this is unfair, but it seems like when he's...
Attaching to people the label, you know, if you're not anti-racist, you're racist.
There's a definite pejorative implication there for the majority of the world.
And acting like your definition should replace that.
Like, academics do that all the time.
They take a word and they apply their definition and then say, well, that's not what I mean when I say the term.
But I feel like that leads to confusion.
It can lead to confusion.
And you have to be honest.
Your bespoke definition doesn't replace the common usage of the term.
An example which is nothing to...
Well, actually, it does have stuff to do with racism.
But David Sloan Wilson, this evolutionary theorist, he thought that the term social Darwinism was unfairly maligned because he was essentially saying this shouldn't be associated with Darwin.
It should be associated with Galton and the people who were strongly focused on eugenics.
And social Darwinism is a misnomer because Darwin was not that interested in eugenics.
So his argument was, I'm going to use social Darwinism just to talk about applying evolutionary insight to social things.
And what he needed to do every time he did that was be like, I'm going to advocate for social Darwinism.
No, not that one.
And it felt like, yeah, just use a different term then, because you can't do that.
You can't say, I'm going to use this term in a way that the public don't understand and the majority of academics don't use it that way.
And then I'm going to act like people should understand that because, no, there's associations with that term that already existed.
You can't just overwrite by force of academic will.
Yeah.
So I guess...
My thought to that is that trying to imagine if Kendi did as you suggest and employed a brief technical bespoke phrase to describe what he's talking about, I don't think his work would have anywhere near the same level of take-up.
Because it really is the magic word and the magic topic that people are highly engaged with, especially in the United States and especially at this present point in time.
Yes, that I completely agree with, that by using those terms, it makes things much more salient.
But I think that could be a point of criticism, in a sense, that we would be calling out people who were using Hyperbolic branding on the opposing side.
But the issue is he is talking about racist policies.
He's talking about voter suppression, which is targeting people of different ethnicities and trying to disenfranchise them, right?
So I think we should be calling that what it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, look, I probably wasn't clear, Chris.
What I said, I guess I did mean it as a criticism.
I think he's stuck with the popular usage precisely because it will maximise interest, maximise take-up, maximise impact.
But in using that bespoke definition, which assumes there is really no pejorative categorisation associated with the word, then...
It probably leads to a fundamental confusion both in the people who are criticizing him but also the people that are very much on the same side of anti-racism and social justice and so on who then go on to use those ideas and I guess leveraging the conclusions that he comes to using the bespoke term but then employing them using the usual usage of the term.
Yes.
So let me continue on then with where the conversation with Ezra goes, because it gets to some of the other nitty gritty points.
So this is Ezra asking about how we use this terminology and still distinguish like Richard Spencer from somebody who just in the moment supports a racist policy.
How do we define those if we can't use the term racist for somebody who is usually and fundamentally racist?
It seems to me that you almost still then need a word to separate what you mean when you're talking about the politician who is supporting a capital gains tax cut because they've been convinced it would be good for the economy, and the person who is operating out of an animus for people of other races or a desire to keep their race separate and superior in a hierarchy from people of other races,
right?
You can even get the question of hate aside.
It might just be a racial hierarchy thing.
How do you distinguish those two ideas in this schema?
Yeah, so, you know, with my last book, Stamped from the Beginning, I really characterized two kinds of racist, or even two kinds of racist ideas.
The segregationist...
Or segregationist and assimilationist.
And historically, segregationists have been the people who have supported the enslaving, the slave trading, the Jim Crowing, the segregating, the mass incarcerating, the mass deporting, the lynching and the killing.
And, you know, obviously, you know, that's along the lines of Richard Spencer.
And then you've had other people who have rejected segregationists, have rejected their segregation, their enslavement policies, their mass incarceration, but then simultaneously felt that there was still something wrong with black
people. So,
So, for me, that then illustrates that Kendi does acknowledge we need this distinction between these two types of racists, the type that are motivated by They're racial animus and hatred for different people of different races and the other type,
which might not be overtly motivated by that, but may engage in things to support racist policies in order to preserve power.
And I feel like if you have this term, segregationists and assimilationists, that you are acknowledging that this is an important distinction.
But now you have a terminology which could potentially confuse people, right?
I don't mean that those terms are confusing, but you've invented a new term for a thing which re-assist is usually used to describe.
Yeah, maybe the correct approach there is just to admit degrees, differing degrees.
And not treating it as a blanket category where someone like Richard Spencer is in the same category of someone who makes a thoughtless, off-colour joke, but is otherwise not too bad, if you know what I mean.
I kind of like where he's coming from, which is to focus not on the sort of essentialism and categorising racist people.
Sure, they exist or whatever, but in a way, we don't really care what's going on in the heart of Richard Spencer.
What we care about is what he does.
What problems he causes the rest of us.
But focusing on those sort of differing degrees, I mean, I'm trying to relate this to some experiences in my own life.
And I remember I was taking the dog for a walk and I said good morning to this old guy.
And he said, it's a bit Japanese this morning.
And I said, what?
And he said, you know, Japanese.
And I said, what?
And he said, you know, and it was beginning to get a bit uncomfortable now because I wasn't impressed.
He said, you know, nippy.
Oh.
He said, get it, Chris?
Get it?
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, so that's pretty racist, right?
Right?
As well as being just a god-awful.
Just bad joke.
Not even a joke.
But anyway, so that's something.
But who knows what's going on with this guy?
He could be a terrible racist, right?
He probably isn't, right?
He's probably just an old fart who tells really bad jokes and is from a different generation and all that stuff, right?
And the different generation may be fine with racism, right?
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
That's right.
The only problem was that he offended me, right?
And that caused a problem.
But another example, we had some very good friends, a psychologist and a psychiatrist, who had immigrated from India, living near us, and just absolutely lovely couple, salt-of-the-earth types.
And we would see them often.
And one time over lunch, they were telling me about her sister, who was currently in the United States, studying.
And I made an offhand joke about, oh, maybe she'll meet a nice American boy over there and get married.
And they were shocked that I would suggest that thing.
And from the conversation that happened afterwards, it was clear that they and their family, the thought of them marrying someone who wasn't Indian and from their particular sort of ethnic group in India and probably their class as well.
It was completely appalling to them.
So I thought of that when the clip you were playing was referring to segregationism because that's a kind of segregationism.
I'm sure this couple have no hatred in their hearts for Americans or white people, right?
It's just they very much thought that they should stick to their own people when it comes to marriage.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so, but I was a bit disappointed about that, right?
Because at least according to my lights, I see it as not healthy.
I was disappointed, but I didn't think so much less of them.
Like, I still thought they were lovely people and everything.
Yeah, and like, I take that point, and I agree with that as well.
Like, what people, and I think there's a problem people often have online, is that they expect racists to be these, like, caricatured villains who, like, spit.
Whenever they walk past someone of a different race.
And then when they see someone who can smile and be polite to black people or Asians or to anybody that's not white, they're like, well, look, how can that person be racist?
They can talk to people as if they're normal.
And they said that they like to visit Japan and so on.
And what my image is always that they're imagining racist to be like, you know, some cartoon.
Villain who simply can barely function in society because of all the Nazi tattoos that are over his face.
And of course, those people are very rare.
But that's not the normal form that I think racism takes in everyday life.
That's the extreme form that you don't see so much, which isn't common.
By the way, I have met...
Literally that type with the swastika tattoos and a scar and get this scar across their face.
Very frightening meeting them in a dark alley.
You meet a lot of races, Matt.
I'm just noticing.
I've lived a long life, so a few things have happened along the way.
But I agree with you that they're really quite rare, extraordinarily rare.
And what's much more common is that sort of incidental...
But also the kind of thing about not wanting to marry someone outside your ethnic group, that kind of thing.
And I don't think those things are fine, but I don't think that they're the same as the guy with the tattoos either.
So I think it's helpful not to catastrophize.
And so essentially I think I'm agreeing with Kendi, even though I know that that's not how the broader discourse occurs at all, that you shouldn't have those Blanket categories to put together milder things with extreme things because it leads to all kinds of confusions.
Yeah, although I kind of think he's doing that to some extent.
But I would also say that I think there's the famous quote that...
Sam Harris said that white nationalists and supremacists are like the fringe of the fringe when he was basically denigrating that people are paying too much attention to this and it doesn't really have any purchase in modern American society.
But obviously that's wrong, right?
Trump was the president, Charlottesville happened, and there's been an increase in the tolerance for people making just disparaging remarks about Mexicans.
People going back to shithole countries, so on, so forth.
So I'm kind of, I'm like somewhere in the middle of, I do agree with you that the hardcore guys with the neo-Nazi symbols and stuff, they are rare.
But I think that we've seen when, you know, he was talking about voter suppression stuff, that is much more insidious and much more widespread.
And it's the policy.
Of the friggin' Republican Party.
You know what I mean?
One of the two parties in the US system.
