Is America’s Racial Reckoning Over? With John McWhorter

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Is America’s Racial Reckoning Over?”

Podcast: Conversations with Coleman
Host: Coleman Hughes
Guest: John McWhorter
Date: June 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features a candid, wide-ranging conversation between host Coleman Hughes and linguist/columnist John McWhorter about the shifting landscape of American race relations. Key themes include whether "wokeness" has peaked, the evolving political alignment among Black Americans, the impacts of immigration on Black grievance narratives, new controversies over the Voting Rights Act and gerrymandering, and the cultural significance of diversity casting in major films.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Teaching Race in Higher Education

• Coleman previews his role teaching “Legacy of Slavery” in Austin, Texas, emphasizing a curriculum that includes both conservative (Steele, Sowell) and progressive (Coates, Hannah-Jones) Black authors.
  • "It's always better, I think, to do something constructive in being part of the solution rather than merely being a critic." (A, 05:19)
• The necessity and impact of widening the American lens on slavery to include global context, drawing from Thomas Sowell’s essays.
• Teaching as a means of bridging criticism and action.

2. Personal Journeys Out of “Default Liberalism”

• Coleman describes how reading McWhorter’s “Authentically Black” empowered critical thinking on race dogmas.
  • "It gave me permission to actually think about all of the racial narratives I was being surrounded by in an intelligent way." (A, 08:14)
• McWhorter reflects on his intention to provoke whole-philosophy debate beyond affirmative action:
  • “I wanted to show that... I have what I might call a whole philosophy on race and it's not just about SAT scores.” (B, 08:58)

3. Are We in a Post-Woke Era?

• Both agree that the “abusive kind of wokeness” peaked around 2020–2021 and has since diminished, especially the punitive, excommunicative attitudes.
• Wokeness persists, but is now applied to new issues (notably trans rights, campus protests around Israel/Palestine).
• The demographic shift and diversification of American society reduces the centrality of Black grievance as the nation’s “main problem.”
  • “There are just too many other kinds of people in the country... it’s never going to be the way it was before.” (B, 13:01)
  • “The idea that America’s main problem... is that black people have never quite gotten what we’re owed, that’s really worn out at this point.” (B, 13:52)

4. Immigration’s Impact on Black Grievance Narratives

• Nicole Hannah-Jones’ observation that Asian immigration (enabled by civil rights reforms) paradoxically now lessens Black Americans’ unique claim to special grievance.
• McWhorter: Increased diversity dilutes white guilt and complicates affirmative action debates.
  • “It was gonna be harder for black people to present themselves as the grievance problem... That old model, it’s just obsolete.” (B, 19:12)

5. Black Support for Trump and GOP

• Anecdotes of Black men (Uber driver, McWhorter’s cousins) expressing satisfaction with America’s opportunity and supporting Trump.
• Changing psychology: Racism exists, but doesn’t define Black identity or political choices as it did.
  • “These black men are being normal human beings... my sense of self worth doesn’t depend on what Donald Trump or any white person thinks of me.” (B, 26:02)
• McWhorter views this trend as evidence of genuine progress and psychological health.

6. Has Wokeness Really Faded? Campus Culture Today

• Despite fewer headlines, “woke” campus culture persists, albeit now practiced by a vocal minority (~5-10%).
  • “It doesn't take 60% of people to create a new taboo.” (A, 35:41)
• The Gaza/Israel campus protests repeat the same passionate-minority dynamic that once propelled wokeness.
• Social norms still enforced by small but committed groups; most students are less radical, just intimidated into silence.

7. Campus Antisemitism and Free Speech

• Hughes and McWhorter discuss the campus response to antisemitism, the IHRA definition, and perceived double standards in hate-speech enforcement.
• McWhorter sees a failure by administrators to support Jewish students, contrasting how pro-DEI slogans would never be tolerated similarly.
  • "If three or four white students started chanting DEI has got to die... they would be physically removed... But Jewish students... are supposed to put up with what they were putting up with at Columbia..." (B, 41:18)
• Both note how anti-Israel activism has become a substitute for anti-American activism, mapped onto the post-’60s racial moral reasoning.

8. Voting Rights Act & Gerrymandering

• Examination of recent Supreme Court decisions about Louisiana, gerrymandering, and the rationale for “majority-minority” districts.
• McWhorter argues that, today, partisan gerrymandering is not motivated by racism, but by legitimate political strategy:
  • “It's not because they don't like black people. It's because they don't want Democrats to win.” (B, 53:58)
• Both question the eternal treatment of Black voters as a “special case” and lament the persistent 1960s narrative frame.

9. Diversity Casting in Major Films: Nolan’s Odyssey

• Both reflect on the debate around casting Black actors (e.g., Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy).
• Hughes has no problem with diverse casting; McWhorter frames it as a positive, necessary evolution:
  • “If we really are going to get past race, then in movies... we need to be able to make some adjustments.” (B, 64:54)
• Acknowledges that “teaching a lesson” is part of current wokeness, but this is acceptable — over time, perceptions change.
• On the reductio ad absurdum (white actor as Malcolm X), McWhorter is open but notes society isn’t there yet.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “No group of people should be trusted with total dominion over any other group of people.” — Coleman Hughes (04:01)
• “The era of a particularly abusive kind of wokeness... is past us. But the idea that woke is over... not necessarily.” — John McWhorter (11:07)
• “If you’re not successful [in Texas], it’s because you don’t want to be.” — Coleman’s Uber driver anecdote (22:13)
• “There is a lull now, but life is unpredictable, and who knows what might happen next?” — John McWhorter (36:03)
• “That old model, it’s just obsolete.” — McWhorter on Black grievance, post-1965 (19:12)
• “You had to check [Twitter claims about the Odyssey casting].” — Both correcting misinformation, highlighting social media effects (63:06)
• “We are more used to seeing two men kiss now than anybody could have thought 50 years ago... Same thing here [about race in casting].” — McWhorter (65:13)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:12] Teaching race at U Austin & curriculum philosophy
• [11:07] Is post-wokeness real? How "woke" culture morphed post-2022
• [16:19] Immigration, diversity, and the evolution of the Black grievance narrative
• [22:25] Black men moving right: economic optimism, Trump support
• [30:26] The persistence of campus wokeness and the “minority rules” effect
• [37:13] Campus antisemitism and speech double standards
• [52:11] Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering debate
• [59:31] Twitter, the Odyssey film, and the meaning of diversity casting
• [65:56] Should white actors play Black icons, too?
• [67:40] Episode close

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Tone & Conclusion

The discussion was intellectually intense but accessible, marked by skepticism toward ideological rigidity and a nuanced view of social progress. Both speakers value open debate and see hope in increasing diversity and generational change, but warn against allowing outdated frameworks to ossify our politics.

