Episode 1024 Scott Adams: Let's Get Me Cancelled Today
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Seattle Autonomous Zone...why not?
Reparations
Living your life like a video game quest
Whiteboard: Systemic Racism
Pygmalion Effect and IQ
It's insulting, racist and bullying to say "white privilege"
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Come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
We're going to get me canceled today.
And if I don't get canceled today, I don't know what.
Because it's a very canceling day.
You'll find out why.
All right. What do we need to start the day to make it amazing?
Well, the simultaneous sip would be my suggestion, and all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including practically cured coronavirus.
It's ending the protests.
It's making racial division smaller.
The economy is zooming.
It's the simultaneous sip.
Go! Have you noticed that most of our problems are solved?
Sure. Coronavirus under control.
And when I say under control, I just mean that our hospital systems, etc., look like they're going to be able to handle it.
And it looks like all of our industries have figured out a way to adapt.
Looks like things are coming back.
Economy's coming back.
And the protests have wound down, haven't they?
Were there any protests last night?
Can anybody tell me?
Because I stopped watching news a little bit because it was just non-stop bad news without any...
nothing new to know.
It was just the same news.
It was just all more bad stuff.
And what's happening?
So what's going on with the protests?
One theory is that the leaders are being rounded up and shut down.
So it could be that law enforcement has found ways to push the right buttons to maybe tamp down on some of it.
That could be it. Could be.
Maybe. But let's talk about the Seattle Autonomous Zone.
First of all, I love the idea.
I've formed an autonomous zone around my house.
And I think all you need to do is just call yourself an autonomous zone and suddenly you don't have any laws.
So I've appointed myself warlord of my own autonomous zone.
I don't know what to call my autonomous zone.
I was thinking of Scotland...
Is that taken? Okay, I'll have to do some thinking about that.
Needs a little bit better branding.
Alright. So, I'm going to make fun of the Seattle Autonomous Zone because it's a Seattle Autonomous Zone.
I can't not make fun of it.
Can we agree?
You can't give a professional humorist A Seattle autonomous zone and then expect me to ignore it?
That's not going to happen.
But let me say this at the same time.
This might be the way to move forward.
In other words, not necessarily this autonomous zone, but the idea of testing some stuff.
You have all these people who are willing to live with each other so they don't have to live with us.
Is that really a problem?
That people want to live their own way.
It's a big country.
Couldn't we let them test it?
Because I don't think they have bad intentions.
In fact, the whole point of the Autonomous Zone is good intentions.
What would stop us from allowing people with good intentions to form their own little experiments and then just run it and see how it works.
So I don't think this one is...
it wasn't a well-planned experiment because it happened somewhat spontaneously, completely spontaneously.
So it wouldn't be a good test, but in general, and I don't think you should be taking over an existing city for your experiment, But I would like to see what comes out of this.
So I'd like to get some reporting about what's happening inside the Autonomous Zone.
Now, probably a lot of you saw a funny tweet where there was somebody in the Autonomous Zone, some Antifa, Black Lives Matter person, I guess.
Probably more Antifa?
I'm not sure. But they were complaining that all of their food was eaten by the homeless.
Now, there's nothing funny about starvation unless you started a Seattle autonomous zone and you are surprised to find out that there are people who are poorer than you and they ate all your food.
Now, I don't think anybody's going to starve to death because there's enough food and there's enough people who would like to give it to them.
But I think there are a whole bunch of people who are going to have a little extra wokeness in another week or two when they realize that all of the places that they get food sort of depend on a lot of things they don't want to exist.
So they've got some surprises coming.
Here's a little interesting factoid.
It turns out that Biden is doing way worse than Clinton did, according to polls, with the Hispanic vote.
Like way worse.
So Hillary Clinton had 61% of the Hispanic vote, whereas Biden is down to 50%.
So it was 61 to 23, but Trump is 10 points higher with Hispanics.
Why is that?
Well, I would say it probably is a combination of factors.
One of those factors is probably that the things that Trump was promising to do It's clear he didn't do, which is deport 14 million people.
So if you lived in the United States and you were afraid that candidate Trump, when he was running the first time, was going to deport you, of course you're going to vote the other way.
Or going to deport anybody that you have a special affinity for, you're going to vote against him.
But once you saw that that didn't happen, and it doesn't look like it's going to happen, at least in terms of 14 million people being deported, Maybe that softened people.
And they said, oh, I get it.
