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Nov. 17, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

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Race and Education in America | Johnny C. Taylor | ACADEMIA | Rubin Report

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johnny c taylor

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		(dramatic music)
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		One of the themes we consistently talk about here at the Rubin Report is why it's important
		to judge people as individuals and not as a collective.
		You as an individual are much more than your immutable characteristics, be it your skin color, your religion, or your sexuality.
		To judge you on those characteristics is actually what the essence of prejudice really is.
		Prejudice, of course, means to prejudge.
		So if you look at a black person, or a Muslim person, or a gay person, and think that you know what they think, or more importantly, how they should think, based on those characteristics, then you are actually the one who's being prejudiced.
		Sadly, many of the people who accuse others of bigotry and racism these days are often the people who practice this brand of prejudice the most without even realizing that they're doing so.
		Just look at some of the things that my friends Larry Elder, Majid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are called by the so-called tolerant side.
		When you look at a group of people and you think you know what they should think or what's best for them based on those outward characteristics, and not what's going on in their own minds, you not only lock people into your preconceived notions of what they are, but stifle the voices of the minorities within these minorities.
		This is why the voices of black conservatives and gay Muslims, for example, are so relevant and interesting today.
		If you really listen to these minorities within the minorities, you will judge these people on their thoughts, their logic and their reason, instead of simply how they look or who they love.
		In a way, the very existence of these free thinkers within these minority communities flips identity politics on its head, showing the flaws of this postmodern, intersectional way of thinking.
		Just see how quickly those who preach identity politics turn on black or Latino people who have conservative political beliefs, or how easily they dismiss gays or women who dare talk about how poorly they're treated in Islamic societies.
		Identity politics only works if you believe that the most important quality about each of us are the attributes which we are born with, thus cannot change, rather than the ideas which we come to learn.
		I view this twisted ideology as a true existential danger for the tolerant and liberal, albeit flawed, country that America is.
		Martin Luther King Jr.' 's desire for his children to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin is being undermined by the very people who purport to be the tolerant ones.
		We're continuing our partnership with Learn Liberty today and joining me is the CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Johnny C. Taylor.
		The organization represents nearly 300,000 students who attend the 47 historical black colleges in America today.
		I heard Johnny speak at an event in Dallas a couple months ago and was blown away by his passion, his commitment to educating young people, and his desire to move past identity politics.
		We're going to talk about politics, race, and much more.
		Has the role of the black college changed as we've become a more fair and just society?
		That's just one of the many questions I'll ask Johnny, and I'll only judge him by the
		content of his answers, not the color of his skin.
		We're continuing our partnership with Learn Liberty today and joining me is the president
		and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, the only national organization representing
		the nearly 300,000 students attending America's 47 historically black colleges.
		Johnny C. Taylor, welcome to The Rubin Report.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So glad to be here.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I gotta tell you, man, and I just did tell you, but now I'll repeat it since the cameras are on.
		We've been doing this thing with Learn Liberty for a little over a year or so, and they've sent us some great authors and professors and thinkers.
		I've never requested anyone.
		You, sir, are the first person I requested because I saw you speak a couple months back at a conference for academics, had to do a lot about free speech and liberty and all sorts of things, and you gave the keynote address on the final night, and I thought, this guy, is possibly the most passionate speaker I've ever seen in my life.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Where does that passion come from?
		Well, let's start there.
		Before we even talk about what you do, just the passion that you had, I was just like, I gotta get that guy on the show.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		See, it's interesting.
		I spent my career in the entertainment space, the media space.
		Paramount Pictures, Spelling Entertainment, Blockbuster Entertainment.
		So all of my life was doing that kind of stuff, making money.
		Let's be honest, right?
		But I always had this yearning for the community and how higher education could play into sort of fixing what was going on in my community.
		And I say the community, I mean all of Americans, but particularly African Americans.
		And there were so many conversations that didn't occur, weren't allowed to occur.
		And so I took this new role at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, representing black colleges. I didn't attend a black
		college. I often say I'm a beneficiary of it because so many of my teachers and doctors and lawyers
		did, but I didn't. My parents didn't attend a black college. But I thought this was such an
		opportunity to come in and really begin to influence how young people, you know, our future leaders,
		how they think about the world, and then to challenge them. My legal education, by
		definition, sort of taught me to challenge the status quo, to be able to argue both sides, or in some
		instances, three sides of any argument.
		And so that's where it came from.
		I really, I don't sleep at night sometimes thinking about where America is headed.
		That's where the passion comes from.
		I'm genuinely concerned about where we're going.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I feel that too, and we kind of hit that a little bit before.
		I gotta do it all over right now.
		Tell me a little bit more about your resume, before we get to what you've been doing these last couple years, because yeah, you just mentioned some of that stuff.
		I mean, you've got a pretty prime, your LinkedIn's gotta be pretty fat.
		I mean, that thing lasts on what, like eight pages or something?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right, God is good.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But tell me a little bit about that, because I think it does form sort of, you know, how you end up sitting across from me here.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I began my career, well let me back up.
		I did undergraduate work at the University of Miami.
		I'm born and raised in Florida, so I'm The you.
		I've got to give my shout out to my school.
		In any event, I finished school, went to law school in Iowa at Drake University, came back to South Florida to practice at a big law firm.
		Janet Reno was the first female partner, so dating myself, it takes you way back.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		And then began my practice.
		Sat on a plane one day, met a, I did not know at the time, a billionaire, Wayne Huizenga, who had this small little business called Blockbuster that he was building.
		I went in as the third lawyer on staff and literally went through this huge acquisition spree.
		And you know, you remember, Blockbuster was on every corner.
		So I did that.
		Viacom bought us.
		So I've spent my time as a lawyer As an HR executive and then ultimately once Viacom bought us and worked for Sumner at Viacom, Sumner Redstone, and then my last corporate gig was running a business, a subsidiary for Barry Diller in New York.
		So I literally have had all the back office functions and then ran frontline operator running a business for Barry and then came to TMCF in 2010 as the CEO.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So you've been doing this for now about seven years, and you're actually about to shift on to something else, which we'll get to a little later.
		Yes.
		But tell me a little bit about what the Scholarship Fund actually does.
		What is the purpose?
		Because I know a certain amount of people, because I know a lot of your thoughts on the diversity memo and all that stuff.
		It almost sounds counter to what the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund might do.
unidentified		Right.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So the College Fund was actually created, by the way, we were created as the Scholarship Fund, Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund.
		About a decade ago, we changed the name to broaden the remit to the College Fund.
		So it's Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
		And we really only do four things.
		Scholarships.
		We provide scholarships for the absolutely most talented students.
		So this is not sort of a social services feel-good for kids who didn't get a shot K-12.
		These are the brightest kids who frankly just have money problems they need.
		So scholarships that are need and merit-based.
		Then, capacity building.
		We've talked with our schools a lot about, there was a time when HBCUs, captive market, if you were black and you wanted to go to college, you attended a black college.
		Well, everything changed.
		Be careful what you pray for.
		We asked for diversity, we got it.
		We asked for integration, we got it.
		And so now, black students have options.
		And so black colleges, the historically black colleges have got to step up.
		So the second thing is to build their capacity to be attractive.
		The third thing that we do is governmental affairs.
		I mean a lot of advocacy and policy work to make sure that we're not making emotional decisions.
		We want to do what is good for our communities and what's good for this country.
		Those are really the three things that we focus on as a fund and that's the work that we do.
		And the thing that most of the folks frankly don't realize is Historically black colleges are not EBCUs.
