[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Brendan Malone, and you're listening to the dispatches, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
Hi everybody. Welcome along to the Friday Freebie edition of the Dispatches podcast. It is great to be back with you again. My name is Brendan Malone, and today's topic of conversation, an important discussion about race based politics. And before we dive into any of that, don't forget, if you're new here and you haven't already subscribed but you're enjoying the content, please subscribe. If you haven't already, please give us a review. If you are listening on a platform that allows you to leave a few stars or leave a few comments about the show, all of that really, really helps the podcast. So please do all that kind of stuff. And last but not least, if you want an exclusive patrons only episode of the Dispatchers podcast every single day of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, then go to patreon.com leftfootmedia and become a five dollar monthly patron. That's right, less than the cost of a cup of coffee each month will get you a daily dose of commentary on issues and current affairs and stories that no one else covers. And we talk a bit more deeply about these issues. We're a bit more proactive and thoughtful in the way that we approach this kind of stuff. And so if that's you and it's something that you think, gosh, I'd like a little bit more of that in my life, go to patreon.com leftfootmedia and become a five dollar monthly patron. The link is in today's show notes. A huge thank you as always, to all of our patrons. It's thanks to you that this content can keep getting made. Alrighty, today's topic of conversation, an important discussion about race based politics. And what we're going to do here is we are going to react to an interview that took place a month ago on the View. For those who don't know what the view is, it's an american daytime panel talk show. They discuss current affairs. They have different guests on. It is a female led panel show, I think. I'm not a huge fan of the view, so I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure that the panel is normally all female, and then they would have a guest or two on and they discuss different issues and different topics. And today in this particular segment, we're going to be hearing an interview that took place approximately one month ago on the View, where they had Colman Hughes on the show. For those who don't know, Coleman Hughes, he is a black american author, scholar, and podcast host, and he has just published a brand new book called the End of race arguments for a colorblind America. And it is fair to say that this interview got more than just a little bit awkward. And so I thought it was worthy of watching, not just because of the subject material, but really more importantly to see how this, what should have been a dialogue very, very quickly turned into a character assassination, an attempt to completely undermine and shut down any form of legitimate debate or dialogue. There was no real interest in dialogue here, ultimately. Now questions were flying around, but by and large, what was actually happening was everything was tailored in such a way as to try and discredit the guest who's written this important book and not actually really get to the heart of what he's talking about. So let's start this. We'll discuss it as we go. There'll be plenty of stops along the way because it offers us some good insights, I think, in how we should conduct ourselves if we desire to be a person of goodwill who actually wants to dialogue well with people about important issues. This is something we can absolutely learn from, basically, what not to do. So let's start the interview and we'll see how this all unfolds.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: The first question that I should ask you to do is explain to folks what you mean by this arguments for a colorblind America. What do you mean when you say that?
[00:04:17] Speaker C: So a lot of people equate colorblindness to, I don't see race, or to pretending not to see race. I think that's a big mistake. We all see race, right? And we're all capable of being racially biased, so we should all be self aware to that possibility. My argument is not for that. My argument is that we should try our very best to treat people without regard to race, both in our personal lives and our public policy.
[00:04:39] Speaker D: Of course.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: And the reason I wrote this book. Thank you.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: This is interesting, because what he's expounding here is basically Martin Luther King Junior s doctrine about colour blindness. Basically, Martin Luther King Junior proposed that and very famously proposed that idea that you shouldn't be judging people based on political categories like race. Instead, what you should be doing is judging people based on the content of their character. And what was really interesting for me, right up front in this interview is you heard the reaction of the crowd. Now, keep this in mind. That actually, that point that he made there actually got a pretty positive round of applause from the crowd. Now, there will be other crowd interjections at other moments, but it's clear to me that that was a very popular idea with these ordinary laypeople who have come to sit in the audience and watch the view. And it's almost like they have permission now to clap and to endorse this man who is saying things that they all privately probably believe, but are too afraid often to admit because they get accused of being racists or they get accused of being bad people who aren't nuanced enough, who don't really understand. So they just shut their mouths and don't speak up because it's safer and it's easier to do that. But here they are in a situation where they're a studio audience, and. And they have a black author and scholar in front of them, and he is saying exactly what most sane, rational people believe should be the normal way of approaching these kinds of issues in society. And so they have the freedom, if you like, to actually get in behind him with a bit of applause. It's quite a safe thing to do in this moment. Now, as I said, keep this little moment in mind, because there are other moments of crowd and dejection. And it's very interesting to notice the difference.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: The reason I wrote this book is because in the past ten years, it has become very popular to, in the name of anti racism, teach a kind of philosophy to our children. Children. And in general, that says, your race is everything. Right. And I think that is the wrong way to fight racism. And that's why I wrote this book at this time.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: I'm sorry, baby. Can I just point out that there is a reason for that? You know, when I went to school, getting any information about anyone's race was not taught no history. There was no black history. None of those things were taught. And here in America, 100 years ago, when I was a young woman, that's how people saw you. That's how they judged you. So I think.
