Wilfred Reilly Debunks the 1619 Project View of Racism and Slavery — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01empirically as a political scientist the
2. 0:02United States of America is one of the
3. 0:04least racist countries on Earth I mean
4. 0:07this is not very disputed data um it
5. 0:10actually world population review in my
6. 0:12opinion stopped running this information
7. 0:14a couple of years ago during the
8. 0:17national mental meltdown following the
9. 0:19death of Mr Floyd because of the
10. 0:22implications of this sort of plain fact
11. 0:24but I mean every year there's surveys
12. 0:26where well-trained social scientists and
13. 0:29I'd imagine the universities the world
14. 0:31in urban areas that you'd expect to be
15. 0:33more tolerant than the average simply
16. 0:35ask people how they would feel about
17. 0:37having a neighbor of A different race or
18. 0:38cast you know is this something you'd
19. 0:40object to this is totally Anonymous I'll
20. 0:42look up the details of the project after
21. 0:43the call but it's very well done it's
22. 0:45universally accepted in my field and the
23. 0:47United States of America invariably is
24. 0:50one of the countries where the smallest
25. 0:51number of people would object to a
26. 0:53neighbor of A different race religion
27. 0:56anything similar and this is part of
28. 0:58this is part of a general pattern
29. 1:00actually where 94% of Americans support
30. 1:03interracial marriage that's true across
31. 1:05whites and blacks I mean so on down the
32. 1:07line so yeah we are we're not the most
33. 1:09racist country in the world we're one of
34. 1:11the
35. 1:11least I have experienced this
36. 1:14anecdotally which is when you travel and
37. 1:17the ironic thing is when you travel to
38. 1:19places like Scandinavia okay the kind of
39. 1:24kind of like racism that you encounter
40. 1:26is so much more overt it's almost
41. 1:28shocking to you yep
42. 1:30uh compared to here in the in the states
43. 1:32or Japan which I haven't been to but I
44. 1:34have many friends who've spent time in
45. 1:36Japan and they're like oh Japan is just
46. 1:38it's it's overt and it does seem like
47. 1:42where you have very homogeneous
48. 1:44populations you just tend to have people
49. 1:46who are more overtly um racist more
50. 1:48overtly like worried and afraid of
51. 1:51people that don't look like them and
52. 1:52then you come to America where we're a
53. 1:54Melting Pot and we're used to getting on
54. 1:57a Subway or going to a grocery store and
55. 1:59seeing lots of different types of people
56. 2:00and being okay with it and yet we have
57. 2:03this narrative that that is that we are
58. 2:06uniquely horrible that we were sort of
59. 2:08born in
60. 2:091619 and this is permeating permeating
61. 2:12our education system I know your book is
62. 2:14your up your upcoming book is called The
63. 2:16Lies your liberal teacher told you and
64. 2:20this feels like one of them this feels
65. 2:22like one of those lies that our kids are
66. 2:24being told that we are this uniquely
67. 2:26racist country so that's one example of
68. 2:28how we're not you just ask people
69. 2:30around the world how else what else
70. 2:33should I as a parent help my kid
71. 2:36understand about race in America so that
72. 2:38they don't fall into this trap well
73. 2:41there are a lot of different points here
74. 2:43I mean so first to engage the main thing
75. 2:44you said I mean yeah like most nations
76. 2:47are far more overtly racist than the
77. 2:49United States and this isn't just true
78. 2:51of white Nations by the way I mean so
79. 2:52like when you mentioned Japan the
80. 2:54Japanese word for Foreigner is still
81. 2:56gajin I mean you see this in you know
82. 2:59anime comics books uh gajin means
83. 3:01Foreign Devil and that's extremely
84. 3:04extremely common the Chinese word for
85. 3:06Foreigner used for both whites and
86. 3:07blacks is guofan excuse my pronunciation
87. 3:10but that means Barbarian dog if I recall
88. 3:13correctly the the experience with whites
89. 3:16certainly probably with black Ethiopians
90. 3:18or whatever as well would have been
91. 3:19foreign Warriors that were viewed as a
92. 3:21bit below those of the Middle Kingdom
93. 3:23much less it's elegant silk clad
94. 3:25diplomats so I mean this is an extremely
95. 3:28common attitude you see this as well in
96. 3:30the traditionally historically powerful
97. 3:32black Nations Arabic Nations mean
98. 3:35there's a famous meme you see this on
99. 3:36Facebook and Twitter of an Asian
100. 3:38American who went to I believe Nigeria
101. 3:41to help the local black population and
102. 3:43when he got there he found that Nigeria
103. 3:45is a rising you know top 30 uh global
104. 3:49economy and that he was greeted with
105. 3:51constant racism so the image in the meme
106. 3:53is like all these black kids pulling
107. 3:55their eyes to the side so they can quote
108. 3:57unquote look Chinese to tease them it's
109. 3:59a whole soccer field doing it and the
110. 4:01guy's like seen this no it it's I don't
111. 4:03know what you'd search for to find it
112. 4:05you know try to think it's something
113. 4:06politically correct but I mean it's just
114. 4:08that is extremely extremely common
115. 4:11everywhere outside of what some people
116. 4:13call the weird Zone the Anglo basically
117. 4:17um it's partly due to homogeneity but
118. 4:20even in very hetrogeneous countries like
