Glenn Loury: Race, Racism, Identity Politics, and Cancel Culture | Lex Fridman Podcast #285

I hate affirmative action. I don't just disagree with it, I don't just think it's against the 14th Amendment, I hate it. The hatred comes from an understanding that it is a band-aid, that it is a substitute for the actual development of the capacities of our people to compete. They wanna tell African Americans, uh, pat us on the head, "Uh, we're gonna have a separate program for you, we're gonna give you a side door that you can come in to." That doesn't make us any smarter, uh, i- it doesn't make us any more creative, um, and it doesn't make us any more fit for the actual competition that's unfolding before us.

The following is a conversation with Glenn Loury, Professor of Economics and Social Sciences at Brown University. He is one of the great minds and communicators of our time, writing and speaking about race and inequality. I highly encourage you to listen to his show on YouTube and Substack, simply called The Glenn Show. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Glenn Loury. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech I think is the greatest speech in American history. If I may, I'd like to read a few words of it.

Sure.

And, uh, ask you a question about this dream. "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today."

Mmm.

First of all, damn. I mentioned to you offline, I immigrated to, to America, and this is why I love this country. This is one of the great speeches that represents what this country is about.

Yeah.

So, what is this idea of equality, uh, that we should strive for as a nation, this, that all men are created equal? What does that mean to you, this equality?

Well, if we put this in historical context, King is speaking in 1963 when he gives that speech. It's exactly 100 years after Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation declaring the enslaved people to be free. They're not yet citizens in 1863, but the end of slavery is, has become the position of the federal government when Lincoln issues that Emancipation Proclamation. So, putting it in context, enslaved people, 4 million or so African-descended enslaved people, how do they become citizens? How, how do they become, in this, uh, status of subjugation and domination and stigma and exclusion, how do they become citizens? Uh, it seems to me that that's the, that's the s- the heart of it. The, the equality that King is talking about is an equality of status as members of the nation, as free and equal citizens within the republic. Now, I think it's really important to understand that slavery was not merely a legal order, but it was also a social system that had the symbolism, uh, attached to it. They had a big journey to make from their subjugated status as serfs, as landless people, as uneducated, unfit for citizenship, really, in the minds of many. So, I think that's what, in 1963, 100 years later, that King is appealing to, this idea that when Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, writes these words, "All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights," he didn't, Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, didn't have in mind when he wrote those words the people who were slaves. But by the time you get to 1963, King is invoking this idea, all men, and of course he means all persons, he doesn't only mean men, he means men and women are created equal. Um, h- he wants this idea to be embraced by the country in reference to the descendants of the African slaves. That's his dream. That's his idea. The legacy of slavery would be erased, uh, that, that the, uh, position of African Americans would be equalized within the political community which is the United States of America. Th- that's my sense of it in any case.