Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 792 | What's to Blame for the Chicago 'Teen Takeover'? | Guest: Heather Mac Donald

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

Starting point is 00:00:19 We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. The streets of Chicago were taken over by mobs of teens, perpetrating violence against innocent victims. Also, a tale of two shootings. There was a young woman and a young man both shot for getting close. to the wrong house by mistake, but how the media is talking about these stories based on the race

Starting point is 00:01:05 of the victims tells us a really sad story about race relations and journalism in America today. We are talking to Heather McDonald. She is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She's a contributing editor for a city journal. She's written lots of books. She's a Yale grad. She went to Cambridge University in Stanford as well. And she talks a lot about race and police. and disparities among whites and Asians and black people. She recently wrote a book called When Race Trump's Merit, how the pursuit of equity sacrifices, excellence, destroys beauty, and threatens lives. So we will be talking about all of this today, including how racial quotas is damaging,

Starting point is 00:01:46 not just academia, but also the fields of medicine and science. So it's kind of a scary conversation, but it's really important for us to know what's going on. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranch. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code All right. Before we get into that conversation, I understand the reaction and response probably that I'm going to get from some people about this. And look, like, I'll just be honest with you. This conversation about race and about disparities and why there are disparities when it comes to academic outcomes, when it comes to delinquency when it comes to incarceration. Like this is an uncomfortable conversation for me to have two, to hear some of the

Starting point is 00:02:38 statistics, to look at the data. And Heather offers a very curt, a database, but a very curt, a very blunt analysis of why these disparities exist. So I just encourage you to see this conversation for what it is, looking at statistics and wanting to find solutions to these disparities and these problems that actually benefit all communities, including communities that are predominantly black and brown. I know it can be difficult to hear some of the harsh things that are said, but this is coming from a place of wanting things to be better for everyone. And the fact of the matter is the diversity, equity, and inclusion,

Starting point is 00:03:21 the progressive policies, affirmative action of the left has actually damaged the very communities that the left says that they care of, about and are serving. So that's what this is about. Obviously, on this podcast, we believe that everyone is made in the damage of God. Everyone has the same innate worth. Everyone has an equal place. If you are apart from Christ, you are equally dead in sin. If by grace through faith, you have been saved by Christ, then you are equally alive in Him. That is the worldview that we are operating from. What we are talking about today is data. What we are talking about today is media bias. We are talking about statistical disparities and what is actually behind those things. So know

Starting point is 00:04:07 that that is where this is coming from. This is an uncomfortable conversation, I think, for a lot of people understandably so, but we have to be willing to look at these facts to be able to ever solve any of the problems that I know all of us, no matter what side that you are on, really want to solve. So without further ado, here is our guest today, Heather McDonald. All right, Heather, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. I've been wanting to talk to you for such a long time, has been a fan and admirer of your work for a while. Before we get into your book when race trumps merit, I want to talk to you about these new stories that I haven't had the chance to break down myself on this show. And the first one is a really horrifying story. The footage

Starting point is 00:04:54 that I've seen is horrifying. And it's from what people are calling. a Chicago teen takeover, it's basically mobs of young people in Chicago running down the street, looting, assaulting people, causing all kinds of chaos. The new Chicago mayor, I'm sure you saw, he's trying to defund the police. He also said, well, we should demonize these young people who are assaulting innocent victims in the middle of the road. I mean, what do you make of all of this? How does this happen in an American city? It happens because we've demonized the cops.

Starting point is 00:05:29 We've totally delegitimated police authority. We've been doing that for decades, but it got particularly bad after the George Floyd race riots. And so the cops have backed off of proactive policing. They're terrified to make arrests because they'll be accused of being racist. And we've sent the message that lawless behavior is perfectly normal. And we're terrified of enforcing the law because it has a disparate impact. on blacks, that message gets across.

Starting point is 00:05:59 But I'm frankly a little surprised by the reaction to this because we saw the same thing last year. These flash mobs of teens from the south side and west side of Chicago on the magnificent mile are a routine phenomenon. Last year there was a boy who was shot to death at Millennium Park. And last year, Lori Lightfoot actually raised the drawbridges.

