All right, so. I'm going to try to get through as many questions as I can. But I got way too many than I can actually answer in the time allotted, so I apologize in advance for that. So let's start with the first one, and this is a question that I think I've gotten from many, many people that has been boiled down to this basic message. Which is how do I communicate to a good faith, Black Lives Matter supporter, that if I say all lives matter or if I make criticisms of Black Lives Matter, that I'm not a racist and that I'm not a Trump supporter.

So I think a lot of people are in in this situation. So the question as it's posed here, you're communicating with someone who is a good faith supporter of Black Lives Matter, which means they're not going to try to read your mind when you speak your mind, they're going to assume that what you say is what you mean. So the way the question is posed here, if you say you're not a racist, they should believe you. With the caveat that racists don't always announce that they're racists.

But certainly if if they say you're a Trump, if you say you're not a Trump supporter. And they don't believe you then they're not good faith, so. That's the obvious point, the less obvious point is how you should view the slogan All lives matter. Increasingly, I think it's a mistake to view all lives matter and black lives matter as as anything other than slogans whose face value is actually meaningless. We have to view these like the terms pro-choice and pro-life, which is to say everyone in America is both abstractly pro-choice and pro-life.

But what those phrases are just brands that sit atop a mountain of substantive beliefs that are both controversial to half the country. So, you know, I if you if you say all lives matter or black lives matter.

You shouldn't be under the illusion that you're only saying the actual explicit meaning of those things, the dictionary definition of those two sentences, because those two sentences are true, just taken literally, you have to assume that you're in a conversation, more like a debate on abortion, or to say you're pro-life or pro-choice is actually to to communicate something substantive about what you believe about controversial issue. And the so so this is the problem with there's two things to say.

One is. There is this hostage video thing that happens where you have to say the phrase Black Lives Matter, and what people will do is they'll pretend that you're not they'll pretend that that's not a political statement. They'll pretend that it's not a slogan akin to pro-life or pro-choice and that all you're actually communicating is obviously true statement that black lives matter when in fact there's a whole political baggage with it, which is why many people don't say the phrase. But the same thing is true of all lives matter, you should understand, is you're saying that what you're communicating actually is that you're just against Black Lives Matter, full stop.

That's how All Lives Matter slogan came up. So my strong advice. Would be to understand whether you're communicating with someone who is actually interested in having a conversation with you. And then just let go of the baggage of these two slogans right at the door, because I've just never. If you're if you want to have any kind of level of nuance about the conversation, you're kind of closing the door to that. If you just live by these slogans or if you start the conversation off with these slogans, you instantly make it a debate.

I think in the same way that declaring yourself pro-life or pro-choice to someone on the other side would say, you should understand these terms for what they are, their slogans that communicate a specific point of view. And in the case of all lives matter, it's actually even different than pro-life and pro-choice, because that phrase actually only came about as a rejoinder to Black Lives Matter. So it's even more. Whereas with pro-life and pro-choice, those are two positions that have just existed independently as positions.

So I would I would say try to communicate what you disagree with black lives matter about without buying into the slow organization of thought. And so that's how I would answer that. This is from someone in the U.K., but applies as well here, I don't follow the US scene closely, but a simple search quickly revealed articles of from Jacobin magazine criticizing the dominant anti racist rhetoric. A while back, I read Assad hater's book, Identity Politics, which makes many strong criticisms of the sort of the sort of anti racism you also reject.

So given that there are these people on the left that are also anti identity politics, are you being fair to the left? I think the short answer to this is that those voices are totally marginal on the left and marginalized. So in America you have Brianna, Joy Gray has done some great writing on an anti identity politics perspective. From the left, you have Adolph Reed Junior, who is this is someone who can sound like me on the topic of racial disparity until you ask what his goals are in terms of economics.

And then you get the total Bernie Sanders socialist policies that sound good. But if we lived under for five years, there are serious know sometimes just consensus within the field of economics that these would probably have bad outcomes. But you can listen to Brianna Joy Gray or it Ofri Junior, and they can sound like me for minutes at a time criticizing the focus on identity. But their punch line is that class is actually everything and there's little or no mobility between classes in America.

And what we need is socialism. And that's not you know, I don't think that's a good idea. But that will that can be another question for for another time. OK. How much of a role has Sam Harris played in your way of thinking and approaches to subject to subjects? So, yes, Sam Harris has played a big role in the way I think about things. And I've actually never read the book that made him famous, which was the end of faith.

The book I encountered Sam Harris when I was probably 16 or 17, probably just in a bookstore, was the moral landscape. And this is his moral philosophy book, where he essentially attacks both the idea of moral relativism, cultural relativism that we can't stand from any place to critique and other cultures practices. And as well as criticizing religious morality, the idea that without God, there's no way of determining what's right and wrong in the world. So I read that book when I was 15 or 16, and that book had definitely had a profound impact on me from the way I think about right and wrong in the world, and also in persuading me that consequentialism, broadly speaking, is the right approach to thinking about right and wrong, that you can obey your gut.

