TOM SLATER: And it's because we see some of
those ideals as under attack that we decided
to put on this tour, to put on events like
this.
So over the next couple of months, through
the unsafe space we're bringing together some
of our favorite, some of the most eloquent
defenders of free expression, critics of the
new climate on campus, which seems to be
about shutting down discussion, to really
try and get to grips and interrogate that
climate, and tonight we're talking about what
is, I think for my money, the most contentious
aspect to this discussion, that of identity
politics and how it relates to free speech
on campus.
Now, from Spike's perspective, we come from
a left wing, universalist, anti-racist history.
We always understood race as something, which
was a nasty concoction, which we needed to
transcend, and yet when we look at UK campuses,
US campuses in particular, we see a new form
racial difference effectively kind of being
reified in politically correct terms.
From the rise of things like cultural appropriation,
the idea that culture splits along identity
lines, produces the rise of things like microaggressions,
where policing speech and wanting to effectively
lay out some kind of etiquette as to how people
should interact with one another—to us seem
to be the warning signs of something which
was reifying that kind of decisiveness on
campus, and increasingly something that I
think we see of course is the idea that one’s
identity naturally leads to one’s ideology,
and that anyone who questions that is questioning
you as a person, and through all sorts of
different aspects of debate on campuses, I
think we see that we see that bare out.
The key question that the panel here are gonna
address, and that we wanna hear your thoughts
on, is if we're in a climate in which we're
urging students of different backgrounds to
kind of tiptoe around each other, if we're
telling them that culture divides along these
kinds of lines, and if ultimately we're suggestion
that identity is something really important
that we should talk about all the time, even
in the absence or any of the kind of explicit
racism we might've seen in the past, are we
actually getting further away from that position
that we position that we say we all want to
be in, which is transcending race, and difference,
and identity altogether, so that's what we're
going to be speaking about.
So I'm going to introduce the panel very quickly
in the order in which they'll speak.
They're gonna speak for about 5 minutes and
then I'm gonna kick it out to you guys as
soon as possible.
First up on my immediate left we have Kmele
Foster.
Kmele was a co-founder and a partner at FreeThink
Media, which is a fantastic production company,
they make documentary film about people at
the forefront of human innovation, the kind
of unsung heroes, which is fantastic, but
he's also a real rising star of commentary
and issues of public policy, he has a great
podcast as well called The Fifth Column, which
I can highly recommend.
So after Kmele, there we go.
After Kmele sat right next to him as Bryan
Stascavage.
Bryan is a free speech advocate, he's a writer,
and he's a student at Wesleyan University.
He became quite notorious, I think it's fair
to say, in 2015 when he wrote an article for
the Wesleyan Argus, which I would say is kind
of gently critical of Black Lives Matter in
relation to what he saw as it's tactic should
be.
As a result, there were many protests, there
was calls to not only defund, but I think
recycle the paper, and so he's someone who’s
been really been at the core face of this,
and it's been really interesting the way in
which he's put his case, so it's great to
have Bryan here as well.
And after Bryan sat there on the second from
the far right, we have Sarah Haider.
Sarah is a writer, she's a speaker, she's
an activist, she's one of the founders of
the Ex-Muslims of North America arguing for
atheism, for human rights, for free speech,
and as someone who Spiked definitely very
much admires, so it's great to have Sarah
here as well tonight.
And then last, but by no means least, on my
far left down the end there we have Mark Lilla.
Mark is a professor at Columbia University,
of Humanities, and is a regular contributor
to the New York Review of Books, and the international
press, and he made himself a little bit notorious
in 2016 when he wrote an article for the New
York Times called After Identity Liberalism.
It became the most read article on the website
of the year, and has now birthed a new, fantastic
book called The Once and Future Liberal: After
Identity Politics, which I can highly recommend
to all of you, so that's Mark.
I'm gonna ask the speakers as I said speak
for about 5 minutes.
Panel: I'm gonna be quite tight on timings,
and the reason for that is we really do want
to bring it out to you guys as soon as possible.
If you haven't already noticed, you soon will.
Most of these guys are broadly critical of
identity politics, they come at it from different
angles, but nevertheless.
This event is as much about you guys as it
is about them.
We're devoting as much of the time as possible
to a real discussion between the floor and
the panel, and even if you vehemently disagree
with the whole framework of what we're talking
about, we want to hear from you, we want to
hear your points, that's what all of this
is about.
In that spirit, that's what we'll continue
on with.
Without further ado, Kmele if you'd like to
kick us off.
KMELE FOSTER: Sure.
First, thank you very much to Spiked.
Thanks so much to all of you for coming out.
I hope that this will be a productive, interesting,
engaging conversation.
I hope that everyone here sort of has an opportunity
to engage either during this, or afterwards.
I hate throat clearing, but I'm gonna do a
little bit of it anyways in the hopes of being
understood.
I'm generally, in context like this, often
talking about race and related issues, and
often in the context of criminal justice reform.
I believe in the necessity of criminal justice
reform.
I think it's absolutely essential that we
look at ways that we can reform police departments
to get to better outcomes.
I think it is a travesty when civilians who
are engaging with the police in something
as routine as a traffic stop for your light
being out, or something else, find themselves
in a situation where they are staring down
the barrel of a gun.
This is problematic.
It is far worse when you find yourself shot
as a consequence of this engagement with the
police.
I think we all agree on this.
Here's the part where it starts to get slightly
dicey.
I think, when I look at the numbers, that
there is very little evidence that black people
are a unique jeopardy of being shot by the
police when we do something other than just
look at the demographics of the country, right?
Black people are 12.5% of the population overall,
but they do make up a much larger share—and
this important, this isn't an excuse, but
it's important to recognize—of stops, and
in terms of being victims, and bother perpetrators
and victims of violent crimes.
When we actually look at police shootings
and various other things with respect to that,
often times we will find the disparities in
outcomes seem to disappear.
IE, the probability of getting shot by the
police, when you're stopped by the police,
when we control for things like rates of violent
crime seem to disappear.
There's no difference between say blacks and
whites.
In fact, some white guy might be more likely
to have something bad happen to him.
Why do I make that point?
For me, it seems impractical to take an issue
that we all agree is important, and to balkanize
it, and to make it something that is of unique
interest to a particular community, to attach
to it a mantra that is narrowly interested
in racial outcomes.
To make it an issue where if you disagree
with me, you don't disagree on an approach
to fixing this problem.
You don't disagree on whether or not it matters
if I survive.
I'm sorry, you don't disagree with it on approach,
you disagree on whether or not my life has
value and merit.
We find ourselves in this country in a time
where there is a protest taking place with
the NFL.
There are players, athletes, coaches at this
point, who are taking knees on the field,
and there is a president of the United States
who is ... Doing things that I think are highly
inappropriate.
It is wrong for the president, either de facto
or de jure, to suggest that people should
be fired from their jobs for holding a particular
point of view.
This unequivocal, it's obvious, I see heads
nodding, so we all agree on this point.
I'm not suggesting anything other than that.
I do think, however, that if we're going to
have a conversation about criminal justice
reform, and if we're interested in policy,
if we're interested in making changes, then
we ought to be interested in the facts as
well, and if this isn't primarily an issue
about race, one wonders if taking this issue,
criminal justice reform for example, and putting
it in that narrow lens is the appropriate
thing to do.
