The Unraveling | Glenn Loury & John McWhorter [The Glenn Show]

Alright, John, we're underway, how's it going, John? I'm fine, I'm excellent. Hi, I'm Glenn Lowry. Glenn

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ed blogging successes on that television. I'm with John McWhorter, we got black people blocking his TV. Glenn and John. I've been doing this since 2007, which would make 13 years. Everyone gets used to it, but they like it, they like it, I hope to continue watching. Glenn and John John are branching out on their own by nabbing Brett Weinstein. that the dark horse pod hunter, John, in Lexecon Valley, where he talks about linguistic issues, he's a professor, he's clearly a professor at Brown University, we're in the Ivy League, okay, now get used to it and we're here wrong, right? what is it?, it's July July 2nd, July 4th is just around the corner, Americana and all that way until blacks like blacks get on that television and we're in the middle of a real storm in culture and American policy on the problems of racism, anti-racism and so on, and that's it. our rhythm so I'm happy to be able to talk to you again John, thanks for giving us - me too what's on your mind well, you know it's funny that you mentioned the 4th of July.

I always think we haven't done that in a long time. In the meantime, I guess I'll just say that Chauncey focuses on economics, where he, um, is really one of the best things he's ever written in the literary sense, where he says he doesn't like to see people devouring his hot dogs. on the street. 4th of July without thinking about the 'no son' accomplice with etcetera etcetera every time there is a 4th of July I think to myself and I look at all the people around me and I think I'm hoping they think about slavery and Jim Crow and the red lines.

What does that mean? And I think I'm partly thinking about that because have you ever read Robin D'Angelo's book, White Fragility? You've got to be kidding me, that's torture. I've only read reviews. Sorry no. but now I have an assignment so I had to read it, it's one of the worst books ever written. I knew I wouldn't agree with him. I didn't know it's interesting that you use that phrase because that's exactly what Mike Taibbi and his book review say, literally, this is the worst book ever written, you can write like that, you know, it's not a crazy point, I disagree. with that, but what bothers me is that everyone is reading this now.

You know, I know all these smart, you know a lot of white people. I know I've been in this building where I live. There are probably people reading that book and a lot of it doesn't make sense. Much of it is based on completely flawed assumptions. smug in a way that neither you nor I could get away with, and yet this is received as an introduction to how to be a good person. What does this have to do with coats? I'm sorry, I have to say it because this is a book that you will come away thinking that it is not okay for people on the 4th of July to walk around thinking about their complicity in a society that is based on white supremacy and spews out white supremacist messages in their own warm way. and wolfish in every possible way and you should always walk around feeling guilty and sinful about it, even though those aren't the words she uses and I find myself thinking there could be a society like that and I'm really trying to think how that could work , did you know? people like that mean in terms of how you're supposed to go around feeling about yourself, what are you going to tell your kids?

It is one thing for you to achieve this balance. Would you teach this to your progeny? What does it mean? I'm not sure, I think you've discovered something important because if you don't have the confidence of your civilization of your order, you know, if you don't believe in it on some level, I mean, if the generalization assumption is that it's illegitimate, okay, If his myths no longer resonate even slightly with anything in your heart, if the values ​​he claims to be committed to or everything is considered hypocrisy, how can he survive? No one will die, no one will metaphorically fight and die for a republic that it is thought in such a way mm-hmm so that you can see it as the first signs of the four times, the Republic that is the United States of America to the extent that this sensitivity of you know that I am a kind of class.

Somewhere on the way to generalization, I would just try to counter a little bit by saying: you know what happened in the 20th century, so there was the American Expeditionary Force of World War I and all that, there was Nazism of World War II, Mussolini Tojo, there was the Soviet Union. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics armed to the teeth, etc. Cold War, etc. Now, where does the United States figure in world history throughout the 20th century? We are the good ones. Well, I'm aware of Vietnam. Okay, I'm aware of. Vietnam, where the good guys are all right, so we're twenty years into the 21st century and the leading chroniclers of American life can't affirm the virtue of the American experiment that you might be seeing in times when you know you might be seeing the

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, Yeah.