		They're not exclusively black colleges.
		In fact, four, currently four of our member schools are majority white.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Really?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Majority white.
		So they are still historically black colleges because the H is historically black, not necessarily currently black.
		So West Virginia State and Bluefield State College, both in West Virginia.
		Lincoln University in Missouri.
		Kentucky State.
		These are schools that while technically are, not technically, are actually HBCUs, have more white students than black students.
		And those are some of the things that people don't understand.
		This is not about race per se.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		How much battling is there over what it means to be historically black versus currently diverse?
		Because I would imagine you've got, you know, ideas and academics and administrators who are probably pretty entrenched in keeping things, just looking at it by numbers, not necessarily diversity of thought and all that.
		So you must be dealing with that constantly.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you have no idea.
		It's ugly and it's interesting because I'm surprised, and I know we'll talk about some of this, but I'm surprised that the number, you'd like to think millennials, you know, we think millennials and we group them in and they're open and they're diverse and they're, well, I was surprised.
		We've had some students, really, not faculty, not alumni, but students, 18 and 19 year olds, They take great issue with the fact that the institutions are more diverse than they were.
		They wanted to come to an all-black institution.
		And when they get there and realize that we have international students and white students and Hispanic students, they really push back.
		So that's been a real surprise to me.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		How do you break through that?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, first of all, you explain to them that HBCU is not EBCU.
		You start with that.
		You also then explain, I find myself oftentimes when I'm talking to them saying, Let me just put yourself in this situation.
		So just recently, one of our campuses, a group of students were really upset because, in fact, it was all over the national news.
		Students came on the campus of Howard University wearing the Make America Great Again t-shirts, right?
		And I said, now, I just, one of the student leaders, I pulled to the side, I said, I want you just for a second to ask me, how do you think this will play out?
		A group of black students, right after Obama's elected, go visit Liberty University's campus.
		They have on the wonderful Obama t-shirts where they're proud of this new president, and they were literally run off of campus.
		They were threatened.
		They were harassed.
		How do you think that will go over?
		And so, what I find myself doing is just literally put yourself in that situation and tell me why this is that different.
		And then you get that pause, that moment.
		By the way, that's what motivates me to do my work, because that's the way you influence sort of the narrative and how these young people think.
		You have to just stop and say, I get how you feel right now emotionally about this, but for just a second, let's flip the script and tell me how this works.
		And you're smart, you're bright.
		Tell me how this works out.
		That's really part of what motivates me to do the work.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's what we need more of, right?
		Because everybody seems hysterical over emotional stuff.
		I can understand it.
		If I was black and I wanted to go to a historically black college and I got there and I thought it was gonna be 80% black and I got there and I was like, wait a minute, I'm actually still a minority here.
		The emotional part, I can understand it being like, this doesn't feel right to me.
		But then when you hear that, and you go, well, things actually are changing, integration is changing, this is all good.
		This is the purpose, right?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		This is the purpose of freedom.
		This is what we pray for, right?
		I often say, be careful what you pray for.
		This is exactly what we said we wanted, is the opportunity to choose, kind of.
		That's what, I can tell you, that's what my great-grandparents, that's what my, in fact, Thurgood Marshall himself, Folks don't realize this.
		Thurgood Marshall didn't choose to go to Howard University Law School.
		Thurgood Marshall, fact of the matter, applied to the University of Maryland, was denied admission to that law school, and went to Howard because it was the college for black students, the law school for black students.
		And so you just have to think about it.
		He then subsequently brought lawsuits to actually stop that very thing.
		Again, this wasn't anti-HBCU.
		The message was, I want to be able to choose, irrespective of my skin color, where I go to school.
		So all of us should have predicted that we would be right where we are today.
		And what I find is the young folks just don't understand the history.
		And then the older people refuse to tell the honest history.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So what's going on there?
		Because I don't blame, there is so much nonsense, the media is so complicit in this.
		Yes.
		I don't, you know, and Identity Politics has become so rooted in everything that I don't blame the young people who are misguided.
		Yeah, I wanna get through to them and all that.
		It's the other people that you're talking about, the older people and the academics that are afraid to speak.
		What happened there?
		Did you see it change?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I did.
		I saw it.
		And where?
		When I was in school, you were encouraged to be a little bit of a provocateur.
		Always respectfully.
		No one wanted you to go out and hurt someone's feelings.
		But we were encouraged in law school, for example, to look at things from all different sorts of perspectives.
		I was given a case once where you'd have to represent the plaintiff and then turn around and go against that plaintiff.
		You know, defend him.
		We've just lost that in education now.
		And I gotta tell you, more and more I'm talking to students who say, you know, I feel a certain way, but I know that if I either uttered those, my thoughts, even in a question format in the classroom, I'd be attacked by my professor.
		It would impact my participation in class, grade, that portion of my grade.
unidentified		Also, and more importantly... What do you say to kids when they say that?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I say, you know, perhaps you're at the wrong school.
		I said, you've got to vote with your feet.
		College is not about, it's supposed to be a time to explore and to grow.
		If you already knew what you needed to know to sort of live in life and be successful, then you don't need to spend five or six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
		If you are the same person that you walked in the door at the end of your freshman year, then you were cheated.
		And I tell them, you should challenge the institution to give you a better education.
		And sometimes The way you get better is to have to confront ideas that you don't necessarily embrace.
		You don't understand them.
		One situation that sort of comes up, and I think it helps my students a lot, understand where I come from.
		I said, you know, listen, I was an employment lawyer early in my career.
		And at that time, there was a big question, for example, around whether or not Gay, lesbian, sexual orientation was covered under Title VII.
		Okay?
		Big question.
		Gender and sex was clear.
		If you were being discriminated against on the basis of something else, on sort of sexual orientation, that wasn't covered.
		I actually brought those cases and made those arguments.
		I defended them, that it was not the intent of the Congress, and this was ridiculous, etc.
		That gender is something that's innate, you're born that way, and well, gay and lesbian, maybe not so much.
		Fast forward.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What year are we?
unidentified		That's 1992.
unidentified		Okay.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I think it's important.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		To context.
		That's right.
		Put it in context.
		Fast forward, you began to evolve and grow.
		You start sitting down and getting to know people who are different than you are, or that your family is, or that you, you just, you began to evolve and it challenges your own notions of what is right and what is wrong.
		And maybe you conclude there is no right or wrong here.
		This is just life and we're evolving as a human species, kind of.
		Even I've had to do that.
		And there's so many instances of that in my own life.
		And so when you begin to have conversations in the context of the classroom with students, you see the growth.
		That's the beauty.
		That should be the beauty of it.
		Instead, what I'm seeing more and more, David, is they're actually retarding the growth of the students.
		You're not encouraged to think.
		You come in thinking a certain way.
		Your professors want you to think a certain way.
		Your institution wants you to think a certain way.
		But here's the problem.
		The real problem is then you go to work and you have to confront the reality of, you know, you're not protected in this bubble.
		You've got to live and work next to people who don't look like you.
		And frankly, that's a challenge.
		That's something that people talk about a lot when they talk about black colleges.
		The only, I don't question the relevancy of HBCUs.
		I think that's a dumb argument.
		It's a dumb question.
		There is a fair question that is posed if you have gone to a black elementary school, middle school, grew up in a black community, and then you went to a black college.
		The first meaningful interaction that you have with people who are not black is in the workplace.
		You're going to be at a disadvantage, just practically speaking, and so it has some downside.
		Tons of upside, by the way.
		Being a majority and a minority community, black colleges give you a very special and nurturing environment to grow in.
