The Megyn Kelly Show - John McWhorter on MLK's Message, Fixing Our Culture's Focus on Race, and Nasty Words | Ep. 100

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by John McWhorter, author of "Nine Nasty Words" and Columbia University professor, to discuss the power of the n-word (and other nasty words), systemic racism in America, how we can fix our culture's focus on race, the policing debate in America, MLK's message, why "White Fragility" is "the worst book ever written," and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh, we've got a treat for you today. Professor John McWhorter is here. He's brilliant. He's so smart. He is a linguist at Columbia University. He has his own podcast called lexicon Valley, which this is how it's described a show about language from pet peeves, syntax, and etymology to neuro linguistics and the death of languages. So you could check that if you want,

but you're going to love him on this show. I can promise you because, um, in addition to just having authored a book about swears and other nasty words, the name of the book is Nine Nasty Words. He's a thinker. He's a deep thinker on especially issues of race. And unlike Glenn, he's not a conservative. He's a liberal. But he's where I think a lot of us are, which is just in the land of reason. No matter his political stripes, he's in the land of reason. He's been called all the names, but he keeps saying the things that you're not supposed to say and really has some deep thoughts on is systemic racism a thing? And is it even the right question? Or should we be talking about solutions? Should we be talking about something else entirely? And what are they?

And he's got real ones to offer, which we could actually do like tomorrow. Anyway, you're going to love John McWhorter. He's super funny, which I don't, I don't know if I totally understood that until today. Maybe it's the little boy in me brings out people's humor from time to time, including my own. Anyway, enjoy him. We'll get to him in one second. First this.

I'm really excited to have you on this program I've been I've been your fan for a long time and I've been listening to you for a long time and I feel like you and Glenn got me through the past year and even prior to that when I just you know like a lot of people felt like I was losing my mind you know and it's like I need sanity and I love that you and here are not totally aligned politically so I can hear different points of view. Well, thank you for thinking of me. So I want to start with a thank you.

Oh, gosh, yeah. Thank you for what you do. Honestly, it's very brave. Have to stick with it because somebody has to do this. That is my feeling and Glenn's feeling. But yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, and I, of course, am late to the party because you've been talking about this.

As far as I know, you've been black your entire life. Pretty much. the things I watched was you at the Soho Forum, which is this place where they do debates, open debates on smart things that people should check out back in 2018. And you were debating Nikhil Singh from NYU, right? The history professor, I think, at NYU. And the two of you were debating the question. Everyone should watch this, by the way. You can Google it. Whether anti-racism is a religion that is more dangerous to the United States than racism. That's my own summary of it. He dismissed what he called the intelligentsia's power to really dominate this discussion. And he downplayed the influence of people like Ta-Nehisi Coates back then as a thought leader who's really driving people's

beliefs on this, you were sounding the alarm saying, no, no, no, no, no. They do have the power to dominate the discussion. This is a real problem and it is taking over. And three years later, would you like to go back and do a mic drop? You know, Megan, I had genuinely never thought of that because you live your life, you know, month to month. I didn't realize that that was now as far back as 2018.

And I had never thought about the fact that, yeah, his point, you know, he was very, very good. He knows an awful lot. His point was that really I was somebody who was getting my knickers in a twist about things that people talk about who read The Atlantic and listen to NPR. And this intelligentsia and that it didn't have anything to do with the real world where, for example, what he meant, although he didn't really stress it that much, is that there is disproportionate police brutality against Black men, which is a whole other question. And I was trying to do an end run around him by beginning that whole thing by saying that we don't hear about the white people these things happen to. But still, he had his point. And you know, it's true that nowadays, I'm not one for patting myself on the back in this sort of sense, but nowadays, I think it has been resoundingly proven since last summer that this kind of ideology is not just a bunch of pointy-headed people talking about Ta-Nehisi Coates. It now really is clearly permeating the way ordinary people are living and thinking all over the

United States. I can't say that I would have predicted it would have gotten this extreme in 2018 because I'm not that good. Nevertheless, I do feel that if he and I had that debate now, things would be quite different. He would have a harder time because what I was portraying America as it even now more is than it was then. I'd love to get his thoughts on it because one of the points he ceded to you was, I agree that the way to bring people around on my wake of thinking, this is Professor Singh saying on my way of thinking that anti-racism is the way and we should be more attentive to race and so on, is not to berate them or shame them or guilt them, right? Like he gave you that point.

I'd love to hear what he thinks about that three years later, because I feel like while both of you were agreeing, the real answer to racist systems or racism in the United States is really policy or certainly to the plight of of people who are struggling in black America, for lack of a better term. Exactly. Is exactly policy is policy prescriptions. You both settled on that. And meanwhile, it seems like all of the explosion over the past year or so has been in the stuff even he didn't like, which is the lecturing, the berating, the guilting, the words that we're trying to and just trying to thought police everybody as opposed to

prescribing actual actions and policies that might improve race relations and life for black people in America. And of course, a lot of people are listening to you saying that and they're going to tweet out. No, that's not true because I'm also interested in these activist policies. But the problem is that the substrate, especially since roughly last June, has been so dominated by all of the thought policing and all of the language policing and all of the shaming, often for transgressions that no one would have thought of as such before about 10 minutes ago. And yeah, what's scary is that a whole generation of people is beginning to think that all of this attitudinizing and kabuki is the work, as you put it, that the idea is to seek this, you know, quixotic and rather romantic psychological

revolution that all whites are going to go through and that, you know, after that we'll reach the rapture or whatever it is that's supposed to happen, when really what we're supposed to be thinking about is what do you do out on the ground to create real change for real people? And the only reason that this confusion is allowed such hegemony is because of social media. Basically, all of this is a nation of intelligent people operating out of fear into pretending to be aligned with a project that actually doesn't make any sense. I've never known anything like it. I couldn't have predicted this is what social media was going to do. But what we have is a reign of terror, not of people being beheaded, but a reign of terror where people pretend that activism is essentially a kind of

a furious twerking instead of going out into the world and helping real people. Yeah, right. It's so well put. And if you dare step outside of that performative behavior, if you dare say, I'm not totally buying it and I don't really like the way you're talking about it and I'm not sure I'm on board for the discussion to be framed this way. Of course you get called names. And I mean, I will, of course I've experienced this many times, but the most recent one was I went on Bill Maher and I was talking to him about what's happening in the New York city private schools, where I pulled my kids because of all this crazy quote, anti-racism critical race theory agenda being shoved on them, not to mention

like really crazy stuff on trans education. And so it's not just all race. And I saw some YouTube videos of, I confess, they weren't very popular hosts because they didn't have a lot of followers, but a fair amount of black commentators who host these YouTube shows saying that the remarks were abhorrent, that they were horrific. Bill Maher and I talking about how this is not the way forward, telling little white kids that they're white supremacists no matter what they do, because they were born with a certain melanin, is not the way forward. And I was like,

I can't believe that the discussion has gotten this nuts, right? Like you can't even push back that much by saying, don't tell my seven-year-old he's a white supremacist. It's absurd. What's interesting about all of this is that we really do have this new idea that, yes, you are to be judged on the color of your skin. So Martin Luther King said that that's not what things were supposed to be about. And it wasn't just him. The real idea among Black people of almost all walks was, let's get past this business of judging us by the melanin in our skin. And now here we are in a time when a bunch of people who feel like they are at the head of time and have hit upon the truth, just as Martin Luther King, whereas in his case he was correct, but Martin Luther King did. They really think of

themselves as bearers of a higher wisdom, think that we are supposed to divide people into different groups so that white people will learn that they're evil and black people will learn that what makes them interesting is that they're noble survivors because they're dealing with white's evil all the time. And, you know, if I put it that way, and I think a great many of us, and I feel so sorry for parents like you, Megan, where you have to take your children out of a school where that sort of thing is being preached. Everybody knows this doesn't make sense. It's as simple as that.

I could explain this to my nine-year-old. I think it would be a bit much for the six-year-old. The nine-year-old would get it that there's been a major perversion of the Martin Luther King who she's already been taught about in school. But you're not allowed to say so. Because if you really do push back against it in clear language and refuse to blink, you are called a white supremacist on Twitter, on YouTube. And most people aren't up for being mauled like that. And so everybody pretends. It is the most mendacious moment I am aware of in the history of this republic. And that is only

partly hyperbole. I know of no time when America has lived with such a lie. And I know some people are going to say, well, what about the lie of racism? Okay, very poetic, but I'm talking about a real lie. All of us are being made to lie, except for a few of us who really just can't stand it. And apparently we're terrible people. It's a really peculiar time to be an American. And just for the record, this shouldn't matter, but I would like to note, you refer to yourself as a cranky liberal Democrat. You're not. And Glenn's not.

Glenn's a, he's a cranky conservative. And so it's not, it's not, I've been saying so many times, this isn't about black and white and it isn't about left and right. I think it's a question of reason versus unreason. And you're on the side of reason. This isn't about partisan politics. right. I think it's a question of reason versus unreason. And you're on the side of reason. This isn't about partisan politics. It's about what you, as you put it, what you know is a lie and finding the courage to call it out, even though you know what they're going to call you.