I don't want to say it's your youth, but I think you have a point. But I think you have to also take into consideration what people have lived through in order to understand why there has been such appointing of very specific racial things, like women couldn't go to get into colleges. If you are a black person, there are a lot of colleges wouldn't accept you trying to equal the playing field. I think that's what a lot of folks have been trying to do.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Now, you notice what's interesting there. First of all, she actually takes a bit of a condescending approach there. And he handles this quite well, as you're about to hear in just a second. He actually engages very charitably and very well. He concedes where she is right. But he also gently pushes back against this general sort of principle that therefore it's okay to have what we have. The current status quo is okay because of a particular experience. Like everyone's experience is different. And he's about to explain why. That doesn't really follow from that. But what's interesting, you'll notice she's effectively suggesting that he doesn't really understand. He's naive. And it's very interesting. This is a subtle. But it is really effectively just another form of a particular style of shutting down dialogue that we see a lot of today where people say, if you're not in a particular political category, you have no right to speak about this issue. We've seen this for decades with the issue of abortion. We see a lot now on race based issues. You don't know what you're talking about because you are not a particular race race. You are not that race. So therefore you have no right to speak. We see this on sexuality issues, sexual identity issues. This happens all over the place. And all she's doing here is she's practising a slightly different version of that same logical problem. It actually shuts down dialogue and debate. She's saying, well, I'm older. I've got more wisdom. And that can be true. Sometimes people are actually more wise because they're older. But what she's saying is, I've had these experiences. And so my experiences that you haven't had must prove that you're wrong, is effectively what's being implied here. And I think he handles this really, really well because obviously that is not correct. And in actual fact, you don't actually need to walk in someone's shoes exactly as they have done to be able to understand or to have empathy or to have a good moral sense of what is morally true and what is morally false about an issue and how in particular, maybe society should be structured as a result. So let's have a listen to how he responds.
[00:10:00] Speaker C: I think that's your experience, and that's valid. You know, as a counterpoint, when I was in fifth grade, we all watched roots together in public school.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: So in other words, what he's saying here is he's acknowledging her experience, which was different, but he's also trying to get her to see, look, things have now changed. Things have been different, actually, for quite some number of decades now. It's not like it was when you were a younger woman. And that's something that I think is consistently people fail to take into account. It's fascinating to me today to hear people talking about race based issues. Even here in New Zealand, people often make a couple of common mistakes that I see. One is they keep talking about race based issues as if we had some sort of legalized slavery, like antebellum slavery that they had in America. They often export, or you might say, import into New Zealand, the racial issues and the specific racial history of that nation or other nations who, for example, had slavery, New Zealand. We didn't know that particular evil. But people talk as if we did. And of course, the other thing that people consistently, I think, fail to take into account is they fail to take into account just how radically things have changed in recent decades. They are now talking about New Zealand today. And some people literally talk this way as if New Zealand today is somehow more racist than what it was 50, 6100 years ago. And it's a failure to actually recognize that no societies do shift and you do have historical changes that take place. And so you've actually got to recognize the real current situation, and you've got to deal with reality. You can't, which is what ideologues like to do, take an idea and try and impose it upon reality. You don't start with the idea. You start with what is real. And then you might explore more deeply what we can see going on, what maybe should or shouldn't be happening, what moral lessons we can learn from this, what moral principles should be applied, what are missing, what are being done well, et cetera, et cetera. But this is generally not the revolutionary way. The revolutionary way is to tear everything down. And you need to whip the crowd up into a frenzy. And the last thing you want the mob to be doing then is to be stopping and saying, oh, in actual fact, maybe not everything's bad, and maybe we aren't really a racist country. Maybe we just need to perhaps spend a little bit more time dialoguing with people who live in different situations to us, or who experience life differently to us. But you really aren't going to want to see that happen if you're trying to whip up a revolutionary mob, because revolutionary mobs rely on a very irrational motive and just a blind rage basically, to function. But this is a really, really important point that he's making here. And as I said, this is a very charitable way to respond as he does here.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: So these are different experiences. I think it's also different generations, it's different parts of the country, right? We have very different cultures all living together in one country. So I'm not going to deny that. But I think I view this notion of a kind, colorblind society similar to the idea of a peaceful society, which is to say it's an ideal, it's a north star. And the point is not that we're ever going to get there, we're not going to touch it, but we have to know when we're going forward and when we're going backwards and we're going backwards when we're doing woke kindergarten in San Francisco.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Now what's really important about this, and I'm really pleased to hear this, is he is acknowledging that this is not utopianism. So what he's saying is the colorblind principle that he's enunciating is the ideal. But at the same time, we also need to recognize we just can't achieve heaven on earth. And it is very dangerous when human beings start thinking and acting as if they can actually establish heaven on earth, they can build an earthly utopia. And so it's really, really important. And I think really like I was quite pleased to hear him enunciate this important point because far too often one of the problems with liberalism is not just is it utopian? But a lot of liberals don't recognise the utopian nature of liberalism, whether they are classical liberals or whether they might call themselves more progressives or woke liberals. It doesn't matter what brand or whether they are marxist in their liberalism, they often don't recognise that they are actually utopians. And commonly, actually, funnily enough, the people who say, well, I'm a libertarian, I'm not utopian. They actually are just as utopian because liberalism itself has utopian ideals about structuring. It is a comprehensive theory of how society should be structured. It has a comprehensive anthropology, a vision of what a human being is, what human societies should look like, and it sets about trying to achieve that. And it compares everything to that. It's very utopian in nature in that regard. So it's really great to hear him acknowledging and saying this out loud and reminding people, look, we don't want to fall into that trap of utopianism.