		But there's a cost to that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Is that just the natural evolution of the way humans are?
		That if you have a legit grievance, you may need a different place?
		Or for Thurgood Marshall, who did not get accepted to the Maryland Law School.
		So he needed a place to go to.
		Completely legit in that time and place.
		But that eventually, if equality works, because the arc does bend towards justice, that eventually you slowly need these things less.
		It doesn't mean that there's no use for them, but a lot of people are sort of addicted to that original pain or instance or whatever you want to call it.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		You nailed it.
		I mean, none of us It's addictive.
		I mean, that's the problem.
		And weaning yourself off of that is difficult.
		And that's not limited to black people or any group of people.
		It's just that you get used to it.
		And this notion that we were to create... Remember, even the concept of affirmative action.
		It was supposed to be remedial.
		It was not supposed to go on forever, right?
		But what happens is if you get used to it, and it's a benefit that inures to you and people who look like you, it's really tough to one day say, okay, that's done.
		I have a seven-year-old daughter, and there's a point at which she's going to come off of Daddy's credit card, and she's going to fight me if it's 18, if it's 28, if it's 38.
		The day that I decide you now have to leave the nest and figure this out yourself, If it's 38, can I move in with you?
		I mean, come on now, what are we talking about?
		But you're right, you're onto something.
		Think about just in real life.
		The thing that I'm intrigued by is I could not wait until I turned 18 so that I could leave my nest, my mama and my daddy's house, and go and start creating my own.
		And I'm seeing, some of it for economic reasons, but just everyone's sort of staying at home.
		It's a very different world.
		that we live in right now, and I'm intrigued by it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, how much of this also is about the family in general?
		That's one of the things when I've had a couple, particularly in this case,
		when I've had black conservatives on, like Larry Elder talking about the black family.
		You just mentioned your mom and your dad, so I suspect they're still married.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		No, actually, that's interesting.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so that's interesting, but they were for obviously most of your childhood.
		How much of that structure is related to all of this?
		Why then you can't necessarily deal with outside influences or any of that stuff?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So I struggle with that.
		I struggle with that because of the realities of slavery.
		The black community was always largely maternally run.
		Dad and mom were separated.
		The family unit in the traditional sense didn't exist.
		And we were successful in spite of that.
		So I'm not so sure that I... Now, all day, I think the value of having mom and dad in the home and frankly at some point grandparents in the
		home to build that I think it's incredibly important
		but I'm not prepared to say that's why everything is wrong.
		As I pointed out my parents ultimately got, were divorced and
		all two, I have two sisters, we both went to college, all three of us rather, were
		successful, have great lives, nobody's been to jail, no one has eight kids, you know
		so I don't know that I'm prepared to say
		that it's totally about sort of the family unit.
		I think family, the one thing that I'm happy to see now, is family is being more broadly defined.
		We, in our community, oftentimes talk about it takes a village.
		And the family could be the little old lady across the street.
		If you don't know your grandmother, she might essentially become your grandma.
		In loco parentis, the concept in Latin that there are a whole bunch of folks who act as parents to make it all happen.
		So I think we have to be a little too careful.
		And I hear the strict conservatives, well, it's all of this is because the family model has degraded us.
		Well, historically, I'm not so sure we as a people in particular ever had that.
		That's not real.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was mentioning to you before also that I just went to George Washington's estate, and you can go to the slave quarters and they do a daily memorial and all that, and they talk about the men living here, the women living here.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		They sometimes only got to interact for minutes in a day and all sorts of stuff.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so you know, sometimes when we have to help people revisit history, you know, sometimes they're like, oh, it was great back in the day.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I said, no, not exactly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of history, I wasn't planning on going here, but as long as we're talking about this, what do you make of all the monument stuff happening right now?
		Because I just read one this week that at Christ Church, and I think it's in Alexandria, they're taking down the monument.
		I think it's just a plaque, actually.
		And I guess there was also a plaque to Robert E. Lee.
		That upset some people, so they said, all right, we're gonna take down George Washington's as well.
		George Washington, there's no doubt, he did own slaves.
		He freed as many as he legally could when he died.
		Not all of them were, because some of them were technically, I think, owned by Martha, Her family or something like that.
		But as I said, they do a great memorial to them.
		These people were all complex people who were writing laws to free people while they owned people.
		I mean, it's a whole freaking thing.
		But me personally, you want my answer first?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, please.
		Because I'm glad to.
		But Tim, what do you think?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't think you can take these things down.
		I think you can put a counter monument next to them, or a plaque that explains more.
		Maybe you could convince me that they can all be moved to a museum, where then you're gonna learn about the history.
		But I'm very leery that there's just no ending here.
		That we're gonna take down the Robert E. Lee stuff, we're gonna take down other Confederate stuff, but it will creep to George Washington.
		It will creep To Thomas Jefferson.
		I was just at the memorial.
		The words that that man wrote about what freedom is, that's the stuff we should all care about.
		And I just fear that there's no ending here.
		I don't know if that's enough of a justification not to take anything down, but that's really where my position is coming from, that it won't end.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, not surprisingly, I violently agree with you.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I would have accepted either way.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		No, no, I know.
		I would have given it.
		But frankly, you know, there are a couple of aha moments for me.
		First of all, We don't like to acknowledge this, but black people own slaves in America too.
		That's real.
		The litmus test is, if you own slaves, somehow we should erase from history or put you into a museum in a little box so that only people who visit museums will learn about you.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, that's why I don't really like that answer.
		I throw it up there because in a Q&A that I did at Claremont McKenna, a kid asked me and I said that and he said, well, what if we put him in mines?
		I said, all right, we can play with that one a little bit.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		But to your point, if you take this to its, I think, illogical end, We then go through and parse every person's history, and we find the one thing they did that we didn't like.
		Which, by the way, at that time, at that point in the world, may have been totally the norm.
		I'm not arguing it was good or bad, I'm just saying it was the way people lived, and it was what was the moire, the folkway, whatever, of the time.
		I struggle with this.
		I think you put everything into context.
		When I ride through and I see a Confederate statue, I was laughing, I was in Old Town Alexandria the other day, I have passed this particular... Which one is it?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I was just there.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		It's Robert E. Lee.
		It's the one that's sitting right in...it's just past, I don't know the street, past King Street, I think it is.
		There's a statue of this guy on a horse.
		I've passed it a number of times and thought, hmm, that's interesting.
		I've also...I live in Washington, D.C.
		on Capitol Hill, and there are all sorts of these statues that, frankly, Charles Barkley, who I don't quote very often, Come on, do a Barkley impression.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I want to see a Barkley impression.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I can't quite put it down, but he said something which was really provocative.
		He said, frankly, most African American people aren't thinking about that damn monument.
		I mean, it's just, we have real issues.
		Facing our community.
		And the idea that we have now gotten preoccupied with these monuments is bizarre to me, and frankly, and more disturbing to me, is that it's divisive.
		Anytime you start peeling apart people's history, all of this is sort of the history of the country, the good and the bad.
		And I think that's the beauty of telling the story.
		And when I talk to students about it, because I've had this conversation with some of our students, and I said, do you think, you know, all of us, if we go back into our history, you're going to find out that your grandparents weren't perfect people.
		You know, the grandfather who beat on your grandmother, who cheated on your grandmother, the grandmother who, well, let's say back in the day decided not to have a kid, just had a kid out of wedlock and decided to give him to an aunt and never acknowledged that that kid was hers.
		There's so many things.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And we've all got this shit in our families, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		We've all got it!
