Full Transcript for Episode 37 - Breaking Down Racism - History and Now

Shively: Right, right. And I think we see that consistently. We certainly saw that in the comments on the Facebook post, you know, people saying that, well, you just cannot have conversation with Nazis. Well, first of all, I want to say that I don't agree with that, even, right? I mean, 'cause I think you can have conversations with Nazis, and we know that Nazis do exist. There are white supremacists out there that do believe these things. and we but we can still have the conversation. We talk about was it Daryl Davis, right? That Dean Bagley: Davis. Yeah. Kevin Shively: that has his collection of KKK robes in his closet that from people that he's had conversations with and actually gotten them to actually change their minds and and kind of get out of that line of thinking, right? So I mean you can have Dean Bagley: Yeah, I mean for Kevin Shively: conversations with with Nazis. Dean Bagley: For for people who are not familiar with D Darrell Davis, you should look him up. He's done a lot of podcasts and a lot of appearances. But he's been involved in I think it goes back to the sev I think it I think it Kevin Shively: Kind of deprogramming, right? Yeah. Dean Bagley: goes back to the seventies that he's been doing this. But and I've heard him tell the story. It all came out of he's a a musician. He's a keyboard piano player. And he ended up involved at one point in the seventies, I believe. He ended up in a country band and they were playing Kevin Shively: Mm-hmm. Dean Bagley: at a bar in Virginia or something. And he ended up in breaks going out and having a conversation with this guy. I you know, and he's he's he obviously doesn't come from a country background, so he's doing blues and honky tonk and and other kinds of musical elements feeding, you know, embellishing Kevin Shively: Mm-hmm. Dean Bagley: the the music that he's playing with that. And he he ends up in a conversation with one of the patrons. That really likes what he's doing. He's like really impressed with that. I haven't heard anything like that before. Where does that come from? And so they have a dialogue and talk about the music, and then you know, the guy's really impressed. And he's like, When are you playing again? I'm gonna get some friends to come. And you know, and so this goes on for a period of time. He gets a large group of people to show up every time this band plays there. Come to find out this guy's involved in the KKK. And and Kevin Shively: Right. Dean Bagley: We didn't say Daryl Davis is black. so they, you know, he ends up furthering the you know, he finds out in the conversation this guy's in the KKK, and he's like why? and and so they have a conversation Kevin Shively: Right. Dean Bagley: about that, and ultimately ended it ends up in this guy changing his perspective. He ends up giving Daryl his robes, and Kevin Shively: And that started it. Dean Bagley: Yeah, leaves leaves the KKA and and and he's been doing that ever since. He's been seeking people out, having conversations, and influencing the way they see things. And he's got a collection of of robes at this point from KKK members that have given him their robes. And yeah. Kevin Shively: have given it up. Yep. Yeah, so so I think he proves, right, pretty definitively that you can have these conversations. But let's just say for a moment that that even if you couldn't, basically when you look when you talk to anybody on the left, especially somebody that really is vehemently anti-Trump, right? I mean, one of the first reasons that they give for why they don't support Trump is because they believe that he's racist. Now That we're not gonna try to get into the question of whether or not Trump is racist, right? In this conversation. People can can look that up or do make up their own mind on that one. that has nothing really to do with our conversation here. But I did look up a poll on that to see what people actually do believe on both sides. Again, remembering that those the partisans on both sides tend to be the most wrong about the other side. And I found the a UGO and economists poll from February of this year, actually. where it said they asked whether or not Trump they people thought that Trump was racist, and came out pretty much the way that you would expect. Democrats, 90% of them thought that Trump was racist, agreed with that statement. but on the right, r on the Republican side, 95%, only five percent thought that that basically described Trump. On ninety-five percent didn't didn't believe that he was racist. So you can disagree with them, you can disagree with with you know, both either side if you want, but you can't really say that they voted for him basically believing that he was was was a racist, right? So if they didn't believe that he was a racist, then they're not voting for him to support racism. I mean, I think we can safely assume that, can't we? Dean Bagley: Right. And and you know, and then the other inference that's always given in that is they voted for him because they're racist and they support his racism. Kevin Shively: Right, exactly. Right. Dean Bagley: So let me let me say something in here real quick. I I kind of want to take this out of this specific discussion and kind of go back to where we started of like trying to build a toolkit to even be able to have this conversations. So I'd like to say one of the things that, you know, for anybody who's looking to be able to do to have dialogue, one of the things that that you should do, no matter what your personal belief system is, what what you know, we're getting to here is that any position that you have, no matter how strongly believe it, you believe it, take a step back for a second and legitimately investigate the possibility. Is there another explanation of another variable or another axis that the person could be looking at this that would also explain this versus what I believe is the cause? Kevin Shively: Right, exactly. Yeah, and that's what we're doing

here, right? That's exactly what this conversation is. because there Dean Bagley: Right, and and Kevin Shively: are alternatives. Dean Bagley: that was that was kind of the specific goal of this segment in this larger race conversation is to really examine a lot of the other explanations are well what if what what could people be looking at this question on if they're not operating on racism? What what other explanation Kevin Shively: Right. Dean Bagley: could there be? Kevin Shively: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And so we we went down that path with our with our framework and and tried to analyze this from that perspective and try to see because it's it's almost like trying to talk to a jury, right? I mean what we're really trying to say is that if there's a kernel of doubt, right, if there's some any doubt whatsoever that we can introduce in here, then that must open up an opportunity to have a dialogue. And that's what we're trying to do here is trying to give people an opportunity. to see that there are some other ways of looking at this so that we can actually open up that that pathway to having an actual conversation. Dean Bagley: Well, and and I mean go back to the the framework is an examination of totalization again in the the context of Robert Lifton's work investigating people coming out of Maoist China, which was later applied to to cult dynamics and that type of thing. But the totalis one of the aspects of totalization, when we when we went over that at the end of our season one, was that it's a self-sealing. belief system where where there's nothing allowed outside of it. So one of the things that we should be doing in examining all of this is the more certainly, the more certainty we have, the more certainly we we believe something, the more evidence of that belief is totalized in us internally. And you know, those are the things that you need to question the most, not have the most confidence in. Kevin Shively: So in our conversation last week, you know, we've we've been what started it really was we had gotten to a point where we saw an inflection point. And that inflection point was in nineteen sixty four with the passing of the Civil Rights Voting Act, right? but but then the we also noticed that the animosity that started to really build and grow between the two sides and politically in America and the divide, that polarization, really didn't take off until nineteen seventy seven, seventy eight, late seventies. So We talked a lot last week about what that gap, why that gap existed and what that meant, right, in terms of how things have gotten so polarized today. But actually, you know, there there are also some other ways of looking at what was actually going on then. For example, a lot of people point at Barry Goldwater, right? Where he was actually, you know, when he came out strongly against the Civil Rights Voting Act and saw that as racism. But then When you investigate even his beliefs, you go back and you look and to find that

