The Eric Metaxas Show - Heather Mac Donald

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

The first of many conversations in Eric's newest series Socrates in the Studio  

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. To the Eric Mattaxas show this holiday season. I'll let you in on a little secret. Eric dreads Christmas Eve because he knows he has to put up with those three annoying ghosts again, just like every Christmas Eve.

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with the great Heather McDonald. Socrates in the studio. Here it is. Welcome to Socrates in the studio. Today, my guest is the brilliant public intellectual, Heather McDonald. Heather McDonald has written innumerable books. She is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She is a contributing editor to City Journal. Her recent books include the diversity delusion and most recently when race trumps merit, which we will be discussing right now at Socrates in the studio. Hey there, folks. Welcome to Socrates in the studio. I am thrilled to have as my guest, someone who identifies as Heather McDonald's, Heather.

Welcome. Yes, you're assiduously gender neutral on that. I want to be very, very clear. That's how you identify, and I respect that. And I'm going to, the pronoun I'm going to use as you. Uh-huh. No. You.

Please. You singular. You people or use for the plural. I don't usually identify particularly female, but in this case I will. Okay. Thank you. But I certainly don't have fun of this male. Well, look, Heather, you have written many books.

The new book, which I've read recently, is called When Race Trump's Merit, how the pursuit of equity sacrifices, This excellence destroys beauty and threatens lives. Unfortunately, quite literally, when you read the book, that becomes clear. I want to talk to you about the ideas in this book and the ideas in the diversity delusion. The problem is, where do we start? Well, we can start with some recent news that the FAA is considering diversity-making race and gender a qualification for doing air-training. traffic control, which is showing that the diversity cult is now a death cult. Well, we already knew that. This is just a new level of death.

Yeah, right. It's the death in the air. Like mass death from the skies. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Not just the death of standards, but yeah, the death on the roads. We're going to get that as well. And we're also going to get death in the emergency rooms. Okay. Just to begin this, you know, as broadly as possible, state upfront, the thesis. of the book so that I don't have to? The thesis is that there is a dominant narrative in our society today that is threatening Western civilization, and that narrative says that any racial disparities in any institution

is by definition a product of racism. No other explanations are allowed into the public discourse. So let me give you some examples. If a medical school doesn't have 13% black students, or black faculty, 13% being the population of blacks in the nation at large. That is by definition a racist medical school. The reason there's an underrepresentation of blacks is racism. If a big tech company doesn't have 13% black nanotechnologists or computer scientists,

that is a racist tech company. And it works in the other direction for over-representation, If blacks are more than 13% of the prison population, they're actually a third nationally. That's because we have a racist criminal justice system. And the solution to these racial disparities is to tear down any standard that is resulting in the underrepresentation of blacks in meritocratic institutions. So, let's say, a hiring exam or a skills test, or in the case, of the criminal law tearing down the criminal law itself if that results in putting more than 13% blacks in prison. What you're not allowed to say is, well, actually, there's an academic

skills gap which we should think about and worry about that results in the underrepresentation. And there's a criminal offending gap, which is really difficult to talk about, which results in overrepresentation. And tearing down these standards is hurtling us very fast towards, at best, mediocrity and at worst, extinction. Extinction. Civilizational extinction. Well, I think that says it all. We're done here. First of all, I want to say that the level of preposterousness of much of what you write about in the book when race trumps merit is such that it is often comedic in other words it's entertaining on some level because it is so wildly preposterous and it begins to eat it's the snake

eating its tail where in other words it gets to a point where what you just said about air traffic controllers, you know, because the standard thing would be to say, like, look, I don't need to agree with the theology of my pilot or with the politics of my pilot. I want him to be a good pilot because I don't want to die. That's his job. The idea that, I mean, it's one thing for this craziness, you know, to creep into, you know, humanities at places like Yale, where both of us have the fortune and misfortune of having spent time, that's sort of at least understandable.

But when you're talking about medical schools, when you're talking about air traffic controllers, it's hard to process that people are, I guess the way I always phrase it is that I'm on team reality, right? Like I care about reality. But these folks, it seems to me, and this is not to get too wiggie, but they don't seem to believe in reality.

