SIO65: Alix Jules Part Deaux

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:04 Clip: You're listening to Serious Inquiries Only.

0:00:33 Thomas: And I am your host, Thomas Smith. I am so excited to have back on the show Alix Jules. I him. I asked him some of the questions I posed and said, hmm, I should ask Alex this back when I talked about the new Jim Crow and much more stuff. Here it is, another long, fascinating, great conversation with Alix Jules.

0:01:01 Thomas: Joining me back for the sequel is Alix Jules. How are you doing, Alex?

0:01:06 Alix: I'm good, how are you, Thomas?

0:01:07 Thomas: It's the... I'm very excited. This is... So many people commented in on this status that I did, soliciting more questions and stuff. They were just like, yeah, talk about whatever, he's the best. I was like, okay. Doesn't... I mean, thank you, but also doesn't really help, but okay. No, that's kind of a... that's good.

0:01:24 Alix: So this is part deux, right? Okay, so we'll do that.

0:01:26 Thomas: Yeah. And there's a lot to talk about. Now, first I want to ask you about, and you were kind enough to listen to a recent episode of mine where I talked about, I just finished the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. I can't, I'm embarrassed to say it took me until now to come across that one and read it. It was a fascinating read. It feels like a really vital read to me. And I had some questions about it. Do you want to say anything in general about it first?

0:01:56 Alix: I think everyone should read it, but you made a comment that I thought was interesting a little bit earlier that, yeah, you're embarrassed that you hadn't read it. I think that's kind of exactly what happens in America in general, where I have this history, I have the secondary history, which is my primary history as a black person.

0:02:04 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Right.

0:02:18 Alix: And I have to learn these things. Sometimes it's in school and it's not during February and Black History Month. But to try and be that whole person and try and make things happen or make understanding of things, of certain things in particular, especially race and race relations, I wind up having to study this. And a lot of times when I have these conversations, I tell people, just because you're black or just because you're white doesn't necessarily mean that you're ready and qualified to have a conversation on race. So before we engage in stuff like that, yes, you have your lived experience, but understanding the dynamics sometimes are a real requisite or prerequisite to having these conversations. It's just like, you know, atheists having conversations with Christians who haven't read the Bible.

0:03:06 Alix: You wind up coming to the table lacking a few things. It's like when I have Black Lives Matter conversations and I want to talk about specific uh specific topics or specific um activists out there and they're ready to quote Malcolm X and and um uh and Martin with the King, usually it's Martin Luther King, not Malcolm. But there's so much context that winds up being missed or missing in that conversation and the subtext and the Angela Davis and and you you were talking talking about Assata Shakur a couple of weeks ago, right?

0:03:11 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's something I would love

0:03:40 Alix: And I know that that was divisive.

0:03:40 Thomas: To ask you about. Yeah.

0:03:42 Alix: I mean, I got tagged in on a couple of those conversations because, you know, Assata Shukur comes with a really big mixed bag. Yes, she was accused of this and she was possibly railroaded the trial and they kept going back after her, etc. But there was all this body of work that she's contributed to many many revolutionaries and activists, et cetera. And it's not just quote mining. This is this is she's she's seen somewhat as as one of the mothers that contributed into the revolution. So what part of the baby do you throw out with the bathwater winds up being the arguments that you have?

Same thing with a lot of the white activists that that we have. You know, when you take a look at someone like, I'll use it, Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, right? You say, look at all these wonderful accomplishments that these people have made. Well, what part of what part of what they've said do you get to ignore and throw out, or do you throw out the entire person? Well, Assata Shakur has contributed A, B and C, but she can but she was accused of doing this. Do we now exclude her from any kind of conversation? Do you do the same thing with Richard Dawkins? Do you do the same thing with Sam Harris and so

0:03:42 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sure.

0:04:59 Alix: Many other activists that are out there?

0:04:59 Thomas: Well, Is this Where someone Would argue, like, there's a difference between having said a few things and allegedly, and and I, I think there's decent reason, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but in from what, from the the research I've done on it, there's decent reason to believe she has a violent history. Is there a difference between, is there a difference between? Violence and mere words that would disqualify someone from a conversation in the way that words wouldn't?

0:05:27 Alix: Well, okay, so do the words incite violence or are they just mere words? And this is where we get into, are we tone policing? Are we beginning to punish people for thought crimes, et cetera? And when I look at someone like a Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, It's like, yeah, I understand those words, but those words have impact and ramifications, et cetera. And then when you take a look at someone, and these are big ramifications, versus someone like Anasada Shakur, who, if she was actually guilty of that kind of violence, yes, you almost say, yeah, that's a really big one to get over.

But still, there's this contribution that she's made to society, or at least a part of society, that is very hard to overlook, especially given the context surrounding everything that is Assata Shakur, the timing, the civil rights movement, the possibility that what we think was said was really never, or what was done. You know, there's so many other doubts that are there, but I don't want to excuse that. But if someone is accused of that level of violence, yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, I would rethink them being a hero, but I would do the same thing with someone who was either an avowed racist or kind of hung around racist or, you know, never challenged racist when they were on their show or gave them access to their platform. Form?

0:06:21 Thomas: Hmm Right, right. Just so we finish this topic, let me say what I said, just to reiterate, because it's possible you'll disagree, I'm happy to face, you know, you telling me I'm wrong if I said something wrong. And actually, people, someone on the internet here accused me of this being tone policing, and I'm open to that, it might be, I was trying to draw a distinction, but I could be wrong. What I said about it was...

The congratulating Assata Shakur's birthday or whatever, celebrating her birthday on the Women's March ...account was... it just seemed needless to me. Like, there's so many... I'm not denying that she contributed good things to the movement, or she had a lot of good things to say, but is it okay to acknowledge that, like, this is already a movement where people on the right accuse it of... essentially, you know, people accuse Black Lives Matter of being a terrorist organization, and I know that There's a certain level where they're gonna do that no matter what, but did this needlessly play into that? When you've got someone who, like Jake Tapper, who went after them for this, I would consider Jake Tapper not the alt-right, I wish, you know, I would consider him a reachable, moderate, pretty mainstream view. Was it needless?

Could they have instead decided, you know, let's just, let's focus on other activists who don't have that violent past, let's still... By the way, the same message, like I'm not trying to detract from the message, but was that an own goal? Was that sort of a needless misstep? That's what I said. I'm happy to hear if you think I'm wrong.

0:08:46 Alix: Well, I think it depends on who you're trying to reach. And if you're trying to a massive audience, and I think that that's much of the goal for the Women's March, well, the majority of that audience is going to be white. So it doesn't make sense to acknowledge someone like Assata Shakur. I say it's probably going to generate more controversy than not. So is the goal to be be controversial and have more people, you know, talk about this or is it about alienating? You know, we get into this discussion on tactics, on activist tactics all the time. Does Black Lives Matter go too far, et cetera? So how do we measure efficacy?

Is it reach? Is that people looking at it? Or is it actually changing hearts? I don't think that, I mean, she could have tweeted or or not tweeted. And I don't think it would have made much of a difference either way, honestly, because people are always going to be painting the Women's March and the leaders in that light, regardless. It's just like Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter in America, the organization, regardless of what it does, is always going to be targeted by the United States. I mean, America doesn't like the idea in general of an organization like that. They didn't like the Black Panthers, which I'm going to go on attention here.

0:09:23 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:10:12 Alix: If you take a look at groups like the Black Panther, the original Black Panther is not the reincarnation of, but the original Black Panther is move on, et cetera. They were very much, if you listen to what conservatives complain about when it comes to African-Americans, the Black community, need minorities. You know, you're a little lazy, get off the government dole, blah, blah. You need to get your stuff together, etc. That's exactly what groups like the Black Panthers were trying to do. Yes, they had other messages in there, but their central tenet was about empowerment, getting up, getting collected and doing something together. It's like the conversation that the the Black community always has. It's not always Black Lives Matter, and excludes what's going on with our neighborhoods because we never talk about violence.