So the fact that it is openly promoting racist policies, I think it's wrong to view it as a fringe of a fringe issue, which I know you're not saying that, Matt, but yeah, I think that some of the confusion around this topic gets conflated because people are talking about different things.
Yeah, I think I'm saying the same thing, which is that, look, there's just a wide variety of different things.
There's the systemic things that...
There's a lot of different flavors of racism.
It's a very difficult thing to talk about.
It's a rich tapestry.
But yeah, I mean, that systemic stuff of the Republican...
I mean, you've probably got some clips that relate to this, Chris.
But if you take one of Kendi's points of view, is that all policies can be categorized as being racist or anti-racist.
Oh, we're going to get to that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think, you know, when you were talking about the Republican Party, they're definitely going for some policies like voter suppression, which are...
Kendi's racist.
Yes, Kendi's systemic racist.
That's right.
No, he doesn't like systemic racist.
Oh, sorry.
Kendi's racist.
That sounds bad for him, but okay.
As you say, we've got a lot of clips to get through, and we've got lots of...
Interesting points he gets to.
So to finish off the Ezra Klein trilogy, here's the end of that conversation.
It's kind of enjoyable because you can hear Ezra also trying to get to the objection and the point, right?
And they have a good exchange about it, but in the end, I think they end up still kind of at different places.
So here's how that ends.
I guess one question I have about that is, is a problem here then that we need a new word?
Because racist carries a charge in this culture that very few other words do.
Not that no other words do, but few other words do.
And that it just, something that often seems to be happening in the racial conversation is there's a war between sort of new definitions of it that are much more expansive and trying to describe something societal and that's more like a description of an ecosystem or things that people face as opposed to things that are in people's hearts.
If not an insult, almost worse than that, a deep condemnation.
Do we just need a new word?
Should we have something else to say?
So I would argue that we should not necessarily create a new word and we should understand where that political charge comes from.
Where that idea that when you call someone a racist, you're attacking them.
You're saying who they are fundamentally as a person.
You're saying that they're a bad person.
That idea, particularly in our context, is one of the ideas that white nationalists have been pushing, particularly over the last 15 years.
They've been trying to essentially make this case, particularly to white people, that when someone calls you racist, they're attacking you.
Yeah, it's a bit mind-bending, isn't it, Chris?
Yeah, because they are.
Usually.
They're not using Candy's definition.
That's what I mean, right?
He's flipping there to say they're misunderstanding, but no, they aren't because most people, when they call someone a racist, they are attacking the person's character.
Yeah.
Let me put it this way, Chris.
I didn't call my Indian friends racist when they told me about how they didn't want their sister to...
Marry an American.
And that's because they would have been deeply hurt and offended by me doing that.
I don't think it would help them if you told them, well, like Candy said, you know, don't worry about it.
That's a white nationalist talking point.
Yeah, I mean...
That's right.
I mean, look, the social prohibitions and stigma associated with racism is good, I think, right?
There should be a strong stigma there.
And I'm trying to think of a similar example that carries the same kind of emotional weight.
And the only thing I can come up with is like a minor attracted person or something like that, Chris.
Can you think of something that's maybe less...
I don't know.
Like, pedophiles and racists are, I mean, they're not the exact same, but they're in the category of things you don't want to be.
Yeah, that's right.
They're in the category of things you do not want to be.
I was trying to think of a different example because that's pretty extreme, but it's a perfectly fine comparison, really.
Like, you can say, to make the distinction to say, look, I'm just criticizing your behavior and the kinds of attitudes you have around being attracted to children.
It's nothing against you personally.
You could still be a good person.
That doesn't really fly, does it?
I mean, it doesn't work.
When you say somebody is doing bad things and has bad motivations, then it's equivalent to saying that they're a bad person.
Well, you know, it's not exactly equivalent, but the inference is rather clear.
And it's not an insane one to draw.
But I'm going to play another clip to highlight that.
So we are having issues, which I think many people have, with the definitional aspects of Kendi's position, right?
And some of the things that it entails.
They're just complicated.
And I want to point out that he acknowledges that this can be an issue.
So here's him talking about...
Why we shouldn't use the term structural racism.
You know, when you go into a barbershop or, you know, you go to a bus stop, you know, you go into a church basement around people who may not have ever read a book on racism and attended a lecture and you say, oh, yes, you know, America is experiencing systemic racism.
And you ask them, well, what does that mean?
Many people may not even be able to say that.
Even college students, even some people who study it cannot.
Coherently describe what that actually means, right?
And so whenever we have terms that everyday people cannot understand, you know, we should think about different ways to explain.
So that's why I use the term racist policies.
Because a racist policy, okay, people understand what a policy is, and then you're qualifying with a racist policy.
And then people can then start thinking about their lives and seeing those racist policies.
And then they begin to see, okay, Those policies are making up the structure.
And so I want people to focus on not the structure, I want them to focus on really the veins that really make up the structure so that they can begin the process of undermining.
This is the part that feels contradictory to me, because if you're saying, well, we want to use the terms in the way that everyday people would intuitively grasp, like, I agree racist policy is better than systemic racism.
But the way he defines terms is not common usage.
So it would be confusing to people if you just applied his schema.
So yeah, it's just an inconsistent point.
But he clearly does seem to recognize that there's an issue with using terms in a way that people won't intuitively grasp.
Agreed.
So it's an inconsistency.
Take that.
Take that.
You know, we highlight the inconsistencies of other people, so there's no reason not to.
If there's one thing that I hate, it's inconsistency.
Like, you know, I don't like, I don't particularly, I'm not that fond of racism either, but it's inconsistencies.
That's the real scourge of modern society.
So another thing that Kendi gets criticized for, we'll stick on the criticism and then we'll go to a good point, is the one that you brought up about this binary, that everything can be put into these two bins, racist or anti-racist.
And as we've just discussed, we're applying Kendi's scheme, right?
So racist is a descriptive term for an action or policy.
So this is a thing focused directly on policies.
So here's the interviewer describing
And so you say that no policy is racially neutral.
It's either racist or anti-racist.
And as I thought...
About that, I sort of found myself wandering into lots of policies that I was like, well, I don't know if I can tell the difference.
Like, I just, for fun, I opened up, I live in the state of Ohio, I looked up some of the recent bills in the state of Ohio, and I was like, this one.
And again, it was exempt veterans' disability severance pay from income tax.
And I was like, well, I can't tell.
And I know you don't know anything about that bill, necessarily.
And I know the devil is always in the details.
But in general, saying, okay, the severance pay that we paid veterans is not going to be taxed.
We're going to exempt it from income tax.
Does that seem to be an anti-racist policy?
Or a racist policy?
Because to me, I look at it and I go, well, it seems neutral.
Do you want to hear his answer?
Yeah, I do.
I can't wait.
Yeah.
So we have that.
So severance, so when we're thinking about severance pay, we're thinking about something, pay that can ultimately contribute to the wealth of a particular person or even one's family, let's say, or even their just annual income,
right?
And so I think one way to assess whether that policy is indeed racist or anti-racist Is we currently have a growing racial wealth gap in the state of Ohio or even an income gap.
So then the question becomes, is that bill, is that new measure growing that wealth gap or closing it?
Is it growing the income gap between, on average, Black people and white people in the state of Ohio?
Or is it closing it?
What's the impact of it?
And I think that's how we can sort of determine.
The answer is to whether that policy is indeed racist or anti-racist.
Yeah.
So this is a great example of Kendi's style, which we haven't really talked about, which is very un-guru-like in the sense that he's very clear about what he is saying.
Even though his definitions are bespoke, shall we say, he's a good academic and unlike many of our other gurus in that he's pretty clear about what he's saying.
My issue with this one is not that I don't understand it or it's unclear or whatever.
It's just that the implications of it can be rather strange.
So the implication is, well, it's not an implication.
He says it quite straightforwardly.
That you can classify all things as racist or anti-racist based on whether or not they have a net positive or negative equalizing effect in terms of outcomes for African Americans versus racial disparities, shall we say.
So that makes perfect logical sense.
You can certainly do that.
It may not be immediately obvious, but you could be an economic analyst and a social analyst.
Do your calculations.
And I think you could figure that out for literally any policy, even if it seems to happen.
Although some would be super tortured.
Like imagine a policy which is about if you're allowed to keep greedy apes.
And like you need to work out is that racist or anti-racist?
Like I'm sure you can find a way.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So, like, whether or not you should be able to keep lions as pets and ride them around as, like, little horses, then that's...
Yeah.
It's not immediately obvious whether that's...
It seems like animal welfare and exploitation of...
Like, there's the thing, right?
Once you get the exploitation of other countries, you can start to...
Yeah.
Okay.
But look, let's put that aside.
I take your point.
I agree that there are some policies that just, you know, they're so close to being neutral, there's no point.
Even doing the calculus, right?
But a lot of government policy is based on economics and social spending and stuff like that.