Everything's a social construct or everything. is in their head. They don't seem to even believe in the idea of metrics or numbers or whatever. They're just in the ether, 100% in the ether. That's the only way I can process that they would have these opinions. Well, I think they would say we have a very strong understanding of reality, which is the reality of America is endemically white supremacist. Yeah. And that's why we'll never elect a black president, much less for two terms. Exactly. It never, it's not going to happen. And no Republicans have had love affairs with black politicians like, you know, Alan Keyes or Alan West or Colin Powell or Condoleez racist. Impossible. It will not happen.

Right. They're way too racist ever to embrace somebody like Clarence Thomas. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that'll never happen. So we have to joke because it's just, it's madness. Yeah, and I have to say, I mean, you and I can say, I told you so because we've been warning about the incentive. sanity on campuses for 30 years, 40 years, and everybody laughed it off. You know, you'd write these articles, say, look at, you know, back in the early 1990s, you'd have freshman orientation segregated by race or dorm graduation ceremony segregated by race on the theory that integration was somehow psychologically injurious to black students. And people said, oh, you know, let these people

graduate into the real world. They'll toughen up and they'll see that there's, competitive standards and merit and accomplishment matters. And in fact, it was the students, the products of this hate-filled university that changed reality in their image. Right. The university finally bled over into the quote-unquote real world and made it not real. Exactly. As Andrew Sullivan said, we're all on campus now.

And after George Floyd, the mass psychosis that followed the race riots, this idea that racism defines American reality and explains everything that we see about our institutional structures became absolutely ubiquitous. And you had our most elite institutions preposterously blaming themselves and blaming everybody else for phantom racism. Folks, right now in other parts of the world, people's lives are being threatened simply for believing in Jesus. People have been enslaved for their faith. So, listeners to this show know that I'm passionate about the work of Christian Solidarity International because they protect and free those who are being persecuted and enslaved for their Christian faith.

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Please go check it out today. That's legacy pm investments.com. So this is Christmas. What we're talking about is an anti-rational worldview. that it sees rationality itself as Western patriarchal something to be demonized. I mean, that to me seems at the heart of a lot of this. And you're absolutely right, that that is their language. And they will say that mathematics is racist, that science is racist,

that objectivity is a function of white privilege. And yet, on the other hand, I'm always reluctant to use the usual conservative arguments say, well, it's anti-common sense or anti-reason. Because I'm not sure they would cop to saying, well, I'm against common sense. Like, I think this is commonsensical, but I'm against it. Or I'm not using my reason here. I think we have to, we can't just, we can't just, right, charge them with wrong procedures. I think we have to get to the empirical claims that are being made. And so, the trans thing is like in a class by itself.

That is truly bizarre. But on the other things, they would still argue that they have evidence on their side. And so that's why it's very important to provide alternative explanations for why we have these disparities. Well, your book, and this is why you're you and I'm me, but you have the talent to write a book loaded with evidence to support this in all these fears. one is more entertaining than the other. You start with medicine and science, then you get into the culture and then finally into the law. But some of it, as I say, is just comedic. I mean, when I read your chapter about the French, the 19th century French bust, I'm glad you thought it was funny to me. Like, I was enraged. That was very hard to write. It is both. Yeah, I know.

It is beyond enraging. I mean, I went to the Metropolitan website, you know, to I live near the Metropolitan Museum here in the city in New York. And I just thought, let me see what they say. First of all, let me see what the bus looks like and let me see what they say about it. And you just want to do backflips with rage of you can't believe. I know. So nobody knows what we're talking about. So do everyone a favor and describe what we're talking about.

We're now talking about the world of art. Yes. We're talking about the Met here in New York. but talk about the two acquisitions, the terracotta and the marble original. Just talk about this, because to me it sums up in some ways everything you say in the book. Yeah, let me back up. This is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is one of the great encyclopedic museums in the world that has been given the privilege, its director, Max Holane, has been given the privilege of curating a collection that was created over a century by these wealthy, generous donors who gave him works from across the world,

and they are beautiful. And all we ask of Max Holine and his curators is one thing. Tell the public why they should be grateful to be able to see these works and why they are brilliant and why they expand our knowledge of human experience and how to see the world. That's all we ask.

