Eli Steele’s documentary Get This, How Jack Became Black exposes how America’s rigid racial categories—forced by schools like LAUSD to label his multiracial son as just "Black"—perpetuate identity politics that ignore complex heritage. Meanwhile, Andrew Clavin argues Trump’s EU trade deal, dismissed as a retreat, actually secured zero-tariff terms and soybean market access, while media misrepresents negotiations as failures. Clavin also mocks California’s plastic straw ban as performative power-grabbing and criticizes CNN’s exclusion from White House events as a First Amendment overreach. Steele’s critique of racial binaries, embraced by progressives and conservatives alike, reveals how identity politics traps individuals in divisive systems—while Klavan warns socialism’s moral void leaves societies hollowed out. [Automatically generated summary]
The California city of Santa Barbara has passed a new ordinance that could result in waiters being put in jail if they give customers a plastic straw.
I love satire of big overbearing government.
Oh wait, this is a true story.
The new ordinance makes each individual straw distributed a separate violation with penalties up to $1,000 a piece and six months in jail.
California lawmakers said the ban on straws and other plastic utensils will have no impact on pollution since Western countries cause very little of the plastic pollution in oceans, but they just wanted to mess with people by showing them how powerful they were and how little they cared about the choices or convenience of individual human beings.
The legislators also said the ban would be good for public morals by keeping Archie and Veronica from drinking out of the same malted while cartoon hearts danced around their heads.
And it would also be really funny to watch handicap people try to reach their cups until they fell out of their wheelchairs.
After making those remarks, the legislators broke into maniacal laughter and had to be carried away in straitjackets.
In a straw poll, 46% of respondents said the straw law was the last straw.
32% said it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
17% said it was straw dogs starring Dustin Hoffman.
And 2% said it just sucked.
Nonetheless, the lawmakers said those arguments were mere strawmen and they refused to bend on the issue because they didn't have those little ridges that make bending possible and are also fun to pull out and press in like an accordion.
While it's true the new law will make it more difficult for Californians to drink their sodas, rest assured they'll still be able to step in human feces left by homeless people and give each other AIDS on purpose without suffering any penalties.
Hooray for Twitter Feed00:04:28
So that's all right.
By the way, if anyone outside the state can still hear the sound of my voice, please come and rescue me.
Please.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are wingy also sing hunky-dunky.
Shipshaw tipsy topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray.
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, we are back.
You know, we have to say we're having a lot of trouble with YouTube trying to basically demonetize our videos on this show.
And so we want to strike back.
You know, Twitter has been pretty good to me.
They have not really shadow banned me as far as I can tell, but I'm up to 90,000 plus followers.
So I want, where are the other 10,000 of you?
Come on, let's go.
Get me up for over 100,000.
Then they'll notice me and they'll attack me and ban me.
So that's what we want to do.
We want to get up to 100,000 on Twitter.
Sign up.
Go on my Twitter feed.
Actually, my Twitter feed is pretty good.
I'm a fairly good Twitter.
All right.
You know, we've been talking yesterday, all the stuff I said about negotiations.
It is as if the universe is listening to this show.
And of course, it is.
That's what's happening.
That's exactly what's happening.
Because yesterday, I raised some questions about Donald Trump's trade negotiations, but I also talked about the way those negotiations are being covered.
The fact that a negotiation is a motion.
You're in motion from one place to another.
And what the press and the opposing politicians are always doing is capturing Trump at one moment and saying, oh, where's the deal?
Or why are you doing this?
Now, I've been in a lot of negotiations in my life.
I mean, when you do what I do, you're a freelancer, essentially.
You're always negotiating.
And I have been in some big, big negotiations and some negotiations on which the future of my family depended.
Truly, I mean, where I was on one side was darkness and poverty, and on the other side was wealth and success.
And I've been in those negotiations.
And of course, I've been in negotiations, which I'm sure a lot of you have been in for houses and things like this.
And one thing I can tell you is the two things that make negotiations harrowing, make them difficult, is one, you don't want the deal to go away and the other side knows that.
And so a lot of times when you're in negotiations for a book or a movie, of course you have an agent.
And the reason you have an agent is because it separates you.
It puts you at one remove from the negotiation.
But it's still you making the decisions.
And I remember sitting through a night of negotiation where truly my family's future was on the line and drinking.
I drank so much brandy that if I had done it on a normal day, it would have knocked me unconscious.
I was stone cold sober.
That's how tense I was and making very, very high-level decisions.
But what makes you nervous in that case is you don't want the deal to go away.
And of course, there are other people, people you love and care about, whose future is on the line.
But the other thing that gets in your way in a negotiation is the people around you, the people who also have something at risk.
So for instance, an agent wants to make the deal and he's always going, well, maybe it might go away.
It might go away.
And sometimes it falls to you to be the hard guy, even though it's your project.
It falls to you to say, no, no, I think we can go further.
I think we can wait an hour.
I think we can, you know, and a lot of times in Hollywood, especially, people will say, you have an hour to get back to me.
And you should never, I never respond to that.
My feeling is, hey, you know what?
If you can't wait until I've made a decision, go away.
And I've pulled that.
I have pulled that.
And it's very tough to do.
The other people can really get in your way.
If you're buying a house, for instance, I'm a very good negotiator for houses because I don't care if a house disappears.
I've never loved a house so much that I wasn't ready to let it go if I couldn't get the price I wanted.
But, you know, your wife, who was the person who was going to be making a home and turning this house, can get very attached to a house.