So I think in most cases it would be pretty straightforward to work out.
But the analogy that I could make is you could apply the same categorisation to other priorities.
You could say, well, we can categorise every policy as to whether or not it's socialist or anti-socialist based on whether or not it equalises.
You know, results in a more equal wealth and income distribution for poor people as opposed to richer people, right?
You could also do the same thing for gender, any number of other priorities one might have.
In fact, we could classify any policy as being pro the environment or anti the environment based on whether or not, you know, it has a net impact on the environment.
So, I mean, you can do that, but I don't really...
The problem is, is what's the...
Is that always helpful?
I mean, you could factor that in into your calculus on any given policy, but if you are categorizing things as racist or anti-racist, then what you're implying, I think, is that anti-racist policies are good and racist policies are bad,
right?
That's the implication.
Good job, Matt.
Yeah, no, no, but that has to be spelt out because that's not true.
Where are you going with us, Matt?
Well, there are many policies that have very little to do with race at all.
They could be focused on environmental regulations.
They could be focused on whether or not people are allowed to ride around tigers as like little horses, right?
But in that case, isn't that just saying that there's a third, I think there's more than the third category, but like that the binary is the problem and not admitting that there can be things which are neutral or which are at best very tangentially related to that issue.
Well, that's what I was trying to say, that their valence, according to that particular dimension, could be negligible relative to the positive impacts it's having across other dimensions, right?
I thought you were going for there can be instances where the racist policy is socially good.
Well, I mean, but that's my point, Chris.
This is where Kendi's language is quite tricky, right?
Because his formulation is logical.
It makes sense.
But I think the only way it makes sense is the way that we just described it, right?
In that every policy has all kinds of implications across all kinds of dimensions of priority.
However, in the language that he's using, which is racist or anti-racist, the implication is that anything that is less than zero, could be negative 0.001 or whatever, on that particular dimension means it's a bad policy.
Whereas, you know, it could be that a particular...
Income tax or a change in environmental regulations or some kind of policy has all kinds of positive benefits.
But it's always going to have a mixture of pros and cons across the various dimensions along which you evaluate it.
So it's actually not true according to his formulation.
That racist policies are always bad.
Yeah.
Because they could be racist, but just fall on the negative thing by just a smidge.
Well, this gets to another point that he makes.
And actually, by the way, just to note that he also speculates that a veteran tax...
He does give an example where it could be anti-racist, for example, if black people are overrepresented amongst veterans, which he...
You know, believes that they are.
But let's say hypothetically that white people were ever represented among veterans, right?
And also hypothetically, maybe veterans really do deserve some kind of benefits because they've been hard done by in various other ways.
Right, yeah.
Then according to his formulation, it would be a racist policy, right?
Yes, that's a good point.
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to explain, yes.
Yeah, it is.
But like, in general, I think...
It isn't that complex.
I agree entirely with the view that you could take this perspective and better examine the contribution of policies to racist and anti-racist issues as defined by Kennedy.
And this would be a valuable thing to do.
I legitimately think it would be.
But I think the issue is with the monomania of forcing everything through that lens.
And with arguing that there's nothing which would be not better understood by applying that to it.
Well, I think what you're saying is that there are other dimensions with which to evaluate policies as well.
There's more than one thing that society is trying to optimise, right?
Yes, and binary as well in general.
We've seen this with like James Lindsay and stuff, and I'm not drawing a parallel between the two.
I don't need to spell it out, but James Lindsay is just such a monumental asshole that it's unfair to compare anyone to him.
But in any case, what was I talking about?
His asshole-ness just subsumed my vision for a second.
So yeah, but there's the same problem about like, you know, Forcing everything in the woke versus anti-woke framework.
Yes, you can do it, but Trump really is a terrible person.
Regardless of whether you think he has the right idea about critical race theory and its role in government training, there should be other issues that you're concerned with.
Okay, maybe we have flogged that horse to death, but a point that follows on from that relates to Discrimination.
And in particular, the potential for discrimination to be good when it is in the form of anti-racist discrimination.
But it starts out, again, the interviewer is trying to understand why Kendi has argued that being concerned about racial discrimination is something that we shouldn't be focused on.
It's kind of a counterintuitive claim.
So let's hear...
Generally, I would have thought was a term that would be a positive term in the fight for racial equality, but you've described is not.
And it's the term racial discrimination.
You've said racist power has basically commandeered that term since the 60s.
So talk to me about why that term has become...
Something that's not helpful in being anti-racist.
Okay.
So I think this is a good frame because there's another example that to some extent, Kendi is taking positions that appear counterintuitive.
Like racial discrimination is not something we should be concerned with with an anti-racist agenda.
And like the immediate action thought is like, why?
Like surely we do want to oppose that.
And here's his answer.
Within the actual law.
There were language that specified the ways in which, let's say, Black people should or could be discriminated against.
And so by the 1960s, when some of those laws were deemed unconstitutional or were disallowed from use, the proposed solution to that was for laws to not have any racial language in them, right?
The conception was that laws that have racial language in them discriminate.
And then laws that don't apparently are neutral or race neutral.
And so that's then what allowed people who oppose affirmative action to make the case that affirmative action policies were a form of discrimination against white people and thereby they were racist and thereby they were not allowing America to achieve its goals of equality and thereby they should be eliminated.
So I'm not surprised to hear Kendi take that position because it's very much along the lines of being supportive of affirmative action and against the idea of being colourblind and totally neutral,
which is kind of that sort of liberal standard position.
And that's something that people more on the progressive activist side are very much against and in favour of.
I guess active measures, and he's calling it discrimination, in order to equalise outcomes, I suppose, to promote equity amongst racial groups.
Well said.
There was a good idea there, struggling to get out.
Yeah.
Well, let me help you along because I think he does a good job.
How about you say it again?
Well, I think he says it better than you or me with some examples.
He gives two analogies.
And, you know, we've talked about the guru way with metaphors and analogies.
And I agree with you that Kendi doesn't rely on that so much, like the flowery metaphor.
He's not this figure like Eric Weinstein or Jordan Peterson.
His analogies are actually helpful.
For instance, you have an under-resourced school, and that school has far and away less resources than, let's say, and it's a majority black than a majority white school down the road.
And you want to go about ensuring that the two schools have a relatively equal amount of resources.
You know, one school is getting...
I'm just throwing the numbers out there.
You know, it has a $5 million annual budget and the other has a $2 million annual budget.
You can then, okay, let's up that $2 million annual budget to $5 million.
But then folks at that white school will be like, you're discriminating against us because you're not giving us money too.
And that's essentially the call of reverse discrimination.
So I think this is actually a very popular culture war topic at the minute.
The progressive view.
Is that because of historical discrimination that we do need affirmative discrimination in order to undo the imbalance that exists.
And we won't get there by just treating everyone equal because people are not starting from the same place.
And this leads to Kamala Harris's cartoon which gets everyone upset and then talking about whether they're focusing on the outcomes have to be the same and how much coercion.
Is in it and so on.
But I think the way that he presents it here is actually a good illustration where you're saying there's a school where the funding is less than another school for discriminatory historical reasons or social reasons.
And if you go to increase the funding, that people will say, well, why are they getting the funding and not this?
It would be fairer to just give everybody the same funding, but that would just recreate the inequalities.
But I think in some part, this is a fundamental distinction in the worldview of liberals and conservatives.
And of course, there's other points on the spectrum, but whether the differences are caused by the pre-existing conditions and structural realities, Or whether they are the instantiation of differences in ability and merit.
And now, when they're tied to racial categories, I think that becomes a very, very controversial topic for a good reason.
Because, like, what are you saying there?
But, like, more broadly, that is just, in part, it's a distinction between liberals and conservatives.
Yeah, I guess so.
I always find it helpful to just...
Take an example that's structurally similar but doesn't involve race.
So I can remember a couple of years ago, my daughter received a scholarship at school, just a little scholarship.
There was some little competition involved, a maths competition, and then that paid for her to go to Brisbane, the capital city of our state, spend a week at the university there and do all of these nice activities and so on.
Now, that scholarship...
It was partly determined on merit, she's good at maths, but it was also targeted specifically at regional areas that had...
Lower socioeconomic outcomes.
People that were, in terms of the geographic area, the geographic category, it was defined as students who were deprived and not as privileged as the people in the city.
And so I doubt my daughter would have received the scholarship otherwise.
So that's one categorization.
And I don't think many people have issues with that.
For instance, targeting a particular town or a particular suburb that is...
You know, in terrible straits is really doing badly and actually spending some money at the state or federal level in order to rectify that situation and help the people there.
So I guess it only becomes controversial when those measures are targeted, you know, according to, you know, an identity category.
And it could be race or it could be gender as well.
Am I right?
I guess there are some liberals who would argue that that kind of discrimination is inherently a bad approach, that a better way to target such things would be to target the whatever it is,
the scholarship, the extra funding, the extra opportunities, whatever, being targeted at the people who fall below some threshold of need.
