- [crew member 1] Ready to start rolling? - [Stewart] All right.
[crew member 2] All right.
Before this job, I was a DEI officer
which is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, of course.
And it was a very stressful job.
What did you do? Like, what did it-- What was your purview?
Preparing presentations,
making sure people knew what the definition of racism was.
Like, just so that everyone knew what they were accountable for.
And that alone was hell.
Of course. Because people wanted to be like,
"Why are you making me feel bad? I'm trying."
And I'm like, "I'm literally defining a word."
I'm-- I'm Webster today.
But it was such a stressful job.
So I think from now on I'm just gonna be Black for free.
[all laughing]
Wait a second. That's what got us in this mess.
Let's not--
- Let's not be Black for free. - [laughing]
[audience applauding, cheering]
Boom.
Hey!
[audience applauding, cheering]
What's happening? Thank you so much for joining us.
My name is Jon Stewart. Welcome to our television show.
For those of you who don't know, a television show is like a--
It's like a-- a podcast that moves.
You'll get used to it.
Um… trying to be lighthearted, trying to bring it in here
because we've got some things to talk about this evening.
Um… Oh, the show we've prepared.
[audience laughing]
As you may know,
uh, this country has had some issues with race.
[audience murmurs]
Oh, okay.
[audience laughing]
Sphincters are tightening already.
Uh, we've had some issues with race. There was that incident in…
[stammers] …1619, and then…
had a few hiccups since then, but…
mostly it's been fine.
We've all been chilling. It's been chill.
Until a couple years ago,
another rare bad thing happened to Black people in the summer of 2020.
George Floyd's death is sparking a national reckoning.
The death of George Floyd. It sparks this global movement, this racial reckoning.
We here in America certainly had our own racial reckoning
in the wake of George Floyd's death.
A growing number of American companies facing a racial reckoning.
As America confronts a racial reckoning.
A racial reckoning.
It also comes at a time of racial reckoning for the country.
Oh.
So you guys are finally ready to talk about racial repar--
Uh, reckoning.
[audience laughing, applauding]
We don't-- We don't wanna--
We don't wanna right the wrongs.
We just reckon we're gonna think about it for a bit.
Well, not to worry.
This egregious midday murder will not be in vain.
Let the work of righting centuries of oppression begin.
Aunt Jemima is being retired.
[audience laughing, applauding]
By any means necessary.
Cream of Wheat is removing the Black chef from its packaging.
[reporter 1] Chris Harrison, host of The Bachelor,
has announced he is stepping away.
[reporter 2] Every NFL stadium, you're gonna see phrases like "end racism."
Tonight we know the Dixie Chicks are dropping the "Dixie."
[reporter 3] The Village of Hempstead renamed Main Street
"Black Lives Matter Way."
We will now kneel for our moment of silence.
[audience laughing]
Worst production of Lion King ever.
[audience laughing, applauding]
But more than kente cloth calisthenics and some long overdue brand readjustments,
there came another even more meaningful cultural shift.
I think white people need to listen.
White people should listen to African Americans.
White people, we need to listen.
We are listening. I am listening.
Now, it's time for us to have ears to hear.
[audience laughing]
Oh, good. 'Cause I've been using mine for fucking.
Two-- Two at a time.
[audience applauding]
I likes my ear fucking like I like my Pink Floyd albums--
in stereo.
[audience laughing]
Yeah-- Yeah, we changed it from rehearsal for the--
the crew that got a bit of a tickle out of that one.
Yes. Apparently this racial issue that so divides America
could have just been solved
if only Black people would have said something.
So…
Okay, white people. Ears to hear.
This is the harsh reality for Black people in America today,
that we are expected to participate in democracy
while receiving conditional citizenship in return.
A zip code determines what kind of school that you go to.
A zip code determines what kind of food you can eat.
These are the vestiges of enslavement.
So when they say, "Why do you burn down the community?"
"Why do you burn down your own neighborhood?"
It's not ours. We don't own anything.
It's amazing to me
why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.
I mean, this stuff is-- is hard to hear.
But these are tough conversations, and I would probably have more hope
in its impact on our culture if those same exact sentiments
hadn't already been conveyed to white people
over and over and over.
Like one year earlier on The Breakfast Club.
They never, never, never addressed the primary problems of Black folk.
Our primary problem was not social integration or civil rights.
The primary problems you never corrected.
The legacies and burdens of slavery.
Or by Viola Davis at an award show in 2015.
The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else
is opportunity.
Or in the '90s,
when Sister Souljah explained this directly to Bill Clinton and Larry King.
The thing that kills African people in America
is not what white people say, but what they do,
their policies, their actions.
See, white people are pretending that this problem is new
and we're just hearing about it now,
because we love to discover stuff that's already existed.
[audience laughing]
It's kind of our thing.
America!
