 All right. Today we are going to talk about racism. We're going to talk about racism. It's Martin Luther King Day. It seems appropriate. That is, after all, his legacy is fighting racism and fighting for rights and for equal treatment under the law. And that is a legacy, I think, worth celebrating. I mean, not everything Martin Luther King stood for was good, not all of his ideas are worth celebrating, but suddenly the struggle for equality before the law, suddenly the struggle against racism, against Jim Crow, against redlining, against the kind of attitudes were so prevalent to the United States, particularly in the south of the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. That is worth celebrating. So from that perspective, Martin Luther King certainly is a hero and also, I think, a fighter against racism of a different generation and of a really a different kind than many of those who claim to be fighting racism today in the African American community and elsewhere, not just blacks, but whites, but generally people who fight racism today are very, very, very different, very different. And we'll talk about that. Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate it. So, you know, obviously today's a good day. Racism has been a topic in the news the last year, suddenly since, you know, since the summer when we had the riots following the death of George Floyd, we had demonstrations, many demonstrations, several of those demonstrations turned into riots. Some of those riots got kind of a life of their own. And in some places, like Portland, Oregon, I think there's still going on months and months and months and months after. But all of this started, all of these demonstrations, all of these riots started with the idea of fighting against racism. The assumption was that racism is prevalent. We've heard all year long of how systemic racism rules America. So it's a good time to reflect back. I did a lot. I talked a lot about this topic during the summer, but it's been a while. We haven't talked to it. We haven't talked about it recently. So it's good to, it's good to do refresher and bring this back. So why does this issue keep coming up? Why is racism an issue? Why does it, why is it constantly being made an issue? Well, because the fact is that this country has a long and ugly history with racism. You know, slavery, obviously, for, you know, over 100 years, you know, slavery is not the defining characteristic of the United States as a 1619 project would assert racism is not a sin that wipes out any achievement that is the United States, as many people on the left would argue. But racism and slavery are a black mark on American history. It is the great evil at the founding, not an evil big enough to wipe out the great virtues of the founding, but yet a compromise, a moral compromise, a political compromise that led to, you know, 80 years of, 80 years of a country that had one of the most evil institutions in human history. I mean, that's been around for most of human history, but yet an evil institution, the institution of slavery and ultimately led to a civil war with resulted in the death of 600,000 people. So, slavery is not just a little issue. Slavery is a major issue in American history and needs to be confronted. And it would be one thing if after slavery, after slavery was abolished after the civil war, that that was it. Then racism had no impact on American history post that, but unfortunately that is not the case. It is the case that racism continued to have a profound impact, certainly on parts of the U.S., primarily in the South, but really throughout the United States. Redlining as a government policy, not a bank policy, a government policy, was prevalent throughout America, all the way far west as California, Chicago, Detroit to the North and many much of the East Coast. Jim Crow laws in the South are true disgrace. They truly something that should be condemned in the harshest way, you know, businesses that only served whites while they had a right to do it are despicable and morally despicable and should be condemned as such, but not to mention lynchings, unequal treatment for the law, and a whole host of evils that resulted in the South during this period and unfortunately got exported at least to some extent to the North in the early part of the 20th century. So racism is a part of this country's history. It's a part that cannot be ignored. It's a part that needs to be dealt with. And of course the 1960s saw a civil rights movement that tried to put an end to legalize to the unequal treatment before the law that Jim Crow and racist laws like Redlining had brought upon the United States and to a large extent it was successful. Those laws were eradicated. Those laws were eliminated. And if anything, one could argue that some of the remedies that were in place to combat the really systemic government instituted, government defended racism in the United States, actually some of the remedies made it, made things worse in the long run, actually institutionalized racism, things like affirmative action, things like the outlawing of any kind of discrimination in private businesses, which have created massive confusion and massive distortion, I think. So the 1960s were a massive success. The civil rights movement was a massive success. And to a large extent, I think the American population over the last 50, 60 years, even in the South, maybe primarily in the South, as individuals have come a long way in changing their attitudes towards racism. Whereas racism in the 1940s, 50s, 60s was open. People were embarrassed or ashamed by it. They were actually proud of it. Most people in modern America would never admit to being racist, even when they are. Racism has become a four-letter word. It becomes something that is morally reprehensible. And people do not admit to being racist. But also just, I think, just people as individuals, attitudes towards race have changed. People are far less concerned with issues of race today than they were back then. I mean, until the 1960s, it was illegal to have, you know, to a black woman to marry a white man or, you know, interracial marriages were illegal. But even in places where they weren't illegal, they were found upon. Today, nobody thinks twice about it. Nobody considers it. I mean, some people do, I know. But for the most part, as a culture, much of the overt racism is gone. And much of the individual racism