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Episode 382 - Book Review - Not So Black and White
In this episode, we discuss a book called "Not So Black and White" by Kenan Malik.
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Transcript
Suburban Eastern Australia.
Speaker:An environment that has over time evolved some extraordinarily
Speaker:unique groups of homo sapiens.
Speaker:But today we observe a small tribe akin to a group of mere cats that gather together
Speaker:a top, a small mound to watch question and discuss the current events of their city,
Speaker:their country, and their world at large.
Speaker:Let's listen keenly and observe this group fondly known as the
Speaker:Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.
Speaker:Hello and welcome to Your Listener.
Speaker:Yes, the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove Podcast episode 382.
Speaker:We're back this time a special episode.
Speaker:I'm Trevor a K a, the Iron Fist.
Speaker:With me sometimes with book reviews and other things.
Speaker:Where he pushes back is Paul from Canberra.
Speaker:How are you Paul?
Speaker:Greetings from Nu Oil Country.
Speaker:Pretty well.
Speaker:Yourself?
Speaker:I'm well, so well, dear listener, normally at this part of the podcast I say that
Speaker:this is a podcast where we talk about news and politics and sex and religion and all
Speaker:the things you're not supposed to talk about at a dinner party because we are
Speaker:fearless debaters of dangerous topics.
Speaker:But tonight, dear listener, we're entering the realm of talking
Speaker:about racism and the history of it.
Speaker:It's morphing into identity politics and other issues.
Speaker:Cause we're doing a book review of Kenon Malick's book
Speaker:called Not So Black and White.
Speaker:So if you thought we covered dangerous topics before you ain't seen nothing yet.
Speaker:I'm a bit concerned about this one.
Speaker:Paul.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I I feel like we are going to cover news, politics, sex, and religion Definitely.
Speaker:And, you know, racism and more besides on this one, so, mm, definitely.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm going to definitely whip this one straight off of YouTube because
Speaker:I think it'll just send the algorithm crazy when it looks at the transcript.
Speaker:You know, I was, I was preparing my notes for this Paul cuz I was, I
Speaker:read the book a few weeks ago and I had some notes and then I was making
Speaker:some more notes this afternoon.
Speaker:I was dictating them into a Word document and as I was dictating, if
Speaker:I mentioned the word negro word would not write the word and would just
Speaker:do a series of star type symbols.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:I I, I'm not surprised that a voice recognition is just going
Speaker:to quietly edit that one out.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, so that one has had me worried about the prospects of this recording
Speaker:lasting on the YouTube channel.
Speaker:Anyway, we'll see how we go.
Speaker:And if you're in the chat room, say hello and make your comments.
Speaker:So let me just minimize the screen so I can look at my notes.
Speaker:So Paul I said I wanted this book, not so black and white.
Speaker:And one of the reasons I wanted it, because it talks about race and identity,
Speaker:and I think this is a good background warmup for subsequent discussions
Speaker:about the voice and indigenous rights.
Speaker:And so I don't know about you, but as I was reading it, I was constantly
Speaker:referring back to that issue and the Australian experience about race and.
Speaker:And how we think about race in this country in the context of the voice.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I was going to ask you, because the book talks about, like, there's a lot
Speaker:of discussion about the US experience of racism and how these issues have
Speaker:played, played out, but it's, you know, there's obviously quite a bit different
Speaker:to how Australia has experienced that.
Speaker:And I was really kind of interested in your, where you saw those
Speaker:contrasts and where and similarities.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It is, you're right.
Speaker:There was a fair bit of the African-American experience and
Speaker:really not much about the Native American Indian experience.
Speaker:In the book Canon Malach actually, actually, I tried to
Speaker:find a pronunciation for him.
Speaker:Some places they say Kenan Maek, some places Kenan Maek.
Speaker:So I'm just not exactly sure what to do.
Speaker:But Kenan Mallek himself was a Pakistani sort of ethnicity who grew up in the uk.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So, but you're right, there is a fair amount of reference to sort of
Speaker:the Black American experience, which doesn't have the land rights issue
Speaker:attached to it like it does for Native Americans or indigenous Australians.
Speaker:So that is sort of left out of the book that although property does come
Speaker:into it, which we'll get to property rights, it wasn't mentioned of it
Speaker:because I think there was also a quote in there from Abraham Lincoln who
Speaker:imagined that, I'm kind of paraphrasing here, but the, the The idea the, the
Speaker:logical result of the emancipation of the slaves was they would just go back
Speaker:to Africa and colonize some bit of Africa really wasn't used in, in there.
Speaker:Did you?
Speaker:I didn't remember that quote, but it doesn't surprise me.
Speaker:Some of the founding fathers of the Constitution and then, and sort of
Speaker:leaders from previous eras had some fairly well racist ideas or notions
Speaker:or things which were common for the time but would be outlandish today.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and I, because I think that one, like one of the themes that I saw
Speaker:through the book was that question of.
Speaker:Integration versus assimilation versus separation.
Speaker:The different ideas about whether it was even possible for races
Speaker:to live beside each other.
Speaker:And I'm just wondering what, what you sort of thought out of, you know,
Speaker:what you got out of that and where, how you sort of see that issue.
Speaker:You know, by the end of it, by the end of the book, he was saying, for example,
Speaker:the guy who came up with critical race theory was quite despairing about the
Speaker:prospects of ever getting rid of racism.
Speaker:And, and they were really saying that if you took that view, that racism
Speaker:could never be abolished, then.
Speaker:You ended up actually maybe I can find that little bit where where
Speaker:it talks about you, you end up just going for performative results cuz
Speaker:you've given up on substantive stuff.
Speaker:So you look for numbers of indigenous people in positions of power and you
Speaker:look for window dressing as opposed to substantive things because you've
Speaker:given up on the substantive things.
Speaker:Was, was kind of one of the arguments there.
Speaker:So, I'll just give a little intro.
Speaker:So, so the book purports to be the history of race from white
Speaker:supremacy to identity politics.
Speaker:And I think it does achieve that certainly runs through a history and I
Speaker:think that's important, Paul, to look at how these things evolve is really
Speaker:important when you're trying to answer.
Speaker:Modern day questions, and we could look at that in terms of some other
Speaker:topics that we've been talking about.
Speaker:Like if you are looking at Russia and Ukraine, for example, and trying to come
Speaker:to a decision about what's going on there and who's right and who's wrong, you have
Speaker:to understand the creation of NATO and what has been happening over the last 50
Speaker:to 70 years in relation to NATO and, and the changes that have happened there.
Speaker:And you have to look at what's, yeah, happened with Ukrainian politics and
Speaker:American interference, and you just can't look at the last two years
Speaker:and, and give a comprehensive, have a comprehensive understanding of, of the
Speaker:issue without that sort of background history and context to put it all in.
Speaker:Same with you know, the current you know, conflicts.
Speaker:Well beat up conflict with China and the Chinese response is going
Speaker:to be so much heavier that they're not gonna be dominated by anybody
Speaker:cuz they had a hundred years of that and they're not gonna do it anymore.
Speaker:That's a really big thing to know about Chinese mentality in that one.
Speaker:If you just examined the people and players of today without taking that
Speaker:into account, you'd be losing context.
Speaker:And yeah.
Speaker:Even things like interest rates in the economy, like our current, the low
Speaker:interest rates that we experienced until very recently, that's all a function
Speaker:of what's happened in since the Great Depression in a, in a series of events.
