Nothing Else is Racism, Nothing Else is the Solution to Racism.

talking about today is complex and i'm
not going to pretend to simplify it for you i got a message from a longtime viewer and supporter of the channel shout out to little bubby asking wouldn't the first step in addressing racism in the united states or a country very much like the united states be to address inequality between whites and blacks that's a result of the history of slavery originally and then of course long periods of uh segregation unequal access to education unequal access to banking and all other services and advantages in life wouldn't the first step be he asks to address inequality but inequality is not racism those are two separate things i made a video about the solution to racism you can have a country in which there is wealth equality but people are intensely racist you can have a country in which there's income equality but in which people are intensely racist there's a really important methodological and even ethical point to be made here that if we're really talking about racism we have to be clear that racism is an issue unto itself now i made another video i would guess about one year ago making the further point that inequality is not poverty that if you're talking about helping the poor that's something very different from reducing inequality a very large part arithmetically of what we're talking about with inequality is the difference between the super rich and the moderately rich between the super rich and the middle class and that's not really our concern here most of the time politically that's not our concern but further in as much as you're talking about poverty and poverty alleviation you're not talking about racism you're not talking about militant racism because to do so on the basis of race would itself be racist what do i mean if you go out into the trailer parks of detroit to help poor people you have to do it just because they're poor you have to say okay we're here we have this program we have this charity whether it's a government program or whatever we're here to help people whatever move from a trailer into a house and then if a white person comes up to you do you tell them no we don't help you we only help black people no you absolutely must ethically help people help poor people just on account of their poverty now this happens even in places like cambodia i had email correspondence with a charity there that was only helping catholics and i said look it was actually housing too it was providing building new houses for people you guys could probably guess what sheridan i'm thinking of say okay so you define yourselves as a christian mission what do they say they did not they said they were not a christian missionary organization i think they defined themselves as a christian fellowship some of this and um i said so you're coming to cambodia and you're not helping the poor you're not helping the poorest or the poor you're not even helping people geographically which may be inevitable like you say okay we're gonna help people in this village or this trailer park or this slum like you can't help everyone everywhere no this is really like a kind of racism you're arriving and only helping people who fall into this one ethnic group or this one religious category um so poverty alleviation is not racism alleviation alleviating economic inequality likewise is not a leading race now when we talk about racism as such racism narrowly defined what what i truly mean is an end to racism a solution to the riddle of racism not poverty not wealth inequality because again you can have the most racist people in the world in a place like georgia the state of georgia united states of america you say okay we're going to alleviate poverty by redistributing land ownership we're going to take land currently there's a lot of land owned by a big corporation like cargill we're going to take it away from this court we're going to give land to a whole bunch of people some black some white we're going to give poor people free land now they can become farmers or they can develop it into a tourism destination they can build an apartment building suddenly they can get a bank loan because they're they're now all land owners and they're still racist right the other huge distraction over the last 50 years has been the idea that the solution to racism is multiculturalism so again let's just say the state of georgia but it could be the state of virginia any of these states people are intensely racist and in these states the primary form of racism in this historical period is black versus white the attitudes of white people towards indigenous people also very important and there was this pretense that the way to solve the problem was just to have a bunch of chinese restaurants come and set up shrop in uh georgia and virginia so now you've got white people who hate black people and black people who hate and resent white people you have intense racism and you have a history of genocide in relation to the religious people but chinese restaurants indian restaurants pakistani medical doctors working at the hospital the idealized multicultural society right south africa one of the world's most multicultural societies in the world racism is an unbelievable problem multiculturalism is not the cure for racism it's not the opposite it's a huge distraction uh from this sort of question so when we're dealing with racism properly and narrowly define the main point i'm trying to make in these videos and this is only the second video i've made in this topic is that we have to think in terms of addition not subtraction now one problem i didn't mention with subtraction is that it is profoundly conservative it is basically a view of american society or australian society that you have a perfectly nice and wonderful and good society except for the racism so it would be that this would be to look at police services in the united states and say oh well gee this business you have of the police kicking down the door throwing explosives through the windows and holding everyone at gunpoint in what are called no knock raids this procedure of no knock raids the only problem with it is racism now there's a case that will give you nightmares of a baby that had its face permanently destroyed baby has now had reconstructive surgery but still because of a no knock raid the explosives were thrown through the window these are called flashbang explosives and all these guys with guns and this special forces gear file on the doors i would be willing to bet money that when the police