Where did you come from?
First.
As a matter of fact, this shit has been said many times
just by Chris Rock.
Shit, there ain't a white man in this room that would change places with me.
And I'm rich.
You had a 400-year head start, motherfucker.
See, the Black man gotta fly
to get something that the white man can walk to.
A Black C student can't even be the manager of Burger King.
Meanwhile, a white C student just happens to be
the president of the United States of America.
He's a very good comedian.
But you know what?
Maybe you don't want to hear about our racial divide
and have it be funny.
Would you rather Black people invent an entire genre of music
just to explain it to us?
♪ Fathers of this country Never cared for me ♪
♪ They kept my ancestors Shackled up in slavery ♪
♪ And Uncle Sam never did A damn thing for me ♪
♪ Except lie about facts In my history ♪
But you know what? [stammers]
It's wonderful that white people are finally ready to sit back and listen.
But damn.
The Black people speaking out now are just sampling the classics.
Racism is so deeply embedded into the fabric of the society.
Thank you, Angela.
James Baldwin went all the way to England to explain it,
because he wanted to do it at white people headquarters.
[James Baldwin] It comes as a great shock to discover
that the country which is your birthplace
and to which you owe your life and your identity
has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you.
For fuck's sake, Frederick Douglass told white people,
"The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence
bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me."
He said that in 1852.
And now… 170 years later, suddenly we're like,
"Hey… you seem upset."
[audience laughing]
"We're still cool though, right?
Did we do something?"
Black people have given us step-by-step instructions through the centuries.
They didn't even do that with the electric slide,
which, by the way,
three steps, and then you bend. I don't want to get into it.
And yet, even after all that,
the wealth gap, worse now.
Homeownership, worse now.
Segregation, worse now.
On average, a white high school graduate
is wealthier than a Black college graduate.
Forget about them telling you.
Even the stark facts don't seem to matter.
Black Americans should understand that if they study and work hard,
they will likely succeed in this country.
Just not as much as white people, who don't study as hard.
We have been told over and over and over again by Black people
that this country has never resolved the original sins of slavery and segregation.
But the response to that is always…
If Barack Obama can make it as a single-- as the son of a single white mom,
then, so can everybody else.
Oprah Winfrey is perhaps the best example of a talented person
who made it on her own in America.
LeBron James is a great American success story.
How can America be racist if Cleveland has a championship?
[audience laughing]
It doesn't seem to matter what Black people tell us
or how many times they say it.
It lands on deaf ears.
Because a large swath of white America believes that Black Americans
are solely responsible for their community's struggle.
And the bias is so pervasive, we don't even notice it.
Crack. Who's responsible?
Let me tell you straight out.
Everyone who uses drugs.
Mmm.
And perchance… who would this everyone be?
[reporter 1] Crack has become the new franchise, a chemical McDonald's.
You want to get high, you see the guys in the gangs
in the red and blue outfits.
[reporter 2] The front line in the war on crack.
[reporter 3] There are tens of thousands more crack babies on the way.
Crack babies…
…are gonna overwhelm every social service delivery system.
[reporter 1] Before, we could afford to ignore hopelessness
represented by gangs.
But now we're afraid it will affect our schools, our kids, our streets.
It's as innocent-looking as candy, but it's turning our cities into battle zones.
And it's murdering our children.
What kind of fucking candy do you eat?
[audience laughing]
Now, this is not to downplay, at all, the effects of the crack epidemic.
But we are currently in the midst of an equally corrosive opioid epidemic.
Although that affects a slightly different "everyone."
And how is that portrayed?
[reporter] America's addiction to opioids
is playing out right down the street.
Every type of person you can imagine.
Successful people.
Funny people.
Moms, dads, grandparents.
Injured athletes.
Cancer patients.
War veterans.
Chances are greater than ever you know someone directly affected.
Why are opioids so hard to quit?
Well, that's fucking easy.
It links opioid receptors and inhibits an enzyme that--
I'm not going to get into it right now.
But the point is, it's on purpose.
And the people who made it that way only had to pay a fine.
But that's drugs.
I'm sure poverty doesn't have the same empathy gap.
Inner city is a polite name for ghetto, as in Black ghetto.
[audience laughs, murmurs]
And that's the award-winning PBS journalist.
So, uh-- uh, just out of curiosity, why is the Black ghetto poor?
Intelligent Americans know it is the collapse of the traditional family
that is wreaking havoc in the African-American community.
72% of Black babies are born to single mothers.
If they would start talking about the responsibilities of fatherhood.
Dependency on welfare was breaking up Black families.
The breakdown of the Black family
and an extraordinarily dysfunctional, toxic inner city culture.
[chuckles] Inner city? Excuse me.
The politically correct phrase is "Black ghetto."
[audience laughing]
Good day.