Speaker:And to get to those low interest rates, you really had to
Speaker:appreciate all these things.
Speaker:So my point is, it's good to have this background to understand where we're at.
Speaker:And, and I mean that's a good example as well.
Speaker:Like you've given a couple of really good examples there of how the politics
Speaker:in a situation and how that's, that sort of is portrayed in the media.
Speaker:I mean, you know, the, the China issue being a classic example for the people
Speaker:that only read the Sydney Morning Herald and trust that to get their
Speaker:news from, or you know, only watch nine they're probably looking at.
Speaker:You know, thinking, well, it's perfectly obvious that China needs to be restrained
Speaker:here if you're not looking at the history and the wider politics of it.
Speaker:So I guess here especially with the sort of that issue of identity politics in
Speaker:the book, do you think that is a kind of recent thing that misunderstands the past?
Speaker:I think people have a really shallow understanding of where we're at
Speaker:in terms of racism and identity.
Speaker:Politics really shallow.
Speaker:I have been looking at the commentary on the voice because I've wanted to when
Speaker:I eventually do this episode, you know, quote people who are for the voice,
Speaker:quote, people who are against the voice.
Speaker:Discuss the ideas, and I find that the arguments on both sides are incredibly
Speaker:shallow and really the people or the voice tend to be both sides, invariably shallow.
Speaker:No talk of class.
Speaker:I have not seen a single modern commentator talking about class.
Speaker:And you know, I'm banging on about class as as an issue.
Speaker:Nobody has mentioned it.
Speaker:And, but when you look at this book and you look at the players involved from
Speaker:Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, various other people who I hadn't heard of
Speaker:before, Franz Fannon, a Mariama Baraka, a whole host of important characters who
Speaker:were big in black Panther movement and black power and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Talked a lot about class.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And none of that is spoken about in this contemporary discussion about
Speaker:indigenous matters that I've seen.
Speaker:Cuz I tell you, I would've highlighted it and stuck into
Speaker:my notes if I'd have seen it.
Speaker:So I think the conversation's very shallow.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that, because I'd heard Noel Pearson's Boyer
Speaker:lectures recently, which were about the voice, and very interesting to
Speaker:hear the approach that he's taking, which in part is like a kind of, it's
Speaker:a bad summary, but I, I would say that his view comes from the idea of.
Speaker:The bringing back respect for the Aboriginal people and the aboriginal
Speaker:culture in ways that he believes has been sort of systematically removed.
Speaker:But also there's one where he talk, one boy lecture where he talks about
Speaker:aiming for full employment and mm-hmm.
Speaker:I have a bunch of problems with the idea of full employment, but the
Speaker:interesting thing there is the, he talks about not just full employment
Speaker:for Aboriginal people, but full employment for everyone that wants a job.
Speaker:Whether they're, you know, white or black immigrant or native, you know, anything.
Speaker:And that to me, I.
Speaker:Seems to be about the class struggle of the working class versus the the employer
Speaker:class, much more than it is about race.
Speaker:Would you sort of Well, it is, and I would've thought this whole
Speaker:voice discussion would've been a distraction from that issue.
Speaker:I dunno how he would've tied in promoting the voice as being
Speaker:anything to do with that topic.
Speaker:I dunno how he could've brought the two in together.
Speaker:I'd have to re-listen to the episode two.
Speaker:We could have segue those two together.
Speaker:I have no idea.
Speaker:But I, I, the other aspect which I saw in the book there, and there's a whole
Speaker:sort of chapter on the, the class, both sort of the, the working class and their,
Speaker:there, there's that sort of contrast between the, the basket of deplorables
Speaker:and the, the, the coastal elites.
Speaker:And that, how did, how did that class struggle there, flow into the racism
Speaker:that Kennon talks about in the book?
Speaker:Well, Kenon makes the point that you never hear the expression, the
Speaker:black working class you never hear.
Speaker:The Muslim working class, working class is, is for whites and in, in discussion
Speaker:the, the black ethnic groupings.
Speaker:Discussed as if there is no class distinction amongst them.
Speaker:That's what infuriates me.
Speaker:This idea that they are all the same.
Speaker:They all think the same.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:There is no class difference, that they're all suffering the same.
Speaker:It frustrates the hell out of me.
Speaker:So, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I, I think there's a lack of recognition of that.
Speaker:And I give the same example regularly of, you know, the Jonathan Thurston's
Speaker:of the world not needing extra privileges or powers, cuz he's got
Speaker:way more than what he should have.
Speaker:The guy was responsible for a football stadium in, in Townsville, but even
Speaker:people in Townsville didn't want.
Speaker:I said, we don't need that.
Speaker:We've already got a stadium that's big enough.
Speaker:So, yeah, he's got a voice.
Speaker:Don't worry about that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But I guess I also wondered there.
Speaker:Like I felt another theme in that struggle was I can't remember who said
Speaker:it particularly, but the, the idea that the the white working class were
Speaker:played off against the African-American working class as in, you know, the,
Speaker:the white people need to be, the white working class, need to be afraid
Speaker:of the African-Americans because they'll take your jobs kind of stuff.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that sort of fed into some of that racism.
Speaker:Did you, where, how did you see that playing out in the book?
Speaker:Mm, I didn't see that emphasized in the book.
Speaker:In terms of the white working class historically.
Speaker:I thought it was very interesting when he was talking about.
Speaker:Indentured servants in America.
Speaker:So, what he was saying at around page 65 actually was when the first
Speaker:Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no white people there.
Speaker:They were English and their children were English.
Speaker:Whiteness as an identity just like race had to be constructed.
Speaker:So the people at that time didn't consider themselves white.
Speaker:They thought themselves as English.
Speaker:And that was in 1619.
Speaker:And then by the end of the 17th century, American plantations were
Speaker:worked mainly by African slave labor.
Speaker:But in the initial decades there was a large European indentured
Speaker:servant work, working there.
Speaker:And basically the servants were cheaper than slaves and could be worked as hard.
Speaker:Slaves were slaves for life, so could not be compelled to work harder by
Speaker:threats of extended entrainment.
Speaker:So, so yeah, there was a, okay, actually in the early days quite a large body
Speaker:of white indentured servants who would get beaten and treated just as badly
Speaker:as the black slaves in the initial sort of creation of the United States.
Speaker:So, yeah, and he, he makes the point that just historically with
Speaker:slavery, it wasn't a, a race issue.
Speaker:And, and it race actually itself didn't come about until a more modern,
Speaker:it's a more modern construction race.
Speaker:People were defined by their community, their laws, their culture,
Speaker:where they lived rather than by the color of their skin in sort of,
Speaker:Pre-modern times was his argument.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:He gives different references to this and mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, black people had black slaves, white people had white slaves and a
Speaker:variety of slaves and they were just poor, unfortunate in the community who
Speaker:were in the slave class, no matter.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But they had the same color.
Speaker:The color didn't come into it.
Speaker:And, and I guess I, I was thinking as well cuz I've read a series of historical
Speaker:fiction set in ancient Rome where of course slavery was perfectly standard
Speaker:and, you know, there was just a slave class and if you are, you know, you
Speaker:could free your slaves if you are, you know, decided to in your will.