And it could be...
Defined in terms of economics or geographic areas that are deprived or however you want to define it.
And they would argue that that kind of net would naturally pick up a large proportion of the, like if it was the case that women or say girls were disadvantaged in a particular thing or non-white people were particularly prone to being economically disadvantaged or go to an underfunded school,
then they would argue that measures to Fund underfunded schools or poorer areas would naturally pick up those identity categories.
So it avoids the discrimination.
So I'm personally, I don't have a strong take on it, I guess.
I don't have a strong feeling about it.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I don't claim to have.
I haven't looked into sociological.
Models of which kind of policies work and don't and the effects of them.
Like, I don't feel well informed enough to have a strong opinion on what works in terms of interventions.
But I do agree there's scope for disagreement on the way to alleviate it.
That doesn't automatically come down to you either.
Racist or anti-racist, right?
Like, I think there's a broader spectrum.
Yeah, I'd actually agree.
In fact, I'd put it like this.
I'd say, I think you could argue for that neutral, you know, identity neutral position that I described and not be like a horrible, reactionary, heartless person.
But on the other hand, you could argue for measures that are targeted, for instance, at Indigenous communities specifically.
Without being a crazy woke person either.
That can make a lot of sense as well.
I don't think it's a discussion point where one has to draw a sharp line between one side is terrible and the other side of the argument is obviously right.
I think it all depends on where you're drawing the lines of the sides.
It's kind of like...
If we take the voter suppression issue, which I know is like a slightly different topic, but there are people who will say, well, one side is that we should have stricter regulations about voter registration.
And the other side is that we should make it more lax.
And they both have good points.
And I feel that that is a false equivalent because one is promoting a disenfranchisement and the other...
It's encouraging greater franchisement.
We have metrics where we know that there isn't this problem of vast voter fraud.
And we know conversely that in franchising people will allow people from minority communities to vote.
And I'm not saying that there isn't political calculations in there, but it would be wrong to frame that as there's...
Two sides and they both have, you know, legitimate points from my perspective.
No, no, look, I agree with you there.
But, you know, important to note that the obvious solution to that is to not have these highly restrictive identification requirements across the board, right?
Yeah, just everyone votes.
Yeah, like essentially an Australian type system, right, where everyone votes, right?
The solution is Australia.
Australia's the best, right?
Australia's the best.
Just get used to it.
But my point is that you actually can solve that problem without actually targeting.
Something specifically at some racial category.
You just stop doing the stupid policy and implement a policy that makes it easier for everybody to vote.
Yes.
To be clear, I'm not arguing for...
That sort of colourblind alternative versus affirmative action.
I can see, I can think of examples, particularly disadvantaged Indigenous communities, which need targeted assistance, where I'm fully in favour of whatever you want to call it, non-colourblind policy, right?
Policy that's deliberately designed to do a particular...
Positive discrimination, affirmative action.
Yeah, yeah, call it what you like.
I guess, look, what are the flashes?
I'm trying to think of...
The people who would strongly disagree with Kendi, I suppose they would cite examples of, you know, where companies are hiring specifically for people of particular...
Yeah, I mean, like, I think the obvious example is probably things like, you know, the recent cases at the universities in America that they're discriminating against Asian Americans because of the overrepresentation of that group.
I don't know the exact thing, but it is clear that there's issues there, right?
That the calculus isn't always so simple to do.
And there can be essentially racial groups or ethnic groups or social groups, not just along racial lines, where there's conflicting interests and not purely in terms of the white groups that are benefiting.
And I think that does end up with like some complex situations where you have people debating about whether Jewish people are white passing or Asian Americans should be not cast in with
I think those issues can get overblown in the culture wars.
But there's legitimate complications there.
And you see people making various strong claims online and people reacting badly against it and so on.
And I think that it isn't So obvious that there's just a simple solution that would satisfy all groups and would be necessarily the best policy that everybody could sign on to.
Anyway, so getting back to Kendi, I mean, I'm trying to remember the clip now.
Let me chew up a clip where...
Kendi, who is somebody that's thought about these issues, is talking about them.
Yeah, maybe that will help us.
So here's him talking about what inequity between groups means.
Despite the differences in which people look, despite different cultures and ethnic groups, we're all on the same level.
We're all equal.
And if there are disparities, they must be the result of...
This is interesting to me because there's a criticism that the likes of Jordan Peterson and various conservatives level, which is that where liberals detect inequity, they only have a single answer,
that it has to be discrimination or some form of unfairness.
This is like the automatic answer, so there can't be any other explanation.
And Kendi does seem to be leaning into justifying that position.
And I'm not talking about that the alternative is that there are genetic racial difference between groups which explain the differences, right?
But he's quite strongly ruling out cultural factors.
It basically is.
Discrimination or it's racism.
That's the two possibilities that he's highlighting.
Yeah, I think the other thing there is historical, just the historical history.
I think he would include that, like he is factoring that in as that can be the explanation for why those policies exist.
But okay, so like an example I can think of which relates to my own experience and is easier to think about.
In Northern Ireland, Catholics were discriminated against, right?
And there was a conflict in the Protestant and Catholic communities there.
And if you try to understand the differences and the situation there, without understanding the disparities and the issues of civil rights, you will have an incomplete picture.
However, from my perspective, if you try to solve the issue of the troubles and the violence in Northern Ireland, and you don't take into account the cultural factors...
Which is like support for paramilitaries, the bigotry in the Catholic community towards Protestants, and yeah, like the glorification of the IRA and so on.
These kind of cultural factors which were at play and anti-elitism that also, you know, has impacts on not only the positions that people are allowed to occupy, but the ones that they culturally value and so on.
Like, I think...
That it is okay to say that where there are structural differences and where there's discrimination, there can be other factors and there can be internal cultural values which can cause and contribute to disparities.
And I'm not so sure that we should automatically assume that any difference observed must be due to structural inequality.
Or policy.
Or policy, yes.
I think cultural values could generate it.
Now, whether they do and whether that can also be used as an attack line and has been used as an attack line to target communities like the Black population in America, it's definitely true.
So again, it's like this very messy area to go into, but I feel like candy is...
We're endorsing the position that Peterson and stuff present and then other people say, well, that's a straw man.
We don't do that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I take what you're saying.
Kendi is saying that when you observe a mean difference between groups, then...
Well, he says that we know that there are no strong biological reasons why people in these two different groups should be doing differently, and therefore it must be a result of policy.
And if I hear what you're saying correctly, you're just pointing out that there are other things that feed into that as well.
Which aren't policy, it's kind of historical accidents even.
It may not have even been historical policy.
I'm thinking of examples in my part of the world too and I'm thinking again of the area that I live, which is rural Queensland, which is one of the widest areas in Australia.
And if you compare that in terms of just the levels of education, the levels of like almost every social outcome you can imagine, it's really not great in rural Queensland, right?
The rest of Australia looks down on Queensland a little bit.
Now, if you compare that to, say, Melbourne, which is a fantastic town, you can get great coffee there, excellent restaurants, it's probably the most diverse place in Australia ethnically.
They're doing a hell of a lot better on every metric you care to name and the reasons for that are all very interesting.
But I'm pretty sure it's not due to a policy that's discriminated against people in rural Queensland or white people, right?
There are historical and economic...
Environmental factors as well.
Environmental forces, all kinds of things going on that lead to that.
And, you know, policy, it could well be the Australian federal policy has...
This is what a lot of people in regional Queensland think, that it disregards people living out here and doesn't value them and so on.
They're quite resentful, as a matter of fact.
It could well be that policy feeds into it as well, but I think primarily, actually, it's more history.
So maybe I was too quick to respond because I agree.
That's kind of what I mean, like historical factors, but not necessarily.
The historical discriminatory factors between groups, it can be a whole bunch of things.
That might exacerbate that some groups are favoured overall, but that they can't be just geographical things or so on.
But also cultural, Chris.
I mean, one of the things that is really apparent in the area that I live is that the local people here...
Who again, I emphasize are white Australians.
They're usually multi, like more than 50% of Australians are first generation immigrants.
But people that I'm thinking of are like third generation or so.
And one of the things you notice about the culture is that they don't value education and they will often get married very young.
You know, it's kind of like the stereotypes of the American Deep South, I suppose, on how true they are.
But, you know, like culture does feed into it and it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the people.
And there can be historical reasons for culture, right?
But again, you're chicken and egging.
Not you.
I mean, in general, the interrelationship of culture and historical circumstances is interact.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a yin-yang type scenario.
Yes.
And there's a point where, actually, I think it's in the Ezra Klein interview where Ezra brings that up.
I think one question somebody would have is, why can't it be both and?
Like, why can't there be some differences in cultures or geographies that people come from or whatever it might be?
And also that there is racist policy.
What makes you certain that it is all one as opposed to some of one and some of the other?
Well, I actually do think there's racialized difference.
