Episode 215: Touch My Pink Monkey

Hey, those are vampires. You don't get to insult them. You're not a vampire.

The great and Oz has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good man. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man.

I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamer Summers from the University of Houston. Dave from Twitter to Fox News to most state legislatures, everyone is worked up about critical race theory. So let me ask you, how has critical race theory hurt you and your loved ones?

My self esteem has dropped dramatically since I learned that I might be white.

Yeah, no.

You know how it's affected me the most is that CRT in my little niche of psychology stands for Cognitive Reflection Task. It's like a particular measure that people use a lot, right? And now it's just meaningless. That's how it's harmed me directly.

Arguably, it was meaningless as a measure.

Before that's only because you got them all wrong.

So today we are going to wade into the debate over critical race theory, I guess something we're both experts in.

Yes, a big caveat. Just remember that this is segment one, because we got a little bit of flack for our loosey goosey treatment of the lab leak theory, which was a.

Fucking opening question, people. And they attributed to us this was on Reddit. They attributed it to us like some strong, firm stance on the lab leak. What the fuck?

I know. One dear editor was like, did they not read this paper? And then they put, like, a nature paper.

He's like, I'm surprised they didn't mention this paper for an opening question. Little thing to riff about.

I honestly, honestly had zero readings ever done on the Lavlic theory, which maybe is irresponsible, but like you said, it was an open question. I didn't even know it was going to be a segment.

It was like the ghost thing. Also, where on Reddit, for the first, like, 30 comments, that's all anybody was talking about. Didn't we talk about it for, like, five minutes or something?

I don't know. I don't even remember. But what I do remember is it's not even clear to me whether the lab leak hypothesis in my mind was an accidental leak or whether it was some malicious intent or don't take any of that seriously.

Yeah, no, definitely not from me either. I thought it was a funny opening question just because everybody was talking actually, I think the reason I was laughing when I came up with the idea to do it, which was right on the spot, is because of how uninformed we were about I thought we made that clear.

That should be the real disclaimer that Liza starts the episode with.

Yeah, they don't know what the fuck they never have.

Like I said, I know about four things, and we covered that territory a long time ago.

By episode nine, we had covered all the things we know and now it's all just bullshit. Right. I will say that I did do a little more reading about critical race theory. And we also have something funny to talk about, which I guess relates to critical race theory, although I think it doesn't.

The tangential relation is part of the.

Discussion, perhaps, which is a paper called it sounds like one of our things that we did for Journal of Controversial Ideas. The abstract on having whiteness. Yeah, whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has a malignant, parasitic like condition to which, quote, white people have a particular susceptibility. That's the first sentence of the abstract. So we're going to talk a little bit about that paper because it was the target of some ire.

Yes. And then in the second segment, we are talking about the philosopher L. A. Paul's book. I'm doing air quotes on book because we didn't read the book.

White people.

On transformative experiences. Transformative Experience, I guess is the title of the book.

Read some we prepared I actually downloaded the book and read a chunk of it. But then yes, also the Pro C was very helpful and it is a very simple idea that I'm excited to talk about because I think it's simple, but then also profound and true.

And also sometimes wrong. So we'll talk about that.

Yeah, well, Dave provoked a violent opposition kind of animosity I thought you liked Paul, too.

So lori, Paul is my friend. Don't say anything about to just I want to load my objection. I would lodge not load my objection here to talking about any of this stuff. I feel like we have to but I resent it all the way.

Right. This is your fault, listeners.

I resent having to talk about critical race theory. I wanted to ask you sorry, just quickly, I wanted to ask you, have you ever taken one of those 23 ANDME or any of the how white are you?

I haven't because I feel like this.

Is just an empirical question. The degree of evilness that one has.

Could be directly yeah, no, I think I'm mostly non white. If you look like I haven't done the actual DNA analysis, but I think I'm like one quarter white. I think, like two fifths. And I don't know how the math worked out, but two fifth Native American.

Cherokee, probably Cherokee, possibly.

Yeah. Two ninths black, and then obviously some Ashkenazi Jew, but no sephardic.

I heard you saying clearly.

I would love to be sephardic. All Asanazi dudes have sephardic envy. Who wouldn't want to be a little cooler, a little tougher, a little Mediterranean, right?

You should do like a 23 ANDME.

Yeah, but then I would learn that I'm not related to most of the people I think I'm related to. Did you do one?

Yeah, I did a National Geographic one years ago and it was mostly expected. I have a lot of so a quarter of my family is Lebanese, so there's Mediterranean that goes back there. But it came out like around 20% native American, so indigenous South American. So I feel like I get to say some things that you're not allowed.

To say as we talk about a couple of your white ancestors raped.

It's like the battle is in my own genes. I don't know what to believe. Do I identify with the rapists or the rape?

Exactly question we all have to ask ourselves.

I laugh to keep from crying. All right, so should we start with on having whiteness or should we start with critical race theory?

Well, I was going to ask you a serious question, or somewhat serious depending on how relative to what we've been talking about. If somebody asked you what is critical race theory, what would you say?

Yeah, it's the exact right question and it's one that I was asking Nikki and Bella. So my answer would be would have been critical race theory is this is the naive ish answer that it is a loose field of study about how institutional structures have particularly affected people of a certain race. Right. So the notion that there is structural racism and that identifying the sources of those structures and institutions is a way to get rid of some of the nefarious, creepy racism of the country and even that's more educated than I probably could have given you like 24 hours ago. Right.

We've talked about it a lot on the show, mostly just making fun of the panic about critical race theory from people like former guest of the podcast James Lindsay. But but I had always associated it with just critical theory in general, which has kind of Marxist elements and related to feminist critique of rights, feminists like standpoint epistemology. But