Starting point is 00:06:25 so that people couldn't be able to come in to the downtown area. So this is this phenomenon of the flashmobs, of the knockout game, of wilding, has been going on for decades, and mainstream America turns its eyes away and pretends it's not happening and instead embraces this wildly fictional narrative that the real threat in interracial violence is white-on black, Whereas the reality alley is it's black on white. Blacks commit 88% of all interracial violence between blacks and whites and whites on blacks. But the rest of the country is so worried about violating racial etiquette that we don't talk about any of that.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Yes. And actually, you just assume that it's actually the opposite. Because in every single crime that we see in which there happens to be a white suspect, a white perpetrator, black victim. We are made to believe that this is common. This is actually emblematic of American culture. We saw, of course, after George Floyd, people like LeBron James saying, well, I just want to be able to go outside without being hunted, which of course, I mean, it's not a laughing matter considering the gravity of what we're talking about, but it's almost laughable to hear someone like LeBron James say something like that. And of course, it causes all kind of strife. It causes all

Starting point is 00:07:49 kind of resentment, but even worse than that, and this is what you talk about so much, it actually affects policy, which then affects people's lives. You're talking about a lack of policing, a lack of respect for law enforcement that has been going on in Chicago for a very long time, that has led to the enabling of these mobs of young people, who, of course, I mean, their parents should be really the first line of events here. That's a whole other conversation. But certainly, the law is not being enforced. And because of that, during this Chicago teen takeover, police day a six-year-old boy was shot in the arm, a six-year-old boy, and a 17-year-old boy was shot in the leg. And then I'm sure you saw a video of this woman. She was getting assaulted. Apparently, there was a different story. Her boyfriend was being attacked. He was trying to protect her. I don't know exactly what was going on. But obviously, violence was being perpetrated. And so, I mean, this is. costs lives. This costs people's safety. And yet it seems like no amount of bloodshed motivates

Starting point is 00:08:55 the officials in Chicago to change their tune or to change their policies in favor of trying to protect, you know, people like this six-year-old boy who was shot. Why? Why not? Like, what is behind their inability to see the danger that they are allowing? Because if they enforce the law, they will have a disparate impact on black criminals. Rahm Emanuel was the mayor of Chicago several years ago, and he and his police chief would routinely go up to this Illinois legislature and ask for stricter gun laws for illegal use of weapons. And the black caucus in the Illinois legislature routinely said, no, we're not going to give you those stricter laws because it will have a racially disparate impact. The left loves to talk about gun control, meaning limiting legal gun sales. That's not what is creating gun violence.

Starting point is 00:09:54 The gun violence in this country is an inner city problem. It is drive by shootings used by illegal guns. The solution, as you say, Ali, primarily has to come from parents and families. The culture has to heal itself. But the criminal justice system can come in after the fact. and penalize people for the illegal use of guns, but we don't do that because it will mean that we'll put more black criminals in prison.

Starting point is 00:10:22 And as a culture, we've decided we would rather not incarcerate criminals than do so if that has a disparate impact on blacks. And you'd mention a six-year-old boy shot. That's the tip of the iceberg alley. I mean, black kids are being fatally shot in their backyards, in their front yards, in their parents' homes, in their cars,

Starting point is 00:10:46 birthday parties, trampolines. I have a list in my book of the carnage on a daily basis for about four months in 2021. It is utterly astounding. And the country turns its eyes away from these young child black victims because it doesn't want to talk about their perpetrators. So until that changes, the only thing that's really going to change is if white kids start getting gun down

Starting point is 00:11:14 in these insane barbaric drive-by shootings, by and large they're not. For all of the hoop law over school shootings, those are disproportionately gang-related. We only go nuts when it's white kids who are shot, and ideally we want a white shooter. But those are a pittance of the gun violence in this country, which is overwhelmingly gang-related, inner-city-related.