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For listeners who missed the episode, this summary covers the main themes, insights, and turning points—offering both a high-level roadmap and granular highlights of this thoughtful, debate-light, discovery-driven conversation between Coleman Hughes and John McWhorter.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest Today is John McWhorter. John is a linguistics professor at my alma mater, Columbia University. He is also a columnist for the New York Times. And most importantly, he is one of my personal heroes. Today, John and I talk about whether we are living in a post wokeness era. We talk about the trend of more black Americans voting Republican. We talk about how immigration from around the world has changed America's national conversation about race. We talk about the casting choices in Christopher Nolan's upcoming film the Odyssey. We talk about recent controversies surrounding the Voting Rights act and gerrymandering and much more. So, without further ado, John McWhorter, If you're like me, you've probably seen a recent headline and wondered, can the President really do that? That's why I recommend checking out the chart topping podcast yout Might Be Right. Hosted by former Tennessee governors from the left and right, Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam. It's produced by the Baker School of Public Policy and Public affairs at the University of Tennessee. And fun fact, the show's named after Howard Baker's principal. Always remember the other fellow might be right. Now that's a quote that Conversations with Coleman can get behind on youn Might Be Right. The governors tackle timely policy conversations with political luminaries like Al Gore and Judy Woodruff. If you need a place to start, check out their recent episode on whether There's Too much Money in Politics. Political spending enables expression and participation, but at what cost? As we approach the midterms, this is a timely and thoughtful discussion featuring Harvard Law School professor Larry Lessig and former chair of the Federal Election Commission, Brad Smith. Hear balance perspectives without the shouting matches found on mainstream news. Follow youw Might Be Right on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and tell them I sent you. Okay, John McWhorter, thanks so much for coming back on my show.

[B]

Hey Coleman, my hero. How are you?

[A]

I could say the same thing right back at you. I'm doing pretty well here in Austin, teaching my seminar course called Legacy of Slavery, being part of the solution to the problem I've been whining about for years about higher education being too slanted and unwilling to read people like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell. So in our class we read Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell. But we also read Ta Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah Jones. And I'm sure my students sort of know where my biases lie, but I do my best to give every writer their best possible Construal. And it's a really rewarding experience.

[B]

So I imagine this involves getting across to them that slavery did happen in just a few other places than in the transatlantic context, and that it was as horrific, if not more, in others, which I've seen you announcing lately on social media, which I think is a great thing. But is that something that you're getting across to them?

[A]

That's a big part of it. I mean, that that is conveyed in the Thomas Sowell essay we read called the Real History of Slavery. I'm sure you've read it. Many of my readers will be familiar. He starts off that essay by pointing out that, you know, we don't think of war or famine. When you hear those words, you don't think of only American versions of that. Right. You think of this as a global scourge. Yeah. Slavery. People just. Especially in America, we only think of it in the American context as whites enslaving blacks in one country in two and a half centuries. And that if we widen the microscope and take a global vantage point, the real lesson is not that whites are evil and blacks are victims. It's really that no group of people should be trusted with total dominion over any other group of people.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And. And that. That was a big deal when I. For me, when I read it, I don't know how old I was. Maybe it was 18 or 19. Because I, as someone who grew up in blue America, did view slavery as an especially and uniquely American sin. I don't know if I would have said it that way, but I had that impression. And that impression did work in my political subconscious, in a way.

[B]

Oh, yeah. It's easy to think that slavery is something that happened in the American south and that the people who were called slaves elsewhere. Cause I think there's a. Even as a blue American, you know that there was something called slavery in ancient Rome, but you figure really, those were house servants. They lived under different conditions. It wasn't the kind of slavery that happened here, where what happened here is something that only happened here. Yeah, it's very easy to have that impression. And you read vaguely, if you kind of read a little bit about East Africans and slavery, but you don't read enough to know that it was as much of a thing as what was going on on the other side of Africa. That's an invaluable thing for people to learn.

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, that's one of our readings. And in general, it's been. As someone that's been complaining about the state of higher education. It's really good to actually teach a course at University of Austin because it's always better, I think, to do something constructive in being part of the solution rather than merely being a critic, which is a lot of what I. And I think we do as writers and speakers. So I enjoy that.

[B]

I learned early on that. And it bothered me a little bit at first to be told this, but then I realized that they were right. It's one thing to be a critic, and you have to be a critic, but if you never have anything constructive to say, if you're not saying, here's what we should do, then, you know, there's another shoe waiting to drop. And in a way, it's a little inconsiderate and maybe a little cold. And so I always try to say, this is wrong. This is what we should do. And the answer is not just that we should go back to what things were like in 1895. But, yeah, that helps. And teaching is part of that. Do you like teaching? Is this your first time teaching?

[A]

So I. I taught this class for the first time last year, and I've come back this year, so it's my second time teaching, but same context. All of that is my first. My first time teaching in the. In the broader sense. I do enjoy teaching. I think it suits my personality in a way. I enjoy diving into the arguments someone is making and leading people through a discussion and hearing multiple perspectives. So I think all of it suits me.

[B]

Good. That's very good. Are you actually in Austin or do you do it remotely?

[A]

Yeah, no, I'm in Austin and I live here while I do it, because I don't want to take two flights a week from New York. It's just too much. Yeah. And it's nice to live in another place as well. Get outside of New York City. Um, so, yeah, I've been enjoying it, but it's. It's great to have you back on the show. I mean, it's. I'm not actually sure when the last time I spoke to you was.

[B]

Has been 1979. Yeah.

[A]

But I've been. I've been reading your columns in the New York Times. I've been watching your conversations, and there's, you know, I've now been reading you and following you, and, you know, I've said this to you many times, but you were very. Have been a very important part of my political development when I was sort of an unthinking default. Default liberal on all issues related to race, effectively, like a default blm. Supporter. I had never even seen an intelligent or sought out an intelligent criticism of many of the dogmas that I and everyone around me held. And so I didn't know it was really possible to have criticisms of those dogmas. It sounds ridiculous to say in retrospect, but it is actually true as a non, non political person. And then I read your first, it was your essay collection, Authentically Black, which is not the most cited of your work, but is really worth looking back at for people that have maybe read your more widely circulated books. And it kind of broke something in me in a good way in that I realized there, there were like, it gave me permission to actually think about all of the racial narratives I was being surrounded by in an intelligent way. And it was really, really important for me.