I know this is something I wanted to ask you anyway, so for example, Charles Blow teaches us and to be honest, not even the PC says yes. Washington where he says we mean check all the damn monuments, including George. Look at it. he was a slave owner, sorry, he interrupted me and tore down the Woodrow Wilson monuments because you know the truth, you can imagine. I think this is all going too far, you know, robert and lee, yeah, yeah, I get that, um, Eli, who, Yale, but no, Ross. "That was true enough, just leaving you alive," he shouted, but you know, I like Woodrow Wilson.

Woodrow Wilson to me is significantly racist in terms of who he was at the time, he was a bigot at the time, he didn't really like black people. he didn't want them around at all he kept them out of the government that hadn't been the case before other things about him, but to me he was such a dedicated fan and also a university professor that I would take his name off what you think he wouldn't ? He wouldn't do it. He is dead. He's done. The Whistle School Winter is no longer the Woodrow Wilson School. It's a complete no.

I would have been against it. I would say there is racism in American history. I would say even. I honored them I would say that racism is not the worst thing in the world, it's not really that human beings are racist, you don't think they are racist black people, dad, black racists, okay, Martin Luther King was a misogynist as much as he was a misogynist. Woodrow Wilson was a racist, he feels those things are comparable. I don't even know how that is measured. Okay, you're going to tear down this monument, you're not going to tear down this Manya and I'm not going to let you tear this down. monument because even though he was a misogynist, blah, blah, blah, etc., he is fine and, furthermore, millions of Americans see him as a hero, Martin Luther King Jr.

He's okay, the guy who blah blah blah, now you have to fill in the blank. Do you respect those millions of Americans who see him as a hero? Are they part of your country? Can you forgive them for liking these races? He was the president of the United States for eight years or mainly because he was competent compos mentis or whatever Fela, the League of Nations, etc. I mean, he was what you are Wilson. I'm not trying to do a report for Woodrow Wilson. I'm trying to accept the fact that Woodrow Wilson doesn't need to go back to the record book and leave the asterisk next to the name of every racist baseball player.

How many of those in the Hall of Fame were racists? How many of them don't? I want to see Jackie Robinson succeed, etc. Center, you'll get them out of the Hall of Fame, you can. I mean, we could go on and on, let me just finish this, this is weakness, not strength, the O'Connell class has no cards to play. They're throwing a tantrum, how do you feel about a beautiful statue celebrating theft? Lee, I think it goes down, let's say, I'm sure, I'm sure you understand that, do you feel like it's just Jefferson Davis who needs to go down and beyond that we?

I need to be more nuanced, so I said I wouldn't remove Wilson's name from the Woodrow Wilson School and I wouldn't remove a statue. What would I do? Robert and Lee and I'll remove it. Well, because these are questions in At the end of the day, about the judgment, we have to decide what statutes we put up, what statutes we tear down. I'm not saying you can never tear down a statute. What is the case against Robert e Lee? He was a rebel traitor who tried to destroy the pact on which the country was founded, he was fighting a war of rebellion against a duly constituted order, so he was a traitor, the other thing is that he was fighting in the name of the Confederacy and the Confederacy wanted to enslave people now, in the early days after the Civil War, it was necessary to bring the country back together.

Can we agree on that? Can we agree that defeat itself had to be reincorporated into the Republic? The year was 1870 1880 1890 now if Put it in 1910 or 1920 trying to say states' rights, blacks, stay in your place, okay, there's nothing to it, but if you felt that the romantic idea of ​​the Confederacy It was something your father and grandfather gave their lives for and you. You love it and you want it to be respected. I can understand why you put the statue up in 1890. Okay, now it's 2020. You want to take it down, you want to put it in a museum.

I understand that not, you know? I'm not going to Charlottesville with the ticket or you guys to protect the statue of him. I understand, but we can't destroy all the monuments because of slavery. No, I mean, you know that John C. Calhoun was really a serious, dedicated man. and a very accomplished man and very intelligent when it comes to mermaids. East Elmhurst Hospitals is a very accomplished man, so it must be decided that intolerance was his main legacy. In this case I think it was, I take American society in 1840, okay, so we're only twenty-five years away from the end of the Civil War and abolition was a mature cause and you already knew that Frederick Douglass was starting his career in et cetera. , so a lot of people cited the wrong side of this slavery issue.