Starting point is 00:11:40 Blacks die of gun-up. homicide at 25 times the rate between the ages of 10 and 24 compared to whites, 25 times the rate of getting killed by guns. And their killers are other blacks, not other whites. And that's why we don't talk about it because whites are terrified to talk about black on black crime. You know, when the horrific Nashville shooting happened, there was this New York Times. could have been the Washington Post. I was trying to find it. But they mentioned two school shootings that had just happened recently that I had not heard about. It was one outside of Denver and then I believe one outside of Arlington, Texas. And I was like, wait, these didn't become huge stories because usually these school shootings are big stories, especially when there's an AR-15 involved. But the perpetrators were both black. And I hadn't I hadn't heard of that. You really only hear about these mass shooters when you have, which is, equally horrific when you've got a white guy or whatever walking in with an AR-15. And then I'll get a bunch of messages from people, even people who say that they're conservative saying, well, why aren't

Starting point is 00:12:52 you, why aren't you at least talking about gun control when it comes to AR-15s? Guns are the number one killer of people under the age of 18. But then they have nothing to say when I say, well, look, if you care about gun violence, which of course we all do, we don't want more murder victims. But let's talk about the 99% of crimes or the 99% of these cases that are actually committed by people who are using handguns. The reason why that number is so high, why so many miners are killed by guns, is actually because of the gang violence that we're talking about. Let's look at the policies that should be actually enacted and put into place to prevent that kind of violence. Then we might be able to see the numbers going down. Banning AR-15s is not even going to put a dent

Starting point is 00:13:34 in those statistics. But as soon as you start talking about a certain demographic that in inconveniently is taking up a large portion of these deaths, they don't want to talk about any policy that would restrict the usage of those guns anymore. Right. Illegal. They, you know, they may go after the legal possession, but these kids that are shooting each other are not going and getting gun permits and background checks. This is an illegal trade. I'm an agnostic on gun control. I'm not going to weigh in one way or another. I will say that Bernie Sanders was right when he allegedly said years ago, everybody in Vermont has a gun and they have virtually no gun homicide.

Starting point is 00:14:17 The issue really is the social breakdown that leads people, these young people, to feel no hesitation about going out and blasting bullets across a sidewalk in the hope of hitting a gang enemy. And if they take out a young child, they don't care. That's the problem. They're growing up in communities without parental control. The blackout of wedlock birth rate is 71%. It's a culture without marriage, without fathers. And young boys are not getting any kind of impulse control from their home environments. That's the problem. Yes, we do have much higher gun violence, much higher number of guns in this country. But that is a

Starting point is 00:15:05 social problem. It's not primarily a gun problem. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

Starting point is 00:15:41 If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. And if anyone is questioning, which it's hard to believe that anyone could at this point, but maybe, you know, maybe you just consume mainstream media. And you don't see the duplicitous nature of how the media reports on these kinds of stories when it's either black on black crime.

Starting point is 00:16:15 or when it's black on white crime or even when it's white on white crime versus white on black crime. Really, that's the only time that you see the media highlighting race as a central part of the story. And the motive is already and automatically immediately assumed. We have a motive. So they say. But when it comes to, for example, the shooter and the and the Nashville scenario, even though we have a manifesto, they pretend like the motivation is completely up in the air. we don't know. But when you've got a race that is white of the suspect and black of the victim, then we always know that it's white supremacy. So there's two stories, two tragic stories, equally tragic stories that occurred over the past week. There was a boy by the name of Ralph

Starting point is 00:17:03 Yarl. He's a 16-year-old black teenager. So it's reported arriving. And this is how it's being reported. So at the wrong house in Kansas City, apparently going to pick up his siblings from a friend's home. And he, um, he rang on this doorbell. Some media reports, Time magazine said he entered the home. Most media reports are saying that he just rang the doorbell. And a man by the name of Andrew Laster, 84 years old, opened fire. I guess he thought the teen was trying to break in. Thankfully, the boy lived. He's in the hospital. Or I think he was released from the hospital. He was shot twice, once in the head. Um, and then you've got also this woman named Caitlin Gillis. She's a 20 year old. She turned into the wrong driveway.