And you know that she's sitting there and sometimes voluably sitting there, so speaking to you, saying she really wants that house.
And that is something that is also spurring you on, possibly to make mistakes.
So when we're listening to the news, the press has a job to do.
It has to report what's happening today.
It can't report what's happening tomorrow.
And it usually has no idea what happened yesterday.
So it's just like Rush always calls them the drive-by media.
They're just driving by and recording this thing.
But you, as a consumer of news, have to understand that the press has something at stake.
Trade Pressures and Negotiations00:15:40
In this case, they usually want to see Donald Trump fail.
Or they're like the Wall Street Journal, who is afraid of business.
They're the kind of business guys.
They're the guys on the monopoly cards.
That's who they represent.
They represent that guy with the mustache and everything.
And they're afraid the business is going to suffer.
So they're constantly doing what these other people do to you in a negotiation.
They're sitting there, this is, where's the deal?
You're not doing this.
You're not doing this, right?
So yesterday, I was pointing out that I was holding fire on Trump's decisions because I know that he's in motion and I'm not sure where he's going.
And I raised some questions and I raised some doubts.
Yesterday, a lot of those doubts were answered, I have to say.
You know, how do you know, you know, when Donald Trump is at a good day, it's when they stop covering him.
When they just, he just vanishes and the stuff he's doing just vanishes and they go off and find some new silly scandal that they're trying to tout.
Yesterday, he had a good day.
He has put up these tariffs and threatened tariffs against friends and foe alike, against the Chinese and against the European Union.
And the European Union came to the table.
I mean, this is not victory for Trump, but it is a victory for Trump.
And there's no other way to spin this.
One of the biggest things you have to do in a negotiation is bring the other people to the table with some kind of similar idea to what you want.
That, you know, you do want to make this movie.
You do want to go for it.
You both want to make it.
So at least we're talking about the same thing.
Bringing people to the table is a big part of this.
And the EU was threatening to go off and make deals with China and make deals with other people.
But no, the European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker showed up at the White House and they said they were ready to talk.
Now, here's the important thing.
They were ready to start negotiations about reaching zero tariffs on both sides.
And the important thing here is that was Trump's stated goal, and virtually no one covered it.
They kept saying, oh, he's saying tariffs are great.
He's saying tariffs are great.
But he said, I want no tariffs.
That's what he wants.
So here's Trump announcing this real success for him.
This is why we agreed today, first of all, to work together towards zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto-industrial goods.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We will also work to reduce barriers and increase trade and services, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical products, as well as soybeans.
Soybeans is a big deal.
And the European Union is going to start almost immediately to buy a lot of soybeans.
They're a tremendous market.
Buy a lot of soybeans from our farmers in the Midwest primarily.
So I thank you for that, John Tlaude.
This will open markets for farmers and workers, increase investment, and lead to greater prosperity in both the United States and the European Union.
It will also make trade fairer and more reciprocal.
My favorite word, reciprocal.
I like that reciprocal.
Because, you know, what's happening here, and by the way, he's emphasizing the soybeans because the farmers are really suffering because the Chinese are striking back against the tariffs that Trump imposed on them.
The Chinese are striking back against the farmers.
And the Chinese, they're no dummies.
They know where his supporters are, and they're going after his supporters.
But what's happening here is after World War II, I mean, that's how far back this is going.
After World War II, the world was in ruins except for us, the European Union, Japan, ashes, gone, right?
And so when you talk about the 50s and how prosperous we were, one of the reasons we were so prosperous, you hear Elizabeth Warren, I heard her saying the other day, we used to have these high taxes and that was our most prosperous time.
Yeah, because all the competition had been leveled to dust.
I mean, when I say that, I mean literally to dust.
Their civilizations were gone.
And so you're not competing with Germany because Germany is in ashes.
You're not competing with Britain because they're putting themselves back together.
We went and made them, brought them back.
We wanted a world that was a working world.
We went back and rebuilt Japan.
We rebuilt Germany.
And we did it partially with the Lone Leaf things where we gave them the Marshall Plan where we helped them out.
But the other thing we did was we gave them big breaks on trade.
And they're still in place.
And all Trump is doing is saying, you know what, World War II is kind of over.
It's like it's been a while.
It's been a couple of days since World War II ended.
It's time to reduce this stuff.
So yesterday, Brett Baer had Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary.
He's obviously the guy in charge of this one.
And he explained why this deal, even though it's just an agreement to talk, it is an agreement to get to a certain place.
And Wilbur Ross explains why this is a big deal.
This is the first one to cut one.
Well, I think there are several very significant aspects.
There were no preconditions to the negotiations.
No requirement that we drop any of the 232 tariffs just to get talks going.
As you know, that had been an original EU request.
They came very prepared to do business.
We came prepared to do business.
And I think this really breaks the ground because it has now set the parameters.
Everything is on the table.
Yeah, I'm talking zero tariffs, possibly.
Right.
President made clear at the G7, although, as you remember, nobody paid any attention, that his endgame is zero tariffs, zero non-tariff trade barriers, zero subsidies, and zero barriers to our market access.
So four big zeros.
So that's a big deal.
You know, that's what there's when you come to the table without conditions, you come to the table looking for these zero tariffs.
And Ross points out there that this is what Trump said.
He said, this is the deal I want.
And when they cover Trump, they do not pay attention to this.
And we'll get into this incredible conflict that Mike Pompeo had with the Senate yesterday.
Just saying to them, you keep paying attention to Trump, things Trump says in the midst of negotiation, but you're not paying attention to where he wants to go and what the policies reflect of what they say.
