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The Michael Shermer Show, 293. An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West (5)

293. An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (5)

2 (43m 47s):

I've been very pleasantly surprised by the strong response that the west has given to what's happened and what is potentially happening in, in, in Taiwan. But we don't have time. We do not have time to mess around. We have to remember that nobody, no empire lasts forever. No hedge of money lasts forever. And the barbarian are at the gates. They're aware of what's happening. And they've been fueling this for a long time. As you know, the Russian troll farms, the Chinese are doing everything they can to accelerate divisions in the west. We've gotta reject that. We've got to say, you know what? We're not ashamed of who we are in the west. We're not ashamed of our history.

2 (44m 28s):

We are aware of the negative parts of our history. We're aware of the positive parts of our history. We are proud of who we are, what, and all, we are one of the few societies in the history of the world. That's actually eventually got round to the idea that people should be treated on the content of their character, not the color of their skin or their gender or their sexuality. One of the very few societies, that's never even tried this. And we are going to double down on that instead of regressing to this idea that people should be treated on the basis of their tribal identity.

1 (44m 59s):

Well, so you have a chapter called stop feeling guilty about race, whiteness and slavery, which I liked, of course, cuz I'm a white guy, but I would then be accused of,

2 (45m 9s):

I wonder what that's about

1 (45m 10s):

As you know, there's massive racial divide here. Again, one of the observations from, from Jennifer coming from Germany is, you know, just watching media and, and television shows and the news and so on. It's all Americans talk about is race just black and white, black and white. Everything is race and well, I guess that's because of our history, right? I mean it's, it's, it, it is our original sin. So what's wrong with, I guess, confronting that directly. And, and how far do you go, you know, critical race theory is, you know, being taught in high school. Okay. Middle school. Okay. Grammar school. Well, that's not really critical race theory. That's something that, well, I don't care what you call it right at.

1 (45m 51s):

You know, at what point is it age appropriate for people to confront our, our dark history? And there are still issues, right? That, you know, that, that people that study systemic racism, for example, point out absolutely that there are huge income differences, black, white income differences, housing ownership, home ownership, and housing quality, you know, employment opportunities and healthcare outcome differences. And you know, it just goes on and on. And now of course I don't go as far as someone like Ebra X Kennedy that just says everything is race, it's all racism. And that's it. There are no other causes, but I can see room for some systemic racist arguments like redlining and housing, which is now illegal.

1 (46m 36s):

But over the long run, those neighborhoods back in the forties and fifties that were redlined, you know, were depressed and they're still depressed. They're near, you know, they're crappy neighborhoods. The schools are no good. The pollution, you know, it's just on and on. And it, maybe it just takes generations to get past this and we just have to keep chipping away at it. But of course the reparations people and so on wanna say, no, no, no, we, we need to do something more than that. We need to, you know, the government needs to step in and, and, you know, give a more, you know, affirmative action, more helping hand from the, you know, great society of the sixties. We need another push like that. Okay. So give us your thoughts on the American racist racism issue.

2 (47m 16s):

Yeah. Well, you, you've got two points there that I think are important to separate. So the first is the history. How do we reckon with the history of the United States and the British empire and so on? And the second is how do we deal with the fact that certain communities, certain ethnic groups continue to be underprivileged in our society, right? So let's, let's take those two separate and start with the history one. So the history one, I am all for the teaching of slavery. In fact, I think we don't teach about it nearly enough because if we did, we would teach about the history of slavery around the world and throughout the history of the human race. And one of the best educations that you can get on this is to read anything by a guy called Orlando Patterson or Thomas soul in where they talk about the history of slavery around the world.

2 (47m 59s):

Slavery is slaves, human beings are the oldest good that has ever been traded between other human beings. It has been with us since forever. Every great civilization in history has used them and are at exactly the same time that the colonial powers were taking slaves out of Africa, middle Eastern slave traders were taking more slaves out of Africa, treating them worse. More of them were dying, et cetera. And at the same time, my ancestors in Russia were living as slaves as serves in the Russian empire. Then under the Soviet union, many of them lived in Golas and as slaves for the construction of all sorts of infrastructure in the far Eastern of Russia and Siberia and around every other part of the world, slavery was happening at exactly the same time in the same way or worse.

