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With that, please enjoy this week's episode.
What's up everybody.
My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces
is Irshad Manji.
Irshad is a public intellectual of the sort
that we desperately need more of today.
She's a prolific author who's appeared on
probably every single news program of consequence
over the last 20 years, including 60 Minutes,
BBC Newsnight, The O'Reilly Factor, Real Time
With Bill Maher, Christiane Amanpour, Charlie
Rose, Bill Moyers and many others.
None other than comedian, Chris Rock, who
I think many of us admire for his humor and
credibility on the subjects of identity politics,
woke culture and political correctness, has
said that Irshad's latest book, which is titled,
Don't Label Me, should actually be labeled
as genius.
I don't think I can give a better endorsement
than that.
After all, Chris Rock is Chris Rock, but I
will say that every single conversation that
I've ever heard Irshad have with anyone discussing
the subject of her book, which is essentially
how to have honest conversations about sensitive
and consequential topics that don't devolve
into moral combat leaves me feeling more inspired
and less angry every time.
This conversation was no exception.
It was one of the most pleasant, honest and
meaningful conversations that I've ever had
on this show.
I hunger for these types of conversations
as I know many of you do.
There's no reason why we can't have them.
There's no law of biology that says that public
discourse between human beings has to devolve
into a series of battles and skirmishes between
two monolithic viewpoints or that conversation
are just another opportunity to try one another
in the court of public opinion.
If we accept that a pluralistic, democratic
society is the best way to safeguard the values
and freedoms that have allowed us to cultivate
and stakeout our individual identities, then
how can it be that in order to protect those
identities, that we should have to curtail
the very freedoms that gave rise to them in
the first place?
We're the fortunate inheritors of a tradition
that, literally, millions of people have taken
up arms to maintain.
As difficult as conversation can feel, it's
supposed to be the easy part.
If you ask me, it's actually fun and rewarding.
When I hear people bickering on cable news
or attacking one another on social media,
I don't find it entertaining.
I find it juvenile and petty, but the conversations
on this show sustain me.
They keep me going, honestly.
It's why I started the show, to begin with.
I missed having meaningful, deep and relevant
conversations with people who value discourse
as much as I do.
The fact that there are people like you on
the other end of this microphone who want
to listen in on these conversations and who
drive value from them, that's more than I
could ever ask for.
I hope you all enjoyed today's conversation.
I hope it serves as an inspiration for the
types of discussions and free exchange of
ideas that we can all have, and which we need
to have if we want to make it through, would
feel as like a very dark time in America today.
With that, please enjoy this week's episode
with my guest, Irshad Manji.
Irshad Manji, welcome to Hidden Forces.
I'm actually excited to be here, Demetri.
I have to just do a quick imitation of you
if you don't mind.
No, no, no.
Please go ahead.
What's up everybody.
I say that to myself after every opportunity
to listen to your podcast.
It just makes me chuckle.
You know what's funny, I have ... You, of
course, know this.
Your most recent book, you actually read the
audio for the audiobook.
I don't know if you do that for the other
ones.
You've been on tons of podcasts.
You've done tons of interviews and media.
I'm sure you've met lots of people at airports
and other places who speak to you thinking
or feeling as though they already know you.
I'm sure you probably already have this experience,
but in cases where I've met people who are
listeners or if I take a phone call with someone
who is a listener, who hasn't met me before,
this often comes up.
This thing about, "What's Up Everybody."
It's funny.
It's become my shtick, my gimmick.
Well, it's your signature, really.
It's utterly endearing.
I know that whenever I hear it, the podcast
has officially begun.
Don't stop.
We, your listeners, love it.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm glad.
I don't know how it started.
I think it was from the very beginning I did
it.
I think I just needed to figure out some way
to begin.
Yeah.
Yeah, to induct.
That wasn't boring.
Irshad, I'm so excited to have you on the
show today.
I'm disappointed as I was telling you that
we couldn't do this in person.
If we did it in person, there would likely
be a giant wall, a glass wall, between us
or whatever the ... some kind of-
That's right.
In the COVID era.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Some kind of plastic walls.
I can't think of, actually, more unsafe environment
to begin if either a person who have COVID-19,
then a studio talking directly at each other,
but I really miss doing the interviews in
person with people.
It's the thing that I missed the most from
the pre-COVID period.
I can't wait for us to get back to doing that.
I'm with you on that.
There's nothing like good old fashion person-to-person
conversation.
So much gets clarified that way.
So much is learned that way.
To do everything through Zoom or some other
video conferencing platform, obviously, you
get the job done, but there is something quite
magical about the human to human experience
that is missing.
I'm with you.
May this pandemic be over before too long.
Yeah.
Especially if the conversation is about conversation.
There you go.
Yeah.
Spoiler, actually, I brought you here to have
this exact discussion.
You're a very successful author.
Also, just like as I mentioned, you've done
the rounds.
You've been everywhere.
Every single show that one can think of, which
I think was when you were most prolific in
terms of your media presence was in the early
to mid 2000s and it was primarily dealing
with issues of reform in Islam.
Is that correct?
That's right.
Yeah.
Your most recent book is titled, Don't Label
Me.
Really, the subject of the book is the reason
why I brought you on here, but before we get
into that, I'd love if you could fill me and
my listeners in on your background.
Sure.
Hard to know where to start because I feel
like I've lived several lives already, but
I'll quickly say that I was born in East Africa,
in Uganda.
My family and I, along with hundreds of thousands
of other families of South Asian heritage,
were booted out of Uganda by the military
dictator general, Idi Amin.
At a very early age, I knew about prejudice.
It turns out that he expelled us because we
were brown skinned.
We were not black enough for the continent
of Africa.
It was at this time that the very legitimate
aspiration to independence that was sweeping
the continent of Africa had corroded, congealed
into the fever known as Pan-Africanism, which
Idi Amin nicely summarized by declaring, "Africa
belongs only to the blacks."