It's really just about securing the border.
So it could be a little bit of that.
But I suspect it's also, a lot of it is that the Hispanic population likes law and order.
Big surprise, right?
Turns out everybody likes law and order, on average.
Every black community likes law and order.
On average. Every white community likes law and order.
On average. Every Hispanic community likes law and order.
On average. So it could be nothing more than the Hispanic community seeing the protests and just saying, you know, and I think this trend happened before the protests.
So if the protests had any impact, it would be just a little bit of an accelerant.
But just speculating.
All right. And I would also say that the energy seems to be dissipating a little bit from the protests.
And remember, I predicted that even if nothing changed in terms of solutions, and nothing has changed, right?
There's been nothing that's like a solution, I don't think.
And I said that the protests would just dissipate because the energy would just get used up.
And I think that's happened.
Now, In addition, there are other factors.
One is that maybe they think they made the point.
Maybe some businesses have opened and some people have got to go back to work.
So there's probably a whole bunch of stuff.
They have alternatives, etc.
But I knew it would dissipate, and sure enough, it didn't.
Do you ever worry that White people are infantilizing the black population in this country by not being honest.
Have you ever had that feeling like you're really doing a bad service to the black Americans in this country because you're just not being honest?
And I don't mean being a racist.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I mean just being honest about the topic of race and racism and how you feel about it and all that.
And, of course, if you're a white person in the United States, you don't have freedom of speech in the way that, let's say, other people do, basically every other person.
If you're a white male, you have the smallest amount of freedom of speech in a practical sense.
In a legal sense, of course, you have 100% freedom of speech.
But in a practical sense, there are things you can't say as an adult white male that almost anybody else could say.
So we don't have the same level of freedom of speech.
Now, I'm not complaining.
I'm just saying that's a fact.
So if you want me to complain, I'll do that separately.
I'm just describing the situation.
And I think that that's a great disservice to the black population because how can you move forward if you can't talk about something?
If you can't have an actual conversation In which you could say, oh, here are my facts, here are your facts, let's see whose facts are right.
If you can't do that, how do you solve anything?
And certainly there's nothing like honest conversation happening.
I was watching a little bit of Oprah last night on her OWN network, and she was doing this, looked like, I guess you'd call it a virtual roundtable on video.
With some various leaders, I think they were all African American leaders in the United States, and they were talking about the situation.
And one of them said something that is so anti-productive, and it goes like this.
And I don't know who he was, I didn't catch his name, but he was an African American gentleman who was saying that If you're white, you benefited from slavery, meaning the fruits of slavery, that you benefited by having a history of free people, even if you were not a slave owner, if your relatives were not slave owners, you still benefited from having freedom that whole time.
But if you were a black person whose history was in the United States, You started from a great disadvantage so that white people have this natural sort of systemic advantage for systemic racism purposes.
And that is sort of a permanent advantage.
But then he made this point that I don't think he knows how this sounds.
Because, you know, sometimes you say things and it sounds one way when it's in your head, but then when somebody receives it because their experience is different, The way it's received is like, oh, that's not the way I meant it.
The way you received it.
And that's what happened here.
Because he said that if you were a white person who was poor, you still owed black people because the people in your line who came before, who maybe you've never even met,
people who lived and died before you were born, your grandparents, grandparents, etc., That because those people could have taken advantage of their freedom and made money, but that other people's relatives came through slavery and they didn't have the option of taking advantage of freedom,
because they didn't have any, that even the products of, let's say, unsuccessful grandparents, if you're white, you still owe something to the black population today Because your parents, your great-great-grandparents could have taken advantage of it and made money, but they didn't.
So when you were born, you didn't have any money.
So they didn't, but they could have.
And so therefore that you, a poor white American, you owe some money to rich and poor black Americans alike because of how much your grandparents' grandparents Didn't hold them back, but rather could have taken advantage of their freedom, but didn't.
What is your, let's say, reaction to that emotionally?
What is your reaction to that if you are in the category of a white adult who was not born with wealth?
Which is probably most of you, right?
Probably most people were not born with wealth.
I was born into a lower, lower income family.
Now, what is your, but what's your emotional reaction to that when you hear, when you hear somebody who's a leader in the African American community, I think otherwise you wouldn't have been on Oprah's show.
So he must have been a leader.
And he said that you as a poor white person owe rich black people some money.
Because your great-great-grandparents didn't work hard enough and take advantage of things.
It's not their fault.