I'm gonna stop there for a moment and sort
of let this go down, and hopefully we'll have
an opportunity to go further down the road,
but again I think the folks you're going to
hear from, I've had an opportunity to meet
for the first time tonight.
Reasonable, sane, no one here, I suspect we
agree on far more than we disagree, so the
notion that anyone would be upset leaving
here wouldn't be surprising to me, but I look
forward to chatting, and thank you so much
for hearing me out.
TOM SLATER: Thank you so much Kmele.
Bryan.
BRYAN STASCAVAGE: Thank you very much to Spiked,
and to Rutgers for having us all here.
I'd like to start off first by just telling
a short story.
In the spring of 2011, I was sitting in a
palace in Baghdad, Iraq.
I was working on the classified newspaper
of Iraq.
When a coworker sat down next to me and asked
me: how would I survive at college?
Because he knew how strong my political viewpoints
were, but how would I handle hearing an opposing
viewpoint.
My response to him was, "If Osama Bin Laden
taught a class, I'd be the first person to
sign up."
That was the worst person I could think of
at that time, so translate it to 2017, if
Richard Spencer, or Michael Moore, any one
of these characters that we deem as radicals,
left or right, were to teach a class, I would
be the first person to sign up.
Not because I was worried that they would
convert me, or they would say something that
I might agree with, it's because I disagree
with them, but I still want to hear from them...
why they're saying the things that they're
saying.
Now I'm gonna do a little bit of audience
interaction and ask a couple of questions.
How people here have either read, or listened
to, or watched a interview with one of these
so called hate groups?
How many of you were convinced?
How many of you are worried that somebody
else might be convinced by those words?
How many of you here were convinced?
That's the issue.
We have a nation that is afraid.
We have a nation is suspicious of each other,
but when we actually sit down together, and
look around, and see, we can see that these
ideologies are not actually propagating, they're
not disseminating.
The students that are here ... you're gonna
be the leaders.
You're gonna be the managers, you're gonna
be the legal experts, the medical experts,
and yet these ideologies are not spreading.
This, I believe, is a problem due to activism.
Specifically activist leaders and media pundits.
Who are more concerned about winning, either
personal, or political power, for their own
causes or what not, but it's creating this
dangerous inconsistency where a majority of
Americans are not being convinced by these
ideas, and yet we are extremely fearful that
white supremacy is right around the corner.
How is this possible?
It's possible because there's been a concentration
of bad news.
I hear people saying Charlottesville.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: We're coming out to the audience
in a couple of minutes so if you'll just let
Bryan make his point, we'll come back out
very soon.
BRYAN STASCAVAGE: But I look across the left
wing and the right wing news, and it's a concentration
of the worst of the worst that each side has
to offer.
We're seeing headlines from that Trump supporter
that says something bad, or that CBS legal
analyst who dismisses the shootings today,
or last night.
This is the problem.
We're concentrating bad news on both sides,
and then we're evaluating each other based
off of these incorrect perceptions.
If, as the left has argued, that Islam cannot
be criticized because of the actions of a
couple of extremists, if we can't criticize
liberal movements for the actions of the GOP
baseball shooter, for those people that are
saying Charlottesville, this is not the center
of gravity.
These are the extremists, and it's being driven
by identity politics, which has been eloquently
said, balkanized ourselves so that we're suspicious
of each other.
This is the issue.
Trump supporters by and large that I've talked
to go to great lengths to say how much they
despise white supremacy and white nationalism.
Their criticisms of social justice comma identity
politics is not an attempt to bring back white
supremacy, it's an idea that there's a contrarian
voice, a critical voice about social justice
that can be made without bringing back white
supremacy.
It's about meritocracy.
It's about creating an equality of opportunity,
not a quality of outcome.
This is what college campuses miss.
Especially the activist leaders that are 100%
convinced in their views.
When you become 100% convinced in your views,
that's when bad things happen.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
TOM SLATER: And Sarah.
SARAH HAIDER: Hello.
Thank you Tom for the introduction, and I'm
really happy to be here.
I'm really happy to talk about this.
I'm an activist, I'm a writer, I'm a co-founder
of an organization called Ex-Muslims of North
America, and we're an organization, which
advocates for the exception of religious decent,
we promote secular values, and we aim to reduce
discrimination faced by those who leave Islam.
We've been building communities of ex-Muslims,
that is to say people who used to be Muslim,
but then left the faith and are not atheists
or agnostics.
We've been building communities for them where
they can meet each other, they can get to
know others like themselves, and build a sort
of support and community that they're really
denied within Muslim communities, some of
you may know that apostates, people who leave
Islam across the world, are in great danger.
Often to come out and say that you're an atheist
is a death sentence, and even your own family
will be maybe the first to abuse you, or to
harm you in such a way.
This is a context that ex Muslims are in right
now, and since I've started the organization
I've started to talk a little bit more about
the problems within the religion, and I've
found, and as some people have mentioned,
that it seems that there is a little bit of
a hypocrisy when it comes to Islam and the
way that we talk about women's rights, and
the way we talk about liberal rights, and
pluralism and everything, and I was really
disheartened because I thought that the people
that would be opposing me the most would be
religious fundamentalists.
That would be religious apologists, the kind
of people that would really be the first to
stand in line against me, but instead I found
that there were far too many people like myself.
I'm a liberal, I'm progressive, I vote democrat,
I'm a feminist and I'm proud to be one, and
I've found that there were people like myself
who were instead saying, "Sarah, you're a
hate monger for saying what you're saying,"
and it's just been very disheartening to see
that there has been such a loss of principles
when it comes to progressive ideals in general,
liberal ideals, feminist ideals, to the extent
that I think we favor political narratives,
and whatever happens to be politically convenient,
more than the hard thing, and the hard thing
is to say look, we stand for the rights of
Muslims as citizens of the United States,
and we will defend their civil liberties,
and we will also stand up and say look, there's
certain parts of this region that do not align
with human rights, that do not align with
modern values and liberal values, and we need
to be able to say both those things, and talk
about both those issues, and if we were to
have that level of courage then I think we
wouldn't see the kind of decay that we've
seen in political discourse.
I hope that if there's one thing that we get
out of this discussion is that let's do what
we can to reawaken a sense of political courage,
and ideological courage, and just talk about
principles, and ideologies, and what they
mean, and be honest with ourselves and with
others.
Thank you.
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much Sarah.
Mark.
MARK LILLA: Well I guess the thing that distinguishes
me a little bit from the rest of the group,
apart from my apparent age, is that I'm not
so interested in free speech.
I'm interested in winning.
I'm a liberal.
For 30 years the politics of this country
have been dominated by an increasingly rabid
republican party.
This party has been trying, apart from economic
issues, and other sorts of things we might
talk about, this party has committed itself
to rolling back the rights of women to have
an abortion, of African Americans to vote,
and gay couples to be treated equally.
Where is this happening?
It's not happening because we've had a republican
president, it's happened because republicans
control two thirds of the state legislatures
in this country.
They control two thirds of the governorships.
They control 24 states outright.
