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Systemic Racism & the Data | Wilfred Reilly & Roderick Graham with John Wood, Jr. — Transcript

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0:03uh we can go ahead
0:04and kick things off and i'd like to
0:06start first of all um
0:08by thanking our partners for tonight's
0:11event
0:11uh including the the national institute
0:14for civil
0:14discourse nicd the national institute
0:17for civil discourse is a non-partisan
0:19organization based at the university of
0:21arizona
0:22to promote healthy and civil political
0:24debate they are our running partner at
0:26braver angels for all of our american
0:28public forum events and we are very
0:30grateful to them
0:32and our special partner for tonight is
0:341776 unites
0:36uh 1776 is an assembly of independent
0:39voices
0:40who uphold our country's authentic
0:41founding virtues and values 1776 seeks
0:44to offer alternative perspectives
0:46that celebrate the progress america has
0:47made on delivering its promise of
0:49equality and opportunity
0:50and highlight the resilience of its
0:52people our focus is on solving problems
0:54uh 1776 in full disclosure that is an
0:57organization
0:58uh that i advise for and uh one of our
1:00speakers mr wilford riley is a
1:02contributing scholar to that project as
1:04well
1:04and so now uh quick introductions
1:08for our speakers we are very grateful to
1:10always tonight
1:11uh wilfred riley will is an associate
1:14professor of political science at
1:15kentucky state university
1:17and the author of the book taboo 10
1:19facts you can't talk about
1:20hate crime hoax and the 50 million
1:23dollar question
1:24he is currently working on the upcoming
1:26project uh quote alt wrongs an american
1:29case against racial nationalism
1:31unquote as well as sketching out a book
1:33looking at the transgender
1:34gender fluid and other kin communities
1:36and the idea of flexible identity
1:38riley has published pieces in academic
1:40questions commentary colette and a
1:42number of other journals and magazines
1:44his research interests include
1:46international relations and the
1:47prevention of war
1:48contemporary american race relations and
1:50the use of modern quantitative methods
1:52to test
1:53sacred cow theories such as the
1:55existence of widespread white privilege
1:57off work he enjoys dogs archery
1:59basketball asian cooking
2:00and beer will it's good to have you here
2:04and i appreciate your balance of
2:05interest um roger graham
2:08rod is an associate professor of
2:09sociology at old dominion university
2:11he is the coordinator of the
2:13university's cyber criminology program
2:15most of his current research is focused
2:17on digital life online
2:19he teaches cyber criminology research
2:21methods and racial inequality
2:23he is a contributor to the conversation
2:24arc digital in the conversation
2:27rod's first book entitled
2:28african-american digital practices
2:30was about how black people use
2:31technology to overcome racial inequality
2:34his second book was one of the first
2:35textbooks on cyber crime entitled
2:38cyber crime and digital deviance uh
2:41roger graham wilfred riley welcome to
2:44you both it's great to have you guys
2:45here tonight
2:46thank you great to be here okay so folks
2:49it's a heavy topic
2:50and so let's jump in uh will uh i should
2:53have told you this but we have nominated
2:55you my friend
2:56uh to get this conversation going and so
2:59uh go ahead and uh each speaker folks
3:02will be giving an opening opening
3:04statement to start with uh we'll go
3:06ahead and give us your opening
3:07presentation here
3:08and uh yeah let's get the ball going all
3:11right
3:12so yeah great to be here john i've
3:14enjoyed working with you with a 1776 rod
3:17we've had a couple conversations online
3:19good to see a group of people and
3:22especially at the top bar to some extent
3:23black men
3:25intelligently discussing these
3:26controversial topics
3:28so getting to the point my basic claim
3:30here is
3:31very simple although it'll doubtless be
3:33very controversial
3:35um the concept itself has some value
3:38but most examples and even definitions
3:41of
3:41systemic racism in my experience
3:44don't stand up to any kind of rigorous
3:47empirical analysis
3:49um and what i mean by that i think as a
3:51quant um is that there are fairly few
3:54systems today where a black or
3:56asian individual for example would be
3:58treated dramatically
4:00differently in 2020 from an identically
4:03qualified
4:04white individual based only on the
4:06variable of
4:07race after everything else that
4:10sometimes
4:11lumped together as subtle bias is in
4:13fact separated and adjusted for
4:15and analyzed so obviously i want to make
4:18the point
4:19that no one denies the existence of
4:21racism
4:22there clearly is individual racism
4:25prejudice or antagonism directed against
4:27members of a different
4:29racial or ethnic population this is one
4:31of the oldest
4:32human vices and we in the west over the
4:35past hundred years
4:37have managed to add a genetic gloss to
4:40this ancient demon
4:42and obviously there have historically
4:44been at least some
4:45systems constructed on the basis of
4:47widely shared
4:49individual racist attitudes so during
4:51segregation in the u.s south for example
4:53the era of jim crow
4:55um a black person a white person in many
4:58or most cases a native american
4:59individual
5:01would be forced to buy a home or even
5:04drink water
5:05in a very specific way
5:08literally determined by the color of
5:11their skin
5:12but that's not what scholar activists in
5:152020 very
5:16often mean when they talk about systemic
5:19racism
5:20very very often and i'll cite the
5:21articles as we go back and forth during
5:23this conversation
5:24they simply mean any facially neutral
5:27system
5:27such as the sat exam that produces
5:30different outcomes for different groups
5:32of people
5:33so preparing for this and just training
5:35as a scholar reading through candy and
5:37angelo
5:38classic peggy mcintosh the other major
5:40pieces on point
5:41the basic claim of the systemic racism
5:44school
5:45is that there are that there must be
5:48hidden
5:48current biases within most american
5:51systems
5:52of the kind i just described uh just
5:54pulling up a standard definition from
5:56wikipedia or britannica of systemic
5:58racism you get this
6:00uh systemic slash institutional racism
6:03is a form of actual racism that is
6:06embedded as normal practice within
6:08society
6:09it leads to such issues as
6:10discrimination in criminal justice
6:13employment housing health care
6:16political power and education among
6:18other issues
6:19and in virtually every journal piece
6:21i've ever read about this
6:23the great piece of evidence that is
6:25given for systemic racism
6:26is performance gaps between groups so
6:30for example all groups actually do
6:32fairly well
6:33by this point by global standards but
6:35there are obvious score gaps on the sat
6:38exam
6:39um the average black kid gets a 9.50
6:42native americans about the same
6:44uh hispanics get a 970 on average that's
6:46a mean average
6:48but whites get an 1100 or an 11 10 on
6:51average in a typical year
6:52and the question has been asked what
6:54could this be but racism we hear
6:56almost annually in higher ed major
6:59papers denouncing the test as culturally
7:01biased
7:02and quite a few scholars have been
7:04extremely blunt
7:05in saying that the only two ways to
7:07explain these gaps are one
7:09acknowledging this subtle systemic
7:11racism or two
7:13being a bigot or a racist yourself
7:16so dr kendy ibram kendi argues that the
7:19only two possible explanations are one
7:22subtly but definitely biased systems or
7:25two
7:25what as i recall he calls permanent
7:27inferiority on the part of groups like
7:29blacks and other people of color
7:32and i i see where he's coming from as a
7:34black man i feel that argument as the
7:36saying goes
7:37we all must oppose racism but the
7:39problem with it is that it completely
7:41ignores
7:42probably the largest perspective on the
7:44center right
7:45in social science and in the business
7:47literature
7:48what i call quantitative culturalism
7:51it ignores thomas soul amy chua
7:54jason riley no relation great guy though
7:57john
7:58mcwhorter sander and taylor heather
8:00mcdonald the thurnstroms
8:02dickens and flynn when you get into iq
8:04and test scores just on and on
8:06so the reality and this is kind of my
8:08core point here
8:10is that adjusting for changeable
8:12situational and cultural characteristics
8:15like
8:15study time family structure just plain
8:19living in the south in the case of for
8:21example standardized testing
8:23eliminates most of the gaps that
8:25activists attribute to racism
8:27and racists attribute to genetics so
8:30i think that most quantitative political
8:32scientists and i wouldn't go quite this
8:33far by the way
8:34but would say that the entire systemic
8:36racism argument would collapse if you do
8:39either of two things
8:40i believe this is schneiderman and
8:42carmine's all that could be an error
8:43about this two-parter but one
8:45move the debate over to any groups
8:47beyond american blacks and whites for
8:49example asian-americans generally
8:51quote-unquote beat both of those groups
8:53or two adjust for any major non-racial
8:57variables like the ones i just mentioned
8:59average age for an ethnic group father
9:02present
9:03crime rate if we're discussing criminal
9:04justice and so on
9:06so in one sentence i'm not saying that
9:08the bloody history of the usa
9:10didn't affect where racial groups are on
9:13average today
9:14that would be crazy but i am saying that
9:17there is fairly little
9:18current effect of racism within
9:20institutions if you will
9:22if we compare black white and asian guys
9:25with the same credentials and then
9:28adjust for obvious factors like
9:29affirmative action effect
9:31and that's important in the usa last
9:34year
9:34all of the wealthiest groups in the
9:36country were made up of dark-skinned
9:37minority immigrants
9:39east indians nigerians
9:41japanese-americans
9:43filipino-americans lebanese-americans
9:45this simply isn't contested
9:47so during the conversation that follows
9:49our little our intro speaking
9:51and i think rod and john and i all
9:53agreed we're not calling it a hostile
9:55debate we want to we want to learn
9:56but i in particular want to do four
9:58things
10:00first i want to acknowledge the obvious
10:02research showing racism
10:04at least on the part of individuals no
10:06one on the american center right denies
10:08this
10:08rod will i'm sure had some studies here
10:10himself
10:12but then i want to point out some of the
10:13obvious flaws in those studies which are
10:15rarely discussed
10:17and note how the country has responded
10:19to racism
10:20so in 1954 the usa desegregated
10:23you can say began to in the south they
10:26didn't get there immediately but the
10:27process was already
10:28well along before that point in the
10:30north as a balance
10:32uh in 1964 we passed a civil rights act
10:35that made most forms of serious racism
10:37actually illegal
10:39since 1967 pro-minority affirmative
10:42action has been the law of the land
10:44that sentence actually bears some
10:46repeating and i'll get back to it um the
10:48philadelphia plan
10:49began in 1967 we've had 53 years
10:54of pro-minority policies in major fields
10:57like my discipline of higher education
10:59so thirdly in the context of those facts
11:02i want to point out what happens to a
11:04lot of the major claims of systemic
11:07or institutional racism if you simply
11:09adjust for non-race
11:11variables so in my most recent book
11:14taboo 10 facts you can't talk about
11:16i look extensively at income and arrest
11:18rates for example
11:20and as i noted recently in a tv
11:22interview black americans make about 85
11:25percent as much
11:26individual income is whites so that's a
11:28sizable 15 percent gap and that is
11:30invariably in the sociological
11:32literature i've read
11:33attributed to quote-unquote subtle
11:35racism
11:36but the gap in fact entirely disappears
11:39if you adjust for just four things one
11:41is age
11:43the most common age for a black man is
11:4527
11:46the most common age for a white man is
11:4858
11:490.2 whether or not someone lives in the
11:51south wages and salaries are much lower
11:54for all groups in the southern third of
11:56the united states more than half of all
11:57african americans live there
11:59third years not quality at all of
12:02education
12:03and fourth basic test scores making
12:06those basic adjustments in any standard
12:08regression model
12:09reduces the disparity to about one or
12:11two percent which may in fact be the
12:13effect of pure racism
12:14but similarly the quote-unquote new jim
12:18crow
12:18gap in incarceration or for that matter
12:20in police shootings
12:22almost completely disappears if we
12:24adjust for crime rate
12:26as reported of course not by potentially
12:28biased police departments
12:30but by crime victims um there's an
12:33annual document that does
12:34exactly this it's based on intimate
12:37anonymous
12:38uh same race interviewer talks with more
12:40than 200 000 people
12:42it's called the bjs or the bear of
12:44justice statistics report
12:45and according to that document in 2018
12:48the african-american violent crime rate
12:51was roughly 2.4 times the white violent
12:54crime rate
12:55this almost entirely explained uh any
12:57disparities in arrests and it more than
13:00explained disparities in police units
13:02so again we still see some five or ten
13:05percent gaps
13:06specifically in sentencing life is not
13:08yet perfect no one denies their
13:10individual bad officers
13:12but the claim that there's an epidemic
13:13of police violence against black people
13:15based on subtle
13:16bias throughout systems a phrase i've
13:18heard often once you actually adjust for
13:21what a cj a criminal justice scholar
13:23might call
13:24density of crime that just doesn't
13:26appear to be true
13:28and scholars i've spoken to and worked
13:30with roland fryer the michigan state
13:32team heather mcdonald at all
13:33have come to this conclusion over and
13:35over and over again
13:36so finally in the conversation i also
13:40may compare any remaining gaps
13:42that blacks and others do face which we
13:44can attribute to bias
13:45to those faced by women gay men poor
13:48people
13:49rural kids etc we often tend to think of
13:52privilege in this crude univariate
13:54racial sense and that's a major mistake
13:57and finally i'm going to point out sort
14:00of the forbidden obvious
14:01all of this doesn't just cut one way
14:04minority americans now have major
14:06advantages when we apply for any
14:07affirmative action college slot
14:09any employment position with the fortune
14:11500 any job with the now more than 24
14:15percent of businesses that are black or
14:16asian or otherwise minority owned
14:19so in 2020 my final point here american
14:22race relations aren't a story of
14:24unceasing oppression that's so much a
14:26part of the system that we can't even
14:28see it
14:29but rather of a complex network of
14:31advantages and disadvantages and
14:33negotiations
14:34i've been harassed by the police myself
14:36but i also got to go to law school for
14:38free
14:38because i'm black and i look forward to
14:40discussing both today
14:45will thank you very much thank you very
14:46much okay
14:48we're off to a good start
14:54okay um all right so this is nice i like
14:57the fact that
14:58um dr riley will focused on
15:02a lot of legislation some some political
15:04science aspects and was really
15:06quiet in how he spoke about things
15:08that's wonderful
15:09so that gives me a good counterpoint
15:11because i can talk about the
15:12quantitative data
15:14but also some qualitative studies and
15:16some field experiments that shows just
15:18how prevalent
15:19race is so you can tell just in that
15:21early statement that
15:22i guess i am thinking a little different
15:24than dr riley because i do believe
15:27that uh systemic racism is endemic in
15:30society
15:31i might agree with him that is not as
15:35as important to a black person's life as
15:37maybe
15:39a candy or d'angelo would argue but i do
15:41think that it's important and it does
15:43impact the lives of black people i think
15:45it's important i wasn't planning on
15:47pointing out some of the the data but it
15:49it might be necessary
15:51um because we focus a lot on politics
15:54i'm sorry on uh policing and um
15:57maybe income and employment as dr reilly
15:59did but this is pervasive across the
16:01board
16:02right these differences between black
16:05and white uh and that's that's worth
16:07knowing because that might point to
16:09uh something that's that's broader than
16:12than we imagine
16:13so if we look at health life expectancy
16:16as we would
16:17suspect is lower for black americans
16:19than white americans especially
16:20black males the life expectancy is 71
16:23years and for white males is 76
16:25uh for black women it's 77 for white
16:28women it's 81.