0:11:05 Alix: We always talk about violence in our inner city neighborhoods, but we put those issues in context. And so, so when a conservative absolutely want groups like the NAACP and and and the Black Panthers to succeed so that you can get off the welfare state and you can say, hey, look how successful African-Americans are, except that America likes to tear those down. We take a look at things like Black Wall Street, where you've seen and there are about 20, 30 different different or minority neighborhoods or communities that were built on success, and they were built on black success and black empowerment and financial empowerment, et cetera.

0:11:51 Alix: And there were firebombed, there were killed Black Wall street, nearly 3000, you know, killed and slaughtered by the surrounding white community. It tears them down. And even from the 70s, 80s and into the 90s, groups like the NAACP, although they're focusing on doing exactly what conservatives are saying that we should be focusing on, they then turn around and say, oh, you're racist because, you know, it's black this, black that. Like, so there's not a whole lot of winning that can be had there.

0:12:26 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I take that on board and acknowledge that there's going to be a wide swath of people who, no matter what, either way, you're kind of screwed when it comes to precisely your message. But I think the Jake Tapper thing is possibly evidence that that's not necessarily true about wishing Assata Shakur a birthday. I mean, this is someone who's an independent, someone who's not... particularly known for being right wing, for who's been critical of Trump. I mean, it's somebody that you would think if you want to reach the moderate, or you want to not alienate the moderate, that's somebody who I don't think you can just write off as, oh, well, they're gonna be against the Women's March no matter what. That's that's all I mean to say, like, I go ahead, yeah.

0:13:01 Alix: Right. Well, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, but, but then we're talking about, then we're talking specifically about the moderate and is the moderate on the side of equality? Is the, and there needs to be kind of a differentiation. And I think we wind up losing the moderate versus the centrist. Right. Because the centrist is always going to try and find that middle ground where sometimes the middle that even the middle is evil. Right? So, you know, alienating alienating the moderate. But when you when you take a look at, you know, quote unquote, true revolutionaries and people that that are pushing for massive social change, the moderate gets in the way. Malcolm X used to talk about the white liberal and the white literal moderate. And and they're not you're they're really not your ally. And so there's this argument of of is that argument still relevant? Is it still pertinent in context of time today? Day. And I, if I sat in front of, you know, two dozen black activists today, they would be at odds on that as well.

0:13:18 Thomas: Hmm. Right. Sure.

0:14:08 Thomas: Right, okay, yeah, well, we can move on to other stuff. I think that there's a fine line between, again, not... There is a sense where, you know, there's tone policing and that's... There's also like a deceptive, selectively paying attention when Black Lives Matter is doing something inconvenient and tone policing that, and then working against those goals in all other aspects. You know, like there's... I just want to say there's different levels of, like, all I was saying at the time was maybe pick a different leader who has the same message to congratulate, because it's sort of a needless thing, but, you know, I don't know if we're agreeing to disagree or what, but we can certainly, yeah.

0:14:47 Alix: Well, I don't, I know, I, I no, I dunno that, that we're disagreeing much. Cause you know I, don't know if that would have been, if Assata would have the one that I chose, but I don't the argument. Um, but it also, it also talks to the inclusion, the inclusion that some Some people are trying to bring to the forefront. And when you start talking about intersectionality, someone like an Assata Shakur talks to people that are usually on the front, not on the fringe, on the margin. People that aren't who may not see themselves as part of the movement. And, you know, Assata means something different to other people.

0:14:48 Thomas: Hmm.

0:15:27 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, and I do think it is worthwhile to at least try to put in context how people are viewing Assata Shakur. Like, I think only the absolute most uncharitable reading would say Linda Sarsour was cheering the death of a state trooper or something. Like, I don't think anybody... That's not a rational thing, and I'm not saying that that's a rational thing at all, but...

0:15:28 Alix: Yeah. Yeah. Nuance is often missing.

0:15:48 Thomas: Yeah, but I think the Jay Tapper thing was instructive, like he, to my knowledge, hasn't said anything else on the Women's March, like he wasn't, it's not like he's against it or for it, it's just this, it just was a needless detractor that wouldn't have existed otherwise, but that's where I'm coming from. I want to ask you about the book though, I want to ask you about...

About the New Jim Crow, because there was a couple things I said in that episode, like, ooh, I want to make sure to get Alex's view on this, because it was really interesting to me. Uh, for one, here's what's, and, and this could be one, the result of, you know, when you read a new book or something, and then you start seeing everything in that lens for a while.

Um, so let me know if this is that, but what struck me about this book, which I went through a tiny bit of, it just scratched the surface on my episode, with how big of a problem Mass incarceration is, and and just how it really is devastating the Black community, and it's a, it's a feedback loop where it just, it makes so many other problems worse, it disenfranchises, it breaks up families, it's gonna create more poverty, which then in turn creates more crime, which then in turn creates more arrests, you know, just, it's the worst kind of feedback loop there is, and

0:16:58 Alix: Yep.

0:16:58 Thomas: When I read this, it struck me that, know, if I'm this, it seems to me that our conversation is centered around, in the mainstream, is centered around just, just, relative to this, just nonsense. Like, it really seems like the conversation is around little interpersonal things that might be said that are, could be, like, maybe they're offensive, maybe they aren't, it's around little... minor interpersonal racist things, which I don't want to say, I'm not in any way saying we shouldn't seek to minimize, like we should always try to be inclusive and all that, but is the conversation, the mainstream conversation, to the extent that it happens at all around race, is it centered around things that ultimately are missing the point?

0:17:41 Alix: Yes. Next question.

0:17:46 Thomas: Because that's the impression I got reading this, I was like, my God, why aren't we just talking about this? Like, why are we...

0:17:47 Alix: Well, part of it is because America doesn't want to talk about it anymore. I think there's a level of of racial apathy or I mean, they're they're just we're just tired of talking about it. And that I think that started well into.

0:18:06 Thomas: Tired, but it never, it never, when did we ever talk about it? Like, we're tired of a conversation that's missed the point from the beginning, right?

0:18:09 Alix: Well, we exactly exactly. So, you know, when when we take a look at at the 60s, the blacks were complaining in the 50s, the blacks are complaining 70s, same thing. And it's still always the same thing and we're still not addressing it. And while we're not addressing it, we're not fixing things. It's like an ESPN sports commentator. What is her name. Jamila Hill got in trouble because yeah she got in trouble because she said that the police, you know, she compared the police to the old slave patrol and what people are missing is well actually that's how modern policing did actually evolve. I know you had Michael Woods on,

0:18:13 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Huh, I don't think I heard about this.

0:18:53 Thomas: Oh,

0:18:54 Alix: Yeah, not too long ago, but that's the reality of it. And many of the practices that went around slave patrolling, yes, some of it did get addressed in the 60s and into the 70s with DOJ getting involved with many different municipalities. But those major municipalities that tend to get in trouble, the big 11, 12, 12, 13 of them that consistently see themselves in the news, those were very much slave centers back in the day. And some of those attitudes never really went away because we never really addressed them. And a lot of the cultural issues, the cultural baggage gets repeated by, you it tends to be very hyper regional, but it winds up being echoed and amplified over and over and and over again.

0:18:54 Thomas: Right, yeah.

0:19:42 Alix: So we ignore the issue. And then when you see a true systematic, systematic problem, and we talk about systemic racism in the judicial environment, et cetera, it winds up becoming a machine. And so you have these individuals who are wonderful individuals, people that decided they're going to put the blue uniforms on, and then they go in there and they're enforcing laws laws that were written, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, and they were specifically targeting minorities. And they may not understand how culturally they are biased and how they are targeting these minorities specifically. We saw that in Ferguson as a prime example. And so we say, well, this officer isn't racist. Well, many of the laws in certain areas were we're based on race, therefore racist and tied to systematic racism. And you have, you know, these individuals that are interacting with this system and the effect is the same. The effect is still the same disproportionate numbers going to jail, disproportionate minorities.

0:20:04 Thomas: Right.