he actually voted for civil rights legislation in both nineteen fifty-seven and nineteen sixty. He actually desegregated his own business in in Arizona. and when he did have ex ex you know, objections to legislation, it was usually on constitutional grounds. It was basically his beliefs about Title II and and Title Seven. on commerce clause grounds, basically, of the voting right. So it wasn't necessarily you can't really call him a racist based on his his full background. So right Dean Bagley: Well, if you're Kevin Shively: there, even right to begin with, we we see a contradiction. Dean Bagley: If if you're trying to look at that rationally and logically, if if if you're investigating the idea of the cause of his actions is racism, then he would not desegregate his business. He would not vote, Kevin Shively: Right, sure. Dean Bagley: you know. It's that adds credence to the idea, again, that there's another variable, there's another axis that he's looking at this on, where his behavior and opinions are consistent because if you're looking at it in the for in the context of racism, his his actions and his words are not consistent. Kevin Shively: Right, exactly. And one of the ideas that really comes to the forefront here in terms of alternate ways to to to view things is something that actually really stems from the words of of Martin Luther King Jr. in his High of a Dream speech, where he talks about believing, you know, hope hoping for a day when people would would evaluate somebody not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, right? And that led to an a belief system that people talk about a lot today, and that's called colorblind universalism, right? Dean Bagley: Right. And for a long time, for you know, the seventies, eighties, nineties, early two thousands, that was the goal. That was what everybody or you know nearly everybody would have agreed this is the the world, you know, this is the society that we're shooting for, where it's irrelevant what color your skin is in making any decision. It it doesn't matter. That's that's not the context that we're looking at people on. Kevin Shively: Right, exactly. And you know, and this is on the right, this is very often brought up. and by the way, there you know, there are some very prominent black leaders on the conservative side that have come out in support of this, people like McGorder and Sowell, Tom Thomas Sowell and others that at that do espouse this position, right? That that believe that our goal should be colorblind universalism, that we should just not not even consider race as a factor. And that's usually where where the arguments against affirmative action or even DEI or race conscious admissions and and hiring practices, all of those things, when there when our objections on the right to those things, it's usually based on that goal rather than necessarily trying to defeat any attempt at at helping minorities, right? Dean Bagley: Yeah, the the argument that

they're making is, you know, from their perspective, because they're all black, they're they're making the argument is like, I do not want to go into situ in into a situation and and have a question as to how I have achieved whatever I'm trying to achieve here. I want to know that I earned this position based on the the merits of my work or you know, by my qualifications and not because of an inclusion based on an you know, what that what they're considering an ir irrelevant characteristic. That's you know, it's the it's the opposite perspective of what you know, affirmative action or that type of thing is usually presented as. It's, you know, it it's an opportunity, but they're like, well it it cheapens the the position that, you know, or the the attainment that then I get because I There's always that question in the back of my mind if I deserve this or not. Kevin Shively: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, I know what the the left's pushback is gonna be on this, right? Because the obviously the left's pushback is gonna say, well, that's just cover, right? That's just colorblind universalism is just cover for racial attitudes. And you know, for some people it might be. I mean, and that's the problem when we look at these things, because when we looked at all the research and we ran all this through our our analysis tools, we found that the research couldn't come up with a way to really distinguish between those people who were really looking at this from a real, you know, real ideological perspective as believing in colorblind universalism, and when there were people that might have been using this perhaps as cover for racial attitudes that they might not otherwise want to say outright. Right. So when because of that ambiguity, we already have to question whether or not we can just automatically have that knee-jerk moral judgment reaction, wouldn't you say? Dean Bagley: Well, and there's there there's a couple of things that I wanna highlight in there too, because one one of the things that gets done in all of these debates is the you know, we can call it a logical fallacy, it may even have a name, but this idea that if you can find one example that runs counter to the argument, that that falsifies the entire argument. You know, and that's it it's all trends and tendencies and, you know, majorities and minority. I mean, just because you can find one person that embodies the stereotype or one person that, you know, or or one group that's doing exactly what the, you know, the narrative or the counter narrative says, that doesn't mean that either one of them is correct. Because the other side can also find that. And then, you know. And and that's what we get to in so many of the th these things is because you you that's what you have. You just like, well, I believe this because I can point to this group that does that, and so it's obviously true. And the other side's well, like, but I believe this because I can point to this other group that does