16:30obviously we know about employment rates
16:32historically
16:33it's been the employment rate has been
16:36twice as high for
16:38for black people than white people i
16:39don't know what it is right now but i
16:41think that's historically how it's been
16:43income obviously about a quarter of
16:46black americans are in poverty whereas
16:48it's one in 10
16:49white americans just go on and on we
16:51look we can look at educational
16:52attainment and achievement
16:54i believe that dr riley pointed out
16:57achievement
16:58which is the uh s.a.t scores uh and and
17:01there are there are gaps there
17:02and also attainment that's actually a
17:05little um
17:06murky because black black people tend to
17:08do fairly well with attainment
17:09but not as well as whites uh but better
17:12than hispanics so we have that we got
17:14neighborhoods where you're living in
17:16home ownership you know all of these
17:18different various
17:19so almost every important social
17:22outcome across the board we see that
17:25blacks do
17:26less well and i want to point out that
17:28it's less well because it's not as if
17:29blacks are doing
17:30poorly this is a relative thing we're
17:32saying relative to
17:34white population uh the black population
17:37is not doing as well
17:38so that's important because a lot of
17:40people may say well you know
17:41this is the 1960s this is no longer jim
17:43crow yes that's absolutely true uh
17:46black folks have done much better now
17:48are doing much better now than in 1960
17:50but it's relative
17:51in some cases it's actually worse so i
17:53didn't mention wealth but uh it's crazy
17:55the
17:55the wealth disparities between white and
17:57black and it has increased
17:59since the 1960s so those are some stats
18:03i think though what i should do is give
18:06maybe an origin story for systemic
18:09racism
18:10and a definition because what we do is
18:13we we dive
18:14into the data and we get into these
18:16political arguments
18:19and that and that definition comes from
18:22uh the media
18:23or or maybe from a dictionary as as i
18:26believe uh
18:27or i believe dr riley did which is
18:29perfectly fine
18:30um but i think we should think of it
18:31more as a body of thought
18:34so so let me kind of set the story up
18:37so after the second world war up into
18:40the 1960s we're very concerned about
18:43individual racism
18:44for obvious reason uh reasons the people
18:47who were pulling the levers
18:48in society the authority figures they
18:51were about racist
18:53or anti-semites so you can think about
18:56uh from hitler to
18:57to uh bull connor right and so we needed
19:00to deal with that
19:01and so at that time the research within
19:04sociology really focused and other
19:06social sciences really focused on
19:08prejudice discrimination and stereotypes
19:12these are these individual level
19:14uh factors that block the progress
19:17of black people and to america's credit
19:20we have dealt with that it's it's quite
19:22amazing actually the
19:23the changes over the past uh 30 to 40
19:26years
19:27and so those are are much less but what
19:29we saw as sociologists was that there
19:31was this enduring
19:32racial inequality even after we've dealt
19:35with these
19:37overt forms of racism so we had to
19:40explain that like what's going on here
19:42we don't believe it's culture i'm sure
19:44that a lot of people in the audience
19:46suggest that it's it's culture
19:48uh i think dr riley will probably make
19:50that argument sorry
19:51and i've i've even heard uh you john on
19:54some podcast
19:55mention uh the importance of culture and
19:57i think that it matters but in a
19:58specific way and maybe i'll get to
20:00answer that later
20:01but in generally i uh in general i don't
20:03think that culture is
20:05the driving force um i do think that it
20:08is
20:09systemic racism so we had to explain
20:11what was going on like why is it that
20:13these
20:13racial disparities continued the
20:16evidence suggests
20:18that um uh racism was still going on
20:22uh and so we needed to explain it so
20:23what's happened all of a sudden
20:25in 2020 is this idea of systemic racism
20:28i can tell you when i teach racial
20:29inequality
20:31it was just one term out of many but
20:33somehow this has become the
20:35the it word of 2020. that idea has been
20:38around and i'm going to give a shout out
20:40to joe fagan he's like he's like 82
20:42years old he's at texas a m
20:44and he started using this term in the
20:46early 80s to describe
20:48what we're talking about now so in some
20:51ways he was vindicated
20:53so that's the story from old racism to
20:55this systemic thing trying to understand
20:57why they're still
20:57enduring racial inequality we can't look
21:00at just individual actions anymore
21:02that's not enough we have to look at
21:04things at a group level and maybe in
21:05institutions
21:06so i kind of crib together
21:09a definition that i think can power
21:12this discussion
21:16and so um this is sort of me
21:19cobbling together what i read from fagin
21:21and and kind of what i read in other in
21:23other texts
21:24so systemic racism is a group phenomenon
21:28not not in individuals it's group
21:30behavior
21:32in which one group in this case
21:35white people benefit by either
21:37exploiting
21:38or excluding another group in this case
21:41black
21:43or people i think in 2020 it's more
21:45about exclusion
21:46we don't we don't exploit as much as we
21:48used to
21:49so this exploiting and excluding occurs
21:53at three levels in society so we can
21:56think of it in a hierarchical
21:58way i'm trying not to get too pedantic
22:00for the audience i'll try and
22:01try and speed things up a bit but it's
22:04uh we can think of it in three levels
22:06so you have that individual level that
22:07we all know about throughout history
22:10but it's also at the institutional level
22:12and then it's also at the level of
22:13policy
22:14at all three levels black people are
22:17disadvantaged
22:18so looking at things in a
22:19cross-sectional way where you get
22:21surveys
22:22and you say well if we if we control for
22:24this variable then we see that race goes
22:26away
22:26uh that's important to know as as dr
22:29reilly points out because that
22:30points us towards avenues of fixing the
22:32problem but that doesn't explain how a
22:35particular person
22:36gets to that point where when you
22:38compare into a white person at 25
22:40you find that he's not doing as well
22:42right the systemic racism
22:44body of thought explains how we got to
22:46that point
22:47so you've got those three levels so
22:48you've got exploitation
22:51and exclusion at three levels individual
22:53institutional
22:55and group and it's important to know
22:57that
22:58the way we think about this is that it
23:00is cumulative
23:02and it's intergenerational so
23:05just imagine you got a random sample of
23:08a hundred black kids
23:10at age one so the idea with systemic
23:13racism is that
23:14there's a a a mine field so to speak
23:18that those black kids have to go through
23:20that is not there for an equal
23:23population of 100
23:25white kids both both populations have to
23:28do their due diligence and go to school
23:30and do what they have to do to get their
23:32jobs and have a nice middle class
23:34life but but there's a bit more that
23:37that population of black kids have to go
23:39through whether it be like me
23:41you're born into a home with no wealth
23:43and no income
23:44which as we know from the data uh
23:47more black kids are born into that than
23:49white kids so
23:51we know that that matters right and
23:53that's not cultural
23:54so those kids have to go through that
23:56minefield so let's say you you want to
23:57get all 100 kids to be
23:59nice upstanding middle class citizens at
24:0245 years old their own home
24:04you're starting at age one you've
24:06already lost 10 kids
24:08right because of because of poverty you
24:10lose white kids as well this is a group
24:12level
24:12phenomenon you lose white kids as well
24:14but not as many
24:16you may lose two or three all right so
24:18then you go into the school system and
24:20we know
24:21about racial attitudes there's been so
24:24much data showing
24:25that because of the stereotypes about
24:28black people
24:29even if you equalize for the amount of
24:32for behavior teachers tend to have less
24:35tolerance for black
24:36uh kids especially black males okay so
24:39now they gotta get to that minefield so
24:41you lose
24:4210 more kids because they don't make it
24:43through school you still got some white
24:45knuckleheads but you lose only five of
24:47them right you see what's happening here
24:49okay so then you have to go off to
24:51college well you got to have the
24:52knowledge the
24:53um you i would say first in school you
24:57need to be in a good school with good
24:58guidance counselors
24:59in black neighborhoods or even any
25:01guidance counselor
25:02so in black neighborhoods you'd have
25:04less of those than in white
25:05neighborhoods
25:07with white schools i should say uh so
25:09you might lose some kids that kids there
25:11okay young people like to go to parties
25:13have a good time
25:14um it is certainly the case that there
25:17is
25:18uh more crime in black neighborhoods and
25:20that's something that needs to be
25:21discussed
25:22but over and above that the
25:24relationships between
25:25uh cops and black kids
25:29is much more fraught than cops and white
25:31kids okay
25:32so black kid does something that he
25:34shouldn't do uh instead of the cops
25:36saying all right you know go home
25:38i'm going to tell your mom that kid's in
25:39jail
25:41and that's because of stereotypes okay
25:42so now you lose even more kids
25:45on and on and on and on you got to go to
25:47college okay if you don't have any money
25:48then you have to work
25:49and go to school i did that a lot of
25:51people have to do that but the more you
25:53have to do that the less likely
25:55it is that you get through school
25:58so this continues and continues and i
26:00didn't even talk about things like um
26:03like the type of school you're in and
26:04whether whether you're in a good quality
26:06school with quality teachers i kind of
26:07talked about the counselors a little bit
26:08but not the teachers so you've got all
26:10of these
26:11these different issues that at the end
26:13of the day at 45 years old
26:15when you look at that population that
26:17started at age one
26:18you have success you know you have you
26:21have 20
26:22upstanding college graduates you know
26:25paying off their mortgage with two kids
26:27in school
26:28which is okay right it's more than it
26:30was in 1960 when it might have been five
26:33but if you compare it to the white
26:35population okay they got 50.
