I don't understand how Sam is so right on the non existence of free will but so baffled by issues of race and still views racism as a matter of personal choice and not the accumulation of ten trillion causes over generations which drive the fully determined actions of individuals in the moment that result in racist outcomes. That right there is the whole fucking thing and Sam is an expert in one side of the coin but an imbecile in the other. That right there is why a black cop can do something racist, because the causes driving him demand racist effects. FFS Sam.
All of his citing of black crime statistics are almost begging the question, don't they deserve it? The reason black people commit more crimes is because of the racist system driving them, not because they choose to. But Sam also believes that nobody deserves anything, that we are just the sum of our past, our current conditions and our mental state in any given moment. I would like him to explore how he can feel these things simultaneously and maybe follow [his] own deterministic philosophy to its logical conclusion - that racism is a system driving racially disparate effects and not a feeling in the heart.
Elaborating on that, from the very beginning he frames it as an issue of conversation vs. violence, with the implication being that the protesters and the left in general are on the side of violence, and that if people don't stop protesting, society will collapse or self-immolate. He literally says people are tearing the country apart and that we can't tell fact from fiction anymore. Except that's hyperbole. People are protesting police brutality, yes. And some of those have resulted in damage and harm. But they're not tearing the country apart, unless a few statues, a couple of jacked up buildings, and graffiti are his idea of the country falling into ruin. The police are the ones who are clearly the most violent party in all of this. But never mind that, because then he brings up COVID-19 and makes it sound like he thinks protesting is irresponsible because of the probability of increased infection rates as a result, and it makes me wonder if he'd say the same if an outbreak had occurred during the civil rights movement. No protesting, just talk about getting rid of Jim Crow and forget all these marches and protests and riots, as if black Americans hadn't been talking about that and lynchings and everything else for years and years. Maybe that's not what he'd say, but it follows from his logic at any rate. And then he goes into how the protests are stifling the ability of people to express themselves, as if black voices haven't been stifled and that's why they they're so upset, because people like Sam still don't even believe that black people are experiencing the level of discrimination and police violence that they've been trying to communicate or that the statistics clearly seem to show. And that's just the intro, the framing of the truth that Sam purports to be after and telling.
To be fair, I agree with him about Trump, both about how terrible he is and how this shit helps him (which I think is true because many Americans are pretty reactionary). But then he asks how many people will die because of the protests, but he doesn't ask why so many people are willing to take that risk. Maybe there really is a problem that needs to be addressed, Sam? It's easy to say that it's just a case of mob mentality and violence by overreacting leftists and black people, but can we just entertain the possibility that this problem exists, has existed, and that the people suffering under it the most and have been talking about it and trying to change it for years, even generations, might have a reason to engage in civil unrest to try and finally get real solutions? Sam mentions the fact that the officer was indicted. Yeah, after all this started, which he concedes may be the reason only to latter argue against their efficiency! And he admits that racism is a problem only to then later try and show how it's not really the problem that people think it is or literally experience. Like, he's not down with racism, but then he seems to me to downplay it every chance he gets in this 2 hour long episode. And my biggest issue with the whole thing is that he wants to control and contain what people are trying to do to change it in their demands for material, institutional solutions that have been a long time coming, including defunding and demilitarizing the police and removing qualified immunity so they can actually be held accountable for a change. But poor Sam and other rational critics of the left, they're a victim of this in many ways too, dontcha know? He acts like he can't talk about any of this in a rational and critical way and push back on the idea that racism seriously affects black people in the US, like just doing so will ruin his career or worse.
And of course after this, he takes more shots at the protesters and violence without even fully going into how those things have started this country, ended slavery/the country splitting apart, gave women the right to vote, ended segregation and Jim Crow, and killed Hitler. Does he think that people just talked their way into all those things? Did they lead to the breakdown of society? And he says things like oh no someone was fired for saying all lives matter as if that's proof of something. People get fired for less and worse all the goddamn time, and if you're a person representing an organization and you say stuff that negatively reflects on them then they can and will fire you! It's completely legal and happens all the time. And some people get fired illegally, such as for trying to form a union, but he doesn't touch on that because he's trying to frame the truth to point towards the dangers of left-leaning censorship and away from other issues even though he's ostensibly just being objective. And to slight the protest movement even more, he talks about it as a religious awakening that isn't "making honest contact with reality."