You have to ask and as empirical as possible, what are the consequences of X, Y or Z, whether that's a policy or a belief or an idea? So that had a huge impact on me. And also, I think one thing like a through line in all of Sam's career has been the importance of ideas and beliefs for the long term consequentialist result of societies, which is to say what people believe has consequences. And those consequences are even more visible, I think, in the long term than in the short term.

But the idea that ideas matter, beliefs matter, and that sometimes ideas and beliefs aren't products of anything but themselves. This is I think we sort of. Disagreed a little bit with Brett Weinstein about why he thinks many of the. You know, the the much of the race debate is a is a downstream consequence of economics and other things where I'm not so convinced, I think people can really just be persuaded into things. And religion is obviously the clearest example of this.

And what Sam sort of got famous for talking about. I'm also a huge fan of waking up and I'm a I've been to a few meditation retreats. I think it's a it's a great practice to get into. And I think ultimately. Where Sam has contributed the most and the most lasting impact is probably been in explaining to people who hate religious horseshit, as I have my whole life, why there is a baby in the bathwater and what spirituality means, just explaining that in a commonsense way to people who who don't like to hear about nonsense.

OK, what would you say to those who, in order in order to encourage more involvement from people of color, advocate for the race of a candidate to be considered during the audition process to choose members of an orchestra? OK, this is kind of a niche question, but I think it speaks to a much broader theme, which is why I wanted to answer it.

There was an op ed a few weeks ago in The New York Times which suggested that the blind audition process at orchestras be jettisoned in favor of a race conscious, race conscious process. Just to catch you up to speed on this, if you don't know, in the 70s and 80s, classical orchestras began auditioning people behind a veil so that the judges actually could not see whether it was a man or a woman or a black person or an Asian or white person playing the violin or trumpet.

And they just had to go on sound alone. And it was found that this actually judges that even view themselves as as a as objective as possible can be influenced just by somebody. Look, if you see a small woman playing the tuba. It can be it can be hard to disentangle the sound from from the the reality that what you're looking at is a small woman who doesn't sound like she should be playing so good. For example. But the idea now is this is a this was an anti racist and sexist innovation.

It is exactly the colorblind ideal that is the antithesis of white supremacy. This was a progressive innovation on orchestra auditions. But the idea in this New York Times op ed. Was to get rid of it, because if the net result of that kind of audition process is that only four percent of the Chicago Symphony is black. As opposed to 13 percent of the country, then that is a racist outcome which needs to be corrected not by less discrimination, but actually by more discrimination by the supposedly good kind of discrimination.

So here's what I would say, I would say two things. One is we have to consider. If you didn't know who you were going to be in the world. You know, this is the John Rawls type thought experiment, if you didn't know who you were going to be in the world. What system would you rather enter, would you rather enter? A system that is really observing your accidental characteristics like race and gender and seeking to correct for them based on the moral whims of the moment, or would you rather enter a system that has just fundamentally committed itself to trying to become as blind as possible to your accidental characteristics and just viewing you on the merit principle alone?

I would submit. Again, if you didn't know who you're who you were going to end up as behind the Rozin veil of ignorance, you have to choose the system that is trying to become as colorblind as possible. Like, if I'm if I'm going to. If I actually as I as a kid, I did want to be in the New York Philharmonic as a trombonist, I was briefly my dream after wanting to be a basketball player. What I would want to the system I would want to enter is a system where I know the result at the end of the day was not a consequence of my skin color.

Right. There is not only do I not want to be racially discriminated against when I get in the door, I want to know that if I've gotten in the door, I damn well deserve to be there based on my talent alone. Right.

So the race conscious audition system and this is true of race conscious admissions as well as in colleges, it has the double effect of discriminating against people that you've chosen for. You've chosen to be the losers of the regime. And keep in mind, these may be people from as tough a background as you could possibly imagine, but you've chosen based on an arbitrary characteristic that they're not among the people who get in the door, get a leg up. And then you've also created a system where the people that you.

Quote unquote, helps by letting them get in the door are vulnerable to the charge of being affirmative action admits, and not all of them will be affirmative action admits only some of them will be. But they're all vulnerable to that charge and they're vulnerable to that know, neurotic self concern. And a critic at this point, what they would say is sure behind a Rosie and veiled veil of ignorance, I'd like to be the person who I'd like to be entering a system that was truly colorblind.