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Everybody's got this shit in their lives, right?
		And the notion that somehow you've literally made this person's life less important because of a decision that happened.
		I mean, all of us are growing on this journey called life.
		And I just think we've gotten too serious about it.
		And it's also, frankly, divided the country, a country that is way too divided right now.
		I mean, I've never seen, I think of Martin Luther King, Lincoln, Thurgood Marshall, they have to be like sitting back somewhere looking at this saying, oh my god, I can't believe once we pulled the rules down, changed the laws, became a more open and free society, none of us could have thunk that this is where we'd end up.
unidentified		Yeah.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, the easy answer is to blame it on Trump, but the fact of the matter is this started way before.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		This is nothing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I know.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Somehow everyone blames everything on Trump now, but I'm pretty sure some, even the NFL protests were going on under Obama.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Of course they were.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And when you talk about the historical stuff, Obama, his first four years, was against gay marriage.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So should we look now, 20 years ago, wow, we gotta take Obama's statue or take his library down?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Oh, don't even start me on that.
		I'll start you on that.
		There are so many countless examples.
		You know, I was talking to folks at, there was a big discussion about public schools and, you know, we need to send all of our kids to public schools.
		And besides, time out, time out, time out.
		The Obama girls.
		Where do they go to school?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Sidwell.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Good for them.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		But then you can't turn around and say, oh, public schools are wonderful, they're great for everyone, when, but no, the reality is they're good enough for your children.
		Those are some of the moments when we have to stop and just pause and say, You know, it's gotten crazy.
		That's the point.
		I mean, I'm so frustrated with it right now because we're picking apart people's lives.
		And the reality is none of us would want someone to do the same thing on an individual level with me.
		You want to pick my life apart?
		You can come out and say I'm a horrible person.
		Ignore the fact that I have a beautiful seven-year-old daughter, that my parents are wonderful, that I'm a good son.
		But you want to focus on the one or two decisions that perhaps I would have made.
		And frankly, I would have done them differently if I were 48.
		But I'm not.
		I was 18.
		We're just in an interesting spot.
		I know that's what you're talking about, but it disturbs me.
		It disturbs me in some very significant ways that I'm raising a child in this world, in this country in particular, that's not the country I envisioned it would be.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think there's any chance that it actually is the country, but it's just the level of noise has gotten so out of control?
		So when we think about, you know, I talk a lot about social media and how Twitter is affecting everybody and the way we all cater news to ourselves and all that stuff.
		But then I took all of August offline.
		I shut down, I was working on my book, I disappeared for a while.
		And when I spent more time just, I mean, I talk to people for a living, but outside of this room, just talking to random people, I think most people do buy everything that you just said there.
		And I don't think that people are necessarily as hysterical as maybe we feel they are.
		Do you think that's possible?
		Or is that I'm just trying to give a real silver lining to this thing?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I think you're trying to feel better.
		Because as much as we can't just put the media over in a little box.
		Particularly, it used to be traditional media, but now it's social media.
		And so when you add all of that, it really does influence the narrative.
		It influences what people think it means to live in America.
		And I do think we're in a very different place now.
		You're right.
		Every person in the world doesn't know what's going on.
		Manafort gets charged today.
		The vast majority of Americans don't know or care.
		It's people who watch the news and who read and who think about this and, you know, where it matters.
		The vast majority of Americans are like, I'm trying to keep the lights on, I want to put my kid in school, and I want a decent life and retire with some decent savings in the bank.
		That's more practical.
		So I think you're right, but the influencers, people like me and you, maybe not like the two of us because the reality is, The more liberal media has just put it out there so far, progressively.
		They're really crafting the narrative and the message, and it's something that we have to pause.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you find yourself with a political home?
		Because obviously, I'm in a lockstep with so many of the things that you're talking about.
		When I heard you give that speech, I was like, yeah, yeah!
		I mean, 20 times, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
		Do you consider yourself, are you in a party?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Totally independent.
		So, or as, when I was in North Carolina, it was called unaffiliated.
		That was the phrase.
		You weren't an independent.
		Because there weren't independents.
		That was yet a third party.
		So it's unaffiliated.
		I was a Democrat for years and actually, quite as it's kept, was a big part of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign.
		Raised a ton of money, had her in my home, fundraisers, had Erskine Bowles and his wife.
		I mean, I was, like, really, really into that world.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I did not see that in the research!
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		So, literally, host her in my home in North Carolina and did a lot.
		And then, fast forward, I've become, this last election, frankly, less enamored, so I was not involved in that campaign.
		I also wasn't involved in Donald Trump's campaign.
		I just have decided that I'm going to have to figure out where I fit.
		And right now, it's just, I'd like to say I'm an American.
		I'm a patriot.
		I'm trying to figure out, on balance, which individual is looking out for the best interest of America.
		And that's a very, it's a lonely place sometimes because, you know, you're either a Democrat or a Republican.
		And some call themselves independents, but the reality is they lean left or right.
		I'm sort of in the middle.
		There are things that I think I would take, positions that I take that are more conservatively aligned,
		and then there are times when it's more, less conservatively or more liberally aligned.
		But I don't think you can just fall into a box.
		I really don't.
		I think that's the problem, frankly.
		There's some issues that I really take a strong position on.
		I mean, we were just, oh, this is, so just the other day we were talking about something.
		I was at the Advancing Justice Seminar.
		It's Advancing Justice Summit, which is hosted by the Charles Koch Foundation.
		Big discussion around reducing the number of incarcerated Americans.
		And so someone threw out, by 2020, we want to reduce the number of people incarcerated by 50%.
		And I paused and I said, "Well, that's dumb.
		"Suppose 30% of those people really should be incarcerated.
		"Suppose they're not, "they absolutely cannot be put back on the streets."
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me you're thinking through, just someone yells out a phrase
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		and you're thinking it through.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I'm thinking it through because--
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You get invited to these things?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you why, because it bothered me.
		Because here's the deal.
		I grew up in one of those fragile communities.
		I grew up, and I shared this with the group, I said, I grew up in the area and my grandmother,
		I'll never forget this, I'll never forget, riding up to high school, people would run
		up to our windows.
		She, you know, 60 plus year old grandmother and me in an ROTC uniform going to high school,
		Drug dealers run up to our windows.
		Prostitutes are standing on the corner in the morning.
		This is 7.30, 8 o'clock in the morning, next to a school.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Man.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Okay?
		But this was the community.
		My grandmother one day, I'll never forget it, she said, they wouldn't allow this in Whitetown.
		They would never put up with this in White Town.
		She was so bothered.
		So she became committed.
		She called, demanded police.
		She demanded that you remove these people from our community.
		And so, fast forward, you just want to release them all back to our community?
		And I said this to one of the attendees.
		I said, here's a problem.
		That sounds great, and it's great for you because they're not coming back to your community.
		That's why this isn't your problem.
		If you release 50% of these people, where do you think they're coming?
		They're not coming to suburbia.
		They're going to show back up in the communities and continue terrorizing and negatively impacting the community.
		So on that front, I tell that story to say, you know, listen, I am passionate about it.
		And I am bothered.
		I appreciate well-intended people thinking that just releasing half the people who are currently incarcerated into our communities is a good thing.
		But they don't think about the impact of that.
		When my kid can't go out and play in the streets for being shot, my daughter has to walk past these scantily clad women who are selling themselves and she begins to think that's normal.
		That's not the world.
		And you may call that a non-violent offender.
		But it's not non-violent.