Uh, by the way, how do we portray poverty
in the… outer city?
[reporter 1] Ruggedly beautiful and deeply poor Appalachia
for decades has struggled.
[reporter 2] People here have struggled more and more
as their factories have shuttered and their coal mines have closed.
It's been a slow, painful drip of job losses for decades.
It used to be with a high school degree, you could get a job
that actually could provide for your family.
Yeah.
And the disappearance of those may lead people to feel a lot more stressed.
So that low self worth, along with that hopelessness feeling,
we start seeing tremendous depression.
So how do you relieve depression?
You can relieve it with drug use, alcohol use.
White people are poor and do drugs because something has been done to them.
Black people are poor and do drugs
'cause they won't just get up and do something.
Everything that happens is viewed through that filter.
[reporter 1] What started as peaceful protest
devolving into something beyond that.
[reporter 2] An explosion of violence today.
[reporter 3] This is not what we want people to see of the city of Philadelphia.
Well, it makes perfect sense.
How would you like people to see the city of Philadelphia?
The Eagles victory touched off a wild celebration in Philadelphia.
[reporter 1] The celebration quickly got rowdy.
Fans pulled down traffic lights.
[reporter 2] The awning in front of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel collapsed.
[reporter 1] Started fires and tipped over cars.
Looks like everybody had a good time there last night.
[audience laughing]
And thus…
the problem with white people.
[audience applauding, cheering]
Hold on. I'm just gonna…
I'm just--
I'm just gonna stop for a second and-- and pose, so you can get your memes out.
Okay, there we go.
Get a good picture for your clickbaits.
For however sincerely we want to reckon and listen,
the truth is, America has always prioritized
white comfort over Black survival.
Black people have had to fight so hard for equality
that they've been irreparably set back in the pursuit of equity.
And any real attempt to repar-- repar-- repair
a ton of… that damage--
[whispers] Reparation.
[normal voice] …sets off white people's "They're coming for our shit" alarm.
Which we would know ourselves had we actually been listening.
My feeling is white people
have a very, very serious problem.
And they should start thinking about what they can do about it.
Take me out of it.
Understood.
Take a look at this.
Hey, white people, it's me, Leslie Jones, America's motherfucking sweetheart,
here to illuminate something for all y'all.
Racism is a spectrum.
And it can go from "racism" to "racism."
With many shades and flavors in between.
But what degree of racist are you?
We have the extreme racists.
Skinheads, KKK, most of--
All of Boston.
Boom! Right here.
Now, right in the middle.
Are you the person who says "I have a Black friend"?
Do you consider me that Black friend?
Lynyrd Skynyrd fans.
"Free Bird," is that by Lynyrd Skynyrd?
I love "Free Bird." I didn't know that they was racist until later on in my life.
Right here.
The ladies who think Meghan McCain got bullied on The View.
That bitch didn't get bullied. She ain't get bullied.
Do you secretly wish Bring It On ended in a tie?
So you saying the bitches from Compton
really, really was gonna tie with you, bitch? No.
This is where you are.
And at the very end of the spectrum we have the unconscious bias.
A catch-all for the rest of y'all.
Did you assume Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima were a couple?
You racist and dumb as hell.
Do you think all nipples are pink?
Even while you looking at my black-ass face!
That's racism sneaking in without you knowing it.
Tricky little bitch.
Okay, white people, I'm done teaching.
If you didn't see yourself on the spectrum,
that's the category you in.
Giving yourself the Best White Person Award.
Congratu-fucking-lations.
[audience cheering, applauding]
One thing's that's fucking mind-blowing to me is that one in five white people
believe that they're discriminated against more than Black people.
- One in five. - That doesn't even hold true
in the category of best rap album at the Grammys.
[all laughing]
- Was that one in five? - One in five.
So, was it Ross, Rachel, Chandler…
- [all laughing] - …Phoebe?
It wasn't my baby Monica. Please, not Monica.
[audience cheering, applauding]
Hey.
We're back.
Uh, welcome back. Now, obviously-- Thank you very much for joining us again.
Uh…
Obviously, usually in an episode about race, focusing on Black issues,
uh, you'd want to connect with a Cornel West, a Ta-Nehisi Coates,
a Dave Matthews, experts in the field.
But I'm gonna take, uh, Toni Morrison's advice on this.
It's time for white people to talk and figure some things out.
So tonight I'm speaking to, I mean,
honestly, as white a panel as I think I could find.
I have an Andrew, a Lisa and a Chip.
This-- This panel is bone. It is-- It is alabaster.
Uh, to my left, is Chip Gallagher,
he's a professor of Sociology at La Salle University.
He researches social inequality and race.
Lisa Bond, the resident white woman for Race2Dinner,
a group that is trying to have better conversations about race in America.
And joining remotely, longtime author and columnist Andrew Sullivan,
editor of The Weekly Dish.