[00:15:10] Speaker D: You believe that public policies that address socioeconomic differences would be better at benefit benefiting disadvantaged groups, and that race based policies often hurt the very people they're trying to help. What are some examples of policies that would be better at reducing racial disparities?
[00:15:27] Speaker C: So my overall argument is that class socioeconomics is a better proxy for disadvantage. We all want to help the disadvantage, and the question is, how do we identify them? Right? The default right now in a lot of areas of policy is to use.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Can I just say here that did you notice how this fr the framing of this question happened? She starts by stating a fact that, you know, comes from his book where he says, look, these race based policies often end up hurting the very people that they are intended to help. So in my mind, the logical next thing that should have come out of her mouth was, can you please give us some examples of this? But that's not what comes out of her mouth. Instead, she takes it in a different direction. And I can't help but wonder whether she didn't actually want him to say out loud to cite examples, because that's what he would have done. He's done that in the book. He would have cited examples where this has happened and the reason why perhaps, and I'm just speculating here so I could be totally wrong, of course, but the reason why perhaps she didn't want this spoken out loud is because it is almost heretical to actually challenge these new dogmas. And you definitely don't say out loud what the glaring problems might actually be, because again, this is utopianism in action, a failure to recognize and a refusal to believe that what you were doing actually isn't the right thing, that what you're actually doing is trying to impose your ideas upon reality. And when reality pushes back a utopianist view, instead of accepting that maybe your ideas aren't actually true and they need to be adjusted, you say, no, we will break reality and make it fit the idea. And so you don't ever admit that the idea is not actually working, and you definitely don't admit the idea is worthy. And you don't talk about the problems. Instead, what you do is you talk about how we're just going to get there. If we keep pushing harder. We push harder. We'll get there. We just need to, you know, do x, y, and z, and then we'll achieve the great goal. The great outcome will happen if we just push ahead. That tends to be the more utopian way. So I can't help but wonder why she didn't actually ask what seems to me to be the obvious question can you cite examples of these failed policies?
[00:17:36] Speaker C: So my overall argument is that class socioeconomics is a better proxy for disadvantage. We all want to help the disadvantaged, and the question is, how do we identify them? Right? The default right now in a lot of areas of policy is to use black and hispanic identity as a proxy for disadvantage. And my argument is that you actually get a better picture of who needs help by looking at socioeconomics and income that picks out people in a more accurate way.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Do you notice that? Interestingly, again, here's the audience coming back again saying, yeah, this guy, what he's saying actually seems logically coherent. What he's saying here we also recognize as being true. It is not the prevailing ideology, though, but what he's saying is absolutely true. And I personally can attest to this because I am white, if you want to apply that label to me. So the theory is that I am in a very advantaged position in society. The truth is that I absolutely grew up in a major position of disadvantage. I grew up in a very poor family. We were a working class family that became a welfare class family when my father was invalided out of his job that he had at the New Zealand railways when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. And as a result of his diagnosis and the medications that he had to take, he was never able to work another day of full time work again in his life. And so our family went on to a sickness benefit, and we were a very poor family. There were regularly meals where we weren't sure where the food was actually going to come from. If it wasn't for the kindness of strangers, we often wouldn't have actually been able to eat. We regularly ran out of toilet paper in our house. And there was often the situation where in the days leading up to the next welfare check, you had to sit in the toilet rubbing newsprint or magazine pages together to try and turn them into makeshift toilet paper. That was the story of our household. In theory, that shouldn't be the story of our household because I'm supposed to be this privileged, advantaged white guy. There were white people I knew who definitely had more privilege and advantage than we did. But there were also families who were brown or black families in our neighbourhood who I went to school with who also had more advantage and privilege than we did because they were in a better economic position than we were. So this has never been the correct way to look at things. And I think he's absolutely right when he says that we actually need to examine and view this through the lens of the class divide, the economic divides, and the socio economic variances, that's where you need to actually look, and that's where you need to start applying policies if you actually want to see change that actually benefits people and regardless of race. And therefore, you know, the rising tide floats all boats. And therefore, if we do that, we're actually going to help the people, the very people that we're claiming to want to help. But currently, the policies which fixate on race aren't necessarily doing the best job of that.