If they were to win two more state legislatures,
they could conceivably call a constitutional
convention.
If you don't think that a constitutional convention
in the age of Donald Trump is the biggest
threat out there for African Americans, women,
and gays, you're dreaming.
The problem for all these groups, and the
identity groups, and the people militate for
their rights, has to be seizing and holding
institutional power.
My book, it's available on Amazon.com, they
take Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and
I take bitcoin... in the book, the premise
of the book is you cannot help anyone in American
politics if you do not hold offices.
When you hold offices that you can make laws,
and especially you can make sure that they
get enforced.
Because republicans control so much in congress
and the state legislatures, we have a constitutional
right to abortion in this country.
That was a product of the women's movement.
There are places in America where you cannot,
or a woman cannot de facto exercise her constitutional
right.
That's because of the republican party.
There are states now where they're trying
to roll back the voting rights of African
Americans.
Through gerrymandering, and through fiddling
with the opening hours of poll stations.
There were states where cities had passed
progressive legislation for gays and it's
been overturned by right wing governor and
state legislature.
If I'm thinking politically, and I'm worried
about these groups, the first thing I want
to do is to help the Democratic Party defeat
the Republican Party in all of these places.
Not fighting the good fight in California,
or in Washington DC, or New York City, but
fighting the good fight in the middle of the
country, which is where power gets determined
in this country right now.
With swing states, and also states the republicans
control.
To do that, one needs a message as a party
that speaks to everyone in the country.
That lays out basic principles and a vision
of the country that everyone can see themselves
in, and the thesis of the book is that identity
politics as currently practiced is preventing
liberals, the left, progressives, the Democratic
Party, however you want to describe that side,
from holding onto institutional power and
actually being the change they say they seek.
And how did that happen?
There was a time when it was possible to talk
about equal rights for these groups, civil
rights movement, the women's movement, gay
rights movement, without using the word identity
at all.
You talked about social justice.
Then something happened.
The word identity, the concept of identity
entered the American language, and politics
was no longer a question of being committed
to a cause affecting people out there, but
became a species of self expression.
I am expressing my identity by getting involved
in this issue, or that issue, and I'm focused
on politics only because of my identity, and
the point of that is: I need to speak truth
to power.
I need to call people out.
I've got to fight the power.
When in fact the point of politics is to be
the power.
Identity movements have put themselves into
a state of, at the moment, a kind of frenzy
that defeats this very practical purpose,
and two things happen, and then I'll be done.
One is that a radical rhetoric gets employed
that gets in people's faces in a way that
is not helpful.
Black Lives Matter, which laid out a call
to the conscience of anyone with a conscience
in this country, ended up breaking up meetings
with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Suicide.
But the other point, and this is where we
come to free speech, is that if your politics
are wrapped up with your definition of yourself,
it gets very hard to have a political discussion
because people feel that in disagreeing with
their opinion that you're challenging their
identity, and that's what's happened on our
campuses.
We're no longer detached enough to argue without
feeling that it's about us, and the big lesson
we have to learn it's not about us.
It's not about how we define ourselves, it's
not about intersectionality, it's not about
my sensitivities, it's about fighting for
justice out there for other people, and to
do that you need to retool.
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much Mark.
At this point we're gonna throw out to audience
questions.
We have a couple of roaming mics.
Put up your hands, roaming mic people, but can I
see some hands, who wants to speak?
So panel, as I said before I'm gonna take
a handful, don't leap in straight away, I'm
gonna grab a few and bring them back.
Who's first.
This gentleman here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Before we even get to that,
we're gonna stop this little rhetoric—
TOM SLATER: Actually, this is the point in
which you can make your point.
If you'd have raised your hand, you could've
made this question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Inaudible]
KMELE FOSTER: How about you sit down and then
just raise your hand and you can have your say?
TOM SLATER: You sit down, you raise your hand,
after this gentleman has spoken, you speak,
and then we address your question.
That's exactly the way in which we set this
up.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How about you listen what
I have to say?
TOM SLATER: We gave you an opportunity, take
a seat sir.
We'll be with you after this gentleman 'cause
he put his hand up first.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, free speech right?
TOM SLATER: Yeah, we want free speech.
That means allowing everyone to speak, not
just yourself.
Take a seat, we'll take this gentleman question,
then we'll go to you.
KMELE FOSTER: Sounds like you'll be second,
I think that's pretty cool.
TOM SLATER: Exactly.
KMELE FOSTER: Second is fine, yea?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Alright.
TOM SLATER: This gentleman here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Those of us who favor free
speech have the smartest, most articulate
people on our side, as we can see.
[Audience Laughter] Yet, we have been on the
losing side both on college campuses regarding
free speech, and in the country regarding
political power.
Why?
TOM SLATER: Very good point.
I'm now gonna take this gentleman here, who
did take a seat.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don't need a microphone,
thank you.
How do you expect to embody an identity that
you’ve never lived in?
Now Kmele, as a black man, you have identified
with being a black man most of your life,
but how do you de-racialize yourself when
you've seen the numbers, you know that—
I hope that you know, that in the state of New
Jersey, black people make up about 12% of the
population, yet there's a 12 to 1 ratio of
blacks to whites in prisons. Uh, Bryan—?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (off screen): [Inaudible]
of black people make up the prison system.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bryan,
How do you really say that the left and the
right are both equal, but Trumpism started
out with Trump saying that all Mexicans are
rapists and need to leave this country.
So I'm not understanding how you want to dis-identify
us when our identities are what kind of make
us now, us being black men who are targeted
because of the color of our skin.
We're not saying that our blackness has to
share the same ideologies, we disagree now on politics
and liberalism, I can tell, I've seen some
of your interviews, that I won't speak of,
but we differ greatly with our ideologies,
and that's not because I'm black and you're
white, we're both black men.
How do we stand with this making college campuses
unsafe spaces, how can any of you, how can
anybody in this room truly be fine with becoming
an unsafe space, the notion of unsafe should
not enter anybody's mind.
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much.
I think at this point I want to bring some
more people.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: No actually, you're not running
this meeting, so I'm gonna take some more questions.
Who else wants to speak?
We'll have one over here, yes.
That's exactly how this is working, can we
get a microphone to this lady, please?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My comment is based off of—no,
I’m fine, thank you [refuses microphone].
I don't need it, I think I'm loud.
You talked about identity movements, and ... America
is built off the backbone of slaves, correct?
This country, the entire, like—everyone
has their own identities.
The fact that we have Columbus day is because other
white people felt the need to have their own identity.
The reason that people are so mad at alternatives like affirmative action is because white people see—
an example, let's say [Inaudible/Crosstalk] right.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Inaudible/Crosstalk]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: More white women benefit
from affirmative action than black women,
than any black people in the entire country,
but a black child who has the same grades,
GPA, SAT scores as another white child will
then be looked at, if he gets picked into
the school, they'll say it's affirmative action,
but no one says anything about the 60% of
students that have a guaranteed spot to go
to that school because their parents went there.
Everybody has their own identities, and the
best way that people benefit from it is having
other people as “the other.”
When there there's an “other,” other people
benefit.
But we can't sit here and pretend that if
we throw away all our identities, it'll make
a difference.