Speaker:But, And, you know, they were to be traded and sold and, and you could be you, you
Speaker:know, you could be brought to punishment if you killed the slave, but only if
Speaker:it was someone else's slave, because that would be destruction of property.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And no one particularly talks about those slaves being, you know, African
Speaker:or from the captured Germanic tribes or anything other than just some of
Speaker:them are better slaves than others.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:It was a completely colored, blind situation.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, so slavery didn't arise because of of color.
Speaker:It arose simply because of, that's where they managed to buy the cheap labor from.
Speaker:If they'd have been white cheap labor in Africa, they would've
Speaker:done the same thing and.
Speaker:But what his argument is in this book is that you had the enlightenment and you
Speaker:had these theories of universality and the equality of rights of men, but you
Speaker:had at the same time, people preaching equality, but then practicing slavery.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and the argument in the book is that eventually what came about
Speaker:was race became an excuse as to why these people weren't treated equally.
Speaker:And yeah, it was, it was an excuse to soothe the, the and comfort people who
Speaker:knew that they were in breach of a new moral code, but it was, they still wanted
Speaker:them, the money and the cheap labor, and weren't prepared to leave up to
Speaker:the practice that they were preaching.
Speaker:Yeah, it, it's that sort of grand irony that I think starts out in chapter
Speaker:one, talking about the Declaration of Independence, which literally
Speaker:starts, you know, we believe that all men are created equal, and yet this
Speaker:was already a slave owning colony.
Speaker:And was, you know, even after the, the War of Independence would be
Speaker:continuing slavery for quite some time.
Speaker:So it wasn't an idea that we are fighting for equality of all of the people, right?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Do, do you ever think, we'll, we'll be able to actually, you know, see
Speaker:all men created equal, or is that always gonna kind of be ironic
Speaker:now, ah, you know, like, look at Australia, it becomes a melting pot.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Of people eventually, people within a few generations have intermixed.
Speaker:And you know, there was, there was angst and racism against the
Speaker:Greeks and Italians, and then it was the Vietnamese and boat people.
Speaker:And I think we can say with some confidence that in Australian society
Speaker:today, those groups have, well, it's really integrated and are not suffering
Speaker:from a racist sort of situation.
Speaker:I mean, yes and no.
Speaker:I, I agree with your original sort of thesis in that, that
Speaker:racism takes a lot of time to.
Speaker:True would, would take a lot of time to stamp out because it is
Speaker:easy as a point of difference.
Speaker:And all it needs is something like, you know, COVID coming out of China and all of
Speaker:a sudden Chinese people are being treated with sus suspicion almost exactly like,
Speaker:you know, they were on the gold fields.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But give it long enough and everyone will have a bit of
Speaker:Chinese heritage in their family.
Speaker:Somewhere in the same way that you know, people ended up having a gay
Speaker:nephew or a, or a lesbian niece or something, and suddenly their
Speaker:attitudes towards gay rights changed.
Speaker:And, and you know, we're such a melting pot here that eventually
Speaker:give it long enough if people will be mixed up enough that these
Speaker:distinctions will just disappear.
Speaker:It'll take while.
Speaker:So either to answer your question Yes.
Speaker:When there is a.
Speaker:Such a mix up of people that we've forgotten that we're ever different.
Speaker:Which, which is an interesting point because I, yeah, I think of then on the
Speaker:other hand of people like Andrew Bolt who kind of want some kind of metric by
Speaker:which Aboriginal people have some have their sort of aboriginality measured
Speaker:and, you know, there are, there's a lot of debate in Tasmania about land claims
Speaker:and cultural heritage from Tasmanian Aborigines who allegedly were completely
Speaker:massacred except for the fact that many of them had married into white, or, you
Speaker:know, been married into white families and became part of the, the culture there.
Speaker:So I guess I, I wonder there, but he's not alone.
Speaker:There are people within the indigenous community who would say the same thing.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Because, you know, G s T and other monies gets distributed to the states
Speaker:on a formula that increases that amount to states with the larger
Speaker:proportion of indigenous people.
Speaker:And what's been happening is that the indigenous population has been growing
Speaker:rapidly in New South Wales and the a c t and other areas with funding,
Speaker:therefore, going to those states and indigenous leaders saying, well,
Speaker:hang on, we really need that funding going to the Northern Territory.
Speaker:It's been drained away because of, of so many people now identifying
Speaker:as indigenous in these states.
Speaker:Which gets back to the, the issue, sorry, it's, it's.
Speaker:Which gets back to the issue that it really is about are
Speaker:these people suffering or not?
Speaker:And the indigenous people are leaders in that situation by implication, are
Speaker:saying there are indigenous people here in these states who are living
Speaker:in urban populations who don't need it as much as some others do, living
Speaker:in other states in remote areas.
Speaker:One, one particular bug mere of mine is the remote indigenous
Speaker:communities who are often not supplied with you know, reticulated power.
Speaker:So they have to run diesel generators, which also put out fumes
Speaker:and cost a lot of money to run.
Speaker:And that's all taken away from the money going into the community because, you
Speaker:know, That's it's treated as a cost and we should just be installing solar panels
Speaker:and batteries and having done with it.
Speaker:But anyway, that's another, that's another issue.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I guess the, the hard part here, and I'm wondering whether this feeds into
Speaker:the sort of identity part of identity politics, is that there, how you see
Speaker:the book talk about racial identities that we now have and how, like, how,
Speaker:how does, can Malach sort of resolve that question of the, you know, if,
Speaker:if race is an invented construct, then why do, why are people identifying why?
Speaker:Yeah, why are they so I guess he makes the point.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Why, why are they, why, why have they abandoned class in favor of identity?
Speaker:Because you can be a, a solidarity around the issues of class and
Speaker:or you could be a form solidarity around the issues of gender, race,
Speaker:ethnicity, and things like this.
Speaker:And people, I guess, looked at the, the black power, black Panther, the
Speaker:black Rights Movement in the United States, which was seen in some ways
Speaker:as successful and used as a template by other ethnic gender groups
Speaker:as a way of getting things done.
Speaker:And even in the UK you would get sort of ethnic groups.
Speaker:Agitating for things revolving around the local IAM or other religious
Speaker:institutions would become, well, even, even like there's a couple of anecdotes
Speaker:that Kenan has in the introduction.
Speaker:Talking about you know, Indian female workers in factories or like the
Speaker:Pakistan League or I can't remember a couple of the names, which,
Speaker:which were about almost unionizing.
Speaker:Along that the lines of we are, you know, a racial group that's
Speaker:being taken advantage of just as much as we are a class, right?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I, I think people saw success in that black movement and therefore, and
Speaker:it's, it's kind of, Easy because they couldn't imagine in America, for example,
Speaker:taking on capitalism, which was, you know, if you were looking at worker's
Speaker:rights and, and unionism and and, and the solidarity of the working class.
Speaker:It was just getting battered relentlessly and indoctrinated in a propaganda program
Speaker:where every American began to think they were just a temporarily unlucky
Speaker:millionaire whose time would come.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so, so he makes, I think the point that people looked at the success of
Speaker:the, the black movement, which under Malcolm X for example was very much.
Speaker:Black people have gotta do this for themselves to gain power,
Speaker:don't turn the other cheek.
Speaker:Violence is acceptable or necessary, et cetera.
Speaker:But he also made some really interesting points that Malcolm X in particular
Speaker:towards the end of his life had traveled.
Speaker:He had left the nation of Islam and had converted to Sunni Islam.
