Student: While I agree with you that, when you look a white America, it's silly
to say that the majority of white Americans are actively trying to
prevent you from getting to where you want to be.
I'm East Indian, and I have definitely experienced some racism,
but I never felt as though it keeps Indians from succeeding.
I do think there's a cultural component that supersedes
the color of your skin, but I also think that it's naive to say that
it just so happens that the same minority groups that have been
historically oppressed happen to have cultures that are less conducive to
success. I believe that environment can create culture.
Can you acknowledge the historical reasonings that led to these so-called
"unsuccessful cultures" and not put blame on these minority groups?
In your heart, I don't think you're a racist person. But in my
opinion, to blame people for their cultural failures without taking
into consideration history in general conceals a lack of empathy
and hints at racism.
Shapiro: I'll fight back on the last point that there's anything to do with
empathy or racism here. But I fully agree with you. Not like 90 percent,
like 100 percent. I think that bad cultures are generally the result of
bad things that have happened in the past or bad modes of thought that
have prevailed over time. For example, there's a great book by Thomas Sowell
called "Black Rednecks and White Liberals." And that book essentially
suggests that a lot of the pathologies that exist about single motherhood,
for example, in the black community, or high rates of violence, are actually
outgrowths of a slave and post-slave culture that was imposed by
a white society that didn't bother with policing, that didn't care about
inculcating morals or virtues in slaves. Obviously, they actually actively fought
against it because they didn't want that to happen. And so, there's
an active fight against assimilation by white people, and that created
an underground culture that's really bad, and that existed in parts of
white America too. It existed in Appalachia. So yes, I think bad
cultures have nothing to do with race. I don't think that just because...
This is why I'm saying I don't know why it borders on racism to say
that cultures are bad. Some cultures are bad, some cultures are good, and
that has nothing to do with race. Charles Murray wrote an entire book
called "Coming Apart" about pathologies in white communities
that are really destructive. Bad cultures do arise, very often, from
historical circumstances, including historical discrimination. What I say
is that today, there is nothing preventing an individual
from superseding the culture in which he grew up and making good
decisions. In a free country, somebody is going to have to break this chain,
somebody is going to have to break this cycle. And so, am I going to...
I don't care if you want to say that the pathologies that exist in the black
community, black inner-city community, of high rates of single motherhood
and violence, for example, or lack of institutional wealth, are a result
of historical racism. I'm fine with you saying that. I don't have any problem
with that. I'm not talking about historical racism when I talk
about white privilege. I'm talking about, right now, the idea that there's
a superstructure of rules and laws that are preventing you from succeeding
or a culture that is trying to keep you down. I don't think that's the case.
So the question becomes: if you are here... Let's say that, on average,
the culture in white America with regard to single motherhood, to take
an example, is here because there's less single motherhood in the white
community than in the black community. And in the black community,
it's here because it's a 70 percent single motherhood rate, and in
the white community it's 40 percent. So the question is: before, thanks to
racism and thanks to discrimination, there was a cap on the black community
that was here, and they couldn't get past it, now the ceiling has been
removed, so what do you, as an individual black person, do
to change your life? And I don't think it's helpful, and, in fact, I think it's
actually quite hurtful, to spend an enormous amount of time talking about
the legacy of discrimination and racism instead of talking about, "What can
you do right now to fix your problem?" This is a general issue that I have
in all of my relationships. When my wife comes to me and she says,
"There's a problem in my life," before we even have the conversation,
I say to her, "Is this a listening conversation, or is this a
you-want-me-to-fix-it conversation?" [Audience laughter]
Shapiro: I think that, when it comes to politics, there should be
far fewer listening conversations like, "I want you to tell me about all the
crap that's happened to you." Because I don't care. I care, but
now the question is, "What are you going to do?"
That's a much more important conversation because we only have
five minutes together. Is that five minutes going to be spent on
all the terrible things that happened, which I fully agree with,
that I would have fought if I were there, but I wasn't?
Are we going to spend five minutes talking about all the terrible things
that happened to blacks and Jews and gays and women and Hispanics
in the United States, or are we going to talk about, right now, what you can
do to succeed? I don't think that the rules are holding you back.