Starting point is 00:17:46 A man came out of his house. This is in upstate New York, shot her, murdered her. Well, the difference is, obviously, in what's being reported related to the races of the perpetrator and victim, the race isn't being reported at all when it comes to the young woman because they're both white. But also, you see President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, President Biden calling the family of Ralph Yarl and inviting them to the White House after he gets better. they've raised on GoFundMe, $2.8 million at this point. And you have the media with an outpouring of sympathy for this young man who is just assumed to be a victim of white supremacy and virtually no outrage and sadness for this young woman. I'm guessing because she's white and was killed by another white person. So this is just how it goes.

Starting point is 00:18:33 If people can't see that at this point, I don't even know how to help them. Well, you're absolutely right. Here's the rule of thumb. If you're reading a crime story and the race of the perpetrator is not disclosed, it's black. That's just 100% guaranteed because if the race of the perpetrator was white, the press story would have said that. And so that means, and, you know, we saw this happening in the 90s when newspaper after newspaper decided that they would no longer report race of criminal suspects because they were almost always black. And so they decided that it was, they would violate their obligation to maintain public safety and help society preserve itself by withholding relevant information if you're trying to find somebody and get witness identification on a criminal who's still out on the lamb. But they would withhold relevant vital information rather than contribute to a fact.

Starting point is 00:19:38 actual truth, which is that violent street crime is way overwhelmingly in some cities 100% committed by so-called people of color. So this has been going on for decades. It's quite extraordinary. And you mentioned earlier the LeBron James fatuity of, well, they just want to hunt us down or something. the worst is from President Biden. He ran while he was a candidate in 2020 on the idea that black parents were right to fear for their children every time they step outside, that they will be killed by the police or killed by whites.

Starting point is 00:20:24 He brought that up again after the Ralph Yarl shooting. It is a complete falsehood. It has nothing to do with reality. again, the reason that blacks die of homicide at 25 times the rate of gun homicide is whites is because blacks are killing them, not whites. You could remove all police shootings of blacks. You could remove all white shootings of blacks. And it would have no impact on the black death by homicide rape. Yes. And just to reiterate something that you said earlier, I mean, most crime, most homicide is intra-racial. So it's mostly if a white person is murdered,

Starting point is 00:21:03 is usually by a white person, Hispanic person, by a Hispanic person. The only demographic that that's not actually true for is Asians. An Asian person, if they are murdered, they are actually most likely to be murdered by a black person. You can look that up in the Bureau of Justice Statistics, but also even though it is much more likely for a white person to kill a white person, black person to kill a black person, as you're saying, you also mentioned that it is much more likely for a white person to be killed by a black person than vice versa.

Starting point is 00:21:31 and Ben Shapiro actually tweeted this out yesterday because of this whole narrative that the media is trying to spin. And this has been true. As long as we have data, this is from U.S. News and World Report, just emphasizing what you're saying, that it is much more likely to be the other way around. And yet we are constantly told the opposite narrative. And it really affects how people view reality. And it's, I mean, it causes so much undue. bitterness and resentment. And as we've already talked about, it affects policy, not just crime policy,

Starting point is 00:22:09 not just so-called criminal justice, also education policy. I mean, this affects everything. And then it ends up ironically, disproportionately negatively affecting black people. Well, let me just correct one thing. The data that I just gave, which is that 88% of all interracial violence is committed by blacks on whites, that refers to. That refers to. refers to non-lethal violence because this comes from the National Crime Victim Survey, so it's self-reporting. So if you're a victim of homicide, you're not going to report. But the homicide disparities are comparable. So you're absolutely right. And you're absolutely right, Ellie, as well, to talk about the bitterness that this creates. Inevitably, after this

Starting point is 00:22:52 Ralph Y'all shooting, we have abeds in the Atlantic monthly, other magazines with the usual, frankly, bathos-filled conceit that, oh, I'm just so exhausted by being black because all these whites are going to kill me. That's just insane. And after any

Starting point is 00:23:14 of these incidents, you have people saying I'm terrified to go outside because I'm going to be killed by a white person. That is to live in a fantasy world. Yeah. But it does increase racial hostility and it does lead to you know, trying to emasculate and decommission policing on the phony idea that we're living

