The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved: Justice Demands the Payment of Reparations for the Victims of Slavery and their Descendants

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Are the descendants of slaves owed compensation? On this episode of the Munk Debates Podcast, economist and author Dr. Julianne Malveaux and Quillette columnist Coleman Hughes debate the motion Be it resolved, justice demands the payment of reparations for the victims of slavery and their descendants. SOURCES: CBS News, C-Span, Washington PostBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesman to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Welcome to the Monk Debates podcast. Our mission every episode is to provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day, free of spin, focused on the facts and animated by smart conversation. The goal of this podcast is to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind about the issue up for debate.

Today's debate, be it resolved. Justice demands the payment of reparation. for the victims of slavery and their descendants. Black people in America are the descendants of Africans kidnapped and transported to the United States with the explicit complicity of the U.S. government and every arm of the United States lawmaking and law enforcement infrastructure. Subsequent discrimination directed against blacks is an injustice that must be formally acknowledged and addressed.

That was Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of the U.S. Congress, making the case for an official government study into reparations payments to the descendants of African slaves. Advocates of reparations argue they are essential to addressing the moral stain of slavery. Not only are reparations compensation for the indentured servitude suffered by previous generations, they are an important acknowledgement of the continuing economic impact of the institution of slavery on the lives of millions of black Americans today. Opponents of reparations say, Americans should not have to pay for the sins of their ancestors. The past should be left in the past, according to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

I don't think preparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea. We tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war about past landmark civil rights legislation. Reparations detractors argue they risk inflaming racial tensions even further and don't meaningfully address important issues facing Black Americans like mass incarceration, racial discrimination, and a lack of economic opportunity. On this installment of the Monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, justice demands the payment of reparations to the victims of slavery and their descendants. Joining us now are two people who've testified before the U.S. Congress on this very issue, reparations. Arguing for the motion is

economist, author, and commentator, Julianne Malvo. Arguing against the motion is Colette columnist and podcaster Coleman Hughes. Julianne, Coleman, welcome to the Monk Debate podcast. Good to be here. Thank you. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. As per convention, we're going to have the speaker arguing in favor of the motion provide their opening statement first. So, Julianne, I'm going to put two minutes on the clock and turn the proverbial microphone over to you. Let's have your opening remarks. Thank you. At the end of enslavement in 1865, formerly enslaved people were promised 40 acres and a mule. It was very clear that from the first enslaved people came here in 1619 until 1865, and in some cases, even later than that, labor was extracted from them

for no pay. People worked for generation and got nothing. So at the end of enslavement, they were pretty much on their own. There was a freedman's bank that failed. Many would say it failed because of poor investments, but those poor investments came from companies like Chase and others. It did not come because of black incompetence. In any case, at the time that enslavement ended, the 40 acres of the mule were supposed to be to get enslaved people started. That did not happen. A few people got it, but most didn't. There was a reconstruction authority established. It was almost impotent. essentially people of African descent were actively and constantly denied the opportunity to accumulate. Then after Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws were passed again denying people the opportunity to accumulate.

Formerly enslaved people did accumulate despite that until Jim Crow laws happened. In 1880, the ratio of wealth, black to white was $1 for every $36 white dollars. By 1910, that had dropped to $1 for every $13 white dollars. People were making progress, but economic envy prevented them from accumulating. more. As a result, the reparations movement is really about restoring that which people lost. And lynching was a part of this. Linching basically was a deterrent to economic accumulation. So there's so many reasons then that reparations make sense. We have a wealth gap that persists, that began at the end of enslavement even before that. So it is time, it's overtime for this

country to pay black folks what they are owed. And I think that should happen sooner rather than later. support HR 40. H.R. 40 simply calls for a study of how reparations might happen this country. Julianne, thank you for those opening remarks. So, Coleman, our resolution before us, be a resolved, justice demands the payment of reparations for the victims of slavery and their descendants. You're arguing against the motion. Let's put two minutes on the clock for you. Your opening remarks, please. So I actually agree with everything that Dr. Malvo said about the long history of injustice. against black people in this country. The question is, how do we make that better today? So if we're talking about broad structural reforms, for example, criminal justice reform, something I'm very much in favor of, we're not going to get these reforms passed if we base them on the logic of