Obviously, geneticists have found that there's a such thing as ethnic ancestry.
And of course, each ethnic group has been racialized.
Of course, to a large extent, those ethnic groups practice different cultures.
But at the same time, there's no biological difference, you know, via race.
There's no behavioral difference.
In other words, across cultures, people love, people lazy, people hate, people laugh.
They just do it in different ways.
But ultimately...
I think more specifically to your point, just because there's difference, cultural and even ethnic, doesn't mean it's better or worse, or doesn't mean it's explaining away racial inequity.
Because fundamentally, we never have received that evidence.
Yeah, look, I'm probably putting words in Kendi's mouth here, but I think from his point of view, the things that we were mentioning, history and culture and geography or whatever, they're all still unfair.
You know, like, and I'm going to stick with the Australian example to keep it out of the American context, but I think he would say, look, yes, you can give me lots of explanations for why a kid growing up in the country here is going to have a bad education and not earn very much money and just be essentially marginalized in various ways.
And you could say it's all complicated due to history and so on.
But ultimately, if that person had been born in metropolitan Melbourne, They'd be doing a lot better, statistically speaking, and that's unfair.
So yeah, I don't think that's a crazy point of view.
I'm not really sure what my take would be.
What do you think?
Well, so I think Kendi, in a lot of respects, I think he's just a very strong left-wing progressive person, arguing for those perspectives, and that entails a very strong strain of cultural relativism.
And also a very strong skepticism about things related to biological inheritance, even within families.
Let me play a clip just to illustrate what I'm talking about.
And, you know, I'm a new father and I have a three-year-old, and I like to imagine that her behavioral characteristics, that I sort of pass that to her genetically, right, as many parents do, even though we have no evidence for that.
And we certainly don't have any evidence for that.
At a group level.
In other words, if you're German, you're going to behave this way.
Or if you're Nigerian, you're going to behave this way.
Or if you're African American, you're going to behave this way.
And it's easy for us to state that, yes, races behave this way.
And that is the reason why they have more, because they are more or because they are less.
And that just, it simply explains the world.
It explains the inequality.
And like you said, we don't have to do anything.
Yeah, so I agree with his point there that, you know, we don't have evidence for like a German phenotype and especially not a racial one across the socially constructed vast amalgamation of things which get lumped in under like black or Asian.
And so on that point, he's right.
But I do think that isn't the only option when you're talking about cultural differences.
That it derives from that ground.
Like, I live in Japan.
I'm originally from Northern Ireland.
There's very clear social differences here, cultural values that are different.
And whereas he said it doesn't lead to behavioral differences, it does.
There are clear behavioral differences in what's expected in the social relationships that people form.
And yes, fundamentally, we're all people.
We're all humans.
We all eat and love and laugh and it's wrong.
I should go about saying that putting people into racial hierarchies is just an injustice, a moral injustice against humanity.
But I think you don't need to do that in order to acknowledge that cultures differ, that the values that they inculcate can be different.
And this can lead to societies which value different things.
I don't want to...
There's plenty of nice things about Japan, like tons.
But for example, the position of women in Japanese society, like on cross-country metrics, looking at gender disparity in the treatment of women, Japan does terrible compared to most developed countries.
And that's related to cultural values.
And it isn't saying that there's something inherent to Japanese biologically that they would do that.
Not acknowledging that the system, like the cultural system is different and that it can lead to outcomes which are indeed, yes, worse or better.
I think that goes too far into like the extreme of cultural relativism.
And I don't think allowing for that entails that you have to bring in essentialized racial differences.
Yeah, yeah.
And like, yeah, I agree with Kendi that there's no evidence at a...
Group or race level of biological differences in behaviour.
But I think there's a lot of good evidence for, at an individual level, in terms of essentially children being somewhat predisposed to be like their parents is pretty strong.
But that's kind of tangential to his main point, I think.
It's just more illustrative of the point you're making that he's quite strong, blank slatist, I suppose, would be the phrase.
Yes, but actually, he does have this part.
I find it really interesting because he's often presented as that kind of thing that he's just focusing on a blank slate approach to human genetics and racial characteristics and stuff.
But listen to this description of genetic differences between groups and ethnicities and see what you think.
Because I thought it's completely spot on.
For the better part of...
Modern era, humans have thought that the races were biologically distinct, that genetically black people were distinct from white people, and therefore black people had black blood and white people had white blood and there were black diseases and white diseases.
And these genetic distinctions then led to genetic predispositions to behavior, positive and negative.
And fundamentally, geneticists have now found, of course, that at a genetic level, we're pretty much the same.
But there is genetic variation, and actually the vast majority of that genetic variation exists in Africa, which means that people in West Africa are actually more genetically similar to people in Western Europe than they are to people in East Africa.
So this idea of this sort of genetic black person...
Just doesn't exist.
However, there is ethnic ancestry that are called populations by geneticists that are distinct.
Can you give an example of ethnicities versus races?
Just because this may not be as familiar to people.
So, to give an example, the Yoruba of Nigeria could be considered an ethnic group.
Or the Irish of Ireland could be considered an ethnic group.
Ashkenazi Jews.
Precisely.
Meaning that their genetic profile, the people who have that ancestry, their genetic profile is similar, is the same, and thereby going to be somewhat distinct from people in other sort of regions that may be close by.
But it's going to be more similar because in a way, you know, the...
You have sort of genetic ranges across the world.
So in other words, if your group is close to another group's origin, you're probably going to have a similar genetic makeup.
I just felt that's important because the way I see him presented is as if he would deny the reality of population differences between ethnic groups.
Yeah. And he seems completely fine with it.
And I think in general, this is a problem that people often have that they assume when people are talking about race as being a social construct, that it's contradictory to say there are population differences and it isn't.
Yeah, no, that's a very good point.
And probably the kind of mistake that people who are opponents of Kendi would make in just making those assumptions.
I guess it was just that.
It was probably just an offhand comment from him, really, which is that there are no behavioral correspondences that the individual inherited at all, which is not, I mean, yeah.
No, so actually, there's one last clip, Matt, for this part where Ezra asks him about that and makes a point you did, but you do inherit some things from parents, right?
But what I was trying to sort of get at is just because we have similar genetic makeups, what still has not been proven is that a particular sort of ethnic
And that's what people have also sort of began to make a case about when even that evidence doesn't exist.
And so what we can imagine is simultaneously biological sameness and ethnic difference.
While simultaneously saying that difference only means difference.
It doesn't mean anything more than that.
Similarly with culture and behavior.
We can imagine behavioral sameness.
And what that means to me is you take any behavioral trait, and I mentioned a few earlier, laziness, happiness, love, hate, hard work.
All of those behavioral traits exist in every culture on earth.
They just exude themselves differently.
And so that's how we can understand everyone loves.
Everyone's the same as a result of love, but people love differently based on different cultures.
And we should not be judging how people love in another culture from the way we love in our own.
That was a slightly different point.
It was the cultural relativism point, but that's quite a strong description of the standard cultural relativist.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, he chose examples like love and hard work and so on, which I think he's right.
You see versions of more basic traits in every single culture.
But to take your Japan example, there's definitely some traits that are very highly apparent in Japan compared to other countries.
And some of them are bad.
But some of them are good and at least partly responsible, I guess, for certain social outcomes and economic outcomes in Japan.
Yeah.
I think fundamentally most liberal-minded people would agree we don't want to rein societies into a hierarchy of these societies are good because they're economically developed.
On the other hand, I think it is okay to say societies that enable more rights for women.
are preferable to those which restrict rights for women or societies which allow freedom of religion are preferable.
For those that enforce theocracy with severe punishment for leaving your religion of birth.
Yeah.
But look, I mean, there are cultural differences that have important outcomes and there are often pros and cons associated with each of them.
Like, you know, one of the most common and big ones that you know about, Chris, is that idea of collectivism versus individualism, right?
And that's a double-edged sword.
So you have a very collective culture of Japan.
You've got a highly individualist culture in the United States.
And there are advantages and disadvantages to both, like quite distinct material advantages.
On one hand, the sort of conformity in Japan leads to a great deal of social cohesion, arguably lower crime rates.
Many pro-social things at work that leads to productivity.
On the other hand, I think a lot of people recognize that highly individualist culture in the United States promotes a lot of innovation, a lot of risk taking, a lot of competition, which is also a good outcome.
So, you know, I'm with you.
Certainly at a basic trait level, like I'm a psychologist, our fundamental assumption is that personality traits are basically universal.
And they vary among individuals, but you're going to have people who are, say, highly extroverted and highly introverted in every single country.
But those are very base level traits.
When you get to more complicated ones, like the degree to which conformity or religious toleration was your example, then these are very complicated things that aren't so...
Primal, if you like.
And, you know, it's not about ranking cultures and saying, oh, this is good and that one's bad.
It's just saying they lead to outcomes which can be quite important in a material way.