But the problem is that under that system, you have this you're you're standing, I guess, downstream of a whole system of disadvantage that is accounting for the fact that there's only four percent of, you know, an orchestra is black. Right. It's because they went to schools that didn't have bands in them. It's because they were discriminated against in various subtle ways along the line and. What you're doing is trying to correct for that. So this is a few things to point out there.

One is that if you I'll just grant for the sake of argument that the reason something is in 12 percent black is totally due to systemic racism and not at all due to cultural choices that black people are making granted for the sake of argument. Even if that's true, I'm not sure in the case of an orchestra, for example. To just make it 12 percent black through affirmative action, what you've done there is you've you've hid the problem. You've made it appear that you've reached racial equality without actually doing something.

And all of those alleged pipeline issues, are you fixed? What's coming out of the pipe? And the pipe is still broken, but it looks like the pipe is fixed. So what you have there is a cosmetic solution to a real problem. At the same time, I grant that for the sake of argument, but I'm not sure it's actually true in the real world, people people are in this conversation in elite circles, are constantly ignoring the role of culture here, like what percentage of black kids at age were like me at age 12 and wanted nothing more than to be the lead trombonist in the New York Philharmonic.

There's a lot, but it's there's no reason to suspect that it would be exactly, exactly 12 percent of the kids who have that dream are going to be black. Right. Because, you know, if if if the word multicultural means anything and if you think culture matters at any level, then more important than the food you eat, then culture is going to matter precisely in those ways that would predict a very non-random, non proportionate spread of of desires that people don't want the same things.

Different groups of people at the mean don't want exactly the same things. There aren't the exact same I can bet without even knowing that the the percentage of people who want to be a pilot who this is their biggest dream, it's not going to be the same percentage. If you look at Asians versus white people, it's not going to be the same percentage. If you look at white people from Western Europe and white people from Eastern Europe, everyone is trailing a cultural legacy which determines in part determines their likelihood of wanting certain things right.

When you see that, you know that the number of Indians who win the spelling bee is to, to put it mildly, not in proportion to the number of Indians in society. Is it racist to observe that culture probably accounts for all of that culture. It's there's no gene necessarily for first for spelling bee persay. Or here's an even better example, and I'll get off this, because I'm going on to this is the problem is I take too long to answer these questions.

If you look at basketball, three quarters dominated by black people, right, of course, no one is lamenting this for the most part. It's just we've been trained to to cringe at certain disparities and another other ones, just the disparity in itself is not inherently a horrible thing to live with because we are living with it in every sector of society. It's just that you can be trained to cringe at the very thought that, you know, black people only comprise six percent of X sector.

You can be educated into viewing that as a is a horrible thing in itself without actually having an honest portrayal of how how we're getting there. But I think ultimately, at the end of the day, most people are comfortable with disparity so long as they feel that that disparity has been reached in a meritocratic way and a society that is free of fundamental barriers, that is what we should be concerned about. We should be concerned about the barriers and we shouldn't be concerned.

So concerned about the outcomes. And the example I was just going to give is, yes, the NBA is three quarters black. But when I when I look at the US women's soccer team, I see very few black people there. And it's it's it's it's no accident. I think, obviously, genes can play a role, especially with athletics. I'm not close to all the all the data of what's true there with fast twitch and slow twitch muscles.

But even their culture plays a huge role because whatever fast twitch muscles are making you good at basketball, you could ask, well, why aren't there more black people on like the US women's soccer team? Well, it's reasonable to think that black kids, in my experience. We grew up playing basketball much more than soccer. That's not true of Africans and West Indians as much. But black Americans, soccer is much less a part of the culture of the subculture than than basketball, for example, so that you can multiply these examples endlessly.

But. But you have to think about the role of culture in these things. OK, that was too long. Do you think, for want of a better phrase, that the quote unquote, intellectual dark web needs to invite people with conflicting opinions into their sphere more often? For example, inviting people whose views they oppose onto their podcast for long form discussion, for example, I'd like to see you speak with Robin D'Angelo or Ebrahim Kendi. Your criticisms of their ideas seem sensible to me, and I think having a long form conversation with folks like that might help bridge the gap.

I saw John McWhorter speak at length with Tallahasse Coates, which I think was productive and worthwhile. I agree that that's from over 10 years ago. You should all if you haven't seen that conversation, really good one and watch it to the end.

So the short answer is, I've I've reached I've reached out to almost everyone you would imagine or almost everyone you would think in the top five, top 10, even top 15 of prominent folks who would disagree. I've reached out.

Sometimes I get no response. Sometimes I get a response. Sometimes I reach out more than once and I'm not going to name names. But it's not for lack of trying. And this is I can't speak for other folks in the Iaw, but I think I imagine it's a similar. There is yeah, there's a phenomenon of sort of not wanting to engage that is a little bit asymmetric. It's not to say there's no one in the Iaw who's penned into their own ideological echo chamber and doesn't want to talk to people.