Yeah. And you know, the funniest thing about this, I had to learn this from the beginning. I've been, whatever I've been doing about race, I've now been doing it for 21 years. And one of the first things I had to get used to was the idea that if I say the things I'm saying to you, it means that I'm a conservative Republican person. And I had to wrap my head around and realize, okay, I see what they mean by that. But even today, there are people who only know so much about me, and that's fine. We can't all know everything about everybody. but they assume that, you know, that I voted for Donald Trump, that, you know, I am against a woman's right to have abortion. They're going to associate me with various positions and that I'm a conservative and that I must be reading my William F. Buckley, et cetera. And I have respect for conservative positions. And I will openly say I have some serious problems with what's happened to Republicans over about the past 12 years, but I am not one to dehumanize Republicans the way many people do.

But yeah, the categories that people try to slip you into these days, nothing I'm saying is about liberal, conservative, right wing, left wing. It's just about what Glenn and I are both trying to do is make some sort of sense of things. And the old categories just don't work, especially because what's going on now is this takeover by inflamed, although well-intentioned radicals in a way that really parallels the cultural revolution in China. It's the same thing, except people aren't being physically threatened. And yet the people in question can't see it. To be against that is not to be somebody who likes to go read a book full of speeches by Ronald Reagan to put himself to sleep. It has nothing to do with that. It's just trying to make some sense of this crazy world. That's right. Now, I mentioned this the other day, but all my friends here in New York are liberals, you know, and that's the nature of our town. And two of my most committed liberal friends have been so frustrated by the school shutdown and the fact that their kids just, they don't get to go. On Wednesdays, their child, their

middle school child gets the pleasure of two 45 minute Zooms. That's his day. And one day a week, he gets to attend class for four hours. That's not school. That's it for a year. No. Now we're a year into this. He's a middle school kid. He needs to be with his friends, right? So they went to a, you know, open the schools rally this past weekend.

And what did they walk into? People chanting and putting up big signs calling them white supremacists because they want the schools to open. So even they are, who would have been, I think, 100% on board with sort of the, you know, Ibram X. Kendi rhetoric a year ago, are rethinking things because they're, the lie gets exposed bit by bit when you see how it's used so indiscriminately, situationally, and versus any given person. We are, we're animals, Megan. I think all of us on a certain level enjoy having a reason to look down on other people. We're all in it. I have that. It's a natural human impulse. You see it in the sandbox. Adults just do it in more genteel ways. And that's part of what we're

seeing here. It's fun to call somebody a white supremacist, especially if you're white. And so it's a way of just saying you're a bad person. And therefore, a lot of this is a natural human impulse. I don't think any of these people are crazy. It's not about people going out of their minds. It's not about people who are trying to accrue resources for themselves. It's just that it's fun to diss people and to feel part of a group. It gives you a sense of community. But that means that you have a middle school kid who hasn't had real school for what to them feels like about 15 years. And you start getting vocal about it at a time when the pandemic is very clearly and presently lifting. And you get called the same thing that people used to be called who wanted to hang black men from trees. Something is very, very wrong.

You know, I know you've got a book out now, too, Nine Nasty Words. It's the new George Carlin, who you talk about in the beginning of the book, and his old seven words, and you've got more. But just the discussion, because you're a linguist, and I want to get to that, you're a professor of linguistics, among others, and I was like, I think that means words. So you can help us understand. I went to public school, John. Help us understand what that means and help us understand how like even your book about nine nasty words and the power of saying them kind of dovetails into what you're saying

right now, calling somebody white supremacist, how it makes you feel. You know, Megan, I'm going to say to you that the honest truth is that they're kind of two me's. One of them is this linguist. One of them is this race commentator. The intersection between the two is thin. One of them is probably the N word. And it happens that these days, for understandable reasons,

people want to hear from me a lot about that. And so Nine Nasty Words was written long before the racial reckoning of last summer. And I was just trying to be jolly linguist. I put in an N-word chapter because I think that's one of our new profanities. And also, as a black person, of course, I have a certain interest in it. But, you know, there's the N-word. There's the F-word with six letters that is used for gay men. And there's some really nasty words used for women.

And the N word was just one of the slurs. Then all of a sudden, last summer happens, and I got mad. And when I get mad, I write books. Nine nasty words was written out of joy. But some of my books are written because I'm angry and I want to have my point. And that is what the second book is about. And so it's these two things. And I can pretend that they were written by the same person, but in a way they were written by very different means.

But linguistics, for example, let me give you a sense of something a linguist noticed that no sane person would, but you can analyze it. So, for example, is not. Those two words. Now you can contract it to say, um, he isn't okay. Or you can say he's not. Do you ever think about that? You can contract in two ways. He's no, but I accept it. He isn't now, of course you're thinking, well, who cares? But the truth is there are reasons for things like that. Often they vary between people depending on their social class or even their gender. Do you know that men say,

huh? Women say, hmm, more often. Not always, but that's something that you never think about. Nobody would tell you. That's the sort of thing that a linguist might notice. And so all of it, a lot of it is very pointy headed little stuff. That's a lot of fun. You know, what language is related to which one Romanian is full of Russian words, but actually you can think of it as a kind of Italian. Then there's this race commentary, which is about completely different things. And so the intersection is the N word where of course you have to talk about the linguistics of how you get from Latin Niger, which means black, to, for example, a word that black men use to mean buddy, and that now you have white men using to mean buddy too, because they grew up listening to hip hop. That's linguistic stuff, but then it intersects with what it means to be black, what it means to be a white person who likes black people,

whether white people like black people enough. All of it is a very large subject where I am kind of straddling the two. And it's awkward, but it's also fun because the truth is, to me, linguistics and race relations are like the film The Wizard of Oz and a slide with an amoeba on it. They have nothing to do with each other, but I have to pretend that they do often. It did catch my eye when I was sort of studying up over these issues, all of these issues over the summer, because you, I noticed, are a professor of linguistics, and there's Steven Pinker at Harvard. He's a linguistics guy, too, and he talks about a lot of these same issues and gets in trouble. There's a big push to get him in trouble for using terms like urban, which some of his colleagues said was racist. I mean, it's crazy, as you know. But I was like, what is it? And also Glenn, he's an economist, and there's a fair amount of economists who speak out about things like this. And I'm like, what is it, like Thomas Sowell,

like what is it with linguistics and economics that are bringing so many people of different political stripes to the same conclusion when it comes to anti-racism. And I know you don't like the term woke, but wokeism and that kind of stuff. You know, that's interesting. And, you know, there's George Lakoff. He's another linguist who has pitched in on political issues. Race is not his beat, so we haven't heard from him as much lately. But he was definitely especially popular in the media in the aughts and is, you know, hardly unknown now. Noam Chomsky, of course, is a linguist and then also somebody who has political positions. Steve Pinker, my friend, my friend, Steven Pinker, he, I don't know that he would necessarily position himself as a contrarian, a professional contrarian

the way that I apparently am. But yes, he is a linguist who does this sort of thing. And then you have your economists. It's a funny thing. I don't know what the reason for that would be. I think you could also find many anthropologists and political scientists who are doing the same thing. But why is it, for example, you can see I'm thinking out loud, Walter Williams and Glenn Lowry are economists, and Thomas Sowell is an economist. And here they are talking about race issues. You know what it is with economists? It's that economics is so rigidly empirical in many ways. It's harder to data economics with bias. And so if you're a black economist, it's easier and it's by no means inevitable, but it's easier to see what I think of

as the truth, to not do what I think we're often trained to do as, if I may, thinking people, which is that when you think about race, you're supposed to sequester your thoughts into a part of your brain that is not entirely bound by logic, which is what I mean by the religion. On race, you're supposed to believe certain things that frankly don't make a whole lot of sense. That's probably harder for an economist. In terms of linguists, I think the linguists who do political commentary have such very different perspectives that I think I would just say that we linguists are academics and academics sometimes like to switch it and that might be it. Coming up, we're going to talk about systemic racism. Is it real? Is it is it actually a thing? You remember, Adam Grant and I had a debate on this.

And is it even the right thing to be asking? That's next. So much of this discussion on systemic racism and so on is based on data on numbers, things that actually can be added up and judged. I mean, listening to Thomas Sowell talk about mandatory minimum wages, you know, raising it to the $15 or what have you, really will change the way you think about those things. I mean, just growing up in a family that was middle class, I was always in favor of the Democrats' positions on these issues. So I'm like, yes, more minimum wage is better.

That's where I'm going to wind up, right? That's, that's, that's my experience. So you want what's good, be good for you, right? And then you learn more, you listen to somebody like, so we'll talk about, well, no, because it's what happens. It freezes out many people who are in the black community in particular, who are lower in terms of the skills that are required, and they just won't get hired, they'll get they'll wind up with nothing. And then the people who call themselves anti-racist seem more like they're on the side of the racist because this is going to be good for one group, but not the group they think it's going to be good for. Anyway, it just requires you to be open-minded and go down the lane of listening to folks.