It's a really good job. So there was a 19th century French sculptor named Jean-Baptiste Carpo. And he's probably the second greatest French sculptor after Rodin. And if anybody has ever seen the works of Bernini in Rome at the Borghese Gallery, Bernini has this amazing capacity to show flesh on flesh, the pressure of a Saturn's hand on a nymph's arm. as he's taking away in marble. In marble. Carpo achieves very, very close to that.

He's a brilliant sculptor. He was absolutely central to the renovation of Paris in the late 19th century, the creation of the Grand Boulevard under Hausman and public monuments. He did a wonderful freeze for the Paris Opera. He created a bust in the 1860s, or 1873 actually, called Why Born Enslaved? Clearly, he created this beautiful sculpture as an abolitionist statement. Exactly.

In art. Exactly. Clearly. Exactly. Okay. His goal was to move the viewer if the viewer needed prodding to understand the inhumanity of slavery. So it's an African woman with a rope around her chest,

one of her breasts is bare, which is typical for all sculpture, sculpture at the period. It is not voyeuristic or sensational. And she's looking over her shoulder with the most poignant piercing expression of dismay, just defiance, lack of understanding what is going on. And as you say, it's patently a work with an abolitionist message. But even if you didn't look at it, we just know that we know historically that is absolutely why he created this exactly like we know that as a fact exactly so the metropolitan opera first bought a terracotta version of this in the 90s and it

had in the 2014 it had a whole show around capo it was a fantastic retrospective i was fortunate enough to go not knowing that i would be writing about him in another seven years or so um and it shows it's this wonderful benchmark of the Met in 2014 pre-George Floyd mass psychosis and the Met in 2022. So in 2014 it could say Capo is a fantastic sculptor. This is the terracotta version of Whyborn Enslaved. Fantastic work, poignant, moves the viewer. So then the Met gets a new curator of its sculpture, European sculpture department. And George Floyd happens.

And they decide, okay, we're going to buy the marble bust. And we're going to do an entirely different show that will correct the blindness and the racism of our 2014 show. And so they build an entire show around the marble bust, which is a much more elegant and finished version of this. And the show is called The Fictions of Emancipation. This already is a clue. So Emancipation is a fiction. It never happened. And the thesis of the Mets show of 2020, of 2022, the Fictions of Emancipation, is that because Carpo was a white sculptor, in him creating an ostensibly abolitionist work, actually the purpose of that work was to argue that blacks are inherently slaves and will always be so.

and that it was actually not an abolitionist work what was in favor of the enslavement of blacks. And every other abolitionist work like Josiah Wedgwood, who was a British, had a porcelain factory, though we all know the Wedgwood lines of tableware. He did a famous medallion called, Am I Not a Man and a Brother, of a black man with chains

begging for recognition of his humanity. Wedgwood campaigned against slavery. The Metz thesis and fictions of emancipations Wedgwood was a racist. Okay, I know, I mean, I knew about the Wedgwood art because I wrote a biography of William Wilberforce, the white guy who led the battle for the abolition of the slave trade, and he partnered with people

like Wedgwood and others to use the arts and culture to help people understand the wickedness of the slave trade. So there's no doubt that Josiah Wedgwood created that image, which was widely disseminated for the very purpose of ending the slave trade and ultimately slavery and was in fact very successful in that. There's no doubt about that. That's historical. That's the record.

but the Met perversely decides somehow against all facts I mean there's there no facts it's just they impose this crazy subjective view on the bus to which you were referring

the sculpture and then on Wedgwood which is even a more dramatically clear example of somebody using his gifts to free blacks from slavery. Yes. And that is nonetheless called racist. There's no way out of that conundrum, the paradox that they're basically saying that

no matter what a white person does, even when advocating for black people as fully human as people who should not be enslaved, even in that act, you're being racist. And you just think you have to hold your head. Yes. Folks, right now in other parts of the world, people's lives are being threatened simply for believing in Jesus. People have been enslaved for their faith.