I'm Pentecostal, I'm Haitian, my parents are
immigrants, but I still have to identity with
the fact that I'm a black woman living in
American and I have certain privileges.
For the fact that I'm a straight black woman
in America, I do not face the same consequences
that cisgendered women in this country face.
I do not feel like the same pain that other
people like Muslim women in this country feel,
because I'm Pentecostal.
You have no right if you are not a part of
that religion to look at someone else and
tell them that they are oppressed, it is not
your place, to tell someone in their own religion
that they are oppressed.
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much.
Point well made.
If there's no one else, anymore, anymore at
this point.
There's one there just right next to you,
and then we'll bring it back.
Yes, hi.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I guess my question slash
statement is: how can we say it's not about
intersectionality or about identities when
for certain people they don't have the privilege
of just turning their identity off.
I can't turn off the fact that I'm black,
I live in this body every day.
So I feel like to tell people that it's not
about their identity, they have to separate
that aspect of it from their emotions and
how they feel about things, almost is like telling
someone to ignore their life experiences,
because ultimately that's what they're experiencing
every single day in that body, in that color
skin, in that gender, in that sexuality—regardless
not necessarily identity is visible, but in
terms of people who have visible identity
it's very hard to tell them, or expect them
to erase that identity, or separate that from
the way that they view certain politics or
experiences, because honestly that's like
telling somebody that they didn't experience
what they did experience.
If I experienced racism today, and it was
based strictly on my race, I can't sit tomorrow
and say racism is a problem, but I'm saying
this not because I'm black.
I don't know, I just feel like it's very hard
to separate identity from politics when people
are forcibly within their identities.
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much.
I'm gonna come back out guys, but right now
there's plenty there so I want to bring back
our panel on it.
So Kmele, do you wanna kick us off?
Respond to anything you've heard or any questions.
Particularly posed at you.
KMELE FOSTER: It's very challenging to have
a conversation like this, there's a lot of
threads that have been opened, and I'll try
to be both succinct, and sort of broadly responsive
to the things that have been raised here.
I think one of the fundamental challenges
that we have in this country is that while
we all agree on the value of free speech,
in a very metaphysical sense we talk about
it in the same high-sounding language, but
we don't mean the same thing
when we talk about free speech.
I don't know that most of us really have an
appreciation for what speech protections are for,
and what they ought to be accomplishing.
The notion that, for example, hate speech
is not free speech is wrong.
Hate speech is in fact protected speech.
In fact, hate speech, legally speaking, is
not a thing in the United States of America.
It's not a category of thing, it is in fact
incredibly difficult to get people to agree
on what hate speech is, and I think this an
important distinction to make because for
so many years in this country, and I'm pointing
to the 1960's in particular, speech protections
were used by minority groups who were fighting
for civil rights, and it was essential for
them to be able to secure those rights in
order to advocate.
The reason why Martin Luther King for example
wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail,
from a Birmingham Jail, is, because he was imprisoned for, effectively, violating speech codes.
Handing out fliers in the wrong spot.
All of these various things.
I think this is something that we don't necessarily
understand.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (chanting): Black lives matter!
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Black lives matter!
Black lives matter!
KMELE FOSTER: This is interesting, let's give
them a second.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Black lives matter!
KMELE FOSTER: Has anyone disagreed with that?
Has anyone disagreed with that principle?
Have you ever gone some place and had someone
scream "black lives matter" and had someone
respond with that's not true?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, quite a few times.
KMELE FOSTER: They said that's not true?
Well guess what, none of those—no, no, no,
check this out.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: When you say all lives matter
you discredit the fact that black lives matter.
KMELE FOSTER: Can I finish?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): Yea like for real, I am with everyone trying to respect freedom of speech,
there are are some people here—this is an opportunity
for us to really educate ourselves on what's
going on in reality.
And I'm going to let the panelists speak, but after
the panelists speak there is something that
I need to say, because when we talk about
identity, we need to understand that this
country was formed off of creating whiteness
and separating blackness, so we can't—separate—
no, no, no, no—we cannot separate our identity
from politics.
TOM SLATER: This is what's gonna happen, Kmele's
gonna finish his point,
we're gonna go down the panel.
KMELE FOSTER: We're gonna come back.
TOM SLATER: We're coming back, let him make
his point.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Inaudible]—history, I
don’t need you to say that black people
are dying, I don’t need statistics to say
that black people are dying.
KMELE FOSTER: Do facts matter? [Crosstalk] ... Do facts matter?
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): Yes they matter! [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Hey, hey, hey.
This is how this works.
If people shout, no one gets to express themselves.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who controls the facts?
It's the system.
It's the institutions.
Don't tell me about facts, I don't need no
facts to tell me that I'm in a state of oppression
because the state, and I don't need no Republican
or no Democrat to help me for my freedom.
'Cause [Inaudible] Hillary Clinton [Inaudible]
massive amounts of incarceration.
It's capitalism why our people are oppressed.
[Inaudible/Crosstalk]
TOM SLATER: That's a whole ‘nother topic.
How about at this: at point we let Kmele finish
his point.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): [Inaudible]
KMELE FOSTER: Can I respond to that?
TOM SLATER: We go down the panel, and then
we come back out.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: The more you shout, the less everyone
in this room has an opportunity to make their
point, and to listen to everyone else.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): [Inaudible]
[Applause] I'm sure you do, I'd value what
he was were saying if he'd put his hand up.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): It's colonialism! That's what it is!
KMELE FOSTER: Yeah...
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): It is colonialism!
It is the fact that you have one group of people control over another group of people. That's what it was.
It has nothing to do with anything y'all saying
up there.
'Cause what I heard was this constant thing
[Inaudible/Crosstalk].
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you sir, I agree with that. I'm done.
TOM SLATER: Kmele.
KMELE FOSTER: I wonder about the specific
point that I've made that one might dispute,
with respect to the data on police shootings
for example, and I wonder about that because
it seems odd to me for one to invest themselves
in a concept that they agree has been contrived,
and invented, right?
I suspect most of the people here would not
be particularly excited if Richard Spencer
was to walk into the room, and you might not
really want him to come here and talk, because
were he to talk about race, he would talk
about the fact that it's a source of pride,
the fact that he believes it's a source of
power, the fact that he believes that his
race is beautiful... The fact that one can make
those claims about whiteness and one can immediately
recognize just how retrograde and backwards
it is to talk about race in that way, and
that one can make the same claims about some
other race, and not recognize how retrograde
those ideas are.
What's retrograde isn't the embrace of whiteness,
it's the embrace of race.
I care about the things that you care about.
There's not a person in this room that thinks
people should be dying unnecessarily.
I care about mass incarceration, I think it's
deeply problematic, but I also know that if
the United States of America were to release
every brown and black person from prison today,
federal and state—
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): [Inaudble]
KMELE FOSTER: Can I finish my point?
TOM SLATER: We're gonna go—
KMELE FOSTER: If they were to release them
all, the United States would still be, and
I've made this point in a room full of conservative
leaders, making it important for them to get
it, that if they were to all be released from
jail, the United States would still be 5th
or 6th in the world in terms of its rate of
incarceration.
That's problematic!
If we want to fix this problem, talking about
it narrowly in terms of race is not going
to help us get to solutions.
