The Left insists that America is plagued by “systemic racism,” especially from the Right. But Glenn has 2 stories that disprove this narrative and suggest that the Left is actually creating the racial divide. First, Glenn and Stu review what happened when author Coleman Hughes told The View that “colorblindness” should still be the goal. Then, they dive into the leftist fallout that a researcher faced when he decided to publish a scientific report that disproves the narrative that our police system is racist.
TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Put yourself in this scenario. You're on The View. Okay?
STU: Yes. You've been on The View.
GLENN: I have been on The View. I have. I have. So you're on The View. It's Easter Friday. Joy says something to you. Your response is?
STU: Shut up, Joy, you fat witch.
GLENN: No. No. No. That would not -- again, it's Good Friday.
STU: And Whoopi, you too, you old hag.
GLENN: Okay. No. That's not.
STU: Not the way to do it. We shouldn't do it that way on Good Friday. That's what we're trying to tell people.
GLENN: We probably shouldn't do it on average Wednesday, either. You know what I mean?
Probably shouldn't do that --
STU: That's true. I will say, my response is somewhat close to what you said, when you were on the -- when you were actually on The View.
GLENN: I think I was completely --
STU: Well, maybe in the aftermath.
GLENN: No! Wasn't -- yeah, in the aftermath. I think I tried to be nice the whole time.
STU: Yes. Certainly off the air -- we had that type of response at one point or another.
GLENN: Well, I don't know about that. That would be wrong of me.
There was a guy though, on The View. That I think we should play. That does demonstrate how people better than us actually respond.
STU: Yeah. This is Coleman Hughes, who is -- he wrote a book recently, which is a great book. It's about basically in defense of colorblindness.
Hey, maybe we shouldn't abandon the idea that colorblindness is the goal here, guys.
I can't believe you even need to write a book about this. He did, and it's very good.
And he went on The View. And, of course, they had to give him the ad hominem, charlatan question. Which is what you would expect, 100 percent from The View. When just praising the idea that we would be colorblind, this is the question he got.
VOICE: Your argument for colorblindness, I think, is something the right has co-opted. And so many in the black community, if I'm being honest with you, because I want to be. Believe that you are being used as a pawn by the right, and that you are a charlatan of sorts.
VOICE: He's not a Republican.
VOICE: You said that you were a conservative.
VOICE: No.
VOICE: No, you did. You actually said that on the podcast you did two weeks ago.
VOICE: I said I was a conservative?
VOICE: Yes. Yes, you did. So -- but my question to you -- my question to you is, how do you respond to those critics?
VOICE: Those critics.
GLENN: Okay. Stop. Stop. Stop right here.
STU: It's not her.
GLENN: Stop. Shut up you fat witch, does seem to be calling out to me for his response, you know what I mean?
STU: Right. And it wasn't Joy.
GLENN: Yeah. No. No. No. Then just buried deep inside of me, hearing that question, phrased that way. Shut up, you fat witch does seem to be an option.
STU: And what we're trying to say, on this day, that's the wrong option.
That's not what you should do. It would feel good in the moment.
GLENN: Right. You are only human.
I don't think even though Jesus was part human. I don't think that was an option that he felt.
But you, me, probably would feel that way.
But here's how he responded.
GLENN: I think it's very important. The quote that you just pointed out, about doing something special for the Negro, that's from the book, Why We Can't Wait, that I just mentioned. A couple paragraphs later, he lays out exactly what that something special was, and it was the Bill of Rights for the disadvantaged, a broad class policy.
VOICE: But he also says, you must include race.
VOICE: Yes, he does.
VOICE: Okay. Well, everyone should go read the book, why you can't wait. Let's not get sidetracked by that.
I don't think I've been co-opted by anyone. I've only voted twice both for Democrats. Although, I'm an independent. I would vote for a Republican, probably a non-Trump Republican if they were compelling. I don't think there's any evidence I've been co-opted by anyone. And I think that that's -- that's an ad hominem tactic people use to not address really the important conversations we're having here. And I think it's better -- and better for everyone, it we stuck to the topics, without making it about me with no evidence.
VOICE: But I just -- I want to give you the opportunity to respond to the criticism.
VOICE: I appreciate it. There's no evidence I've been coopted by anyone. I have an independent podcast. I work for CNN as an analyst. I write for the free press. I'm independent in all of these endeavors. Is nobody is paying me to say what I say, I'm saying it, because I feel it.
STU: Hmm.
GLENN: So what he's saying there is, shut up, you fat witch.
I think that's what I heard. I think that's what I heard, just in a very nice way.
STU: Yeah. And he's -- he's good at just dismantling it with reason.
There's no evidence, this guy has been co-opted by the right.
These are arguments, we all used to agree on.