did this they had no idea what the ethnicity of the people inside the house i think they didn't know and this is this is standard practice the united states america the no knock raid was carried out on the basis of one anonymous phone call they got one anonymous tip on the phone saying there was drug dealing going on in this house and it turned out not to be true now actually in what i read it was confessed the the owner of the house the family lives in the house he actually did have a brother who didn't live there who was in some way connected to being a drug addict or drug deal i i don't know but it said actually there was some reason for the why this phone call might have come in but no investigation no burden of proof no innocent proven guilty the police raided this house and this this baby was in a crib or lying in a bed of some kind and the explosive went in through the window and hit this baby in the face the ethnic group of these people they were an indigenous people of southeast asia called the mong it's pronounced hmong but it's spelled h-m-o-n-g i would bet money that the police don't even know what this ethnic group is i i know those people i used to live with those people in northern laos i met my new home people i worked with hmong people that's an ethnicity i know a lot about the history and politics of the average white police office they're not they they might have thought they were japanese or they might have thought they were white people they probably had no idea looking at the name or looking at the address looking at the house they got this phone call apparently they put no no investigation of any kind they carry out a no knock right now these these no knock grades they may disproportionately uh injure black people i i would bet money that in the united states they're probably disproportionately attacked by people um i would bet that they probably disproportionately do not impact asian people in the united states due to various factors including poverty including various cultural effectiveness nevertheless the problem with this police procedure is not racism and the solution is not subtracting racism from the police department when you take this subtractive attitude what you're presuming and what you're implicitly declaring is there's nothing wrong with our society our society built on genocide colonialism and slavery there's nothing wrong with police procedure and rights and laws what have you the only problem is the racism of the attitudes of the police no knock raids responding to anonymous phone calls by raiding someone's house at gunpoint waiting and searching some of those at one point this is fundamentally bad and wrong and evil regardless of the race of the person who's targeted the person who's harmed and there are real examples that will give you nightmares of white people being shot dead by police in exactly the same scenario white people significant numbers of white people have been harmed and killed this way on the basis of an anonymous phone call and by the way in some cases these people are innocent in some cases they're guilty in some cases they're drug dealers but they still didn't deserve to be shot to death in their living room or to have this happen there still is a better way to arrest and apprehend drug dealers than this procedure so by taking this subtractive attitude by problematizing racism and assuming that the solution is just to subtract racism from the police force and to subtract racism from our society as a whole there's a deep unexamined assumption there that what the police are doing is fine and good and what our society is is fine and good if only we could subtract the racism uh here in canada the clash between white settler populations and indigenous populations is just a much bigger percentage of our political discourse in some parts the united states that's true also probably if you're in hawaii if you're in maine uh you know if you're in a navajo country in the great deserts or what have you there are some places in the united states where that still is also a major major political question okay so if you subtract racism from our police force if you subtract racism from our parliament if that were possible if you ensure that each and every member of our parliament is not racist and each and every member of our police force on a cognitive level is not racist the cree language still goes extinct i i was walking past a parking lot here in victoria bc canada today and then the sign up in english and chinese for the parking lot i said have you ever seen a single parking lot with a sign up in any indigenous language here in canada whether that be cree ojibwe dene maybe if you go to the northwest territories you can see a parking lot with sign up in uh one of the inuit languages maybe okay so everyone can be not racist and continue down the merry road to 100 genocide and 100 language extinction right here in the colonies of of north america right you can everyone can be not racist and merrily skip along the road to total forced assimilation right like where is a school where you can take lessons in navajo now that's good sandwich what about a school where navajo is the primary language where you can learn about geography and chemistry and biology taught to you in navajo as a medium and how would you achieve that how would you reverse even to a tiny extent the impacts of languages nation these questions also very real by the way in mexico central america south america you know really really dealing with the consequences of just so again nothing else is racism and when we address racism as such properly defined then my assertion is the question and the answer has to be in terms of something positive something additional not something subtractive not something that just negates one portion of the what's become the social and cultural norm now to put a human face on this i've had some really negative encounters with police here in canada i certainly look white i don't think those guys look at me and consider me persian or jewish but many times in my life people do actually treat me as if i'm a persian immigrant or north african arab immigrant or something i have situations people don't treat me this way but let's just presume these cops perceive me as white cops act like thugs they act like goons that act like gang members i notice this even when they're at trial even when they're in court they're trying to intimidate people they talk to me on the street and they try to intimidate me i'm a very difficult person to intimidate others others really would be intimidated