Well, that's interesting because my family
and I had been in Uganda for three generations.
We had no passport to any other country.
We were Ugandan through and through, and yet,
because of our brown skin, we were told we
did not belong.
We fled.
The only country, at the time, willing to
accept us was Canada.
That's where I grew up, mercifully, on the
West Coast, just outside of Vancouver, British
Columbia.
As I grew up, I attended two kinds of schools.
From Monday to Friday was the regular secular
public school of most North American kids,
and then on Saturday, every Saturday, for
several hours at a stretch, I attended the
Islamic religious school.
Many of your listeners will have heard the
word, "Madrasah" or it's anglicize version,
"Mardrasa."
That's where I would go once a week for eight
hours at a time.
I started off having some pretty basic questions,
but my basic questions also turned out to
be highly inconvenient ones.
I remember the question that got me expelled
from the madrasa at the age of 14.
My teacher that day was instructing us in
why we could not take Jews and Christians
as friends.
I said to him, "Well, wait a minute.
They are people of the book.
Some of my favorite people, in fact, at public
school are Jews and Christians.
I'm trying to understand, sir, why are they
haram to have us friends.
Why are they forbidden to have as friends?"
Probably because I had asked far too many
questions over the years as it was, he snapped
and he told me, "Look, either you believe
or you get out.
If you get out, get out for good."
Well, I had to make a choice in that nanosecond.
My conscience told me that what he was ordering
me to believe was a lie.
I stood up and I was in my chador.
I walked straight past the boys' section,
which was scandalous in it of itself.
Get this, Demetri, I'm not proud to admit
it, but I have to keep it real.
I kicked open the hefty metal door of the
madrasa, kicked it open.
Out of frustration, I yelled, "Jesus Christ,"
and I walked right out.
How old are you again?
I was 14.
Amazing.
Well, maybe, if that's amazing, the thing
that I am proud of is that when I got home.
You see, my mother had already received the
phone call of my expulsion.
I'm so proud that she did not force me to
go back to the madrasa and grovel for forgiveness.
She knew me better than that.
She said to me one thing.
She said, "Look, you are a smart girl.
I have faith that you will think through what
you're going to do.
Now that you are no longer welcome at the
madrasa every Saturday, what else are you
going to be doing with those eight hours?"
Because she expressed her faith in my ability
to think responsibly, I decided, I'm not going
to go to what we called back then the arcade.
I'm not going to go to what we had back then,
which were roller rinks.
I was going to go to the ... That's how old
I am.
Yes.
I was going to go to the closest thing that
we had to Google at that time, and that was,
of course, the public library.
That, Demetri, is where I soaked up all the
information I could about my religion, yes,
but about other religions too, and various
cultures.
It was during that time of self-study that
I came across something absolutely mind-blowing.
It's sadly something I would've never learned
at the madrasa.
Something positive about Islam.
I learned that Islam has its own tradition
of independent thinking, of debate and descent
and yes, reinterpretation, which meant that
I could, in fact, be a questioning Muslim
and a faithful one at the same time.
I didn't have to make a false choice between
those two.
I was able to integrate them and that word
"integrate" of course, led to my integrity,
my wholeness.
In so many ways, it is a spirit of that discovery,
the discovery of integrity that led me, ultimately,
to write this book, Don't Label Me, how to
do diversity without inflaming the culture
wars.
That's almost an unbelievable story.
Almost unbelievable.
Almost unbelievable that have-
You have to ask my mom how true it is.
I believe you.
I believe you.
I believe you because it's you.
Because it's you.
Yes.
That's also how it's in the point, it is you.
I find one of the things I so much enjoy about
this job is that I get to meet such exceptional
individuals.
It's not a coincidence that people become
activists or people follow the path that they
follow or blaze the trail that they blaze,
because there's something deep inside of them
that wheels them in that direction.
You won't be surprised to hear that after
I came out with my first book, which was entitled
the trouble with Islam today, a Muslim's call
for reform in her faith, many of my critics
resorted to the argument that I may "traumatize
madrasa misfit," and that it was out of revenge
that I wrote The Trouble with Islam Today,
but I had to remind them that while that's
a neat theory, the reality is that with or
without my expulsion from the madrasa, there
were and are so many human rights abuses being
committed in the name of Allah and it's for
that reason that I knew that after 9/11, when
the world, sadly, was finally willing to pay
attention to what is going on in the name
of Islam, it's for that reason that I knew
I had to write that first book.
It's really hard to speak out or hold your
own culture or people or ideas accountable,
because not only do you make yourself an enemy
to both sides, but you can get easily use
as a tool by people who have malicious designs
or intentions.
It's so challenging.
It's one of the most difficult things in the
world.
I'm sure you experienced that.
Frankly, still do.
Because I consider myself something of a social
seamstress, by which I mean, whenever there
are opposing sides and each side has something
valuable to contribute to the overall picture,
if you're going to reconcile those warning
sides, you're going to have to thread a needle.
As a social seamstress, to this day, I thread
the needle to stitch together the opposing
regions of our human tapestry.
That is very difficult because as you say,
you don't satisfy either of the sides.
Both of them will try to use you to push their
own agendas.
One of the things I've learned over the years,
and I teach this to my own students now, is
that if you don't have a vision for your life,
someone else will have an agenda for it.
Interesting.
It's also interesting that the way that our
media is constructed and debates are constructed
today, there is room for self-promotion, plenty
of room, but it's very difficult if you want
to put forward an honest agenda or push a
point that isn't aligned with the dominant
mainstream narratives, whatever those might
be.
If you want to introduce nuance, it's extremely
difficult to do.
Is that how you describe yourself?
How would you describe yourself and what you
do to a room full of strangers?
I practice or at least do my very best to
practice a leadership tradition called, Moral
Courage.
Moral courage means doing the right thing
in the face of your fears.
Now, the question, of course, is always, well,
what is the right thing in a deeply polarized
culture?