And the senators keep saying, we'll play some of this.
It's amazing audio.
The senators keep saying, well, he said this and he said this, and Pompeo keeps saying, yeah, but his policies say this.
I just want to play one more cut of Wilbur Ross.
I know it's a little bit in the deep weeds, but I did ask this question yesterday.
Why, when Trump says I am buying time with, for instance, bailing out the farmers, I said, well, why doesn't China just say, oh, well, we can outweight him.
We can outweight him.
So of course, because the universe responds to me, this is exactly the question Brett Baer asked Wilbur Ross.
I just want to say, the reason you are listening to the show is this is the wisdom show.
And one of the parts about wisdom is knowing what you don't know.
And like Socrates said, I know that I know nothing.
That's what made him the wisest man.
I know that I know even less than nothing.
So I'm even wiser than Socrates.
So I asked this question, and Wilbur Ross gives this answer.
The Chinese have done a very, very good job figuring out the political map and how to target it.
But you look at their recent announcements, infusions of capital into the banks, lowering reserve requirements, letting their currency drift downward.
They're feeling pain themselves.
They're also finding it not so easy to substitute for all of our farm products.
You're going to see once they run out of the soybeans that they artificially built up, they can't just get all the beans from Brazil.
And here's why.
Brazil is 55% of the beans they buy.
We're 33%.
For Brazil to replace us, they would have to increase their exports to China by 60%.
Well, guess what?
If Brazil could have done it that much and increase at an economical price, they already would have done it.
They didn't have to wait for this conflict.
So they're finding it not so simple to deal with their own retaliation.
Just to unpack that a little, because I know it's the deep weeds, he points out that China was storing up soybeans, waiting for Trump to do what he did and kind of outsmarting him by trying to go after his base.
So China's part, you know, we're in a trade war with China.
This is the one thing you have to agree with Trump about.
All Trump is doing is fighting back.
And yes, this is dangerous.
War is dangerous.
A trade war is dangerous.
But the panic that you're getting from the Wall Street Journal, the insane panic you're getting from Republicans in Congress, you know, it doesn't help in the negotiation.
Trump may be wrong.
He may have gotten this wrong.
He may lose the negotiation, but it doesn't help him negotiate to have all these people jumping on his shoulders saying, what's happening?
It's like, are we there yet?
It's like listening to the kids.
I have to point out.
So my one point about this is this is a victory for Trump.
It's not victory, but it's a victory for Trump.
So how do they cover it?
The New York Times, a former newspaper, their headline is, with surprise deal, U.S. and EU step back from trade war.
Now, who was surprised?
Where does that surprise come from?
Donald Trump said this was going to happen.
Yesterday, we played a cut of him saying, oh, they're coming to the table.
The EU is coming to the table.
But who's surprised?
The New York Times, not Donald Trump.
And the networks, truly dishonest reporting.
It's worth playing a minute of this.
This is the networks trying to spin this as if Trump lost, as if it was Trump who blinked instead of the EU.
And I'm not saying the EU blinked.
The EU did the sensible thing.
They were under threat.
Trump is right about the tariffs.
They should be fair.
There should be a zero.
And here's the Nets reporting this.
To the president tonight, under pressure after his own tariffs, igniting a trade war, other countries retaliating.
It has many American farmers paying the price.
You heard from many of them last night right here.
Well, tonight, the president with a new promise, reaching out to the European Union, he called them a foe just a week ago, but late today, calling a press conference outside the White House to say they will now work together.
ABC's Terry Moran at the White House tonight.
Reeling under increasing pressure from American farmers, congressional Republicans, and nervous Wall Street investors, President Trump suddenly shed his trade warrior persona today and declared a truce with the European Union.
Now to the late development that could mean the U.S. and its European allies are stepping back from the brink of a trade war.
The president denouncing a compromise today with the EU, but offering few details.
Yet the nation's automakers and some suppliers say they're already feeling the pain from the trade war on another front with China.
That is amazing.
That is amazing dishonest reporting.
They can't just say, you know, he threatened them.
They came to the table.
It's got to be, you know, he threatened them.
He caved.
He caved.
It's just lying.
It is lying.
It is just, you know, that is those guys, those guys who get paid a lot of money to go in there and look into a camera and give you information.
They took the money, they put on their suits and ties, they went on there with serious looks, and they lied.
That is what they do.
To me, that's amazing.
I don't understand.
I really don't.
I don't understand what that life would be like.
I do not understand what it would be like to be putting on my tie and looking in the mirror.
And of course, I don't wear a tie, but I occasionally look in the mirror.
And you're looking in the mirror and thinking, I'm going out there and I'm going to sell this crap to people.
If it's the last thing I do, I do not understand what that life is like.
I've got to play this Pompeo stuff.
It is just so good.
Pompeo goes before to talk about the Russia summit and North Korea and all this, and the Democrats hammer him.
And Pompeo was, I got to say, another big victory for Trump, just the fact that Pompeo was standing up for him.
Here he is talking to Democrat Chris Murphy about the Helsinki summit.
And this is about the Russians.
Yeah, this is the cut about the Russians.
Let's just play Chris Murphy is talking to him about what Trump says, and Pompeo is saying, yeah, but watch what he does.
Senator, the policies are themselves statements as well that the administration makes.
Well, policies are statements and statements are policies.
It goes to the police.
No, that's not true.
That's absolutely not true.
But people make lots.
I make lots of statements.
They're not U.S. policy.
The president says things, right?
The president makes comments in certain places.