I'm sure there are folks like that. But there's an asymmetric thing where people don't want to talk to the people you're thinking of in the more than more than the reverse is true. But I can I can absolutely promise in the very near future I will have a smart person who totally disagrees with me and I will get them on my podcast. And you will you will get that, because I agree that's what it's all about. So I promise that is a that is a that's as much a promise as I can give you.

OK. In conversation about race relations in America, you often rely on statistics, FBI stats, the frier study of police violence toward blacks and whites. One rebuttal I hear is that police reporting is entirely voluntary and that due to lack of oversight, the numbers may not be reliable. How closely have you scrutinized the data and how do you respond to this counterargument? So. Our data definitely is imperfect here, but some of these charges actually aren't true.

Yeah, yeah. I think reporting to the FBI, I believe, is voluntary. So that's true as far as it goes. But I've never really seen people. Doubt like simple FBI stats such as I use on murder and the racial disparity in murder victims and and murder perpetrators. You can find all that information that the FBI unified crime report. It's publicly available and it's incomplete, but it's it's I try to only stick to using homicide data there because.

You can't fake a body and most bodies don't get disappeared, so when you find that 50 percent of the bodies every year are black and we know people are very likely to be killed by people of the same race. That's just an undeniable disparity, right? So as far as the Frier study. Roland Fryer recently responded to this allegation, I think, very persuasively by pointing out the simple fact that the data he used and he responded in The Wall Street Journal probably probably over a month ago now.

The over 90 percent of the data that Roland Fryer used in his study. Was just from nine one one calls. So there's a there's a worry that when you're asking the question. When you're asking the following question, when a police encounters a suspect, what is the likelihood or what is the effect of the suspect's race on the likelihood of them shooting? Holding everything else about the encounter equal. So almost all of the studies that have asked that specific question come to the conclusion that there is there is no antiblack racist bias there, but.

Yeah, so so so actually, this is important. One big caveat about the studies is that it's impossible to actually measure bias directly or measure racism directly. All you can do is hold constant every variable, like, did they have a gun? Were they charging at the officer? What what was their gender, what was their age, you can hold all of this stuff constant and then see if there is a difference in the likelihood that a shooting occurred contingent on race.

Now, even if there is a difference contingent on race, that that's not synonymous with there being a racial bias. And I try to be consistent with this as possible. But many people just aren't. So. So, for example. A few of Fryer's results found that holding everything constant, there was a disparity. That that people officers were more likely to pull the trigger on a white suspect. Now, does that is that straightforwardly mean that there is an anti white racist bias?

No, because just because you've hold you've held everything constant, you actually haven't held everything constant. You've only held that which is measurable and observable, constant, constant, which is only a small size slice of reality. So to to to preempt criticism, a lot of what Fryer found is that the police are more likely to lay a hand and rough up a suspect if if the contingent on that suspect being black. Right. So but in the same way that.

Just observing a disparity in the results, holding everything constant. In the case of shooting, didn't imply necessarily anti white racism, holding everything constant and finding the reverse disparity with with non-lethal force, which is what you found that does it. That's not synonymous with finding racial bias. So I think what I'm admitting here is that social science is hard. You cannot just straightforwardly measure, measure racism. You can find out certain things. And then to to finally loop back around to the criticism.

One criticism of his work is OK, sure. Once you've already gotten to the point where you're having an encounter between an officer and a suspect, I'll concede it. Sure, he's not more likely to shoot if the suspect is black. But why is it that the officer came into contact with that person to begin with? Why is it that the police are coming into contact with black people more often to begin with? And can't there be racism in the cop's decision to pursue a suspect?

Obviously, the answer to that is yes. A cop can be more likely to pursue a suspect of that suspect who is black. So you have to think about that. But but Roland Fryer is response to this critique, which I find to be very persuasive, is that over 90 percent of his data came from nine one one calls. So what that means is it's not the cop deciding based on his arbitrary bias, to pursue a suspect ending in shooting.

Over 90 percent of these shootings began with a civilian calling the police on someone else. Now you can further say so. So are the civilians racist? And then you can I have to think that a lot of these people calling are themselves black. But but suffice it to say that that objection doesn't deep six the prior study. OK. How would you distinguish between racism and bias in general? It's a good question. I think everyone is biased. I think if you're being honest with your own mind and observing your thoughts moment to moment, you will find that you have biases.

And this is this is true of of everyone. This is not white people. This is black people, too. This is everyone. And I think it's a some people are certainly more biased than others. Some of them might just be genetic predisposition. Others it might be your life experience has made you incredibly biased. It might be a combination of genes and culture, but racism, the kind of racism that we really ought to care about fighting. Should be defined as any kind of belief that.