reparations. If you think of the First Step Act, which disproportionately benefited black federal inmates, something I very much supported, if that had been framed as a Prison Reparations Act, even though it was the same policy, it would have been dead on arrival in Congress. So my argument is never against progressive policies themselves. It's basing them on the logic of a repayment for history. The end goal for me, and I think we share this, is to make the wound of slavery feel like it's been healed. But there's a treadmill effect, which is to say that every effort to compensate then gets

to fine down to zero. And affirmative action was originally intended as a compensation for Jim Crow. It used to be called compensatory justice. Now we've defined that downed to zero. You know, national apologies for slavery that happened in 2008 and 2009, several different states. These didn't really work. So the idea that the next thing is going to work, I think, is confused. And what we should do is really focus on improving people's lives now.

Okay. Thank you, Coleman. Just before I have both of you kind of reflect on what you've heard from each other in terms of your opening statements, Coleman's in a sense saying that there are real wounds of slavery. They could and should and need to be solved, but reparations is not the right vehicle to achieve that outcome. In fact, it could be a step back in terms of the political situation and building consensus to deal with the real problems facing black Americans. Julianne, you've painted a powerful picture of not just the effects of slavery on the people who are actually indentured, but how the reverberations of slavery, the traumas of the institution of slavery continued on for decades and centuries afterwards, and that these need to be taken into account in the moral calculus that we approach this issue with. So, Julianne, give us your quick response to Coleman's key opening arguments.

Well, first of all, affirmative action was never seen as reparations. Affirmative action was seen as quite something else. I do believe, I agree with Coleman about progressive public policy, but that still does not fix the past. And we end up with the scars of the past in terms of the wealth gap, the unemployment rate gap and all the other gaps, health gap. NARC, the National African American Reparations Commission, is not just looking at dollars for individuals, but also look at ways to repair communities, to repair health standards. status to repair communities in terms of gentrification, other things. This sounds very broad-reaching, but it is because enslave it was a very broad-reaching institution.

So I don't get Coleman's dismissiveness of reparations. And, you know, national apology, whatever. That was done, but it's not a big thing because no action accompanied it. Any apology has to come with accompaniment. I disagree with his approach, although I appreciate that. the fact that he does see history the same way that I do. So, Coleman, what's your initial thoughts to the arguments that you've heard from Professor Melvo?

I think if you and I looked at the health problems facing Americans right now, or if we were to look at the criminal justice system, I bet our list of what the problems are would be overlapping substantially. The moment we try to make any of these problems better, whether it's healthcare or criminal justice, for example, we're talking about writing bills and getting them passed. And we're talking about making political arguments that truly make moral sense. So if we're talking about health care, for example, are we going to premise our argument for universal health care on a reparations-based claim?

Or are we going to say, people are just owed this because it's the right thing. to do regardless of whether their ancestors were enslaved or not. If we're going to talk about getting out of a circumstance where nonviolent drug offenders are going to prison, are we going to premise that argument on the fact that their ancestors were enslaved or on the, I think, much stronger argument that nonviolent drug offenders just shouldn't be going to prison, regardless of their race, regardless of their ancestry. It's a better moral argument. It's a better political argument. You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved, Justice Dimmest, demands the payment of reparations for the victims of slavery and their descendants.

If you like this podcast, make sure to check out our other episodes, including debates on everything from impeachment to social media to Iran to the threat of China, all free to download or stream on our website, monkdebates.com. Let's rejoin the debate in progress. Be it resolved. Justice demands the payment of reparations for the victims of slavery and their descendants. So Professor Melvo, why do you think that the moral imperatives of reparations should, in a sense, trump what Coleman sees as, you know, very challenging political realities that you face in the United States right now, a polarized society, a society that's, in a sense looking for cultural issues like reparations to clash over?

Is there a danger here that the moral imperative drowns out your, the ability to achieve meaningful reform on important issues? You know, reparations and progressive public policy are not mutually exclusive. You can have both at the same time. The reparations argument really talks about what has been lost and what must be repaired. The progressive public policy argument, universal health care prison reform, talks about the present and the injustices that are, some of which are a function of enslavement, such as the whole prison industrial complex, which basically has its roots in enslavement. But in any case, that's good public policy to say that people should not be going to jail for 30 years for a couple of joints.