[B]

I'm glad Authentically was for that purpose because that was after I had written Losing the Race, which was thought of as the book that says that black students don't work hard. And that was the inevitable boil down of the book. And I wanted people to see that whatever you think of me, I have something to say beyond affirmative action. And so I gathered together those articles and I just wanted to show that, you know, I have what I might call a whole philosophy on race and it's not just about SAT scores and the like. And it kind of got around. It got more attention than I thought it would. And of course now all the articles are so dated. But I'm glad that I had that effect on you that Shelby Steele had on me. You know, my purpose was always, I want people younger than me to start opening up to thinking this way so that we can really have something going. And here we are.

[A]

Yeah. And so, you know, for me, that was at this point, that was like 10 years ago. I'm, I'm 30 years old now. Can you believe that? So finally. So a lot, a lot has actually changed in, in America since that time. Since that, you know, the political crucible that I came of age in was the crucible of wokeness and Trump won. And I now feel like we are just meaningfully in a different era. Right. We're in a, we're, we're facing a different set of problems, a set of problems that's re related and reactionary to the convulsions the country went through in, you know, between say 2014 and 2022. But, but we've like turned the page in a way, and I don't think I've talked to you about that or like sort of in the time where we can really say definitively we've turned a page, we're facing a new set of problems and we need to be talking and thinking about them, maybe differently. So I guess my first thing to tee up for you is like, how do you. Do you agree that we're in a. A post wokeness America, at least post this iteration of it? And how do you think we should be talking and thinking differently about the new challenges that we're facing?

[B]

Well, I think that the era of a particularly abusive kind of wokeness that permeated in particular academia and the arts starting in 2020, that era is past us wokeness is still very much in play in both of those institutions, but not in the nearly violent way that it was in the bad old days. But the idea that WOKE is over, that I see in social media, I would say not necessarily. If we're talking about a punitive attitude where you have an extreme leftist view about something, are not interested in engaging in reasoning, and are ready to interfere with the life of someone who disagrees to excommunicate or defenestrate. As I often said back in 20 and 21, that is still with us. It's just that it's applied to different subjects. It's exactly the mood of the campus protests about the Israel Palestine issue. If there had been protests against that. I hate sounding so old, but I am twice 30 at this point. When I was in college, there were protests about things like that. But it wasn't about breaking windows, it wasn't about spraying people, it wasn't about ostriches, it wasn't about breaking into a building and practically tearing it down one of the floors, as happened with Hamilton. None of that happened. The reason that it happened that way a couple years ago was because of the model of the new woke mood. And some of the exact same people were really the ones holding the cudgels. And so there's that. And also trans issues are complicated. They really are. It's at a point where on various aspects of the trans issue, I can't say anything yet because I'm not there. I barely know anybody who is. And you don't want to be glib about those things. But I would also say that it's obvious that the leaders of the trans movement, especially since 20, have taken on that prosecutorial anti reasoning attitude. And I hate to say that a lot of them are still doing it and they're modeling that on what they hoped would work in 2020 and 2021, which frankly, in terms of creating a racial reckoning Maybe there was a racial reckoning, but it would be hard to say here in 2026 exactly what it led to. And I think really what we need to be thinking about now is that the idea that America's main problem sociologically is that black people have never quite gotten what we're owed, that there's still a shoe that hasn't dropped, that's really worn out at this point. And a lot of it is because there are just too many other kinds of people in the country. I was thinking, actually just this morning before this interview about how when I was in college, really, to oversimplify, there were white people, black people, and a few Latinos. The Immigration act of 1965 had not led to a whole lot of college students of other extractions yet. And so I barely knew an East Asian, barely knew a South Asian. They just were not part of the equation. And now we have so many people with so many different kinds of problems, and it's never going to be the way it was before. And I find myself watching someone like Chicago's Mayor, Brandon Johnson, and he's clearly minted right. In the era of black power and root causes, the idea that no black person can really do anything wrong because of our history, and to me, and I think to an increasing number of people, he looks tinny now. He talks in a way that would have been considered very urgent and very Jesse Jackson Esque in 1982, it doesn't work now. He's becoming a relic of another time. I suspect he won't be reelected. And that type is gonna be ever rarer. We need, frankly, more cosmopolitan and frankly, more honest people as our black leaders. There won't be any one black leader but black leaders. And so that's where I think we am. It's gotten to the point that when someone comes along who thinks that we're still in the era where black grievance is something that a significant number of whites are ready to just lay down and change the rules for. I see that kind of person and I almost feel sorry for them because I can tell that they just don't know what else to do. They can't imagine going another way. But the noise that they're trying to make and the effect that they're hoping it's gonna have, it's not gonna work the way it did for previous generations. There's gonna continue to be things like Supreme Court decisions that limit the Voting Rights act or, frankly, practically exterminate it, try to get rid of affirmative action completely. Those things are going to keep happening, and they're going to be those of us. And I think I take the liberty of saying both of us are ones who are black and think that it's time for those sorts of things to happen. And there are going to be ever fewer black people who are afraid to say it. So we are in a new time. The2030s is going to be interesting in that way, because the Brandon Johnson's not to demonize him, but he's a very pure example. The Brandon Johnsons are going to have to find something else to do, and that's going to be hard for them.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, so it occurs to me, since I, a few weeks ago, assigned the 1619 project, or parts of it to my students. We read Nicole Hannah Jones's lead essay there, and one of the points she made sort of in passing was that it's ironic this is her speaking. Right. It's ironic and sad that Asian Americans would be upset about affirmative action, given that the only reason they're really in this country is because of the civil rights revolution of the mid-60s and what that did to immigration policy, opening up the borders and getting rid of the quotas that had. That had been in place for the past 40 years. And so sort of, how dare they turn on us African Americans when we're the reason they kind of got into this country? And it occurs to me, like, you know, she's, in a way, making a similar observation as you, but just having a different judgment on it, in my view. You can never get mad at a group of people that says, hey, we're being discriminated against. Like, we don't like it. To me, that's human nature, and everyone's allowed that. But. But in the end, it could be a very interesting development and not entirely predictable that opening up the country to immigration from the whole world had ended up maybe diminishing the African American claim on special grievance in a way that I'm not sure would have been predicted. Yeah, I mean, do you think that in the end that will actually soften the phenomenon of white guilt?