Are we going to get them all out? history books we are going to disgrace them all retroactively. I want you to think about what that mission means. What are we doing when we do that? Because we could be doing something else. We're going through the record book. This is what I'm seeing. this TV

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tutors about Henry V ace and when it's really well done the costume is amazing, it's dramatic, it's a really great TV show, you know? And at the end you start thinking about England. I'm thinking of Andrew Sullivan. Recently, and speaking of iconoclasm, I'm thinking about the fact that there were Catholics, it was a Catholic country until, you know, there were a lot of remnants of the Catholicism of the English that then, after Cromwell and the Revolution and the Reformation and all that It was torn apart as a Catholic country used to be, we used to be a slave Republic, in fact I am talking about the United States of America, my country that I love used to be a slave Republic the flag that will fly in front of my house momentarily my great wife despite from being a slave Republic we were born as a slave Republic we are the greatest country in the history of the world okay, I know that's a bit you know, you know, but, but it's my country, it's our country, it's the only place where We have been kind and it was public slavery, that's right, you won't love him well, no, no, if you try to put.

You get into these people's heads and to be honest I think there are two comments if you are black and you have decided that you can't love America because of that ass and you even know the racism that still exists in the present, but if you don't You may love the United States because of the nature of its founding, you are being intentionally unintellectual. I mean, I think anyone can think more complex than that, but if you want to pretend that the past never happened, pretend that "Regarding Faulkner, it's okay if you're going to reject the country on the basis that you don't like him.

Honestly , I think if you think that they owned my people, they looked down on my people and therefore everything that happened since then and 99% of the rest of the country other than that is irrelevant because they don't like me, well it means that you don't like me. I mean, frankly, a normal person ignores themselves thinking about how Jefferson Davis felt without them thinking about how Wilson and him fell, so there's more to it than that and if you're white and you're up. to this train, you're trying to feel good about yourself, it's one thing to see justice, but it's another thing to pretend that this whole thing we're sitting on is the fact that slavery had a lot to do with the economy and that everyone was racist until about 25 minutes ago, if that's all you can see, you are intentionally racist.

Turning a blind eye to the basic richness and complexity that you use your brain to process when you're dealing with the rest of life and it means that, in some ways, this is what these people fail to understand. racist if you've decided that you're going to reserve a part of your brain to think in that silly Milton Bradley board game way only when it comes to black people and you think that's somehow in advance, it's not like you're treating us like children. A lot of those people don't really understand that I read these people on Facebook and I think they think I'm a kid.

I don't want a white person sitting andstudiously worrying about the fact that their whiteness privileges them over me. I have led a very privileged life and no one can tell me that I am a revver, being middle class and mobile since 1965, being black has been quite common and anyone who wants to say that that is not true you cannot stand up and defend affirmatively. action the next fund and the Supreme Court threatens you if you want to say that my life has been so strange that you can't say that affirmative action has benefited black people that much, so in these ways I'm thinking about white privilege again .

I'm thinking about a different book, but it's very related because I'm thinking about this question of identity and you know my ancestors were slaves, slaves were barely treated, slavery was an abomination and therefore I must play politically there, therefore, I am involved. in a certain symbolism and a certain narrative, what not, now of course my ancestors are not just African, my ancestors are also European and a little bit of native people in the lineage and I'm thinking of Albert Mary's book . I'm the Americans, you know this book. You know it, you know it, it had a great influence.

Daily Croucher, a big influence on Stanley Crouch, for example, yes, and it's very much a cultural argument, but the argument is that you know that black Americans are unique, you know that in terms of Neth nisit II. It's, it's an American phenomenon, yes, I mean, as a student of pidgins and creoles, you understand what I'm saying, I mean, it's a phenomenon created organically within the context of the United States, all these things, you know, Americans have to accept 1619. it's all, it's all framed within the American narrative, it's not an African story, they're an edge, that's, of course, there are efforts to push back and try to incorporate some sense of you know, whatever the drum, the drum will always be there, we hear the drum.