Outside of the KKK. If you weren't wearing a white hood, most people would say, hey, we shouldn't focus on skin color that much.
And now, 50 percent of the population, or at least 50 percent of our major political parties, have embraced an idea that we should only focus on race and gender and other immutable characteristics.
GLENN: And re-separate. Right.
STU: Yeah. It's horrific, that that has happened, under all of our watch at least if you're on the left. You've let this happen. And you should be on the side of Coleman Hughes and pushing back against it, and there are very few that are.
GLENN: You know, it's amazing to me, that the Democrats get stuck in about 1968.
You know what I mean? It's like they just stopped seeing new things. You know what I mean.
It's just like, well, you know what, that's why blacks should be able to go to school with whites.
And you're like, yeah.
Okay. We've believed that for now, 40, 50 years.
STU: Even longer.
GLENN: We've been on that. Yeah. We've been on that train, you know, white people.
Again, there are still some Klan members out there. That don't agree.
But there's also Joy Reid.
STU: Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing.
They have decided. Oh. The 1960s.
Hey, blacks should be able to go to school with whites. The left has reversed that. They now say they should have safe spaces away from whites. They've legitimately gone the exact opposite way. And they're acting as if we're the crazy ones.
GLENN: I know. I know. And we learned this -- my generation, I'm the last of the Boomer generation. Last year. And I grew up in a time, where I didn't see color. We didn't do that. You know,, I mean, it's not -- yes.
STU: They were people.
GLENN: When you're in a bad section of town, bad section of town, you might look over your shoulder.
Oh. Is that because it's black!
Why?
Because I said a bad section of town?
You all of a sudden assume that it's a black neighborhood? Here's the racist here. Who is the racist here?
You know -- you just don't do that.
And we have gotten to a place. Or we were at a place. To where we wanted to see people for the content of their character.
Thought that was right. And in many cases, that's the way we judged the world.
And it's as if all of these radicals, as if 1970. 1980. 1990. 2000.
2000 -- well, 2008, I think was the end of that.
I mean, it's like none of those years happened. Like all of the things.
All of the progress we made, didn't happen.
We're still in 1965.
In what world? In what world?
STU: Yeah. No. It's true.
You see the way these people retreated. Another interview that happened. It was a speech, I think. It was part of the free press. Which Coleman Hughes actually mentioned in that clip. They interviewed a guy who did a study -- an academic who did a police study against blacks. And the study came out in an interesting way. Not the way the media believed it would come out. Now, the man who is speaking, I don't have his -- I misplaced his name. But he's an African-American gentleman, who is describing a study he did, in academic circles to talk about violence against African-Americans by the police. Listen.
VOICE: I collected a lot of data. We collected millions of observations on everyday use of force, that wasn't lethal. We collected thousands of observations on lethal force. And it was in this moment, 2016. That I realized, people lose their minds, when they don't like the result.
So what my paper showed, you'll see tomorrow. Some of you was, yes, we saw some bias everyday pushing up against cars and things like that. People seemed to like that result.
But we didn't find any racial bias in police shootings.
Now, that was really surprising to me because I expected to see it. The little known fact is, I had eight full-time IRs that it took to do this, over nearly a year. When I found the surprising result, I hired eight fresh ones, and redid it.
To make sure they came up with the same exact answer. And I thought it was robust. And I went to go give it. And my God, all hell broke loose. It was 104-page academic economics paper with 150-page appendix, okay?
GLENN: Jeez.
VOICE: It was posted for four minutes. Then I got a response. It doesn't make any sense. And I wrote back, how did you read it that fast?
That's amazing. You are a genius.
And I had colleagues take me into -- to the side and say, don't publish this. You'll ruin your career. I said, what are you talking about? I said, what's wrong with it? Do you believe the first part?
Yes. Do you believe the second part?
Well, it's the issue is, they just don't fit together. We like the first one. But you should publish the second one, another time.
I said, let me ask this. If the second part about the police shootings. This is a literal conversation. I said to them, if the second part showed bias, do you think I should publish it then?
And they said, yeah. Then it would make sense. And I said, I guarantee you, I'll publish it. We'll see what happens.
So it was -- it was -- you know, I lived under -- under police protection, for about 30 or 40 days. I had a seven-day old daughter, at the time.
I remember going shopping for her. When you have a newborn. You think you have enough diapers. You don't. So I was going to the grocery store to get groceries with an armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy.
STU: For just saying the truth and saying, hey. Maybe police aren't intentionally trying to commit a genocide on African-Americans. Something that I think everybody in their heart actually knows. But the evidence showed it was true. And because he published actual evidence about actual things that go on in our country, he had to live under police protection for months.
GLENN: Let me just leave it at this.
Shut up, you fat witch!