[B]

Yeah, I do. And I'm not aware of anybody who saw this coming in the 60s. I'm trying to think of an essay by, say, Bayard Rustin or something. He was smart enough to have thought of this. But, yeah, looking at what was happening after 1965, you could have known that there was gonna be. It was gonna be harder for black people to present themselves as the grievance problem. And of course, for many people, the idea will be we have a special lock on the grievance. We deserve it because of slavery and Jim Crow and redlining. And so the new people who come in need to understand that there's a black history and that therefore we are going to be given places over them. The problem with that is it's a way of thinking. And I don't want to be too mean about this, but I'm not sure those people are thinking about what it is to be a person in the present tense. And so are you really telling that Korean family that their child, and they are shopkeepers, they're not working at intel or something, they're shopkeepers and their child has an excellent dossier and doesn't get into the very top schools. And those parents who didn't even grow up here are supposed to understand that that's okay because black people and Jim Crow and redlining and maybe even slavery. And also, it's this idea. I'm gonna use Brandon Johnson again. Although, to be honest, I don't think Nicole Hannah Jones is immune from this. There's this idea that we are somehow kind of exempt from having to make tippy tippy top grades and really have the kind of dossier that that Korean kid did. And as I've written in various places, I genuinely believe that people like that, deep down, it's not overt. And so they get really angry when someone calls them one. But deep down, they think that if you're that good at school, then you're not authentically black, that there's something a little wrong with you. And therefore, why should we try to get straight A's? That's not what we do. And it's hard to cut through that because nobody sits around thinking that. And also, if you do think that, and I've heard exactly one black woman, a black undergraduate, actually say it, and this was at Berkeley 400 years ago. But if you do think it, you don't necessarily know it. It's just part of your. Part of your mental DNA. But there's that there. There's that part. But, yeah, there are too many people with a claim on grievance now, including poor whites. That. That old model, it's just obsolete. It's not that it's. It's unpleasant. It's not that maybe it shouldn't have been that way until about 1990, but it's obsolete. And I think there are a lot of people who are never going to be able to quite grapple with the fact that time has passed and it matters even Though racism still exists, that still too much time has passed to keep that old model going.

[A]

Yeah, I'm going to do the New York Times op ed page thing and talk about an Uber conversation I had literally yesterday. An Uber driver here in Austin. He's a black dude who is. He looks about 40, had tattoos, and he's from California and moved to Texas, and he was just kind of yapping at me a little bit about who he is and what he's about. So I came to Texas, I got a job in oil and fracking, and I sit in a truck and I, you know, oversee the fracking. And I made hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it's amazing out here, the economy is booming. He was just talking to me about sort of how successful he is, how much he loves Texas, how it's on the come up, and how I should move here because there's so much economic opportunity and.

[B]

Did he know who you are or did you keep.

[A]

No, no, he had no idea who I was. Yeah, he was just. I was just making small talk. He was just like, yeah. And I just bought this house. And he's just, you know, clearly a guy that's, like, winning a lot in life and pursuing. And he's like, yeah, you know, the thing about being in Texas is like, there's so much economic opportunity out here. If you're not successful, it's because you don't want to be. Right. And then at the end of the Uber, Uber drive, he says, and, you know, it's great out here. This, you know, so many Trump supporters out here. And I really love that. And he just. That's not really my beat, but. Yeah, but he just, he just threw it in there. Kind of apropos of nothing with no self consciousness or just.

[B]

And not knowing who you are.

[A]

Not knowing more interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was all part of the same vibe of, you know, to the extent that he is the type of black man that definitely voted Trump at least the last time and is part of the now undeniable trend of the past 10 years of more and more black men, in particular of that age group, voting Republican. Like, what does that represent? Does it represent? I mean, for me, psychoanalyzing him, it represents someone that has almost certainly experienced some racist incidents in his life. Just given the type of black guy that he is and how he looks. He was big, he was muscular, he had tattoos all over his body. Like, there's no way. He has zero examples of racism in his life. But his overall sense of life in America is like, man, there is so much opportunity to win here. I don't want to hear this whiny narrative that that tells me I can't succeed. That to me is the psychological profile of a guy like that, which makes a lot more sense in 2026 than it would have in 1966, but clearly is on the rise and rose subtly out of view, sort of despite the wokeness of the past 10, 15 years. I'm curious what you make of that trend, because many people denied it was a trend for many years. I think now it's undeniable. Something like 15% of Trump got like 15% of the black vote and over indexed among black men. You know, why is it black men rather than black women? And what do you make of that trend?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, many people would say that last time around part of it was that Kamala is a woman. But you know, actually I have noticed that among my cousins, especially under a certain age, voting for Trump is probably the majority. The last time I was with them, I was surprised that you didn't have to say it quietly. It was just considered an ordinary thing that you voted for him. I would say, especially among those who were less educated, but they didn't feel like they were dropping any kind of bomb. And my sense from people like them and other ones who I've, I've spoken to is that they think that Trump projects a certain kind of strength. They like that Trump has an almost standup quality of humor. I mean, ultimately what he is is a standup comedian. And they felt that he was going to work for America and they believed him about that. And I think it's pretty well known that I am utterly nauseated by every everything about Donald Trump. But I can very much imagine putting myself behind those guy's eyes that they would see him as a better choice than many Democratic candidates that are offered. And I don't think that that kind of thing is going to change because we hyper educated people in the circles you and I travel in are used to a certain tripwire sensitivity to things like that that is not as common out in the real world. And I think guys like that are going to say Trump is for me. And the thing is, although I would never vote for Trump myself, this is evidence of progress because, you know, most black people have experienced some kind of racism here and there. But there has been a really novel idea promulgated since the late 1960s by a certain crowd that now feels default. Like in the way that you felt about these things before you started kind of looking outside the bubble. And that is that passing incidents of discrimination, small incidents of racism that you may have experienced, the fact that you can look in society and see certain statistical discrepancies, usually small, but that probably can be traced to some sort of racist bias in a kind of abstract, Rube Goldberg way, that those sorts of things are as impactful and important and determining as the kind of racism that our grandparents experienced and ought to occasion the same kind of scowl and fear and aggression and a sense of your life as a beleaguered person. That's new. I suspect that no human beings anywhere on earth until what black people started being told in the late 60s were taught that and it is counterintuitive. It's not psychologically natural. And I think as things get better and better than a phenomenon like Trump, and he is, whatever else he is, he is a phenomenon. Maybe he kicked something into gear, which is that these black men are being normal human beings and thinking, sure, all white people don't love me. Sure, Donald Trump probably wouldn't want me to marry his children, but I'm interested in the candidate and my sense of self worth doesn't depend on what Donald Trump or any white person thinks of me. And that guy doesn't think of himself as particularly strong. It's not keep your chinny chin up. It's normal. And for this guy that you're talking about to say that so openly and casually, that's good because it means that he's a psychologically healthy human being instead of thinking that exaggerating is part of how you show that you're an authentic black person.

