>> hello and good afternoon walking to the commonwealth club program i am pleased to be the moderator for today's program a fellow with the discovery institute chatman center for leadership and a syndicated columnist. those which focus on top news and current events. pleased here to be here today to discuss the book world racism. and came out last weekend is

already making waves and inspiring debates for critical race theory and the author of several books and an associate professor at columbia university. john, welcome to the commonwealth club. but a quick note if you have any questions for john or me they will be forwarded during the program. i love the book. i never got boring and made meo think about the world in a new way sote before angel down why did you write the book? what is it about and what to people who really don't like your viewpoint say about it and how do you respond? >> and not some sweater vested person who is writing a book designed to get money from white conservatives.

although what i am is a liberal getting on people's nerves. it is not our right wing black book. so whatec is for people left of center listening to the voices from the radical hard left. and that must be an actual truth rather than one facet of the left out of fear. and ifs you disagree with what it is a very narrow punitive range of views. what we need is left of center but constructive and unselfconscious positions. and so i think that what most people will say with my views

on recently in the clinton administration. you are only as good as what you didhe last week. so i completely understand that a lot of people think i first started to write for the daily beast in 2016 they think i'm newon at this that's why they throw this set me so hard but the main thing is they say they say things that what white people wantk to hear but that is m not true it's been for black people as much as white people most black people want to step 2 feet agree with what i'm saying andnd this is a hard thing. to the extent with that enlightenment sensitive white person wants to hear what i have written invoke racism there is an idea what white people want to hear must automatically be racist.

that is simplistic. it could be the probabilitynj does allow that when a white person enjoys hearing is also the moral truth and i'm taking a gamble my book falls into that realm. that's what woke racism is. >> and then to criticize marie condo. and professionally destroyed foyer because people were saying she was a racist and punching down. she was suspended and left "the new york times" that you don't think she would've been targeted five years ago and destroy the way she was now talk about how things change so quickly. then ire will do a follow-up.

>> it's interesting you bring her up because they open the book with her. and that really was what sparked me to write the book. i like her. and the food she was teaching you to make then all of a sudden she was gone and i noticed and i read why. that's when it clicked it is absolutely absurd and i could tell it would continue and this is an influential group of people who will keep doing this and i cannot have it it's not me rubbing my hands together and then essentially fired and then not trying to better power differentials and that she's passed high and not completely right and a

japanese citizen if not a white american person or white european person and therefore it is a criticism. and with that moral transgression and all of us know except the roughly seven and a half people with those offhanded criticisms of those influential people. neither of whom think oflv themselves of white hegemony and yetnd that's the way it has to be. and that's what i thought the people who got allison fired.they were doing aed good thing. i didn't think they were holding pitchforks and running down the hill but peaceable sensible overeducated people we genuinely thought what they did was the right thing. but most of the rest of us know so t what was the gap of

understanding? it is the issue of power being everything and i took it from there. >> did she take of apologizing? if she had far back sooner but that have helped? >> she could not have known but in her time and it's reasonable to think that she could apologize. so that took her real jump starting in the spring of 2020. in retrospect, no. i haven't done anything wrong. but those are the consequences but i admit no culpability that i understand in the spring of 2020 that people like t this needed to be down across the country and could not have known.

>> thank you for saying hegemony a lot of people don't know how to pronounce it. i appreciate that [laughter] you are a linguist. it has made me very insecure. so do you think things will get worse or better are there signs this is sending that nice people are trying to take over their jobs for trivial fault? what is the answer? >> yes. it is changing and six months ago i wasn't sure. but at this point am seeing various signs there will be a push back as we come out of the pandemic and we see so much of it happening we realize noticing how for better or worse woke is now a

slur because this person who is annoyed and has been used for so many normal thinking people. this is one of my books i can tell this will be topical in ten years it will be seen as part of a certain moment in part of a push back. and i hope helps to serve the purpose. and i want toha do everything we could to make sure as many people as possible understand to resist this extreme so i this book is a part of that. >> and then talking about religious people and you are

talking about people i have to tell you that you have totally radicalized me because in 24 years for the san francisco chronicle and i was tender it's the anguish don't back down. and then i was on twitter yesterday what we would talk about. if people start to challenge you that you just have to slam them back. >> but when it comes to this type we need to simply stand up in the same way to look them innd the eye and say no and