0:20:55 Alix: And then there's something else that Michelle talks about. And I know Michael talks about it as well. And And it's over policing. When you take a look at rates of crime in certain areas like this, this minority area versus, you know, the same white area, you normalize for population and crime statistics. And you look, why do you have five times more police? Well, you're increasing the interactions between that community and and the police. So, of course, there's going to be a higher incidence of of whether it's, you know, police, police brutality, whether it's, you know, apathy or whether it's arrest or not, you same thing with drugs, right? It's like, well, we know that blacks and whites consume certain drugs almost at the same rate. And in certain instances, whites consume significantly more.

0:21:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:50 Alix: So you would expect there to be more whites in prison. In fact, I argued once and I didn't really mean it. I was being hyperbolic. It's like, if you really want to fix the system, I'm not saying decriminalize A, B and C drug, just arrest whites at the same rate as you're as you are arresting blacks and watch there be a massive shift in the way that we deal with things like drug abuse.

0:22:07 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:22:18 Alix: We're beginning to see it with the opioid epidemic, right?

0:22:19 Thomas: Yeah, exactly, with the, with the op-, yeah, the

0:22:22 Alix: Crack was a black problem. Opioids be, you know, oh, wait a minute, now we have a problem.

0:22:22 Thomas: Opioid crisis. Now all of a sudden we gotta

0:22:27 Alix: It's like, wait, a minute.

0:22:27 Thomas: Treat it, yeah.

0:22:28 Alix: We had a problem back in the 80s and 90s with the heroin epidemic and then the crack epidemic. And your answer was Bill Clinton, right, with this new wonderful crime bill that's going to disproportionately affect minorities. Minorities.

0:22:45 Thomas: Well! Put a pin in that, I gotta say, that I want to, I want to wait because actually, this is interesting. I, not, not to fully try to defend Bill Clinton at all. But after I recorded with Michael A. Wood Jr., Andrew started talking to me about how much he blew the crime bill out of proportion. So I am gonna, I want to hear that, I want to get him on the show to talk about if there's any misconception there because I think, I think, well, I don't want to talk about it before I get him on, but I will say that it's an easier pitch to blame Reagan and Nixon. There's more blameworthy people, is all I'll say.

0:23:07 Alix: Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, the war on drugs, the war on drug alone, the one drugs alone, you know, coming in from from Nixon and his its effect on the families in the early 70s, and all mid 70s. You know, post, post Vietnam, etc. When when we saw what that was doing to families, etc? Oh, Yeah, absolutely. Even conservatives will admit that there was a problem there, you know, the Shapiro's and company will show you the trend. You know, as soon as you start destroying black families and putting black men in jails or taking away, it's like, look at what happened to the crimes. Well, there's a lot more to that conversation. And this is why statistics by themselves don't tell the story.

0:23:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:24:05 Alix: Sam, Sam, anyway. Yeah.

0:24:08 Thomas: Yeah, well, and that's the, yeah, that's a, that's a huge injustice of it, is that eventually it can sort of justify itself. And and we do see the system does justify itself, because, like, as soon as it starts putting away black men and and ruining black families, then crime goes up in the black community, because you've got a whole bunch of broken families and poverty, which is just a recipe for crime. And then it can self-justify, so, "Oh well, look at the crime rate now, we've got over police more," and then it filters back in on itself and creates an even bigger problem. So I, I totally agree, like, this just looking at stats doesn't tell you what's going on behind the stats.

0:24:46 Thomas: So what about, this is what's so fascinating to me, what about the part toward the end of the book where Michelle Alexander talked about maybe ending things like affirmative action, because of the, it's sort of almost like a tokenism, where if you can find like good examples, like excellent examples of black men or women succeeding in society, then it's a way of distracting from the systemic issues. So she ended up saying, you know, maybe we ought to not even be doing things like affirmative action. I wanted to get your view on that.

0:24:45 Alix: Yeah, that that that is such a that that was such a controversial, uh, as if the, as of the entire book wasn't itself controversial.

0:25:25 Thomas: Yeah, I bet. Sure. Yeah.

0:25:29 Alix: Uh, but that one it's, it's not, it's actually not, it's not new. Um, the idea, yeah, the idea of let's take away all of the, uh potential distractions that, that show success or potential success to show what the numbers actually are. I mean, it is, it's just like we only say, well, what's systemic racism? You have Jay-Z. And I'm like, wait a minute, you're going to use Jay-Z as an example? Yeah, Jay-Z is rich. You got Oprah. I mean, we had a black president. I mean, racism has to be gone because, you know, A, B, and C, and numbers of whites that voted for Obama. It's like, well yeah, you are right to a certain extent, but you are dismissing what the numbers really mean because you would expect there to be, if all things being equal, significantly more Jay-Z's out there. Like, show me the black Bill Gates. Show me the black Steve Jobs. And we're not seeing those. You know, who's the black Warren Buffett? And that just doesn't,

0:25:34 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Right. Yep.

0:26:28 Thomas: Or even just, yeah, or even just like the mainstream numbers of black income, black, you know, employment, like even just, not even extreme examples, but just mainstream. You know, like averages you would expect to be a lot higher and a lot closer to, if everything was equal, you would expect everything to be equal, essentially you'd have, you know, you'd have extremes, you'd have a lot of people in the middle who were you just kind of successful, employed, and all that. And the truth is it's not what we see. We see the black community lagging behind in these numbers because of the drug war and the mass incarceration and stuff. Nice.

0:27:03 Alix: Right. Although we're seeing much better numbers in black unemployment. I think it's almost at a 20-year low, which was surprising to me. Yeah. But yeah, you You know, here's it's interesting when we talk about affirmative action, because, of course, it's being challenged again. And there's always a question on the efficacy, the idea of affirmative action. You know. We hope that one day it goes away when things really do do equalize. And unfortunately, I don't think that's that's there yet. And it does disguise some of the, you know, hey, look, that that person got into Harvard or whatever, you but people assume that all of these successes happen because of affirmative action, which is another problem, which Is another problem.

There was a there was a recent I read this tweet, I'm trying to remember who wrote it, of a there's a black woman who talked about, who talked talked about, um, going to a camp. She was a, uh, she was a camp counselor and I want to say it was Boy Scouts. And it was the year before she went to college and she was counseling there. And, and she Was really excited about going to college. She had, um... the college catalog with her and the, the kids were like talking to her like, well, I wish I could, um.. afford to go to college, I wish I was black because then I could just get

0:27:14 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Right. Oh. I wonder if we're thinking of the same one.

0:28:27 Alix: In for free.

0:28:27 Thomas: Right, right. Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of, yeah.

0:28:30 Alix: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I hear that all the time. I mean, I really do. I actually had, you not to make it about me, but I actually had a Woman come up to me at one of my debates and and and try and say, hey, you are I listen to you. I read your background, etc. It's wonderful. Are you are you one? Are you OK with the level of affirmative action that happens today? And I'm like, I actually didn't use any of those anyway. But but she assumed that. And it's just and but the question that that hit me was, have you gotten to the point where you can you can forgive the enslavers for bringing you and your people to this land so you could have the opportunities that you now have, including lecturing us on race? Yeah.

0:28:33 Thomas: Yeah. No, feel free.

0:29:21 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, that's all anyone wants is like all this horrific, violent, disgusting injustice so that later one day they can like give a lecture. Is that the deal we all want to make?

0:29:23 Alix: Right. Right. That Yeah yeah yeah, exactly, this is like, have you have you have you found the forgiving forgiveness in your heart because obviously, you know, I've been to Africa, I see what Africa is like, and you wouldn't want to be living in those conditions. And my response to her, and it took me a while to get there, was, you know, if you hadn't done what you did to Africa, maybe I would have traded it, but you know, let's not forget that too. So it's not if and or, it's it's you've got to look at everything in context. So yeah, I think that

0:30:09 Thomas: It's just one of those, that's a, it's a weird question because I do think there's a lot of, you know, there's obviously a ton of problems in Africa as there would be anywhere because humans are humans are humans pretty much. And, but it's just a useless question. Like it's a, it's a, it's a useless counterfactual that like, yeah, yeah, right,

0:30:10 Alix: Yep.