[A]

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[B]

She's performing.

[A]

But yeah, fighting through tears to ask me a question about affirmative action or something. This is like, so this is still the dominant culture on elite liberal arts campuses. You know, I recently read, I want to get your reaction to Tyler Cowan's column he wrote a couple weeks ago. I think he said in retrospect, maybe wokeness wasn't that bad because what has replaced it on the left now is perhaps a more violent and serious kind of politics in the sense that wokeness was a lot about the policing of language and about making a very big deal of very fine distinctions and crying because you asked me where I'm really from and it was more in the category of annoying rather than deeply harmful. And what it's given way to, at least this is Tyler's, one of Tyler's ideas is like it's given way to the politics of Luigi Manioni and, you know, killing a healthcare CEO, killing Charlie Kirk or at minimum, being disturbingly comfortable or even praiseworthy of those kinds of acts of political violence. You know, killing that Jewish couple in New York and all cheering for October 7th. Yeah, that's right. Cheering for an actual massacre. So isn't all of that, in a way, kind of worse than wokeness? Like, don't we want our complaints about microaggressions back?

[B]

You know, I never thought of it that way, that one of the legacies of peak woke is this theatrical embrace of violence and people actually engaging in it in a way that. Or with a frequency that they were not, say, 10 years ago. I think that social media and the ever burgeoning effect of it, the copycat aspect of it, helps. I don't know if this would be the case if we didn't have the phones, but we'll always have the phones. I think, nevertheless, that is one thing. But in terms of whether that kind of attitude has the hold on the arts and on college campuses that it once did, you're in as much of a position to know this as me because you were an undergraduate at Columbia not too terribly long ago. And my sense there, and maybe there are things that are said behind my back that would make me feel differently, but my sense is that that kind of student is the most vocal and the most scary, but that most of the kids in my classes are not thinking that way. And frankly, many of them kind of welcome that I'm the person who. One of the people who has stood against that sort of thing. And I also often hear from students after they graduate where they say there was such a, you know, it was all such a bubble. I was afraid to speak my mind. Thank you for, you know, that sort of thing. And I'm sure you have heard things like that from people. And so I don't know if it really has the stranglehold. And didn't you feel when you were at Columbia at that time that really, the sorts of things that you ran into, the sorts of things that you ran into with the Columbia Spectator, that was still one cast of student, rather than even most of the students out on low steps and walking around the campus, or did you really feel that it was a majority view?

[A]

No. So I remember specifically having a conversation with my best friend in college who was like one of the few openly conservative students on campus, and he was a Hispanic student from South America, and he had a just kind of like a immigrant conservative attitude, was anti Trump, like, very, very moderate. And so we were living this, like, every day, right? Trying to be these people having our views and being able to critique things and have conversations in close to peak wokeness. And we said, like, what percent of students do we actually think are woke? If we could agree on, Basically, we know it when we see it. And I think the number we came to was between 5 and 10%.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that is surprising. It's even surprising to remind myself of this in retrospect, that it wasn't that many students, and yet it really did determine the culture of the campus. And I think, you know, I don't know if I think it's Nicholas Nassim Taleb, but others have made this observation. There's a common misconception that it takes 50 or 60% of people thinking something to determine the culture. That's not actually how social psychology works. Right. It's, you know, 5 or 10% of people believe it strongly, and 60% of people are scared to challenge conflict.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah. Want to avoid conflict and maybe even suspect that those people are wrong. But they have a bit of moral authority that they can determine. They can change the whole culture. Right. And they can create new taboos that everyone else follows. That's really the key thing. It doesn't take 60% of people to create a new taboo.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And under that narrative, you could say that there was peak woke on college campuses and then a certain quiet period followed by the Gaza protests, which were based on that same sort of attitude. Again, it was a minority of students whose feelings were that passionate, but it determined what most people were willing to say and how administrators conducted themselves. There is a lull now, but life is unpredictable, and who knows what might happen next? But, yeah, so campus culture, one thing, as opposed to whether there are more people who are comfortable saying what they think. My impression in my discussion classes is that there are. But then again, they know who I am, and maybe they're less comfortable doing that in other classes. So. Yeah. Yeah. And that woman who you're talking about with the crying. I know her name. I mean, she is a stock character, and she's in. There's one of them in almost every audience, and she's a minority of the students. But watching that. That 60 or 70% are gonna think, I better just shut up about what I think. Yeah. They have a disproportionate effect.

[A]

Yeah. I'm curious how closely you've been paying attention to the response of college campuses to antisemitism, because this is a. It's a very tricky conversation for me to disentangle all of the concepts and. And walk the tightrope walk that I want to walk because on the one hand, I've always, you know, since I started actually thinking about politics as a human being, I have defaulted towards free speech absolutism and the idea that you can say whatever you want about anything effectively and the First Amendment should be the guidepost. On the other hand, colleges have enforced speech rules and speech norms related to racist speech and all. And to the extent that they do that, they should do it neutrally and with respect to everyone. Like, I don't, I don't think should be a case of special pleading for any group. So with all that said, you get. So I had Glenn Greenwald on my podcast who like free speech and anti Israel are really his two big overlapping causes at the moment. And so he'll point out that many colleges have at least nominally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Associations definition of anti Semitism. And the, the definition itself is actually good. And I think most, most people would widely agree on, but they give specific examples of what they believe count as anti Semitism and some of them go, go farther than I would go. So, for instance, saying Israel is a racist country, right? I think that's an incredibly stupid thing to say. I don't think it is bigotry to say it because I think even if it comes from bigotry, in many cases, I think you should be, it should be okay to call any country racist.

[B]

I would agree.