Starting point is 00:23:38 through an epidemic of racially biased police shootings of black men. That is another complete falsehood put out by the police. The fact of the matter is, Allie, this country had a deplorable history. It was an utter contradiction to its founding ideals. White Americans treated blacks with just horridged. heartbreaking, gratuitous cruelty and nastiness. It breaks my heart to read it. But that is not our country today. It was our country in the past. We were white supremacists. We were an apartheid country. And we violated our ideals on a regular basis. But today, that is not the reality. There is not

Starting point is 00:24:20 a single mainstream institution that is not bending itself over backwards to try and admit and higher as many blacks as possible. Our reality is black privilege, not white privilege. And to go around pretending the opposite means that we're tearing down standards of criminal behavior. We're tearing down meritocratic standards in medicine and science, in academic achievement, in engineering, all based on the lie that, you know, racism is our problem today. It is not. Standards are not racist. The problem is there's underlying skills. You have your gaps. That's a perfect segue into the book that you've written when raised Trump's merit.

Starting point is 00:25:16 It goes against this narrative that, you know, people like Thomas Sol and Walter Williams also really argued against this idea that really all of the disparities that we see today, whether it's fatherlessness, incarceration, economic graduation rates, that all of that, that is a consequence of the legacy of slavery. They'll say slavery and Jim Crow weren't all that long ago. It's a generational effect. And that's why we see the disparities, even if what you say is true, that we're not necessarily an institutionally white supremacist country today. Still, the legacy of that past oppression is still what is pushing down black Americans today. Obviously, you disagree with that. You would say, actually, America is trying very hard and has for a long time to replace racial. quotas with merit-based standards, right?

Starting point is 00:26:14 We're replacing merit standards with racial quotas. Yes. And as far as right, as far as what's creating these gaps, there's many different explanations. And the sole explanation, I think he's, his main argument is that let's not blame racism. there comes a point when whether or not these disparities are generation after generation after generation from slavery, there comes a point when the culture has to heal itself. It is not impossible to actually do your homework. You can say, well, slavery created some sort of anti-academic achievement ethos,

Starting point is 00:27:05 but that that really came about in the 60s, I can do my homework. That is within my control. And in fact, the only person who can make sure that I know how to read or do arithmetic is me. I have to do the studying. So one can bracket the discussion about what are the causes of this. And the left will always say that to the extent that they ever acknowledge the academic skills gap, which is huge, for instance, 66% of black 12th graders do not possess even partial mastery of the most basic 12th grade math skills such as arithmetic or understanding a linear relationship on a graph.

Starting point is 00:27:52 And the number of black 12th graders who are advanced in 12th grade math is too small to show up statistically. given those disparities, it is absurd to expect that absent racism, Google would have 13% black engineers or black computer scientists or an Alzheimer's research lab would have 13% black neurologists. They're simply not available in the competitively qualified academic pipeline. So my focus is on the disparities today, not what their causes are. And I would say we have spent decades and trillions of dollars trying to close those disparities through distributing, redistributing wealth, through way, way high funding for inner city schools. The gaps have not closed. We have to stop blaming ourselves for racism.

Starting point is 00:28:52 We have to stop tearing down standards of achievement. And the culture has to heal itself and say we're going to put in the effort it takes to meet the standards rather than demanding that the standards be lowered to meet us. Right. And some people will say when it comes to education that, well, you know, it's a result of redlining. It's a result of a lack of funding. But actually, if you look, I just saw this stunning chart from Chicago schools, how much the principals are getting paid and the vice principals are getting paid. The administration is getting paid. versus how many students can actually read at a competent level. I mean, it's completely disproportionate.

Starting point is 00:29:35 It's obviously not a lack of funding. There is something much deeper, as you're saying, that is going on there that's not being addressed and is not only not being addressed, but this kind of incompetence from the administrative level is certainly being rewarded at the expense of these kids. And this is how you say it in your book to kind of summarize what you just said.