We've been doing that for 3 or 4 years now
while Black Lives Matter has been very active
since Ferguson, talk to me about the federal
reforms that have been achieved.
There aren't any.
That's problematic.
I want to fix these problems too.
My concern is that disrupting conversations
like this makes it harder for us to solve
those problems.
TOM SLATER: So Bryan, respond to anything
you’ve heard.
BRYAN STASCAVAGE: Black lives do matter, that
is why I wrote the article.
I study political movements as my job, as
an intel analyst.
My job is to look into the group, diagnose
its strengths and weaknesses,
and at my old job it was to defeat it.
My new purpose is to try to help these groups
out, especially the ones in the United States,
and if you read the article you would realize
that my support for the movement is front
and center.
I've worked with police, I've gone on ride-alongs
with them, I've seen the world through their
eyes, and I've asked them what about the effects
of Black Lives Matter?
And they almost always say the same thing.
They've got good ideas, but when we start
saying listen, we don't think this one will
work, conversation over.
People stand up and start screaming.
Black lives do matter, but my criticism of
the movement was to try to help it so it could
be more effective, which means distancing
itself from extremist type rhetoric.
Extremist actions, and the prediction that
I put in there was that if the Black Lives
Matter leaders did not do this, did not distance
themselves the extremists, did not remove
the leaders that were extremist, that their
image as a whole would suffer, and look what
happened.
Dallas happened.
The Dallas shooter had nothing to do with
Black Lives Matter.
Nothing to do with that movement.
How did it get put on it?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Conservative propaganda. [Laughter]
BRYAN STASCAVAGE: If the movement had a strong
anti-violence, pro-working, pro-ideas—it
would be in a much better place.
TOM SLATER: Thank you Bryan.
Now we're gonna go to Sarah first who’s
been waiting very patiently, and then we're
gonna go to Mark, then we're gonna come back
out.
Sarah, please.
SARAH HAIDER: I don't have too much to say
about Black Lives Matter in particular, but
I will talk about generally identity politics.
I'm not, I guess it depends on how we identify
identity politics, but I don't think movements
based on identity are necessarily corrosive
or destructive.
To dialogue, we know about in Civil Rights
movements that have been beneficial in many
ways, in feminist movements that have been
beneficial in many ways, I think when identity
movements go wrong is when they make claims
such as only I can know this thing, and you
as somebody who doesn't share identity have
no right to talk about it with me, or to challenge
my opinion, and of course that isn't to say
that experience doesn't matter.
Experience is extremely important and we learn
things from other people's experiences, particularly
from minorities, and people who are oppressed,
historically when we hear them we realize
okay, we'll I've been trapped in my own mind,
but now I know that this issue exists and
now I can focus on it and pay attention to
it, but that is empathy, that is sympathy,
that is progress.
That's how you move forward, is that you have
these conversations, and you hope that you
can reach this person, and you don't say I
have exclusive rights to this knowledge that
no one can share, that no one can know, because
if that was the case, we wouldn't be able
to build coalitions.
We've been able to move past a lot of retrograde
ideas.
We no longer think that women are unequal
to men in many ways, and Western society is
not perfect, but it's much better than it
was, and how did it get here?
It got here because feminists were able to
talk to people that were men, that didn't
have that experience and say look, here are
my concerns, and here's what's going on, and
some men, many men now, were able to say okay,
I understand what that means, I don't have
that experience, but I understand what that
means.
So experience absolutely has a role, but it
can't be the end of the conversation, because
if it is the end of the conversation then
there is no conversation.
There is no coalition, and that is the death
of progress.
So if we want to move towards racial progress
and end this injustice, and a lot of the points
that were raised I agree with, I think that
absolutely terrible the way that blacks have
been treated throughout American history,
and it's absolutely a stain on this country
that we still bare, but hey, how do we move
forward?
What is the best way to move forward is the
question that we should be thinking about,
and one woman did mention a little bit, she
threw out that who am I, or who is anybody
to say to a woman wearing the hijab, or a
Muslim woman, she didn't say hijab, but a
Muslim woman that she is oppressed.
I'm not telling any woman that she is oppressed.
I know that when I was Muslim, if someone
had told me that I'm oppressed and that I
just don't understand my religion, I would've
flipped them off, and I would've said how
dare you, because I would've found that to
be incredibly insulting.
So I don't think that's the way that you proceed,
but here is the reality with the way that
the religion works.
There are passages in the scripture that make
it very clear that women have an unequal space
with men.
There is a verse in the Quran that says a
husband has the right to discipline his wife.
There is no right for the wife to discipline
a husband, there's just a husband has that
right, and the verse just on it's own, forget
about whether someone feels empowered by it,
or oppressed by it, the verse on it's own
is misogynist.
The verse on it's own is sexist.
So if we're going to have conversation about
what we need to do with this religion, we
need to honestly recognize that that exists,
because throughout the Muslim history and
across the Muslim world, women's rights are
nowhere near where they should be, and the
first people to stand up against women's rights,
and against women's empowerment are religious
conservatives, and that's a reality and we
have to be able to talk about that.
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much, Sarah.
Mark.
MARK LILLA: I'm old enough... to remember
the politics of the late 60's and early 70's,
and I can tell you how this movie ends.
This movie ends with you accomplishing nothing,
because the only thing that makes America
change is power.
It's not about how you define yourself, how
you define your experience, or any of that.
If you want to protect yourself as a group,
you must have power, and you can not have
power alone.
That means you needs allies, and that means
you have to find a way of speaking, as Sarah
was just saying, that builds bridges.
You can not tell people simultaneously, “you
must understand me” and “you cannot understand me.”
You must become more political creatures.
You can talk about racial justice, social
justice, gender justice, without mentioning
your identity.
I don't give a damn about how you define yourself.
I want you as an ally to fight in the fight.
It's not about you, it's not about me and
how I define myself, it's about a fight out
there, so let's just grow up and start fighting.
TOM SLATER: Thank you Mark.
So, let's take some more questions.
Where are the roaming mics so I can see.
There's a gentleman with his hand up there.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: How's it going.
So Mr. Stascavage, you said in the beginning
you had three questions.
Being like, are you worried that people are
radicals, how many of you are radicals, and
then are you scared of radicals coming forth,
and most of us said we weren't scared of radicals
coming forth, and I didn't raise my hand either,
and I find that to be a mistake.
Because then I heard Professor Lilla talk,
and at first he said I'm not interested in
free speech, and I'm sure he did that to be
provocative and sexy and everything, and then
he comes forth and uses the classic, liberal
buzzwords: women, gay people, and black people,
and ... As a professor, he's in a position
of power, he is the one that I'm worried about
affecting the minds of young people coming
to their college and looking to develop their
political ideals, and having him as their
authority with these radical ideals that screw
... half the—I'm sorry.
Screw conservatives, screw the two thirds
of the governors, you said 24 states are conservative.
That means 26 of them, more than likely, are
democratic, is that so?
MARK LILLA: Democrats control 7 states.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, I apologize for my
ignorance.
If you see the rise of the anti fascist movement,
Mr. Stascavage, it's because there's something
feeding into this, and as you've seen, it's
grown even.