[A]

So that's one example. There are two or three others that would be past my line. So on the one hand you have folks like, like Glenn Greenwald and many others who would point to this as an example of the Israel lobby's overwhelming power to shape and punish speech on college campus. To which my retort would be, I agree those particular examples go over the line. However, we shouldn't divorce that from the actual context of what goes on on college campuses, which is that the pro Israel students are outnumbered by the anti, the spirited anti Israel students 10 to 1. And that has an inevitable impact on the actual felt power imbalance. Right? So the, all of these like pro Israel student groups, they're frequently getting censured and like disallowed from campus funding for, for, for, for clubs because the majority of students in the student senate or whatever, like arbitrarily deny them. Right? That's the kind of thing they face frequently. And you can go to fire.org and just find very recent examples of this on many campuses. And so that's the actual state of the power imbalance. The truth is you can, despite the IHRA definition being nominally adopted. You can write in student op ed at any of these schools saying Israel's a racist country, Israel is an apartheid state, and the level of social censure you'll face is like far less than the average pro Israel student. So to me, you can't separate those. I'm curious overall, what has been your view on how campuses have reacted to antisemitism and maybe include your view on what your view of the Trump administration and what they've done?

[B]

Well, to be honest, I think that I was very disappointed to see how hesitant campuses tended to be in truly directly condemning and disallowing, especially face to face abuse of Jewish students. And so free speech is one thing, but most conceptions of it say that it's different. If you're talking about serial abuse towards individual people, that's when you get beyond free speech. And from what I saw, and then of course, sometimes from what you saw actually reported, given, for example, the texts that were accidentally recorded from Columbia administrators at the time, the idea is that Jewish students should be able to put up with it because they are white and because Israel was a first world white nation, imposition upon, quote, unquote brown people. And so the Jewish students in a way deserve the kind of abuse that they took. But when that exists alongside a fact that we don't even need to wonder about, though, it's a hypothetical that if three or four white students started chanting DEI has got to die in the middle of a college campus, they would be physically removed from the planet after about 10 minutes. There would be no question about it. And so that's absolutely not allowed. But, you know, Jewish students are supposed to put up with what they were putting up with at Columbia just for week after week after week after week. I used to see it physically, Jewish students having to walk through lines. And so that was a very disappointing rhetoric because I think it took a lot of administrators a while to realize that thinking that students needed to put up with that because they were white people was especially an administrator was rather primitive and unfeeling. It shouldn't have taken them as long as it did to understand that. But in terms of the Trump administration, I don't think that Donald Trump himself has any particular interest in protecting Jewish people from abuse or protecting anybody from anything. I think he thought of it and his people think of it as just part and parcel of fighting wokeness. But the truth is something needed to be done because. And you know, one thing that surprises me sometimes is that I am, I'm a very Jewish adjacent person. I am friends with many Jewish people and more than a few of them have said to me that they have been surprised over the past few years at how deep the sense of Israel as a mistake is among so many writerly people. And I've often told them no. I mean, I've been in academia now for what, goodness, 36 years. And the idea that Israel should not actually be a nation, that it really shouldn't be there. Ordinary dinner table conversation among academics that I've known. It's not that all of them believe it and it's not that anybody would say it, pounding their fist on the table. And no pacific minded academic would wish that Israel would be blown off the map militarily and physically. But their idea is that it should never have happened in the first place. And they would be readily under the idea that blacks do that. Jewish students should be able to just cross that gauntlet every day because they're white and they can take it. They're the ones who are in power. That's perfectly ordinary. I vividly remember conversations like that at Berkeley. I remember conversations like that when I was a grad student at Stanford and, and I would just kind of keep my mouth shut because I figured I'm not going to die on that hill. But just perfectly ordinary. And we saw the result of that a few years ago in how campus administrators were taken by surprise while a great many campus professors were cheering. And yeah, that's. It didn't surprise me as much as it surprised some people.

[A]

Yeah. And I'm curious if you share my view, which is that the reason the typical kid, like, you know, the typical strongly activist kid at a college like Columbia or Harvard, the reason they care so much about this issue is because they view it as a substitute for the American story. It's really like first that they have been indoctrinated or genuinely believe that America is a fundamentally white supremacist construct, that whiteness is therefore evil. And their, their whole sense of what good and evil is in the political world is bound up in race in a way that is more fundamental than previous generations could even really understand. Because they, they took in their notions of white and black, they drank that in with their notion of what is what good and evil is in the world. So they're, they're like intertwined at some deep level and they understand that America is never going to be given back to the Native Americans. Right. That's like, that actually is just symbolic. That's a lost cause. The legacy of Slavery, it's never going to be undone in some grand way that is going to lead to the true realignment of the American soul. But what we can do, because Israel is recent, and you know, recent being 80 years old, what we can do is symbolically undo it by undoing Israel, which they view as being the same thing now. So for me that's. It results in an obsessive focus on the Jewish state. And so I understand why it looks like anti Semitism is the best summary of like the cause, but in reality it's, it's different than the anti Semitism, the classical anti Semitism of the right, the Nazi anti Semitism of the right that's now represented by Nick Fuentes. It's like they arrive at it through anti whiteness and anti Western and third worldist ideology. And so I, I've never known whether to call that anti Semitism or whether that's imprecise or whether, you know. So I'm curious your view of that if you share the overall point I'm looking at.

[B]

I do. A great many Jewish people who I know think that it's cutting salami too thin to distinguish anti Zionism from antisemitism. The idea often expressed very passionately by people even who are quite familiar with the contours of constructive argumentation, is that the homeland is such an important part of being Jewish that if you disagree with the Zionist impulse, then you are against us and that is anti Semitic. However, I fully perceive the difference that you're talking about. And many people will ask, well, why is it always against the Jewish people, this tiny little country? Why are people so concerned about that rather than the Ukraine or what's going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or Sudan? How come that one little place? Why is it always about us? And partly it's because of the idea that the United States is supporting what's going on in Israel. But then also, yes, it's seen as a white over black issue. And it's one thing to say that a great many Israelis are, you know, as dark as you and me and maybe darker, and that there are many very light skinned Palestinians. But most people think of that as static, really. The idea is that the Israelis are white, supported by big white countries and we're talking about brown subalterns who were chased out of their homes. And of course even that is a rather unsubtle view of what went on from month to month and year to year. But still, yes, the idea is that it's whites against browns and you are so upset about it because. And I think this is, especially since the late teens and then cresting in 2020, the idea that what makes you a good person is being aware of and appalled by and rejecting and protesting against such things. And so you have the girl crying in your audience and she's. That's. I'm not gonna say that the students who were protesting a few years ago on college campuses were just engaging in performance art. There was too much passion for that. But that girl is performing and what she's basically showing is I'm a good person. If somebody stands up and criticizes affirmative action, I'm gonna literally weep tears. This shows that I'm a. A good person. And in a way, you know, to my woke racism, religion issue, I'm going to go to heaven because I'm weeping these tears hearing this rhetoric. So yeah, there is that part of it. I think for many students it was a way of showing that this is what I'm supposed to do as a good person. It was kind of a replacement for church. But then if you ask, yeah, it's this country, the size of New Jersey that you've never visited. Exactly why this particular issue? And it's because of white and brown as a proxy for white and black, because there's only so much you can do here. But it's not an accident that George Floyd the unjustifiable. And I know there are issues here, Coleman, especially with you, but the unjustifiable murder of this man galvanizes the whole country to a racial reckoning. And clearly a great deal of that was by protesting against the Minneapolis Police Department and what happened to George Floyd. I'm going to show as a white person that I'm one of the good ones. That was a model for what happened on college campuses a few years later.