26:38and so what we realize when we look at
26:39that population level is it's not about
26:42individual
26:42temperaments and talents we we know
26:44that's there we know that people are
26:46different at the individual level
26:48but when you compare groups and you see
26:49this systematically
26:51the only answer that you can uh
26:54that you can give or at least that i can
26:56see is that there is systemic racism
27:00so um in my opinion
27:03the question is not if uh it's more
27:05about how it operates
27:07uh where we see it right
27:11to what degree does it impact the lives
27:14of black folks so
27:15i've just kind of detailed a a kind of
27:17rough story there but it's not like that
27:20everywhere right in some institutions uh
27:22things aren't so bad
27:23uh maybe it's worse for police systems
27:26uh or for
27:27uh for the criminal justice system and
27:29maybe it's it's not so bad in other
27:31areas right so
27:32the research has to really focus and
27:34zero in on
27:35when it matters most right um
27:38so how it operates where we see it to
27:41what degree does it impact the lives of
27:42black folk and finally uh what should we
27:44do about it
27:46now i think i have a little bit more
27:47time and so i want to
27:50introduce the audience to different
27:52types of research
27:55we are used to looking at these
27:57statistics these uh bivariate or
28:00if you're at the level of dr riley
28:02multivariate uh
28:03statistics important i think that's
28:07that's that's
28:07very important but there are so many
28:09other ways of uncovering
28:12systemic racism in society and i'll
28:14point out i'll do two
28:16um and then maybe i'll talk about some
28:18others later
28:20so one is from nancy de tomaso she is
28:23a she's at rutgers university i think
28:26she was trained as a sociologist but
28:28she's in the business department
28:30now what she did was she interviewed uh
28:33white adults from the age 25 to 55
28:36in three states and what she got was job
28:38histories
28:40and what she wanted to find out was to
28:41what extent
28:43did those white people get
28:46jobs through other white people well
28:49basically she didn't ask it that way she
28:50asked how did you get
28:51work and tell me about your your life
28:53history and so they detailed it and they
28:54said well you know i got help this way i
28:56gotta a
28:57hookup from this guy um what have you
29:00and she found that in almost every
29:01situation
29:03i think 70 percent white folks got help
29:06from other white folks and it's a it's
29:08in group solidarity it's a
29:10type of opportunity hoarding now there's
29:13nothing wrong with that people should
29:14help their friends i would certainly
29:16help my friends
29:18the problem is that historically those
29:21opportunities
29:22are concentrated in white networks so
29:25when white folks
29:27practice um opportunity hoarding
29:31endogamy which would be marrying each
29:33other and homophily
29:35where they become friends with each
29:37other they don't have to be racist
29:39uh and andy tommaso points out that look
29:41this has got nothing to do with them
29:42trying to hurt
29:43black folks it's just the way our
29:45society is organized and segregated
29:47black folks are locked out
29:49of a lot of opportunities if there are
29:51any uh black professionals
29:53in the audience i think that would
29:55resonate with them because it resonated
29:56with me
29:57i realized that okay you know i've got
29:58my phd i'm going to get a job somewhere
30:01i got one and i realized that it was a
30:02little bit harder
30:04for me to make those connections that
30:06really mattered in my case it was
30:08co-authoring books
30:09um getting uh working on grants with
30:13other people
30:14it was just a little bit difficult and
30:16um
30:17just a little of a tangent i thought it
30:18was me because i lead a
30:20fairly monastic life right so i'm
30:22thinking oh it's just me you know i
30:23don't really
30:24get on with people but no i went to a
30:26black faculty meeting
30:27and every all the black faculty and
30:30hispanic faculty were complaining about
30:31this same issue
30:32we're working with nice people but they
30:35tended to
30:37nice white people but they tended to
30:38connect with other white people and that
30:40locked us
30:41out of a lot of opportunities okay
30:44i'll do one more
30:48and the point of this is to show the
30:49research that's out there
30:51um and it's good research so this one is
30:54a type of field experiment
30:56these i think a lot of people may know
30:57about
30:59so diva pager who was a at harvard she
31:01was a sociologist she
31:03she passed a couple of years ago she
31:05does these
31:07audit studies they're like field
31:08experiments where she matches people
31:11uh black and white and she sends them
31:14out
31:14to apply for a job and she changes or
31:17she keeps them the same
31:19except for their race and the idea is to
31:21see how race
31:22impacts their job opportunities these
31:25are powerful very rigorous studies
31:27because they control for so many other
31:28things no no no research is perfect but
31:31these are really good
31:32so in any case this was done in
31:34milwaukee and what she did was she sent
31:36out
31:37four types of people white people
31:40white males looking for entry level jobs
31:44white males white males looking for
31:46entry-level jobs
31:48with a prison record and then black
31:51males looking for entry-level jobs and
31:52black males looking for entry-level jobs
31:54with a prison record right so she wanted
31:56to see what the rates of return would be
31:58who would get a call back i guess
32:00is better the findings
32:03are very sobering um so this is the
32:06breakdown
32:08whites with no record after so they went
32:11out and they said look i want to apply
32:12for this job you know give the resume
32:13wait for a call back
32:15whites with no record criminal record
32:17got a call back 34
32:19of the time whites with the criminal
32:22record got a call back
32:2317 of the time okay we say fine that
32:26makes sense you know an employer all
32:27things me and even
32:29they want to hire the person with no
32:30criminal bracket but this is the
32:31sobering part
32:33blacks with no criminal record got a
32:35call back
32:3614 of the time so
32:39a black person equally qualified
32:42without a prison record
32:45gotta call back less than a white person
32:48with a cr prison record i mean that
32:51shows
32:53somewhat clearly that race matters
32:57and then of course the lowest category
33:00was
33:00blacks with a criminal record they only
33:02got a call back five percent of the time
33:05so uh those types of studies are out
33:08there
33:08and they show that that there's
33:11something
33:12about the way the united states is
33:16structured
33:16that does lead to black people falling
33:19behind and i think is
33:20systemic racism rob thank you very much
33:24okay so uh well i'm going to ask you
33:27will
33:27to go ahead and uh give uh uh
33:30take a few minutes to respond to what
33:32rod has said
33:33after that i'll have a question or two
33:35and then we will move to questions from
33:37the audience so go ahead will
33:39yeah that sounds good so uh first of all
33:42i'm glad that the
33:43uh pager study pager 2002 came up i mean
33:47i think that's a piece that we need to
33:48discuss from both sides obviously a
33:50classic
33:51the first thing that i'll say about that
33:52study before we get into complex methods
33:55obviously a top academic but when for
33:58taboo i started looking at these studies
34:01on workplace discrimination
34:02one thing that i was surprised to find
34:04is that they all concentrated on the
34:06same
34:07fairly niche area of the workplace and
34:10uh dr graham you might correct me on the
34:12exact language from the paper but i
34:13believe it was quote unquote entry-level
34:16non-affirmative action positions
34:18specifically with white-owned
34:20businesses in the private sector so i'm
34:22not
34:23extraordinarily surprised to find that
34:26there was some
34:27discrimination in that sector
34:30um the obvious response would be if
34:32you're looking at the
34:33full labor market i mean i think it's
34:35fairly obvious to anyone in the american
34:37middle or upper middle class
34:38that you would have seen a very
34:40different result if people were applying
34:42for for example
34:43university professorships uh having
34:45served on some hiring committees myself
34:48um spots at any fortune 500 company with
34:51a diversity program
34:54entering seats simply as students in an
34:57ivy league
34:57college or graduate school i mean
35:00harvard university was recently sued i
35:02mentioned this on twitter today
35:05because the gap between entering asian
35:08american and for that matter white
35:10students on the one hand
35:11and nam students non-asian minority
35:14students on the other hand
35:16was 330 points among applicants and 192
35:20points among admittees
35:21so there are obviously many sectors of
35:23the labor market many sectors of the
35:25educational market
35:26where there is an equally large
35:28advantage that attaches to being a
35:29person of color so that is worth noting
35:32obviously i don't think there's any sort
35:33of conspiracy afoot here but i do think
35:36that studies tend to get published when
35:38they find
35:38positive statistically significant
35:40results so almost
35:41all of these studies that find labor
35:44market discrimination look at this one i
35:46believe it's 18 or 19
35:48of the labor market that is one thing i
35:50would note
35:51and if you actually get into this kind
35:53of work
35:54it's a much more of a complex picture
35:56again i don't deny that there's some
35:58racism we're discussing terms like
35:59systemic absolutely institutional
36:01but it's a much more complex picture
36:03than we are
36:04initially told or at least i think that
36:07most people would initially assume
36:08so for example there's also a body of
36:10studies that i planned on talking about
36:12in my full presentation
36:14that looks at whether uh black names
36:16like lakeisha
36:17jamal and so on are more likely to lead
36:20to a workplace
36:21rejection than stereotypical white names
36:24like greg and emily
36:25and looking at this initially even i
36:26thought yeah probably
36:28i mean especially if they're going again
36:29into this one area of the private sector
36:32it turns out that that's not necessarily
36:35true
36:36um there are a couple of studies uh
36:37university of missouri 2015 for example
36:41that looked at the effect on hiring of
36:43black last names
36:44uh jefferson washington i believe
36:48freeman was in there and of upper class
36:51uh black first names you know jalen
36:55duane and they found that this had
36:57absolutely no impact on hiring
36:59whatsoever
37:00so the question becomes are
37:03are we looking at racial discrimination
37:06in many of these cases or if someone i
37:08mean the clap one of the names used was
37:10sharkeisha that's something it was an
37:11internet meme for a while
37:13um is someone with that first name going
37:16to face discrimination whereas
37:17jalen freeman might not these are fairly
37:20complex pictures
37:21another element that many people have
37:23noted on kind of that quantitative
37:25center right
37:26is that there is an affirmative action
37:29effect
37:30to drop on that people perceive when
37:32they look at job applicants
37:34so several people going back to tom's
37:36soul decades ago
37:37have pointed out that the difference in
37:40hiring between
37:41black and white applicants who list the
37:43same university on their transcripts
37:45is very often quite close to the gap
37:49uh for example on the entering exam
37:51that's offered
37:52to uh students of color nine percent
37:54eleven percent
37:56i'm interested in a project right now
37:59where i send or i and my team send
38:01resumes to employers that would be
38:03identical
38:04for white and african american students
38:06let's say
38:07but we also include a metric like sat or
38:09gre score
38:10to make it very evident that
38:12preferential admissions didn't play
38:14a role in these students entering for
38:16example the university of kentucky or a
38:18similar university
38:19and what i would bet you will find there
38:21when this is done is that there's
38:23almost no difference in the rate in
38:25which these students are hired
38:26so i don't think we necessarily i don't
38:28think we necessarily agree on
38:30disagree on some of the major issues
38:31here at the level of racism bad
38:33but i think that the point that i'm
38:36making here
38:37from almost a purely quantitative
38:38perspective
38:40is that we need to have a valid
38:42discussion here to get into what the
38:44term racism means
38:46in practice so i mean i i felt your
38:48examples when you went through the list
38:50of things that you would
38:51deal with as a young black man in a
38:53working-class area i was born on the
38:55south side of chicago grew up on the
38:56east side of aurora
38:57that's valid enough but it strikes me
38:59that about 90 percent of those
39:01things i'm not having family or
39:03situational wealth
39:04not having guidance counselors in the
39:06high school when i think of the southern
39:07illinois high school where my fiance
39:10matriculated the cops being a little
39:12tough with you in an urban or a rural
39:14setting
39:15most of that would vanish if you adjust
39:16for class um i live in appalachia today
39:19and the treatment that i see of whites
39:21in rural kentucky is certainly not
39:23better than the treatment i saw of
39:24whites or blacks in urban chicago in
39:27fact it's worse
39:29although my city has a fairly solid
39:30policing force but i mean
39:33so i guess nobody really no serious
39:36scholar denies
39:38that there are issues in the black
39:39community that have been caused by one
39:42past racism i.e poverty housing and
39:45two i would say the culture that to some
39:48extent grew out of those experiences out
39:49of competition with
39:51what at the time were the caucasian
39:53oppressors
39:54for example father absence i think is an
39:56identifiable measurable cultural problem
39:58no one denies these things the question
40:00that i ask about systemic racism is that
40:03if you or i
40:04dr graham were to take a standard
40:06regression model in stata
40:08and break out eight or nine different
40:10things you're looking at
40:11is a father present you're looking at
40:14social class so on
40:15and you were to adjust for those would
40:17you find any difference
40:19in outcomes for blacks or whites i
40:22personally find virtually none
40:24uh and this is relevant because as i've
40:26mentioned the wealthiest and most
40:27powerful groups in the country
40:28in general are not anglo-whites they are
40:31nigerian americans japanese americans
40:33jewish americans so on
40:34so there's quite a valid question if you
40:37come to the usa
40:38and you are a person of black african
40:41descent
40:42and you make 90 000 a year and you have
40:44a credit score of 800 and so on down the
40:47line
40:47are you going to have any trouble buying
40:49a house or a car
40:50or living a stable life and the answer
40:53is no
40:54i would say that the majority of those
40:56issues in the african-american community
40:59are due much more to the legacy of past
41:01racism or to cultural issues
41:03than they're due to continuing racism
41:05today so the question becomes i guess
41:07this is my point in one sentence
41:09the question to me very often becomes
41:11how do we help the poor
41:12something i think we're all passionate
41:14about as versus how do we continue
41:17ghost hunting for different forms of
41:18racism i read white fragility this week
41:21and i'm not going to
41:22mock the book or anything along those
41:23lines but you keep coming across these
41:26lines
41:26like we must identify the white gays
41:29where it exists and so on
41:31and i think that for either the black
41:33kids or the appalachian kids
41:35if you can think of programs at the city
41:38or the state level that would build
41:40familial wealth
41:41that would help those kids go on to the
41:43same level of success as everybody else
41:45i don't think that there is a hidden
41:47form of prejudice out in the system that
41:49exists
41:50once you adjust for other things now
41:52there might not there almost isn't a
41:54debate here if by systemic racism you
41:55mean the legacy of past racism made
41:57black people poor
41:58anyone who's not a racist admits that
42:01but the question is now that you're
42:02talking about
42:03you know 10 foreign-born population now
42:05that you're talking about
42:06the wealthiest group in the country is
42:08asians
42:09can we move past the idea that there's
42:11something out there based on intent to
42:14some degree