So I think that Coleman seems to just have an aversion to the word reparations. And I think the whole notion of being politically pragmatic is why we're in the situation in this country as we are today. There are too many, not only white people, but also black people who don't understand the reality of enslavement and is reversed. If you go to parts of the South, some people still think that the South won the Civil War. I'm laughing, but it's literally true. It's often taught in the schools that this was about states' rights. It was not about enslavement. And you can get all kinds of arguments to basically distort history.

But our nation needs to know the history, needs to know why people are demanding reparations, needs to know what's happened to people. It takes a very evil brain to figure out not only enslavement, but 4,000 lynchings in this country. It takes a very evil brain to invent the implements of enslavement. This was evil. It was pure evil. And it's at the very roots of our country. You can't fix it unless you begin to address it.

So, Coleman, you know, here in Canada, for instance, we've just gone through a long process of attempting to reconcile with our first nations, our Aboriginal communities. And part of that has been an acknowledgement and addressing, including financial remuneration to the victims of what were called residential schools. These were state-run schools that the children of aboriginals were put into against their will. You know, there's many examples around the world where societies have acknowledged wrongs and said, you know, compensation well doesn't solve those wrongs. it is an important part of an acknowledgement of a healing process that you've stated just now is something that you think is critical to this debate, healing the wounds of slavery. Part of why this discussion is tricky is because some people are really very comfortable with the notion of just a check, a straight-up check, someone like Tanahasi Coates or the economist

Sandy Dherty. Other people really think a check is focusing on the wrong thing, and we should be going for more broad structural reforms passed in the spirit of reparations. But in terms of the sort of spiritual harm and the epistemic harm, the erasure of history and learning our history, no doubt, I'm as appalled as anyone as at the textbooks that try to minimize the centrality of slavery to the Civil War. And luckily, I think that's really on the way out more and more. Again, I do think there is a treadmill effect here. There is, you know, the national apologies for slavery seem to have have done little or nothing. Eight different states that, you know, of the most slaveholding states have independently issued apologies.

You know, we now have a- While they still fly this Confederate flag or some variation thereof. Sure. And, you know, we now have a national museum in the nation's capital dedicated to African-American history. with extensive exhibits on slavery that cost half a billion dollars to build and gets millions of visitors a year. Those things were good, but they seem to have done nothing to sort of ameliorate this wound for people. We could build 10 more museums, each one deeper and deeper and sort of more focused on the massive harm done to black people. And it seems like many people would still say,

we've done nothing to acknowledge the crime. And so I'm wondering. But then, Coleman, why, I mean, just give us a, your kind of focused answer on why, why not cash reparations then? Why isn't that a step change in dealing with this trauma and an acknowledgement of responsibility beyond, as you say, the empty words of an apology? I think just as a matter of principle, cash payments would be due to direct victims of a national crime. But when you're talking about, you know, the median black person in America is like 32 years old, roughly. I'm 23, a descendant of slaves as well. If you're talking about that,

generations removed, you have to think about the prudential and practical considerations at that point. You know, let's say every black American got a thousand dollar paycheck, which is kind of insultingly small for slavery. I mean, you do that math a thousand times 40 million. You know, and what is that? 40 billion, right? Like any, any amount that would even seem to begin to be appropriate morally, that even would begin to seem commensurate with the enormity of the crime, would be absolutely deranging politically and in terms of budget. We know that straight-up checks are not the answer to that. Given how many structural problems we have to solve in America right now, that just seems short-sighted and really unwise.

Okay, I think this is a great segue to Professor Melvo, just to come in, Professor, and indicate, you know, are cash payments part of how you think about reparations? And in the context of Coleman's remarks just now, is that somehow an insult to the magnitude, the scope of slavery's actual effects? Because that cash payment could never truly reflect the harm caused by that horrible institution. A cash payment certainly could not ameliorate the harm. At the same time, a cash payment might close some of the gap. My approach is to have a cash payment plus, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, the law may not make you love me, but it will keep you from lynching me. And so, you know, the laws can't change some things, but power can change some things. And part of that power is cash. Wealth is power. And African Americans have $1 for every $10 the whites have. That's ridiculous. And the reason is very structural. You also see a number of things in the financial services. You see predatory lending. You see rent-to-owned. Just a number of things. In a predatory capitalist system, people are trying to extort surplus value.