0:30:20 Alix: Yep, yep, it was a fun. It was, uh, it was fun because it allowed me to see where some people, how far you know, some some people would would are willing to go, and she was a missionary in Africa, and and, you know, she was, uh, a church goer, and and I know know, that deep in her heart, she really, really meant well.

0:30:42 Alix: And I just couldn't wrap my head around it, but back to it.

0:30:41 Thomas: Right, right, right. But that's the thing there's Such a focus on like, when I debated about, then I'm not gonna bring up the issue again, but just a reference it, when I debated on the Brett Weinstein stuff. There's such a focus on like, "No, but the intent is fine. The intent is fine." Like, I've found that people are obsessed with intent and it's like, I. People kept saying like, "Well, look, where is he being racist? Where's he being racist?" And I had to keep pointing out like, I never called him racist. Like in every conversation I've had about Brett Weinstein, at some point, someone assumes I called him a racist.

And it's like, I never did that. That's all what this... Kind of fragility is, is happening, you know, like it's, it's just, no, it's, he was oblivious and, frankly, in my opinion, whitesplained and was arrogant about it and didn't... like, didn't pay proper to other perspectives, but I never said, like, he's a racist and he wears a white sheet and like, that's like, that seems to be the problem. And the reason I bring it up is because in the book, in The New Jim Crow, that's a lot of how the system perpetuates itself is when there have been legal challenges to it.

The justices or whatever level of the court it is will say, well, we need some overt bigotry here. Like we need someone to say like, yes, I'm trying to lock away black people. When really it's like, no, it's ostensibly race neutral and that's the issue. Like people are always looking for the...

0:31:16 Alix: Yeah. Yeah,

0:32:10 Thomas: Like, racism, Cap, like, like, they're always looking for, like, the white sheet and the, you know, they're looking for, like, overt stuff, which is out there, I'm not saying it's not out there, but that's what they're looking for in order to be able to even say there's a problem.

0:32:23 Alix: Yeah, yeah. No. And it would be it would be great if we could get a real a real look at what the and we can. I mean, sociologists sociologists do the hard math and policy people do the hard math as well. Statistically looking at where bias really exists, et cetera. And if you get to peel back the number with affirmative, see, affirmative action is really tricky because because it doesn't just help people of color. In fact, because of the subsequent laws, et cetera, we know that it helps white women as well. In fact – so how do you –

0:32:55 Thomas: Right, yeah. I think it helps, also it helps everybody, right? Like a diverse classroom, everybody learns better, there's better learning outcomes, stuff like that, right?

0:33:04 Alix: Well, yeah, exactly. And what was really interesting is – I'm trying to remember the study, but it was a couple of years. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. There was a study that showed that white women in particular – now, this may just be a function of demographics. Again, black people are only 13 percent of the population. Um, and about 70 being white, um, white non-Hispanic, uh but they actually showed that white women were the primary beneficiary of affirmative action and not people of color. Yeah.

0:33:20 Thomas: Right. Huh. That's very interesting.

0:33:36 Alix: Yeah, that's, yeah. Oh.

0:33:38 Thomas: Here's the thing, and I have to say this, because I'm so, I'm just fired up about this today, because I just recorded with Andrew for Opening Arguments. I don't know when this will go out, this, you and I right now, I'm not sure when it's going out, scheduling is always a weird thing in podcasting, but... Just today was when Andrew and I recorded an episode where he talked about the Justice Department, something you referenced off mic before recording, Alex. The Justice Department is finally going to go investigate how wronged white people have been in colleges.

0:34:10 Thomas: And Andrew goes through, it is, oh my gosh, you gotta catch this one if you can, and everybody listening, he goes through and describes the case, history of when that one girl, Abigail something, sued, and, right, and the actual, they went through the policy, and the... The affirmative action was like one part of one part of one part of one part of like one of the criteria. It was like it couldn't be less of a big deal. It is and it is such a typical... This is what has really moved me on this issue, to just speak personally for a second, like this is what has brought me over, in my view anyway, toward just a progressive stance on a lot of this stuff and has shaped how I see this issue because I have been blind in my life to how much white overreaction there is to stuff. Like, it just has

0:34:08 Alix: It's, it's terrible, all these it was yeah, ut it was University of Texas. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:35:05 Alix: Victimhood,

0:35:05 Thomas: Looked normal to me.

0:35:05 Alix: Victimhood. Let's let's let'S call it a victim culture.

0:35:06 Thomas: Exactly. White victimhood.

0:35:08 Alix: Go ahead. There you go.

0:35:08 Thomas: Absolutely. I have been blind to how much white... I really have. Like, I would have said when I was in high school, yeah, affirmative action screws over a bunch of white people who are trying to get into stuff. When you look at the numbers, it's like, I don't even know if this is doing anything. Like, maybe it may... Like, we can look at the numbers. Maybe it got in a... A few people of color here and there that if you just went by numbers might have not have gotten in or something.

But what white people do is they take this tiny factor that barely factors in, that the goal is to get some more diversity because of how horrendous, and he cited some other statistics like 50% of the classes had one, or fewer, black, no, had like zero black people in them and then like another 20 had one or something like that, I blanking on the numbers but it was pretty abhorrent and it's like, okay, that's a very good aim, like try to try to get rid of that, you know, try to try to fix that situation. And white people overreact to like they're under attack for this and it's, it doesn't, look, it doesn't mean white people can't be right about stuff, can't have an opinion on stuff. That's not what it means to me anyway.

It doesn't mean every black person is right about every issue. But what I've seen is a shitload of white overreaction about a lot of stuff that once you get to the bottom of it, you're like, holy shit, I cannot believe how sensitive they

0:35:21 Alix: Right, right. Yeah, Yeah.

0:36:26 Thomas: Have been as a whole.

0:36:26 Alix: Well, but, but but but in part, it's because we refuse to have these conversations. I, I did a talk, I did, I did a talk recently and it's um colorblind parenting for humanist okay. Colorblind parenting for humanness, I mean, I can distill it into like one sentence. You know or one rule, don't do it. All right, it's really it's real, it's that simple, right?

0:36:31 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hmm. I'd love to hear it. Nice. I was curious where you were going with that. I was like, oh, this is interesting, like colorblind. I thought that was kind of against what we were talking about.

0:36:56 Alix: Right, and but when we start looking at at the data, because I was actually testing a hypothesis that I heard um Adam Corolla make on another podcast about how, yeah, he was talking about how he doesn't teach his kids about race. You know, oh, no, I just tell people to tell my kids to treat everyone equally. And I was like, and if that were true and it would if it actually worked, what's the number of people who actually do colorblind parenting? It turns out that the majority of white parents do color blind parenting, they ignore the idea of race.

0:37:03 Thomas: Oh. Oh, joy.

0:37:18 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:37:27 Alix: They just say, hey, it's a bad thing to acknowledge race. But we know that children start recognizing race as early as two and three years old, and they begin to start sorting things as early As two and Three. So we're ignoring those questions and and ignoring those differences. Many of these kids start internalizing the idea of difference must be bad because we're not talking about it. Right.

0:37:52 Thomas: Hmm.

0:37:52 Alix: But but when we if If colorblind parenting actually worked, we should see better numbers in anti-black or explicit bias numbers. And we're not. I mean, it's getting a little bit better, but only two, three, four percent within the margin of error. So we know that that's not working. And then when we take a look at how black and brown parents talk about race, They are three to five times more likely to have real conversations about about substantive conversations about identity and and and history, et cetera. And just it's a black and white issue. In fact, there was a book that was written a couple of years ago, Nurture Shock, that goes into a lot of detail behind it. And one of the stories that's in there is one of the Ph.D. students was working on a study and what they wanted white parents to do. I think she had like 10 parents pulled aside for the study.

And she's like, hey, I need you to talk to your children about race. So, you know, black, white, etc. It's not about white guilt or any of that, but I need to talk to them about race, where we are, where we've come from, etc., and as soon as the parents found out about this and all

0:38:22 Thomas: Right.