		It's actually more violent because it's working into the psyche of these young people.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		There's so much there, because you could also look at that and go, well, a certain amount of those people are in there for drug offenses, not selling.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And if they had had better representation or more money, they would have never been in jail in the first place.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Or better parents.
		So you can't just blame the government.
		See, that's the thing.
		Fast forward.
		We want to get to 20 and blame the system for not giving them good lawyers and the system for incarcerating them too long and all of that.
		And you forget that a lot of that stuff started a lot earlier in their lives.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Now you took it back to the scary conservative point.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		It's not that scary because, by the way, my only point is it doesn't have to be mom or dad.
		It has to be someone.
		It could be a school teacher that helped infuse morals and the sense of right and wrong into that kid.
		But we've got to go back.
		We can't just wake up and say, okay, now you've got a 19-year-old who has a long criminal history, no regard for anyone or anything, and say, we just think he or she should not be incarcerated.
		Then pray tell, what are you going to do about that?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you ever get an answer to that?
		I mean, if you let these people out, I get that.
		I'm fully with you.
		Okay, came from a bad place, didn't have the proper support, potentially in jail for doing drugs, not even selling them.
		So the idea is, okay, you want to get this person out of jail, even if it's just an economic thing.
		You don't want to have the system spending money on that.
		But now you put them out there, you still have some responsibility, I think, that the system or whatever you want to call it has some responsibility to make sure that now you just don't toss this back into the mix of what got them there in the first place.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, right.
		And how do you fix that?
		That is the big question.
		I mean, the easy answer is release them.
		And then what?
		I would say, and then what?
		And the thing that bothers me is that many of the people who advocate for this release, release, release, don't have to answer the question, what?
		Because they live in neighborhoods, gated neighborhoods, with a lot of police protection, etc.
		So they're not impacted by it.
		They just want to, once you get them out, and we see this, listen, and unfortunately with individuals who suffer with mental illness.
		So you want them out, and then what?
		What are you going to do now?
		And that's someone else's problem.
		And the system, as you call it, the non-system, hasn't answered that question.
unidentified		(upbeat music)
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's shift a little bit to some specific issues,
		'cause I think we've done a nice little broad job to start here.
		You mentioned to me briefly something about DACA that I thought was really interesting, how the black community is sort of split on this.
		Can you explain that?
		Yeah, yeah.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		You know, DACA is, on its surface, it's an easy, it should be an easy, but when I've come, talking about the complexity of it and the nuances.
		So, increasingly, our students on HBCU campuses are raising They have real beef with this, is the way they describe it.
		One of the students put it, and it made me pause, because I was like, that's an easy one.
		You're not going to send 12 million people home.
		These kids were brought here by their parents.
		They didn't have a choice.
		If I tell my daughter we're going somewhere, she's going, right?
		So that's what it is.
		So I get it.
		And then one of the young women put it best.
		She said, you know, think about the, she called it, she said, the irony of this is that America is all rallying around providing not only the ability for these students to enroll in school, but oftentimes full scholarships for these students, the DACA students.
		While, she said, and here I am, the legal descendant of slaves.
		We were forced to come here, and I have to figure out how to pay for my education.
		And so there's this tension, this real tension, and they have to whisper it.
		So I asked her, I said, well, why don't you just talk about that in class?
		And she said, oh, I would be killed.
		You can't talk about that in class.
		She said, but there's an underground sort of conversation about that doesn't seem fair.
		If America has enough money to provide additional scholarship assistance to students, then shouldn't you take care of people like us, who were brought here?
		Our parents were brought here, and we truly are.
		And so I was like, wow, that's really, it was a really, I hadn't thought about it.
		It made me pause.
		There's also a recent article, I think it's the Chicago Times, where a guy wrote an editorial about Rahm Emanuel wants to spend one or two million dollars on providing IDs for undocumented immigrants.
		And the black alderman had a meltdown.
		I mean literally it's quoted all over the paper saying this is absurd and enough's enough.
		We have Americans here, African-Americans in Chicago who need X, Y, and Z and instead you want to go spend a million.
		So there's a tension.
		America's at a really inflection point that's just not black or white or conservative and liberal.
		There's tension now amongst people of color.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and it seems to me that obviously that conversation is good, and it's nice to hear that a student said something to you that made you re-evaluate, because that shows you practice what you preach, obviously.
		That's right.
		Who's the leader right now?
		I know you probably get this one all the time, and I don't even like the question in a certain way, but who should Black America, whatever that is, it's so stupid talking about that stuff, but who should, in your opinion, should the black community be turning to to make some sense of this?
		Because there's the usual cast of characters, and we can name all the ones that you don't like that are on MSNBC every day, and I don't like them either, so let's just forget those guys.
		But are there some people that we should be looking at that, and I don't even mean just black America, but for people that really care, period, about freedom.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So you make the good point.
		I don't even know America generally, you know, that we can identify someone who is sane and rational and logical and thoughtful.
		But in the African American community, you've nailed it.
		We had a generation of leaders and they were ripe for that era and what was going on.
		Fast forward twenty, thirty years, I'm not sure.
		And I've actually sat with a group of my counterparts, you know, forties, successful, and said, who's the leader?
		Who's the voice?
		What voice captures what's happening in the African-American community?
		Now, to be fair, it's not monolithic.
		African-Americans, you know, like any other community.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's why I don't like the question.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's why we don't like it.
		It was never monolithic, but we had leaders.
		Martin Luther King was a leader, although, you know, he wasn't from industry, he didn't, you know, so, but still he represented, just he caught and captured the voice of the community.
		I have to honestly say, and it's something that bothers me, I don't know who that person is.
		And I'm not so sure that if you asked ten black people, nine of them would say, I'm not sure who that leader is.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and it's so complex, because do you remember a couple years ago when Oprah said the thing about how, well, we just need these old racists to die?
		Yeah, I remember that.
		She was referencing some people's grandmothers and grandfathers, and I remember thinking, and I have no beef with Oprah, obviously.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		No, got it, got it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But I remember hearing that and thinking, this is so dangerous.
		It gets back to what we were talking about earlier about how you just live in your times and all that.
		No one wants to look at their grandparents who grew up in a different time and think, I gotta wait till you just drop dead so you can't vote anymore.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That makes me think.
		My grandmother taught school for 46 years in Broward County, Florida.
		And I remembered, she said something to me now, and I think the world of my grandmother, she's still alive, 93 years old, 94, she just had her birthday.
		And I remembered going down to the University of Miami and I came home and I said, I think I've met someone.
		And it was, she assumed it was a white woman because I'm at a majority institution, you know, Lily White, University of Miami.
		And she said, son, I'd rather you bring a man home than a white woman.
		Wow.
		Now this is someone who I adore and I think the world of her.
		But I had to stop and pause.
		It stuck me.
		I remember that.
		I'd rather you bring a man home.
		than a white woman. And I had to realize that a lot of folks hold these racial sort of things,
		and they are products of their era. So when I see an older 90-year-old, 80-year-old white guy who
		has and harbors some racial animus, I wasn't around then.
		I can't really put that in context.
		I'm not justifying it.
		I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
		But what I am saying, to your earlier point, is I love my grandmother.
		And if you tried to attack my grandmother because she espoused that worldview, I would attack you.
		Because I look at the totality of her contributions to this country and her racist tendencies I want a product of the era that she grew up in, but they are also a very, very small part of the full woman that I know.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and that's the key part.
		Everyone wants to define everybody.
		As you said earlier, you could figure out something that you did when you were 18, something that I did when I was 26, and go, man.