this, and that's obviously true. So Kevin Shively: Mm-hmm. Dean Bagley: you're a racist. Kevin Shively: Exactly. Well, I mean it's just a lot easier to say they're there are racists, right? It's I mean it's a lot a lot quicker and just you know, that it also kind of relieves you of responsibility of of being able to try to engage and actually have a Dean Bagley: Well Kevin Shively: substantive conversation on a subject that is not easy to talk about. Dean Bagley: another thing that I I think is a component of that, and this is nothing that we investigated directly in our research, but you know, we looked at nineteen sixty-four and the passage of the Civil Rights Act being an inflection point. And one of the things that we didn't investigate there, but I think is important to to kind of keep in the back of your mind, is that that is when definitively in this country, at the highest levels of the legislation. It was determined and decreed that one of the worst things that you can be is a racist. It is it is not socially acceptable to be racist. And and so from then on, that is an accusation that carries a lot of weight and does a lot of damage. Kevin Shively: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it goes right to the heart of somebody's character, right? And and Dean Bagley: Mm-hmm. Kevin Shively: and and attacks that directly, which which is why it gets such an a vehement emotional response, obviously. Dean Bagley: Right. And that's that's one of the reasons that it gets used so much is because it was, you know, at least you know, like we looked at there there was a big increase in the sentiment in twenty eleven to twenty fourteen time period. and and part of the reason for that is because especially at the beginning of that, it was extremely effective. If that accusation credibly attached to you, you were done. Kevin Shively: Right. And and by the way, this, you know, none of this suggests that racism isn't real. We've we said that many times last week and we'll probably say it again during this conversation. I mean, we both accept that racism it does exist and and and is a problem in society, something that we don't want to have in our society. So I Dean Bagley: Well Kevin Shively: mean, I think most people would agree on that. Dean Bagley: Yeah, again, that goes back to what we were just saying. Is that you know that's that's that one extreme or the other, you know, it's all or nothing way of debating it. It's like, you know, well, if if you're saying that what we're looking at right here, whatever the subject is, isn't racism, then you're saying that racism doesn't exist. And it's like, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying this instance may be operating from a different place other than judging people based on their the color of their skin. Kevin Shively: Right. Yeah. And and by the way, what we're really talking about is because our conversation here is all about depolarization, right? And trying to find a way to bridge that that gap between between extremes and positions so that we can actually have an actual open and honest conversation to understand each other better. And that's and so because of that, we're trying to suggest that We don't want to just automatically have that knee-jerk reaction and automatically jump to those moral judgments without actually investigating because even the research says that we can't know for sure on an individual basis until we actually talk to the person and actually find out what they actually believe. Dean Bagley: Yeah, you know, I just I've had this in the back of my mind like all week, and it doesn't it's not directly relevant, applicable to right here in in this particular conversation, but I've I really feel like one of the things that we need to be trying to do, and this the framework is built around this, is so much of this discussion is framed around trying to figure out who is responsible and why whatever happened. And way down on the priority list is looking at what actually happened. And however that narrative is yeah, Kevin Shively: Right. Yeah. We're always trying to find somebody to blame. Yep. Dean Bagley: but however that narrative is framed, if if the who dis is determined to not apply, or if the why is determined to be incorrect, then so much of the discussion is able to just throw out the what and and yeah, it's like, but no no, but that happened and we need to look at that. So yeah, I I feel like we need to be focused on what and then once we understand the what, then we can begin to potentially look at who was involved and why. Kevin Shively: Well, the problem with making that immediate judgment call is that it prevents us from actually exploring these other options and trying to investigate whether or not there's other things going on. For example, the idea of I mentioned affirmative action a few minutes ago and people automatically assume, right, if you are against affirmative action, well then you're against helping minorities, right? I mean, that's that's the the immediate assumption that people make. But When we s make that assumption, we we hide from being able to dig down and say, Well, what are the actual results that affirmative action does, right? And and does it actually improve things or does it cause other factors that are maybe not intended consequences but but come out, you know, in a way that we don't want it to to manifest and and There was a study actually by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor that we came across in our real re research that really talks about this because they had a theory that they were testing that arguing that affirmative action can possibly place students into institutions where they have statistically less likely a chance of success. now you can you can argue that one way or another, but there are that you can do actual research on that. And if you make those assumptions about affirmative action, it prevents you from even being able to explore that question and see because

we sh we should not want to know the answer to that question, right? Dean Bagley: Yeah, it's it's kind of the the big fish in a small pond phenomenon that that you look at. It's like if you're at your local school, you're the lo you're the valedictorian of your high school, which has 75 students, you know, and that qualifies you to go to MIT. Do you really have the fundamental knowledge to succeed at MIT? And and people feel like they do because right. Kevin Shively: Are you properly prepared? Yep. Dean Bagley: People feel like they do because in comparison to everything else that they've been dealing with, they're head and shoulders above everybody else, but they've never seen that other level that they're going to have to do. So that's one of the arguments that's been made against things like for affirmative action, is that you end up you end up putting people in a situation where they're more likely to fail. And then that kind of for the people who support the affirmative action, that just feeds the idea that, well, if they failed that. We need more affirmative action, you know. That that's that's because it's still racist and we need to put more people in there and you know, where if they were left to to be then in an environment where they were more likely to succeed in the first place, that they they wouldn't have gotten discouraged, they would have had greater success and and potentially had, you know, a better general quality of life outcome. Kevin Shively: Right. And we can we can explore those things with research and look at things like graduation rates and and grade point averages and all the, you know, success or failure type of of measures. Right. And and we but we can't do that if we're already making those assumptions and basically saying, well, if you go down that road you're racist. Right. So it's preventing us from Dean Bagley: Yeah, I've I've talked Kevin Shively: finding out truth. Dean Bagley: I I've talked on here before. You know, I watch a lot of detective shows. I mean, you know, going back to Sherlock Holmes was one of my earliest heroes, and so I've always been interested in, you know, Sherlock Holmes and Scooby-Doo. I've always been interested in solving the Kevin Shively: Right. Dean Bagley: mystery. So you know, one of the things y you watch a lot of these types of shows, you they they always talk about one of the things that you want to inv avoid in an investigation. that's really easy to do is if you fixate on a particular subject or suspect that you think is if you decide that they're guilty at the beginning of the investigation, what people do then is only investigate evidence that proves that they're guilty. And and that's right. And that's that's what we Kevin Shively: Right. They're just trying to find confirmation. Right. Yeah. Instead of really investigating. Dean Bagley: that's what we do in in these situations. We we only look for confirming evidence or evidence that, you know, proves the conclusion that