People of one race are superior to another or deserve privileges and rights that others don't or deserve to be given a leg up over others. So racism is an idea, whereas bias is a fact of psychology, and I'll grant that maybe there is a. Neat, perfect in between those two things. And they can they can certainly interplay, if you're biased enough, you're probably more susceptible to racist ideas. And if you're less biased, you're probably you may be less susceptible, but that's how I would draw the line.

What do I think about the recent announcement by Jack from Twitter? Donating 10 million to Ibram Kennedy's non-profit. Yeah, so I think this is it's troubling, it's depressing, it deserves to be condemned, frankly. I think Jack is. You know, I I have to imagine he is too smart of a person to not understand what is wrong with Ibraham Kennedy and Abraham Kennedy's ideology. I mean, I've heard Jacques's because he's not a dummy. So let's be under no illusions about this.

Ebrahim Candy. The world he wants to see is is actually totalitarian, that's not I, I, I think part of the reason. Some of my fans enjoy my work is because I really do not try to overstate or use hyperbole. But I encourage you all to read my review of Kennedy's book, How to Be an Anti-racist or read Kennedy's Politico article in which he lays out essentially what he would do if he were emperor for a day. And what he would do is institute a constitutional amendment that created an anti-racist organization of experts like himself who could not be fired.

Who would be able to reject any local, state or federal policy that was deemed to be contributing to racial disparity as seen by those experts, as defined by those experts and discipline public officials who do not, quote, voluntarily change their racist ideas, unquote, coding that from memory?

So so just to jargon ify that it means you're going to be punished if you don't voluntarily change your racist ideas, racism as defined by people who have an absolutely nutty, nutty and capacious definition of it. For example, even Candy Devine defines supporting a capital gains tax cut as a racist policy because it could it would have a theory, a disparate effect on people who are black, people who don't have as many stocks. Right. There's actually no policy in his worldview that is not racist or anti-racist.

So what he wants is a federal body to decide whether your town can institute a property tax, who from Washington can decide whether you're your small town, can institute a property tax raise based on the disparate impact it may have on different groups? And this is a body that can't be fired by the president. That's what you want. So Jack is donating 10 million dollars. To an organization run by a person who has no concept of a liberal society, who doesn't care about liberal ideas at all, whose ideas would not do a damn thing to actually help poor people, much less poor black people.

And it's a shame, I think, that they didn't vet they either did vet him by reading his book or they didn't vet him. But, you know, we have to stop pretending that this is real scholarship. And it's concerning, you know, there's one other thing to say about this. I'm curious to see the antiracist or as you say, the race conscious antiracist movement believes itself to be. Fighting the man, fighting the system and in some sense.

But that's hard to square now, increasingly now that almost every major corporation is voicing its support for Black Lives Matter. Twitter is donating 10 million dollars to. An organization that is is actually very fringe, right, like if people really knew everything can be stood for, I doubt even the typical person out there marching up Black Lives Matter would necessarily support it. Right. So it is really the fringe of the Handford for Twitter to cosign that and to use resources that, you know, could have been used in almost any other way is is shameful, frankly.

OK, where do you stand with regards to Dubai? I actually don't don't have a position on this, so I will be probably like many people, I'll be studying that question more and more. And with covid, it's it's increasingly it seems like we sort of had it for a second. So I don't have an opinion on it and I'm not going to pretend to at this moment. Lots of questions about my music career. Any update? Yeah, I've been making a lot of new music and I'm very excited to to share that all with you very soon.

I have big things in the works that I'm excited about, and you'll see that probably probably on this side within the year. OK. Do you think we are witnessing the final breakdown? Of grand narrative, if the racial narrative breaks down, where will identity go? So I don't totally understand this question. I actually am not really sure what this person is asking me if I can find someone or find another one, that's. Little more. OK, yes, so as to American gun culture, might you offer an estimate as to what percentage of shootings, justifiable or not, are perpetrated by persons who are prohibited by law from being in possession of a gun, either by criminal record or by the means by which they acquire the gun?

So I can't give a percentage of this. Yeah, the overwhelming majority of gun violence is perpetrated by a very small percentage of people demographically, we're talking about black men in their teens and 20s and even that is too broad a category because we're talking about a very small percentage of black men in their teens and twenties accounting for the lion's share of of gun violence in this country. And those guns are, for the most part, gotten illegally. This is it's a really tough problem I have no solutions for because the the regulation of guns, you know, the law abiding.

GUNGUN wielders in this country is making it 10 times harder for them to get guns or prohibiting them from getting certain kinds of guns is not going to make a dent in the overwhelming majority of gun violence. Right. Which is a shame, you know, I wish it were that easy, if it were that easy, I would be probably as anti-gun as as anyone is, but. You know, the problem of violence in pockets of the country, like the, you know, the proverbial south side of Chicago, East St.