Welcome, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us.
Uh-- I want to know what it is--
Here's what I think holds back our race conversation in America.
I think at its core,
I think white people put blame on Black people
for the position that they are in.
And then believe that white people will lose something
in order for Black people to gain it.
And-- And that's what creates that resentment and difficulty to overcome.
And I'll start with Chip because…
- Chip. - [chuckles]
It's Charles. Uh, yeah.
- That doesn't help. - No, it doesn't help. Yeah, yeah.
- Okay. Uh… - [chuckles]
A significant amount of white people in the United States of America
see race relations through a color-blind lens.
And I don't mean that-- I don't mean that whites don't see race.
They see someone that's Black or Asian.
But they don't, in any way, attach any meaning to the color
in affecting life chances.
And what that fundamentally means is that race doesn't matter in getting ahead.
It just doesn't matter.
They believe that we are in a race-- race-neutral environment.
[stammers] That the playing field has been leveled.
- And if you make it, um, or you don't… - It's a meritocracy.
…it's a meritocracy, and it's a narrative also, that does a lot of things.
It makes white privilege invisible.
Um, and it also makes whites feel that whatever they did,
whatever successes they had,
had nothing to do with what happened 50, 100, 200 years ago.
You have to look at it as…
it is difficult.
I can see how people would get defensive about, "I didn't have sla--
I-- I have not actively participated.
I am a part of a system that was built through, uh, racism.
But-- But my life is hard and I work hard and I don't get ahead.
So how-- how does privilege factor into it to me?"
Now, Lisa, you try and get these conversations going.
Where I come from, is that this system of white supremacy
has done such a good job of teaching us, as white people, that racism is bad.
And when we talk about racism, we're talking about your character flaw.
If we say you're racist, it's a character flaw.
- Mm-hmm. - I'm bad, and I know I'm not bad.
I'm-- I think I'm a good person.
I think I'm a nice person, and I know that I am racist.
And I know that I am racist because I, every single day,
uphold the systems and the structures of racism.
And if we don't start having a conversation about that,
and about the ways that we are complicit every day, daily--
If we don't talk about it, then we are never going to see movement.
- Ever. - Andrew, do you think
because it always gets framed on that moral level, right?
Does the moral qualifying of it
make resentment the natural outcome of that?
I think one of the issues is that some--
it's very hard to agree with some of the very premises
that are being expressed tonight, as if everything is already settled.
We know this country is, for example, a white supremacy.
Well, I don't believe that.
I think it's possibly the most absurd hyperbole I've ever heard.
I come from--
I'm an immigrant, so I have a slightly different view of this.
I can tell you America in 2022 is the most multiracial,
multicultural, tolerant, diverse melting pot
that has ever existed on planet Earth.
And there is no other place on Earth even like it.
That's why 86% of our immigrants are non-white.
[Stewart] Let me ask you a question.
Do you think they want to come to a white supremacist country?
I-I think you bring up an interesting point,
and we might be getting hung up on semantics.
So the fact that you're an immigrant speaks volumes.
It means you chose to come here.
But America didn't start that way for Black people.
They didn't immigrate here.
They were living somewhere else and they were kidnapped, and raped
and murdered and taken here.
And so for you to just say this is a magnificent place
that doesn't have racism is actually, I think…
- [Sullivan] I didn't say that. - …more of a foundational lie
than anything else.
- [audience cheers] - I didn't say that.
I did not say that.
- You said that it's the most hyperbole-- - I did not say that racism doesn't exist.
I said the term "white supremacy" is an absurd hyperbole.
For most people, that means the KKK.
It means no rights for minorities.
- And this has been used… - Okay, then let's define the term.
- …simply to avoid an argument. - Let's take a step back.
And let's define what we mean by white supremacy.
When you say white supremacy,
how are you defining it for, uh, this conversation?
When I talk about white supremacy and when I talk about racism,
I'm talking about, um, power and privilege.
The power and privilege that we hold as white people in society.
The way in which our structures, our institutions, our systems,
how everything was designed with white people in mind,
and only white people in mind.
If you think about who-- who is white in society, how it has morphed…
Oh, dude, I'm a Jew. I was grandfathered in like 50 years ago.
- Right. - [Stewart] They-- Here's what they did.
Brown people started coming. They're like, "We're gonna need some Jews."
And so they brought us in.
- [Bond] Absolutely. - It expands.
But it does that to hold up the pillars of the systems that are in place.
But you think it's purposeful?
- It's absolutely purposeful. - Andrew, would your argument be
that you don't believe that that's purposeful, or that it doesn't exist?
- I don't believe it exists. - Okay.
I don't know what these systems are.
- [Stewart] Okay, so-- - Just give me one system.
- All right, redlining neighborhoods. - Capitalism?