a use that analogy of popping a shark on the nose. not to be physical but anyone arguing from the left but this type is poised to call you a the publicrt in square if you don't agree with their views. you say no i'm not a racist don't agree with what you're saying and you can say whatever you want about me wherever you will, i am not changing my mind. o if we say that enough to the extent we can within the parameters of ourso lives, then this will change and unfortunately were talking and that racism is more than burning crosses on people's line is not the most natural way of thinking. but now the idea has to be

then to realize the world will keep spinning and your life will keep going. in the meantime you can give these people what they want. if you give it to them they will take it. if you really want a world one by people who is taken what is a compassion into a social justice religion, not to leave the room but to set back down what i really hope as they have that backbone i am not telling white people to tell black people to sit down but certainly there are blacke people like this but not what they think that is something i wish more people would keep in mind. >> one of the things that you write about is that basically

that black people are hothouse flowers who will will under certain kind of criticism with that dysfunctional behavior but you have to coach an incredibly sensitive ways. and you seem people lower their standards. >> yes. i reject the idea is to walk around in a constant existential theme from things that happened hundreds of years ago. and with the idea and those that walk around carrying the entire history of the race upon them. so be very sensitive talking about race issues and then basically c come as close as you

can to giving into any demand any of us make and it follows naturally from thateo you give black people a path you cannot expect serious competition to be engaged in by a person that is soo burdened but essentially what is a consolation prize is supposed to be the top prize for us but i reject that. i did not grow up for so i reject that because it is an way of thinking that black people in the past generally had. there is no push from the media or intelligentsiapt to adopt yes i can as a mantra. and condoleezza rice was on the view last week expressing the same views and she grew up in the segregated south. there's nothing unique where she came from. she titled her biography extraordinary ordinary people who told her this. people in birmingham't of all

places deep in alabama. of what was happening to black people in the streets she knew those four little girls who were killed in the church. but yet she knew that yes we can't is not progress that settled in the late sixties and early circles and that notion was magnified and sent out to mainstream america and the wake of george floyd's murder. i reject it thinking of myself as utterly ordinary. i want to put people on the mental patch so look them in the eye. that's weird people use that and linguistics and i shouldn't but i want them to get rid of that little blip that people cannot be subjected to standards of redlining. i don't think our ancestors wanted us to think that way.

>> one of the reasons but one of the points is when you have so many people and how they feel about other people not looking for practical solutions about the disparity that does ant disservice to everybody in this country. can you talk to that for a second? >> it's very simple. a lot of the people we are to —- talking about our showing that you understand societal racism is key. showing that you understand w that is a necessary prelude to changing the world. says who? in what sense? where did you get that? nobody would've had any idea

what that meant so what is the proof now? i imagine some very sophisticated have answers and some academic journals was some books i haven't gotten to but the point has not been made in any mainstream way to say all of those people who are pretending this know that it feels right frankly. it is easy see you stand up and show you know something. everybody will give you a high five that nobody really ask that question except someone like robin d'angelo literally in the worst book ever written and says one thing i have done a lot of is read books. the worst book ever written she actually anticipates the question that if you are asking okay but then what will you go do? you're going to fast. you are letting yourself off

the hook really supposed to think of how you are complicit. how iste this better than the somebody can give an answer you cannot give an answer with the attitude of course, because nobody has said what it was. but then nobody explains that despite the fact it's painfully obviousn. question. >> you want to get to questions from viewers. and then with poor people in america but the war on drugs and offer more vocational training. you don't mention family. >> now [laughter] >> i was surprised.xp

so explained to me. now i will not say that. >> i know many people have compelling pieces and then the value of being two parents in the home. i certainly know what the expansion of what welfare is in the late sixties did to black communities. and then i wish somebody would make a movie about that. and in general my feeling is don't want to be in. is not that i don't agree that a wonderful statistic but if

you get a job and you don't have a child until you are married then you will not be poor. but in terms of thing people that the people have been saying about that you could dated to them when a hand report but and it doesn't seem to work and those values will from those policy decisions. that's my feeling in my there was nothing about how single parenthood is not in the book. i did not write that. >> and ending the war on drugs is a great idea. there have been people writing about that for a long time

it's even hard to teach phonics. that's not easy. and then those that are less controversial and with the war on drugs come i know that you want to be a complete war on drugs that doesn't seem that realistic either. and then because of the past 20 years i haven't been around that long but i have seen cracks in the plaster so the fact to be graphic nowadays walked down new york's tree andht smell marijuana that's fine that is the beginning and also a lot of people who have agitated to go further including even some branches of the naacp were opening up