0:39:08 Alix: White parents, like five of them drop out immediately. I'm not going to do that. It's not helping the cause. In fact, we're seeing kids now, even the millennials, like, well, what is racism? I don't really know what racism is. And when we start talking about individualized racism versus systemic racism or institutionalized racism, that's not a thing. Or racism today, you know, that stopped because of Obama and the civil rights era was a hundred years ago.

0:39:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is so interesting because I can, this is where I can, again, I love when I get to whitesplain some things to you. No, I'm just kidding. This is where I can speak from my white experience, which is just, just say as a, as a white youth learning about things and learning about the civil rights movement and school and stuff in the nineties, it's so weird to think back because, because I think this is a human thing. I think we all think wherever we started from is normal. Like whatever we... Thank you for watching!

0:40:35 Thomas: What you just said a minute ago is totally how I experienced it as a kid. It was like, well, sure, there was this thing called racism. Like, sure, once upon a time, there was, you know, there was a need to march and there was a, you know, and then they fixed all that. And then now is now, you know, like that is very much... And I don't think anyone's explicitly trying to teach that that I know of in my past. It's

0:40:58 Alix: They're Yeah. No, no. And, and they're still not talking about it.

0:41:01 Thomas: They're Yeah, just not talking about it. Yeah, like, what's... That is a very human impulse to be like, things are fine now, like, we fixed it all. And then I think back, I look back and I'm like, this was the early 90s. How, like, two seconds ago, there were people, you know, like, there were white people in the South and everywhere, you know, like, super overt racists, you know, stopping people from, stopping black people from going to school with them, stopping them from drinking, like... This was 10 minutes ago! Like, how in the world, if you took just somebody looking at the timeline as a whole, you know, that's just a blip in the screen. There's nothing, but as a kid, you think, well, that was forever ago. Like, that was all solved.

0:41:40 Alix: Right. And I, and I like to remind people that they're, they're not talking they're in the Senate. I mean, you still have people that wanted.

0:41:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're still currently Attorney General. Yeah. This is amazing. It's something that, yeah, I agree. Let me ask you something. I want to ask you some advice, if you don't mind. How do you think... I am about to be a parent. Our daughter should be born this month, assuming all goes well.

0:41:52 Alix: Yeah exactly. Oh yeah, Yeah, exactly. Sure. Congratulations.

0:42:09 Thomas: Thank you very much. As a white parent, I want your advice. How should I talk to my daughter about race? Should I proactively do it? You know, what would you say? What

0:42:19 Alix: I have five children and they're they're biracial. And so we do have conversations about this. And, you know, half of their family is white. And and so I'm always walking this this this line because, Because, you know, I've had the little ones ask, like, wow, are you saying that white people are bad? It's like, no, I'm not saying that they're bad.

0:42:40 Alix: I'm saying this is the history and this is why your mom and I couldn't get married, you know, just a few years before I was born, right?

0:42:21 Thomas: Right. Right, yeah. If it were, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

0:42:50 Alix: But we've been able to overcome that and there's a lot more for us to do. So I actually have a few things that I usually recommend. And the first one is don't hide what's going on and have age appropriate conversations. If you're seeing things in Baltimore or Ferguson and history tells us it's going to happen again, a lot of times chances are they're already being exposed to it and just brushing it aside isn't doing anything. So engage in that conversation, age appropriate and give them some context. That's one. The second thing that I would do is discuss racial stereotypes and why they exist. Also, as they get older, talk about why they have their certain appeals and their histories. Now, that takes some level of research.

0:43:19 Thomas: Right. Hmm.

0:43:43 Thomas: I'm gonna just have to do some homework, yeah, I was gonna say, like, I don't know, as a kid of the 90s, like, I don't, we were just, I think we were raised a lot with the kind of neutral, like, colorblind attitude that you've been referencing, so, like, I don't know a ton of that history, I don't know much about it at all.

0:43:43 Alix: Search your, it takes you, well, I mean, just, just the idea of the welcome.

0:43:58 Thomas: Give me some book recommendations,

0:44:00 Alix: Well, I mean, well yeah, we can, yeah. Nurture shock is, is, isn't one I, I recommend hands down just Google nurture shock. Get Um, comfortable with difficult dialogue. You're going to be a parent anyway. And so if you can have the sex talk or if you, if you're planning to have the text talk, eventually you should be able to have the race talk because guess guess what? As a black parent, I have it anyway. I have the race talk. I have the police talk. And those are very different coming from my background.

0:44:00 Thomas: For sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's very forced on you, huh? You don't really get the option of not having these talks, whereas white people, it's like, I could just not do any of this.

0:44:33 Alix: Right, right. I also think what's important is exposure. So foster personal friendships and organizational alliances, as I tell, if you can find a family group that has a little bit of diversity, sometimes being exposed to different cultures really, really helps. So that's really really big.

0:44:55 Thomas: That's a tough thing. I don't know, that seems like a tough barrier because we're so segmented in our society. Yeah, yeah, we really are.

0:45:01 Alix: Segregated? Segregate it is the word.

0:45:03 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, we are, yeah, we are really segregated. I was just listening to a... Vox podcast about, I mean, it's not as bad in California, but it's not great. And there's, in particular, was it Detroit they were talking about? Like, just how bad the segregation is still. School segregation, you referenced that last time we spoke. There's a lot of, it's just... It's like the lines were drawn back in a very overtly racist time, and those lines had a profound impact on, you know, district lines, school district lines, housing lines, and that shit just doesn't go away.

You know, Another reason why this is a vital conversation and why we need to actually do stuff is you can't just... This is what I see in our community. To bring it back to maybe, I don't know, more atheism stuff, like this is what I'm seeing in the skeptic community is, I thought we were done with race, don't we get to reset, you know, like It's like These things, like these policies, the housing policy, they brought up in the Vox podcast. They were like, well, there was a literal wall built to separate this black neighborhood from a white neighborhood because the federal government would not lend money to them without a protective wall.

0:45:03 Alix: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. Oh, yeah, well,

0:46:22 Thomas: Subtitles by the Amara.org community. And I'd love to hear your take on this, but they tried stuff like, okay, well, we're going to bus kids around. We're going to try to bus the kids from like the suburbs into the city. And the court was like, look, unfortunately you can't do that. Like we get what you're trying to do, but you can't take kids from outside of a city that they don't live in and say you have to go to a school in a city because the city...

0:47:29 Alix: You if you go by the number of the impact of generational generational wealth, yeah, you're looking at 200 years or so of trying to trying to fix a bridge that and yeah, I mean, I mean, we've been, many of us have been talking about this for 20, 30, well, yeah, 20, 30, 40 years or more. And, and, well.

0:47:45 Thomas: Hey, I'll never be as woke as you, Alix Jules. I'll never be... You were woke before school.

0:47:53 Alix: I was born woke. No. Well, my, my mom, my Mom was a union organizer and she was a community activist as well. And so a lot of these issues that were happening in my community, you know, I got exposure to them, you Know, really, really young. I was way too young with a picket sign, way too young with picket signs. She has a picture of me and I think I'm like five, six years old and I have a pickets sign. It's like, why do I have a picket sign?

0:47:54 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's too young. If you

0:48:19 Alix: You know, and she's proud of that picture.

0:48:20 Thomas: Can't read what's on the sign, maybe that's a little too young. That's all I'm saying.

0:48:24 Alix: Yeah, you know, and it was an immigration issue at that. It was an immigration issue. But yeah, I mean, talking about making sure that financially the money's going where it needs to go, raising the standards of school education in the inner city, all of, I mean, there are, there are policy institutes that dedicate tons of resources there. The problem is you, you know, again, we're not having a very honest dialogue about things. And then you throw in things like the bell curve and, and which, which might be valid a hundred years from now, but it sure as hell wasn't valid when they used it because it dismisses way too much of the context associated with those statistics.