A lot of it, I feel, comes from there's someone
older in power telling these empty, blank
slate minds that it's okay to be violent to
gain power, to gain political means.
TOM SLATER: I think we've got the point. Thank you very much.
Let's come down here, there's just a bloke
in the middle over there with a purple shirt on.
Yep.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi.
I think I might try to distill some of the
things people said tonight, into an
interesting question.
I agree with Mr. Lilla that identity politics
hasn't worked for democrats or liberals, but
there is a place where it has worked.
It's worked in white identity politics, and
I'm curious why it is that liberal identity
politics has failed in this country, and yet
we have a president and political party that
can rally people around that type of identity
politics, and what do we do about that?
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much.
So I'm gonna take this lady here, this gentleman
here, and then we'll come back.
We will come back out again.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, my question is to Sarah.
I follow you on Facebook and I repost a lot
of the things, I mean I don't know if you're
writing all the stuff, but I know it's got
your stamp of approval.
I'm very interested, I'm reading Douglass
Murray's book, and I'm a book fan of
Maajid Nawaz, the whole thing.
I'm questioning a couple different things,
and I'll make it brief.
One is I think that the American experience
of the Muslim community is very different
than what's going on in Europe, am I correct
in saying that?
In general?
I just want to sort of ... Get your, sort
of, take on that, and I guess also there's
a sort of gray area, which I think really
connects to this identity politics thing we're
talking about, there's a sort of gray area
where if you criticize Islam, everyone says
you're an Islamophobic, your anti-Muslim,
and it comes down to it you really can't criticize
an idea, and there's this gray area where
people say, but you know my next-door neighbors
that are Muslims they don't want to kill,
how do you deal with that gray area.
Is it just sheer numbers that the people who
are Islamists are a larger percentage, I would
just like to hear your standard thing that
you say about this because I think it's very
interesting.
TOM SLATER: Thank you for that, and Joe would
you just pass to this gentleman here and we'll
come back.
We will come back out.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just something I want to
say quickly about, it's a statement you guys
can touch on it, just about identity politics.
Looking at the world in all social phenomenon
strictly through a racial prism I think engenders
a certain type of myopia.
I'm a Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx raised
in a single parent household, and it's like,
but what does that mean?
Should I think a certain way because of that?
I don't, and people like diversity as a thing,
diversity is a thing that we all speak of.
It's a value.
How many people care about idea diversity?
I wonder how many protesters here have read
Thomas Sowell, or John McWhorter, or Jason
Riley, but read it openly—to receive it.
So it's just something I wonder about, why
would you want to build an ideological prison
around yourself?
And I've heard people say that they can't
disconnect from identity, and I fear that
they wouldn't have it any other way.
TOM SLATER: Thank you very much.
We'll bring the camera backup to this point.
Just get things off, let's mix it up a little
bit.
Sarah, do you want to respond to the question
that was put to you.
SARAH HAIDER: Sure.
Well there's a lot there, so I'm just gonna
generally touch on some of the issues that
I think are really important when it comes
to immersion of Muslim populations.
There is a difference between the European
Muslims generally speaking and American Muslims.
American Muslims are much better integrated,
they're much more educated, they're much more
likely to support liberal values, they may
be the most liberal Muslims in the world.
So there's something that we're doing right
here.
Some of that might just be the kinds of people
that are coming in.
American system of immigration has been different,
we accept less refugees, less low skilled
migrants than Europeans do, so you'll have
the Pakistani doctors that'll come to America,
but perhaps that won't be the case in other
countries, or you're more likely to be able
to get in.
So that's a huge part of it, there's a certain
kind of person that's just coming in.
Then there's the idea that American society
is a melting pot.
I think my European friends just bristle a
little bit when I talk about this, but I do
think that the approach to immigration has
to entail that when someone's coming into
this country, they have an opportunity to
be fully American.
Not American with just a little bit different
kind of a citizen, but the same kind of citizen,
and this is why it's so important to stand
up for civil liberties of Muslims.
That is to say that Muslims can and should
be able to talk about their religion, they
can and should be able to express their rights,
their outrage, and share that with everyone,
and they should be treated like all the other
citizens because that helps them feel like
they're a part of this nation, and that their
destiny is tied to ours, and that this is
really a project that we have to take together,
that's a very important feeling.
Just historically, the way that immigration
happened in Europe where so many of them were
migrants, and so there was this idea that
they're gonna come in and then they're gonna
leave, it's gonna be a guest worker thing,
so there was always a little bit of an idea
that they're not here to stay.
So that's part of it, at least in England,
but I think overall you have to be able to
look at citizenship as something that anyone
can achieve fully.
Anyone can be 100% American, including Muslim
Americans, and that's a very important feeling
and I think that changes the way that you
feel about your duty towards the country,
and that affects the way that you might be
walking towards a more radical way of looking.
TOM SLATER: Thanks Sarah, and Mark I was wondering
if you might address the question from the
back as far as is it liberal professors who
are can of feeding this climate.
MARK LILLA: Well yeah, well I wanna put that
in connection with the other question, right,
because what I felt, correct me if I'm wrong,
behind the young man's comment was that ... Why
are you focusing on all of these groups and
leaving everyone else out.
What about everyone else who aren't part of
these special groups that liberals say they
care about ... And that can lead to a kind
of frustration and resentment, and that is
what, I'm not talking about you at all, but
that is the kind of thing that feeds a racism
that's already there and turns it into a kind
of white nationalism that you've seen in places
like Charlotte.
It feeds the machine.
Why?
Because it feeds a picture of the world, and
picture of this country of groups simply being
set against each other, and that works for
them, it does not work for us.
That's the lesson to be learned.
These kind of appeals work for them.
They cost us, and we need to think about tactically,
strategically, what to talk about, how, and
when.
Does that mean we're gonna be able to say
everything that we feel in our hearts?
Not if we wanna win.
Are there venues for that, right, but that's
precisely why in the book I talk about why
it's important to pull ... Let's say the white
working class that feel some of this resentment.
I grew up around a lot of these people, I
grew up a mile away from Eminem in Detroit,
and I remember the first day I hear the N-word.
It was July 23rd, 1967.
When the day after the Detroit riots started,
and there were kids across the street who
started walking up and down in front of the
house with baseball bats saying, "We're just
waiting for the Niggers," and I never heard
the word, and I asked my mother what it meant,
and she got furious with me for using it.
I know what people like that can be like,
and there's got to be a way to talk about
what we share as citizens, the principles
we share where everyone can see themselves
in it so we don't sink to this level, and
so if our strategy is to actually take power.
I want to give Steve Bannon a bad day every
day.
I don't want us making his lunch for him,
which is what he says we're doing by focusing
so much, and using on real social problems
in terms of identity.
I want him to have a bad day, I want to get
him out of power.
Him and his people.
Well how practically do you do that?
Once you start talking about that and thinking
hard, your tactics are gonna change.
TOM SLATER: Thank you Mark.
No, hold on.
Kmele, if you want to respond to anything
you've heard.
KMELE FOSTER: This'll probably be the most
unpopular thing I say all evening, so I'm
gonna double down and perhaps say two unpopular
things.
First of all, I'm not a progressive, I'm also
not a conservative.
My politics are decidedly Libertarian.