It's not black people's fault that your great-grandparents didn't succeed.
They had every opportunity.
They were free. And so they owe some money.
The poor white people, by this reasoning, would owe some money to successful and rich black people because they didn't have that opportunity.
What do you say to that? How about fuck you?
How about just fuck you completely?
How about fuck you from head to toe?
How about fuck you on every corpuscle of your fucking body?
How about fuck your whole, every particle of your being?
How about fuck you before you were born and after you're dead?
How about fuck you completely?
That's what I feel.
That's my reaction.
Now, does it help Does it help that a black leader infuriated me by making me seem as though it's my fault that my grandparents didn't work hard enough?
First of all, it's racist, obviously.
But let's talk about reparations.
I told you I was going to get cancelled today, so might as well go for it.
You ready? Let's talk about reparations.
I think you would agree with the following statement.
There's nobody alive who could be objective, right?
Like if you said, all right, we've all agreed that we should calculate some reparations for slavery.
How do you calculate it?
Well, if you hire a bunch of white people to calculate it, you're going to say, well, they're not going to do it right.
They're biased. If you hired a bunch of black people to calculate it, the white people would say, well, they're biased.
They're not going to do it right.
If you hired somebody who wasn't involved, you still wouldn't trust them.
So you really can't find any human beings on Earth who could do the calculation because there's a ton of subjectivity, right?
So you couldn't really hire anybody to do it in a way that everybody would say, oh yeah, that's pretty good.
That's credible. So as a thought experiment, imagine that an advanced alien species was discovered.
And one of their characteristics is they don't have any bias.
It's just a weird alien from another planet and You know, we meet them, we interact enough, and we realize they just don't have any bias.
So we say, can you do us a solid favor?
We'd like to calculate reparations, but just look at us.
We're all biased. We can't do it.
Can you, with your complete lack of bias as a space alien, calculate the reparations for us and just tell us what it is?
Because we can't do this with all of our bias.
And so the aliens do this.
They say, okay, just give me the raw data and we'll calculate this for it.
So you say, alright, what do you need?
And the space alien says, alright, here's what I'm going to need.
I'm going to need the average income of black Americans.
And you say, alright, alright.
And then you say, we'll also get you the average income of white Americans.
So you have a comparison, and that would tell you where the gap is, right?
And the space alien would say, why would I need that?
And then you'd say, well, that's why you're comparing.
You're comparing how black Americans have done since slavery, and you want to compare that to the average, let's say, economic output of white Americans who were the oppressors or the descendants of the oppressors.
And the space alien would say, That doesn't make sense.
That's not even the right comparison.
And you'd say, ah, but that's the whole point.
That's what we're looking at.
That's the whole point.
And the alien would say, yeah, that's the whole point.
The point is that you have uneven outputs.
I get that. But that's not what you asked me.
You asked me to calculate the reparations part.
The reparations is a different comparison.
If I'm going to calculate the, let's say, the theft from the black community, if you were to measure the theft, let's say just theft, that slavery was, in other words, you stole the productive part of their lives, etc., and you used it for yourself.
So here's the number I need.
I need, how is the average economic situation going?
For the average black person in this country.
And then to compare it, I want to compare it to the average life of a black African.
And you say, what?
And the space alien says, yeah, that's the comparison.
So you want to compare what would happen to the average black person if they had stayed unmolested in Africa and there had never been a slave trade.
Because that's what you're comparing to.
Because if the people who were brought to America as slaves and then their descendants are doing much worse than if they'd never been brought with slavery, then that's the amount of reparations.
That's how much they lost is all the money they would have made if they'd stayed in Africa.
You know what the problem is, right?
They would owe money to white people.
So the space alien, if he could do the calculation without bias, would say the proper comparison is what would have happened if this crime of slavery had never occurred.
So if it never occurred, people would have stayed in Africa, they would have had happy lives in Africa, and they would have had a certain lifestyle.
Compare that to what it is now, and that's your difference.
Am I wrong? Now, I'm just saying that if you were good at comparing things, that's the comparison you'd make.
Now, obviously you're not going to make any policy based on that comparison, because nobody's going to accept that comparison, right?
Yeah, I'm cancelled.
So, and this is exactly the sort of conversation you can't have without getting cancelled.
Somebody in the comments will say, yep, you're cancelled.
Exactly. Don't you think that's cancellation city?
I'm just getting started.
You want to cancel me?
Wait until the next part.