Starting point is 00:29:57 If blacks are underrepresented in science research labs are overrepresented among arrested felons, the only allowable explanation is racism. The possibility that such racial disparities reflect the actual distribution of skills or differences in behavior is taboo. You're absolutely right about that. It is taboo. As a remedy for this alleged racism, we create double standards of accomplishment and behavior. But double standards help no one. They are condescending and they are lethal.

Starting point is 00:30:22 So they're lethal. They're deadly. Talk about that. How are they deadly? Well, we see this most obviously in the criminal justice system where we believe that the colorblind constitutional application of the criminal law is per se racist if it has a disparate impact on black criminals. It will have a disparate impact on black criminals because blacks commit the overwhelming portion of violent street crime. Sorry, that's the case. In New York City, for example, blacks are 23% of the population, but they commit about 75%.

Starting point is 00:30:57 of all shootings, and that's according to the victims of and witnesses to those shootings who are themselves overwhelmingly minority. Whites are about 34% of the New York City population. They commit about 1 to 2% if that of shootings. So it's vastly disproportionate. But when we say that the problem is the criminal justice standards are prosecuting the law, because it has a disparate impact on blacks, we've stopped prosecuting the law. The result, was after the George Floyd race riots, the largest one-year increase in homicide in this nation's history, 29% in one year, which is massive for any, any kind of field to have a one-year, 29% shift in anything is just stunning.

Starting point is 00:31:44 And the victims were overwhelmingly black. So we've got the criminal side of this, but you also have the side now where we are tearing down meritocratic standards in science and in medicine, and that will have an impact. You know, medical schools are waiving. Some medical schools are waiving the medical college admissions test, the MCATs for black students. This is the objective standardized medical school tests like the SATs because those have a disparate impact on black students. Why not? Because the tests are racist.

Starting point is 00:32:20 The tests are not racist. They're colorblind and they ask for basic academic skills. but because on average, blacks don't have those skills at the same rate. Again, there's many individuals who are whoop in everybody's ass within these groups, but we're talking about averages here. Medical schools are deciding they're going to lower their standards for blacks. They're lowering their standards in the medical licensing exam. They're going past, fail to one important test rather than grading the students

Starting point is 00:32:53 because blacks were doing very poorly when graded. So now we're not going to know who's getting Ds and Fs and who's getting A's and B's. And at some point, we're compromising medical technology and medical skill. We are also slowing down medical progress in research. The federal science labs and funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation are now doling out research money based on the race of researchers, not their scientific accomplishments. And that will mean that we are slowing down the progress in curing cancer and Alzheimer's. You give some more examples of this in your book.

Starting point is 00:33:46 In 2021, the average score for white applicants on the medical college admission test was in the 71st percentile, meaning that it was equal to or better than the 71 percent of all average scores. The average score for black applicants was in the 37th percentile, a full standard deviation below the average white score. The MCATs have already been redesigned to try to reduce this gap. A quarter of the questions now focused. on social issues and psychology. I mean, that in and of itself is troubling to me when I'm thinking about being put in

Starting point is 00:34:14 these life and death situations. I'm totally, you know, I have to fully submit to the expertise and hopefully the skilled hands of whatever surgeon is, you know, at my table, medical schools regarded those below average scores as all but disqualifying except when prevented by blacks and Hispanics. over 56% of black college seniors with below average undergraduate GPAs and below average MCATs were admitted, as were 31% of Hispanic students with those scores. Not true for Asian students, less than 6% of Asian college seniors that had, you know, under the typically acceptable standard when it comes to those scores, were accepted.

Starting point is 00:35:00 Of course, that's true for white students too. you give an example of University of Pennsylvania Medical School that guarantees admission to black undergraduates who score 1,300 on the SAT. That's on a 1,600 point scale. That's a fine score. It's fine. Maintain an even more modest 3.6 GPA in college and complete two summers of internship at the school. I feel like this has changed really fast. I graduated from college in 2014, not all that long ago.