- No, redlining neighborhoods. - Well, that's a state--
That was a state-enforced thing from Jim Crow,
which is the one point of which I think absolutely is true.
So you just said it doesn't exist except for that.
- No, no, no. - Yeah.
No, I said white supremacy doesn't exist.
So when the New Deal-- when the New Deal was passed, right?
When the New Deal passed,
Black people were explicitly not allowed to have those loans.
When the Homestead Act allowed white people
to get an enormous wealth of land and be able to farm it,
Black people did not have access to that.
When slaves were freed, when Social Security came--
Black people-- when the G.I. Bill-- Black people were not--
So when you say to me, "I don't get how this exists,"
I'm just having trouble figuring out, like-- I mean, you're a bright guy,
like, what the fuck are you talking about?
- [Gallagher] Exactly. - Honestly, like, I don't know.
Yeah.
So, Chip, Chip, you jump in. And I don't mean to attack you.
- I'm just confused. Chip. - First off, the false analogy is this--
equating 250 years of slavery and then 100 years of Jim Crow
with the immigrant experiences of white Europeans from 1870 to 1924.
I grew up in an Italian, Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia,
working class.
But you know how these folks made it?
They got jobs in the government, civil jobs, cops, union jobs.
These were all off-limits. If you were brown or Black, forget it.
Here's the real deal about everything,
is that whites came to believe that everything good--
the jobs, the lands, the suburbs, it was theirs.
And when Blacks try to encroach, that's when you have the pushback.
That's when you have riots about busing. That's when you have terrorism.
So I don't know-- You know, I get Andrew. I know Andrew's history.
But, like, I don't even remotely understand what he's saying
about American history.
Because it is not in anyway--
People that have studied it, this is nothing like what he's talking about.
No one is denying this awful history.
Nor is anyone denying--
Great, so let's talk productively about what we do about it.
I think the conversation is then this-- we have an awful history.
It's-- It's--
- Remnants are still felt today. - We also have a great history, Jon.
- Say it again. - We also have a great history.
But I think you're minimizing it.
You're suggesting that because--
I think by calling today white supremacy, you are minimizing actual white supremacy.
We have an incredible diversity.
To condemn all American history as racist when in fact it's been liberatory…
The systems that were racist that were put in place that--
- Systems? - Yes, the systems that were put in place.
I'd like you to explain exactly what they are.
Well, I thought I explained it earlier about the G.I. Bill
and about the New Deal.
That's one thing. I want to know about these systems.
I just explained it. Housing--
That's one, and I've agreed that.
Andrew, you're not living on the same fucking planet we are.
Honestly.
- I really don't think you are. - I think you are not living--
I think you are not living in the planet most Americans are,
which is why this kind of extremism…
- Right. - …this-- this anti-white extremism…
- Yes. - …is losing popular support,
is creating a backlash, is going to elect Republicans
and undo a lot of the good you think you're doing.
This is what happens when you don't talk about it.
- I'm in favor of talking about it. - This is what happens
when white people don't talk about it,
is you have racist, dog-whistle tropes like this
that actually perpetuate and perpetuate and perpetuate.
So I am-- I-I--
And I did not come on this show to sit here and argue with another white man.
That's one of the reasons
that we don't even engage with white men at Race2Dinner.
- Um… So, um… - [Gallagher] I'm out.
You know, because quite honestly,
if white men were going to do something about racism, you had 400 years.
- You could've done it. - [audience cheering]
Okay. Um…
- So, I just-- Nope. - I am 58 years old.
I'm shutting you down right now.
- Um, so the point is… - I'm not responsible for anyone before me.
…I'm so tired of just engaging this conversation
and this deep hurt that Andrew has about talking about racism.
And-And, Chip, God bless you, but I'm gonna put everybody in the thing.
All of us white people do this.
I don't care if we say we're abolitionists.
I don't care if we say we're progressive.
I don't care if we're literally members of the KKK.
Every single white person upholds these systems and structures of white supremacy.
And we have got to talk about it.
[audience applauding, cheering]
If I could finger snap, I would finger snap right now.
Uh, let's remove it then from the--
Will you be finger snapping her calling me a racist, Jon?
Let's-- You've been doing a pretty good job with it yourself there, so…
Uh, but, Andrew, I think you're taking words out of context
and blowing them out of proportion
so that you don't have to deal with having to figure out a way
to deconstruct the barriers that were put in place
for Black people in this country
and give them a better chance.
- Your opening segment was the biggest-- - Was brilliant.
He didn't see it. I don't think he saw it.
Brilliant.
The biggest reductionist, one-sided--
- Yes. Yes. - Uh, uh…
- Completely biased position. - Yes, yes.
- Andrew, you are correct. - When I watched it, I wondered,
have you lived in the same country as everybody else for the last 30 years?
It was a straw man that you created.