to that idea despite the fact the most of those cases you are dealing with conservative ministers but is not impossible that's a tough one but with vocational education to have some interest in that sort of thing going back to the obama administration but yes i take your point. >> from viewers first question critical race theory seems to exploit to tongue tie everyone. how do we define a common word? >> you cannot counteract people's reef formation of words. it is inevitable in language change. it's almost never deliberate but with critical race theory

our discussion is polluted by the fact there are certain legal papers written decades agoo that nobody better legal scholar could love. that way of thinking having percolated into graduate school and humanities. and also education school such that philosophies based on those ideas are now being promulgated and wasted upon a and nine -year-olds. what is critical race theory doing in our classroom? and who was teaching these of secure legal scholars? so at this point it is handy because it is called crt and then you know what that is the abbreviation for. i have written a few columns to cut through that. i have done a podcast episode aboutod it lexicon valley. so i have never written out a full column about only that but i did what crt means.

so onma this day i realize and people really don't think there's anything going on in the classrooms. but there is no problem with anything going on in the schools. people like me are making that up. and then thinking that we have to craft that message better was smart and well-intentioned people.. so there is a messaging issue. the terms always be messy but we have to analyze what the next is my work is beginning to intersect. and then to use both halves of

my brain lately. and with that change of meaning. because i can happen so quickly. >> so today i am in virginia. >> nothing>> going on down there [laughter] that they i don't teach it in public schools. >> and this they don't teach those works that he is right. if all the say what my child history teacher is teaching and then he wrote something back in hebrew that doesn't makes sense it doesn't have to be critical race period self but ifte your kids are being taught that whiteness is an inherent guilt.

if there taught all subjects need to be looked at through the lens. that's it they are taught to any appreciable expense? that is critical race theory. and anybody who denies that is an issue either doesn't know. some people find education policy boring. i know anything about football many people love for football i get it. or you are being willfully naïve because you try to placate a certain base to get elected but that means we can listen to the fight with our reflection of what is happening so either way there is that area going on in education. >> . >> what you think of the 1619 project?

>> the truth is a lot of it is a history lesson that cox the ear more to how we are to the differentials so the claim of the revolutionary war and the thoughts of a significant degree because of people not wanting to let go of slavery with the idea to lose the war means you cannot have a plantation so it would seem to be that claim has been disproven and that's what i think of the 1619 project. any discussion of it purports with that highly celebrated tenant that is not disproven. >> and what you have lost

patience for for what you understand as an academic and you teach at columbia what are your students like these days? are they better prepare now? are they up to the challenges? how prepared are they for university education? >> i don't know the answer to that question yet because of mundane things everything went crazy in the spring of 2020. but universities were online. i don't get to talk to them off-line so i taught them in classes so now we're back on campus. honestly with everybody and masks it is muffled communication once again not

that i'm an anti- master or anti- vax are but that on my face means i avoid being on campus to breathe and smell the world so i'm not back on campus yet so i don't know. and then i will be spending more time on campus and theny to talk to the current i know that sounds trivial but it really does affect how you smell a campus and get a sense of what's going on if you have asked me before the pandemic the idea the campuses taken over that is vastly exaggerated so roughly june 2020 then suddenly all of that came true which is why i got up on the soapbox so i use to say my students don't act like i said that for years and

years and columbia has been almost on the immune to what you have seen at yale for example. but i just cannot say anything yet. >> as what i'm thinking is one of the messages as they can go after anyone with the most inconsequential thing. do you have a plan? obviously you are still there at "the new york times" and at columbia. has anybody ever gone after you? how did you deal with it? or how will you quick. >> that's a good question. that has not happened at columbia yet. i got no signals for any of the higher up. but i would be an idiot not to wonder if it could happen and

all it would take is just one person who decides to interpret one thing i would write or say and it would snowball.. i have no reason to think if it snowball beyond a certain point that i could let it go and that could happen so i spent a lot of time since the middle of 2020. i had spent a lot of time setting things up so why could continue to be able to make aag living. i have done that. the job is complete. so i'm'm not that worried. but my sense is that i will not lose my job there are some other factors it would be a bad lucky fire me for those. but if it does i will end of

my feet and continue to say things. that is the idea and the possibility cannot keep me because that say because they will forever.t and that is how it is. so i get the feeling of doing that i am 56 so how long will he hang in anyway? i will keep doing this into my eighties if i can so yes i have thought about it but i have not seen any's part of it yet. so please talk about for a second why you decided not to use that term in your book as well.