One person's right is another person's abominable,
but what I have found is that whatever you
wind up deeming to be the right thing, it
has to start with an honest attempt at engaging
your other.
That's because nobody has a monopoly on truth,
not one person.
Even your harshest critic has something to
teach you, as I have learned over the years.
It is only when I have lowered my emotional
defenses enough to try and hear where they're
coming from.
That not only have I grown, but here's the
beauty of listening and going first in the
listening department, I have learned how to
take the information that they've given me
about their values and reframe my own arguments
in a way that they can finally hear.
In other words, yes, you grow by listening
to many of your critics, but you also become
a much better communicator of what you believe
in.
It's one thing to preach to the choir.
Almost anybody can do that.
It's quite another to win the trust and the
respect, which is not to say agreement but
the willingness to look again, the respect
of the whole doubts.
Sadly, far too few advocates of any cause
are willing to go there because it's work.
It's laborious.
It means, taming your ego.
I was about to say.
I was about to say, ego is a big part of that.
Yeah, huge, huge part of that.
A lot of people assume, Demetri, that the
word, "ego" is self-helpy or somehow airy-fairy.
The fact of the matter is that, anybody who
has a brain, and I don't even mean that sarcastically.
I mean, literally, anybody who was born with
a brain is born with an ego, because the ego
is the function of the primitive part of our
brain.
In times past during the hunter gathering
times of our ancestors, ego was necessary
every day because it is what kicked in when
our very existence was being threatened.
If you heard a wrestle in the bush, who knows
what that could've been.
The ego rose, basically, to signal to you
that that could be a threat to your life.
You've either got to get ready to fight, freeze
or flee.
Yeah.
The ability to separate yourself from the
other-
That's right.
That's right.
... to understand yourself as a separate entity
in relationship to.
Here's the problem.
In relationship to.
Now, that is great in a situation of mortal
danger.
It is not good in a situation of mere discomfort.
That's the problem with us caving to the ego
today is that when we are being disagreed
with, the ego tricks us into believing that
your very humanity is being questioned.
Your existence is being jeopardized.
You better get ready to fight, freeze or flee,
but the reality is, your idea is just being
disagreed with.
Take some time, just literally a couple of
seconds, to slow down, to breathe, to decelerate
the blood rush in your body.
That buys you the wherewithal to override
the primitive part of the brain and tap into
the more evolved part of the brain, which
allows for reason to co-exist with emotion,
not be bulldozed by emotion.
Of course, we're now all steeped in technologies
that are deliberately designed to amp up our
emotions.
I think that's a huge reason for why we now
live in such a noisy world.
Ultimately, it's our responsibility to use
these technologies constructively, but man,
given how our brains are wired and given how
these technologies are designed, they really
tap into the weakness of human beings.
Yeah, and totally agree.
It's something that we've talked about at
length on so many prior episodes, whether
it was our episode with Shoshana Zuboff on
surveillance capitalism-
Right.
... or so many others.
There's also another technical component here,
which came up in my mind while I was writing
the rundown and the section of why I care,
what I'm interested in to discuss today.
That has to do with the ways in which we've
become conditioned to expect to have frictionless
experiences.
I think that this speaks to, again, this idea
that we shouldn't have to feel uncomfortable.
That if something isn't working for us, we
should be able to excuse ourselves from that
conversation, which that also is incoherent
because at the same time, many of the people
that say that, then put other people in a
position that's extremely uncomfortable or
where they feel threatened and at the same
time, you have concepts like White Fragility,
which suggest that white people, when they
feel uncomfortable around conversations dealing
with race, even if they're being attacked
as based on their race, that is actually evidence
of their privilege.
It's almost like this giant gas lining mind
effing thing, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm glad that you raised this poisonous concept
of White Fragility.
I say it's poisonous.
It's toxic and it's misleading.
Let me first say why it's misleading.
Well, maybe you could also tell our listeners
what it is because not-
Sure.
Understood.
... everyone is going to know what it is.
Absolutely.
There's a book that has steadily risen up
and ultimately, top the best seller list,
cheering the anti-racist and protest that
have been sweeping the nation.
That book is called, White Fragility.
It claims that white people are so entitled
to feeling comfortable that whenever hard
conversations about race need to be had, white
people will always meet those conversations
with resistance, with defensiveness, with
denial, with hostility and even with a venom.
Now, I have to say, sure, some white people
fit that bill, but it's not because they're
white, Demetri, it's because they're human.
Let me explain what I mean.
Compare that to the Muslim fragility that
I encountered when I traveled the world talking
about the need for liberal reform within my
faith of Islam.
I quoted from the Quran Islam scripture to
back up my case.
I talked about our own tradition of independent
thinking, which means that we didn't have
to turn to outside foreign influences in order
to rediscover the best that our religion has
to offer.
All of the raw materials for reform were already
within the faith and yet, so often, too often,
I experienced denial, consternation, condemnation,
vitriol and on occasion, violent threats.
Now, that would qualify as Muslim fragility.
Are we really to believe that only white people
are fragile?
To the degree that white people are fragile,
according to this concept of white fragility,
it's not because they're white.
It's because fragility is a human condition
born of the ego, which is a universal power
within each of us.
If we're not aware of it, it becomes not only
pervasive.
It becomes pernicious as well.
Of course, none of this is discussed in White
Fragility.
As a result of the comparison that I've just
given you, that there is such a thing, also
then, as Muslim fragility, as black fragility,
as queer fragility, male fragility, female
fragility, you name it, that we cannot simply
put this on white people and reduce such a
huge swath of humanity to that one negative
characteristic.
I said that this concept of White Fragility
is misleading.
That's what I mean by that, but it is also
toxic.
Why?
Because when we focus on demographics, we
immediately erect walls in people's minds.
This, again, is because of the way the brain
works.
I'll give you a classic example.
Take the phrase, "Black Lives Matter."