Well, we know that rhythm is rhythm, whatever I mean, we are an African people, for some reason, pan-African or, you know, diasporic African or whatever, but we are Americans. Look, this is a uniquely American phenomenon we're talking about. is that we are, therefore, extraneous or we are central to the project and when I say this I know that in some ways I am echoing part of the motivation for the 16:19 project, which was to say that the story is central to Americans black history black history African American history slave history our efforts our suffering our exclusion in oppression our domination that is central to American history but that is not the only thing that is happening in domination defeat suppression possession being rape that's not the only good thing you don't think some black people fell in love with some white people you think all the misogyny I mean I'm not misogyny what's the right word here saturation exactly thank you very much As much as you think it was all rape come on Come on, it wasn't, it was mainly very complicated Charleston South Carolina was very complicated in New Orleans Louisiana was a really very complex human dynamic, everything on top of each other, the kind of thing Cornel West would do. be eloquent for a long time because it is true it is carnal it is organic it is human it is intimate it is a lot of things not every story was a story of domination and oppression our story is more than a story of survival of domination and oppression our story is an American story not only because, or even primarily, because our ancestors were slaves and could be continued in this sense, Emancipation is part of that history and in Emancipation it is not really the grudging recognition of African American humanity, it is the culmination of a certain type of political dynamic that begins in the middle of the 18th century and that really extirpates slavery, that is a world historical achievement, the man who can do it, what society, what democracy, what political tradition, what nation has done it done, mm-hmm, I mean, you have a you.

Anyway, I find it difficult to give any parallel. I'll stop. I'm not going to continue. African American history is American history. American history is African American history. Yes, some of my ancestors were slaves, not only were they slaves and those were slaves too. Not all of my ancestors know what I don't understand this kind of thing is that we know that there is a certain type of person who is listening to us and you and I just don't understand it and are I'm going to stick to this idea that American history it's just slaves and whipping, talk about miscegenation, the reason I'm the color I am is because of a very complicated relationship between the white shopkeeper and a black woman who ran the store and who helped him run the store. in Atlanta about a hundred and twenty-five years ago and they had two kids, they both could have asked to be white and they didn't, and one of them was my grandfather and that's why I'm this color and if anyone wants to say that that whole relationship was great, well , they just don't know that that's not the story that's been passed down, it was something, it wasn't something beautiful, but yeah, it was complex, but a lot of people just go for a walk.

They're frowning and that's why it's this horrible story and anyone who's out there now is complicit in it unless we dedicate our lives to exposing it and blowing up American society and starting over in some way that's never specified. , but the point is not to do it. Don't these people realize that if you spend your life approaching history that way, then the white man wins? Basically, a lot of these people seem to think they're going to live 500 years, from when you're 19 to when you're about 79 and you're mad at this cartoon version of the story out of some sense of duty and that's as far as you go. to do instead of being interested in other things instead of embracing reality.

Sometimes I wonder if some of these people know joy, and I've said this before on the show, but do they know the joy of discovering new things? Do you know the joy of being interested in anything? and if they don't do it with many of them, I wonder what you're doing. doing in academia or, frankly, what are you going to get in a high position in journalism if nothing interests you on its own and all you have is this bleak, oversimplifying mission? It's a type of mind that in a way I feel sorry for because they will go to the grave. having never known the joy of being a person, one of them, which is that you discover things, if you are an intelligent person, you like to study, learn some things, don't just indulge in this personally manufactured anger, it is such a disappointing way to be intellectual or academic and I've been dealing with that since I came in, there's a lot of this in certain areas of linguistics, to where I think this is all you're in this for, but you know, I'm a little bit stuck on that and I I'm left with that, John, we're still very far along, it's happening, it's like the old economics profession is being overwhelmed by this wave of woke anti-racist sentiment.

Sandy is someone I've met. since 1974 75 when he came to study at MIT I think he came in 75 actually I had been there for a couple of years so we were black American graduate students and economists at MIT at the same time mmm that's a person you 'We're close, on some level, for over 40 years, but I wouldn't call us friends. She said some nasty things. A daredi tweet about Glenn Lowry and Roland Fryer is that we are full of self-hatred, we are vile. we're vile, this is a quote from Lowry McWhorter, I mean, Lowry and the fryer, vile and full of self-hatred, he's a serious scholar, he's into reparations and you know he's at Duke, he was that UNC , someone tweeted, so the quote is full of self-hatred, I'm sure there are people listening to us right now who agree exactly, Professor Garrity, you have Lowry, you can't even call.

I didn't know he was that bad, that's something he's been working on for a while. issues where he and Garrity don't agree about things, so Fryer thinks he has evidence that acting white is a real phenomenon among themselves, less so than African Americans, you know, Fryer thinks the case is complicated . Fryer thinks you know whatever, but you know and there's another dimension. Well, there I said, I'm going to tell the world, man, I'm actually going to say this, so the economy is a meritocracy because they are gatekeepers with their white nails and the economy, racism and sexism, all that, here It is resounding.