0:48:27 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

0:49:12 Alix: And, you know, we should be trying to measure efficacy with different ways that we're teaching, but you've got to overcome a lot of the issues that history hasn't allowed us or America hasn't allow us to overcome yet. So until we're ready to address And since we're talking about the atheist community, let's bring it home. There's been a lot of talk about civility and trying to stop eating our own and this new call for unity, etc. And I'm not 100% on board with that because what many of the people are, what they're missing is these dividing lines are not necessarily dividing lines, but defining lines for many of us.

Because when I wind up talking about black lives matter and someone says, well, yeah, it's not that I don't believe in black lives, but there shouldn't be a, but at the end of that, there, there shouldn't be the, but it has no, but at the, you, I mean, we can talk about tactics, but this shouldn't be a butt at the of that.

When we start talking about transphobia and whether or not, you know, Hey, well I'm going to have a platform for turf, but now hold on again, you're, you've got that, but But at the end of it, well, feminism just does.

0:49:32 Thomas: Sure.

0:50:32 Alix: OK, hold on a second. Now we're addressing or we're attacking core pieces of our identities that people see without our atheism. And now, because we want to talk about those, we're like, "Wait, well, can't we all just get along?" Well, it didn't work in L.A. It doesn't work anywhere else in culture. Culture, so why are you silencing it now because you believe the movement is being fractured because I have showed up and now I want to be heard, right?

0:51:04 Thomas: Right. Yeah, and I don't think there's anything I could add to that. I think that speaks for itself. I think that I've already said the few things I was going to say in terms of, you keeping the movement unified. It's like, unified for what? I mean, we'll still, you know, we could still donate to the causes we want. We can still... I'll argue with a Christian if you want me to or something, but like, I don't know. What else am I doing? You know, I don't know. Whatever.

0:51:18 Alix: Right. Well. Is, is it well. If, if the, if the and then I'll say this, um, and I think it's the last thing I'll saying on this topic, is if, if, if the of the atheist movement is to further atheism, well, let's look and take a look at what the numbers are and are we failing. Regardless of what the movement is or isn't doing, secularism is growing in America. And I think that's probably what's causing the movement to look and move the the way that it is. You've got a lot more people with a lot more interest and it's not what it used to be.

0:51:29 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:52:04 Alix: And I hate the attack that people say, oh, it's becoming less intellectual, et cetera. It's like, well, certain studies may not be the same as yours. And maybe they, we are focusing a little bit more on, on intersectionality, but that doesn't make it less valid. Does it? I mean, does it?

0:52:22 Thomas: Not in my opinion, yeah, I think that the best thing, I think it's always been true, like even back before all this talk, you know, maybe early in the movement, I think it's always been true that the best thing we can do to spread atheism, and this is something like Seth Andrews says, you know, the best thing we can do is be a good neighbor and be an atheist, you know, like just be a cool atheist, like that's gonna be... You know, you're, you're sharing a hitch slap moment on YouTube, like, I don't, you know, I feel free, but I don't know, like, really spreading atheism is gonna be done on the level for the most part. Most people. Thank you for watching!

0:52:42 Alix: Yeah.

0:53:30 Thomas: A New Lefty Blog - www.sinistermarginalia.net

0:53:38 Alix: Right. Nope. You got Got it. There you go.

0:53:45 Thomas: Yeah, I think I think we've covered that before so we can we can go on to? I had a few questions for you on here. I always, I always end up soliciting questions and then I have so much I want to ask you. I'm kind of selfish and then I, I don't end up, but I'll ask you a few. Dean asks, "A common argument I hear from those who don't like what Black Lives Matter is doing is that crime and police brutality statistics don't support the claims of lived experience. Whether or not that's true, I would love to hear some discussion on how those statistics are collected, how complete a picture they can tell, where they fall short, and how we can address the skeptical, in quotes, criticism without having hard evidence to point to." Tough question. It's a tough one. It might be too long of one, but do your

0:53:46 Alix: I think we covered that one.

0:53:56 Alix: It's okay. It Yeah,

0:54:29 Thomas: Best.

0:54:30 Alix: Because this is something that I tell people, you should always be skeptical. You should always look at the numbers, but also look for the context. Context clues matters. And I do this with my kids as well. But when you look at what's out there in terms of police brutality versus police murder, now, there are a bit—it's a problem. The first one is we were asking for the Obama administration to collect numbers because there really wasn't a national database that showed us what the picture was. And so we would look at the FBI crime statistics. We'd look at, you know, DOJ's. And it was really incomplete because we just didn't see it. In fact, I think, you know, one of the numbers that we often look at is the Counted. And this is, I think it's, I think it's the Guardian that puts it out.

You can Google the Counted and it actually tries to track police violence and police or extrajudicial killings, all kinds of things when it comes to police violence in general. They usually try and do that. But one of the holes is it's often self-reported. So it's coming from, you know, outside of it being a very high profile case, like just about any of them in recent years, still there are several hundred that never get that visibility.

0:54:36 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hold

0:55:56 Alix: And it winds up being investigated by the police departments, you know, internal affairs or whatever. And the DOJ doesn't always get involved. And when we take a look at places like Ferguson, which was just a cesspool, same thing with Baltimore, which so many problems like, OK, you wind up. When you look at Baltimore and you see how many millions that it was dishing out and to what extent it went out to try and limit the cap on what they were paying people in wrongful death suits, you can Google that, you're like, okay, there might be a real problem there. I mean, you take a look at L.A. County and you say, wait, you know, LAPD was taken away from L.

0:56:43 Alix: A. for a while. Right. And it had to be it had To be managed by the state. So there are times where you have government intervention. Now, again, these things tend to be very concentrated and where you see, you know, over policing centers and higher interactions with police wind up having this culture of boom. Boom, there's almost a gas playing with match kind of thing going on. But it's always going to give you bad data. But when you look at the lived experience, Black people have been complaining about police brutality for years, right? And a lot of that never gets reported. I mean, I remember my first encounter with the police and it definitely doesn't match the narrative.

0:57:32 Alix: I'm growing up in New York. I've got my backpack and I get I was maybe 12. I had just turned 13 and I'm dealing with my very first strip search because I got a backpack. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I get thrown into a police car, get strip searched because I have a backpack and it's early summer. Summer, because I had a backpack, I was

0:57:51 Thomas: On. Why did this happen? What were you doing? How? But where were you? How did, why was there police there?

0:57:59 Alix: At the train station, they saw me with a backpack and of course it couldn't have books in it because black kid with books, no way, black kid backpack, drugs, thrown in the back of a vehicle, they tear into my backpack looking looking for drugs and like, what, what the hell are these? Books, biology, physics, and math.

0:58:01 Thomas: Oh my gosh. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Drug book. Oh no, just regular books. Okay.

0:58:27 Alix: You have regular books. Um, and then it, it turned into a strip search. Of course, you know, this, this turned into me going home and telling, and the cuffs left bruises, bruises on, on my wrist, right? For like three days, I had these big bruises and I'd go home and I tell my mom about this, you know? That night, and of course she's livid and we go to to the police station and she wants to file a report. And the police department is saying that never happened. It's like, so where did these cuffs, um, where, where did these bruises come from? You know, are you calling my son a liar? Hey lady, I'm not calling your son a lie. I'm just saying it didn't happen. Um, so, and, and but that's not an uncommon story and I can guarantee you that didn't get, get collected. And

0:58:35 Thomas: Jesus.

0:59:03 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right.

0:59:11 Alix: There are a lot of, now of course you want them saying, well, but that is anecdotal evidence.

0:59:16 Alix: Well, But when you take a look at a lot of anecdotal evidence, then you wind up saying, can we get better data? Can we actually start collecting the information so we can measure it? And it wasn't until close to the last year of the Obama administration that we got the DOJ to agree to that. And then we had Trump.

0:59:36 Thomas: Yeah.