is gone. Yes, people still make racial slurs. People still slide into different forms of prejudice. But it's nothing like the kind of racism that was so prevalent in decades past. So we have come a huge way. And one of the things that I find disappointing and upsetting, and I think really harmful to the cause, is that people fighting racism today will not acknowledge any of that. They will claim that there's just as much racism today as there was 60 years ago, that nothing has changed, that we still live in an oppressive white supremacist culture where systemic racism is prevalent everywhere. And that's just nonsense. Much progress has been made. Yes, there's still racism around. Yes, there's still some evidence that even the law doesn't treat everybody the same always. Yes, there's still racists out there. And we'll talk about who those racists are in a little while. And yes, some policemen are probably racist and behave badly. But as a culture, we have come so far, so far, that not to acknowledge that is to undermine and undercut everything that you stand for if you stand and get racism. So I think today we have a culture. Put aside kind of the extremes of the political culture in America. We have a culture that's generally overall come a long way in terms of being less racist, being much more accepting, being much more tolerant. And we've moved, particularly in parts of this country, much more towards the goal, which is colorblindness, the goal which is not caring about somebody's skin color. Now I've said in the past, so let's take a step back a second and define what we mean by racism. Because even there today, there is massive confusion. Racism is the idea of treating an individual, not treating him not based on his character, not based on his actions, but based on the color of his skin, based on his ethnic origins, based on some unchosen characteristic that has to do with what people term as race, something to do with his ethnic, his genetic, his skin color. That is what racism is. It's not inequality. It's not some kind of collectivist term. It's a term that applies to an individual who evaluates people based on their membership in a group, a group identified as race. The ideal, now this is evil, why is this evil? Because it is defining somebody based on something non-essential. It is defining somebody based on his membership in a group. It is anti-justice because it is not treating the actions, the character of the individual as essential, but treating something that's non-essential, irrelevant and unchosen as the basis by which to deal with a person. Now that is the opposite of justice. That is the essence of injustice and it is a rejection of the whole idea of individualism, of treating people as individuals, not as members of tribes, not as members of groups, not as members of collectives. Why is the video not on, wait, wait, wait, wait, site. It's working. All right. So it's a complete negation of the whole foundation of what this country is based on, the rights of individuals, the idea that individuals are what matter and the idea that you have a mind and therefore you shape your own moral character, that you're not evil because of your genes, that individual shape their own character, that individual make choices that individuals can think for themselves, that individuals have control over their own lives. That is the basic assumptions of the enlightenment that made this possible, made this country possible and the principles on which this country was based and more importantly, the principles of an individualistic ethic, racism negates all that and it is evil because it is unjust because it is self, it is corrupting, it is anti your self-interest, it is destructive to you and to everyone around you. All right. So in eradicating racism, what is the goal? Well, in eradicating racism is to eradicate that kind of judgment, to start people using other people's race, genetics as a standard as a criteria for evaluation. You want to eradicate racism because you want to live in a just society. You want to live in a society of rational people. You want to live in a society of justice, a society in which the non-essential, in which the unchosen is not judge morally. You want to live in a society of people who are colorblind. Now, I've said in the past and I'll say it again and I still believe this, that race in and of itself is an illegitimate concept. There are populations out there that come from different parts of the world. There are people with different skin colors. There are people who have different genetic makeup. There's some groups that have more similarities among them than other groups. But usually the differences within a group, the differences within a group are greater than the differences between groups. There is no way to actually categorize races. I mean eugenics have tried over and over again. And the more we understand about genetics, the more we know that you cannot do it. Yes, the differences, but there are no hard lines. There are no clear distinctions. There are no clear characteristics. But it seems like the more culture becomes collectivists like ours, the more people try to find differences. The more people invest in finding differences. The more people want to emphasize the differences. The more people want to stand by the concept of race, the more people want to proudly proclaim that there is such a thing as race. But it doesn't exist. All that exists are individuals. Individuals that have differences because they have different genes. And those genes determine certain things about you. Primarily your biology, your genetic makeup is important for your health and for how you look. But it's not important for who you are. It's not important for your moral value. It's not important for the choices you make. It's not important for what you make of yourself. So race to begin with is a myth. A myth created by people who dislike people who look differently than them. And therefore the goal of those who actually oppose racism should be to make the case that there is no such thing as race. That all that matters are individuals. That individuals should be judged as individuals. And that we should pay no heed one way or the other to somebody's race. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who like it, you know, I want to see, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. 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