Speaker:Traveled to Saudi Arabia and did a lot of travel in Africa, and came across
Speaker:a lot of white people who were of the strong belief that racism was a terrible
Speaker:thing and needed to be overcome, and were very friendly towards him and they
Speaker:were white and he hadn't seen it before.
Speaker:And he began to see that he'd made a mistake in not embracing.
Speaker:White people into his cause, into fighting against them.
Speaker:And just one paragraph I'll read here.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:After he's traveled, it made him rethink his ideas about race.
Speaker:He met revolutionaries who were not black, but were as hostile to racism as he was.
Speaker:Malcolm realized that he was alienating the people who were true revolutionaries.
Speaker:And John Lewis, the chair of S n C C, dunno what that is, but recall
Speaker:a conversation in which Malcolm X talked about the need to shift
Speaker:our focus from race to class.
Speaker:He said that was the root of our problems, not just in
Speaker:America, but all over the world.
Speaker:Unfortunately, in the decades following his murder, it was the old Malcolm
Speaker:rather than the one he was becoming.
Speaker:That it got remembered that got fixed as the real Malcolm X.
Speaker:And just in terms of Martin Luther King on this topic, Martin Luther King
Speaker:recognized too that equality meant more than simple civil and political rights.
Speaker:What does it profit a man?
Speaker:He asked to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he
Speaker:doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee.
Speaker:So he launched a Poor People's Campaign telling a reporter
Speaker:We're dealing with class issues.
Speaker:So people might think of Malcolm X especially, and Martin Luther King
Speaker:as being excited on the black race.
Speaker:But in fact, by the end of it, they had recognized it was a class issue.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, anybody talk about that?
Speaker:This is one of the most valuable things to come.
Speaker:I had heard bits of these things in other articles, but it's one of the
Speaker:more valuable things to come out of this book is, is some of the reflections
Speaker:he's got on black leaders like that.
Speaker:And I'll give you one more, which is it was good actually in
Speaker:that this introduced me to some black leaders I hadn't heard of.
Speaker:Amira Baraka, poet and critic, founder of the Black Arts Movement.
Speaker:Shed his nationalism for Marxism in the 1970s.
Speaker:He recognized the dangers of appropriating racial thinking,
Speaker:even for the cause of equal rights.
Speaker:He recognized to the importance of class in any struggle for equality.
Speaker:He came to realize that simply having black faces in positions of
Speaker:power did little to combat racism or empower working class blacks.
Speaker:And there was one other character, Franz Fanon rejected the idea
Speaker:of a singular black identity.
Speaker:That's a slightly different topic.
Speaker:So yeah, in terms of class, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Amira Baraka.
Speaker:In discussions, when I talk to people and I say I'm more interested in
Speaker:the class than race, I'm actually from the Malcolm X, Martin Luther
Speaker:King and Amira Baraka School of.
Speaker:Race relations.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Don't call me a racist.
Speaker:I, and I, this is, I guess, where I think some of that, the critical
Speaker:race theory that I've understand, understood, comes from is in the
Speaker:intersectionality between race and class.
Speaker:That the, and gender and other attributes.
Speaker:You know, the, the black working woman.
Speaker:Suffers all of the sort of intersections of those problems.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Not just one of them.
Speaker:I in isolation.
Speaker:And thank you to Event Horizon for saying the Student Nonviolent
Speaker:Coordinating Committee is the ncc.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That, that whole point about the like, you know, I felt very strongly with
Speaker:that discussion about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, you know, very
Speaker:interesting that they only met once.
Speaker:They basically sort of shook hands, went on their way, ships in the night.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That, you know, it's interesting in part because I think Luther
Speaker:King preached a lot more, not.
Speaker:Tolerance of racism, but that hating the other person wasn't the solution.
Speaker:And I always I I feel very strongly that you know that saying that he
Speaker:had that hate, cannot drive out hate and only love can do that.
Speaker:Is, you know, it's vital to remember when we've got so many causes that
Speaker:we are invited to hate, right?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But also on the other hand, the point that they make in the book was, is
Speaker:that Malcolm X was also saying, but we can't keep relying on the white people.
Speaker:To take our side, we actually have to fight the forces that are trying
Speaker:to put us back in their place.
Speaker:And those, those are some white people too.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I'm, I'm interested where you see the, sort of the violence in that, you
Speaker:know, peace versus love versus hate, peace versus violence in the, the o
Speaker:the whole sort of history in the book.
Speaker:What, how did you see that theme play out?
Speaker:I didn't see a lot of it other than in the Malcolm X sort of scenario.
Speaker:And I don't know.
Speaker:I mean, while he turned towards concentrating on class at the
Speaker:end, I dunno whether he was quite happy for the lower class to be
Speaker:violent against the upper class.
Speaker:I dunno, I didn't, it didn't go into that.
Speaker:It's quite possible he was still happy to rely on violence.
Speaker:But use it in a, a class based scenario rather than black versus
Speaker:white scenario, so, mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yeah, I didn't see much other sort of reference to, to violence as such, but
Speaker:just on the critical race theory and the intersectionality and all that.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Ken Mallek obviously critical of it and he talks of people in that critical
Speaker:race theory, movement, I think as trying to find racism wherever they can.
Speaker:Almost like somebody who's got a hammer.
Speaker:Everything I see as a nail, and he was saying that, you know, the concept of
Speaker:white privilege, a lot of the people in that movement were willing to ascribe
Speaker:white privilege to all whites, and were right in that sense, equating.
Speaker:Both Elon Musk and the cleaner in the Elon and the in the Tesla
Speaker:factory, both were enjoying white privilege in a very simplistic manner.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In the critical race theory movement, finding racism where they could.
Speaker:And he gave an interesting section on mass incarceration in the United States.
Speaker:And so I'll read a little bit about that.
Speaker:He says that mass incarceration would seem to be the classic
Speaker:illustration of many of the themes at the heart of critical race theory.
Speaker:A black man born in the late 1960s who dropped out of high school oh,
Speaker:he said that is sort of offering some alternative thinking here.
Speaker:A black man born in the 1960s who dropped out of high school has a 59% chance
Speaker:of going to prison in his lifetime.
Speaker:Whereas a black man who attended college is only a 5% chance.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:That's interesting.
Speaker:I hadn't seen statistics based on, on that before, or maybe I had,
Speaker:but it's a good point to make.
Speaker:That's a big difference.
Speaker:A 59% chance versus a 5% chance both black one has gone to college and one hasn't.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And he says he quotes an analysis by this guy, Nathaniel Lewis for the People's
Speaker:Project think tank, concluding that race is not a statistically significant
Speaker:factor for many incarceration outcomes once class is adequately controlled for.
Speaker:And what he's saying is what's risen dramatically since the seventies
Speaker:is the incarceration rate amongst high school dropouts while a rate
Speaker:amongst college graduates, whether they're black or white, has declined.
Speaker:And And I'm just one more statistic.
Speaker:2017, Clegg and Guzman suggests a white high school dropout was about
Speaker:15 times more likely to be in prison than a black college graduate.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:So, of course, the argument is, well, who's most likely to be a college
Speaker:graduate is perhaps a white person.
Speaker:But yeah, that, if you simplify to me to have the, I can't remember the
Speaker:statistical fallacy, but if you're comparing very different selection
Speaker:sizes, then the proportions or the percentages or the absolute numbers
Speaker:are going to look quite different.