We have National Security Council.
We meet.
We lay out strategies.
We develop policies.
How do I know that?
The president then sets the course.
How do I know the difference between a presidential statement that is not a policy and a statement that is?
Senator, here's what you should look at.
Compare the following.
Barack Obama speaking tough on Russia and doing nothing.
Those were true.
It is true.
I understand you want to rewrite the Obama policy on Russia, but that's simply a problem.
Let's go task to put a comprehensive, unprecedented set of sanctions on Russia.
The man said he would have more flexibility after.
You're not, listen, my question isn't about, isn't about, I know you want to turn constantly back.
No, I just want to look at facts and policy, Senator.
I'm trying to get to U.S. policy.
It's what I do.
I can't believe that Pompey was just, all right, let's go.
Let's go.
It's crappy.
And, you know, and Murphy backed down.
After that, Murphy started asking much more friendly questions.
Because when you're willing to bring up the fact that Obama did try and sell out American defenses to the Russians off camera and got caught on an open mic, he just happened to get caught on an open mic.
But listen to what Murphy is doing.
What Murphy is doing is saying, how can I tell the difference between what Trump says and the difference between his policies and what Pompeo is saying is watch his policies.
Trump is a negotiator.
He's not just the president who sends other people to negotiate.
He negotiates.
He negotiates.
And by the way, we were talking about his lousy character yesterday, which I talk about all the time.
I never pretend that he's a great guy.
But bad people make good negotiators.
I mean, this is one of the things.
You know, I'm kind of a hard case, but I'm actually fairly pleasant human being, but I can be a hard case in a negotiation.
But most hard, really hard negotiators, most really tough negotiators are not nice people.
And that's one of the things you're seeing with Trump.
And listen, yesterday, a lot of victories.
I got to play some more of this Pompeo stuff just because I love the back and forth.
He goes off on they start talking about the North Koreans who are starting to actually disassemble some of their nuclear things.
So Edward Markey says, yes, but have they gotten rid of all their nukes?
Have they gotten rid of all their nukes?
And Pompeo's like, no, not yet.
But listen, things are going well.
And he just takes this kind of condescending tone with the senators.
Pretty hilarious.
Fear not.
This administration has taken enormously constructive actions that have put us in a place that is far better than in either of the two previous administrations, one Republican, one Democrat.
We have put sanctions regime in place that is unequaled.
We are continuing to enforce that sanctions regime.
We've made incredibly clear that we will continue to enforce that sanctions regime until such time as denuclearization, as we've defined it, is complete.
Pressure on the regime is clearly being felt.
We have lots of work to do.
But unlike previous administrations, Senator, we have no intention of allowing the UN sanctions, the world's sanctions that we led the charge, have put in place to allowing those sanctions to either be lifted or not enforced.
And until such time as Chairman Kim fulfills the commitment he made, which I am incredibly hopeful that he will, those sanctions will remove.
We have not been taken for a right, Senator.
Why We Left Race00:15:29
I hope you can sleep a little bit better tonight.
I hope you can sleep a little bit better.
You know, Trump had a good, good day yesterday in which a lot of his negotiating strategies started to bear fruit.
We will see how he does it, whether he follows through, whether he gets to the end.
Some of these things are difficult.
But all I'm saying is when you're watching the news, remember you are watching the nervous wife who's saying, are we going to lose the house?
Are we going to lose the house?
While you're trying to get the price that you think you can afford because you're looking 10 years down the line to whether or not you're going to be paying a mortgage that's going to compromise your children, compromise their schooling or whatever it is.
You know, the nervous wife is saying, are we going to lose the house?
You have to keep your eye on the goal.
And that's what the Trump administration is doing.
Right now, Donald Trump is the adult in the room, which is the scariest thought I can think of.
He's the adult in the room.
But he had a good day yesterday.
I have to talk about this one other thing.
The CNN reporter, Caitlin Collins, was barred from a White House event because she was screaming questions about Michael Cohn at what they call, I think, what do they call them?
Like a, I can't remember, a spray, a spray, where Trump is sitting there and they're throwing her out and she's shouting these things.
She was barred from a subsequent event.
Here is her side of the story.
Here is Caitlin Collins explaining how she feels, what she feels happened.
To walk you through exactly what was going on, I was representing the rest of the television networks during this spray, which is what we refer to at here at the White House in the Oval Office.
We were brought in for the top of the meeting between the president and the president of the European Commission.
Both men delivered remarks and then I and several other reporters started asking President Trump questions.
This is a normal occurrence and it is often our only chance to ask President Trump questions that day and he often responds to us, Wolf.
So to give you a sense of the questions that the White House did not like that we posed to President Trump, here they are.
Did Michael Cohen betray you, Mr. President?
Thank you, Bert.
Thank you, everybody.
Mr. President, did Michael Cohen betray you?
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everybody.
Mr. President, are you worried about what Michael Cohen is going to say to prosecutors?
Let's keep going.
Are you worried about what is on the other tapes, Mr. President?
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you very much, Jerry.
Why is Lot America not accepting your invitation?
Okay, now there's a disparity between why Caitlin Collins says she was banned.
She says she was banned because he didn't like the questions.
Sarah Sanders, the spokeswoman for the White House, says she was banned because she wouldn't leave the room and she was being rude.
Okay, so that's very different.
And really important, this is a very important point.
Sanders says CNN was not banned.
Only she was banned from that event to punish her essentially for being rude and not leaving the room when she was supposed to leave the room.
So there's two different versions of the story.