So I guess people like me are just being completely irrational? Completely ahistorical? Completely unhinged and out of touch with reality? I don't know if he'd use those words per se, but he definitely thinks we're motivated by "confusion and misinformation." Ok, sure. Maybe. There's a lot of that out there. But I'd counter that he's motivated by his distaste for identity politics because he feels he can't just say whatever he wants, that essentially free speech should mean not only freedom from government interference but freedom from consequences. He doesn't want people to be able to get angry at him for the things he says. And then he goes on to say that a person's race/skin colour or personal experience shouldn't matter when talking about racism. On the face of it, I agree that everyone should be able to talk about it. It shouldn't be taboo to have discussions about race and racism. But the idea that a black person shouldn't discuss their experience as a 'black' person amidst the racism of America, because that perspective doesn't somehow matter? According to Sam, we can apparently only talk about racism from some supposedly objective viewpoint that transcends race. Which isn't fucking possible, except maybe for people awakened to the nature of nonduality or a future where racism is all but eradicated. (He talks about weaponizing ideas, but I think he's weaponizing his contemplativism and scientism here to suggest he has the same standing to speak authoritatively on the experience of racism as opposed to a black person or community suffering under it, which I think takes away their voice but I digress.)
As I've said, he's very skillful at saying there's an issue or problem that exists only to then downplay it. And for as much as he seems to understand and champion causal determinism — the idea that we're not in as much control as we think are are conditioned by many internal and external causal factors — he doesn't seem to be able to connect the dots when it comes to the way social relations and institutions built on and suffused with racism can't condition the shit black people are experiencing and that have created and sustained the very identity of blackness itself. Or how those material systems and mechanisms can feasibly continue to cause issues, and that that is why people are trying to change them by defunding the police and using that money in other, arguably better ways. (Here Sam could have gone into the history of how the Enlightenment, besides the many great things it did, also helped to give rise to modern racism [3], and how that has influenced much of Western society founded upon Enlightenment ideals, both good and bad. How white supremacy was a part of that, and how it's an ingrained part of our culture and society and in some ways our thinking. Which doesn't mean every white person is a white supremacist, only that it's a part of our past and present and still ingrained in our social institutions and subconscious. But of course he doesn't.) In essence, it's not a bad faith argument as he says more than once; it's a causal deterministic argument that a materialist like him should be championing, too! And the statistics. He thinks this is his finishing move, FATALITY!
He says that white people suffer more from police violence than black people, that the police kill more white people, so basically the problem of racism isn't as bad as you might think. Those BLM people are just playing loose with the facts, right? Wrong. If we look at the numbers, we see that yes, more white people are killed by police over all, but we also see that they are also a much larger percentage of the population. This fact isn't inconsequential. He should understand how statistics work and the importance of looking deeper into the numbers. Comparing the numbers and taking into consideration the percentage of the population who are white vs. black, for example, we can see that black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. [4] And even in terms of more nonlethal means like tasers, there's obvious disparities in the numbers of black people killed vs. white people. It's clear, for example, that the use of tasers disproportionately kills black people in the US [5], so again, I'd argue that the scrutiny should be on the police and how/when they use force, and why black people seem to bear the brunt of it proportionately speaking. But not Sam.
Beyond that, though, he seems to miss or completely gloss over the entire issue of institutionalized racism itself and how ingrained biases can affect or infect everyone in that society and condition everyone in said society to operate in certain ways, such as studies that suggest women objectify women in the same way as men [6], likely due to the prevalence of sexism and patriarchy in our society; how black officers view black suspects more negatively than white ones and kill black suspects at similar rates as white officers [7], likely due to the prevalence of institutionalized racism; etc. And yeah, white people experience things like police violence, too. Nobody denies that, Sam. The question is, is their treatment equal? Are they equally targeted? Are they killed in proportionate numbers population-wise? If so, then maybe Sam's argument would hold water. But the answer, of course, is no, and he basically admits that, but then uses his downplaying trick by saying black people commit more crimes. In his view, obviously the police will target them more because they commit more of the crimes. (Again, no exploration of the role generations of discrimination, segregation, wealth inequality, etc. play in conditioning pockets of poverty in black communities, which conditions crime and how we could possibly address that with means other than sending in state agents with guns.)
Then he questions the explosion of anger over a black guy dying by cops and why there wasn't the same reaction over a white guy dying under similar circumstances. Makes you think, right? He seems to think that a poor perception of racism is responsible for people essentially overreacting over the death of one man, except he again completely misses the obvious fact that it's not just about one man but 400 YEARS OF HISTORY of black people in the US and the things they've had to overcome each generation by another group of people and a government that stole them from their land, treated them like animals and used them as slaves, constructed a racist narrative about them to justify it that poisons people's minds to this day, criminalized and vilified their skin colour, and once they were finally freed, turned around to segregate them, lynch them, prevent them from getting loans or homes in certain areas, and constructed laws that disproportionately affected them, courts that disproportionately sentence them, and a police force that obviously targets them for attention and the use of violence to this very day. There are a host of statistics that, to me, illustrate the ripples from this history still persist and in many ways are still a present reality, statistics that Sam never mentions. Disparities in jail time. [8] Wealth disparities. [9] Health disparities. [10] Educational disparities. [11] Employment disparities. [13] The list goes on. So again, re: Sam's argument against identity politics, even if many white people today aren't as prejudiced or racist as they once were and see beyond a person's colour, these built in barriers and inequalities clearly seem to still exert their influence and manifest themselves in the forms of disparities, inequalities, and violence that disproportionately affect the black community.