It's a small world, people, I can talk to the brother in Australia instantly, okay, so we're all competing to get into the American Economic Review, we're all competing and getting into econometrics, the guys in Beijing, the guys in Seoul, we all do it. we are trying. to get right into it some of the smartest economists I know from South Asia are Indian they are Pakistani these guys are smart when men and women know a lot of mathematics they know a lot of economics they know our whole history a lot of philosophy my psychology there are some smart people it's a small world it's a global profession half of our graduate students are born somewhere else half of our teaching staff many of them come from somewhere else they speak many different languages ​​it's a meritocracy this is economics okay then, in the realm of meritocracy, guess what the people who win the awards turn out to be more conservative than the losers, the ones who actually ask the question with data about whether acting like a target is real or not and the ones who do the careful statistical analysis and publish the article in the peer-reviewed journal? and who end up getting the Clark Medal and who end up being Ivy League professors you end up being distinguished members of the American Economic Association they have the respect of their peers how do you think they got there?

They got it because they played hard to win in a global meritocracy and came out victorious. Now there are some blacks like that and they are despised by many other blacks. It's okay, they can't stand it, they think. white gatekeepers are favoring blacks like Fryer and Lowry by patting us on the head. Where, in fact, have you consulted the appendix to my econometric article on intergenerational income dynamics? It uses asymptotic theory of stochastic Markov chains. It uses complex mathematical analysis and went through three I want you to count them three very tough referees who didn't give a damn what color I was a lot of people have a lot of problems with the success of certain people and when that success is combined with the fact that Those people have political and contrary opinions, they go completely crazy, including 64-year-old professors from Duke University.

I can't compare Seavey's quotes because there's some of this in my world too, except I think it's different in yours because we don't. No, now linguistics focuses more on numbers, but before it wasn't about who gets those awards and who doesn't. What do the detractors you're talking about say about the fact that you have the award? numbers numbers can't be contradicted I guess they understand that we have different numbers and they tell them there is a whole argument about methodology that is flawed, it's not just that they are saying white people are patting you on the head, white people can say they're patting you on the head because my Markov chain says you know, don't just think about that, but they have a substantial argument against your argument to cross out Markov jargon was just to prove that I have skills, that's not really the problem. the real problem is personal responsibility in general with the disadvantaged status of African Americans that reflects anything that is wrong and you can prove it with numbers and they say you are not doing it right.

Whatever you say culture matters. Garrity has a whole article where he argues that what he calls it the Harvard-Washington Consensus because he involves William Julius Wilson and Orlando Patterson in this with Roland Fryer and they are the kind of equivalent and racial studies of the neoliberals in global economic studies, you know . of the people who like the World Trade Organization, the people who believe in the International Monetary Fund and who think there should be open markets and all that, they are the Larry Summers, the Larry Summers of racial studies, okay , the consensus why, because you could say something like well-being makes people dependent.

I'm not saying Roland is saying this or that. I'm saying it, but you could say it, but that would be the kind of thing you could say, something like people respond to incentives in the area of ​​law. law enforcement so if you want less violence you must implement sanctions, you could say something like reviewing the way educational services are provided to children through innovative transformations of education mechanisms, as affected by some charter schools , it's a good thing, you could say in a way. You could say that seven or ten children born to a woman without a husband is an absolutely catastrophic circumstance of social organization for any community. you could say thingslike this or, if you're William Julius Wilson, you could say things like you know what race is important, but it's not the only thing: the broader dynamics of economic class competition and the ranking of things will have secondary consequences for people, which that will exacerbate racial differences. inequality and that they will only have remedies that can be achieved through social democratic policies that require closing racial gaps and therefore we must look beyond race.

If you are a Lando Patterson you could say that it is impossible for slavery not to cause cultural damage to a people, it is simply impossible, it is impossible for 150 years of domination and slavery not to leave a people marked in one way or another and those scars can have consequences. very long ones that could help explain some of the common pathological social problems seen in later and descendant populations in the UK in the Caribbean in the US this is Orlando Patterson that Glenn Lowry I'm pointing out the thing but the only thing What I'm saying is that any of these things IQ matters.