I believe in really kooky things like legalizing
all drugs, and not locking people in cages
for voluntary deciding to use drugs, or to
hire a prostitute, or whatever else.
I'm glad that's a popular idea.
I don't know that identity politics don't
work, I don't have a perspective on that.
I do know that they tend to obscure a lot
of the important underlying phenomena that
we are trying to discuss.
If for example, when I talk about mass incarceration,
it is surprising to you to discover that letting
all of the black people and the latino people
out of cages in this country, getting them
out of state and federal prisons would still
make the United States a world leader in incarceration.
You haven't been thinking about this problem
that you claim to care about in the appropriate
way.
If for example when I suggest to you that
the police aren't over-killing black people
relative to certain metrics, again, you're
not thinking about this problem deeply enough,
so you're not talking about solutions in a
constructive and sane way.
If you're smirking once I say something like
that, if it's immediately outrageous to you
that I would suggest these things, then again,
to have an ally who routinely talks to conservatives,
and is routinely advocating for reform, and
for change, to not recognize that the Charles Koch
organization was one of the first national
organizations working on criminal justice
reform.
Again, you're thinking about this in the wrong
way.
One of the first sort of prominent ones in
recent years during the Obama administration.
The last point I'll make is about the Trump
administration, and this is going to be deeply
unpopular here.
White lash, racial resentment as an explanation
for how we got to the Trump administration.
I don't know if that washes, and the reason
I don't know if it washes is because I don't
see it in the exit polling data.
The fact that white people voted for Barack
Obama twice and then decided to vote for Donald
Trump doesn't suggest to me that the reason
they voted for him is racial resentment.
I have never seen an exit poll that says that's
why they voted for him.
One can choose to vote for a candidate for
any number of reasons, I suspect that people
who voted for George W Bush for example the
second time didn't do it because they thought,
well he lied about weapons of mass destruction
and I really love that.
One can invent a narrative that makes the
people who disagree with them the most despicable
human beings on Earth, that doesn't mean that
narrative is true.
It's interesting that minority groups, Latinos
and blacks, voted for this horrible, despicable
racist Donald Trump in greater numbers than
they had percentage wise for any recent republican
candidate.
This seems important.
If these things are true, then perhaps that
particular factoid, which at this point is
received wisdom, it is gospel truth, when
actually what we're doing is we're taking
a particular belief that we have about other
people's beliefs, and we have concretized it,
we have turned it into a physical object.
It is this talismanic thing that we know,
we don't even have to debate it, and I asked
repeatedly in various contexts, bright people
who talk about politics on a regular basis,
what are you latching on to, Van Jones, when
on the night of the election having seen zero
exit polls you say well what happened is a
“white lash."
Maybe, but you'll have to show me the evidence.
TOM SLATER: Thank you Kmele.
And Bryan, hold on.
Can we go back down for the final points in
a second, but first we'll hear from Bryan.
BRYAN STASCAVAGE: So to answer your question
about antifa, or ANTIFA, or however to explain
it, I've talked to, I've actually debated
a professor who was an acknowledged anarchist.
It was at a community college in Connecticut.
This individual actually was a professor of
one the quote-unquote elite liberal art schools
in New England.
There's a couple of secrets about professors.
One, they're terrible debaters for the most
part.
And two, if you stand up to them and you argue
back with them, it's a learning experience.
This particular professor went through the
whole gambit of calling me a Nazi, and a racist,
and all these things, and I looked at him
square in the eye and I said, "The difference
between you and me is that you wanna force
people to your beliefs, I'm trying to convince
them," and he had no response to that.
And that's what it comes down to.
In terms of diversity in opinion, that is
a great point.
There's a funny thing that happened from the
1970's to today, which is the share of professors
at university's, especially elite universities
who are conservative versus liberal, and this
is what happened.
The diversity movement out of the 70' came
forward and said we need to have more diversity
at campus.
More diversity of backgrounds, and universities
were like, that's a good idea.
If we fast forward from the 1970's when conservative
professors are about 40 to 35% of the campus
to today, in elite New England schools it's
at a 28 to 1 ratio.
What happened?
Universities more than likely waited for the
conservative professors to retire, and replaced
them with white women.
And a couple of diverse candidates.
Now you have campuses that are almost 100%
one ideological point of view, and you wonder
why these echo chambers are pumping out crazies.
TOM SLATER: Thank you Bryan.
SARAH HAIDER: Can I add something?
TOM SLATER: We've got very, very little time
left, I'm gonna grab three points on the floor,
then I'm gonna bring it back for final points.
I want 3 people who haven't spoken before,
and I see there's a lady with her hand up
in the back there with hand up, glasses, just
there.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [Inaudible]
I'm too English for this, I'm sorry.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm not interested in microaggressions,
I am interested in macro-aggressions, and
what people are responding to in this room
is structural inequality and institutional racism.
When you say Kmele that race is, I'm sorry,
is an invention that's true, it is inventive,
but it doesn't make it any less real.
Wednesday is also a social creation, and 9
AM is a social creation, but if I don't show
up at work at 9 AM on Wednesday, I would be
fired and that too is very real.
TOM SLATER: I think that's a really strong
point, I just... [Crosstalk]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, no, no, no, no.
I am the single organizer of the faculty of
this campus, I'll say something about structural
inequality and racism.
TOM SLATER: Briefly please.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: 3.9% of the tenure track
faculty, which is to say the people who actually
have academic freedom, are black, in a state
where well over 13-14% are black, and yet
the people who are adjuncts here, who are
paid like lettuce pickers, $5,000 a class
who have no access to health insurance, and
where there is no academic freedom, that is
where you have people of color well overrepresented
in their numbers.
You have 2.6% latino faculty who are tenure-track
who have have any kind of protections.
I am not here to defend the Democrats or the
Republicans, they at bipartisan level and
have forced it upon us, this absolute exchange
of wealth from working class people to the
rich, and what people are responding to is
imperialism, what people are responding to
is the fact that 40% of black children in
this country live in poverty, we are responding
to the fact that you feel comfortable [Inaudible].
TOM SLATER: A point well made.
Point well made.
No—I want to get two more people in.
There is a gentleman over here who’s had
his hand up for a very long time and has been
very patient, thank you.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): People are
responding to real racism, real class inequality, real misogyny—
TOM SLATER: Please let this gentleman speak.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): —not a week goes by without a black trans woman in this country getting killed.
[Applause]
TOM SLATER: Let's hear from this gentleman,
and then we're gonna come back.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is directed at
Bryan and Kmelle?
KMELE FOSTER: Kmele.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sorry.
KMELE FOSTER: Kmele, just like the girl's
name.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My questions are directed
to you guys.
Racial inequality exists in the United States.
We all know the statistics about the criminal
justice system, education outcomes, and housing.
We may disagree about how much is about culture
and personally responsibility, but obviously
some of this inequality is explained by prejudice,
and actually a survey by the General Social—basically
called the general social survey, from the
University of Chicago, found that 28% of white
Americans would support an individual homeowner’s
right to discriminate on the basis of race.
That's 28% of white Americans, and again this
is the general social survey from the
University of Chicago.
So my question is, how can anyone on this
panel say that identity shouldn't matter,
when people are treated differently in America
based on these identities.