- Andrew… - A total straw man.
- …you can appreciate things-- - In which every white person was bad.
- Let me stop for a second. - Every Black person had the same position.
You can appreciate where you live.
You can love where you live.
And you can honestly diagnose a terrible, terrible illness
that has lived in this beautiful place that you call home and love,
that you believe has metastasized into a cancer
that can kill the very thing that you believe in so deeply about this country.
To improve that place
and make it into the country that it stated it was in its founding documents
is the duty of everybody who lives here.
- So do not… - [Sullivan] Indeed.
…tell me who I am or what I believe, uh, motherfucker.
I'm just saying that you've created a straw man.
- [laughs] - [audience applauding]
I apologize. I-- I-- I fucking-- [stammers]
When you get older, it's harder to control the emotions.
But let's talk about solutions.
Um, Lisa, I'll start with you. What is-- What is the future?
How do we heal a country that has a really difficult time dealing with this?
As we see from four people that I think, uh, like and respect each other
and yet still can't have a conversation.
I think the first thing that we need to understand
is that all of us white people
have a responsibility to engage in these conversations regularly.
But when it gets hot like this, what do you do?
How do you back out of that and remind everybody like,
"Hey, okay, let's take a breath. We're all--
I think we're all decent, good-hearted people
who are trying to do the right thing.
- We differ in how to do it." - Yes.
I think that we have to know that we have to hold people accountable,
but we also have to, um, hold them with grace and with compassion.
And we have to-- we have to do each of them.
[Gallagher] To Lisa's point, I think at the individual level
- there are things we can do. - Yeah.
- At the big level… - Okay.
…what I think is that a lot of racism, when you strip it away,
it's about someone trying to take my resources. And status is a resource.
We need something akin to a new New Deal, to something to a Marshall Plan.
We basically, instead of building another B-1 bomber or another carrier--
basically we invest in our infrastructure.
Schools, bridges. I mean, the list is very, very long.
Andrew, I would think that's something actually that might appeal to you
in terms of rebuilding infrastructure and things,
because that's not, uh, based on-- but it's rebuilding areas
that are entrenched in poverty and those things.
It can be absolutely, yes, um, but I'm sorry to say,
I think just white people talking about this endlessly
is not going to help
actual Black Americans who deal with it.
I have certain ideas about that.
I think we need to focus intensely on young education.
I think education is crucial.
I think figuring out a way to help Black kids have a stable family.
The truth is-- That's two--
If you have a two-parent home, you're going to do better.
You really are.
I didn't grow up in a stable family. I grew up in a single-parent family.
- I'm just telling you the data. - And so, you know--
The data is that 30% of African Americans don't have this.
It's the biggest factor in getting people into college and succeeding in life.
And if you ignore it, we're gonna let these Black kids down.
I think Andrew-- I mean, what I'm hearing is, like, the family,
the pathology of the Black family.
That was the line. It wasn't the Black family.
It was the structures. You know, in the '80s it was crack.
It's disinvestment, it's-- it's white flight.
Family stability-- There is an element of economic stability and family stability.
And like, that's lost in your conversation.
I feel like your defensiveness
and the tropes that you use about, uh, the Black family
being the cause of entrenched poverty in that community
ignores why those families are broken up in the first place.
And that's mass incarceration,
and that's, uh, the way that we viewed the crack epidemic,
and that's the economic opportunity over generations that was defined, so--
You keep trying to remove things from their historical bearings.
- And I just think that's-- - [Sullivan] No.
If you can't diagnose the problem, you can't fix it.
We need to think about how we help the family restructure itself.
Because it's key. It's key.
Let's boil it down then.
Why do you think the family got that way?
Because I do think--
Because I do think it wasn't-- Marriage became less important.
Sex outside of marriage became-- for all of us.
Uh-huh. But you're not talking about all of us, Andrew.
And now we're seeing the same happening with white families.
You're talking about specifically the Black community.
If you look at white families today, you see the same thing.
So you're upset about that as well?
- Of course I am. - Okay, all right.
I'm not blaming-- This is-- This is a family question.
White or Black, you're gonna do better if your parents stay at home
and take care of you until you leave home.
That's just a fact.
How are you supposed to do that when you work a low-income job
and you don't have child care?
Well, it's really tough, which is why we need to address that.
- Absolutely. - But that's what we just talked about.
Of course we do and-- Yeah, that's important. I agree.
I would spend more on that. I'd spend more on schooling.
I would spend more on child care.
But I do not think you can dismiss culture.
- There are very poor-- - That's the point I'm getting to, Andrew,
which I think you've been dodging around.
What do you mean by culture?
I mean a culture in which the family unit is not as strong as it might be.
And in which the sense of making it in America--
And why is it not as strong as it might be?
- You're not talking about everybody. - …a source of a lot of our problems.