[00:20:46] Speaker D: You say that socioeconomics picks out people in a better way than race. When you do look at the socioeconomics, you see the huge disparity between white households and black households. You see the huge disparity between white households and hispanic households. So your argument, and I've read your book twice. Cause I wanted to give it a.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Chance, do you really believe that she's read the book twice? I'm suspicious about that claim. And you can hear the passive aggressive tone already in what's going on here. So first of all, she hasn't really, I don't think, understood his argument. He's not playing some sort of silly game here. He's actually saying, look, the socioeconomic divide is more important. That's where you actually fix social harms in a more effective and across the board kind of way. And if you do that, you will actually benefit and advantage people who are in the black and hispanic, poor black and hispanic community.
And she's automatically assuming that what he's actually saying here is something that he's already acknowledged at the beginning that he's not saying, which is that race is irrelevant. You can't see racial differences. You can't see differences in different racial communities. He's already acknowledged that's not what he's saying. But she has sort of failed to understand the point here, I think, quite clearly. And what he's saying is ultimately, yes, there are poor people who are outside of hispanic and black communities. What about them? How do they factor into all of this? And surely if we address the class problem, the poverty problem, then we will be helping everyone who's in need, including the members of the black and hispanic communities, by taking that approach now on her very condescending, passive aggressive tact that she suddenly turned into here, holy moly. I'm suspicious that she's actually read the book twice. She may have, but I suspect what's probably happened is she's skim read through the book on a couple of occasions because it's pretty clear that she's lining up now to launch into an attack. And the mere fact that she said, I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, what that tells me is that, in actual fact, before she had heard any of his evidence, before she had even read a thing, any of the data, any of the claims that he was making, any of the arguments that he's putting forward, she had already made a judgment that he was a bad person and that his ideas were clearly wrong, because obviously they challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of the day, and so they must be wrong. And so I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to give you a chance. So I read your book just to see if maybe you could prove me wrong. But no, no, in actual fact, I know that you are what I assumed you to be. Without reading your book, without listening to any of your arguments. This is not how you should engage with people, folks. This is not a dialogue. This is a condescending, passive aggressive character assassination. It is ad hominem. You are attacking the person. You are not addressing any of the arguments that they've put forward, and you're not even dealing with any of the evidence that actually pertains to the matter at hand. It's really quite astounding. And as you probably suspect, if you haven't seen this little clip before, things are about to get a whole lot worse. So let's see how this all unfolds.
[00:24:12] Speaker D: Your argument that race has no place in that equation is really fundamentally flawed, in my opinion.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: No. Well, they're two separate questions.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Do you notice what's going on here? She's not actually engaging with the actual evidence that he's putting forward. And you're about to hear why she's not engaging. Like he has already told us that he doesn't believe in this kind of odd colour blindness, which would try and say that race doesn't matter. And here she is effectively trying to accuse him of the very thing that he has already, just a few minutes ago, said, I don't believe. When he was asked to define this, I don't believe in this idea of colour blindness that would say race doesn't matter or that we don't see race. But she's trying to pigeonhole him and accuse him effectively of not caring about black people, his own people, in theory. That's the accusation, really. She's trying to level at him here. And did you notice also the crowd reaction? This is what I was talking about earlier. This is another moment where the crowd, some people in the crowd have reacted, but clearly, there's not as much support anymore. You can hear the difference in the volume level and the intensity. There's not as many people who are on board with what she has just said. It's a very telling little moment about where society in general actually lays on these issues. Despite what the talking heads, the commentators, the media people might repeat over and over again. When you actually get to the grassroots level, you often hear a very different story about what people really know to be going on and how they are actually living lives and more meaningful lives, often in the real world with real people.
[00:25:50] Speaker C: They're two separate questions. One is whether each racial group is socioeconomically the same. That I agree with you. They're not.
[00:25:58] Speaker D: Yeah, they're not. And the questions show that.
[00:26:00] Speaker C: Yeah, of course I agree with that fully. The question is, how do you, how do you address that in the way that actually targets poverty? The best. Great. And what Martin Luther King wrote in his book, why we can't wait, is he called it, we need a bill of rights for the disadvantaged. And he said, yes, we should address racial inequality. Yes, we should address the legacy of slavery. But the way to do that is on the basis of class. And that will disproportionate, disproportionately target blacks and Hispanics because they're disproportionately poor. But it will be doing so in a way that also helps the white poor in a way that addresses poverty as the thing to be addressed.