So listeners to this show know that I'm passionate about the work of Christian Solidarity International because they protect and free those who are being persecuted and enslaved for their Christian faith. I've got to thank you for your life-changing generosity for years now. If you've given a CSI through this program, you have played a role in freeing literally thousands of captives. So as we near the end of this year, can I ask you to give once again your gift of just $250 will free a woman in Sudan who has been enslaved for years? You can buy a believer's freedom and provide her with food and other supplies necessary to start her new life. Just $250. Maybe you can give more and free more people. Call 888-2533522, or go to metaxis talk.com. Please do it metaxistalk.com.

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your viewers should understand, Eric, the degree of hatred that went into the creation of this show. Self-hatred, but also hatred for what Max Holine and his curators believe is the unwashed masses, that they hate Western art now. They hate our civilization, and they will engage in the most counterfactual narratives to continue this amazingly counterfactual discourse. And it involves in making their argument about the Carpo bust, they have to turn on every aspect of Western art.

So, yes, one of her breasts is, revealed. You mean turn against? Turn against. Well, no, I mean, you said it correctly, but just to be clear, they are, yes, they, go ahead. They have to take every, some of the most longstanding and noble traditions within Western art and argue that those are racist in order to try and argue that this bust is racist. So, for example, yes, one of the sitter's breasts is revealed, well, so is the famous delacois portrait of the French Revolution of Liberty. I believe both breasts. Both breasts in that case.

And the nude, there have been millions of nudes created. Like 99.999% of those nudes have been white. There have been very few black nudes. But somehow, because this one model is black, one breast is exposed, this means that the portrayal of the nude is racist. Well, as far as they're concerned, everything is the hot and tot Venus. There's just nothing else to discuss. It's just, it must be because she's black and that's the end of it.

And we don't need to talk anymore. And it's obviously silly. But what's creepy, Heather, is the seriousness with which they take themselves. was they are, these are like, you know, it's like being in Mao's cultural revolution. Yes, yes. You cannot have any real conversations. You are guilty, and you must say that you're guilty. Right.

What do you think accounts, this is broader than the subject of your book, but because you back it up so magnificently in so many fields, what do you think accounts for the hatred among the elites in the West of the law? West of our civilization. And it does seem to be only the elites, only the people running places like the Met or Yale or whatever. They somehow feel that this is their version of noblesse oblige, that they have to do this mea culpa self-flagellation on behalf of everyone because they're in the lead. But what might account for their, let's call it self-hatred or the hatred of the greatness of the West? I may distinguish between the university and then the non-academic world.

And within the university, the impulse of self-critique in the part of Western universities is very longstanding. I mean, you can even say, because I do ask myself, like, more broadly, only the Western civilization is committing suicide right now. Okay, hold on. See, now that right there, you do write about this a little bit in the book. that is very telling because you are i don't mean to cut you off i just want to make sure we don't like lose this that is the beauty to some extent of the west in other words there are values within the western tradition exactly which are not afraid of self-criticism yep which seem to believe in this idea of objective truth and justice and goodness and beauty and therefore are free to criticize themselves. So that's beautiful, but what's happened here is it's gone too far. Right. Well, see, I ask

myself this all the time, why the West? And, you know, to just bring it back briefly to the art issue and then make sure I don't forget my train of thought and bring me back. But in Western art museums now, particularly in the United States, but it's also in Europe at the Rice Museum in Amsterdam, they will write wall labels that are deconstructing the subtext of these works, so that if you see a beautiful still life from the Dutch golden age of Baroque art, the still life will not tell you, you know, make sure you understand what has been created here with this translucent grape skin and the beautiful cut pewter and the ability to portray light on glass, but instead see this as simply a product of colonialism and slavery. And, you know,

you don't see any slavery here, but it's really all about slavery. The museums will only do that about Western art. They will, meanwhile, you'll go into the African art wing, and it'll celebrate aesthetically the way it used to be, you know, talk about formal elements or the creation of a Benin-Ber on celebrating a warrior king. And it will never say that what you're not seeing here is the slaughter with

which this king got power and the tribal genocide that brought him there. They will never say that about Chinese art that also you had a deeply misogynist culture here, foot binding of women. Instead it will be, this is

beautiful. You know, appreciate this landscape. The West is only criticizing itself. And no other civilization is criticizing itself. Are you tired of not getting a good night's sleep? Well, my friend Mike Lundell has created the perfect solution. He didn't just stop at the pillow. He also created the Giza Dream bed sheets made from the world's best cotton called Giza.