42:15that's holding people back once you
42:16adjust for everything else
42:18i think once you adjust for everything
42:19else there is no god of the gaps
42:22okay so let me let me put a foundational
42:26sort of question on the table between
42:28the two of you and
42:30um hopefully this will this will set the
42:32stage for us to pivot to
42:34pivot to audience questions but the
42:36thing that makes
42:37racial conversations i think uh
42:40difficult just starting from a
42:42conceptual level
42:45in america is the fact that we are
42:47constantly engaged in a tug of war over
42:49what the definition of various terms are
42:52particularly what the definition
42:53of racism or systemic racism is
42:56what i am hearing from each of you is
43:00a definition of of racism or systemic
43:03racism here
43:05that i think seems to allow us
43:08perhaps to point at some data points
43:11upon which
43:12there is agreement but to situate those
43:14data points in a way of understanding
43:16the concept of systemic racism
43:19that somehow others seems to shift kind
43:21of the tone of
43:22tone of our focus and so rod
43:25uh you you have well actually well let
43:27me start with with with your with your
43:29conception here you seem to be putting
43:30forward
43:31an understanding of systemic racism
43:34which seems to lean upon
43:37lean upon the idea that a genuinely
43:40systemic race
43:41systemically racist system would be
43:43something that would have a
43:44disproportionately negative impact on a
43:46certain
43:47racial group even if one were to control
43:50for other variables
43:51that would tend to impact that would
43:53naturally impact
43:55outcomes whether it's you know the
43:56outcomes of the group's interaction with
43:58the health care system
43:59the law enforcement system the
44:01educational system that if you control
44:03for all of those things a genuinely
44:04systemic
44:05racist system would still propose
44:08produce a disproportionate
44:09outcome or a disproportionately negative
44:11outcome and if it failed to do that
44:12you can't credibly look at it as
44:14institutionally racist
44:16is is that a fair fair enough
44:18representation of your view or do you
44:19wanna
44:20you wanna clarify that a little a little
44:22further crystallize it
44:24no i think it's pretty fair uh i don't
44:25think the people on the top bar
44:28here disagree that because of
44:32centuries of ethnic conflict which
44:34included oppression in the usa
44:36there are issues poverty housing and the
44:38like in black communities
44:40i would add living in appalachia many of
44:42those existing poor white communities
44:43hispanic communities
44:44but there's not widespread disagreement
44:47with that thesis among people that
44:48aren't bigots
44:49so to some extent this art this
44:51conversation does
44:52touch on the semantic yeah and so will
44:55can i can i just turn to rod really
44:57quick and get his parallel
44:59parallel framing can i say one more
45:00thing yeah okay
45:02one sense last basically yeah you're
45:05right to me
45:06systemic racism in a quantitative sense
45:09would have to refer to a system that
45:11treats people differently
45:12significantly differently not one
45:14percent one way or another
45:16um once you adjust for everything but
45:18race
45:19i understand that intelligent people can
45:20disagree but if it turns out that
45:22systemic racism
45:2490 measures class effects caused by
45:27past battles between the great races i
45:29don't know if racism is a logical term
45:31for that and that also
45:32leads to kind of rumors low expectation
45:36when you see
45:37nigerians japanese americans indian
45:39draven's coming here and killing it
45:40so i i personally don't like the term
45:42very much right
45:43and so ron the key uh the key phrase i
45:46heard
45:47in your description of systemic racism
45:49was that
45:50well you you referenced uh will's way of
45:53looking at that
45:54looking at this issue uh the fact that
45:56if you you know quantify
45:58certain outcomes controlled for certain
45:59variables you can make a straight across
46:01comparison between groups but your point
46:03was that
46:04a proper understanding of systemic
46:05racism shows how we
46:07arrived at these sort of inequitable
46:10trajectories to begin with and i think
46:13that you seem to sort of illustrate the
46:14fact that systems seem to interact
46:17in a certain way so as to produce so as
46:19to produce
46:20uh supposed to produce inequitable
46:23outcomes
46:24even beyond these sort of uh sort of
46:28singular analysis by which we could say
46:30okay this one system
46:31uh seems to produce an inequitable
46:33outcome but if you control for various
46:35variables you might say it's not
46:36institutionally racist i seem to hear
46:38you saying that that system
46:39still sort of interacts with other
46:41systems that are kind of
46:43at at play right and so the question is
46:46how did we get to a place
46:47of unequal starting points leading to
46:49unequal outcomes to begin with do you
46:51want to
46:52do you want to fine-tune what i've said
46:53here or correct anything that's
46:56incorrect in my representation of your
46:57view uh sure
46:59first i want to i want to say that the
47:01the use of
47:03quantitative data regression models as
47:05dr riley has been using
47:07uh is a wonderful way to explain
47:10how people are how people are at one
47:14point in time i'm hearing an echo now
47:16um so let's say you have a you have some
47:19surveys and and
47:20people take the boxes okay i'll make
47:22this income i'm black
47:24um i'm a male uh you know i live in this
47:28place and then you and his
47:29as he is saying if you control for all
47:31kinds of things you'll see that people
47:32are equal
47:34uh particularly class you find out that
47:36class matters uh
47:37in people's outcomes uh which is which
47:39is totally fine
47:40my point is that in real life you don't
47:43get the control for those things
47:44by the the people who are flesh and
47:47blood
47:48by the time they get to the point
47:49they're taking that survey they've
47:51already gone
47:52through all these institutions and
47:53they've already had connections with um
47:56peer groups that might steer them astray
47:58with professionals who may have had who
48:01may have anti-black attitudes
48:02so by the time they take that survey
48:04yeah um when you pluck out the 10 black
48:07people
48:07who are doing well and say well see if
48:09you did well then you would have
48:10you would have the same uh wealth as a
48:12white person that's fine
48:14but um it's not a proper tool
48:17these cross-sectional quantitative
48:20regression analysis
48:22are not the proper tool for
48:23understanding how we got to now no
48:26not at all and i don't think it's just
48:27about what happened in the past
48:30i think that that that black people
48:32experience subtle
48:35it's important to realize what i'm doing
48:37here i'm sort of tacking between
48:39the i don't know the woke left
48:42maybe radical left and between what dr
48:45riley is saying
48:46it is certainly the case that that the
48:50that a black person or any person can do
48:52well in the united states
48:53what i'm arguing is that when you look
48:55at the population as a whole there are
48:57so many little tiny things that black
48:58people have to navigate
49:00that it ends up uh as you were
49:02mentioning interlocking systems you know
49:04systems working together
49:05yes that's true by the time they they
49:07pass through all that then you're going
49:08to see
49:09a a disproportionate um disproportionate
49:12social outcomes
49:14okay and so i think that um i think that
49:17that's terrific because i think that
49:19what we rarely get at
49:20in these conversations is a real
49:22sharpening
49:23of the different ways in which we're
49:25treating these definitions
49:27and definitions are fluid over time in
49:30the sense that our understanding of
49:31things
49:31generally terms change and yet a mutual
49:34understanding of definition seems to be
49:36important for having any complex
49:38conversation and so
49:39you gentlemen i think have done a
49:40terrific job of framing up
49:42the way in which we can appropriately
49:44sort of understand these terms to allow
49:46us to have a
49:47to have a conversation um with the
49:49audience here
49:50uh in terms of uh you know um how we
49:53should understand various points with
49:54respect to systemic racism in the
49:56context of the different ways in which
49:58we're looking at things and so
49:59ladies and gentlemen i should have
50:01mentioned this up top but we have a bit
50:02of a tradition
50:03at braver angels since this is a zoom
50:05call and folks are on mute standard
50:07applause is you know hard to pull off an
50:09effective way
50:10what we do is utilize the uh the sign
50:13language uh
50:14tool for applause uh otherwise known as
50:16jazz hands
50:17uh which is this move right here so
50:19ladies and gentlemen jazz hands for our
50:20speakers
50:21professors wilfred reilly and rod graham
50:24very appreciative um
50:27of your opening remarks now what we'd
50:28like to do is uh pivot in the direction
50:32of taking your questions so i'm going to
50:34guess
50:35that we have uh more more than more than
50:38a couple
50:38so i'm just going to start calling i'm
50:40going to start calling names here
50:42uh dean adams go ahead and uh ask your
50:45question by the way dean and for
50:46everybody else listening
50:48um try to lim first of all make sure
50:50your question is a question
50:51not a speech disguised as a question
50:53because otherwise nobody
50:54we won't get many in uh try and keep it
50:57keep the question to 30 seconds
50:59if you can i'll have to cut folks off if
51:00they go too long okay dean go ahead
51:04uh hi this is dean adams from
51:05minneapolis
51:07my questions for rod and i appreciate
51:10hearing you i heard you on the last
51:12debate and i was impressed with what you
51:14had to say
51:15um i was listening to to
51:21the questions from uh wilford and i
51:24also appreciated the the comments from
51:26him as well
51:27and uh my question is the number of uh
51:30let me frame it the number of entry
51:32level jobs is much greater
51:34than the higher level jobs that um
51:38professor reilly mentioned and
51:41having worked in a fortune 500 company i
51:43understand that
51:44but to get to the higher level jobs you
51:46generally have to start at the entry
51:48level
51:49so the rate of callbacks on entry level
51:51jobs versus the total number of jobs
51:54would give you a total number of
51:55opportunities versus the
51:57uh rate of callbacks on a higher level
52:00of jobs when the number is smaller
52:02so how do you account for that in your
52:04statistics because you talked in
52:06generalities about rates but you didn't
52:08talk about the quantitative actual
52:10impact
52:10of the total numbers
52:14that's a good question um i'm not sure
52:15what the debate you saw
52:18uh professor reilly i see okay now i
52:20understand
52:21okay i didn't know which one of us you
52:23were talking to
52:25actually there's a surprisingly positive
52:27answer to your question
52:29this is in my book taboo i don't recall
52:31the exact figures i'm not going to
52:33bs about them at all but the short
52:36answer is that as far as i recall in
52:38the pager experiment almost all of the
52:40kids would have gotten a job
52:43they sent out a fairly large number of
52:46resumes
52:47the response rate was lower for
52:50african americans but i mean i think it
52:52would be something like 14
52:54out of 40 versus 29 out of 40.
52:58um so i think that most of them actually
53:01would have found
53:02a placement i don't know whether that's
53:04true across
53:05all of these experiments that's an
53:07excellent question i mean that that sort
53:09of something where i should go look at
53:10the data i think people in general
53:12should
53:12but i do recall that fact that these
53:14very few of these people would have been
53:16kept out of the working world
53:18i also i also do think that when you
53:20talk about number of slots
53:21and this again is something that i don't
53:23know without rereading that paper
53:25but you'd have to look at what exactly
53:29each category of job consisted of
53:32i mean if you're talking about
53:33entry-level jobs and you're responding
53:35to one ads in the paper are those things
53:36like fast food management i mean that's
53:38been a common technique
53:40if so i would argue that there are just
53:41about as many jobs if you're going from
53:44janitorial up through mail room staffing
53:47up to junior executive so on in the
53:48fortune 500
53:50fortune 1000 space i mean certainly
53:52there are millions of slots
53:54in uh college and university where
53:56there's a substantial affirmative action
53:58advantage for people of color
53:59so i don't think i would argue that in
54:01that sort of entry-level non-affirmative
54:04action job space people of color have an
54:05advantage that'd be that'd be a bit
54:07wacky
54:08but i would say that there are quite a
54:09few jobs offered in those areas where
54:12there seems to be equal hiring or a
54:13slight minority advantage one
54:15and two that if you're actually looking
54:17at a lot of these studies
54:18um there is i believe is pager also rod
54:21might correct this
54:22but late 90s uh did a study
54:25this was kind of the progenitor of the
54:27one we're discussing
54:29where hundreds of resumes were sent out
54:31and the callback rates were
54:33they had they paired identical white and
54:35black
54:36dyads in 15 of cases
54:40both were called back i think 14 was
54:42just the white guy
54:43uh six percent it was just the black guy
54:46those numbers are all within one percent
54:47or so
54:48um i mean what would actually happen if
54:50you sent out 30 resumes to get a
54:52quantitatively sound
54:53sample and the black kids on average
54:56were called back
54:5621 of the time i mean they would be
54:59offered
55:00six jobs as versus eight or nine for the
55:02white guys but yeah in the entry level
55:04job space i would i would concede that
55:06there are sectors where it would be more
55:07difficult to get placed if you're a
55:09young in particular black man
55:11uh the question is just whether that's
55:12balanced out by minority advantages and
55:14higher education so
55:16that's a good question the short answer
55:17is i'll have to reread the paper okay
55:20um thank you very much uh uh thank you
55:23very much for the question here and now
55:25um we are going to move to carolyn
55:27mendenhall carolyn are you with us
55:31and uh carolyn go ahead and unmute
55:33yourself
55:34oh yeah okay my question is for
55:38professor riley
55:40and i guess my uh
55:43my question is even when we don't have
55:46an economic or
55:48class delta does he see any room for the
55:51psychology
55:52psychological damage that's done to
55:55black children
55:57in america
56:00and the reason why i bring this up is
56:04my daughter grew up in evanston which is
56:06a college town
56:07she went to integrated schools she has
56:10two parents that made six figures
56:13she's got a ba
56:16uh m.a and she's abd
56:20right now on her phd
56:24but over the course of her life
56:27i've had to fight institution to ensure
56:32that she got what she deserved
56:37and i don't think that's just
56:40my experience when i talked to other
56:43black
56:44parents in this integrated suburb that
56:48she grew up with
56:49and they had the same experience
56:53okay uh will go ahead and respond
56:56well i think that's a fascinating
56:57question and again i i don't want to
57:00sort of keep reiterating this i'm sure
57:01you guys have you know heard
57:03me ramble and voice already but i don't
57:05think anyone denies that there is
57:06there's racial prejudice in society
57:08i will say i went to a very integrated
57:11school east aurora senior i'm very
57:12familiar with evanston we actually ran
57:14against them for track and played them
57:16for basketball
57:17but i went to a very integrated school
57:19just outside chicago for high school and
57:21there was
57:22tense there were tense racial moments
57:24that had a negative impact on black
57:26students white students and the majority
57:28of the school
57:29uh hispanic students who actually
57:31academically dealt with more struggles
57:33than the black or the white students
57:35so of course that sort of interaction
57:37can occur in life and that can be very
57:38unpleasant
57:39i will say from my understanding of the
57:41political psych literature african
57:42americans actually have the highest
57:44level of self-esteem of all groups
57:46and have the highest level of in-group
57:49pride and identification of all groups i
57:51mean i
57:51lean right but i'm quite proud to be
57:52black i mean that's virtually a