2 (48m 47s):

Now the transatlantic slave trade, which is what people in the west talk about when they talk about slavery, which is what they mean when they talk about slavery was uniquely bad because the technology of that time allowed people to put people on large ships and transport them across the ocean. And that meant that it was worse, but that wasn't any different to what anybody else would've done if they had the technology to do it. Right? So the west history of slavery is terrible and at exactly as terrible as every other society in the history of the world. So we should teach fully about slavery and reckon with our history of slavery in the same way that we reckon with the history of slavery in other countries.

2 (49m 28s):

So that's the first thing on the slavery thing in terms of people being underprivileged as, as a result of objectively racist policy. Well, the first step we've got to do and largely it's done is to remove any racist policies and laws of the books. I think it's fair to say that the United States and the UK have gone all the way on that and frankly have gone in the reverse direction in many, in many situations. Does that address the fact that these communities are still underprivileged? No, it doesn't. What does I think help though, is to focus on this issue as a class thing because here in the UK, and it's also true to some extent in America, people from west Africa, immigrants, from west Africa, some of the most successful people in the history of this country, they earn the most money.

2 (50m 16s):

They're the best educated they do the best at school. They have the best health outcome, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Right? So it's not about your skin color. It's about where you live, where you grew up. Did you come from an intact family and so on and so forth. And because of that, the way to address this issue is not through the lens of race. It's through the lens of class I E economic situation. Where are you coming from? How did you grow up? What community you were born in, et cetera. Because I imagine the people that you guys in a called white trash in this derogatory way have just about as hard a life as the people who are grown up in the inner city who are from a minority background. So it's a class issue. Is did you go to a good school?

2 (50m 57s):

Did you have a father in the home? Are you surrounded by criminals? Did you get a good education? Did you get the right food and nutrition? When you were a kid, these things will determine your outcomes in life, far more than race. And just like in the UK, you know, Japanese, American, Chinese Americans, they do incredibly well in your society. So it's not about ethnicity or race necessarily. A lot of this is about class. We had all sorts of reports into this. We had the, the, the race and disparity report here in the UK, which found that there's a huge difference between people of Caribbean origin and immigrants from Africa who've come in recent decades. So there's a historical element. There's also culture, there's family structure, there's nutrition, there's all sorts of things.

2 (51m 42s):

And those things are best addressed without looking at people's skin color. And by looking at the actual circumstances and addressing those and helping people, if you want to help people. The best thing to do is to find people who are poor. Who've got a bad school who are surrounded by who live in a criminal neighborhood and help them get out of that situation or improve the situation where they live forgetting about their race, which is by the way, the American ideal.

1 (52m 6s):

Yes. Well, I think a lot of those Trump boaters in 2016 from the Midwest, which is pretty white, who felt left behind that is they didn't recover from the 2008, 2009 meltdown in, in recession. They didn't have stocks in the stock market that bounced back during Obama's administration and continues, you know, they, so when they're told you have white privilege and you know, you've been handed this silver platter, they're looking around going, what are you talking about? I, you know, I'm dirt, poor. My schools are crappy and, and there's no blacks here. This is not a race issue for them.

2 (52m 42s):

Well, I agree now I wouldn't necessarily compare those people to someone, you know, living in a crime infeed neighborhood in the, in the city. I think I, while I understand their frustrations, I don't know that it was necessarily the same, or I certainly wouldn't say it was the same. And look, we, we, we're going quite deep into American politics. I'm always wary of talking about it because having been to America several times, my greatest takeaway is that just because the same, we speak the same language doesn't mean that we understand each other's countries, all that well, and our cultures are not necessarily the same. In fact, they're really not the same, but yeah, I think, I think these issues are best addressed by looking at people's actual circumstances, as opposed to judging people on the color of their skin.

2 (53m 26s):

I think that's unwise. I think that's divisive and frankly, it doesn't help those people.

1 (53m 31s):

All right. Let's talk about language. I loved your chapter on how language is used to distort the truth. Let's start with the origins of the, of the phrase political correctness. I love that section. Mm,

2 (53m 41s):

Very, very few people in the west or frankly, anywhere else know where it comes from. But of course like many of the things that we are doing now in society, Michael, it comes from the Soviet union in the Soviet union. My ancestors would be told Comrad, you cannot say this. This is factually correct, but politically incorrect. And what that meant was you were going against the party line of the day. You were going against what you were supposed to say, even though you knew it was wrong. I don't think that sounds all that unfamiliar to people living in the modern west. So that's where political correctness comes from. It's about, it's a way of enforcing a certain dogma and ideology on society.