Speaker:But either way, it's still, you know, I think this gets to your
Speaker:point about class being a thank you.
Speaker:It is the base rate fallacy.
Speaker:Thank you, Joe.
Speaker:The class is, it gets to your point about class being a much more differentiating
Speaker:factor because things like education and did, did you complete high school?
Speaker:You know, what kind of family did you grow up in?
Speaker:Things like that have as a lot of effect on your class, whether
Speaker:you are black or white right?
Speaker:Or doesn't deny that race is a factor, but he's saying there are other factors
Speaker:that need to be taken into account and and it, and it shouldn't be simplified.
Speaker:There's complex.
Speaker:Relationships going on here between race and education
Speaker:and, and other factors at play.
Speaker:So I had a look at some local statistics, Paul, on incarceration and education
Speaker:found, this doesn't surprise me.
Speaker:Trevor Australian Institute, health Welfare report of some sort.
Speaker:So, big report somewhere at page 256.
Speaker:I got that far into it
Speaker:in Australia of prisoners.
Speaker:1% have a bachelor degree, 4% have a diploma, 31% have a trade certificate.
Speaker:56% have no non-school qualifications.
Speaker:Only 19% of the prison population.
Speaker:Finished year 12.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:The, and the interesting sort of anecdote that I've seen on this as well is that
Speaker:the, if you look at the incarceration rates in Tasmania where there is a higher
Speaker:proportion of high school dropout rate then it is, it is higher than states
Speaker:that don't have, as, you know, don't have dropout rate, same education standard.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:But also that the population, as we know from what we said before about, you know,
Speaker:from Tasmania, is that the population of the Aboriginal people is very, very
Speaker:low compared to other jurisdictions.
Speaker:So, I do think that it, it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's a, a big factor.
Speaker:So I'll just give some other statistics.
Speaker:Well, I was wondering there if do you think that's something that Ken
Speaker:Malak is kind of overlooking the, the, because you sort of said before
Speaker:he's, he didn't really look at race in English politics or in, and you know,
Speaker:we know that from India and Pakistan, there are different races as well.
Speaker:There are different racial groups.
Speaker:It, it felt to me like he didn't really a, a address race, racism in other context.
Speaker:And it, and so it's because you've got this quite clear differentiation
Speaker:of, of skin colors in the us then it, it became a lot easier to just con
Speaker:compare and contrast that example.
Speaker:And he was, he just missed out on some of the subtlety.
Speaker:Do you, do you feel like that feel like I've asked?
Speaker:I think it was fair enough, wrong way around.
Speaker:I think it was fair enough to concentrate on the US because he
Speaker:probably wants to sell books in the us There's obviously excellent
Speaker:statistics on this that are available.
Speaker:He's, we are all familiar with the figures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
Speaker:There's, you know, there's a size and a richness to the whole story there
Speaker:that I think it was an appropriate place to, to, to deal with.
Speaker:I don't, you know, the book would just get enormous if you were going
Speaker:to enter into other jurisdictions and start talking about, you know, like I
Speaker:would be interested, for example, in race and indigenous issues in South
Speaker:America where I don't tend to hear of indigenous lands rights issues in South
Speaker:America, even though I've got a keen interest in South America and it would
Speaker:pique my interest if I heard something.
Speaker:There's definitely, I've definitely heard like the Y Mamo and other native
Speaker:Brazil, you know, native tribes in Brazil.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, basically pushing against the, the sort of slash
Speaker:and burn farming of the Amazon.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It, it's such a large mixed population where nearly.
Speaker:Everyone has got a bit of native blood in them.
Speaker:They're very mixed races there, I think.
Speaker:But I get off, we're getting off topic there because I don't have enough detail
Speaker:on it, but just I don't, I don't blame Malick for concentrating on America.
Speaker:And I think, you know, what he does say about this incarceration is it's a
Speaker:complex relationship and he says that the savagery of mass incarceration
Speaker:in America reveals a complex relationship between race and class.
Speaker:To suggest that is not to deny racism or to fall into the trap of
Speaker:class reductionism, as some have claimed, it's simply not to wish
Speaker:away the complexities of the world.
Speaker:So I think he's just saying, and I think his criticism is of many of the players in
Speaker:the critical race theory movement finding racism as the answer to everything and
Speaker:white privilege being abundant no matter what the class is of the white person.
Speaker:So, That's what he was sort of saying there.
Speaker:But just to finish some statistics, cuz locally in Australia indigenous people,
Speaker:29% of the prison population, even though they're three point something
Speaker:percent, 3.3 of the general population.
Speaker:The other thing of course is prison population, 90% are male males
Speaker:only make up 50% of the population.
Speaker:So there's a strong bias against males in prison.
Speaker:Do we have a hear of special programs to specially designed
Speaker:to keep men out of prison?
Speaker:Paul, maybe they do.
Speaker:We, we, we did, but the coalition cut them all.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And adults without a degree, adults without a degree, are 72%
Speaker:of the general population, but 99% of the prison population.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:So it'd be simplistic to say, we'll make sure everyone's got a degree and they
Speaker:won't end up in, you know, up in jail.
Speaker:Or some high qualification or not male that'll reduce it by 50%, you know.
Speaker:Well, I'm also shows there's factors involved in a complex.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:I'm also kind of reminded of the Terry Pratchett quote that, you know, living
Speaker:in living in a slum was sort of, Almost borderline criminal because it
Speaker:was just so hard to make an existence any other way, but criminality.
Speaker:But if you owned a slum, you'd got, all you got was invited to the best parties.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And, and where is this from?
Speaker:From a book in Terry Pratchett.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Fairly sure it was, it's one of the guards series, the vibe series.
Speaker:But anyway the, the thing I'm thinking about here is the number of ca cases of
Speaker:high profile well-educated people going to the courts and then being given lenient
Speaker:sentences because, you know, it might hurt their career in future, whereas
Speaker:people who don't have the education.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And I'm just, I'm kind of trying to skip over race here.
Speaker:But the, the, the lower classes, well, they just, we, we've
Speaker:gotta throw the book at them.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And so I'm really, I, I wonder here if part of the reason we don't, you know,
Speaker:another reason that that statistic is as high for, you know, not jailing
Speaker:people with degrees is that judges with degrees also favor, you know, allowing
Speaker:people, you know, people who look like them with degrees from going through,
Speaker:you know, worse sentencing possibly.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:All sorts of inherent biases are at play.
Speaker:No doubt.
Speaker:No doubt.
Speaker:So there's one other aspect that he touched on in this book
Speaker:that I just wanted to go to.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In case you weren't going to, and this was about property.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And so, Adam Smith, famous economist, invisible Hand.
Speaker:The needs of property for him compelled restrictions on equality because we had
Speaker:at this time these notions of universal rights of, of men that were all equal.
Speaker:And we had the practice where they weren't.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And in fact, the people who had wealth and power were not really wanting to share it
Speaker:if they possibly could get away with it.
Speaker:So Adam Smith, strangely unlike today, Hmm.
Speaker:Adam Smith helped them out by saying that the needs of property
Speaker:compelled restrictions on equality.
Speaker:But Jean Jacque Russo Russo demanded that the needs of equality demanded
Speaker:restrictions on property rights.
Speaker:And he said the first man who having enclosed a piece of ground thought
Speaker:of saying, this is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him
Speaker:was the true founder of civil society.