[00:26:31] Speaker D: That part is true. But as you are a student of Doctor King. I'm not only a student of Doctor King. I know his daughter Bernice.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Now, this here is a classic logical fallacy. It is known as appeal to authority. So what she's trying to do here is she is trying to shut down the debate. She's not addressing what he's just said. She's not dealing with any of the evidence that he's put forward or any of the data in his book that has just been published. Instead, she has appealed to an outside authority by saying, I know Doctor Martin Luther King Junior. S daughter. So therefore, what I say has more authority than what you say, because I know his daughter. A, just because you know his daughter, that doesn't mean that what you are about to say has any more truth or substance to it. Knowing his daughter has no bearing on whether or not what is coming out of your mouth is true or is false. And secondly, it also assumes that knowing his daughter would actually give you access to some privileged information about the views of Martin Luther King Junior. That were somehow so substantive and important that they would override the actual scholarship, the documents, the public speeches and everything else that we clearly have a lot of related to the thoughts, the philosophies, the politics of Martin Luther King Junior. And I don't think for a second that is actually true. I don't think for a second you can say, well, someone's daughter is going to be able to provide some sort of substantive insight that is so substantial, that is not known in the public square, that a scholar who's actually researched this, who's worked his way through the arguments and has written a book about all of this, is not going to have actually properly understood. Now, a sloppy scholar for sure. And maybe if there is something really important that someone is hidden from the public view, sure, but I don't think so in this case. And as I said, all she's doing here is she's trying to shut him down. She's not actually addressing any of what he's just said, let alone what's in his actual book. She's just saying, you're wrong. Because I know Doctor Martin Luther King junior. S daughter. Please, please, please do not engage in conversations with other people like this. Engage with what they're actually saying. That's how you have a dialogue. This is not a dialogue. This is quite shocking what's going on here.
[00:29:03] Speaker D: Right? So I'm gonna get to my question. Go ahead, go right ahead.
I think the premise is fundamentally flawed. You claim that color blindness was the goal of the civil rights movement based upon Doctor King's I have a dream speech, you know, content of character versus the color of skin.
Bernice, Doctor King's daughter points out that four years after, after giving that speech, actually Doctor King also said this, a society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for Negroes. He also said in 1968, it was about less than a week before he was assassinated. This country never stops to realize that they owe a people kept in slavery for 244 years. So rather than class, he did write about that earlier on, right before his death, he made the argument for racial equality and racial reparations. And so your argument for colorblindness, I think, is something that the right has co opted.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: So this is interesting. So now what she's accusing people of doing is cause she knows that that argument is sound.
So she can't really argue against the principle, because every good person, every person of goodwill knows that that principle is actually a sound one that we should actually look at persons with a sense of moral equality. They are all morally equal, they are all sacred image bearers. Every person is made in the image of God and this is what gives us our profound dignity and worth. So that principle is really sound. So she can't attack the principle. Instead, what she does here is she tries to shift the ground. Now, before this, she actually did something that was a reasonable point of dialogue. She put forward what she believes to be evidence in favour of her case. And she actually, this time, cites references to Martin Luther King Junior s own writings. But you can see here, by the way, how even knowing her daughter has no bearing on this at all, because her daughter didn't actually like. She's not necessary in this equation. Anyone can go and read those writings or those public speeches that Martin Luther King Junior gave and they can see for themselves what he actually said. So she's actually attempting to present evidence. Initially, we're about to discover that she has been quote mining, though. She has cherry picked, selectively looked at the evidence and not followed through, and she's about to be caught out on that with the response that Coleman Hughes gives her. But before we get to that point, just consider she started by presenting evidence and then she quickly shifted back into the ad hominem with this whole claim that the right has been co opting the principle of colour blindness. She knows the principle of colour blindness is actually morally sound, so you can't attack that. But what you can do is you can say or so doubt in people's minds by saying, ah, but that principle has been co opted by bad people and now they are using it to trick us into a lie. And so you see the difference. It's subtle, but it is quite a powerful little trick to try and fool people, again into not looking at the actual arguments, the claims, the evidence, the data that is being put forward, none of that is being discussed when she does this kind of thing.
[00:32:38] Speaker D: Your argument for colorblindness, I think, is something that the right has co opted. And so many in the black community, if I'm being honest with you, because I want to be, did you hear.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: The condescending passive aggressiveness just dripping from this? And you know that what's about to happen is there's not going to be honesty, there's just more argument ad hominem, which is where you attack the person instead of addressing the actual claims, the arguments, the ideas that they are putting forward. You know, that's what's coming. And sure enough, that is exactly what we're about to hear more of. So let's have a listen.
[00:33:15] Speaker D: Believe that you are being used as a pawn by the right and that you're a charlatan of sorts.