because it is the title. and not the ones that we originally had and the label is calledca the elect that is my name for these people not that is a voice cracking like henry eldridge. it is that they are mean or their children. and these are people who have. good news and that the world needs to listen to and is so incontestable he good it is worth hurting people to make it so that the world works according to these tenets.

and that is reminiscent of people who think of themselvesmi as chosen. and that they will impose it upon the world by whatever means necessary. >> but these are good people doing the right thing. but it's more than january 6 so can you talk about that? >> but so the answer is that they are overturning voting o laws. that you can't help but notice on the ground.

and those to keep democrats it is revolting on many levels but it doesn't work as well is we are often told. that is the thing the left doesn't want to admit. it is a terrible gesture from the right bute it doesn't work that well. in the meantime what i have i seen happening with the elect as they are taking over academia, the media and the arts and the law. all four of those things. and the kind of person who willth tell me those things that are not as important to keep people from voting and failing and that makes no sense to me and to a lot of people asking why it p is a big deal a certain group of people are deeply affecting the way we

teach, learn, question, judge and think and make music to say that is no big deal is frankly most people believe it's a valid point. those that take over institutions. but i'm not that corny it is not about some sort of jingle but so what we had as modern enlightened people. i will not watch that turned over that needing me like a child and then doing high-fives over the fact that racism exists because george floyd died unjustly that is not the way social history is to proceed i will not allow

it. >> you talk about january 6 to be the effort to suppress the black vote. and people who thought wrongly that trump had one and then conflating with what happened with afterward. >> i'm trying to get the people who say this give them the benefit of the doubt. but trump reallyy should have won the election they think he won the election and therefore procedures need tone be overturned to make a look that way. the same people who areg interested that are overturning basic procedure that they don't vote much as a stretch but the idea that people who want to interfere with the electoral mechanisms to have things their own way. but that really doesn't work

either. because that's a common view atat this point.us >> why you think this is so ridiculous? >> . >> it was based on a truly brilliant person looking at, the work and found in that is the basis of it and then all the people who get the most praise are white. and it was a very long time ago.r and one of those elements to be foreground and background were specifically elements in thee background were if you do certain things you can make a sound like the foreground. and it is parallel to views of the hierarchy with hegemony

and i swear to you. but i read this work and not something that but that the music department across the country are inviting that person to speak and share his view and are discussing his views and that affects the curriculum that's a problem. and then i don't think the person in question is making any money it has nothing to do with me being jealous of career success. the influence of that person based on such a thin premise. but yet that is being treated as something significant not only condescending to black brilliance but a waste of time thinking about good music of any kind. >> another viewer, does the

ongoing discussion of race that is central to many problems. >> they should be held more front and center and this is the thing. it used to be that people of a certain type would complain about the racial issue of poverty. that was considered the greatest injustice but now we don't talk about poverty that way anymore and the whole discussion about a black underclass or who are just a start, the whole meth addiction, jdvance. all that is very real and it's very talked about . but now that's wrong. you can't talk about class because you're ignoring that a meth addicted person with only half of their teeth who can't take care of their kids and will never make a real

living and is living in a shack somewhere in the distant place that has no prospects as white privilege. that's today's discussion and that's become especially important for many people since about june 2020. that's not a human discussion . that is kabuki and it's obvious that a more rational america at this point would be moving towards thinking that there are black people who need help, there are white people who need the same health. being black and middle-class now is normal and default. you have to admit, you have to polish the crown once you've earned one but we're not allowed because we're supposed to think of blackness and racism as the eternal route that rents our nation. i sincerely believe that you today is more performance than pragmatic reality. and you know, if it makes me a white supremacist to call that out i guess i am one but we need to redefine what we mean by white supremacy because frankly , the core

white person who i just described is not supreme. there's nothing supreme about that. and to master the mental exercise of supposing somebody like that is privileged just because they're not brown is an absurdity. it's a waste of time. where only alive for about 80 years and we have things to do. it's time to stop those mind games and get down to real social justice which for many people this is ahorrible thing to think . social justice should apply to some white people too it's always been like that . >> i have a question about perception. fuel research does these polls where they asked people about racism broadly and they talk to people from countries and people from singapore, spain, italy, france they all thought the united states was more racist than their own countries. you also found that more black students experience racism that high school students and younger people

are more likely to see discriminationthan older people. can we talk about that ? >> do you mean older people arm are more likely? >> they're less likely to say they see it than younger people . >> okay, yeah. i think it's obvious that there's an extent to which education, part of modern education is that your dedicated to understand the nature of oppression but that i can also teach a black person that they are suffering more than for example their ancestors and by ancestors i'm saying grandparents, ancestors they know which say that they were so i'm particularly interested in that college student is more likely to say the experience racism that a 14 or 15-year-old and your thinking are you really experiencing more because