Speaker:How many crimes, wars and murders, how much misery and horror the human race
Speaker:would've been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes and filled in the
Speaker:ditch and cried out to his fellow men?
Speaker:Beware of listening to this imposter.
Speaker:You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone
Speaker:and the earth itself belongs to no one.
Speaker:So that was Russo.
Speaker:And then the Scottish Juris.
Speaker:George Wallace was unequivocal in his condemnation of slavery and his
Speaker:anti-slavery Radicalism came more easily to him because of his unusual
Speaker:lack of respect for private property.
Speaker:Property that bane of human Felicity Wallace wrote Must necessarily be
Speaker:banished out of the world before a utopia can be established.
Speaker:So we had the theory of universality with the enlightenment.
Speaker:We had the practice not living up to it.
Speaker:We had.
Speaker:Intellectuals like Adam Smith justifying inequality, the needs
Speaker:of property and capitalism.
Speaker:But we had others who were ready to go the whole hog on equality.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Often because they had no respect for private ownership of property.
Speaker:And I find the property argument interesting because one of my problems
Speaker:with the voice debate is a lot of the commentary is that indigenous people
Speaker:have been here for 440,000 years.
Speaker:It's really an argument of, well, from their point of view, we
Speaker:were here first, so it's ours.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And that's seen as a good argument.
Speaker:And I don't like the argument of we were here first.
Speaker:I don't think it's a good argument in the same way that yeah, I, I think
Speaker:it's a very, very poor argument and it seems to be accepted as a good one.
Speaker:And people like Russo and George Wallace would say it's not a good argument for
Speaker:anyone to claim property in a special way.
Speaker:But then you'd agree with the pervasive idea across aboriginal
Speaker:cultures that they belong to the land and it is not the other way around.
Speaker:The, this, the, you know, the, the land the places belongs to
Speaker:no one and people existed on it.
Speaker:I dunno that all indigenous people accept that way of thinking about land rights.
Speaker:I would, would you say a majority did?
Speaker:I'd have to look closely at the wording of the America Macata statement and others.
Speaker:But because to me, I think it's an important to distinction between
Speaker:the sort of the, the history of we were here first mm-hmm.
Speaker:Versus the the, the Colonial property rights argument
Speaker:about here we were here first.
Speaker:You know, the, the, the, the, the only way that the colonists were essentially
Speaker:able to justify themselves was by de just deciding that there was no prior owner.
Speaker:Because at that point, as you say, you know, Russo says, Someone had enclosed
Speaker:a plot of land and said, well, this is mine and you people should keep
Speaker:off it because I want it for myself.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I see that as a different form of being there to the aboriginal idea of simply
Speaker:being a part of the land, land being part of its history, being attached to it.
Speaker:But, you know, let, let me read some of the comments I've been hearing.
Speaker:So, Osmos, Samarius Greek commentator whether you're a Greek born Australian,
Speaker:an Indian migrant Australian, a young Arabic Australian, we all have two homes,
Speaker:the one that houses us, and the one which we identify as our ancestral home.
Speaker:Most of us are in this country because of some form of
Speaker:dispossession, be it economic, cultural, religious, or political.
Speaker:The land that has given us this incredible second chance belongs
Speaker:to a 43, 40,000 year old culture.
Speaker:We respect their deep ancestral history.
Speaker:We want to thank them for it so belongs to a culture and someone like Paul
Speaker:Bonno, you would've heard of him.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Can we get it?
Speaker:The primary motivator, the voice is recognition of the injustice.
Speaker:Meet it out to those who are bloodily dispossessed of the
Speaker:land they owned for 60,000 years.
Speaker:Still both people coming from the western ownership of property point of view.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And this is the advocates for the voice.
Speaker:This is, yeah.
Speaker:I'm just giving you the counter that I'll, it seems a traditional national I used as
Speaker:creeping into this look in, in a type of, a type of special property rights that was
Speaker:being envisioned by Rau in that certainly.
Speaker:Unequal in that sense.
Speaker:So, yeah, I guess I'm making the point.
Speaker:And I guess for people who are interested in this topic by Malik's book and read
Speaker:that section of what Adam Smith and Russo and and who was the other commentator?
Speaker:George Wallace had to say they were very non-private property as part of
Speaker:their push for equality and anti-racism.
Speaker:Because the thing that really resonated to me when I sort of reading through that
Speaker:was the, the modern sort of, I couldn't help but feel like the modern descendant
Speaker:of that is the prosperity gospel.
Speaker:The idea that that, you know, that from coming from Adams, that sort of, you know,
Speaker:the,
Speaker:the value of the property that I own implies a con
Speaker:curtailment of the, the freedoms.
Speaker:But, and, and therefore I should be allowed to acquire more of it.
Speaker:Morphing into the kind of acquiring property is good and hard work and,
Speaker:you know, diligent labor can achieve that of the sort of Protestantism.
Speaker:And then into the.
Speaker:Were they both justifications for an an unequal result?
Speaker:One relying on God and the other one relying on a better overall economy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Did, did you feel there was a sort of a, a progression at all in that?
Speaker:No, I see them as just relying on two different convenient rationalizations
Speaker:for doing what you want to do and and finding an uncomfortable result and
Speaker:going, oh, how will I explain this?
Speaker:Oh God.
Speaker:Or well, it's worthwhile trickle down everyone benefits in the
Speaker:end, it'll work out for all of us.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I see them as two different sort of reasons for.
Speaker:What, doing what you wanna do.
Speaker:One of what, one of the things that I did wanted to a want to ask you about,
Speaker:which we kind of touched on earlier and I was hoping to get back to was
Speaker:in sort of talking about violence one of the things that you know, he, that
Speaker:Malik ends with the Christchurch mosque attack and other similar attacks.
Speaker:And, you know, it really ro made me think that terrorism I I is a, a force used to.
Speaker:You know, it also like the, those people are committing acts of, of
Speaker:terror in part to be able to say we've pushed back against them.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And the link lynchings and other, you know, beatings of slaves that
Speaker:tried to run away and so forth.
Speaker:And it, you know, seemed to me also to be a form of terrorism.
Speaker:You know, it's, is a, you don't dare speak out or vote or do, you know, keep the,
Speaker:the rights that you should have because, we'll, you know, we'll kill you if you do.
Speaker:Did you honestly didn't see much, I didn't really see much
Speaker:reference to violence in this.
Speaker:I didn't, I didn't really.
Speaker:Read much talk about the different groups resorting to violence as such, so Okay.
Speaker:Sort of pick that up in, in the discussion about the Christchurch.
Speaker:I can't remember that in the book to tell you the truth.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I can't remember.
Speaker:The Christchurch might have skipped in the, in the end of the 10th chapter.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Talking about, because you know, there's sort of discussion of the, the
Speaker:white identity that kind of emerges out of a reaction against the Ah yes.
Speaker:Black identity.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And those that then comes into all of the stupid conspiracy theories
Speaker:that mean that we have to, you know, white people need to fight back, which
Speaker:is just another form of terrorism.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I kind of skipped over that chapter in my summary notes here, where
Speaker:he talks about the emergence of.
Speaker:Of, of white identity as a reaction to certain events.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But yeah, unfortunately I don't really have much notes on that.