		Right, exactly, but that's the point, that we're just pieces of all of this.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		And that's a problem.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		We just want to collapse on the one thing that someone did that's, by the way, unpopular now.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What do you think Martin Luther King would think about the identity politics stuff?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I would like to think, and by the way, I say that because you read so many versions of what Martin fought.
		I've heard people say he was a Republican.
		He's a womanizer, he's a this, you just don't know.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think you can make interesting arguments about that.
		He was a conservative, and now he doesn't want his children to be judged by the color of their skin.
		That actually sounds a little more like a conservative idea, because that's not an identity politics idea.
		Yet a lot of his economic stuff was veering more towards socialism in a way, so I think you can argue both.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		But I think on balance, I think he would, I believe, That he's looking down saying, you know, no system is perfect.
		No set of rules is perfect.
		But this is a lot better people today than it was.
		What we inherited back then is far worse than what you have today.
		So why don't we look at the progress that was made and figure out how we build on it.
		I'd like to think that because his nature was one of working together, finding commonality and peaceful protest.
		You know, people now, you know, not allowing people to talk when you disagree with them, literally shouting them down.
		Think about that era when Martin Luther King, we were the minority.
unidentified		We were clearly, I mean, really in the minority.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		They could have silenced him by yelling him and shouting him down.
		And somehow the country allowed that voice, and people embraced it because they listened to it.
		Even people who were probably not inclined to agree with him, you know, for that time.
		But by listening, they said, ah, maybe he's on to something.
		And it really piqued their heart.
		It got to their heart and said, you know what?
		This is probably not the right way to think about my fellow Americans.
		It was because they listened.
		But if you aren't even being, if you can't hear, if you're unwilling to listen, Martin has to be sad right now.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was just at the Monument.
		I was telling you, I was just in D.C.
		going all these things.
		And that's what I felt.
		I just felt things have gotten so much better for everybody.
		It doesn't mean there isn't racism.
		It doesn't mean some people don't like gay people or any of those things.
		But our laws basically are fair.
		And it's like, where else are they doing it better?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Are you looking to move somewhere?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I said the same thing right after, even after the Trump election.
		I remember all those folks, if he's elected, I'm leaving the country.
		No.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Lena Dunham's still here.
		I check every day.
		She's still here.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Right, all of these folks, Rosie, name the group who all thought they were gonna leave the country.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I'm like, you're not going anywhere, shut up.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Stop it.
		I don't wanna go too far down the Trump thing, unless you wanna go there.
		No, no, no, no.
		Do you think that whatever's happening with him right now, and as you said, as we're taping this today, Manafort was indicted by the FBI.
		It sounds like it's not even directly about the Trump campaign, that it's about some Ukraine stuff before, but we'll see where all that plays out.
		But as a general rule, what do you make of what's happened?
		Because to me, what I keep trying to say is, if you just let go of the tweets for a minute, you let go of the media hysteria, basically nothing bad has happened, basically.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, two things.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		First of all, you've only had... I know it's hard to get rid of the two.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		No, no, you've only had eight months of it.
		So nothing bad could really happen in eight months anyway.
		This is a republic that has been around for a very long time.
		It's going to be around a long time after him.
		So that's the beginning.
		The other thing is, it goes back to this media thing.
		If you continually, there's a barrage of information that says everything this person does is bad, at some point you believe it, right?
		And I think that's a part of it.
		He's trying to figure it out.
		Could he stay off the tweet a little bit, Twitter off?
		Yes.
		Could he be a little bit more presidential?
		Hell, he admitted it this weekend when he said, that that I'm about to say about Michael Moore is true.
		Totally not presidential.
		Well, news alert, President Trump, several of those sorts of things have not been presidential.
		I'm glad you're acknowledging that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But in a weird way, he can't though, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because that's what got him there.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's what got him there.
		And that's what people forget.
		It worked.
		And frankly, as much as we talk about he's not reflecting America, yes he does.
		43 million Americans voted for him.
		46 for Hillary.
		And people don't factor this in, but Hillary won the great state of California by 3 million votes.
		People forget that.
		So pull those, that three million person spread was like here.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well for the record, I in California voted for Gary Johnson.
		Judge me however... You went on to another... Judge me however you want.
		But I suspect you would have liked a lot of the ideas of Gary Johnson.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I did, in fact I did.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, we knew he wasn't going to win, so that's a whole different conversation.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm in California.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It didn't matter which way I was.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		It didn't matter.
		It didn't matter anywhere, right?
		That's like me in Washington, D.C.
		No matter who you vote for, the Democratic candidate was going to win.
		Full stop, right?
		And again, that gets back to the issue.
		This country is just, you're in one camp or the other.
		And it is, when you think 46 and 43 million people, we're really divided.
		I mean, I just don't even know where the center is anymore.
		That's troubling.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So to me, the center basically is somewhat economically conservative in that you earn your money, you should keep it, and I also always argue that's the best way, if you hate Trump, the best way to limit government is to stop giving it so much money and power, right?
		Because sometimes, you know what, you might get Bernie, And he can use a lot of power that you like, but then sometimes you're gonna get a guy you don't like, so let's just stop giving them so much power.
		But in a weird way, does this all show that our system is working properly?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the, you know, you mentioned it earlier.
		This is, it's not a perfect system, but I don't, there's no other place in the world I'd rather be.
		I thank God every day when I wake up, and so, you know, that I'm here,
		'cause we could've all been born somewhere else, and this could've been a really bad situation.
		It's not a perfect union, but we're working towards it, and that's the optimism, but it's only
		if we have conversations like this, the two of us.
		This doesn't appear on mainstream television, by the way.
		That's the thing that... I gotta figure out how to get you a big show.
		Hey, let me be your agent!
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But we have to get out and have... I believe you could do it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't even know that I want it, but I believe that you could do it.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		We really could, because this voice is what's missing.
		You're either MSNBC or Fox News.
		You're Rachel or you're Hannity.
		And that, by the way, doesn't get us any closer to fixing this because people then divide out.
		That's what we've got to do.
		Because rational people can, I think, reasonable people can come to some conclusions that this is good for all of us.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, relating this to sort of where we started, as you're saying this, I'm thinking, you know, there's something interesting here.
		If this identity politics stuff wins the day and they start taking down more monuments and we start judging Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the founders on the morals of today, it's not just that we'll remove them, but we'll actually, all of their good ideas, all of their good ideas will have to go away.
		They won't, Even if you like a lot of those good ideas, you know what I mean?
		They won't just magically keep some of the ideas.
		You're going to actually remove all of those ideas, and then what are we left with?
		It ain't pretty.
unidentified		Right.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		And it's not America.
		That's the reality.
		It's not America.
		And that's something that we've all got to come to grips with.
		This is not a good direction.
		The trajectory is all wrong.
		I'm pleased to say, and all of us in the markets are performing, that financially you'll do well.
		But by the way, if you don't have any money, you're not participating in the markets anyway, right?
		So people like the two of us, we're going to do fine.
		And our families and significant others and stakeholders are all going to do fine.
		It's the rest of these folks who are being left out.
		And they, unfortunately, are buying into this narrative that America's bad and somehow the magic fix is to tax the wealthy.
		Where does that end?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is the appeal of that just because it's sort of lazy thinking?
		You know what I mean?
		Like, it just doesn't take much to be like, I want what somebody else has.
		Like, it's kind of an easy answer.
		Like, I don't have somebody else got, they should give me some of that.
		Like, you don't have to think that hard.