[00:33:19] Speaker C: He's not a Republican.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Did you hear what happened there? This is astounding. You are being used. And it's not just her. Now she's claiming that is actually accusing him of being a pawn of the Republicans, a tool of the right. She's effectively calling him an uncle Tom here. And she knows she can't attack him along racial lines because he is a black scholar himself. So she can't pull that card. So what she does is she accuses him of being co opted, of being a zombie, of being a mindless, ignorant man who is an uncle Tom who is allowing himself to be used by the enemy to undermine their cause. And remember, it's not just her she's claiming who is accusing him of this? That would be crazy enough. But what she's actually now trying to do is she's now engaging in the logical fallacy of appeal to popularity. The majority of the black community, the black leadership, they agree with me. They think this about you. That's where she started, remember? So that's an appeal to popularity, the majority, the important people. Again, it's a combination of both appeal to authority, black leadership, and popularity. This majority, this group of important people, agrees with me. That is not how you determine the truth. The truth is not determined by the authority of the person actually uttering the truth. And the truth is not determined by a majority vote. So these are clear, logical fallacies. Again, all she's doing here is attacking him. She is trying to engage in a character assassination instead of actually listening and then responding to what he's actually saying. This is really, really shocking stuff, but it is very, very typical of the revolutionary, the cultural revolutionary set. And there is a grand irony in all of this, by the way, because you can't see this, but I can. I'm looking at a video clip. She is sitting there wearing Gucci, and she is saying, no, no, no. Let's not focus on class. The woman wearing the Gucci says, it's not a class issue. And I think that maybe it's just a little bit too uncomfortable and a little bit too close to home, maybe. Or maybe that's a little bit unfair on my part. But regardless, let's see how the rest of this little conversation unfolds.
[00:35:34] Speaker D: You've said that you're a conservative.
[00:35:36] Speaker C: No, no.
[00:35:37] Speaker D: You did. You actually said that in a podcast that you did two weeks ago.
[00:35:41] Speaker C: I said I was a conservative.
[00:35:42] Speaker D: He's not a.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:35:43] Speaker D: Did so. But my question to you, my question.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: To you is, by the way, he has an actual fact, and it's been long time this has been known. He's never voted for a Republican. So he doesn't identify himself as conservative. He doesn't identify himself as Republican. He's publicly on the record. This is well known. For many years this has been well known. He's never voted for a Republican. And not only that, but in the previous election, it's publicly known because he stated this. He voted for Joe Biden.
This is unbelievable. But it doesn't matter to her. The truth doesn't matter. She is a revolutionary trying to assassinate this man's character so that people won't actually listen to the substance of what he is saying. She is afraid of the truth. She can't handle the truth. As we all know, that famous line from the film, you can handle the truth, when Jack Nicholson yells that out at Tom Cruise and a few good men. Right. That's exactly what's going on here. She doesn't want to hear the truth. She's just assassinating this man's character in the hope that other people will go, oh, yeah, we don't have to listen to what he has to say because we already know he's a bad, evil man. He's an enemy, and so we shouldn't actually listen to what he has to say.
[00:36:56] Speaker D: How do you respond to those critics? Ok, let's give him another Adam answering.
[00:37:03] Speaker C: I think it's very important. The quote that you just pointed out about doing something special for the negro, that's from the book, why we can't wait. That I just mentioned.
[00:37:12] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:37:13] Speaker C: A couple paragraphs later, he lays out exactly what that something special was, and it was the Bill of rights for the disadvantaged, a broad class based policy.
[00:37:22] Speaker D: But he also says you must include race.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: No, he didn't. He says it's.
[00:37:26] Speaker D: Yes, he does.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: Okay, well, everyone can go. Everyone should go read the book. Why? We can't wait. Let's not get sidetracked by that.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great way to handle that. She is wrong. Clearly she is wrong. And this is what I was talking about earlier. She's just been exposed. She got caught quote mining. She selectively cherry picked things that were said by Martin Luther King. And then he is actually someone who has studied the actual documents, the writings, the speeches, etcetera. And he's able to know exactly what Martin Luther King Junior did or didn't say. And then he's able to go back to her and say, well, in actual fact, just a couple of paragraphs later in that very book you've quoted from, he explains exactly what he meant by those statements that you have selectively cherry picked, and he doesn't mean what you were claiming. How do we know this? Because he told us exactly what he means. And then she tries to turn around and say, no, no, he didn't say that. And then the way he handles this, I think, is brilliant. He says, go and read the book for yourself. I encourage everyone to go and read the book. And what that does straight away, it's a way of not getting bogged down in the weeds in a dialogue or a public debate like this. Probably not so much a dialogue, because I would actually want to go and show people the book if I was in a one on one conversation. But in a public media appearance like this, it's a very effective tool that he's just utilised here, basically. Let's not get bogged down in the weeds. Trust me, the document, you don't even need to trust me, in fact, and you don't need to turn this into a he said, she said, just go and read the book for yourself, because if you read the book, you'll see that I'm right and she's wrong. In other words, he has just won the authoritative high ground by doing that effectively. He's put it beyond doubt, because not only is he encouraging people to go and read the actual words and the thoughts of Martin Luther King Junior and understand them for themselves, but he is also putting it beyond all doubt that he's actually the one who's got it right here and that she's got it wrong, because he's not afraid to have people actually go and read the book and discover the truth for themselves.
[00:39:22] Speaker C: I don't think I've been co opted by anyone. I've only voted twice, both for democrats, although I'm an independent. I would vote for a Republican, probably a non Trump Republican, if they were compelling. I don't think there's any evidence I've been co opted by anyone. And I think that's an ad hominem tactic people use to not address, really, the important conversations we're having here. And I think it's better, and it would be better for everyone if we stuck to the topics. Rather than make it about me with no evidence.