Speaker:So, yeah, he does, he does talk about that emergence of a white
Speaker:identity as a reactionary thing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:One, you know, I, I guess the key thing, and we can sort of in the next five to
Speaker:10 minutes or 15 or whatever, just sort of wrap it up, but the, I think the key
Speaker:thing that I enjoyed in it is, is people's misguided priorities and on Black Lives
Speaker:Matter here he says many who have taken up the Black Lives Matter banner, like many
Speaker:within the race consciousness movements.
Speaker:Historically follows conflate the necessity of challenging racism with
Speaker:the building of racial solidarity.
Speaker:Pursuing the second makes achieving the first more difficult.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Even within America, there is no single identity or set of interests that bind
Speaker:together all black people and only black people, still less all people of color.
Speaker:To assume that there is only reinforces the power of the black elites and
Speaker:diminishes the voices of black workers making it more difficult
Speaker:to tackle the problems facing those at the sharp end of racism.
Speaker:So I, and, and that's sort of part of the byline of this, of this book.
Speaker:Where did I write in the notes?
Speaker:It was yeah, it was that the more we despise racial thinking,
Speaker:the more we clinging to it.
Speaker:And people are.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:How do you mean?
Speaker:People are objecting to racism by coalescing around race and using
Speaker:that as their tool to fight racism.
Speaker:Whereas they should be embracing an entire community.
Speaker:Martin Luther King was getting white people to his marches
Speaker:as much as black people.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Which is your traditional thought in opposition to Malcolm X.
Speaker:And he was getting this, this is a ideological thing
Speaker:that we should all embrace.
Speaker:And it's actually harmful to the cause to make it a race based fight.
Speaker:And I think that's a trap that people are falling into.
Speaker:Con, conflating the necessity of challenging racism with the
Speaker:building of racial solidarity.
Speaker:It should be.
Speaker:It should be broader than that, I think.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:How does that like I feel like there's an intersection there to the class argument.
Speaker:There is where,
Speaker:because it should be, should be more about where is the suffering,
Speaker:where is the harm, where is the hurt, and where's the disadvantage?
Speaker:And that should be colorblind.
Speaker:And let's all look and try and address that as, as what the priority is.
Speaker:I, I mean, I guess I, I have a slightly different take on that, but I, I'm
Speaker:happy to put that aside to another day.
Speaker:I, I think the, I agree with you that you know, it, the, and the interesting
Speaker:thing about your formulation there is that you didn't need to say which class
Speaker:we were going to deal with or help.
Speaker:You just said, we need to identify the people that need our help.
Speaker:It's evidently not the millionaires.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Well, we spoke about changes to superannuation laws that people with
Speaker:over a certain million, millions of money, million dollars in SPR will lose
Speaker:their percentage of a tax concession.
Speaker:I'd put it to you under critical race theory, that that unfairly disadvantaged.
Speaker:White elderly males, and we went, well, that's okay, because they need a bit
Speaker:of disadvantaging added into the pot.
Speaker:You know, it was a, that, that would've had a Yeah, but I feel like an unfair
Speaker:effect on a small ethnic, on a particular ethnic and gender and age group.
Speaker:But we were like, okay, that's all right.
Speaker:In sometimes discrimination is okay, privilege away from people who have it,
Speaker:rather than rather than removing something else from the people that don't have it.
Speaker:It's, I, I guess my point is that we we're prepared to discriminate and
Speaker:disadvantage, you know, take away these advantages where we see it's obviously
Speaker:the right thing to do and it's about Color doesn't come into it, does it?
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Just on the same point.
Speaker:And I was, I was gonna sort of also touch on that idea because you touched
Speaker:on it before that you know, there are, was it Clarence Thomas, the Supreme
Speaker:Court Justice as in the us who's an African American man and you know, quite
Speaker:happily, you know, an arch conservative and, you know, voting against seems to
Speaker:be voting against the very same sex, sorry, the very racial marriage act that
Speaker:allows him to be married to his wife.
Speaker:It's hard to, you know, I can kind of imagine a whole class of
Speaker:working white poor in the US that can hate him equally because he's
Speaker:rich and you know, well educated.
Speaker:He's a classic example of, you know, just having representation
Speaker:isn't gonna change things.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:For the people of color, for example.
Speaker:So more and more we are seeing people from minority groups getting into
Speaker:position of power and screwing over.
Speaker:You know, if, if they happen to be a Tori conservative, they'll
Speaker:happily screw over a form.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Working class certain, a certain senator from the Northern Territory Yeah.
Speaker:Might be involved in this.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So just on this sort of idea as well.
Speaker:Page 2 62, he says the inward looking binding politics of identity, The outward
Speaker:looking, bridging politics of solidarity, the former mobilizes by emphasizing shared
Speaker:membership of a particular identity, be that gender, sexuality, race, or nation.
Speaker:The politics of solidarity also stresses the collective endeavor,
Speaker:but views commonality as emerging, not from particular identities, but
Speaker:out of the shared set of values and beliefs and the struggles to win
Speaker:acceptance for those values and beliefs.
Speaker:So that's a good description of the difference between the politics of
Speaker:identity and the politics of solidarity.
Speaker:But that's what he's saying.
Speaker:I think it's well put and I know, which I prefer.
Speaker:It's, it's hard though to see exactly where those differences are.
Speaker:Sometimes it's easy.
Speaker:You think So the people who talk about race and identity in my
Speaker:people never talk about class.
Speaker:It's easy to see.
Speaker:It's either they spot 'em a mile away.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:Spot them a mile away.
Speaker:I, what, what I guess I'm thinking of there is that the talking about
Speaker:the identity is often an, an identity which involves those shared values,
Speaker:those common, increasingly it doesn't.
Speaker:Increasingly identity is these fixed notions of fixed characteristics
Speaker:of your gender, your sexuality, your your race your color, and,
Speaker:and not your ideological belief.
Speaker:It's, it's rare for people to say, come on, we're all communists.
Speaker:Let's band together under this ideological.
Speaker:Banner that we've all decided to adopt as a, as a, as a theory of living?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because people are adopting solidarity because of, of fixed characteristics
Speaker:and it's not healthy for them or for us.
Speaker:And I'm kind of reminded of that meme that goes around with various captions of
Speaker:sort of our two workers you know, white and a black, you know, man sort of with
Speaker:hands locked together in solidarity.
Speaker:They're not sort of fighting each other.
Speaker:They're, you know, helping each other giving each other strength.
Speaker:And, you know, you'd think that it would be easy to say, you know, workers unite.
Speaker:You know, poor people unite.
Speaker:But we keep on being divided off into, you know, single moms and,
Speaker:you know, working single parents and the elderly and so forth.
Speaker:Divide and divide and conquer.
Speaker:It's, it's, you know, the oligarchs and the powerful don't
Speaker:want people organizing together.
Speaker:So we'll encourage movements like the whole beat up over trans people.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:You think there was one in every street corner the way Yeah.
Speaker:Is, is give it to it and it, it's just a beat up to keep people.
Speaker:Part of it is to, to distract, to divide and to prevent people coalescing together.
Speaker:I, I was wondering that about that as well, because.
Speaker:There's a couple of times, I don't think he particularly used the phrase
Speaker:moral panic in the book, but there's certainly sometimes where he talks
Speaker:about the the things that, you know, black people or, you know, people of
Speaker:different races, Chinese were, were accused of, you know, being dissolute
Speaker:and drug addicts and, you know, perverted and all those sort of things.