So on that front, let me talk to you about systemic racism. This is the big term. And I know I read you wrote a piece in Barry Weiss's amazing sub stack saying this is the most nettlesome term in the English language. I love the word nettlesome. I also look that up. It's annoying, right? I don't know. It's annoying.

That's my take on it. And I understand why, right? Because it just gets abused and I think misused and who the hell knows what people are trying to encompass with it. But I do want to talk to you about it because I just had Adam Grant on the program author. He's a professor at Wharton. Great guy. I know. That's right. Yeah. We had a good discussion about systemic racism. And I said, you know, I've been questioning. I don't rule it out.

I'm not like, you know, one of these far right firebrands who's like, no, no, it isn't. It's all been solved. That's not me. I'm open minded. But I'm also really data based. And when I look at, for example, the number of shootings of cops by black men, I'm not persuaded that there is a systemic problem on the cops shooting black men in disproportionate rates to the crime rate. I know you've spoken out on that too. But can I just ask you, as I look at other areas, and I heard some of this in your debate at the Soho Forum again with Singh, I'm like, okay, I'd like to know more because I know you sort of have said, okay, I'm going to give you some of these things, but not all race-based inequities are due to prejudice. Right. We have to probe further. But can I just get you to comment on a couple of things he raised in particular? Sure. Some of this stuff is cited pretty broadly. And I got my attention for sure. He was talking about, for example, the effect of race on hiring, saying employers will sooner hire a white man who has a criminal record than a black man who has no record. Citing stats that say he was citing Dr. Deva Prager, who is a Harvard sociologist now deceased. Five percent of blacks with a criminal record got a callback for the job interview.

Seventeen percent of whites who had a criminal record got what? Got a callback. OK, so already disparate. And 14 percent of blacks without a criminal record got a callback. So 17 percent of whites with a criminal record get called back. Okay. So already disparate and 14% of blacks without a criminal record, got a call back. So 17% of whites with a criminal record get called back 14% of blacks who have no criminal record got called back. So you can see the point. Um, he said black people pay more for identical housing than their white counterparts. And the more white, the neighborhood, the higher cost of entry to blacks trying to move in said, um, not having a high school degree is the greatest predictor of whether you wind up in the criminal justice system but he said four out of five black men who don't graduate from high school wind up in prison whereas only one out of ten whites do um and

and all those things i was like all right that does these sound problematic right so and then we got it you guys got into stop and fr, which has been ruled unconstitutional because 85 percent of those stopped were either black or Latino. And even though the crime rate went down in New York City, the courts and black black men do not trust cops here because for so many years 10 years they just pulled over because they looked they looked suspicious i mean that was and that's real yeah exactly yeah so anyway what are your thoughts on those numbers he was rattling off which some of which we hear in modern day modern day three years later in those discussions today too yeah um the issue is not whether there are race-based disparities in society. The issue is one, where they came from, and two, whether just standing with your hands in your pockets and saying, what we need to do is get rid of the racism to solve that problem makes any sense. And so for example, with the 4% and the 17% with what kind of person with a criminal record gets hired.

Those facts are not fair. That's something that should be aired, and the people in question should be made aware of their biases on that score. But the question is, how much of an effect do those numbers have on whether or not a Black person gets a job? So let's say that there's one job where there is somebody with that kind of bias, and so they don't get it. Do they only apply to one job? I don't think most of us would be able to imagine that becoming employed would mean knocking on one door. The issue is, are doors closed to them to such an extent that it's unrealistic to expect

them to have a job or that it would create some sort of economic crisis. To me, a lot of those statistics, by no means all of them, a lot of them are kind of like men say, huh, and women say, hmm, you have to be told. You'll find it if you do an analysis. But the question is, what effect does it really have on society? The analogy is imprecise, but still useful. On the criminal justice system, what it comes down to is this. Let's just try this. Black men are overrepresented in prisons. There's no doubt about that. Now, you want to say, why is that? Now, many people will say it's because black men get sentenced differently. The data on that has always been dueling studies, very hard to come to conclusions. But let's say that it is that Black men tend to

have those sentences, tend to be there longer because of the nature of their records. I think it's more productive to say, why is it that they have that kind of criminal record? And many people would say, because of the communities that they grow up in. Okay, what's the problem in communities that would lead young Black men to commit more and more violent crimes? Because frankly, they do. They just do. The data is in. But the question is why? Because the answer is not going to be that they're less human or that there's something wrong with them, that there's some pathology. You want to ask, why do they commit more of these crimes? And you might say that it's poverty, and that's going to be part

of it. But there are other poor people too, who don't commit that kind of disproportionate crime. You can look at Latinos. You can look at also poor whites, as we are now increasingly doing. So it's not only that. So there must be something else and it's not going to be pathology. So how about the epidemic of fatherlessness? Many people would say that most of those boys do not grow up with a dad. Well, why is that? Because often the dads do long spells in prison, and even when they come out, they can't really be dads. Now, why is that? Well, a lot of that stems from the war on drugs was designed to round up black criminals. Okay, that's half true, but it was also designed to take care of a crime wave in general that was perceived in the late 1960s. And also, and this is what people actually at the time said, to crack down on the hippies and people who are smoking, all of these sorts of things to get rid of them. Both of those things strike us as unjust now, but more to the point, to the extent that many people would say we have to think about the racism and not the hippies. Black people in stressed communities were all in favor of laws that got black criminals off the street both then and when there were similar legislations in the

early 90s. And nobody is going to stand in the face. Well, nowadays, you know, the white woke person kind of does, but you're not going to stand in the face of that black minister who was very happy to see these laws enacted, didn't know they were going to have such draconian effects, but was happy to see it happen and tell him that he was a white supremacist. We all live our lives month to month and we work with what we've got. So then you want to look at something else, which is that fatherlessness was also encouraged by a chapter of black history that is almost never told, which is that white Marxists starting in New York City encouraged poor black women to sign up for

welfare that they didn't think that they needed. The idea being to bankrupt the government so that we would start again. That was a noble idea. I have no problem with somebody thinking that that was going to work out. I'm afraid that it didn't, but it also meant that fewer Black couples got or stayed married than had even as recently as 1960. Be that as it may, was that racism given that these white Marxists were about as unracist as white people got at the time? All of which is to say, that was long, all of which is to say, is systemic racism why these Black men are in jail? The disproportion is one thing, but social history is more complicated than Ibram X. Kendi would like us to believe. And therefore, the

solution, is it to turn out your hands and say, well, we're going to undo the racism and get these Black men out of prison. I don't know what that means. Just let them out. What? It's just too oversimplified. We're all taught that astrophysics is hard. We're all taught that art history is hard. We're taught that it's hard to do math, but somehow when it's black people and social history, all of a sudden we're supposed to reason like we're four years old. It's got to stop. And a lot of our discussion of systemic racism is basically a very sweet way of telling us to dumb ourselves down. And that won't save anybody's life. So we're focusing on the wrong thing is what you're saying. Yes, some of these systems may have some sort of systemic racism in

there or may not. It's complicated. It may be multifactorial. But what you would like to do is take the discussion to now what? Now what? And the people who are dominating the public microphones right now are certainly the publishing world, like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, want to start with shame. awareness, you know, even like Adam had recommended to me and trying to cure me of my questions about systemic racism, the book Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt, which I did order. She's from Stanford. And I have it and I've been reading it. And one of the things she says is this whole thing, this MLK thing of not seeing color doesn't work. That's unrealistic. And she says when people focus on not seeing color, they may also fail to see discrimination. So her answer, and I think the answer of a lot of people like Jennifer, is focus on it. Look at color. Look at your own. Look at your neighbors.

Be aware of it. And if you're a white person talking about this, just realize it's a privilege not to have to talk about or think about color. And you need to check that privilege and get in the game and see the realities of the power structure. Yeah. And see, she's right to an extent. We can't be colorblind. I completely understand that.

We can't pretend that race doesn't exist as a matter of social perception. We can't pretend that race doesn't exist in terms of history. We can't pretend that race doesn't exist in terms of history. We can't pretend. But even in what you're talking about there, there's that slide into, if you're a white person, look around and see race. Okay, I get that. But then the rest of it is becoming, if you're a white person, think of your view about these issues as invalid in comparison to any Black persons, no matter what the Black person says. And there's a short step from that to the idea that white people are evil and need to understand that, and Black people are correct and noble no matter what we do. And that's where

you get to Robin DiAngelo's white fragility. DiAngelo is different from Eberhardt. Eberhardt is a book of sensible counsel, but still it slides into that idea of making it into us versus them, which channels our natural impulses to do Lord of the Flies. And next thing you know, you've got white fragility held up as a New Testament of the Bible. And there's a short step from there to Kendi, where I don't think that he is as interested in this idea of white people and black people squaring off in a room. But his idea is that if there's a problem, if black people are not doing as well at something as white people, then stop asking them to do it. And that's where you get Ibram Kendi saying that we shouldn't have standardized tests and giving a certain imprimatur to the idea that whiteness is precision and objectivity and that we need to get

rid of it in favor of roughly jamming and talking about the streets that you came from and pretending that that makes you Proust. That's him. And that's where Jennifer Eberhardt's counsel tends to go. So next thing you know, you have the, you know, a white woman, college educated, maybe about 45, who was afraid to say anything about these things because she's been taught that she's evil. And I've known some people like that, who I can tell when they're talking to me, they don't know what to do because they know that I don't agree with a lot of this stuff. But on the other hand, all of we black people are supposed to think the same. And so what, where quite do you go? And I'm sitting there and she's looking at me as this black man who is here to help you absolve yourself of your complicitness in white supremacy. I don't want to be that person.