I haven't even gotten to the good part.
Here's a question for you.
How long should I wait?
Let's do something first.
Before I get cancelled, I'm going to do some other stuff first.
Have you seen the news?
A bunch of alleged racist statues are being toppled.
I guess the statue of Christopher Columbus was toppled and some other statues are toppled because they have their statues basically to racists.
Columbus was a gigantic racist.
Before I get cancelled, I just want for full context, let me say, I'm fully in favor of getting rid of those statues.
Why in the world would you have racist statues?
It just doesn't make sense.
I get that it's historical, but so was Hitler.
Hitler was historical.
Does Germany have a lot of Hitler statues?
So I'm completely with the black community, completely with the protesters, Who want to get rid of the statues?
Now, I would do it differently.
I'd probably move them to museums or something.
So I would handle it differently.
I don't think I'd destroy them physically.
Or maybe I'd put a plaque on it and say, this guy was a racist, but we didn't want to take down the statue because of his history.
I think the protesters have a point.
I wouldn't handle it the way they're handling it.
Here's a question for you.
There is a new kind of discrimination that just started.
I don't know if you've experienced it yet.
So I am aware of one person who is a Trump supporter who declined to hire a black person recently, not because they were prejudiced.
So as a Trump supporter who is not a racist, Who declined to hire a black person for a job recently.
Just something I heard about personally.
And the reason was this.
It wasn't racism.
It was the fear that the black person would be uncomfortable with them.
In other words, it was a fear that the average black person in the United States would so dislike a Trump supporter that if you hired a A black person, and you were known to be a Trump supporter, it would be a problem for you.
So it's like a whole brand new kind of racism that got created.
Because the old kind was, I don't want to hire somebody because I don't think they can do the job.
That wasn't even a little bit part of this decision.
There was no part of this that said, can't do the job.
It just wasn't part of the thinking.
It was purely that the That the attitudes of the public have been so whipped up at the moment that it was somebody who didn't want to take the chance of spending time with somebody who might hate them, might actually just hate them, and think they were a racist.
Imagine that. It's like a whole new brand of things.
And that's a real story of a black person who didn't get a job.
And through no fault of their own, through no fault of their own, didn't get a job.
It's like, I didn't see that coming.
It's a whole new form of racism.
So that's not good.
All right. I cannot wait for that autonomous zone to figure out that they need systems to eat.
And I'm not saying that as a joke.
It does seem to me that this autonomous zone, we should let it run a little bit.
And I mean that seriously.
We should let it run until everybody involved with it has a very solid idea of what worked and what didn't work.
Right? Because I've got a feeling there's a whole bunch of people...
Somebody said this online and this little bell went off.
Imagine a whole category of people...
Who grew up with video games like Fortnite.
What do all video games have in common?
Not all of them. Let me soften that greatly.
What do a lot of popular video games have in common?
They have in common the idea of fighting people until you control territory.
Right? A lot of video games are about clearing a space, controlling territory.
So you have all these people who grew up in the video game age who just created this autonomous zone, essentially like a video game.
They lived their real life like a video game.
They picked up things that they could use on the street like rocks.
They got energy from people who would bring them water and food.
And so they played it like a quest in which they were trying to Do something.
And somebody said, hey, let's own this little zone.
And then it became a proper video game.
But what is the thing that all video games have in common?
They're not true to life.
Meaning that in a video game, nobody has to go to the bathroom.
Right? In a video game, nobody has a bathroom.
And you don't need to eat or sleep.
So the basics of life...
They're now confronted with, maybe for the first time, at least in this form, they're being confronted with the fact that these oppressive systems, the ones they want to tear down, they don't tear down so easily.
Because if you tear them down, you end up with whatever's going to happen in the auto zone, in the autonomous zone.
I want to call it an auto zone, because that's a car dealership around here.
All right, so... Alright, let's go to full cancellation.
You ready? So I tweeted this yesterday, and I was being provocative, but for good purpose.
Because I'd really like to understand this.
And I tweeted this. What is the right amount of time to wait for an example, the key word here is an example, of systemic racism before discarding it as an illusion?
Pretty provocative, isn't it?
Because just even bringing up the notion that it's even possible that systemic racism is based on an illusion is pretty racist sounding, isn't it?
Pretty provocative.
But I'm not saying it doesn't exist.
I'm saying the opposite.
This is a call for examples.
Because we have this weird situation in which part of the country Seems to have this very solid idea of this thing called systemic racism.