In an annoying, contrarian way, I will mention, I'm published on the collectivism, individualism differences, specifically in East Asia.
It hasn't been debunked, has it?
Don't tell me it's been debunked.
Would you believe, Matt, it's more complicated than...
More complicated than I understand.
Is that what you're saying, Chris?
Yeah.
The fundamental argument is that collectivists or individualists are no less concerned with groups than collectivists.
They're all concerned with groups and that in East Asia it's intergroup collectivism where people...
Don't lose themselves in groups.
They care very much about their positionality within groups and the relationships, which isn't the image.
The image is that people lose their identity and their group identity.
Oh yeah, right.
I wasn't thinking that.
I had the sophisticated version in my mind, Chris, the whole time.
Sure, sure.
I know, I know.
Look, I know what goes on in Japanese companies and amongst Japanese friendship circles, amongst same others, for instance.
And yes, there's an awful lot of individualistic competition going in, but there's definitely a facade of everybody agreeing.
Yeah, so the clip I wanted to play before illustrated better why Kendi has an issue with people focusing on inheritance.
And it again talks to...
A characteristic which maybe some people disparage amongst the progressive set, a tendency towards potential catastrophizing or slippery slopiness.
They don't call it slippery slopiness.
But let me play it and we'll see the road that it takes us from acknowledging the role of inheritance in the outcome of children.
But there is some evidence that we pass individually our genetic and such behavioral inclinations onto kids to some degree.
My son is a lot chiller than I am and than I was, but it's there, right?
Well, I mean, when I say there's no evidence, meaning it's not concrete, right?
And so there's theories, there's some evidence to justify that.
But to me, it's such a powerful statement.
And I feel like there are certain things that should not be said until we have absolute evidence that proves it.
Because obviously, if we are just sort of theorizing or talking about or preliminarily saying it, that's a very powerful idea.
Because then we're going to say, oh, you know, all those smart people, they're going to give birth to smart kids.
And, you know, then it's going to lead to eugenics, right?
And so I think it's a very dangerous slope to go down.
Yeah, it's revealing, isn't it?
And look, it's very understandable why Kendi and people who would be aligned with Kendi are opposed to those things.
First of all, opposed to any idea of saying that material outcomes are, say, the product of culture or even just historical accident, and also to be against the idea that there's some sort of biological basis to outcomes as well.
Now, I completely...
I understand that and I appreciate it, especially at the group level.
As he said, at the group level there's absolutely no reason to think that there's any biological reason for group level differences.
So I sympathise because I know that that's the conservative reactionary argument is that nothing should be done to remediate the inequities that currently exist because their argument is that it's due to these things that aren't our responsibility.
And what Kendi wants to do is say, hey, it is your responsibility.
These inequitable outcomes are our responsibility to fix.
And that's the thing.
I completely agree with him on that.
First of all, about the biology, that's a no-brainer.
That's not a valid reason.
That's only racists who say that.
But the more interesting ones is about cultural differences and history.
And I would say that it doesn't matter.
It doesn't have to be the outcome of deliberate policy.
Or racist policy, even historical racist policy.
It could just be a historical accident that led to a particular area in the Appalachians or a particular area that has led to very poor outcomes.
It doesn't matter.
It's still not good, and policy should be aimed to rectify that.
So I suppose, yeah, I'd just say to him that you don't need to...
Like, I understand the reason, the political reason, to lay everything at the feet of...
Policy caused this?
Now, in the United States, obviously, policy did cause it.
Historical policy and present policy absolutely did cause it, and in Australia, too, for that matter, to a significant degree, shall we say.
He's wanting to disregard other causes of it, too, but I would say there's no need to because it's a good idea to rectify them anyway.
Yeah, and look, I'm going to play some clues.
Candy's saying things which I've heard you say many times.
So this should be music.
To your ears.
You know, for instance, when it comes to violent crime, we know, for instance, that typically neighborhoods with higher levels of violent crime tend to have higher levels of poverty and unemployment.
And so, but we can't see those macro issues of poverty and unemployment for whatever reason as the cause of that violent crime because we're only looking at those individual people.
And we're only focused and outraged about the acts of those individual people.
And certainly, you know, anytime anyone harms another person, we should be outraged.
But we should also realize that these aren't actually dangerous Black neighborhoods, because if somehow it was the Blackness of the people that was behind the violent crimes in all Black neighborhoods, no matter the levels of poverty and unemployment,
would have the same levels of violent crime.
But it just so happens that higher income black neighborhoods tend to have lower levels, far lower levels of violent crime than extremely impoverished black neighborhoods.
So this is pointing out structural factors which are relevant that poverty and deprivation should be considered and not just like the character failures of the individual.
And I think we would both agree with that.
And he actually makes the point that he doesn't want to focus on it as purely a racial So this is him talking a little bit more about the same sort of theme.
It means we actually do have dangerous unemployed neighborhoods.
We have dangerous impoverished neighborhoods, but then that changes the calculations in terms of what is the deficiency.
Yeah.
You know, the solution isn't we need to work out some way to alleviate black...
People's genetic inferiority that makes them create these terrible places to live.
Like, no, we need systems that are addressing poverty and deprivation.
And I don't find much to disagree with there.
But it's kind of predictable, right?
Because, like, we are liberal people, so that would be the kind of explanation that we would favor on.
Structural factors and deprivation and that these should be resolved through policies.
So are we just saying that the liberal thing is right?
Well, yeah, I think it's self-evidently true what he's saying, that when you look at, say, high levels of crime or high levels of social dysfunction generally, there could well be a correlation with race,
but it's not the race that's...
That's the problem.
It's not the skin colour that's causing it.
It's a combination of historical policies, present policies, and even things that we're referring to, the impact of culture and subculture.
To a large degree, those things are downstream of history.
I'd say 100% they are fully downstream of history.
A history that's been affected by policy along the way.
So it seems appropriate to me to look to policies to steer things in a better direction, to rectify them.
I've got one last clip that I think will echo that and just show how much you're on the same page with Kendi.
For all our disagreements, here's the point where we converge.
You have many Americans who it's easy for them, for instance, to blame those individual...
People who are engaged in violent crime in a neighborhood that's perceived as dangerous and violent.
It's a little bit harder.
You see those people, and it's easy to blame those people, and it's easy to say those people are violent, and it's easy to say then community is violent.
It's much harder to take a step back and start to think about, okay, what potential policies are affecting that community?
That could be leading to those higher levels of violent crime.
So, you know, Jordan Peterson would hate this.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, as you say, Chris, when viewed from, I guess, the right angle, then I am so on board with Kendi, it's not funny.
And I think you probably are too.
And I've got a bit of a hot take here, which is, it seems to me, at least part of the reason why people like Kendi is so controversial in the United States is that...
In the United States, they really have an abhorrence of the idea that anything apart from your individual gumption and stick-to-itness and moral character determines what happens in your life.
It's particularly strong on the right wing, on conservatives, but even liberals too tend to favour a kind of an individualistic way of thinking about things.
And even in addressing injustice, often there's this kind of return to sort of things that an individual...
And so on.
on what causes a particular person to be successful and happy and well-balanced and so on.
And it's got an awful lot to do.
With how lucky you were in terms of how well off the family was that you were born into, the environment that you grew up in, your friendship networks, all of these things, they all feed in to affect how your life turns out.
And I think Americans just don't like to think about their own destiny being...
The outcome of these bigger forces.
So through a particular lens, Kendi isn't talking about race at all.
Okay.
I mean, okay.
Stick with me.
Stick with me.
Okay.
On one level, yes, he is talking about race, Chris.
But on a deeper level, I think he's talking about disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
You know what I mean?
And all kinds of other deprivations that can affect everybody.
To one degree or another, right?
Or people are free of them to one degree or another.
And it happens that in the United States, those things are highly correlated with your racial identity.
And in Australia too, especially with respect to Indigenous people.
Fortunately, with respect to other racial categories, it's not so much the case.
And so I think that racial lens is less prevalent here.
But in Australia, it feels that everyone is very comfortable with the idea that...
People are affected by their circumstances and we want to take actions at a societal level to give everybody a fair go.
Yeah, there is the cult of individualism in America.
You know, it has its good and its bad points.
The libertarian ethos is certainly strong in that country.
But I can get on board with your hot take, but only to a certain degree, because I think he really, he is talking about these broader things, but like, it's very, very fixated on Rius as the key.
I agree.
Obviously, that's the main thing he's concerned with in terms of equalizing that.
I'm not saying the man who wrote Anti-Racist Baby is not concerned with race, right?
But what I am saying is that when you actually look at his sort of theoretical machinery, his intellectual framework that goes into explaining Those racial discrepancies and differences and how to ameliorate them.
It's standard socialism.
Would you agree?
I would agree.
But that actually takes me to one of the last points before we get to our wrap-ups.
Unless you have more to say, in which case just like continue on.
So one of the criticisms of Candy that we will be complaining about if we don't address.