		You actually have to think harder to understand why you shouldn't or don't deserve someone else's money.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		But see, I don't, and why, maybe, but it's also equally lazy to think if I were, You know, I'm a millionaire.
		I wouldn't want to give more of my money to someone else if I earned it, right?
		Even if I bought a freaking lottery ticket.
		You know, just basic.
		Take some person who's from a fragile community and who's got limited resources, and you say to them, you won the lottery tomorrow, you won ten million dollars.
		Five million of it goes to the federal government in your state.
		How does that make you feel?
		Bad!
		That's lazy.
		You don't have to think a lot to say, that's not a good result.
		Right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So I don't know why this is... I don't know that it's easy.
		I think it's we have just pounded into people's heads that Taking that the rich people are bad, you're vilified for going to work every day and making some good decisions and some luck and some God and some fate, all of that in the totality, you're bad for having done well.
		And the media plays it consistently.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		They love it!
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		And so you believe it!
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		You believe it?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What do you think is the right amount of government for us to have?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		As much as we need.
		I know that's not a great answer, but I would, literally, I'm sort of, I'm not sort of, I'm very conservative in that respect.
		I don't think you can have no government, because then you have anarchy.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		We need... So you don't want Mad Max?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Right, I don't want that.
		I mean, if my house burns down, I want a police department to show up.
		I don't want to have to rely on my three neighbors with buckets to come... I mean, a fire department to show up.
		So I think government, the infrastructure, is important of any society that will endure.
		I do think that we've gotten too far, though, when you have just huge bureaucracy and departments designed to solve problems that, frankly, will solve themselves amongst people.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but we've become completely dependent on it.
		Is there any way to scale it back?
		That's one of the questions I try to ask a lot of my more libertarian guests.
		It seems like this thing has gotten so big, and when you factor it in with handouts and all of this stuff, that if you were ever to take it back, a lot of people think, well, you'd just be screwing over all the poor people, all that.
		Then I have some people who come on and say, no, you just cut it tomorrow, and we see what happens.
		Will charities come in?
		Will churches and synagogues and mosques and all that, will they pick up the slack?
		You know, if you cut the funding to Planned Parenthood, would Barbra Streisand and Rosie and the rest of them suddenly put some of their money towards that?
		I tend to think the answer is yes.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Me too.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I do.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But how do you get that point across to people?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're not going to do it unless forced to do it.
		So I think that's something to be said for just stop.
		I mean, what we saw, Puerto Rico is a classic example.
		We're all forced, you know, worried about what's happening in Puerto Rico.
		But this didn't start with a hurricane.
		Puerto Rico is a disaster.
		I mean, when I read something, I was down there last year and they said 70 Or so percent of the population work for the government.
		Like, that has gotten out of control.
		And the only way you fix that, you can't come in and say, hey guys, 50% of you all should give up your government jobs for us to get this right.
		No, you're just going to have to cut it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You just have to.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you just have to.
		And that's the, frankly, that's the opportunity.
		And I want to be careful here because I don't want, I didn't, I'm not a Trump surrogate or anything else.
		But that's the opportunity for someone like him.
		I think we have just elected our first independent president.
		I think it's the first time that America has had someone who says what they think, for good or for bad, and who is prepared to be unpopular.
		Because to make these sorts of decisions, you've got to be unpopular, and okay with that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So was that his best line during the campaign, when he said, basically, to the black community, he was like, what do you got to lose?
		Do you think it was an actual, it ended up being a good line?
		Because it sounded off when I heard it, and then I've talked to a lot of people, and they kind of were like, yeah, all these Democratic-run cities, Chicago, Atlanta, Ferguson, that's where it's the worst.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So it's funny, I remembered, I know where I was at that moment when that happened, and I was with a group of my friends, and one of my friends, who is as liberal as they come, I've never said, I mean, he drips of it, and he said to me, It was this moment, like, when you eat something that's bitter at first, and then you're like, oh, that tastes good, ultimately.
		And he said, he's on to something.
		And that was when I knew that actually resonated.
		Now, it didn't feel good at first.
		I mean, I got it, check.
		Because it was a little dismissive, and frankly, the African-American community is still enjoying the fact that we elected our first African-American president.
		And frankly, so are a lot of Non-African Americans, right?
		It was a big deal.
		So they felt like it was a shot at Obama.
		That was the issue.
		If you had taken Obama out of the equation, having been the president, it was a totally reasonable statement to say whomever the guy was before He didn't meaningfully change your life.
		I am prepared to do it.
		What do you have to lose?
		So I think if you took Obama out of it and the pride associated with him being a first, I think it was totally logical.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Ironically, I think you can make a great argument that the president himself, whether it's Obama or Trump or anybody else, shouldn't have that much power over your life.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That would be my greater solution here.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's my attitude.
		People say, you know, I wouldn't want to have lunch with Donald Trump.
		I say, and you're not.
		So that's easy.
		I want my president to do two things, literally.
		I have sort of drawn it down to this.
		National security and economic security.
		I want the economy to be strong globally.
		I want that fine and then I want to make sure that the homeland is secure in the context of a global context.
		So it's not just domestic, but you got to do some things internationally to protect your homeland.
		Those two things, I don't care what the president thinks about much of anything.
		Because he's a man just like I am and you are, so he'll have an opinion about X and that's good for him.
		There's Supreme Court, there's Congress, there's all of that stuff, but I just want him to do two things.
		Economic security and what I'll call homeland, but security, national security.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is it funny to you how everybody's sort of flipped their opinions on almost everything these days?
		Because as you're saying that, I'm thinking if we just go back 20 minutes when we were talking about DACA, it's like, well, suddenly Democrats, because they didn't like what Trump was doing, were fighting for states' rights.
		And it's like, yeah, I want you guys to fight for states' rights all the time, because then I'll start voting with you again.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well, look at the Obamacare, the new proposed Affordable Health Care Act.
		You know, the idea is block-grant it to the states.
		I thought that's what we all wanted, right?
		And I was surprised to see some states actually, no, we don't want it.
		What do you mean you don't want it?
		The ability, Mr. or Ms.
		Governor, to manage and take care of your citizenry with your dollars without the intervention of some people in Washington, D.C.
		who know nothing about what happens in Spokane, Washington.
		You don't want that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Man, to me, that's like the most perfect example of how screwed up our system is, that a governor who is the executor of the state would be like, no, no, no, the thing that I'm supposed to do, you do.
		Let's send it over there, that way I'm free in the clear.
		That's like the worst, that's why people hate politicians.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's why people hate the media.
		I totally agree.
		I live in California, which they're probably gonna execute me in five years, you know what I mean?
unidentified		For a little freedom and a little bit, A little libertarian thing, you know?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And believe me, if they secede from the union, I'm really, can I move in with you?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, come on, come on.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		We'll have to leave D.C.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we'll be great.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'll meet you in Missouri or something.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right, Iowa.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But that, yeah, Iowa, that's what I do.
		But that point, basically, of everything's being flipped right now, like everyone's kind of all over the place, it's actually cool.
		I mean, I know so many people are depressed about it, but what I've been trying to say is, There's opportunity here.
		It doesn't mean it's going to be bad.
		It doesn't mean it's going to be good.
		But let's get in there and fight for what you believe, even if you believe in the stuff that I abhor.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
		But they're lazy.
		I mean, you use the right word.
		People are lazy.
		This is actually fascinating to watch.
		Now, I want to separate.
		Earlier I said, you know, I'm nervous about where this is going.
		That's true.
		I'm hopeful.
		I'm not necessarily optimistic, and there's a difference, right?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		But I do enjoy watching the process, the sausage making.