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Take advantage of this amazing offer. Go to MyPillow.com and click on the radio podcast square and use promo code Eric at checkout. Don't wait any longer to get the best sleep of your life. Life call 800-978-3057 or go to Mypillow.com now and use promo code Eric. When we talk about the concept of this thing that both of us would see as very healthy, the ability to be introspective. Socrates, obviously, famously said the unexamined life is not worth living. He merely asserts that, but we all know that, yes, we agree with that,

that we ought to be introspective, we ought to be self-critical. I would argue that that's a biblical, well, I wouldn't argue, I know that it's a biblical worldview, this idea that we are fallen, and therefore we need to check up on ourselves and not to drift into some utopianist madness without being aware of where that can take us. And so these are Western ideas, whether you get them from the Athenians or you get them from the Hebrew Bible.

But these are what gave us the greatest civilization in the world. And it's interesting to me that the seeds of destruction are there. People argue the same thing about Luther. You know, Luther did all this stuff, but then it leads to madness and whatever. And I think what you're ultimately talking about is the downside of freedom, right? That freedom can sometimes lead to people, you know, using their freedom for ill ends. But that seems to be really clear right now,

that this self-critical aspect has gone crazy. Well, and I would, so I think, as I said, there's a long tradition of that type of critique in academia. Then I add to this race, because that, to me, when I look around the world today, leaving the trans madness aside, it is racial issues that are having the biggest impact on our culture. And Americans came very late to an understanding of how deeply they were violating their fundamental ideas. Obviously, there were people who understood it from the beginning and were fighting and were articulating arguments against the very real white supremacy.

that characterized our culture and the gratuitous nastiness with which North and South treated blacks, and it's heartbreaking to read that history, and it took a very long time to become fully cognizant of that. And so a guilt, an understandable guilt, I mean, you can argue whether it's ultimately self-defeating or not, but an understandable guilt is driving a lot of what's going on now, but to the point that to, again, contradict myself and support you, means, I think, a failure to see facts before one's eyes.

Tragically, you know, we're like ships crossing in the night. It breaks my heart to see black entertainers and black thinkers and black civil rights activists from the 40s and 50s conforming to board. bourgeois ideals. You know, Ella Fitzgerald dressed to the nines and Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole and the protesters with suits and hats and at a time when America in the South especially was still, as I say, gratuitously asserting white supremacy over them. So they were conforming, and then civil rights revolution happened and America finally became ready to say, we will accept you. And then you had the rise of an oppositional culture in the black community

that now celebrates dysfunction, celebrates criminality. And so that moment where both sides were willing to accept the other has passed. And so right now we have these racial disparities and our only allowable explanation is racism, whereas in fact, as I say, the reason for racial disparities today is not racism. It's an academic skills gap if I can just put these numbers out and they're very uncomfortable to talk about. And I would ordinarily believe that racial etiquette would keep this off stage, but it's too late. It's too late for that now. But can we talk about the roots of that? Because to me, that's the real issue. In other words, when you talk about these gaps, you say, why? What has happened? And it is, you've just said it. I mean, there was,

in previous decades, a kind of paradigm about how we deal with this inequality, with the injustice, and it had to do with dignity. Yes. It had to do with showing our moral superiority through dignity. And so when you think of Dr. King, telling the people on the buses, we will not fight back. In other words, we will not participate in. in this. We will not allow them to demonize us. We will act so nobly that they will be ashamed. And that is what happened. That is what happened. It worked. When you think of Rosa Parks,

you may know the story I've written about it, but I mean, Rosa Parks was chosen specifically because she was so morally upstanding, such a fine Christian woman, that they knew that when people would try to attack her, it would be very difficult. So they took that stand. A lot of obviously the civil rights movement came out of the churches. And it was when they embraced the thinking of Malcolm X and pulled away from Dr. King's fundamentally kind of Christian perspective on how we how we deal with this, it changed everything and it led ultimately to where we are today. But I still think there are many, you know, people in the black community who would agree with us on this and who were troubled by this.