And he doesn't talk about it in these talks that we looked at.
But I think he is a little bit prone to twittering hot takes and that kind of thing.
But there's a lot of people who are on the opposing front for him.
John McWhorter, for example, has not been covering himself with glory on Twitter recently.
So he has suggested that there should be an amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that they should establish...
A department of anti-racism, as he describes it, comprised of formerly trained experts on racism and no political appointees, DOA would be responsible for pre-clearing all local, state, and federal public policies to ensure they won't yield racial inequality,
monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expression of racist ideas.
People did highlight this idea, and their argument is that this is close to describing a totalitarian apparatus that is above all democratic areas of the state, which has a positive goal,
yes, but lots of things which end up totalitarian carry within them fundamental.
Their idea is good.
It's the execution that is the problem.
A department which is above all regulations can police what people are thinking.
It doesn't sound great, does it?
No.
The people pointing this out said, if this was a conservative writer who was arguing for something similar related to, I don't know, like valuing American traditionalism or something, people would very quickly say,
That's fascism, or that's close to fascism.
And I don't think that Kendi, like, I don't think that's a fair thing, because I don't think he's going to instigate, like, an anti-racist fascist state if he had the choice.
I think it's more, this is my take, and this might be me, you know, being overly kind.
But that's just, like, a bad suggestion of an academic who...
It's like fixating on policy and it's thinking of an impractical wonky solution that could have really negative consequences if it actually came to pass.
And so I think it's partly just a hot take that deserves criticism, yes, but that I think fundamentally is hard.
You know, it's in the right place.
And I know that doesn't necessarily matter because most people think that they're doing the right thing.
I just want to play one clip before I get your feedback where he's asked about this setting up of a policy center at the university.
And I think this highlights to me more that that hot take...
He stands in contradiction to the way that he responds here.
And you formed a center which the whole goal was to bring together policy people to really look at what policies are racist, what policies are not, and to try and change the sort of policy that gets enacted.
Well, certainly.
I mean, you know, we've founded the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research, and certainly, you know, one of our goals.
Will be to allow research to bear on sort of policies that are indeed maintaining or growing racial inequity and justice.
So we then can see what policies need to be eliminated from our body politic.
Yeah, as you say, Chris, that's a lot milder version of the hot take that you read out before.
So I tend to agree with you that...
It's more of a wonky policy suggestion by an academic.
And he, I would say, phrased it in an inadvisable way.
But the way he described it there is pretty innocuous.
The way I read it was he pretty much hedges that, look, we are going to, we'll do research that will speak to policies and we'll give advice.
But what he's not saying is we'll establish a constitutional thing and everybody needs to.
To me, it just sounded like an academic.
Yeah, yeah.
So it seems like we've managed to run long for our final episode.
We've touched on all the hot-button topics that will get us cancelled.
We've disparaged Black Academic for at least two and a half hours by the time it's edited down.
This is our Zenith.
And look...
I fully anticipate that some people will say, well, but you're too nice to him in a way that you aren't to like some of the folks that you don't agree with in terms of their politics.
And to that, I would say that's probably true to some extent.
But I think we did highlight that, you know, my issues with him primarily are that he's applying these bespoke definitions.
Occasionally offering hot takes, but that actually the way he talks in general, it isn't like a super hyperbolic way.
It's just applying his definitions.
And it speaks to me as an academic as something that I've seen many times.
And I sometimes strongly disagree with academics when they're using definitions that I don't agree with.
But I think that it would be wrong to present him as like, well, this is the liberal version of Scott Adams or the liberal version of an Eric Weinstein.
No, he doesn't strike me as super grandiose or fundamentally sinister.
He strikes me as someone who you can disagree with the various claims that he has, but he has a policy agenda.
He's a bit wonky-ish.
His arguments about how we should apply the logic of racism, I'm less compelled by.
But the underlying logic that we need to be concerned about not just people who are slavering racists and that people can, in their actions, be inconsistent and support racist policies without harboring deep animus towards people from other racial categories.
Yeah, that's all good.
So I think he's fine.
For us to cover as a guru, he definitely falls within that sphere.
But he wasn't as bad as I was expecting him to be from the culture war stuff.
I'd be curious to read one of his books and see if he fleshes things out better or if there's more hot take stuff in it.
I'm not sure.
Yeah, I...
Largely agree with all that, Chris.
So focusing on the stylistic stuff to begin with, he's not guru-ish at all.
He sounds like an academic and he's very clear and precise and, as you say, he just doesn't do the guru things.
If you disagree with him...
Then it's because you disagree with him.
It's not because he's spinning things out of whole cloth.
He's advocating for a particular position and he explains himself very clearly.
We criticized a few things and I want to revisit them before I get to the final degree to which I agree with him or not because I think it's helpful because I think he does make some mistakes in some of that logic.
Part of it is to do with the definitions, as you said.
I don't mind those definitions as far as they go, but the problem is that because the label of racist and racism has got such a strong valence, it's up there with child molesting, frankly, in terms of the kinds of emotions that arise from it.
To use such a bland description of...
Racism and then rely on that is confusing to the public discourse and probably contributes to the really quite nonsensical culture wars stuff that goes on.
So that would have been best avoided.
I guess my other criticism is that he implicitly does work in a categorical kind of way.
So, you know, in classifying behaviours or policies as racist.
Or anti-racist.
It just flattens the differing degrees.
And as we talked about, there are some policies that are going to be virtually neutral in terms of the degree to which they contribute towards or fight against racial equality.
And that's okay.
And that goes along with my other issue, which is that he's kind of like a single-issue person.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
There's a lot of people who are single issues.
You can talk to environmentalists, for instance, who are absolutely focused on environmental issues.
All they care about is fixing the environment, something that I'm personally very passionate about and very sympathetic to.
But, you know, that is a unidimensional focus.
And there are other things apart from the environment that are important.
And just like there are other things apart from racial equality that are important.
It doesn't mean that those things aren't important.
It just means that there are other things that are important too.
So when you talk about categorizing things as racist or anti-racist, implicit in that is the idea that anti-racist policies are always good and racist policies are always bad.
Whereas just like with environmental issues or income inequality or health and wellbeing, you know, it's multidimensional.
We're trying to optimise things for people in a multidimensional way.
So we can have other focuses as well.
So those aside, you know, I don't mind where he's coming from at all.
I quite like it.
Even though his definition of racism is being about policies and...
Being about behaviours can be confusing to the discourse.
On a purely academic level, very helpful, I think, because that's the stuff that actually matters.
You don't really care about what's going on in the heart of hearts of some random person.
It's if they say and do stuff that is hurtful or just annoying in the case of that old guy and his stupid joke.
That's the problem.
And in terms of policies, yes, actually it doesn't really matter what the intention is.
What matters is how much it works.
It doesn't matter if your policy intends to reduce...
Carbon emissions.
What matters is whether or not it does.
So I'm actually okay with an awful lot, more than okay.
I like a lot of his logic.
And although he does have that laser-like focus on reducing racial inequality, which is very understandable, when you tease apart where he's coming from theoretically, he's really not focused on race.
He's focused on those environmental and social.
And even cultural and historical determinants of people's health and wellbeing, their economic wellbeing as well, and saying that, hey, I don't really care how downstream it is, the degree to which it came about through some policy from 100 years ago or whether it came about through some policy of 10 years ago.
He's saying we should operate from the heuristic that...
Large discrepancies between racial groups is not really okay.
It's not really excusable.
And the sort of right-wing arguments or explanations for it, which is, oh, these people deserve to be worse off because there's something wrong with them, either biologically or culturally or whatever, is simply wrong.
First of all, there's no evidence, as he says, that it could have anything to do with biology, so that knocks that one off.
The other one, that it's cultural, to the extent that that exists, is often largely downstream of historical policy.
So I don't think of myself as being in favour of...
For want of a better phrase, identity politics or being woke at all.
I just look at these things from a liberal and slightly socialist kind of frame.
And just from that frame, he's not wrong.
He's not wrong at all.
So, you know, little picture.
I have lots of quibbles with his, or not, a few quibbles with his logical decisions.
I think he could fix a few of those things.
I think he's not guru.
Guru like it all.
He explains himself very well and very clearly, which makes it a lot easier to identify those points of disagreement.
Thank you very much, Abraham X. Kendi.
That was helpful.
And on a big picture level, I think I'm on board.
Like you, Chris, I didn't expect to be on board.
I expected to hear Twitter, Culture War.
Slogans.
Bullshit.
Bullshit, frankly.
But I didn't.
You know, he makes a lot of sense.
And when you disagree with him, at least it's quite clear at what points you disagree with him on, and you can talk about that.
Yeah, I find myself...
I don't think you listened to all of that episode, but I find myself much more in agreement with Ezra Klein than Kendi when they had their discussion.
But that's because...
I'm a neoliberal centrist shell, so that's why.
But I think we've said enough on the man and now people can leave us alone for doing candy.