119. 4:22Mexico and India people openly refer to
120. 4:25each other as backward cast or lazy
121. 4:28Forward cast uh in Mexico you know Chino
122. 4:31negro Blanco people's nicknames mean
123. 4:34things like China man so we have uh
124. 4:38because of a combination of everything
125. 4:39from our civil rights laws to post
126. 4:42British Victorian era politeness to just
127. 4:45extreme diversity we've mentioned some
128. 4:47of the cities in the country we've come
129. 4:49past that and yes that absolutely should
130. 4:50be recognized should be recognized as
131. 4:52something whites blacks everyone else
132. 4:54sacrificed to do and so the narrative
133. 4:57that comes in count counter to that the
134. 4:59169 narrative is primarily false the
135. 5:02reason it's false is not even so much
136. 5:04that the things that it says like there
137. 5:06used to be a great deal of ethnic
138. 5:07conflict in the USA are inaccurate it's
139. 5:11that they are kind of the 33 degrees of
140. 5:13knowledge it was always associated with
141. 5:15foolishness or with the devil in
142. 5:16European mythology the assumption is
143. 5:19that someone who's listening won't know
144. 5:22that Asia Africa Arabia so on were much
145. 5:25worse that's that's the great caveat
146. 5:28here we had slaves well everyone had
147. 5:29slaves we helped the world free them it
148. 5:32was the US and the UK that literally
149. 5:34armed their navies and blockaded whole
150. 5:37countries like Zanzibar to end the
151. 5:39global trade in slaves we ended the
152. 5:41international slave trade in the USA in
153. 5:431808 so I mean not being aware of that
154. 5:47only being aware of only being aware of
155. 5:50our warts in the context of what being
156. 5:52warts and all means is is a foolish
157. 5:55approach also a lot of the things said
158. 5:58in Traditions like that simply are not
159. 6:01true I mean the idea that the United
160. 6:03States began in 1619 slavery didn't
161. 6:07become begin in the United States until
162. 6:09and I talk about this in lies my liberal
163. 6:10teacher told me but until almost 50
164. 6:14years after that I mean when Anthony
165. 6:16Johnson and the first black you know
166. 6:18arav easts to the USA got here they were
167. 6:20indentured servants slavery hadn't yet
168. 6:23been formally implemented as a practice
169. 6:25slavery of course is servitude that you
170. 6:26can't leave but the general idea that
171. 6:29was that if you were a black SLA servant
172. 6:31just as if you were a white servant you
173. 6:32were going to be in bondage for maybe 10
174. 6:35years then you were going to be you you
175. 6:37know he'd lost the war it was going to
176. 6:38suck but then you were going to be
177. 6:40released you were going to in many cases
178. 6:42be given some land and you would have
179. 6:44the opportunity to buy both black and
180. 6:46white servants so I mean when I mention
181. 6:48the name Anthony
182. 6:50Johnson the first slave owner in the
183. 6:52United States many people would say was
184. 6:54a black man he was an angolan sort of
185. 6:57lower Chieftain captured by the
186. 6:59Portuguese during the incessant fighting
187. 7:02that existed for males in particular of
188. 7:04every group during this period he was
189. 7:06brought to the United States brought to
190. 7:08the Commonwealth of Virginia he suffered
191. 7:10his time as an indentured servant which
192. 7:12is absolutely miserable for almost
193. 7:13everyone of these roles people weren't
194. 7:15actually taught to be blacksmiths or
195. 7:16something like that they were used as
196. 7:19essentially enslaved Farm labor for the
197. 7:21length of those contracts which are
198. 7:23often 23 years his was 10 but he was
199. 7:25then released he ended up getting
200. 7:26married fighting the Indians with his
201. 7:28white neighbors so on
202. 7:30and the case that settled legal American
203. 7:32slavery actually involved another man I
204. 7:35think John quore who was his bond
205. 7:38servant who tried to run away and
206. 7:40Johnson argued that uh recalcitrant Bond
207. 7:44servants should be kept permanently by
208. 7:47the people who owned them as I recall
209. 7:49the matter and so he became there may
210. 7:52have been one or two before him in other
211. 7:53states but the first American slave
212. 7:55owner and we're talking about the 1650s
213. 7:571660s here so the 1619 project idea
214. 8:01itself is wrong slavery in its full form
215. 8:05didn't exist at that time and the United
216. 8:07States I'll note also didn't exist uh
217. 8:09the USA began in
218. 8:111776 so we had we had slavery in America
219. 8:14from 1776 to
220. 8:161865 that's it I mean it's a you know
221. 8:18shameful unfortunate block of time but
222. 8:20it's worth comparing that to the entire
223. 8:22Global sweep of the exact same
224. 8:25practice what should you tell your kids
225. 8:28which is I think your real question you
226. 8:29should tell them all this and more I
227. 8:31mean I would strongly encourage you to
228. 8:33buy what used to be considered just
229. 8:35conventional history books uh in books
230. 8:38in general from Jared Diamond to Charles
231. 8:40Murray that everyone used to read
232. 8:42through about what
233. 8:442010 and have them in a library in your
234. 8:46house and just communicate this
235. 8:48information uh there there's not much
236. 8:50more to be said than
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