We know that black lives certainly need to
matter.
According to some statistics, black lives
are disproportionately on the firing line
by police brutality, but by naming this movement
Black Lives Matter, it immediately sets up
in the minds of those who don't already agree
with that phrase that "Oh, Black Lives Matter
huh?
Okay.
I guess that white lives don't matter."
Organizers of Black Lives Matter have often
said, "No, no, no, no, that is not what we
mean."
What they have failed to do, Demetri, is work
with human biology.
They have played right into the ego's trap.
I think that this movement would have made
much further strides many years ago.
Had it been called something like black lives
matter too as in white lives matter, yes,
but black lives matter too.
Or if they, indeed, had adopted the phrase,
"All Lives Matter."
I know, believe me, I've said this before
and I've gotten a lot of flack for it.
I know that a lot of people, when they hear
this, they think, "Oh, Irshad just wants white
people to be off the hook."
This is an ego gratifying delusion on the
part of people who just bat away the idea
that you need to name things in a way that
doesn't make people defensive.
Because again, it is not just white people
who are made uncomfortable when we focus on
demographics.
There's a very interesting social psychologist
at Yale by the name of Jennifer Richeson who
has written papers on the fact that when African-Americans
or Asian-Americans are told that Hispanic-Americans
are growing in number, people from those two
groups, African-American and Asian-American
become more conservative.
They are triggered to become more conservative
because they fear losing status.
You see, it's a universal human thing, which
is why this focus on both black lives mattering
or white people being fragile is destructive.
It certainly does not advance the cause in
ways that are frictionless.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
Well, stereotyping is a thing we all do.
All of us.
That's right.
That's a guess to suggest that this is somehow
just a racial issue or gender or whatever
the particular issue is of the day or the
focus is of the day.
Just misses the point, because this is how
the brain processes information.
Exactly.
It's uses heuristics.
Exactly.
Heuristics, shortcuts.
That's exactly right.
Let me just say one other thing about that
because I love the fact that you point out
that we all stereotype.
I think that it would go very far to building
trust.
If people who scolded other people for having
bias since we all have biases, if the scolders
were the first people to step up and say,
"I have biases too."
Let me tell you what my biases are.
In other words, if the scolders grab some
humility-
Self-reflection.
... and made them ... Self-reflection.
Self-awareness.
Introspection, self-awareness, and made themselves
role models rather than finger-waggers.
Well, the great example is to bring it back
just temporarily to the point or now, we'll
move forward because I have so many other
thoughts about White Fragility.
The idea that the discomfort of white people
in the context of these conversations, first
of all, people can feel discomfort for all
sorts of reasons.
Even if the discomfort by someone is because
there's a sense of guilt, that is not a cause
for demonization of that person or ridicule
of that person.
Right.
The idea that White Fragility is something
to be criticized or pointed out or called
out, but at the same time, white people need
to bend over backwards to make other people
feel comfortable who represent a group that
we deem to be an oppressed group.
This is, again, another contradiction.
It's a hypocrisy.
There needs to be a level of self-reflection
around that.
Actually, I would like to talk about that
later when we talk about language, because
I'm astounded by what's happened to language
today and the extent to which we need to cuddle
the people around us and phrase things correctly
and be very careful to the point where I didn't
even have this experience when I was a kid.
There were things that we were taught about
what we should and shouldn't say.
If we got bullied, we should go to the principal,
but there was also a social consensus among
children.
If you'd said something racist, something
that people generally agree it was racist,
you wouldn't be attacked by the mob, but what
actually happened was something that was more
natural and organic, which is that people
wouldn't play with you.
It would just be an organic shunning.
It wouldn't happen in the way the things are
done today.
Also, race is not a scientific concept.
No, it's not.
It's a very fuzzy idea.
Right.
As you experienced when you were living in
Uganda, there are shades.
Who is black?
Who is white?
Who is a person of color?
These are all categories that many people
have more or less experience with.
This goes back to the issue of labeling people.
I may not feel entirely comfortable with the
label of being white, to be quite honest with
you.
Absolutely.
When I was growing up in the US, I went to
a school that was very waspy, very Catholic,
the people were of Irish, Polish decent.
I felt that they were white.
I thought of myself as not them.
I have to get onboard with all this language,
all of the stuff, instead of being allowed
to simply arrive at it organically and in
a way that feels appropriate and authentic
for me.
If that's not going to be exactly what you
think it is or you think it should be, that
should be okay.
Because otherwise, we're not actually making
progress as a society.
What I'm simply doing is that a fear I'm kowtowing
and I'm adapting the language and the servile
rhetoric that I need to in order not to be
punished.
When the opportunity changes or when the tables
turn, I and not me specifically, but I or
my representative called, Group, is going
to try it against you.
Exactly.
This is not a white-black thing.
This happened in Iraq after the fall of Saddam.
It happens in every country.
People constantly divide.
We said, stereotypes, heuristics.
This is how the brain process information.
We create groups.
Any group can subdivide into a smaller group.
In a family with a lot of children, there
are groups within that family.
It's an absurd thing.
You've pretty much written, Don't Label Me
for me in that sense.
I hope I can get some of the royalties.
Yeah.
Yeah, your check is in the mail, Demetri.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You've heard that one before, right?
Look, I want to pick up on one thing that
you said moments ago, which is that I have
to kowtow.
So many people feel today that in order not
to be "canceled," in order to not have their
professional reputations besmirched or outright
obliterated, that they're just going to have
to climb up and conform.
I think that this is the worst thing that
can happen in a society that deems itself
to be free.
You don't have to kowtow.
Now, I'm not saying that you have to be reckless
and lash out at people who are asking you
to have more sensitivity in how you refer
to some people or how you frame your points.
There's no need, at least early on, for lashing
out.
What you can simply say is, "I don't feel
that people are really captured or described
accurately by labels."
Let's say, I'm a so called straight white
guy.