We've done them.
It was entertaining, I think, but substantial.
It was entertaining and it was easy because he is very clear and he makes sense.
So he's easy to understand and whether you're agreeing with him or disagreeing with him, he's good in that respect.
So, yeah.
Yeah, and it's all the more shocking because he's black.
Sorry.
Sorry.
I might cut that.
That's a joke, right?
I know that's a joke.
It's a good joke.
It's a very good joke.
You should end on that.
You should end on that.
That's it.
Nothing else.
I don't have a ball for that.
But I might keep it in.
I might keep it in.
But we have some last things to do, Matt, before I let you escape the outback and your luxury gay communism.
Can't wait to gay it up out here in the outback.
I hope people get all these references.
I'm just making myself so terrible.
So before that, though, we have a little...
A little thing that we usually do before we end.
So one thing is reviews.
Reviews, Matt.
And I'm not going to keep you long because these are short reviews, but I quite enjoyed these two.
You know, we ask people to send them reviews.
They send them reviews.
They're often funny.
And I've got two amusing ones.
Can't wait.
So one says, My Review.
That's a title.
By Flax Hardly.
A cruel and confusing experiment in gaslighting in which two woke gurus from academia claim they are not woke, then proceed to criticize anti-woke gurus on woke grounds in order to provoke accusations of wokeness.
Five wokes.
That's very good.
That's very good.
I think our generally favorable impression of Kendi is not going to help us.
In terms of the...
On the woke scale.
Well, you're screwed, guys.
I'm screwed.
But I don't know.
You know, it's all very confusing as to who sees me as woke and anti-woke.
Yeah, when I was blocked by Liam, it was easy, right?
Like, I was blocked by Liam, blocked by Stefan Molyneux and Mike Cernovich.
I'm the perfect centrist, kind of knowing progressives and far-right people.
But now I'm back in the Liam sphere, at least until this episode airs.
So...
You know, where do I go from here, Matt?
But review number two.
A review from a Zoomer.
What's a Zoomer?
But he uses Zoom?
No, no, no, no.
They're a generation.
It's a generational thing, yeah?
The people in the...
Are they?
Generation Z. This is a review from Generation Z. That's it.
Generation Z, yes.
You know, like Generation Z, they like to be concise and it's just a short thing.
Yeah, yeah.
This is delivered by Professor Neumann and they say, fair and balanced for two bourgeois neolibs.
So there we go.
We have the wokey woke and the second category that we belong to, bourgeois neoliberals.
Well, as we discussed earlier, that's a label I have to...
Except I am bourgeois.
My daddy has a yacht, so there's no way to avoid being called bourgeois when that's the case.
My daddy does not have a yacht.
But actually, we do have boats.
We do have boats.
But these are Irish boats.
They're not your luxury yachts.
These are from blood, sweat and tears and shampoo bottles.
Okay, so let me just check.
Does your boat have air conditioning?
Why?
No.
What country?
Like Ireland?
Has an air conditioner ever been used in Ireland?
Well, yeah, at least, you know, we do have summer sometimes.
We did have.
But, yeah, that's such a – that reveals your privilege, Matt, your heat privilege.
I'm leaning into the privilege.
You're leaning into the racism.
I'm leaning into the privilege.
Now, that's not a fair for you.
I mean, no things.
Oh, look, yeah, Matt, we forgot to throw out...
No, we did.
We threw out loads of disclaimers at the start.
But we wanted to say, of course, we could be wrong.
We only partially know things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like, this works, right?
And we say, by the way, we were very fair.
We should also do that because, you know, these magic spells of just saying...
Like, yeah, it's quite impressive how good we were at dealing with all the arguments fairly and without strawmanning anything.
It's impressive.
Yeah, I was impressed by how open-minded you were, and I could tell that you were of me as well.
I was.
I was.
It's good that you could tell that.
Now that that's going to the way, you got that done, we've picked up the techniques masterfully from the gurus, I have to say.
And look, you're getting a little rare treat at the end.
You know, usually we're pretty quick.
We're tired.
We're like, bye-bye.
And it's still going to be quick because Matt is tired and I am tired.
I'm very tired.
But we need to say thank you to our patrons who, not now because we're too tired, but they will soon receive the Garometer scores.
Where we take candy and score them in a little short video that we post up on the Patreon.
So should you wish to see that kind of thing, hear the Grometer Breakdown, join the Patreon.
And you can be like Matt Carl, who is a conspiracy hypothesizer.
Thank you, Matt Carl.
Thank you, Matt Carl.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
And next, we need to find Kim Hendig, who is a revolutionary genius.
Kim.
Well done, Kim.
Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking and let yourself feed off of your own thinking.
What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher.
A thinker.
That the world doesn't know.
Yes, I think the world doesn't know.
I'm very sorry for that.
But they will.
They will.
Just give it time.
And Evan!
Evan!
My man Evan!
It's Justin's first name.
So, Evan.
Oh, that Evan.
Yeah, Evan.
You know Evan.
He's always hypothesizing conspiracies.
That's his problem, Matt.
But, you know.
Apart from that, he's a good bloke.
He's all right.
He's all right.
Good job, Evan.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
Now, in a derivative fashion, Matt, the last one for this week, M. Jason, unlike the other conspiracy hypothesizers, he follows in the wake.
We've already had that sound played two times and like...
Here it is again.
I'm sorry, M. Jason, but yeah, you're the last conspiracy hypothesizer.
But he's still unique and special.
That's the important thing.
He is.
He's a minority of one.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
All right.
So there we have it.
Our lovely patrons, thank you very much.
And you can be like them too by joining.
But the last thing, the very last thing, Matt, the thing that you get before we go is we usually say who the next guru is.
Now, we didn't decide this at all, although we have now got a document with loads of suggestions and we have a bunch of emails.
I feel our reward for a job well done will be that we can just decide here who we'll do.
Now, I'm going to make a suggestion based on your...
Recent Freudian slips.
I have a feeling you want to cover Gadsad.
Is that an inaccurate feeling or is that true?
Oh, yeah, no, that is true.
I would like to cover Gadsad.
I mean, in my brain, he occupies precisely the same cognitive location.
As Nassim Taleb.
Is he different or is he just like a different version of Taleb?
What's the deal with him, Chris?
That's a good question, isn't it, Matt?
So we could find that out or we could go, you know, left field and go for someone.
I can give you some names or Matthew Remski when he was on suggested someone that's on YouTube.
I forget her name now, April something or other, but he was talking about these like super high production values and Cum Hiller eyes and that the, you know, the whole thing is wrapped up in this like super presentation.
I feel like we need to do some sort of lefty or at least hippy-dippy people that we really hate.
Because feeling like we're losing our centrist credentials by not minding Kendi.
Oh, you want the lefty that we hate?
And you don't class all of the people that claim to be lefties in the IDWS?
No, I don't class them.
I mean, if not lefty, at least, what about that New Age thing?
How about Gwyneth Paltrow?
Has she said anything that we could...
What?
But people hate her.
Isn't this supposed to be...
Oh, no, wait, we are supposed to hate her.
Right, yeah, so that will work out.
I feel like I will.
I feel like I would.
You've been chatting about Gwyneth Paltrow all the time recently.
It's Gwyneth Paltrow this, did you see what Gwyneth Paltrow did?
So maybe let's just get Gwyneth Paltrow.
Done with to stop you talking about it.
She won't reply to any of my emails or phone calls.
That's really annoying.
I have no idea what kind of content she produces that will be able to do this, but she's a guru.
She's online.
She's a woman.
Let's do it.
She's a lefty.
Let's do it, Matt.
Let's just fucking do it.
I can do it.
All right.
All right.
But we will do Gadsad.
Maybe we'll do Gadsad next.
Yeah.
Good plan.
And also the other person that Matthew Redsky mentioned.
They all sound good.
They all sound good, Chris.
Well, but still, we need to get rid of this Gwyneth Paltrow fascination.
I have to deal with it, Matt.
For your marriage's sake, you know.
So...
So there you have it.
You've heard it first here.
Gwyneth Paltrow is the next person to be tore down by our relentless cynicism.
Yeah.
We will find out all her inconsistencies.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, Matt.
I almost forgot because I had to add this in last time.
We have a Gmail account, which is decodingthegurus at gmail.com.
we have a Twitter account, which is gurus pod on Twitter and you are on Twitter at Arthur C dent and I'm on Twitter at C underscore Kavana.
If you send us reviews and stuff like that, that's all appreciated or abuse, whatever you want to do.
Um, and oh yeah, that's just a thing.
So the last thing I wanted to say, Matt is just, you know, grovel at the feet of your muscle master.
Oh, I,
That sounds good.
That's my new sign off!
That's my new sign-off.
That's just quieting, but I like it, yeah.
There we go.
All right.
There we go.
No explanation for it.
No, go listen to the Matthew Ramsky interview, should you wish they'd understand that context.