And I don't think most black people want to be that person. The tragedy is that so many do, but I frankly think that's a kind of brainwashing that happens. I think it's easy to fall into the noble victim sentiment because it is for all human beings. But Black people who like being treated that way are noble victims, just like many white people and Asian people and Latino people are noble victims for other reasons. That's a noble victim. That is not the only way that a Black person needs to be because there was slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining. It's one way of being black. There's so much to talk about in there. That was funny and awesome. I know you talked about this when talking about the N-word. And you said,

first of all, you said, many ask why black people give whites the power to harm us so easily with this word. And then you write, but I know I'm missing the point. This performative transformation of the N-word into a taboo term affects a kind of power. This is to the point you were just making. Black elects, which is your other word for the wokes, get a way of getting back at whites by destroying their careers. White elects, spectating, get to show that they aren't racists by cheering on the witch hunting. And so there's absolutely a performative element to this, as you point out, and it's something that makes both groups, black and white within the wokorati, I'm really

struggling with that term, makes them sound way too sexy and fun, into the winners, the ones who are right, who are moral, who have virtue versus the rest of us losers. That's what this is. And I should say, I'm not against woke. I think it would surprise many people to know I consider myself quite woke. I was raised by somebody who taught a course at Temple University in Philadelphia that for a while was literally called Racism 101. That was my mother. And I did pay attention to my mother. So I have the woke. It's woke people who are mean. The elect is woke in a way that makes you feel that it's okay to defenestrate people because they're not as woke as you. If that is you, or if you give likes with a capital L to that kind of person on Facebook, that is what I'm calling the elect. And yeah, what it means is that something doesn't make sense, and yet you're supposed to pretend it does. Don't say that word. Don't say a word that sounds like that word. Don't say a word that sounds like that word, even if it's in Chinese, or I'm going to fall to pieces and I'm going to have to go to the diversity counselor and I'm going to have to have therapy because it's just so hard to be black. Don't utter that sequence of syllables. And then at the same time, you're talking about how black people are strong.

You're talking about black power and how we have survived. So we have survived in order that if somebody says nega, nega in Mandarin, you're supposed to fall to pieces. That's being a survivor? I don't think so. It doesn't make any sense. Why would you give the word that kind of power if you like yourself? That's all. And yet, because pretending to be hurt by the word in that way gives you a power in our context, especially with social media, of making white people very, very uncomfortable and even destroying their careers by uttering that sequence of sounds, you have to wangle this equipoise where on the one hand, you're espousing weakness as power, but then on the other hand, you're enjoying exerting the power so much that you

let that cognitive dissonance pass. My problem is I just can't let it pass. I feel diminished by the notion that if I hear somebody use that word when they're just referring to it, I'm supposed to feel hurt. That makes me a hothouse flower. And last time I checked, that's not a psychologically healthy condition. But somehow when we're talking about Black people, we're supposed to make an exception. That's religious thought to the extent that anybody can hold that in their head and walk around with their head held high. And I have to contest it. I'm sorry. I will not say that Black weakness is Black strength. And I wish more Black people would get over doing that. I've never heard anybody use the term

wangle this equipoise. I'm going to hold on to that one tonight, like a blanket. Equipoise. Yeah, that wasn't bad. Equipoise. Okay, got it. I like that. Okay. I completely agree with you because I can relate to this as a woman. When somebody sort of treats you more gingerly because you're a lady part, it's like, oh, can you spare me? I don't need your tenderness. I'm fine. And the N-word is one of those things where it's like, as you know, as a parent, you're like, I mean, certainly as the parent of white children, you're like, oh my God. So that word, it can never be uttered.

You can't, like even saying the N word, saying it like that is dicey. It's not my kids are littles. They don't say that word, but stories come up in the news or what have you. And they're curious, you know, like they want to understand like, what is it? Why does the word exist if If we're not allowed,

like it? Why? You know, why do people allow it? And you try to give them the history of why it's so bad and how it was misused and the power structure that existed. But it makes me feel uncomfortable talking about it with my kids, because I feel like I am giving the word all the power. I am giving that word more power than it had yesterday. And it does feel like shouldn't we be somehow disempowering that word? What is a way of disempowering? Wasn't that the reason rappers first started saying it so much, which is like, we're going to take this hideous term, turn it around. But now, I don't think we've done that. I don't think we're there anymore.

You know, it's interesting. Given that this part of this may be the one that gets around most, I want to clarify something because there are many people who actually hear me saying that it's okay for white people to run around using the slur. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that if we're really strong people, we should be called N words all the time. No, my problem is this new thing that you can't even refer to it. And what bothers me is that if you're talking to your kids about it, you have to talk to them about it in a way that basically says Black people are so fragile that you can't even utter the sequence of sounds such as if somebody asks you when you're about 13,

what was NWA? What did it stand for? You're not supposed to say niggers with attitude. I can say it because I'm Black, but you aren't supposed to say that because you're white. You're not supposed to use the word when you're talking to the kids about it. You might even write it down, but refuse to say it these days. And the problem with that is that it's unnecessary is because when I was in my 20s and 30s with taste, you could use the word in reference and the world kept spinning and everybody knew what the hideous history of the word was. But I had little snippets of white people I knew who would mention the word if they were talking about something, usually in critique. You know, they're talking about how somebody used the slur or how they would never use the word, but they would say, I would never say, and they would use the word. Nobody thought a thing of it. Or if they did, they had no purchase on the general conversation. It was okay. And so that makes me an old man to say, back when I was a kid, but I wasn't even a kid. I was 40 and it was still pretty much that way. And now here we are with this taboo term. And I just I must admit and I will own this.

I don't care what people say about me saying it. I shudder at the thought of you having to tell your kids about the way we use it now, as opposed to the way it was about 20 years ago, because it makes the rest of us, it makes black people look like babies. I've just I it embarrasses me that we have gotten this religious about the word. And I'll say one more time, folks, I don't mean the slur. I'm talking about people referring to it and they are different. Yeah, but that's right. Like the, uh, the New York times reporter, Donald McNeil, who got fired for repeating the word in trying to understand a story that was being told to him about a girl who got in trouble for using the actual word. So he was like, wait, so she said this and he repeated the actual word fired. All right. In one second, we're going to get into an attack on Glenn Lowry that was launched by the head of one of these New York City schools trying to ban Glenn Lowry. And what does he think are the real life solutions to some of the problems that we have discussed? You know, some of the crime rate problems and some of the imprisonment numbers that we went over there.

He's got four real life solutions that I think you're going to want to hear. So we'll get that in one second. But first, we're going to bring you a feature. This is a new one, a new feature here on the MK show that we're calling Thanks But No Thanks. In this case, we're calling thanks, but no thanks. In this case, we're saying thanks, but no thanks to Justin Trudeau. So what exactly is the virtue signaling former blackface wearing? I mean, we think it was former. It's unclear. You know, he wore it so many times he can't remember them all.

We assume he's finally learned his lesson. Prime Minister of Canada up to these days. Well, besides not distributing a whole lot of COVID vaccines, he has focused on the new budget for his country. Oh, it sounds like a yawn, you may think. No, stand by. In a tweet thread this week, actually it was last week, Trudeau explained some of the elements of the budget, which would make up his, quote, recovery plan for jobs, growth, and resilience. It includes such details as new jobs, new training, innovation. But Trudeau chose to focus on one particular element. You see, he tweeted that we're going to do everything we can to make sure women can fully and equally participate in our country's workforce, promising he would make the COVID

recovery one that is inclusive and feminist. They're going to have a feminist COVID recovery in Canada. What's wrong with us? Ackermars isn't feminist. What the hell does that mean? And then he said this. The pandemic has threatened to stall much of the progress women have made over the past decades. In fact, many women have left their jobs this past year. This isn't just a recession. It's a she-session.

Oh, Justin, a she-session. First of all, try to say that. Go ahead and try to say that at home. She-session. Oh, Justin, a she-session. First of all, try to say that. Go ahead and try to say that at home. She-session. She-session. It's not easy. And it's stupid also. This tweet was not the first time he debuted his very woke word. No, he used it back in March in a joint video with his wife on International Women's Day. So he clearly likes it. He likes it. Listen. This is about young women everywhere in our country. It's about making sure they grow up in a world where they can do and be anything they dream of. And everyone has a role to play in making that a reality. It's especially important right now when women are bearing the brunt of the impacts of COVID-19 and we face a she-cession. You're saying it so seriously. You're saying it like it's a real bird there, wasn't it?