If you're going to treat me, simply as a caricature,
a cartoon of a straight white guy, then to
be honest, you're not really seeing me for
who I am.
You're assuming that what I am is the same
thing as who I am, but in order to really
know who I am, you have to engage me as an
individual.
"Let me tell you something about me that you
don't know."
Simply, by virtue of the labels that you have
assigned to me, but I think that would be
a fascinating experiment for all of your listeners
to undertake.
No matter who they are, straight white guys,
queer Muslims, whatever it may be, to just
tell somebody who assumes something about
them, here's what you don't know, merely by
assigning your labels to me and watch a really
interesting conversation bloom from that.
Without ever having to scold somebody for
labeling you, you've made the point that labels
distort.
They never capture who any of us is in all
of our complexes.
Well, they also rob us of our right to self-discovery.
That's right.
I don't have to define myself.
In fact, by defining myself, I live at my
capacity for self-discovery.
I also limit my capacity for evolution.
If I already come with a preconception about
who I am or what I am or what I believe, well,
first of all, I'm less open to really learning
what I believe and what I feel.
On the topic of racism, it's a perfect example,
because if we adopt the definition of racism
that it is the product of a culture of racism
and that by virtue and this is something that
and I would generally agree with this idea
that and when I say it's something that folks
like Robin or I can't remember her name now,
but the DiAngelo is the author of White Fragility-
The author.
Right.
Right.
... would support which is that by virtue
of being white, you are, by definition, racist
because you live in a white supremacist culture.
I have, I think, issues with some of the words
there, but generally, I do agree that we all
operate in a certain culture and that we just
naturally imbibe some of these cultural norms
and cues.
If that's the definition of being racist,
then you can't simultaneously use racist or
term racist as a derogatory word-
Right.
Right.
... that can threaten someone.
Because if I'm, in fact, going to be open
to racist impulses that I have, right?
If I'm going to be open and honest about those
impulses, I need to feel safe.
Exactly.
This is going to get to another important
thing.
I've broken these down.
We're going to be here for a while.
That has to do with intentionality.
Right now, we live in a culture where there
seems to be this odd idea that's taken us
by storm, which is that intentions aren't
really important.
What really matters is how the other person
took offense or how the other person experienced
what you said, but if that's the case, then
if every white person in Americas inherently
racist, then it means that there's no really
differentiation between people who are racist
but one actually live in a world where we
move towards a more equitable, less hurtful
society.
If I engage in a conversation on this, if
I say something racist, if I say something
or something that someone else takes as racist,
but I didn't mean it that way and not only
did I mean it that way, but actually, I want
to understand what you mean, because I genuinely
actually care how you feel.
Right.
Because guess what, there are a lot of people
that actually care how other people feel.
For sure.
Let me just say about exactly what you've
said.
We run into another wall in the way that anti-racist
activism is so popularly conducted today.
If you, Demetri, genuinely want to understand
more about how to become in the lingo of the
movement and ally, so often, you're not even
allowed to ask that question because in reaction
to that question, you will hear, "Well, it's
not my job to educate you."
That is the ultimate irony, as far as I'm
concerned.
Here, activists want people to be educated
about these issues, but when many of them
say, "Great, I am at your behest.
Teach me."
They are then told, "I'm tired.
I'm exhausted.
It's not my job to educate you."
Hold on.
If that's your reaction to somebody who earnestly
wants to learn, then don't be surprised if
they feel so demeaned by that interaction,
that they will not feel motivated to learn
about the issues on their own.
As I detail in Don't Label Me, this is one
of the reasons out of many, but certainly
one of the reasons that so many young, liberal
men have turned to extreme right-wing politics
because they have felt shamed and humiliated
by the very people who pursue justice, but
they have been in your excellent language
of earlier in this conversation, they feel
gaslighted.
Dignity is a huge thing.
I've talked about this-
It's a huge thing.
Right.
It's-
Sometimes, it's everything.
Look, take you and a great example, at 14
years old.
You walked and stormed out of your class and
you never came back because you felt that,
partly, your dignity was on the line here.
You believed something and you were being
told that you had to accept something you
didn't believe.
You just didn't accept that.
Right.
I think that it's very difficult for people
who have a strong sense of right and wrong
and dignity.
I've brought this up in various instances
on this podcast, although we've only done,
I think, maybe four episodes dealing specifically
with this issue, this larger, broader issue
of correctness, wokeness, cancel culture,
et cetera.
I've talked about it in other episodes.
When I grew up, I was a fiery kid.
I didn't allow myself to get bullied.
When people tried bullying me, I fought back.
That's just one example in all sorts of places.
Since I was a kid, that's who I am.
I'm not going to start getting bullied right
now.
If you push me, and there are lots of people
are like this.
You're not going to get a very good reaction.
Anyway, it's like the Lord of the Flies movie.
It's like the kids took over or some of the
kids took over the island or whatever.
One of the things I actually want to do, Irshad,
is because I do want to discuss your book
and I want people to understand what it's
about, but I've also written out a number
of things that I wanted to cover with you
in this context.
One we did, which was all these labels like
white fragility, toxic masculinity, white
privilege, et cetera, rape culture, et cetera,
and how some of these words are turned around
and used in a very racist way and make other
people feel very threatened.
I think we've covered that, but there's these
other ones that are really interesting.
One has to do with freedom of expression.
Something I want to talk, first, with you
about, but I want to highlight some of the
other ones because I think they're important.
The second one has to do with power.
I just think this is not discussed properly.
I think that the way that we talk about power
today, i.e., power is vested in white men
who are heterosexual, broadly.
Therefore, power is really a biological marker
of identity or rather, biological markers
of identity are consistent with certain levels
of power.
It doesn't matter whether you're the chairman
of Goldman Sachs and you're white or if you're
a white guy living in a trailer on welfare.
That doesn't really matter.