And those who are most vulnerable are most easily exploited. HR40 simply sets up a commission to study this and see how it may be actualized. My feeling about HR 40 is once legislation is passed, we would really go around the country and have these conversations and basically do education. Again, so many people do not know history, do not know the nature of exploitation. Some people don't even know that we took land from Native American people. That's our original sin. There's basically the exploitation of Native American. A second sin, of course, is enslavement. And look at how many people got wealthy because of enslavement. I mean, if you think about it, enslavement was the basis of the

bond market. Slavers basically borrowed from the value of their slaves. And so the bond market really is based on that. And that's something that few have come to grips with. We really need to do the right thing. And the right thing is to both pay people in order to close a wealth gap and look at structure. It's not either or it's both end. You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved. Justice demands the payment of reparations for the victims of slavery and their descendants. Arguing for the motion is economist and author Julianne Malvo. Arguing against the motion is Quillac columnist Coleman Hughes.

Coleman, when you testify in front of Congress about Bill H.R. 40, you indicated that you felt that reparations played into a narrative that positioned black Americans as victims, as opposed to individuals with their own agency. Can you expand on your thinking there and what you were getting at as you testified to Congress on that specific point? If I look around the world at multi-ethnic societies that have oppressed minorities in various ways, I don't see any examples of a group that rose from relative poverty to affluence primarily by adopting a stance of victimhood and political demands. It suggests something about the disutility of the victimhood mindset. Their narrative of always being a victim, even if those grievances are valid, is actually

unhelpful in terms of their own success. If you're in academia, you're encouraged to take that stance. If you're writing, but like in everyday life, it's a very kind of common sense attitude that things go wrong. You press forward. You don't always focus on the ways in which you've been harmed. You know, I'm not a victim. I don't think black people are victims.

I think we're victors. We managed to get through enslavement. We managed to get through Jim Crow. We managed to get through all of the things that happened to us. That's not the point. No one is claiming victimhood. What we are saying is we were harmed and we want to be made whole. Doesn't make anybody a victim.

It means that people simply want to be made whole. If somebody hits your car and you go to get justice, that does not make you a victim, it means you want to get paid because your car was hit. If somebody steals your land and you go to court to get it back, that doesn't make you a victim. So the victim could argument, I think you've used that argument. I heard you use it at the hearings and I thought it was absolutely wrong and I still do. People are not encouraged to be victims. People want justice. Okay, let's bring Coleman in. Yeah, I just think the analogy there presupposes the intergenerational group. as a single unit.

It's not, yeah, if you hit my car, obviously I'm going to be, want to be made whole by you and I'm right to. But if your grandfather hits my grandfather's car, our legal system does not have a recourse for me to get damages from you. That's what this is. Only because of statute of limitations. If indeed you took my land, I can document it was my land, you took it, you die, your kids get it, I can still sue your kids.

maybe, statute of limitations, but you have passed the benefit of your stealing to your children and to your children's children. And that is, there is nothing about a victim to say, you're going to pay me my money. There's nothing about a victim that says, I want justice. And that's what reparations is about. It's about justice. It's not about victimhood. I take strong objection to the use of the term victim. When I look at our people and the amazing things that they've done, despite all odds, but there still is injustice and the injustice is manifested in the wealth gap. Yeah, Coleman, let's talk about the wealth gap because this statistic, you know, the black Americans have one-tenth the savings of white Americans. You know, we understand now through sociology that poverty is an intergenerational disease.

That if you, in a previous generation, have experienced really challenging life outcomes, that the effects of that reverberate on through multiple generations. So why wouldn't you see cash payments around reparations as a way to kind of address? that that multi-generational effect of wealth confiscation, wealth appropriation, that black Americans suffered profoundly in the 18th and 19th centuries. I think the problems of poverty are in general much more complicated than a simple lack of cash. If you think about Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, that was an extremely costly expansion of government jobs programs, lots of welfare checks. And this administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. For the war against poverty will not be one here in Washington.