we've already come to. And Where we get into these fights and arguments. Kevin Shively: Exactly. You know, and one of the other things in all of this, right, that that keeps coming up in our analysis, you know, part of our analysis that we always run things through the the moral foundation lens, you know, from Jonathan Heights research and and work. And with with racism as a subject, this is really touches very strongly on on the moral foundations because b when we look at people from the left that tend to be focused primarily on the care and harm or fairness. foundations, specifically Karen Harm when it comes to to racism, when you look at things only through that lens, right, specifically, then the other more conservative types of moral foundations that that people on the left tend not to see as moral foundations, things like loyalty, authority, sanctity, those kind of things, then those tend to to look like hostility towards minorities, right? And And when you're looking at it only through a care and harm lens. So you have to be able to, like you said, step back and say, Well, wait a minute here. Am I looking at this only through that lens? And and sh are there other ways that people might be looking at this issue that that may not make sense to me but are are valid on their end, right? Dean Bagley: Yeah, I mean there's there's a temporal element that to that too. A lot of that I if you understand the other perspective, a lot of those scenarios, the opposite side is also looking at care and harm. I mean, we have different moral foundations, and you know, I thought the the conversation that we watched with with Jonathan Haidt and Mousse Algarve was a really good explanation from his personal perspective of How he kind of came to that, having, you know, the default left academic perspective. And and suddenly at some point realizing that there were other ways to look at things, and he had to to like really take that into account and and figure that out. And that's kind of what led to that. but forget where I was going with that now. Kevin Shively: Well, it does, Dean Bagley: The Kevin Shively: you know, it does mean that we're we're making those assumptions. Dean Bagley: the the the short like people frequently frame that without realizing this in in the perspective of well, we need to do this to prevent immediate harm or short term harm, and they don't realize that the other side is potentially looking at, well, we need to do this this this way to avoid long-term negative consequences. And so, you know, end up talking because Frequently, we need to experience short-term negativity to have long-term positive consequences. And that is something in in a lot of different areas now, I feel like, has gotten kind of pushed aside in in our dialogue on a lot of different subjects. Kevin Shively: Right. Well, you know, and also the other thing that we don't end up talking about a lot about here when we're talking about racism is how that word itself has kind of morphed and changed and along the way as well. Because, you know, originally when we were talking about racism in the nineteen sixties, it was really an existential question, right? I mean, there were literally people in the streets, you know, protesting about segregation and and not and really seeing there were attitudes at the time of seeing one race as being superior to another. And that's really true racism. But that is not really the case anymore. And in for by and large, at least for the majority of Americans. We've seen this in in the research. We to we talked about it last week, how, you know, all of this has been going on and all of this in this building belief that everything is all about race and racism, while actual acts of of violent racism has actually been going down over the years and they even the belief in segregation and and things like that has virtually disappeared in terms of the the general public. Dean Bagley: Yeah, that was that was one of the interesting things that I there are probably a lot of people that kind of have a a sense of this, or there are people, you know, especially people that that lean right that this would not necessarily be a surprise for. But it was interesting to see that in the numbers in black and white, that is especially in the in the more recent period again with that started in, you know, like twenty eleven to twenty fourteen, where there's been a sharp rise in the the public sentiment that race is a big issue. so that there's been more conversation about it. There's been more, you know, yeah, there was the Black Lives Matter era, you had the protests in 2014, and then you had the protests in 2020. You had all of this conversation at the same time that actual incidents of racism and racial violence have decreased. So there's a disconnect in there somewhere. Kevin Shively: Yeah. And and in the research, basically some of the the research that's gone on about this, actually, we found that that w while racism basically had has been declining, what what they've been measuring more now is a sense of what they call symbolic racism or racial resentment necessarily. and and even that then kind of gets tied into the whole identity theory of is this actually based on race or is it actually just an a natural output of the in-group outgroup behavior of human psychology, right? Dean Bagley: Right. Yeah, and I mean that's Kevin Shively: And that's that's where it gets confused. Dean Bagley: That's kind of always been my sentiment in this is that you know, because I'm I'm operating from a stack that doesn't have race at the top. I mean, you know, watching T V and stuff, my my wife and I have made jokes for a long time. I don't recognize I I like I I can't tell you what the ethnicity of an actor or somebody that I'm looking at is based on looking at them. I I don't even judge it by name. So I mean, you know Course, you're watching TV, you you know, characters' names and that type of thing, but you know,

even you've got an actor that's like, I know they've got some kind of ethnic name or you know, but like I don't place them as being from like a different culture or diff, you know, and it's like the the example that comes to mind is like I didn't know until very recently that Jessica Alba was Latina. It just it never crossed my mind. You know, it's like I can Kevin Shively: Mm. Okay. Right. Dean Bagley: I can see You know, like three. I can see like white generally, I can see, you know, Asian generally, and I can see, you know, black basically. And there's you know, there's Kevin Shively: Mm. Dean Bagley: variations in there, but it's like, you know, South American versus you know, European Spanish versus it's like I don't you know, unless you hear somebody speak or something like that, it it's it's not the first thing that comes to mind. Kevin Shively: Right, right. So, you know, and and with all of these things, I mean we I I think what we're really trying to say is that basically we need to be able to understand not just where our perspective is and where we come at these these issues from, but we really do need to be able to understand where the other person is coming from and not just make those assumptions that they're looking at everything the same way that we're looking at them because I we see things very differently, especially with different moral foundations and different hierarchies in our identity stacks as we've been talking about, right? Dean Bagley: Right. And and I think we talked about this week, or I I think we talked about this last week. And it's it's been an ongoing theme in our conversation, but it you know, it goes back to the importance of definitions. And one of the things to to realize in here, and I know this this isn't in the outline, but it was, you know, part of the research and bears mentioning again. one of the things that came up in the research that we did on this was that like you were just talking about, the definition of racism For the average person, for the normies, the definition of racism hasn't changed. It's the idea of thoughts or actions that are based on thinking that your skin color group is different and probably superior to some other skin color group. And Kevin Shively: Right. Yeah, it's assigning these attributes to to skin color or to race, right? As as putting people Dean Bagley: Right, and then then thinking or acting as Kevin Shively: themselves on a hierarchy. Dean Bagley: right, thinking or acting as a result of that. But like you said, academically or in in other circles, that definition has grown to, you know, to be systemic, to be racial resentment, that type of thing. And there's there's a disconnect in the fact that It you know, it goes back to something that we've been saying from the beginning. You have to establish definitions because if you've got a person that's using the traditional definition and a person that's using the current academic definition and they're having a conversation, they don't understand each other. Kevin Shively: And you know, this has also been studied, right? We found a a research by Donald Kinder and and Lynn Sanders in the nineteen eighties started actually with their American national election studies. And they've been doing this since then and and continuing to do it, where they ask questions about racial resentment and things and and and what it comes out to where and again the the data can't really show whether or not it's a question of race or a question of values, right? because they would ask questions, for example, they'd say things like, how do you how much do you agree with these statements? Things like, blacks should work their way up with special fla without special favors the way that other groups did. Or if blacks would only try harder, they would be just as well off as whites, right? Now, those are framed in a racial frame, but what they're really asking underneath is not necessarily a a a race question as as opposed to blacks being different than whites, but it's a values questions of of, you know, assigning somebody a a work ethic, right? Or a level of work ethic. And not necessarily because they're black, but but as a group, necessarily, right? Dean Bagley: Right. And then, you know, you see like the the logical extreme, you know, the the final conclusion of this is something like that that chart that we've talked about a few times that was that came from one of the Smithsonian branches in twenty twenty, where it identified you know, Protestant work ethic being on time, all of these things that, you know, in a different context we would look at as just habits that you need to to adopt to be successful in the world, had them framed as being white culture and therefore supporting white supremacy. Kevin Shively: And and the problem with that is because of the different moral foundations, you can't really get the answer from that, whether or not that is actually a belief based on the person's race or whether or not it's simply something that's measuring a general level of political conservatism based on because of the the way that a conservative mind tends to think in terms of the the moral foundations and how they they prioritize things. Right. So that it that it may not necessarily be specifically about race. Dean Bagley: Right. Kevin Shively: So and you won't know until you actually have a conversation with that person to be able to find that out. And that's that's what a lot of the studies you know, there's been a lot of pushback on the ANAS studies as well. people like Snyderman and Tetlock, the you know, they they ar argued that it conflates the racial attitudes with general conservatism, right? And and the principles of of conservatism that people and that defines how people think. Dean Bagley: Right. And then there's you know, because because that tends to then project racism onto those particular perspectives, it is easily used as a confirmation of racism. Kevin