I'm just saying it was genetic. I'm not a Genesis. What I said was that people differ with respect to cognitive functioning and differences in cognitive functioning are structurally connected to differences in success in life. what I said there is a tremendous amount of evidence that that is true, there are differences on average in cognitive function between racial groups, that is just a fact, if you say that and if you say that it is related to something other than discrimination, then you'll be in this result, so that's what has nothing to do with econometrics, at the end of the day, it's about the political implications of serious work and I just think it's interesting because the very remnant of Fortune magazine had an article where they said who the black people are. economists and they had an analyst who listened to the names the lists the names did not include Kerwin Charles, who is dean of the Yale school of organization and management hmm, the list did not include Cecilia Rouse, who is dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, formerly Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University the list did not include Susan Collins all these are black black economist who used to be dean of the Ford school is now a distinguished professor of international economics at the University of Michigan the list did not include Roland Fryer who is the winner of the Clarke medal is the only African American to have done so, the Union Nobel Prize winner and the list did not include your humble servant because clearly we are not black economists when it comes to the journalist who writes articles on black economics in the Fortune magazine and let me tell you this is complete, this is completely disconnected from reality, let me say this again, the people who really matter in economics know the difference between second rate work that is biased and ideologically motivated to prove a point or, better yet, make a wine. they know the difference between those serious social sciences people why the delay that I just listed now I exclude myself from the list none of whom were mentioned by Fortune magazine are black economists but all of them are Caroline Hawks, who has a professorship At Stanford, they're black people, okay? none of them are on the list because there are serious academics whose results sometimes favor school choice, the hawks sometimes come out when they don't find that the police are using racially disproportionate lethal force against blacks and they can say that affirmative action could be condescending, that's Glenn Lowry and people think they can cancel you by simply refusing to recognize your professional achievements and I just finished because I've been talking for a long time about these young black men at Howard University learning economics at Morehouse.

College learning economics black axis and black Johnson said at Tulane who might be meeting African American mentors we are trying to learn economics will not be able to discriminate between the noise and the real business if it cannot retain our people who have I achieved the achievements that some of these people have accomplished the most difficult kind of intellectual work you can imagine in the social sciences and you extol them as role models for your young people. You will always have mediocrity stalking you. making me think about myself and yes I've had analogous experiences and not as bad and it's probably because people don't think that linguistics is evaluated as much as they do economics in some ways, but I find myself thinking that, um, you don't know anything .

I once tried to do this, but I've already written two and a half books on black English. I talked about it a lot in the media, always in defense, always explaining that it is a coherent discourse and you know that, by accident, I did it. comes as an expert on that, it's not why I went to graduate school, but I always thought if it's some kind of duty to represent it now, 25 years ago, when the Oakland School Board proposed that English teaching materials for blacks will be used as a bridge to stand firm. of English in schools where black children had problems.

I was very naive. I didn't understand the contours of these debates. I didn't understand anti-racist literature, but I didn't just say there are other ways to teach kids like that to read. Black English is not the problem and here is why and I explained it, which got me in trouble with many of my older black linguists and many of their white traveling companions and generally, of course, I have what the People call me and my politics. I guess it will be the whip in the mouth of the far right and I realized that these days it is never planned this way and I don't walk around thinking about it, but in terms of the general public learning that black English is a good thing, The first to publish a book on that subject was reviewed at the same time in the New York Times and The New Yorker.

A whole article about me and my book in The New Yorker a few years ago. It's me. I have done my job. English and yes, it's interesting that the people who study blogs were the linguists there. There is a crowd and there are people who bury their individuals that that proud student, okay, but it's interesting that they have little mini-conferences and things like that and like everyone in their mother is invited to those. conferences but I don't, as if I didn't know anything about the subject. I have written several academic articles on the topic in some capacity.

I'm just not invited, I've never been invited to give a keynote on something like that and to be honest, it's okay, you know I'm not. I don't particularly like to travel. I'm pretty busy. This doesn't bother me in itself, but the principle of the thing is interesting. I'm persona non grata because I came to quote-unquote wrong conclusions about Ebonics 25 years ago and in general. because supposedly I can't join and so these are all college students who are at a lot of conferences and endeavors and retreats and things that are sitting at the feet of all these black English scholars, well, they don't They don't sit at my feet and they don't know me because I never do it, but I hope no one sees this because I'm not saying I want to be invited, but yes, there are, I'm an expert. one of the world's experts on African American Vernacular English and the people who study it have no interest in having anything to do with me and it's because they think I'm politically unpleasant, that's a shame, that's not how academics are supposed to be , but I just now heard that you resigned from the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle and I'm wondering if you want to talk about what you don't want to talk about is five, but I'm curious, no, no, it's necessary.