And at least half of the country, I don't know the actual percentages, but let's just say half and half for conversation.
And another half of the country doesn't have any idea what that means.
I mean, legitimately. They're not being difficult.
They're not being argumentative.
They literally, actually, genuinely don't know what it means.
And so the biggest problem in the country, if you're just looking at the news headlines and the protests and stuff, and the racial division, etc., one of the biggest issues in the country, and there's at least a solid half of us, and I'm in this half, who are looking at it and saying, I'd like to fix that.
Whatever it is that's making half of the country go nuts, I'd like to fix that, if I could understand it.
You know, because I'm just a fixer.
I like to fix anything that's broken.
If I can fix something for you, let me fix it.
But I don't know what it is.
And so I ask this question to try to provoke people to do a better job of explaining it.
Because one possibility is that it's just not being communicated well, right?
So it could be that it's a really gigantic problem, and it's a little bit invisible to some people in the public, and I'm one of them, a little bit invisible to me.
So if they communicated it better, especially with examples, Then I can get on board.
And I can say, oh, okay, okay, I didn't get that.
But now with these three or four examples, this will help me recognize it on my own.
So you've given me four good examples, and now I'll be able to see a new one just because I have that pattern in my head.
Oh, okay, here's a new situation, but now I recognize it.
That's also systemic racism.
But at the moment, I have no idea what it is.
So I gave it a week. Randomly.
I just said, well, I'll give it a week.
So it's been one day, and I want to tell you how people have done in explaining to me what systemic racism is.
Shall we go to the whiteboard, ironically?
Let's go to the ironic whiteboard.
And here's what I've learned so far about what...
These are the answers you get when you ask, what is systemic racism?
People like to give you an analogy.
And they say, all right, let me explain what systemic racism in this country is.
And here's an analogy.
And then I say, stop.
Stop. Why are you giving me an analogy?
It's a systemic racism.
It's everywhere. Give me an example.
Just point to it.
Say, here's some right here.
Why are you giving me an analogy for something that's so widespread it's everywhere?
Can't you just look at it and say, here it is.
Here it is, Scott. Here's a perfect example.
It's happening in your life right now.
You're just blind to it because of your white privilege.
I just want an example.
If somebody gives you an analogy instead of an example, does that make you think that they know what it is?
Because it makes me think they don't know what it is.
Because otherwise they would say, here it is.
Look, right here. Not an analogy.
The other thing they'll do is they'll give you an historical example.
Well, back in 200 years ago, and I'll say, okay, but are we talking about that?
I get the point that there's a ripple effect through history, so we're on the same page with the ripple effect from slavery to the present.
But if you're talking about historical examples, why?
Why are you talking about historical examples?
Because the problem is now, right?
If it's widespread and it's everywhere, why can't you give me an example that's happening right now?
So anybody who gives you an analogy or an historical example makes me think they don't know what it is or that it doesn't really exist.
Because those are not the ways you would answer a question about something that's pervasive and everywhere and always present.
You also see people make assumptions that I can't test.
You see references to original sin, which is a reference to slavery as being the original sin, and that this original sin has sort of pervaded into the present, to which I say, okay, I buy that concept.
I buy the concept that slavery was a Gigantic sin, if you want to call it the original sin, the big sin, I'm okay with all that.
It's as big a sin as you can get.
And I'll also agree that it has a ripple through history.
So now show me an example.
But this isn't an example.
This is, again, another call to history.
The other answer that you get, and most commonly, and I think about every one of you have seen this, right?
The word salad. There's some kind of a long paragraph as an answer to show me the example of the systemic racism.
You'll get a paragraph with large words and jargon in it, and you'll read it, and you'll say, I don't even know what that means.
Right? Now, what have I taught you is going on When you see a word-salad answer to something, it always means the same thing.
Because you're seeing it from different people.
If one person always gave you a word-salad answer, basically a bunch of big jargon words that don't mean anything, you'd say, oh, there's just something wrong with that person.
But if lots of people do, what's it mean?
And they're different. Everybody's word-salad paragraph is different from the next, but it's a widespread thing that happens.
What's that mean? It's cognitive dissonance.
That's what it is. Cognitive dissonance is most easily identified by a word salad.
When you trap somebody in their argument to the point where it's just clear that they've lost the argument and there's just nothing there, they will still respond because people don't like to give up, but their response won't make any sense even as sentences.