- I am. - You're talking about Black people.
Why do you think--
You seem to feel like somehow
Black culture is uniquely destructive to family. Why?
I don't-- I don't--
To be honest, I'm just telling you that's what is the truth,
that 30% are still born out of wedlock.
Only born out of wedlock.
I mean, it's a complicated question. I think--
Well, that's why I'm asking you to explain it.
- Tell me. - [stammering] It's also a function--
Well, I think it's a function of social conservatism losing its grip
in African-American communities.
In the 1930s,
the family retention rate, the marriage rate was in the 80s.
80 percent.
If it was 80% in Harlem in 1928
and it's only 30% now,
we need to get it back to where it was to have a better chance
for kids-- for Black kids to succeed.
That's what I'm talking about.
- Because you care about Black kids. - And-- Okay. That's-- So we'll--
- We'll look into that. - [audience laughing]
- Um… - [audience member] Yeah!
[stammering] And we'll get there, but, uh…
People in those communities want a better quality of life.
Whatever we have to do to get there for them to attain quality of life--
It's not about broken marriage--
It's about, how do we get people to have the quality of life
that we all as Americans, uh, deserve?
I think that we can all agree on.
And what a wonderful moment of kumbaya…
[audience laughs]
…at the end. I've appreciated everyone taking the time to do this.
Boy, has it pointed out some fault lines, and we've got to recalibrate
and find a way to… be open to
all different stripes of white people in the conversation,
whether they be people who study it,
uh, people who spend their lives trying to change it,
or people who are very upset about having to do that.
- Um… - [audience laughs]
Thank you very much, Andrew Sullivan, Lisa and Chip.
All right, we'll be right back.
[audience cheering]
[no audible dialogue]
[audience laughs]
[commentator] Back to Larry for three. Yes. Three-pointer!
[commentator 2] Hits the three.
[commentator 1] The hired assassin is firing it on target today.
[commentator 2] Look at that smooth rhythm.
[commentator 3] Stockton open.
[commentator 4] It's another one. Great pass.
Beautiful play for Little John Stockton.
["The Best" playing]
[cheering]
- [Stewart] Senator Booker. - I wish we were back in Jersey, man.
I feel in some ways like I am back in Jersey.
We've declared this for the state of New Jersey.
- Senator Scott, South Carolina. - Yes, sir.
- Thank you so much for joining us. - Absolutely.
Uh, in this country, obviously after George Floyd
there was a real sense of a racial reckoning
that, uh, white people needed to listen.
So we had a conversation with white people.
I can tell you this.
Uh, it did not go well.
- Really? - Yeah.
It got heated fast.
One of our guests used the phrase "white supremacy,"
that the country was designed in white supremacy.
And that language was a burr in the saddle of this one individual
who said, "How dare you say white supremacy."
Even though, to my mind, I don't know how you would describe it any other way
in terms of the design of it.
So, I don't want to quibble with some of your words.
Quibble away, though. I'm here to be quibbled.
But the language-- The reason why your language makes me feel uncomfortable…
- Yes. - …is because it makes it sound
like there's some sinister person who's designing a system today.
We need to tell the truth.
But somehow it can't be a conversation about blame,
but more that inspires a sense of responsibility.
[Stewart] So that's really interesting.
So would we agree that the experience of African Americans
- is unique in this country… - Yes.
…in that the government really did set structural barriers for them?
For 180, 190 years of American history
African Americans were, by and large, specifically carved out
of a free market system that works incredibly well
- if you're in it. - Right. Right.
Without a question. If you can't acknowledge that,
then you're not acknowledging the truth.
But I see so many signs of strong progress that I've personally experienced,
and at the same time I see some of the challenges that we still need to confront.
The reason why I wanted to come to the Senate,
- and Senator Scott and you… - Right.
…is you sit in a position of power in an institution
that has not traditionally been hospitable to people of color.
House of Representatives is very much a picture of what America looks like now.
It's diverse. Uh, different viewpoints.
Ethnically, gender…
The Senate is affirmative action for old white dudes.
- [laughs] I-- - It's-- It's--
- But let me get to the point. - Yes. Please.
How do you move forward
when the still-overwhelming majority of the country believes,
"If you help the Black community, that's gonna come out of our pot"?
It's resource guarding.
Those who believe that in order for me to have what I need
- you have to give up what you need… - Mm-hmm.
…that's just an illusion.
Why do you think the resentment, then, is so ingrained?
Too much of success in this nation feels elusive.
[Stewart] Right.
And so the future challenge that we have coming our way
I think is less Black and white and is more structural
to those who feel like their resources are inadequate to meet their needs.
- If you're looking for a great equalizer… - Mm-hmm.
…the closest thing to a panacea,
it's understanding that education is the closest thing to magic in America.
With a good education, almost all things are possible.