57:55universal feeling in the black community
57:56so there is
57:57a very strong base it's sometimes called
58:00the mom network the black
58:02church athletics so on down the line
58:05that compensates for those sort of
58:06negative experiences
58:07so i don't really see that among
58:09african-american let's say middle or
58:11high school students you do see some
58:12some issues with younger children
58:14there is a vast amount of long-term
58:16trauma that endures into later life
58:18that said i don't deny microaggressions
58:20don't deny racism one thing that i will
58:22say to put this in context though
58:24um i've mentioned some of the projects
58:25that i'm interested in working on during
58:27this discussion
58:28one of them there's a great study that
58:30was i believe designed by yale undergrad
58:32it was actually up as the front piece of
58:33buzzfeed for a couple of weeks
58:35but it's just the headline is just check
58:37your privilege it's a 110 question
58:39metric
58:40looking at how easy a life individuals
58:42have had i mean i've administered it to
58:44students in class
58:45and that's something i'm currently
58:46getting irb right now for a very large
58:49sample i'm interested in what affects
58:50privilege
58:51and the questions on that instrument go
58:53from have you ever gone to bed hungry
58:56to have you ever lost a fight with more
58:58than two individuals as a chicago and
58:59unfortunately i have
59:01um two do you know what frequent flyer
59:03miles are so on down the line
59:05and what i find when you administer that
59:07to people is right off the bat
59:09there is a very slight advantage you
59:11could call white privilege certainly
59:13before you norm and you start running
59:14regressions
59:15it's never been less than two points
59:16even with everything controlled for it's
59:18usually say three
59:19but social class which we keep talking
59:21about has about a 30 point effect on
59:23privilege
59:24so the average black guy may be less
59:27privileged than the average white guy
59:28but the average rich guy
59:30is literally 30 points more privilege
59:31than the average uh poor guy
59:33and so on down the line being a woman is
59:35a bit more difficult than being a man i
59:37don't think that would surprise
59:38approximately 50 of the people listening
59:40being gay
59:41among males is extremely difficult and
59:43some you wouldn't expect coming from a
59:45small disadvantaged town rather than a
59:47great city like the one i was lucky
59:48enough to grow up in
59:49has a major effect on your privilege
59:51basic things like does your high school
59:52and varsity sports teams is there a
59:54library nearby
59:55so what i would say is obviously i'm
59:57incredibly sympathetic to any kids that
59:59have traumatizing experiences
1:00:01i don't know if all in all that is more
1:00:04common
1:00:04caused by members of the other race for
1:00:07black kids than it is for say hispanic
1:00:09kids or some white kids
1:00:10the overarching thing for me is that
1:00:13it's important to look at these things
1:00:15in sort of this multivariate space where
1:00:18sure race is real but so are class or
1:00:21sex or sexual orientation
1:00:22birth order urban rural all these other
1:00:24things and i think very often we tend to
1:00:26focus on white
1:00:27privilege you know the black man quote
1:00:28unquote versus the white man
1:00:30and i don't i don't think the panelists
1:00:31tonight are doing that but i do think
1:00:33that that's something to be
1:00:34avoided so we should we should help the
1:00:36kids whenever possible but i don't know
1:00:38if there are huge gaps in self-esteem
1:00:40among
1:00:40black and white kids i want to i want to
1:00:43say something if i can
1:00:44yeah go ahead ron go ahead um to that to
1:00:46that um
1:00:48the person in the audience so there's a
1:00:52a burgeoning amount of literature that's
1:00:54pointing out that
1:00:56upper class black people
1:00:59tend to face higher levels of stress
1:01:02than working and middle class black
1:01:05people or working class black people i
1:01:07should say
1:01:07so middle and upper face higher amounts
1:01:09of stress and then poor and working
1:01:11and there is a a bit of a logic about it
1:01:14that makes sense and then i'll and then
1:01:16i'll speak directly to
1:01:17to the caller about some some way of
1:01:20dealing with that so
1:01:21the logic is that if you're if you're a
1:01:23middle class and upper class you're
1:01:25navigating a white space
1:01:29it seems that every time i try to say
1:01:31something someone comes on
1:01:33there's a conspiracy going on here so um
1:01:36yeah if you're if you're navigating
1:01:38uh a white space and you are a minority
1:01:41then
1:01:42then you kind of have to you kind of
1:01:43have to deal with that
1:01:45and um because you're the other i guess
1:01:47it would be the same as if you're gay
1:01:49and you're in a straight
1:01:50uh space and you don't have anyone to
1:01:52relate to and so there's a cumulative
1:01:55effect of that over time
1:01:57uh dr riley is right that when it comes
1:01:58to self-esteem uh black
1:02:00black people tend to score higher on
1:02:02that
1:02:03but with when it comes to stress it
1:02:06seems as if
1:02:07upper class black people and middle
1:02:09class black people tend to have that
1:02:10more so in the case of
1:02:11uh uh your daughter if she happened to
1:02:14be
1:02:15at a university where she is one of the
1:02:17few black
1:02:18students then uh she may have faced that
1:02:22stress because even though we
1:02:23we're all americans here there are
1:02:24certain differences uh between black and
1:02:27white
1:02:27uh in terms of maybe some cultural
1:02:29patterns and norms and beliefs
1:02:31and so that that can be stressful some
1:02:33people like to say some negative things
1:02:35about critical theory but one of the
1:02:37in critical scholars but one of the nice
1:02:39things that they do is they
1:02:40ground their ideas in the lives of
1:02:42people
1:02:43so this idea of safe spaces that maybe
1:02:45people might
1:02:46might might denigrate or laugh at it
1:02:49comes out of this
1:02:50it comes out of students and people of
1:02:53color and racial
1:02:54uh sexual minorities saying look i'm
1:02:56stressed out here i don't have anybody
1:02:58that i can commiserate with and so they
1:03:01and so they would create these spaces
1:03:02where people can go
1:03:03with like others and talk and and i i
1:03:06mean i don't
1:03:07know about your particular situation and
1:03:08your daughter um
1:03:10but um but that is a way that that
1:03:13a lot of universities deal with that
1:03:15issue
1:03:17very good um next question and uh uh
1:03:20a will for both of you if uh questioner
1:03:22asks a question
1:03:23uh to to one of you but the other one
1:03:25wants to piggyback on that that's
1:03:26absolutely fine i just want you guys to
1:03:28know that that goes both ways
1:03:30um i saw rebecca catalady rebecca
1:03:33go ahead and uh and ask your question
1:03:37hi thank you um well first just quickly
1:03:40i'd like to ask
1:03:41dr riley if he has any links to some of
1:03:44the
1:03:44research and statistics um you share it
1:03:48if you do if you could
1:03:49post a link or something in the chat box
1:03:51i'd love to read more about that
1:03:52um my question is given the polarization
1:03:56in society today um this is for either
1:03:58of you
1:03:58what do you think can be done to come
1:04:00closer to having
1:04:02a common language and a common
1:04:04understanding of terms
1:04:06about these issues so that we can start
1:04:08to become better as a society
1:04:10in really diagnosing the real problems
1:04:13and being able to talk about them
1:04:14constructively
1:04:15and particularly i guess into cases
1:04:18where i think sometimes
1:04:20different terms are used interchangeably
1:04:23to mean the same thing when they're
1:04:24actually something different and i see
1:04:26that as problematic
1:04:27um one is racial disparity and racism
1:04:30i think they're they're different things
1:04:32even though they may have some relations
1:04:34but sometimes they're used
1:04:35interchangeably
1:04:36and when systemic racism is used to mean
1:04:41cis racist systems that exist in the
1:04:43past that may still be
1:04:45impacting later generations that are
1:04:47living today versus systems or laws
1:04:49today
1:04:50that are racist themselves um so either
1:04:53of you
1:04:54could speak to that thank you great
1:04:56question rebecca
1:04:57um would either of you like to uh like
1:05:00to go first on that one
1:05:02all right well i'll i'll start with this
1:05:03idea of um
1:05:05of how to deal with those definitional
1:05:06problems and i've thought about this a
1:05:08lot now i think in a in a
1:05:09i'll say this in a pithy way we kind of
1:05:11need a neil degrasse tyson for the
1:05:13social sciences
1:05:14like someone who is like not on left or
1:05:17the right just someone who people trust
1:05:20who can then be more beholden to his or
1:05:24her discipline
1:05:26and not necessarily to the politics of
1:05:28the matter because what happens is these
1:05:29ideas do get hijacked
1:05:31by the left and right and they're coming
1:05:33out of
1:05:35some real some real thought within
1:05:37whatever discipline it is
1:05:39economics sociology psychology um and
1:05:42then somehow it it goes into the media
1:05:44and it goes it just goes off the rails
1:05:47so that's
1:05:48that's what we need i don't know who has
1:05:50the ability to do that
1:05:52maybe dr o'reilly can't but but but
1:05:53that's that's kind of what we need
1:05:55um so yeah indeed will do you have a
1:05:58quick thought on that
1:05:59yeah um i agree with a lot of what was
1:06:01just said so first of all how can we
1:06:03resolve
1:06:04disputes i think that the first thing we
1:06:06can do is actually
1:06:07and everyone doesn't have to pat
1:06:08themselves on the back at once but what
1:06:10we're doing right now which is just
1:06:11talking
1:06:12generally when you have a conversation
1:06:14and they're normal in jazz hands
1:06:16they're normal intelligent people
1:06:17involved you kind of
1:06:19break down what the elements of the
1:06:21debate are
1:06:22so i think uh both myself and rod have
1:06:24pretty clearly broken down what our
1:06:26concepts of systemic racism would be
1:06:28mine would be a currently racist system
1:06:30that once you've adjusted for everything
1:06:32else treats people differently
1:06:33on the basis of race his which is also
1:06:36well articulated intelligent idea
1:06:38is if a system still reflects the
1:06:41prejudices of the past and that more
1:06:43black people are poor for example
1:06:45you can definitely say we need to fix
1:06:47this systemic effect it's not a
1:06:48coincidence that more african-americans
1:06:50are poor you can
1:06:51both are widely used in the social
1:06:52science and we're both fairly serious
1:06:54intellectuals i mean these are not
1:06:56radical ideas but hearing them broken
1:06:58down in detail i think is a new
1:06:59experience
1:07:00for many so the more conversations like
1:07:02this the better uh one thing i will
1:07:04say about the media i absolutely agree
1:07:07with that comment
1:07:08that there isn't there aren't a lot of
1:07:11neil degrasse's
1:07:12in specifically the social and the human
1:07:14sciences
1:07:15and i think that citizens of normal
1:07:18middle class individuals in the country
1:07:20this actually is one of my major talking
1:07:22points i've given speeches about just
1:07:23this
1:07:23need to start demanding more from the
1:07:25media the
1:07:27mass media in the usa whether this is
1:07:29fox on the right
1:07:30or msnbc on the left which spent two
1:07:34years accusing trump being a russian spy
1:07:36um don't let him forget it uh very often
1:07:39says things that are
1:07:40simply not accurate um
1:07:43so an example of this would be the
1:07:46extreme
1:07:47over publicization of black on white
1:07:50crime on the right
1:07:52where you see the proliferation of
1:07:56these these wild stories young woman
1:07:59beaten
1:07:59you know moving throughout the
1:08:00right-wing blogosphere often reaching
1:08:02television
1:08:03i mean in reality interracial violent
1:08:05crime uh and this includes both
1:08:07whites and blacks is about five percent
1:08:10of crime in a typical year there's six
1:08:12hundred thousand
1:08:13violent incidents involving either a
1:08:15white or black perp and a victim of the
1:08:17op
1:08:17the other race um there are 12 million
1:08:19crimes on an annual basis so that's a
1:08:21right-wing example we've all seen
1:08:22a left-wing example frankly and this
1:08:24might be a little more controversial
1:08:26but is the extreme focus on police
1:08:28violence
1:08:29um when i began writing taboo i looked
1:08:31at the number of unarmed brothers
1:08:33unarmed african-american men
1:08:35that were killed by police in a typical
1:08:36year and was shocked by the figures
1:08:38uh in 2019 the most recent year on
1:08:41record
1:08:42total number of unarmed black men killed
1:08:43by police in fact this may be black
1:08:45people
1:08:45two women as well was 15. so very often
1:08:49the media which enjoys telling us the
1:08:51planes we're flying on are going to
1:08:52crash
1:08:53and we're going to be eaten by sharks
1:08:55and so on down the line
1:08:56also publicizes these racial and ethnic
1:08:58stories to a ridiculous extent
1:09:00so we need to start demanding more and
1:09:01we need to talk
1:09:03outstanding ron mcfarland i think i saw
1:09:06your hand raised
1:09:09yes um i um
1:09:13i want my question to be for both the
1:09:15speakers if they can and my
1:09:17it goes back to uh john uh mchorter's uh
1:09:21book i think it was losing a race
1:09:24and he pointed out in that book three
1:09:27three things
1:09:28victimology uh separatism
1:09:32separatism and uh anti-intellectualism
1:09:36as a root cause that he thought
1:09:40that uh was on some of our black kids
1:09:44i was wondering if you guys even though
1:09:46the book is 20 years old
1:09:48i'll just wonder is there some um
1:09:51some to that i'm just curious because
1:09:54i'm a former teacher
1:09:56mostly in the black community and uh
1:09:58over the 30 years i
1:10:01i experienced some of that and um
1:10:04but i'm just curious about that
1:10:07thank you i see you smiling rod so i
1:10:10feel like i feel like
1:10:12um well the complicated answer is uh yes
1:10:15there's something to that and no there's
1:10:17nothing to that so let me let me try and
1:10:19uh flesh that out a little bit um
1:10:23it's been a while since uh since i even
1:10:26thought about that book uh it was
1:10:27certainly a seminal one
1:10:29and and and mcwhorter's arguing that
1:10:30culture matters which is
1:10:32a very common theme well yes culture
1:10:35does matter within one lifetime
1:10:37and so yes it is the case that um
1:10:40what you're talking about maybe
1:10:42anti-white or what you know in a more
1:10:44abstract way oppositional culture where
1:10:47maybe working class
1:10:48people of of of any race may decide to
1:10:51reject
1:10:52middle class values that does happen
1:10:54that's been that's been documented uh
1:10:56quite frequently uh however the the
1:10:59cause of that
1:11:00uh is actually the policies that have
1:11:03been put in place
1:11:04so what what people tend to do is they
1:11:06focus on the here and now and say well
1:11:09look at this pathological
1:11:10black culture okay fine certainly uh
1:11:13there are behaviors that
1:11:14that black people are doing and also
1:11:16poor people are doing that that may
1:11:18perpetuate some problems
1:11:20but that culture comes out of a
1:11:21particular context that was
1:11:24made i believe uh by the policies put in
1:11:27place by the us government so if you
1:11:28ultimately want to change those things
1:11:30you really need to change the policies i
1:11:32think it's very unfair to
1:11:33expect a group of people to somehow
1:11:37um act differently given the the
1:11:39circumstances that they're in
1:11:45um very good um audrey balloon
1:11:48hey do you oh yeah i'm sorry we'll
1:11:52you want to jump on that will i should
1:11:53tell you guys you guys want to piggyback
1:11:55off of each other just go ahead and
1:11:56just go ahead and cut me off before i go
1:11:58to the next uh before i go to the next
1:12:00person
1:12:03andrea will wanted to respond to the
1:12:05last uh point but we're coming to you
1:12:07next
1:12:09okay go ahead i mean yeah i've so
1:12:12i grew up in an inner city area as i
1:12:15said i was born on the south side of
1:12:16chicago i grew up on the
1:12:17pre-gentrification north side in wicker
1:12:19park which at the time was nicknamed
1:12:20needle park
1:12:22um i went to high school at east aurora
1:12:24senior like five minutes outside the
1:12:26city city at 300 000.