Oh my God. I don't hear him speak that often. He sounded, I don't know, like a little, he sounded slightly feminine and he sounded very woke and he sounded kind of pathetic and definitely not like a man who you'd want next to you in the bedroom. I'm sorry, but that's, sorry for, you know, that's how I feel for the wife. And I think he should work on his theatrics because he may be a very good blackface wearer, but he is not a very good actor. He sounded ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

It's his fault. Canadian Debbie weighs in. Debbie, I had no idea you were so this fired up about Justin Trudeau. Why is it his fault? It's his fault. No mom can work

because there's no freaking school. There's no daycare. There's no nothing. Oh, Canadian Debbie. She's mad. Anyway, Justin Trudeau working very hard to signal his feminism to the Twitter crowd. Thanks, but no thanks.

Back to John McWhorter right after this. There's something else you said about what people expect of you and whether and how you're just not going to play the role that that they want you to play made me think of you know i had paul rossi on the show not long ago the teacher at grace church school in new york right who spoke out about the crazy critical race theory going on there and the messaging and one of the things i that jumped out at me in his story was he wanted to assign glenn lowry's writings your buddy uh you know on blogging heads um but is it blogging heads tv i just look you up on youtube but it's um just to get it correct for the audience blogginggingheads.tv. And The Glenn Show also. And The Glenn Show is where I watch it.

It's part, yeah. So anyway, he wanted to assign some Glenn Lowry to his students just to have some alternate voice to all the messaging that they were getting. The administration said no. This is Paul Rossi's recitation of what happened. The head of school responded to me that people like Lowry's lived experience

and therefore his derived social philosophy made him, Lowry, an exception to the rule that black thinkers acknowledge structural racism is the paramount impediment in society. So we can't listen to Glenn because it's going to make people think black people think this way when really it's just Lowry. He added that the moment we are in institutionally and culturally, this is the admin, the head of school, does not lend itself to dispassionate discussion and debate. And discussing Glenn Lowry's ideas would, quote, only confuse and or inflame students, both those in the class and others that hear about it outside the class. And the head of school's suggestion was instead for Rossi to assign, quote,

mainstream white conservatives. Your thoughts on that? Does that man or woman not realize that they are a zealot? Do they really not get that they sound like some religious figure in 1250 in France? They really think that when it comes to these race issues and only these, that they have arrived at this unassailable truth that means that you can make an exception to the idea that there's a marketplace of ideas that people need to think for themselves. And, of course, this person has to feel that Glenn Lowry is an exception. And I'm sure they would say, you could say, well, there are also some other people who think like this. And they'd say, well, those nine, 10 or even 100 people are exceptions.

There is this truth about black people and oppression. And the way they know it is because they read it in Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi, and they liked Ta-Nehisi Coates' work in The Atlantic. And I guess that's not fair. They also get it from what you learn from most classes on race in most institutions of education. And as far as they're concerned, there could be no other truth. Once again, race is simple. So astrophysics is hard. Algebra is hard. Black people is simple. Well, no, that head of school, one, is a zealot. Two, I'm going to rhyme. They're a zealot. They're a prelate. And also, in a way, I'm like some sort of priest or something.

I'm learning so much. Keep going. I want them to write. And also that head of school is a racist because that head of school thinks that blackness and black people are just so simple and that we're all so oppressed. And that person has frankly read, Ta-Nehisi Coates and I do not agree on much, but I would never say that his writing doesn't make any sense. I think that a lot of his writing is more performance art than ratiocination, but that doesn't mean that he's wrong. It's that I think people read it in a way that I would not. But with Robin DiAngelo, frankly, White Fragility is literally the worst book I've people read it in a way that I would not. But with Robin DiAngelo, frankly, White Fragility is literally the worst book I've ever read. Now, other people may have read worse ones, but that is the worst book ever written,

as far as I'm concerned, in terms of its logic. And then in terms of Ibram Kendi, his work is simplistic. You know, he has some good ideas, but Ibram Kendi operates in very broad strokes. There's a book called The Sunny Day. It's a wonderful children's, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. It's a wonderful children's book about a black child.

If you were a black child who grew up in my time and even afterward, it's a beautiful book. But Ibram Kendi's ideas look like the illustrations in that book. Broad strokes, only a few colors. You can't quite see the personhood in a lot of the drawings. That's what I always think of when I read him. And the head of school here cannot possibly have missed that. But as far as that head of school is concerned, Blackness is about these simple oppositions, such as between anti-racism And I forget what the opposition is And that's really just all there is To be thought about He or she is talking down That's a zealot And I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves

And Paul Russey is a hero He must be joined There need to be more people like this Because that zealot cannot be reached You cannot change the zealot's mind You have have to have an uprising, a civil one, but an uprising. Well, that's the thing. So I also just taped with Andrew Gutman, who's the parent who spoke out at Brearley School, and he lit a little bit of a can of gasoline in his letter, but he was mad. He's ticked off about what's happening to his daughter in the education. And he came on.

And the thing that's bothering me about both of those guys is where's the cavalry? You know, where are the rest of the parents who I know from having been in the New York City private school system now for several years feel as they do? They're they're hiding. They're afraid they won't even come out anonymously. You know, like go to the New York Post and say, here's 30 of us. And we want to tell you our feelings. And they'll put it in there. They won't require your name.

You know, they can do reporting like that. But they're so afraid, John. They're terrified. Like they're they're letting those guys twist in the wind. Like they're just these, you know, one one racist teacher at Grace Church and one racist parent at Brearley. And it's not so it's really it's it's angering me that the cavalry does not come. Isn't that the saddest thing? Because it's a funny point in our society. To be called a racist is almost like being called a pedophile. That starts in the 70s,

it continues and reinforces itself in the 80s. And it's a good thing. The idea that it is one of the most incorrect things to be a racist is, as humanity goes, quite an advance. But here we have these people where social media allows them to take advantage of that. And everybody is so afraid of being called a racist on Twitter that these poor parents are almost willing to sacrifice the education of their kids. I don't know what they're doing because my kids aren't old enough to be affected by this yet, but I imagine some of them are saying that they'll supplement what happens to their kids with educating them from home. But I think they need to think about the fact that that's easier said than done. Are you really going to have the time? Is that really what you're going to do with your summer? You're going

to sacrifice your kids' education because you don't want mean things said about you in places that other people can see it. I think that's really sad. Those people are simply afraid. And what they need to realize is if they started, you know, frankly, not only just saying things anonymously, but releasing their names, there is safety in numbers. And pretty soon they could do real good in America by saving Black people from this condescension. And you get a bonus. You get to have your own child have a real education instead of having to basically seep in this anti-racism academy that seems to be taking a page from some communist nightmare. Is that really okay just to show that you're not a racist,

parents? Please join these people. It shouldn't just be the occasional scrappy, usually male person. It has to be a much broader cross section of the parents, given how from what I can tell in every one of these schools, most of the parents don't like this. Stand up. And the thing is, it's not just the white parents. You know, we had an underground group at our boys school of parents who were objecting to this. And I think about Jason Riley and his wife, Naomi Schaefer Riley. They've got, I think, two girls.

It could be could be wrong. I think it's two girls. But anyway, they're in private school up in Westchester. And she's written publicly about how, you know, so these girls are mixed race and they identify as black and they're really angry about what their daughters are being taught. Like, because it is so disempowering. It's so paternalistic.

It's so diminishing of their actual power. You know, you see when a black person dies, a lot of people on Twitter will say, rest in power, rest in power. It's like, how about being alive with power? And what does that mean? Right, it doesn't mean being told constantly that everyone has to lower the standards for you, has to tiptoe by you, can't confront you with ideas that are different from your own, can never put a person like Glenn Lowry in front of you because you're too fragile to even

hear what he has to say about race. That's one of the things that drives me nuts about it. My audience has heard me say many times, sometimes when I'm tweeting or I get into one of these stupid Twitter wars with somebody, I've asked myself, oh, gosh, you know, it's like it's a black person. It's always, you know, Colin Kaepernick or Ava DuVernay. And then I say to myself, okay, that is racist to not fight back because the color of their skin is to be the person you're trying to fight against. And then I fire away and everybody calls me racist anyway, but it's fine in my, in my heart. I know that's not racism. That's true. Anti-racism. Yeah, this is, that stuff is hard. I mean, I try to avoid Twitter battles with the kind of people you're talking about, because in my experience as a human being, I know that it's no fun to back down. And so when you challenge people like that, they're never going to say, OK, you're right. They're just going to yell louder. And maybe you've planted a seed in their mind.