Shively: Right. And even the the the there is again kind of a people use there's a a guy named DeSante that did a two thousand thirteen thirteen experiment. And he did find that people who do have those agree with those statements of people should just work harder and and not necessarily get special favors, right, based on who or what they are, what the you know what race they are or things. and again that that can be seen both as a a racist response, but it also can be seen as a colorblind universalist response, right? So we have to be very careful until we actually have that conversation. We don't know which is the case. And even when they find that one group will apply that so they found that white voters, for example, DeSante did, would apply that that standard of values to the black communities probably more strictly than they do white communities. But again, is that necessarily because of race or is it because of the other things that we uncovered previously, where we found that people always in any in-group always rate the the out group's performance more harshly than they do their own in-group's performance, right? So again, Dean Bagley: Yeah, if Kevin Shively: you have to be very careful about what mechanisms we're actually trying to measure here. Dean Bagley: If you're if you're operating on in on the in group out group axes, then any other group that you don't see as being your group, you're going to judge more harshly than you do your own group. And that's just that's how in group out group always works. w I didn't I didn't think Kevin Shively: Right. And if you mixed up the people and mixed up the the races and everything, you'd still see that based on in group outgroup behavior. And so if Dean Bagley: Yeah, I Kevin Shively: if that if that behavior if if the fact that they're black or different races is downstream of the actual mechanism in first, then it's really not the the race part of it isn't actually the causal part of it. Right. So just following logic. Dean Bagley: One of the things that I didn't think to to ask the the research on that that comes to mind now, I would be interested to see if they investigated so you're looking looking at black and white, basically. So so ask the same conservative leaning group of white voters the same questions based on the Asian community. Because, you know, without sounding racist, The the judgment that I think a lot of people have looking at like the tiger mom phenomenon and that type of thing is that the the Asian community prioritizes hard work and discipline and all of that to a much higher level than even the the white community, which is being looked at. and those results are then borne out, you know, that's That's the case that ultimately led to kind of the overturning of the affirmative action, is that, you know, they identified discrimination against Asians in admission practices. So I I would be interested to see if they studied that and what the results were, because if If that

still showed consistently, then it, you know, it still holds up either in-group, out-group, or potential racial bias. But if they had a much higher view of another community in a different, you know, racial community that upheld those values, then you know, that would that would validate the idea that they're making those decisions based on those values. Kevin Shively: based on values as necessarily and and assigning in group out group relationships, right? Definitely. Dean Bagley: Right. Kevin Shively: So one of the other things that we did look at here and that that complicates the conversation a little bit, but is something that I think that we need to be able to address. And that is that, you know, like we said before, we know that there it has been racism in our in our history, it's it's throughout our history as a as a people and as a country. And we do know that there are certain elements of that that do seem to, at least based on the data and the information, seem to have lasting and lingering effects within certain communities. And and one of those is the idea of redlining, right? And and when we ran this through our framework, this is the one area that of consideration in this whole discussion where we really saw. what we like to call our triad test fully fulfilled, right? That triad test of consequences, decision makers consequences, and cost bearers, right? Because here we have a really fully totalized type of situation where, and for those people who don't understand what redlining is, redlining was a situation where back in the nineteen thirties, basically as part of the New Deal and it was part of the homeowners loan corporation. the H O L C basically they created color-coded maps and of over 200 US cities and rated neighborhoods by perceived mortgage risk. And they did this using race as a consideration, as looking at and so those neighborhoods that were primar primarily minorities, people of black communities and also in Hispanic and and immigrant communities, were colored colored red. And they were considered hazardous hazard hazardous rather, and places that were of higher risk in terms of loans, so though they didn't get loans basically. And so even though they were 10% of the population, even 10% of veterans, only about 2% of FHA loans and and even five percent of VA loans, of veterans administration loans, went to black borrowers. And of course, this was during the 1935 to 1947. framework where people getting home from World War Two with the GI Bill, people were buying houses, right, and they were getting loans to get those houses and white lo borrowers were getting loans at a you know, much, much higher rate, even as far as their percentage of the population. Dean Bagley: I've I've I've had a couple of different perceptions on this. Is is it the situation where they were not given loans at all or where they would only be given loans in the redlined area? You know, it's like they couldn't they couldn't buy property outside of the minority concentrated area. Kevin Shively: No, actually this was what the statistics shows that I'm looking at here is only about two percent of loans overall went to black Dean Bagley: Okay. Kevin Shively: families, the FHA loans. So they weren't even getting loans at all, even in the red lined areas. In fact, specifically in the red lined areas, because the red lined areas were redlined because they were telling the banks don't loan to these areas. Don't don't don't loan people money to buy houses in here because it's gonna be too big a risk. You're gonna lose your lose your investment. Dean Bagley: Uh-huh. Kevin Shively: So, you know, and and so we looked at when we looked at the legislation of civil rights, of course, that didn't really do anything for for redlining. But there was a Fair Housing Act in nineteen sixty eight that did address this. And then because one of the things we talked about last week was, you know, well, we fixed a lot of the structural parts of these things. You know, why why is it that It's still a problem and why do we still need to do more? Right? Or why are people arguing that we need to do more? Is is really what Dean Bagley: And Kevin Shively: it w comes down to. Dean Bagley: one of the things that really stood out to me on this particular subject, I I've mentioned before, I have a real estate sales associate license in Florida. I've been working for the last year on studying to get my my real estate broker's license. And one of the things that it call covers in there is all of this legislation. And it makes the point specifically. Redlining is a thing that used to happen, it's illegal. And this comes up in this conversation, Kevin Shively: It's illegal now. Yep. Dean Bagley: and it's like, so this happened from 1935 to 1947. Yeah, it was decided on race. It was, you know, so reading all of this, the reaction that I have is like, okay, yeah, you know, racism happened. This happened. We made it illegal. Why is that relevant now? Kevin Shively: Yeah. And that is that is one of the arguments that people make, right? In this. And you know, even though because we did have the Equal Opportunity, Equal Credit Opportunity Act in nineteen seventy-four, we had the Community Reinvestment Act in nineteen seventy-seven. So there have been a lot of legislative efforts to to correct this. Now, the problem is that when we look at the statistics, of course, we see a lingering generational gap, right? That we see that black families were never at because they were not able early on to invest and build that wealth. Because that's where a lot of the middle class wealth in the nineteen forties and fifties came from was homeownership. Right. That's really where the the middle class that's getting hollowed out now, but the the middle class was born. That's really where it became the central biggest chunk of of American society was from home ownership primarily. So it's something that we Dean Bagley: Right. And Kevin Shively: have