Honestly, it shouldn't be so hard for a determinist of any stripe to understand this, especially when we have the history and the numbers at our fingertips. There's clearly something going on here. But instead of really wrestling with this, he spends a lot of time on things like how people should just not resist arrest rather than exploring the idea of fundamentally changing the material social relations, institutions, and systems built into the fabric of our society that arguably influence how it functions along with our views and perceptions about race. And I think his argument is ultimately a straw man because the left, protesters, BLM, etc. aren't arguing that it's all about feelings and individual prejudice, as if only white people are responsible and the ones doing the killing, etc. None I know at at least. They're ALL talking about systems of injustice, material conditions like widespread poverty and lack of access to equitable education, healthcare, and employment opportunities, etc. that condition these things, conditions that in turn lead to more crime in those communities and compel black police officers to shoot black suspects more than white ones. In essence, their argument (and mine) is that current power dynamics aren't equal, and that those dynamics push black and other people of colour within the system (politicians, police officers, etc.) to see and act in similar ways now that they are part of the system. And whether or not you agree with it, it isn't a bad faith argument or one that relies purely on the identity politics that he despises so much.
So yeah, this podcast both upset and disappointed me. For one, he's got a big platform and a lot of people put a lot of faith in his opinions. And he's smart and rational and I know that his opinions carry more weight than mine as he's famous, has written multiple books, has a podcast, and has an academic background in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience and I'm just some random guy on the internet. So people will hear this and likely have a negative opinion of these protests and the movement behind them without looking deeper. And I don't know why his take bothers me so much (maybe because I personally used to look up to him as a scientist and social commentator?); but I think I and others criticizing the system have valid points and he doesn't really address any of them. At least it seems to me that he glosses over a lot more than he digs into just so that he can seemingly focus on his criticism of the left and identity politics and not on the real question of, how the fuck do we finally get shit in this country equal for everyone? And so I find myself echoing NYD3030: FFS Sam.
/rant
1. Harris, Sam. (2020, June 12). Can We Pull Back From the Brink. Youtube. https://youtu.be/vmgxtcbc4iU
2. NYD3030. (2020, June 13). Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/h7wxus/comment/fup706l
3. Bouie Jamelle. (2018, June 5). The Enlightenment's Dark Side. Pocket (via Slate). https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-enlightenment-s-dark-side
4. Haddad, Mohammed. (2020, May 31). Mapping US police killings of Black Americans. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2020/05/mapping-police-killings-black-americans-200531105741757.html
5. So, Linda. (2020, June 15). Black Americans disproportionately die in police Taser confrontations. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests-tasers-in/black-americans-disproportionately-die-in-police-taser-confrontations-idUSKBN23M16E
6. Association for Psychological Science. (2012, May 15). People see sexy pictures of women as objects, not people; sexy-looking men as people. ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515131719.htm
7. Jacobs, Tom. (2018, August 9). BLACK COPS ARE JUST AS LIKELY AS WHITE COPS TO KILL BLACK SUSPECTS. Pacific Standard Magazine. https://psmag.com/social-justice/black-cops-are-just-as-likely-as-whites-to-kill-black-suspects
8. Ingraham, Christopher. (2017, November 16). Black men sentenced to more time for committing the exact same crime as a white person, study finds. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black-men-sentenced-to-more-time-for-committing-the-exact-same-crime-as-a-white-person-study-finds/
9. Lee, Trymaine. (2019, August 14). A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html
10. Orsi, Jennifer M. MPH; Margellos-Anast, Helen MPH; Whitman, Steven PhD. (2010, February). Black–White Health Disparities in the United States and Chicago: A 15-Year Progress Analysis. Am J Public Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804622/
11. Darling-Hammond, Linda. (1998, March 1). Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education. The Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/
12. Quillian, Lincoln; Pager, Devah; Midtbøen, Arnfinn H.; Hexel, Ole. (2017, October 11). Hiring Discrimination Against Black Americans Hasn't Declined in 25 Years. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-americans-hasnt-declined-in-25-years
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