293. An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West (5)

2 (43m 47s):

I've been very pleasantly surprised by the strong response that the west has given to what's happened and what is potentially happening in, in, in Taiwan. But we don't have time. We do not have time to mess around. We have to remember that nobody, no empire lasts forever. No hedge of money lasts forever. And the barbarian are at the gates. They're aware of what's happening. And they've been fueling this for a long time. As you know, the Russian troll farms, the Chinese are doing everything they can to accelerate divisions in the west. We've gotta reject that. We've got to say, you know what? We're not ashamed of who we are in the west. We're not ashamed of our history.

2 (44m 28s):

We are aware of the negative parts of our history. We're aware of the positive parts of our history. We are proud of who we are, what, and all, we are one of the few societies in the history of the world. That's actually eventually got round to the idea that people should be treated on the content of their character, not the color of their skin or their gender or their sexuality. One of the very few societies, that's never even tried this. And we are going to double down on that instead of regressing to this idea that people should be treated on the basis of their tribal identity.

1 (44m 59s):

Well, so you have a chapter called stop feeling guilty about race, whiteness and slavery, which I liked, of course, cuz I'm a white guy, but I would then be accused of,

2 (45m 9s):

I wonder what that's about

1 (45m 10s):

As you know, there's massive racial divide here. Again, one of the observations from, from Jennifer coming from Germany is, you know, just watching media and, and television shows and the news and so on. It's all Americans talk about is race just black and white, black and white. Everything is race and well, I guess that's because of our history, right? I mean it's, it's, it, it is our original sin. So what's wrong with, I guess, confronting that directly. And, and how far do you go, you know, critical race theory is, you know, being taught in high school. Okay. Middle school. Okay. Grammar school. Well, that's not really critical race theory. That's something that, well, I don't care what you call it right at.

1 (45m 51s):

You know, at what point is it age appropriate for people to confront our, our dark history? And there are still issues, right? That, you know, that, that people that study systemic racism, for example, point out absolutely that there are huge income differences, black, white income differences, housing ownership, home ownership, and housing quality, you know, employment opportunities and healthcare outcome differences. And you know, it just goes on and on. And now of course I don't go as far as someone like Ebra X Kennedy that just says everything is race, it's all racism. And that's it. There are no other causes, but I can see room for some systemic racist arguments like redlining and housing, which is now illegal.

1 (46m 36s):

But over the long run, those neighborhoods back in the forties and fifties that were redlined, you know, were depressed and they're still depressed. They're near, you know, they're crappy neighborhoods. The schools are no good. The pollution, you know, it's just on and on. And it, maybe it just takes generations to get past this and we just have to keep chipping away at it. But of course the reparations people and so on wanna say, no, no, no, we, we need to do something more than that. We need to, you know, the government needs to step in and, and, you know, give a more, you know, affirmative action, more helping hand from the, you know, great society of the sixties. We need another push like that. Okay. So give us your thoughts on the American racist racism issue.

2 (47m 16s):

Yeah. Well, you, you've got two points there that I think are important to separate. So the first is the history. How do we reckon with the history of the United States and the British empire and so on? And the second is how do we deal with the fact that certain communities, certain ethnic groups continue to be underprivileged in our society, right? So let's, let's take those two separate and start with the history one. So the history one, I am all for the teaching of slavery. In fact, I think we don't teach about it nearly enough because if we did, we would teach about the history of slavery around the world and throughout the history of the human race. And one of the best educations that you can get on this is to read anything by a guy called Orlando Patterson or Thomas soul in where they talk about the history of slavery around the world.

2 (47m 59s):

Slavery is slaves, human beings are the oldest good that has ever been traded between other human beings. It has been with us since forever. Every great civilization in history has used them and are at exactly the same time that the colonial powers were taking slaves out of Africa, middle Eastern slave traders were taking more slaves out of Africa, treating them worse. More of them were dying, et cetera. And at the same time, my ancestors in Russia were living as slaves as serves in the Russian empire. Then under the Soviet union, many of them lived in Golas and as slaves for the construction of all sorts of infrastructure in the far Eastern of Russia and Siberia and around every other part of the world, slavery was happening at exactly the same time in the same way or worse.