0:59:36 Alix: So that data is at least four plus years away from really being collected substantively, Especially when you've got someone like Jeff Sessions. So, you know, you can tweet the data, but you can look at the context there and you look at, you know, are we actually collecting? No, it's bad data. It's bad data. We know that it's bad data,

1:00:01 Thomas: I'm looking at the counted, at. But und... Maybe... Let me ask you this. When you look at the totals, you know, when you just look at, like, how many people... Of course anybody unjustifiably killed by police is too many, of course. But when you look at the numbers...

1:00:14 Alix: But no, no.

1:00:15 Thomas: Well, no, I'm going to give you a but. When we look at the numbers of how many people it is, does it surprise... Would you have thought it's more or less? Like, I probably would have thought it was more than is showing on this website. But the point I was going to make is, and feel free to still tell me no buts, is the... It sounds like what you're saying is just merely focusing on, like, killings doesn't tell you the whole... Data, you know, like, it's also the over-policing and the searches and the violence and all that.

1:00:17 Alix: But no, right.

1:00:47 Alix: It is the entire is the We had we had a recent story and I'm not saying that this happens normally, but I think it was in Baltimore again where where video we actually have video body cam evidence where it exists.

1:00:49 Thomas: The whole picture, yeah.

1:01:02 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

1:01:03 Alix: Right. Of a cop planting drugs.

1:01:03 Thomas: Yeah. Planting evidence, yeah.

1:01:06 Alix: Right. Planting evidence. Evidence. Um, we have, um, other areas where body cams were supposed to solve all these issues and body cams are being turned off and dash cams in LA are being turn off and, and places that we didn't think had problems. And I was like, wait, are you, what you're losing terabytes of data and video because what happened? Um, so there's a very complex story that happens between, um, minor, actually everybody in the, and and and the policing community, just in, was it in Minneapolis, where we had a white, uh, what was her name, the Australian woman that was shot by the by by this right right, all and you know what, the the first, the first thing that people started, you know, it's like, oh, where's Black Lives Matter?

I was like, Black Lives matters out there, they they, they were out there where the, where the Blue Lives Matter and White Lives Matter, um, and and this is where, where, you I don't like making generalizations, but I always ask, why when we see that whites are being brutalized by police, why the hell aren't people protesting when it's a wrongful death? Why is it that you only hear it with Blacks? Well, I'm not saying that Blacks are blowing it out of proportion, but why don't whites care? Why doesn't the white community that experiences these? Why aren't they saying, and it doesn't have to be a racial issue, a lot of times it is, but let's just say it's not, why aren't you asking for better standards when

1:01:41 Thomas: Oh, right, yeah. Then all of a sudden... Yeah.

1:01:52 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:02:38 Alix: It comes to policing?

1:02:39 Thomas: I wonder, I'm just speculating here, I wonder if it's because, on average, white people have such an easier time with the police in general, that when we see it in the news, because, I mean, there are horrible police killings of white people all the time, like, you know, around the time of some of the famous killings of unarmed black men, there were some pretty brutal killings of white men at the same time, and those are the same, you know, the people you're talking about, where it's like, where's Black Lives Matter on those?

1:03:04 Alix: Yeah. And they showed up.

1:03:08 Thomas: Happens, I... What's And they showed up, yeah.

1:03:10 Thomas: Totally. And I'm wondering, this is just me speculating, give me your thoughts, but I wonder if it's... If it's because I'm... When I hear a white guy was killed by the police...

I'm not thinking, as a white guy, I have all this privilege of, yeah, I've been pulled over a couple times and cops were, you know, cops are assholes, but in a very, you know, in a very limited range of what I would consider an asshole, which is, oh, he was kind of, you know, kind of a dick to me, like, not in the range of what you would consider, which is a fucking strip search and, you know, being cuffed on the hood of the car and like, so for me, with that white privilege, I think when I see a white person shot by the police, I can think, okay, he probably deserved it or something like, or there was some reason or like, if I'm just going off of the instincts, you know, if I'm not thinking too deeply about it, I'm thinking, oh, okay, this is just something that happens to bad guys, you know, but but, but is it maybe that in the black community, since you have so many more bad interactions with police so much more, you know, and just so many more interactions with police when when

1:03:29 Alix: Yeah. Yeah.

1:04:11 Thomas: There's a police killing of an unarmed black man, you're thinking that could be me, that could be my child, that could be, you know, my friend, that could be, because I've, I've experienced, you know, because I'm experiencing this all the time. That's just my speculation. What do you think about that thought?

1:04:12 Alix: I think that's true. And I think, again, that talks about the different countries we live I mean, I could be living across the street from me, but I live in a different country. For work, I had to go right after Ferguson. I had go up to St. Louis. And I was like, OK, I've got to visit. This is like a day or two after the riots and everything. And I plan on going up there anyway. And it's like work says, hey, we're going to fly you up there because you have to talk to a so-and-so customer. I'm like, okay, yes, I'll do it.

And I'm going to be there an extra day. And, you know, so I got to meet with a couple of people, which was great and have real conversations in Ferguson. Now, I put on my corporate suit and tie and and one of the people I work with who is a local, he decides that he wants for some reason he's going to bring this up for some some reason.

And he's like, you know, you know, Ferguson just was just down the street and I have a property there and it got, you know, it got vandalized and it was all outsiders that, you Know, black people don't have a problem in Ferguson.

1:04:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

1:05:31 Alix: And I'm like, are you serious? Are you serious right now? And I tried to avoid it because you have to, as a black person, you have to avoid these conversations because James Baldwin once said, you kno, to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively cognitively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. So you try and avoid that, that, that button, you know, someone's going to stick you. It's like, you don't want to do that. And of course, if you blow up, um, you Know, I've got five, it

1:05:50 Thomas: Yeah.

1:06:01 Thomas: It doesn't help you and your career and your... Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

1:06:03 Alix: Never helped. Exactly. It never helped and, and he continues to talk about it and outside outsiders coming into, uh, into the area.

1:06:15 Alix: And And he also begins to talk to me about how racism is is is overblown in in America. And he says, come on, Alex, how many times in your life have you been stopped by police? And my my answer, and I was being very generous, I said this month. And he's like and now now he wants to argue with me about it and tell me that no way. I mean, look at you. There's no way they're stopping you. I said, I live in Texas. I travel for work across the United States. How many times do you think I get stopped? I'm married to a white woman. How many times do you think I get stopped and they want to question her safety? When I travel with white people and I make the mistake of being the driver, how many times do you get stopped then? I can't count.

1:06:58 Thomas: Incredible. It really is because, like, I've been pulled over three times in my life. You know, it's like, yeah, three, four times. Yeah, it's amazing. So it really is just a different universe. I mean, what are you, three times a month? What are you at?

1:07:05 Alix: Really? Oh, wow. I average monthly. I'll get a stop monthly. Monthly. I mean, if I if I can, I'm going to say about six times a year. I'm gonna say about Six Times a Year. And

1:07:27 Thomas: Wow, yeah. And that's, and that's contrast with my like point two times a year, like, you know, in my driving life, you know, like that's just such a difference.

1:07:30 Alix: Yeah, I mean I my wife, I think I said I told this story a couple of times. But after the Oklahoma shooting where that dad was was gunned down, my it was it was then. Then and when we had the whole Dallas officers that were killed, my wife didn't want me going out. She says, your your tags haven't been updated or they're about to expire. I don't want you out there because that gives them a reason to pull you over.

1:08:08 Thomas: Yeah.

1:08:08 Alix: And when that happens, I don'T know if you're coming home.

1:08:11 Thomas: Yeah. It's, it's a different world.

1:08:12 Alix: And and it's hard for her. It's hard. It's really hard for him because she's white. And so she's not she's becoming accustomed to it. But she hasn't grown up with that fear, like many black mothers and black women and black wives deal with that every single day. You don't know if your son's coming home. You Don't know, if they're going to be that, that one statistic that all of a sudden, you know, your kid never had a drug issue, never did anything. Thing. And all of a sudden, and we know that this happens, all of a sudden he decides that he's reaching for a gun he doesn't have, or he was selling drugs that were planted on him or excuse me, not planned were found at the scene and the media just runs with it. He's now a thug and he's dead and he deserved it.