But they'll think they did.
That's a big tell for cognitive dissonance.
The other thing you'll get is a laundry list of what I'd call ordinary racism.
Now, when I say ordinary, I don't mean it's not bad.
I mean it's the common kind.
Common racism would be you try to get an apartment and you're turned down for being black.
That's just racism. I don't think that's systemic racism.
That's just racism.
You go in to get a job and your employer doesn't give you the job because you're black.
That's not systemic racism, is it?
That feels like just regular racism.
It didn't need another word. So this is another answer you get, just some examples of ordinary racism, which is not even the same topic, because we know what ordinary racism is.
The question is, what's the systemic thing?
And then there's another category, which is bad statistics.
For example, somebody will say, well, look at the number of black people who were killed by police.
There it is. Just look at my statistics.
And then I say, that's actually just bad statistics.
We don't need to get into that.
You already know that if you're looking at the number of people stopped by police, more white people are killed.
Now, there certainly is a statistical difference in outcomes.
But there are also lots of poor white people.
So if you're going to say there's systemic racism and it's proven by the outcomes, that's a tough argument to make.
What do I do about it?
Change the outcomes?
You know, I think everybody wants better outcomes if we knew how to do it.
All right, so here's where I am.
There are six days left on my seven-day challenge.
To explain what systemic racism is, or the default after seven days will be, I will assume it's not real, and that it's a major hallucination.
Now, would this be the one thing that people are hallucinating about?
No. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I think just about everything in the public conversation is a hallucination.
This isn't the one thing that would be the hallucination.
Interesting comment in the comments.
Somebody says that crime and poverty are caused by low IQ. And I was doing some reading on that, and it turns out that the IQ story is actually not nearly as clean as you think it would be, meaning we don't know what causes IQ and why anybody has it, and we do know that it can be changed a great deal.
So we know, for example, that IQs have risen over time, and that doesn't make any sense.
Like, why would our IQs be higher than they were 200 years ago?
It doesn't make sense. But they are.
And we also know that, you know, if you take somebody from one group who has traditionally low IQ and they're adopted by somebody who has traditionally high IQ, if they're adopted young enough, Those kids have high IQs.
So there's a big body of work that says that IQs are so influenced by, and also by expectations.
Have you ever heard of the, what's it called, the Pygmalion effect?
The Pygmalion effect.
Which is that, I guess the experiment was they took kids and they randomly said some of them were gifted.
So kids who were not necessarily gifted were just told they were.
So their teachers said, oh, well, we've identified you as an extra smart person.
And then they'd measure their test scores at the end of the year, and all the people who were told they were smart got better grades.
So it works really well with kids.
It's a hypnosis trick, actually.
That people become what they expect to become.
That you manage your life to that thing you think is true.
So if you were simply to tell people, you're going to do great.
My mother, for example, from my youngest age, told me that I was unusually smart and that I would be unusually successful.
From four years old, probably.
And did that affect me?
Probably. Probably.
Because if somebody tells you you're smart enough, you'll start acting like a smart person does.
You'll say, well, I guess I go to college.
I guess I do a job that being smart makes a difference.
So you can very much be programmed by other people and your environment.
So the whole IQ and poverty question is really complicated, but one of the things that we can't pick out of that, apparently, and I just looked at some of the studies yesterday, one of the things you can't sort out is a genetic component.
And isn't that interesting?
You would think that that would be the most obvious thing that you could sort out.
But when you start really digging into the details of it, it sort of disappears.
Now, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It just means it's not identified.
So that's different. All right.
So, let me summarize this again.
I'm not saying that systemic racism doesn't exist.
So if you hear that, that's the wrong message.
I'm saying as clearly as possible...
I hope somebody can explain it to me in the next week.
Because if nobody can explain it to me without using one of these things which is not an explanation or even close, I'm just looking for examples.
If I can't get examples and I only get these things, at the end of seven days I will conclude that it's a hallucination.
Meaning that it's a common belief that just isn't true.
In a way that you can do something about it.
Now, I think that you...
It is certainly true that there are differences in outcomes.
There are differences in how people are treated.
There are all kinds of differences.
And you could easily make a case that that's what you're talking about.
But if that's what it is, let me know.
But I don't know which of these things can be fixed if you don't have an example.
Yeah. Alright, here's my last cancelable point.
I think this should do me pretty well.
You're hearing a lot about white privilege.