to be very conscious of as far as, you know, what kind of lingering effect it has going forward. Dean Bagley: Right. So so the I mean, I I inquired, you know, in the research directly on on that and and it gave me a couple of things that I hadn't thought of that way and and I thought were really valuable. I mean n one of those that it highlighted before, and I'm like, Yeah, okay, I get that was was that idea the idea of generational wealth where you know if if you buy a house to some extent that that Opportunity at the very least passes down to your kids. it also models homeownership. You know, there's a lot of different variables that kind of even aren't really taken into that. But it it kind of that's the framework that you come out of and what you plan to do. And then that that establishes you for your the rest of your life and and that type of thing, and models that for your kids and and you know, going on forward of that. So if you don't have that initial opportunity, that doesn't happen going forward. the other thing Kevin Shively: Right. And and there is a real gap. There is definitely a gap between these communities. Yep. That's measurable. Dean Bagley: Right. The the other thing that that the when I when I asked it specifically, it's like, okay, setting that aside because that happened, why why else is this important? And it it highlighted it as a test case to always keep in mind to compare everything against. Because especially with this line of research that we've been doing, looking at, you know, especially what we're talking about this week. Well, if it's not racism, what else could it be? what happens is if you Yeah, if you find well Kevin Shively: If it's not all racism, right? I mean, yeah. Dean Bagley: looking at it, you know, asking all of these individual things like if what other explanation could there be other than racism? The aggregate there is that you can come away with an idea of okay, well, racism just isn't as big of a thing as, you know. it's it's being made out to be. And what this does is it provides that case to say, wait a minute, you need to keep this in mind that this happened because of race. And Kevin Shively: Right. This happened. Yep. Yep. Dean Bagley: there's it's a contrast to be able to look at everything else and compare that against to say, does it does what we're looking at over here match what this was, or you know, is it something a little different? So it It's it's definitely something that needs to be included and and considered when looking at this subject overall. Kevin Shively: Yeah, but you know, we can agree. The here's here's a further wrinkle here is that we can agree that redlining happened. We can agree that it was wrong. We can agree that it hurt the black community and the minority communities. and we can also agree on the fact that things are still very unequal today and that there is a very good correlation, corollary or a correlation between and and a causal relationship, we can argue

because of that. that this is why this is a lingering effect of a wrong that happened in the past. But even if we agree on all of that and we all say, you know, on both left and right, and say, yes, we agree that all this happened and this this lingering effect is real, we still may not agree and we need to have the conversation of what do we do now about it. Because there are still two camps on that that come that emerge from this. Because one side says, you know, Now once we've done all the legal requirements, we've set an a legal we've made it illegal to discriminate. We've you've made it illegal to redline, we've made it illegal to not loan to minorities, right? All of those things. Once we've done that, that's really we've created a level playing field. That's as much as government should do to actually correct the situation. Now it's up to the people in each community to to put that in into, you know, to put their own effort into building up their own their own wealth, right, and their and their success. Of course, the competing opposition is just the opposite. No, we need to actually go back and and basically help these people even more because they were disadvantaged. And we can have that conversation, but we have to be able to to have that conversation about policy. This is really a policy question, basically only after we've agreed on kind of understanding what actually happened and and what the actual effects have been, right? Dean Bagley: Yeah, and that goes back to being Kevin Shively: And that's a worthy discussion. We can have that. Dean Bagley: it goes back to being able to honestly evaluate results even if the results indicate something that makes you uncomfortable. Because you know, one of the things that we can look at, and and I'm not gonna say this is the explanation, because I again all of these things are complex in the sense that there are multiple variables, all of which play a role. So trying to isolate a particular cause in each of this is unfair. But, you know, you look at one of the reasons that that you make those judgments based on, you know, a financial institution makes a judgment based on who to loan money on is the idea of is the the person taking out the loan reasonably going to be able to pay it back? And and one of the charges that gets made, And there were multiple things again involved. But leading up to the 2008 crisis, which was led by housing, was that there were multiple loans. Now it's I mean they were done in a predatory manner, you know, but there was a large percentage of loans that were made to people that had no reasonable expectation that they were going to pay those loans. And so they defaulted. Yeah. You know, and then the Kevin Shively: They're bad loans, yeah. Yeah. Junk loans, yeah. Dean Bagley: You know, then you had mortgage backed securities where those bad loans were packaged into something that was read as a as a solid investment that wasn't. But, you know, there there were a lot of things happened. But, you know, part of that is it was a response to that question. It's like we want to try to give these people who are disadvantaged the opportunity to get in on this. So we're going to to take those risks and you know. there is there is an argument that can be made in that that it didn't work. So so what is the correct response? You know, that's it complicates that that question. Kevin Shively: Because this this really does break the whole question down into two real really two questions. And that is, it's not like did redlining actually, you know, happen and cause damage? We know that it did. but it's how much of the present-day gap is attributable to that. And then when we answer that question, then we have to say, well, how much, what is the response that society shouldn't do? And what do we owe, right? What level of of corrective measures do we owe to actually to to address the the gap that was caused by the the harms, right? So and those are policy questions. Those are things that we can have. But again, we have to be able to not assume just racism and necessarily to begin with to get to that point where we can have that conversation. Dean Bagley: Well and this, you know, we're we're hitting a point now where I'm thinking that we may even want to, you know, because we we've been talking about it. The the conclusion of this conversation, you know, we said it was going to be a multiple point, you know, multiple episode conversation dealing with all of the permutations of the subject of race. And and the landing, you know, the landing that we get to. Is going to be again a much more in-depth discussion of what we mentioned at the top of this episode, the whole identity stacking and and how that plays into all of these different conversations. and so we were initially l looking at that as part three. I I feel like that we're getting to a point now where we may actually want to insert because this is it's something that we began to look into this week. And we're beginning to talk about now, and I think it may take another episode to actually cover all of this, is all of the financial s financial system implications of what has been going on in the timeline that we're examining. Kevin Shively: Yes, yes. That was that was where I was gonna go next, actually, to kind of bring this this part of our conversation full circle. And that is one of the other explanations for all of this is, you know, to borrow the phrase from what was it during the the George H. W. Bush first campaign where it says it's the c the economy stupid, right? Is that what it was? Yeah. So I mean Dean Bagley: Yeah, Jim Jim Carvel. Kevin Shively: it is, and it's exactly. and I think Dean Bagley: It was the Clinton it was the Clinton campaign, but that was his quote, yeah. Yeah. Kevin Shively: there was a Clinton campaign. That's what it was. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for correcting me on that. Yeah. So it's the economy stupid, right? So basically we looked at because