It must be one in the field, in every private home, in every public office. I would say we waged war on poverty, and in most cases poverty, That was the beginning of the crime wave. The problems of poverty are much deeper than a mere lack of cash. If we're talking about reparations checks to all black Americans, you're missing most poor people in the country and you're giving checks to many people who aren't poor. That is a separate conversation about if we should expand the social safety net, give more cash to the poor.

That's a different policy than reparations. It's a wiser one because it's based on class rather than race. I don't know why it's wiser to avoid what was done to black people. Now, I'm glad you pointed out that poverty is not a black thing. Two-thirds of the poor are white. But at the same time, I really think that basically you're papering over what happened. You're papering over what should happen in response to it. And when you say, well, the divisiveness that you expect to happen from reparations is here with us now.

So I just think that one of the ways, one of the ways that we basically ameliorate the effects of enslavement are the present. What do we have in this country that is a survivor of enslavement? Some of that can be fixed through reparations. Not all of it. Certainly not all of it, but certainly some of it. It also does speak to the nature of apology. Apology with nothing else is simple words. Apology really does have to be coupled with repair.

And then finally, the question of the class distribution of the black community, while worth noting, there are African-American people who, indeed, are quite wealthy. Many of those also favorite reparations, but they say if they got a check, they donate it to the NAACP, to some other organization that's fighting for social and economic justice. Coleman, just keep you on this topic of what's happening in America right now. You have some interesting experiments with reparations going on currently. Georgetown University has created a fund that will acknowledge the extent to which the university benefited from the slave trade and will be used to create programs and initiatives that benefit those who in turn were subjected to,

indentured servitude. We also had the city of Chicago. There's a precedent where victims of crime, police crime, received restitution. Chicago's city council voted today to pay five and a half million dollars to victims of police torture that date back from the 1970s into the 90s. The city has already spent more than 100 million after losing some lawsuits and settling others. The city of Chicago as part of their acknowledgement of this set up a program to provide cash restitution to those victims and their families to acknowledge the harm that was caused. So let me just answer his question briefly, if you don't mind. I do think there's a difference between public and private.

If a private institution wants to do something internal to acknowledge its role in the slave trade, that's for them, in my opinion, to sort out. when you're talking about the government and the role between citizen and state, it becomes different. Practicalities, political practicalities become very important. As for police brutality, you know, the moment one sees the video of, you know, Daniel Schaver, the white kid getting shot with his hands up, is the moment you must acknowledge that people ought to be made whole if they're victims of police brutality, period. That can't just be a racial thing. But it visits us racially.

The police brutality visits us racially. I'm sorry the white kid got shot and certainly his family should sue the police and get whatever they can get. But the fact is that from an incident's perspective, there are more black folks, black men but also black women who are brutalized by the police. And so there is a racial component to this. And to deny it is really to insult the people who have been the victim of racist violence, racist murders. No, no. I'm not, I think... I'm talking, Colman, please. Please let you finish. Please let me finish. I want to basically go back and look at the difference between federal, state, local, and private industry reparations.

The federal government passed laws to disadvantaged black people. The federal government encouraged enslavement. That's why the federal government owes. State governments also, some state governments are looking at this. California is looking at this. There are a couple cities in Illinois that are looking at it. at this, or look at what they did that cause things like the wealth gap that encourage things like racial exploitation. And then, of course, we can show that there are corporations,

universities, and others that benefited from enslavement. I am very proud of the students at Georgetown, but understand what they've done. It's very extraordinary because the university hasn't even done that. What the students at Georgetown have done is they voted to add on a certain amount of money, I think is $30 or $40 to their student fees to be used for reparations. what they're calling reparations, they can identify some of the direct descendants of those enslaved people who were sold to make Georgetown University possible. They're also looking at ways to benefit the community in general. I think that this was a courageous step by these young people, and I wish more people would emulate them. But whether you're talking federal, state,

local, or individual institution, the fact is that African American people have been systematically oppressed. That doesn't make them victims. That makes us victor. because we're still here, here, loud and ready to demand, yes, demand reparations. You're listening to the Monk Debates podcast. Be it resolved, justice demands the payment of reparations for the victims of slavery and their descendants. Arguing for the motion is economist and author Julianne Malvo. Arguing against the motion is Quillac columnist Coleman Hughes. Let's rejoin the debate in progress. going to closing statements. I want to ask both of you a question. Dr. Malvo, maybe Coleman hasn't

changed your mind here, but are there a few of his points that you take most seriously in terms of having to fashion your counter argument? I do think that the point he makes about divisiveness and the political realities. I mean, we haven't even gotten the majority of Congress to co-sponsor HR 40. So I believe the political realities are real. But if you look at, let's say, 1840 when people wanted the federal government to abolish enslavement. Everyone said that couldn't happen and people kept fighting for it. So while I think the political realities are real, I think it's also real to continue to fight for reparations.