But for the most part, they're just going to yell louder. And maybe you've planted a seed in their mind, but for the most part, they're just going to yell louder and louder. And so as far as I'm concerned, as soon as I hear a certain kind of language, I just back away. And I've made a few exceptions during the pandemic because I was a little bored and it only reinforced me in saying, no, just don't, don't engage. But when it comes to not being jumped on Twitter, but just something happening in real life where a Black person has said something or done something that really is subject to question. Yeah, the idea that you just pat the person on the head and you say anything that you say or feel goes because you're Black and there was slavery and Jim Crow and redlining and somebody micro-aggressed you last month. No,

that means that you are treating Black people like babies. And I can tell that for a lot of White people, that is a very uncomfortable point, the idea that you might actually challenge a Black person on anything, unless that Black person is a quote-unquote conservative, in which case you can tell them that they're a white supremacist in Black clothing. But if it's a quote-unquote normal Black person, no, you just bow down and let them go. And of course, what a lot of these people are afraid of is that they're going to get called a racist on Twitter. And I frankly think it's at the point where people who could stand it, and maybe it's not everybody, but people who could stand it need to stand up with their back straight and let that person yell. And frankly, if that kind of person starts to learn that calling you names and putting up with the gifs, et cetera, on Twitter doesn't have the effect that it used to have. If they can't get what they want by calling you names,

then they'll sit back down at the table and start acting the way they were before, say, roughly June 2020, which is one voice among many, but not trying to turn us into China in 1965, which is what they're trying to do. I know you said, I listened to you on Sam Harris at the time you went on and you were saying people, people should be prepared to be called a racist that, you know, we've got to learn to stand up to these people who are taking over this discussion within these terms and just say no and be prepared for the name calling that follows. Yeah. It's just, people often ask me, what can I do to have a productive discussion where they won't call me a racist? And my answer is no, they will call you a racist. You cannot have a productive discussion and they are going to acknowledge it for a long time, but you've probably planted a seed. And that, unfortunately,

is the way societal discussions happen. It doesn't normally happen through people peaceably changing one another's minds. That's not how science works. That's not how social history works. It's friction. It's difficult. It's agle. But you plant seeds. But that involves that you have to be able to look at somebody frown. You've got to see your name taken in vain on social media. But life goes on. The planet keeps spinning. And overall, although you're not supposed to say this, things get better. Right. I want to talk to you about to speak on that front to two things. Number one, how do how do we fight the elect? What do you think is the best way? Because I know I've heard you say, including on that podcast with Sam, there's no, you can't look at them and say, why don't you be open to my opinion? And let's talk about it. Like you've said, we've sort of got to go around them. It's like the woke are no good to us. We got to move on from the elect. Move on. They're no good to us. So I want to talk about what do we do to fight them in your view? And then I also really would love for you to say the four things that you think are most important in addressing some of the problems we've been talking about when it comes to what some would call systemic racism or just some of these inequities or disparities between black success and white success. I thought that was very powerful. I don't know how you think we're doing on those. Take them in whatever order you want. Yeah. I think, um, we have to realize that telling these people about John Stuart mill and a diversity of ideas makes no

sense whatsoever. When you say to them, why can't you open up to other views? The first thing they'll say is that I am open to other views, but they're not. And if it's clear that they're not, then next you have to understand that what you're asking them is why can't you be open to other views, but they're not. And if it's clear that they're not, then next, you have to understand that what you're asking them is why can't you be open to pedophilia? For them, when it comes to race issues, there is no question of diversity of opinion outside of a very narrow band. The issue is to them as if you're saying, why can't you accept pedophiles as productive and acceptable members of society? And you have to realize that it's very surgical. What that kind of person is committed to, not just the woke, but the woke who are mean,

what they're committed to is the idea that battling power differentials is paramount, that battling power differentials must be the focus of all intellectual, moral, and artistic endeavor. That sounds a little clinical, but power differentials is what matters to them. Listen to the way they use the word power. And power differentials relating to race is of particular concern with them. For them, that's everything. There is no argument to be had. There is no discussion to be had. And that means that a discussion really just can't get anywhere with them. You have to basically say to them, I do not believe that battling power differentials is to be the central goal of this

endeavor, such as a school. You can say, I believe in combating systemic racism. I believe in helping people to be more enlightened about racism. But no, I don't believe that that should be the focus of our entire curriculum. That's something that you believe because you're part of an ideology that believes that. I believe that that should be one of about six or seven things that we focus on. In other words, the way it was before,

because it's not as if these schools were conservative academies. It's gonna be the way it is before. You put power differentials in that place. You have to address them with what they are. A lot of them don't think of it that way, but that's a seed that you would plant. Just telling them, no, you think power differentials in that place. You have to address them with what they are. A lot of them don't think of it that way, but that's a seed that you would plant. Just telling them, no, you think power differentials are supposed to be the center and the focus. I don't. And then the

person's going to say, you know what? You're a white supremacist. And you say, no, I am not a white supremacist. I am not a white supremacist at all. And we're going to keep doing things the way we're going to do it. Then on Twitter, they're going to say, oh, look at him, the white supremacist at all. And we're going to keep doing things the way we're going to do it. Then on Twitter, they're going to say, oh, look at him, the white supremacist. There he goes. Same as usual. And you just look at that on Twitter and you look at all the likes. And then somebody else chimes in and says, yeah, he's a white supremacist. They're going to keep doing it for about three days and, you know, have a picnic, you know, start watching the third season of Stissel. Something. Just keep your mind on something else. And pretty soon they'll stop it. And in the meantime, devote yourself to four things. This is what the black community needs. One,

the war on drugs needs to stop. It was developed in part to give black people a hard time. That was a very long time ago. But if there were no black market in hard drugs, then there would be a revolution in the black community where black men would be more likely to seek legal work. That would change so much and more to the point, because you're waiting for me to say the cops, and I'm not going to. If there were no war on drugs, a great many Black men would encounter the cops less, and that would be a great many Black men who are going to prison less. No, the cases that we hear, such as George Floyd, et cetera, are not always about people being stopped for drugs. They're not always about people who are doing or selling drugs. But nevertheless, that's a big part of the story. That's a big part of the reason Black men

wind up in prison. Not necessarily for selling drugs, but often whatever this person was doing, whatever the violence was about, for example, it's not just that Black men walk around being violent just to be violent. Often it was because of gang-related violence. What was the gang warfare about? Often maintaining turf because people are selling drugs. It's indirect, but it all often comes down to that one thing. Kill the war on drugs and you save the black community.

Second, what do the black men do if they're not going to sell drugs? And, of course, it's not even a majority of black men, but too many. What are they going to do? Well, they're going to go to community college. They're going to go to vocational schools. They're going to go there for free. They're going to spend two years. It is absurd to keep telling black America that the ideal is to go to four years of college and pretend that you like Shakespeare. That is not for everybody. That is an idea that kind of crept in after the GI Bill in the 1940s. Everybody shouldn't have to do that. Most people don't want to do it, including probably about half of the people who are in four-year colleges now. Really, if you go and you learn how to, say, be an electrician, if you go and you learn how to install cable, if you learn some kind of trade with your hands, being an ultrasound

technician, all of those things afford a person a thoroughly middle class, sometimes upper middle class existence. You will send your kids to college. That is something that we ought to emphasize instead of the idea of looking at men from those communities and thinking, oh, it's so sad that they don't go get to live in a dorm and go to the football game and take classes and graduate with a mortarboard after four years. No, that should not be thought of as the default American experience. Then there's another thing, which is reading is not taught well, especially to poor kids. It should be phonics and not whole word. You should not have your teacher saying, look at that word, L-I-T-T-L-E. Now, just kind of what do you think that is, especially since this page is full of small things. What do you think that might be? And the person kind of guesses around and thinks little. No, you take them through each word and you do it by sound, including making your way through little as much as you can. That sounds really kind of picayune, but that is a major difference between the way poor kids from bookless homes learn to read versus middle-class kids.

If you're a middle-class kid, you grow up and books are surrounding you. Can you give me another line on that? How would that work? How would the phonics work with the word little? Well, with little, you'd have to sit there and you'd say, okay, oh, it, and then what's next? Oh, and then there's this E and that's silent and that's unfortunate. That sucks about English, but you're going to teach them about silent E. But what's important is that you teach them, for example, the big thing with kids' minds is learning that it's not C-A-T. It's not, it's cat, cat. I've taught both of my daughters that I have watched the magic happen where you teach them that these sounds go together into a word. I did it with phonics-based books. You should learn Teach Your

Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelman. I'm going to say it again. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelman. I've done it with both of my daughters. Watch the magic both times. Listen to my podcast, Lexicon Valley. On one episode, I actually have Dahlia, my first daughter, doing this after having been taught from that book. Later, I have her sister, Vanessa, doing the same thing because that is the way they should be taught in school. Now, of course, you might guess I do have a book lined home, but kids learn faster with that phonics method than they do being taught to kind of guess at what the words mean based on the pictures and, you know, maybe

looking at only the first letter and beware people who tell you it should be a combination. Phonics alone does the trick. The science has proven it. And that is especially important with kids who are poor. And that includes disproportionately black kids. So that's important, too. Then the fourth thing is more controversial. I know. I believe that long-acting reversible contraceptives should be available to all poor women for free. They're expensive.