And one of the things that I am a big believer in is that each group Be they women, be they black, be they white, be they Asian, be they whatever group.
Whatever group you're in, I think every group does have the right or should have the right.
Let's say they don't have a constitutional right.
But it seems proper and good and good for the world if this standard could apply to everybody.
And the standard is this.
If there are particular words or phrases that you find offensive to your category of people, You should be able to point that out and discourage people from using those words.
Obviously, the N-word.
Now, there was a time when I was young, very young, when I would say to myself, okay, I get why we shouldn't use the word.
It's insulting. It's offensive.
But who can tell me what words to use?
I'm a free person in a free country.
I should be able to use any word I want.
I don't want to use that word.
I find it offensive, too.
But I should have the right to And, you know, that's sort of a young person's argument.
As you get a little more worldly and you understand how things work a little bit better, you become a little, let's say, less rigid.
And you say to yourself, oh, I get it.
The whole point is to live happily among each other.
That's the big picture, right?
The big picture is not some technical right you have in the Constitution that doesn't mean anything to you.
The right to use one specific word Big deal.
Yes, I do not have actual freedom to use that one word.
Does that affect my life?
No, it does not.
Not even the slightest bit.
So if the goal is to just live together and not be jerks, if you've got a word that offends you, I don't want to use that word.
And I would certainly like to know, I would like you to tell me what that word is.
So, black people, very clear on this point, very consistent.
The N-word, it's off the table.
Unless you're a member of the community.
And I'm cool with that.
100% cool with that.
But I like that standard to apply to everybody.
Now, of course, if you're Jewish, if you're Hispanic, everybody's got their word or words that they would say, alright, not these words.
You can use these words, but please...
Just understand how I feel when you use these other words, so don't use it.
Totally cool with that.
Now I would like to extend that thought.
The phrase white privilege I think is racist and bullying.
I do understand that other people don't think that.
I also don't care that other people have a different opinion of what the word means or how it feels.
My point is that this is my category.
I'm a white person in America.
So this is just a phrase that I find deeply offensive.
And here's why. When you say white privilege, you're telling me I didn't work for what I got.
Now is that what you mean?
Do you intend to say that?
Maybe a little bit, maybe not.
I don't care. I don't care what you intended.
Because that's not part of it, right?
If you were black, would you care that a white person had good intentions when they used the N-word?
No. You don't care about their intentions.
You just don't want the word to be used...
You just don't want it in the atmosphere.
Totally cool. Makes perfect sense to me.
I'm with you 100%.
And I ask you in return, black Americans...
Don't use the word white privilege unless you want me to like you less, because that's what it does.
It makes me feel bullied, it makes me feel disrespected, and it makes any accomplishments that I might have seem diminished.
Now, I was born without the benefits of wealth or connections, and my parents didn't go to college.
Both of them had failed a grade in high school.
My impression of my life is that I worked for what I got.
And I worked very hard.
I worked pretty much seven days a week and always have.
Most of my life I'd say I've worked seven days a week.
And I did it because I wanted to build something, make something, accomplish something.
When anybody tells me That white privilege is any part of my experience.
I feel bullied.
I feel diminished.
I feel insulted.
And I don't ever want to hear it again.
So, it's the W word.
So, I will completely respect any other group's preferences for what words to use.
The pronoun stuff is a little...
You know, the pronoun stuff, I think, is its own category.
And I don't even have an opinion on that.
I just don't care one way or another.
Well, actually, no, let me throw that in the mix.
Let me be consistent.
The people who have a pronoun preference, I'm happy to use it.
I've never had a problem with that at all.
And, no, it is a problem if somebody accidentally uses the wrong one and they get in trouble.
I don't like that. I don't want anybody to get in trouble for accidentally using the wrong pronoun.
But if somebody has a preference, call me him or her, I don't care.
Why would I care? I'm happy to, in a social world, I'm happy to give people what they want.
If it makes them happy, I wouldn't even complain about that, even the slightest.
This is where I disagree with...
Well, I'm not sure I do disagree.
Because if it became a legal requirement...
You could go to jail for it or something.
Or lose your job.
I don't agree with that on the pronoun stuff.
But I do agree that to be a good person, if somebody has a preference, why not use it?
All right. More whites are throwing around the term white privilege, somebody says in the comments.
Yes. Well, more in terms of you might be hearing it more on TV. Yeah.
Just because there are more white people.
So I don't doubt that more white people are using white privilege.
Somebody says, you also have educational privilege.