1:12:28and i mean i don't disagree with some of
1:12:30the
1:12:31so first of all obviously one thing that
1:12:33i think rod and i would agree on
1:12:35is that there's nothing wrong quote
1:12:37unquote with black people
1:12:39cultural issues in the black community
1:12:41clearly if this even needs to be said
1:12:43aren't genetic they're not going to
1:12:44endure forever
1:12:45so on down the line they're the result
1:12:48of
1:12:48conflict with an oppression by caucasian
1:12:51america in the past
1:12:53as well as things like the welfare
1:12:55system that may have been very well
1:12:57intentioned
1:12:57but that had a devastating impact on
1:12:59black communities poor white communities
1:13:01blah blah
1:13:02i mean we could both discuss this at
1:13:04research paper length
1:13:05so the fact that these problems exist
1:13:07doesn't mean anything
1:13:09about people of african descent as a
1:13:11group what not
1:13:12but with that said if we're not making
1:13:14excuses yeah there
1:13:15obviously are issues with student
1:13:18behavior
1:13:18that would make people less likely to
1:13:20succeed in an inner city school
1:13:21i once got in a fist fight at school
1:13:24because someone hit me for wearing a
1:13:26backpack
1:13:27i was an athlete at the school i came
1:13:28into the school this guy who happened to
1:13:29be african-american said
1:13:31what you're wearing a backpack for with
1:13:32your backpack nerd itself
1:13:34threw a punch at me i ended up hitting
1:13:36him i'm not gonna boast about this we're
1:13:38all adult you know
1:13:40men at this point but i mean that's
1:13:41something that i couldn't see occurring
1:13:43in a lot of suburban environments and as
1:13:45african-american educators we need to be
1:13:47very real about that
1:13:49um i think mick warder excellent book
1:13:51excellent book i do think he's a little
1:13:53hard on the kids in a few sections
1:13:55but his basic point at one point he says
1:13:57there are four
1:13:58things that if you adjust for them not
1:14:01only improve black student performances
1:14:02but close the black white iq gap
1:14:04this is an incredible note that he makes
1:14:07it from a qualitative standpoint but it
1:14:08just kind of goes in passing
1:14:10but as i recall they were grades
1:14:12demanded by your parents specifically
1:14:14your mother
1:14:15uh asian moms are known known for this
1:14:17uh two
1:14:18number of hours of study as versus
1:14:21watching television daily
1:14:23three father in the home and
1:14:26four um what was for a number of books
1:14:29that i don't recall that having
1:14:30a massive impact but i mean obviously
1:14:33those
1:14:34are cultural variables it may be
1:14:37that for african-americans or for poor
1:14:39whites and at least in the first case of
1:14:40african-americans we weren't allowed to
1:14:41learn to read for a while
1:14:43there are reasons why there are fewer
1:14:45books in the home but if you can
1:14:47teach people to read to their kids you
1:14:50see dramatic sat jumps you see dramatic
1:14:52gpa jumps
1:14:53there's no reason to deny this from some
1:14:55sort of woke all knowledge is equal
1:14:57perspective and i don't think anyone up
1:14:58here is doing that yeah he's correct
1:15:00um just a basic point that john
1:15:02mcwhorter makes that's so obvious we
1:15:04often don't even consider it
1:15:06the most successful group in the usa i
1:15:08said this earlier isn't white it's
1:15:09asians
1:15:10if you look at scores on the s.a.t the
1:15:12highest scorers in the usa are japanese
1:15:14and korean-americans
1:15:15and the predictor there isn't some kind
1:15:17of magical hyper-intelligence or diet or
1:15:20any of the nonsense you hear on the
1:15:21internet
1:15:21it's study time um there's a graphic
1:15:24from ogboo 2003 he finds that asian kids
1:15:26study
1:15:27two or three times as much as white and
1:15:28black kids so yeah as
1:15:30as a coach as a mentor for young men who
1:15:33are majority black i don't have any
1:15:34problem with white mentees of course
1:15:36but yeah that's one of the things i say
1:15:37you go home eat your meals read your
1:15:40books like very often the secrets to
1:15:41success are pretty simple
1:15:44don't fight people for wearing backpacks
1:15:46to school
1:15:48and that um okay audrey so sorry to have
1:15:52cut you off before audrey go ahead and
1:15:54ask your questions no that's fine it's
1:15:56also interesting
1:15:57um my
1:16:02more directed to rod but i'm glad that
1:16:05um dr riley said something
1:16:07because um i'm i
1:16:10i'm really unclear about what rod said
1:16:13and
1:16:13my quote and so the question is number
1:16:16one
1:16:17why would there be stress among those
1:16:18who have succeeded black people
1:16:21and why would he blame that on our
1:16:24culture
1:16:26and or our or the
1:16:29a white culture or systemic racism
1:16:32and two is to piggyback on that how does
1:16:35the system cause
1:16:37cultural differences cultural issues i
1:16:40maybe i misunderstood what he's saying
1:16:42but if
1:16:43if the culture and if dr riley is
1:16:46correct
1:16:47or if we take his point that the culture
1:16:51is the culture
1:16:52and and it's just like a jewish culture
1:16:55is different than a gentile code
1:16:57they're just cultural differences
1:17:00and class differences and we hate to
1:17:02talk about class in the united states we
1:17:04think that that's
1:17:05somehow where we ignore that but there
1:17:08are cultural and class differences
1:17:10that to my way of thinking
1:17:13are the underlying cause of all of this
1:17:16kind of thing
1:17:18and how then do we come back to saying
1:17:21no it's systemic racism which came first
1:17:24the chicken or the egg
1:17:25right thank you very much audrey now in
1:17:27general folks i want to try and limit
1:17:29questions to
1:17:30actual uh to to to one question uh per
1:17:32questionnaire but audrey you got a
1:17:33couple clear questions in there
1:17:35rod uh go ahead and uh respond
1:17:38okay um well so the idea with the um
1:17:42the health issues i think that was the
1:17:44first question and and that and the uh
1:17:46the stress
1:17:47issues well i think the way it works is
1:17:50if if
1:17:51there's been some qualitative research
1:17:52and i think some qualitative too but
1:17:54it's not in my head right now
1:17:55where when you when you when you talk to
1:17:57minorities
1:17:59in a setting where they are a minority
1:18:01they have a sense that they are
1:18:03somewhat of an outsider and they have a
1:18:05hard time developing meaningful
1:18:07relationships with people
1:18:08so just imagine if you were in in um
1:18:12put in isolation or something and that
1:18:13would that would cause uh
1:18:15some kind of stress on you and so it's
1:18:17obviously not
1:18:18not that severe uh but if you are a
1:18:21black person and you're the only black
1:18:22person
1:18:23in a corporate setting or in a
1:18:25university
1:18:26then that will that can cause some
1:18:27stress on you and over time that can
1:18:29accumulate
1:18:30uh and it can lead i think his name is
1:18:32david williams at harvard university
1:18:35uh he says he did this famous ted talk
1:18:37you know racism makes you sick and the
1:18:39idea
1:18:40is that this constant stress of being
1:18:42the only or being one of the few
1:18:44and maybe constantly monitoring yourself
1:18:47uh in some ways because
1:18:48you know that you're slightly different
1:18:50than the majority
1:18:52population in your setting that actually
1:18:53leads to things like hypertension
1:18:56uh which of course uh can lead to early
1:18:58death so
1:18:59uh it's not necessarily about white
1:19:01culture it's about being a minority
1:19:04in a particular setting um she also
1:19:07talked about class and this might be a
1:19:08general point
1:19:09um i've noticed in a lot of
1:19:11conversations about systemic racism or
1:19:13racism in general
1:19:15there seems to be this this uh drive
1:19:18to sort of focus more on class
1:19:22i think that's a mistake um class does
1:19:25matter
1:19:25uh obviously for outcomes in people's
1:19:28lives
1:19:30but it's also the case that racism is
1:19:32its own phenomena in other words if you
1:19:34if you're interacting with someone you
1:19:36walk up to someone to talk to them
1:19:39your your interactions will be
1:19:41contingent upon their visible
1:19:42characteristics
1:19:43first so you don't know how much money
1:19:45they have in your pocket
1:19:47in their pocket so that has an effect it
1:19:49may it may not have the effect
1:19:51in terms of what kind of house you buy
1:19:52or anything like that but it has an
1:19:54effect on certain things like maybe the
1:19:55friends you
1:19:56you make uh the friends you make how
1:19:58police interact with you
1:20:00um you can be a rich kid but if you're a
1:20:02rich black kid
1:20:03and and people have some anti-black
1:20:06attitudes the teachers have anti-black
1:20:07attitudes then it's going to have an
1:20:09effect on you
1:20:10so i just want to stress that point that
1:20:12trying to reduce this
1:20:13to a class issue
1:20:16might be a mistake and i think the data
1:20:18the data bears that out even though dr
1:20:20riley points out when you control for
1:20:21these issues
1:20:23um the fact is flesh and blood people
1:20:25can't control for those issues
1:20:26they walk into a room and they have all
1:20:28these things um
1:20:30so i hope i answered i hope i answered
1:20:32her two questions
1:20:34okay thank you thank you rod uh will you
1:20:37if you want to jump on that uh go ahead
1:20:39um
1:20:40if not i'll keep going down the docket i
1:20:42actually have one kind of less
1:20:44politically correct comment about that
1:20:46this doesn't really counter any of
1:20:47the rod scholarship there but i actually
1:20:49pulled up some articles on feminism on
1:20:51my phone while we were talking
1:20:53and it seems like upper class kids are
1:20:55more stressed about a lot of things
1:20:57um so if you look at worry about
1:21:00sexual assault for example women who
1:21:03attend
1:21:04absolutely elite colleges many of which
1:21:06are almost entirely female like vassar
1:21:08and oberlin
1:21:09are often more worried about being
1:21:11abused or being caught up in a scenario
1:21:13of domestic violence
1:21:14than working-class women and i think one
1:21:16thing we can't move away from here so
1:21:18first of all obviously the point you're
1:21:19more likely to feel nervous and tense if
1:21:21you're a minority in an environment
1:21:22that's just true but one thing that we
1:21:24can't move away from here because
1:21:26working-class black kids are also i'm
1:21:27sure
1:21:28working a construction job during the
1:21:30summer et cetera often the minority in
1:21:32an environment
1:21:33is that there seems to be a rise of
1:21:35almost
1:21:36panic among the american upper middle
1:21:38class
1:21:39we certainly see this around a bunch of
1:21:41issues so i mean women who identify as
1:21:43upper middle class feminists are more
1:21:45worried about sexual assault and dv than
1:21:47working class women in a lot of
1:21:48situations
1:21:49um we do see that upper middle class
1:21:52black kids are more worried about racism
1:21:55more prone to describe what they call
1:21:57microaggression so on the working-class
1:21:58black kids
1:21:59i think one of the reasons for this is
1:22:01that in colleges and elite high schools
1:22:03we constantly talk to people about
1:22:05racism sexism microaggression and
1:22:08other threats from the surrounding
1:22:10society um
1:22:12you can debate whether that's a positive
1:22:14or negative but for example writing the
1:22:16book hate crime hopes
1:22:17um one of the things that i was
1:22:19surprised to see is that when you look
1:22:20at people
1:22:21directly falsifying incidents of racial
1:22:24conflict and this is very common on both
1:22:26the left and the right by the way
1:22:27there's a whole chapter focused on
1:22:28quote-unquote alt-right hate hoaxes
1:22:30more than a third of the cases on both
1:22:32sides took place on an american research
1:22:34university campus like that's remarkable
1:22:37when you look at the
1:22:38percentage of people that are currently
1:22:40living on an american research one
1:22:42university campus
1:22:43so i i do think there has to be some
1:22:45effect to constantly telling people
1:22:48that ethnic conflict is everywhere
1:22:51all men are rapists this sort of thing
1:22:53and this may be i thank you for bringing
1:22:54that up because that's
1:22:56this may be to some extent an
1:22:58illustration of that
1:22:59um and my last line here i would suspect
1:23:01that upper middle class people if you
1:23:03looked at for example
1:23:04covet 19 perceptions on gun culture
1:23:07would be
1:23:08more afraid of almost everything because
1:23:10they're more aware of the literature
1:23:12that's out there
1:23:12they're more wired into facebook and
1:23:15twitter i can find that stuff to an hour
1:23:17a day
1:23:17i mean that that has an effect
1:23:20indeed all right thank you very much
1:23:22will um feroze
1:23:24adams go ahead and ask you a question
1:23:27thank you john um first of all i wanted
1:23:29to say uh
1:23:30uh dr reilly i really enjoyed your book
1:23:32on hate hoaxes and so i'm glad you
1:23:34mentioned that that was uh
1:23:36quite an eye-opener on many dimensions
1:23:38my question really has to come down to
1:23:40affirmative action
1:23:41and um i'm sure you're familiar with the
1:23:43literature from thomas now
1:23:45uh so will on um at least in the book uh
1:23:48the economics and politics of race where
1:23:50he talks about
1:23:51different minority groups in many places
1:23:53whether it chinese and southeast asia
1:23:55indians in east africa
1:23:56jews of course in europe and the middle
1:23:58east and then our meetings in anatolia
1:24:00and
1:24:01all these different examples it seems
1:24:03like that
1:24:04there seems to be a some sort of pushing
1:24:07asians under the bus as collateral
1:24:09damage when it comes to a lot of these