again, let's go back to the the key dates here, right? 1977, 78. Well, what was going on in 1977, 78? Stag inflation, right? We had economic stagnation and price inflation, something that that the economists thought before was impossible, shouldn't be able to happen, right? So and people were really feeling the pain. And so when you look at it from that standpoint, and you look at at is that something that actually contributed to this in-group-out-group animosity and political polarization outside the bounds of just pure racism, right? And and and being a racial issue. And we find with the research that yes, I mean, that is exactly something that would generate this kind of thing, because a lot of the research that we found that uncovered is that. Anytime there is a any kind of of restriction of resources, right? And people tend to start looking at at competition not necess necessarily for them to succeed, but that there's a smaller piece of the pie to go after, right? That you have to really fight for each each crumb. And that Dean Bagley: Right. Kevin Shively: raises animosity between in-groups and outgroups. Dean Bagley: it it gets into this thinking that it's it's a zero sum game. That if if I gain some you know, if if if you're losing, somebody else is gaining what you're losing. And then you know there's there's a finite amount of whatever it is. It it gets away from the rising seas, you know, rise you know, rise all boats or lip cell boats. Yeah. Kevin Shively: Yeah, the rising tide ri lifts all boats. Yeah. Yeah. Dean Bagley: you know, the the other potential perspectives on that. And you know, and that's trying to to identify here looking at different particular time periods which come up repeatedly from a variety of different perspectives, you know. I mean, you can lay on top of that directly, you know, Al Garbi's Great Awokenings. You've got, you know, the the 60s, 70s, and and that's his theory is that it's the elite overproduction combined with a time of lower financial opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. So you have that in Kevin Shively: Resource scarcity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dean Bagley: the the 60s and 70s. You have that following the the 2008 crisis where you you know you've had the the rise of this conflict again. there's another aspect that I haven't injected into you know it's a an analysis that I ran real quick yesterday that I haven't even put in here yet because I knew it wasn't going to be anything that entered into this week. But there's There is another factor in that that tracks directly, at least in the US, those exact time periods, and that's birth rate decline. Kevin Shively: Mm, right. Interesting. Dean Bagley: There is there is a What would si whatever the opposite of peak, you know, there's there's a yeah, the Kevin Shively: Valley. Dean Bagley: you know, a dip, you know, a bottom in Kevin Shively: Right. Dean Bagley: in birth rates that occurs right in that nineteen seventy eight you know, seventy seven, seventy eight period. And again in I Kevin Shively: Mm. Dean Bagley: think twenty eleven or something like that. I don't I don't remember that, but it was you know Kevin Shively: Yeah, that might be something we'll have to investigate further to see if there is an any kind of direct connection. But you know, we Dean Bagley: Yeah, yeah. Kevin Shively: do see it with the sheriff's you know, Roberts Cave experiment. We talked a lot about that over the course of many different episodes. and you know, when you look at that experiment, that was actually part of a larger conflict theory project, right? A be a broader theory, which holds that intergroup hostility actually intensifies specifically when groups perceive themselves competing for scarce resources, right? And economic scarcity. And it's a it's a textbook trigger for the animosity to between in-group and out group. and also Dean Bagley: Yeah, and it it Kevin Shively: group position theory from Bloomer, right? Where Dean Bagley: Uh-huh. Kevin Shively: it's not just necessarily that that they're fighting over scarce resources, but they're scarce is fighting over their group's position and and whether or not the group is being is being fully compensated and being getting what it deserves, right? Dean Bagley: Well, it's it's status and the status hierarchy. And I somebody brought that up Kevin Shively: Efforts. Yeah. Yep. Dean Bagley: in something that I was watching earlier today. And I I I need to integrate that too, because even if you go, you know, I think I know I mentioned this t to you, I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast, but you've got Rob H Rob Henderson's theory of luxury beliefs. And you know, to synopsize that real quick, it's the idea that people adopt a position because it will Holding that position will elevate your status in in your in group. and it's it's kind of a triad position because it's a position that you assume that you're trying to benefit another group that you see as disadvantaged that's not your group, which applies then a cost to another group which is also not your group. So it it kind of mirrors our triad thing, but it's it's in order to gain status in you know, within your in group. Kevin Shively: In your own group. Right. Yeah. Well, you also mentioned you you mentioned the the concept of zero thumb sum thinking, right? And Dean Bagley: Right. Kevin Shively: that's a there are further research studies to show that that actually plays into the the whole picture as well, because a recent work with Ali Nunn and colleagues actually on zero thumb sum thinking found that it does correlate with economic stagnation and instability too. And it treats zero sum political mindsets, right, as a as a driver. of contemporary polarization. So all of these things, all of these pressures are related and they all go hand in hand with economic troubles and economic so it becomes more of a class issue necessarily than it is about race. And then the race part of it is downstream of that.