Then Brett Baer came under fire and Fox came under fire for supporting, in their words, supporting CNN on the matter of access.
In other words, CNN should have access.
Now, first, before we, lest we forget, and this is one of the most amazing pieces of audio or video you will see and hear today, lest we forget, look what happened when Obama had a rude reporter thrown out of the press room.
Listen to what happens.
The only voices you hear besides Obama are the voices of the press themselves.
These are other reporters reacting to Obama, throwing a reporter out.
You're in my house.
It's not.
You know what?
It's not.
It's not respectful when you get invited to somebody.
You're not going to get a good response from me by interrupting me like this.
No.
Shame on you.
You shouldn't be doing this.
Obama.
Come on.
Can we escort this person out?
That is amazing.
They're chanting Obama.
This is the press.
It's kind of like when they chanted Trump, Trump, Trump.
Oh, wait.
Yeah, that will happen the very minute that hell freezes over.
So here's the thing.
I want to put the other side of this forward too, though.
Back in 2010, Obama got so ticked off at Fox News, the way Trump is now ticked off at CNN, that he tried to delegitimize them.
He stopped giving them interviews.
He stopped sending his administration onto their shows.
At one point, the White House attempted to block Fox from a round of interviews with the guy they called the pay czar.
And the Washington now at this point, the Washington bureau chiefs of the five TV networks said they would not interview this guy if Fox couldn't interview him.
They stood up for Fox.
Okay, so it's not that they were always like this.
They were not always supporting Obama.
When he tried to delegitimize Fox News, the other networks stood up for them.
So here's the thing.
You've got to split the baby on this.
Banning an individual reporter for being rude is all right.
But even I, as much as I dislike CNN, they should have access.
So you've got to say, banning an individual, yes.
Banning a legitimate news network, no.
And in the basis of the First Amendment and free flow of information, CNN should be able to lie and cheat and sell their fake news and still get into the White House.
But if she was rude, there's nothing wrong with banning herself.
All right, we're going to stay on.
Yeah, we'll stay on.
For an interview with Eli Steele, Eli Steele is the writer, editor, director, and producer of the documentary, Get This, How Jack Became Black.
It's about trying to enroll his multiracial son in LA's public schools and learning the boy would be denied entrance for refusing to state his primary race.
He had to choose which race he was, moms or dads, and moms and dads are both mixed up too.
The film attempts to answer the question: why does race still matter so much in America?
Mr. Steele was born deaf, but thanks to a program designed to train deaf children in the auditory method, he learned how to hear and speak.
His voice is a little distorted, as deaf people's voices sometimes are.
For people watching, we have put subtitles on that.
But if you are just listening, if you listen carefully, you get used to his voice and you'll be able to hear what he says.
Here's Eli Steele, the writer, director, editor, and director of How Jack Became Black.
I am deaf.
I am black.
I am Jewish.
White, Native American.
So I am.
What about my kids?
Who are even more mixed than me?
I get an email from my Spanish school.
You need to pick a primary race.
White, Hispanic, Asian, African American, Black.
One needs to be chosen.
Primary and then a secondary.
Primary, I think.
One side is more primary than the other.
I'm going to call you and say which one you want to pick.
We have to put something.
You can't deny my kid an education because I'm going to pick a primary race.
I'm not one or the other.
I'm the space in between.
Race is not an individual choice in America.
It is a social choice.
Black, your skin color.
It's about race.
It's not standing.
They use the term multiracial or biracial to distance themselves from blackness.
But who says that I have to stay in that space?
There's so many kids who are being born of this next generation that are not a single race.
We're not able to say, oh, I'm mixed because you're forcing me to pick a race.
Very tempting to just say, let's just forget it.
I'm a human being.
I think it's fear.
I don't think we as a nation are there yet.
They want to stay stuck into the norm of what we're used to.
What do we want?
Justice!
Is race really the driving force in America?
Mr. Zimmerman was a white Hispanic.
You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.
He's always going to be that average white male, you know?
Privileges, whiteness at the top of the scale.
They have mistaken white supremacy for personal excellence.
We've been trained to put someone in a category.
My race does not fit into a box.
Here we go.
So here, the African American.
Absolutely.
Annie.
Let's say what.
Eli, thanks so much for coming in.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Your film is called How Jack Became Black.
And it's basically about registering your son at school.
But before we get to that and the racial craziness involved, but before we get to that, talk a little bit about who you are, what your heritage is, and where you come from.
I was born in the Stabilities to a black father and a Jewish mother.
And at that time, we were starting to celebrate with progress.
It was the coming together, Americans across the color line.
And I'm the first one ever, if you think about that, from slavery depreciation ever to say, I am who I am.
I am not going to be what the government tells me to be.
We should be black.
I may be, I am black and I am Jewish.
That's just who I am.
And that posed a huge problem for identity politicians as I grew up.
You know, I mean, you're black and Jewish, so you have won the oppression sweepstakes here.
And you have a handicap, so that's your really identity politics.
You've got it sewn up.
And now your wife, what's her heritage?
It's definitely my ex-wife, and she is the first generation born in America, but Mexico.
Okay, so now you have, how many children did you have?
Two, Jack and June.
Okay.
So now, so Jack has now black, Jewish, Mexican heritage.
And it gets even more complicated.
My ex-wife's stepfather is Mormon.
Okay.
So biologically, Jack and June, you know, she's 100% Mexican in their hat, but they've got that whole influence.
And I mean, there's so many different influences.
Plus, America.
I mean, they are the most all-American.
They're all American, right?