What matters is, your gender, your race, your
heterosexuality and other intersectional markers
of your biology, which is asinine on its face,
but we'll get into what that's about because
I'm curious, though I don't know exactly,
but I have some ideas.
One of the very general ideas that it said,
"Divide and conquer game."
Intentions, we mentioned that.
We actually talked about that.
Another one is, again, the sheltering language.
The way in which we cuddle conversations and
want people to feel safe and create safe spaces,
et cetera, et cetera.
This is something we talked about with Jonathan
Haidt.
Let's start with this thing about freedom
of expression.
Because it's something that, I think, strikes
at the heart of all of this.
How important is freedom of expression to
you?
What does that mean?
Freedom of expression, for me, is at the very
heart of how I live and how I hope other people
feel free to live.
As I mentioned, my family and I are refugees
to this part of the world.
I am enormously grateful for the freedoms
that we have in our society to think and express
ourselves, whether we exercise those freedoms
is another issue.
I know I insist on doing so, partly out of
gratitude, and partly, because I worry that
those freedoms will atrophy, that they will
just seize up and become so brittle that they
disappear in our lifetimes.
Yeah, I didn't fight for those freedoms, Demetri.
I didn't strife for them.
I didn't shed blood for them.
I was giving them when my family and I landed
on the shores of this continent.
I have to say that every morning I wake up
and ask God to help me stay worthy of these
freedoms, it is the very essence of pluralism.
Now, let me explain what I mean by pluralism.
I don't mean multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism is the philosophy and some
would say, ideology under which we preserve
differences between and among groups because
differences are valuable, but what multiculturalism
does, it reduces, again, people to the groups
that they are thought to belong to.
It doesn't see people as individuals in their
own right, full of their own complications,
full of different thoughts that might diverge
from the consensus within the group that you
assume that they're a part of.
It's exactly what you insist on being, right?
You insist on thinking for yourself, Demetri.
You don't want to be lumped in with everybody
who looks like you or has the same heritage
as you, as if all of you think and believe
the same thing.
Sadly, under multiculturalism, that is the
assumption that is made.
Pluralism is very different.
Pluralism is not relativism.
It is not anything goes.
No.
If you're a pluralist, you absolutely do stand
for what is right versus what is wrong.
You stand for what you believe is conscionable
and you oppose what is unconscionable.
You fight for what is acceptable and you reject
what is unacceptable as you define it, but
this is key.
You do all of that with the humility to recognize
that any position you take is contingent.
It is temporary.
It is based on the life experiences that you've
had so far.
If you have more life experiences, you have
the right to change your position.
Your temporary position is also based on the
arguments that you've heard so far.
Well, what if you hear better arguments down
the road?
That, too, is a reason to change your mind,
but you can't hear better arguments if you
don't have freedom of expression because all
kinds of ideas are lost to self-censorship.
For me, freedom of expression is the lifeblood
of the examined life itself.
Well, it's also the intellectual tradition
of our republic.
The ideas of people like John Stuart Mill
who, of course, is writing after the founders
but this gets the heart of liberalism and
what is liberalism, because there's this weird
conflation of what is this modern leftist
movement with liberalism because it's profoundly
anti-liberal.
Exactly.
It's very illiberal.
It's illiberal.
Also, something you said earlier, maybe think
about this.
It might have been the fact that when you
engage in the marketplace of ideas, we come
to more developed use about things.
This is also integral to our epistemic tradition,
our enlightenment tradition.
This is how we come to views about things.
This is exactly what you did when you left
that class on Saturdays and substituted it
with going to the library.
Right.
You did it on your own.
This information was accessible to you.
You didn't need someone else to authorize
it.
Right.
You learned it on your own and you came to
your own view.
Exactly.
For those who may be thinking, right now,
well, there they go again, equating western
culture with universal culture.
Let me be very clear.
Even in Islam, freedom of thought is meant
to be treasured.
I can hear the laughter already.
Of course, the way it's practiced often stifles
freedom of thought, but this tradition of
independent thinking that I discovered in
the public library, which is associated with
Islam actually saved my faith in my faith.
As many of your listeners will know, there
was a time about 1,000 years ago when Islamic
civilization led the world in curiosity, creativity
and ingenuity.
Precisely because at that time, freedom of
expression, freedom of conscience were valued
within the faith far more so than they are
today.
I worry that what has made Islam so brittle
over the years, the fear of critical thinking,
is something that is infecting.
Yes, I do use that word deliberately, infecting
causes today that as varied as social justice
on the one hand and free expression on the
other.
Look, I just told you that I'm a huge advocate
of free expression, but I also recognize,
Demetri, that there are many on my side who
advocate free expression only because they
want it for themselves but they don't want
other people to have it.
Right.
If they're criticized, many free expression
or free speech advocates will say that if
they are harshly criticized that they're somehow
being canceled.
No you're not.
You're just being criticized.
Grow up.
Pull up your big boy and girl panties and
deal with it.
Yeah.
What is this phenomenon that we're seeing?
What do you think this is really about?
This-
Power.
Power.
Power.
Who is seeking power?
Just about everybody.
Just about everybody.
People that can access it through the normal
channels and feel that this is an easier or
more accessible way of wielding it?
People who are told that they can't access
it through conventional ways.
This is the very important distinction that
I've just introduced.
People who are told that they can't.
You see, in universities, for the last 20,
30 years, a lot of so called minority students
whether they are black or queer or Latinx
as the phrase goes now, whether they're-
What is that?
Latinx.
It's meant to be gender-neutral.
Instead of saying Latino or Latina, it's now
referred to as Latinx so as not to offend
those who don't want to be identified with
one or another gender.
My point, simply, is this, that a lot of young
people in America have been "educated."
Because really, what I mean is, indoctrinated
in what is called, Critical Theory.
In some cases, it's called, Critical Race
Theory.
What it teaches is that, those of you who
are not white, straight men are victims.
You are seen by other people only for your
categories and therefore, you have no power.