And I tell you, I am as firmly committed to this as I am to anything else. I will also say that in terms of future generations, whether there are reparations are not, the reparations fight informs young people of what folks are willing to do to get justice. I don't want anyone to see themselves as a victim. Quite frankly, I think of black people as philanthropists because we built this country and didn't get paid for. We gave our labor. So that's my approach. But I do appreciate that one point. So, Coleman, which of Dr. Malvo's arguments do you think warrants the most consideration when people are engaging with this debate and trying to understand what are the important issues and what should we be focusing this debate around? I would say probably

the depth of the historical injury. Most people don't know, and we haven't even talked about all of the examples of black people being harmed by their white neighbors, the U.S. government, state governments, et cetera. So I think the most compelling point is simply the listing of historical wrongs and acknowledging the depth of those wrongs. Thank you, Coleman. So let's move to closing statements. And Julian Melvo, I'm going to put two minutes on the clock. just for you to sum up, either respond to some of Coleman's key points or reiterate what you want listeners to take away from this conversation today. Okay, thank you. I want listeners to hear what happened to black people. A lot of people look at the wealth gap, the unemployment rate gap, and say, gee, black people aren't trying. Black people have been trying. They say black people aren't saving. That's why you don't have wealth. But if we saved every discretionary dollar we,

had, that would not close the wealth gap. This is endemic, is systematic, and it needs to be addressed. And dealing with reparations, both in terms of thinking about it and talk about it, but also in terms addressing it, is one of the ways of dealing with this. I want your listeners, if they're not history buffs, to become at least historically knowledgeable about the reality of lynching and what it did to black people. Black people couldn't get loans for banks. When John Johnson and started Ebony Magazine, he had to hock his mother's furniture to get the loan, whereas

they wouldn't give it to him for a business idea. The wrongs, reverberate, and reparations is one of the many ways to make it right. It's social and economic justice. It is a moral imperative, and any white person who does not believe in reparations or in repair

is really saying, I'm content to live off the benefits of exploitation. Because you didn't have to have slaves to be, to be, to benefit from enslavement, and the very economic foundation of our country is built on enslavement. Thank you, Professor Melvo. Okay, we're going to give the last word to you, Coleman.

I'm going to put two minutes on the clock, and please sum up this debate for us. What do you want listeners to take away from this conversation? I don't think the debate over reparations is a referendum over whether black people have been uniquely wronged throughout American history. That should go without saying. To me, the problems of 2020 are so, so complex and so different than the problems of the past. Yes, there's a big wealth gap between blacks and whites. There's also huge wealth gaps between other groups that are never talked about.

And there's no wealth gap bigger than the one between the poor and the rich. And if we're talking about what makes sense from a policy proposal standpoint, from a moral and political standpoint, the idea that you bound a group of people by a historical wrong that is every day receding further and further into the past, and you make a claim only to them specifically, that's a dead end for us. Coleman, Julianne, thank you so much for this civil and substantive debate today. This is a difficult issue. It's one of the most trenchant and compelling public and social issues that is part of the public debate today. You've both approached this with great civility and a sense of history and a willingness to listen. So it's been a real contribution to this debate. On behalf of the Monk Debates, I want to thank you both. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank Julian Malvo and Coleman Hughes for participating in this thoughtful debate. You certainly gave us a lot to think about. The Monk Debates podcast is a place for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change to religion, to geopolitics, to the future of human progress, visit our website, monkdebates.com. You can also find show notes on today's debate along with a full transcript. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public

debate one conversation at a time. I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation. Redyard Griffith. and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. The president of Antica Productions is Stuart Cox. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thanks again for listening.