your 20? many people say you are experiencing it more when you are 14 when people were less trained to be polite so there's a slip between what people will attest and what the reality is and it's not that somebody's doing that for malevolent reasons but there's a certain coaching that i think a lot of black people undergo not consciously but we have to watch out for that and for a white person to call that out takes a certain amount of bravery and most white people wouldn't be up for it and i understand whybut that reality is there . all i can say is if what they mean is if they saw the footage of george floyd being killed, that's not a metric of whether this country is moreracist than their country . we have to look at that and that is what many foreigners are led to think. they're showing videos of certain disgusting incidents with the police and they assume that is something that happens all over the country all the time only to black people and those things

happen more to white people. that's a whole other thing. it used to be the same kind of european or japanese person would be shown films of black ghettos and the only reason must be black people are not white and therefore america is a more racist country in many cases the country in question as a racism that's endemic and more naked than anything happens here. these days the measure of america's racism is thought to be what happened to one man in the spring of 2020 captured on tragically clear video. okay, i'm glad the world has seen that but you can't base junior sociology on that one thing . japan is less racist being then united states? i beg to differ . but the george floyd video is hideous. >> and america becomes more multiracial every year.

there are more children born into not just white families or black families, multiracial families . how is that affecting how people are looking at these issues of brokenness? >> if you think about the general trajectory of things, we're at a point where i would say that based on the schematic fiction that white people and black people and some latinos scattered in there and whatare we going to do about these asians and some people think from india . that'sthe discussion . that's not going to make any sense after another generation. you can look at people now and if you ask what i'm thinking about my own kids whose mother is white the answer is yes. it's going to get to the point where there are so many people of age that the whole issue of them having to own that there black because their one quarter black or sometimes even half or mothers tie and the father is from bosnia.

what is the child and the child is just nothing and i think that kind of person frustrates people who like to talk about white versus black because they want to keep it down to the certain categories. for reasons that make sense they want to foster this constant guilt. the truth is when i discussed the sorts of issues i discussed i think to myself i'm putting aloft awful lot of energy into a discussion that's going to look like something some people a long time ago were arguing too much about in 60 years but i can't help being part of my own time. and is racism going to go away western mark probably not. will there be some other form of discrimination that comes into play after mark i suspect classism will become sharper in the future world but we are becoming much more. it depends on the neighborhoods but there are plenty of months in even for example dissent for white

communities. a lot of interracial marriages in that world now. a lot of interracial marriages in theblack ghetto . >> i'm goingto go to your linguistic background for a second . i'll read you sentences and you can explain the difference. banks are less likely to give loans to blackpeople . black people areless likely to get loans from the bank . >> i shouldn't laugh. i readthat article to . i don't hear the difference that much but i can respect that the person supposes if you put it as banks are less likely to give loans to black people it will make you think about what it is about the banks. where i lose that person is that that person just assumes that the answer is that banks are racist in some way. that the person sitting behind the desk and assessing the personfor a loan is partly affected by the fact that the personhas brown skin . if you lookinto issues like

that and you have to look in and frankly , finance , banks are boring. no offense to anybody's who's the person who wrotethat article thinks that, frankly i think that, i'm an armchair linguist . we can look into the details but it's not as simple as just skin color in those cases so that's assuming that banks are racist . banks are probably a tiny bit racist. but banks in 2021 as opposed to 1914 or 1952 at all certain reasons for doing things and it would be hard to identify bigotry or discrimination as the reason. i'm not sure that person would be open to a discussion about that but i see where she's coming from. >> i looking for your bio some things i found interesting. i went to monument mountain regional high school also. >> and to the theater.

>> that's correct so tell me about your education . the decisions you made in your education, you speak french. what, why did you take this path to get where you are academically? you have this special team of linguistics. tell me about what interested you and why you made the choices you did. >> i didn't make choices. i'm in more centralized person than most reason most would have reason to believe. i went to four different schools. i went to simon's rock for four years, most people went for two years back then. got an aa in french only because i was good at it and i didn't know what else and then i got a ba from rutgers. i went to rutgersfor no reason at all . my parents were not as