And yet, if you want to do family planning, if you want child-rearing, if you you want childbearing to be something that you plan rather than an accident that you then have to deal with, well, those should be available to all poor women without having to pay a whole lot of money so that you can wait a bit before you have kids. You have kids when you want to instead of too many children are born by accident to too many people in general. And I think that that has a disproportionate effect upon the black community. And colors, using them. And they liked them. They didn't feel that it was eugenic. They liked having the opportunity to take advantage of this technology. There are two studies that I know of that show that. I'm not trying to be a eugenicist. I just want family planning to be easier for people who already have enough things to think

about. Those four things enacted would create a whole new black America in one generation, and nobody would have to read Robin D'Angelo. We wouldn't have to pretend that anti-racism and, what is it, non-racism, whatever these oppositions are that we need this whole revolution in what we think of as political science and sociology. None of that word magic, frankly. We don't need it. It's not necessary. We need to get down on the ground and make policy changes. And the vast majority of Black people, especially outside of the academy and the media, would be quite happy with where Black America got on the basis of those things.

And I'm quite sure that civil rights leaders of about 50 years ago, if they're listening to this, agree completely. And what they hear in me is not a right-wing conservative. I'm not, this is not Rush Limbaugh talking. I sound like a liberal in 1960 and i'm proud of it i love all of that and by the way i have i too have been struggling with what to call these people like the elect i don't know i was saying to my team yesterday i'm like that makes them sound too highbrow like too smart too elevated i don't like it i understand woke is kind of confused i've been saying woke arati i reject my own term that makes them sound kind of glamorous, you know, like glitter

karate. And then I was like, what about like woke karate, like paparazzi? That's bad. You don't want to be called plus it's got the Nazi feel, but then you shouldn't refer to Nazis. And so I'm really struggling. I like, we got to keep working on it. And you know, the elect is not, it's not perfect. Joseph bottom, who's a brilliant man, he came up with the elect and I'm stealing it from him. But I know it's not perfect. It's a little sterile. It does put a kind of a crown on their head. I'm still sometimes working on it, although I think I'm going to use it for my upcoming work. But yeah, important though to realize, not just the woke. There are plenty of woke people who are woking just fine. It's woke people who are OK with being mean. That's the elect. young children, young black children, wherever we do this, right? Young poor children, whoever, to read. And going back to that stat of the best way to wind up in prison is not to graduate from high school, right? And we've seen so many of these studies saying that in all these schools that are underfunded or in bad areas, high crime rates, that the kids are in eighth grade, but they only have a second grade reading ability. I mean, I assume that's what you're getting at here. Yeah. And I should say, if you don't get in the reading well, all the rest of

it is hard. If you can't read, then you're not going to do well in math and you're just on your way. And for example, remember, it's 25 years ago now that the Oakland School Board very innocently was arguing that black kids are having trouble in school. And maybe the reason is because they have trouble translating between black English dialect and the standard English dialect that they're expected to master in school. Now, they had reasons for thinking that that was the problem, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that we've known how to teach poor Black kids how to read since the 1960s, when this sort of work was first done by, among others, Siegfried Engelman. What those kids needed was to be taught to read via K-A-T. Until you have that method of teaching,

you have too many kids who are in danger of not learning to read well. They're not going to be illiterate, but they're going to be the kind of people where, you know, you go to a diner and you have one of those long New York-style menus with all these things like Romanian steak that nobody eats, and you're trying to get through it because all you want is a corned beef sandwich. The kind of person who finds that menu and they're moving their lips as they go through it, that is a person who very often had trouble with school. They weren't taught to read right. There's

nothing wrong with them. And so phonics is really important for depressed areas, schools. And yet there's a whole education school orthodoxy that doesn't like phonics or thinks that it needs to be mixed in with this other very middle-class whole word method when all of the science says that phonics works faster and better, especially when there's no reinforcement from home. So yeah, I have a hobby horse about that. That's not linguist to me. That is me who's interested in how you get past poverty and noticing that that linguists aren't trained in reading science. That's a whole different thing. It's psychologists, but that kind of reading is what helps poor black

kids have better lives. I know that I don't want to take up all your day. I think your, your, your comments and the, and some of the, some of the appearances I've referenced on police are really interesting and you've been defensive. the appearances I've referenced on police are really interesting. And you've been defensive. Yeah, I know you say they're definitely meaner to black people, but they're not. But they're not every case of like a George Floyd, you can find them doing something just like that to a white person that Coleman Hughes has been saying that to that's considered very controversial now, right? Like even in my child's school, they stood up the other day and said there's a massive problem in America with cops killing black men, unarmed black men.

And it's like, you know, there's no nuance, there's no numbers, there's no data, there's no comparison. It's like, I'm so tired of sort of going over it. Because at this point, I just don't know if the other side want to hear any of the actual numbers. I just think they go with it. It's that on that particular issue, there's a part of me that almost gives up because the feelings just run so high that a great many people, including reasonable people, not to say that the elect aren't, but in some ways the elect are not reasonable, but even non-elect people just can't hear you. But yeah, the cops are meaner. That's been documented. And it's funny,

somebody, you catch the occasional tweet that sticks with you. And somebody wrote, well, you say, McWhorter, that the cops are meaner. Just why do you think that is? And it's interesting. That was so illuminating. Yes, the reason for the meanness is racism. It's not that racism doesn't exist. So yes. But that doesn't mean that the racism makes the cops kill Black men. So the idea is, well, they're racist, so they must kill more people. You'd think that. That's intuitive. But the data simply doesn't support it.

And for every one of these cases that you hear, these horrible gut-wrenching cases of a Black kid or a Black teenager or a Black 20-something or a Black anybody who gets killed, sometimes for no reason whatsoever, sometimes because there was something going on, but things went wrong and they lost their life indefensively. Whenever you see that, there are white cases too that the national media simply doesn't report. And that makes you sound a little, that sounds a little crankish. That sounds like something Rush Limbaugh would have said, not to keep on talking about that one person. But no, this is not right-wing boilerplate. It's fact. It's at the point where these days, every time one of those cases makes it into the news, I think, okay, who was the white one? And all you have to do is look into databases and you find that that exact

same thing happened to somebody white, sometimes just months before. And then there's the whole issue of disproportion. And so black people are still killed two and a half times, twice and a half more times than you would expect based on our representation in the population. And the idea is, well, that means that it must be racist. That's clever. That's genuinely clever to identify that. But then black people are two and a half times more likely to be poor too. And poverty brings you into contact with the police more, which is incontestable. Those two figures don't match up so precisely for nothing. And so the idea that white cops pull the trigger and kill black people more easily out of subtle racism, that's intuitive.

I get it. I believed it until 2016 when I was thrown the facts and had to take a deep swallow and accept them. But the fact is, no, what it looks like is something thoroughly plausible. White cops are meaner to black people. White cops do pull black people over more. Yes, the reason for that is racism. But when it comes to having a gun in your hand and pulling a trigger and taking somebody out of this world, that bias doesn't go that far. That's perfectly plausible psychologically. It's not that bad. So yank somebody out of the car, call them things, not be as patient with them as you would with white people. Sure. That's called racism. Pull a trigger and fire it into their heart just because you got a little bit scared, whereas if it was a white person, you would have given them the benefit of the doubt. No. And the reason that I'm saying no is because the data makes it so painfully clear that that's the way it is. And so I never thought I'd be saying it five years ago,

but I can see why the cops are so offended by the idea that they kill out of racism. I'll bet with a lot of them, you'd have to kind of futz around and make them admit that they're not as nice to black people, but they're not so anti-Black that they kill with abandon. So this whole rhetoric about Black bodies being unsafe with the cops, it's great theater, and I get it because I believed it too until 2016. But it's just not true. There was a white George Floyd. There will be others.

It's just one of these things. But that one, the cops, is so central to this debate that you have to do it carefully because people really don't want to hear you because they're afraid that if they listen, then on some level, they're racist. I've got groceries to buy. I've got my own career. You know, whoever's saying this might be right, but I can't take the risk of that because of the way George Floyd died. I understand that. But it means that it's very hard to have a real conversation about it. Eberhardt says in her in her same book, she's talking about the number of shootings of black men. And she says this from the book, when police kill unarmed black suspects, those deaths are associated with a significant dip in the mental health of blacks across the entire state where those killings occurred. And my first thought was that is the media's fault, because as a member of the media, I can tell you they're totally irresponsible with it. Yes, we should we should report these stories, but you don't put the tape on loop and lead the audience to believe that it really is an epidemic, that there are thousands of George Floyd's happening a year because it isn't true. And there's no there's no responsibility being taken by the media for creating that fear for stirring it, for creating, adding to what is now a very incredibly toxic atmosphere

for police who are out there. And it's getting more dangerous and disrespectful by the day toward them, which doesn't help in terms of recruiting good cops, right? Which is what we need. Keeping them in communities where black women and men want them, right? According to the polls. And the example that comes to mind is it just came out this week it hit the hit the news this week but it happened last month in april out of california we actually have a short sound bite of this where this woman the woman is black the police officer i i think he might be latino i'm not 100 sure um but listen to how polite this just listen to a little% sure. But listen to how polite this is. Just listen to a little bit of

this tape. Listen to how polite he is. Yeah, he's Latino. And listen to the way she's talking to him, what she's calling him. Take a listen. I have a right to record the police when they're harassing me. By all means, but you can't do it while you're driving. I wasn't texting or none of that. Do you have that picture? And you scared me and made me think you were going to murder me. Okay, well, I'm sorry you feel that way. Well, that's not just a feeling. You're a murderer. Okay. Can you zoom in on that for me, Jen?