1:08:27 Thomas: Yeah.

1:09:02 Thomas: Would you say that you've got to be on the lower end of how many times you get pulled over in terms of being a black man, right? Because if you're okay,

1:09:10 Alix: I think I, I think, I'm, I tend to be a little average because I'm not lower because I live in, uh, I live live in an area where, um, it's not affluent, but you know, I, I close to affluent affluent areas. So the closer you get into those areas, the more likely you are to be stopped because you don't belong there. So, so I have that, but I,

1:09:19 Thomas: The area you live.

1:09:36 Thomas: But at the same time, what about the fact that, like, white areas aren't policed as much? You know, like, white affluent areas. So that counteracts it, right?

1:09:40 Alix: Oh, you know what? It's not. Oh, Oh yeah. Yeah. But for some reason they, they can usually find me, but

1:09:48 Thomas: So they're not policed much, but it's, uh, you know, they, they've, they've got their targets.

1:09:53 Alix: They find me. That's like,

1:09:55 Thomas: Yeah, they've got their...

1:09:55 Alix: I didn't see a cop anywhere around here. Where did you come from, officer? During the day, you were not around. Oh, property. Oh, got it. Got it. You got to protect property. Yeah.

1:09:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, and you know, there was a quick follow-up, shoot, I cannot believe the time, how fast it's gone by, but there was a follow-up on, someone wanted to know about the fact that there's a lot of legal work that Black Lives Matter is doing that maybe people aren't aware of. I don't know if you had any comment on that, but yeah, go ahead.

1:10:29 Alix: Yeah, yeah. Yeah unfortunately, you know, like I said, there are organizations that are out there, the alliances that Black Lives Matter are, they're actually on the ground doing things, including working with other the organizations on you sometimes it's food. You know, it's not as disorganized as people believe. If you go and take a look at, there's actually, there is an agenda out there that's put out by Black Lives Matter, the organization, on what it's going to work on. It talks about trying to change the broken window policing systems that are out there. It wants to even get more politically active when it comes to screening, screening candidates and and what have you.

1:11:16 Alix: But the narrative that that we tend to see bubble up is Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group and blah, blah, and take the out the out cases. And, you know, that's that's the norm. And you grab a chant from here or there. And Black Lives Matter is equated to the Ku Klux Klan. And that's unfortunate, but America wants to, it's the same thing with the original Black Panther Party, where they were talking about, yeah, exactly. Exactly, um, but when, when you start looking at what the Black Panther, original Black Pantha Party was doing in terms of of creating schools to educate kids, um, creating food pantries and and and feeding kids that were were dealing with each, even within the Nation of Islam has so many issues, but the nationofislam doing what they were doing with, uh, trying to reduce

1:11:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. They're the real racists.

1:12:10 Thomas: Yeah.

1:12:10 Alix: Recidivism and and what have

1:12:12 Thomas: That's a tough one though, right? I mean, there's gotta be lines somewhere, because I know I referenced on my last podcast how the ties to just really anti-homosexual, anti-, you know?

1:12:21 Alix: Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. Especially with Farah Khan. Yeah, that. Wow. Yep.

1:12:25 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I do, think we're kind of bringing it full circle here when you're talking about like, how much of the baby do you throw in the bathwater kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not embracing Islam anytime soon. Oh, right.

1:12:34 Alix: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah? Yeah. I well, I did. On my way out of religion. I did I did that. It wasn't the it wasn't the nation of Islam, although I had friends in the nation.

1:12:46 Thomas: Yeah. You told a little bit of that story, huh? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

1:12:52 Alix: I mean, it was just part of black culture that they were there, just like you had black Christians, you had, especially especially where I was from, New York City. You had the Nation of Gods and Earth, the NGE, the Fruit of Islam and the Nation of Islam, all there. Same thing with the Black Israelites and what have you, different, very different organizations.

1:12:56 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:13:13 Alix: That's a different show. That's just, that's, oh boy.

1:13:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, and to tie out the Black Lives Matter legal thing, one thing that I thought was interesting, and again, this is just one author's perspective, the Michelle Alexander book, but she was a, and again, I haven't read up on her if she's still doing this, but she was a civil rights attorney. But in the book, She talked about like, okay, this may be the wrong approach, like trying to find these perfectly palatable examples to make into lawsuits is feeding into that exceptionalism thing, is feeding into that, okay, here's some exceptional perfect victims. You, she talked a lot about that. So it's interesting to think about, maybe a part, maybe another conversation, but how much does that play into that narrative of you have to be the perfect victim in order for white people to pay attention to you?

1:13:18 Alix: Boy, she's still doing it. Yep, she'S still doing it Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of like having the perfect Black president. You know, there's There's only so much that you will—Trevor Noah did one recently where he said that Donald Trump is what white America thought a black president would be. And it was actually kind of—but it is, right? And he went as far as to say eating fried chicken, showing up to places three hours late. Right. And, and, and unfortunately this is what the, this is the narrative. And we'll talk about stereotypes and the importance of where they come from. Um, but this is very much what they broken home. Right. I mean, how

1:14:12 Thomas: Because, Yeah, totally true. It is, yeah, absolutely.

1:14:54 Thomas: Yeah,

1:14:54 Alix: Many women does he, all of that? But you know, for Barack Obama to, to be accepted, he had to be damn near perfect. It and this is, you know, and and even then people

1:14:56 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Accepted in quotes, by the way, yeah. Accepted in quotes, like, accepted by half the country, I guess, yeah.

1:15:07 Alix: Huh, yeah, accepted in quotes, exactly. And and still many people believe that he got to where he was only because of affirmative action, yeah, we

1:15:18 Thomas: Yeah, the affirmative action president program that we have, where... Because that's how that works. Wow. I think we got it. Yeah, I think we'll have to call it to close. Again, like it's longer than I normally do, but fully worthwhile because I could talk to you forever. It's been really fascinating.

1:15:34 Alix: Got another four hours, man, absolutely.

1:15:37 Thomas: Yeah. Thanks again, Alex. Really good stuff. It's a pleasure talking to you. Let's keep in touch. Definitely find next time when there's a good discussion topic for sure to focus around. Once again, you want to point people to the places you should point people? Your blog? I don't

1:15:50 Alix: Yeah, oh, yeah, where where did you find me? Um, you can, it's Alex, A-L-I-X, Jules, with, yes, A.L.I.X, Jules, and it's Alex331 on Twitter. You can find me on Facebook. I think I still have room, and there's a public page there as well. You can follow a lot of, you know, if I'm touring, speaking, et cetera. I think the next big conference I'll be at is the one in Pennsylvania. The Gateway to Reason one was fun. That actually came off. Um, you know, that's been a beleaguered uh conference as of the last couple years, but it was, it was, it was a good time, good good people out there.

1:16:33 Thomas: Know anything about it, but sounds

1:16:33 Alix: Yeah, yeah, I get what you... Reason, but uh, uh, the Pasta, the Pennsylvania Atheist and humanist conference and that's Margaret Downey and company, and I'm very much looking forward to that, and I think it's October, so I'll be, I'll be in that, in that, that area. Um, the graffiti wall, you know, when I do write, you can find me, Graffiti Wall, on Patheos or the Orbit, I'm actually working on a really cool piece, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, so and it's about the dividing line, yep,

1:16:34 Thomas: Good. Glad. Oh, I've heard about that. Nice.

1:16:57 Thomas: Oh, great. Well, maybe when that comes out, I'll make sure to... I'm sure I'll see it on your social media, but I'm looking forward to that.

1:17:07 Alix: Thank

1:17:07 Thomas: Maybe it'll be something we can talk about, but as always, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on, Alex.

1:17:13 Alix: You very much for having me, it was a pleasure.

1:17:28 Thomas: Boy, it's really fun talking to Alex, I really learn a lot every time. It's a really good conversation, so looking forward to when we can do that again, and in the meantime I'll just say that's it for today's episode, and I'll have to see you on Thursday! Thursday.