I do, but I had to work pretty hard to get it.
Uh... All right.
Safe spaces. So am I going to get cancelled today?
What do you think? We'll see.
So this is why I started the Locals account.
You can see there's all these topics that there are things that you can say on Twitter, you can say on Periscope, and then there's another level that you just can't say.
Just stuff you can't talk honestly about.
And again, not with any bad intentions, not because you're a racist, none of that.
Just there are whole categories of things you're just not allowed to talk about.
Alright. Why is there no affirmative action in sports?
You know, I wonder about that.
If you're an Asian American, do you ever look at the NBA and say, you know, not enough Asian Americans playing in the NBA. I don't know.
Why are some things fair and some things aren't?
Now, I think the answer would be there's nothing stopping them.
They have all the, you know, nobody's discriminating against anybody Asian American in the NBA. Everybody has the same tryout.
All right. So I guess that would be fair.
Okay. Uplifting positive vibes.
Well, I don't know if I gave you any, probably didn't, but maybe you need some.
I think you need some uplifting positive vibes.
You want to hear some? Look what we just did.
As a world, but as a United States, for those of you who are Americans watching this.
Look what we just did.
We just beat the coronavirus, which doesn't mean it's over.
Lots more people will die.
But we did beat it in terms of it destroying civilization.
It's not going to destroy civilization.
It's just not. We will take losses.
We will mourn for our losses.
But we beat the coronavirus.
We beat it. It's one of the biggest challenges of modern civilization.
We just beat it. We just beat the hell out of it.
How about the economy?
Are we coming back?
Yeah, we're coming back.
We're going to come back harder because we shook the box and now we have all these new opportunities that come out because we're looking at things differently and things we can do that we couldn't do and regulations that will be cut and things will just be more flexible in the future.
How about that? How about all the protests and the conversations about race?
We kind of needed to do this, didn't we?
Don't you think? As bad as the economic devastation is, as bad as the retail destruction, all the innocent people who lost things, I don't minimize that.
These are genuine tragedies.
But sometimes you just have to get things out of your system, don't you?
Sometimes you just need to scream at the sky.
Sometimes you need to punch a wall.
Sometimes you need to break something.
Again, not justifying any destruction.
I'm just saying it's human nature that when your anger or your emotions reach some level, it's going to come out in some form or another, either good or bad.
I feel as though it just needed to come out.
I think it just needed to move out of the shadows and get into the light a little bit.
And that if the only thing that comes out of this Is that everybody involved in the conversation gets smarter about it?
Wouldn't that be good?
Imagine if just the only thing that came out of this is everybody got smarter.
In other words, you learned what systemic racism is.
Still waiting for that lesson, but let's say we get that.
That would be pretty good. Suppose we learn what the real statistics are for police killings.
Suppose we all learned the same statistics, because right now we think we're on different pages.
But suppose we came together and said, oh, well, okay, those are the statistics we should look at.
That would be a big deal, a really big deal, if we could just agree on the statistics.
And we're a lot closer to that than we ever have been, simply because it's the conversation now.
You know, when it's not the main topic in the news, You can hit it with your two-minute appearance of a pundit and then it goes away and you never have to talk about it again.
Then another two minutes later from another pundit.
You can just sort of ignore all the racial problems if you're just getting it in two-minute hits every few days.
But when it becomes the major theme of the country, well, you can't ignore it.
Should we ignore it?
I don't think so. Obviously, it's a big problem, at least in the mind and experience of lots of Americans, so that should bother you.
It should bother you that it bothers other people.
If you don't get that, you have not bought into society.
We are social creatures.
It should bother you that other people are bothered.
Even if you think they shouldn't be bothered, it should still bother you that they are bothered.
And you should care about that.
You should do something about it, if you can.
Alright, so that's the good news.
The good news is that we're, the conversation about race, I think, is going to be elevated to a level we've never seen before.
And it might include some honesty that we haven't dealt with before.
And Let me give you the ultimate...
No, I'm going to save it. So tomorrow I'm going to tell you how all racism and how the left and the right can come together.
That'll be a whiteboard lesson for tomorrow.
All right, and that's all we have for today.
I hope somebody will explain to me systemic racism because I actually do want to understand it.
It's not like a strategy or something to...
It's not a rhetorical strategy.
I actually want to know.
Genuinely, completely, I want to know what it is.
I want to know examples. I'd like to be able to spot it myself when I see it.