Sure. Thank you. And I'm perfectly legal, and I'm a teacher. So there. Congratulations. You're a murderer. What's your last name? I can't see that there. Well, here you go, murderer. Stop shaking. Zoom in on that for there. Well, here you go murderer.

Zoom in on that for me. No, because you're scaring me. You're threatening to kill me and my son. He's only citing you for using your cell phone while you're driving. That's it. Here you go ma'am. Sign inside the red box right there. For him being a Mexican racist. What is that name? Gaso. Sign the citation ma'am. Here you go Mexican racist. You're always going to be a Mexican.

You'll never be white. You know that, right? You'll never be white, which is what you really want to be. OMG. Now that person, that's a type. You know, I mean, there are types of all races. She's a performer. And I don't mean literally, but she's a kind of a performance artist. But the trope that she's touching on there is something that a lot of Black people genuinely feel. A lot of Black people have been led to think by the media that they are in danger of being mauled and killed by cops in a way that white people aren't. And you know what? The most God-blessed joy is that that's not true. It's

good that that's not true. But a lot of people don't want to hear that good news because the idea is that to admit that good news is to not be sufficiently aware of how racism works and that therefore it puts you in bed with white supremacy to allow that things have gotten better. And that's the weird moment that we're in. But yeah, a lot of black people genuinely think this because it's what you see in the news. Why wouldn't you think that black men get killed and then white people just get off with a pat on the hand?

It's because you haven't seen what happens to the white equivalents of these multiple white equivalents killed in the exact same ways. There is a white version of every famous case that we know of that is something that happens to a black man. All the people pulled over, shot in the back while running away, shot in front of a convenience store, playing with a toy gun, playing with a BB gun in a Walmart. Every one of these things, there's a white equivalent. And yet you don't know. So of course, black people feel that we live under this burden from the cops. And of course, good thinking white people think the same thing and think they're doing us a favor by patting us on the head and telling us. And they don't think they're patting us on the head. They think they

are supporting us in what is a very genuine danger to us walking around in society. And isn't it the saddest thing? Although, frankly, ultimately, it's a good thing, I think. And isn't it the saddest thing? Although, frankly, ultimately, it's a good thing, I think. But isn't it the saddest thing that it's based on a lie? I'm glad it's not that way. But unfortunately, I can't share it with people without being told that I'm a jackass. Well, just to follow up on something, because what she said reminded me of something I read that you said. I'm not sure it's true that he can never be white. You had written something about this, about like the Irish and the Italians. Now there was discrimination against them.

That was kind of an interesting point. I'm not sure actually. What did I write? What is this one? You were saying that there are a lot of groups that have been discriminated against over time. And that, you know, the Irish didn't used to have it so great in this country and the Italians didn't used to have it so great in this country. Oh, actually, this is from the same Sam Harris podcast. And you said they became white and they did it without there being any grand psychosocial revolution in society. I would have said that. Yes.

Right. So what does that mean? I mean, you're obviously not literally, but like you're talking about getting past being somebody who's otherized, right? I mean, I'm guessing that's your meaning. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's an eccentric use of the word white, but we can definitely get past this. That can happen. And frankly, that woman in the car wouldn't quite know what to do with things if we did get past it. That's a problem. She's clearly staked her whole sense of her significance, her place, her reason for being on being a member of this victimized group. It's clearly where she gets her sense of comfort. And that's not rare. There are degrees of that in an awful lot of us these days.

And nevertheless, the truth is that we could get past this. There's a fashion to say, nope, because brown skin is processed as just so different, and there's this history in Africa, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't know that those people are basing that on fact as opposed to sentiment. And I think if we did the four things that I talked about and let some time go by, and it would not be anything like 100 years, I think it would be actually a couple of generations, then there would be differing conceptions. You can already tell how differently younger generations are processing all sorts of things. There's more flexibility than we like to think. But yeah, we have to start thinking about real change on the ground as opposed to thought

training that gives no sign of working in any significant way. A lot of people are thinking that the thought training is working because people will mouth the platitudes, but that's not how you really change minds. All of this is thinking that you've changed minds when really you've just made people afraid. You don't extinguish people's religious convictions or their intellectual convictions or their essence as people

by making them scared and making them mouth slogans. You just make them slightly broken people who have learned how to tell a lot of lies and then pass that on to their kids. What a great way to be an American. I want to give you the last word on this. Tim Scott got attacked last week for saying America is not a racist country.

Maxine Waters came out and said, every day we see this nation get more racist than anybody ever thought it could be. Your thoughts as the cranky liberal Democrat, the black man, your thoughts on America and on those sentiments. Maxine Waters is well-intentioned, but there's a bit of the performer in her. And she's also been around a while. And so her sense of how race works in America was formed in a time when her kind of rhetoric made more sense. I have respect for that. All of us freeze in time to an extent. I can guarantee that I will. And so that's her. Tim Scott was talking about degree, but we're encouraged to pretend that when it comes to race, it's all about simple opposition. So if there's any racism, then we are a racist country.

That's a lexicographical kind of sleight of hand that people engage in. There is racism, but is this a racist country? A lot of people who say that wouldn't last for a week in, frankly, most other countries of the world. And so we just need to be able to speak realistically. And the whole idea that if you even ask a question about racism, you're injuring people, because that's the issue. The idea is that you can't ask, let's have a conversation, because for you to even ask certain questions hurts Black people.

And the idea is, well, I shouldn't even have to explain. The problem with that is, once again, a performed fragility. It hurts me to be asked these questions. And therefore, the whole cycle continues. I was asked a question this person didn't understand. This systemically racist nation didn't make this person understand. And when, oh, when, when will it stop? As opposed to, why in the world do you need to be so exquisitely well understood? Why is it that the descendants of slaves at the end of the 20th century in something called the United States of America need to be exquisitely well understood? Our oppression has to be acknowledged by every citizen in the same way as everybody was responsible for just getting a vaccine. Everybody needs to be able to put their hand up and recite about, you know, a good 20 minutes on Black history. Why? No other

people in the history of species have ever requested this. Why us? Why are we so weak? Why are we so delicate? And how in the world can you present that as some kind of cognitive normality, some kind of human strength. It makes no sense. And I think that all of us, white, Black, Asian, Latino, and everything else, need to start being more honest, not only with Black people, but with ourselves. We need to have a more honest conversation about these things and treat Black people with the dignity that we deserve. And that means that sometimes we're wrong, sometimes we're exaggerating, and we don't need exquisite sensitivity. The very thought of it insults me. I don't need that any more than anybody else does. We have to start allowing our race perspectives to make sense. And folks, if a perspective on race that you're hearing doesn't

seem to make sense, don't decide that you're a racist or that you have internalized racism if you're a Black person. Allow yourself to make your own kind of sense and realize that in the real world, some people, even with good intentions, are going to call you names, but that you will survive and that a real conversation can only take place if we all realize that. Oh, I love that. We don't need exquisite sensitivity. That's so well said. We do, however, need to wangle the equipoise. I love it. I'm using it. And I hope so much you'll come back and we can continue this conversation. I'd love to, Megan. You're amazing. Thank you. Well, that was a fun time.

I love John McWhorter. Wow. Aren't we lucky to have minds like these to enlighten us? Like he's done so much work. He's so bright, so brilliant. And, you know, they help us. They help people like me from the public school to understand the big words and the big ideas, right? Think of the number of hours and years that it's taken to

accumulate that much wisdom. I just feel so blessed, truly blessed to have access to these guys and be able to ask them my questions. Anyway, and blessed to have you guys come along for the ride. Really appreciate doing this with you and learning with you. And we'll keep it up on Wednesday when we're going to have a show about whether trans athletes should be able to compete against cis girls, right? That's really the issue. It never really goes the other way. But should a trans girl, you know, born a boy, be able to transition from, let's say, 12 to 13 or 13 to 14, and that very year compete against biological girls. You know this is an issue. Connecticut has been sort of the center of this

because there were three girls who brought a lawsuit because they had been number one on the track team and suddenly fell to number three after two trans girls joined the squad, joined the team. And they're coming up. So you're going to hear directly from the girls who have lost this battle. They had a setback in court.

We'll hear from them. And we'll also hear from her attorney about where this goes from here. We're going to also talk to some medical professionals on what's real. Like, what's real? Because the advocates will tell you, you can sort of get rid of all the natural physical advantages that a biological boy would have such that it's fair. And then we'll have somebody else that challenges that. So you're going to hear both sides. It's going to be a great discussion.

I've been looking forward to this for months now. It's Wednesday. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.