		I do like to see that ultimately, you know, if you go back and look at some of the, at least the reports of the early Founding Fathers, it was ugly.
		They hated each other.
		It was divided like nothing you've ever seen, and all of what we refer to as going on in Congress right now.
		Hell, it happened back then, too.
		This might be the American experience, right?
		In time, what we do is we put a painting, we tell a story around it, and it looks so wonderful and dramatic, but the reality is, it's ugly.
		You know, operating in this sort of a government, this model of governing, is ugly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and it's gotta be ugly, right?
		I mean, what's the option?
		I mean, I think that's what people don't understand.
		It's like, if anything's gonna work, it kinda has to be ugly.
		I mean, the sausage factory's the right thing.
		Nobody wants to see how it gets made, but we all like it.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		No, she'll like it.
		Well, I was reading the other day, I know you've seen it, the comments.
		Boehner is now talking about what happened.
unidentified		You know, gosh, suddenly the man's cursing his brains out, you know?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		And the idea that, you know, literally, he said a guy either pulled a gun or a knife on him or something, one of his fellow members in Congress, and it's just fascinating, literally, he said, but that's within the party.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So the idea that somehow the tension is bad, maybe not so much.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's also funny because like, you know, you'll always hear all these media people and politicians be like, House of Cards is the most realistic show ever.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And it's like, well, there's an awful lot of murder and drug use and evil backdoor deals and you're just, you guys are all kind of telling us.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You're all showing it to us.
		All right, well, we could go a far rabbit hole on that one.
		Let's shift to your future, because you mentioned earlier, so you are leaving the organization at basically the end of next month.
unidentified		Right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And where are you going?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What are you doing?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to run an organization called the Society for Human Resource Management, SHRM.
		And it's the world's largest association dedicated to human resources.
		It's a trade association for the profession.
		of human resources professionals.
		And, you know, so some have said, wow, that's kind of out there.
		Well, no, it isn't for a couple of reasons.
		First of all, I've been in higher ed for the last seven and a half years.
		If you ask nine out of 10 college students, why did you go to college,
		it's to get a good job, period.
		So it's a very natural kind of thing.
		There's no point of going if this doesn't turn into some way to provide.
		The other thing, though, is it's a natural sort of evolution in my career.
		I now understand higher ed.
		Actually, I think I have a really good understanding of all of the education, so PK through 16.
		We've now got to connect it.
		There's not an article that comes out where employers say, the system is not giving me what I want.
		The students who are graduating don't have the skills that we need and so they're frustrated because I'm paying taxes to pay for this system, education system, and what comes out on the other end.
		The assembly line model is, right, really bad.
		I pay for all of this and at the end of the car, I don't like it.
		So I think this gives me an opportunity to take what I've done for the last seven and a half years, And now get industry, bring the two together, and say, let's figure out how to make this system work.
		We're spending a lot of money as a country on education, and to what end?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So what are some of the ways you could shift education?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think the basic premise is get people to listen, get people to really understand what they believe in, but is there something that's a little more concrete that you're gonna go in and be like, guys, this is what we gotta change.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, the current administration is talking a lot about apprenticeships, for example.
		The end game can't be everyone goes to four-year college.
		And I think we went that way for too long, and that didn't work.
		So the idea is to figure out credentialing, to figure out what are the specific skills that one needs to go into the 21st century economy.
		Industry has to tell us that, since they are ultimately the consumer of this education product.
		And then we've got to go back and say, okay, now you've got to tweak your system.
		I know you all don't like being vocational schools, and you want to teach people how to think and solve the world's problems.
		But the vast majority of the folks who come through your system are doing what?
		They're trying to get a job.
unidentified		Yeah.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		So that's what we're going to do.
		Concretely bringing those education and industry together and say, let's figure this out.
		We've got to rethink.
		And talking about disruption, I predict that higher education in particular is going to be disrupted in a way as a business, as a sector, like nothing you've ever seen.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		The pieces are all there for that right now because we see the schools that, a lot of the schools that have gone down the SJW route are really struggling.
		Mizzou is majorly struggling in enrollment.
		We know Evergreen State is struggling.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Well you have another problem.
		Americans just had fewer babies.
		The reality is there are fewer students graduating high school this year than last year and the year before.
		So what we're seeing is a problem.
		You're just not going to have the same number of bodies to come into that traditional college environment that we created with dorms and everything else.
		So now our non-traditional student has to be our traditional student.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's gotta be a little ironic for you in a way.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You come from the higher ed thing, you care so much about it, and yet you can also acknowledge that a certain amount of people, just because of the reality of economics, don't necessarily need all of that education.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And it's gonna be lifelong.
		It's the idea, we came out of the generation where you get your education, your bachelor's, your master's, your doctorate, whatever you get, and then you go into the workplace and do it for 30 years and you retire.
		And now, because the economy is changing so much.
		Every five to seven years, industries go away that we were taught to participate in.
		They go away.
		And so that's, I'm so excited about that.
		Finally, you know, sort of related to that, America is browning and graying at once.
		So underlying all of this is we've got to figure out how to get the system to appreciate a very different
		America.
		It's not black and white anymore.
		It's brown, it's yellow, it's everything.
		And how these workers, as they come out of college or whatever their educational backgrounds are, when they come into the workplace, how do we grow our economy?
		And we've got to use people to do it, right?
		And that's what I'm excited about.
		SHRM and higher education and just trying to figure out how to tie that all together.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I gotta tell you, man, I thoroughly enjoyed this.
		I'm not surprised, because as I said, I saw you once and I was like, this guy's gonna do it.
		But I think the real beauty of this is that you're not just saying this stuff, you're actually out there doing it.
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		And I believe it.
		That's right, I don't believe, you know, this isn't about my desire to run for office or to get a job.
		I really believe this.
		This is something that keeps me up at night.
		How can people like the two of us change the narrative?
		Thank you, thank you for allowing me.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I feel like I gotta give you one more here that'll, all right, what would you say, what would you say then?
		Well, thank you.
		But what would you say then to the people, whether they're college students right now or whether they're middle-aged, whatever it is, that wanna get in the fight but are afraid because of all the silencing factors?
		You know what I mean?
johnny c taylor ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, two things.
		First of all, you need courage.
		You've gotta, intestinal courage.
		You gotta just go down and decide this is the pit, this is where I want to go.
		And by the way, if that means transferring schools, if that means changing the people you spend time around, because, you know, that can be debilitating in some ways, then do it.
		I mean, it's just the only way to do it.
		The other thing is, I would encourage all Americans, we've got to listen more.
		The most frustrating thing to me now is we're so busy talking, and frankly, talking over others, that we just won't pause and listen.
		That's the beginning of changing the narrative, because as you're listening, you're going to, one, The other person will respect you now because you've listened to them.
		And in the process, you actually might learn something.
		You might say, you know, the world is a little different than I perceived it to be because I got it from someone else's perspective.
		That's the beauty of diversity, by the way.
		It's not just gender and race and national origin.
		It's diverse perspectives.
		How another person sees the world.
		If we can get those two things down, first of all, listen, but then courage.
		It takes a lot, frankly, for me to be right here.
		The best thing in the world, if I aspire to be a congressman and a member of, you know, the CBC and da-da-da, there's a narrative that I'm supposed to follow.
		And you've got to decide that that doesn't matter.
		What's more important is that the American story a hundred years from now is a much better story because I was here.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I love it.
		That's a closing statement.
		And for more on Johnny, you guys can follow him on the Twitter machine.

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