So now you take Jack, now you're taking him to register him in public school?
Yes.
Where is this?
In Los Angeles.
In Los Angeles.
Second biggest school district in America.
And what do they want from you?
They wanted me to check a primary race box.
A primary race box.
At that point, what do you do?
I mean, I look in Jack, and Jack is olive skin.
And what do I put?
I mean, what is he, and why only one?
Decided, okay, you know what?
I'm going to app out.
I'm not going to check anything.
And they're like, no, no, no.
You have to pick one or he cannot come into school.
He cannot come into a public school.
He cannot begin his education unless we have that race information.
And so to pick a primary race, first of all, it's picking between his parents.
Exactly.
Right.
And it's also saying that his heritage, which is unique, doesn't exist.
He has to.
It doesn't matter.
Yeah.
And what was interesting for me was these schools, this is the front line.
I mean, they are just, you know, everyday people.
They had no idea what they were doing or any idea why I had to check this bar.
So I went to five different schools, got five different ants.
Jack went white to black.
Black and board.
And, you know, so I was kind of trying to prove the point, but nobody really knows anything.
So did you eventually make a choice?
Yes.
So you made Jack.
That's how Jack became black, because he had to get into an LA public school.
Exactly.
Then as I started making the film, that's just a starting point.
I kind of opened up to the whole of identity politics in America.
And as I kind of started making this film, I said, really, meaning, is identity politics really a racial order?
Because they really organized it by race.
And so that's why I just kind of started going deeper into the issue.
And because I know with identity politics, we kind of focused on the Marxist aspect.
But that kind of ignores that we live in America and the white supremacy was actually the very first form of identity politics.
Because we had a black boss, we had a white bot.
We just reinvented those boxes to five primary race boxes, identity politics.
And so that's why somebody, under white supremacy, my father, my grandfather would be black and inferior.
And that's why we add values to that.
And that's why today, you see a whole group of people, like for example, Harvard, with the whole Fremen Sibyl scandal, they're marking an entire race of people as not having a personality to devalue them.
And this is done in the name of racial justice.
Yep.
And that's what racial orders do.
They should organize this by race.
There are even universities now with dorms for black students, which to me is so appalling.
I mean, being from the old school where we're trying to get rid of that stuff.
Exactly.
It's appalling.
So now you make this.
There are people in this film who essentially left-wingers who essentially accuse you of turning your back on the issue of race.
What's the logic of that?
You know, I may agree with some of what they say in terms of policies, you know, but why do I have to subscribe to that entire framework of that group thing?
You know, that's not what I was, that's not the promise to be an American.
If we have the freedom to be able to make choices for ourselves, to look at everything.
But why do I have to give up my individuality to be part of that group?
Yeah.
Why do you, do you think?
Why is it so important to them that you make a choice, not just for your son, but essentially for you?
Why do you think they want that?
Because they believe, they have the belief that that will lead to racial justice.
Whoever society with the black policy is going to be, they need people to pledge elites to that.
And when somebody like me, it's a threat.
Yeah.
Because it means I'm not going to be 100%.
You're kind of black.
And for me, that's what we always talk about.
Why is black?
And for me, black really, for me, is the stories that come from the responsibility that I have to my heritage.
Because I do really feel the responsibility to be the best person I can be because my people suffer so much and I wouldn't be here if they hadn't found a way to make it possible.
Sometimes when you look in race, when you make black policies, you are focused.
Sometimes you get locked into that bar of race and you see the humanity beyond it.
And sometimes you get trapped in that power where you're, like for example, you say 75% of the black males in California students are not on the really level, on the gray wheelie level.
Beyond Race00:04:01
We say, oh, okay, that's black.
They're black.
That's why.
We don't move beyond that problem, beyond that label, to the deeper problem.
If I say 75% of the male students are not on the gray and really level, the next step is, well, what's the problem?
Who needs buyer?
How do we exchange it?
So a lot of people see black and they stop there.
And so that's what's trapped in.
That is absolutely true.
I think they're so afraid.
They're so afraid that people are going to put forward some kind of genetic explanation that they're afraid to look at all the other explanations like families, dysfunction, including affirmative action, I think, which is, it can be a dysfunction.
Absolutely.
They argue that Black Lives Matter could be much more effective.
If you want an organization, if you want to fish police brutality, you have to look at the bigger problem.
It's not just black people.
I mean, I know the whole history behind the blast in police, but we also have to be aware that we live in 2018.
And we have a guy, a white guy, that was shot in Arizona after four minutes of contrary direction given to him.
How do you ignore that just because he's white?
Yep.
And, you know, he kind of brings up a real early story that made me embrace all of who I was.
It was a family friend.
He was like at the Black Panthers in Oakland.
He was widely on the freeway ramp with real black guys.
They see a motorcycle collapse, crash on the ground.
They stop.
They walk over.
They flip the visor.
He's white.
They flip it back on.
They get back in the car and they drive around him onto the freeway.
So that's always been like, that's wrong.
We're Americans.
We have to look in the whole situation.
So now you've put out this movie, How Jack Became Black.
What kind of reactions are you getting from the right and the left?
It's very surprising.
I'm getting a really positive reaction from both They're called the Bernie Sanders left and he's Trump white.
So the far left and the Trump right, the socialist left, likes this movie.
Yes, because they know the identity policies get in their way.
They know that when you put people in race parties, you can't go any further.
There's nothing, it's the past.
That's why it's not a pathway.
I have to admit, I'm startled to hear you say this.