There will be some talk about it because the people on that forum are great. I have no personal problems with anyone in it. I wasn't very impressed with the person who basically sparked the whole thing and I'm not going to name his people. I can find out what her name was in the media but yeah it started with a black woman making an accusation and the accusation was that one of the older white guys is a racist and what they called a racist what she called him was that when Le I asked that he wasn't on the same page, but when asked, he said that his accusation that posting is okay with racism is inaccurate and that he wasn't abusive, but he was very direct, very eccentric, he wasn't doing the dance he's supposed to. what one should do.

It was expressed as if it were around 1965, I don't really know why, but I was sitting on the board for years, it's not racist, not even in the most sophisticated senses that you taught, there is a minute of referee, he said something like " no I don't know that there have been many black writers who have helped white acolytes, but I know many white writers who have helped black acolytes, you know why, given the nature of history, why people should be white, that's true, it's a clumsy statement, he's a bull in a china shop, it was just a phrase, although it's difficult for him to have a long season, you know, long waits and the fact is that he's not racist, he wasn't criticizing black people, that phrase in some way, something that is classified as public is that he decided that this was racist and she called the board to, quote, address it, which is religious, he speaks of excommunicated Arabic and the president of the board does not. did that and therefore the other person got very upset and the whole thing.

Is this poor guy Carlin Romano a racist and I'm like no he's not and the reason I had to leave the board was because so many people on the board were behind the black woman calling him out after he wrote something racist Nobody called him? a racist but it's the same thing they said that his message was racist and I realized that I can't continue on the board because I don't believe it is racist and if I don't believe it to a critical mass of people on the board I am complicit in white supremacy, no one said that and no one would have said it, not that that was going to come out, but it became clear in the discussions that he wasn't, that he was going to look like a bad black person and so on.

I just decided that I can't imagine this working anymore and that's why I have to leave the National Book Critics Circle, which is a shame because I like people and I sure liked getting all those new books all the time I had in this. room, you know, but it was a shame because when did you feel something crawling talking about the two viruses as if we were, it depends on what state you are in your state, in your past, the worst of the virus that you owe, I hope? I'm freaking out, the National Book Critics Circle collapsed around me in 48 hours.

Charges are being leveled against a certain linguist and I'm not really going to say who it is because I want this to happen, but I'm worried. that the mafia is about to come for him and I'm in a position where I have to help decide this. It's getting to the point where these people are brandishing their sweet, rotten copies of Ebron, but with those books, they're starting to defenestrate people, right? and I left, I worry about myself, I've literally thought about what I would do financially if something I've written is something I say and it gets me kicked out of Columbia and I think I could get by, but it could happen.

Frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't like that. This has not happened to any of us. I'm not one to walk around pretending to be afraid of things. I think everyone knows this, but this is really starting to worry me. I'm starting to worry that all kinds of places I sit are They're going to take me out because I'm a white supremacist. Is this starting to get on your nerves? I can't worry about our colleagues. You and I know many people who don't say the right thing. I know people can start losing their jobs, it's a virus. I'm really starting to feel it right now.

Well, you know, when you were talking about your colleague, the gentleman who made the comment that upset a woman being connected to the National Book Critics. Circle that ultimately led to your resignation, was it racist or was it not on my mind? I kept replacing the word witch with racist. Is he a witch? I think that's what I don't think is a witch and I thought that because I recently came back. and I reread Arthur Miller's play The Crucible because I was led to it by the events that led some of me and the cancellation also had some thoughts on this, so what do you mean by easy racist?