2 (48m 47s):

Now the transatlantic slave trade, which is what people in the west talk about when they talk about slavery, which is what they mean when they talk about slavery was uniquely bad because the technology of that time allowed people to put people on large ships and transport them across the ocean. And that meant that it was worse, but that wasn't any different to what anybody else would've done if they had the technology to do it. Right? So the west history of slavery is terrible and at exactly as terrible as every other society in the history of the world. So we should teach fully about slavery and reckon with our history of slavery in the same way that we reckon with the history of slavery in other countries.

2 (49m 28s):

So that's the first thing on the slavery thing in terms of people being underprivileged as, as a result of objectively racist policy. Well, the first step we've got to do and largely it's done is to remove any racist policies and laws of the books. I think it's fair to say that the United States and the UK have gone all the way on that and frankly have gone in the reverse direction in many, in many situations. Does that address the fact that these communities are still underprivileged? No, it doesn't. What does I think help though, is to focus on this issue as a class thing because here in the UK, and it's also true to some extent in America, people from west Africa, immigrants, from west Africa, some of the most successful people in the history of this country, they earn the most money.

2 (50m 16s):

They're the best educated they do the best at school. They have the best health outcome, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Right? So it's not about your skin color. It's about where you live, where you grew up. Did you come from an intact family and so on and so forth. And because of that, the way to address this issue is not through the lens of race. It's through the lens of class I E economic situation. Where are you coming from? How did you grow up? What community you were born in, et cetera. Because I imagine the people that you guys in a called white trash in this derogatory way have just about as hard a life as the people who are grown up in the inner city who are from a minority background. So it's a class issue. Is did you go to a good school?

2 (50m 57s):

Did you have a father in the home? Are you surrounded by criminals? Did you get a good education? Did you get the right food and nutrition? When you were a kid, these things will determine your outcomes in life, far more than race. And just like in the UK, you know, Japanese, American, Chinese Americans, they do incredibly well in your society. So it's not about ethnicity or race necessarily. A lot of this is about class. We had all sorts of reports into this. We had the, the, the race and disparity report here in the UK, which found that there's a huge difference between people of Caribbean origin and immigrants from Africa who've come in recent decades. So there's a historical element. There's also culture, there's family structure, there's nutrition, there's all sorts of things.

2 (51m 42s):

And those things are best addressed without looking at people's skin color. And by looking at the actual circumstances and addressing those and helping people, if you want to help people. The best thing to do is to find people who are poor. Who've got a bad school who are surrounded by who live in a criminal neighborhood and help them get out of that situation or improve the situation where they live forgetting about their race, which is by the way, the American ideal.

1 (52m 6s):

Yes. Well, I think a lot of those Trump boaters in 2016 from the Midwest, which is pretty white, who felt left behind that is they didn't recover from the 2008, 2009 meltdown in, in recession. They didn't have stocks in the stock market that bounced back during Obama's administration and continues, you know, they, so when they're told you have white privilege and you know, you've been handed this silver platter, they're looking around going, what are you talking about? I, you know, I'm dirt, poor. My schools are crappy and, and there's no blacks here. This is not a race issue for them.

2 (52m 42s):

Well, I agree now I wouldn't necessarily compare those people to someone, you know, living in a crime infeed neighborhood in the, in the city. I think I, while I understand their frustrations, I don't know that it was necessarily the same, or I certainly wouldn't say it was the same. And look, we, we, we're going quite deep into American politics. I'm always wary of talking about it because having been to America several times, my greatest takeaway is that just because the same, we speak the same language doesn't mean that we understand each other's countries, all that well, and our cultures are not necessarily the same. In fact, they're really not the same, but yeah, I think, I think these issues are best addressed by looking at people's actual circumstances, as opposed to judging people on the color of their skin.

2 (53m 26s):

I think that's unwise. I think that's divisive and frankly, it doesn't help those people.

1 (53m 31s):

All right. Let's talk about language. I loved your chapter on how language is used to distort the truth. Let's start with the origins of the, of the phrase political correctness. I love that section. Mm,

2 (53m 41s):

Very, very few people in the west or frankly, anywhere else know where it comes from. But of course like many of the things that we are doing now in society, Michael, it comes from the Soviet union in the Soviet union. My ancestors would be told Comrad, you cannot say this. This is factually correct, but politically incorrect. And what that meant was you were going against the party line of the day. You were going against what you were supposed to say, even though you knew it was wrong. I don't think that sounds all that unfamiliar to people living in the modern west. So that's where political correctness comes from. It's about, it's a way of enforcing a certain dogma and ideology on society.