1:24:10policies when it comes to affirmative
1:24:11action like in
1:24:12new york city public schools in
1:24:14california so the question really comes
1:24:16down to what could a broad-based
1:24:17coalition against
1:24:19affirmative action looks like i mean
1:24:20especially considering
1:24:22the mismatch effect and that possibly
1:24:24reducing the size of
1:24:26some minority middle classes
1:24:28artificially it doesn't seem like it
1:24:30really helps anybody
1:24:31uh affirmative action so what could a
1:24:33broad-based coalition look like and this
1:24:34is where dr reilly
1:24:36okay i think that's a fascinating
1:24:38question i mean and without immediately
1:24:41endorsing you know either side of that
1:24:42potential political battle i mean i do
1:24:44think that's something you might see
1:24:45down the road
1:24:46basically the simplest answer is that
1:24:48the coalition would consist of all of
1:24:49the people that are currently hurt by
1:24:51affirmative action
1:24:52as versus those that currently benefit
1:24:54from it so i don't
1:24:55necessarily love lumping people in
1:24:57groups like this but i mean i think
1:24:58you'd see affirmative action would have
1:25:00a surprisingly broad range of people
1:25:03that believe their beneficiaries from
1:25:04african americans to hispanic americans
1:25:07to white women to a very surprising
1:25:09degree
1:25:09a lot of people don't know that in terms
1:25:11of institutional entry and how that
1:25:12breaks down
1:25:13but the coalition against it i mean
1:25:15clearly asian americans
1:25:16um south asians poor whites
1:25:20i mean all of those groups that perform
1:25:22fairly well but not spectacularly on the
1:25:24exam
1:25:25and are removed from spots to some
1:25:28extent as a result of that
1:25:29and i mean asians and south asians in
1:25:31those categories not that there aren't
1:25:32many very high performers on the exam in
1:25:34those populations
1:25:36but i mean affirmative action in the usa
1:25:38right now is
1:25:39an interesting kind of cultural hot
1:25:42potato
1:25:43one of the reasons for that i'll give
1:25:46two very quick ones but
1:25:47one of the reasons for that is that
1:25:49university in particular wouldn't be
1:25:50dramatically less diverse in the broad
1:25:52sense without affirmative action
1:25:54you'd see more asian americans you'd see
1:25:56more jewish americans you'd see a lot of
1:25:58west africans
1:25:59and you'd see a lot of poor whites from
1:26:02you know the highest performers in the
1:26:04area where i currently live
1:26:05that are right now considering a ksu or
1:26:07a uk i mean some of those people
1:26:10if a third of the spots opened up might
1:26:12consider for example a lower ivy
1:26:14so i don't i don't think you'd see
1:26:16simply white
1:26:17gentry sprigs if you got rid of
1:26:19affirmative action um the second issue a
1:26:21lot of people have with affirmative
1:26:23action is that you're not
1:26:24talking just you're not talking
1:26:26necessarily about helping the poor
1:26:28uh anymore i mean many of my friends are
1:26:31affirmative action legacies and that
1:26:33they are upper middle class black and
1:26:34hispanic guys
1:26:36who would receive an affirmative action
1:26:37boost if they applied to you know my old
1:26:39alma the university of illinois
1:26:41but who also um are the sons of people
1:26:45who attended an honors program or went
1:26:48to the sociology department political
1:26:49science department at the university of
1:26:51illinois these are well-off black and
1:26:52hispanic families
1:26:53so a lot of people ask the question
1:26:55aren't you moving one group of middle
1:26:57class kids out of the way to make room
1:26:58for another group of middle class kids
1:27:00these are interesting issues um i think
1:27:02that there are
1:27:03there's some valid approaches in terms
1:27:05of saving affirmative action
1:27:07one obviously would be some kind of
1:27:08socio-economic affirmative action
1:27:10program
1:27:11where you look at the actual income of
1:27:14the neighborhood
1:27:15students come from and you awards uh
1:27:17substantial chunk of the current boost
1:27:20uh say a hundred points two people and
1:27:22you could confine this to
1:27:24you know members of whatever race if you
1:27:26wanted to but the argument there would
1:27:28be
1:27:28that these people actually do have
1:27:30slightly lower test scores because
1:27:32they're coming from quote unquote or el
1:27:34barrio
1:27:35i mean that they are to some extent
1:27:37disadvantage that's that's an option
1:27:38i've seen batted around a lot in higher
1:27:40education
1:27:41another option would be confining these
1:27:43programs affirmative action perhaps
1:27:45reparations down the road to what some
1:27:46call eidos
1:27:48which is american descendants of slaves
1:27:50african-americans perhaps some native
1:27:52americans
1:27:53which removes the odd question of why
1:27:56are we taking
1:27:56poor whites out of slots in these
1:27:58programs or asians out of slots in these
1:28:00programs
1:28:01to give those slots to foreign noblemen
1:28:03uh southeast asians for example qualify
1:28:05for many programs um
1:28:07people from the entire spanish-speaking
1:28:09diaspora qualify for almost every
1:28:11affirmative action program
1:28:13so that's that's something that i don't
1:28:14really do a lot of research on but it is
1:28:16interesting in terms of a coalition i
1:28:18think you'd see
1:28:18you could see everyone that's hurt
1:28:20versus everybody helped uh and i'd be
1:28:22interested in rod's take
1:28:23in terms of ideas of affirmative action
1:28:26last line massive affirmative action is
1:28:29something
1:28:30that is kind of the ignored elephant in
1:28:32the room now as we have other
1:28:34conversations about for example white
1:28:35privilege and so on
1:28:36i mean if you look at the affirmative
1:28:38action gaps in that harvard study i mean
1:28:40they are
1:28:41very substantial uh as i've mentioned at
1:28:43least if you're talking about
1:28:45uh believe admittees not enrollees the
1:28:48original gap was 302 points between say
1:28:51asians and african-americans
1:28:52so there is going to be to some extent a
1:28:54reckoning around that at some point when
1:28:56the majority of the students being
1:28:58turned away
1:28:58are west african black people or east
1:29:01asian individuals or something like that
1:29:04i hope that helped it was like at least
1:29:07very good rod if you want to jump on
1:29:09that point you may i'm just going to say
1:29:11here
1:29:12that um we are going to go for about 12
1:29:15more minutes maybe 13 on questions and
1:29:17i'm hoping we can get
1:29:18i'm hoping we can get uh two or three
1:29:21more people in at least
1:29:22so uh but rod uh did you want to did you
1:29:24want to jump on that board um
1:29:26uh sure uh um um with respect to
1:29:29to that uh caller
1:29:33my my take is that uh in terms of
1:29:36in terms of so he was asking a question
1:29:38about how to deal with affirmative
1:29:39action um
1:29:40so i'll talk about in terms of systemic
1:29:41racism um
1:29:43it has no bearing whatsoever uh in the
1:29:46overall shift or reduction of um
1:29:50of um outcomes for black and white
1:29:53people because
1:29:55to me the way i understand affirmative
1:29:57action is that it's it's
1:29:58it's usually in the most competitive
1:30:00school so that's like the top 200
1:30:02schools
1:30:02in the country okay so that immediately
1:30:05narrows it down to 10 to 15
1:30:07of the college population immediately
1:30:10then you're talking about
1:30:12a percentage within those groups
1:30:16um who are maybe not getting in those
1:30:18schools
1:30:19because they've lost a slot to a black
1:30:22person and i sympathize for that person
1:30:24who's
1:30:25who's lost his slot although he could
1:30:26certainly apply somewhere else
1:30:28uh and so so you you're talking about
1:30:30this this tiny percentage of a
1:30:32percentage
1:30:33of college uh enrollees now they're
1:30:36going to top school so of course they
1:30:38may end up
1:30:39being our future leaders but when it's
1:30:41when it when it comes to the
1:30:42to the mass of black people uh and
1:30:45dealing with maybe
1:30:46inequality of education outcomes it
1:30:48means nothing whatsoever i'm actually
1:30:50baffled by the amount of uh
1:30:52focus that's placed on affirmative
1:30:54action and i think it must be because
1:30:56it's at harvard that that's got to be
1:30:58the only reason
1:31:00because when it comes to every other
1:31:02when it comes to the
1:31:03mass of college students it really does
1:31:05not affect them that much
1:31:08indeed okay um i had a name in front of
1:31:11me
1:31:11uh yaya fanuci i'm hoping i got that
1:31:15somewhere close to correct but forgive
1:31:16me if i didn't
1:31:17go ahead and ask you a question that is
1:31:19correct thank you thank you
1:31:21very much for uh for the opportunity
1:31:23thank you both for your presentations i
1:31:25came on a little bit late but i did get
1:31:27get most of it um i actually want to ask
1:31:29you a bit of a cultural question and i
1:31:31know our presenters are in my
1:31:32age range from the sort of uh gender
1:31:35generation x
1:31:37um i have a question about the culture
1:31:39of when we grew up
1:31:41which is if you remember the hip-hop of
1:31:42the old days you had
1:31:44we could talk about systemic racism in
1:31:46the system but we also if you guys
1:31:48remember
1:31:49self-destruction we're all in the same
1:31:51gang
1:31:52uh songs that would have self-critiques
1:31:55of the black community while at the same
1:31:56time talking about the system
1:31:58my question is this has changed uh you
1:32:01don't see
1:32:02it seems now if you talk about issues of
1:32:03personal conduct black on black crime
1:32:06it's always framed as respectability
1:32:08politics my question is
1:32:10when did this happen and are we missing
1:32:13something because now it's difficult
1:32:14to have these self-critiques what do we
1:32:16do about that okay
1:32:19and i i think that i might like to start
1:32:21just to get more questioners in
1:32:23guys i think i might like to just have
1:32:24one or the other of you answer answer
1:32:26the question uh
1:32:27dial were you directing that question
1:32:28towards will or dwarts rod
1:32:30whoever feels most uh inspired to
1:32:33respond
1:32:34rod says no you take it dr riley
1:32:37brother i'm a hip-hop head my assumption
1:32:40would be john and rod r2 and
1:32:42by the way there are a lot of
1:32:43differences between the golden age and
1:32:45hip-hop
1:32:46with you know biggie smalls and tupac
1:32:48and wu tag it's all some of the this
1:32:50music that we're seeing today i don't
1:32:51know if um
1:32:52a lot of the guys with little in front
1:32:54of their name can really spell out a
1:32:55sociological critique of you know
1:32:57white and black interactions in america
1:32:59you know but i mean i do think that
1:33:01that's true
1:33:02so a lot of times two things can be true
1:33:04at once and one thing we do is academics
1:33:06are just as politically active
1:33:08people is pick a side you know i'm on
1:33:11this bl i'm on this research team so i'm
1:33:13on this side of this debate
1:33:15or i'm you know i'm a democrat i'm a
1:33:17republican so i'm going to take
1:33:19this position and in reality a lot of
1:33:21issues abortion in the black community
1:33:23just throw an obvious one out there in
1:33:24any community
1:33:26really have a there are a lot of
1:33:28honorable positions you can hold
1:33:30so i think the basic idea that there are
1:33:34there's a place for critiquing racism
1:33:35where it still exists and there's a
1:33:37place for critiquing
1:33:38personal behavior is obvious um actually
1:33:40when i think about this
1:33:41i don't think so much about rappers as
1:33:43about chris rock chris rock in the 1990s
1:33:46was one of the funniest sociologists out
1:33:48there
1:33:48if you look at videos like how not to
1:33:50get your ass kicked by the police
1:33:52um you know old people white or black
1:33:55are the biggest racists
1:33:57i'm actually going to censor myself and
1:33:58not go through like five or six of these
1:34:00but anyone listening to that was
1:34:02cracking up because they know it's true
1:34:04um you know his famous one about the
1:34:07conflict 5050 in the black community
1:34:09so i definitely think that there has
1:34:11been a move away from that i would
1:34:12actually date it to what's called the
1:34:14great awokening in 2008
1:34:16and i don't think a lot of this has to
1:34:18do primarily with black people
1:34:20i think that large white-owned
1:34:21publications like the new york times
1:34:23around the time they began working in
1:34:24coordination with the obama campaign
1:34:26began using terms systemic racism would
1:34:29be one of them but one of the more
1:34:30useful ones
1:34:31but a dozen other things you know the
1:34:32gays and so on down the line about a
1:34:34hundred times more than they had before
1:34:36and i think we moved from a culture
1:34:37where it was okay to kind of tease each
1:34:39other locker room fashion
1:34:40to a much more sensitive culture and
1:34:42this isn't just on the part of
1:34:43african-americans or primarily on the
1:34:45part of african-americans
1:34:46i watched a video of a young woman irish
1:34:50dancing the other day
1:34:51and my reaction was just well that's
1:34:52what's up that's cool black irish dancer
1:34:54whatever went to get a beer
1:34:55came back she'd been accused of cultural
1:34:58appropriation and people are trying to
1:34:59have her
1:35:00fired this sort of nonsense i think is
1:35:02something that's very recent it's a
1:35:04product of twitter it's a product of the
1:35:06great awokening and media
1:35:07bad
1:35:10okay thank you will uh karine kakmarik
1:35:15hi thank you so i have a very quick
1:35:17question um
1:35:18dr riley are you afraid that people will
1:35:21perceive you
1:35:22a certain way if you say that systemic
1:35:24racism exists
1:35:25because we live in a society that