[00:39:50] Speaker D: I want to give you the opportunity to respond to the criticism.
[00:39:54] Speaker C: I appreciate it.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: Now, this is just nothing more than gaslighting here what she's done is she has started by saying, I think your position is fundamentally flawed. And then she has co opted in other people using logical fallacies like appeal to authority, appeal to popularity, saying, look, the majority of the black community, the leadership in the black community, they think you've been co opted. And what she's doing now is she is using them as proxies. This is a form of gaslighting. When you then turn around and say, look, no, no, no. It's not about you, and it's not me who's actually saying this. It's these other people. And I just wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to these awful character assassinations that are being made against you by these other people. But no, no, no. It's not me. It's not me. That is classic gaslighting. Imagine if a husband or a wife in a conversation did that to the other spouse. Imagine if they said, hey, people are saying that you've been co opted, that you're a charlatan, that you're a fraud. And then they turn around and said, oh, look, look, no, don't get upset. It's not me. It's not my fault. It's these other people that are saying this. And I just wanted to give you an opportunity to actually respond, because that's what a good person does. Right? As I said, this is nothing more than blatant character assassination. She is trying here to do everything in her power to avoid having to actually engage with the substance of the arguments, the evidence, the reasoning, the data that he has put forward in his book, because that is the one thing that is noticeably absent in all of this, a conversation about what's actually said in his book to back up these claims.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: There's no evidence that I've been co opted by anyone. I have an independent podcast. I work for CNN as an analyst. I write for the free press. I'm independent in all of these endeavors, and no one is paying me to say what I'm saying. I'm saying it because I feel it.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: Alyssa, you have the question.
[00:41:51] Speaker C: Coleman, thanks for being here.
[00:41:52] Speaker D: So, in the past decade, it feels like racial tensions have gotten worse. Do you see it that way? And what do you attribute it to?
[00:41:58] Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, if you look at all the data, it finds that racial race relations were getting better until about 2013. That year, you had majority of black, hispanic, and white Americans saying race relations were good, and then you just see it nosedive. And 2013, you know, people like to blame Republicans. Americans like to blame Obama. Wasn't his fault. Democrats like to blame Trump. It was actually just technology. We all got social media and smartphones, and we had videos being promoted in the algorithm that were unrepresentative. And it created this impression that racism was on the rise, when, in fact, it had been on the decline for decades.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Now, this is where I disagree with him. I actually think social media played a part. But I think social media was more of a tool in all of this, because I think what he's failed to account for here is the fact that there were definitely revolutionary type people, people who are revolutionary minded, who were actually trying to foment the divisions between people. And that's exactly what you would expect. This is just history repeating itself, where you have revolutionary groups who want to tear down the existing social structures, the existing social order, and so what do they do? They have to whip up a mob into a frenzy. What is one of the effective ways of doing this is to actually claim that you are on a moral crusade, and that if the majority think that your cause is truly moral, they will join you. If they can be horrified at the people you are claiming are the enemy, they will want to target them. As Aldous Huxley once famously said, the surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone to be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior righteous indignation. This is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. And so there were definitely groups who were absolutely agitating, and they used social media as a tool to quickly and very far and wide spread their agitation, even across a global stage. And that definitely only made things worse. But I think he's failed to account for that fact. And if you want to whip up a revolutionary mob that's going to tear things down, then one of the best things that you can do is you can cry, evil, evil, evil is happening. We must stop the evil. We must end the reign of the monster. And there's no doubt that in popular western culture today, racism is definitely still one of those things that is held to be an evil and a very grave evil. And so there was definitely, I think, various currents, various attempts that were employed, and some of them successfully, some of them not so successfully, but largely, you'd have to say, very successfully, at whipping up the public into a frenzy and then sewing all sorts of dishonest ideas about what was going on and who was to blame and what the best cause could be. And I think he's failed to account for that fact. I don't think it's the technology alone. The technology doesn't create the ideas. The technology doesn't put the ideas into the public space. It is the tool to allow that to happen. It's the gateway. It's the vehicle. But someone else has to actually be in the driving seat, and I don't think he's accounted for that factor.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: Foreign actors getting involved in technology.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:45:17] Speaker C: Russia tries to meddle, absolutely. But I think. I don't think we can blame foreign actors. This is a homegrown problem.
[00:45:23] Speaker D: Okay, I have a question. Cause you write that the anti racism movement.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: There are a couple of people.
[00:45:28] Speaker D: I don't even know who they are.
[00:45:30] Speaker A: Maybe you.
[00:45:30] Speaker D: Robin D'Angelo.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: Robin D'Angelo. Ibram Kendi, for instance.