When you say that people on the Bernie Sanders left, do you mean the politicians or do you just mean the ordinary people?
I would say the people.
Okay.
Because, for example, when I went to a region film festival in Washington, D.C., and it was a very progressive film festival.
And so I was kind of worried what the reaction would be.
And the reaction from the audience was very, very positive.
There were two ladies next to me who probably have more of a stake in identity policy.
We would have a disagreement with them.
So I would say that if you have some sort of investment in identity politics or derived sort of power from it, you're not a latest movie.
Right, right.
So the ordinary people know that this identity politics doesn't actually serve them because it puts them in the box.
But the people want them in the box because that's where they get their power from.
Exactly.
And I mean, I had young children, 17 from poor neighborhood coming up to me after the film, and they were talking to Justice Morrie t-shirt.
And they were just vaccinated.
They just wanted more.
Like one girl, I told one girl, I said, well, we have five race parties, but we have 180 nations, people from 180 nations represented in America.
How do you fit all of that into five race parties?
Right.
And she was just like, one of you have to go tell a friend.
So that's how you make little changes like that.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Evil, Good, and Meaning00:02:55
And why should you do it?
Let alone how do you do it?
Why should you do it?
How Jack became black?
Where can people see this?
Fortunately, almost everywhere, iTunes, Amazon Prime, and nearly every cable network on demand.
Cool.
Okay.
Yeah, so it's either be on a new release shift or it's just thirsty.
Okay.
Eli Still, thank you very much for coming in.
I appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
All right.
Stuff I like.
Andrew Clayvan likes.
Badoom stuff.
Andrew Clayvan likes.
Badoom, badoom stuff.
Andrew Clayvan likes.
Andrew Clayvan likes.
That's a good one.
That was good.
This is Brian Drexler.
We should just do this forever, right?
At some point, I feel we should choose one, but maybe not.
So, you know, I do like to return to the classics from time to time.
You know, the last couple of stuff I like has been TV shows that have been on really good ones, but still.
And the opening, the first day of this week, I guess it was, I think it was Monday, I was talking about socialism and how it kills civilizations.
And, you know, I said that it kills it in two ways, especially, that it turns people into slaves, which is the first thing, but it also removes God.
Socialism is, perforce, a materialist philosophy.
You can't have God and a sense of your own worth and your individuality and then say, oh yes, but the state owns everything you make and the state has the power to disperse your wealth.
And to say it's democratic socialism means nothing.
That just means the majority is tyrannizing over the minority.
To say that what a person does with his time, which is his life, right, what he does with his life belongs to him.
His property belongs to him because his property is an outgrowth of his life and his time.
His money belongs to him.
And when I said that it removes God and that destroys civilizations, there were people, I saw people online just like raging against me.
Some of them said stupid stuff like, well, what about the Romans?
You know, the Romans had gods.
You know, they had different gods, but they were still gods.
And I didn't say which god you had to have, although I think it does, of course, make a difference.
But the thing about why does losing God, why does civilizations die the way Europe has died without God?
And the reason is, is that meaning goes out of life.
I mean, one of the reasons I tease Jordan Peterson whenever I see him, I'm going to stop doing this, but I can get him to say, do you believe or not?
Because he's a Jungian.
And ultimately, with Jung, you're basically saying God is a metaphor.
You're saying God is a metaphor for very deep, evolutionary consciousness in humankind.
But with God, you believe your actions have meaning.
You believe an action can be evil or it can be good.
It's not just evil or good to you.
It is not just evil or good to human beings.
It is not just evil and good because of game theory.
It is actually evil or good.
Shakespeare's Moral Universe00:09:21
And the guy who really drew a beautiful picture of what happens to people as they act in the moral universe is William Shakespeare.
There's a lot of people who say William Shakespeare is a secular writer.
The great Shakespeare scholar of our day is Stephen Greenblatt, who's a wonderful writer, but he insists that Shakespeare is among the most secular of playwrights.
And I just believe that's untrue.
Shakespeare was writing at a time where if you said the wrong thing religiously, you got burned at the stake.
Not a time when you want to be very careful.
I believe Shakespeare was a Catholic, actually.
And so does Greenblatt, by the way.
I think Greenblatt also says he was a Catholic.
And what Shakespeare did that I don't think anybody had ever done before is he simply didn't preach a lot.
I mean, there's Jesus in his, he didn't preach at all.
There's Jesus in his place, but he just shows human action taking place in the Christian universe, right?
So the things people do happen in a world of Christian morality.
And he just takes that for granted.
And because he took it for granted, we take it for granted.
And we don't even know really a lot of our vision of morality comes from Shakespeare.
It comes from Shakespeare basically extrapolating from Catholic doctrine and putting it on the world.
And his characters act within that structure.
And one of the things that I believe in, and by the way, I'm a very well-read person, especially in the field of literature, because I work in the field of literature and I wanted to know everything about it I could.
But I'm not a scholar.
So when I say things, I know scholars and I know the depth and breadth of information they have.
I'm extremely well-read, but I'm not a scholar.
And so when I say some of these things, I'm just telling you my impressions.
But I cannot think of a villain who exists before Shakespeare, who does the things that Shakespeare's villains do and then suffers because of them the way Shakespeare's villains do.
So for instance, let's take two of his villains, Richard III.
Richard III in Shakespeare, we don't know about it in history, but it seems in history to some extent too, kills his way to the throne.
And we first see Richard, he first comes on stage in his play after it's the War of the Roses and one of the long periods of war has ended.
And that's where he comes out and says, now is the winter of our discontent, right?