1:35:27demonstrates the lingering effect of
1:35:28racist policies
1:35:31well i think that part of the part of my
1:35:34notoriety as an academic is that i don't
1:35:36necessarily care extremely much about
1:35:40large group reactions so for example i
1:35:42think the alt-right says a lot of things
1:35:43that are nonsensical like diverse
1:35:45societies have never worked they get
1:35:46back to rome
1:35:47so i debated their founder on television
1:35:50i wanted to make the point that it's not
1:35:52just that racism is bad
1:35:54that makes these ideas not so worthwhile
1:35:56is that they're wrong
1:35:57but on the other hand i've written what
1:35:58many would consider a right-leaning book
1:36:00hate crime hoax
1:36:01so i'm not incredibly worried about
1:36:03people's reactions to me
1:36:04um on this for example where i say i see
1:36:08a fair amount of individual racism but
1:36:10not
1:36:10i don't think the term systemic racism
1:36:12is valid using my definition
1:36:13no i haven't seen much backlash to that
1:36:16um i i teach at kentucky state that's an
1:36:18hbcu
1:36:19top 200 you and an hbcu the hvcus do a
1:36:22lot of great work in this country and i
1:36:24will say i would be fired immediately if
1:36:25i was perceived as an
1:36:27actual racist but there's probably a
1:36:28little less guilty wokeness there
1:36:30because our entire management team is
1:36:32well off black guys
1:36:34so i think from the starting from the
1:36:36jump the it's assumed that none of us
1:36:38dislike black people slowing down the
1:36:39line so we can have more room for
1:36:41conversations of this kind
1:36:43and i i find that also to be true for
1:36:44kids black and white on the campus
1:36:47okay joanne richards go ahead and ask a
1:36:51question
1:36:53and you're muted joanne um it's on mute
1:36:56joanne
1:36:57thank you so there was an interesting
1:37:00thing that happened oh not too long ago
1:37:03uh with airbnb
1:37:05where folks who were renting rooms
1:37:09were discriminating based on the name of
1:37:12the person who applied
1:37:15and i don't know whether so that's one
1:37:18situation that i
1:37:19think sort of underlines this issue of
1:37:23individual discrimination
1:37:27based on some characteristic and the
1:37:30other that's an interesting one that i
1:37:31have a question about is that
1:37:34when symphony orchestras
1:37:38changed their interview process by
1:37:42putting a screen between the interviewer
1:37:45and the interviewee
1:37:46what ended up happening is the number of
1:37:48women who were hired by symphonies went
1:37:50up
1:37:51but that was not true for
1:37:52african-americans
1:37:54or hispanics and i'm wondering why
1:37:59well i can i can speak to the first uh
1:38:02question um i would like to stress
1:38:06that when scholars look at
1:38:10anti-black attitudes in a particular
1:38:13setting
1:38:14or or explore to see if it's there um
1:38:17it's usually the case that we see
1:38:19that that um there are these attitudes
1:38:22these stereotypes about black folk that
1:38:23damage them
1:38:25and it's not about class so obviously
1:38:26with the airbnb example
1:38:28they had the money i i assume uh to rent
1:38:31the house
1:38:32um but of course if if
1:38:36so so even if they had the money to rent
1:38:37the house because the
1:38:39uh person who was renting it perceived
1:38:42them as black
1:38:43that damage them and this occurs over
1:38:45and over and over again i don't want to
1:38:47beat a dead horse but it's just
1:38:49important to recognize
1:38:51how those little things impact they have
1:38:54a cumulative advantage
1:38:56and they impact the lives of black
1:38:57americans uh
1:38:59and maybe dr riley can talk about that
1:39:01that second point
1:39:04the symphony uh question
1:39:07okay um so a couple things i mean i'm
1:39:11i still and i won't even say cling to i
1:39:13think it's a large majority of the
1:39:14evidence
1:39:15my my comment would be that there's a
1:39:16huge multivariate set of things that
1:39:18leads into how you judge people so for
1:39:20example the airbnb
1:39:21study was based on names again and
1:39:24rodney had a good back and forth about
1:39:25what that means
1:39:26i think there'd be a big difference
1:39:27between being named wilfred or dwayne or
1:39:29something like that and being named
1:39:30something that was perceived as being
1:39:33lower class and i'd also by the way i'd
1:39:34like to see more work done on
1:39:36white people and class for whatever
1:39:39reason
1:39:39the wright certainly doesn't want to do
1:39:41this the left doesn't always do it
1:39:43but if your name was bobby lee or
1:39:45something like that
1:39:46would that have an effect on your life
1:39:48as versus being named
1:39:50thaddeus i think it would at any rate um
1:39:52now returning to the orchestra
1:39:54question though um one argument could
1:39:56simply be that people that work for
1:39:58orchestras are sexist but they're not
1:39:59racist
1:40:00i mean that would be a quick glib answer
1:40:03uh and that again gets into
1:40:04this this day the point that i'm making
1:40:07here
1:40:08and this really is my my take away from
1:40:10this life is multivariate
1:40:12nobody argues that racism doesn't exist
1:40:14when we talk about affirmative action
1:40:16violence in some situations etc no one
1:40:18argues that the response dislike of
1:40:20whites doesn't exist
1:40:21but this exists within a complex matrix
1:40:23where women on
1:40:24average tend to experience more for
1:40:26example incidents of disrespect than
1:40:28white or black men
1:40:29um this might be one of them so that
1:40:32that's a fascinating
1:40:33that's an interesting question and to
1:40:35some extent that would be my guess
1:40:37perhaps black and asian men are not
1:40:39stereotyped as being poor competitive
1:40:41musicians
1:40:42but women are um that's that actually
1:40:45would very likely be my guess
1:40:48um i will say also that all of this is
1:40:50becoming extraordinarily politicized
1:40:52there's now a call on the nation's
1:40:54symphonies to drop
1:40:55blind auditions so that they can get the
1:40:58exactly proportional
1:40:59number of whites blacks asians hispanics
1:41:03and i mean my my suggestion would be
1:41:04have everyone play behind the screen
1:41:07and go with the best musicians and if
1:41:09that happens to equalize discrimination
1:41:11against women great
1:41:13yeah i agree okay well thank you very
1:41:16much will you've come forth with a
1:41:17constructive uh
1:41:18solution uh towards the end of our
1:41:21towards the end of our session
1:41:22ladies and gentlemen we didn't get a
1:41:23chance to solve every issue under the
1:41:25sun
1:41:25related to this topic but i'm confident
1:41:27that folks i think
1:41:29that we all have a clear understanding
1:41:30of some of the dynamics here than we did
1:41:32before
1:41:33and we are in the debt of professors
1:41:35roger graham and wilfred riley for that
1:41:37so
1:41:38round of applause so to speak jazz hands
1:41:40uh
1:41:41for our speakers and uh
1:41:44thank you gentlemen both very much and
1:41:46before we uh
1:41:47pivot to the close here why don't each
1:41:50of you tell um
1:41:51uh tell our members and tell our
1:41:52visitors here how they can keep uh keep
1:41:54up with you and follow your
1:41:56your work uh so uh will how can folks uh
1:41:58stay in touch with you
1:42:00well i'm an internet kid i'm very wired
1:42:02in i'm on twitter as
1:42:04will uh underscore duh underscore beast
1:42:07630 a big joke based on an old rap name
1:42:10but i'm will to beast
1:42:11um i am wilfred riley on
1:42:14facebook so on down the line and i've
1:42:17written a couple of books i mean one of
1:42:18them is the 50 million dollar question
1:42:20left leaning if it's anything purely
1:42:22scholarly one is hate crime hoax
1:42:24uh and one is taboo 10 facts you can't
1:42:27talk about which looks at a lot of these
1:42:28issues that we're talking about today
1:42:30those are available on amazon and so on
1:42:31i would always encourage people to go
1:42:33patronize a local
1:42:34business like a bookstore first but
1:42:37those are some basic ways to stay in
1:42:38touch with me and i mean feel free to
1:42:40really get in contact with
1:42:42me i will note i i talk a lot of trash
1:42:44sometimes from the right and sometimes
1:42:45from the left on the internet so you
1:42:47might be annoyed by my actual internet
1:42:48presence
1:42:49but um i i definitely welcome people
1:42:51encountering me talking to me chopping
1:42:53it up with me
1:42:54indeed and rod how can folks keep up
1:42:56with you um
1:42:57well so my my website is
1:42:59roderickgram.com and it'll have
1:43:01my books on there that of course no one
1:43:03will buy they're boring uh textbooks of
1:43:06course but i do have my
1:43:07op-ed pieces there and you can also see
1:43:09my other social media
1:43:11links there so i'm on twitter quite a
1:43:13bit and
1:43:14i tend to poke people a little bit on on
1:43:17twitter so
1:43:18if you want to get in those
1:43:19conversations please join in
1:43:21indeed ladies and gentlemen i want you
1:43:23folks to prove rod wrong and go out and
1:43:25buy his books
1:43:28nothing wrong with a good textbook um
1:43:31yes sir okay well thank you gentlemen uh
1:43:33once again and so folks um very happy to
1:43:36have had everybody's participation here
1:43:39um your presence is valuable it is
1:43:41meaningful
1:43:42uh once again thanks to the national
1:43:44institute for civil discourse thank you
1:43:46again to 1776
1:43:47unites i believe you're going to see
1:43:49links for these organizations uh in
1:43:52the in the chat going around and folks
1:43:53are interested in learning more about
1:43:54them and their work
1:43:56um and also um will uh rod if either of
1:43:59you
1:44:00as i'm uh sort of talking this out here
1:44:01in these last few minutes wanna
1:44:03send any uh link or information about
1:44:05some of the uh some of the
1:44:06studies that you cited there's some
1:44:08comments coming in in the chat
1:44:09expressing curiosity
1:44:11about some of the source material that
1:44:13you guys uh referenced and so if you
1:44:14want to send uh
1:44:15send that to luke so he can send around
1:44:18any notes along those lines we've got a
1:44:19few
1:44:20few minutes to circulate that um and so
1:44:23yeah well folks i am um
1:44:27i am very sort of impressed
1:44:31by the uh the difficulty
1:44:34you know uh that we have in the united
1:44:37states of
1:44:38america and you know just as folks
1:44:40living in a diverse society
1:44:42in engaging in conversations over
1:44:45conversations that touch on who we are
1:44:47as a people that touch on our identities
1:44:49and our
1:44:49historic sensitivities right um
1:44:52in a way that allows us to make progress
1:44:55on difficult
1:44:56tricky complicated issues while at the
1:44:58same time
1:44:59not torpedoing our ability to actually
1:45:01get along with each other
1:45:02to actually build with each other and
1:45:05sort of
1:45:05embrace uh sort of a common commitment
1:45:08to the general
1:45:09welfare um as friends as neighbors
1:45:12as citizens in this country and one of
1:45:16the reasons why well you know key reason
1:45:18braver angels exists at all is because
1:45:21you know and i referenced this at the
1:45:23top of our event
1:45:25there's this fundamental way in which
1:45:27the progress of our nation our ability
1:45:29to
1:45:30exist as a nation um is threatened
1:45:33by our ability or depends on our ability
1:45:35to actually maintain
1:45:36relationship with one another um to
1:45:39maintain community
1:45:40with one another and so the good news
1:45:43about that is that it doesn't require us
1:45:44to agree on every issue
1:45:46you know it doesn't require us to all
1:45:48think the same
1:45:50but if we open ourselves to the idea
1:45:52that there's a role for different
1:45:53perspectives in the conversation
1:45:56we actually give each other the
1:45:57opportunity to edify one another
1:45:59and in that we give ourselves the
1:46:01opportunity to move closer to the idea
1:46:03of a more perfect union
1:46:05or closer to the idea of the beloved
1:46:07community as martin luther king jr would
1:46:08have put it
1:46:09and so this event uh this evening
1:46:13uh from my vantage point uh seeks to be
1:46:15an exercise in that
1:46:16the braver angel seeks to commit to this
1:46:19work and to
1:46:19act in that direction in a variety of
1:46:22different ways
1:46:23and so folks who are interested in
1:46:24becoming a member of braver angels folks
1:46:26who are interested
1:46:28in continuing this work not just to
1:46:30continue hearing from excellent scholars
1:46:32and speakers and thinkers like rod
1:46:34graham and
1:46:34wilford riley but to bring these
1:46:36conversations to your own community
1:46:38to help us as we engage with people in
1:46:40the in institutions in the media
1:46:43in the academy in government to advance
1:46:45the culture
1:46:46of depolarization and beyond that just a
1:46:49culture of goodwill
1:46:50in american political and social life
1:46:53you've got a home with us whether you're
1:46:56republican democrat left right center
1:46:58progressive conservative black white
1:47:00latino asian straight gay anything else
1:47:02in between you have a home
1:47:04with us because what we're trying to do
1:47:06is to build up this culture
1:47:08of goodwill and unity across the board
1:47:09in the united states and we are far from
1:47:11giving up on the idea that that is
1:47:13possible
1:47:14and so again the link to become a member
1:47:16the link to join us at braver angels is
1:47:17in the chat box but the website
1:47:19is braver angels angels.org you can
1:47:22follow us at social on social media
1:47:24facebook twitter instagram
1:47:26braverangels and until next time ladies
1:47:28and gentlemen
1:47:30we are building a house united
1:47:33thank you all so much and have a
1:47:35wonderful night and again
1:47:36we will see you soon

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