Louis, et cetera, et cetera, that's not a problem that can be solved by stricter gun laws. In fact, often it's in cities with the strictest gun laws that. You know, that that have these these problems, it's not out in the it's not always out in red America where where where the gun laws are more lax. So we have a problem that's akin to the war on drugs, which is that people want guns and there's people are always going to want guns and we have to find a way to fight crime.

You know, without without succumbing to the fantasy that making gun laws stricter is going to lower the homicide rate. And on that, I really recommend the book by Thomas Apte. ABT is the last name called Bleeding Out. That's really quite good. OK. Actually, while I'm doing that, I should I always get. People asking me what books they should read. So let me just I just pulled a couple off my shelf five minutes ago, ones that I like that you may, may or may not know about.

This one, I mean, this is a classic black rednecks and white liberals essays by Thomas Sowell, one of his one of his best. Slavery and social death. This is a book by Orlando Patterson, and it's a sweeping study of slavery all over the globe. If you're interested in the topic, it is fascinating to know how many places have had slavery that you haven't even heard of and in what ways. It varies.

One by one from the inside out, I wonder if this book is still in print, I got it used, but it's a serious an essay collection from Glenn Lowry in the 90s. Glenn is, as you know, probably no excellent on these issues. This is one, OK, these are two that there's a little more obscure but really, really fantastic ethnic dilemmas by Nathan Glazer.

This book I really can't recommend highly enough. It's clear thinking on all of these issues and from Nathan Glazer in the 60s and 70s. And many of them could just be reprinted word for word today. And this is a little book called Race and Liberty in America, it's a compilation of texts from a classical liberal perspective on race, historical texts going back to seventeen hundreds. I find it fascinating sort of how many people tapping into the anti-racist tradition that comes from a more colorblind perspective.

Frederick Douglass and I and many others. So it's a useful compilation of those. OK. Could you explore the idea of reparations through the lens of the civil war, so many blacks and whites lost lost their lives in order to end slavery? Yes, so this is so you know, as you all know, I think reparations is misguided idea. But there's one objection to it that I don't agree with, and this is the idea that reparations has always has already been paid in blood.

And that, you know, that was the blood spilled during the civil war. I think this just misunderstands the idea of what reparations is, obviously. If you think of another example, such as the internment of Japanese during World War two or the slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust. Would it have counted as reparations merely to free the Jews from the camps or to or to free the the Japanese from the concentration camps? Or internment camps, rather. No, I mean, the idea of reparations is not just to free them from the oppression they're currently facing, it's to compensate them for that oppression.

So I I think this is there are a few bad arguments. There are many good arguments against racism, against reparations. But the idea that we already paid them in the civil war is one of the the bad arguments, in my opinion.

How did you start as a writer and any advice for upcoming writers? Hmm, so I started as a writer when I was at Columbia. As. As a freshman, I would write all the time, sort of for nobody. I just had to Google Docs. Dozens of pages long trying to sort out my own thoughts and occasionally I would. Do a blog post. In truth, I don't have any great advice about. You know how to make it as a writer, I think the truth is it's very difficult.

Know, I'm viewed as someone who is a successful writer. But I don't think I could have really made a living off of. Writing freelance, the pay is is horrible and it's a it's a very it's not for the faint of heart. I think. The best advice is. The advice Hitchens gave and short of the advice Jerry Jerry Seinfeld gave about comedians, you should only do it if you need to do it, if it's a deep psychological need.

You know, that's the person who should be writing, and if that's not you, then it's you know, it's. You know, it's a it's a hard path. I started by just submitting a piece called To Colette, and it was accepted and they invited me back. This is why Kwolek Colette is great. They'll just if you submit a piece to them, know you could you can be a quote unquote, nobody, and they'll accept it if it's good.

That's hardly really the case at other places that are highly gay kept. My advice for getting good at writing is to imitate your favorite writers. There is nothing wrong with imitation, I think. That that's the quickest way to learn, is to find out someone or find someone who's doing it right and try to understand what they're doing. I really recommend Steven Pinker's book, The Elements of Style. That's my if I have a writing Bible, that's it.

Do you think Obama helped or hurt the racial divide animosity we see today? So this is an interesting question. I think a lot of people on the right think that Obama hurt the racial divide. And the evidence they point to is, you know him. Rationalizing events that weren't necessarily racial, such as the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in twenty twelve. Obama famously said, if I had a son, he would have looked like Trayvon. With the Ferguson riots, as Glenn Lowry often points out, he had an opportunity to say what was true and ethical there, which is a we don't know that this had anything to do with race and to just condemn the riots.