The only way then to get power is to fight
for it, but in this case, fight for it for
your entire group and not just yourself.
Because the system, they are indoctrinated
to believe, because "the system" is built
to cater to the needs and the wishes of white
straight men in order to get power you're
going to have to overthrow the system.
That includes such quaint ideas as freedom
of expression, which is why so many on the
left today and not just students of color,
also white students and I hate those labels,
forgive me for using them.
Yeah.
It's a great example.
You're forced to use it.
I'm forced to use it.
Exactly.
All kinds of young people are now forced,
if you will, compelled to think of freedom
of expression as a joke, as a cover that powerful
people use-
An excuse.
... in order to keep their power.
That's right.
An excuse to not change things.
No wonder there's such an easy drift into
illiberalism because it's not, in fact, about
justice.
It is about, I'm going to use a phrase here,
just us.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Justice is one thing, but it easily becomes
tribalism, as in, just us.
That is why I'm saying that it is about grabbing
power, not really about seeking justice for
everyone.
I'll say one other thing before I give the
floor back to you.
You've really got me going now.
I'm happy about that.
Which is that the work that I do, Demetri,
is about changing the game.
I'll explain what I mean by that in a second,
but what I see going on today is that the
game isn't changed.
It's just that the uniforms of each team are
swapped.
Meaning, if you are deemed to be on the team
of the powerful and someone else is deemed
to be on the team of the powerless, then the
powerless team simply wants your uniform.
They want to wear the uniform of the powerful.
That is only swapping jerseys, but it's not
changing the game.
Because the game is still created by ego,
right?
It's not about dismantling the systems that
we are told has led to oppression.
It's simply about, now, the oppressed wanting
to become the oppressors.
Well, I'm sorry, but how is payback the same
thing as progress?
It's not.
This is why I'm saying, the game isn't changing.
Only the jerseys are being exchanged.
That's why I make it a point to emphasize
that whether you are advocating for free speech
or whether you are advocating for social justice.
If you are letting your ego lead you into
the trap of becoming dogmatic of not listening
to your other, of actually assuming that you
have the truth and nobody else does, then
you're not a game changer at all.
Totally.
I have so many thoughts about this.
One of the things that just entered my mind
was something you said very early on, which
was listening to other people and the importance
of doing that.
It made me think, also, about how the practice
of doing that makes you a much better partner.
It makes you a better partner in business
and in your personal life.
Absolutely.
It makes you a better friend as well.
My marriage dissolved, Demetri, because to
be blunt, my partner believed she had the
full truth.
Of course, there's always a different ... I'm
coming from a biased place, obviously, but
here's my point.
There was a time when I said to her, "I have
never met anybody more prideful than you."
It's one thing to be proud of who you are.
That's beautiful.
That's great.
Don't let anybody shame you for being who
you are, but it's another thing to be prideful,
which means that you never say you're sorry.
You never admit that you have responsibility
for the collapse of something including a
relationship.
If you're going to engage with your other,
in order for that to be successful, your other
is also going to want to have to engage.
If that other does not want to engage and
exploits you for your willingness to listen,
then nothing will be resolved.
Unfortunately, that's what happened in my
marriage.
I learned the hard way that sometimes you
do have to walk away.
I'm not suggesting for a minute that by going,
first, in the listening department, all will
be fine.
No.
I'm saying that sometimes it won't be fine
and you've got to have enough dignity to know
when you need to walk away, but if you don't
go first in the listening department, you'll
never know how much can change.
You'll never know whether that other person
was willing to engage once they saw that they
were not going to be judged for coming from
the perspective that they come from.
It is a fine balance.
These are skills that I teach in Don't Label
Me, but it is important, therefore, that relationships
really do become relationships, not monologues
that are then assumed to be conversations.
Well, this is a really great point, I think,
to transition soon to the overtime, because
it highlights the real world difficulty of
actually trying to have honest conversations.
Because one, you have to be open.
You have to be radically open to self-examination,
right?
At the same time, you also need to be able
to know when and how to hold your ground.
You need to be able to know what's right and
what's wrong and where to say thus far, no
further.
Right.
There's no quantitative model that's going
to spit out an answer for what to do here.
That's right.
There's no algorithm.
There's no formula.
Yeah.
No one has got the right answer for you.
Anyone that says they do, they can tell you
what's right or what's wrong, and wants to
punish you accordingly as an authoritarian-
Exactly.
... with authoritarian impulses.
This is why it's so essential that we have
a respect for conversation for free expression,
and that we have some model in our head for
how to arrive in a consensus.
It doesn't mean we're going to arrive at ontological
truth, but if we have a template for how to
work through our problems, whether that's
in our personal lives or whether that's in
the political arena, we can actually survive.
My fear is that we are in a really dangerous
place.
I know that a lot of pondents on television
and in the media exploit this type of language.
Because for so many years, people both on
the right and on the left, use hyperbole to
stir up emotions and tell people the republic
is lost or you are being attacked by fascist
or whatever, but I'm genuinely concerned.
I'm genuinely concerned because as the tensions
ratchet up, there is the real potential for
a next phase transition in authoritarianism,
not just in this country and elsewhere.
It's also important to note that America is
the most powerful militaristic super power
on the planet.
We cannot afford to screw around with our
republic.
We have a responsibility, not just to ourselves
and to the people who fought for the freedoms
that we now take for granted, but we also
have responsibility to everyone one else in
the planet who would suffer in the even that
we lost control of this republic.
When I say that, I don't mean to suggest anything
about the current president, because I think
people's obsession over Donald Trump does
us all a collective disservice.
Because what we're talking about here, the
issues here run much deeper, are broader and
much older than anything that one individual
can do and whether it's this president or
whether it's a future president, what worries
me is the instability of our social and political
fabric.
We're not doing a good job of stewarding that.
It sounds like you wanted to say something
there.
Yes.
You've given me the most beautiful segue.
We're not doing a good job of stewarding that.