connected to getting their kids into great schools as today's parents would be. parents weren't into that then . i certainly didn't care. i should have gone to swap more but they didn't take me. i could have gone to haverford we forgot to hand in a financial aid form on timeand they were strict about it . rutgers was the fallback. i met some wonderful people writers who i stillknow that i shouldn't have been there in general . it was two years on pause. i learned a lot about ragtime and then i went to nyu because i wanted to live in new york city for a while and read more books so i got basically a nice little degree in american studies . just a masters i got to read the great gatsby . i got to read you know, and see now i told you you'd remember. i got to read all search of great things with the aging paperbacks i'm looking at right now and i spent a lot of years spinning my wheels and i thought i know that the least secular thing i did was

when i was in my early 20s i thought i know i'm a professor. i can feel that's what i am. but i don't know what and then i thought i seem to have this facility with languages and the only reason i knew that meant linguistics was because i was working in a copy center at nyu to make ends meet and people would bring in journals and things to be copied and there was one person who was a linguist who would bring in, that's the only reason i knew what linguistics was and i thought maybe i can do that . thatis really the story . so i got a phd in it because i could fake being good at it which is the best that i did while i wasgetting the degree . and none of this had anything to do with becoming a race commentator. you would have perplexed me if you'd said in 1992 that you're probably going to be best known for saying contrary things about race that make people hate you.

but i just got to the 90s and i thought things get better and better for black people despite rodney king and despite this that and the other thing and i found the educated you was things have not changed for black people since 1960 and i didn't understand why . there's a part of me partly just being tidy. i couldn't rest with it. i couldn't say to these people are crazy because they weren't. i couldn't say these people were stupid because a lot of them were smarter than me but i thought they are not processing reality. that is what slowly lead i think it is particularly fueled by oj. it's at the point where we can say it's painfully clear the man murdered twopeople and yet for many years , black people of all educational stripes were pretending not to see it. i didn't get it. and that's what led me to write losing the race in 2000 .

i had no idea it would become so widely read. i wrote it as kind of therapy . i write quickly and i thought i will put this out there so people know what i think and maybe younger black people will say i'm not crazy like shelby steele taught me that i'm not crazy and low and behold losing the race was a minor bestseller and more low and behold i never stopped being asked to write editorials. i kept thinking i guess i'm having 15 minutes and then it became a half hour at around 08 i thought people are not going to leave me alone so i settled into it but for me it really was i want to be a professor. i like languages. i thought i was going to write a book on looney tunes and not the menstrual ones, all of them. i've seen 850 of the 1000. i love them to pieces and somehow that didn't happen so here i am just dealing with how white that came out but it's also been a crapshoot. but i wouldn't have it any other way. >> i have to tell you, it's a great book.

i highly recommend and i'm curious, it is. it's a great book. it's a fast read. there's no space where it slows down. you just keep moving on. irecommend it to everyone what's your next book ? >> i want to say just because there's crosstalk, what i was saying is it is a great book. i've said there it is because i'm always soimpressed to see it . i don't know if it's a great book. you know, i don't know what the next book is and people are going to think i'm saying this to seem cute but i thought the next book isnot going to be some angry screed . it's exhausting presenting a book that never smiles so i bought i want it to be something fun. i actually thought i wonder if i could get it by my agent to write the book on looney tunes from 1930 until 1938 because i thinkthey are high are .

somebody came up with a book about looney tunes so i can't do it, somebody else wrote it . jamie lyman, damn you. now i have to write about something else and i don't know. i think the next book will be something about language. that's as far as i've gotten. i have no idea because to be honest i have had 2 in my calendar year and my brain is fried. you know what it's going to be about? not race. maybe that will be the title. >> maybe you can go against the looney tunes book that came out. >> my looney tunes, that's right anyway, it's a thought. i think i'm supposed to close this down now. if i'm wrong, i guess there

will be dead space afterwards . anyway, unfortunately that is all the time we have for today's program. i want to thank the commonwealth club and encourage everyone to purchase a copy of john mcwhorter's new book "woke racism" wherever books are sold and you can read it in a weekend and feel smarter afterwards. i want to encourage everyone to become a member of the commonwealth club . there's the site@commonwealthclub.org and learn how to become a member. this program and others will be posted on the website. okay, thank you so much john. i appreciate it.hello everyone.

my name is jacob demlow. i am the events and marketing manager at east city bookshop on capitol hill in washington dc and we are so excited to have you with us tonight to discuss tim max new book misfire in inside the downfall of the nra. you can find this book and more at east city bookshop online at our website on various social media, and we are currently open to customers tuesday through sunday. before we get started a quick detail if you have any comments or technical issues that you need help with please let drop those in the chat and we will help you help you with those as we can and if you have any questions for tim, please throw those into