Speaker:And I guess I just wondered, feels like there's a also a sort of a, a a, a common
Speaker:tool in that division strategy of is, is to sort of go for the moral panic.
Speaker:You Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, it, it, it happens.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's again it's to the advantage of powerful people to keep less
Speaker:powerful people fighting amongst themselves over, over issues so
Speaker:that they don't band together.
Speaker:And so I've got, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I've got one final question.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Because I feel like this was a book that you were hoping to read because it would
Speaker:talk about a particular issue that you already knew you had strong opinions on.
Speaker:So I'm wondering if what, what were the, what were the things that, where
Speaker:you really found yourself thinking, oh, that's really changed my view of it.
Speaker:Oh, look, to be honest, I don't think it's changed my view on, on anything.
Speaker:I found it quite affirming of the things I already thought, because I've read
Speaker:already a fair bit of Cannon Malick, okay.
Speaker:Over the years in articles and books and things.
Speaker:And so I've, and I really can't remember disagreeing with him much on these things.
Speaker:I, I knew where he was gonna head with this one.
Speaker:So, for me, I was just hoping it would present ideas and concepts and and
Speaker:stuff that I could use in to further the arguments I already had in my head.
Speaker:And I think it's achieved that, so, okay.
Speaker:So yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, I can't really, there were things that I just didn't quite know.
Speaker:And really, it probably don't matter that much in terms of how much historically
Speaker:racism really wasn't skin color based.
Speaker:And it was, probably wasn't aware as much of that, but doesn't really matter.
Speaker:It just not an important issue.
Speaker:It's just interesting.
Speaker:Certainly the stuff about Malcolm X is.
Speaker:Has changed towards the end of his life I wasn't aware of.
Speaker:And that was good to understand.
Speaker:I think he's got a beautiful turn of phrase in a way of saying things like
Speaker:he says here the question people ask themselves today is not so much in what
Speaker:kind of society do I want to live as?
Speaker:Who are we?
Speaker:Who are we as become defined less by the kind of society they want to create than
Speaker:by the history and heritage to which supposedly, supposedly they belong.
Speaker:So, just a, there's good turn of phrase and a good way of saying things and
Speaker:he's very much a class-based thinker, like just right at the beginning.
Speaker:Now let me just find so, he says at the very beginning of the book that he grew up
Speaker:with Paki bashing in the UK in the 1970s.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So he was a victim of that racism.
Speaker:The racism drew him into politics.
Speaker:But learnt social justice is bigger than racism in a person's skin.
Speaker:Color, ethnicity, or culture provides no guide as to the
Speaker:validity of their political beliefs.
Speaker:He realized shared values were more important than shared skin
Speaker:color, ethnicity, or culture.
Speaker:So, so I just find that really spot on and that's you know, when I'm talking
Speaker:to people in life I, I just don't care about their fixed characteristics.
Speaker:I'm interested in the things that they decide in terms of
Speaker:ideologies and why they decide them.
Speaker:That's what, that's what interests me.
Speaker:So, so yeah, I'm sort of on board with Ken Malik so much, so I can't say he, okay.
Speaker:No, but it's but it, and it is nice.
Speaker:It is nice.
Speaker:I, I agree with you on I'm, I'm getting a re a message saying I'm
Speaker:trying to restore the connection.
Speaker:So I dunno, I'm still coming through, but seems to be okay now.
Speaker:I do think it's nice to have someone who's done the research that can
Speaker:kind of confirm all of those things a bit like you know, reading the
Speaker:Carbon club and seeing, yeah, okay.
Speaker:There really was this group of people behind the scenes that were doing
Speaker:all of this stuff that, you know, now makes sense of what we publicly saw.
Speaker:I guess the, the, how this may, it's probably a, a tangent for another day.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Another, another form of class to me is cast.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:You know, in, in Indian societies, but also in Arabic and in other, what we
Speaker:might call the subcontinent societies.
Speaker:There are these very distinct casts which kind of also say you are a laborer or,
Speaker:you know, you are an untouchable, you should never be able to do anything.
Speaker:And I really kind of wondered I found myself thinking this, I can't remember
Speaker:how I was reminded of it, but it sort of, after I'd finished you know, thinking
Speaker:that it, you know, for Indian people and for other, you know, other races
Speaker:where there is a lot of different.
Speaker:So there's a lot of different class variety in, in terms
Speaker:of their, their money.
Speaker:But also, and I mean even in the, you even see this in England in the upstairs,
Speaker:downstairs of that idea that, you know, if you were born into a peasant family
Speaker:or a servant family, the very, very best that you could ever hope for is to be
Speaker:the, the head of the under servants.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, you would never actually, as, you know, you could never even
Speaker:aspire to have property, you know?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Well, you couldn't aspire to choose an identity.
Speaker:So in sort of the pre-modern world, you, you just, your identity was a given.
Speaker:And it was only in the, it was based on the community that
Speaker:you were ensconced in and.
Speaker:You know, with the industrial revolution and the breakdown of community and then
Speaker:with the coming of the Enlightenment, Malik explains the first time in
Speaker:history as people became detached from their communities and a and
Speaker:a prescribed identity, they, they started to have a choice of choosing
Speaker:an identity, if you, you like, okay.
Speaker:That they didn't have before.
Speaker:Is, is that a substitute for class then in that struggle?
Speaker:Well, I guess people have taken it that way.
Speaker:That's the people have forgotten class and have just concentrated on identity.
Speaker:They've, they've given up on class.
Speaker:So, but I think it's coming back.
Speaker:I, I think it's coming back.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I well, I don't particularly want to eat the rich because they're unusually fatty
Speaker:and probably contains lots of toxins.
Speaker:You know, but, but no, you know, the, the idea of the far, you know, that
Speaker:we are in late stage capitalism is becoming more and more acknowledged.
Speaker:And, you know, we're looking at riots in Paris that were quite substantial
Speaker:over the, what's to do with the retirement age being increased.
Speaker:But more and more people are gonna return to a class-based bite because
Speaker:it's now becoming obvious that capitalism has reached its late stage
Speaker:and something else is around the corner.
Speaker:So it was hopeless before, and people resorted to the sanctuary
Speaker:of a, of a, of a race based.
Speaker:Bite.
Speaker:But I think people can tell that there's something gonna happen, so.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Which might be a good place to finish off.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:On that.
Speaker:Thank, thank you very much Trevor for allowing me to ask you all those questions
Speaker:and interject with opinions of my own.
Speaker:Very good.
Speaker:So, you can look at the books that you think you might want for next month, Paul.
Speaker:I will look at one that I have a look at my list.
Speaker:List and see suggested one before and I'm trying to remember what it was.
Speaker:I'll find, find it if you are willing to give it a go.
Speaker:Well, I'll weigh it up.
Speaker:I'm not gonna commit so after all That's right.
Speaker:Like, like a United Nations rite of veto.
Speaker:I'm I'll, I'll exercise as a major power whenever I feel like it.
Speaker:So, alright.
Speaker:We're dear listener.
Speaker:Well thank you.
Speaker:In the chat room for people there who stayed on and listened.
Speaker:Hope you enjoyed that one as something a bit different.
Speaker:I'll be back with Scott and Joe next week, the range of the
Speaker:usual topics and bye for now.
Speaker:Talk to you later.
Speaker:And it's a good night from him.