Is it about convincing, maybe, white Americans
that this investment actually enriches everyone?
Jon, I don't spend as much time on white versus Black as you do.
- I spend most of my time-- - I can tell. But to me,
it's illuminating the challenges
so that everything starts off on a level playing field.
If you were looking at an area of profound change,
would education be that--
- Is that where the power source would be? - So, it's hard to say that.
One of the top indicators, if not the top indicator,
of whether your children will be poisoned
is the color of your skin in this country.
Because from the particulate matter that causes asthma,
to the toxins in soil, to the contaminants in water,
those are disproportionately in low-income places.
So it's hard to say, "Just give that kid some more money."
You can't separate education from poverty or from environmental hazards.
So what is it about the white community that has in their hearts--
- Some in the white community… - Some, some.
…that there is this lack of-- of-- of that empathy.
You're talking about a narrow band of people
who harbor racial resentment.
No. I'm talking about the majority of people.
They don't harbor racial resentment, but they'll say,
"Well, there's more crime there…"
- Right. - "…in the Black community."
And if you keep saying to them, "But why?" They won't come to,
- "Well, redlining and the Homestead Act." - Yes.
- What they'll come to is the culture.
Well, I'm-- I'm--
- I'm not sure I actually agree with you. - Okay.
I agree with you about implicit racial bias.
And-- And-- And it is an issue.
Um, it is an issue of why in my life--
- Right. - Both Tim Scott and I-- our lives--
we were pulled over disproportionately to our white friends.
I wanna make sure that you guys don't think that I'm a unicorn.
[stammers] I have faced the same challenges you have.
- [Stewart] Right. - I've been stopped 20-plus times.
As a-- driving while Black.
[Stewart] You guys have the grace and the pragmatism to move past it.
- These two gentlemen… - Right.
…on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
One considered very conservative, one considered very liberal.
And yet, I was surprised at how well you aligned with each other.
Look, Tim has been my best partner.
Contempt didn't get me and Tim Scott to pass the First Step Act,
to pass Opportunity-- I can go through the legislation.
Not hating somebody,
seeing their humanity, not otherizing them.
Patriotism is love of country, and you cannot love your country
unless you love your fellow countrymen and women.
You don't always have to like them. You don't always have to agree with them.
But love is this radical idea
that, "I am going to put your well-being in line with mine
and understand that they are actually bound together."
But you're preaching the gospel to some extent here.
And I gotta tell you,
if Jesus was alive today and he preached that gospel,
- the Twitter comments would be vicious. - [laughs]
I-- I--
"Jesus, you both-sideser!"
- [laughing] - What are you doing?
[Stewart] Final question is just for me personally.
But I do wanna ask you, who is the most racist senator?
- You know, that's like uh… - [laughing]
…asking a question about when did you stop-- [stammers] You know--
[both laughing]
- So I'm the fourth Black person… - Yeah.
…uh, popularly elected ever to the Senate.
Tim is the fifth.
- Really? - Yeah.
So, picture this.
We were negotiating the policing bill, and we get assigned a room.
And I'm walking into the room. I ask my staff,
"What's this room's name?" And they go, "It's the Strom Thurmond room."
[both laughing]
[chuckling] And I just-- I stopped and wondered…
- [Stewart laughs] - …"What would Strom Thurmond think?"
[Stewart] Uh, thank you for your time. It's really much appreciated.
- Appreciate you. - Appreciate you.
Thank you.
- All right. - [audience cheering]
Ah, thank you!
Thank you for watching.
I need a nap!
[audience laughing]
Thank you for watching the episode that'll have the most people on Twitter
reminding me I'm Jewish.
Oh, I look-- I look forward to their comments.
For more resources, please check out our website at theproblem.com.
We also have a podcast
where I always say at least one thing that requires an emergency staff meeting.
Check out our newsletter.
Got lots of exclusive tips for my toned arms, my juicy glutes.
It goes in a different direction than the rest of the show.
And, uh, the best rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Thanks for joining us. Good night.
When you hold up a LeBron James or a Jay-Z
or somebody along those lines as, "Well, that guy made it.
The most exceptional athlete any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes
can make it. Why can't you?"
Chris Rock used to do a great bit about it. He goes, "I'm six-foot famous."
He goes, "Outside of six feet, I'm just another Black guy
walking on the street getting in trouble.
But as soon as they get within six feet, they're like,
'Hey, ma-- Hey, Chris Rock!'"
- [all laughing] - That's not how the joke goes.
- [Stewart] Oh, it's not? - He's six-foot famous.
And then he goes-- The cop goes,
"Nigga, nigga, nigga-- Oh, that's Chris Rock!"
- Yeah. I did-- I did shorten the bit. - [all laughing]
I said, "Jon, tag me in. I'll do the rest of the joke for you."
- [all laughing] - "We can do this together."