You and I disagreed about Trump or not. he is racist. I'm not trying to ask you about Donald J. Trump again. I'm just trying to say that even though it's fleeting, you can say it up front, it's not really all that if everyone is very clear and you and I might not agree, but that's a separate life, it's pretty fleeting, right. , because we're really talking about what the guy's motive was, you know, what's in his heart, you know, and the fact that it contravenes certain conventions about public expression, you don't question affirmative action, I guess. I thought you knew that black kids like Amy wax things, the black kids in my class in general just aren't that Swift, it's just not that good compared to what I'm used to at my school, this is affirmative action and I'm saying it . out loud, you know you're going to get canceled, let me do it, you're basically erasing us now, you're racist and you can see here, you're racist, you know and what do we mean, we really don't mean, anyone? type of elaborate philosophy of Nazi-type racial superiority, we really want to say that, in fact, you are an apostate,You're a heretic, you know, it really has that feeling and it's the other word I would use. there is communist, yes, or in our current time, socialist, which again is not an effort to attribute to anyone a coherent, well-developed and fully developed worldview, it is a, it is a, it is a, it is a, it is a, it is a, it's a, it's a label, it's a and you know you are. you're just attacking the person or whatever so it's an effort to enforce conformity it's tyrannical and you're asking me if I'm waiting I'm sorry I know you want to talk no I'm tenured I'm 70 and I'm black and I'm prominent and I don't think I'm vulnerable, you know, I mean, I get the raise I want because the chancellor is mad at me for something I wrote in the papers something like that, I'm not saying I won't do it or that I will do it or whatever. , But that is not important.

I mean, it may take them a long time to respond when I ask a question about my research budget if their offices get remodeled due to covid, it may not have much leverage in the negotiation game over my corner office and, you know? ?, if I could, they could try to expel me by showing me their back, you know, but I don't feel that here yet. It would be a shame, I can't be good enough, man. I could probably get by, but I don't want to try, but it moved me. Now stop publicly punishing my president for one of these letters to dear colleagues when all this blather is going on.

In it, on the issue of black lives matter, she didn't use those words, but you know, it was just repetitive Angelo the Angelo type anti-racism rhetoric and I thought you know the president of the university if you have an opinion, however idiosyncratic it may be. that's fine, but when you impose this on the entire institution by having everyone, even the dean of the School of Public Health and everyone else, approve it and formulate a partisan line, we sympathize with whatever it is that you know that only me I object and have received three communications of my approximately 500 winnings, so your colleagues here at Brown about that letter, all of them positive.

Thanks, Professor Lowery, okay, so I'm going to subtract three from 500. I'm going to give 497 yeah, I guess at least 30% of them, hey, you know, I guess actually one thing that worries me is this book that is He is writing alone. I'm writing this book against racism. I'm excited. I get so many things just from people. I know since I announced that I was writing it, people send me all these little things, thank you. Oh yeah, the book is turning into a yes, it's like you always are and I should say it again, folks, and I'm not going to continue with that. long time with this once again.

I really appreciate all the mail, but I can't respond to everyone anymore, so if you don't hear back from me, it's not that I don't care, it's just that we're at the point now where it's like 50 a day and I know that will end. after a while, but I just can't, I don't have a secretary, but the book worries me because when it comes out, I won't beat around the bush and I'm starting to realize that I'm just one person and the person who wrote that book and I suspect that will receive a certain amount of attention given the nature of the moment, it will be the person walking around campus and standing in front of classes. and there are certain types of students who will hate me that's why you will survive many many teachers will mold me for that book will survive losing the race some tell me you will survive this first great book I think it was people who verbally cost me in the street that's why I wasn't going to lose my job, you know, the tenure of the area, maybe that would have gotten into it, but I had the tenure and I knew I would keep my job today.

I really wonder if there's any danger in something not being true, but it makes me think, my God, if I do this now, there will be a certain type of person who really believes they are doing God's work to miss my job because my book is complicit in white supremacy. Jonathan just had a horrible thought. The horrible thought was that there's a movie and in the movie there's a character like me and in the drama of the movie if he gives a speech like the one I just gave, I'm tenured, I'm black, I'm prominent quickly. cuts to the scene where he's impoverished, he's in a hut somewhere, he's eating porridge, he's thinking about the day, you know, before the Cultural Revolution wiped out him and his family, you'd be selling blank pencils and Yes, you never, never, never know.

I just don't know and it's funny, I think to myself too. I've often thought how many black teachers could be afforded and fired, you know, especially those who are kind of in the middle, that would be enough, but things are getting so crazy lately that I'm thinking you know our skin color doesn't would help us, why don't we call it a conversation? John, I have to move on to the next thing. Sorry, we'll come back another day. Thanks John, talk to you later.