Full stop. Right. And he you he didn't really live up to that expectation. So I do think he deserves to be criticized for that. On the other hand, if I look at the totality of Obama's presidency, that the general rhetoric he employed, it definitely changed over the years. At the beginning, you know, Obama sounded like me in 2008, practically. If you listen to his 2008 speech about race, it's one of the great documents of, you know, of any politician dealing with the issue of race and and in particular, the American history.

With nuance and grace and subtlety and ethical clarity. Obviously, he didn't sound like that in twenty sixteen. Now, what are the reasons for that? Is it. That Obama himself. Became more of an identity politician. Well, yeah, but I think the reason for that has a lot more to do with the culture and with social media than with Obama himself. I think Obama was a symptom of a trend that he did not himself cause. That trend started in twenty twelve.

And I think it has a lot to do with that, that that was the first year that everyone and their mother was on Facebook and had iPhones, and that meant that for the first time in history. If an altercation between a police and civilian went sideways and they got shot, that there was likely someone standing nearby to film it. And not only that, everyone else in the world had a device in their pockets where it could show up in their Facebook stream.

With an opportunity for them to comment on it and share it right, that's a kind of possibility that just has not ever existed in the history of our species. Right. So when that came on board, things were going to change. And the way that they changed was that. People selectively shared videos, they only shared videos of black people getting killed by cops rather than white people know, and such videos exist as I am, as I've become tired of pointing out.

They got interpreted through the lens of American history, and I think, like many Americans, I was raised on videos of seeing totally peaceful black civil rights protesters getting hosed, getting the dogs sicked on them in the 60s for for standing up for my right to vote. Right. This is something I am I am enormously grateful for that people like John Lewis and others sacrificed in this way. But I think people superficially, you know, the video of Alton Sterling getting shot resembles that it resembles that only on a superficial level.

And I think that's enough for people to feel that it's exactly the same. Do you think Donald Trump economic policies have positively or negatively impacted the black community? So, I mean, the economy had been great under Trump until covid, the truth is the president does not have that much control over the economy. So I hesitate to give Trump credit or to to blame him so much for the downturn and this is the this is. I would have said the same thing under Obama, and I'll probably be saying the same thing if Biden wins.

The truth is the economy is an incredibly complex system. What what Donald Trump has done is prosecute a trade war that. That ultimately hurts America and then. We have to end up subsidizing industries that we are hurting by prosecuting a trade war with China, so that's a that's a dumb policy. But overall, Donald Trump, that the economy was doing very good under Donald Trump, regardless of whether he was the source of of that. So, you know, obviously that was was felt by a very low black unemployment rate, all trends to be celebrated and hopefully to be continued once this nightmare is over.

Yes, I have no problem with other than the trade war. I have no problem with Trump's general, you know, economic policies. OK, try to go for five more minutes. What are your what are your thoughts of how Marcus Garvey affected black history? Marcus Garvey doesn't get talked about often, but he he represented a sort of pre Malcolm X. Black nationalist, diaspora, pro capitalist. Kind of ideology. And he, I think, ended up inspiring lots of black nationalists, sort of a forefather that they looked to in the 60s.

So it's interesting because there are small points of agreement that I would have with someone like Marcus Garvey, especially about the relationship between racism and capitalism. Some people imagine that to be an antiracist is by definition to be against capitalism because capitalism is racist capitalism. Is about greed and the impulse that created slavery and so on and so forth. So this is something I really couldn't disagree with more. Forced labor has existed in capitalist societies, that it's existed in communist societies any anywhere where one tribe has been in a position to exploit another throughout human history, they've basically done so.

So exploitation and slavery are just. The mistake is to limit your analysis, your analysis to America and to observe that some exploitation happens here and much more has happened historically and therefore to see our economic system as the cause, you just have to expand your data set to include the rest of the world to understand that exploitation is a wider human failing, not a capitalist failing. Broadly speaking, capitalism has created an enormous amount of wealth that makes the United States one of the most pleasant places to live, it's it's not an accident that America is the number one destination for black and brown migrants around the world.

You know, one of the reasons for that is we have an economy. That is is. Obviously, you know, regulated and we have a welfare state which which all capitalist countries need. There are just people who who in a constantly changing capitalist marketplace, either for for reasons of genetics, culture or both, you know, they become people that no one wants to pay to do anything. And these are just people we have to take care of.

You know, we I don't want to be stepping over homeless people on the street. And I understand that not having anything to contribute to to a free market should not be a death sentence. And it certainly shouldn't. If if you have dysfunctional parents, we have to find ways the government has to have a safety net. So. People sort of conflate these these two conversations to be pro or anti capitalism is not the same as as being pro or anti the existence of a welfare state.