So it's not necessarily the causal action. Dean Bagley: Right. Yeah, it's you know, one of the one of the things that I wanted to investigate in this is, you know, the idea that okay, we're seeing things. You see two things is we we always want to im infer a causal relationship. So it's look, you know, well, is there the possibility we're seeing these two things running in the same direction? We know that they're correlated. Is it possible that there's a third element that's actually the causal element, which is driving both of those in that direction? The economy being, you know, or economic difficulty being one of those that we're looking at, you know, there are a variety of different variables that you can apply that to as another cause for driving those in the same direction. Another idea in that that you need to look at is it is actually an inversion, is what we're looking at as the effect, actually the cause. you know, so it's like the reaction towards, you know, people of of different races or different in groups, is that a cause, you know, is that an effect of something else versus the cause that we're we're, you know, applying that as? Kevin Shively: Right. So in this in essence, racial resentments and things like that may be downstream and they're they're actually the effect as opposed to what's actually creating these things, right? Dean Bagley: Yeah, I mean and and that's really easy to see if you if you can look at a different framing of something like affirmative action and you know and people apply this as being racist, but if you look at, you know, you see people you you know, you see the possibility of yourself or especially like your children or you know, your children's cohort being disadvantaged disproportionately based on this process that's that's disproportionately advantaging other groups, it's hard not to feel some resentment for that. You know, even even if you agree with, you know, the the historical injustice that this was done as a result of, you're still looking at like, you know, I'm getting screwed here. Kevin Shively: Right, right. Well, I mean, and this kind of brings this full circle for this part of the the conversation. I think that we have shown, though, that there are some rational and reasonable alternatives to race as being perhaps involved in in all of this and something that we need to be able to consider when we do talk think about race and think about the polarization aspect of it, and also when we think about how we interact with each other. Right, especially across the political divide. because again, w if from the left, if everything that we see is all gonna be all about race, and it tends to be very often, then we're I think we're missing an opportunity to actually see some other things that are going on in society that we also probably would like to talk about and address, that aren't necessarily directly related to race, but do have an effect on. how we see race in our in our country. Dean Bagley: Yeah, I mean, you know, we've we've mentioned and we'll talk in depth more on this later on, the the identity stack, the identity hierarchy. There's there's a priority hierarchy that we're operating in here, too, which partially comes from that identity stack. But yeah, it's you know a question of when you're making these decisions, what's what's the most important thing that that you're looking at in there and the realization that What you're looking at is the important factor or the causal factor or whatever it may be completely different from what somebody else is looking at. Kevin Shively: Yep, exactly. And you know, and that's where we're gonna go next next week with with this conversation. We're gonna start talking about, okay, well, let's dig into that identity stack. What does that actually mean? What does it look like? How does it work on both sides? And how does it work differently on the two sides? and how how does it how do the two sides find a way to interact in that way when we have such different hierarchies and different priorities, like you say, right? So that we can understand those things. Because if we can actually understand what the other person's priority is, and understand that if we are pushing in one direction, then we need to make sure that the direction that we're pushing is actually going to get the result that we want. Right. And if all we're doing is calling each other racist or calling one side, calling the other side racist, is that really the best way in the end to actually affect change? And actually if you really think things are all about race, then what's the best way to to make them not all about race, right? And maybe it's not. Just making everything all about race. So something to consider anyway. Dean Bagley: Yeah, I mean it you know, it goes back to one of the first things that we determined in having this conversation. I d I think people would be surprised to find out how much the majority of people agree on the goal of not having, you know, any of the minority communities discriminated Kevin Shively: People be discriminated. Yeah. Dean Bagley: against because of their their status in that, you know, to have them have the best possible results. I think you know, the vast majority of people would agree on that as the goal. And what they're disagreeing on is the the manner of getting that there, but then it's being framed as, well, you just, you know, because one side doesn't see how the other side is trying to help them, you're just trying to hurt them. Kevin Shively: Right, exactly. Yeah. And that goes all the way back to that that Facebook discussion that we were talking about at the very beginning, right? Because I I reject both reasons for not having this ongoing conversation. One, I don't agree that we can't talk with people who do espouse racist beliefs and and do have those beliefs. I still believe that we can talk to those people. It it takes some effort, it takes a lot of effort, in

fact. But even if we don't agree on that. We really do need to take a second look and see that, well, you know, maybe the other side isn't just all racist. Maybe that the other side is maybe there's more to it. Maybe I need to actually have that discussion first before I actually make that determination, whether which which type of person they are. Right. So on on Dean Bagley: Yeah. Kevin Shively: both sides, I think, argue that we need to have this conversation. Dean Bagley: Well, and I don't I mean, I've thought a lot about because we we identified early on that this moral judgment is one of the big problems that we have going on. And and one of the feelings that I have on that is it's really not something that you can make in in the process while things are going on. I think you have to make that moral judgment in hindsight. And even then it may not be fair. You know, and it's the this is gonna be controversial. Kevin Shively: Well at least make sure you have all the proper information, right? I mean you gotta have all Dean Bagley: Right. Kevin Shively: the proper information. Dean Bagley: Right. This is going to be controversial to think about. And you know, we've mentioned this before, but I don't think people really think about this. It's, you know, if you accept them at their word, even Hitler and Mao were trying to do what was best for the people that they were they were leading. They they wanted to improve, yeah, Kevin Shively: Based on their ideology, yeah. Dean Bagley: they wanted to improve the situation of the population that they were in charge of. So, you know. Obviously we judged now that that was done in ways that were, you know, heinous that we cannot imagine, but I I don't Kevin Shively: Right. Dean Bagley: I don't know if you can make the moral judgment of the the motivation of their actions even for people like that. And if you can't make that for them, you can't make it for anybody else. Kevin Shively: Yeah, that's true. That's very true. Yeah. And you know, it's it's like you say, it's you know, hindsight's twenty twenty, right? You always have an ability to look back and but then again at the same time, I mean, you have to be able to to understand what and now th once you understand, then you can have disagreements, right? Then you can and you don't have none of this is means that we have to agree. In fact, none of this entire podcast conversation means that we have to agree on everything. But what we should do is at least aim to understand, right? Because Dean Bagley: Right. And it Kevin Shively: if we don't understand, how can we even say we disagree? Dean Bagley: It and it doesn't mean just because, you know, we we can determine that that one of us was right about something, that doesn't mean that the other person was wrong. They may have been right in what they were looking at too. You know, it's like in this case, just because Kevin Shively: Actually from their perspective, yeah. Dean Bagley: just because there are a lot of other variables that pe you know, axes that people are operating on not looking at race, doesn't mean that there isn't racism and that there aren't some people that are looking at things that way. And Kevin Shively: Right. Yeah. And we and Dean Bagley: You know, and it Kevin Shively: to be able to to know for sure we need to be able to have the conversation. Dean Bagley: Yeah, and it I mean, part of this goes back to the the foundational theory that created our framework. The idea that this a lot of this comes out as a product of incentive structures and just the way things develop and not, you know, the morality or the ideology or or you know people operating out of that. It's just it's what the system creates based on what it rewards and what is what it punishes. So In order to make any changes, we need to understand that and we need to change the rewards and the punishments, it's not the people. Kevin Shively: Yeah, that's what we're trying to do here is try to find them the actual mechanisms, right? Actu what is actually going on underneath that aesthetic layer that we like to talk about so much, right? And and really dig down into that structure. And when we do find structural problems, then we can actually work together to try to find reforms that are actually going to be able to solve the the real problem underneath and not just sugarcoat or or you know put a fancy new coat of paint on it. Well, you've spent another hour and what, twenty minutes talking to the talking talking with or listening to us talk about things and we appreciate your watching this asynchrony podcast. We also appreciate you hitting that like and subscribe button, share it with your friends. Also get involved in the conversation. We want to hear from you. Do make comments on our our YouTube page. We've got a Facebook page up there. We do get some good comments there with our especially on Facebook, we've been getting some great comments on things there that we like to interact with. So we want you to be a part of this conversation as well. Any f final thoughts before we wrap things up? Dean Bagley: Just you know, kind of the hope that in in listening to us ramble on, hopefully it it will cause our audience to look at you know even one thing, say, you know, I hadn't looked at it that way, or you know, that there are other ways to look at that that I hadn't considered. And if we can do that, you know, then there's hope for us. Kevin Shively: Right. Exactly. Well, maybe not just n not hope for you and me, but maybe everybody else. Dean Bagley: You know. Kevin Shively: All right, well, thanks again, and like I always like to say, let's keep the conversation going. Dean Bagley: Thanks everyone. We'll see you next week.