Here's some data to your point.
Last year, a scholar by the name of Liliana
Mason who studies the politics of identity
and how that translates into partisan politics,
she released a paper that found that 18% of
the democrat surveyed and 13% of the republican
surveyed agreed that some or more than some
violence is justified if the other side wins
the 2020 election.
Very scary.
Very scary.
Okay.
That's like one in five people.
That is huge.
For that reason alone, I'm not writing off
the possibility of civil war.
No matter who is pronounced our next president.
Yeah.
Civil war doesn't have to be the union-
That's right.
... and the confederacy lining up at Gettysburg.
That's not how it has to be a civil war.
A lot of people hear and the word, "civil
war" and they think, "Oh, come on.
You're exaggerating."
There are various ways in which society can
come into physical conflict with each other.
Here's an example of how to outwit this tendency
toward violence.
In Don't Label Me, I tell the story of Genesis
and Lewis.
Genesis is an African-American Hip-Hop artist
who wants the Mississippi state flag to change.
She wants the confederate battle emblem in
that flag to be replaced by something else.
Why?
Because when she sees that flag, she is reminded
of how her ancestors were enslaved and the
fact that her own grandfather was murdered
by the KKK, simply, for protecting a group
of black voters the first time they were able
to cast their ballots.
Now, Lewis is also a young guy and he is white.
He is an entrepreneur.
He wants the state flag to remain as is because
he feels a sense of home when he sees it.
He belongs to a club called, The Sons of Confederate
Veterans.
He is directly descended from a civil war
soldier who fought on the side of the south.
I bring up all of this because you can see
how each of these individuals could take history
very, very personally.
Genesis, one night, as a Hip-Hop artist, launched
an inflammatory protest against the confederate
flag.
A viral photo of her protest then generated
a ton of hate mail towards her.
As she was scrolling through her social media
feeds, she saw a message from Lewis, in which
he said, "Look, I don't want you to die.
I don't want to kill you, but I have to say
that I disagree with you."
You know what she did?
She actually invited him to her backyard to
sit and discuss this issue.
She started off the conversation with a very
from the heart question.
Nothing intellectual at all.
She said, "Lewis, when you see that flag,
how does it make you feel?"
He answered and because she asked him that
question, he felt the moral obligation to
reciprocate.
He asked her, "How does it make you feel?"
She answered.
Over the course of three hours, Demetri, they
got to know one another.
What he realized, Lewis, what he realized
after that conversation and as a result of
it is that he cared more about Genesis than
he did about the confederate flag itself.
What he did about that is that over the course
of a few months, he reflected.
He introspected.
He asked himself questions.
He had contentious conversations with his
own father about it.
Without anybody asking him to do this, not
even suggesting that he do this, he took down
the confederate flag that was flying in his
own backyard.
He neatly folded it up and put it in a box
called, Things of the Past.
When I asked him why he did that, he said,
"Irshad, I had never gotten the kind of respect
from the other side that I felt when Genesis
asked me why I believed what I believed.
It was because of that respect that I came
to appreciate, I'm not going to lose my heritage
if that flag is changed.
I'll still have my heritage.
I can still be proud of it, but I'll be prouder,
still, when we have a flag that doesn't make
other people feel terror in their hearts.
He said that he was taking a position that
he feels Christ would've taken.
That's how seriously he took his Christianity.
My point is this, before deciding that somebody
who looks like Lewis, scruffy red beard, dirty
baseball cap, calls himself a Christian, before
we decide that on the basis of his appearance
and his labels, he must be a racist.
Let's engage.
Let's actually find out the backstory.
Let's see where he's coming from and you'll
be surprised how often.
Not always, but how often.
When you take the time to build that trust,
then emotional defenses are lowered, so that
those who would, otherwise, feel that they're
being persecuted for their point of view,
then understand that not only are they not
being judged, but they're being encouraged
to educate you.
When they feel that way, they will suddenly
have the psychic bandwidth to then hear where
you are coming from.
That's the bottom line.
This iron clad law in human psychology, if
you wish to be heard, you must first be willing
to hear.
Notice that listening is not about being nice.
It's not about being civil for the sake of
civility.
There's actually enlightened self-interest
in it.
It's a beautiful story, Irshad.
It's from the book and there are other stories
like that as well.
Including your friend Jim, it's a similar
story of how someone that you can love and
that walked you down the isle, in fact, can
also vote for someone whose political positions
you could so disagree with.
I think that it's important to recognize that
those two thing can happen.
I think it's our jobs to understand how people
that we may disagree with on certain moral
issues that might be important to us may still
yet be good people.
We need to be able to figure out how to resolve
those incongruities because this is how we
move forward in society.
This is exactly right.
That's the key, moving forward.
I often say that we can stand our ground and
seek common ground.
That sounds like a contradiction, but in fact,
it's not.
Here's why.
You can have your position, but by engaging
with somebody who profoundly disagrees with
that position, if you believe even after that
engagement, that on the hole, you still are
right in having your original position, great.
Stand your ground, but in opening up the space
for your other to be heard by you, you have
just created a way to also seek common ground.
Think about it like this, standing your ground
is about the what, the content, the actual
issue.
Seeking common ground is about the how, whether
you engage or whether you shut down potential
conversation.
If you can balance your what with your how,
that is what I call effective citizenship.
I love it.
Look, the thing that we were talking about
earlier that I want to discuss into the overtime
or at least to start with and then we'll get
into other issues as well is this concept
of power.
Because I think, to me, it perhaps is the
most important thing that we could discuss
because I think that we're getting played
here.
I think there is a much larger game being
played and there are dynamics of divide and
conquer happening in society.
I would like to explore with you what you
think is really going on here.
One of the sources of this manifestation and
things to that effect, for regular listeners,
you know the drill.
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Irshad, stick around.
We're going to move the second half of our
conversation into the overtime.
Happily.
Today's episode of Hidden Forces was recorded
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