But the media narrative only talks about what we're talking about. Right. And the message was rather than meeting standards, tear down standards on our behalf. We, you know, we won't meet them, just lower them. Folks right now in other parts of the world, people's lives are being threatened simply for believing in Jesus. People have been enslaved for their faith. So listeners to this show know that I'm passionate about the work of Christian Solidarity International because they protect and free those who are being persecuted and enslaved for their Christian faith. I've got to thank you for your life-changing generosity for years now. If you've given a CSI through this program, you have played a role in freeing literally thousands of people.

of captives. So as we near the end of this year, can I ask you to give once again your gift of just $250 will free a woman in Sudan who has been enslaved for years? You can buy a believer's freedom and provide her with food and other supplies necessary to start her new life. Just $250. Maybe you can give more and free more people. Call 888-2533522, or go to metaxis talk.com. Please do it metaxistalk.com. Hey folks, welcome. Happy holidays. I always say that sarcastically. Chris Heimes, you know I'm saying that sarcastically. I meant to say Merry Christmas. Yeah, that's legal now. We can say that. It's legal for many years. Because Trump is back in office. Oh, wait, not yet. Not yet. So Merry Christmas and a happy new year in advance to those of you who are planning

to be alive in a few days when 2024 dawns, which is really, it's going to be one of the craziest years. Let me say in American history, no exaggeration. Yeah, that's a lot. That we cannot even talk about like madness, lunacy. But I want to be clear, I believe God's will will prevail. We continue our campaign into January, very important with CSI. We're still way behind hitting our goal. So if you've not yet participated, you still have the chance to go to MetaxusTalk.com. I want to exhort you to go to metaxisotocot.com. Please go to metaxis talk.com, please. And while you're there, you'll see the banner, click on the CSI banner. If you prefer to use the phone number, I'll give you the phone number in a minute. I'll let you get a pencil or a typewriter.

or a crayon or I don't know what you use, but I'm going to let you have time to get it so you can write down the phone number. But when you give to CSI, every $250 freeze a slave and sets them up in a life of freedom, it's an amazing opportunity, folks. It's very rare.

You get an opportunity like this to be part of something this beautiful, this clearly good. There's no mitigating factor. It's not like, oh, when you give $250, it goes to some bureaucracy. No, this is CSI. that's why we work with them.

So here's the phone number. Again, the website is metaxis talk.com. You can click on that. The phone number is 888-253-3522. Again, 888-253-3522. 888-253-35-22. 8-88-253-35-22. 8-88-253-35-25-25-12.

I want to really encourage you to do that. That's a beautiful thing that you can do. I also want to encourage you to go to Socrates in the city.com and sign up. You'll see a thing that says Socrates Plus. You can't yet pay any money, but we'll send you the email when it goes live. Socrates Plus is going to be big, folks. This year is the year of Socrates Plus. We've been working on it all year long.

We're ready now. January 4th, it goes live. There's going to be all kinds of Socrates programming on it and other kinds of programming on it, a gentleman's guide, lots of loony, wonderful stuff. We say the tagline is truth, humor, hope. Truth, humor, hope. We need a little bit of those things in our lives. So you can go to Socrates in the city.com. On the right side, you'll see Socrates Plus click on that. I want to also encourage you, please help our sponsor, Mike Lindell, mypillow.com,

mystore.com. If you go to mypillow.com or my store.com, please use the code Eric. Please tell your friends to use the code Eric. There's a lot you can do. You can share these videos. If you get these videos, if you go to Ericmetaxis.com, if you're sign up for my newsletter. A couple times a week, we sent out a newsletter. You can sign up at Eric Metaxus.com. We send you these videos. We send you all kinds of stuff. You can share them with your

friends. You can sign your friend up to get the newsletter so they can get the videos directly, all these interviews that were airing this week and every week. And you can also tell them to use the code. If you want to support this program, use the code Eric when you go to my store.com and my pillow. and don't forget CSI, MetaxistalksTalk.com. You'll see the banner, an opportunity to be part of something beautiful, doing something beautiful for God. Go to Metaxistalk.com. The phone number 888-253-3522.