by this behavior on a cultural level these cops think that their role is to be a tough guy and you know i was just thinking about the other day because i've been reading confucius and a lot of ancient chinese philosophy and a lot of the philosophy of confucius is about being a gentleman what it means to be a true gentleman a refined gentleman i thought you know what the last time i was talking to those cops i wish i'd asked them do you consider yourself an educated person do you do you consider yourself right now to be behaving like an educated gentleman you know and i have asked cops to their face what's your university degree in boy i've said that to cops to their face i got a degree in political science how about you because i know in the 21st century pretty much all these cops have to have a ba in something they have to have a ba and then they go to so-called justice school and then go on to become cops i've said that to cops because what i'm doing is i'm not putting them down i'm reminding them you went to university and you studied this right you are an educated person but you're not acting like one now if i'm looking to really improve the quality and behavior of police conduct if i'm trying to change the culture of policing and the attitudes of policing this is not something as simple as subtracting racism it's not something as simple as banning or outlawing or punishing racism you need a positive ideal of what it is to be a refined gentleman of what it is to be an educated person of what it is to be helpful what it is to be a civil servant of what it is to be a police officer of what it is to hold that position of public trust and yes the question of how you handle your own bias or your own hostility is going to be part and parcel of that right and mason racism is a many splinter thing there are many aspects to it yeah but i mean i've mentioned this story before i knew a guy well-meaning guy he didn't think he was racist he had his bike stolen by a group of of black tough guys in the streets in the in the united states and it really changed his attitude and gave him this very hostile feeling you know if you're a police officer and you've had a bunch of bad experiences with hispanic people it could even be japanese people could be any race but the specific group of people you've had bad experiences with on the job or in your childhood there is a special discipline of mine that goes way beyond racism say look even even though i've dealt with a lot of people who have tattoos and spiky dyed hair and i've had a lot of bad experiences with those people if they're not a race but there's still this person i'm meeting for the first time i don't know him i don't know you i'm gonna treat you the same way i treat my own brother or my own distant cousin i'm gonna extend there are real questions of self-discipline and of cultivating and rewarding that culture amongst police officers keeping with you i think that's a huge issue for university professors i think it's a huge issue for people in all sorts of positions of authority with university professors the problem isn't that they act like tough guys it's that they act incredibly selfish and self-intelligent but sure i've had parallel conversations with professors like what what do you think it means to be a professor i mean what is what is the role you're you're trying to live up to there is something positive that needs to be accomplished there right there is a new culture and as i put it in my earlier video i think the easiest way to both exemplify this and to actually attain it is to talk about a literature why literature like why don't i say start a new religion for example or why don't i why don't i say make a new disneyland or something they can go on rides that'll teach them a better place officers go on a flume ride that'll make you less racist now why literature why the word literature why the concept why aren't i talking about uh writing a new constitution like a new political document or starting a new religion why isn't why would the word literature come up here and of course i'm not just dying with the word but the thing as such how did those cops get the notion into their head that they ought to behave like gangsters like tough guys like criminals and as i said i see that on the street face to face i see it in news footage i see it even when they've been caught committing a crime the way they try to defend themselves and present they're still blustering they're still trying to be a tough guy for the camera and for the court you can't give up where do you think they got that from in a word literature yes movies yes comic books yes cartoons yes reality tv yes there is a literature there is a crime literature there is a police procedural literature there's a detective novel literature that profoundly shapes their attitudes their habitats their ethics and indeed their ethos how they perform the duties of a police officer are men and women who are serving in parliament today why do they act the way they do they are drawing not on some kind of formal training not from some philosophical exercise not from aristotle there is a kind of literature that has prepared them that gave them this sense of what that role is and how to play it so i do think it's the literature that has to be changed and if you really can't have a literature that exemplifies that that shows what it means to be a good cop or maybe the literature is also showing you the consequences of being a bad cop the literature that show that gives us something meaningful as i explained in uh my earlier video a bridge between people who are by nature by default or out of our primordial ligaments people who are just mutually alienated and mutually invidious what is the literature that would make a cop feel a kind of kinship for the man or for the woman he or she has to arrest what is it that you could quote that could bring people together and make them feel some sense of common intellectual aspiration some some common ethos of trying to make the world a better place if you and i both had quoted this literature and now i'm the one who has to put you in a jail cell because you've made some bad choices because you've made some mistake but i can still see you as a human being it's not going to be shakespeare and it's not going to be sesame street so i'm asking that question what is that literature that can bring us together and help us transcend some of these really toxic and really invidious and really destructive cultural roles that we find ourselves still in the year 2020 acting out in a loop again and again