Starting point is 00:35:27 But if I remember correctly, my friends who were applying to medical school. I mean, there were really, really high standards for that. Some of the smartest people I know weren't getting into medical school right away. And so it seems like these standards have lowered, but I guess just for some demographics, especially in the past few years. Well, yes. I don't think you were paying attention, Ellie. It's probably true.

Starting point is 00:35:56 I wasn't. Yeah. The very founding racial preference Supreme Court case. Baki versus the University of California was from 1976 or 78, I think. So it's been going on. And this challenging the UC University of California, Davis had a massive set-aside program for black students. Alan Bocke had very, he was a white guy, had very high MCAT scores, he had very high GPA.

Starting point is 00:36:23 He had fabulous recommendations. And he was rejected several times from the Davis Law School at the same time that blacks with much, much lower MCAT scores and GPAs than him were admitted. And he challenged this. And the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the use of racial preferences in medical school and every place else on this ridiculous diversity rationale. So this has been going on for a long time. And I would say what has changed is that just if you're Asian these days,

Starting point is 00:36:58 you have to be even better. I mean, the bar gets higher and higher for Asians. The discrimination against them gets worse and worse. And so it just widens the gap in academic classes, whether it's at the college level or at professional schools. So you've got Asians who have had to meet the standards at like the absolute stratosphere. Their standardized test scores calculated out to point O, 0-0-0-0-1% of the top.

Starting point is 00:37:33 And then in this push for ever more diversity, and we've got to do even more to have racially proportionate schools, medical schools, law schools, engineering schools, they're lowering their standards even further to admit blacks. And so the mismatch effect gets greater and greater. Yeah. Man, it seems like this problem is almost too big and too embedded to take on. Obviously, I think it's great that governors like Ronda Santis are pushing back

Starting point is 00:38:06 against DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and trying to ensure that institutions are using merit-based standards. But of course, that's just one section of the country. We're talking about like the federal government here. We're talking about even global institutions that are pushing this kind of thing. And then there's also the aspect that you talk about. about so much that's really underneath a lot of this is the social fabric. If it's 71% of black children are born into fatherlessness homes or fatherless homes. And we know that as a driving factor behind delinquency and all kinds of problems for young people, I don't even know where to begin to solve that problem. I mean, what do you suggest? How do we as just regular people

Starting point is 00:38:56 try to rectify what is such a horrific issue. Do no harm. The first thing we have to do is stop tearing down our standards on the phony charge of racism. We have to stop being cowed by the race hustle. I am not going to be silenced by being called a racist for telling the facts about academic achievement, about criminal offending. They're the facts. I'm sorry, you can't take me down. And so we have to do.

Starting point is 00:39:27 to defend meritocratic standards. We have to defend criminal law standards with facts and saying if we're not going to allow our civilization to be canceled. You're absolutely right that the elites are very hard to reach. However, DeSantis, it's a very, very good start. And as far as what we can do, I mean, I guess we can start not being paternalistic towards blacks. and not lowering standards on their behalf, but say, no, we expect you to meet standards.

Starting point is 00:40:03 You have the capacity to do that. We are stripping blacks of any agency, and they're stripping themselves of agency. And I'm, again, let me just say, I'm speaking of averages here, and there are individuals within any group that are at the absolute top end and the absolute bottom line,

Starting point is 00:40:22 there are thousands of blacks who are outperforming whites and Asians. The difficulty with racial preferences is that tars the entire group as needing lowered standards. And that makes the beneficiaries of racial preferences live under this cloud of suspicion that is a perfectly logical, rational cloud. But by and large, to be honest, Allie, you know, white Americans have very goodwill. And I want everybody to succeed. but there's only so much that the so-called we can do. The problem of the black breakdown of the family is really tough

Starting point is 00:41:02 because relations between males and females in the black community are very toxic. There's a lot of suspicion. But again, that's not something that people from the outside can solve. And the acting white syndrome, the anti-acting white syndrome, that has to change. There has to be the same. emphasis on academic achievement that you see in Asian families, and they can do it. You can take your textbook home. You can't learn if you're not in the classroom. Parents have to make sure that