Right. But once you have a welfare state to catch the people who cannot take care of themselves. The broader principle that is made America such such an attractive destination for people in such a, you know, a functional economy, whether it is where there is wealth to go to, where there's wealth to decide how to distribute in the first place is our commitment to to free markets and in practice. The free market does not the market doesn't care what your skin color is, and there there have been instances in history such as Plessy vs.

Ferguson. Where the street car company is composed of white people from the Jim Crow South, white businessmen ended up funding and anti-racist court case in Plessy vs. Ferguson because the racism was costly to them. They had to sit white people and black people in different cars, which just didn't make sense from a profit point of view because, say, this car isn't filled up while you can't put people in there if they're the wrong race. Right. The idea that profit is is somehow always on the side of racism is just a historical truthfully.

It can be profit can be on either side depending on the context. It's neutral, really. It's not. It's not it doesn't take a position on racism. So people shouldn't sort of conflate these two things. And that's the kind of thing that I might agree with Marcus Garvey about. But then he has a wider set of assumptions about the deep importance of your skin color, which I find to be mind numbingly boring and tribalist and caveman ish and something we we all have to be trying to outgrow.

OK, so I guess I'll make this the last one. What are your thoughts on people being judged based on their religion? I wonder in what respect this is meant. So I suppose you mean in a in a like a hiring context or. Yeah, I'm not I'm not really sure exactly. What you mean by this question, but. Yeah, religion, religion differs from race a little bit in that it's a religion, it's a it's a it's part culture, but it's part belief system as well.

And insofar as it's a belief system, then someone's religion does tell you something about what they think about the world. But, you know, too often a religion is just. You know, it's just something you're born into. And it's something that even if you don't believe it, you don't necessarily leave. I think there's a lot of people that are born Muslim or Catholic or Jewish, and you don't really know what they believe. But still keep the label because it's almost more of a cultural marker.

So, OK, so the person clarifies that they're they're talking about people who think that all people from a religion, from from from a different religion, from their own, should go to hell. Now, yeah, I mean, you'll you'll be surprised to know that I think that's an all too common viewpoint in the world.

And it's it's really. Really lamentable. Yeah, I guess there's just I have to I have to imagine there aren't that many people like that in my audience, but maybe there are if you're under the illusion that you can become friends or even ultimately spouses with someone from a different illusion, from a different. Freudian slip. A different religion. Yeah, then you're you're just you're just accepting a level of of. Of close mindedness in yourself that it could be possible to outgrow.

It might be very hard to do it, but. You might find that was on the other side is worth it. And this is where meditation and psychedelics and stuff can all be sort of useful in opening a person up who who is otherwise kind of close minded. But suffice it to say, there are amazing people from. Every religion on earth, and I'm just always surprised to is that how little I know about a person based on what they tell me, their religious their religious affiliation is like there are increasingly there are just people who.

There are people who who I get along with deeply and then on religion, they're just totally dogmatic and. They just believe every word of the Bible, but are truly just beautiful people in in every sense. And then there are people like myself who who you know, who's who's an atheist, and I know I know lots of atheists that are beautiful people. And so I just have I have no. I try to make no judgments about people, and I'm open to being friends and being as close to people from every religion or no religion.

And I think that's the only defensible way to be, frankly. OK, OK, so. Well, we'll put one more in here because. My view of Kamala Harris, the short version is she is an opportunist. I can't I can't bring myself to care or celebrate about the fact that she's black or a woman. I'm black, too. It's not a damn accomplishment. So everyone praising her for that is confused. As politicians go, she's as unprincipled as any of them.

I'm no fan of Trump, partly, partly for this reason, but this is a person Kamala has very few principles. Let's be let's be honest. There's nothing you know, this is a person who has fought to keep likely innocent people in prison who laughed at the idea that, you know, we would get legalized as recently as twenty, fourteen and twenty fifteen who I believe prevented try to prevent someone from.

Presenting evidence, someone on death row from presenting evidence of their own innocence. These are the kind of things that if Trump had done them, I would be hearing nothing else. So there's a deep level of partisanship and the admiration for her record. There is a kind of unthinking miss to the praise of her as a as a black woman, as if there are not plenty of other black women who have less horrible criminal justice policies. So my view of her is, is she is uninspiring, unprincipled, and ultimately not someone that I want to see with the reins of power.

That said, I will at some point do a longer exposition of why I'm voting, the way I'm voting, and it still looks likely that I'm going to vote for the Biden Harris ticket as as a lesser of two evils. But this Q&A is is over, so I promise I will give you much more on that. And I will I will deal with all of the sort of objections that may be coming to your head. Thank you so much for tuning into this live stream.

I think this went better than the first one and hopefully the next one will be even better. Thanks so much for your support.