[A]

Yeah, and this goes back to Shelby Steele, someone who I've also reread recently from my class his thesis in Shame, which is kind of distributed across many of his books, that after the 60s, the fundamental psychological problem for Americans on both sides in a way became we can no longer just naively assume America was morally good and pure. That was challenged by Vietnam and the civil rights movement and something broke in the American psychology. And we've been. Politics has been a way of trying to fix it ever since. And the liberal strategy for trying to fix that has been, okay, well, if I can't assume we're just good, then maybe what is good about us is never forgetting the sins of the past and the present. We are good insofar as we are always pointing out that those sins of racism are still alive. And that's how we reaffirm our goodness in this ritualistic way. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's a powerful explanation of, of, of a lot of a lot, a lot of American politics since the 60s. I want, I want to get your view on the Voting Rights Act. What's been happening there recently with the Supreme Court decision, Louisiana versus Calais. Is it Calais Kalae? Yeah, yeah. Can you describe what the decision was and give me your view on it?

[B]

Well, the basic idea is something that has been kind of quietly gutting that act for a long time, which is that if you can show that you're changing the shape of these districts in such a way that you eliminate a majority minority district, let's say really what it is, a black district, if you get rid of a black district, it has to be demonstrable that you did this on the basis of racist intent as opposed to partisan intent, where because black people vote so heavily Democratic, if you get rid of a black district, then that action means that you spread Democratic votes around and therefore it's better for the Republicans. And of course, I think in all but maybe a tiny minority of cases today when Republicans are doing that kind of gerrymandering, it's not because they don't like black people. It's because they don't want Democrats to win. And so the idea is, is that racist? And it's kind of like Zionist and anti Semitic. Is it racist to do that? Because we're talking about black people with slavery and Jim Crow and the Voting Rights act having been necessary ones and redlining, et cetera. So you can't be partisan when black people are involved. And that's really what that decision was about. And this time the Supremes decided to, frankly, I think, admit that it's time to stop thinking of black people as exempt from high stakes and serious competition in the way the real world works. The idea being that partisanship will involve breaking up black districts and spreading out those Democratic votes. And that that means that we just have to step up our game. That's. That's what people were fighting about three weeks ago.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, there's, it's kind of counterintuitive here because everyone complains about gerrymandering. Right. We have this word gerrymandering. And the idea is that parties are doing things for their own political gain. They're making districts that are unnatural, whatever. Exactly. That means in order to, you know, Basically lessen the other party's power, get more people in Congress, but you're actually allowed to redistrict for partisan reasons. So, like, it's. Ultimately, you're allowed to gerrymander up to a point. Right up to the point where the districts just look, quote unquote, too weird, whatever that is. Actually, no one quite knows what that is. But maybe in the extreme case, we could all agree. But then what about just below the extreme case? It's not clear. And so what happens when you have a group of people, African Americans in this case that we talked about how there's more support for Republicans in the past 10 years, but still we overwhelmingly vote blue. And that's an extremely useful shorthand or proxy for. So being black is a really good proxy for being a Democrat. And if you're allowed to redraw districts in order for your own party to gain, at least up to a point, then getting rid of majority black districts strictly for partisan reasons makes sense as a strategy. And it's. The intent is you're using race in order to get to your true intent. Which is. Which is partisanship. Right. And absent in admission that absent being caught on tape using the N word or something, it'll be impossible to prove that it was racist intent. And this is. I think you and I agree that ultimately what Republicans care about here is, is getting more power in Congress. They don't care about discriminating against blacks because we're black per se.

[B]

Not. Not at all. No.

[A]

Yeah, But a lot of people out there don't agree with that. Like, I've had conversations with people where we couldn't. I couldn't assume that they. They shared that belief. Like, almost as if, even if you had a group like, like, let's say a bunch of people from Botswana move. And for some reason they're like, okay, maybe they're anti lgbt. That's their main issue. They're all voting Republican. Right. They're just a new sociological group of people. Would Republicans want to gerrymander their power down? I think obviously not. Right. So it's hard to know exactly what status quo we want to arrive at here. Is it ultimately a bad thing? I mean, should black people be viewed as, like, a special case forever? I'm not sure.

[B]