[00:45:33] Speaker D: Okay, well, you say that that is just a form of another form of. And you even say it has a lot in common with white supremacy. How can you compare those two things? I compare them by anti racism. You're comparing it to white supremacy.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Interesting, that question. Right. The framing of that question. Joy Behar, who's white herself, but in her mind, clearly she can't comprehend that you could have a form of black supremacy. In her mind, you can only have white supremacy. And it's very interesting that is very much a product of the very ideology that he's challenging here, this ideology that only one group of people are oppressed, or that only one group of people can ever be oppressors, or that only one group of people can ever actually perpetrate supremacists, like racially supremist ideologies, and the other group isn't capable. Now, why would she think that way? Because she has been indoctrinated in all sorts of different ways with this marxist version of reality. It's all about power. It's all about oppressed and oppressor groups. And clearly, in her mind, only the white people are in the oppressor class, and therefore, anyone who is not white is in the oppressed class. And so the oppressed class, it's not racism when they do it. Instead, it's just revolution. It's just them fighting for their own freedom, et cetera, et cetera. The lens is never applied in a principled kind of way, and that's why the question is framed that way. It's so clear in my mind that she can't conceive when she thinks of racial supremacy. She can only think of nazis, like literal nazis. But racial supremacy is not just a nazi problem, and it's not just confined to any one particular race. You see this all over the globe and it's been a consistent part of, I guess, empire building. It's been a consistent part of in group out, group type divisions and preferences. And yeah, there's nothing abnormal about this. But in her mind, because the current ideology doesn't actually accept this, she's sort of struggling, I think, to comprehend this possibility.
[00:47:37] Speaker C: They both view your race as an extremely significant part of who you are. So white supremacists, they obviously say, we all know what they say, okay, neo racists like Rob D'Angelo, they say that to be white is to be ignorant, for example. Well, this is a racial stereotype. And I want to call a spade a spade and say this is not the style of anti racism we have to be teaching our kids. We should be teaching them that your race is not a significant feature of who you are. Who you are is your character, your value. And your skin color doesn't say anything about that.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: Notice the intensity and the volume of the applause there again is all of a sudden the crowd saying, yeah, this guy's in the right. We want to make it clear that this is the guy that we believe and this is the guy that we support, not these other ideas. It's a very, very interesting trend and it's a consistent one, where people who are in elite positions in modern western society are often very detached from the reality of what people, ordinary, everyday people, us normies, actually understand and know about the world. They're very detached. They live in these sort of theoretical, ideological worlds. We are the ones on the ground floor living out the reality of life and just getting on with the business of being good, humane people. They tend to be the ones at the top virtue signalling. And possibly because they feel a little bit of a guilt about the fact that they're in a higher class, they have a bit more privilege than the rest of us, and they shouldn't feel guilt about that. But I think they feel a sense of guilt. And often this sort of bad ideology is a manifestation of them trying to deal with their own internal guilt. Sort of trying to outwardly outwork and resolve their own sense of guilt and sense of shame in a very public way.
[00:49:14] Speaker D: Actually misrepresenting what Robin DiAngelo's position is.
[00:49:17] Speaker C: It's in her book.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: I love that. Again, he hasn't misrepresented her position at all. She does say that white people are ignorant. It's a very basic statement and it is widely understood. If you know anything about Robyn D'Angelo, you know that she has absolutely expressed that idea, and I love it. He says, look, it's in her book. In other words, he's saying to the audience, you don't have to trust me. You don't have to turn this into a he said, she said, just go and look at her book. And if you do that, you'll see what's really true.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: So here we go.
[00:49:50] Speaker C: Here we go.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Thank you, Coleman Hughes, for coming, because this is a show of lots of different opinions, and we are multigenerational, and we all got an opinion.
So the end of race, his politics, arguments for Colorblind America is out now, and we're giving it to you all so you can read it and judge for yourself how you feel about what he said.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Now, the reason I let that play to the very end is because of the fact that they gave away a free copy of the book, and the audience was pretty happy about that. Now, look, I'm under no illusions here that they were probably told there were signs or something flashing clap, but they were pretty happy by the sounds of it. They weren't just clapping. They seemed pretty happy to be receiving a free copy of his book. And I thought that was a nice little very positive way to end all of this. But the reason why I thought this was important, not just the subject matter, but also I think it is important to understand how to dialogue well with people. And there were some really shocking examples of how not to dialogue with people in that conversation. And what you don't want to do is if you are genuinely a person of goodwill and you really do want to be a person of virtue in your conversation, your conduct, your relations with others, then don't do some of these errant and illogical things. Don't attack a person's character. Have a conversation about what they are actually saying, talk about the ideas, talk about the various proposals that they are putting forward, and more importantly, understand what your own principles are so you can respond with something of substance. I can't help but suspect that the reason he was subjected to more of a character assassination in this particular show, in this setting here, was because maybe the person he was actually debating with here didn't really know, or maybe doesn't have a clear understanding of what her own principles are. She's just repeating things that other people have told her she is supposed to believe. And so when you don't really know what you believe or why you believe it, it's much easier just to assassinate the character of the other person. Because to engage with what they're actually saying would require you to maybe start by admitting that you don't have a substantive basis for the beliefs that you hold about the world. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the dispatches.
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