Starting point is 00:41:34 their kids are not truant. You can't study for the text if you have for the test if you haven't taken your your textbook home. And you can't study for the text if you're running the streets at night. There's not a lot that people outside can do about that. And that's just the harsh reality of it. And I know people will hear this. I'll get people who are conservatives who listen to this episode and we'll say, that was so racist. That was such a racist conversation. You're not talking about the innate capacity of these people or these, the innate capabilities or innate nature of anyone. You are talking about the facts. You're talking about statistics. You're talking about reality. At some point, we have to face reality and we have to

Starting point is 00:42:30 have an honest conversation about what is causing the disparities. What is causing the reality, which everyone, by the way, is uncomfortable with. No one wants these disparities. No one wants the fatherlessness. No one wants the underperformance. We all want people to succeed and achieve. But so many people are unable, unwilling to look at that reality because they don't want to be called a bigot. I think that's the biggest impediment to making any real progress. You're right. You're absolutely right. And again, it's not racist to talk about the facts. and the disparities that I'm talking about are when you apply a neutral colorblind standard, and that produces disparities. But listen, Ellie, I understand the racial etiquette, and whites are absolutely terrified to look head on at inner city dysfunction.

Starting point is 00:43:21 And there's an argument to be made that in a multicultural society, no group should speak honestly about any other group and we should all turn our eyes away. that argument for racial etiquette is no longer applicable as far as I'm concerned, because we have every institution of Western civilization, whether it's classical music, art, medicine, science, they're all being accused of being racist because they do not have proportional numbers of blacks either in their history when Europe was the source of these and Europe was not 13% black for most of its history. it was demographically white, or we're accusing medicine today of being racist because there's not 13% black principal investigators on NIH grants. When that is the dominant discourse and they're accusing everything else of being racist, I'm not going to follow the racial etiquette that says I can't talk about the underlying disparities in academic achievement that lead to these lack of.

Starting point is 00:44:28 proportional representation. You know, it's a right now that the accusations go in one direction. Exactly. And it's too late. It's too late. You know, the time for racial etiquette is over because the left is winning and they're tearing everything down under this phony charge of racism. And as long as racism is the only allowable explanation for racial disparities, the left

Starting point is 00:44:53 wins. And we have to be able to provide an alternative explanation for why Google, doesn't have 13% black engineers. Yeah, it really is. It's honestly the most loving and compassionate thing you can do to advocate for a merit-based system and to say, I actually believe that everyone is innately capable of reaching these high standards. Yes, there needs to be changes in the social fabric and the family structure and things

Starting point is 00:45:18 like that to enable these people. But everyone has the innate capacity to do it. As Thomas Sol says, when the left says equality, they always mean equality downward. They always mean bringing everyone to the lower. lowest common denominator. And that is certainly what's happening, especially in these communities. And it makes them worse off. So if you really care about black people, if you have a heart for these communities that you feel, whatever words you want to use are underserved or on the outskirts society, whatever you want to say, well, then let's look at the actual policies that would benefit

Starting point is 00:45:51 them rather than enable and exacerbate the despair and the violence that we see characterizing these cities. That means you're not going to be on the progressive side of this issue if you truly have compassion for these people. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. Where can people buy not just this book when race trumps merit, but all of your books that you've written on this? Because you cite all of the statistics, by the way that you're talking about. You're certainly not just making them up. So where can people learn more about this? Oh, thank you, Ali. Just wherever people like to buy books, you know, it's every place. I hate to say Amazon, but it is on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, any place, you can just Google me and I think you'll find it.

Starting point is 00:46:35 I've got a Twitter account. I don't even know what it is. I don't run it, but it gives a lot of my information and stuff. Yep. When race Trump's merit, how the pursuit of equity, sacrifices, excellence, destroys beauty, and threatens lives. Heather, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you for such a great interview and for reading my book.

Starting point is 00:46:56 Ellie, I'm very grateful to you. Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Alley, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

Starting point is 00:47:21 faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 792 | What's to Blame for the Chicago 'Teen Takeover'? | Guest: Heather Mac Donald

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