The people you're talking about, they're only seeing it through that certain narrative where if something is happening that we don't like, if something is happening that makes things less easy for us, it must be that we're dealing with people who don't like black people. And especially if you're a person who thinks that your mission, and this can be a white or a black or a polka dotted person, your mission is to identify racism that still exists and also to specify the power that it supposedly has. And so this is just a perfect example of that. And so white people supposedly are pretending that they're not racist and just calling it partisanship. But, and you know, Coleman, to be honest, I think we all have an awful lot of things to think about. And most of the people you're talking to would never follow this through to wondering whether they would be trying to deprive us of the vote. If most of us black Americans voted Republican, would they still be thinking, oh no, not the negras, as I'm sure a lot of them are thinking, no, the Republicans would have no problem with all black districts if that were the case, and certainly not Botswanans. But instead this. And I really think one, as we see that black candidates can win over white districts and it's considered fashionable to not admit this or to leave it out of the conversation, but it's true and it's only gonna get better and better. It just means that black candidates will have to maybe be a little bit more creative, a little bit less black only in what their proposals are. And then I'm not sure, since we've been talking about the Trump voters, among other things, what is the black vote? It's just assumed that there is this one thing called the black vote that is pretty much the same by age cohort, which it's not. And what most people are thinking, especially if they're in a hurry, is that black people vote against racist policies. And then we're supposed to know what these racist policies are. And most of us aren't as brilliant as Ibram Kendi. And so I'm not sure we could figure out what these racist policies are. And I think all of it is based on a sense that you are a good person if you pretend that it's still 1965 and it just isn't. And so I really, I did a column on this where I thought this is one of the ones where people are going to read it and think that what I like to do is just stir up the pot. But I was just thinking I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel, apparently about this change in the Voting Rights Act. And when Justice Elena Kagan says it would be virtually impossible to prove racist intent, I was thinking, yeah, because there isn't any. And it's time to move on. But apparently we are apostates in this.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. I also want to talk about the Odyssey here. I mean, I've been. This is part of, just like, I think, the poisoning of Twitter after Elon took over. I mean, he is the most brilliant businessman probably, that has ever walked the Earth and has contributed an enormous amount to the world. So I don't want that. I, I, I think people too often skip over that small detail about him. But what has happened to Twitter, at least to my Twitter, in the, in the aftermath of his takeover, the algorithmic nature of it, it's become much more of a cesspool. And so, like, I think in my ideal reality, there would just be no conversation about the race of the characters of the Odyssey. Like, I don't care about that conversation until I see the film. Right. My view of the Odyssey is like, two things. One, how lucky are we to be alive at the time when such a great director, maybe the greatest of his generation, is tackling the Odyssey? Very lucky, I feel. Right, Right. Hopefully he does a good job with it. And what's more, as someone who does think that Western civilization is a good thing for the world, I feel lucky to have been born in America. The principles that shape it, the canon, these are all things that I feel good about and want to see have more influence broadly in the culture. I think it's a good thing that the Odyssey is going to be the film event of the summer, and that story will be made fresh to a whole new generation of people. That is sort of what preserving the canon looks like and is much better than the alternative where that movie isn't made. Right. And so, to me, the idea that there's a black Helen of Troy whose essential characteristic is beauty and is therefore represented by a beautiful actress who happens to be black, I have no problem with it. I'm excited to see it. But I also acknowledge that that's kind of just a subjective preference. Right. Like, I personally have no problem with Lupita being Helen of Troy, and it makes me excited. But that's purely an emotion. I don't think. I actually have a principled argument for when it is and isn't okay to substitute the race of characters. It's kind of like the principle is what the audience will accept, and what the audience will accept is somewhat arbitrary, and it varies over time. And, you know, we look back at how they put on Shakespeare in Europe and, you know, in the olden days, and it's like they had men playing women, and this was acceptable to the audiences, it wouldn't be today. It'd be laughable. But it's all a bit arbitrary for me. I'm one millionth of the audience for the Odyssey, and I'm like, I'm fully okay with black Helen of Troy. I don't know if I'm okay with scrawny trans. Scrawny trans Achilles, if that is true. I mean, it wasn't.

[B]

No, that. That wasn't true. Twitter had that on for, like, two days. But no, he's playing a different character.

[A]

But so great. So another. Another consequence of, like, the poisoning of Twitter discourse is I saw that the first time and I was like, that's definitely not true. And then I saw it the 16th time, and, like, no one has corrected it.

[B]

I had the same experience.

[A]

True. It just seems so unbelievable to me.

[B]

Yep. You had to check Exactly.

[A]

Yeah. So I think a lot of decent people who I admire do object to the black Helen of Troy, and I don't. And is it because I'm black or is it just because. It just doesn't bother me, and it's totally subjective. I don't know what to think of it.

[B]

You know, what upsets people is that they think of it as wokeness. They feel like they're being taught a lesson. And you know what? They are. They are definitely being taught a lesson. And having somebody that dark playing this character who we would have perceived as some kind of Caucasian if she weren't a fictional character. Yeah. It's basically saying, hey, look at this. Here's something for you to learn. But, you know, there's wokeness and there's wokeness. When wokeness is getting somebody fired for using the wrong word or, you know, for saying black lives matter, too, instead of black lives matter. That's bad. Woke. If woke is Lupita Nyong' o playing Helen of Troy, I figure there's us now, and then there are younger people and there's the passage of time. And that's a linguist thing, partly in me, but it's a good lesson to have the most beautiful woman in the world be her. I think of children seeing that and thinking of it as normal already with the Obamas. You know, the Obamas didn't create any magic transformation in how race is perceived. But if you've been around a while, you know that those two people in office for eight years, being black, smart, rich and powerful, changed what younger people and maybe even you thought, affected, thought of blackness and its possibilities. My girls, 11 and 14, don't think of There being anything unusual about there having been a black president and maybe there being another one and the same thing here. If we really are going to get past race, then in movies, not only on stage where people don't seem to complain, but even with the realism in movies, we need to be able to make some adjustments. And I think that for many reasons, and it's not people being poverty pimps, but a lot of people don't want to get past race. And if we're going to, we have to get used to seeing things like that. We are more used to seeing two men kiss now than anybody could have thought 50 years ago on the screen. Well, same thing here. That we can have race not determine what roles people play in our cinematic recreations of ancient events. So that's really how I feel about it. It is a lesson. There's a little of this in it, but then again, a little school can be a good thing.

[A]

Okay, so, I mean, but then what do you make the argument of. What do you make of the argument of sort of the reduction ad absurdum of what if a white. Are we gonna have a white guy play? You know, whatever.

[B]

Yep, I'm ready.

[A]

Malcolm X. Or, you know, I am ready.

[B]

I would like to see Sean Penn playing Malcolm X. Or, you know, we've already had a Malcolm X, but we laugh at it now. But I can imagine a state of humanity where we allow that a black woman could do a good light black scent and play Michelle Obama in some future movie and we would all just accept it as long as she did a great impersonation and had the same general feeling now. No, because of partly employment opportunities for black actors. Partly because we'd have to get past a sense that nobody could do that without ridiculing. And there are people who tend to dominate the room who would make so much noise about that sort of thing now that we need to just wait until things have changed so much in this country that people like that don't get the kind of attention that they do now. But, yeah, that should come later, too. If we're past race, we have to get past this idea that nobody white can play anybody black. It's funny in a way. 100 years ago, American popular culture was more familiar with that kind of thing, and not only in ridiculous portrayals. And so one of the. The first person who recorded Porgy in Porgy and Bess on disc was a white man. He did it very well and nobody had any problem with it. George Gershwin was fine with it. It's really a very good recording. Nowadays, that could never happen. And we need to get past that. And we need to get past it in film, in theater. I think maybe that'll probably be the first place it happens. But. But I'm ready for Robert Downey Jr. To play who. To play Marcus Garvey or something. So, yeah.

[A]

All right, that comes to the end of my questions for now. John McWhorter. It's great to have you back on the show, Coleman.

[B]

Thanks for having me. We should keep it going.