He's talking about winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by the Son of York.
So his side has won for a while in the War of Roses.
And he says, you know, there are two human activities.
One is war, and the other is love.
And when war is over, you have peace and then it's time for love.
But the problem is he's a humpbacked, ugly little man.
And he says, I'm deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up.
And that's so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them.
Why I, in this weak, piping time of peace, have no delight to pass away the time unless to spy my shadow in the sun and descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these farewell spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain.
Now, I can't think of anybody saying that.
Not that I'm going to do this and this and such and so and it's bad, but I'm going to become a villain because I'm not cut out to be a lover.
I'm too ugly to be a lover, so I'm going to become a villain.
And so he knows the moral universe is there and he makes an open decision of his own free will and with good motives that he thinks are good motives to violate that moral universe.
And in doing this, of course, he becomes king.
He kills his way to the throne, seduces, kills, murders his way to the throne.
And then finally, when the revolt comes against his tyranny, he's waiting for this final battle, the battle where he's going to be killed, Bosworth Field, and suddenly all his victims come back to him.
So in knowing that he violated the moral universe, he becomes conscious-ridden, and all these dreams and ghosts come back to him.
They all have the same message for him.
Despair and die.
That's what they say to him.
His wife comes back.
He's murdered his wife.
And his wife comes back and says, Richard, thy wife, that wretched anne, thy wife that never slept a quiet hour with me, now fills thy sleep with perturbations.
Tomorrow in the battle, think on me and fall thy edgeless sword, despair, and die.
And he wakes up and he cries for Jesus.
He says, have mercy, Jesus.
Soft, I did but dream, O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me?
So knowing that the universe is there and violating it, he becomes conscious-ridden and his conscience ultimately undoes him and he dies a terrible death on the field of Bosworth.
So that's one way in which Shakespeare is depicting us living within not a free world, not a free space where we can act any way we want, but a world in which our morality comes back and pays us back, even if it's only in the mind.
He gets haunted by ghosts, and there's some question about whether Shakespeare actually believes in these ghosts.
We think of them as psychological entities, but he may not have.
But the other villain is Macbeth, and Macbeth does more than Richard III.
He doesn't recognize the moral universe at all.
He does, but his wife doesn't.
And because his wife basically takes him over and guides him to murder his way to the throne, she violates nature in Shakespeare.
Shakespeare had no problem with depicting women as wiser, smarter, funnier, more efficient and competent than men.
He often did that.
Portia in the Merchant of Venice, he often depicted women.
But he recognized that women had different natures than men and were set up to do different things.
But Lady Macbeth rejects that.
She calls on spirits, meaning demons really, she says, come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty.
So in other words, women are not as cruel as men, but she asks to be filled with direless cruelty, and she says, take my milk for gall.
And later when she's talking to Macbeth, she says to him, you've heard the phrase, the milk of human kindness, that's still something we say, right?
This comes from this play.
And she says to Macbeth, I fear thy nature.
It is too full of the milk of human kindness.
In other words, you're too womanly.
You're too much.
You have too much of the nature of a woman.
Let me be the man here and I will take this over.
So when they come to Macbeth and they tell him that his wife has died just before his final battle, it's not just conscious that comes to him.
The entire meaning of life vanishes.
The entire world becomes a nihilistic universe without meaning.
And it's one of the great nihilistic speeches, nihilistic coming from the term meaning nothing.
It's one of the greatest nihilistic speeches in all of literature, written by one of the most moral writers in all of literature.
So he gives this beautiful speech to Macbeth as he's about to die, finding that life is meaningful.
I'll read this to you.
You know, I think we need some dramatic lightning.
I'm going to really deliver this speech here.
I'll even do my Macbeth accent.
Although he's Scottish, I can't do Scottish.
I'll come as close as I can go.
This is Macbeth after he has heard that his wife has died, who has moved him to one murder after another.
Love the lighting.
Excellent.
He says, tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Give me the lights back so I can see what the hell I'm doing.
I love it.
I love it.
Anyway, life is a tale told by an idiot.
It signifies nothing.
It means nothing because Macbeth has stepped outside that moral universe.
Because of course, if there is a God, there is also those things that are not God.
Anything that exists has things that it is not, has a nature, right?
Anybody who says, oh, God is whatever you believe, is saying there is no God.
God is a nature.
And he has stepped outside of that.
Now the world means nothing to him.
Socialism destroys people because when you take away God, you ultimately put them in that position.
They may not recognize it.
They may still behave in a moral way.
They may still believe that meaning makes sense, but their philosophy really doesn't make sense anymore.
And they're just acting on other people's philosophies that they've given them.
But think about it in your own life, in your own life, when you have this feeling, oh, life is meaningless, is it because you have stepped outside?
You have created that meaningless life?
When you are hounded by conscience, so the left is always saying to you, don't make me feel guilty.
Why are you shaming us?
You're slut shaming us.
Well, it's not me.
It's not me.
It is because you have stepped outside this moral web and gotten caught in that web.
And if you are like Richard III and you know the moral web is there, you will be haunted by conscience.
If you are like Macbeth and you have tried to shed it entirely, you will find a world that is meaningless.
What then happens when you act within the moral framework?
I would argue that then that is where you find the joy of life.
The Clavenless Weekend is upon us.
Want to talk about life being a walking shadow, a poor player that's struggling, you know, a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing?
It's here, the Clavenless Weekend.
But we will be back on Monday.
Survivors gather here.
Clavenless Weekend Approaches00:00:35
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Emily Jai.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.