TOM SLATER: I'm gonna bring this back to the
panel now 'cause we're fast running out of
time, and these gentleman from the police
here will shut me up as soon as we run over.
I'm now gonna bring the panel in for your
final points, just take a minute or two.
Just offer a final thought for our audience
here, and then we shall close.
So I'm gonna go down the lines, Mark if you
would like to go first.
MARK LILLA: I haven't' heard a single person
in the room tell me how you can change the
power structure of this country if you do
not win elections.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): We have to protest!
[Inaudible]
MARK LILLA: Protest will not do it, no one
is listening to you, no one is listening to
you in these red states.
You are—the only way a protest works, is if
you have people susceptible to your protest,
and those are Democrats, they are not Republicans,
they do not care about you. [Crosstalk]
Then you're useless. Then you will be thinking
that the word historical struggles are the
struggles of teaching assistants at Rutgers.
We're talking about, if you're serious about
structural racism in this country [Audience Shouting]
you want to seize power, it's the
only way to do it.
Welcome to the NFL, this is how it works.
You are just expressing your impotence, you
have a way of taking all this energy, all
this energy and actually take back one state.
If you could take back one state from the
Republicans and make them stop taking away
the rights of black people to vote, that would
be an accomplishment, go and do it.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: [Inaudible/Crosstalk]
TOM SLATER: Hold on.
MARK LILLA: You are not telling me how you're
gonna take power.
TOM SLATER: This argument can continue in
the bar afterward.
First of all, I want to hear the final points
from our panel.
Thank you.
Please take a seat sir.
Please take a seat, thank you, thank you.
AUDIENCE MEMBER (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Hold on—
MARK LILLA: Are you telling me that there
is no difference in the laws in those states
where a woman can't get an abortion and black
people are finding it hard to vote, no difference
in those than California, New York, you're
dreaming man.
You're dreaming.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Please, both of you, please take
a seat.
We are very close to the end of this meeting
and I'm very desperate for a drink, please.
Take a seat and we can move on.
Take a seat, please.
Gents.
I want to hear what our panel has to say,
and then we're gonna close.
[Audience Shouting]
We've heard from both of you.
We've had plenty of time for that.
[Audience Shouting]
You've made your point, you've made your point.
[Audience Shouting] I want to hear 3 points
from these guys, and then we're going to stop.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
[Audience Shouting]
We have listened, this is the thing.
[Audience Shouting] No one can listen when
everyone's shouting, that's what I'm saying.
No one can listen.
[Audience Shouting]
Alright, here's what I wanna do.
How about this, how about this, how about
this.
[Audience Shouting]
We gave as many as we possibly could, so now
I'm going to go to Sarah for a final point,
and hopefully I think the people will be considerate
enough to hear her speak, and then we can
carry on this argument in other formats afterward.
Sarah.
Please.
SARAH HAIDER: I'll just say one more thing,
I agreed with everything Mark had to say,
which is not that none of those injustices
exist, of course they exist, I agree they
exist, but how are you going to solve the
problem.
What are you going to do, just riot your way
to the White House?
That's not how it works, or protest your way
to the White House, that's not how it works.
You've got to change someone’s mind, you've
gotta get them to see your point of view.
I already see your point of view, but other
people don't, so how are you going to reach
them?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Listen to her, please.
SARAH HAIDER: That has to be a question that
you have to consider otherwise he's right,
you won't win, and then we'll have more Trump.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Thank you Sarah.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
SARAH HAIDER: So what is your solution?
What's your solution?
What is your solution?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Now, now.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
SARAH HAIDER: How does that change?
This is a democracy.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Guys.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
SARAH HAIDER: How does that change the vote?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Please.
Please.
We are so, so close to being out of here.
I want to hear Bryan's final point.
I'm enjoying it, but I also enjoy actually
being able to hear people, so I'm gonna go.
Sarah, you've got nothing else you want to
say, you've made your point.
Bryan, please.
Your final thoughts please.
If we just listen a couple of seconds, thank
you.
BRYAN STASCAVAGE: Democrats.
Democrats are in for a rude awakening in 2018,
aren't they.
The divisions in the party, quite apparent.
That being said, it's not that identity does
not matter, it's not that we don't recognize
that racism is an issue, or that bigotry is
an issue, the difference is simply about how
to solve the problem.
That's it.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Thank you Bryan.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
SARAH HAIDER: What are you doing?
TOM SLATER: Kmele, take us out.
KMELE FOSTER: One of the remarkable—
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: Hold on, hold on.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
SARAH HAIDER: Protesting is not enough.
KMELE FOSTER: One of the remarkable things
that's happened to me in the last couple of
weeks is I've hard the opportunity to talk
to a gentleman by the name of Michael Bell.
Michael Bell Sr lives in Kenosha, Wisconsin,
his son Michael Bell Jr was shot to death
by the Kenosha, Wisconsin police.
He was shot to death in front of his home
with his mother and his sister watching.
Michael Bell had blonde hair.
This was 8 to 10 years before Mike Brown was
shot in Ferguson.
Michael Bell is a remarkable human being,
I hope you'll go look for his piece in the
New York Times after this, just google his
name and you'll find it.
What's remarkable about Michael Bell is he
is not a man who today is filled with resentment
who believes that all police officers are
terrible or awful.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
KMELE FOSTER: You know who Michael Bell is?
I'm sorry.
No, no.
Michael Bell Sr is alive, his son Michael
Bell Jr was shot to death by the Kenosha,
Wisconsin police.
That was the beginning of what I said, you
probably missed it because there was a lot
of stuff going on here.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
KMELE FOSTER: I'm actually proceeding to a point if you'll allow.
We're almost done, I'll hang around for a
little bit afterwards.
The thing that is so amazing about Michael
Bell's story is that Michael Bell's father
was an aviation engineer.
What he was astonished by was that after the
shooting, within about 48 hours the police
had largely cleared themselves.
What he discovered is what any of you might
discover if you dare to look, that the police
often are responsible for investigating themselves
after something like this takes place.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
KMELE FOSTER: Michael Bell's father was successful
in getting a first in the nation law passed
requiring that in Wisconsin when these things
happen, they will be investigated by outside
organizations.
That has happened in the last 12 months.
His son was killed well over a decade ago.
It took a decade of work to do this.
He said the reason why this is so important
to him is because he wants to ensure that
no family has to endure this again.
Here's my charge to you.
Focus on policies that work and get results
for the specific things that you're interested in.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
KMELE FOSTER: What did I just—this is so
weird…
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
KMELE FOSTER: I think that working on particular
issues of consequence is a real opportunity
for us, and think Michael Bell Sr has the
right idea.
Getting that law passed is the right thing
to do, and I think it's the sort of thing
that one could replicate all across the country.
[Applause]
AUDIENCE MEMBERS (shouting): [Inaudible]
TOM SLATER: If we could have a round of applause
for all of our speakers please.
Thank you all so much, please come and speak
to us again with Spiked, with Spiked US, doing
the Unsafe Space Tour, tell us what you think.
Our friends at the IHS are interested.
So please do that, and of course some of the
speakers will be hanging around if you want
to have a chat with them afterwards.
Thank you so much everyone.
